Superman.
He's the last survivor (or one of the half-dozen last survivors) of the exploding planet Krypton. And he's invulnerable to just about everything in the universe, including nuclear bombs and the vacuum of interstellar space — but he can't come anywhere near a radioactive fragment of his own planet without dying. Or, if it's a red fragment, it'll turn him into a dwarf or a dragon. Of course. Also, Superman's pal, the Martian Manhunter, has a terrible vulnerability to fire — but it turns out to be mostly psychological.
Why it's poetic: Come on, he's lost his home planet... and now whenever he encounters part of it, it nearly kills him. The loneliness, the desolation.

Sontarans.
On Doctor Who, the Sontarans are cloned super-soldiers from the distant planet Sontar. They're almost unstoppable (although in their latest appearance they turned out to be pretty darn stoppable once you used non-copper bullets.) And their only weak spot is a small vent in the backs of their necks, which they use to recharge.
Why it's poetic: They're super-warriors, so they must always face their enemies. I mean, they could put a cap or a shield onto their neck-holes, but they choose not to. Because they need their fatal flaw to remind them who they are.

The Klowns.
In Killer Klowns From Outer Space. It turns out you can kill a killer klown by popping their red nose — it makes perfect sense!
Why it's poetic: They wear their most vulnerable part right in front of them, so they can see any attacks coming. Plus, it's like slapstick and murder rolled into one. Dude!

The Martians.
In War Of The Worlds, the invaders can clobber everything that humans can throw at them, and they scoff at our huge weapons systems. But then they're felled by the smallest enemy of all, the common cold.
Why it's poetic: Mostly because H.G. Wells gets so fancy and flowery talking about the "smallest and humblest of all God's creatures" and how it stomped the monsters' asses. (How does he know germs are humble?)

The Fithp
The Fithp are sort of weird super-intelligent elephants who use superior, if borrowed, technology to invade Earth in the 1986 novel Footfall, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The humans are hopelessly outclassed, but they have one advantage. In the Fithp culture, when two herds fight, one eventually surrenders and gets absorbed into the other herd — so they're not prepared for humans to surrender and then mount a resistance or plan sabotage.
Why it's poetic: Because these super-elephant guys fail to understand the most human of behaviors... sneakiness.

The Colonists
In The X-Files, the aliens seeking to invade the Earth create super-soldiers who have only one weakness: their bodies are torn apart by the magnetic fields of large deposites of magnetite.
Why it's poetic: The alien soldiers are super-human because of their metallic bodies — but those same bodies make them vulnerable to magnetite. Woah.

The Crawling Eye.
Aliens who are basically just huge eyeballs with tentacles invade the Earth and nothing can stop them — until one human figures out the aliens have no defense against the awesome power of fire!
Why it's poetic: Because the eyes are burning! It's a tremendous metaphor for the blindness of power. Or maybe it's just a metaphor for how much you'll be rubbing your eyes with sleepiness as you try to pay attention to this movie.

The Signs invaders.
We've already talked about this a fair bit, but the aliens who decide to attack/invade/kidnap kids in M. Night Shyamalan's Signs have a terrible vulnerability to plain old water.
Why it's poetic: The humblest of beverages! Or maybe, the fact that the aliens can't protect themselves against water without giving up their shape-shifting abilities. So they rely on the chameleon thing, to the exclusion of protecting themselves.

The Alien Teachers
Aliens replace the teachers at Henderson High School in Robert Rodriguez's The Faculty. And it turns out the aliens' only weakness is Zeke the drug dealer's "homebake."
Why it's poetic: It's the humblest of drugs! Oh, wait. I mean, come on. They're impersonating teachers, and they're vulnerable to the students' drugs. That's awesome. Plus, it's proof that drugs really are good for you. And the school drug dealer is your friend. Etc.

Leto Atreides II
In Frank Herbert's God Emperor Of Dune, Leto lives for 3,000 years and becomes nearly unkillable because he's part sandworm. But then it turns out that he's gained the sandworms' vulnerability to water.
Why it's poetic: He inherits the weaknesses as well as the strengths of the worms. Dude, come on!

Stitch:
Stitch, from Lilo and Stitch, is a super-awesome alien koala creature. Except that he can't swim.
Why it's poetic: Stitch's super-dense body makes him indestructible, but also means he sinks like a rock. Oh noes!

The Tenctonese.
The aliens from Alien Nation could be burned, and even killed, if they came into contact with salt water. What is it with aliens and water of various types? (Thanks Roraz!) Science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer has an incredibly complicated explanation of how the Tenctonese's weakness actually makes sense.
Why it's poetic: You can't cry on their shoulders... or if you do, they'll definitely feel your pain.
Note: In the course of putting this blog post together, I found this post at Everything2, which was pretty helpful in coming up with some examples.

I wasn't sure at first why I liked "The Poison Sky" better than "The Sontaran Strategem." I think it's just because last week's installment was just lots of nonsensical investigation. And this week's was lots of nonsensical battles, which are just inherently more fun to watch. There were just more fun moments this week, which is all you can really ask for a lot of the time. (Sorry this is late, by the way — partly I wanted to ponder it a bit more, but mostly I just got swamped thinking of ways to obliterate campiness. This episode provided a few hints in that department, of course.)

I liked almost everything about Donna in this episode, which surprised me — except for some of the interactions with her family. Donna's mother is still not working for me as a character, and even though I love Bernard Cribbins, I'm getting tired of the way the schmaltzy music comes on whenever she has a heart-to-heart with her grandfather Wilf. The thing of the companion staying in touch with her Earthbound family worked pretty well when it was Jackie and Mickey (as annoying as they sometimes got) but it just doesn't seem to have that much life left in it now.

Besides Donna getting to be a hero and take on a Sontaran single-handed, the much-maligned paramilitary organization UNIT finally got to kick some ass as well. The first half of the story had me wondering why UNIT had even been included, and I was ready for part two to be just a litany of scenes where the Doctor tells the toy soldiers not to engage the aliens — along with the occasional moment of UNIT disregarding the Doctor and learning the folly of violence. So I was stoked when UNIT actually turned out to be competent — and I liked Colonel Mace's rousing little speech about showing the aliens how advanced humans can be in the killing department.

So, yes. Fun shooty action and nice use of the SHIELD helicarrier UNIT airship in the giant battle. Although, the final bit where the soldiers all cheer and the hawt female science-nerd/soldier smooches Col. Mace — maybe a little too much. But it's Doctor Who, so "too much" is always on the menu.

And yet. All the things that didn't make sense in part one still didn't make sense in part two. The Sontaran scheme still seemed way too fancy for the galaxy's most unstoppable warriors. Why not just swoop down, have a fun afternoon killing all the humans, and then transform the planet into a clone farm? It's better strategy, plus it's the warrior way. The Sontarans must have done this to planets a thousand times before, so why would they need to use cars to convert the atmosphere to clone feed? They should have a "Sontara-forming" device on their ship to do that for them.

I was also sad about Martha — when she turned up on Torchwood, that show suddenly became twice as watchable, and the Torchwood team started being good at their jobs. But Doctor Who reaped no Martha boost, mostly because she was sidelined in the random clone plot. I sort of got that the Sontarans needed the Martha-clone to infiltrate UNIT and stop the nuclear launch. But did they really need her to keep pressing a button on her iPhone every few minutes after that? Couldn't they have just rigged a little button-pressing machine? Mostly, it just seemed like a waste of the amazing powers of Freema Agyeman.

And then the scene where Martha talks to her dying clone literally made no sense to me. Why were we supposed to be sad that her (apparently) smelly clone was dying? Was Martha confronting her own mortality through her clone's death? No clue, sadly.

Actually, now that I think of it, I know why I liked part two of the Sontaran storyline better than part one: there was a lot less of Sergey Brin, or whatever his real name was. His character continued not making much sense to me. He was like like stock character #27: the misunderstood genius who teams up with the bad guys because he believes their empty promises. And then they suddenly but inevitably betray him. (He had maybe just a dash of Adam from season one.) Even the wacky "breeding program" scene felt like a random stereotype. ("I'm cleverer than you! I'm cleverer than EVERYONE!!!") Plus did I miss a scene that explained about this new planet the Sontarans were going to give him and his ten other breeding partners? It was mentioned, like, twice.

The only way Sergey Brin could have surprised me is if he hadn't sacrificed himself at the end. The misguided geniuses in league with monsters always sacrifice themselves, either to redeem themselves or to punish their former allies, or just because there's five minutes left.

Another thing that bugged me, of course, was the deus ex machina device, the fancy atmosphere-fixing machine that we'd seen for a split second in the first episode, which miraculously turned out to be the key to solving the killer-smog problem in the second episode. Of course, the new Who is known for its deus ex machinas, so it's par for the course. And the alternative, to have the Doctor MacGyver a new atmosphere neutralization whatsit out of spare parts, wouldn't really have been much less cheap. Just slightly less cheap.

Oh, and the Doctor being willing to sacrifice himself, just so he can offer the Sontarans one last chance to quit? Sort of great, I guess — except he knows what the Sontarans will choose. Is it really worth giving up his life — all his remaining lives? — just to offer them a last chance that he knows they won't take? And then it turns out the Doctor is bluffing anyway. So he's throwing away his life on a bluff that he knows won't work. (Or, more cynically, he's manipulating Sergey Brin into committing suicide on his behalf.) It felt like it happened not because it made sense, but because the story needed one last tense climax.

So in short, I liked part two better than part one, mostly because I'd already swallowed the ridiculous set-up and the ridiculous resolution was more fun. Looking at the two parts as a whole... it was a forgettable but sort of entertaining romp. Better than the Daleks/pigs/Depression/New York storyline by the same author last year, but still a bit scattershot. If I had to explain to someone how the ruthless warriors, the killer car fumes, the global military organization, the geek wunderkind, the mind controlled soldiers, the cloned companion and the aborted nuclear launch all fit together, I think I'd have a brain embolism. Better to think of it as a collection of cool moments (Donna alone on the Sontaran ship) and blah ones (Martha watching her clone die, Sergey Brin describing his breeding program) than try to view it as a story.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed "The Sontaran Strategem," and it was much better than last year's Daleks-and-pig-people two-parter from the same writer, Helen Raynor. I mean, yay, the Doctor's paramillitary playmates from UNIT are back, Martha is still awesome, the Sontarans are still being nasty, brutish and short, and it's all good fun. And we get Sergey Brin doing a little world-beat dance with the evil Sontarans, in the above clip. Somebody needs to make a "Sontar! Sontar!" music video, including other bits from the original series where Sontarans appear to be dancing. (If you make such a video, I will most definitely post it here.)

It just all felt a bit... routine. The story zipped along, hitting the usual notes: there's a new diet pill, or ghosts are popping up, or there's a new car thingy, and everybody loves it. But it's secretly a naughty conspiracy. The Doctor and companion investigate, and the new companion gets a moment of proving she's really smart. Everybody oohs and ahhs. We reconnect with the companion's family and there are some emotional moments (supplied here by the world's most random montage. What was that about?) The villain does a silly dance. And then the pace slows wayyyyy down for the final cliffhanger, because we have to be sufficiently impressed with how fatal the danger really is.

It doesn't help that this is one of the most continuity-heavy episodes of the new Who so far, referencing not just tons of events in the previous three seasons, but also things like UNIT and the Sontarans from the original show.

I don't mind if the Davies Doctor Who era is going to be characterized by extreme campiness much of the time. It would be foolish, at this point, to expect a Who that takes its villains or storylines seriously, outside of a few notable exceptions. And I'm happy to take the show on its own terms, instead of hoping for it to be something else.

But there's nothing worse than recycled camp. Camp should be fresh, imported directly from the source on the wings of gilded nightingales.

Last year's Master three-parter was intensely campy and completely ridiculous, but it was also fun and engaging, and I got totally sucked into the storyline and wondering how exactly the Doctor was going to win this one. This didn't feel nearly as fun, nor was I nearly as engaged in whatever the plot was supposed to be.

I was underwhelmed by the Sontarans, who seemed a bit wimpy. The Doctor even points out that they're being uncharacteristically weak-kneed. Just like last year's New York Daleks story, where the Daleks skulked in a basement creating pig-people instead of just getting out and exterminating everybody, the super-warrior Sontarans are acting like Slitheen. (But to be fair, this is a two-parter, and there will no doubt be some clever explanation next week.)

Also, minor nitpick. The chief Sontaran makes a wisecrack about how talking is for women — one of the defining characeristics of the Sontarans is that they're cloned, and they have no concept of gender. In their first appearance, the Sontaran warrior Lynx examines Sarah Jane with puzzlement, because he can't understand why her "thorax" is built differently than the men. (And I know Helen Raynor remembers that scene, because she riffed on it in this episode.)

I did really like the interplay between Martha and Donna. It was cute that the Doctor was expecting them to fight, because that's what happened last time with Rose and Sarah Jane — and instead they made friends instantly. The bit where Martha told Donna about what happened to the Joneses was underplayed and super-moving. I would happily have had more of the former-companion-bonding and less of almost everything else in this episode.

I also liked the thing of the Doctor teaching Donna to steer the TARDIS, and Martha calling him back home using the cellphone he left her. And any chance to see Bernard Cribbins as Grandpa Wilf is always a major treat. It was pretty funny that everyone in Donna's family had met the Doctor.

There was also some extreme dodginess, like the Doctor talking the computer into self-destructing. Would Sergey Brin, let alone his alien masters, be dumb enough to program a computer that does the opposite of whatever you tell it? The computer's trying to kill the Doctor, not contradict him. It made no sense at all. And I actually cringed when Donna demanded that the Colonel guy salute her. Also, I hope somebody points out the Doctor's hypocrisy, the next time he depends on those naughty men with guns to save his life.

So to sum up, I'd say there was nothing wrong with "The Sontaran Strategem," except that it felt a bit too deja vu. And the second episode will have to do an absolutely brilliant job of explaining this whole cars-smog-GPS-evil-computers-genius-school-clones-invasion plot, or this episode will retroactively look a lot worse. Based on past experience, the show is probably hoarding all of its really fun, heavy-hitting stuff for the final few episodes. Plus, of course, the probably awesome Steven Moffat two-parter.

I'm trying real hard to be balanced and not excessively harsh here. For another POV, here's former Doctor Who novelist Lawrence Miles:

Well, for now, let's not dwell on the seemingly-endless tedium of "The Sontaran Stratagem". Because as I write this, it's 6:45 on Saturday night: I've been out for a wee twice, I've put the dinner on, I've tried walking up and down and stroking the cat in an attempt to make time go faster, but the damned thing isn't even half-finished yet. The worst part is knowing that it's a two-parter, and that we're going to have to go through all of this again in seven days' time.

So it's pretty certain that the Ood, those creepy telepathic slaves from "The Satan Pit," will be back in "Planet of the Ood." And we know for sure the clone warrior Sontarans will be back, because we've seen a promo pic. And it sure looks like the Axons (a sort of space parasite from the 1970s) will be back in the Christmas episode, judging from the latest promo image. And we know Billie Piper is coming back for a few episodes.

But everything else sounds totally bogus. Will Ben Kingsley really play Davros, creator of the Daleks? Will Joanna Lumley really play the Master (actually, that sounds hot.) Will the Ice Warriors and the Brigadier really drag their asses out of mothballs? Not to mention the season concluding with a four-part "Time War," involving every monster ever. Most of the alleged spoiler summary sounds like ridicuous fansturbation. Which, knowing Russell T. Davies and co., means it's probably all true.

Meanwhile, there's a ten-second teaser trailer for the Christmas episode, which reveals nothing. In other news:

The animated Batman DVD that's coming out to promote The Dark Knight could be better than the movie itself. The six animated shorts will include new work by Satoshi Kon (Paprika), Bruce Timm (Batman: The Animated Series), plus animation studios Madhouse (Death Note), Studio 4°C (Tekkonkinkreet) and Production I.G. (Ghost In The Shell)

Movies we might see in 2008 or 2009: The top movie scripts written in 2007 include a few science fiction stories, according to the "Black List" compiled by 150 movie execs and top assistants. The fave scripts include Passengers, about a passenger on an intergalactic spaceship who awakes from cryogenic sleep a hundred years before the rest of the crew. Keanu Reeves' company is producing that script but no studio has optioned it yet. A movie version of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, written by Joe Penhall, has already been optioned by 2929 Productions. Also on the list: Get Back about two die-hard Beatles fans who (it gets worse) find a time machine and travel back to keep John Lennon from ever meeting Yoko Ono. Can we please send that one to development hell now now now?

Gerald "300" Butler still might star in the Escape From New York remake, despite reports he's dropped out. Terminator 3 director Jonathan Mostow is directing, so it should be just cheesy enough for Butler's trademark scowl.