Under our current age of Trump, it’s frankly stranger when the federal government doesn’t do something completely unproductive. The latest bit of pointlessness? The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has switched back to using the name “monkeypox”—an outdated label for the disease mpox.
NPR was the first to report on the name switchback, which appears to have been implemented sometime in the last month. Nearly three years ago, virologists pushed for monkeypox to be retired, both for being potentially stigmatizing and factually inaccurate, since monkeys aren’t the primary hosts of the virus in the wild. HHS confirmed the switch to Gizmodo but offered no elaboration as to why it did so.
Why the change?
In November 2022, the World Health Organization officially adopted the label “mpox” to describe the viral disease, following a concerted effort by relevant experts and scientists to retire “monkeypox.” This name was quickly reaffirmed by many health organizations and countries, including the U.S.
The reasoning was twofold. One, though humans first discovered monkeypox in a group of lab monkeys in the 1950s, we now know that rodents are its predominant animal hosts. Since 2022, the disease has also spread widely between people, causing outbreaks across the globe—another sign of monkeypox’s outdatedness. Though outbreaks have generally lessened in most parts of the world, the disease still causes large surges of illness to this day.
Secondly, many scientists noted the harmful racial and ethnic connotations of the name. People have long used “monkey” as a racist shorthand for Black or African people, and some have cast monkeypox as strictly an “African” disease (mpox is still most prevalent in parts of Africa, but the global outbreak has clearly illustrated that it doesn’t respect borders).
Boghuma Titanji, a virus researcher at Emory University originally from Cameroon, recounted to NPR how her attempts to share information about the mpox outbreaks in 2022 quickly led to a pile-on from racist trolls on social media. “Likening me to a monkey, asking me to go back to Africa, where people have sex with monkeys, and being someone who defends gay sex with monkeys. Those were some of the really, really dark messages that I got in my inbox,” she told NPR.
What’s in a name?
There is, admittedly, some room for confusion here.
As it turns out, different organizations are responsible for naming a virus as opposed to the disease it causes. And while most experts and health agencies defer to the WHO’s guidance for a disease’s name, it’s the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) that decides the formal name of the virus.
Right around the same time that WHO was considering a name change, the ICTV stated that it would not drastically change its labeling of the virus behind mpox. Though the group has been updating its classification of many virus groups lately, it ultimately only added a broader label in front to illustrate its closeness to other similar pox viruses. So its official species name is now Orthopoxvirus monkeypox (if it’s any consolation, many scientists have complained about the ICTV’s virus name updating for other reasons).
It’s this distinction that HHS may be hanging its hat on in order to support the name switch. An HHS spokesperson told Gizmodo, “Monkeypox is the name of the viral disease caused by the monkeypox virus.”
To be clear, though, that’s not accurate. Or at least, monkeypox isn’t the name that most every other health agency around the world now uses for the viral disease caused by the monkeypox virus; that’s mpox. That long list also currently includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, since the agency (part of HHS) is still using mpox on its webpage about the disease. Since the last update of that page occurred in April 2025, though, it’s probably only a matter of time before that changes as well.
As for why the federal government is doing this, who honestly knows? Trump and other members of his administration have made it clear that they despise the WHO, to the point of stripping away the funding the U.S. has historically provided to the agency. But that doesn’t really explain why the change is happening now. For all we know, someone got in Trump’s or Health Secretary RFK Jr.’s ear last month and scared them into thinking “mpox” is too woke a term for the U.S. to endorse.
What we can say for sure is how utterly pointless any of this is.
If you were anywhere within 10 feet of a Wi-Fi connection this week, you may have come across the still image of what appeared to be an unstacked Italian nesting doll of dimples and unconventional shoe choices on the Tonight Show couch of Jimmy Fallon (who was wearing extremely conventional shoes under his desk, I’m sure). What you may or may not have known is that the bodies attached to those shoes belonged to three mega-viral TikTok stars—who are, in fact and importantly, all Italian.
Todd Owyoung/NBC
This image, and the interview that went along with it, ripped through the internet like a Costco pizza cutter. First, there was Fallon’s response to his guests, two of whom were children, which ranged from occasional bemusement to borderline tolerance to complete derision for the antics of the TikTok act he had booked on his show. More importantly, there were the optics: Fallon appeared to be hosting the call sheet for a multi-timeline show about a Batman villain. But the final reveal for the uninitiated, which happened entirely post-airing, was what took this piece of the historical record over the edge of virality: This adult man and the two children next to him … who look like the Animorphs book cover of a very specific Italian male species … were not all related.
The large- and medium-sized gentlemen with the eyes of a husky and the vocal cords of the Cookie Monster and Donald Duck, respectively, are the Costco Guys, a.k.a. AJ Befumo and Big Justice, who are obsessed with two things: bulk shopping and going viral. The littlest one to their left, however, was a little more of a mystery to new audiences. First, there was his vibe: quiet, considering, frequently unsmiling, but seemingly there for a pleasant time. Then there were his shoes: neon green, in constant motion, jutting out horizontally from his body, without so much as a suggestion that they’d ever touch the floor. Because he is a child, you see—even despite immediately establishing himself as a person (a person with the distinct aura of a wise and magical toad, but a person nonetheless) deserving of the utmost respect. He somehow seemed like AJ and Big Justice’s elder and Fallon’s boss. He’s 3 feet tall, 8 years old, and probably learning how to subtract in a third grade classroom as you read this. And his name? Is the Rizzler.
If you knew none of this, then congratulations—your algorithm is built different. If you knew any of this before the Rizzler started proliferating through social media at large following the Fallon segment, then you are probably a straight white man. The Rizzler may not be related to the people he makes viral videos with, but he certainly has cultural cousins: Hawk Tuah, Baby Gronk, Theo Von. These are words and names that could kill a Victorian child, but words that I know nonetheless. You could call the Rizzler the human Moo Deng … and you could also call him the baby from Dinosaurs. But if you think you’ll make it far on the internet without calling him the Rizzler—you are wrong.
Yes, visually and spiritually, he’s like if Grogu knew meatball subs existed, but culturally, the Rizzler’s whole bit—other than eating things with two guys who are, again, not related to him—is that he is a child who demands respect. When Fallon asks him to do “the Rizz face” (more on that later), he obliges, I believe, out of the goodness of his heart, and not because he’s a dancing monkey. He does the big booms with AJ and Big Justice because he supports his friends’ ambitions, not because he’s a clown. He offers up that he likes chocolate-covered raisins when Fallon strangely yells at Big Justice, “THEY’RE GOOD FOR YOU!” after Big Justice—a kid—complains about raisins as a Halloween treat. The Rizzler is the head of families he doesn’t even hail from. The Rizzler is an aura bomb, wrapped up in charisma and comic timing, who looks like a Squishmallow and smells like pastrami, but in a good way.
Or that’s what TikTok would tell you when there aren’t enough reverent words in the English language with which to praise the Rizzler (government name: Christian Joseph). Trying to convey this to a Tonight Show audience who thought they might be seeing Zendaya or Ryan Gosling, or even that young “Brat” woman they’ve been hearing so much about, is a Herculean task that no one at TheTonight Show even attempted. When an internet trend hits the harsh, NBC-studio-scented air of the real world, it’s like seeing a teacher at the mall. Or maybe it’s more like seeing the school mascot at the principal’s desk. Something doesn’t quite feel right, and suddenly everyone is asking questions like “Who got fur in the coffee maker?” and “Why are Jimmy Fallon’s ears bleeding like that?” and “What’s a Rizzler?”
On the latter, at least, I can help. No small being has sparked this much curiosity with so few answers since your mom started asking you what Moo Deng was. And I’m certainly not trying to pit round things against each other—that’s billiards, and this is actually bigger than that. Because nothing produces more questions and anxiety over where we are as a culture than when the lawless, lore-driven celebrities of social media meet the tidy, media-trained couches of late night television. So for those just catching up, allow me to answer your questions about how the Rizzler got there (other than, again, by possibly being a magically materializing toad). Let’s start with the obvious and most frequently asked question about the Costco Guys and the Rizzler …
Why doesn’t the big one simply eat the smaller ones to grow stronger and defeat Jimmy Fallon?
Great question with a not so simple answer: In joining forces, AJ, Big Justice, and the Rizzler have created a viral ecosystem that simply doesn’t work without all of the biotic and abiotic components working in unison. Less scientifically speaking, these three are the holy trinity of BroTok. AJ is God, Big Justice is Jesus Chrst, and the Rizzler is the Holy Spirit that keeps us intrinsically connected to them all.
AJ, love him or tolerate him, has been trying to go viral or get famous—whichever comes first—since Big Justice was in “larval form,” to quote a TikTok comment lost to time. Before he started vlogging about his family on social media, AJ was a semiprofessional wrestler who went by “American Power Child, Eric Justice.” But he was also, like … making parody songs and putting Big Justice in his “backbling” (a Baby Bjorn, goodness, this lore is deep) to go shopping. Until something finally stuck: Costco. In March, AJ and Big Justice went mega-viral (56.7 million views and counting) for their “We’re Costco Guys” video, and eight months later, they have more than 2 million TikTok followers and their very own Beans (which is to say, an unrelated minor who maybe lives with them).
The Rizzler is simply a funny kid who seems to like doing characters and bits. It’s a tale as old as time, but whereas I pretended I was a puppy dog for, like, my entire fourth year of life and nothing happened but my parents getting annoyed, the Rizzler went viral precisely this time last year for fully embodying his Black Panther Halloween costume: “Just because I’m Black Panther doesn’t mean I’m going up a ladder! Mommy said it’s dangerous.” As legend goes, Big Justice saw this video and wanted to meet the Rizzler, so he traveled with AJ to New Jersey—shockingly, the Costco Guys are not from New Jersey, but Boca Raton, Florida—and the rest was history …
But realistically, the degree to which AJ was like, “OK, and what if I just got an even smaller guy”and recruited the Rizzler to start making content like he was related to them—something many fans still don’t even realize—is kind of unreal. AJ knew what women decorating homes have always known: Getting the tinier version of something normal-sized is simply more fun. I like tiny bowls because I can put even tinier things in them. And I like the Rizzler because he’s a tiny Big Justice, who is a tiny AJ, and there’s no verifiable proof that they didn’t find an industrial-sized vat of the Substance at Costco that made this all possible.
But where did the Rizzler get his name? The other day I heard the words “sticking out your gyat for the rizzler” floating from underneath my 13-year-old’s door. Are these two things related?
Sort of. But also, gross!
The easiest way to put it is that “rizz” is Gen Alpha slang for “charisma,” and a rizzler is someone who has it in spades. I’ll explain “gyat” just because we’re here, and so you can get your kid to stop listening to that song (but it will never leave your head again, I’m so sorry, it’s like the video from The Ring, you just have to pass it on now). Gyat stands for “girl your ass thick” and is basically a replacement word for “a woman’s butt,” so to stick out your gyat for the rizzler is to show off your behind to attract a charismatic gentleman …
I don’t want you to talk like this, OK? But you need to know that there are people talking like this, and they are mostly under 5 feet tall, and we need to be able to talk to them! We also need to speak this language to understand that, in a matter of months and with a handful of viral videos, this 8-year-old boy went from being a rizzler to being the Rizzler. According to the lore, the Rizzler’s friends started calling him the name before he even knew what it meant, and he started making the face that’s made him famous—“mewing,” as the kids say, or “Chad face,” as the slightly older kids say—even before that.
If you were paying close enough attention, you may have noticed that on The Tonight Show, the Rizzler taught Fallon and the Roots how to do the eyebrow raise and lip pursing—but not the signature cheek stroke. Some things are simply proprietary.
What we all need to understand is that generational talents used to debut on the Disney Channel with a show about being a tween private investigator who has a medical condition that gives them a wolf’s sense of smell. Now those little talents are on TikTok. The idea that they can all make it to The Tonight Show one way or another is as concerning and alarming (for us) and exciting (for the Rizzler and Chloe Wolfe, PI) as ever before!
But why do people love the Rizzler so much?
It seems to be one part “he’s so cute, I want to eat him like a Haribo gummy,” a dash of “this kid is just innately weird and funny,” and a heavy pour of “this is a child who I see only on social media that I can assign a character to and have a little fun never knowing whether it’s true.”
The cuteness is often rolled out in the Rizzler archives—cute home videos from before he was a mononymous internet personality—and the humor is in the content he makes with the Costco Guys and the extended Costco Universe (more on that later). But the character work is going down in the comments, where Rizzler fans observe a mafia-dom-like energy from this itty-bitty Michelin Man. Any suggestion of an insult is met with an insistence on respect for the Rizzler’s name. Any suggestion that perhaps Costco food taste testing isn’t what children should be doing for their after-school snack is met with a stern “The rizzler doesn’t even eat the double chunk chocolate cookies you fucking moron.” And, in general, something about that Fallon interview: The fact that he was at the right hand of the host, the fact that he sat quietly confident as his colleagues fawned and fretted over their big moment, the fact that it was preceded by starring moments at Knicks and Mets games this month—all of this just kind of made it feel like the Rizzler had moved beyond his corner of the internet and into the mainstream.
And I don’t know what to tell you—the source material is there. I have officially been Rizzler pilled. This third grader simply has the gravitas of Gandolfini or Don Corleone, whether he technically has access to a (toy) horse’s head or not.
On that note, are we sure this is … a child?
Does the Rizzler kind of appear to be an adult wearing shoes on his knees like Gary Oldman in Tiptoes? Yes. But by all accounts, that’s just part of his general aura. It’s not, like, an Andy Milonakis situation. (Although I would be fine with the Rizzler getting his own talk show, maybe even just usurping the Tonight Show gig the next time he’s on. He’s the head of the family now, after all.) There is a strong video trail that shows the Rizzler being an actual baby just a few years ago. Which, it also can’t be overstated that after a summer spent getting wildly internet famous, the Rizzler simply … went to third grade.
Why did it seem like Jimmy Fallon would rather be at a vegan butter-churning festival than play along with the people—two of whom are children—he invited onto his show?
Pretty rich for ol’ James to be annoyed by childlike behavior from two actual children and their kinda-sorta guardian! At various times throughout the interview, Fallon seemed to roll his eyes or attempt to move on from the kind of bombastic, repetitive clownery the Costco Guys intentionally use in their videos—you know, the kinds of things kids like? The internet astutely pointed out that Jimmy should be careful. By disrespecting him, Jimmy was treading awfully close to turning the Rizzler into the Joker.
My pet theory is that Fallon didn’t know, until the second the house lights went down and the stage lights came up, that the Rizzler was a child. Just look at the way he looks to the Rizzler for help when AJ and Big Justice bellow out their 20th Big Boom of the night. Also, Jimmy didn’t help the Rizzler when the kid asked him what to do with the licorice that received only two measly booms, and because he was too polite to put it on Jimmy’s desk, he just had to eat it. That is absolutely no way to treat the Rizzler, a person I learned about four days ago.
Why do theysay “BOOM!” like that, though? Is it a sloppy homage to Emeril’s “BAM”?
You know what, maybe? But sometimes virality really is just as simple as rhyming, and someone like AJ knows that. The Costco Guys invented the “Boom or Doom” scale to rate their Costco findings, immediately abandoned ever “dooming” anything, and resorted to rating everything on a five-boom scale. One boom is no good, three booms is solid, and when something is a home run, it gets “Five! Big! Booms!” The booms must be both verbally and physically performed, and they must be loud (sorry, Jimmy Fallon).
The booms are more native to the Costco Guys than the Rizzler, but he does participate when called upon and always backs them up when they’re giving big booms, even when Fallon is sighing down his neck a foot away. He’s magnanimous that way.
Wait, but if AJ isn’t the Rizzler’s dad, who is? Did he spawn from a Costco baby back rib like Adam?
The Rizzler has parents. His dad is especially present on the Rizzler’s own social media pages, filming and sometimes doing skits alongside him and his little brother (yes, they get even smaller). The Rizzler’s dad even has his own moniker within the Costco Universe: Uncle Savasta.
Sorry, did you say the Costco Universe?
I’m suspicious of AJ and where he falls on the scale of “monetizing your children—and also not your children!—to live out your dreams vicariously through them,” but to be honest, I find his laugh while spending time with his child (and not his child!) so genuine that the jury’s still out. Plus, it’s all such a gender bend of the Toddlers & Tiaras mom trope that I’m almost impressed by the subversiveness …
But I’ll hand this to Costco dad every day of the week: He’s incredible at talent acquisition and world-building. Get this guy out of the amateur wrestling ring and into a Marvel studio. Even before AJ and Big Justice acquired the Rizzler, they’d been branding their entire family and adding newcomers to the Costcoverse. There’s Cousin Angelo, who, like Cousin Olver, seems to be a less preferred member of the crew but who also has an admirer in Vita Coco, which is endlessly funny to me; there’s this guy Makeshift Zach, who gets all the exclusive interviews with the family; and regularly appearing in the videos are MBJ, a.k.a. Mother of Big Justice, and the sister Ashley, who simply goes by Ashley, which I personally find iconic.
And of course, the Rizzler debuted in the Costco Universe at the beginning of the summer, rating chocolate chip cookies (pronounced exclusively: DUWBA CHUNK CHOCK-LUT COOOOKIE) with the gang. Every member of the Costco Extended Universe gets their own added verse in the viral song “We Bring the Boom”; there’s a line in the Rizzler remix that is funnier and more astute than anything a band of bloggers could ever conjure: We’re like the three ev-o-lutions of a Pok-e-mon.
Not to start any beef, but at this point, has the Rizzler become bigger than Costco Guys—bigger than any one fictional universe can contain?
Technically speaking, the Rizzler isn’t bigger than most things. You could roll him up in a ball and save him in your pocket for later, like a jawbreaker.
But in terms of power and influence—yeah. He’s the Steve Urkel of bro-y TikTok: a guest character brought in to jazz things up who stole the show so completely that you’re pretty sure the show was called Steve Urkel. But I firmly believe that the Rizzler needs the structure and support of the Costco Universe as much as they need his star power.
Ok, but, is this … bad? Is it bad to enjoy the Rizzler as a sort of funny little internet character who is, in fact, a child who isn’t really in control of his own online presence? Is this going to haunt me? Is this going to become a Baby Gronk situation?
I assume this tricky final question is payback for telling you about sticking out your gyat for the Rizzler, in which case, I do understand, but wow, what a doozy.
I’ll say this: The feeling I have when I look at the Rizzler is the same one I have when I see a Shiba Inu puppy. Can you please just stay like this forever? Can you be cute just like THIS forever, even though I know the future thing you’ll be is just as good???
And for that reason, I would really love for the Rizzler’s parents (and OK, AJ, too) to talk to the Corn Kid’s parents. Remember him? The 7-year-old with a naturally hilarious way of communicating who accidentally got famous on another person’s social media channel? And then he took a few big brand deals, threw a few baseballs, rode on a float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and then just … went back to school without usever even learning his last name? Because his mom didn’t want us to know it! And one day, after that kid has hypothetically finished four years of college paid for by one Chipotle ad and the good personality he had when he was 7, if he still wants to be famous, or work for Big Corn, or make viral TikTok videos—he can! (And listen, even with all that care, internet rumors still went viral saying that he died, which Corn Kid had to clear up on Instagram. Which is exactly why it was a good idea for Corn Kid to go back to being just a kid.)
Fame isn’t linear, and nothing can stay golden forever. Nor can it stay perpetually round and fully detached from the Tonight Show floor. Internet main characters, even the young ones, are like the plucky ingenues of the aughts—we lift them up onto pedestals so high, they can only ever fall from them. And while I feel confident in the Rizzler’s Anne Hathaway–like ability to bounce back, I’d love to see him not have to. I’d love to see the adults around him help him avoid any descent that’s too painful. We’ve learned to respect the Rizzler. Let’s—all of us—keep it that way. Because I certainly don’t wanna find out who gets the horse head first.
Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) should be the kind of man who has songs written in his honor. A low-born knight, elevated to the Kingsguard, then made Lord Commander, before finally rising to the position of Hand of the King. Our handsome knight has some … anger issues, yes (who doesn’t in this world?), but he appears to be an honorable and gallant knight — and really that’s all that matters as far as the histories are concerned. He does have one fatal flaw though, something entirely outside of his control: he was born in the age of dragons.
Episode 4 saw Criston rise to his highest yet. His successive military victories earn him the acclaim of the masses. For a low-born knight to be named “kingmaker” is the stuff of legend, but here we saw just how far he can fall. As dragons clash in the sky over Rook’s Rest, Criston is thrown from his horse and spends most of the battle unconscious. While there is no shortage of sweeping dragon-on-dragon action, the focus of this sequence is remarkably human. This climactic battle represents one of the most important days of Criston’s career, the moment this entire campaign has been leading to, but he spends it face down in the mud. It doesn’t matter what someone’s status is, when faced with a dragon they are little more than a sack of meat and bone.
But this is just one setback in what has been a long line. He was elevated to the Kingsguard, only to discover the limits of his station. He is constantly beneath royalty (and you can take that in any way you will), which means he rarely has leave to act of his own accord. He has had two royal flings so far, and neither have gone particularly well. Even when things go his way, he is uncomfortably aware of his own fragility. No matter what he does, how hard he tries, he just isn’t enough. His military is larger and better equipped than that of team Black, but they are little more than specks when viewed from dragonback. He has seen men tossed aside like dolls, and burned in dragonfire. He knows that his little battle of men and land is a farce — there are greater powers in the sky. But Criston rails against these limits. Faced with his own powerlessness, we see him declare this a war of dragons, not men. He is restless in his position, and it’s easy to see why.
Criston is entirely convinced of his own self-importance. To be fair, he has a good deal of evidence to support that perspective, even beyond what’s outlined above. He unseated Daemon at the tourney and quickly won his position on the Kingsguard, and his military victories are all his own. Aegon looks pathetic when placed next to Criston (though this is true of most people, to be fair), but even the more formidablePrince Aemond was his pupil. He has done the impossible already, so it is no wonder that he is so confident in his own abilities; he can already hear the songs that will be sung in his honor.
Photo: Theo Whiteman/HBO
But that honor is fragile. He tries to bury any and all evidence that suggests he is not suited to his position, first by murdering Joffrey back in season 1, and more recently by deflecting blame for Jaehaerys’ murder onto Ser Arryk and sending him to his death. Criston is skilled, yes, but he is also recklessly prideful. He is locked in a constant battle to prove to himself and others that he deserves his position, but he constantly falls short. Episode by episode we can see his frustration mounting, Frankel deftly portraying the rising anger of a man who can’t quite get it right. We can all sense the danger here: We have a man who wants to prove his own greatness, who blinds himself to his shortcomings, yet is cursed to spend his life in the shadow of dragons.
In most cases, this kind of self belief would serve one well. Criston is ruthless and bold, and while that aids him on the battlefield, it presents a problem when the conflict begins to escalate. The battle at Rook’s Rest has clearly shaken him, but where some would reconsider, he doubles down. He endorses Aemond as regent, knowing that he will escalate the war. Criston has seen a fight between dragons firsthand, he knows the chaos it will bring to the Seven Kingdoms, yet he still leads team Green down the path of war. He’s not pure evil, but he is delightfully hateable in this moment. Alicent pushes for him to side with her, but he knows he can’t. It’s the dilemma at the core of the series, and Criston would rather see the Seven Kingdoms fall to ruin than be on the losing side. He’s just as doomed as anyone else in King’s Landing, no matter how high he climbs.
Criston’s attempts to rise above the dragons ultimately ensure that he will always be under them. Desperate to prove himself, he will lead this war of dragons to its bloody end. His legacy is set in stone, at least as far as his brief mention in A Feast for Crows is concerned. Of all the tragic and thoughtless mistakes characters in House of the Dragon have made so far, pitting the dragons against one another might just be the most significant.
At first “Dot and Bubble,” the latest episode of Doctor Who, seems to be borrowing from Black Mirror’s bag of tricks. It’s set on Finetime, a planet where everyone is accompanied by a small spherical AI assistant called a Dot, which projects a “Bubble” around their heads. Within their individual Bubbles, people live their entire lives — group chatting, watching funny videos or performances by pop stars — and they do not seem to leave except to sleep. Even walking is mediated by the Bubble, telling them how many paces to move in each direction, guiding them to the office, back home, and to meals. It’s a very “kids these days and their damn phones!” kind of premise, but again: only at first.
The initially blunt metaphor only gets blunter when the monster of the week is introduced: terrifying slug aliens that are eating the denizens of Finetime alive, as they obliviously walk into their gaping maws because they can’t see past their bubbles. Our heroine for the week, the hapless Lindy Pepper-Bean (Callie Cooke), finds her Bubble’s feed intruded on by the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson), who spend the episode trying to remotely lead her to safety, in spite of her skepticism.
It’s a clever setup, one that hearkens back to fan-favorite Doctor Who stories like “Blink,” and tropes beloved by writers like Steven Moffat (who, surprisingly, did not write this episode): horrible things at the edge of one’s perception, a hard limit on the Doctor’s ability to intervene, and a world engineered for conformity, with safety dependent on characters’ ability to escape societal gravity. This canny structure clashes with the painfully patronizing metaphor at the heart of “Dot and Bubble” — which writer Russell T. Davies exploits to obscure what he’s really doing.
Image: Disney Plus
Because in between the seemingly lazy satire of the terminally online youth and the chilling thrills of its plot, Davies quietly drops pertinent details about Finetime and what is really happening here. Who are these people? What do they do? Why are they there? Each answer, delivered conversationally in an episode packed with a loud, candy-colored palette, louder social commentary, and one of the creepiest monsters of the season, barely registers. So when you finally get to the ending and the truth about Finetime is made clear, it’s like the floor opens out from underneath you, and “Dot and Bubble” immediately becomes one of the grimmest Doctor Who stories told in some time.
[Ed. note: This means spoilersfor the very end of “Dot and Bubble.”]
In the end, there is no saving the people of Finetime. The first hint was in Lindy’s rapid dismissal of the Doctor’s warnings at the start of “Dot and Bubble,” and that she only began to listen when Ruby Sunday spoke to her. More hints piled up, leading to the answer of what brought the slug aliens to Finetime in the first place: the Dots. The Dots, in their algorithmic service to their users, learned too much about them, and grew to hate them. And it’s not because of their tech-addled brains blinding them to the real world; it’s because they’re fucking racist.
Lindy and the other Finetime survivors refuse to take the Doctor on his offer of safe passage away from Finetime, instead choosing to brave the wilds where they face certain death, just because of who the Doctor looks like. It’s here where the last tidbits fall into place: chilling glimpses of selfishness from Lindy, her lily-white friend group, the fact that Finetime is only inhabited by the young adult children of the 1%.
Image: Disney Plus
Up until now, Doctor Who has been pretty unconcerned with how the Doctor taking on the appearance of a Black man might change the dynamic of the show. On the one hand, this is understandable, desirable even — it would be crass and arguably retrograde to immediately subject the Doctor to racism the moment it became a possible story outcome. It also feels intellectually dishonest to act as if it would never matter. Davies, as the white showrunner who engineered this situation, chose neither trauma porn nor avoidance. Instead he chose specificity: This is how the Doctor’s job is harder now. There are some people who don’t want to be saved by him. There are some problems that cannot be solved by cosmically deep wells of compassion and empathy. There are some people with hearts so mean they will not even save themselves.
“Dot and Bubble” argues that its hero’s role is to stand in the gap and help even in the face of such shocking contempt, because life is precious above all, even hateful little ones — presumably because life can be redeemed, and death is final. It’s hard to accept this, and Gatwa’s performance suggests that maybe such idealism isn’t deserved here. He laughs at the insanity of the situation, and then screams in anguish. Who knows if it’s the right call, but he made one. He tried.
The barrage of TV — and great TV — continues apace in 2024, with plenty of intriguing new and returning shows launching their seasons this week.
The headline item: Ncuti Gatwa’s tenure as the Fifteenth Doctor starts in earnest this week, with two new episodes following up on the winter specials from late 2023. But that’s not all — Netflix has a new murder mystery set in Ireland starring Will Forte, Interview with a Vampire returns for its long-awaited second season on AMC, and Apple TV has their seemingly contractually required new sci-fi series of the month.
Here are the best new TV premieres and finales coming to TV this week.
New shows on Netflix
Bodkin
Genre: Murder journalism investigation mystery Release date: May 9, with all episodes Showrunner/creator: Jez Scharf Cast: Will Forte, Siobhán Cullen, Robyn Cara, and more
An American podcaster (Will Forte) hoping to reconnect with his Irish ancestry heads to a coastal town in Ireland, where he works with an investigative journalist (Siobhán Cullen) to dig into the sudden disappearance of three residents.
Genre: Time-tested time travel sci-fi Release date: May 11, with two episodes Showrunner/creator: Russell T. Davies Cast: Ncuti Gatwa, Millie Gibson, and more
Doctor Who is back! After a trio of 60th anniversary specials (and a Christmas special) teed up showrunner Russell T. Davies’ return to the show and Ncuti Gatwa’s introduction as the Fifteenth Doctor, their time together starts in earnest with two new episodes.
This three-part docuseries based on a WIRED article tells the story of how Black users on Twitter helped make the platform the powerhouse it was.
New shows on Max
Pretty Little Liars: Summer School
Genre: Teenage mischief (and murder) Release date: May 9 with two episodes Showrunner/creator: Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa & Lindsay Calhoon Bring Cast: Bailee Madison, Chandler Kinney, Zaria, Malia Pyles, Maia Reficco, and Mallory Bechtel
The second season of the fourth series in the Pretty Little Liars franchise is here. After the tragic events of the first season led to understandably poor grades, the girls have to go to summer school to advance to junior year. But another mystery — and potentially another killer — lurk around the corner.
New shows on Prime Video
The GOAT
Genre: Reality stars reality show competition Release date: May 9 Host: Daniel Tosh Cast: Reality show stars
14 reality stars compete in a variety of challenges in what looks like Prime Video’s answer to The Traitors.
New shows on AMC Plus
Interview with a Vampire season 2
Genre: Horror romance (ish) Release date: May 12, with one episode Showrunner/creator: Rolin Jones Cast: Jacob Anderson, Sam Reid, Bailey Bass, and more
Genre: Sci-fi Release date: May 8 with two episodes Created and based on the book by: Blake Crouch Cast: Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Connelly, and more
Apple TV Plus’s latest sci-fi series has a few things going for it: Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly as leads; alternate dimension hijinks; Jimmi Simpson. But perhaps most intriguing is the fact that Dark Matter author Blake Crouch is writing the television adaptation as well, and serving as an executive producer on the project.
New shows on Crunchyroll
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Hashira Training Arc
Genre: Demon Slayer Release date: May 12 Based on the manga by: Koyoharu Gotouge Cast: Natsuki Hanae, Akari Kitō, and more
Demon Slayer is back! Per the official synopsis: To the Hashira Training… The members of the Demon Slayer Corps and their highest-ranking swordsmen, the Hashira. In preparation for the forthcoming final battle against Muzan Kibutsuji, the Hashira Training commences. While each carry faith and determination within their hearts, Tanjiro and the Hashira enter a new story.
Discworld is one of those strange series that you simply cannot explain to somebody who has not read it before. Sir Terry Pratchett was the greatest fantasy writer of his time, perhaps of all time, and reading his books while I was homeless was one of the few things that brought me enough joy to keep going some days.
Former UNC quarterback Drake Maye (right) speaks with former NFL quarterback Payton Manning on the red carpet ahead of Thursday’s NFL Draft at Detroit’s Fox Theatre. Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
Kirby Lee
Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
DETROIT
Drake Maye will start his NFL career in the place that Tom Brady and Bill Belichick made famous, as he was drafted No. 3 overall Thursday night by the New England Patriots.
Wearing a gray suit coupled with Carolina blue tie and Air Jordans, Maye had a long day of waiting and rumors before the No. 3 overall pick was finally announced at 8:33 p.m. before approximately 150,000 fans in Detroit. Then Maye got to hug his family and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.
After Southern Cal QB Caleb Williams went No. 1 to the Chicago Bears and LSU QB Jayden Daniels was drafted No. 2 by the Washington Commanders, Maye went No. 3. All that was expected, but the team Maye would go to had been in question for months.
While rumors of trade-ups by the New York Giants and Minnesota Vikings dominated the pre-draft conversation in Detroit, the Pats ended up staying pat and took Maye. There the rookie will compete with veteran Jacoby Brissett (formerly of N.C. State) and Bailey Zappe for the starting job.
Maye spent part of NFL Draft eve playing 4-on-4 full-contact basketball with his three older brothers and several other people. Although the Patriots and new head coach Jerod Mayo probably weren’t thrilled to hear that, they hadn’t drafted Maye as of yet and didn’t have any sort of hold on him.
Texted Mark Maye about the hoops battle: “Wasn’t hyper competitive. But they had a good time with it. ‘Friendly’ 4-on-4.”
While Maye’s three brothers all made an appearance with their brother at the NFL Draft in Detroit — Luke Maye flying in from Japan where he is in the middle of a pro basketball season to do so — UNC football coach Mack Brown did not.
Former UNC quarterback Drake Maye jokes around with his brothers and former Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton as they walk the red carpet for the NFL Draft to commence Thursday night at the Fox Theatre in Detroit. Kimberly Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports Kimberly P. Mitchell Kimberly P. Mitchell / USA TODAY NETWORK
There were a number of other celebrities with Carolina connections around however. Steve Smith Sr. was on set with NFL Network in Detroit, and Cam Newton was working the red carpet, interviewing draft prospects for the very same employer.
Newton interviewed Maye on the red carpet before the draft, and Maye was obviously happy to talk with one of his childhood heroes. “He’s my MVP,” Maye said of Newton, noting that his family had had Carolina Panthers season tickets for years.
Newton then said that he and Maye both had a “special place” in their hearts for the 704 area code and joked that Maye was the “runt” of the Maye brothers, who are all at least 6-foot-7 except for Drake, measured at 6-foot-4 at the combine.
Maye, 21, was the ACC Player of the Year as a redshirt freshman in 2022 for UNC and then was second-team All-ACC in 2023, when his numbers were slightly down from his record-breaking 2022. He played high school football primarily at Myers Park in Charlotte, where one year he had a staggering 50/2 touchdown/interception ratio.
“I’m ready to go compete,” Maye told NFL Network shortly after the pick. “Let’s go.”
Former UNC quarterback Drake Maye stands on the red carpet ahead of Thursday’s NFL Draft at Detroit’s Fox Theatre. Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports Kirby Lee USA TODAY Sports
This story was originally published April 25, 2024, 8:33 PM.
Sports columnist Scott Fowler has written for The Charlotte Observer since 1994. Fowler has earned 22 national APSE sportswriting awards and hosted The Observer’s podcast “Carruth,” which Sports Illustrated named “Podcast of the Year.” Fowler’s new podcast and online series is called “Sports Legends of the Carolinas” and features 1-on-1 interviews with NC and SC sports icons. The series has also been turned into a coffee-table book, available at SportsLegendsBook.com. Support my work with a digital subscription
Cousin Sal is joined by Jimmy Kimmel to discuss hosting the Oscars, the Jake Paul–Mike Tyson fight, and the glory years of UNLV basketball before being joined by the D3 to debate which former NCAA basketball player would’ve made the most NIL money.
Host: Cousin Sal Guests: Darren Szokoli, Brian Szokoli, Harry Gagnon, and Jimmy Kimmel Producers: Michael Szokoli, Joel Solomon, Jack Wilson, and Chris Wohlers
For those who don’t know, Cloudfare encrypts their data using the randomness of a lava lamp. “To produce the unpredictable, chaotic data necessary for strong encryption, a computer must have a source of random data. The “real world” turns out to be a great source for randomness, because events in the physical world are unpredictable.”
After four years away, True Detective returns for a new season with a sinistrous subtitle. We’re in Night Country now, and we’ll be following along each week to try to piece together, with the help of police chief Liz Danvers and detective Evangeline Navarro, who perpetrated those gruesome crimes in Ennis, Alaska. Read along for a breakdown of Episode 5.
Who Done It?
Throughout this season, Pete Prior has been a rare—perhaps the only—bit of purity and innocence in Ennis. He alone seems to have dodged the town’s darkness, projecting a sincerity and conventionality that are absent from any other character we’ve encountered. All he wants, it seems, is to be a good husband, a good dad, a good son, and—even as it increasingly conflicts with the other roles—a good cop. Ennis isn’t a place that fosters kindness, yet Pete has spent his life with a purehearted dedication to doing right by others. Indeed, we learned this week that Pete’s wife, Kayla, first fell for the former high school hockey star when he uncharacteristically blew a game—after which she learned that, without so much as a word about it to anyone, he’d done it to cheer up a player on the opposing team whose dad had just died.
This week, Pete’s innocence was finally shattered. All season long, he’s followed at chief of police Liz Danvers’s heels, palpably straining to learn from his professional hero. At long last, his questions about what caused the rift between Danvers and onetime protégée Evangeline Navarro led to the realization that she and Navarro murdered serial abuser William Wheeler years ago and covered it up. Wheeler was left-handed, Pete figures out, meaning that his right-handed fatal shot to the head couldn’t have been self-inflicted. Danvers might be a good detective, but she’s no hero.
She’s not the only one. Pete has tried throughout the season to make the best of his difficult and sometimes abusive relationship with his father, Hank. Amid a mounting pile of evidence that Hank isn’t the well-meaning cop that he has pretended to be, Pete bursts into Danvers’s home at the episode’s climax to find that his dad is just as willing to brush the law aside for his own ends. On orders from Kate McKittrick—more on her in just a moment—Hank fatally shoots the former engineer Otis Heiss. Pete responds with his own irrevocable sin, shooting and killing his father. His days of looking for the good in people are over.
Before the shoot-out, Danvers comes close to throwing in the towel on the Tsalal Arctic Research Station case: McKittrick and Ted Connelly call her into the Silver Spring Mining offices to inform her that the scientists’ deaths have been ruled not a murder but a tragic accident resulting from a slab avalanche. (Holy Dyatlov Pass, Batman.) A conversation with Leah changes her mind when her daughter asks whether she knows how bad the pollution has gotten in the Indigenous villages around Ennis—does she have any idea how many stillbirths there have been? Danvers visits the Ennis cemetery, where tiny coffins sit waiting for the ground to thaw so that they can be buried—and then she decides to keep looking for answers.
Last week, Heiss told Danvers that still-missing Tsalal researcher Raymond Clark was “hiding in the night country.” This time around, Danvers finally learns that “the night country”—all together with me now, boys and girls: Night Country!—is a term for Ennis’s subterranean ice caves. And those spirals that keep turning up? They’re markers left by hunters to warn others about thin ice above the caves.
Night Country’s answers sure seem to be in those caves. Clark, so far as we know, is still down there. And we know that Annie Kowtok was murdered somewhere inside: The recovered video of her final moments shows her telling the camera, “I found it. It’s here.” Finally, we know that McKittrick and Silver Sky Mining really, really don’t want Danvers and Navarro going in. Next week, that’s just what they’ll do, but until then it’s time for one last look at the suspects.
1. Kate McKittrick and Silver Sky Mining
A hearty welcome to the top of the suspect list goes to local mogul and Silver Sky exec Kate McKittrick.
McKittrick’s power in Ennis has thrummed beneath the surface throughout the season in ways both large and small, from her ownership of the ice rink—the town’s de facto community center turned morgue—to the fact that she holds Leah’s fate in the balance after the teen graffitied “MURDERERS” on Silver Sky’s offices.
This week, we see her summon—summon!—Danvers to Silver Sky, where the chief is shocked to find Ted Connelly waiting. (Poor Connelly catching strays: “Connelly is a political animal,” McKittrick says later on. “He’s weak, and he’s fucking her.”) First, McKittrick dresses Danvers down for an early effort to get into the ice caves with Navarro “on Silver Sky property”; then, she and Connelly present the extraordinarily dubious news that Tsalal’s scientists perished in what Connelly dubs “a weather event.” McKittrick seems positively thrilled, giddily telling Danvers, “I know it’s a relief for all of us that there’s not some killer out there on the loose.” Nothing fishy here!
As Danvers notes, it’s awfully convenient. It’s also particularly suspicious given some new evidence that Pete dug up in the tax records of the multinational conglomerate that runs Silver Sky Mining: Turns out that the LLC behind Tsalal is a partner of Silver Sky, which funds the center at least in part as a greenwashing initiative. “That means the mine bankrolls Tsalal and then Tsalal pushes out bullshit pollution numbers for them,” Danvers says. Given what we know about the rampant pollution around Ennis and its devastating human toll, the revelation raises new questions about the mine’s, and McKittrick’s, possible involvement in what happened at Tsalal, to say nothing of the murder of Annie, who was a vocal anti-mine activist before her death.
There’s not a lot of ambiguity in what comes next. Danvers tells McKittrick that she has a lead on Clark courtesy of Heiss, whom she’s secretly stashed at The Lighthouse and whom McKittrick doubtless knows has extensive knowledge of the caves. McKittrick immediately arranges a sneaky meeting with Hank Prior, telling him that if he kills Heiss, she’ll have him named as the new chief of police in Danvers’s stead. “She’s looking for the location of the Kowtok murder,” McKittrick tells Hank. “She can’t find that cave.” At minimum, this means she has intimate knowledge of Annie’s murder and that, in her capacity at Silver Sky, she wants it hidden from the police.
What is McKittrick trying to cover up by offing Heiss: the truth about Annie’s death, what really happened at Tsalal, whatever it was that Annie found under the ice, or some combination of all three? There’s just no universe in which McKittrick isn’t involved in some—or all—of the murders (let alone the pollution poisoning Ennis).
2. … Ghosts?
Just kidding—kind of. Your mileage may vary on whether you view this season’s spooky spiritual accompaniments—the jump scares, the flashes of dead-eyed zombies, the mysterious caribou stampede off a cliff, Travis’s spirit’s season premiere dance party, the reappearing orange, and so on—as an enhancement to the story or a major mark against it. Anyone who’s read Agatha Christie knows that a mystery’s seemingly supernatural explanation will be punctured in short order by the very human truth beneath the caper at hand. This late in the season, it seems clear that we’re close to the kind of culprit or culprits who can be put in handcuffs—a conclusion that Danvers has hewed to throughout the investigation.
But there’s still something going on. Many different people in and around Ennis have witnessed seemingly inexplicable phenomena. Those caribou really did run off that cliff. And just last week, Navarro had her own otherworldly moment in the dredge, leaving her with an apparently ruptured eardrum (an incident that bizarrely did not come up this week at all).
It all has me thinking a lot about another show set in a remote, icy town, where—just as in Night Country—an A-list detective comes in to solve a ghastly crime. In Fortitude, which premiered back in 2015, it’s Stanley Tucci who finds himself wading through the snow in search of the truth in a troubled town. Without spoiling too much of that series, the investigation takes a sharp turn when it becomes clear that something—something neither human nor supernatural—is affecting the townsfolk with increasingly violent results.
In Night Country, we know that the mine is polluting water for a significant portion of the Ennis area. We also know that Tsalal was hunting deep in the ice for as-yet-unknown organisms in the name of scientific discovery. What if one or the other or both of these have led to mass poisoning- or infection-induced hallucinations—or worse? Something really did make all those scientists run out onto the ice partially clothed, after all, and the people of Ennis really are seeing things that seem to defy explanation.
What if there is an explanation, and all that sinister stuff that’s been haunting the town—and the series—can be explained as the neurological aftereffects of the shady business at the mine and Tsalal?
3. Raymond Clark
After an entire season of mentions in the Who Done It? column of Ringer recaps, Clark has plummeted down the list of suspects.
That’s not to say he’s not involved—he’s still the clearest link between his onetime flame Annie and the Tsalal deaths, and it is distinctly suspicious that Clark would be the sole survivor from the research center, even before considering that he’s been on the run for the show’s duration. And Clark specialized in paleomicrobiology during his nearly two decades working at Tsalal. If one of the center’s discoveries is behind the murd—er, tragic avalanche event—he’s likely the one who found it.
“He’s crazy as shit, man,” Heiss tells Danvers early in Episode 5. “Creepy motherfucker.”
But Clark increasingly seems like a fall guy. We know he loved Annie; if Silver Sky conspired to have her killed or cover it up (or both), surely he wouldn’t have been on board. If anything, he seems like another victim of the mine’s and/or research center’s collateral damage.
4. Hank Prior
So long, Hank.
Hank has graced the list of suspects in each of TheRinger’sweeklyrecaps this season for good reason. His bitterness that Danvers was named chief, a need for money to woo the con artist formerly known as Alina, an unhealthy relationship with alcohol, instability in his relationship with his son (and, before that, Hank’s now-ex-wife), his relentless, wiry anxiety—none of it paints a pretty picture for Hank.
This week, we learned that Hank had been on Silver Sky’s payroll and was involved in Annie’s murder—though he insists to Danvers shortly before Pete shoots him that he only moved her body out of the cave where she was killed and had nothing to do with the murder itself. I’m inclined to believe him: “I’m not a killer,” Prior tells McKittrick after she tells him to take out Heiss—seeming confirmation that he really wasn’t behind Annie’s murder, or any others that McKittrick is aware of.
At that point, anyway: It’s not long before he shoots Heiss. (Good for Heiss, I guess, that he got one last go-around with his beloved heroin, courtesy of Danvers, who squirrels him away from The Lighthouse in a joint intel-smack excursion. “Don’t leave a mess,” she instructs him as he slips into her bathroom. Standard police technique, am I right?) Prior Sr. is hardly heading into the great beyond with a clean conscience, but it at least doesn’t look like he harmed Annie or the Tsalal group.
Galaxy-Brained Theory of the Week
“She’s awake!” the various creeps and creepies of Ennis have told us repeatedly. While I’m tempted to write off the warning as mass delusion (see: ghosts), the fact that we keep hearing about this evidently fearsome “she”—whose awakening seems to have portended all the horror we’ve witnessed this season—seems significant.
I think we can rule out mortals for this particular role. Could she be the one-eyed polar bear—some protective, and perhaps freshly vengeful, spirit that has long lain dormant beneath Ennis? Speaking of beneath—well, I guess we’ll find out next week.
Vikram’s Alaska Corner
True Detective: Night Country takes place in the cold fringes of the Last Frontier, otherwise known as Alaska. (Never mind that the season was filmed in Iceland.) The Ringer’s own Vikram Patel is a former resident of the state who still spends his winters there. Each week, we’ll pose a question to Vikram about his second home as we look to learn more about the local geography and culture.
Claire: This week’s episode dealt with a whole lot of ice—most of it perilous. We see Rose Aguineau and Evangeline Navarro use an ax to hack a hole through thick ice so that Eve can scatter her sister’s ashes, only for her to wander a few steps too far and have the ice crack beneath her and nearly give way. And we finally learn what the “night country” refers to: a network of subterranean ice caves that we’re told are wildly dangerous and filled with jagged ice that cuts like glass (but that, teens being what they are, still draw out the kids to mess around and explore from time to time). Ice now feels less like a backdrop and more like a direct threat to the Night Country crew. While I recognize that Ennis’s anthill of spooky ice tunnels is probably not the norm, what can you tell me about living with the realities of ice in Alaska?
Vikram: I’ve had only one encounter with an ice cave. And after I tell you about it, I think you’ll understand why.
The glacier was huge—a thick, jagged layer of ice crawling over the mountain we had just hiked up. It looked still, but it was talking to us. We heard little cracking sounds in the distance, regular reminders that glaciers aren’t frozen in place, but rather a slow-moving river of ice.
As we got closer, the air became measurably cooler. It’s a remarkable effect, the kind of moment in nature that reminds you how helpless you are. This chunk of ice was changing the weather. It was powerful.
Once at the edge of the glacier, we scoped out what seemed to be a small opening under a brim of overhanging ice.
Courtesy of Dave McGee
After a few minutes, we got curious and squeezed through, into a cave about the size of a one-bedroom apartment, tucked under many tons of glacier ice. Inside, it was stunning; the blue was deep, the air even chillier. The inside of an ice cube. We had never done anything like this before.
Courtesy of Dave McGee
We spent the next 10 or 15 minutes inside our frozen hideaway and probably would have stayed much longer, but we had to head back soon—a friend was waiting for us on a nearby ridge. But as we made our way to the entrance of the ice cave, we heard a crack—this time, a little louder and a lot closer—just overhead. Oh shit. We walked faster. Then another crack, even louder. Run. The entrance to the cave was collapsing.
In my memory, the next few things happened almost instantaneously. We shot out the entrance. Me first, then Rob, then Dave. I tripped a few feet outside the entrance and fell to the ground. Rob, at full speed, passed by me. I looked over my shoulder and saw a chunk of glacier ice—probably two-thirds the size of a Subaru—falling from about 30 feet above Dave’s head as he lunged out of the mouth of the cave. I couldn’t tell whether he was clear of the ice or about to be crushed by it.
For a moment, I thought Dave was a goner.
Today, 17 years later, it’s still the scariest moment of my life. His too.
“I remember the feeling that things were falling behind me. I could feel the force of something hitting the ground just behind my feet. I’ve probably never moved as fast in my entire life, even though it was over wet rocks.”
Courtesy of Dave McGee
I called Dave recently to help confirm my memory. We hadn’t talked about that day at Raven Glacier in a long time. I told him I wanted to talk about True Detective: Night Country and how Episode 5 involves a network of ice caves. I tried to keep explaining the context, but he interrupted me. “Just hearing that—ice caves—makes my body shiver.”
We compared memories. Dave remembers seeing me fall and look back at him. I sure hope he can’t remember the look on my face.
“It was literally fractions of a second between life and death. Tons of ice falling right on top of me. Even if I had survived the initial blow, it would have been impossible to recover a body under there.”
After Dave scrambled away, the three of us came together. “We all looked around, at the ice, at each other. Someone said, ‘Holy shit.’”
I remember hugging—desperate hugging.
A few minutes later, we turned to leave. “We had a long, solemn walk down that hill, having a lot of thoughts about mortality.”
During that walk so many years ago, and again this week on the phone, we wondered aloud whether we had caused the collapse. “It had to be us, right? The odds seem too incredible that that piece of ice happened to fall right then. I mean, how many years does it take for a cavern like that to form? And then it collapsed … right then?”
The moment has stayed with Dave, who now lives in Chicago with his wife and their three children. “I think about it still, usually when I look at my kids’ faces. They wouldn’t exist if I had been a step slower—or if I had slipped on a wet rock. My wife would have had a different life. My kids wouldn’t be here.”
Dave doesn’t tell this story much anymore. But before he moved away from Alaska, it came up a lot. Especially with newcomers. “It obviously changed the way I look at glaciers, especially as a place of recreation. After that, I would tell anyone new to Alaska to stay away from them.
“But people ignored me. They went exploring still.” That’s the power of the ice.
Iconic True Detective Looks of the Week
Underneath the true crime mysteries at the forefront of each season, True Detective is admirably devoted to capturing the aesthetics that define each of its many eras. With that comes some pretty incredible costume and makeup work, which we’ll be highlighting throughout the season.
HBO
Right out of the gate, we have the woman in charge of cremating Julia Navarro—a somber duty that nevertheless seems to require some funk.
HBO
Could there be a clearer representation of Pete’s attempt and failure to hold on to the last shreds of his innocence than his decision to rock his old high school hockey sweater as Kayla is kicking him out of their home?
HBO
Leah doubles down on her activism against Silver Sky Mining, culminating in her arrest. “Coop! Book me, will you?” Has a teen ever said anything more metal?
HBO
It’s about time that we got a refresh of “heroin chic.”
After four years away, True Detective returns for a new season with a sinistrous subtitle. We’re in Night Country now, and we’ll be following along each week to try to piece together, with the help of police chief Liz Danvers and detective Evangeline Navarro, who perpetrated those gruesome crimes in Ennis, Alaska. Read along for a breakdown of Episode 4.
Who Done It?
If endless darkness in the Arctic Circle didn’t sound isolating enough, try spending that time alone on Christmas. Episode 4 of True Detective: Night Country sees pretty much every resident of Ennis spending the holiday solo or reckoning with some form of personal turmoil—but it wouldn’t be True Detective without festering psychological trauma and existential dread, would it? But hey, it’s still Christmas—sit down, relax, and let your favorite Warner Bros. Discovery crime drama promote your favorite Warner Bros. Discovery Christmas movie.
Screenshots via HBO
Episode 4 presents some significant progress in the Tsalal murder case. Last episode, Liz Danvers and Co. discovered a chilling video of Annie Kowtok that she took of herself just before her death. It shows Annie in an ice cave with unidentified bones embedded in the wall, which leads the crew to deduce that Annie’s body was moved from that location into town to make some sort of statement to the locals.
Meanwhile, when tasked with tracking down anyone who had suffered similar injuries to the Tsalal scientists, Pete discovers the record of Otis Heiss, a seemingly crucial piece of the Night Country puzzle. After surviving the injuries—which included burned corneas and self-inflicted bites, with no reported cause—Heiss went off the grid. (He’s traceable only through his police record of disorderly conduct.) When Danvers and Evangeline Navarro seek out Ennis High School teacher Adam Bryce for assistance in locating the cave Annie was likely killed in, he suggests tracking down whoever mapped out the dangerous tunnels. A quick Google search reveals none other than Heiss as the man responsible.
This episode also has no shortage of flirtations with the spirit realm—which probably shouldn’t even be described as flirtations anymore. We just flat out saw multiple Conjuring-ass ghosts. Night Country has been very clear about the possibility of the supernatural at play; True Detective Season 1 never went far beyond merely hinting at it. I still don’t believe the killer will end up being a wholly supernatural force, but visions of the dead have been shown so frequently and assuredly by multiple characters that the existence of the paranormal doesn’t seem to be just speculation at this point.
Heartbreakingly, these visions lead to the death of Julia, Eve’s tormented sister whose persistent encounters with the dead drove her to walk into the freezing ocean. In Episode 3, we discovered that Eve and Julia’s mother was also driven mad by hearing voices, and she eventually left home and was murdered by someone who was never found. With her sister now gone too, Eve fears she’s next in line to be targeted by these specters, though it wouldn’t be her first brush with the supernatural. Episode 3 showed us that Danvers and Navarro’s last case involved a man named William Wheeler who abused and killed his girlfriend—it’s suggested that either Danvers or Navarro killed him upon arriving at the crime scene and covered it up by falsely reporting his death as a suicide. Episode 4 reveals that Navarro saw the dead girlfriend’s ghost in the room before one of the cops likely pulled the trigger on Wheeler.
The episode culminates with the spotting of a man wearing Annie’s pink jacket—the same one Raymond Clark was seen wearing in a Tsalal video—near the town dredges. Navarro and Danvers go to scope it out and basically find themselves in a game of Silent Hill. They quickly locate the mysterious figure, and Danvers chases him up the ladders of a dredge, only to discover the man is actually Heiss rather than Clark. So where is Clark? “He went back down to hide,” Heiss says. “He’s hiding in the night country. We’re all in the night country now.” Hey, that’s the name of the show! As Danvers races after Heiss, Navarro starts hearing voices calling her name and follows a trail of footsteps to an ominous Christmas tree. There, she stumbles upon an apparition resembling Julia—Eve’s haunted by another woman she couldn’t save. Danvers comes down to find Eve in a catatonic state with blood dripping from her ear (akin to the ruptured eardrums the scientists suffered, perhaps?) after the encounter.
Oh yeah, this episode also treated us to more oranges and one-eyed polar bears, plus Billie Eilish songs. Are we any closer to solving the Tsalal mystery? Let’s round up the suspects.
1. Raymond Clark
The Nikola Jokic of murder suspects, our boy Raymond remains atop the list. His whereabouts are still unknown (unless “hiding in the night country” counts as a location), but that Danvers found Heiss in the state he was in, in the same Annie jacket that was last seen on Clark, indicates that something went down there. Speaking of “down there,” what exactly did Heiss mean by saying Clark “went down” to hide? Last week in this column, my colleague Ben Lindbergh introduced the Inuit goddess of the sea and ruler of the Adlivun underworld, Sedna, as a potential suspect. It doesn’t get much more “down” than the underworld, and “night country” seems like an apt description of a frozen wasteland where souls are imprisoned. Could Clark be posing as, or possessed by, Sedna?
Clark has been built up to be such a prime suspect over the course of these four episodes that it seems almost too obvious for him to be the sole perpetrator. But the mounting evidence shows he is clearly involved in the murders somehow. That he’s been missing for so long also seems to be foreshadowing a big showdown for when Danvers and Navarro do eventually track him down.
2. Oliver Tagaq
Even though Tagaq wasn’t seen in this episode, he was still key in an important scene. As Danvers obsessively rewatches the Annie Kowtok video, she notices that it ends with the lights getting cut in the same way they do at the end of the Raymond Clark Tsalal video. Danvers surmises that there was some sort of power outage at the end of both videos, but Annie’s video was evidently taken in an ice cave—how could there have been power in there in the first place? Danvers remembers that Tagaq was an equipment engineer at Tsalal and would likely have access to the lab’s emergency generators. She sends Eve and Pete back to Tagaq’s place to investigate and, what do you know, he’s vanished. Tagaq left right after Danvers and Navarro confronted him in the previous episode, according to the others at his camp. Eve and Pete find a spiral symbol drawn on the ground and carved into a stone, and when they ask Oliver’s former neighbors if they know what the symbol is, they don’t answer—their dogs start barking, and they kind of just … stare menacingly.
My hunch is that Tagaq is a red herring who’s just very distrusting of authority. (Understandably so, after how the Indigenous population has been treated.) But he obviously knows something, and his connection to the spirals can’t be meaningless.
3. Kate McKittrick
Even if Kate didn’t actually murder the Tsalal scientists with her own two hands, she’s still evil as hell and guilty of something. Actually, we already know she’s complicit in polluting Ennis’s water supply as an executive of the Silver Sky mining company, which Annie had been protesting against before her death. Plus, we know Kate is close with Hank from their interaction at the ice rink in Episode 2, and he’s the one who hid Annie’s case files and failed to report some key evidence in her investigation.
In Episode 4, we see a brief scene with Kate after Danvers’s daughter, Leah, was caught vandalizing the mining offices, spray-painting the word “MURDERERS” across the front door (badass!). If Leah becomes a target next, that would further heighten my suspicion that Kate is involved somehow, but even if not, Kate seems very unhappy with the reputation of her company. Unhappy enough to commit murder? I’m not sure. She does have a potential motive for killing Annie, but theorizing why she would kill the Tsalal scientists is just conjecture—maybe they discovered something in their research that would be detrimental to Silver Sky if made public? And since Night Country takes so much inspiration from Season 1, Kate could ultimately serve as a Billy Lee Tuttle figure in a web of corruption.
4. Sedna
Not to copy Ben’s homework from last week, but the supernatural is still a huge possibility in unlocking the Tsalal mystery, and Sedna is still the best explanation. And Heiss’s description of Clark’s location wasn’t the only clue we got in this episode that could lead to Sedna.
Listen to the way Eve describes her family’s relationship with spirits to Danvers: “It’s a curse,” she says. “Something calls us, and we follow.” It’s been said that Sedna can imprison the souls of the living, and Julia’s death was due to walking into the ocean, which happens to be Sedna’s domain. As Julia marched in, it did seem as though she was being led somewhere—could it have been Sedna calling to her?
The prevalence of these visions makes it seem like the paranormal will play a part in solving this mystery in a way that it didn’t in past seasons of True Detective. I still believe a human will ultimately be found responsible for the murders, but there were simply too many ghosts in this episode to ignore.
5. Hank Prior
I almost feel bad including Prior here because my guy had a horrendous outing in Episode 4. He was supposed to finally meet his Russian fiancée, Alina, at the airport, but, alas, she never showed. Well, he might have seen her briefly get off the plane, make eye contact with him, and get right back on, which is an
extreme case of getting curved. But in all likelihood, Alina is probably just some dude with an internet connection catfishing Prior into sending him money. Still, Prior does a terrible job of pretending to brush off the whole situation to his son, saying that Alina’s cell service is probably just out (a classic rationale for victims of ghosting). As we see Prior sulk in front of a bottle of champagne and a rose-petal-adorned bedspread intended for a romantic night with Alina, we know he’s pretty heartbroken.
But that we get such a sympathetic portrayal of Hank in this episode doesn’t necessarily absolve him of culpability in the murders. He obviously tried to cover something up with Annie’s case, and he’s overall been a pretty big asshole to Danvers, Navarro, and his own son. But the Alina situation shows how naive Hank is, and that probably makes him a pretty terrible cop. With the Annie case, it seems possible that Hank is doing the bidding for some powerful person—maybe Kate?—while being kind of oblivious, or even willfully ignorant, about the severity of these cases. Which, again … really shoddy stuff for a cop to do. But it probably means he’s not the one committing the murders himself.
6. Captain Connelly
Let me cook for a second. The thing that raised my eyebrows this week was the way Captain Connelly responded when Danvers asked if he’d seen the Annie Kowtok video she’d sent him: a short nod and then, “You keep that on a need-to-know basis.” Yes, he’s a police captain who probably doesn’t want evidence leaking to the public, but it just struck me as a bizarre reaction to the uncovering of a crucial and traumatic clue in a years-old murder case. Plus, he’s been trying to wrangle control of the Tsalal case ever since it opened.
Danvers has made a lot of comments about how Connelly wants to look good for his future mayoral campaign (which Connelly himself has never really responded to), and that might be true—and that could certainly include ensuring that any skeletons in his closet never come out. Prior is, in all probability, compromised by his connections to Silver Sky one way or another, so why couldn’t Connelly be too? True Detective Season 1’s Errol Childress murders had connections all the way up to the Louisiana governor. A powerful and ambitious man like Connelly could easily get his hands dirty, too.
Galaxy-Brained Theory of the Week
Now let me really cook for a second. There have been multiple visions of a of one-eyed polar bear throughout Night Country so far (which have been presented in a sort of dreamlike manner but could be a real sighting in an Alaskan town). Both Navarro and Danvers have experienced these visions in the same way: by almost crashing into the bear in Episodes 1 and 4, respectively. A plush one-eyed polar bear that once belonged to Danvers’s son, Holden, has been a recurring image as well. It almost reminds me of another polar bear sighting …
Look, I realize it’s probably a different experience running into a polar bear in the Alaskan tundra than it is on a deserted island. But the polar bear sightings on Lost, surprisingly enough, actually had an explanation: They were brought to the island by the DHARMA Initiative for studies in electromagnetic research. So those polar bears had to come from somewhere. Who’s to say that the DHARMA Initiative never had a study-abroad program at the Tsalal research station specializing in polar bear recruitment? I don’t know, man, I’ll just take any opportunity I can to bring up Lost again. What a program.
Vikram’s Alaska Corner
True Detective: Night Country takes place in the cold fringes of the Last Frontier, otherwise known as Alaska. (Never mind that the season was filmed in Iceland.) The Ringer’s own Vikram Patel is a former resident of the state who still spends his winters there. Each week, we’ll pose a question to Vikram about his second home as we look to learn more about the local geography and culture.
Julianna: I have to be honest with you, Vikram—I’m four episodes into True Detective: Night Country and my California mind is still unable to comprehend just how cold Alaska is. I’ve lived in the Golden State my entire life and am currently typing this from Los Angeles, where it’s a lovely 73 degrees in January, and I still saw jackets and beanies outside. I could count the number of times I’ve seen snow in my life on one hand, and at least a couple of those times I’ve foolishly worn jeans and sneakers that quickly got sopping wet.
So my question is: How do you adapt to extreme cold? Do you ever get used to it? What are the wardrobe essentials for an Alaskan winter? Is an Andy Reid frozen mustache a common sighting? I realize that was multiple questions, but this is truly a world that boggles my mind.
Vikram: Like you, Julianna, I am from California. When I first moved to Alaska, I hadn’t had much exposure to cold weather, and it showed. The first winter I spent in Anchorage, my “coat” was a thin corduroy jacket, and I mostly wore a lot of sweatshirts and jeans. As many locals warned me, cotton kills. But I was too stubborn to buy myself a puffy jacket or the stretchy technical clothing that my friends wore to exercise in the cold. I was neither warm nor fashionable.
Fortunately, despite my inadequate wardrobe, my body did adjust. Exposure to cold weather activates something in our bodies called “brown fat,” which helps keep our bodies warmer, a sort of internal layer of long underwear. I noticed this effect most when I would visit my family in Los Angeles during the winter; they wore sweaters and jackets all day, while I could wear shorts and T-shirts without a shiver. It felt like a superpower.
But there’s a limit to what our bodies can withstand.
The coldest temperature I have ever been in is negative 35 degrees Fahrenheit, near Fairbanks, Alaska. It was a whole different kind of cold than I had grown accustomed to in Anchorage, where the temperature rarely drops below zero. The layer of ice covering the road in Fairbanks was a few inches thick but not as slippery as warmer ice (the thin layer of melting water on the surface of the ice is what makes your car slide around on the road). Taking a deep breath at negative 35 is an adventure—air that cold tends to cause an instant coughing fit. We visited some hot springs on that trip; I remember dunking my head in the water, coming up for air, and feeling my hair freeze in seconds. Extreme cold can be delightful.
But does Ennis get that cold? It’s hard to say—there isn’t a weather almanac to consult for fictional Alaskan villages. But we can make an educated guess. Night Country creator Issa López described Ennis as a “fictionalized amalgam of northern villages Kotzebue, Utqiagvik, and Nome.” These villages are further north than Fairbanks, but they are located on the water, which can help keep temperatures relatively mild—the brown fat of meteorology.
Stuck in weather-estimating hell, I reached out to Brian Brettschneider, Alaska’s leading climatologist. Brian told me that Ennis is likely “not as cold as Fairbanks, but notably colder than Anchorage. Nome, Kotzebue, and Utqiagvik are also quite windy places and are in the tundra,” where, he reminded me, trees cannot grow. Brian also sent me this handy dynamic temperature map. By my estimation, Ennis likely sees temps as low as negative 15 or negative 20 degrees Fahrenheit in the depths of winter. In a word: brrrrr!
If you are planning to visit a northern Alaska community next winter, here are some items you will want to bring along, courtesy of my Real Alaskan Advisory Committee (Tara, Emily, Zach, and Barry):
A wool hat that covers your ears
A thick neck gaiter that you can pull up to protect your face
Heavyweight thermal underwear—this is your second skin
Mittens (not gloves!), preferably with a long gauntlet—covering your wrist and lower forearm—to keep the warmth in and the snow out
A down parka, ideally 600 fill or above, that goes down to at least your thighs and has a proper fur ruff (synthetics don’t cut it when snow is blowing sideways)
Wool socks
Bunny boots, which are cartoonish snow-white boots that keep your feet warm by trapping air and leaving room for thick socks—if you can’t find any, a pair of Bogs or Muck boots (cold-weather boots all seem to have exceptional names) will also do
Hand and foot warmers to tuck into your mittens and boots—get the foot warmers with adhesives, or you’ll end up with a crumpled mass far away from your toes
Julianna, now that you’re prepared, I hope you’ll decide to visit Alaska in the winter sometime. I can’t guarantee you’ll see anything supernatural, but a snowy, dark Alaskan winter is magical all the same. The juice is worth the squeeze, even if it’s a little bit frozen.
Iconic True Detective Looks of the Week
Underneath the true crime mysteries at the forefront of each season, True Detective is admirably devoted to capturing the aesthetics that define each of its many eras. With that comes some pretty incredible costume and makeup work, which we’ll be highlighting throughout the season.
Rose Aguineau’s little Christmas party (and dress!) looked lovely. She seems like a great hang. Other than the fact that she has to deal with, as she says, “all the fuckin’ dead.”
Bro put on his best turtleneck and brought along a well-dressed stuffed animal only to leave the airport alone thinking he got stood up on sight. It’s so sad it almost makes me forget he’s a terrible person.
You ever look so good you cause a stranger to spiral into an abyss of loneliness and heartbreak?
A guest of mine who I made a good impression on, apparently, decided to gift me this gold plated dollar bill. It’s legal tender in several places, honest to god, but I’m going to get it graded and then professionally framed and put in my office. With this and the Lions winning tonight, I’m doing pretty damn good lately.
In Part 2 of the exclusive Townie Awards, Matt and Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw select their Winner of the Year in Hollywood, and give out a number of additional awards, including Executive Fail of the Year, Low-Key Flex, Movie Marketing Miss of the Year, The “Did I Say That Out Loud” Award for Worst Quote, the Mea Culpa I Was Wrong Award, as well as the Suck It Haters I Was Right Award, and more.
For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, What I’m Hearing …, click here.
Mal and Jo are back to discuss “The Church on Ruby Road,” this year’s Doctor Who Christmas special, and how it stacks up against the show’s holiday specials of years past (6:41). Then they dive deep into the episode that introduces the series’ newest companion, Ruby Sunday (18:03).
Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Producer: Kai Grady Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal Social: Jomi Adeniran
It’s finally time: the last new TV of 2023. Whether you’re at work or not, this week tends to be a pretty sleepy one, ideally with plenty of time to catch up on new TV.
That’s not to say there’s a ton of new stuff during this period, but there’s certainly something to get excited about. There’s a new Doctor, with the Christmas day Doctor Who special introducing us to the Fifteenth Doctor. And the world of Money Heist is back — at least, partially, with the Berlin spinoff taking us back in time on Berlin himself.
Here’s the best TV premieres and finales this week:
Genre: Money Heist spinoff Release date: Dec. 29, with all episodes Showrunner/creator: Álex Pina Cast: Pedro Alonso, Michelle Jenner, Tristán Ulloa, Begoña Vargas, Julio Peña, Joel Sánchez, and more
Money Heist fan favorite Berlin (Pedro Alonso) is back, with a look at the big heist from before his Money Heist days: disappearing $44 million in jewels. Touched upon in flashbacks during the later seasons of the show, Berlin will give us a better glimpse at the Professor’s second-in-command (and his savvy cohort).
Letterkenny season 12
Genre: Dirtbag comedy Release date: Dec. 26, with all episodes Showrunner/creator: Jacob Tierney Cast: Jared Keeso, Michelle Mylett, Nathan Dales, Jacob Tierney, Tyler Johnston, Dylan Playfair, and more
The six-episode farewell run of Letterkenny is going out on a high note — possibly literally, with a country music hit being one of the many things teased by Hulu’s news release, which also notes that the small town “contends” with a comedy night at Modean’s, the Degens’ bad influence, a new nightclub, and an encore at the Ag Hall.
New shows on Disney Plus
Doctor Who Holiday Special: The Church on Ruby Road
Image: BBC/Disney Plus
Genre: Timey-wimey sci-fi Release date: Dec. 25 Showrunner/creator: Russell T. Davies Cast: Ncuti Gatwa, and more
After three specials that indulged some nostalgia and brought back an old (well, new) Doctor, we’re finally getting a new new Doctor, with Ncuti Gatwa, whose long-awaited arrival is finally here — it’s gonna feel like it’s Christmas Day! (I know it is on Christmas Day.)
New shows on Apple TV Plus
Slow Horses season 3 finale
Image: Apple TV Plus
Genre: Spy thriller comedy Release date: Dec. 27 Based on books by: Mick Herron Cast: Gary Oldman, Jack Lowden, Kristin Scott Thomas, and more
It’s all coming to a head in the fantastic third season of Slow Horses. The team has been trying to rescue Standish (Saskia Reeves) while also uncovering the large-scale conspiracy her captors are involved in. Who will make it out alive? Will anyone in the British government face actual consequences for their actions? Will we make it until season 4 without just playing Mick Jagger’s theme song on repeat? The answers to these questions, and more, in the finale.
The Fifteenth Doctor is finally here — at least, for a one-off Christmas special.
After making an appearance in the third anniversary special through a bit of “bigeneration,” Ncuti Gatwa is at last stepping up to the plate as The Doctor. He’ll be joined by new companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson), who lives a quiet life with her grandma and mom until The Doctor shows up. In “The Church on Ruby Road,” they’ll both come face to face with mysterious goblins, and have to riddle their way out of a Christmas adventure.
How to watch the Doctor Who Christmas special on Disney Plus
As with the anniversary specials (and all Doctor Who seasons moving forward), Doctor Who will be streaming its Christmas episode on Disney Plus. That means we can probably expect the same sort of release schedule: Disney will be releasing the special concurrently with its broadcast in the U.K., meaning if you’re watching it on Disney Plus, the new specials will drop on Christmas at 9:55 a.m. PST/12:55 p.m. EST.
Can I watch the Christmas Doctor Who special on BBC?
Yup! You’ll be able to watch Doctor Who’s 2023 Christmas special on BBC One and the BBC iPlayer in the U.K. starting at 5:55 p.m. on December 25 (that’s Christmas).
What do I need to have watched beforehand?
As with the Doctor Who anniversary specials: Technically nothing — the franchise has been going for 60 years and counting, so there’s a lot of Who you could catch up on, but how could you even pick where to start?
If you do want to revisit any older Doctor Who, you’ll want to check out the Russell T. Davies section, as he’s the new (returning) showrunner; so you’re looking for series 1 through series 5. Those won’t be viewable on Disney Plus, though, only Max.
Is there a trailer so I can watch Ncuti Gatwa already?
There is! Here’s an early Christmas present, ya rascal:
And here’s a special look at his new Sonic Screwdriver:
The defendant, now 20 and with continuing interim name suppression, appeared before Judge Kathryn Maxwell in Auckland District Court this morning as she mused over his unusually substantive criminal history for someone so young.
He has spent some of his time since the March 5, 2022, shooting remanded in a maximum security jail cell, where he has at times spent 23 hours per day in lockdown.
“You have to take some responsibility, though, of course, for that difficulty on remand,” the judge said, blaming the difficult conditions on “how you are acting in prison”.
The defendant was ordered to serve a sentence of five years and seven months for three counts of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm with a firearm and a concurrent six-month sentence for receiving $1700 worth of stolen goods as the result of an unrelated road rage incident.
He was 18 when arrested last year for the shooting, which took place around 2am on a Saturday on central Auckland’s Fort St, where some businesses catering to the nightclub scene remained open.
The hero of BBC’s long-running sci-fi series Doctor Who is, famously, not a real medical doctor, but they have been a bit ill. What should have been a promising changing of the guard in 2018 — with new showrunner Chris Chibnall and the first woman cast as The Doctor since the series’ 1963 debut — only served to accelerate a gradual downward slide that began in the latter half of previous showrunner Steven Moffat’s seven-year tenure.
In response, the BBC has decided the cure to The Doctor’s ails lies with the man who revived the show from a 15-year coma in 2005: Russell T. Davies. And with his first episode, last weekend’s hour-long special “The Star Beast,” Davies has delivered the goods. “The Star Beast” isn’t quite the reboot Davies is here to deliver — that’ll come in 2024 when Ncuti Gatwa takes over as The Fifteenth Doctor. Instead, “The Star Beast” is meant as catnip for lapsed and disappointed fans that were introduced during Davies’ first Who revival. It’s a blatant nostalgia play that, hilariously, carries on as if nothing has happened since Davies left the show in 2008. And you know what? It kills.
Loosely based on “Doctor Who and The Star Beast,” a comics serial by Pat Mills and Watchmen co-creator Dave Gibbons, the new special pulls triple duty: delivering a snappy, classic Doctor Who adventure, introducing an overarching mystery that will tie “The Star Beast” to two more specials coming in following weeks, and briefly introducing the Doctor to newcomers. It excels at its first two tasks, and stumbles pretty extravagantly at the third. Luckily, there’s so much charm here that “The Star Beast” never feels anything other than delightful, even at its clumsiest.
That charm is essential, because Davies’ first Doctor Who episode in 15 years is lampshading what, in most circumstances, would read as desperation. The mystery at the center of “The Star Beast” and the specials that follow is why — and how — did The Thirteenth Doctor (Jodie Comer) regenerate back into the same body she had as the Tenth Doctor (fan-favorite David Tennant). For a show built around a time-traveling humanoid alien who never dies but instead “regenerates” into a new body with a new personality so the show can explain away recasting its lead, “continuity” has always been more a suggestion than a rule. But Davies bringing back Tennant as the newly-christened Fourteenth Doctor and also Catherine Tate as beloved companion Donna Noble is extravagantly cheeky, even for this show.
Image: Disney Plus
What reunites them is the eponymous Star Beast, a giant Furby-lookin’ guy called The Meep, who crashes on Earth and befriends Donna’s daughter, Rose. The Meep is being hunted by insectoid soldiers who look like Power Rangers villains, catching Donna and her family in the crossfire and bringing The Doctor back into their lives again.
It’s all very silly, and an astonishing display from two actors who do not seem to have missed a beat since they last played these roles in 2008. Even with its messy exposition and open, lavish courtship of fans that grew to love the show during the first Davies era, “The Star Beast” is a good reminder that Donna and The Tenth Doctor were popular for a very good reason. Doctor Who has never had the biggest budget or the slickest sensibilities; it was and remains a childrens’ show that fans happily carried into adulthood. The most beloved of Doctors — Tom Baker, Matt Smith, David Tennant, and a few wild card picks — made this text, imbuing the character with a childlike whimsy, playing a very old man who never stopped believing there was magic to be found in the universe.
David Tennant is still remarkably good at this, and “The Star Beast” makes as good a case for The Doctor as any. He’s endlessly curious, always a little odd, and trusts that kindness and intelligence will win the day over violent antagonists. Tennant’s Doctor is not afraid to treat every square inch of ground as a stage from which he will play to the back of the room. There is no line too silly for him to bellow with conviction. There is no creature too strange for him to care about.
Image: Disney Plus
“The Star Beast” takes a little bit longer to recapture what makes Donna Noble such a great presence, but when she finally gets going, Catherine Tate is a force of nature: Never that impressed with The Doctor, happy to argue with him even with armageddon on the line, and fully capable of steamrolling anyone who looks askance at her or her loved ones.
It is hard not to love these two characters, to not want to travel all of time and space with them again. In a way we have, from 2008 to 2023, in a transition so seamless it’s shocking. Perhaps this shouldn’t be such a surprise. When Doctor Who is at its best, it’s like The Doctor has always been there: an old imaginary friend that still charms you as an adult. The earnest wonder and curiosity the character represents never really gets old. This is why the show endures: You don’t need a season of Doctor Who to be won over, you just need a moment. Those moments can come at any time, during runs both maligned and excellent. The Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble were incredibly good at making those moments in their time together. Here’s to a few more, before it’s someone else’s turn.
The Doctor Who 60th Anniversary specials are on Disney Plus, with the first now streaming and two more premiering weekly. Previous seasons of Doctor Who are available to stream on Max.
The Time Lord has come in the form of Jodie Whittaker, so Joanna and Mal are here to dive deep into the era of the 13th Doctor. They cover Seasons 11 through 13 of the beloved BBC series in Part 6 of their Doctor Who Viewing Guide (9:54). Then, they have some superlatives for all the Doctors they’ve covered as they look forward to David Tennant’s return (1:19:05).
Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Associate Producer: Carlos Chiriboga Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal Social: Jomi Adeniran
The Time Lord has come in the form of Peter Capaldi, so Joanna and Mal are here to dive deep into the era of the twelfth Doctor. They cover Seasons 8 through 10 of the beloved BBC series in Part 5 of their Doctor Who Viewing Guide (8:43).
Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Associate Producer: Carlos Chiriboga Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal Social: Jomi Adeniran
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