#Tracking down where Khan's crew have been taken

[izzysarchivedblogs]

[ hold ] one muse cradles the other’s face between their hands ground them. 

// Make it Linda holding his face pls maybe?

@thefleetsfinest -> here's that into darkness thing we were talking about

Where to begin with the past several ⸻honestly, she hasn't been keeping track of the time and in the following days, Linda would come to find how short a time that everything had happened.

From apprehending a man, three hundred years old, to the Enterprise being fired upon; it happened in rapid succession one thing after the next thing after the next. Lives lost, that's the most important sticking fact to her. Linda had been scared along with everyone else, but she knew her role and the face she had to wear. A brave face, stepped right up and she had been intensive situations before.

When the ship first arrived, transporter and shuttles being used to land on the planet. Precautions taken, protective equipment worn and masses of people getting sick, dying. The first week were the roughest, assessment of a situation that was worse than the initial information that they had received. It was awful, made her feel ill and shed tears in the one moment alone she'd find.

They helped people, that's what a hospital ship was for. Helping, bringing supplies, relief and aid. Crisis. Linda's proven to herself that she could handle that, after so many years of medical school and training, and she knew she could. When she had been there, it really had tested her.

The Captain didn't die there nor had there been a three hundred year old war criminal and an Admiral who gone so far with what he had done. Linda was sure when the shock wore off for everyone there will be reports and all the sort of stuff that even before she considered Starfleet, stuff Linda hadn't cared for. The talk, all the bureaucracy of everything. It wouldn't be at the top of her concerns, that would go to the Chief Medical Officer. There would be a funeral after for everyone lost.

Linda's already got the number in her head, or at least a guess from before they were even pulled out of the Enterprise after it was all over. She knows her people, knows the ship crew and size. It's not hard to keep Help coming, taking accounting and the count was one less than what it was The Captain, something that may have felt sort of him playing at being a god; that's one of the things that any medical professional all secretly thought they could play at, when it came to saving lives and Chief Mccoy had done it. He had played god, and it was remarkable. Her eyes couldn't look away from him.

Khan's blood had done it, revived a dead tribble and the Captain's only had just died. Livor mortis sets in at twenty minutes, that had been the window of time that felt like a miracle. Tribble starts breathing and brain function was first to save, the heart could be fine for up to an order and the heart valves for a day. She was able to work with that when Dr. Marcus and Chief Mccoy had put Jim Kirk in cryo to preserve what function was there.

That had been rush, she's not even sure how many hours had gone by once they had Khan, and begin transfusing blood. She had a hand in this, father wrote the modern book on hearts published multiple journals about congenial heart diseases, she was keeping an eye on the Captain's heart, made sure it was pumping properly as the blood transfusion had began. Carol Marcus and Leonard Mccoy worked on everything else while she was the monitor.

THE CAPTAIN LIVES. A miracle, and she's sure now that they had him in a hospital bed. Lungs breathing and brain function appearing present. The blood had left Jim heavily irradiated, and he's been out cold but alive. It's incredible, and her eye haven't left Leonard. They had already been looking, before he played a god, before any of this. Her eyes have been on him, chest went incredibly tight when they knew that Jim had died, watched the way that he went tense; held himself together and than dropped down at a bench, the bench with the tribble.

She couldn't move, shared that moment of silence with everyone. She had been attending to a crewman, she couldn't recall who, but her eyes had went to Leonard and watched him hold his face in his hand. His friend had just died, and he hadn't been there. Linda had watched, pinpointed the moment as the tribble began breathing how his mind had begun to work. Eureka in those blues as he runs a test, as he makes the order to get Kirk into a cryo pod. She had been monitoring those.

Preserve as much brain function, had to be fast and Linda's still watching him. Kirk's in coma, but he's alive and going to recover. There's much to worry about him still, irradiated cells and blood pumping through his body; that puts his heart on overtime, there was so much that could still go wrong. There is that chance that he won't wake up, or an unforeseen neurological change within Kirk when, if he wakes up.

It was four days post, and it's catching up to him. There's something tight between his shoulder blades as he's monitoring the Captain. Linda notices how he had been dry swallowing, jaw clenching and she can guess at a grinding of his teeth. She's aware that he hasn't had a moment alone, reports and talk, being in here to monitor Kirk himself. Linda knows why he does that, long chat about anything and everything. Jim was his best friend, and he put himself at risk and died. Revival wouldn't matter.

I can keep watching him, and she would continue monitoring him. There's nothing to update, his body was healing. He lived. She takes over, or tries to when she can. Enforce that she won't work under the Chief if he's not taking any care of himself. Linda doesn't know what he does when she stands in the door way and refuses him to entrance. As the days drag on to two weeks, Linda knows she's wearing herself thin but she's holding on better.

It's nothing to comparable like anything before, but she's had experiences and someone had to. It's as it reaches two weeks, and Jim Kirk wakes up, that Linda is certain he's not sleeping. That was already a given, but he's really not doing well. Jim's awake, and than there's something, as they were both leaving for the evening. Linda knows not to presume how someone will react to anything. Heart transplant, and the young woman excited to have a new lease on life comes back one month later sobbing for the heart to be ripped put and left with a dead heart.

His best friend was alive, awake now, and he seems defeated, heartbroken. Linda tries to say something, call him back. Hey Chief, you, uh, and she chokes on that. Try to get some sleep, Mccoy, I mean it. She was really worried about him, should have just said that. Admit that she watches, pays attention, and he's her friend. Close friend, possibly her best friend on the ship. She should have just aid that, she's shown the concern before but come on, Carter. She knows that her noticing him was more.

It's hours later, and Linda's gotten sleep and she's his friend, call him or better yet he told her where's his apartment. She's up early, way early enough that it makes it an odd hour, most people don't show up at seven am but they knew each other's sleep schedules. He'd be awake and he'd appreciate good coffee.

That's how she ended up in front of his San Francisco apartment, and he does answer to her. AND THE SIGHT OF HIM ⸻ Oh, he was drunk, not just hung over but like he still was nursing a drink. There really had been something bothering him, whatever it was after Jim had woken up. ❝ I'm guessing you're hoping that I had brought an Irish coffee. ❞ She comes in, won't let him take back opening the door to her.

❝ I don't mind the state or the mess. ❞ She's in, and he was sad; must've been mulling over something all night.

Cursory glance around the place, mostly searching for what was his poison was. She takes in the little kitchen, the living room with the bookshelves. Another time, maybe she could browse them and take her pick of things. Really, what she was doing was looking for his poison. One large bottle, and a glass sitting to be filled. There's maybe less than half of the glass worth left. It's got to be a strong proof, and he was going to have one hell of a hangover that was not going to be polite with him.

Linda knows that this was heavy to be dealing with, and she's got to weight her options with him. Decides, however, that he was done at least and one more was only going to make him hurt him. She goes to pour the final glass, and drinks it herself. It's not to show off, but she finishes off the rest in a go. ❝ You don't have the worst taste but there is better whiskeys. ❞ A soft muse, poor attempt at humor she knows. Linda knows her liquor, ❝ Poker with ol' pops, no Doctor Carter in this family wasn't going to not know the good drinks from the bad drinks. ❞

She explains, just to be talking and show that it was okay. She was here, and she wasn't going anywhere; no judgements either. Linda sets the glass down, next to the coffees and leaning down, reaches to take off her shoes. ❝ Come on, floor time, no saying no. Indulge me. ❞ Linda goes to get water instead, because coffee wasn't the trick to countering alcohol consumption. It was the trick to hiding alcohol consumption.

He'll know what that means, over the year they've been working together and they'd end up in his office, sitting on the floor. Shoes became optional, once they felt like were friends and Linda admitted while her shoes were comfortable she rather have them off. So floor time, no shoes, and they'd just sit and talk. Take a moment to just be before they were back to work. It's their thing, what she'd do for a friend.

She moves the coffee table away from the couch to make room for them on the floor. Sits herself in front of his couch, back against it than pats the spot directly next to him and looks at him expectantly. Come on, she's his friend and she's watched him for two weeks wear himself to the. . . . the bone; she knows his nickname, the pun wasn't intended. There's concern on all fronts, but Linda wasn't letting her friend continue or be alone.

They sit, just quiet for a moment and she just focuses on her breathing. ❝ So, that was a lot, sweeping it under the rug? ❞ She starts, trying to speculate perhaps where some of this was coming from. ❝ Christ, I am doing alright or I will be, will be okay again after some time. Nothing like what I've worked under before. ❞ She starts with herself, just talks and tell him about the rush of the day it was, along with the lead up. Admits she was scared, worried for him a lot of it.

❝ First week on planet, the masses. . . . Fifty patients about every nurse and doctor; thirty eight of those first fifty under my watch died. ❞ She's talking about her last ship she had been aboard, giving him some context for where he was at with her feeling. How she handled everything there. She had lost fellow nurses and doctors too, who got infected but that wasn't admitted. Linda will tell Leonard everything he wants to know anytime, about her past assignment or more.

This time, it all happened so fast and they lost crew mates and friends. Linda talks about that, how she may won't feel the effects until a few more days later and the ship; their home for the time was in dry dock for colossal repair. Talks about herself, and perhaps she shouldn't when Leonard is drunk. It just might help, to know she feels it all too.

Linda knows he's drunk, knows there's the chance he's maybe not going to remember parts of this. Aware of his state, but he's alone and he needs a friend; and Linda's concerned for him. So she's hear, and talking. She notices how he was leaning into her, seeking physical contact, and she turns to him. Gives him something more, connection as well, to see in her eyes.

Her hand goes to cup his cheek, hold his face and really look him in the eyes. Thumb brushes slowly, barely skimming over his skin. Her face displays the fullness of her concern, of her care, her best friend since meeting him on the Enterprise. ❝ Hey, hey ⸺ you can let yourself breath, and feel, and you can rest. ❞ She tells him, her lips a part and she means that.

Hopes that she was reaching him, and she has a thought. ❝ He woke up, you saved him and he saved everyone, than died. You weren't there for that, but you were there to save him and he's awake cause of you. ❞ Pure speculation, and she'll admit to that. ❝ You saved your friend, Leonard, that's enough. ❞

Linda continues to hold his face, thumb still moving so slowly over its place. ❝ Talk to me, how I can help you, Chief, I really worried about you and please, tell me what upset you today. ❞ She pleas, and waits and than she listens. Continue to hold his face, or hug him and be his friend. SHE LISTENS WHEN HE TALKS, EVERY WORD, AND DOESN'T LOOK AWAY UNTIL HE WANTS HER TO.

Her hand doesn't stray from his face, and she knows, she knows, she knows. But he's drunk, and this was just friends. That would be okay for Linda. Eventually, they will get up and leave the floor, his apartment. When that happens, Linda presses her thumb gently into skin and rubs again. ❝ Hey, you slipped and this is one hell of a hangover to have, but Leonard? You got through it, in a terrifying time and you did something incredible, and we can talk about that too. ❞

There's a lot of ethics brushed on there and thoughts, she liked their debates and slow day philosophical wanders. Adored those times, and she had so many thoughts about what he had did. There is the god topic, and than seeing how he worked, how he saved hiss friend. A lot to discuss. Later, that's all for later.

❝ You were strong than, and you'll be strong again, and with help if you ask for it, which I am right here, you're my best friend and of course, I'd help you ⸻ speaking of hell hangovers, you're getting water, doctor's orders, and we're gonna go eat now. Doctor's orders too. ❞ Linda's assuming he'll ride the hangover out, instead of curing it medically. Thumb brush one more time, than she's up to get him more water to drink. AFTER THEY'LL GO EAT.

[brooklynislandgirl]

Advent Day I ~ Old and New @respondedinkind

Christmas means a lot of things to Beth, but mostly it means peace and family. She remembers eagerly awaiting for the ships to bring pines and spruces in refrigerated containers, and some neighbours simply decorating palm trees in their yards. She remembers stopping and visiting the bearded and red suited Santa Claus bearing his chest to the tropical sun and raising his hand in a universal greeting ~hence why he's called Shaka Santa~ while beside his statue, one of Tutu Mele {Mrs Claus in formality} wearing a grin, her square eye-glasses and her finest mu'umu'u. She remembers feasts down on the beach where members of the community pulled together to bring food and drink enough for everyone, and no one was turned away. There would be carols sung along with the soft strains of ukuleles. There would be Aunties sharing pumpkin crunch bars. Hulas would be danced, presents exchanged. But star ships don't really have anything that can compare. Most of the time, the crew seem to ignore the ceaseless flow of time, marking it all down not as days and nights but strings of numbers that create a stardate. Beth remembers. Keeps track of time as far as earth-dates in her personal journal.

~*~ Weeks ago, she'd taken the liberty to escort Khan back to his quarters. And while he never offered her entry, she couldn't help but notice the barren state of it. She saw no photographs, no hint of anything personal to him. And maybe that made sense in the time when he politely inclined his head, his face an unmoving and expressionless thing, reminding her of nothing so much as an achingly haunting classical statue. She bid him a good evening, and turned back down the corridor. Mind lost in thought as she thought to herself how sad and lonely it all seemed. Not that he would admit to anything like that. But surely, even Commander Spock was prone to sentimental things. Then it occurred to her that maybe… maybe Khan had nothing of his old life. Nothing of home, of kin. Maybe nothing at all. She recorded these thoughts as she did most of her opinions. In letters she would never again get to send to her brother. She tells the idea of him that in some ways she is starting to identify with her mysterious patient, or at least empathise with him. How he and Khan might have been friends. A lot of little things that held no bearing on her assignment or the man's place on the ship. And then after making herself comfortable, she began her secret project. The first order that would take the longest was the blanket. The outermost border was knitted in white. Then cream, then alternating cream and a neutral sort of brown. These colours represented dry and wet sand from her beaches and the way the colours blended down by water's edge. Brown gave way to a thin sort of blue. The kiss between land and sea. That blue became the turquoise and deeper shades of the sea as the ocean fell away into itself, and finally turned to the colour of his eyes that she has no name for and doesn't have the paint to try and replicate it in any other medium. Knitting the cover took all of her time so that it would be ready in the time she wanted to have it. Wide enough to span the size of his bunk, long enough to wrap him shoulder to toe. She doesn't think Khan gets cold like she can, but that isn't the point really. It is a gift. Something for him to own, something that is his and no one else's. So what if she sacrificed a little sleep in order to finish it? Beth has never needed much rest to be fully capable, and she wanted to be kind. The second gift is much more personal in nature perhaps. Or at least in an entirely different way. When Beth was little, her grandfather had given her a little scroll case necklace. The clever design incorporated her 'aumakua ~a family guardian~ in the form of turtles swimming endlessly. Honu are seen as a symbol of wisdom, of long lives, of perseverance. All things he wished to impart in her, and all things she sees in Khan the more she gets to know him. It does make her smile a little when she thinks of the incredibly hard outer shell that protects the soft living heart within. She can think of nothing more appropriate to describe him. What Beth didn't account for, though, was getting caught trying to be a secret Santa. She'd talked her way into getting his quarters opened. She'd set the ribbon-tied blanket on the foot of his bunk, the necklace settled atop of it, and she was fully expecting to make good her escape when she turned…and came face to face with the man in question. Beth blinks. Her cheeks are fire and she lowers her gaze. "I…I can explain."

[fangirlshrewt97]

Doctor Who (2005) Fic - The Goldilocks Vacation Conundrum

Title: The Goldilocks Vacation Conundrum

Author(s): Fangirlshrewt97

Fandom: Doctor Who (2005)

Pairing: None

Characters: Thirteenth Doctor, Yaz Khan, Ryan, Graham

Rating: General

Warnings: None

Banned Together Bingo Prompt: Alien Weatherman

Additional Tags: Crack-ish, Prompt: Alien Weatherman, Banned Together Bingo 2020, Humor, The Doctor does not know how to pick human appropriate vacation spots, Poor Graham keeps falling because of the Doctor’s poor TARDIS parking skills, Post Season 10

Summary: Essentially, a semi-crack-ish fic where the Doctor tries to suggest vacation spots to her companions, and misses the mark. Until she gets it right.

After all, third time is the charm.

Excerpt:

The Doctor swiped through a few more potential vacation spots, this time, Ryan joining them. There were several that caught the eyes of the crew, but each time that Graham asked for the dangers, there was always one.

Tentacle monsters, giant crabs, Multiple-headed monsters, noxious gas, acid-spitting monsters, poisonous fruits, monsters with giant horns, unfriendly natives, evil tyrannical rulers that were wary of tourists. What was with all the monsters, honestly?

By the end, Ryan and Yaz had joined back on the steps with the Doctor standing in front of them.

 Link to A03: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25314952

                                                          /// 

The TARDIS fam were sitting on the steps next to the central console waiting for the Doctor to return. She had said she would only be a moment and for them to stay.

“I just need to grab this one thing from a friend, I’ll be back before you know it. No need for you to follow me!” she had said, bouncing around the console as the TARDIS landed on another planet, nearly sending Graham to the floor from the abrupt stop.

“But doc-” Graham had started to protest only for her to already be halfway out the door, coat in one hand, and an extremely long rainbow scarf in the other.

“Five minutes at most. Just wait here!” was all the humans heard before the door swung shut.

Graham sighed. “Well that is not going to happen.”

“Who wants to bet she will get stuck on an adventure?” Ryan had asked, mischievous glint in his eyes.

Yaz barked a laugh. “What kind of a naive idiot do you take me for Ryan? The bet should be the kind of adventure she goes on. My guess is tentacle monster.”

“You’re on, I think it is alien species that wants to conquer the planet.”

“Ohhhh, good one, damn I want to change my bet.”

“No way too late!”

“Graham, what about you?”

“I don’t know about the doctor, but personally, I am going for an adventure to the kitchen. I want tea.” Graham had said, waiving off the groans from the other two. He did press the pedal to get a creamy custard biscuit as he walked by though.

That had been almost four hours ago. In the meantime, Graham had had his tea and biscuits, finished his book, taken a small nap, and wound up back in the console room, playing poker with Yaz and Ryan. The younger two members of the ship had tried to venture out of the ship, only to find they were parked at the top of a very steep cliff with no houses or identifiable signs of civilization in sight. And rather than risking getting lost, had ventured back into the ship.

Graham was chuckling as he won the hand for the fifth time in the row, collecting the candy they were using as betting markers when the Doctor burst into the room, tracking mud throughout the entrance as loud bird screeching followed her. She quickly barricaded the door with the bar she kept next to the door and ventured inside.

“Well fam, sorry for the delay, but I see you kept yourselves entertained.”

“Say doc, have you ever actually run an errand where things didn’t go tits up?” Graham asked as he opened one of the mints from his winnings. From the corner of his eye, he saw Yaz passing some money to Ryan.

“I resent the implications Graham, I will have you know I have had plenty of successful errands where nothing went wrong.”

At the silence from the three humans, she looked up from she was fiddling with the console controls again. “I have!”

Graham scoffed as Yaz made an empathetic noise and Ryan rolled his eyes fondly.

“Sure you have Doctor.” Ryan said as he stood up.

The Doctor’s comeback was interrupted by a piercing cry and the distinct sound of claws (or talons) against wood.

“Whoopsie, looks like we have overstayed our welcome!” The Doctor said before pulling down the lever. The trio of humans just managed to brace themselves before the ship took off, shaking like a teacup during an earthquake.

After a couple more minutes, the wheezing sound faded as the ship managed to land somewhere.

“Hey Doctor, where are we?” Yaz as as she peered into one of the monitors on the console. It was still displaying that odd (but beautiful) circular writing the Doctor had called Gallifreyan, but she could also make out a landscape. It was a flat field, with what looked like medium height grasses (green), under a clear sky (purple, which weird but cool), and a scattering of trees that almost resembled pine trees but had normal leaves.

“Ah, thanks for asking Yaz! Welcome to Brosha, in the Aresa galaxy. I figured I owed you guys a proper vacation, and this place has the best food this side of the Andromeda galaxy made from corn. Well, it is actually eir but tastes very similar to Earth’s corn. Looks similar too!”

The three humans were not looking at her as impressed as she was hoping. Her smiled dimmed a bit. “No?”

Ryan answered. “Doctor, that is really nice of you, but none of us are really big fans of corn. Also you are hiding something from us.”

“No I am not.”

Yaz chuckled. “Yes you are. You have a tell.”

“I do not!”

“You do too!”

“I do not!”

“You do too!”

“I-”

Graham cut off the childish squabbling. Honestly one was an officer of the law, and the other was a two thousand year old alien. It was undignified. “Alright enough. Doc, this sounds nice, but what’s the catch?”

“There are, rarely, every once in a while, stampedes of these huge moose like things. But honestly the chances of that happening while we are there are-”

“Sky high. Doc, we tend to always be around for the once in a blue moon situations. How about elsewhere?” Yaz said gently.

The Doctor pouted, but turned and fiddled with her monitor before brightening.

“Oh, I got one. What about Brakem in the Uccas galaxy? Hot springs filled with healing crystals, soaps and scents from around the universe. Never really rains, two suns, three moons. Gorgeous orange skies.”

“And?” Ryan asked, a wicked smirk on his face.

“Doc, this would be easier if you just mentioned the catch too.” Graham added.

“Average temperatures outside of the resorts are about 40℃.”

No way in hell. Mainly cause it sounded to be about the same temperature. “Next option Doc.”

The Doctor whined but looked at her monitor again. Graham went to sit on the stairs, he had a feeling they’d be there for a while.

“Ok, fine. How about, um, no not that one, ooh that would be, no nevermind, oh! No.” The Doctor muttered as she swiped at her monitor. Yaz went to stand beside her, watching her flick past some amazing landscapes. One in particular caught her eye, and she must have a sound because the Doctor looked at her. “Yaz?”

“What’s that?”

“This one? This is Chebara.” On the screen was a massive lake, extending seemingly to the horizon. The sky was so purple, but so clear she could almost make out stars and other planets in the photo. To one side of the lake she could see a massive hill rising from the ground, clouds covering it from about midway. In the middle of the lake, giant trees that seemed to be floating?

“Are those trees floating?”

“Oh yes, they are Ubal trees, their fruits produce dyes that don’t fade even after a thousand years. Very valuable.” The Doctor explained, glee filling her eyes again.

“Is it safe?” Graham asked. He loved the Doctor, but safety somehow never made it into the woman’s priority list.

“Graham, where is the fun in that?” The Doctor asked, only to be met with a raised eyebrow that would not be swayed. She sighed. “There is a small chance we may encounter the giant alligator-hippos that inhabit the lake.”

“No.”

“But Yaz wants to go!” the Doctor protested.

“Actually Doctor, I think just the photos might be enough. We have had so many adventures, and I would really like a vacation before we head back to the fray.” Yaz said, apologetic.

The Doctor’s shoulders slumped. “Back to the drawing board then.”

The Doctor swiped through a few more potential vacation spots, this time, Ryan joining them. There were several that caught the eyes of the crew, but each time that Graham asked for the dangers, there was always one.

Tentacle monsters, giant crabs, Multiple-headed monsters, noxious gas, acid-spitting monsters, poisonous fruits, monsters with giant horns, unfriendly natives, evil tyrannical rulers that were wary of tourists. What was with all the monsters, honestly?

By the end, Ryan and Yaz had joined back on the steps with the Doctor standing in front of them.

“Guys come on, I promise, the vacation will be fine, I’m sure the bad things won’t happen, they are all statistically very unlikely.”

Graham stood up and walked to the Doctor, laying a sympathetic hand on her forearm. “Doctor, I am sure you have noticed, but let me point it out again. We are kind of one-in-a-million central here. All I want is someplace to put my feet up, a nice cuppa, maybe a chance to tan.” Graham said. Beside him, Yaz and Ryan nodded in agreement.

The Doctor stood in front of the three humans, arms crossed, and cheeks puffed out like a squirrel. Yaz internally squealed at how adorable this couple thousand year old alien could be.

The Doctor tapped out a distracted pattern on her forearm before brightening. “I know the perfect place!” she said.

And then, without waiting for the companion’s response she went back to the console and pressed a few buttons before pulling the lever.

The TARDIS’s wheezing sound was heard before the ship rattled and transported. Graham, who had been standing on the stairs still fell hard on his butt. Ryan and Yaz managed to stumble forward and brace themselves on the console.

“Ow Doc, a couple more rough landings, and you are going to owe me a new hip!” Graham complained as he rubbed the small of his back. Ryan came to his side, helping his sit up against one of the columns around the console.

“Sorry about that Graham! I just thought of the perfect place for a lovely holiday, and wanted to get us there ASAP!”

Ryan and Yaz exchanged glances before looking at her hesitantly. “So…”

“Where are we?”

If possible, the Doctor’s grin got even wider, her eyes alight with delight. “My lovely fam, welcome to Earth, third planet in the solar system, in the outskirts of the Milky Way galaxy. We are in present day Sheffield, the temperature is a pleasant 23℃, there is a humidity of 65%, and chance of rain is 7%!” The Doctor said as she clapped her hands once in delight. Ryan shook his head at the antics of the Time Lord and began to chuckle.Yaz started to giggle before the Doctor waggled her eyebrows at her, at which point she burst out laughing, using the console edge to keep from falling over. Even Graham had a grin on his face as he continued to rub his back. He used the column to brace himself and got up.

“How long will we be staying then doc?”

The Doctor swayed back and forth on her toes and heels. “Up to you guys. How long do you want to stay?”

“Wait, you are staying too right?” Yaz said, squinting at the Time Lord.

The Doctor brought up her hands in surrender. “I’ve got a whole universe Yaz!”

“And I’ve got a spare room with your name on it. Come on, just stay. I know we don’t have crystal pools or floating trees, but Charlie’s pub down the block serves some of the best falafels in the country.”

The Doctor bit her lip, but looking at the hopeful faces of her companions, she gave a single nod.

“Alright, why not.”

She turned and pressed a couple buttons, dimming the lights of the main area of the TARDIS. “There, she is in hibernation. Let’s go enjoy Sheffield.”

With a cheer from the humans, the Doctor let herself be led outside by her fam. Yaz dragging her by the wrist as Ryan lightly pushed her from the back, with Graham closing the ship doors behind himself.

Sometimes, the best vacation from a life traveling was a little bit of home.

[blackkudos]

Melle Mel

Melvin Glover (born May 15, 1961), better known by his stage name Melle Mel and Grandmaster Melle Mel, is an American hip hop recording artist who was the lead vocalist and songwriter of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.

Early life

Melvin Glover was born in The Bronx, New York City, New York.

Career

Glover began performing in the late 1970s. He may have been the first rapper to call himself MC (master of ceremonies). Other Furious Five members included his brother The Kidd Creole (Nathaniel Glover), Scorpio (Eddie Morris), Rahiem (Guy Todd Williams) and Cowboy (Keith Wiggins). While a member of the group, Cowboy created the term hip-hop while teasing a friend who had just joined the US Army, by scat singing the words "hip/hop/hip/hop" in a way that mimicked the rhythmic cadence of marching soldiers.

Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five began recording for Enjoy Records and released "Superrappin'" in 1979. They later moved on to Sugar Hill Records and were popular on the R&B charts with party songs like "Freedom" and "The Birthday Party". They released numerous singles, gaining a gold disc for "Freedom," and touring. In 1982 Melle Mel began to turn to more socially-aware subject matter, in particular the Reagan administration's economic (Reaganomics) and drug policies, and their effect on the black community.

A song "The Message" became an instant classic and one of the first glimmers of conscious hip-hop. Mel recorded a rap over session musician Duke Bootee's instrumental track "The Jungle". Some of Mel's lyrics on "The Message" were taken directly from "Superrappin'". Other than Melle Mel, no members of Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five actually appear on the record. Bootee also contributed vocals (Rahiem was to later lip sync Bootee's parts in the music video).

"The Message" went platinum in less than a month and would later be the first hip-hop record ever to be added to the United States National Archive of Historic Recordings and the first Hip Hop record inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Mel would also go on to write songs about struggling life in New York City ("New York, New York"), and making it through life in general ("Survival (The Message 2)"). Grandmaster Flash split from the group after contract disputes between Melle Mel and their promoter Sylvia Robinson in regard to royalties for "The Message". When Flash filed a lawsuit against Sugar Hill Records, the factions of The Furious Five parted.

Mel became known as Grandmaster Melle Mel and the leader of the Furious Five. The group went on to produce the anti-drug song "White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)". An unofficial music video starred up-and-coming actor Laurence Fishburne and was directed by then-unknown film student Spike Lee). The record was falsely credited to "Grandmaster + Melle Mel" by Sugar Hill Records in order to fool the public into thinking Grandmaster Flash had participated on the record.

Mel gained greater fame and success after appearing in the movie Beat Street, with a song based on the movie's title. He performed a memorable rap on Chaka Khan's smash hit song "I Feel for You" which introduced hip hop to a wider and more mainstream R&B audience. Grandmaster Melle Mel & The Furious Five had further hits with "Step Off", "Pump Me Up", "King of the Streets", "Jesse", and "Vice", the latter being released on the soundtrack to the TV show Miami Vice. "Jesse" was a highly political song which urged people to vote for then presidential candidate Jesse Jackson.

In 1988, after an almost 4-year layoff, Mel and Flash reunited and released the album On The Strength, but with up-and-coming new school artists such as Eric B. & Rakim, DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions, and Big Daddy Kane dominating the hip-hop market, the album failed miserably. Mel performed with The King Dream Chorus and Holiday Crew on "King Holiday" aimed at having Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday declared a national holiday. Mel also performed with Artists United Against Apartheid on the anti-apartheid song "Sun City" which was aimed at discouraging other artists from performing in South Africa until its government ended its policy of apartheid. Mel ended the decade by winning two Grammy Awards for his work on Quincy Jones' Back On The Block and Q – The Autobiography of Quincy Jones albums.

In 1996, Mel contributed vocals to the US edition of Cher's hit "One By One". Their version is only available on the maxi CD format.

In 1997, Melle Mel signed to Straight Game Records and released Right Now, an album which features Scorpio (from the Furious Five) and Rondo. This album took more of a harder rap style. It barely sold at all in the US and the UK.

In 2001, under the name Die Hard, he released the song "On Lock" with Rondo on the soundtrack of the movie Blazin. Die Hard released an album of the same name in 2002 on 7PRecords.

On November 14, 2006, Mel collaborated with author Cricket Casey and released the children's book The Portal In The Park, which comes with a bonus CD of his rapped narration. It also features two songs, "World Family Tree" and "The Fountain of Truth", by a then unknown Lady Gaga performing with Mel. The book was re-released in 2010. Also in 2006, Melle Mel attended professional wrestling school. In 2007 (at age 45), he stated in an interview with allhiphop.com that "I'm going to try to take some of John Cena's money and get with WWE and do my thing".

On January 30, 2007, Mel released his first ever solo album, Muscles. The first single and music video was "M3 – The New Message". On March 12, 2007, Melle Mel and The Furious Five (joined by DJ Grandmaster Flash) became the first rap group ever inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In his acceptance speech, Mel implored the recording industry members in attendance to do more to restore hip hop to the culture of music and art that it once was, rather than the culture of violence that it has become. He added, "I've never been shot, I've never been arrested, and I've been doing hip hop all my life. I can't change things all by myself. We need everybody's help, so let's do it and get this thing done."

On October 10, 2008, Mel appeared on Bronx-based culinary adventure show Bronx Flavor alongside host Baron Ambrosia. In the episode "Night at the Bodega", he appears as a spiritual mentor to sway the Baron from his over-indulgent ways and get him on the right path to success.

In April 2011, it was revealed that he would take part in a new hip hop/pro wrestling collaboration, the Urban Wrestling Federation. Its first bout "First Blood" was recorded in June 2011.

Mel also appeared in Ice-T's 2012 hip hop documentary Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap.

In August 2015, Mel appeared with Kool Moe Dee and Grandmaster Caz in Macklemore and Ryan Lewis's song and music video "Downtown".

In May 2016, Mel and Scorpio, performing as Grandmaster's Furious Five ft. Melle Mel & Scorpio, released their single "Some Kind of Sorry".

Discography

Albums

1982 The Message (with Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five)

1984 Grandmaster Melle Mel and the Furious Five (a.k.a. Work Party)

1985 Stepping Off (as Grandmaster Melle Mel and the Furious Five)

1988 On the Strength (with Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five)

1989 Piano (as Grandmaster Melle Mel and the Furious Five)

1997 Right Now (as Grandmaster Mele-Mel & Scorpio)

2001 On Lock (Grandmaster Melle Mel & Rondo as Die Hard)

2006 The Portal In The Park (as Grandmaster Mele Mel with appearances by Lady Gaga)

2007 Muscles (as Grandmaster Mele Mel)

2009 Hip Hop Anniversary Europe Tour (as Grandmaster Melle Mel)

Singles

1979 "We Rap More Mellow" (as The Younger Generation)

1979 "Flash to the Beat (as Flash and the Furious 5)

1979 "Superrappin'" (as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five)

1980 "Freedom" (as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five)

1980 "The Birthday Party" (as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five)

1981 "Showdown" (as The Furious Five Meets The Sugarhill Gang)

1981 "It's Nasty (Genius of Love)" (as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five)

1981 "Scorpio" (as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five)

1981 "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel" (as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five)

1982 "The Message" (as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five)

1982 "Message II (Survival)" (as Melle Mel & Duke Bootee)

1983 "New York New York" (as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five)

1983 "White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)" (as Grandmaster & Melle Mel / Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five / Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel)

1984 "Continuous White Lines" (Remix – as Grandmaster Melle Mel and the Furious Five)

1984 "Jesse" (as Grandmaster Melle Mel)

1984 "Beat Street Breakdown" a.k.a. "Beat Street" (as Grandmaster Melle Mel and the Furious Five)

1984 "Step Off" (as Grandmaster Melle Mel and the Furious Five)

1984 "We Don't Work for Free" (as Grandmaster Melle Mel and the Furious Five)

1984 "World War III" (as Grandmaster Melle Mel and the Furious Five / Grandmaster Melle Mel)

1985 "King Of the Streets" (as Grandmaster Melle Mel)

1985 "Pump Me Up" (as Grandmaster Melle Mel and the Furious Five)

1985 "Vice" (as Grandmaster Melle Mel)

1985 "The Mega-Melle Mix" (as Melle Mel)

1988 "Gold" (as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five)

1988 "Magic Carpet Ride" (as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five)

1994 "Sun Don't Shine in the Hood" (Split 12" single with "Da Original" as The Furious Five)

1995 "The Message 95" (Remix – as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five

1997 "The Message" (Remix – as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five)

1997 "Mama" (as Grandmaster Mele-Mel & Scorpio)

1997 "Mr. Big Stuff" (as Grandmaster Mele-Mel & Scorpio)

2003 "Where Ya At?" (as Melle Mel)

2007 "M-3" (as Grandmaster Mele Mel)

2011 "Markus Schulz Presents Dakota feat. Grandmaster Mele Mel & Scorpio" – Sleepwalkers

2016 "Some Kind of Sorry" (as Grandmaster's Furious Five Ft. Mele Mel & Scorpio)

Collaborations

1984 "I Feel for You" by Chaka Khan

1986 "MC Story" by MC Chill and Emanon (The Baby Beatbox)

1986 "Susie" by Emanon

1986/87 "Who Do You Think You're Funkin' With" — collaborating with Afrika Bambaataa

1989 "What's the Matter with Your World?" (with Van Silk)

1996 "What Order" (with Keith LeBlanc)

2005 "RSVP" (with Nikkole)

2008 "Hip Hop Fantasy" by Chutzpah - for the track Bizness.

2009 "Electro Soul Satisfaction" — collaborating with Mic Murphy of The System

[willsherjohnkhan]

Section 31

Follow up to A Phoenix Rises

RATED: Mature

Chapter 1: Prologue

***

Those that had volunteered for the mission did so knowing they were going up against a formidable opponent.

Section 31 was never officially acknowledged, but its dominant and imposing presence was felt throughout Starfleet and the Federation.

To go after such an organization and its agents was regarded by many as reckless, if not downright suicidal.

*

Fear had led to Section 31’s creation, and they used that fear as justification for the questionable methods they employed. Their operations were kept hidden behind a veil of secrecy that they deemed as necessary if they were to effectively protect the Federation and its citizens.

Therefore, Section 31 was accountable to no one. They existed outside Starfleet and the Federation’s influence. This meant they were not subject to the constraints of Starfleet’s ethical protocols. In their arrogance they saw themselves as the ultimate intelligence and security agency. And as such, they saw no need to submit reports about their activities to anyone, or to request permission for the undertaking of their operations. Their credo that to save lives, ‘the ends always justified the means’ meant that their interrogation techniques routinely included the brainwashing and torturing of suspects, some of who were the very citizens they claimed to protect. To enhance their ability to defend planetary systems in the Federation from possible attack, they had developed advanced weaponry and constructed warships. Assassinations and the committing of genocide were justified as an absolute imperative in the interests of inter-galactic security from potential external threats.

So when the true nature of their activities did eventually come to light and the lengths they were prepared to go were revealed, it shocked and sickened many. It was clear that Section 31 was a loose cannon, and posed far more of a threat to the security of the Federation than any potential exterior influence.

But many in Starfleet Command and the Federation’s Governing Council were too afraid to mount a move against them. The hold Section 31 had over them was still too strong. Instead they turned a blind eye and allowed them to make their escape.

*

Starfleet refused to sanction the mission. They made their position very clear on that point. If those who chose to take part in such a risky assignment, then they did so in the full knowledge that they were on their own. They weren’t to use anything that could identify them as being part of Starfleet.

But if Starfleet Command believed these restrictions would make the group rethink their position, then they were to be disappointed.

It only reinforced their determination.

It may have made getting what they needed to undertake their mission that more difficult, but not impossible.

It was essential that they had a ship, which was their top priority. Since the Enterprise was now out of the question, their thoughts turned to another… A stealth ship with advanced weaponry. Its inclusion would be vital if their mission was to have any chance of success.

Unfortunately it was currently stored, in its badly damaged condition at a junkyard outside San Francisco.

In secret they had the ship moved to the very shipyard formally controlled by Section 31 that had been abandoned immediately after the death of Alexander Marcus.

It was here, far away from prying eyes, that the rebuilding of the dreadnaught-class warship began.

***

IO FACILITY, NEAR THE JUPITOR MOON - THREE MONTHS LATER

Disengaging from the shipyards docking port, the Vengeance manoeuvred free of its moorings and slipped noiselessly back into the outer reaches of deep space.

*

VENGEANCE – BRIDGE

Seated in the Captain’s chair, James T. Kirk observed his fellow volunteers. Like him they were ready and eager to begin their mission.

His gaze settled on Khan, if he felt any anxiety or inner turmoil he didn’t show it. Outwardly he gave the impression of complete calm, whatever his true feelings they remained hidden, which was a testament to his strength of character, given he had the most to gain, or lose, depending on the outcome of the mission.

Turning back to his helmsman Kirk gave the order. “All right Mr Sulu, go to warp.”

The time had finally come for the implementing of their self-appointed assignment: that of the tracking down Section 31, and discovering the whereabouts of the missing 72 augments.

***

Chapter 2: Welcome Back

***

IO FACILITY – 2258.15

“John? John can you hear me?” a disembodied voice worked its way into his consciousness. With a struggle he fought his way through what felt like an impenetrable fog in his mind, eventually winning the battle as his eyes flickered open, though his eyelids still felt so heavy, he found it difficult to focus of the face that belonged to the voice.

“That’s it John,” Admiral Marcus continued encouragingly as the man lying on the bio-bed finally regained consciousness. “Welcome back.”

The man named John looked blearily at the man leaning over him. He opened his mouth to speak, but his mouth was so dry, he had to swallow several times to generate enough saliva, so he could wet his parched lips with his tongue. Turning his head to try and assess where he was exactly left him feeling dizzy and confused. “Wh… Where…?” he began uncertainly.

“Your eyes should adjust to the light in no time,” the man assured him.

“… Am I...?”

“Home, John. You’ve come home.”

“Home,” he repeated. His eyelids, that felt like they weighed a tonne, began to close again.

Marcus went to the replicator before returning to the bed to press a glass of water to John’s lips. “Here,” he said as he placed a supporting hand to the man’s upper back and neck. “This might help.”

John greedily swallowed down the fresh, cool contents of the glass.

“Better?” the admiral asked.

“Much,” John replied gratefully, leaning back with an exhausted sigh, his gaze however remained focussed on the other man.

Marcus read the unasked question in ‘John’s’ eyes. Seeing little point in delaying matters, the admiral set into motion the next stage of the plan he’d devised, upon discovering the true identity of the man now lying in the bed before him.

“You probably wont remember much of this, or anything for that matter,” he advised. “But my name is Alex Marcus, and we’ve been friends for years.”

“Alex… And I’m… I’m John,” John responded cautiously.

“That’s right,” Marcus confirmed encouragingly. “You’re a Starfleet officer, Commander John Harrison…”

John frowned. Mention of Starfleet triggered a brief flash of memory. But the rank Alex had given him, it didn’t feel… right.

Marcus cut into his thoughts. “Sorry, getting a little ahead of myself. At the time of your mission to QoNo��s, the Klingon Homeworld, you were a Lieutenant. You have since been promoted to Commander.”

“Klingon… QoNo’s…” John murmured thoughtfully.

“Yes. Six months ago you were critically injured while on a mission to the Klingon’s Homeworld. You suffered brain trauma that should have left you catatonic for life,” Marcus explained. “But the best surgeons in Starfleet, and the fact you’re the toughest bastard I know brought you back.”

Although Alex sounded enthusiastic, John was starting to feel somewhat overwhelmed. He tried desperately to remember the events Marcus spoke of. But, try as he might, he came up blank.

“I don’t remember,” he exclaimed, his voice rising as panic threatened to engulf him. “I don’t know who I am… what I do… Starfleet…?”

As Marcus observed the man before him, he inwardly gloried at seeing this man, who had at one time ruled more than a quarter of the Earth’s population, reduced to his current state of hysteria. But outwardly he moved to reassure the agitated man, placing a calm but restraining hand on his shoulder, pressing him gently back to a reclining position. “Its all right John, you will remember, it will just take a little time. But don’t worry I’m going to help you. The more you re-learn, the more you’ll remember on your own. Its early days, and they’ll prove the hardest. But I promise you, you wont go through them alone.”

He felt the tension in John’s body ease, and his breathing calmed. “I’ll leave you now to get some sleep. The doctors warned me I shouldn’t get you over-excited.”

When John’s eyes closed the admiral took his leave, satisfied that the latest stage of his plan had gone off without a hitch. But he knew he needed to be cautious, Khan Noonien Singh was not the type of man who would take kindly to being manipulated.

***

Chapter 3: Evil at Heart

***

MISSION DAY 21

VENGEANCE – TRANSPORTER SECTION

As Captain James T. Kirk made his way to the transporter pad, he occupied his mind with marvelling at the simplicity of the warship they now travelled on. Where the Enterprise had been all about a comfortable environment for a life of exploring the wide and uncharted universe, the Vengeance was about stripping comforts and everything else down to the bare minimum. Hence an actual room for the transporters was regarded as unnecessary, so a section just off Medical had been set aside for the placement of the transporter pads and terminal.

Whispers and rumours were all that they had to go on. Such was the nature of their task in tracking down Section 31’s movements. That was the damned annoying situation they found themselves with in their self-appointed mission. It was for this reason that he was eager to hear what, if anything the away team had learned after their survey of the planet below.

Communication between the ship and the away team had been intermittent from the moment they had transported down to the surface of what was believed to be an uninhabited planet, Vagra II.

*

When the three crew members rematerialised, Kirk was relieved to note that all three appeared unharmed, though it was clear that Khan had survived an interesting encounter.

The once legendary former-leader, clandestine operative, accused traitor and now valued crew member looked the worse for wear. The augments usual immaculate self now covered from head to toe in a sticky black, oozing goo. And it was clear from his annoyed expression that he was not happy about it.

Kirk couldn’t help teasing his newly appointed Head of Security, querying cheerfully. “Negotiations go well then?”

Khan spared his Captain a brief irritated glare, muttering under his breath as he stalked off. “It got the message.”

Kirk raised an enquiring eyebrow at Spock and Bones. “I look forward to reading your reports.”

***

VAGRA II – EARLIER

From the moment Mr Spock, Dr McCoy and Khan arrived on the surface of the desolate planet they all had the uncomfortable feeling that they were being watched.

This was completely at odds with the data on their tri-corders, not to mention the Vengeance’s far superior scanners that all showed Vagra II to be devoid of sentient life.

And yet the feeling persisted.

From where they stood all they could see was a dry, lifeless landscape made up of rock and sand. The sky above them had a sickly orange hue to it that was continually highlighted by violent electrical storms.

The only other feature of interest was an area of ground that appeared to be covered in a tar-like sludge.

Though there seemed to be little prospect of finding any clues as to why Section 31 would have come here, they nonetheless set about searching the surrounding area to assure themselves that there was nothing here to find.

They were just finishing their reconnaissance and were back at the point from where they had started, when McCoy looked about him, a frown forming as he tried to work something out.

“Problem doctor,” Spock queried.

“Yeah,” McCoy responded. “When we were here before, wasn’t that black stuff further over that way?”

Khan and Spock checked the readings on their tri-corders and found that the doctor was quite correct.

Khan took a step towards the unknown substance intending to get a clearer reading of it, when...

“Look out!” came McCoy’s warning shout, but too late.

The puddle moved swiftly to completely engulf the unwary augment.

As Khan disappeared from view, a menacing voice cackled. “You’ll do nicely.”

*

Khan fought to free himself, but to no avail. It was only when he sensed the enjoyment and immense satisfaction his struggles gave the being that had imprisoned him that he went against his own nature, becoming passive and giving up all attempts to fight free of its hold on him.

His determination to not give it what it wanted clearly annoyed it, as it complained bitterly. “Why do you stop? That is not the way of the warrior?”

“I prefer to know more about my opponent before I engage with them,” Khan responded.

“Ah,” the beings voice became thoughtful. “You wish to assess your opponent’s weaknesses so that you might exploit them.”

“Correct.”

“Then you must prepare to be disappointed, for I possess no weakness,” the being gloated.

“Impossible.”

“And yet it is so,” came the taunting reply.

Realising he wasn’t going to get anywhere with this line of questioning, Khan tried another. “Who are you?”

“I am Armus,” it stated proudly.

“And what is Armus?” Khan queried.

“The physical manifestation of evil,” came back the response.

“Impossible.”

“And yet it is so,” Armus parroted back.

Khan could feel his frustration and impatience growing with Armus, and silently prayed that Spock and McCoy were working on a way to extract him.

*

Getting out his communicator Spock attempted to contact those aboard the Vengeance. “Spock to Captain Kirk.”

But there was no response.

While Spock continued in his attempts, McCoy was checking some new data that had appeared on his tri-corder.

“There’s a recently created energy field that appears to be blocking our ability to contact the ship,” he reported.

Spock checked the readings on his own tri-corder. “It wasn’t there before.”

“Which is why I noted that it was newly created,” the doctor replied in obvious irritation.

*

“How did you come to be on this planet?” Khan asked, looking for anything he could use against Armus.

“The race that lived here created me, and then abandoned me,” Armus snarled.

All of a sudden Khan felt overwhelmed by a powerful landslide of hurt, anger and bitter malice that washed over him. He smiled triumphantly to himself. He had found a chink in Armus’ armour. Now all he had to do was find a way to exploit it.

*

“Did you see that?” Bones asked, indicating the readings on the tri-corder.

“Curious,” Spock said before noting. “Something was strong enough to weaken the force field briefly,” he paused, deep in thought. Looking over at the being that had captured Khan, he turned back to the doctor and speculated. “Is it possible that Khan and this being are communicating?”

“And if they are,” McCoy replied. “Whatever they’re discussing is annoying the creature enough that its energies are becoming compromised.”

“Indeed,” Spock agreed, before taking a cautious step towards the being. “Khan, if you can hear me. Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.”

*

“Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.”

Khan felt immense relief at the words. Clearly this conversation with Armus was showing some sign to Spock and McCoy. He may yet get out of this after all.

Taking a deep breath he ploughed on. Armus had still not given him an answer to his last question, so he pressed on. “Come on Armus, why did they create you only to abandon you? And who are they?”

“Who they are no longer matters, they are long gone,” Armus responded petulantly. “But now thanks to you I will finally get my revenge. The only way you can escape my clutches is if you take me with you on your ship. Then I can track those that abandoned me.”

‘At last!’ Khan thought to himself, as a means to extricate him presented itself. ”What did they do to you to earn such wrath?” he queried innocently.

Armus erupted, roaring in anguish and unrestrained rage and fury.

“They created me as a means of expunging all the evil that lay within them. But in removing the evil they needed to place the evil somewhere, so they created me. Now pure of thought they no longer wished to be reminded of the evil they once possessed so they left, leaving me behind...abandoned.”

Khan could feel Armus’ hold on him weakening, caught up in his memories. And so he made his move, using every inch of his strength he fought his way out of his living prison.

As soon as he began to emerge from the black mass, Spock and McCoy were there to pull him free.

Once Khan was safely clear Spock contacted the Vengeance. “Three for immediate beam out.”

***

VENGEANCE – KHAN & MOLLY’S QUARTERS

When he entered his quarters he was met by the welcome sight of Molly.

“Oh my!” she exclaimed as she took in the sight of him.

Khan looked down at himself and grimaced.

“I think you need a shower,” Molly suggested.

Khan immediately brightened at the prospect.

“Yes I believe we do,” he growled.

“Wha..?” Molly began before giving a squeal of delight as Khan scooped her up in his arms and then headed for the bathroom.

*

Their coupling was brief, but frenzied.

They were on the floor of the shower, Molly on all fours as Khan’s hips pumped wildly, slamming into her cunt again and again from behind.

Although Khan set a punishing pace, his savagery was tempered by tenderness, totally at odds with the aggressiveness displayed. But he was always careful to ensure her comfort, never forgetting his enhanced strength.

Not that Molly found reason for complaint. She was the grateful recipient of his passion.

In minutes the shower stall was filled with their cries of release.

*

After the shower Khan was preparing to shave, when he glanced in the mirror, and paused.

***

IO FACILITY – CMDR J. R. HARRISON’S QUARTERS - 2258.25

Five days after he woke up Commander John Harrison was released from the Medical Bay. The five days since had been spent trying to make sense of all that he saw and heard around him.

Admiral Marcus was adamant that the best way to recover from the events on QoNo’s was for him to get back to work.

“We really need your expertise John,” the Admiral had pleaded. “Things have stalled during your incapacitation, and we’re in danger of falling behind schedule.”

*

John Harrison was in the process of raising an old style razor to begin shaving, when he froze.

For a brief moment the face looking back at him in the mirror had not been his own And yet the features reflected back at him felt familiar, the face had a regal and noble bearing, the skin darker than his own with hair long enough to be pulled back in a ponytail. In many ways that face felt more recognisable, and right than the one currently looking back at him.

John shook his head, trying to clear it, convinced his eyes were playing tricks on him.

But as he left his quarters, a nagging feeling that something wasn’t right refused to leave him.

***

VENGEANCE – KHAN & MOLLY’S QUARTERS

As the memory faded Khan contemplated the being they had encountered. There were many similarities between himself and Armus.

Both had been created to serve a particular purpose.

They had both been feared by their creators, which had led to their being isolated or abandoned.

These actions had led to feelings of resentment, and a need to strike back at those they felt had betrayed them. In his own case that had led to he and the others like him taking control of Earth that had then led to war, and his exile upon the SS Botany Bay.

And that had ultimately led him here, to the 23rd Century.

Considering all that he had gone through since being awoken, he was thankful for the love and friendship of those on this vessel.

If it wasn’t for them there would have been every chance that he would have ended up with a heart as black as Armus’.

***

[thedcdunce]

Lobo

“I killed every living thing on Czarnia fer fun. I killed Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny an' things that don't even exist, an' so help me, I tried ta follow th' triple-fold path o' peace. I tried my best... but frag me for a bastich, even I got limits!” - Lobo

Gender: Male

Height: 6′ 4″

Weight: 305 lbs (138 kg)

Eyes: Red

Hair: Black

Skin: Blue/ White

Powers:

Czarnian Physiology

Abilities:

Genius Level Intellect

Tracking

Multilingualism

Expert Combatant

Indomitable Will

Weaknesses:

Uncontrollable Personality

Always Keeps Promises

Equipment:

Spacehogt

Chained Hook

“Frag” grenades

Various Weapons

Universe:

Earth-One

New Earth

Base of Operations:

Ferris Aircraft

Coast City

Marital Status: Single

Citizenship: Czarnian

Occupation:

Priest

Assassin

Bounty Hunter

First Appearance: Omega Men #3 (June, 1983)

Powers

Czarnian Physiology: It is said that Czarnians can only be truly killed by other Czarnians. Furthermore, Lobo has been banned from entering either Heaven or Hell. Lobo can survive unaided in the vacuum of space.

Superhuman Strength: Lobo is able to effortlessly lift far in excess of 100 tons.

Superhuman Stamina: He possesses inexhaustible stamina.

Immortality: Lobo is functionally immortal and cannot die no matter what happens. He is immune to the effects of aging and disease and has been banned from entering either Heaven or Hell.

Invulnerability: He has at times shrugged off blows with no damage, taken planet-destroying attacks without so much as a scratch but at other occurrences has had his skin penetrated by bullets and had only some resistance against most magic spells and attacks.

Superhuman Speed: Lobo possesses the ability to sharpen his awareness and increase his temporal flow, appearing to move faster than humanly possible. He can move at incredible speeds.

Self-Sustenance: Lobo does not need any food, water, air, or sleep and he can survive in the vacuum of space without any harm.

Regeneration: If Lobo does somehow sustain an injury, his accelerated healing enables him to regenerate damaged or destroyed tissue instantly, with little apparent pain. He will apparently heal from any injury.

Bio-Fission: If Lobo spills even a drop of blood, that drop can become a completely new Lobo.

Thermal Immunity

Abilities

Genius Level Intellect: As unbelievable as it may seem, despite his violent and loutish nature, Lobo seems to have a genius-level intellect in matters of destruction and violence. He can create complex virulent agents and the necessary antidotes.

Tracking: The tracking ability allows him to trace any prey across even the Universe.

Multilingualism: By his own account, Lobo can speak 17,897 different languages from across the galaxy.

Morse Code: Lobo can communicate in Morse Code.

Expert Combatant: Lobo is a proficient hand-to-hand combatant.

Indomitable Will

Weaknesses

Uncontrollable Personality: Lobo loves fighting, loses patience easily, is very arrogant and does not get along in a group.

Always Keeps Promises: Even if it means his death.

Equipment

Spacehog

Chained Hook: Lobo's signature weapon is a large hook on a chain. Aside from use as a weapon, he also uses it to tie up opponents or drag them behind his bike.

"Frag" grenades

Various Weapons: Lobo has been shown carrying countless weapons, such as a laser weapon, a large knife, and even a guilt grenade.

History

Lobo, whose name comes from a Khund dialect and means  "one who devours your entrails and thoroughly enjoys it," is the last of his people for one reason: he killed them all. He hailed from the planet Czarnia which was a virtual paradise that knew nothing of war and the Czarnians were almost immortal. When Lobo was born, his evil was so frighteningly apparent, the nurse who delivered him went insane and became the planet's first mental patient in ten millennia after the infant Lobo chewed off four of her fingers. Lobo knew he was one of a kind, but he wanted even more. Inspired by the idea of genocide, Lobo created a swarm of lethal scorpion-like creatures, he set them on his people wiping out his entire species but himself. He claimed it was a science project and gave himself an 'A'. Since then he has traveled the galaxies collecting bounties. Despite his ruthless nature, Lobo has a strict code of honor when it comes to these agreements. Along the way he has met and battled a number of superheroes.

Omega Men

Lobo played an important role in the Citadel War, in his capacity as a bounty hunter. He was hired by the Citadel's human agent Harry Hokum to capture the Euphorian known as Kalista in a bid to learn the secret behind her home world's planetary shield. Along with fellow bounty hunters Bedlam and Berserk, he raided the mothership belonging to the Omega Men, where upon he engaged in combat with Kalista. Soon after, Harry Hokum hired Lobo once again, this time to assassinate the Omega Men's interim leader Tigorr. Lobo never had the opportunity to complete the contract however.

After the Citadel War ended, Lobo was then hired by Kalista's husband Primus to help them infiltrate a Citadel prison facility and free several of Primus' captured allies. During the prison break, Lobo killed the supreme commander of the surviving Citadel military forces.

Justice League

Lobo made his first appearance on the planet Earth when he was hired by Manga Khan to take out the newly formed Justice League International. But after Big Barda teleported Lobo across the galaxy, Lobo landed on Earth smack in the Justice League Embassy. After a brief altercation with Guy Gardner, Lobo hung around, pretending to be a friend, waiting for the right moment. But before he could act, Manga Khan canceled his contract.

L.E.G.I.O.N.

For a such a fierce bounty hunter and a loner, Lobo still held a few surprises under his brash exterior. He would prove to be more a team player than anyone would think. He kept a secret pod of pet Space Dolphins that he cared for. When one of the dolphins was killed, Lobo tracked the perpetrators to Vril Dox II's newly formed band of freedom fighters, the L.E.G.I.O.N.

Lobo single handily crippled the entire team, but was halted by Vril Dox II, who offered to provide protection for the Space Dolphins in exchange for Lobo's service in the L.E.G.I.O.N. Lobo accepted and accompanied the new team to Cairn, known galaxy wide as the "drug world." There the team dismantled the drug lords' empire by sheer brains and brawn. Vril Dox II also took advantage of Lobo's ability to multiply, which helped them destroy the remainder of Cairn's opposing rulers. During this mission, Dox secretly poisoned Lobo and his clones. Lobo was depowering, lost his ability to multiply, and his clones were destroyed. It was later revealed that one of Lobo's clones escaped to the planet Kannit.

During Lobo's service in the L.E.G.I.O.N., it was clear that he held no personal love for any of his teammates. He followed Vril Dox II's orders out of some sense of honor, but did not hesitate to break both of Garryn Bek's legs. But even Vril Dox II was not immune. When Vril Dox II was raped and killed by Stealth, he too was cloned. Lobo took advantage of Vril Dox II's vulnerability and attempted to kill the clone in order to be free from his pact.

Lobo was sent on an undercover mission to bring down a formidable opponent: the space pirate Dagon-Ra of the planet Trom whose natives have the power to transmute matter. He joined Dagon-Ra's crew and lead a successful mutiny against him.

Superman

Draaga found an intergalactic taxi driver to take him to Earth to get revenge on Superman. Just as they left the bar, Lobo arrived. Lobo was boozing it up at the bar when he heard two aliens in a bar corner discussing the odds of Draaga's return battle with Superman. Lobo got involved in the conversation, and the aliens got Lobo drunk enough to where he accepted a bet that he could kill Superman. Lobo, along with the bar's delivery guy Raof and Bibbo Bibbowski, traveled to the Fortress of Solitude, but Superman wasn't there. While the three were tooling around inside, Superman arrived. Lobo attacked Superman, and the two brawled through the Fortress. Superman escaped to a Kryptonian exo-suit he had, and battled Lobo outside while wearing the suit. Lobo blew the suit up with missiles from his spacehog, and Lobo and Bibbow presumed Superman dead. They then collapsed, both very drunk. It turned out that Superman was safe inside the Fortress, and had faked his death inside the suit.

Mister Miracle

Lord Manga Kahn accidentally captured space-dolphins belonging to Lobo, who came looking for them. After an altercation, Lobo recruited Mister Miracle to help him find his space-dolphins on Mogo.

Guy Gardner

Guy Gardner had to get back on his feet after his fight with Hal Jordan for Sector 2814, so he tried crime fighting ringless. When that didn't work, he enlisted the help of Lobo to go with him to Qward to get Sinestro's ring. Guy and Lobo then retrieved the ring.

Lobo eventually got into a fight with Guy, over the events on Qward.

Breakdowns

Lobo was hired by Lord Manga Kahn to take in Despero. Despero had been currently running rampant on Earth. Lobo tried to take the monster in, but met fierce resistance from the Justice League International and the Justice League Europe. Lobo, the JLE, and the newly formed Conglomerate all launched a frontal assault on Despero, but the monster was able to fend them all off. But Kilowog and L-Ron arrived, and Kilowog accidentally uploaded L-Ron's consciousness into Despero's head. Lord Manga Kahn then paid Lobo his fee for helping take down Despero, and also offered to finance the reconstruction of Times Square.

Superman's Resurrection

At one point, Lobo went back to Earth to prove that he was still better than Superman, even though Superman was resurrected. Along the way, Lobo destroyed a planet called Thanotopsia, which attracted the attention of a group of aliens that followed Lobo to Earth where Lobo confronted Superman in Metropolis. After a battle, Superman punched Lobo into orbit, and Lobo landed on the alien ship where he was attacked by a number of robot bounty hunters. Superman took out the disintegration cannon on the ship and hauled it away from Earth. Superman then caught back up to the ship and helped Lobo defeat the bounty hunters. Lobo then decided to not fight Superman anymore since Superman helped him out.

Miss Tribb

When Vril Dox II later hired Lobo to transport a prisoner to him safe and alive, Lobo thought that the transport normally wouldn't be more than a boring job. It turns out the prisoner in question is not only the person who wrote the book on Lobo, but was also his fourth grade teacher, Miss Tribb. The Legion Of Decency, a group of old women who want to kill Miss Tribb for writing such a nasty book; a group of truckers, after an altercation at a truck stop; the Dnedia Police S.W.A.T. Team after Lobo killed their chief; and the Pan-Galactic Demolition Dance Company after having to get Miss Tribb from their show and slaughtering many of their dance troop were among the groups of enemies Lobo were being tracked by. The only people on his side were a gang calling themselves the Sons of Lobo, not that he cares or even knows.

While each of the groups have their reasons for wanting Lobo and Miss Tribb dead, he eventually falls into the hands of The Orthography Commandos who seek to remove the ignorant and functionally illiterate from the universe. They have a special way of eliminating these so called unwanted by holding a spelling bee. Lobo was smarter than he lets on, especially when he's given words to spell that he likes, such as "Genocide", for example. Things go his way until he makes the mistake of telling these people that Miss Tribb is a teacher. Eventually, Lobo loses his patience with these people and kills them all. Unfortunately, after this situation was sorted out with violence, he contacts Vril Dox II and tells him he's taking a vacation on Revel-7. He does this over an unsecured line and it draws everyone to him like flies.

One world wide riot and massive body count later, Lobo delivers Miss Tribb to Vril Dox II, alive and well, but as soon as Vril receives the old woman, Lobo fixes things so that he is, once again, is the Last Czarnian.

52

Lobo eventually turned his back on his violent ways and became an archbishop in the First Celestial Church of the Triple Fish-God. He became a protector of sorts to a massive colony of refugees from Sector 3500 and also gained possession of the Emerald Eye of Ekron.

He happened to arrive in an asteroid field just in time to kill Devilance, rescuing Animal Man, Adam Strange, and Starfire, who were stranded in space. Starfire negotiated a deal with him, in which he would help them out of their predicament if they helped him with his problems. After helping the heroes defeat Lady Styx, he brought the Emerald Eye to the triple-headed fish god, who agreed to release Lobo from his vow of non-violence in exchange. When told that the Emerald Eye was the only thing that can kill the fish god, Lobo blasted him with it.

One Year Later

After the battle on Apokolips, Lobo's soul was sent to Hell. Lobo's suffering was enough to power Neron's entire region of Hell. When the demons Etrigan and Blue Devil went on a rampage through Hell to seek revenge on Neron, they accidentally freed Lobo from his prison. In order to buy time to fully recover before battling Czarnian, Etrigan stole Blue Devil's soul and told him he would have to fight Lobo to get it back. Lobo however during his rampage through the underworld cut off the magician Zatara's head, which angered his daughter, Zatanna who engaged in an intense battle with him before paralyzing him in place to escape with her team.

Brightest Day

Lobo appeared on Earth to capture a bounty on the Red Lantern Atrocitus's head. After battling Hal Jordan, Carol Ferris and Sinestro, he left without finishing his job. The mystery of his retreat is revealed as the fight was all staged by Atrocitus in order for the latter to gain the trust of the New Guardians. As a payment, Lobo was given a Red Power Ring.

R.E.B.E.L.S.

Still using the Red Power Ring, Lobo was recruited by Vril Dox II, who requires his help battling Brainiac and Pulsar Stargrave. Due to the fact that the Space Church that Lobo oversaw was spending more money than it was taking in, Lobo needed to work for Vril Dox as his personal enforcer. Even losing his Spacehog, Lobo saves the planet Colu, but Brainiac and Pulsar Stargrave escaped.

Lobo later battled Altin Ad'Ms, the Green Lantern of Sector 2828, to a stand still. He was later tricked into thinking that there was another Czarnian still alive, but Astrild Storm-Daughter, using pheromones to confuse Lobo, for this trick he later killed Astrild.

After tracking Astrild's origins to the Psion Homeworld he would go toe to toe with Smite, her friend and ally. The fight would only pause because Lobo was winning and wanted to get drunk instead of fighting. Lobo and Smite go to a bar and share a drink and war stories. He then explains to Smite he shouldn't be mad at him, he should be mad at Starro. Lobo and Smite then attack the now helpless Starro.

Fun Facts

Lobo's favorite color is "Sepulcher Black", which he names his hair color after.

Lobo's name translates to He Who Devours Your Entrails And Thoroughly Enjoys It.

Lobo is also known as the Main Man, the Bo, Master Frag, Mister Machete, Popebo, the Thrash, and Li'l Lobo.

Lobo possesses a fondness for space dolphins, which sometimes affects his judgment. Additionally, Lobo's word is the only thing he finds sacred, and will keep his promises, even to his detriment. He is also highly susceptible to gas attacks and is extremely violent even to his allies.

"Lobo" is Spanish and Portuguese for "Wolf".

"Bob Bastiche" was actually the name of the first employer to hire Lobo for bounty hunting work. He claims to have adopted the man's name as a saying just because he liked the sound of it.

Lobo was, allegedly, hired to assassinate Santa Claus by the Easter Bunny, and succeeded.

[theprocrastinatingalien]

Battle of Star Trek - Batch#8 Heats (featuring Picard, Tilly, Kim & Kira!)

The Battle of Star Trek continues, but the end is nigh, as we enter our final batch of characters for you to whittle down to your favourite.

We started with 128 characters, and here we have the last batch of 16.  Head over to twitter, add procrastinalien and get voting!

DEANNA TROI

Half Human, half betazoid, Deanna is an empath - meaning she can sense emotions in others.  She was Picard's trusted counsellor on the USS Enterprise-D (and E), and eventually married his first officer Will Riker.  Throughout seven seasons of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, four movies, and some guest spots on VOYAGER and ENTERPRISE, Troi was played by Marina Sirtis.

TORAL ZIYAL

Ziyal spent much of her life as a slave, neglected by her father Dukat due to being half-Cardassian but also half-Bajoran... something his people would never have accepted.  She ended up on DEEP SPACE NINE, where she was taken under the wing of Kira Nerys and started developing a romantic relationship with Garak until she was killed by Damar.  An act which sent her father a little crazy.   A supporting role, Ziyal was played by a number of actors - Cyia Batten, Tracy Middendorf, but most notably Melanie Smith.

DATA

Lt. Commander Data was the first android in Starfleet, and served aboard the USS Enterprise D & E, under Picard, where he spent much of his time studying, and endeavouring to become a part of, humanity. He built up great friendships, in particular with Geordi La Forge.  He was an asset to Starfleet, until his sacrifice in STAR TREK: NEMESIS.  Data was portrayed by Brent Spiner throughout seven years of THE NEXT GENERATION and four movies.

LORE

Lore was, essentially, Data's evil twin. Unlike Data, he was equipped with an emotion chip from the beginning, but sadly his personality wasn't as promising.  He did may evil acts throughout a number of guest spots, particularly when he took control of a dysfunctional faction of the Borg, and tortured Geordi in the process - or worse, got Data (mind controlled) to for him.  Like Data, Lore was played by Brent Spiner.

JEAN-LUC PICARD

Arguably the best commanding officer in STAR TREK.  Some might argue (and there are certainly arguments for the likes of Kirk or Janeway etc) but Picard - as played by Shakespearean actor Patrick Stewart - is easily the most commanding.   At first he was uptight and offish, but surrounded by a warm crew, Picard softened over the years... especially after he was assimilated by the Borg as Locutus.   Stewart played Picard for seven seasons of THE NEXT GENERATION, four movies, and a guest spot in the pilot of DEEP SPACE NINE.

HIKARU SULU

The very first time we met Sulu, he was in the science division, but for the rest of his time in THE ORIGINAL SERIES (and THE ANIMATED SERIES), we was the ship's helmsman.  He remained at the helm through three seasons of the live action series, two seasons of the animated, and five movies, until he was finally given his own command.  Captain Sulu appeared in charge of the USS Excelsior in STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY and again for a guest spot on VOYAGER.   He was played by George Takei in all of that, with John Cho playing the character for the Kelvin timeline appearances since 2009.

KURN

A proud Klingon, Kurn was Worf's brother, and looked down on his decision to join Starfleet.   The brothers attempted to turn the dishonoured name of their father into something good again... but when Worf went against Kurn (now a Klingon councillor) over the a Klingon invasion of Cardassia, Kurn had his mind wiped so he would feel Worf's fall from grace.  Tony Todd played Kurn in both THE NEXT GENERATION and DEEP SPACE NINE.

CHARLES 'TRIP' TUCKER III

'Trip' was the chief engineer onboard the NX Enterprise. He was a good friend of the commanding officer, Archer, and despite his distrust of the Vulcans, he not only became good friends, but romantically involved with the first officer, T'Pol.  The three would often eat dinner together.  Connor Trinneer played Trip throughout the four seasons of ENTERPRISE.

KIRA NERYS

At the start of DEEP SPACE NINE, Kira resented Stafleet's position on the station.  She'd been a rebel, freedom fighter against the Cardassian occupation of her homeworld, Bajor and felt Starfleet was another oppressing force.  She lightened up though and over the years Kira came to trust and value Sisko and the other Starfleet officers. Kira was played by Nana Visitor over the course of all seven seasons of DS9.

HARRY KIM

When the USS Voyager was flung across to the Delta quadrant, young naïve Harry Kim stepped up.  He was the Operations officer on board and became a valued member of Janeway's crew. He formed a strong friendship with Tom Paris, the two often hanging out in the holodeck.   Harry was played by Garrett Wang for all seven seasons of VOYAGER.

WESLEY CRUSHER

Some people found the Wesley character annoyed, but come on, I dare you not to feel a little bit proud when he first walks on the bridge in his Starfleet uniform.   Wesley, son of Dr Crusher, was a child genius, and applied (but missed) his chance at starting Starfleet courses, so Picard gave him duties on the USS Enterprise.  Wil Wheaton played Wesley for a full three seasons of THE NEXT GENERATION, and left part way through the fourth.  He made guest appearances in the seasons that followed, including a cameo in STAR TREK: NEMESIS.

JANICE RAND

Grace Lee Whitney played Kirk's yeoman.  Despite appearing in a lot of the promotional images for STAR TREK, Janice Rand only appeared in the first bunch of episodes. She did appear in cameos across the movies though, last seen on the USS Excelsior under Captain Sulu, in VOYAGER.

LT. KYLE

Lt. Kyle was one of those rare things in THE ORIGINAL SERIES... A red shirt that didn't get killed off.  He was played by John Winston across the series as well as an appearance in STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN.

SYLVIA TILLY

Tilly could be described as the 'heart' of STAR TREK: DISCOVERY.  A young and hopeful cadet, Tilly is also determined. She found herself bunking with known mutineer Michael Burnham, but whilst nervous, became her friend - and after proving herself to the rest of the crew, was promoted to ensign, and put on the command track.  Mary Wiseman played Tilly during the first season, and will return for the second.

ALYSSA OGAWA

Every good doctor needs good nurses, and Dr Crusher had Nurse Ogawa.  Whilst only a supporting character, we got a few nice moments for Alyssa, including an episode (THE LOWER DECKS) which saw a few ensigns looking for promotion and her starting a family.   Patti Yasutake played Ogawa from the fourth season of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, and went onto the first two movies featuring the same cast.

PHILIPPA GEORGIOU

Michelle Yeoh was the first cast member to be announced for the newest of the Treks - STAR TREK: DISCOVERY.  Captain Georgiou (commanding officer of the USS Shenzhou) was killed by the Klingons in only the second episode however, with only a hologram of her, reading a message to her first officer Michael Burnham, to follow.  That was, of course, until the USS Discovery found itself in in the Mirror universe... and we met Emperor Georgiou.   Burnham brought her back to our prime universe, and after pretending to be our Georgiou for a bit, she's disappeared into the shadows.  I think we all expect an appearance from Yeoh in the second season - currently shooting now.

So there you are.  No new names after this point, this is it.  We already have champions from the previous seven batches, and now we need to find one from this batch. You've got three days to pick your favourites - get yourselves to twitter and get voting!

[rbbox]

The Coronavirus pandemic has spread around the world rapidly. Several institutions in the country have been shut down, workplaces have decided for work from home opportunities for the employees, theatres are being shut down for time being, shootings are being cancelled. On Sunday, Indian Motion Pictures Producers' Association, Federation of Western India Cine Employees and Indian Film&Television Directors' Association came to a decision to put a halt on the shootings with the effect from March 16 till March 31, 2020.

Aamir Khan starrer Laal Singh Chaddha's next schedule has been put on hold for now. The actor completed his shoot on Sunday, March 15. Since the actor has been shooting the film in real locations, it requires him to follow the same protocol for the next schedule too. The next schedule date will be decided on a later date observing the scenario. The film, which stars Kareena Kapoor Khan, is scheduled for Christmas 2020 release.

The shooting for Nikamma starring Abhimanyu Dassani, Shilpa Shetty and debutante Shirley Setia has come to a halt too. The shooting was pre-emptively called off on Saturday ahead of the decision made by several bodies. The 10-day schedule required few scenes to be shot along with the title track of the film. A huge set was erected at Madh Island where the trio was supposed to shoot the title track before Sabbir Khan sent out the message on Saturday that the shoot was called off. The film is almost complete as per the director. Keeping the safety of the actors, cast, and crew, the decision was made. They'll resume shooting once the situation is better. While the film is insured even if there's a monetary loss, Sabbir Khan said that it's his job as director and part producer with Sony Pictures to take the responsibility. The film is scheduled for June 5 release.

Jersey remake starring Shahid Kapoor too has taken a hit. Shahid revealed, "At a time like this it is our social responsibility to do everything in our capacity to curb the spread of this virus. Team #Jersey is suspending shoot so as to enable all unit members to be with their families and in the safety of their homes. Be responsible. Stay safe.❤️"

Aman Gill, the producer of the film, said that the remake is already 70 percent complete. They were in Chandigarh to shoot and were looking at April end wrap up. Keeping the current scenario in mind and how the Coronavirus has spread across the globe, the decision was made to keep everyone safe. The makers will begin work as soon as the situation normalizes. Jersey is set for August 28, 2021.

ALSO READ: Kareena Kapoor Khan’s selfie with a sleeping Aamir Khan is the funniest thing you will see today

March 16, 2020 at 10:29AMLaal Singh Chaddha, Jersey, Nikamma shoots come to a halt amid Coronavirus pandemic https://ift.tt/38Twgw0

[inhumansforever]

Ms. Marvel #21 Review

spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers

The stirring and politically-charged ‘mecca’ story-arc continues in this excellent latest installment of Ms. Marvel; from the creative team of G. Willow Wilson, Marco Falla and Ian Herring.  Full recap and review following the jump.

The diabolical Chuck Worthy and his cronies have managed to take over the local government of Jersey City, instituting a zero-tolerance policy toward Inhumans, Mutants, and anyone who might possess weird powers or an odd appearance.  Despite it being wildly unconstitutional, Worthy administration has somehow gotten away with dispatching uniformed goons who are rounding up anyone who doesn’t to their narrow view of normalcy.  Leading Worthy’s forces are the villains, Lockdown (‘Basic’ Becky St. Jude) and Discord (who seems quite familiar although his true identity has remained thus far a secret).   Last issue ended with the cliffhanger of Discord threatening to kill Kamala’s brother, Aamir, unless Ms. Marvel surrendered and allowed herself to be taken into custody.  Unwilling to risk her brother’s life, Ms. Marvel had agreed to surrender.  

The various Mutants and Inhumans that have been rounded up refuse to let Jersey City’s hero give up.  They fight back and in the ensuing melee Discord point this weapon at Aamir.  Before he can fire, however, Ms. Marvel stops him, slamming her embiggened fists onto the street and cracking the concrete. 

As Ms. Marvel battles Discord and his goons, Aamir and the other detainees siege the opportunity to flee.  Not knowing where else to go.  Amir leads them to his Mosque where upon Sheikh Abdullah makes his long overdue reappearance in the pages of Ms. Marvel.  Despite his reservations, Abdullah recognizes that these people are in trouble and he sees it is moral duty to invite them in and offer them refuge and a safe place to hide.  

The various Inhumans and Mutants that Aamir had found himself lopped in with are a motley crew of different peoples from different ways of life.  Normally they would not have much in common, but their mutual persecution by Worthy’s forces has made them allies.  One comments on how he never would have imagined his ever finding himself  such a place like this.  A short period of quiet reflection offers some interesting dialogue between Aamir and his new friends. And yet , it is not long before Lockdown and her forces manage to track down their escaped detainees.  They burst their way into the Mosque looking to recapture their prey.  

Ms. Marvel follows closely behind and the battle continues.  Kamala is exhausted, she’s been fighting for too long without having any time to rest or eat and her powers are beginning to wane.  Barely abel to stand, Ms. Marvel is forced to sneak off to a secluded room of prayer in the back.  Discord ultimately finds her and aims to finish her off.  Before he can, however, Ms. Marvel grabs him and yanks off his mask, revealing that this villain is actually Josh, Kamala’s friend and classmate from school. 

Josh is rather horrified at being unmasked.  All of the bluster and sinister commitment he had once demonstrated seems to fade once his real face is exposed.  It’s actually a bit of a jarring shift, yet it’s quite true that people tend to change their attitudes significantly once their anonymity is taken away.   Ms. Marvel asks how it is that Josh should fall in with such villains as Chuck Worthy and Lockdown.  His tale is not that different then many privileged people peoples who become angry when things don’t go the way they want them to.  Josh is just as alienated and confused as any typical teenager, yet he has always been told how lucky he is, how fortunate and  privileged he is and that things will come to him easily.  Nothing has felt easy or fortunate and it has all left him angry and spiteful; and when Lockdown offered him the opportunity to act on that anger in the guise of Discord, Josh leapt at the chance.  

Well, I personally feel just about zero compassion for Josh in this situation.  Yeah… life is tough.  It’s tough for teenagers and adults, for those who are lucky and privileged and for those who are not.  It is all tough.  But that is no excuse for donning some ninja suit and engaging in a totalitarian campaign against the who are different.  Seriously, Josh can piss right off.  

Yet apparently Kamala is a gentler and more compassionate soul than I (or perhaps she is just a bit more naive).  She sympathizes with Josh, feels bad for the things that he has been through and opts to do something rather rash.  She removes her mask, revealing her true identity as Kamala Khan… Josh’s classmate since their were in primary school.  

Josh is shocked and it remains unknown how this new development will effect his attitudes moving forward.  And we’re going to have to wait until the next installment to find out more the issue ends on this cliffhanger.  

This issue feels a touch more rushed compared to the two that preceded it.  The action is more chaotic and there is a bit more reliance on exposition then I am used to in Willson’s scripts.  Still, there is some important and heady stuff that fits well with the overarching thematics and I continue to be happily surprised with the decision to make Aamir into such a well rounded and multidimensional character.  I was particularly stirred by Aamir’s comments about how he had imagined he would be more accepted by the conservative aspects of Western attitudes.  

He’s traditional, pious and conservative and expected that those in America who maintain similar views would be welcoming to him.  Yet they weren’t and what’s left unspoken but nonetheless evident is that he was not accepted because he comes from a foreign land, is a Muslim and has brown skin.  It’s a matter I hadn’t really contemplated before.  Christians, Jews and Muslims who lean more toward orthodox values really should get along better, but they don’t and the only viable explanation as to why they don’t is base xenophobia.  

The sudden shift in Josh’s attitude and demeanor once he is unmasked may seem overly stark and unrealistic, but it;’s actually in tune with psychological experiments explore the effects of masks and obscured identities.  Researchers have found that people can act in extremely different ways when their identity is hidden, yet tend to mellow quite considerably when their identities are revealed.  This can have positive connotations, such as Peter Parker who is much more confident and self assured when wearing his Spider-Man mask; and can have very negative connotations, such as members of the KKK who often feel emboldened to do and say terrible things when their true faces are obscured.  

All of this aside, I have no sympathy for Josh and felt kind of annoyed that Kamala proved so sensitive and understanding over his situation.  Perhaps I am not as compassionate a soul as Kamala, but I have absolutely had it with angry white guys who take out their frustrations on those who are different.  I mean, I can relate to Josh.  I’m a white guy and came from a relatively well-to-do family.  School wasn’t very hard, I was decent at sports, and many of the girls I liked liked me back.  I had no reason to complain but was nonetheless a very anxious and depressed kid.  Life s tough no matter who you are, but that is never, ever an excuse to bully and persecute others.  It’s reprehensible and, although it may seem cold-hearted, I don’t want to see Josh earning redemption.  He needs to go to jail.

All of this is indicative of just what a great comic Ms. Marvel is.  Even a somewhat lackluster issue has the effect of eliciting all sorts of interesting thoughts and feelings.  I’ll read other comics, finish them and be like ‘that was fun’ and then sort of forget about them.  Ms. Marvel is different… it rarely fails to leave a lasting impression, provoking all matter of thoughts and feelings that swirl about my head long after I’ve put the issue down.  

Issue #21 isn’t as strong as the two that proceeded it, but recommended nonetheless.  Three out of Five Lockjaws.  

[reviewdoctorwho]

Marco Polo- All the Splendor Telesnaps Can Display

This is one of my favorite First Doctor serials, which is saying something since none of it actually exists. For those of you who aren’t aware, back in the 60s and 70s the BBC (among other channels) wiped a metric ton of master videotapes from many TV series, Doctor Who included. Since the First and Second Doctors were filmed exclusively onto videotapes, it meant that every one of their master copies were destroyed forever. Over time people have found copies of episodes around the world, artifacts left over from old BBC foreign broadcasts. Some serials, such as this one, are completely missing, while some others are missing just one or a couple episodes. Even more interestingly, sometimes in missing episodes there will be a snippet of someone getting shot or a monster blowing up or some other violent acts, because all that survived were the pieces cut out of the broadcast in foreign markets due to censorship. As a result of this wiping, a huge percentage of the First and Second Doctor serials only exist in reconstructions made with the audio (every single episodes exists as audio even if the master tapes were dumped) and telesnaps, screenshots of the recording television screen kept for record keeping purposes. Thanks to the people who piece these together, we have a very thorough idea of what these episodes would have been like, but we are still missing out on the hard work put into our favorite show back in the day. Every Classic Whovian has a missing serial they’d love to see completed, and for me it’s this one (it used to be Enemy of the World, but they found that several years ago and it is literally as amazing as I could’ve ever hoped for).

Synopsis: Interestingly, this story is narrated by the titular Marco Polo as he writes his memoirs. He begins telling an interesting story about the strange group of people he met in 1289…

The Doctor and crew land in the snowy Pamir mountains, their TARDIS completely broken and shut down after escaping the craziness that was the previous serial. They begin to investigate their surroundings, trying to find a way to survive and avoid the Mongols they discover looming in the area. The Mongols track them down and are about to kill them, thinking they are evil spirits who have just materialized on the mountain, when Marco Polo arrives on scene and stops them. The crew join Polo’s caravan, which is headed to see the Kublai Khan, and the Doctor tells Polo about his “flying caravan” and how it needs to be repaired so they can leave. Our four heroes are introduced to Tegana, a Mongol warlord on a peace mission to see the Khan, and Ping-Cho, a young Chinese girl whom Polo is escorting to the Khan so she can be wed to a 75 year old dignitary. Tegana and Marco Polo begin creating their own plots to steal the TARDIS- Tegana so that he can use it to destroy the Khan, and Polo so that he can use it as a bargaining chip to earn his freedom from the Khan- as soon as the Doctor repairs it. Over the next several episodes, the caravan moves across the Gobi desert, with the TARDIS crew trying to figure out how to escape now that they know that Polo intends to take the ship for himself. Tegana’s attempts to steal the TARDIS get more cunning and more violent, but he manages to escape blame on merit of his (seemingly) faithful servitude to Polo and the Kublai Khan.

Eventually, the crew makes it to the Khan’s summer palace. The Doctor meets with Kublai Khan and they end up becoming friends, bonding over their old age and all the issues that come with it. They start playing backgammon, and the Doctor makes bank but then bets it all on the freedom of his TARDIS and loses. After some arguments over who the TARDIS should belong to, our four heroes are locked up yet again and only escape when Ping-Cho and Susan tell them about a plan they overheard in the palace, a plot created by Tegana to sneak into the throne room and kill everyone, including the Khan. The crew escape capture yet again, alert Marco Polo, and they all head into the throne room to find Tegana having killed many a dignitary but subdue him before he can kill the Khan. Tegana takes his own life rather than have it taken by the Khan’s men, and as a reward for saving the Khan The Doctor and his companions are given the key to the TARDIS and allowed their freedom. Things even work out well for Ping-Cho, who is freed from her dreaded arranged marriage to the 75 year old dignitary when he is found dead after drinking an elixir of life (mercury). She chooses to stay with the Khan’s court and enjoy freedom in splendor. As the TARDIS fades away, Polo is granted freedom to go home back to Venice.

Background Info: 

This is one of the hard-historical serials that were present in the first season (which was 50% historical and 50% hard science fiction since it was supposed to be an educational show)

This is the first serial to feature The Doctor interacting with a famous historical figure

First serial written by John Lucarotti. Lucarotti had worked with show creator Sidney Newman on several of his largest shows both in Canada and in England, and he contributed three serials to Doctor Who, all First Doctor stories.

A photo from this serial was the first ever Doctor Who cover photo on the magazine Radio Times. The show and Radio Times have a long-standing history of cover features, and this was the very first one to receive the treatment.

This was the second and final directorial credit for Waris Hussein on the show. He was the director for An Unearthly Child and had been supposed to direct half of all episodes of season 1 (of which there are 3 more serials after this), but left because he wanted to direct more plays.

Opinion: I love this serial. Yes, at times it does drag on (I mean, how many times can shady stuff happen and people literally bring you evidence that Tegana did it before you start thinking they may have a point?), but that’s what happens in these old 7-part serials. The shame with these telesnap reconstructions is that you can’t see what they actually looked like in action. The shots of the sets, especially with regards to the caravan, are so lavish looking. I imagine that if we had the actual episodes in full it may not look as opulent, but it is far and away one of the best set designs we’ll see for a long time. Every character is incredibly strongly written and I love the scenes between Ping-Cho and Susan as well as Ian and Tegana because the actors’ chemistry is so great that you can feel it without even having to see it. Phil Sandifer points out an interesting quirk about this episode, one that I loved without realizing that I loved it until I saw it pointed out in his review. The characters in this serial that we encounter throughout the entire thing are surprisingly diverse. Even currently on Doctor Who we tend to focus on one culture and/or race at a time. Typically, if the Doctor is getting involved with a group of people, they are often fairly homogenized. In this one, however, we get a western man, a Chinese woman (although the actress is actually Burmese, but still, yay not-yellowface!), and a myriad of Asian characters (sadly, these are almost entirely yellowface. Gotta love the 1960s) all interacting with each other as they trek across the desert. I just think that this story is fascinating because the hard-historical episodes are pretty rare, making up half of the serials in this season but then dropping rapidly until there were no hard-historical ones anymore by season 5. Out of all the ones I’ve seen so far, this one is the first where I could really get invested in the history without being bored to tears. John Lucarotti used the actual memoirs of Marco Polo to create his story, and it shows. I definitely wouldn’t want to show this as anyone’s first Classic Who serial or anything, but once you’re comfortable with the tone and format I’d recommend giving this one a watch. Or, more accurately a listen. It’s on YouTube if you’re interested!

Favorite Moment: Like I said, I enjoy the whole thing, but let’s just all gather ‘round and enjoy these lovely colorized photos from the set that shows you just how amazing this serial looks.

[celebritylive]

The Coronavirus pandemic has spread around the world rapidly. Several institutions in the country have been shut down, workplaces have decided for work from home opportunities for the employees, theatres are being shut down for time being, shootings are being cancelled. On Sunday, Indian Motion Pictures Producers' Association, Federation of Western India Cine Employees and Indian Film&Television Directors' Association came to a decision to put a halt on the shootings with the effect from March 16 till March 31, 2020.

Aamir Khan starrer Laal Singh Chaddha's next schedule has been put on hold for now. The actor completed his shoot on Sunday, March 15. Since the actor has been shooting the film in real locations, it requires him to follow the same protocol for the next schedule too. The next schedule date will be decided on a later date observing the scenario. The film, which stars Kareena Kapoor Khan, is scheduled for Christmas 2020 release.

The shooting for Nikamma starring Abhimanyu Dassani, Shilpa Shetty and debutante Shirley Setia has come to a halt too. The shooting was pre-emptively called off on Saturday ahead of the decision made by several bodies. The 10-day schedule required few scenes to be shot along with the title track of the film. A huge set was erected at Madh Island where the trio was supposed to shoot the title track before Sabbir Khan sent out the message on Saturday that the shoot was called off. The film is almost complete as per the director. Keeping the safety of the actors, cast, and crew, the decision was made. They'll resume shooting once the situation is better. While the film is insured even if there's a monetary loss, Sabbir Khan said that it's his job as director and part producer with Sony Pictures to take the responsibility. The film is scheduled for June 5 release.

Jersey remake starring Shahid Kapoor too has taken a hit. Shahid revealed, "At a time like this it is our social responsibility to do everything in our capacity to curb the spread of this virus. Team #Jersey is suspending shoot so as to enable all unit members to be with their families and in the safety of their homes. Be responsible. Stay safe.❤️"

Aman Gill, the producer of the film, said that the remake is already 70 percent complete. They were in Chandigarh to shoot and were looking at April end wrap up. Keeping the current scenario in mind and how the Coronavirus has spread across the globe, the decision was made to keep everyone safe. The makers will begin work as soon as the situation normalizes. Jersey is set for August 28, 2021.

ALSO READ: Kareena Kapoor Khan’s selfie with a sleeping Aamir Khan is the funniest thing you will see today

from Latest Bollywood News | Hindi Movie News | Hindi Cinema News | Indian Movies | Films - Bollywood Hungama https://ift.tt/2WfBJe4

[timeagainreviews]

Marco... Polo!

Greetings friends! Real quick, I wanted to say thank you to all of the people who read my "The Witchfinders," review. It means a lot! Finally had the time to settle down and rewatch "Marco Polo," only to remember I had a doctor’s appointment. Well, I saw one Doctor at least! 

Recently I got into an anime known as "Konosuba." People close to me would know how rare this is, as I don’t usually watch anime. Excited by my newfound fandom, I got inspired to read the manga. Which brought me to light novels, mangas, spin-offs, volumes, and chapters! My word there is a lot to learn! I had to get my wife to explain it to me. For many fandoms, entry is a simple Netflix view away. But for other fandoms, where to start is not as simple. When starting Discworld, a 41 novel series, people often get on Reddit saying "Where do I start?" Comic books can be just as daunting with their thousands of issues already established over the course of decades. Doctor Who is no different.

My friend Tino told me recently that he would have watched Doctor Who by now, but he’s such a completionist, he would want to start at the First Doctor, which would mean watching everything from the beginning. Which I get. Before my friends sat me down to watch the Eighth Doctor, I had looked into the First Doctor. What I discovered is that I was in way over my head. Not only was this cheap old black and white series hard to track down, but it was also rife with missing episodes! The idea of such a thing perplexed me to no end. Having grown up with VHS, and into the digital era, I couldn’t imagine a network destroying old episodes.

When I came into Doctor Who, there were 108 episodes of the show missing. Since then, eleven of them have been recovered. Alas, not one of them was from the 1964 serial "Marco Polo," which to this day, is missing in its entirety. So what’s a girl to do? Reconstructions of course! Various sources have reconstructed lost episodes. The BBC had even animated some of them. For the most part, the BBC frowns upon third-party reconstructions, but isn’t that a bit rich? If I toss a diamond in the bin, I can’t get upset when the rubbish man repurposes it.

For those of you watching along with me, I decided to go with the Loose Cannon reconstructions. I opted out of the colour version, as I was looking for something as close to the original as possible. I also avoided the Mark Eden reenactments for similar reasons. Now then, if you recall, we last left the TARDIS crew on a snowy mountainside. Susan had just found a giant footprint. As I was going through this episode, it somewhat donned on me that we never really get a very satisfying conclusion about this footprint. Ian attributes its size to the sunlight melting a normally sized footprint. But more than just a red herring, the true point of the footprint is to alert you to the fact that our friends aren’t alone on this mountain.

The TARDIS seems not to be working, which is odd considering all of the fault locating Ian and the Doctor did in "The Edge of Destruction," but whatever. Ian and Barbara are sent off to find fuel, which is funny because the show is still looking for excuses to be the show we know now. I guess I’m glad they earned it at least. And they really have earned quite a bit by this, their fourth serial. The TARDIS crew has really come together as a group. The Doctor is still a curmudgeon, but he’s our curmudgeon. Instead of a simple kidnapping situation, Ian and Barbara have gone full-on Stockholm Syndrome with the Doctor. So when they see a man dressed in full 13th Century Mongolian apparel, they go running back to the safety of the TARDIS, their newfound home. By this time the Doctor realises the fault with the TARDIS is in its circuitry, which has knocked out the heating. If they’re to survive the night, they’ll need to come down from the mountain and find a camp.

The Mongols, having seen the crew arrive, want to kill them for being evil spirits. But a white man they will come to know as Marco Polo interrupts the proceedings. Now, when I say “a white man,” I mean "a supposed to be white man." Because most of these “Mongols,” are also white men.  I’m not going to pretend to know how many Asian actors were active in 1960’s London, but I do know all but maybe one of them had a speaking role. I find it hard to believe they couldn’t find more. That being said, I’m going to proceed with things on a story level. Yellowface is bad. It’s not my place or desire to excuse it.

Marco invites the Doctor and his companions into his company. They’re travelling across the Gobi Desert to see the great Kublai Khan. Among his fellow travellers are Ping-Cho, a sixteen-year-old girl arranged to be married to a 75-year-old man. And there is also Tegana, a peace emissary from Khan Noghai. He, along with his other Mongol brothers distrust the Doctor, seeing him as some sort of sorcerer with his magic box. Of all of the new characters introduced, I rather liked Ping-Cho. Part of me was thinking what a good companion she would have made, but this is the only story where she makes an appearance. Another great thing about her is that she’s one of the few actors of Asian descent, and she’s really good. Even in a reconstruction, she shines.

Over the next few episodes, not a lot really happens. The company travels across the Gobi desert. Susan and Ping-Cho become friends and get lost in a sandstorm. Tegana spends most of his time plotting against Marco Polo. Marco Polo takes the Doctor’s TARDIS away from him as an acquisition for the great Khan. Doing this causes the Doctor to sulk by himself for the better part of an episode. Lots of things early on give William Hartnell the option to take a rest. Perhaps they were writing around his health, but the Doctor spends a lot of time sitting, or having altitude sickness. Marco tries to get the Doctor to understand that if he can bring the Khan a great gift, perhaps he will permit him to leave back to Venice. The Doctor’s aversion to explaining the TARDIS, mixed with Tegana’s distrust of him, causes Marco to bar the Doctor from entering the TARDIS.

Planning to poison the water gourds, Tegana goes off into the night. But Susan and Ping-Cho follow and get lost in a sandstorm, causing Tegana to have to hastily slash open the gourds instead. With not enough water to finish the trip, the travellers face hard times. Where they travelled fifteen miles one day, they travelled ten the next, then eight. I’m not sure the writer, John Lucarotti, understands the desert as he depicts it as hot, even at night time. With this kind of heat, they’ll need water, and fast! Tegana rides ahead to find an Oasis, where he finds water, but only for himself. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Susan, having been let back into the TARDIS, are able to supply the company with water condensed on the TARDIS walls. I was impressed with the good people at Loose Cannon for digitally adding in water droplets. Those small bits of animation act as an oasis in and of themselves. At first, Marco thinks the Doctor has been lying to him about their water reserves, requiring the Doctor to explain the concept of condensation. It’s an edutainment moment.

Speaking of Marco, he’s a hard one to pin down. In many ways, I rather like Mark Eden’s portrayal of him. He’s a rather dopey, but lovable character. I’ll be honest, I don’t know much about the real man himself. Though the script does endeavour to make him realistic, as John Lucarotti used actual diary entries from Polo as a reference. I did, however, find myself constantly frustrated with his uncertainty. I understand that it’s helpful in creating believable characters to give them flaws. But in a lot of this serial, I felt like Marco Polo was a bit naive and indecisive. It made it hard to really like him, which I get, to a point. He needs to be a bit of an antagonist at times. He’s taken the TARDIS, he’s siding with Tegana’s awful lies, and he kowtows to Kublai Khan like a cheap suit. These things are supposed to aggravate the audience, but it happens so often, it begins to feel like padding. We can’t have Marco Polo being more assertive. That would turn this seven-parter into a four-parter!

One of the things I love about this serial is its use of the Marco Polo diary entries as narration. Along with overlays of a map of Northern China, we get nice little interludes from the great traveller. In many ways, it reminded me of "Star Trek," with the Captain’s log. It’s a rare opportunity to get narration in Doctor Who, much less by a character that isn’t either the Doctor or a companion. Like many map montages, this one is used to plot our journey across the Gobi desert. Renewed with their TARDIS water, they arrive at a way-station in Tun-Huang. Here they restock and Ping-Cho recites the story of Aladdin. As a fan of Ping-Cho, I was saddened not to be able to see this performance acted out. I’m sure it was rather charming. During the performance, Tegana slips out to see about some shady shit he’s up to, but Barbara, who’s been onto him for a while now, tails him all the way to "The Cave of Five Hundred Eyes." Tegana meets with a couple of men named Malik and Acomat. Evidently, Khan Noghai has an army on it’s way to Karakorum. Barbara gets kidnapped, but the Doctor and co. are able to rescue her, while Tegana is able to avoid association.

Looking for another way to rid himself of the busybodies from the TARDIS, Tegana tries to draw a wedge even further between the Doctor and Marco. He convinces Marco that Susan and Ping-Cho have an unusual bond together, causing him to separate the two friends. His trust is even further tested when Tegana is proven correct that the Doctor has a second TARDIS key on his person. More than ever, the TARDIS crew are more like captives than travelling companions. Tegana plans an assassination with Acomat to finally rid himself of these pests. But Ian is able to escape Polo’s internment, only to discover their guard is dead.

I’ve learned a bit watching this serial. Like Ian throws bamboo on the fire to scare off their would be assassins. Bamboo under intense heat explodes, evidently. I also learned that the word assassin comes from the Arabic “ḥashshāshīn,” or “eaters of hashish,” making this the first mention of narcotics in Doctor Who history. Neat! Now, either it was the sound of exploding bamboo or the killing of their leader Acomat at the hands of Tegana, but the raiders leave the camp. Tegana, once again, has enough plausible deniability to avoid any sort of recourse from the great Marco Polo, wet blanket that he is. However, after taking swords against a common enemy, our friends seem to have regained Marco’s trust, allowing Susan and Ping-Cho to talk again, and freedom to roam.

The TARDIS is about to get split off from the rest of the caravan, which would separate them even further. Out of options, Ian tries to explain that the TARDIS is the only way home, even going as far as to tell Marco about its time travelling capabilities. But it’s no use. Having seen where he hides them, Ping-Cho gives Susan one of the hidden TARDIS keys. The Doctor and his friends head off to leave under the cover of night. But Tegana nabs Susan as she’s entering, and uses her as leverage to get the key back from the Doctor. Ping-Cho, afraid of the repercussions of revealing the key, runs away. Ian discovers her and the TARDIS have been kidnapped by one of Tegana’s men. Tegana pulls a sword on Ian and Ping-Cho, but one of Polo’s men arrives with a band of soldiers. Even then Tegana smooth talks his way out of things.

Finally, at Peking, the great capital of China, we’re introduced to Kublai Khan. Much like "The Witchfinders," relieved a lot of tension with it’s take on King James I, "Marco Polo," finds its foil in Kublai Khan. Played as a decrepit old man with twinkly eyes, he adds a bit of humour to the proceedings. The Doctor refuses to kowtow to the Khan. Perhaps it’s due to a lack of respect, or from a bad back, or just a case of the old. Either way, he can barely muster a bow. It’s a pretty classic moment, that I’m sure was even more charming when you could actually see it! I get the feeling that the two of them bond over mutual achiness. The Doctor and the Khan play rounds of backgammon, which the Doctor uses to win back the TARDIS, but ultimately fails, despite earlier winnings.

Unimpressed by Polo’s gift of the Doctor’s TARDIS, which was not his to give, the Khan seems in no hurry to bestow the boon of returning home. Ping-Cho and Ian tell the Khan of Tegana’s machinations, but Tegana claims they are evil sorcerers. Not sure who to believe, the Khan decides to hold court. It’s all very tedious, this constant back and forth of trust and distrust. Tegana is really wearing out his welcome. While the Doctor and his friends are taken into custody, Ping-Cho learns that the elderly man to whom she was to be wed has died suddenly after taking an elixir of life. Basically, old boy overdosed on ancient Viagra because he was worried about his vitality. I shit you not. It’s such a "by the way," random turn of events. At least her character got closure?

The Doctor and his friends escape by tripping the world’s dumbest guard. They make their way back to the throne room where Tegana has just slew the Khan’s Vizier while attempting to kill the Khan. Using this as a chance to grow a spine, and maybe regain the Khan’s favour, Marco draws his sword against Tegana. Now I know old Doctor Who is not going to have great sword fights. At best we can hope for some fight choreography, but nothing too flashy. And let me tell you, friends, I would take that over still images of a sword fight any day. After what I assume was a gallant battle, Marco disarms Tegana, and he is taken into custody. However, unwilling to be taken alive, Tegana throws himself upon a spear, thus ending his own life. I was actually a bit shocked, in all honesty.

Having gained the favour of the Khan again, we’re left with the knowledge that Marco Polo will once again see his home of Venice. Ping-Cho no longer has to pull an Anna Nicole Smith. Tegana’s plan has been thwarted, and Kublai Khan is prepared for whatever forces Noghai has planned for him. But what about the TARDIS? Feeling benevolent, Kublai Khan simply gives the TARDIS back to the Doctor. Or maybe it had something to do with an unfinished game of backgammon that was tipping in the Doctor’s favour. Susan and Ping-Cho say goodbye to one another, and like in "The Witchfinders," a great ruler and his subjects watch as the TARDIS disappears into thin air. Marco ponders whether the Doctor and his companions are now in the past or the future.

Final Thoughts: Hoo boy. Let me tell you. I am really glad I don’t have to watch another reconstruction for a while. As reconstructions go, this is one of the worst. Literally, every episode is missing in this seven-part serial. Not even a snippet of footage exists. But none of this is really the fault of the story. I will say, however, that large swaths of the storyline were very tedious and repetitive. It was basically a constant trade-off between kidnappings. If it wasn’t Barbara, it was Ping-Cho, or Susan, or the whole team. You could have devoted two episodes to the travelling, and two episodes to the stuff in Peking and the pacing wouldn’t have killed you.

On the plus side, I was happy to see the Doctor in China. As series 11 has proven, it’s nice to see the Doctor visit other parts of the world than the U.K.  There are parts when the music and atmosphere come together to make some truly creepy stuff. The singing sands were pure Radiophonic bliss (see: a bunch of noise). The costumes and sets were brilliant. This also marks the first time in Doctor Who when actual animals were used on set with the horses. So that’s kinda cool. It all lent a lot of credence to the setting, though I can’t speak to any level of historical accuracy. However, a lot of the realism and setting is thrown under the bus with the constant and all-pervasive yellowface happening onscreen. 

Carole Ann Ford once said this was her favourite episode to shoot. Perhaps it was the fun costumes and sets, or maybe she formed a bond with Zienia Merton, the girl who plays Ping-Cho. For me, I don’t really see it. There’s not a lot of plot, for starters. As I said earlier, it could have been edited down considerably, and nothing would have suffered for it. I do appreciate the sheer spectacle of it. On a level of classic Doctor Who, it’s a feat of design. I’m also really glad to have watched it a second time because I didn’t pay much attention the first time around. I wasn’t looking forward to a seven-part slideshow, so my investment level was pretty low. Even still, I’ve not got a lot to say about it. Basically, unless they find the episodes intact, I don’t plan to watch it again.

[matthewhorton]

Pet Shop Boys, Introspective: An introduction

It took some time for house music to get to the UK, let alone make it up the A41 from the London clubs to the suburbs. I grew up in Berkhamsted, tucked into the Chiltern hills between Hemel Hempstead and Aylesbury, out on the north-west limb of Hertfordshire that poked (and still does, in fact) into Buckinghamshire. It wasn't a hotbed of musical endeavour and couldn't have dreamed of being at the vanguard of dance music even if it knew what it was. But, you know, some commuter-belt teenagers were switched on enough to realise things were changing, and once we knew something thrilling was afoot, we wanted to share it with our friends. The tentative proddings of hip-hop had made a difference to us and when Run-D.M.C. made a fantastic mess of Aerosmith or Melle Mel sexed up Chaka Khan we had something fresh to cling onto. But house only started to make its presence felt when the mainstream succumbed too and plonked Steve 'Silk' Hurley's Jack Your Body right on top of the UK singles chart at the start of 1987. This was alien stuff, sparse, hypnotic and like nothing we'd heard before – it took electro, something we were vaguely aware of, and drained it of melody, hope and street-swagger, replacing it with harder beats and blank-eyed repetition. If nothing else, this was dead cool. And it was Number One! Well, the floodgates were open now. The higher reaches of the singles chart soon fell to M/A/R/R/S's Pump Up The Volume, Bomb The Bass's Beat Dis and S'Express's Theme From S'Express as sampling rapidly became the lingua franca of cutting-edge dance and scratchier, less refined house music found an audience of some power. Mind you, these were the poppiest extremes. In the hands of a canny producer, sampling could sound cartoon-like and you have to wonder how many of the hordes of buyers were picking up these records because they amused them rather than moved their purist feet. House, techno, whichever Chicago, Detroit or New York enclave floated your boat – these movements had spread their commercial wings with alarming speed. Of course, we didn't really know the difference at the beginning, but all that changed in the summer of 1988 – the Second Summer of Love, to adopt the nickname thrown at a loose scene by the music and style bibles. It was an extraordinary experience, even without the drugs or the sweaty London basements or even the right clothes. The backdrop to a day of realisation was almost unbearably prosaic. In fact, it was the day of our GCSE results, our passports to a professional life or a couple more years of school beyond the age of 16. Some brave soul was throwing a party a few miles outside Berkhamsted and, although our own little crowd didn't know her, we had enough mutual friends to be able to stride in, no questions asked. It was an enormous house with huge gardens but – on a close, sticky August evening – everything was happening in the garage. This was almost too good. Weren't all the best New York parties garage parties? We're not sure they were thinking about a space big enough to fit a Ford Escort, a gardening implement or two and some empty cans of paint, but what the hell? This garage would do, and it was pumping out sounds deep enough to rival any Manhattan warehouse. These sounds were almost too deep though. If Steve 'Silk' Hurley had sounded stark and austere, this was barely even music. It was an unassuming little cassette squirting out loops and bleeps, and in the middle of the garage one of the hipper lads in our year was giving an accidental dancing lesson to a crowd of amused acolytes. He'd grown his hair since term finished a month or two earlier, pushed out a pair of massive sideburns and discovered a new fondness for washed-out denim and vast badges with smiley faces on them. His name was Tom and he had a copy of Acid Tracks. Phuture's acid masterpiece has its firm place in history now, but out in the Home Counties in August 1988 it was a bewildering curio, potent and divisive. The boys and girls who laughed or scoffed that night probably carried on laughing and scoffing throughout the nineties and continue to now – if they ever give dance music a second thought. The more welcoming remainder felt their doors of perception opening, and they were high on little more than cheap cider and even cheaper cigarettes. Naturally, I can't speak for everyone else, but I never looked back after that night. My GCSE results were underwhelming – the inevitable result of boundless arrogance and minimal revision – but they were good enough to send me back to school for another couple of years; two years that were followed by another four years of lazy and undeserved achievement at university, and a career that gradually slipped into focus. Whatever, I'd fallen hard for the dance music bug and every week in sixth form was a drawn-out drag of a warm-up for another weekend party I could light up with my amazing mixtapes. No one else had been bitten quite so deep so there was no competition for the stereo – whatever the quality of my compilations, I was the only one who was going to get the dancefloor (usually the kitchen floor, let's face it) jumping. The collection I built up and the knowledge I amassed gave me the keys to the university decks too, launching a semi-professional (or, more accurately, quarter-professional) career as a DJ with no actual technical skills. Good God, what about the Pet Shop Boys? Well, they took dance music to the masses in 1988 too. They'd been heading this way, of course. From the early electro burblings of their nascent career in the first half of the eighties, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe had been fashioning a curiously English take on the dance music coming out of the United States. More strictly, they had been taken with Hi-NRG, where disco met euphoric electronic climaxes on the gay scene, and particularly New York's Hi-NRG producer-supreme Bobby 'O' (Bobby Orlando to his mum). Tennant and Lowe had already written many of the songs that would become polite pop classics later in the decade, but they didn't lay down serious recordings until they found an audience with Orlando. With their main man in the chair, they made an early, disco-orientated version of their breakthrough hit West End Girls in 1984. It created waves in the right circles but failed to hit commercial paydirt, not even managing a full UK release. No matter – pop triumph could wait; the first fumblings were all about implanting pure dance chops in their DNA. The route to the UK charts and ensuing international fame took hard-nosed ambition and a small dose of compromise. The producer Stephen Hague had tasted some success with the poppier ends of electro personified by The Rocksteady Crew and Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark's less challenging synthpop, and his safe hands repurposed West End Girls for the late 1985 Number One slot that made the Pet Shop Boys' name.  Sharp lyrics and a craftsman's way with a pop tune saw Tennant and Lowe build on that quick winner to consistently race to the top of the singles chart over the next couple of years and achieve similar results with their first two albums, 1986's Please and 1987's Actually. The dry titles suited their sardonic manner and unshowy presentation, but there was real heart to the Pet Shop Boys' music too. No genuine cold fish could come up with the delicate Love Comes Quickly, the at once pointed and ambiguous Rent or the breathtakingly poignant What Have I Done To Deserve This?, also a remarkable revamp of the career of sixties blue-eyed soul legend Dusty Springfield.  But underneath this golden age of British pop that the 'Boys were almost singlehandedly ushering in (no exaggeration), there was a bubbling subculture that could not be ignored – and Tennant and Lowe had no intention of ignoring it. Rare were the bands who curated alternative versions of their own music, but the Pet Shop Boys threw themselves right in, second-guessing fans who might attempt to convince naysayers with the old "Yeah, but you have to hear their remixes" gambit. Wedged between Please and Actually was a companion piece that pointed the way to a parallel universe. Disco, released in autumn 1986, was officially endorsed and presented as beautifully as any 'regular' Pet Shop Boys album. It consisted of remixes of hits like West End Girls, Opportunities (Let's Make Lots Of Money) and Suburbia alongside fan favourite (and Suburbia B-side) Paninaro, the sort of track whispered about by the in-the-know Pet Shop Boys aficionado. They'd blown apart the cachet of rarities like that but at the same time took a hold of their own destiny and shaped a 360-degree market for pop's more canny operators. The next imperial pop star to shove out their own remix album was Madonna, You Can Dance arriving a year after Disco. That second album proper, Actually, came out in September 1987 and threw the Pet Shop Boys' chart dominance into sharp relief. It housed two Number One singles in the obliquely confessional It's A Sin and the more straightforward Heart, and even took the time to stand back in between as non-album single Always On My Mind (a cover of the country standard made glorious by Elvis Presley) took the 1987 UK Christmas top spot. As 1988 dawned, the Pet Shop Boys could do whatever they darn well pleased. That's what they did and that's why we're here. Introspective turned up in October 1988 and turned the entire remix album concept on its head. What if we release the extended versions first and cut the radio edits later? That, near enough, is the off-beam question that struck Tennant and Lowe. They could finally be the dance act that made the odd concession to the pop market, not the other way around. It was a dazzling thought. Introspective's closest antecedent was The League Unlimited Orchestra's Love And Dancing EP in 1982, a collection of Human League remixes handled entirely in-house by their producer Martin Rushent. But that was the accidental result of fulfilling 12" obligations – with Introspective, the Pet Shop Boys wanted to trump that thinking, to make the full-length track the thing, the single mix the obligation, even the afterthought. This new thinking was symphonic, a new way of looking at dance music, or at least a return to Giorgio Moroder's intentions. What could have seemed like an interim album in the vein of Disco became a genuine opus in its own right. All it needed was the public to think beyond its relatively few tracks – six of them, but in their extended form still topping 48 minutes – and accept that it stood alone. Ostensibly the sales bore this out as it ultimately became the Pet Shop Boys' biggest selling album, but appreciation of its artistic status was a tougher challenge. With its bold striped sleeve – human images confined to the inner sleeve or card – Introspective seemed to be reaching out to the anonymous dance spheres, a white label in Technicolor, bright but austere and, yes, inhuman. Inside, however, was a concept album that truly hung together as a piece, disparate parts joining up in an exploration of that most human of conditions: loneliness. Introspective was the sound of the dancefloor in your head.

[originaldetectivesheep]

A Life of Riley Part 3: The Very Last Place On Earth ch 5

Chapter 4

V

If I had been expecting different, I guess that I was tired, or stressed out, or just didn't know my lab mates well enough: they weren't scared or weirded out by the ancient half-bomb-half-reactor inside this rotting metal cavern, and they all seemed ready to get to work.  Maybe they were just glad to get inside for a second, out of the rain; maybe as long as there wasn't the atomic bomb plugged in, they didn't think it was any more dangerous than the stuff like Riley's dislocator that we were up to our elbows in all the time.  Or maybe they were on the same page as Riley: that if we got up this far and actually found the nuclear test thing, it'd be a waste not bringing it down.

Riley was still up in the cockpit or wherever, so I organized the rest of us to start doing the plan: Yuping would find the manual crank for the cargo lift, wherever that was, and Remy would clean the rust off the connections in the lift while Sajitha and Simon went to go get pieces of the wings to put under where the lift would be.  I wasn't super sure how the lift would work as like a pushing foot, but I could easily see that the plane was a big, heavy chunk of metal, and that if it was pushing down on just a loading gate, we'd end up only digging a hole in the soft jungle dirt under the plane rather than lifting it anywhere.  As they got moving, I went forward to go any try and find the hydraulics reservoir for the front ramp; I was a lot less sure than Riley was that this hadn't gotten smashed up when the plane landed, or that it hadn't just ruptured and leaked away after like when they left the plane in a jungle for sixty years, but we had to try.

The ramps were still folded up in the nose, buckled and pressing up at the roof from the hydraulic assembly down in the deck.  I had no idea how Riley thought we were going to be able to take those apart without smashing the nose doors off: it looked like the ends that would have gone on the ground were secured to the roof, the cockpit floor, with something, but even if it was just getting the main run of the ramps out of the way, that was steel that was supposed to be able to support like trucks, and to take them apart, we had six college students with some machetes and a shovel.  I slid in between the two ramps and inched over the end of the deck, feeling around for where the hydraulics assembly had to be.  The metal was bent and buckled, and I went even slower – the last thing I needed was to slash myself open on some rusty edge of something.  I shifted my feet onto the nose doors, and the metal creaked and groaned underneath me; the doors were more damaged by, who knew, flying into a mountain covered with trees than maybe Riley thought they were going to be, and it might get to be a real problem to expect to use them as a sled for the Ceiba.

I squatted down just below the lip of the deck, feeling over the pivoting bars that made the hinge for the ramps, looking for the hydraulic actuators, trying to see if I could find a hose that would lead back to a reservoir.  In the darkness there, the ramps mostly blocking out the light from the holes in the fuselage where we'd climbed in, my eyes adjusted, picking up from the rays of half-light making it through the rain clouds and then through the seam in the nose doors, and I could see it, the main control box for the hydraulics, just under the deck – stained with some uneven, discolored glop that had pushed out along the top seam and then run down over the sides.  The hydraulics were busted and there was nothing usable in the reservoir; what hadn't slopped out into the jungle decades ago would be denatured from the weather and the broken seals.  I shook my head and stood up carefully, climbing back up to the deck to go on back to the tail and give people the bad news.

Remy was standing in front of the Ceiba thing, looking around, confused.  "Yeah, Carolína?" he asked.  "Do you know where Riley got to?  Yuping found the crank for the lift, but there's some kind of retaining pin that's going through the armature for it and I wanna know if I can just take it out with the shovel or if it'll break something.  But Riley's not around, and nobody else knows shit about planes like this from a million years ago."

I stopped in place, thinking.  It wasn't like Riley to just ghost – it especially wasn't like Riley to vanish out of the middle of the jungle when we were supposed to be retrieving something as big and important and technically interesting as a wildcat fusion reactor. "No – no, I didn't hear anything.  I was down under the ramp for a bit – let me go check the cockpit real quick."  I made my way over to the ladder up, Remy following, and I didn't complain when he had to give me a boost to get all the way up where I could really hang onto something.

When I got up to the flight deck, though – nothing.  The glass in all the windows was out – fallen in even where the emergency doors hadn't been kicked away when the crew escaped.  The rain was coming in, and there was moss and dead leaves all over everything, the little tremors of bugs and lizards running away through the muck on the floor and the seats, but no Riley.  It wasn't a big space – I could turn around right from the cockpit and see over to the pressure door to the cargo hold and there was nowhere, no cabinets or side cubbies or nothing, and no Riley anywhere.  I leaned out the biggest door hole, looking around for tracks, and saw nothing, getting pushed back by the pounding rain.  Riley was gone – just plain flat disappeared.

I hung down at the end of the ladder and dropped, trying to flex myself so that it wouldn't hurt when I landed; by now everyone was gathered up inside.  Simon and Sajitha had probably just lugged their latest piece of the wing over, and Remy'd obviously checked with them too – which meant that they hadn't seen Riley either.  Everyone was looking at me, and I shook my head.  "No.  No trace.  The cabin's empty – the whole flight deck is empty."

"Well?" Sajitha asked.  "What?  What now?  What do we do now?"

I shook my head.  "I – I don't know.  Last thing I heard from Riley, we were supposed to move this thing" – I pointed through the crowd at the Ceiba device – "and get it to fall out through the doors.  Now, there's a lot of crap in the way and it's not gonna be easy, not with no grease, but I didn't hear about a change to the plan, and if it was gonna change, I'd think Riley'd tell someone what it was."

"Sure, but what if that's not the deal – what if Riley's in trouble?  I don't wanna waste my time hand-cranking a friggin elevator if one of my friends is like bleeding out somewhere."  Remy was strident, almost hurt.

"In trouble from what?  We've got to be the only people on this mountain – everyone smart is inside somewhere where they're not getting rained on."  I could see his point, but hadn't Riley led us up here?  We'd all trusted Riley coming up into the jungle, and if that was a mistake, then we were all in deep trouble.

"From what – Carolína, we're in the middle of the jungle – Riley's just from like Toledo, right? None of us have ever been somewhere like this before.  I know you're trying to hold it down, trying to keep everyone stable, but what if this is a problem – what if Riley really is hurt out there? What do we do?"  Sajitha had her hand on Remy's arm, supporting him with more than just her words, but this wasn't the time.  She had a point, but I could still trust Riley – I guess we had to.

I sat down, folding up, pulling out my machete to stick down at the deck; the point ground and squeaked against the water-worn aluminum rails.  "All right.  If any of you thinks you know enough about the jungle to go and try and find Riley, you can go on ahead.  For me, I don' think I can.  This is my first time in the jungle too: I don' think that I can find my way back to this place, if I go out and go look for someone.  Anyone who thinks they can, really thinks they can, I'm not gonna stop them."  I looked around, and there were no takers; everyone was thinking back about how hard it had been, going across without a trail – how Riley directed us through Red Light Green Light, how hopeless they'd felt not knowing what was in front of them, where anyone else was.

"For now, because we'd get lost ourselves and I can't believe that Riley would walk into the jungle without a plan, I say we keep going – keep doing the plan like we got it.  We're not gonna be able to take off the ramps ourselves, just the five of us, today anyway.  But we keep doing it until tonight, sleep in the plane where it don' rain so much, and then tomorrow morning if Riley isn't back, we leave this place and go down and try to get a rescue.  We can go if we don' got to get back: this is a mountain on an island, so any way we can go down, that way is out – and then when we get to the beach, any way we go around, we'll find the town sooner or later.  We can give Riley till tonight to come back, but after that, there isn't enough coconuts around here to stay eating them.  After that, we got to save ourselves."  Everyone was looking at me, and I felt a little embarrassed: like I was the boss, like they thought of me like the boss, like those few words when Riley first pulled me and just me into the plane had passed something on.  Then I realized I was sitting on the floor cross-legged leaning on a machete like I was Genghis Khan or somebody, and that I looked ridiculous – and maybe, hanging out with Riley so long, sober plans out of the most stupid ridiculous poses was what everyone was conditioned to think of as leadership.

I scrabbled up and quickly put my machete back in its sheath; what the hell I had taken that thing out for, I didn't even exactly know myself.  "So, we can have someone stand up in the cockpit and yell," I said, "or set it on fire if it's even gonna catch in this rain so that Riley knows where the plane is.  But yeah, I don' think we're gonna want to go too far from the plane – and if we're gonna stay here, we might as well work on moving the reactor, or we're probably gonna all get our butts kicked when Riley comes back."

"True," Yuping said.  "It doesn't feel right, but it's better trust." "If you say so," Simon seconded, hand on his shoulder. Remy nodded, accepting, and Sajitha squeezed his hand, then nodded as well.

"But –  Carolína, I just want to make sure we're okay.  It's – it's hard for me too, like I said; I mean, I'm just from Hackensack and not like the Ghats.  It – it's hard, and I shouldn't've gone in on you just because I'm stressed."  Sajitha took a deep breath; this was bothering her a lot more than it was bothering me, and I could guess why.

I stepped in and gave her a hug, brushing Remy's arm away and pressing my head against her chest.  At times like this it would really help to be able to put my head on her shoulder without a stepstool, but what are you gonna do?  "It's okay," I said, "it's okay.  We're all cool, and we're all gonna get through this together. All of us – and Riley too."  I squeezed again for a beat, and then pulled back.  "So, you wanna go up and yell first, or do we get back to work?  Together."

Sajitha raised an eyebrow and looked over at Remy.  "I don't trust that ladder – Remy can go and yell or light the cockpit on fire or whatever.  I'm cool down here."  She smiled as Remy shook his head – and then started for the ladder anyway.

Remy got bored and stir-crazy and thirsty pretty quick, though, and changed with Simon so that he could go help Sajitha drag in more wing pieces while Yuping worked on the crank.  And then Simon changed with Yuping because he didn't see the point, and Sajitha worked on fixing the crank because, you know, we'd been all of us together for so long that she still needed space even with how it was with them, and Yuping started some kind of electrical fire in the cockpit, I don't even know how, and moved back by the ladder to watch it and make sure there wasn't weird alloys in the frame that would set the whole plane on fire.  And through all this, I was working on taking the ramp apart: I got the main run pieces disconnected off the feet that were clipped to the ceiling, but we'd need like a sledgehammer to knock out the connecting bars and really get free – there was no room to like pound with the handle of the shovel – and then there was the frigging ramp bars underneath them that I still hadn't disconnected from the hydraulic extender assemblies.  The day was moving on despite us, and I was getting tired and hungry – and if I was feeling worn out, everyone else who'd been dragging slabs of aluminum through the jungle while I was turning screws had to be dead beat.

I was climbing down one of the ramps to get to work on the bottom connections – might as well – when a pounding, thudding noise knocked through the fuselage.  I looked up at it – everybody else looked up from where they were taking turns futilely turning the crank to extend the cargo elevator by hand.  It was Riley leaning in through the hole over the wing – Riley and what had to be the sounds of like a rescue expedition or a work detail out of the village close behind.

"Hey, yo; holding up?" Riley asked, as if this was the most natural thing in the world.  "Sorry for ghosting, and yeah, Carolína, I really shoulda planned better about those damn ramps.  But I've picked up a couple dudes who are gonna help us as long as they can salvage everything else – they didn't think there was much left of the plane way back when it crashed – and I brought lunch.  Soup's on, pitch in."  Riley climbed through the hole and took off a metal backpack, setting it on the cargo deck with a clunk.  As soon as the latches popped, the heady smells of sticky-boiled rice, crisp fried pork, and warm wet banana leaves swelled out through the jungle stink that was all through the fuselage, and if I didn't get to it first out of the rest of us five ganging the canister, it wasn't by much.

"Eat up," Riley said, staying clear as we dove in, tossing the banana-wrapped packets hand to hand to keep from getting scalded as we opened them up and tore into the spam musubi like we'd never seen food before; "You've got to be hungry, and the guys are fresh. Pick up when you're done; we'll try and get those ramps taken down while you eat, then maybe put a couple tubes of bearing grease under the Ceiba if we can get shit cleared out to the doors."

Maybe, when you got a choice, or you're just seeing it in the store, you turn up your nose at spam, or you mock how islanders make it into sushi.  But after most of a day working hard in a soaking-wet jungle, you need calories and salt and protein, and Riley couldn't've done better for morale if that bucket had back-home fast food takeout and bottled rum and cokes in it.  The food vanished too fast for us to even argue about who got more than their share; we sat around dazed for a couple minutes, digesting, and then back we went, shoulders to the wheel.  Remy and Simon cranked on the elevator; Sajitha and Yuping worked out the grease applications under the Ceiba where it was needed and where it wasn't while people were still working on getting the ramps out of the way; and I got myself up on the nose doors, helping Riley take apart the hinges.

"So, if you don't mind," I asked at last, "what was the deal? Why run out?"  I pried my machete under a hinge and twisted, splitting and splintering the plate away from the fuselage.

Riley shrugged, spinning a screwdriver to disconnect one on the other door. "Things.  Up in the cockpit, when I was thinking, I could see out under the storm and guess from how the light was running that if we tried to do this solo we'd be at it all day.  I forgot how the ramps were stowed in these bastards.  So I had to go get help, and if I knew you guys, you'd work straight through lunch and then just pass out and then we're dying of starvation for nothing.  So I had to get some food too, and I had to go quick if I was gonna do that on island time and get back in time to get the sled moving before dusk." The hinge fell away, and Riley reached out for the next rib, to climb a little higher into the nose to the next connection point.

"I'm surprised," I said, "that you could just bomb off into the jungle like that – this was the first time for us, wasn't it? Weren't you from like Toledo or something, right?"

Riley turned and gave me a look, raising an eyebrow.  "Dayton, actually.  And that was just my last port – don't underestimate service brats.  Sometimes we're pasted to the same six bases in Cali, Texas, and North Carolina, but some of us do get around."  I nodded, and pulled myself on up to the next piece; I hadn't known. But if Riley's parents were in the military, that made a lot of things – like how a physics lab lead could know enough about how old cargo planes went together to "forget" how the ramps folded – make a lot more sense.  Of course, there were a lot of other things that it didn't help with at all, but that was Riley for you.

Eventually, we got all the hinges off that we needed to – Riley's plan was that the Ceiba would slide down and crash into the door, and tear off the couple hinges left on the sides rather than burst the locks through the seam in the middle – and the village guys had dismantled and salvaged out the steel-alloy ramps and dragged them out of the hole over the wing, so that we could even think about shoving the reactor down at the nose.  The plane was getting more stubborn – the old wing panels under the down-cranked elevator were bending up at the ends rather than pressing down any further into the dirt – but you couldn't deny that the cargo bed was tilted more down at the nose now than when we started.  As dumb as this plan was, as hard as all the work that went into it had been, this was going to work.  Or at least, it looked like it was going to work, and hadn't failed yet – but with Riley on the scene, you could take your 'at least' and chuck it off a bridge.

"Ernest, Maynard, you better get clear; get your guys outside to watch for when the doors are gonna pop," Riley was saying, pointing out instructions for the guys from the village.  "I think there are still some dead trees in front of the plane; if not, you guys might wanna drag a trunk or two around.  Just tearing the hinges out of the frame is going to help with moment of inertia, but this Ceiba here is a heavy mother and I don't have a level with me to calculate the exact expected force that we're gonna be putting into the doors.  No – outside, you all can stay outside, it's us who's gonna be shoving the thing, that way we're sure we're not gonna put anything extra into it over overcoming coefficient of friction.  We gotta get this out, but we're not gonna get shit if it rips the doors in half and plops through them into the jungle."  Maybe for the guys, hearing this wasn't so good, but I didn't mind – and really, if you wanted to make sure you didn't put more than the minimum possible force into something, you ought to use the half-dozen college students instead of the ten farmers and fishermen.  I moved back into position at the back end of the Ceiba thing as Yuping and Sajitha doped up the last parts of the deck with the grease and smeared the rest of it under the reactor, ready to shove and get it moving.

At first, it was like leaning into the rock of the mountain itself.  But then, the six of us working together, it nudged – it nudged just a little, and then a little more, and then the grease was spreading itself under the metal block, and every inch was easier than the last.  It still wasn't easy, not next to anything normal, but by the time the giant reactor coffin tipped forward, and fell into the doors, and tore them out of the nose to fall down into them, sledding into the local guys' bulwark of rotten trees with a skgronch and a thumping crunch, it was at least moving of its own accord. It wasn't landsliding – it didn't tear the doors apart – it didn't turn them into a toboggan sled to go crashing off down the mountain and running everybody over – but it did what Riley thought it would do and ripped the front doors out of the plane, turned them into something useful, and sat in them in a way that almost balanced.  We were out – we were free – and now the hard part, to get this down the slope to the beach without losing control or breaking it up, was barely started.

"All right – all right," Riley called out, crab-walking around the side of the improvised accidental sled.  "Everyone, everybody, bring it in here.  We're going to have to take this real careful – everybody put a hand on the metal, we're gonna have to all work this together to get it downhill.  Careful, careful – you don't wanna get run over by this thing, trust me.  It doesn't have to go anywhere; all it has to go is down, as soon as we can get it onto a beach – and it's probably going to be a beach instead of somebody's floodplain from here – we're good and you all can go up here after those ramps and go try and find the superchargers off the engines. Careful – careful – nice and easy."

I brought it in, too, and ended up on one of the door edges next to Ernest; one of our neighbors, the guy we'd borrowed a hatchet from before going up the mountain.  I thanked him for it, and promised to get it back as soon as we could – and then, because Riley was ahead a little piece, working out just how the sled would have to fall and slide, I asked him the question that had been burning on my mind since last night.  He was like my dad's age, so he would have had to have been around to know.

"So Ernest," I said, "when the government came to find this plane, they ran the bulldozers all over the wrong side of the mountain.  But people were here, and they knew what side the plane was on, even if they thought it was in little pieces they couldn't salvage.  Why didn't they tell them, tell the Department of Energy they were on the wrong side?"

Ernest shrugged.  "If the government wanted to dig up the wrong side of the mountain, then, as long's they're paying people to drive the dozers, who cares?  When they started on the wrong side, we thought they'd keep going; maybe they do the east side next, or maybe they do the north side, and people get paid three times instead of two.  So the people kept shut up, y'know?  And when they packed up, well, then, it was too late; couldn't tell em or they'd get mad we worked em and then we'd get a raw deal off some other end."

I shook my head, and concentrated on keeping my feet under me.  Of course; it had to be something like that.  Little things, the littlest things: and now here was Riley about to take a thermonuclear fusion engine home because we paid attention to those littlest things.

[zwei-the-penguin-with-a-pen]

‘With Ears to See and Eyes to Hear’

The nightmare played in her mind again, the same as it had every night of her life. Her former family being murdered one by one, and Lorelei Sienna herself running for her life. Her subconscious mind would not allow her to forget them.

First, there was the murder of Lance Lapiz, the reptilian leader of their little faction. The Elite Four they had called themselves. Lance had led the four of them in their desertion of the White Fang. None of them agreed with the organization's new leadership, as Sienna Khan's way of doing things was more violent than the diplomatic way of Ghira Belladonna.

Lapiz had always looked up to the panther, but this tigress was too much for him to take. Lapiz had seen a crew of grunts set fire to a shop because they refused to sell coffee to a passing Faunus. It didn't matter to them that the man couldn't pay for the coffee, that he was a troublemaker in the first place. They just lit the place ablaze.

That entire shop had been destroyed, and the cashier had been injured in the struggle. And for what, because some straggler Faunus had given him trouble? Lance couldn't believe what was happening, and he could not bring himself to take part in anything of that sort. He got a small crew of like-minded Faunus together and made a break for it.

Lance witnessed a White Fang raid on a Dust shop that the Schnee Dust Company supplied, and had jumped to the defense of a worker that some grunts were attacking. One of the grunts recognized him and taken him out almost instantly.

Bruno Bones was the next to fall. The bull Faunus had been distraught at losing Lance and went around punching holes into trees. A White Fang faction descended upon him while he was alone, and his life was over. Lorelei hadn't seen either of these as they'd happened, but they haunted her nightmares all the same.

Those two men were part of the only family she'd ever known, as her parents had been killed in a bandit raid when she was young.

The loss of Lance and Bruno had left Lorelei with only Agatha Ecru, the feline Faunus that had always watched over her. The two had become even closer since leaving the White Fang, sharing everything: their food, their secrets, and on occasion even themselves. Lorelei wasn't sure what love was, as running for her life had always been more important, but she thought it might feel something like what she felt when she was curled up in Agatha's arms.

The feel of her skin against Agatha's was definitely a wondrous feeling Lorelei had never felt before. She knew Lance and Bruno had loved one another that way, so perhaps it was love. Proximity was a more likely explanation, as Lorelei would understand that, but that didn't feel like this.

Agatha was preparing a raid on a nearby White Fang hideout, as she'd heard on the wind that they were keeping Lance and Bruno's weapons as sick trophies. Agatha had told Sienna that she must not follow after she'd left for the night. Sienna might have been younger than the rest of them, but she knew the way things worked.

Nearly every time one of them went off alone they never came back, and Lance and Bruno had not been running right into enemies on purpose. Ecru was basically handing herself over, and Sienna could not let that happen. Once Ecru was out of sight, Lorelei scooped up Koga and followed her.

The dreams had a tendency of fast-forwarding the little chase scene, bringing her to the hideout almost instantly. Ecru had left the door open, as she'd knocked out a grunt and used their handprint to open the automatic door, then destroyed the lock with Kikuko. Classic Agatha, always knowing her exit. Lorelei slipped in and scoured the area.

Almost instantly she was yanked to the side behind a wall.

"Lore, I told you not to follow me! I need to do this myself!" Agatha scolded her. Lorelei was not taking any of that.

"YOU CAME HERE TO DIE!!!" She yelled quietly, choking back tears at the thought. "I couldn't let you get yourself killed! Especially not to collect two weapons that may not even be here!" She hugged Agatha and nuzzled her neck. Agatha squeezed her tiny Sienna tightly.

"I guess I can't stop you. Just know that you can't die at the hands of these garbage grunts. I'll kill you if you do, love." She chortled and kissed Lorelei's forehead. As she pulled away Lorelei pulled her back, kissing her lips this time and holding on for a moment. "Yeah, I love your kisses too, but if we sit here making out we'll be found," Agatha told her. The two of them got to their feet and readied themselves.

"Good eye, sniper!" Lorelei told her.

"I shoot, you run!" Ecru replied, and the two of them were off. Ecru had an idea where the weapons might be, so they headed in that general direction. Their intrusion had not yet been realized, as there were no additional units placed around the base.

Lorelei saw the first guard around a corner, stopping short of rushing him. She pulled on one of her tusks and it pulled right out of her face, a new one replacing it nearly instantly. She thrust the bony spike at the guard, who fell as it shot straight into his heart. The guard's teammate moved to rush them, but another well-launched tusk took her down also.

"I thought I was doing the shooting, love." Agatha nicked from behind her.

"Come on, two kills in a row isn't bad." Lorelei retorted, pleased with herself.

"We should try not to kill anyone, although they won't value our lives as we value theirs," she told Sienna as she peeped around the corner. "This corridor is clear. Let's get it!" The two of them were off again.

This part always went faster in the dreams as well, or so Lorelei thought. She never knew how long they'd actually been in the base, only the awful happenings there.

Ecru put her sword up to a grunt's throat. This one she recognized. "You're actually a bit of a high rank. Kairyu and Dynafist! They are weapons that once belonged to two of my cohorts. Word through the ranks says they're still held by the White Fang, and a little birdy told me they were in this very base. Tell me where they are and I'll let you live."

"At the center of the hideout, in Giovanna's chamber. You'll never make it there, though. I'll have soldiers on you instantly. You can't fight them all yourself." The grunt spat, chortling. Ecru sighed.

"Yeah, I guess you won't be keeping quiet. Sienna, give him a sting or two." The tiny boar Faunus spun Koga around in one hand and stabbed the grunt's leg, her poison seeping out of the blade and into his skin. He let out a scream as it burned him, but Ecru covered his mouth. "It's okay, she poisoned you badly. You'll be out of your misery soon."

They left him lying there, but Ecru put a bullet in his chest for good measure.

The two warriors tore through the base. Giovanna Scarlet would not be at the base at this hour, so this should be quick and easy. They found the chamber in question, though it was sealed with a voice code. "Criminy, these are vernacularly fastened doors! Damn Scarlet for being endlessly extra!" Agatha cursed.

"The password is 'Hcez Nyrra," Lorelei spoke. "That's her lover's name. It probably has to be spoken in her voice, though." Lorelei puzzled for a moment before remembering something. "She's a parrot Faunus. She has that squawk in her voice!" She cried, reciting the password in her best parrot voice. The lock flashed different colors, and the door opened. "See? You would never have made it without me!"

"Oh, hush, love. Now, let's get those weapons." Ecru replied. The two of them scoured the room, quickly collecting the bo-staff and gauntlet they'd come looking for and stuffing them into Ecru's backpack. Their mission complete, they made a break for it.

They tore down soldier after soldier in their exit trek. They slashed their way through until they were nearly at the exit. Lorelei could hardly believe they'd succeeded.

Agatha stopped short, about twenty feet from the door. Lorelei stopped dead in her tracks as she saw what had happened. A grunt with a spear had jabbed it into Ecru's chest. Lorelei's heart stopped for a split second, the color leaving her orange eyes. The grunt had given a cheer about taking out the deserter and getting a promotion, but he would get no such thing.

Lorelei stabbed Kikuko into the grunt's throat, thrusting it ever deeper until it stuck through him like a roasting spit. The damage was already done, however. Ecru lay on the floor of the base, the last of the life seeping out of her. Lorelei held her for a moment, taking one last kiss from the one she loved.

The nightmare jumped around after that, a miserable highlight reel in her subconscious mind. The fire Lorelei had set in their temporary dwelling to burn Ecru's body. The reforging of her own katana, Koga, using parts from the weapons her friends had wielded. The initiation at Haven Academy and the meeting of her team.

Finally, a montage of events that had not happened, leading up to her death at the hands of the White Fang. Just before she would have 'died' she awoke with a start, lying in her bed breathing heavily. She heard a noise in the dorm's kitchen area. Indigo appeared with two mugs of hot tea.

"I heard you sleep talking and realized you were having the dream again, so I made you some chamomile tea." He passed her the mug, frowning after she took it. "I'm terribly sorry for freaking out about your lyric book. Zwei slapped me around and brought me to my senses."

"It's okay, dear. I'm just glad you're here with me. Also, I'm glad I didn't wake Zwei or Katrina."

"Tree sleeps like a stone, and I don't think Zwei sleeps at all some nights, anyway." The boy with the wispy purple hair told her. She hugged him tightly between sips of her tea. He hugged back, her warmth engulfing him. She was careful not to jab him with her tusks. They exchanged good-night words and Lore fell back into her bed.

\/\/\/\/\/

\/\/\/\/\/

\/\/\/\/\/

Day 21: Faunus Character

I’m always down to write about my OCs. Lorelei Sienna is a boar Faunus with tusks jutting out of her face. She is able to yank these tusks off and throw them like knives, and new ones grow back in their place. She figures this may have been a blood trait, but she hardly knew her blood family.

She and her former cohorts are named for Kanto’s Elite Four. And all their weapons but Bruno’s are named accordingly. Sienna eventually goes to Haven Academy and becoming a member of Team MZKL (Musical) along with Zwei Silverstein, Indigo Monotya and Katrina Windstorm.

She alludes to Cynder the Dragon, as her Semblance is Poison, though she also touches on Koga and Lorelei from Pokemon as well as Spike from X-Men.

Giovanna Scarlet is an OC I made on the fly, but she alludes to Giovanni, the boss of Team Rocket... just in case that wasn’t obvious. Giovanni was always my favorite crime boss. Also, Hcez Nyrra should be self explanatory. If not, I’ll say this: I get a lot of mileage out of spelling names backwards.

[totesmccoats]

9/20/17

Batman: the Red Death The first of the Dark Knights rises! In Earth -52, Batman hunts the Flash for his speed force. With the Bat-Family dead, Bruce wants to steal Barry’s powers so that he can protect the entire world, much less Gotham. After a long and, for Barry, torturous chase, Bruce succeeds in merging himself with the Speed Force, becoming Batman the Red Death. Shortly thereafter, he is approached by the Batman Who Laughs, who tells him that his world is destined to die, but he knows of one destined to live – they just have to take it.

Metal continues to be, well, metal as hell. Let’s start with the Red Death’s awesome name and better costume. He looks insane! And instead of lightning, he leaves a trail of bats as he runs like some kind of super-fast Dracula! Dude! This is extremely my shit! The first half of the issue is the stronger one, really setting up how scary the Dark Knights are even before their new powers. Earth -52 Batman is just as intelligent and prepared, but completely ruthless. The second half is weaker because, one: it feels like a retread of the first, and two: the Red Death railroads the Flash. No build-up, no tension, just a straight curb-stomping. At least it looks dope as hell.

Batman #31 KITE. MAN. HELL. YEAH. Kite Man gives Batman and the Riddler the location of Joker’s final remaining safehouse, but it’s on top of a tower filled with traps. Only way in is through the windows, and only way to get Riddler’s army through 73rd floor windows is with…kites. That’s it. That’s the issue. Kite Man’s coup de grace. Riddler also manages to give an actually rattled Joker a beat-down, but Kite Man finally gets his win. And in the next issue, Batman does the unspeakable.

Superman #31 Another Lois issue! On assignment by the Daily Planet to interview a cartel boss, Lois goes to Bolivia only to find that Deathstroke had gotten to him and his crew first. Inspired, Lois decides to instead track down and interview the most dangerous killer in the world, and, being Lois Lane, succeeds, but also attracts the attention of another group of killers. Give. Lois. Lane. Her. Own. Book! Seriously. These issues where we follow Lois on her investigations are some of the best in the series, and offer a perspective that no other superhero book really does. If this were just a Superman story, it would involve Clark flying around the world to stop Deathstroke from killing people; but Lois goes to watch him, to interview him, even. Almost every other protagonist in a superhero book does things to change the world in some way – usually by saving it; but Lois’ actions are motivated by observation, not participation. She usually does end up being a part of every story she covers, but her goal is always to let things play out around her rather than intervene herself. And while I think James Bonny understands and nails this perspective, if Lois should get her own series, I wish it would be written by someone with a journalism background whom could also capture journalistic language as opposed to the novelistic style writers usually make Lois write in.

Green Arrow #31 With Hal unconscious and floating in space, it’s up to Green Arrow alone to take down the Ninth Circle’s satellite and also the goon in the mech-suit protecting it. Not the easiest task when you also consider Ollie can’t breathe in space. Luckily, he’s recently made some friends who might be able to help. Like last issue, the finale drops the political overtones from earlier in the arc for pure explosive action, but is still satisfying as a conclusion to Ollie’s personal arc of rebuilding bridges with DC’s other heroes. Ollie still has to take down the satellite on his own, but at least now he has friends to help clean up the mess he makes in doing so. And this change really does show an evolution from the fallout of the last arc with the destruction of Seattle, where it all fell on top of Ollie and his small team, with no-one coming in to help. Meanwhile, Black Canary also completes her arc, taking out the underground men with a triumphant catharsis over her own abusive upbringing, helping others so they don’t suffer as she had. All and all, and ending that reestablishes hope for Green Arrow’s corner of the universe, even as he heads straight into Metal and it’s dark universe.

The Wild Storm #7 We’ve got an info-dump! IO’s Jacklyn King, their chief of analysis checks in at work and assigns her team to look into the Angela situation before Skywatch finds out about the stolen technology and sparks a war between the two most powerful agencies on and off Earth. Meanwhile, John Colt needs a quick rescue from an IO blacksite he broke into before he gets found out and killed, which would prevent him from giving the HALO team the aforementioned info-dump about what IO knows about Jacob Marlowe and machine telepathy. As Cole says in the issue, it’s a lot to take in. Thankfully, Ellis still writes some of the most electric dialogue in comics, and still manages to squeeze in a propulsive fight scene right before the info-dump to give us something to wind-down from. But even then, it’s one of those “here’s what we know they know we know they know” info-dumps – one of the worst kinds – and after reading it three times I’m still not sure if I’ve taken away everything I was supposed to from it.

Wonder Woman/Conan #1 As a child accompanying his father to council, Conan was awe-struck by a black-haired girl named Yanna. Years later, after becoming the Barbarian, Conan happens upon a gladiator match between three men and one black-haired woman who manages to beat them. She demands her freedom, but cannot overpower all of her slaver’s warriors and is taken back in chains. Conan, once again awe struck, goes to rescue her. So far, this is unfolding as a Conan story with Wonder Woman in it. While Conan is full Conan here, WW is amnesiac, forgetting everything including her name, remembering only that she has powers, and once had a golden lasso. And, for some reason, she also fashions a passable enough facsimile of her costume out of rags and mud. We get plenty of Conan being Conan in this issue, fighting bandits, looking for gold and wenches, and sneaking into places; I just wish we got more Wonder Woman. Hopefully next issue.

Generations: The Marvels Under (pre-Secret Empire #10) mysterious circumstances, Kamala Khan is sent back in time to when her hero, Carol Danvers, was still Ms. Marvel; and working on a failing women’s magazine spun out of the Daily Bugle. Kamala accidentally becomes an intern at the paper, and has to help Carol save the magazine, and the world, from an alien invasion. As she’s tended to do with crossover stories, Wilson seamlessly blends what could’ve been an interruption into a natural extension of her main Ms. Marvel story, turning this one shot into another part of Kamala’s growth from being Carol’s acolyte to a Ms. Marvel entirely her own. Working closer with Carol than she really has before allows Kamala to really nail what their differences in personality and heroic philosophy are, and how she can be true to who she is while still being the Ms. Marvel the world needs her to be. And Wilson also makes this arc into Kamala’s strategy for saving the magazine, by having her explain to Carol the sort of balance between fun and function that modern women want from their reading material. Villanelli and Herring’s art is a perfect match for the alternate history setting of this story too. My impression was that the issue looks almost like a 70’s manga, with Villanelli’s manga-inspired character designs and style and Herring’s coloring giving the book an aged patina. The whole aesthetic really gives the impression of something foreign but familiar that I really enjoyed, and also fit Kamala’s experience in the issue.

Spider-Men II #3 The origins of Miles Morales 616. Miles had taken a fall for the Rigoletto crime family, finding himself in Rikers; and Wilson Fisk gets himself thrown in to tell him he’ll be out sooner than expected. Morales helps defend Fisk while their both in their, starting a friendship that takes them to the top of the family. Honestly, not a great origin? Having our earliest introduction to this new minority character finding him already arrested for gang activity is pretty problematic, even considering he’s supposed to be a bad guy. But even besides that, it’s just an origin that we’ve seen before way too many times. And like in most things, Wilson Fisk completely steals the spotlight. And while there are are definite similarities in flirting style during a scene where Miles meets his future wife, this issue doesn’t do much to make the two Miles’ feel like doppelgangers, which was kind of supposed to be the conceit of the story. Really, more than anything, after reading this I want more young-Kingpin, and could care less about Miles-in-name-only.

Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man #4 Spidey, Teresa, and Torch manage to survive the Tinkerer’s assault in Kingpin’s penthouse, but find out they’ve been fighting a decoy the entire time. And they come home to more bad news: that JJJ is running with the Spider-Man aiding a traitor to SHIELD story he was leaked, meaning that Spidey and Teresa are also now on the lam! Luckily, there’s one place Peter can think of that nobody would think to look for them, but asking to crash on someone’s couch is a big ask before even a second date! This is probably the loosest issue of Spectacular so far, having enough slack for Spidey to do a tight-five of stand-up while on the run, but I honestly like it. Compared to where Amazing is right now, I enjoy having a Spider-Man series that is more loose and silly, even a little chill despite itself. Spidey’s stand-up sticks out from the issue like a sore thumb, but it’s fun page; and I really wouldn’t mind if the entire series continues the trend and leaves slack in the story for silly side stuff life it in the future.

Snotgirl #7 Lottie takes Caroline to Haters’ Brunch in an attempt to integrate her new friend with her old ones, but it doesn’t go that well. But later that night, Caroline’s brother Virgil convinces Lottie to invite her to a comic con party with the other girls, take her out of the city for a while on a road trip. Meanwhile, a slightly amnesiac Charlene wakes up from her coma to a waiting Sunny, and, under the advice of a mysterious stranger, begins to retrace her steps from New Years. What makes this such an interesting series is that, for all the exquisite detail the book gives us into each of these character’s inner lives and monologues, they never seem to be the details we need to solve the series’ main mysteries – mostly surrounding Caroline and now her brother. Instead, the issue is more concerned about Lottie’s continued attempts to impress Caroline by hiding how much she enjoys things like waiting in lines to get into fancy restaurants, and comic-con. But of course, it turns out that Caroline actually wants to go to the party after all, despite it being nerdy. Plus, showing us Lottie’s self-conscious side does do a great deal humanize her, keeping us on the love-hate relationship rollercoaster this book’s set up between us and the protagonist. It’s super interesting how the book divides our attention, really – because it wants us to care about Lottie, and gives us so much of her that we’re kind of forced to despite how terrible of a person she may be, but never lets us forget about this big mystery that Lottie barely even knows is something to be solved. It’s a really fun push-and-pull to play with/against, especially as you never know what the stakes of any given issue is gonna be.

Bitch Planet: Triple Feature #4 Another successful book of short stories from the Bitch Planet universe. Deschamps, Lee, and Olea’s “Life of a Sportsman” shows us a corner of the world we haven’t gotten to before, revealing the hyper toxic-masculinity of sports in this world, following the career of a megaton player who gets off better than OJ and Brock Turner combined. Sara Woolley’s “Bodymod” shows us the extremes that plastic surgery went to in Bitch Planet, making women into literal angels and mermaids who live in constant pain for their beauty. And Ayala and Gifford’s “To Be Free…” is a heist, where a ballerina is recruited to steal something of incredible value from a history museum in order to help the resistance. Unlike last issue, none of these stories feel like they’re repeating themselves or stepping on each-other’s toes. This issue also has some of the most distinctive art of these collections yet, further expanding the universe.

—

9/27/17

Marvel Legacy #1 One million years ago, Odin and Agimotto joined ancient versions of the Pheonix, Starbrand, Iron Fist, Ghost Rider, and Black Panther to lock a Celestial deep under the Earth. Today’s versions of those heroes begin having dreams of those events, not understanding what they mean in the context of a world removed from its status quo. Welcome to Marvel Rebirth, essentially. Secret Empire really messed things up for the Marvel Universe, and it’ll take another universe threatening cataclysm to shake things back into shape. Not gonna lie, the Avengers One Million BCE is badass, if archeologically bonkers, and I’m excited to see more of them. And I’m also all about the return of Marvel’s first family. And also Space Wakanda. But overall, this felt a lot like Rebirth #1 without the soul. Just a bunch of hints to future stories.

Generations: Spider-Man Bendis does what he does best and writes an issue where two people just sit and talk to each-other. Miles Morales wakes up in the past, at Empire College, where he runs into a young Peter Parker, who is about to have one of the worst nights of his life. But instead of seeing that story (again), we see what happens when Miles talking to an exhausted Peter after the action, and learn what it means to live as Spider-Man, and the person under the mask. When forced to tell a story in one issue, Bendis really can do wonders, even in his normally dialogue heavy style. At its core, this issue is one Spider-Man revealing to another that being Spider-Man is never easy, it’s always sacrifice, and it’s always personal. And that’s exactly the sort of thing the first needs to talk about to learn when he’s won, and the second needs to hear to learn that he’s doing a good job.

Black Panther #18 The Midnight Angels go on a mission to retrieve Asira as T’Challa and Shuri investigate a village whose people were stripped completely to the bone. Shuri recognizes this from a Wakandan legend involving the Originators, but further investigation points towards a different origin. A lighter issue than most of Black Panther, consisting almost entirely of two action scenes with a last act reveal. Really not much to review in this one; it’s mainly a set-up for a big Legacy rematch.

Wonder Woman #31 Well, it’s not a great sign when the first issue of your Wonder Woman run barely has Wonder Woman in it. Instead, most of this issue concerns a fight between Hercules and Darkseid’s daughter, Grail. Wonder Woman’s only job in the issue is to find out who won. Like, the set-up is interesting enough, but I pick up this series to read about Wonder Woman, not Young Darkseid.

The Flash #31 Flash tries to evacuate the city before Bloodwork can hurt anyone, but with his powers still causing destruction everywhere he goes, realizes he has to stop this problem at the source. But hearing Bloodwork’s motivation helps Barry realize that his negative powers may be feeding on the same impulses, and realizing that can help the hero and villain alike. The end of this arc masterfully threads the needle from moody black-suit hero to reformed opportunistic hero, without letting Barry off the hook for being a jerk to his friends and family. Barry understands why his negativity has been ruling him, and promises to take steps to fix that, the first one being accepting responsibility for his actions. This ain’t a clean-slate for better-Barry. It’s self improvement, and it’s work. And its great that Williamson isn’t ending this arc with everything hunky-dory. It ends with Barry on the first step to healing, himself and those he’s hurt.

Batgirl #15 Dick and Barbara try to get some info on the Red Queen out of Mad Hatter, but he’s not talking much while in critical condition, and the hospital might not be the safest place for them at the moment, anyway. And in the past, Robin and Batgirl go undercover at a high school party to investigate where the drugs are coming from, but only find a strange song. And Barbara begins work on Ainsley’s project, which involves nano-bots with an intriguing glitch. I’m still charmed by this book strictly on the basis of DickBabs. It’s like, the one ship in fiction I’m actually invested in, and this story is handling it so well! Honestly, all I’m asking for are more Robin and Batgirl adventures, cute awkward flirting and all!

Nightwing: The New Order #2 Finally, a superhero about fascism I can get behind! Ok, “finally” is a bit much considering that this is basically an X-Men mutant registration story with DC characters; but what makes it work, unlike, say, Secret Empire, is that it addresses fascism’s marriage with bigotry. This issue flat-out says that this started because people were afraid of their neighbors, of the “others” that creeped in until it seemed like they suddenly overwhelmed the “normals.” And it shows that Nightwing, in a state of panic, gave into the fear and slippery-sloped the world into fascism. The details are unrealistic, of course, but the broad strokes ring true. The story does have one of the big issues that most X-Men stories like this also share, which is that unlike skin-color or religion, a superpower could actually pose a bodily threat to other people, and like weapons, should have public oversight…but that’s one of those dissonant you’ve just kinda gotta accept as part of the genre. Also, Bat-MVP Alfred-fucking-Pennyworth, refusing to stand down to fascism, bringing a bat to a gunfight, and showing Dick how it’s done. Next issue hopefully begins the Nightwing apology/ass-kicking tour.

Saga #47 We catch up with The Will, whom has been kidnapped by the vengeful widow of one of the many many many people he’s killed, who is using a magic VCR to playback his memories to find someone close to him that she can kill, and make him watch. Sadly, for both of them really, she’s having more trouble finding someone close to The Will still alive. It has been a minute since Saga featured the universe’s most unfortunate bounty-hunter, but this issue more than makes up for it. Through the magic VCR we witness the childhood incident that turned him into a freelancer, and an early mission with The Stalk, before his kidnapper discovers a memory she can do something with. The developing rapport between the Will and his kidnapper is also golden. She’s trying way too hard to play the supervillain, prancing around and taunting, to break the Will, but he’s already too broken to care, and has nothing left to lose anyway. I really can’t wait to see how she eventually becomes his new sidekick or partner and the sorts of hijinks they’ll get into.

Crosswind #4 After a pleasurable, but confusing, night out with Cason’s fiance, June finally decides to try and call the man whose body she’s inhabiting by calling herself. Fortunately, Cason – in June’s body – picks up, and the two have a conversation about being each-other. And June needs the advice, as Case’s life is about to get very very dangerous. It’s really an accomplishment that this issue can have a body swap conversation – in a silent medium, remember – with characters that are rarely using their own names, and still have it be completely legible. Case and June just have such distinctive “voices” in syntax and diction and style, that they’re clear even coming out of the other’s mouth. Just from a writing perspective, that’s super impressive on Simone’s part. But it’s also the rare body-swap conversation where the characters aren’t complaining to the other about how hard their lives are, the opposite in fact. Each compliments the other for the good in each-other’s lives. Cason compliments June on her son and gentleness, while June tells Case how impressed she is by the respect everyone shows him. But they also tell the other to be careful and not mess their lives up before they can swap back. And the issue rounds off with each actually making steps to work on maintaining the other’s appearances, with June hiring some people to watch her back; while Case goes to a neighbor’s house to find out how to be more ladylike. The conflict in this book isn’t with each-other at all, it’s already present in their own lives, and the other just has to deal with a completely foreign situation. Also, Simone gets in a couple of good boner jokes! Always a plus. Lastly, Staggs is doing so much with these characters’ body language. Posture, reactions, how they hold phones or go to sleep tells us so much about every character completely wordlessly, and in the sort of fine detail that’s not easy to come by in most comics. This is a wonder on every level.

Comic Reviews for 9/20/17 and 9/27/17 9/20/17 Batman: the Red Death The first of the Dark Knights rises! In Earth -52, Batman hunts the Flash for his speed force.