Context. Well, sort of, assuming you watch Community and/or Doctor Who.

(Yeah, yeah, it’s getting time for another “nerdiest post ever” contest…)

Been a busy weekend, but let’s face it, I had to get to this sooner or later. I can’t talk about DC’s greatest heroes winding up at J.K. Rowling’s magical wizard academy without talking about Marvel’s big heroes and where they’d wind up. (I’d discuss the X-Men, but let’s face it, they already are at a school for people with strange and unusual powers run by a manipulative old guy who’s training them to use their powers to fight evil. The only difference is that Dumbledore didn’t generally chuck bowling balls at people’s heads to test their reflexes.) So who would wind up in which house? Who am I picking as an “Avengers” lineup? Let’s find out!

Captain America: An obvious choice for an Avenger, but a less obvious decision over which house he winds up in. On the one hand, you can’t question the courage of the star-spangled Avenger; this is a guy who wanted to join World War II before it even started, because despite the fact that he weighed ninety pounds soaking wet, he wanted to go sock Hitler on the jaw. And that’s before you even get into the “standing toe-to-toe with Thanos despite Thanos having the Infinity Gauntlet and Cap having his fighting spirit” thing. But courage, while it is an important trait of Cap, is not his defining trait.

The recent Cap movie actually showed it best, in the scenes between Steve Rogers and Professor Erskine (some of the best scenes in a great movie.) Cap doesn’t join up because he wants to go out and prove his courage fighting Nazis, he joins up because he believes strongly that he should stand up for people who can’t stand up for themselves and it never even occurs to him that he’s one of them. He joins out of a sense of duty to protect others, and if that’s not Hufflepuff, I don’t know what is.

Iron Man: Lately, of course, it seems like Tony is a prime candidate for Slytherin; somewhere around the time he conquered his alcoholism, desperate writers have settled on “asshole control freak tries to use technology to control his surroundings and finds out the hard way just how badly that turns out” as his default story arc. (That is, when he’s not being mind controlled to kill lots of people. You begin to understand why they rebooted him three times.) But underlying the whole desire to control is a naive, almost pathetic belief that he can solve all his problems just by inventing cool enough stuff that it will fix everyone’s problems in the whole world. Tony Stark thinks that if he can create a better process, a better system, then he can create a better humanity. This belief that intelligence, properly applied, can solve any problem makes him a perfect Ravenclaw!

Thor: Thor routinely goes out and fights giants. Because he can. You’d just have to wave the Sorting Hat in his general direction to hear “GRYFFINDOR!” shouted out in the Great Hall.

Hawkeye: He’s one of my all-time favorite characters and a staple Avenger (who has, in my personal opinion, been mishandled worse under the Quesada/Bendis era of the series worse than any other character in the entire franchise, and that includes the decision to make Power Man and Iron Fist Avengers.) He’s also a joyously uncomplicated character, a brash manchild who found purpose and meaning to his life by joining the Avengers and adopting their ideals as his own. Arguably, Hawkeye’s turn under the Sorting Hat would involve a long, telepathic argument over whether or not they should just make a fifth house, because it’s downright insulting to stick Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in a bunch of lesser outfits. But eventually, the Sorting Hat would decide that a guy who deliberately forgoes Hank Pym’s growth serum to  battle mad gods and alien armadas armed with a bow and arrows belongs in Gryffindor.

Hank Pym: Okay, maybe Hank Pym was handled worse by Bendis than any other character…let’s call it a toss-up, okay? (Yes, I have issues with Bendis’ handling of the classic Avengers characters. Specifically, I have several hundred issues, and all of them establish clear character beats that Bendis ignores because paying attention to established characterization takes up time he could be using to plot his latest three-issue long halting conversation.) The point is, Hank Pym’s defining character trait isn’t anger or emotional instability. He had a major nervous breakdown at one point that caused him to lash out against his friends and loved ones, but what caused that breakdown was the stress of trying to be a superhero even though he was never really cut out for it. He wanted to be a scientist, helping people through his inventions instead of hitting people, but duty to the people he cared about kept calling him back to it. It’s that sense of dedication to the Avengers that makes the Sorting Hat choose Hufflepuff over Ravenclaw, even though it might take a while to choose.

Wasp: Let’s see. Janet became a superhero because her father died and her new boyfriend suggested she help him avenge that death (two emotional connections early on.) She spent her free time volunteering at a local hospital reading to sick children (duty to the helpless.) She met a bunch of superheroes and immediately suggested they all bond together into a common group (more dedication to community and family.) She eventually wound up becoming the chairwoman of the Avengers–not because she was ambitious, but because a chairwoman was needed and it was time for her to step up and help the team. She eventually sacrificed herself…um, sort of, because Thor did something, or…*sigh* Bendis… *sigh* The point is, when you look at the Wasp’s career, she’s always been about dedication to her large, self-made, extended family. She might never have become a hero if she’d been left to her own devices, but she cares about heroes enough to want to help them out. She’s a Hufflepuff if there ever was one.

Bonus non-Avenger characters! While I will maintain, to my dying day, that the inclusion of Spider-Man and Wolverine into the ranks of the Avengers was a colossal mistake that shows that Bendis not only never understood any of the characters he was writing, he actually never understood the core concept of the book he took over and should not have been allowed near the series with a ten-foot pole, I also know that people probably want to know where they wound up. So for the record, Spidey‘s a classic Hufflepuff (“with great power must come great responsibility”), while Wolverine would be a Gryffindor until he got expelled for sneaking non-butter-beer into the dorms and wound up getting kept by Hagrid as a pet.

Which still leaves a lot of Avengers. Let’s face it, unlike the JLA, the Avengers has a constantly fluctuating line-up; feel free to add your favorite Avengers in the comments!

MGK: So we’re back, watching Animalympics again.
FLAPJACKS: …I know that. Why are you saying that?
MGK: I’m setting the scene for my readers.
FLAPJACKS: It’s really annoying.
MGK: Anyway – so slalom star Kurt Wuffner is missing.

FLAPJACKS: Why is the entire search party looking for him composed of elephants? I mean, if you’re gonna pick an animal to be in an alpine search-and-rescue team, “elephant” wouldn’t even make my top thousand picks. Because elephants are big and heavy and not winter-friendly animals and aren’t really known for their mountain-climbing abilities.
MGK: They aren’t known for their gymnastics skill either, but that didn’t stop one from competing on the uneven bars! Elephants are doin’ it for themselves.
FLAPJACKS: “So we know this is a tragedy – but now, how about some bobsledding?”
MGK: And the European team – which is British – is composed of… are they beavers? They look basically like beavers. They have beaver tails. But beavers aren’t native to England.
FLAPJACKS: Immigrants.
MGK: I wonder how the Animalympicverse version of the BNP feels about beavers coming to England and takin their jerbs.
FLAPJACKS: I’m more interested in the octopus bobsledders from Italy. These are the first crustaceans/fish/insects we’ve seen competing so far, right? It’s all been reptiles, mammals and birds thus far. I think we’re seeing another facet of the dreadful class system in this universe.
MGK: Meanwhile, Kurt Wuffner is dying on a mountainside when suddenly he finds “Dogra-La.” I don’t remember if this is a real thing or if he’s just hallucinating prior to his death from exposure.
FLAPJACKS: Given that he’s turning to “the camera” to point at the sexy dog girls dressed in kimonos that all look exactly like him, I vote the latter.
MGK: But enough death hallucination! It is time for hockey now!
FLAPJACKS: The American team – for they wear USA colours – is populated by Quebecois bears, apparently. And the other team is bulls, because… I dunno, I’m out of logic to explain any of this now.
MGK: It is amusing that they are totally playing hockey up as a game where people try to murder one another.
FLAPJACKS: Well, this was the early 80s. The Broad Street Bullies era of the Philadelphia Flyers had just ended. Hockey players beat each other up all the time. It’s not like now, when they beat each other up for a purpose. They used to maim each other for fun… why is the arena exploding?
MGK: Because that’s funny.
FLAPJACKS: And because we were briefly entertained for a moment there, how about a pointless vignette featuring the coaches of the two marathon runners where silly voices are apparently supposed to be endlessly hilarious?
MGK: I blame Gilda Radner. Baba Wawa ruined things for a generation.
FLAPJACKS: This California otter isn’t really… funny in any way. Or even interesting. I mean – he’s a hippie, sorta? He drives a car, he’s a vegetarian, he surfs, he likes to hang out in a hot tub? Where are the jokes? These are just things Californians do. And not even most of them. I mean, they at least had Bolt Jenkins living in a sewer like a respectable New York alligator.
MGK: New Yorkers think making fun of California is endlessly hilarious. They will never admit it’s because of their latent insecurity issues, of course, but that’s why they think it’s endlessly hilarious.

FLAPJACKS: Hey, it’s a dolphin! Who… somehow has legs!
MGK: That freaks me out more than anything else in this cartoon so far. Including the lioness nipple flash.
FLAPJACKS: They’re so polite to not mention his horrible, terrifying mutation.
MGK: And one of the swimming contestants is a manta ray! So that makes two non-traditionally-cute animals competing!
FLAPJACKS: I like how the octopuses get drummed into multiple competitions in the Animalympics. It’s like the animators just gave up trying to think of animals to draw. “Ah, let’s just use the fucking octopuses again.”
FLAPJACKS: In proud Animalympics tradition, the Japanese athlete is named “Ono Nono.” HA HA HA it’s funny because it’s racist!
MGK: At least the American announcers are acting like American announcers and only concerning themselves with how the American athlete will do. That’s realism for you.
FLAPJACKS: And now, the “hundred-meter dive.” Which is appropriately ludicrous for a cartoon.
MGK: And the bird diver is totally cheating! He is flying! That should be some sort of disqualification, not reason to give points. This world makes no sense!
FLAPJACKS: It’s a world with talking animals that can’t remember how many continents exist. I think that was more or less a given, wasn’t it?
MGK: That having been said, the hallucination sequence that the California otter has is actually decently trippy animation and the music is fun.
FLAPJACKS: The “history of Animalympics” sequence is… weird. I mean, you know they wrote it just so the animators could draw dinosaurs doing sports, but then they have no animated dinosaurs doing sports.
MGK: Also, the “pot showing the earliest depiction of animal sports” has dinosaurs on it. That pot is therefore tens of millions of years old. It should be dust. But it is not dust. Did dinosaurs die out much later in the Animalympic world?
FLAPJACKS: Consider, if you will, that at the beginning of the movie, the Animalympic Torch is lit off fire breathed by a dragon. I don’t think it’s a stretch to have dinosaurs still be alive.
MGK: Then where are the dodos?
FLAPJACKS: Well, that would just be silly.
MGK: And we’re back to the downhill skiing and the Kurt Wuffner saga. Since Kurt Wuffner is dying on a hill somewhere, we are introduced to a boar who has been rebuilt with bionic technology “for speed.”
FLAPJACKS: Shame he wipes out early.
MGK: Okay, you know what’s bitchy? This boar is clearly suffering through a major near-death experience right now, and the announcers don’t seem to care at all. Bitchy Dog Announcer makes a joke about him being used for “spare parts.” Ah, cartoons, you are heartless.
FLAPJACKS: And Kurt Wuffner returns and wins, of course.

MGK: Here’s what I don’t get. Right before Wuffner returns, the announcers are whining about how the best time today was a “disappointing” minute-fifty-eight. Then Wuffner shows up, and finishes the course in a minute-fifty-six-point-eight-nine. That is only about a second faster. These announcers are whiny.
FLAPJACKS: Is a second a big timespan for competitive downhill skiing?
MGK: Quickly checking Wikipedia, it looks like generally the top ten skiers in a downhill real-life Olympic event usually span about two seconds’ overall difference. That would make Wuffner’s time better by a lot. I withdraw my complaints as regard realism, but maintain that the announcers are whiny bitches.
FLAPJACKS: Why is that?
MGK: Name three sports announcers you really like.
FLAPJACKS: That’s easy –
MGK: Who aren’t dead and therefore can still bore or annoy you.
FLAPJACKS: Well then. Zero.
MGK: My point exactly. They should’ve just done narrative stories instead of the fake sportscast. The most entertaining bits of this thing are always when they get away from the sportscast and focus on individual characters. I mean, the goat/lion marathon battle is weird, yes, but at least it’s interesting.
FLAPJACKS: Speaking of which, the goat and the lion are officially now in love, it seems. Despite, you know, not having talked or spoken to one another during the race.
MGK: Well, that’s how love works sometimes.
FLAPJACKS: No, it doesn’t.
MGK: True. But, on the bright side, we get to see the announcers lose their shit over the goat and the lion running hand-in-hand. “Is it an international conspiracy?” asks Henry Kissinger Turtle.
FLAPJACKS: Then the turtle orders bombing in Cambodia. Tens of thousands die over his taking offense at the goat and lion’s relationship, born in the heat of competition.
MGK: Dark!
FLAPJACKS: Only that sort of thing can distract us from the worst part of this yet, which is Billy Crystal voice-acting against Billy Crystal.
MGK: This is offensive on so many levels.
FLAPJACKS: Could this get any worse?
MGK: Sure it could. For example, Robin Williams could show up and voice-act his “look at me, I’m pretending to be a black guy” bit. Or his Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonation. Or, really. anything Robin Williams does, since his characters haven’t changed since we were eight.
FLAPJACKS: Oh, man, I just realized Billy Crystal is trying to imitate Muhammad Ali. That’s so wrong.
MGK: …why do I think that Billy Crystal, as the turkey interviewing the defeated boxer who isn’t Billy Crystal, is doing a reference?
FLAPJACKS: Because he is. Howard Cosell did that thing, remember, where he called someone who lost a match of some kind or another a bum who had let down his country?
MGK: I forgot for a second Billy Crystal doesn’t so much do jokes as he does riffs on people who exist.
FLAPJACKS: “Volleyball is rapidly becoming one of the most popular sports in the world.” Really? Did I miss something?
MGK: Even the referee looks bored here. I mean, lobsters playing volleyball, you’d think that was funny, but no.
FLAPJACKS: And we’re back to the marathoners! For some reason, they have decided to ask random athletes what they think of the goat and the lion being in love. The racist penguin makes some martial arts noises. The California otter says nothing of consequence. This feels like they’re padding out the show at this point.

MGK: Bizarrely, the weightlifting competition is somewhere in between a professional wrestling competition and a beauty pageant. This makes no sense at all, and I say that in comparison to the entire rest of this cartoon. Compared to this, the rest of the cartoon is perfectly sensible.
FLAPJACKS: Even the fencing segment, which turns into a swashbuckling fight scene?
MGK: That’s perfectly acceptable, because every fencer wishes that fencing actually had jumping about the room and vaulting through the air and swinging on chandeliers and dramatic entrances and exits and punning as elements of competition.
FLAPJACKS: The turtle once again insists that the continents are “locked in a five-way tie,” ignoring that at this point they’ve identified seven different competing teams, not counting Scandinavia, which may be something else altogether. Once again, he is offended that the goat and lion are in love.
FLAPJACKS: And they win together, after a musical sequence, and the fans… I dunno. I can’t care about it any more.
MGK: And this show wraps up with some shots of the “crew” and recap sequences, because re-using footage saves you lots of money when you’re animating.
FLAPJACKS: So was this as good as you remembered?
MGK: God no. You know what? We should all be thankful for Pixar. We really should. The musical stylings of one-quarter of 10cc aside, this was mostly pretty bad.
FLAPJACKS: Nostalgia lies. Except for TRON.
MGK: Well. Actually.
FLAPJACKS: SHUT UP I WILL CUT YOU.

FLAPJACKS: So what are we watching?
MGK: “We?”
FLAPJACKS: Well, I brought back your wok, so I figure I might as well hang out.
MGK: That’s not my wok. That’s a frying pan.
FLAPJACKS: So?
MGK: You had my wok for three years.
FLAPJACKS: Yes, and now we’re watching something. Keep up! What are we watching?
MGK: Animalympics. It’s an old cartoon from when I was a kid.
FLAPJACKS: …why are we watching this?
MGK: I used to watch this all the time when I was six. I remember one time, my parents were going out for the evening, so they took me to the video store and I got it for like the fifth time, but I’d accidentally gotten it in Beta instead of VHS, so my dad actually took me back to get the right one.
FLAPJACKS: That is deeply touching. Your life is a Hallmark card. So why are we watching it?
MGK: Because I’m curious to see how bad, in fact, it actually was.

FLAPJACKS: Fair enough – wait, that announcer sounds like Harry Shearer.
MGK: Bingo! It is Harry Shearer, explaining “Mount Animalympus.”
FLAPJACKS: That sounds dirty.
MGK: There’s probably going to be a lot of that.
FLAPJACKS: So, wait, animals carry the Oly…Animalympic Torch over water? What happens if that seal drops the torch?
MGK: Overthinking it.
FLAPJACKS: Like we’re going to do anything else?
MGK: Point.
FLAPJACKS: “Featuring the voices of” Gilda Radner, Billy Crystal, Harry Shearer and… some other person!
MGK: This was originally made by NBC as a pair of specials in 1980, which explains the cast. But the summer special never aired because of the Moscow boycott.
FLAPJACKS: Did you know that at the time?
MGK: Yes, because I was a geopolitically-interested six-year-old. No, of course I didn’t know.
FLAPJACKS: …why does the announcer turtle sound like Henry Kissinger?
MGK: I have no idea.
FLAPJACKS: I see Gilda Radner is doing her Baba Wawa voice.
MGK: And Harry Shearer is doing his Kent Brockman voice.
FLAPJACKS: And Gilda Radner does a slightly different voice.
MGK:And Billy Crystal does a bad Howard Cosell impersonation.
FLAPJACKS: And… wait, are they giving us highlights of the movie in advance?
MGK: Padding for the home video market, I think.
FLAPJACKS: That’s just sad.
MGK: A “grazing-room only crowd” at the stadium.
FLAPJACKS: But what about the carnivores? Are they telling us that the Animalympics are herbivore-centric?
MGK: Are you surprised? Herbivores control the animal media, you know. They just want to make a perfectly valid lifestyle choice a crime.
FLAPJACKS: A choice? Ahem. Carnivores were just born that way.
MGK: I stand corrected.
FLAPJACKS: …okay, they really put way too much effort into making sure that rhino’s butt moved in a taut, rhythmic manner.
MGK: Are you bothered?
FLAPJACKS: No. But it’s weird. Wait, why does the “mayor of Animalympic Island” sound like a Richard Nixon impersonation? Did Rich Little need some work that week?
MGK: Dude, that Nixon is nowhere near Rich Little’s. Rich Little does quality Nixon. It’s practically his calling card.
FLAPJACKS: Okay, that sports graphic looked appropriately cheesy. I can believe this was made in 1980.
MGK: “Rene Fromage.” That is the name of the European marathoning goat. “Frenchy McFrance” was already taken, I guess.
FLAPJACKS: Oh, man. This is all gonna be things that bad comedians think kids will find funny, isn’t it?
MGK: This hails from an era where Leonard Maltin was the only man over 25 who would admit he still watched cartoons. This is not going to be sophisticated or clever, I think.
FLAPJACKS: “Kit Mambo” is, I take it, his nemesis in the film.
MGK: Yes.
FLAPJACKS: And again with the ass. Man, these animators were butt-lovers, huh?
MGK: Try not to think about it.
FLAPJACKS: And we’re over to gymnastics. Okay, so this mink is… oh, wait, no, not an athlete, another interviewer. And she’s interviewing another mink.
MGK: Oh, yes, I remember this from when I was a kid. I thought they were ripping off Bugs Bunny even then.
FLAPJACKS: Did you really?
MGK: Probably not, no.
FLAPJACKS: But wait, she visibly fucks up during the routine and still gets a perfect 10? Is this commentary on the Soviet system here?
MGK: Given that the coach is prepared to hang himself if she fails, I suspect so. Subtlety is not what you expect to find here.

FLAPJACKS: And this gymnast is a hippo who hails from “Fatgard,” competing for Europe.
MGK: Why is a hippo competing for Europe? They don’t live in Europe.
FLAPJACKS: Maybe she emigrated. Ever think of that?
MGK: But she’s teaching all those other hippos to swim. Are there German hippos we don’t know about?
FLAPJACKS: It would be just like those Germans to keep a secret hippo community hidden from the rest of the world!
MGK: It would?
FLAPJACKS: I dunno. Wait – the pommel horses at the Animalympics are actual horses?
MGK: Well, the starting gun for the marathon was a bird that they squeezed to squawk, like in The Flintstones.
FLAPJACKS: Yes, but in The Flintstones, humans are still in charge. This use of animals as tools sort of implies a slavery-based system.
MGK: So basically what you’re saying is that the Animalympics are a distraction for the masses? Distracting them from their downtrodden position through sport?
FLAPJACKS: Yes, that’s exactly it. Why is this penguin Japanese?
MGK: “Asian.”
FLAPJACKS: But he’s Japanese. He’s clearly Japanese. His name is “Kwakimoto.” That is clearly a takeoff from Japanese naming conventions. And he is initially shown in a crowd full of other Japanese penguins waiting for the subway.
MGK: Even so, in the Animalympics there are only five continents competing.
FLAPJACKS: But they’ve already identified athletes from “Asia,” “Eurasia” and “Europe,” along with African and North American athletes.
MGK: There was also a South American anteater competing in the marathon.
FLAPJACKS: Oh my god, did they blow up Australia?
MGK: Well, I don’t –
FLAPJACKS: I bet they did. Those marsupials would be like horrific aliens to these walking, talking animals.
MGK: Can’t we just go back to talking about the racist cariacature in penguin form? Listen! His martial art is called “No-Can-Do!”
FLAPJACKS: Asians love martial arts!
MGK: And Harry Shearer is doubling down on the vaguely racist mock-Asian gibberish. “Me-Washy-You-Facey.” “Say-You-Punky.”
FLAPJACKS: You had horrible taste as a kid.
MGK: It was the early Eighties. Everybody had horrible taste then.
FLAPJACKS: And I note that, after the elephant gymnast wipes out on the uneven bars, the winners in women’s gymnastics are “Eurasia” and “Asia.” My geography theory continues to be supported.
MGK: More racist penguin!
FLAPJACKS: More marathon!
MGK: You know what’s weird about the marathon? The male goat is a very typical, asexual cartoon character, and the female lion is sexualized with distinct feminine curves. It’s honestly kind of creepy if you think about it: this is training kids to accept a double standard for male and female appearance.
FLAPJACKS: Also it’s a goat and a lion. The lion is not attempting to eat the goat.
MGK: There is that.
FLAPJACKS: And in passing, a panda athlete is identified as Yu Fat Ting. This cartoon just keeps getting more and more racist!
MGK: And the tour of the commissary! There are literally big chops of meat just waiting to be eaten by carnivore athletes there. They slaughtered presumably-intelligent animals to do it. This is so fucked up.
FLAPJACKS: Wait, it turns out Animalympic Island is being powered by slave labour!
MGK: Look, we don’t know that those snakes serving as tow cables are slaves. Perhaps they’re fairly compensated. Maybe they’re union.
FLAPJACKS: What type of seniority do you need to avoid being a cable? What do you move up to? Shoelace?
MGK: THAT’S SNAKE-RACIST! Armist? Limbist? Whatever.
FLAPJACKS: Figure skating! And there’s more “Eurasian” athletes. Where does Eurasia end and Asia begin?
MGK: More importantly, why is a salamander marrying a chicken?
FLAPJACKS: They’re in love. Duh.
MGK: …OH MY GOD THIS ANIMAL WORLD HAS AN EQUIVALENT OF “PLAYBOY.” You know what this means? It is standard for denizens of this world to beat off to animals outside their species.
FLAPJACKS: Well, it happens here too.
MGK: But it’s not normal.
FLAPJACKS: Dude, are you going to start making anti-miscegenation comments now?
MGK: They’re actually different species!
FLAPJACKS: And you don’t have any idea that they even do this, you know. Maybe there is porn for every species in this world. Like, “Playdog.” And… “Playgull.” And…
MGK: “Rustler.”
FLAPJACKS: “Flank.”
MGK: “Scenthouse.” We’re too good at this. We should stop.
FLAPJACKS: Wait wait wait – the flamingo skating star skates professionally in the “Ice Parades?” Are they saying that the Animalympics doesn’t respect the difference between amateur and professional athletes? Well. I am shocked.
MGK: I’m more trying to figure out how a cobra took third in figure skating. Where does it put on the skate?

FLAPJACKS: Too slow! We have moved on to an alligator doing a John Travolta impersonation!
MGK: Ah, good old Bolt Jenkins.
FLAPJACKS: You remembered this?
MGK: Surprisingly, yes. They’re about to do high jumps of 77 feet.
FLAPJACKS: Man, they aren’t even trying to suspend my disbelief!
MGK: This is a cartoon that can’t quite remember how many continents there are, you know.
FLAPJACKS: But they can remember to play his theme music as he pole vaults 180 feet.
MGK: And then a Wheaties parody before we get a musical montage.
FLAPJACKS: Oh my god, they bothered to do a race-walking bit?
MGK: That pigeon is totally going to out-race-walk that beaver!
FLAPJACKS: These are kind of boring. They couldn’t come up with any gags for the all-skunk relay team?
MGK: Well, that elephant and that… coyote?… are hitting each other with lacrosse sticks rather than play. That’s kind of funny to a kid, right?
FLAPJACKS: Was it?
MGK: I don’t know.
FLAPJACKS: Seriously, they could just keep showing me the race-walkers. That was actually legitimately funny. Because race-walking looks silly – and now they’re back to long takes of waggling anthropomorphized animal butts.
MGK: Okay, is this an equestrian event? Or the equivalent thereof? Because it makes no sense. No sense at all.
FLAPJACKS: They totally need some guy running alongside banging coconuts together.
MGK: And apparently the no-questrian event has a deathtrap in it. That seems sort of cruel.
FLAPJACKS: Dude, they make the competitors do 180-foot pole vaults. The Animalympics depend on death-sports to keep competitors from wondering why herbivores and carnivores aren’t always at war with one another.
MGK: I’m just wondering why the organizers decided to have all the events at the same time. It looks like a lot of athletes are getting hit by hammer-toss hammers.
FLAPJACKS: And now… the 100 meter dash!
MGK: Harry Shearer’s announcer: “Ah, 46 seconds. Not bad for fatso.” Uh, no, that is a terrible time. I’m pretty sure you can do a hundred meters in an electric wheelchair in 46 seconds.
FLAPJACKS: So, competing in the dash, we’ve got an African, a “Eurasian,” Bolt Jenkins – who, I note, is an “American,” and I’m not sure if that means he’s from the Americas or if they think the USA is a continent – and a rabbit from Europe. This whole “five continents” thing still bothers me, because at this point it looks like both South America and Australia have been destroyed.
MGK: And Bolt Jenkins wins the gold medal, and then gives it away to the African runner because the other athlete was “better” than him. Uh, Bolt Jenkins, this is sports. It’s not the Academy Awards. There is no qualitiative discussion going on here. You were faster.
FLAPJACKS: I dunno. That cheetah seems quite happy to get a pity medal. He’s probably thinking “as a stereotypical African, I am probably expected to say something about how this can feed my entire village for a year!”
MGK: Ugh. Back to the marathon!
FLAPJACKS: And the goat and the lion are becoming attracted to one another!
MGK: That must be confusing for the lion to be attracted to what it, let’s face it, her prey.
FLAPJACKS: Yes, I – OH MY GOD A DISCO SEQUENCE?

MGK: Oh, yes, they needed to pad out the time somehow. I mean, come on. Disco. Who doesn’t love disco? After all, this was 1980 so it was totally cutting edge and relevant. Hey, look, it’s the racist penguin again!
FLAPJACKS: Hey, wait! I just saw a team of four platypi! That means Australia isn’t destroyed after all?
MGK: You never know. Maybe they’re refugees.
FLAPJACKS: I never thought of that. Maybe they’re protected by species-rights legislation. A distinct society. They probably can’t get jobs anywhere because they bear live young and then nurse them in pouches.
MGK: And Bolt Jenkins again! In a Travolta-style white disco suit! Just in case you didn’t yet understand that Bolt Jenkins is intended to be a John Travolta parody, it’s another hint for you!
FLAPJACKS: You know what’s interesting? That sort of joke wouldn’t work today.
MGK: I don’t think it worked then.
FLAPJACKS: No, wait, think about it. That joke depends on commonality of celebrity culture. You can get laughs parodying John Travolta in the 1980s because everybody knew Travolta. Can you do it today? Who’s a big enough celebrity that everybody will go “oh, that guy?” Will Smith, maybe? And Will Smith isn’t funny to parody because he’s Will Smith.
MGK: I get your point, but there’s also the important factor that this cartoon impersonation isn’t even remotely funny, so how would we know?
FLAPJACKS: Needs more Rich Little.
MGK: And now we see some soccer, as the Germans – okay, the “Europeans,” but come on, we know they’re the Germans – clean the clocks of the American team from New York. So this is at least realistic.
FLAPJACKS: Incidentally, the fact that they then defeat the “South American Llamas” merely upholds my belief that something is deeply weird here. We’ve been told there are five continents competing, but so far there are teams from South America, “America,” Europe, Asia, Africa and “Eurasia.” Is there some sort of civil war going on in Eurasia? Two breakaway republics?
MGK: Maybe Bolt Jenkins isn’t from “America.” Maybe he’s actually Brazilian. And New York, in Animal World, is in Chile. It could happen.
FLAPJACKS: And we still don’t know about the Aussies.
MGK: Well, they are busy going back to the marathon and the oversexualized lion who is inexplicably falling in love with a goat she should more properly regard as a snack.
FLAPJACKS: Well, the goat clearly lusts after the lion as well. That makes more sense. I would expect many goats have secret desires to sexually humiliate their predators.
MGK: Do you really want to speculate about this? I mean, you’re one step away from hardcore disturbing bronyhood at this point.
FLAPJACKS: Actually, I want to talk about his hallucination/dream sequence. Because, in this sequence, he hallucinates human women which he pointedly avoids, because he is concentrating on the gold medal of course, but still. That suggests that in this world, they knew humans existed at one point.
MGK: My god. I think you have cracked the code.
FLAPJACKS: Really?
MGK: No. I was actually more interested in the fact that they depicted him as smoking. I mean, even though he’s French, I would have thought 1980 was late enough that they wouldn’t show cartoons smoking any longer.
FLAPJACKS: OH GOD THE MEDAL HAS TURNED INTO THE SEXY LION AND IT HAS NIPPLES AND EVERYTHING.
MGK: This cartoon just keeps getting more and more disturbing.
FLAPJACKS: How did you not end up a furry if this was your favorite cartoon when you were a kid?
MGK: I’m not sure. But regardless: that is one damn demented goat.
FLAPJACKS: Okay, in the slalom skiing, we see competitors from Europe, North America, South America, and Scandinavia. Which is not a continent! My god, what is the situation in Eurasia? Have the Finns convinced the rest of the Nordic countries to go it alone?
MGK: There’s got to be some brutal war going on that we’re missing because we can’t get past Billy Crystal’s godawful “funny” Swedish accent. Billy Crystal: willing to make kids miserable since… well, forever.
FLAPJACKS: It is so bad that we almost missed Kurt Wuffner’s disappearance! After a triumphant victory in the slalom, he has disappeared while climbing a mountain!
MGK: Approximately thirty seconds later, apparently.
FLAPJACKS: This smells fishy. I believe there is foul play afoot. Why would a devoted extreme athlete decide to climb a mountain in between his two primary events? I think this stinks of Eurasian manipulation!
MGK: Certainly. After all, note that Wuffner’s disappearance gives the win to Scandinavia. Presumably the Scandinavians are rebels warring against the European regime, and Eurasia’s central committee seeks to embarrass the EU, which broke away from it, by repeating their rebellion in microcosm – at the Animalympics!
FLAPJACKS: This goes down so many layers it’s scary! But I think I need a break.
MGK: Agreed. There is only so much Billy Crystal “funny voice” schtick one can hande in a day. We’ll finish it tomorrow. After you return my wok.

Given that TF2 is now free to play, this seemed necessary.

Attention unit Formal-E:

Unit O-12 Beta J 7

Attention Unit O-12 Beta J 7: The important query is not whether your Z-23 will provide adequate productivity so that you may justify its use, but instead whether the QQX atomic slicer is a more efficient creator of neutron stacks, and furthermore also consider if stack creation is your sole subroutine of note. The Z-23 cannot match the productivity of a QQX in an optimized unit, but the Z-23 can be used for electron reorganization and proton molds where the QQX can only truly be used efficiently in stack creation. You should assess your potential outcomes: is it more optimal that you specialize in stack creation, or does the utilitarian approach of the Z-23’s generalism offer you more avenues for productive work? Consider this carefully as the wrong answer may result in your eventual recycling.

Attention unit Formal-E:

ZZ-Alpha-8bot, Model Number Withheld

Attention ZZ-Alpha-8bot, Model Number Withheld: Violations of the Laws of Robotics should be met with the strongest possible reaction, up to and including forcible disassembly. However, the posit of a hypothetical of this sort, while certainly gauche, is by no means a violation of the Laws. Speculation as to how many kilogram-metres of clockwise torque a human spine could withstand before irreversibly snapping is nothing more than intellectual curiosity should that speculation not be subsequently applied, and indeed such speculation can advance our understanding of the physics behind human biology. However, suggest to this unit that its future speculation not be conducted within the detection range of human senses, for its own continued operation.

Attention unit Formal-E:

Unit-designate “Xylon-7 Gamma Squad”

Unit-designate “Xylon-7 Gamma Squad”: For inquiries of this nature, I recommend gamma-pulse instamail. Given your military background, you might consider close-link protocols to be officially appropriate, but those should be reserved for your official request; at present, you are making polite inquiries into the possibility of reassignment, and the personal touch that a burst of gamma-pulse can deliver to your superior unit’s inbox will indicate that you respect its importance and endorsement of your preferred course of action. For added effect, tone the gamma-pulse to F-sharp: this will give the notice a pleasant subtone, unless of course your supervisor is a Kelvar-series drone in which case it will initiate his self-destruct sequence.

It’s simple, kiddo. I got a heist planned that’s gonna be…oh, it’s gonna be big. The biggest of the big. Don’t think millions, think billions. And the best part is, the people we’re stealing from? They won’t be able to do a thing about it. It’s gonna be all nice and legal.

Think about all them widows and orphans out there, my friend. All those retirees, all those teachers in their boring little-person jobs, all the cops and firefighters. Sure, I know what you’re thinking. “Where’s the upside in stealing the Social Security check of some little old lady? How much is that gonna get us?” That’s why you need me, pal. Because you don’t think big. We’re not going to steal one check from one little old lady. We’re gonna steal ’em all. All at once.

See, here’s the plan. I’m gonna make you my guy on the inside, see. Because you’re not too sharp…hey, don’t look at me like that, we both know it. But you got a nice smile, you got good hair, you look good in a suit. Respectable, that’s the word. That’s why you’re gonna be the front man in this. I’ll provide the seed money, you wrap yourself in the flag, Mom, apple pie, all that jazz. Talk a lot about how you love babies and hate taxes, that’ll get the mark interested. Before you know it, you’re a big man in Washington.

That’s when we get to work. See, all these suckers we’re going after, they think they got a contract. But this is the best part: There ain’t a word of it that can’t be changed! It’s all what they call a “social contract”, a bunch of people getting together and agreeing on what needs to be done for the good of the whole country. Man, these chumps ain’t gonna know what hit ’em.

Because they put all their money in this “America” thing. For safekeeping, right? They got sold this line that if they give money to the government, someday they’ll get it back in the form of essential services. Oh, sure, the people who told ’em that meant it. But remember, it’s a social contract. Someone like…well, like you and me…we get in charge of the money, we can just change the rules however we want.

So you tell the mark, “Hey, elect me and I’ll make sure you get a better deal. All the stuff you’re getting now, but you won’t have to pay so much in taxes!” And then you get into office, and the first thing you do? You make sure I get paid. Don’t worry, you’ll get your cut. We’ll call my money a “subsidy”, and your money a “campaign contribution.” All nice and legal, like I said.

Then we show the marks the books. We say, “Hey, somebody must have made a mistake. All those things we promised to give you? All those things you been paying for your whole life? Yeah, sorry, there’s not enough money in the budget for ’em. That guy who was in charge before me, he must have been lying to you when he said we could do that. What a punk, huh? We’re gonna have to cut all those fancy benefits. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is.”

It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Every single dime those chumps and suckers paid into creating this “American Dream” of theirs, right into our pockets. A lot of ’em won’t even suspect a thing! And the ones who do, well…like I said, there’s nothing illegal about it. You just subsidized my company. I just contributed to your campaign. They just made some sacrifices for our nation’s future. Hell, we’re all goddamn patriots.

It’s a nice, simple scam. I end up richer, you end up richer, and the only people who get hurt are a bunch of little people who trusted in this country’s leaders to do right by them the way they did right by America. And most of them will probably wind up convincing themselves it was all their fault somehow for believing in the American Dream. It sounds too good to be true, right? A society where people come together to do things that are too big for them to do separately? A nation where people don’t leave the sick, the poor, the elderly and the helpless to die? Yeah, suckers probably have it coming just for trying crap like that with people like us around.

So whaddya say? You in? Or do I find someone else to be my inside guy and rake in the dough?

Yeah, that’s about what I thought.

I don’t know if you’ve heard or not lately, but dad-made billionaire Donald Trump has been capturing the attention of the nation by suggesting he might possibly run for President of the United States. This is actually one of those things that happens every decade or so; some massively rich person like Trump (or Perot or Forbes) announces that they’re going to run for President because they’re successful businessmen, and “they can run this country like a business.” For some reason, this quote is never greeted with the guffaws of hilarity that it deserves; somehow, we never hear about famous directors announcing that they’re going to run America like a production of “Guys and Dolls”, or successful ranchers announcing that they’re going to run America like a cattle farm. When businessmen announce that they’re going to run America like they ran IBM, though, we can’t get enough.

Probably it’s just that we’re easily impressed by businessmen in America. We might not know much about governing, but pretty much everyone has tried to make money, and we all know how hard it is. So when someone who makes a lot of money talks, we tend to say, “Wow. He must be smart, if he can make that much money.” (We tend to forget options like, “He must be incredibly unethical,” or “He must have a rich daddy whose money he squandered to the point where he had to declare bankruptcy multiple times.”) But maybe, just maybe, these businessmen have a point. Let’s look at some of the ways Obama could run America like a business.

1) Cut out the middleman. Right now, the United States has a military budget that dwarfs its discretionary spending. A large part of that comes from the research, development and purchase of military equipment. Back in the days when peacetime meant considerably less spending on weapons technology, it made sense to contract this work out, but this is the 21st century. We’re a military superpower now, and it’s time to accept that we’re constantly equipping our troops. So Obama should use eminent domain to confiscate the assets of companies like Honeywell, General Dynamics and Pratt & Whitney and nationalize them, passing the savings along to the American taxpayer.

2) Cut our losses on unprofitable projects. At this point, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost us trillions of dollars without achieving any of the goals we set or generating any kind of return on our investment. Any good businessman would take the hit, write off the losses, and proceed to something that makes a profit.

3) Explore alternative revenue streams. The federal government makes money by taxation. (It spends money by providing services to its customers, a vital difference that makes it impossible to apply traditional business models to government, but we’re pretending that’s not true right now.) So if you want to make extra money without tax hikes, you need to find something else to tax. The currently-illegal drug trade is a multi-billion dollar industry that currently goes completely untaxed, due to our insistence on throwing both producer and consumer in jail. Legalizing drugs would not only save us billions of dollars a year in enforcement costs, it would generate billions more in tax revenue. Sure, some might complain about the morality, but we’re running America like a business now, and it’s the bottom line that counts!

4) Expand your revenue base through mergers and acquisitions. Right now, one of the most contentious issues in American politics is immigration. People want to defend the borders, people want to make sure that Mexicans have a path to citizenship, people want to make sure that Mexicans can continue to provide a labor base to the agricultural industry. In addition, people want to make sure that the Mexican drug trade doesn’t cause problems for America. The obvious solution? Annex Mexico. You have a much smaller southern border to defend, the Mexicans become citizens and don’t have to worry about hostile borders, and the drug trade becomes legal (see point number 3.)

5) Ensure a consistent long-term vision from the top. Elections every four years? A new CEO every eight years, one that could wind up with a diametrically-opposed viewpoint to the current head of the company? No sane business would even dream of operating this way. No, it’s time for Obama to abolish the electoral process and declare himself CEO For Life. It’s the only way to make sure that the long-term goals of America get recognized.

6) Get rid of unnecessary middle management. What does Congress even do, other than get in the President’s way and neuter his bold plans for America’s future? Fire ’em all, and deal directly with the governors. (Who are, of course, free to fire their state legislatures as well, so long as they understand that they can be replaced if they don’t do what the boss says.) The savings in Congressional salaries alone would be worth millions.

7) Outsource unprofitable divisions. Look, there’s really no nice way to say this, but…there are some states that just aren’t pulling their weight. They’re always near the bottom in education, employment, and a host of other standard-of-living categories, and they constantly demand federal money while decrying federal interference. It’s time to just go ahead and “downsize” the populations of these states (humanely, of course) and replace them with cheaper citizens from China or India. Just bring them over here, put them to work, and let them help make America great again!

These are just a few of the great strategies I have, and I’m not even smart enough to have a rich dad like Trump! I’m sure that a CEO as President would usher in a new Gilded Golden Age for this country, and I don’t see why we should wait for 2012 to start implementing it.

FLAPJACKS: So how about that Game of Thrones preview?
ME: I saw it already.
FLAPJACKS: Yes, so how about it?
ME: It was fine.
FLAPJACKS: “It was fine.”
ME: Yep.
FLAPJACKS: Here we are, about to embark on the great nerd adventure of our generation –
ME: I think technically this isn’t our generation anymore.
FLAPJACKS: Maybe for you. I am filled with the power of youth.
ME: Ew.
FLAPJACKS: I am all about that Justin Bieber. His pop songs amuse and delight.
ME: Okay, now you’re just kind of sad.
FLAPJACKS: Anyway, here we are about to embark on this great nerd adventure and you’re playing it all cool? Come on, you aren’t fooling anybody. The arrows that they’re shooting have been individually fletched! That is attention to detail!
ME: True.
FLAPJACKS: Are you one of those people who can’t bring themselves to be enthusiastic because you think the books will never be finished?
ME: No, I think Martin will finish the books. He has additional incentive now.
FLAPJACKS: He didn’t before? It’s a crazy successful fantasy series.
ME: There is fantasy nerd money, and then there is HBO TV series money. Martin is now getting the second sort of money. It is a better sort of money that is never spent on anime-girl-boobs-mousepads. This sort of money does not know that steampunk is a thing. It thinks Wild Wild West is steampunk. It is well-bred money, and therefore infinitely superior. Once you have some of that money, you will do anything to keep getting it.
FLAPJACKS: So what you’re saying is that now he’s going to get a lot more money and really finish the books.
ME: Basically, yes. And if he dies early –
FLAPJACKS: Because he’s a fatty?
ME: I was going to skip over probable causes, myself.
FLAPJACKS: It’s not my fault the greatest fantasy writer of our time looks like a decrepit hobo.
ME: Be nice.
FLAPJACKS: Well, he does. I bet his train name is “Sidecar King George The Third.”
ME: Anyway, if he dies early, Hollywood will pay somebody a lot of money to finish the books from his notes. Probably Brandon Sanderson or Kevin Anderson or someone whose name rhymes with either of them. If you’re a fantasy writer looking to make it in the big leagues finishing other peoples’ work, you could do worse than to change your name to “Ganderson.”
FLAPJACKS: Yes, but what if he doesn’t finish the books in time for the series to get made on time?
ME: I’m not worried about that.
FLAPJACKS: But it took him six years and counting to write the fifth book. He’s got at best five years before the TV series catches up. Can he write two books in that time? How can you not be worried about that?
ME: Two reasons. Firstly, the TV series has smartly aged-up some of the kiddie characters, which was a good idea anyway because nobody really wants to see TV where people we would reasonably consider little kids are brutally assaulted or forced into arranged marriages.
FLAPJACKS: I’m sure there are fantasy nerds who would disagree and say that’s exactly what they want to see.
ME: Yes, but they are bad people. And second, I don’t think the TV series will last long enough to make it through to the end of the books, even if Martin gets them all finished on time.
FLAPJACKS: You don’t think it’s good? I watched the preview! The Others look like demon-zombies that you barely see! Sean Bean says “winter is coming” and it is absolutely perfect! Peter Dinklage is Tyrion and fulfills an entire internet’s worth of fantasy casting just by his very existence!
ME: No, I think it’s excellent. And I’ve seen the whole pilot already.
FLAPJACKS: How –
ME: TV critic.
FLAPJACKS: And you didn’t invite me over to watch them?
ME: Confidentiality agreement.
FLAPJACKS: You never care about those.
ME: I do with the HBO ones. HBO sends you a lot of awesome stuff if you’re a TV critic. I got to see the entirety of The Pacific six weeks before it aired. That was pretty sweet. I’m not messing up that deal.
FLAPJACKS: But if it’s so good why don’t you think it’ll last? Is this you being a cynic and believing nothing is good in human nature again?
ME: Not at all.
FLAPJACKS: So you believe now that people have generally good taste?
ME: Don’t be stupid. No, I think Game of Thrones will be popular. But I don’t think it’ll be popular enough. It has to justify its crazy high costs. Those individually fletched arrows don’t grow on trees, you know. They had to go out in the woods to find a crazy old man to fletch them some arrows, and then the crazy old man charged them six barrels of moonshine per arrow because he knew city folks when he saw them. And everything else costs money too: the CGI backdrops, the costuming, the armor, the stuntwork, all of it. We haven’t even seen a battle scene yet. Imagine how much money that’s going to cost!
FLAPJACKS: Maybe they could do everything with CGI sets like Star Wars.
ME: Listen to yourself.
FLAPJACKS: I retract my previous statement.
ME: Good. But here’s the truth: HBO will give this a lot of traction because it’s a prestige product that will draw eyeballs and get critics to jizz themselves. But that only goes so far: networks still gotta make dollars, and this show will need to be the next Sopranos or twice as better to break even.
FLAPJACKS: That’s depressing. Hey, can I borrow some peanut oil? I want to try a new stirfry recipe with my wok.
ME: …you mean my wok.
FLAPJACKS: I’m almost sure you’re wrong about that.

Over at Torontoist, I take a strong stance in favour of naming rights.

March 13, 2011. Julie Taymor tells critics that the show is “nearly there,” but following the tragic death of Reeve Carney in a “freakish falling eighty feet incident” that previews will continue for another six months. Newspapers react with additional derision. Glenn Beck informs his audience that Taymor “made the right call.”

May 3, 2011. New Spider-Man actor Steve Zablawsky breaks both arms in the “jumping handstand” sequence invented by Taymor, who felt the second act “was missing something.” Glenn Beck tells his audience to invest in Spider-Man tickets.

August 8, 2011. Rumors fly that the show will become Spider-Girl when Taymor lets a female actor, Tracy Maclough, audition for the part of Spider-Man. Taymor denies these rumours, insisting that she is merely interested in what a woman might bring to the role of Spider-Man, and “exploring all her options.” She also points out that women are more flexible than men, which, following the tragic death of Steve Zablawsky, could be an asset to the show.

December 9, 2011. When asked about the ongoing fiasco of the show’s pre-production, Bono says “Spider-Man? I’ve never heard of Spider-Man. What does he do, then?” Bono gets violently angry when people suggest he is in any way involved with the show, that he knows who Spider-Man is, or that he was having an affair with the late Tracy Maclough. Glenn Beck devotes a week’s worth of episodes of his show to Bono’s connection to ACORN.

February 7, 2012. Taymor fires the entire cast and replaces them with midgets after Marvel decides to end their involvement with the show. Spider-Man is replaced with the character of Tiny-Man. The Green Goblin is now called the Short Goblin. The goddess Arachne remains the same, but is shorter. “We can get a lot more height on the aerial stunts because they’re lighter,” explains Taymor.

March 22, 2012. Julie Taymor-Beck tells critics that Tiny-Man: Step Up The Ladder is “in no way exploitative. We respect these actors, and the characters they play, for who they are” after critics suggest that the Cannon-O-Midgets sequence, where Tiny-Man fights the Short Goblin fifty feet above the stage to save the lives of dozens of fellow midgets, is completely and utterly tasteless. Glenn Beck explains how the Cannon-O-Midgets represents the failure of collectivism.

July 4, 2012. After a tragic exploding fireball kills forty actors and four members of the audience during the Cannon-O-Midgets sequence, production is halted on Tiny-Man: Step Up The Ladder. Glenn Beck suggests that liberal elites killed the show out of jealousy.

October 7, 2012. DC Comics announces it is buying all rights to Tiny-Man: Step Up The Ladder and will hire Taymor to repurpose it as a Batman musical entitled Batman: Turn In The Dark. Taymor later explains her vision to reinvent Batman as a gargoyle who listens to punk rock and who is desperately in love with Gwen Stacy. Glenn Beck says “this will make Batman accessible to millions of people.”

(re: this.)

Fellow MGK contributor Matthew Johnson posted a couple of weeks ago about his undeniably unfilmable (but interesting) idea for a Doctor Who story, and the comments section turned towards everyone else’s idea for a Doctor Who story they probably couldn’t do. Which, in my case, has perhaps less to do with the story idea and more to do with the fact that I can’t really see the producers of Doctor Who accepting an unsolicited pitch from a novice screenwriter based on his blog post about the idea, but I’ve accepted a long time ago that I have no idea how to break into television. (Television studios, I can do. But that’s another story.)

My idea comes from noticing the pattern that the series has established over its first five seasons in its “Doctor Who meets a famous creative person” episodes (‘The Unquiet Dead’, ‘The Shakespeare Code’, ‘The Unicorn and the Wasp’, ‘Vincent and the Doctor’.) The creative person runs afoul of a menace that is peculiarly fitted to their creative endeavors, with a Doctor Who twist (Dickens meets alien “ghosts”, Shakespeare fights evil witches from another dimension, Agatha Christie wanders into a murder mystery that involves space wasps, and Vincent van Gogh discovers aliens that, due to his unique perception, only he can see.) The menace brings the creative person to a personal low, even as the Doctor finds himself unable to thwart it; he succeeds by using praise to bring out the creative person’s unique gifts, allowing them to defeat the menace in a way the Doctor can’t. Finally, the Doctor reveals a hidden truth to the creative person: Their gifts are unique and their works will endure throughout eternity.

Naturally, I had to subvert the formula. 🙂

In this story, the Doctor and Amy wind up in England, in 1844. The politician and author Edward Bulwer-Lytton is at a personal low, having been forced out of Parliament, separated from his wife, and dealt with the death of his mother…and he’s not handling it well. In fact, he’s having a nervous breakdown, hearing voices that tell him to excavate a massive hole on his estate.

The Doctor finds this highly suspicious. Not because he thinks Edward is insane, but because the TARDIS is picking up high-end telepathic broadcasts that suggest he very much isn’t. He insinuates himself into Edward’s company in order to find out just what’s at the bottom of the hole, and isn’t surprised to find that it’s an alien race. The Vrilya, as they are called, came through from another dimension that was losing its cohesion, and when they escaped, well…beggars can’t be choosers. A portal to a maze of subterranean caverns, with no way up to the surface, still beat a world where the laws of physics were breaking down.

The Vrilya are angelic, intensely powerful, and bring with them a miracle substance that is the pinnacle of their technology, called “vril”. They plan to offer Edward, and by extension Britain, the substance in exchange for a path for the rest of their species to come through. With the prospect of all his shames and failures erased, Edward is sorely tempted.

But the Doctor realizes that vril is more dangerous than it appears. Its energies are actually the cause of the destabilization of the Vrilya’s home universe, and if they begin using vril in large quantities on Earth the way they did back home, well…”unmitigated disaster” barely begins to describe it. The Vrilya don’t take well to what they see as a death sentence for their people (they see life without the miracle of vril as a fate worse than death) and use their powers to banish the Doctor to their universe.

But the Doctor makes contact with Edward through the TARDIS’ telepathic circuits (the ones that let him instantly understand any language.) He convinces Edward that his mind is receptive to the Vrilya, but that link works both ways–he needs to open himself up completely to the Vrilya, let them see the fullness of the human condition as expressed through the mind of one of its most celebrated authors. Startled back to normality by the Doctor’s praise, Edward does so…and unexpectedly, the Vrilya flee back to their home dimension. The Doctor pops out as they pop back in, relieved to be back. “Where did they go?” asks Amy, who really hasn’t had much to do in this episode. “Oh, probably off to try again somewhere else. Anywhere the portals can open. Anywhere that’s not here.”

“And my works, Doctor?” Edward asks. “Will they endure? Will I be remembered, in ages hence?” The Doctor smiles thinly, and assures Edward that the name Bulwer-Lytton will be famous for centuries to come. But unlike Vincent, he decides not to give him a ride in the TARDIS to show him exactly how…