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The Doctor is back with an all-new episode of Doctor Who, and we’re thrust into a spy thriller that keeps us on the edge of our seat throughout the entire thing. All around the world, spies are being killed by aliens that the Sonic Screwdriver cannot identify. The Doctor continually gets no readings on these creatures, and when she goes to her old MI6 buddy O, they’re under attack from the same creatures.

MI6 brings in the Doctor and her companions when they see spies go missing. With a call from C (Stephen Fry), our favorite crew rolls into MI6, and Graham and Ryan are more concerned with the cool gadgets they get to use than anything else. But splitting up after C is, seemingly, assassinated by these aliens, the Doctor and Graham go to Australia to visit the former MI6 agent O—an analyst who studied the extraterrestrial life forms that the government came in contact with—while Ryan and Yaz went to San Francisco to talk with the man who was, seemingly, at the center of these attacks.

There are two jokes in this episode that hit in the best possible way. One comes when C says that the Doctor changed (meaning regenerated), and she responds that she “got an upgrade.” The second? Ryan trying to go undercover and naming himself “Logan” because he wanted to channel the energy of Hugh Jackman, but then was afraid that he couldn’t channel the energy of Hugh Jackman and broke down into nerves while trying to go undercover.

It was great because, for the first real time, it showed the Doctor’s companions trying to figure out how to get information without having the Doctor there for an excuse or the use of the psychic paper to help them. But then, the episode goes from a fun mess of the Doctor’s companions trying to be spies into a twisty-turny episode that had us all screaming by the end.

The twist? O is not who he says he is. In a moment that had me yelling in public, the Master is back with an all-new persona. There was a part of me that wanted Michelle Gomez back as the Master to take on Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor, but I do have to say that I loved the reveal of O’s lies.

It was an episode of the Doctor in a tux, spy-thriller dynamics, and twists and turns that are typically found in a James Bond movie rather than Doctor Who, but it was a solid and fun start to season 12.

The episode does a great job of setting up the turmoil that is to come to the Doctor in this two-part episode, and Twitter was excited about the New Year’s Day premiere episode.

✨ DW SPOILER ALERT ✨
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bitch IM BACK #DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/qXCTw84ehx

— letics || dw spoiler ✨ (@luyfloyd) January 2, 2020

the master: surprise bitch bet you thought you’d seen the last of me

the doctor even though this literally happens every time and they’ve known this stupid timelord since childhood: #DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/BAd19vdxuU

— Klaudia Amenábar // doctor who spoilers mute me (@kaludiasays) January 2, 2020

‼️ #DoctorWho Spoilers ‼️

Get you a man who can do both. pic.twitter.com/cMCNQyXBjZ

— Jennifer/Raven (@Ravensong97) January 2, 2020

The many stages of “Oh Shit! The Master Again!!!” #Spyfall #DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/kFze5T10zZ

— JAMΞS (@NormaJeansBaker) January 2, 2020

This was the most adorable and dorky thing I’ve ever seen in my life! ❤️✨#DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/VobURLob4G

— TardisMonkey (@tardis_monkey) January 2, 2020

the master is such a dramatic bitch and I love him already#doctorwho pic.twitter.com/4hUqJ7ItMJ

— caitlin/DW SPOILERS (@cxpxldi) January 2, 2020

I’m excited to see where this season ends up taking us. Right now, the Doctor is separated from her friends while they’re on a crashing airplane, but as the Master said to her before separating the Doctor from Graham, Ryan, and Yaz, everything you think you know is a lie.

(image: BBC)

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 —The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—

Writer: Dan Jurgens / Artists: Inaki Miranda and Scot Eaton / DC Comics

If you’ve been following BNP’s comic book coverage for a while, you may know that I regularly reviewed DC’s main Batman title. From issue #1 to issue #85 – with the occasional handoff in between— I rode the highs and lows of that series.

Now it’s time to venture into new territories. But I can’t venture too far from home, however, because Batman has my heart, and I won’t give up until he’s happy! (read: never)

I decided to check out Batman Beyond as it’s a story I’ve dabbled with and enjoyed in the past, but not in its current iteration. Little did I know I’d come across one of the most enjoyable and satisfying Batman stories I’ve read in a while.

The issue features an anonymous Batwoman who has stepped in to don the cowl as Terry McGinnis is suffering from a bad case of amnesia and living on the streets. Batwoman is fighting none other than Blight, a former millionaire named Derek Powers who actually murdered Terry’s father after he exposed his schemes. Oh! And he absorbed radioactive energy and walks around in a body that’s quickly deteriorating.

Back in the Batcave, old man Bruce Wayne and Terry’s younger brother Matt are watching on as this anonymous Batwoman fights Blight and speculate on who should be. Neither of their biggest leads picked up the phone, so who knows at this point?

On the other side of town, Terry is living on the streets with only his first name and the company of another woman who’s hit rock bottom. The only problem is that she hit rock bottom by taking part in the same scheme that got his father murdered.

*gasp*

Now, Batman Beyond #39 is not doing anything new here. As a matter of fact, a lot of this issue is a reintroduction of regular tropes like amnesia, secret identities, and the return of long-thought-dead villains. But Dan Jurgens is having fun here. He’s not dealing with the pressures of trying to steer one of DC’s top-shelf titles, which allows him the freedom to have some fun.

9.0 out of 10

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The post Batman Beyond #39 Review appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.

From Ge’NeL Magazine

With the impending Wonder Woman 1984 film due for release in the new year, it’s time to revisit Diana’s history — that is her BDSM and polyamory lifestyle.

Written by: Kiesha Richardson

In Sparta, 9th century BC, young men were gathered and whipped by priestesses in a ritual called diamastigosis in one of the cult rituals that alleged to have made the men strong. It makes sense for the Amazonian women who fled ancient Greece to have these same traditions. In addition to the physical portrayals of Bondage, Discipline, Dominance and Submission, Sadomasochism, most historians forget to include the one thing that made BDSM so vital then and today still, and especially with regard to Wonder Woman.

In Greece, truth and sex were linked, in the form of pedagogy, by the transmission of a precious knowledge from one body to another; sex served as a medium for initiations into learning.

This is one of the primary reasons Wonder Woman’s main weapon is the golden Lasso of Truth. William Moulton Marston, a Harvard graduate, self-help author, and comic book writer who created the character Wonder Woman as well as the inventor of the polygraph lie detector test — understood the importance of the character he was creating in his particular era of 1941. Wonder Woman, for Marston, was a symbol of everything our society lacked then: free love and equality for women. The Angela Robinson film Professor Marston and the Wonder Women also explores his history in this respect.

Marston was in school during the Suffragette Movement, where women, borrowing from the abolitionist movement, chained themselves to the gates of the White House in protest for the right to vote. In this way, every time Wonder Woman was tied up or chained, this symbolized her need to escape men’s power over her. In the comics, she is often referred to as Mistress and for another to dominate her is a power struggle that she always wins. And to this, Marston believed that:

The only hope for peace is to teach people who are full of pep and unbound force to enjoy being bound… Only when the control of self by others is more pleasant than the unbound assertion of self in human relationships can we hope for a stable, peaceful human society… Giving to others, being controlled by them, submitting to other people cannot possibly be enjoyable without a strong erotic element.

In other words, learn to love bondage and you will become powerful. It’s one of the tenets of modern BDSM: a submissive who gives up control willingly holds the power because it’s a choice.

Though, feminists today who have very little knowledge of Wonder Woman from the Golden Age of comics tended to turn their nose up and feel offense over the Wonder Woman Earth One graphic novel series. Grant Morrison and Yanick Paquette wanted to return Wonder Woman to her bondage roots in their 2016 Earth One series.

The Earth One series, unfortunately, was the first time in decades that the Wonder Woman stories actually worked (it still had its problems, but that’s for another time). Why? Because Wonder Woman’s costume and bondage go hand in hand. As mentioned earlier, she uses the Lasso of Truth to bound her foes, which makes them tell the truth—they submit to her. Her bracelets are a defense against bullets but look like wrist shackles. So, when the Comics Code Authority of 1954 decided to ban “horror, excessive bloodshed, gory or gruesome crimes, depravity, lust, sadism, and masochism” and directly addressing Wonder Woman, saying “Illicit sex relations are neither to be hinted at nor portrayed. Violent love scenes, as well as sexual abnormalities, are unacceptable” the stories just didn’t seem to recover. Though, DC tried.

Deviating from Wonder Woman’s bondage past is part of the reason her storylines just haven’t been as good as it was during the Golden Age of comics. If DC can reconcile the feminist icon with her BDSM roots, Wonder Woman could finally reach her full potential. She could be what she was meant to be.

How do you view the themes of Golden Age Wonder Woman?

The post Will Wonder Woman Ever Reconcile Her BDSM Roots? appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.

Anti-robocall rules benefit "consumers who are sick and tired of robocalls" (via Icons8/Unsplash)

As one of his final acts of 2019, President Trump on Monday signed into law major anti-robocall legislation.

The TRACED (Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence) Act aims to curb unwanted interruptions and thwart the scammers behind them.

Despite its swift adoption by Congress and the White House, don’t expect immediate results: It will take at least 12 to 18 months for the ordinance to kick in, at which point it should begin to lessen the overall number of spammy calls.

Nearly More than 58.5 billion robocalls were placed nationwide so far this year—up from 48 billion in 2018, 31 billion in 2017, and 29 billion in 2016, YouMail reported. That’s equal to roughly 164.4 calls per person affected.

Following their passage in the Senate and House this summer, two separate anti-robocall proposals were reconciled as part of a bipartisan, bicameral agreement: the TRACED Act.

The bill requires that carriers adopt technology to help identify legitimate (or not) calls and let consumers opt in or out of blocking—at no extra charge. It also allows the government to step up enforcement actions against unlawful robocalls, prosecute the criminals generating them, and hand out penalties of up to $10,000 per call.

“I am glad that the agency now has a longer statute of limitations during which we can pursue scammers,” Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement. “And I welcome the removal of a previously required warning we had to give to unlawful robocallers before imposing tough penalties.”

I thought my twice-monthly “Unknown Number” calls were annoying.

But, as The Washington Post pointed out last month, these disruptions are more than a nuisance: They endanger hospitals, flood phone lines, and scare patients.

In response, Congress included a clause in the TRACED Act that protects patients, doctors, and hospitals from unlawful robocalls.”

“I thank the American people for never letting us forget how fed up they are with scam, spoofed robocalls,” Pai said. “It’s their voices that power our never-ceasing push to fight back against the scourge of robocalls and malicious spoofing.”

More on Geek.com:

• New FCC Rules Target International Robocallers
• FTC, Law Enforcement ‘Call It Quits’ on Robocallers
• FCC Empowers Carriers to ‘Aggressively Block’ Robocallers