ksandness

While 20,000 lives lost in the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in 2011, a problem with an even greater catastrophic potential was brewing at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex. Thanks to lessons learned after accidents at another plant in the late 1990s, the Fukushima plant survived the initial earthquake with all the backup systems working. But then came the tsunami, which flooded all the backup systems and disabled the cooling systems of the reactors. No one knew what to do next.

The predicted worst case scenario was that all the nuclear cores would explode, sending lethal radiation over about 1/3 of the country, including Tokyo, and making that area uninhabitable for decades.

This miniseries portrays the desperate efforts of the onsite workers, led by plant manager Yoshida Masao, to try this and that as real life outpaces the situations provided for in volumes and volumes of manuals. They work for days on end with little sleep and no real meals, and the actors do a great job of portraying men who gradually arrive at the brink of physical and emotional collapse. Workers risk their lives by working in highly radioactive areas, while the power company officials and the prime minister keep yelling at them to "Do something."

There are a lot of obvious Japanese cultural elements, both in major ways, such as the strong sense of duty that the workers exhibit, even in the most trying circumstances, or the minor way in which power plant officials, even the plant manager, wear vests inscribed with their job titles. The one reason this isn't a 10 is another cultural element, the sentimentality of scenes associated with the fate of one of the missing men.

It's not really a spoiler to say that the situation was brought under control, but even though I knew that to be the case, I was still in suspense through much of this series.

Although I saw a few episodes of the original Doctor Who when they played on PBS in the 1970s, my involvement with the series dates from the 2005 revival.

However, because of getting rid of cable, I have been slow to catch up with the current cycle of episodes with a female Doctor played by Jodie Whittaker.

I know that there were a lot of angry fans when it was announced that the next Doctor would be a woman, but I kept an open mind.

Now that I have seen five episodes of Season 11, I'm done, at least with this particular Doctor and writing team.

Each newly regenerated Doctor starts off babbling and confused, as if not quite sure of the new identity and body. Then they settle in and assume distinct personalities, but all are brave and resourceful, although not without moments of self-doubt, with a wisecracking sense of humor and slight undercurrent of darkness. Jodie Whittaker starts out as an incoherent ditz, like her predecessors, but she never moves much beyond that. Here portrayal is monotone, the fast-talking airhead who seems to solve problems only by accident. It's a combination of poor writing and Ms. Whittaker not really "getting" the Doctor.

I am not categorically opposed to having a woman portray Doctor Who. If Michelle Gomez hadn't already been cast as Missy, she would have been able to pull off the combination of cleverness, assertiveness, sarcasm, and darkness, and I'm sure there are other actresses who would have made this role more interesting.

I'm not crazy about the companions this time, either. They seem quite one-dimensional in comparison to Nardole, Clara, Amy and Rory, Rose, even Bill.