Tuesday, August 8, 2006

CROSSOVER OF THE WEEK! (8/8)

Warning: there are spoilers within for the second season of 'Doctor Who'........

All I came up with this week were crossovers from promos and commercials, stuff that I can slip into the mix any time. As for what happened last week, I was hoping to make a connection between the finale of 'Hex' and the pilot for 'Fallen' (coming as a mini-series next year), but I've yet to watch the ABC Family TV movie about Teen Nephilim. I promise I'll have that for next week.

In the meantime, I think I'll turn the reins of "The Crossover Of The Week" over to the guy who actually discovered a link in a recent episode of 'Eureka', Mark T....

Mark wrote to me two weeks ago:

"possible cross (don't know if it's too random) - in the second episode of Eureka, when Jack is entering the (control complex? section 5?) with Allison (the place where her husband heads), the loudspeaker announces something about the trajectory of 'satelite 5'. If you have it tivo'd, please reconfirm.
Mark
"

Before I could go to the videotape, Mark responded with his own answer:

"ran thru Eureka again - it's definitely Satellite 5. The exact phrase (over the loudspeaker twice) is "Local dynamics - satellite 5 online in three - Local dynamics - satellite 5 online in three"

Mark's a good lad; a well-intentioned disciple of his Toobworld master. But he has made one small error - I believe the loudspeaker is saying "Global Dynamics", the name of the company hidden on the mountain behind the town, - rather than "local dynamics".

Still, his heart was in the right place, so the thrashing will be commuted to thirteen hours of Toobworld community service.

And that is punishment indeed, as Mark so looks forward to the thrashings.....

Mark continues:

"Satellite 5 was the 'media ship' as well as the battleground for last seasons finale."

Mark's referring to several episodes of 'Doctor Who' from last season, in which the show was revived with Christopher Eccleston as the ninth incarnation of the Gallifreyan Time Lord.

In "The Long Game", the Doctor, Rose, and Adam visited Satellite 5 where they found that the development of the human race had been stunted by the manipulation of their incessant news broadcasts. The human face behind this plot was a villainous fellow known as "The Editor"; but the true nasty was a sentient carbuncle on the ass of humanity known as the Mighty Jagrafess.

In short order, the Mighty Jagrafess was dispatched, thanks to an ambitious newswoman named Cathica and a living dead undercover agent known as Sookie.

The Doctor and Rose revisited the space station about one hundred years later in "Bad Wolf" (Part One of the season finale), only to find that Satellite 5 had been rechristened "The Gamestation". Now it telecast nothing but reality show competitions and game shows non-stop to the human populace below.

Again the purpose of the satellite was being twisted to serve a different agenda - the true Masters behind the scheme were the Daleks, newly reborn from the ashes of the Time War with the Gallifreyans. The Doctor thought they had all been destroyed along with his own people at the end of that war; after all, he had initiated the cataclysm. But the Dalek Emperor had survived, falling through a temporal wormhole to regroup and rebuild a new army of Daleks made from the pulp of humanity's waste.

Only by Rose's sacrifice when she looked into the heart of the temporal vortex - which no one is meant to do, - were the Daleks destroyed once again. But the power she had absorbed was killing her, so the Doctor took that energy upon himself to save her. This heroic act ended up "killing" him however, and he soon regenerated into the tenth incarnation of the Doctor, played by David Tennant.

And that's how the first season of the renewal ended, by trumpeting its new beginning for Season Two.

So that space station, the scene of so much conflict with alien races nearly 500,000 years into the future of Toobworld's present day, could thus trace its humble beginnings to a small, unassuming town in Oregon by the name of 'Eureka'.

There in Section 5 of Global Dynamics, secret tests were being conducted on one of the components of Satellite 5, which would go on to mutate through add-ons and rebuilds until it would finally become the multi-level residence and broadcasting complex revered and reviled many centuries into the future.

So there's this week's crossover:

'EUReKA'
&
'DOCTOR WHO'

It's a pity though that by the time we revisit Satellite 5 in the future, it more than likely is the dimensional doppelganger from an alternate TV dimension. That's because I've finally come to the realization that the Gallifreyan we know as The Doctor has either fled to this alternate dimension via "sliding" after the Time War, or he's always been a resident of this world rather than the main Toobworld, Earth Prime-Time.

That's not to say that 'Doctor Who' never took place in the main Toobworld; I believe the entire run of the original series and the FOX TV movie to boot were all presented as though they occurred on Earth Prime-Time.

But once we were reunited with the Doctor in the form of Christopher Eccleston, we were now in a different dimension - one in which Tony Blair gets murdered by an alien family named Slitheen; in which Big Ben is demolished by a stunt space-ship; and in which Harriet Jones, MP of Flydale North, becomes the new Prime Minister.

Last year I bent over backwards with splainins on how the Doctor and Rose ended up in an alternate dimension for the episodes "Aliens Of London" and "World War Three", and how Blon Slitheen (aka Margaret Blaine) rode an interdimensional surfboard out of that dimension in order to bring her storyline back to the main Toobworld in time for the episode "Boom Town".

But with this new season, it was as if Russell T. Davies was intent on making sure all of my theories would be forever bolluxed - not that I'm a paranoid fellow.....

With "The Chrismas Invasion", Harriet Jones was now installed as the Prime Minister, which goes against the setup in Toobworld proper; and then we were re-introduced to former companion Sarah Jane Smith (::sigh::) who knew about that holiday attack by the Sycorax.

I would have been happy with doing the pretzel logic routine of coming up with splainins as to how they kept bouncing back and forth between dimensions: how the Sycorax invasion happened in both dimensions (easy enough to do since there was no mention of Prime Minister Jones in "School Reunion"); and noting that most of the episodes were set in the future or the past where there was no need to bring up the alternate government of Great Britain.

But with the two-parter "The Rise Of Steel" and "The Age Of The Cybermen", RTD slit me up a treat. The Doctor pronounced that sliding between dimensions was no longer possible without the other Gallifreyans being alive to power that ability with their very existence. (My opinion? The Gallifreyans were always full of themselves.)

So this couldn't be the Doctor of the main Toobworld, bouncing back and forth between dimensions in his TARDIS (as it should be able to, since it's acronym stands for "Time And Relative Dimension In Space"!) Unless he was purposefully lying to Rose to spare her feelings and to keep her safe with her reconstituted family, there was no way the Doctor could ever go vortex-hopping again without sundering the wall between dimensions.

Even then, I could have worked with that theory - that he was lying to her, - if it weren't for my feeling of certainty that we have not seen the last of Prime Minister Harriet Jones in connecton not only to the Doctor, but to the Torchwood Institute in the coming spin-off series as well. (During Part One of this year's finale, the Doctor and Yvonne Hartman discussed Harriet Jones and Torchwood's role in the destruction of the Sycorax.)

So I think I should abandon even the hope that this is still the original Doctor who was able to "slide" through the vortex to the alternate dimension of Rose Tyler's before the mass death of the Gallifreyan population caused the dimensional barriers to be sealed forever. (There's a mouthful, and no mistake!)

I think he always belonged to that dimension.

That's not to say I'm giving up on the Doctor ever having lived in the main Toobworld. I will still contend that the adventures we know of Doctors One through Eight took place in the TV universe of Earth Prime-Time. But thanks to 'The Simpsons', which is set in the Tooniverse, we know that the Doctor has counterparts in other dimensions. And these other Doctors shared the same adventures as did the original Doctor, right up until the terrible and deadly Time War.

That's why the Tenth Doctor knew the Sarah Jane Smith and K9 of Rose Tyler's dimension: his adventures with her were a common thread for all of his dimensional counterparts.

As for the Time Lord of the main Toobworld, I like to think he's out there, but we just haven't met him yet. And that he has gone through his ninth and tenth regenerations so that he did once resemble Christopher Eccleston and now resembles David Tennant. For all I know, he also teamed up with the Rose Tyler of Earth Prime-Time.....

It's just that if they did do battle against the Family Slitheen, Tony Blair never got killed and Harriet Jones never became the Prime Minister. This would then alter certain elements of other stories told so far ("The Christmas Invasion", "Army Of Ghosts") to bring them in line with the political "reality" of the main Toobworld.

Can we ever hope to see that version of the Doctor, rather than the one of Earth Prime-Time/Rose (which could also be the same dimension for 'Prison Break', 'The Agency' and 'The District')?

It's pozzble, it's pozzble, as Mushrat would say to 'Deputy Dawg'. But if so, I think it will have to wait until the RTD regime has relinquished the reins, and new producers can realign the British government to reflect that to be found here in the real world of Earth Prime.

One nice thing about this theory is that you can't be too sad for Rose Tyler, now trapped in yet another dimension (one which I think can be linked to 'The Secret Adventures Of Jules Verne') with the new, blended version of her family. Perhaps it's true that she will never see the version of the Doctor that she knows again. (But then again, this is sci-fi; anything can happen!)

But that doesn't mean her dimension lacks its own version of the Doctor. After all, as she told him at their final parting of the ways, she was now working for Torchwood. As the Doctor then dubbed her, she was now "Rose Tyler, Defender Of The Earth".

Well, Torchwood only came into existence because of the Doctor's actions in the episode "Tooth And Claw". The Doctor of the Cybus dimension probably participated in that adventure just as he did in Rose's dimension, perhaps even as he did in the main Toobworld. But in Rose's new dimension, the Doctor saved Queen Victoria from that alien lycanthrope without Rose as a companion, since she never existed in that dimension before.

Ow. My head hurts. I can just imagine how you must feel........

So where was I? Oh yeah. The Crossover of the Week. This is a blog post about the Crossover of the Week.

All of that doggerel I just unleashed upon you doesn't negate the crossover. Satellite 5's origins lie in the secret laboratories of Global Dynamics in Eureka, Oregon, and one day it will be transformed into a symbol of the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire. And this will be true in almost all of the dimensions of Toobworld.

Oh, and here's another little nugget of a possible crossover connected to all of this.....

Remember my wish-craft last week about wanting Jackson Roykirk of 'Star Trek' fame and infamy to show up in 'Eureka'? I think this Satellite 5 project would be the perfect place to find Roykirk working, now that the launch of Nomad is about four years behind him!

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

PS
Thanks again to Mark T for alerting me to the mention of Satellite 5 on 'Eureka'. And thanks to Mark and the other Brokeback Buddy, Michael C, for making it possible for me to see 'Doctor Who' long before the rest of America finally got to see it on the Sci-Fi Channel.

Thanks to them, I don't have to be stuck with the rest of those losers......

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