So yes, ‘Asylum of the Daleks!’ I have many thoughts about this episode, some of which have already appeared. But what I keep coming back to again and again, my friends, is that Steven Moffat has serious lady issues. Are you tired of them? Because I am tired of them. He’s got this obnoxious tendency of reducing female characters to orbiting moons rather than their very own planets, and the man cannot seem to understand why women are rather riled up at their depiction; who can forget that line where he tried to turn a critique ’round on the critiquer by claiming it was ‘anti-woman’ to be concerned about reducing female characters to mothers as though there was nothing else for women to do and it was impossible to be a mother and something else at the same time? (How could little ladybrains possibly manage dual tasks like that?!)

I mean, really. I rather wish the man would write a submarine drama or something just to give us a break from his attempts at female characters, because it would be a relief for us all. Maybe they’ve got an opening on Last Resort he could fill for a bit.

Be advised, my friends, that some discussions of recent plot events lie below!

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As reported late yesterday, Christopher Eccleston will play Malekith The Accursed, the big bad in Game of Thrones director Alan Taylor’s first forary into the Marvel universe, Thor: The Dark World. Though he’s been eclipsed by David Tennant and Matt Smith, Eccleston’s melancholy turn as the Doctor was terrific, with a sense of brooding, cosmic scale that should fit supervillainy nicely. Both the character, a shape-shifting dark elf, and one of the most important arcs he’s associated with, an attempted coup by secrecy of the throne of Asgard, seem like an excellent fit for the world Marvel’s building, and to leverage Taylor’s Game of Thrones experience.

In that arc that sounds most promising, Malekith has Loki switch places with him in prison, something that might be easy to accomplish if Loki’s going to get thrown in Asgard Jail after Thor brings him home after the events of The Avengers. He then disguises himself as Balder, an ally of the Warriors Three (Thor’s main men), who wasn’t a character in Thor, who is apparently about to be crowned king of Asgard. It’s the kind of thing that could make for terrific nasty court politics and dramatic and unexpected showdowns in those settings. Taylor’s proved himself a nice hand in those sorts of emotional situations—he directed “Baelor,” the tremendous first-season episode of Game of Thrones in which King Joffrey orders the former hand of the King Ned Stark executed in front of his daughters, and “Fire and Blood,” in which Dany reveals herself with her dragons. The man knows how to stage an announcement of a new and dramatically different identity or worldview.

And a disguise story could also be a setup for a larger Avengers arc. One of the best-executed parts of Joss Whedon’s The Avengers was Hawkeye’s brianwashing by Loki, and the sense of betrayal his teammates experienced, the loss Black Widow felt, and his shame when he came back to himself. Similarly, if the Skrulls are going to play a role in future Avengers storylines, it would be a shame not to make use of their shape-shifting abilities in addition to those nifty ridged chins, a plot device that could gel nicely with that sense of uncertainty, loss, and hollowing-out that was present in Hawkeye’s storyline. And a Malekith conflict that also involved swapping and surrendering identities would be in keeping with those themes.

Much of the conflict in The Avengers—and the reason the finale was so satisfying—was driven by the characters attempts to come to truly know each other. Captain America wants to know if Tony Stark is sincere or a callow playboy. Tony wants to know if Cap’s a relic, and if Bruce Banner has gotten comfortable with his inner rage. Nick Fury has a role and an agenda he successfully conceals for the entire film while his men and women are busy figuring Loki out. When they all trusted each other, knew each other’s capabilities, and could work together instinctively, only then could they stop the invasion, working together at the top of their capabilities.

I was reading through Annalee Newitz’s piece in last month’s Smithsonian about Neal Stephenson’s efforts to create a more optimistic science fiction in the wake after reading Emily Nussbaum’s piece on Community and Doctor Who in the New Yorker, and the combination struck me. The thing that I’m most interested in seeing in my science fiction right now is not solely new technology, and not solely explorations of what relationships might look like in the future: I’m interested in explorations of what our relationships to our new technology are going to be like.

One of the things Emily praised about Doctor Who in its latest incarnation was its exploration of how a specific technology—time travel—affects characters’ relationships to each other, and enhances fears of abandonment, missed chances, and the need for profound patience with the people you love. Stephenson, Annalee writes, has a more concrete set of motivations:

“We have one rule: no hackers, no hyperspace and no holocaust,” Stephenson says. He and his collaborators want to avoid pessimistic thinking and magical technologies like the “hyperspace” engines common in movies like Star Wars. And, he adds, they’re “trying to get away from the hackerly mentality of playing around with existing systems, versus trying to create new things.”Stephenson’s greatest hope is that young engineers and scientists will absorb ideas from the stories and think, “If I start working on this right now, by the time I retire it might exist.”

I think what I’m curious about is a fusion of the two. Kim Stanley Robinson’s new novel 2312 is about precisely that dilemma: what happens when humans who are interconnected to their personal computing devices to the point of having them embedded in their bodies, discover that computing’s evolved to a higher level such that they aren’t sure they trust something they’re intimately connected to? What happens when they date someone or get involved in professional relationships where someone wants them to detach? These aren’t exactly new questions—Orson Scott Card posed a lot of them with his character Jane, a sentient expression of the internet, in Speaker for the Dead—but Robinson feels like he’s riffing off Siri, the Apple personal assistant that doesn’t work as well as we’re told it will, but that we’re supposed to want to like quite a bit.

And these aren’t the only technologies that pose those kinds of questions. Watching Star Trek a couple of years ago, I was struck watching Bones repeatedly stab Kirk with injections. I have a nut allergy, and my Epi-Pens are a source of both great comfort and anxiety to me. I’m glad they exist, but I’m terrified of actually having to jab myself with one, and I was both uncomfortable and fascinated to see Bones doing that repeatedly as if it was no big thing. I’d be curious to hear from long-time Trekkies in the audiences whether there are episodes of the show or movies I might have missed that address what it’s like to have medical technology that good. Do people take more risks? Do doctors overmedicate patients? Does it lead them into error? I feel like we have a lot of science fiction, whether it’s John Scalzi’s work or The Forever War that discusses how medical technology changes decision-making by soldiers. But from a doctor’s perspective, I can’t imagine what it would be like to have a tool that powerful at your disposal, and I’d love to see a futuristic medical show that explores some of those questions. I’d totally watch a show about a futuristic Atul Gwande (or, who am I kidding, Shonda Rhimes 2032 show Space Mistresses).

Good gadget design or carefully thought-out rules are a first step towards good science fiction. But just putting those tools or those rules into action without meditating on them aren’t the only way to tell stories with them.

In case any of you haven’t seen it yet, I wanted to call your attention to Emily Nussbaum’s New Yorker column on Community and Doctor Who, which is really a stealth argument that it’s time for those who look down their nose at genre fiction to reconsider, in part, perhaps, because genre fiction itself has changed:

The original “Who” dwelt on pure sci-fi obsessions, abstract questions of how society is organized and the line between humans and machines. But, as deeply as fans loved the show, its themes were rarely emotional. Instead, it jumped from Aztec civilization to Mars, as much an educational show for children as an adult narrative, with a British-colonialist view of the universe. (So many savages, so little time.) The series’ most striking feature was the Doctor himself: in contrast to “Star Trek” ’s Kirk—the Kennedyesque leader of a diverse society—the early Doctor Who was an alien iconoclast with two hearts and a universe-wide Eurail Pass. For a certain breed of viewer, this was an intoxicating ideal: the know-it-all whose streak of melancholy—or prickly rage, depending on who was Who—had to be honored, because he actually did know everything. Though that show had its charms, I was surprised, and delighted, to find that the modern “Doctor Who” has a very different emphasis: it’s a show about relationships, in an epic and mythological vein.

“It’s so much larger when you’re on the inside,” she writes of science fictional shows, though it’s worth remembering that emotional complexity and attentiveness to relationships aren’t the only thing that validate science fiction. There’s plenty of value in well-executed silly gadgets and drivebys to distant civilizations. The Daleks may be low-effects “Nazi-ish pepper pots,” but shabby exteriors and crude mechanically can be a vehicle for totalitarianism as well as glitz and glamor. Dropping in on a planet or a time per week can read like a survey of the Empire, but early Star Trek made those encounters melancholy, and strange, and sad (and occasionally silly) from the outset—those visits were less an affirmation of control but a reminder of how much there is out there. It’s not less worthwhile to dream about how we’ll interact with the strangenesses of the future than to ruminate on how we might have interacted with people we already know in the past. The world is changing rapidly, and even outwardly silly thought experiments may yield useful lessons and parallels. How we’d behave under siege may be a question that fluctuates only slightly if the invaders are orcs, or medieval humans, or Nazis, or cybermen. How we define humanity is a question that can be extended and expanded by science fiction in a way that realism or historical fiction may not allow us to access. Execution is one thing, but ambition itself is not inherently laughable or dismissable.

Genre fiction may become respectable when it’s seen to be answering the same sorts of questions as literature, and if it meets certain standards for prose or artistry. But judging fiction on the former rather than simply the latter says more about the gatekeepers of respectability—the New Yorker a week earlier banged the guilty pleasure drum to no particular effect or insight, saying “part of the pleasure we derive from them is the knowledge that we could be reading something better”—than about the fiction that’s up for judgement.

No matter how much we love our favorite bits of popular culture, we know that even the best shows — and the best characters — aren’t perfect. Here are 10 shows and franchises that could learn from each other — and that would produce some of the greatest, wackiest crossovers of all time.

1. Sons of Pawnee: I originally got this idea while talking to Maureen Ryan about who seems to have better stimulants: the Sons, or Leslie Knope. But it makes sense that Charming’s family-oriented motorcycle gang and Pawnee’s relentlessly cheery city government would go great together — if you could figure out which one represents the immovable object and which the irresistible force. First, Pawnee has a ridiculously traumatic history, from massacres to Death By Ice Flow for indecent exposure. SAMCRO’s arrival in town would just continue that noble tradition, and the creators of Pawnee’s public art could make up for the fact that Clay Morrow is pretty terrible at graffiti. The gang could carve Leslie up a new table to commemorate the City Council seat she’ll inevitably win. Gemma and Leslie could collaborate on a Taste of Pawnee. Chris could date Tara, who is literally the best small-town doctor on television. Joan Callamezzo and Tig Traeger can carry on a torrid affair. Now that Ben’s out at City Hall, he could take care of the Sons’ books. And if things went sideways, Ron would make sure that the Parks Department wasn’t short on guns, the Tammys could throw down with the SAMCRO Old Ladies, and Leslie and Tom could do surveillance and plan efficient, stylish counterstrikes.

2. Breaking Bad and Breaking Dawn: One of the most notable things about the Twilight books and movies is how bad Bella Swan’s parents are at their jobs. Renee, her mother, is a flake who basically dumps Bella with her father Charlie so Renee can gallivant around with her younger husband. Charlie has essentially no way to respond to Bella’s severe depression except by hoping she’ll end up with a different guy who can cheer her up. Neither of them is capable of having a real conversation with Bella about the fact that she’s not going to college and is getting married as a teenager, just as they did. Now, Walter White is no great shakes as a father either, whether he’s getting Walter Jr. drunk to the point of vomiting, buying his son a car the family can’t keep, or exposing his infant daughter to the dangers of meth dealing. Skyler White is a world champion self-deceiver, and only a mediocre plotter. But I bet the One Who Knocks, and the woman Who Protects This Family From the Man Who Protects This Family would have things to say about their daughter getting married out of high school to a totally mysterious dude who wrecked her emotionally. And failing that, some chemicals strong enough to blow up a vampire or dissolve him in a bathtub.

3. Doctor Who and Ugly Americans: I’m fond of the Doctor, but man does that guy get himself into a lot of trouble with all his gallivanting around. Clearly, what he and the Daleks need is a social worker with extensive experience in alien mediation and an integrationist approach to sharing a galaxy and a planet. Plus, it might be refreshing for him to have a male companion for once: less sexual tension, more TARDIS mini-fridges and dude-bonding. So the Doctor should totally rescue poor Mark Lilly from his zombie roommate and his terrible Craigslist New York apartment. But even then, there’s the risk that the Doctor and Mark would make a new enemy, one very irritable half-human, half-Devil supervisor at the Department of Integration.

4. Game of Thrones and Revenge: A Lannister always pays his debts. So, it turns out, do the Clarkes. Except they’re way more organized about it. While Cersei Lannister is revenge-fucking her brother to pay back her terrible abusive husband, turning into a drunken sot to get back at the people who doubt her, and continuing a pattern of humiliating her younger brother for the sin of being born; and while said younger brother is grousing about how he wants to rape and kill his older sister while tramping all over Westeros and Essos, Amanda Clarke is getting stuff done. Her training at the hands of a mysterious Japanese man appears to have been much more efficient (and less painful) than Arya Stark’s education in Braavos. And while it’s admittedly easier to wreak havoc on a bunch of unsuspecting rich people in the Hamptons than it is to take down a bunch of paranoid and heavily fortified nobles in Westeros, girlfriend is getting it done. Amanda should really set up an academy somewhere and get the Starks and various and sundry other heavily wronged people ready to kick ass for fun and profit.

5. Glee and Party Down: As graduation approaches for some of the members of New Directions and the Troubletones, their perpetual freakouts about what they’re going to do for the rest of their lives is getting more intense. The Party Down crew could explode all of their illusions, reminding them that even if you make it to the big city, sometimes you end up catering an eccentric array of parties rather than hoofing it on Broadway or the sassy gay friend on a Bravo show. Glee is at its best when its all kinds of dark. And while teenagers may not need their illusions crushed and then milled into a fine, tragic grain, it’s probably worth a reminder that a decent job and a good relationship aren’t failures.

By Jess Zimmerman

Let me start by saying I really liked the Doctor Who finale. But it was also emblematic of the Lady Problems the show’s been having, where otherwise good female characters keep getting turned into The Girl Who Waited or The Doctor’s Wife — people who are defined in the negative space of the central male character. We’ve found out a lot about River Song this season, which culminates in this episode as she both marries and kills the Doctor — but she does both as part of his character development, not hers.

River and Amy, most of the time, are fully-realized, interesting, flawed, admirable characters. At minimum, they look like someone really tried. But writing a character who’s some caricature dippy socialite or gross nouveau Stepford wife isn’t the only way to be sexist. You could also, for instance, forget that your fully-realized female characters are supposed to be fully-realized, just as soon as the need arises for them to fulfill some symbolic function.

Last season ended with a wedding, where the hoary old “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue” rhyme actually SAVED THE UNIVERSE. Existence depended on Amy and Rory not only tying the knot, but doing it in the most heteronormative of possible ways — if they’d just gone to the courthouse, everything would have been wrong forever. (Other important plot points in the following season: Amy and Rory get pregnant, Amy and Rory get a house, the Doctor stops calling Amy “Amy Pond” and calls her “Amy Williams.” Ugh.)

In this episode, a wedding has to save the universe again, although I’m honestly not certain why. This time it’s a little less traditional — whatever the Time Lord version of the Wedding Industrial Complex is, I’m guessing it doesn’t involve bow ties. But the symbolic weight of the wedding is the same as it was last season. These weddings aren’t just plot, they’re allegory: they bring friends back together, heal broken memories and broken universes, knit fragmented timelines, put time back in its proper place. Which is pretty okay! Weddings are fundamentally symbolic anyway — why not put that cultural significance to use? Let them stand for unity and harmony and all those nice things.
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A good post from Nikki, in response to some of my writing, saying that it’s not enough to want more women writing and directing television episodes. She writes:

If we suggest that increasing the number of women ON television might increase the number of women BEHIND television, thereby effecting a change in how sexist or feminist television shows might be, we excuse men from the process entirely, except as Upholders of the Status Quo. Set aside the question about women behind the scenes and focus on the men behind the scenes, who are definitely still in power in the media and it’s that power structure that should be held accountable for the current portrayal of women on TV.

Amen. I’m a pretty firm believer in the carrot-and-stick thing, though, because it’s relatively easy for male creators to clap their hands over their ears when they’re being criticized for not giving us wonderful, developed female characters and just not listen. And it’s much easier to get people to listen when you’re praising, and for other people to see that praise and think “I want that!” So without further ado and in no particular order, 10 fantastic female characters on television who were created by men.

1. Trixie, Deadwood, David Milch: I know this list isn’t in order, but if it was, I’d still put it at the top. Milch’s prostitute-turned-accountant, pimp’s-trick-turned-Jewish-businessman’s-girlfriend would still be at the top. We meet Trixie at the beginning of the show when she’s been accused of murder, and watch her help another woman beat a drug addiction even when it means defying her employer’s orders; seek out an education no one ever gave her so she can have more options in life; stand up for her friends when they get married and grieve for them when they bury their children; and develop a new relationship. She’s always making choices. And when she takes steps backwards, we understand why, at the gut level. She’s empowered, but the show doesn’t fall prey to the trap that strong female characters created by men often do — that women’s liberation is purely a matter of will, not circumstance.

2. Alice Morgan, Luther, Neil Cross: Alice, who enters the scene when she murders her parents, melts down the gun, and feeds the remaining parts to her dog, is a certified crazy person, but she’s not a victim. Her attraction to John Luther doesn’t make her a nymphomaniac. And her decision to work cases comes out of a clearly defined alternate morality and worldview. Rather than setting her up to be judged by the audience, she’s a compelling — and sometimes very scary — way to see the universe.
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The bridge is yours.

-Not excited about about this autobiography, but pretty excited for this one.

-Reality stars don’t count as stars, apparently.

-No, Ashton Kutcher’s character on Two and a Half Men won’t make any sense.

-Hack rap.

-Some folks can, apparently, walk away from Hollywood money.

-Why would Matt Damon take Michael Moore’s suggestion and run for president when he gets to hang out Neill Blomkamp and wear crazy cyborg suits? Being POTUS is a really terrible job in comparison to being an A-list actor.

-You know who probably doesn’t need immigration waivers? Also A-list actors.

-I will only watch a Bewitched remake if it’s a horror story a la the episode of Charmed where Phoebe turns into Samantha.

-Pretty confident video games didn’t cause the London riots.

-Hell yeah steampunk lady scientists (also, SyFy’s H.G. Wells spinoff strikes me as the only way we’re going to get a lady Doctor).

I’m on a bit of a sprint to watch at least the core of Torchood so I can properly analyze Torchwood: Miracle Day when it premieres in July. Two things that are striking me about the show so far, other than the whole pansexual space pirate thing, which is the most obvious vector for analysis. First, both the Doctor Who and Torchwood universes do really nice work when they tell stories about fans. And second, Torchwood feels, at least in the early going, a little institutionally unmoored.

I’m not entirely caught up with the rebooted Doctor Who yet, but one of the episodes I’ve watched that touched me most was “Love & Monsters,” which is essentially about a fan-and-mild-conspiracies club of people who believe the Doctor exists, and what happens first when that belief becomes secondary to the members’ friendships, and then when they actually, desperately need him to be real. There is a monster, to be sure, but he’s not really the point. The episode’s a fairly tender story about how wonderful it is to discover you’re not alone in your interests and your passions, and how those interests can be a critically important icebreaker, particularly if you’re not great at the work of conventional socializing. In the first season of Torchwood, “Random Shoes” does takes a different approach to a similar theme. A young man who’s seen his early promise slip away, and who clings to an interest in and belief in aliens as the last thing that makes him special, finds that after his death, that love makes it possible for him to undertake one last heroic act. Obviously it makes sense for shows like these to write Valentines to their fans, but they’re a nice acknowledgement of the fact that it’s increasingly easy to have fandom as an organizing principal for your life, and as a result, it’s (at least anecdotally) increasingly common and increasingly important way to arrange your social life.

On a less positive note, though, one of the things I like least about Torchwood so far is the extent to which the organization is isolated. Obviously, Torchwood Three has some kind of relationship with the Cardiff police, which gets vexed with their supernatural counterparts. And there were multiple branches of Torchwood. But we don’t get a sense of any institutional tension between Torchwood and more conventional law enforcement: the team tends to be able to just waltz into crime scenes, and to turn human offenders like the murders in “Countrycide” over to the cops without any real need to conceal their existence. The relationship’s an irritant than a real constraint on Torchwood’s operations.

Similarly, the fact that Torchwood Three appears to be the only functional branch of the institute isn’t actually a good thing for the show. We don’t get a training montage that really introduced Gwen to Torchwood’s practices and traditions, which would be both a fun thing to do, a great way to introduce viewers to the world the creators are building, and a good way to establish the constraints Torchwood agents work under. Without constraints, it’s hard to know what it means to be a Torchwood agent. As is, they’re basically private dicks who know that aliens are out there. My understanding is that we get more context later for why Torchwood Three is what’s left. But even if, and especially if, they’re what remains of a tradition, that should be an interesting burden to carry out, a legacy to carry on, something that should be part of Gwen’s experience and ours.