Classic and new Christmas specials and longer videos. See what I add all year and see if one of your favorites is on the list.
Understand that I’m a big “Weird Al” Yankovic fan. There are easily bigger fans, but I do enjoy his parodies and even his original songs that parody song styles. “One More Minute” is one of my favorite Weird Al songs, and it’s about all the personal mutilation he’d rather do to himself than supposedly spend time with his new ex. Being a dark comedy song doesn’t bother me.
Being a dark Christmas song, however, will.
And it’s not parody that bothers me. Just this week I added an Irish drinking song about not giving Guinness to a reindeer to warm them up, or at least Santa’s magic flying reindeer that can talk. You’ll find other parodies in my “BW Yule Log” playlist. I can allow for a bit of silliness. This is supposed to be as much about having fun as honoring our Savior’s birth.
It’s just something about Al’s two Christmas songs, “Christmas At Ground Zero” and especially “The Night Santa Went Crazy” where the accordion legend and I have to part ways. In the continued spirit of “don’t get me wrong”, I’m not even saying you are a bad person if you make it part of your Christmas music playlist. Nothing wrong with the songs and I don’t think Al is trying to attack the holiday or the Christ child or anything extreme like that. It’s just for me, while amusing on their own, they don’t really put me in a festive spirit because of how dark they are. Let’s go over them and I’ll explain.
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Chapter by Chapter features me reading one chapter of the selected book at the time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as read-along book club.
Our episode novelisation continues. Last time our villain trapped the Doctor, Ian, and the TARDIS in a cave and seemingly killed Barbara. It’s not a spoiler to say they survived of course.
So where’s the drama if we know they make it out? Well, if this was your first read and you never saw the episode, it’s like prequel and flashback stories: learning HOW they survived. If the story is interesting enough, you’ll watch/read it again with a new perspective and maybe catch things you missed the first time. If you’re like me and finally saw the two episodes long after reading the book it’s getting to compare the two, while seeing if the book is still an interesting read on its own apart from the episode, and vice versa. It depends on when you came into either version. A good story shouldn’t be boring just because you know they’re going to survive. Of course they’re going to survive (provided the actor is staying). They’re a main character. It’s how they survive that brings us back each story.
With that, it’s time to check in on our new main character, and see if she can save one of the current ones.
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What? It’s Christmas time. I’m not using…that number. Maybe if I had gotten more comics out this year the number would have shown up earlier, but at this time? Not risking that.
Odds are she’s asking another Holiday question.
Next time: the observers’ identities revealed!
Well, I need to get Captain Yuletide done on time, and events put me behind schedule. To take some of the pressure off I won’t be doing the daily comic reviews until after the Christmas break. Luckily none of the cliffhangers (mostly in the Malibu comics) would have been resolved this week and next week would have been Christmas break starting anyway. The Friday Golden Age anthology comics take up more time to review than you realize. So if there are going to be any articles this week before I shift to all Christmas specials and still have a chance of getting my comic in on time, the comic reviews are ending early.
Meanwhile I already have the final CBS Transformers featuring the production notes ahead of the second pitch attempt auto-scheduled for Friday. We’ll still have that and the next installment of the Chapter By Chapter review of the Doctor Who: The Rescue novelisation, and I’ll try to get something interesting in the rest of the days before I take time off.
Have a great week, everyone!
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Looks like Captain Yuletide actually has some help this year.
I’ve mentioned Spidey & His Amazing Friends before, usually mentioning how Miles Morales gets to have a superhero name of his own instead of white boy hand-me-downs. Sure, “Spin” isn’t exactly scarring the bad guys but this is a show for little kids. We don’t want to scare them either, especially at Christmas.
This episode, made during Season 7, the “waterwebs” themed season. They get a pirate ship because somebody doesn’t understand what pirates are. They also get Hydro-Man. Sort of. Look, if you’re expecting heavy action you chose the wrong show. This is about deaged versions of Spider-Man, second back-up Spider-Man, and Ghost Spider being turned into Spider-Kids to fight troublemakers. Episode 4 contains two Christmas themed episodes, and while of course religion has nothing to do with a special about the recognized day of tribute to Christ’s birth (this is 2025’s Disney Junior–I’m surprised they even SAY “Christmas” as often as they do and don’t try to shoehorn Kwanzaa in there somehow or even Hanukkah, which ISN’T Jewish Christmas) there are some Christmas themes in there, plus a “save Santa Claus” story.
First is “The Candlelight Walk”, in which Miles’ dad gets to walk a candy from the festivities to the Christmas tree in the park as part of a unity event. Since this is the LITTLE kids show, Green Goblin, Rhino, and Hydro-Man just want to ruin the festival by putting the candle out. Then we have “The Santa Trap”, only it’s deaged gender-swapped Trapster (still modern Disney) trapping Santa and the Spiders…and maybe learning a little something about helping others. Enjoy. Or maybe a little kid in your life will enjoy. I’m good either way. It’s on the Christmas special playlist despite the annoying ad watermark. No, that’s not a “waterwebs” reference. You’ll see.
BW Media Spotlight 
BW’s Saturday Article Link> The Mystery Of The Mystery Box
A mystery box is not a good mystery. So says author Brian Newmeyer and basically everyone who has seen the trope employed, rarely if ever making a good story with it. In this article, he goes over what a mystery box is and why it’s such a terrible storytelling tool. The goal to me is setting up a situation it won’t deliver on to trick you into watching the story they really want to make, which is lying to your audience.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on December 13, 2025 in Book Spotlight, Movie Spotlight, Television Spotlight and tagged commentary, mystery, mystery box.
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