First item:
Johnny Depp as Doctor Who.
No thanks. Here's the thing: the Doctor is a strange, wacky, crazy guy. Johnny Depp has spent the last twenty years (1990: Edward Scissorhands) being professionally strange, wacky, and crazy. But while that sounds like a good fit, it's not. The Doctor is always a stranger wherever he is - hence the wacky. But he's also almost a thousand years old, and he needs to SHOW that.
Tennant's Doctor was, to a degree, afraid of his age. A little weary and frustrated by it (Waters of Mars), a little wary of the power he knew he possessed. But when pushed to it, he was TERRIFYING. When pushed to the decision-making point, he was an unwavering force and I hope you've got a god to pray to (hi, Daleks) if you're moving counter to his aim. Eccleston's Doctor, in part because of the stories written for him, was more sympathetic (Empty Child) but also had that inner strength, particularly visible in his Dalek episodes. I'm not familiar enough with Matt Smith's interpretation to include him in this comparison.
But anyway, back to Mr. Depp. Strange, he can do. By all accounts the man is a master of the unusual. My issue is that he is SUCH a big person and has been professionally strange for so long, his portrayal of the Doctor just wouldn't be unusual. "Oh, it's Johnny Depp being wacky again." The biggest thing about the Doctor, for me, is that he is unassuming. He is a traveler, an observer, one man wandering the universe with a terrible secret: that he is, more or less, its lone custodian. I'm afraid Depp is too big for the part.
Also: (1) I hope his accent is good, and (2) how exactly is he supposed to fit into the regeneration chronology? This is Doctor Who, not James Bond.
Pre-publishing edit:
according to io9, the BBC is denying all rumors of a Doctor Who/Depp movie. Phew.
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Game Design: Words With Friends.
Words With Friends (WWF) is a Scrabble-like game for two players, available in the iTunes App Store. Like Scrabble, you've got a board with a grid on it, seven letters of varying point values, etc. But Words With Friends is not Scrabble... and for all its similarities, really it's not even close. The single difference between the two is the damning one: the board layout. Check them out - the first is Words With Friends, the second is Scrabble.
I haven't nitpicked the layouts like crazy, but two big differences are readily apparent.
First, both boards have eight triple-word (TW) squares. However, the Scrabble board puts four of those in the corners, making them hard to reach and of limited usefulness since you must start or end your word on the square to use it. All eight TW squares on the WWF board are out along the edge - more accessible and easier to use.
The second point I'll make is the real kicker, though: the quantity and placement of triple-letter (TL) squares. Scrabble has twelve of them. More importantly, it is impossible to place a word such that you score both a TW and a TL square (which would inflate a Q, for instance, from ten points to 90).
The Words With Friends board has sixteen TL squares (a 33% increase). Even worse, though, is their positioning. Eight are just a single square away from a second TL square. Twelve - Scrabble's entire compliment - are positioned just two squares away from a TW square. In fact, there are eight places on the board where a six-letter word can get you a TW square and two TL squares. "QUOTED" would score 114 points in spite of the fact that four of its letters are only worth 1 apiece. "ZODIAC" would score 123. There are certainly even higher-scoring examples.
What this does is it changes the dynamic of the game. Scrabble is about using letters smartly to create unusual, high-scoring words. Words With Friends is all about board control - playing defensively with small words (or even passing/swapping tiles) until your opponent leaves a TW/TL - better still, both - open for the grabbing. And that takes a lot of fun out of the game. Victories are lopsided, and playing well for 3/4 of the game can be upended by a single calculated word.
So, free advice from me to the designers at NewToy: think about your board layout. WWF could be a better game than it is.
