This year's been a bit odd for me in terms of games. I've certainly been playing them, as evidenced by my incredibly original and charming What I've Played in '14 list, but nothing's yet grabbed me in terms of games I really want to talk about. But for my long-time readers who have been vociferously clamoring for (in my head, at least) a return of Sparky's Update, here's three months for you. Bravely Default was a mess of really great ideas and classic PS1-era feel with a lot of piss-poor execution. Batman Arkham Origins is just more Arkham City (which is a pretty darned good thing, if you ask me, but it's dull to talk about). Telltale continues to pump out great games that I love dearly. News of Civilization: Beyond Earth turns me on to eleven. I'm kind of meh about Borderlands 2.5, which I know I'll play the shit out of, but would much rather see the resources devoted to a full-on sequel.

And that's really about it. Three months of games in a few sentences. I've been trying to think of some intelligent opinion pieces or articles to write like fellow bloggers @gamer_152, @chaser324, or @dankempster, but most of my writing these days is devoted to putting together a short story collection or to the ephemeral novels I keep braying about to no one in particular. I reckon I'm pretty excited to lay my hands on a PS4 at some point, maybe as soon as next spring, but honestly, there just hasn't been anything that's grabbed me yet, so I'm content to play last year's leftovers and revisit games like Civ V and Skyrim in the interim.

That huge and mostly unnecessary wordy intro aside, I thought I'd start devoting blogs to other media I'm enthralled with, particularly books and television. I don't watch many movies these days, but expect to see some of those occasionally covered too. What I'd like to start with is a blog about a show I'm admittedly geeky about - Doctor Who, for those who can't bother reading blog titles but have somehow waded through this much horseshit.

I think I've been a fan of Doctor Who since about 2006 or so, when I was making money hand over fist and could afford to upgrade my stupidly priced satellite to include BBC America. Middle class thuggin' and bumpin', ya'll. I caught the premiere (over herein the States, anyways) of the revamped series, and found it in its early days to be a corny, silly show which I just couldn't stay away from. I watched the first season fairly regularly, but throughout the years, I'd only catch sporadic episodes until I could catch up on all of them through Netflix and BBC America (which became my addiction when I first started watching Top Gear in about 2011 or so, despite the endless Graham Norton ads. PS - fuck you, Graham Norton).

By now, though, I think I've watched just about every episode and special of the modern Doctor Who at least once. I tend to favor the bigger, more serious arcs and stories, and I used to put my mind on autopilot through most of the one-offs and just about the entirety of the Donna Noble era. Lately, though, I've been making an effort to go through each episode with an open mind, a task that's been a lot of fun with only the minor annoyance or two. Again - see Donna Noble. OK, that's a bit unfair, and you'll see why in a few.

My love for Doctor Who has really grown and changed throughout the years, from finding it a bit too hokey to realizing that its absurdities help anchor it down, in a way. I hope to impart some of my reasons behind these thoughts into this and future blogs. I think this will likely end up being a three-parter, with the first focusing on the modern Doctor's companions. Future blogs will talk about the incarnations of the Doctor themselves - obviously, again, this will be in reference to the modern Doctor, since I have little experience with the old Doctor Who episodes (but will endeavor to watch those as well) - with the last blog I have planned being a bit of a potpourri of thoughts and nonsense.

So... whew. With all that, let's get on with it. Warning - there will be MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD. Read at your own risk.

Rose Tyler

Played by the lovely and talented Billie Piper (who you might also know from Secret Diary of a Call Girl, and if you're like me, you might regularly confuse her for the female lead in Coupling), Rose Tyler had to be the anchor for the audience of the modern Doctor Who. Audiences (and myself) weren't going to follow the exploits of some simpering damsel in distress, and thankfully, Rose Tyler was never displayed in that light, save for her beginning.

The series starts with its second-most ridiculous Whollains in the Plastic Men. Only the Pig Men seem more absurd (and cheap) in their design, and like the Pig Men, the Plastic Men were only featured for a brief moment. Billie Piper did an excellent job here of creating as much tension and fear as she could with the material she and Christopher Eccleston were given, and the damsel in distress facade didn't take long to disappear, as she became instrumental in aiding the Doctor and saving the day by the end of the very first episode.

Piper and Eccleston couldn't have been more opposite in nature. Make no mistake - both are quite talented actors, but Piper always seemed quite believable, even in the most ridiculous of moments - and in Doctor Who, there are plenty. Eccleston, who we'll get into later in a future blog, never quite matched Piper pound for pound in terms of his comfort with the role and his surroundings, and therefore, the first season suffered a bit. Rose Tyler and the Doctor's relationship, fairly awkward at first, never quite felt right until the inimitable and truly awesome David Tennant took over.

Really, that entire first season in retrospect falls on Billie Piper's shoulders, and she carried the load admirably. She's the audience's first (modern) window into the bizarre and delightful universe of Doctor Who, and she nailed it. She experiences the joys of travel, the thrill of the mysterious Doctor, the pain of the great losses he and his companions must suffer through, and a growing sense of attraction, all within a handful of episodes, all while reeling from the alienness of it all. As silly as the show might be, the role of a Doctor's companion requires a huge amount of range from its actors and actresses. Watching Billie Piper now, she grows and adapts to the role, making it her own, while Eccleston continually tried to fit a square peg into a round hole with pure brute force - mostly successfully, but still... polar opposites.

With the still-mysterious leaving of Eccleston from the show after its first season (I'd kill to know the story behind that, as I think a second season might have done his Doctor a world of good), that meant the Doctor needed a regeneration, which led to the fulfillment of the Bad Wolf storyline. The first of Rose Tyler's major stories, it saw her become a deus ex machina by absorbing the energy of the TARDIS into herself, destroying a Dalek threat and helping resurrect a sometime companion to the Doctor by the name of Jack Harkness (still a personal favorite of mine). Eccleston's Doctor reabsorbs the energy back into himself and then the TARDIS, effectively ending his life and causing him to regenerate into a tall, skinny, ridiculously charming version of himself that remains my personal favorite of all the Doctors to date.

Almost from the get-go, Billie Piper and David Tennant didn't have so much a spark as they did a forest fire. Their on-screen chemistry is terrific, their story arcs full of tragedy and a wounded hope. Their run also greatly benefitted from some of the show's best strings of episodes, including The Girl in the Fireplace, a tale about Madame de Pompadour that is, to me, one of the best one-off episodes in the entirety of the show; the dark Impossible Planet and Satan's Pit, in which Doctor Who comes deliciously close to real horror; and the tragic end of their run in Army of Ghosts and Doomsday, two terrifically emotional episodes for Piper and Tennant (as well as for me) which end in the tearing of the fellowship between the two, leaving Rose stranded in an alternate universe while Tennant's Doctor soldiers on, heartbroken and beginning to show hints of the self-loathing and sadness that eventually made his run as Doctor Who so remarkable and personal.

Rose came back in a series of mysterious visions to Donna Noble in the fourth season, leading to the ridiculously satisfying reunion of the Doctor and Rose Tyler in a pair of episodes meant to send off Tennant's Doctor's companions with a bang. It's hard to argue with the logic of putting the Doctor and Tyler back together, as it doesn't diminish the sadness of their parting in any way (it's actually a human version of the Doctor who gets to walk away with Rose, while the real Doctor slips away in his Tardis). That wasn't the end of Rose Tyler, either, but she wouldn't be seen for several more seasons.

All in all, Rose Tyler is easily my favorite of the Doctor's companions (with the caveat that I really, really look forward to seeing where the show goes with Jenna Coleman's Clara, who had the most intriguing beginning to all the companions I've seen). Billie Piper brought a magnetism to the role and it's stupidly hard not to get attached to the character. While her early relationship stuff with Mickey is questionable, once her relationship solidifies with the Doctor and Mickey is given strong material of his own, Rose easily becomes one of the most relatable, most human characters of them all. It doesn't hurt that the second season of the show is far and away the most evenly written of the series.

For the best Rose Tyler episodes, I strongly recommend checking out Dalek (S1), The Girl in the Fireplace (S2), Impossible Planet/Satan's Pit (S2), Army of Ghosts/Doomsday (S2 - Army of Ghosts is a weaker episode, but its culmination in Doomsday is tremendous), and The Stolen Earth/Journey's End (again, the first episode isn't quite as good as the latter). Feel free to argue with me in the comments below or post your own favorite Rose Tyler moments and episodes.

Whew. I fully intended on this being a complete look at ALL the Doctor's companions, but I think that's enough for one day. I'll look at the next companion - Freema Agyeman's woefully underwritten Martha Jones. See you then.