So you want to watch Doctor Who?

So your friends are geeking out about the new season of Doctor Who. They insist that you have to see it but the show looks strange and confusing. On top of that you’re not even sure where to start. That’s where this handy guide comes in.

Before we begin you should know a little about what you’re getting into. Doctor Who started in the sixties as a television series about a time traveling alien who liked to bring human companions along in his spaceship for shenanigans. The alien is called the Doctor, his spaceship is a blue police box called the TARDIS, and his species is time lord.

This is exactly the sort of shenanigan you can expect.

Instead of dying like humans do, time lords regenerate (code for turns into a new actor.) So when people talk about their favorite doctor they’re really talking about their favorite actor. The old Doctor Who that ran from 1963-1989 had eight Doctors. The series rebooted in 2005 and picked up with the Ninth Doctor. (For a list of the series in order visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Doctor_Who_serials)

Since you don’t want to start watching in the middle of a storyline, it’s best to start with a new regeneration. Most storylines wrap up when one actor leaves and a new actor takes his place. Often the human companions stay the same for a season or two to help the audience transition to a new Doctor. Each actor brings different characteristics to the role and the writers frequently change so if you don’t like one Doctor you should still give the next one a try. Despite these changes remember that the Doctor is always the same man.

Option 1: The Ninth Doctor, Season 1 Episode 1 “Rose.”

If you’re patient and you don’t mind cheesiness then start with the 2005 reboot. I didn’t like it at first because...well...it’s strange. Now I love it the way a mother loves an ugly child, but at the time I arched an eyebrow and shook my head while silently mouthing “no.” By the time I made it to the third episode I found myself strangely entranced. It’s a show with plot holes big enough to drive a monster truck through, the CGI is ridiculous, and the bad guys are just robots with toilet plungers for arms. Yet there’s this touching optimism to it. Underlying every episode is the belief that humans are extraordinary, each of us is capable of heroism, and that we are worth fighting for. So give this season a fair chance.

Intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism--that the Ninth Doctor in a nutshell.

Option 2: The Tenth Doctor, Christmas Special “The Christmas Invasion.”

This is my favorite Doctor. He’s simultaneously goofy and dramatic. His seasons are unskippable. If you just can’t make it through the Ninth Doctor then this is a good place to start. It’s less cheesy, and the adventures are just cool, and funny, and sad, and all the emotions at once. If you suspend your disbelief you will go on a journey my friend.

Just roll with it

When I was going through a rough time with some medical issues I rewatched all of the Tenth Doctor’s episodes. I don’t watch a lot of television so it took me months to get through them. It did exactly what you want television to do: distract you for a short time and leave you genuinely happier than you were before. I credit the Tenth Doctor with dispelling much of the gloom that I was carrying around with me then.

Wedding or no wedding we have to save the world!

Option 3: The Eleventh Doctor, Season 5 Episode 1 “The Eleventh Hour.”

The Eleventh doctor is dapper.

Maybe you’re not interested in watching the whole series. Maybe you just want to catch up on the most recent Doctor. That’s fine. As always you can just start with a new doctor, blank slate. It’s a tone shift from the previous seasons since they have a new head writer. The optimism is still there, but there are fewer happy endings. It’s also the least cheesy and the plots are a bit tighter. So even if Nine and Ten weren’t your style you should still give Eleven a shot.

Charming and scary all at once.

Option 4: The First Doctor, Season 1 Episode 1, “An Unearthly Child.”

This one is for crazy completionists. It starts in the 60’s, the show is still in black and white, some of the episodes are lost, and Netflix plays them all out of order. If you absolutely love the show then go ahead and go back to the very beginning of Doctor Who, but I don’t recommend starting here.

Option 5: The Twelfth Doctor, Season 8 Episode 1, “Deep Breath”

This doctor seems a touch darker.

It premiers on August 23rd, 2014. We saw a glimpse of this Doctor during the big fiftieth anniversary episode, but he still remains a mystery. We know that this Doctor is older, less goofy, probably a bit darker. I’m excited to see a new Doctor, but it always takes me a few episodes to accept that this is really him.

This is an excellent place to start, you’ll be current, you can talk about it with your friends, and you can always go back and watch the older series later if you wish.

Whatever you choose, go in with the expectation that it will slowly make you a happier person.

Guardians of the Galaxy

I did it. I actually saw a movie on opening weekend. To celebrate my trendy, cutting-edge pop culture sensibilities I present to you the following movie review. You’re welcome.

It was just fun.  Peter Quill/Star-Lord doesn't carry all the baggage of an A-list superhero so he's free to be goofy, charming, and kind of almost inspirational. Everyone in his team of misfits felt like a real person, including the giant tree and the talking squirrel.

The plot never took itself too seriously and it stayed easy to follow without being simplistic. The soundtrack played a major role in the story and it was perfection. The dialogue was immediately quotable: “Metaphors would go right over his head.” “Nothing goes over my head. My reflexes are too fast.”

Guardians of the Galaxy gave me everything I hoped it would. In the end I didn't even care that characters could survive briefly in space by wearing a special space mask. I didn't care that they gave us one token female with frequent shots of her butt. I didn't care that about the underdeveloped bad guy and his inefficient scheme to destroy a planet. I just enjoyed myself and let Marvel Comics charm me with this clever, goofy, and surprisingly tender action movie.

P.S. I saw the poster for LUCY. The "fact" about humans only using 10% of our brains made me froth at the mouth. OH MY GOODNESS just point to a part of the brain and I will tell you what we're using it for. It's not like 90% of the brain is just sitting there all limp and useless. You know this, and I know this, so why do writers feel like they can base a movie around this myth?

Trampoline Trauma

Once upon a time my parents bought a trampoline. It was a magical fun machine akin to a slip and slide or a zip line. I told the other first graders about it and they were all jealous (except for Amanda who claimed to own a trampoline and a playground and a horse.)

A visual approximation of Amanda's house
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As with all magical fun machines, grown ups felt the need to set down some rules governing its use. No frontflips, no backflips, no shoes, only one person at a time, always use the ladder to exit, and stay inside the circle. The circle was a white line my father spray painted onto the canvas to ensure that his children only jumped within the inner 50% of the trampoline.

When I mention these rules to people they give me quizzical looks. They all had carefree childhood memories of bouncing with friends and getting elbowed in the face by larger relatives. One lady shrugged her shoulders and told me “it’s a good way to lose your baby teeth.” My bubble-wrapped childhood seemed bizarre by comparison.

“Why all the rules?”

Because trampolines are bouncy reapers waiting to claim reckless children. I’m only half joking. Google “trampoline statistics” and you’ll find alarmed parents and pediatricians discussing the tens of thousands of trampoline-related emergency room visits per year.

Yessssss. Send your children to a bouncy death.
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“Did you actually follow these rules?”

My parents fired my favorite babysitter because she let us jump two at a time. I didn’t dare speculate what they’d do to me if they caught me attempting a flip. I didn’t even know how to do a flip. My lack of physical coordination rendered that a moot point.

“Did you even use the trampoline once they’d sucked all the fun out of it?”

Kind of. I’d bounce on it a bit, then I’d get bored and stare up at the sky. Then I’d bounce some more. Then I’d go get a book and read on the trampoline. Since my only option was “jump up and down in a small circle,” I probably spent as much time reading there as I did jumping. Still, the jumping part was fun.

Nets and other trampoline protections weaken the moral fiber of our children
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“Don’t you think your parents were being paranoid?”

Under different circumstances you could call my parents paranoid. But let’s not forget that they’re my parents. Already they’d witnessed me nearly blind myself at a public pool, and then accidentally chop my thumb off (as in no longer attached to my body) at the optometrist’s office. I’ve suffered from self inflicted stab wounds, I once lodged a staple inside my finger, and the less we say about my bike riding instruction the better.  I was the Mozart of unexpected injuries, I was a friggin child prodigy.

But with all these rules, surely I’d be safe from trampoline trauma. Nope. One day I watched my older sister jump off instead of using the ladder to get down, a clear violation of rule number five. I immediately tried it and I landed crooked on my left arm. It hurt, but I expected that. When the pain didn’t wear off I went to bed for a few hours until my Mom noticed that something was wrong and took me to the hospital.

You guessed it. It was my first rule violation and I ended up with a broken arm. So the story has two morals, take your pick.

1. No amount of rules will keep your kids safe so they might as well have fun.

2. There is no such thing as paranoid when you have me for a daughter.

Optimism: we are not going to hell in a hand basket

Technology is ruining our lives. Kids these days and their dang video games. If only life were simpler…

You probably haven’t spoken these exact phrases (because you don’t want to sound like a fretful old hermit knitting sweaters for cats) but odds are that you’ve said something like this. That’s normal, most of us have. Longing for the past is as common as fearing the future.

The sad fact is that the past is a terrible place made slightly less terrible by wealth or status. I don't need to go into the living conditions of the pre-eighteenth century world do I? I'm not just talking about the lack of indoor plumbing. I'm talking about starvation, disease, slavery and all the other normal conditions. Fix that in your mind and jump forward to the much admired 1950's.

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"Those were simpler times." Maybe, but simpler doesn't always mean better. Cancer treatments have certainly increased in their complexity, but I'm not complaining.

"People knew right from wrong back then." No. One generation is not more moral than another. We're the same people put into different situations. Prior generations valued religion, the current generation values equality. Obviously millennials aren't born different or "defective," they just changed with the times the same way baby boomers changed with their times. If a generation of hippies managed to grow up, hold jobs, have children, and live long enough to disapprove of their own children then millenials will doubtless do the same.

Between the lack of modern conveniences, rampant racism, and post-war push to get women out of the workplace and into the kitchen, I'll pass on the 1950's.  They had great diners though, and drive in movies, and some sharp outfits. It wasn't all bad. Very little ever is.

Pessimists out there believe that we're all going to hell in a hand basket and the world is getting gradually worse every year. They believe that the world is more dangerous than ever. Reading The Science of Fear: How the Culture of Fear Manipulates Your Brain cemented an idea that I'd long entertained. It convinced me that everything is actually ok.

Humans have always used the availability heuristic as a tool to determine how dangerous their environment is. If we hear one story about drinking poisoned well water we know that it's not very likely to happen to us. If we heard five stories we think twice before drinking that water. That tool worked well when we got our news through small communities, but now that we can hear thousands of worldwide stories about toxic water we worry. We worry about pesticides in our foods, sexual predators on our playgrounds, and terrorists in our cities.

We worry about our youth and the consequences of technology. We assume that they're more immoral or disrespectful than previous generations. We're afraid that social media will turn them all into illiterate narcissists. We wring our hands and repeat the laments that our ancestors uttered about the Gutenberg press, waltzing, and chess.

We shouldn't. Our world is not only safer than it's ever been, but the "kids these days" are going to be fine.

To illustrate my point I present you with the following links and graphs:

Let's start with all those diseases we don't have to deal with anymore. If you yearn for the good ol’ days you have to take the good with the bad; that includes polio, malaria and all those other illnesses that Americans don’t have to deal with anymore.

Then there's the worldwide decrease in poverty from 43.1%  in 1990 to 20.6% 2010. (There's some debate as to whether the increase is as dramatic as the World Bank claims is it, but nevertheless we have reason to believe that the quality of life is improving.) Many believe that third world countries are a lost cause. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation disagrees. Conditions overall are improving leading to greater worldwide income equality

As for safety concerns, it’s true that violent crime used to be on the rise, but in the past few decades violent crime has gone down, not up.

Speaking of violence, death due to war is way down worldwide.

You are more likely now than ever to die peacefully in your sleep surrounded by your grandchildren or even great grandchildren. If that's not a resounding recommendation of the modern day you can still join the Amish.

As amazing as the present day is, the future promises to be even better.  Look at all the cool stuff that could come our way.

Clean nuclear energy. We already have the technology, all we lack is the widespread implementation.

Lab grown organs, no more waiting on the list of people who need transplants. Also the organs are made from your cells so that your body won't reject it.

Faster than light space travel. I'm not saying that it'll happen soon, I'm just saying that we can't rule it out...it's too amazing to give up on.

Nasa’s imaginative design for a faster than light spaceship

Because we're humans we will misuse this technology and wring our hands and worry about how it's ruining our lives. Then we'll go home, say hello to our family, eat dinner, and go to bed the same way we always have.

Harry Potter Plot Holes: Why We Don't Care

If you’re a Harry Potter fan with an internet connection then the odds are good that you’ve heard of a few plot holes. Some of them are the natural consequence of reading seven books with a broad array of spells, characters, and locations. Some of these problems are a direct result of J.K. Rowling playing fast and loose with the rules. I’ll list a few examples for fun and then I’ll tell you why they don’t matter.

The biggest problems for me  are related to world building. There’s the inconsistency of the magic itself.

“Yet in the Potter books, the costs and limits are too often arbitrary. A patronus charm, for example, is awfully difficult - until Rowling wants a stirring scene in which Harry pulls together an intrepid band of students to Fight the Power, whereupon it becomes simple enough to be taught by an inexperienced fifteen year old.” (McArdle, "Harry Potter: the economics", 2007)

Then there’s the fact that the wizard economy should not work. Magic is pervasive and simple spells can be used for everything. Manual labor is completely unnecessary, the production of goods is limited to a few rare magical items. What do wizards contribute to their tiny economy? Do they really need money?

“The low opportunity cost attached to magic spills over into the thoroughly unbelievable wizard economy. Why are the Weasleys poor? Why would any wizard be? Anything they need, except scarce magical objects, can be obtained by ordering a house elf to do it, or casting a spell, or, in a pinch, making objects like dinner, or a house, assemble themselves. Yet the Weasleys are poor not just by wizard standards, but by ours: they lack things like new clothes and textbooks that should be easily obtainable with a few magic words. Why?” (McArdle, "Harry Potter: the economics", 2007)

With little need for labor, the job options are largely in the service industry or government.

“The private sector is limited to a handful of merchants on Diagon Alley and in Hogsmeade Village, and most of them seem essentially to be government contractors who supply Hogwarts students...Harry himself aspires to become an Auror, a government agent, when he grows up. Do any witches and wizards earn their knuts, sickles and galleons by providing goods or services that add value?” (Cullen,  Harry Potter and the realm of big government, 2005)

For many people these big-picture problems don’t matter because they don’t directly influence the plot. Ok, instead let’s address how we have a “team sport” that is really just about two seekers each trying to catch a ball that’s worth 150 points while the rest of the team works their butts off for every 10 points.  The rule is so awful that the International Quidditch Association changed it so that catching the snitch wins only 30 points.

These guys have the right idea.

Or consider the plot hole that is the Marauder’s Map. It lets you see everyone in the whole school. It’s a plot hole that could’ve solved the mystery of “who’s attacking the school?” in book three.

Or we can discuss the bizarre education system.

“As an independent school, it does not have to follow the National Curriculum closely; however, it is disappointing to note that basic requirements such as English, Mathematics, and Religious Education are all lacking or entirely missing from the school's syllabus. This has had adverse effects on all students, many of whom have never even been taught basic KS1 or 2 literacy.” (Wharmby, "The Board of Education Finally Inspects Hogwarts", 2013)

Even stranger than the lack of reading, writing, and arithmetic is the disconnect from the muggle world. Wizards make up a minuscule percentage of Britain’s population (J.K. Rowling says 3,000 people, some fans insist that you’d need at least 15,000 to support all the details of the story.) So even if all 15,000 wizards lived together in a gated community they’d still be too small to justify their naivety about the outside world. They don’t know muggle history, they never reference muggle pop culture, they live in the UK and they don’t understand soccer. The amish are more connected that wizards are.

Alright, this is the last plot hole I’m going to bring up, but it’s one that could’ve solved everything: the Time-Turner.

How Harry Potter Should Have Ended. AKA Just use the time-turner.

Once you introduce time travel all bets are off. You have to constantly explain why you don’t just go back in time and kill the bad guy. You have to set up clear cut rules about when and how time travel works. J.K. Rowling made a smart move by having all the time turners destroyed in later books so that we couldn’t use that device over and over, but their existence presents an easy solution to every problem. “Why don’t we just create another time-turner and…” You get the idea.

The reason that we shouldn’t care about these plot holes is because it doesn’t interfere with reading experience. Most of us only notice these inconsistencies in retrospect. J.K. Rowling gives us small details like the smell of the potions and the grease on Snape’s hair until we can see the whole potions class. Details like that sell the entire story until the things Rowling never explained become far less important than the rich tapestry of detail she weaves for the reader.

If we find a plot hole in Minority Report, or Inception, or The Matrix, we rejoice because they spend a long time working on internal consistency. Finding plot holes in a film like that can actually ruin the whole story. The Harry Potter series doesn’t really try to convince you that there’s a solid economy, instead it dazzles you with the details of Diagon Alley:

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Readers don’t care that the students never learned basic math because we see that they’re doing homework just like us.

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And all of the little “we could’ve ended the series much earlier if Harry had just used X magic instead of doing Y”--that’s irrelevant. Because ultimately this is a story about characters, and those characters are intensely real. They grow over seven years, they make sense, you know them. As Stephen King said “Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity.” You’re different at the end of book seven. You found a character stronger than death. You’ve learned that the world isn’t split into good people and death eaters. You're better able to choose between what is right and what is easy. Thank you J.K. Rowling. It's been magical.

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Children Already Know that Dragons Exist

Remember when you were a kid and an adult would say something like “children are innocent and pure” and you’d think “umm, yeah lady, you just keep thinking that.” Or do you remember when your teacher asked in outrage “Where did you even learn that word?” and you’d think “Gee, I dunno, maybe from every other kid at school.” When you overheard adults talking about violence or tragedy you weren’t shocked because nothing could be worse than the bloody fangs and ripping claws of the creatures in your closet.

Then you grew a little older and real life hard stuff happened all around you. Even if you lived in middle class suburbia you knew about that girl that disappeared from school because of what her weird uncle did to her, or that boy whose dad was shot, or that scrawny kid  with some disease you couldn’t pronounce died. Mostly this happened to strangers, sometimes it happened to friends, sometimes it happened to you.

And you couldn’t tell adults about it. These were the same people who didn’t believe you when you told them about the monsters under the bed. How could you possibly expect them to understand what it means to be wary of the seventh grade?

My point is that children have a secret world and it is easy to forget how scary it is. They’re often jaded about the things that we consider “too adult” for them. Probably because their lives are more adult than they let on.  When kids do bring problems to their parents the reaction is often something like: “Seriously, that kid threatened to push you off the bridge and you didn’t tell someone? What is wrong with you?” Explaining that the other kid was only 50% serious doesn’t really reassure grown ups, either that or they’re too reassured and they decide that you’re just being too sensitive. It’s hard to convey these subtleties to adults, you remember how it was.

When kids can’t go to adults they can always go to stories. Stories don’t judge you, or try to fix you, and the good ones don’t shove a “life lesson” down your throat. They’re simply road maps. Some are realistic maps that tell you that this is what happens when your friend gets pregnant and that is what happens when your mother dies. Other maps are hazier with information about undead horrors and alien invaders--but those maps are arguably even more useful since the conflicts can symbolize whatever you’re going through at the time: your first crush, the pressure to excel, weird stuff your body is doing, or just loneliness.

But sometimes adults want to protect children from stories, precisely because the road maps are too detailed. These adults say “the world is scary enough,” they fret about the nightmares their children will have, the sexual exploration this might inspire, or the violence they might reenact.

They’re not wrong.

If you let your kids read useful books then they’ll have nightmares. They will learn more about their bodies at a younger age than you’d like. They may want to act out the violent things they read. Sometimes the results will be extreme and terrible like in the recent Slender Man Stabbings. It’s much more likely that someone will just get a broken arm or you’ll have to have an uncomfortable conversation about anatomy.

And still I say let them read scary, sexual, sad, violent books. Knowledge is dangerous but the cost of ignorance is higher. Protecting them from difficult stories is like sending them on a road trip through adolescence without a map. Parental guidance, good friends, a moral code--they’re the brakes, the fuel, and the steering wheel, but none of them replace a map.

Obviously we don’t give Steven King novels to third graders but kids are generally good at pacing themselves. I’ve re-read books that I read as a child and thought Wow, how did I miss that bloody dismemberment? I don’t remember that at all. When I was sixteen I picked up a romance novel someone’s mom left in the bathroom. I got two pages in, glanced over the bit about oral sex, and put it down. Kids seek out information that’s relevant to their lives, when something doesn't fit they often just skip it or move on to a new book.

Step in when you have to and tell your kids to wait a few years. That’s good parenting. But please, don’t take the books out of the library. Don’t hide the maps because you don’t like the terrain. Think of everything we'd miss out on.

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”

G.K. Chesterton

Don't Mess With Earl

Locked inside of me is a giant, muscular man named Earl. He wears sunglasses, a leather jacket, and a face tattoo that says “Don’t Mess With Earl.” Earl wants to come out sometimes and punch convex faces into concave holes but I don’t let that happen because I like to pretend that I’m a nice person. Most days he’s quiet and he doesn’t cause any problems, but some days Earl gets angry and I have to remind him that I’m not actually a giant man with thick muscles. I am a pregnant woman with the muscle tone of a comatose kitten. I can’t shouldn’t do the things he wants me to do.

Before I explain about Earl, let me explain something about pregnancy. People like to come up with cutesy terms for pregnancy. Some people find the process just adorable. Preggers, prego, pregalicious etc. My prenatal yoga instructor will not say butt, she consistently tells me to sit on my “bun cakes.” When my doctor told me that I was having a boy she said “there’s the teenie weenie.” My husband had to interpret for me because I hadn’t heard the word “weenie” since middle school.

So when people told me about “pregnancy brain” I didn’t think that it was a real thing. I thought it was just a cutesy way of  saying that I’d be extra tired for nine months. I didn’t expect the following: lack of focus, forgetfulness, getting all teary-eyed at every death in my zombie audiobook, hate-crying on my husband when he wakes me up from a nap...the list goes on and on. But that’s ok because it’s socially acceptable for pregnant women to be sleepy, emotional, and slightly cranky. You can still play that off as adorable.

Earl isn’t adorable. He doesn’t do cutesy. And he really wants a nap.

When I’m tired or dealing with “pregnancy brain” or whatever this is then I’m too distracted to keep him in check. At moments like this it is dangerous for a stranger to suggest that perhaps my lawn chair is beyond the approved lawn chair zone in the amphitheater. When that stranger points to the “No Lawn Chairs Past This Point” sign he’s actually just pointing out the nearest blunt heavy object to beat him with. Earl appreciates his consideration.

Realistically the stranger was right and I was wrong. After a brief and entirely embarrassing confrontation I took down my lawn chair. But the adrenaline would not fade. I was angry for at least a half hour and then I felt like an idiot for the rest of the evening.

It’s times like this that I wish I was a little bit more like Earl. People carefully consider their options before bothering a guy who looks like that. I want a simple, easy way to signal to people “Don’t mess with me; I’m tired and I haven’t eaten in two hours.” Instead of yelling at strangers I could just glare menacingly and achieve the same result...Or I can simply wait until my gut starts to actually look like a baby bump. I’ve heard that works too. People think twice before messing with women who are hugely pregnant. Plus it’s less permanent than a face tattoo.