Yup, better make that my plan.

Okay, the first Elseworlds episode is delightful. And I squeed at the Smallville theme and then had to explain it to Tim. And now I just want to watch Smallville.

And the second Elseworlds episode was a lot of fun, too. Gotham looks gorgeous (I'm a sucker for all that art deco architecture), and Stephen Amell and Grant Gustin are having way too much fun in each others' roles.

I don't understand why Barry and Oliver would hallucinate each other's fears, though, when they still have their own memories. Since Malcolm and Thawne showed up right before a commercial break, I was honestly expecting to come back from the break and see Barry and Oliver tell their respective hallucinations, "You've got the wrong guy," and walk away.

Me, too, Tep! I really loved the banter in the three eps, I have to say. Barry's delight when he shoots Oliver in the back with the remote control arrows was hilarious.

Barry's delight when

That was EXCELLENT.

I just finished the last epsiode, and Tyler Hoechlin had way too much fun playing Deegan/evil Superman.

I want to know what deal Oliver made with the Monitor. I guess they're going to save that for Crisis on Infinite Earths.

15 Fantasy Adaptations We're Excited to See on TV Soon

A lot of these are on Amazon. It seems like their strategy is "adapt everything until we get our own Game of Thrones".

Also, Frank Miller is working on a show with a teenage girl protagonist? Err...

The Doctor Who New Year's special was a much better season finale.

In hospital, so no lengthy comment, but I completely agree. I wouldn't call it groundbreaking or anything, but it made for a pretty exciting story, and was competently done. (I have thoughts about the Thirteenth Doctor finally meeting the Daleks, but for a later time.)

I finally got caught up on The Magicians. I never remember to watch it when it's on so I watch it on Netflix. I really liked Season 3. I loved the Under Pressure episode, the song choice was perfect and the way they split the lines to the characters.

When I started watching I liked the show but I didn't like a lot of the characters. Quentin was annoying, Alice... I liked and then didn't, and I thought Margo was just bitchy. But now Quentin I can deal with more, I really don't like Alice, I love Margo and Julia. My favorite characters are Julia and Margo followed closely by Penny and Eliot .

I did not like the whole Julia was raped plot line and I was worried about what was going to happen to her and I really like her changes and growth.

I'm hoping that in Season 4 we get to see some kind of flashback to Timeline 23 and how Julia and Penny became a couple because I find that intriguing and would like to know more. Penny 23 is interesting and it's nice to see Penny not trying so hard not to care. And I hope we get to use Underground Penny, it seemed like he made his choice to embrace the destiny they had for him and I hope it brings him something good.

I adore Hale Appleman. The end of the S3 finale when he comes up to Quentin at first I thought I he had somehow broken free , that this was hopeful and then it changes. I'm looking forward to seeing how what he does with being a new character.

Although Eliot was an ass to Margo about the High King election, I think she is better at being a ruler and getting stuff done and she proved it by getting elected although that was in weird circumstances . Fen realizing human Fillorians don't count enough was a nice moment.

One thing I can't remember is if time flows differently in the Library/Underground vs the real world. The girl who helped and then betrayed Penny said she did it because her family was whacked and then her uncle pulled strings to get to the otherside. After watching the McAllisters die I wondered if maybe she was related and that was her family. But that seems too neat to do.

My issues with Alice aren't so much her character or the acting (sometimes it's that) but it's her voice especially in intense moments it does this weird thing and I don't like it. And the way the costuming throws me off. The way she is covered up for her torso but then the short skirts. It's a weird thing to be bothered by.

I have spare time on my hands, so here are thoughts on the Doctor Who NYD special, Resolution. I liked this one. The plot basically made sense, as did the emotional stakes; the Dalek scout was suitably creepy, Lin did a good job acting out "possessed by a Dalek", The Doctor's stance was coherent and reasonably appropriate. Some nice touches too. The Dalek creature was more menacing than past designs. Junkyard Dalek is a great idea. You could even work a parallel between the Dalek making its casing and the Doctor making her sonic. This felt like perfectly serviceable Doctor Who.

I wouldn't say it was great DW. Compare, for instance, to the Ninth doctor adventure, Dalek. In both cases you have a single Dalek, sufficient to be a threat to all humanity. IN both cases, to me at least, the stakes felt real and the Dalek felt scary. But I think you'd have to say that Dalek was much the better story. Both the Doctor and the Dalek had an inner conflict to deal with. It had something to say about the nature of Daleks. There was a well-realised secondary threat (Van Statten), who works as an allegory for a number of real-world groups (including a certain flavour of Doctor Who fan). In its own way, it threatens the very premise of Doctor Who (it turns the Doctor from compassionate trickster to another testosterone-poisoned action hero toting a big gun - and the resolution involves rejecting this future). Rose gets a lot to do, including providing moral grounding for the Doctor when he becomes unmoored.

There's not such depth in Resolution. Everyone's goals and motivations are clear and unconflicted. There's the B plot about Ryan's dad, but it doesn't much connect with the main plot. It certainly doesn't go flat-out weird or experimental. It's a good story, but not overly ambitious.

I was particularly interested in this ep in the context of the season. This current incarnation of the Doctor is perhaps the most pacifist of all; only the Fifth Doctor really comes close. I've had a real problem with it, because it's largely been quite incoherent - see, for instance, Arachnids in the UK (where she leaves the spiders to die cruel deaths and Trump Florrick to go free), Kerblam! (where she upbraids someone for treating robots as just tools and then destroys thousands of them for no apparent reason, and where she seems fine with a world where the best most people can hope for is a soul-sucking, pointless job with no prospects on survival wages) or The Battle of Ranskoor av Kolos (where she learns that her previous refusal to kill Tim Shaw led to the destruction of entire planets yet sees no challenge whatsoever to her moral position, and where she regards killing as immoral but eternal imprisonment is fine).

If there's any limit case to this approach it's the Daleks. There's no quarter to be given, no common ground to be found. Especially if you script it as a straight-line A-to-B traditionalist Dalek adventure. Chibnall seems to be aware of this. The Doctor makes an overture, but when it's rejected, she has no qualms about simply trying to kill it. The Doctor clearly accepts that the Daleks have to be opposed by all possible means.

That's a position not really different from the Tenth or Eleventh Doctor. (One interesting touch: she checks in with her companions first. But still.) In this sense I liked this ep; it was morally coherent in a way that the season wasn't. Not that it addressed the difference directly. We have a wait of over a year before finding out whether this actually constitutes a lasting course correction.