Fearful Symmetries

While Relative Dementias was the eighth 7th Doctor PDA to be published, it is the first in order chronologically. Author Mark Michalowski places his story between Battlefield and Ghost Light both of which were part of the final season of the Classic Series. Like most of that season and all of the 7th Doctor PDAs I've read so far, this story takes place on Earth.

I liked how Relative Dementias opened with a burst of short scenes that fail to include The Doctor and Ace. The prologue introduces us to Graystairs, what I took to be an old folks home. It's a staccato series of bits of conversations that are derived from the elderly and the senile being left at Graystairs by their families. I was vaguely reminded of those "Camera Eye" sections of the U.S.A. Trilogy by John Dos Passos. This gives way to another short section in which we meet a female character who is on watch on a shoreline of some sort. We have no idea what she's keeping an eye out for or why she is in a new body that has a bum fingernail.

Next we meet Doctor Joyce Brunner. She is a member of UNIT and knows The Doctor. However, Dr. Brunner knows the Third Doctor (and Bessie too!). She has brought her mother to Graystairs, which is somewhere in rural Scotland, but has some "vague concerns" about the place. So she contacts The Doctor the only way she knows how: sends a postcard to the PO box in London that he gave her. And lastly before our intrepid time travelers enter the scene, we get a brief glimpse inside Graystairs with orderlies being ornery and fussing over the disappearance of one of their patients, Eddie.

I don't doubt that some people would find this rapid-fire introduction of places and characters, some named and some left anonymous, to be confusing. But it does lay out many of the story's building blocks from the get-go and, quite frankly, I don't mind being a bit confused. Indeed, I rather like that sense of bewilderment because it means that the game is afoot.

The Doctor and Ace finally enter the picture as they traipse around London in 2012. They make a stop at the residence of Countess Gallowglass who runs a little post office for aliens on Earth so that they can get their mail. The Doctor hasn't checked his in quite some time and is perturbed by something he received. He keeps his cards close to his chest and really pisses Ace off when he locks her out of the Console Room. She can hear him speaking with someone else but can't discern much more than that.

Just when we think that Michalowski is finished giving us the introductory material, he throws in a diver in some body of water somewhere who finds a dome underneath the surface. Yet another place and person to contend with.

With a highly irritated companion, The Doctor sets course for Muirbridge in 1982. He explains to Ace that an old friend of his, Dr. Joyce Brunner, has some reservations about a facility claiming to have found a cure for Alzheimer's disease and he's bound to investigate.

As you can imagine, not all is as it appears at Graystairs. A bald albino man sits alone on the top floor crying to opera while patients go missing and one even gets total recall. Ace and The Doctor investigate things separately which leaves the former on her own when she stumbles across a teleportation device in Graystairs' basement. She fends off the albino's henchwoman, Megan, with a frying pan before being teleported to an alien ship that features Graystairs patients neurally hooked up to a computer in what we later find out to be a parallel processing array. Ace gets to be a hero here, in addition to being something of a badass. She plies her heroics on the ship solo and eludes that albino, whom we find out is named Sooal and guess what planet he's from. His motives lie far away from curing Alzheimer's.

Ace ends up in the North Sea where she meets up with a certain diver and, if you don't want some major spoilers, skip this paragraph. She finds out that she's near the Orkney Islands, hundreds of miles away from Muirbridge. In a neat twist, Ace sends a postcard to The Doctor pleading for rescue. He gets it in 2012 along with Joyce's missive. There are eventually two Aces running around Muirbridge which, after you find this out and think back, explains some of the mysterious occurrences from earlier in the book. Michalowski handles this little temporal discommotion very well.

Spoilers over.

At one point in the story, The Doctor gets hooked up to the array on the space ship and has a couple visions. One involves Leela, which he realizes is a memory from his past, but the other is of a lone, baleful gray eye looking at him through a broken window that shimmered orange and brown and yellow. It whispers to The Doctor and asks if he'd forgotten him already. The Doctor ponders this vision at the end of the story and I am wondering if it will be addressed in another of these PDAs.

Being set in the time period of the show's last season, Relative Dementias does include some Cartmel Masterplany stuff. The mysterious vision is one element that can be ascribed to it. Another is Brunner's son, Michael. Michael is in UNIT, or rather was in UNIT. He's gone AWOL and is wrestling with telling his mother. His decision to desert his post came from much anger and confusion. Amongst the reasons is The Doctor who, although he has helped humanity, has also been responsible for the deaths of many people including Michael's friends and comrades in arms. It's a far cry from intimations about The Doctor's mysterious past but I think it fits in with an overall darker view of him and engenders some ambivalence about him as well. This is something that have fit well in the last season of the New Series.

Michalowski generally keeps his characterizations of The Doctor and Ace within the boundaries set by the TV series. I've noticed that there's a general consensus amongst fans that, for the 7th Doctor, portraying him and Ace in a way that is consonant with how they were portrayed on TV is a good thing. (Conversely, fans of the 6th Doctor books praise authors who portray him in a less acerbic manner than he was on TV and more like the character that Colin Baker and Big Finish developed for their audios.) And I suppose it is. This certainly gives the books a certain familiarity. On the other hand, I am curious if any of the authors tweaked the characters a bit. I'm not looking for a 180 but for some development, some expansion. So far I haven't found that in the PDAs but it may happen yet. I'm not complaining, mind you. Perhaps the Virgin New Adventures take our beloved heroes in new directions. I shall find out.

With Ace being separated from The Doctor for quite a while and the fact that she takes charge, saves people, and kicks a little butt, it's easier to see how she is a precursor to the companions of the New Series. While there's no Nitro 9 here, Ace is a partner to The Doctor and not simply a damsel in distress and/or springboard for the Timelord to relay his deductions. Michalowski portrays her as capable, smart, and independent yet also as a teenager still figuring out what it means to be an adult. She blushes when meeting a cute young man yet is able to adjust to being thrust onto an alien space ship like a consummate pro.

Relative Dementias kept mostly to the blueprint established by the TV show but it tweaked the formula a little bit. There are more subsidiary characters here and it was fun to read as Michalowski established them independently and then drew them all together. Plus there's Michal who views The Doctor as someone who brings death in his wake as opposed to a savior to humanity. But it's mostly The Doctor and Ace battling an alien baddie. The time travel twist was icing on the cake.

Pingu is, according to Wikipedia, "a British-Swiss stop-motion claymated television series...about a family of anthropomorphic penguins at the South Pole."

New Glarus has released the first part of their 2012 release schedule.

I am thrilled to see that Two Women is returning next year. Road Slush, an oatmeal stout, and Hop Hearty IPA are back as well after a hiatus. That means Coffee Stout is taking a rest. Not sure what Hop Hearty is replacing. I am also glad that Cabin Fever Honey Bock shall make another appearance as I really like having the year bookended with bocks. (Please let Back 40 return...)

The first Thumbprint brew is a barley wine and the second will be Cherry Stout. I still have 3 bottles of the last barley wine they brewed and two of the Iced Barley Wine in my cellar. I'll have to give those a try when winter really settles in.

The Sundance Film Festival U.S.A. is set for 26 January. This is when filmmakers and their films leave Utah and roadshow their movies at select theatres around the country. Sundance Cinemas - Madison has been participating the past couple years (since it started?) so I find it odd that we've been left out for 2012. The Sundance theatres in San Francisco and Houston are a go, so why not Madison?

In other film news, both Cinematheque and the WUD Film Committee have released their spring semester schedules.

It's December so now is the time to clear out the Oktoberfests, right?

Hoptoberfest is a Märzen from Milwaukee Brewing Company and, as the name implies, it has more hops than your average Oktoberfest.

In your glass, it has a nice reddish amber color and I got a nice, foamy head that lingered when I poured it. Taking a whiff, the malt came across as both caramel and biscuit, slightly more of the former. You can catch the hops in the nose too with it being herbally inclined.

Hoptoberfest has a medium body but it tasted a bit lighter than I'm used to in a Märzen. It has a moderate malt sweetness with some nutty overtones. So far, so good. The hop flavor is moderately high in general and very high for the style. You get a good dose here of grassy hops with a liminal floral accent underneath to boot.

When I bought this beer I was a bit nervous because I wasn't sure if the HOP bit meant tilting the scales away from the malt sweetness which typically gets the nod with Oktoberfests or if it was going to be a Märzen with the hops really jacked up. It's towards the latter here. A lot more hops (and more alcohol too with its 6% ABV being just above the high end of the range for the style.) While I'm not a purist who thinks tradition shouldn't be tampered with, Hoptoberfest just didn't do it for me. Either it needs a bigger malt backbone or the hops should be dialed back a little bit. Almost everything about this beer was clean like a good lager should be, but the bitterness simply overpowered the malt and got in the way of a nice dry finish.

Junk food pairing: I'd go with a good Indian snack mix. Let the curry leaves, coriander, and other aromatic spices balance out the bitterness.

Man #1: How old are you?

Man #2: 38.

Man #1: Just wait til you're 40.

Man #2: (inaudbile)

Man #1: Yeah, well just wait because the other alternative isn't that good either.

Unfortunately Denver's Great Divide Brewing doesn't distribute here in Wisconsin. If they did, I would certainly be buying more off their Hoss, a rye lager. And so would a couple friends of mine to whom I gave some and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Hoss is based on the Märzen style which, to my mind, means a malty lager with a goodly amount of hops thrown in to keep it from being very sweet and giving the beer a dry finish. This brew is very much in line with this definition excepting the presence of rye in the grist. I personally love rye in my bread – liquid and solid.

This stuff pours a nice copper color with a good head which disappears rather quickly. The aroma is part caramel from the malt and part sharp rye graininess. Drinking it, I first tasted the malt. It was caramely with a slight fruitiness to it – like plum. This was quickly joined by the rye spiciness and made for a great pairing with a medium body. Hoss finishes with on a dry note with a moderate grassy hop bitterness which melds with the zesty rye very well.

As far as I can recall, this is the first rye lager I've ever had and it was a fantastic first experience with the style. I appreciated that it was prominent in the flavor profile instead of lurking in the background while the other flavors took center stage. The barley, rye, and hops make for a wonderfully tasty triumvirate of gustatory goodness. The interplay among them makes for a crisp, refreshing beer that also has some heft. This is one of my favorite beers of the year. Unfortunately I have but one remaining bottle and I fear that I am going to start acting like Gollum around it.

Junk food pairing: Grab a handful of Jay's Barbecue potato chips to go with this beer. I betcha can't eat nor drink just one.

Since Hoss is unavailable in Wisconsin, I will recommend a trio of brews for anyone who likes rye bier or may want to try one out.

First I will note that Scotty, the brewmaster over at Vintage on Madison's west side, has his Tippy Toboggan Roggenbier on tap now. This is an ale. (Roggenbier is German for rye beer.) I had some of this for the first time at the Great Taste this past summer and it got my Teutonic heart all a-flutter.

Founders brews Red's Rye PA and this is another great brew. Very hoppy yet the rye shines through.

Page over at House of Brews has a rye Kölsch which I love. The rye is subtle here, though.

Surly also has a rye Märzen called SurlyFest but I've never had it. But it sounds great.

I am very happy that our troops have finally left Iraq. My fellow blogger Gregory Humphrey is as well and he wrote a post expressing relief that our soldiers are leaving Iraq and that the war has had some horrible consequences. He lists many of them including dead and wounded American soldiers, the riches of Croesus having been spent, a serious blow to the United States' reputation, and the moral failing of the American people.

What's missing from his account, however, is any notion that 100,000+ Iraqi civilians died in the conflict. According to Iraq Body Count, we're looking at 104,122-113,770 dead Iraqis and that's a highly conservative estimate. Nearly three years ago some estimates gave us these gruesome statistics: about 1 million killed, 4.5 million displaced, 1-2 million widows, 5 million orphans.

So, while Humphrey points out many tragedies, he neglects the extremely heavy toll inflicted on the Iraqi people and opts to lament, "Woe is us!" a shameful and solipsism display on his part.

The problem is that we are not leaving Iraq. As Spencer Ackerman of Wired notes, we have a mega-embassy there with some 18,000 people and there will be 3,500-5,500 "armed private security contractors". Security contractors? Soldiers? A distinction without a difference. I'm sure the Iraqi people simply see Americans with guns. And let's not forget that our troops are leaving because of the insistence of the Iraqi government, not because President Obama was ready to bring the boys back home.

If you were an Iraqi or an Iranian or just any average citizen of a Middle Eastern country, how would you take Obama's statement that "our strong presence in the Middle East endures"? (That's where the oil is, after all.) Does it instill confidence that Big Daddy Obama is looking out for you or do you take it as a threat? The Authorization for Use of Military Force is still intact so our government stands ready to send troops back to Iraq or anywhere else there are people considered to be terrorists. Plus no boots on the ground are required to start the Drone Wars in Iraq.

There are still lots of people in the Islamic world who recall with extreme embarrassment the ass-kicking that Muslims suffered at the hands of the Mongols in the 13th century (Hulagu Khan, for instance, laid waste to Baghdad in 1258.) yet the Obama administration sounds like it wants everyone to forget the millions of Iraqis who were killed, maimed, displaced, widowed, orphaned, or otherwise had their lives upset by our invasion. To add insult to injury, we are keeping a mega-embassy there along with thousands of security contractors and a promise to maintain a warlike posture in the region. I certainly wouldn't blame anyone over there for taking Obama's comment as a threat and think that we should be prepared for more blowback. End of the war my ass.

The Hollow Men is a sequel to one of my favorite stories from the classic series, The Awakening. This isn't immediately evident, however. There are two prologues and the first concerns “the most evil man on God's earth”, one George Jeffreys who proceeds to turn the village of Hexen Bridge into a charnel house. It is one of the most hideous episodes to be featured in a Doctor Who story.

Fast forward to the dawn of the 21st century. The TARDIS lands just outside of the accursed Hexen Bridge with The Doctor intent on attending a reunion at the village's school where he is on the board of governors, which I take to be the equivalent of our school board. The village is not dissimilar to the one in Grave Matter - an insulated community populated by a bunch of suspicious locals and a tavern where information is to be had. However, it turns out that Hexen Bridge is less like the village on the Dorsill island and more like Innsmouth.

Instead of an Innsmouth look, the population of Hexen Bridge remains preternaturally steady, although the suicide rates of the school's alumni is very high and people who leave the village discover that they are either barren or sterile. Zadok Allen is replaced by the Reverend Thomas Baber. And instead of fishmen, we get scarecrows.

The Doctor and his companions are usually separated but Seven and Ace seem to remain apart for longer than is normal here. The Doctor is kidnapped and taken to Liverpool while Ace remains in Hexen Bridge where she sneaks about looking for clues and dodging the mulitifoliate menaces. For his part, The Doctor uncovers the scheming of Hexen Bridge alumni Matthew Hatch and Kenny Shanks. Gun-running is minor compared with aiding and abetting the thing underneath the village green in their hometown which is a cousin of the Malus from The Awakening. It also turns out that Hexen Bridge is close to that story's Little Hodcombe.

Just as in Illegal Alien the lilywhite setting is disrupted by colored folk. Instead of a black American ex-pat we have the Chens, a Chinese family. These perpetual outsiders moved to Hexen Bridge and opened a restaurant. They provide a target for hatred as well as allies for our heroes. Plus they can cook a meal fit for a Time Lord. I'm not sure why authors Keith Topping and Martin Day included them. Were they just useful for providing a contrast to the creepy consanguineous white people or were the authors commenting upon English villages or, at least, the portrayal of them in fiction?

Although the cover says this story takes place between The Curse of Fenric and Survival which places it in the show's last season on the air, there isn't much in the way of the Cartmel Masterplan to be had. The Doctor and Ace's relationship doesn't involve the former trying to get the latter to acknowledge and understand her past instead of running away from it. Furthermore there are no hints that The Doctor is something more than your average Time Lord gone incommunicado in a Type 40 TARDIS.

This certainly is no problem; it's just that I'm curious as to whether the BBC 7th Doctor books follow in what I am told are the footsteps of the Virgin New Adventures in portraying Seven as being darker and more mysterious than he was generally portrayed on TV. So far that's not the case. All three Seventh Doctor books in the series that I have read/am reading take place on Earth. Again, not a problem but I am looking forward to some off-world adventures.

The Hollow Men has the spirit of the Classic Series and, as these book tend to do, it expands on the formula of the TV show. A couple more subsidiary characters get some space above and beyond what the show would have done, there is more blood and guts, and there are more locales than the television version's budget would have allowed. Oh, and there's some nudity and sexual references as well.

Quite simply, a fun read.

Considering the plot - about a woman's difficulty in getting her boyfriend to give her a golden shower - this is a funny and dare I say cute little movie.

I bought some Novi Bock from the Woodman Brewery tonight. It was skunk. Someone on Rate Beer had the same experience a few days ago. I don't know if we're talking a bad batch or if it has just been on the shelf too long/was handled improperly.

What a waste because I think there was a tasty helles bock hidden in there.

The altbier is the official bier of Düsseldorf. From what I've read, the volk there are quite proud of the city's standard-bearer and a good way to get a Teutonic smackdown is to wander into a local tavern and order a Kölsch. I have never been there and my memory comports with that of a commenter who says that no alts from Düsseldorf have been seen in Madison for ages. The moral of this story is that, when it comes to judging domestic altbiers on their conformity to the “real” thing, I am not your man.

Altbiers don't seem to get a lot of love here in Wisconsin, as near as I can tell. Tyranena brews one as does BluCreek. New Glarus and Rush River both had limited release alts that were more like stickes, i.e. - a bigger, stronger altbier. And that's about it as far as breweries that bottle go. (Any others that I have missed?)

At the risk of pissing off sticklers for style, I'll say that altbiers are a hybrid in that they are brewed with top-fermenting yeast but are cold conditioned. They're a brown ale on one hand and a lager on the other.





Metropolitan Brewing in Chicago brews German-style biers and their latest annual is Iron Works Alt.

Iron Works pours a deep copper color and you get a fairly substantial head that lingers. It being winter, my nose is often stuffy so I wasn't able to an optimal whiff but the aroma was of caramel along – almost fruity - with a grassy hop scent to boot.

Unlike other domestic altbiers that I've had, this stuff has a comparatively light body. BluCreek's version is a good example of one that is heavy, syrupy on the tongue. The caramel aroma returns in the flavor but it is balanced by the spiciness of the hops as well as the lager crispness. This is not a very hoppy beer, although I suppose that's relative in this day and age of 100+ IBU brews.

In addition to be a hybrid style-wise, I find that Iron Works is a hybrid in terms of servability. I have been drinking this stuff the latter half of this year and find that the light body and dry finish make it very refreshing in warmer weather but that the high malt aspect of the profile also makes it eminently drinkable in colder weather.

Junk food pairing: During a recent Packer game I found that Iron Works goes great with nuts freshly cracked from the shell, especially pecans and hazelnuts. And last night I discovered that it is just swell with a some chunks of Musa's Hot Albanian Sausage. Who knew that someone made Albanian sausage here in Madison?

I also want to note the existence of the altbier glass or Becher.





I do so for the sake of completeness and that it allows me to go off on a rant.

These are like Kölsch glasses in that they are cylindrical with straight sides but they're shorter and wider. And I'd bet that the only alt glasses in Madison are in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Leopard”. Belgian beers always seem to get the correct tulip glass or chalice yet my Kölsch and altbiers come in pints instead of a stange or Becher. Until alts get more popular I won't expect the proper glass, but times are tough so at least give me my Kölsch in the correct glass so it doesn't get warm while I'm drinking it and you can hire Köbes to keep it filled and help the unemployment situation. It's a win-win proposition.

Christopher Hitchens succumbed to esophageal cancer yesterday.

Vanity Fair's editor Graydon Carter has a nice memoriam while Slate has some of his greatest hits.

I'll be raising a glass of Johnny Walker Black at some point this weekend.