Batman and the Captive Commissioner

Yes, another Hostess ad. I know, I know, they've been mocked to death by many before me, but this one...this one is my favorite. So from the pages of Batman Family 3, February 1976, here's...

Batman and the Captive Commissioner

Click for a larger image if you like, but an excruciatingly detailed analysis follows.

"Not just trouble, Batman, real, deep, big trouble! Real, deep, big, hard trouble! Real, deep, big, hard, thrusting...what are we talking about?"

I had no idea Commissioner Gordon exerted such a calming influence on Gotham City. Is he so beloved that his mere absence is enough to turn ordinary citizens into fist-waving, appliance-looting hooligans? Or is the city always teetering on the brink of a riot, and it's the Gotham City PD who have pushed it over the edge, joining in on the anarchistic fun now that their killjoy of a boss is out of the way? Whatever the reason, Batman seems pretty happy about the whole thing. And why not? Wayne Manor's on the edge of town, it's not like his TV's being stolen.

Here we meet master criminals/'70s porn stars the 3 Svengali brothers. Interests include unorganized crime, chest hair, and "overuse" of "quotation marks". (Man, I wish I had a hot pink Members Only jacket in 1976. I would have ruled my kindergarten.) This may be self-evident given that this is an ad for fruit pies, but their criminal master plan seems insufficiently thought out. How exactly do they plan on running the town - as Mayor? As the City Council? Because I don't think a street vigilante has the power to turn over municipal authority. (Or maybe he does. Gotham's a pretty weird town.)

In tonight's performance of "The Captive Commissioner", the role of head Svengali will be played by Salvador Dali, with Robert De Niro as the twins.

"You can beat the crap out of us all you want, Batman, this car will still take you to our super-secret hideout where the Commissioner is waiting for you to rescue him." Shockingly, the Svengali brother is not seeing the flaw in their plan. Wasn't he suspicious that Batman got in the backseat of their car so easily? I guess they snagged him coming out of the convenience store, since he has some snacks handy. Svengali brothers, do not trust snack-sharing Batman! He has a plan!

I am amazed that the Svengali's have a computerized self-driving car. I suspect they are actually just misunderstanding what the GPS does.

Road trips with Batman are the best! He's so nice I'll overlook how creepy his drawn-on eyebrows are. But where did he get Hostess fruit pies with the city in chaos? Did he loot them? I'll be so disappointed if he looted them. They look all blurry and trampled from the riot. Blech.

And the carefree "let's enjoy some snacks" Batman of the last two panels is gone. In his place is the grim avenger of the night, using the distraction of the fruit pies to line up his fist for maximum punching impact. Svengalis, you poor, poor bastards. Look at the determined line of his mouth, look at the focused arch of his eyebrows. (Don't look at the eyebrows too closely; they raise more questions than they answer.) Enjoy your real fruit filling and tender crust while you can.

This is our first unobstructed view of driver Svengali, and judging by his rocking turtleneck he is the least sartorially challenged of the three brothers; shame the wind is about to claim his toupee. (Also, he's eating his fruit pie side-on, which is just wrong.) The passenger Svengali has had a different face in every panel. Is he secretly the shape-changing super-villain Clayface, posing as a Svengali because he knows only the Z-list villains get delicious snacks with their beat-down?

A little nap after a meal helps with what? Recovering from a punch in the face? Hey, kids! Enjoy a delicious Hostess Fruit Pie and Batman will punch you in the face! That is the message I glean from this ad. Am I wrong? Whatever the message, this is far and away the most violent Hostess ad I've seen. Batmen is hitting them so hard their faces are distorting. At least he let them finish their snacks. That was thoughtful.

No fruit pie for the eldest Svengali. Just a punch in the face from a teenager in hot pants. (Or as I call it, "Saturday night". Thank you! I'm here all week!)

"Batman, you've done it again!" If this is a recurring pattern for you, Commissioner, you need to start being more careful. Gotham turns into Thunderdome whenever you disappear, so please stop getting kidnapped by morons. And Batman, Hostess did not help you whatsoever. You could have punched those guys in the face at any time - you just wanted to get rid of those Hostess Fruit Pies. Those things are nasty.

Now let's enjoy some snacks!

Companions: Katarina

Katarina

(Adrienne Hill)

Katarina lived in ancient Troy at the time of the famous war as a handmaiden to the princess Cassandra. The Doctor, Vicki and Steven met her in the last episode of The Myth Makers, when all hell was breaking loose. She made friends with Vicki, who sent her to help the Doctor get a wounded Steven back to the TARDIS. Katarina came aboard and the Doctor promptly absconded with her, without asking if she'd like to come along. (Most of the early companions were either stowaways or kidnap victims.)

With Vicki having stayed behind in ancient Troy, Katarina served as her replacement aboard ship. When the TARDIS landed on the planet Kembel at the start of The Daleks' Master Plan, Katarina stayed in the ship to tend to the still-wounded Steven while the Doctor set off to look for help.

The TARDIS is found by Space Agent Bret "not the Brigadier" Vyon, who demands that Katarina fly him off the planet. Operating a time machine wasn't covered in Trojan handmaiden school, so Katarina is somewhat at a loss. Luckily Steven comes to long enough to knock Bret out before passing out again.

But Bret's not all bad, and, with a promise that he will help Steven, Katarina agrees to let him free from the Doctor's restraining chair (don't ask). Bret cures Steven and helps the the duo escape from the Daleks who have surrounded the TARDIS.

Isn't Bret dashing? The three of them meet up with the Doctor, who's surprised that Katarina let Bret go free.

Katarina convinces the Doctor that Bret's on the side of the angels, and the four set off to foil the Daleks' evil scheme of the day.

They steal the rare element taranium from the Daleks and flee the planet in a convenient spaceship. Unfortunately, the Daleks shoot them down, and they are forced to land on a prison planet. They manage to take off again, but not before one of the convicts, Kirksen, sneaks aboard via the ship's airlock. When Katarina is sent to check the airlock - because why wouldn't you send the girl from ancient Troy to check the airlock? - Kirksen grabs her.

Kirksen demands to be taken to the nearest planet, which just happens to be the planet where the Daleks are waiting to kill all of them. The Doctor and Steven agree in order to save Katarina's life, but she reaches for the airlock controls...

...and ejects herself and Kirksen into space, sacrificing herself to save the Doctor, Steven and Bret from the Daleks. Let's take another look at that picture, shall we?

Not horrifying at all. Poor, poor Katarina. With one push of a button she became both the first Doctor Who companion to die, and the shortest lived companion from the original run. Although she spanned two stories, she only appeared in five episodes total, and she only really appeared fully in three - we met her at the end of the last episode of The Myth Makers, and she became vacuum food at the start of the fourth episode of The Daleks' Master Plan. Kamelion the shape-changing robot got more airtime than that, and he didn't even work. (More on him later. Much, much later.)

Katarina handled her travels in the TARDIS (ok, travel - she only made one stop) remarkably well - perhaps to keep herself from instantly dying from culture shock, she decided that the Doctor must be a god (Russell T Davies would later take this idea and run with it). He was Zeus, she rationalized, and the TARDIS was his flying temple. She was already dead, and the TARDIS was her conveyance to the afterlife. The Doctor protested, and although she stopped calling him a god at his insistence, she never stopped believing it.

Although Adrienne Hill was signed on to be the new "Doctor Who girl", the writers very quickly realized that they didn't know what to do with the character. They felt her naive world view would make for limited story-telling options, and so they killed her off, replacing her (in the short term) with Space Security Agent Sara Kingdom (more on her next time).

It's a shame, really, because Katarina had a lot more potential than the writers gave her credit for. She's often described as naive, but that doesn't seem quite fair - she showed good judgement in defying the Doctor's orders by releasing Bret to save Steven - which must not have been easy for her, since she would have believed she was defying her god. And she clearly isn't stupid - in her final scene, she figures out which button to push to jettison herself out of the airlock, despite barely understanding what an airlock was (Steven's horrified cries of "No, not that one!" may have helped, serving as a morbid game of hot-and-cold).

Keeping Katarina aboard the TARDIS could have helped the writers, not hindered them, if they had so chosen. She could have easily served as the stock question-asker to move the plot along ("What are you doing, Doctor? What does that mean? What does this button do?" Maybe not that last one.), with Steven as a more experienced counterbalance. Her journey from bewildered innocent to worldly traveler could have made for great stories - just a year later they'd do exactly that with 18th century Scottish piper Jamie McCrimmon - but the writers' weren't interested in that kind of character development for a companion at this time, so out the airlock she went.

In the expanded universe of Doctor Who, though, leaving the TARDIS is never the end. Companions are constantly brought back in tie-in novels, comics and audio adventures, with new stories taking place in the gaps between the original television adventures. Katarina has presented a problem for writers of these licensed spin-offs, though - there are no gaps in her appearances in which to fit new stories, since the end of her first story leads directly in to the start of her last, and her death makes it a little difficult to write about her life after leaving the Doctor's company. ("Katarina froze. Her body floated a bit, then got caught in a planet's gravity well. She burned up on re-entry. The end.")

But Doctor Who fans are nothing if not creative, and Katarina has managed to make a handful of post-death appearances. The Seventh Doctor met her as a child in a comic in Doctor Who Magazine (time travel, you know), and also encountered her as an adult, inexplicably alive on a far-off world.

Spoiler! She was really a shape-changing alien. Ah, well, nice to see her again anyway. Short stories have shown her in the Greek underworld trying to make it to the Elysian Fields, and in an alternate timeline having all sort of adventures with the Doctor and Steven.

Katarina - potential squandered, all but one episode lost perhaps forever, only remembered for being the first to die. And not even remembered well - Adric's really the go-to dead companion when you want to dredge up some of the Doctor's guilt. What's a handmaiden gotta do to get some respect?

3-G Redubbed (5)

More from the girls in 3-G! Well, one of them, at least. This week, things look bad for Luann, and Gabby meets Alan!

5/20/07

5/21/07

5/22/07

5/23/07

5/24/07

5/25/07

5/26/07

Who Loves You!

In honor of Valentine's Day, here's a look at the absolute worst relationships in Doctor Who history. What do you want from me? I'm single.

Leela and Andred

In The Invasion of Time, the Doctor brought Leela home with him to Gallifrey, where he perpetrated an insanely over-complicated plan to foil the invasion of the Time Lords' planet by the Vardans. Assisting the Doctor was Andred, Commander of the Chancellory Guard. Leela spends most of the story in the outlands of Gallifrey rounding up help, while Anded spends most of the story with the Doctor, looking confused. They have no on-screen time alone together, and there doesn't seem to be any time for them to sneak in any off-screen action. And yet, at the end of the episode, Leela declares that she's fallen in love with Andred and will be remaining behind on Gallifrey. Actress Louise Jameson has stated numerous times that she was unhappy with how Leela was written out, and indeed, she plays this final scene as if Leela is mildly embarrassed about the whole situation. Big Finish Productions' audio adventures have continued the story of Leela's life in their Gallifrey series, and they wisely sideline the whole relationship right off the bat.

I've now decided that "to leela" is a verb meaning to suddenly write out a regular character on a TV show by creating an out-of-character romantic entanglement for them with a character with whom they have no previous history or significant interaction. Please spread it around.

Peri and King Yrcanos

Peri's travels with the Doctor ended in the season-long serial The Trial of a Time Lord.  She was about to be killed by having the brain of a dying amphibious alien transplanted into her body; before the Doctor could intervene, he was kidnapped by the Time Lords to be put on trial for interfering in the history of other races (the Time Lords have a thing about that). Peri is apparently killed, but at the end of the trial it is revealed that, in fact, she survived and, since the Doctor apparently never bothered to go back for her, she wound up marrying their ally King Yrcanos. Peri's departure seems totally out of character, and there was no suggestion of any romance brewing between the two of them during the story. Peri was totally leela-ed by the writers. Still, Yrcanos was played by Brian Blessed, and while he doesn't look as good in this story as he did as prince of the Hawkmen in Flash Gordon, he's still not too shabby of a catch.

Vicki and Troilus

There's nothing inherently wrong about Vicki's love for Trojan Troilus; her decision to leave her life in the TARDIS behind to be with him forever as Troy falls around them is actually quite romantic. It's the fact that she takes the name Cressida that suggests that their romance may not meet the happiest of endings.

Fitz and Trix

If you're like the majority of modern Doctor Who fans, you're probably asking yourself, "Who the hell are Fitz and Trix?" Fitz Kreiner and Trix MacMillan were companions of Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor in a series of tie-in novels published by BBC Books between the airing of the 1996 TV movie and the start of the new series in 2005. Fitz traveled with the Doctor for a very long time, and the two became the best of friends. Trix was a con artist who they met while she was working for Sabbath, an enemy of the Doctor's. She left Sabbath's employ and asked to travel with the Doctor - he refused, so she stowed away. She was eventually discovered and accepted (as most stowaways on the TARDIS are), and she and Fitz eventually fell in love. In the final book in the series, The Gallifrey Chronicles, Fitz and Trix resolved to marry and stay behind on Earth as soon as the current adversary was dealt with. Nothing wrong there. It's just that Fitz is one of my favorite companions, and I have a weird fictional character crush on him. There, I said it. Ok, it's irrational and perhaps a little creepy, but I stand behind it. Fitz was a fully-realized character and was awesome, and Trix was under-developed and sucked. There are no pictures of Trix for me to share with you, since she only appeared in the books (and she probably looks like a total whore), but Fitz made one appearance in a Big Finish audio, The Company of Friends, in which he was played by Matt di Angelo. It's a small picture, since he only appears in one little sliver of the CD cover, but isn't he handsome? Maybe we should move on...

Martha and Mickey

Although I haven't been ranking this list, it's safe to say that this is my least favorite Doctor Who romance, even though I really love both of these characters (yes, Mickey too). It's the pure randomness of it that gets to me. Martha and Mickey meet in Journey's End, where they have no interaction whatsoever outside of the big group scenes. The next time we see them, in The End of Time, they're married and happily hunting Sontarans together. Granted, when we saw them at the end of Journey's End they were both walking away with Captain Jack, so who knows what kind of unspeakable depravity might have followed. Still, at the time, Martha was engaged to another man - to Tom Milligan, whom she met (sort of - it's complicated) in Last of the Time Lords. Russell T Davies has said that he married Martha and Mickey because his last name is Smith, and hers is Jones, and Martha's first episode was Smith and Jones, so he thought it would be funny. Ugh. Having read a bit about Davies' writing process, I doubt this was the real reason, but still. It felt to me more like he wanted to make sure Mickey got a cameo like all the other past Tennant companions at the end of The End of Time, but didn't want to spend time on a whole scene just for him so shoehorned him into Martha's. I'm not sure which explanation is worse. For whatever reason, Davies managed to leela two companions at once!

There's also a slight ick factor to their relationship, in that Martha loved the Doctor, and Mickey loved Rose, but the Doctor and Rose were in love with each other. Martha's love for Tom seemed to fulfill the promise of the clean break she was looking for at the end of Last of the Time Lords, but her marriage to Mickey smacks of sublimation on the part of them both. I see marriage counseling in their future.

So happy Valentine's Day to you and yours! Please choose your partner more wisely than most of the Doctor's companions have, and here's hoping you don't get leela-ed!

Companions: Steven Taylor

Steven Taylor

(Peter Purves)

In The Chase, when the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicki were captured by the Mechanoids (basically giant geodesic spheres with flamethrowers) (so, basically awesome), they found themselves imprisoned alongside Steven Taylor, a spaceship pilot from the 23rd century (or thereabouts). They believed Steven died during their escape, so Vicki and the Doctor were understandably surprised when, after saying goodbye to Ian and Barbara, they found Steven waiting for them in the TARDIS.

Steven had gone back into the city to rescue his stuffed panda HiFi, who had been his only companion during his two-year imprisonment (like Tom Hanks' volleyball, only more adorable). Steven survived the destruction of the Mechanoids' city and slipped into the TARDIS while nobody was paying attention. Here's Steven with Vicki and HiFi at the start of his next story, The Time Meddler:

Adorable, right? Enjoy the picture, it's the last interesting thing you'll see about Steven Taylor.

Steven was brought in to replace Ian as the leading man, the action hero (Barbara, of course, was irreplaceable). And he fits the bill fine - young, strapping, handsome, and utterly and completely generic.  He's not a bad companion, he's fills a storytelling niche and Peter Purves does a good job with the material he's given. But after his exciting introduction, he doesn't do a whole lot; at least, nothing unexpected if you're familiar with his stock type. He gets very little in the way of character development - he's just kind of there.

Here's the new crew, hiding cheerfully behind a rock. Posing for publicity photos is fun!

Steven's development was not aided by the fact that his first few scripts were originally written for the previous TARDIS crew. In his next story, Galaxy 4, his role in the story and most of his dialogue were originally written for Barbara. As a consequence, he spends most of the story held hostage while the Doctor and Vicki get on with the business of saving the planet.

See? They even gave him one of Barbara's cardigans to wear.

He spent the next story, The Myth Makers, being all action heroey in the Trojan War, and getting near-mortally wounded for his trouble. Vicki departs in this story, and she's replaced by Trojan handmaiden Katarina, who carries the wounded Steven into the TARDIS.

More on Katarina next time, but suffice it to say, she doesn't last long. In the next story, The Daleks' Master Plan, she's quickly replaced with Sara Kingdom, who also doesn't last long. Steven was very, very lucky to have gotten out of that story alive.

All these deaths in the space of one story wear a bit on Steven, so the TARDIS takes him and the Doctor to Paris, where they can chillax in some fine BBC period clothing and get their drank on.

Except it's Paris in 1572, and the story is titled The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, and ten thousand Huguenots, including all the drinking buddies Steven just made and the cute serving girl named Anne Chaplet he had his eye on, are all about to be brutally slain in a weeks-long purging that will see the streets of Paris run red with innocent blood. Because fuck you, Steven Taylor.

Every companion gets their lesson in the futility of changing history, and this was Steven's. He's furious at the Doctor for making them abandon their new-found friends to their fate, and when the TARDIS materializes in 1966 London, he storms out, determined to leave his travels with the Doctor behind forever. Ah, you say, that sounds like characterization to me! Well, no, because right away he spots some policemen running towards the TARDIS and comes back to warn the Doctor, who promptly takes off. On board the TARDIS with them this time is new companion Dodo Chaplet, and Steven convinces himself that, since they have the same last name, Dodo must be Anne's descendant, so Anne must have survived the massacre, and all is well. The Doctor is so happy Steven has stopped bitching about the constant slaughter that comes with a life in the TARDIS that he doesn't point out how staggeringly unlikely Steven's hypothesis is.

Here's the new team in Dodo's first full story, The Ark. Steven doesn't do much in this one, except almost die from catching Dodo's cold. It's a nice picture, though, isn't it?

Steven gets to have a bit more fun when the crew goes up against The Celestial Toymaker. The Doctor is sidelined for most of the story (the producers were considering letting William Hartnell go, as he was becoming more and more difficult to work with), so Steven and Dodo took the lead, playing the Toymaker's deadly games in order to win back the TARDIS.

Sadly, most of this story is lost, but it sounds like it was pretty good. Steven got lots of action in this one, and doesn't he look nice in color? Score one for you, Steven Taylor.

I take it back. In The Gunfighters, the trio visit Tombstone just in time for the gunfight at the OK Corral. They meet the Earps, the Clantons, Doc Holliday and Johnny Ringo, bullets fly and people die, and Steven dresses like he's going to a Western-themed costume party at Liberace's house. Luckily, the Doctor passes them all off as entertainers, and even more luckily - and inexplicably - Steven can sing and play the piano. There's an awful lot of gunfighting in this story, and Steven doesn't take part in any of it. Ian would have taken out the entire Clanton gang with one bullet...sigh. I miss Ian.

But all mediocre things must come to an end, and Steven's next story, The Savages, was his last. On an unnamed future world, the Doctor negotiates peace between a race of scientific Elders and the primitive Savages they've been exploiting. For some reason the two tribes invite Steven to stay with them and become their leader - I suppose when choosing a leader after years of conflict, "vaguely nonthreatening" seems like a pretty attractive quality. Steven accepts, bidding the Doctor and Dodo farewell.

I've probably been overly harsh on Steven - he was perfectly serviceable, as male companions go. He was just bland, and it's hard to find anything funny or interesting too say about bland people.

Oh, I've got something. In the tie-in novel The Empire of Glass, set in 1609 Venice, Steven teams up with playwright Christopher Marlowe, who makes a pass at him. Steven ignores it, though, because otherwise something interesting might happen.

Bad dog. KA-BOOM!

My sister has one of those "invisible fences" for her dog. The dog wears a collar with a little device in it, and if she crosses the barrier, she gets a mild shock. After the first couple of shocks, she got the point and stopped trying to cross the barrier.

Batman does the same thing with his dog...

...only he doesn't believe in second chances.

From Detective Comics 318, August 1963.