Prefect Slog

Evil 2 Cover

2012-01-23T05:51:00.001-08:00

For more info, check out the official Evil UnLtd site.

SAF

Olive Press

2012-01-08T06:32:00.000-08:00

Yet another independent offering in an ever-expanding sea of self-published novels. Maybe it’s the circles I move in, but I’m bombarded daily via Twitter and Facebook and the like to read this ebook and that ebook. It’s the shape of the future and if more indie novels were as good as Olives by Alexander McNabb then mainstream publishing would have cause to tremble.

Of course, if quality was the only gauge then the market wouldn’t be so flooded with high-profile dross from the big publishing houses and you wouldn’t find any good books remaindered and selling 3 for a fiver in your local bargain bookstore. (I’ve found them, although the challenge is finding 3 good ones at the same time to qualify for the offer.) It’s all about the publicity, the marketing, the prominence given to titles on the shelves – or, in the ebook world, on websites – and I can only hope Olives garners the recognition and attention it deserves.

To that end, this review.

Now, hand on heart, in the interests of full disclosure, I chose to buy myself a copy of this book because I know the author. The fact is, I often end up reading friends’ books, whether through volunteering to proofread the MS or, as in this case, simply because I’m familiar with the guy’s work and so there’s a trust that the book will be of a certain quality. Given the unfeasibly huge range of indie books out there, this might as well be one of the selection criteria. Anyway, with that in mind, I always do my best to be as objective and critical as possible, regardless of connection with the author or (in the case of TV, movies etc) anyone else involved, but by all means feel free to make allowances while weighing this review.

Olives is a courageous work, far braver than anything I’d venture to write. A white guy writing about the Middle East? Must be mad to try.

But McNabb has lived and worked in the region for decades and writes with an assured confidence, while taking the precaution of introducing his first-person protagonist a fish out of water. Indeed, Paul Stokes, journalist, never really reaches a full understanding of the world into which his career has thrown him and there’s a sense that no matter how much he learns he will remain to some extent out of his depth. It’s an admission most of us might make on Middle Eastern matters.

According to the publishing world – agents and editors, folks of that sort with their finger on the global pulse - readers aren’t going to be very interested in a tale centred on Middle Eastern troubles. Maybe I’m strange, but I shake my head at this wisdom - it seems to be lacking the full set of pillars – and at the risk of turning hippy it strikes me that we all need to embrace a little understanding if we’re ever to find peace. So while every bomb and shooting disinclines me to watch the news and while every arduous airport security check puts me off travel, I welcome this novel as a rare opportunity to lift the curtain on the region.

Rest assured, it won’t bore you with the issues. It’s not some stale classroom lesson or documentary. It’s fiction. It’s an initially slow-burning thriller, a deftly mixed cocktail of political and sexual tension that – very broadly – puts me in mind of The Year Of Living Dangerously: romantic heat against a backdrop of political troubles. And after drawing you in, it becomes genuinely un-putdownable at around the halfway mark.

Where it’s especially clever is in its deliberate eschewing of religious issues in favour of a far more fundamental concern – water – and a very human story of people embroiled in and affected by the long history of conflict. It takes care to offer balance too and I’m thinking particularly of a powerful scene involving an Israeli border guard that, for all its relatively incidental nature, provides the most effective reminder that there are far more lives – on all sides – touched by the violence than the central family to which Paul attaches himself.

The only faction who perhaps don’t receive an even-handed treatment are the British, as represented by the odious Gerald Lynch, but to say too much about him might entail straying too far into spoiler territory and I’m keen to avoid that.

For me, the only areas in which the book falls a little short of the mark are with the Swede, Lars - whose dialogue is peppered with faltering English and all the Scandinavians I’ve ever met have never suffered anything like that in the language department – and, curiously, in Paul Stokes himself. As a protagonist, Stokes is not unrealistic, but he spends much of the story as a hapless victim, only properly taking control in ending his relationship with Anne, when he’s cowardly and disingenuous, unable to fess up to the real reason it’s all coming apart: namely, his dalliance with Aisha. Not atypical male behaviour, by any stretch of the imagination, but it makes for a somewhat un-empathetic central character. On the other hand, it detracts not one jot from the engrossing and progressively compelling nature of the plot and, moreover, shifts focus of our sympathies onto other characters like Aisha - and even Lars. Thus, it becomes a book not about Paul Stokes, but about the people and the issues around him, which, for my money, is the way it should be.

In a similar way – without giving the game away – come story end, I found myself hankering for some additional coda, but against that, on reflection, I have no idea what more might be said and so I’m obliged to conclude that it delivers the perfect end note.

Really, there’s a lot more to be said about Olives - it's one of those books that could easily become a talking point - but we would end up peppering the review with spoilers and, trust me, you’re better off giving it a read and allowing it to provoke your own set of thoughts. And provoke them it will.

Intelligent and accomplished, this is a well-judged thriller, smouldering at first but growing steadily more explosive and with a distinctive flavour of its own, courtesy of its setting and its author’s informed perspective. And if your understanding of Jordan extends little further than Katie Price, then you could stand to have your horizons broadened.

The walls of mainstream publishing are a long way off tumbling down. Meanwhile, there are a great many - too many - independent authors out there, clamouring for your attention. Picking out the good ones can be like finding the best tea leaf in a bag of Tetley.

But even if you don’t think this will be your cup of tea, go and have a read of the sample: HERE. (Click on the image to Look Inside)

If you like the taste, pop it in your Kindle, sit back and let it brew. Give it the time it deserves and this is a read that will reward.

SAF

Christmas Twee

2011-12-29T07:30:00.000-08:00

Christmas is a time of miracles. One miraculous thing this year was my managing to avoid seeing any trailers or hearing anything about the Doctor Who Christmas special, beyond the title: The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe. Obviously I could infer some Narnia parallels, but it made a nice change for it all to be wonderfully hype-free.

Expectations suitably contained then, it’s something of a miracle that it succeeded in disappointing quite so spectacularly.

I’m not even a hundred percent sure why. I was in fine spirits, receptive and looking forward to a generous helping of the unknown, the magical and – let’s be honest – the main thing worth watching on Christmas Day.

It begins with the usual gung-ho antics we’ve come to expect. Indeed, falling to Earth is getting to be a habit of the current Doctor. This time it’s sans-TARDIS and it’s fitting, I suppose, that the Grand Moff pulls off a Star Wars opening shot with the massive star-cruiser bearing down on the planet.

It also pays homage to ye olde Doctor Who in that the Doctor’s tumbling in a vacuum is, like a number of shots in the episode, a case of the visual fx ambitions over-reaching the budget. (See also the clumsy Androzani tripod harvester, in particular when viewed through the triangle window.)

There’s a sense throughout that the story’s straining to achieve something out of its reach. It has to work really hard to pull together its various elements, deliver a Christmassy adventure and arrive at a specific outcome. And it’s a shame because, for one thing, there is some magic on display and, for two, the outcome is exactly where you know the story’s headed from the get-go.

So, we have some welcome fantastical Narnia-isms – wartime kids visiting a country house, a portal into a winter wonderland – and large servings of Chrstmas motifs, with a planet full of Christmas trees, Christmas stars floating up to the heavens and, of course, a guiding star to follow. Individually, the ingredients aren’t so bad and there’s plenty of good seasoning, but when combined it’s all a bit hard to stomach. The shiny balls that hatch into Yule-log Ents are a terrific example of this tale’s constant stretching to bridge Christmas and sci-fi adventure.

Some of the wintry scenes are beautifully laden with menace; Claire Skinner plays the widow with delicate humour and poignancy, the kids – particularly the daughter, I think – were convincingly played, their template straight out of a CS Lewis storybook and brought effectively to life; and some of the dialogue exchanges between the Doctor and, well, pretty much everybody at times were spot on. Alexander Armstrong was a good choice for the dad and it was remarkably easy to forget his annoying contributions to the world of insurance advertising.

On the other hand, the inclusion of Bill Bailey – who I totally rate – felt like Armstrong’s game show vehicle, Pointless. Wasted and sadly now I doubt we’ll be getting to see Bailey in a real role in Doctor Who any time in the future. Bah and, it goes without saying, humbug.

That’s only a passing gripe though and doesn’t amount to a hill of brussel sprouts. But it’s symptomatic of the wider issue, which is that given the chance to do Doctor Who meets Narnia, far better could have been done with the materials.

All the aforementioned menace in the wintry scenes – and, to be fair, in the creaky old wooden folk - comes to nothing. They just want to be helped. Awww, bless. All the poignancy in Skinner’s bereaved widow comes to nothing, because she’s going to don a shiny crown and fly a mothership (groanworthy Christmas cracker joke) through the vortex to light her hubby’s way home. “Be a little impressed!” says the Doctor and it’s almost as though he’s appealing to us, as the audience, when really it’s not all that impressive. Indeed, by that stage proceedings are in the realm of ET’s magic moonlight bicycle-ride. Ladies and gentlemen, we are flying on pure undiluted sentiment.

It doesn’t even matter that the whole concept of plundering a world full of trees for battery fluid - using acid – is stupid. (How hard would it have been to change that to some other much-sought-after resource? I don’t know, maybe they could have been harvesting some pine-scented ingredient for the latest celebrity fragrance. It’s daft, but it’s – if the ads are any indicator – Christmassy. Anything, really. Just not battery fluid.) The main problem is it’s all sugar and no meat and potatoes. And right when your stomach’s turning at the thought of consuming any more sweets, it goes and ups the saccharine dose with the “Humany wumany” line.

The closing scene is a perfect dovetail, with Amy and Rory, and the Doctor touching a finger to his happy tear is much more the Moffat I admire, but schmaltz on schmaltz is not the basis of a nutritious Christmas meal.

It’s possible the Christmas special tries to be too Christmassy. For me, some of the best songs for getting me in the Christmas spirit aren’t even about Christmas. Far too many Christmas songs are too twee and jingly and, like this story, working way too hard to get their (jolly) message across. Sure, you want something that’s essentially uplifting, maybe even something that’ll bring a lump to your throat – but ideally not gag. And I can’t help feeling that now we’ve had Christmas-tree-shaped killer robots, Christmas-star-shaped ships and Christmas-tree-shaped beings that are all peace and light and starry souls, we may have scraped the bottom of the Christmas themed Doctor Who barrel.

Next year, Nestene decorations that strangle, shiny-ball Yeti control spheres, monster Christmas puddings? The Doctor could spend the entire thing exercising on a new Wii-Fit and it would involve a lot less stretching.

You expect some mess with a real Christmas tree. But it beggars belief that, with such a synthetic job, you’d end up with quite so much sap.

SAF

Kingston On Clyde

2011-11-14T12:38:00.000-08:00

Continuing my irregular, if not random, reviews on some of this year's TV viewing, this time a bit of a curio and not my usual cup of tea...

My wife is good to me. When she was due to be away in the States earlier this year, she queued up a few treats for me on our DVD rental list. And decided that Alex Kingston could keep me company while she was gone. It was nothing untoward, you understand, only a TV series.

Hope Springs is something I wouldn’t ordinarily have chosen to watch. There’s a whole sub-genre of BBC dramedy, that I tend to think of as Ballykissmacbeth Of The Glen, where it’s believed that a hearty serving of regional flavour will cement a series’ charm and win us all over with colourful community spirit. It’s also a sub-genre in which Wales, as far as I can tell, has been sadly neglected – or will have been until my own script, Sheep Leeks, secures the recognition it deserves.

However, credit where it’s due, Hope Springs did break down my cynicism barriers with a warmth and sparkle that, in all fairness, is probably present in other series of its ilk if you take to the characters. Alex Kingston certainly helps this one along. Not only does she play a rough diamond brilliantly, her character is a strong, tough adhesive holding her band of sisters – and as a result the series – together.

Just about. It is, of course, a ludicrous situation: four ex-jailbirds band together to con a crook out of his millions, their getaway is postponed indefinitely when they lose their fake passports (when their fat friend expires on the luggage conveyor at the airport) and so they flee to Scotland where they elect to hide out and, in the meantime, run a hotel. Hope must have sprung eternally when this was being pitched to production companies. (Fawlty Towers meets Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels, yeah?) Still, it’s worth bearing in mind that it’s possible to summarise anything and make it sound ridiculous and on a very basic level this isn’t so far removed from The Ladykillers.

A bunch of crooks holed up, in this case, with a canny old dear in the shape of Annette Crosbie, who’s another linchpin of the series, playing her role with the credibility and conviction the scenario needs to prevent it from falling apart. The Highlands are a picturesque backdrop for what is unmistakeably sit-com turf and the plot progression for the dozen episodes is slightly off, such that it strains to maintain the situation part. Much as the gals scrabble around trying to maintain their cover, you can sense a degree of desperation on the part of the scripts to move things along while still holding out for the full run. (On a related note, there’s a particularly clumsy recap one episode, where the director chooses to repeat a scene showing the villain driving towards the village the villain driving towards the village which might have worked when viewed week to week but seen in close succession simply jars. See what I did there.) A few genuinely human touches, most notable being Hannah's (Sian Reeves) connection with poor abused Ina (Lorraine McIntosh), help to keep it just this side of real and a murder mystery that would have been at home in Midsomer is thrown in very early on as an additional hook.

But the key driving force is fun. There are more than enough antics, ranging from engaging to absurd, to keep the comic element alive. And in that spirit it succeeds.

The villains are exactly that – suitably exaggerated caricatures that, in another age, would have been seen tying ladies to railway tracks. This makes it easier for audiences to take when one of them has his arm severed and his corpse dumped in the loch, without loss of essential sympathy for the heroines of the tale. Alec Newman does well to play the JR Ewing of Hope Springs without straying into the realm of a pantomime nasty. But the one who shines with her bitchiness while engendering a measure of empathy is Ronni Ancona, who I’ll from now on consider entirely wasted in Alistair McGowan impression shows. She’s very good.

Where it’s weakest is in the rom-com stakes, presenting us with promising chemistry between Alex Kingston and Paul Higgins' stalwart detective that, of course, is doomed from the start. I mean, a crim and copper fall for each other, that can never end well, can it, guvnor. The series does at least have a stab at toying with our expectations on that score, with that romance hitting a dead end and being replaced with a surprise romance for the copper from another direction. Except that’s equally doomed because, after poor Gil Cameron (Higgins) has committed career suicide to save the ladies from jail, the gals all SPOILER off to foreign pastures, leaving their community friends in the lurch, to pull off another heist involving a bank vault and an ex’s severed finger.

Which is all as silly as it sounds and I got the impression the writers were really stuck for a good ending. I guess being a sit-com it had to go out on a gag but even in the wake of the preceding ridiculousness, it strikes as a bit of a misfire. A joke that I sense the writers probably thought far funnier than anyone watching ever did.

Like a lot of shows though it gets by not so much on its regional flavour, but more on the appeal of the central characters. They’re a charismatic bunch and I liked them all, so on the whole I enjoyed following their ups and downs, despite the silliness. Which makes Hope Springs sort of the opposite of Torchwood and therefore by definition a good thing.

SAF

Domo A Como

2011-11-06T07:05:00.000-08:00

It seems an age ago now that my wife and I holidayed in Argegno, a friendly and colourful village on the shores of Lake Como. A little over a year, as it happens. I wrote a blog post about the holiday, full of glowing praise for the scenery, the serene and stress-free days on the lake and the people – most notably the wonderful staff at the Hotel Argegno where we often dined and our brilliant and thoroughly entertaining host, Paul Wright, at whose B&B we stayed.

Unfortunately, my netbook went and died and took – amongst other things – that blog post with it. Luckily then, along comes this opportunity to revisit those memories and in the company of a terrific storyteller.

Of course, in staying with artist and author, Paul, we were spoilt, treated to huge helpings of local tales, at least as colourful as the setting, all washed down with plenty of dry wit wine.

In Paul’s book, An Italian Home, the authorial voice is, inevitably, an edited version of the man himself and that’s a shame, but to be fair it’s a bit like that common niggle we all make, that we perhaps enjoyed a movie but it wasn’t as good as the book. At the end of the day, if you haven’t read the book, then that’s not going to be a factor and besides they’re two distinct art forms, aren’t they, so they’re bound to be different.

So while there are some stories and turns of phrase that didn’t make it into print, Paul still writes an engaging account of his and his wife’s uprooting and relocating to in Italy. The small, friendly village of Moltrasio – rather than Argegno, where they now live – provides the main focus for the story, as Paul and Nicola do battle with the horrors of Italian bureaucracy, come up against unexpected cultural differences and struggle with the language barrier in their quest to hold on to their dream of a new life.

To be fair, it’s mostly Paul who has the struggles with Italian and he’s refreshingly blunt and honest when it comes to admitting his reticence and stubbornness as a language student. There’s none of the illusory effects of Paul’s trompe l’oeil paintings; he tells it like it is and while the world of Lago di Como is, take it from me, paradise – albeit with too much traffic – he gives a very clear picture of the daunting aspects of their adventure, right alongside all the warmth and enchantment that made the two so determined to overcome those hurdles.

The book breezes from chapter to chapter – interest only flagging (for me and my wife) when it explores some of the idiosyncrasies of Italian football, but that’s just our personal anti-football bias and it’s true to say that Paul’s own passion for the sport clearly shines through in the writing. And among the comic episodes (that we had the pleasure of hearing live) that did make it into print are the story of Paul and Nicola’s encounter with the local police chief, Signor Pompino, and poor Nicola’s faux pas (or whatever Italian for faux pas might be) when waxing freely about sticky fig juice in among some of her and Paul’s Italian friends. You will likely feel her embarrassment while laughing at the same time.

Although by no means a tourist’s guidebook, well worth a read, even if you’re only planning a holiday in the region. Guidebooks give you facts, while stories like this give you flavour. And if you’re entertaining similar dreams of relocation, well, you’d do well to read about Paul’s and Nicola’s shared dream, entertainingly told.

Dreams may not always come true, but with a measure of courage, determination and hard work, you can make them.

An Italian Home is available on Amazon, price £8.09.

You can also check out some of his artwork - and find out about his B&B - on his website.

SAF

Chucks Away

2011-10-15T16:41:00.000-07:00

Continuing our irregular review catch-up, a few words on Chuck...

When I first discovered Chuck I thought of it as something like Alias, but fun. Now that it’s reached the end of its fourth season and is on the verge of its fifth, that comparison holds true, albeit with a shift of emphasis. I.e. it’s more like Alias, with increasingly convoluted made-up-as-they-go-along storylines, and not quite as much fun. The characters, the colour, the charm and the humour are all still there in the mix, and there’s plenty of its own-brand warm-hearted action, intrigue and spy-jinks with geekdom and electronic retail on the side... but the show has started to feel tired, with a few too many treadmill episodes in between the highlights.

It’s like your favourite six-inch sub that's been around for too long – has all the same great ingredients you love – but it’s gone a bit stale. This is, I guess, only to be expected when you muck the chefs about.

Because Chuck’s future has been firmly in doubt since series two, saved by a Subway product-placement deal, but only ever handed temporary stays of execution – 13 episodes here, another 9 episodes there, and so on. Frankly, it must be a nightmare having to work to that kind of stop-start framework, when they’re endeavouring to construct more than standalone episodes. And in defence of the writers and production team one thing they have actually been consistently great at is working towards a succession of potential series finales. Whenever interest has begun to wane, my attention has been grabbed again in the run-up to the key 13th and 22nd or 23rd episodes every time.

Somehow they manage to wheel in the crash cart and shock new life into proceedings at around the same points in the series every year. But against that, they’ve demonstrated a persistent reticence to shake things up or play too adventurously with their formula. And if you don’t play with the dynamic from time to time, your show will lose some of its dynamism.

On the other hand some shows may be like replicants and have a built-in limited lifespan by virtue of their format or central premise.

Chuck’s premise is a nifty little one. Nerd becomes hero thanks to a huge supercomputer downloaded into his brain. Totally far-fetched, of course - a computer system requiring no daily updates? - but from the get-go suspension of disbelief was not a problem, courtesy of the tone in which it was all delivered. Not just in the tongue-in-cheek department, but as I say, it brimmed with warmth and charisma. And in amongst all the nerdish humour and spydom, it forged unlikely bonds (unlikely Bonds?) into credible, touching human relationships. It had heart.

And even when the product placement came along it was cheekily blatant and embraced as a running gag. Which, if you really have to embed advertising in your entertainment, I guess is the way to go about it.

It also boasted a brilliant ensemble cast of characters. From the wonderfully gruff uber-Republican, gun-loving John Casey (Adam Baldwin), to the kooky sleazemeisters of Jeff and Lester (to say nothing of Jefster). Big Mike in charge of the Buy More. Ellie (the lovely Sarah Lancaster, who would've made a great Wonder Woman) and Awesome (the hilarious Ryan McPartlin, who would've made a great Captain America), Chuck (Zachary Levi)’s devoted (and gorgeous) sister and his (awesome) brother-in-law. Morgan (Joshua Gomez), Chuck’s even more nerdish sidekick. And of course, Sarah Walker (the inconceivably gorgeous Yvonne Strahovski), Beauty to Chuck’s Geek.

They even added to this from time to time with extended family – parents of some of these characters – every one of them an absolute gem of perfect casting and every dad a starship captain: Scott Bakula, Bruce Boxleitner and Gary Cole. The inclusion of Chuck’s dad, as the mysterious Orion, makes for an especially well-woven and involving story arc and – particularly in the context of what can often be a very cosy series – his ultimate fate is a genuine shock.

Where matters begin to gang aglay, for my money, is when they bring in Chuck’s mum. Although brilliantly cast again, in the shape of Linda Hamilton (and maintaining that principle of hiring from the kind of cult-SF stable that will have that added appeal for nerds everywhere), it’s not so much that they introduce the character as part of an arc, it’s that they then fail to do anything really different with it. There’s a whole is-she-bad, is-she-good question that they run with for a while, but the answer is ultimately that of course she did everything for the best reasons and has Chuck’s (and Ellie’s) interests at heart. Just like his dad. And that is ‘nice’, but boring. Oh how much more fascinating it might have been if she’d turned out to be a bitch.

Other plot opportunities are similarly blown later on down the road, with a clear chance for Ellie (and perhaps even Awesome as well) to be zapped full of the Intersect. Or even their baby - for god’s sake, anything that might have shaken up the status quo and got the show playing something other than the same three chords. Of course, it’s also often true that a hero is only ever as good as the villain he’s up against, and they’ve fielded a reasonably successful bunch of baddies through the various (but not too varied) story arcs, culminating in Timothy Dalton putting in an exceptional star-turn as the ‘misunderstood’ Volkoff. Replacing him with his daughter has yet to properly pay off – the female of the species is supposed to be deadlier, but Lauren Cohen has yet to fully convince.

Meanwhile, the Chuck family has possibly grown too large and a number of the previously terrific characters have had to take turns in being sidelined – Ellie and Awesome frequently, and even John Casey on occasion. Which is borderline criminal. It’s at least in part owing to the decision to reinvent Chuck as a bona fide superhero, rendering his special agent backup somewhat superfluous. And the small ways in which the producers did attempt to play with the format – like having Morgan follow in Chuck’s spy footsteps – haven’t really worked.

Now I gather that the makers have decided this (fifth) will be the last season and whereas earlier (premature) reports of its demise were met with a loud “Oh no!”, I greet this news with a bit of a “Phew” to be honest. Because finally the writers and producers get to work towards an end that is under their control and I can hope that at least they wrap things up spectacularly and satisfactorily. (Especially after the series four finale! Eek!)

At the end of the day, although there has been definite flagging, I do care about the characters and they deserve a proper bow at curtain close. I hope that the writers will use these final episodes to be brave and bold and pull off a few big surprises to make up for the missed opportunities of the past two seasons and, above all, not just throw them away. Go out with a bang and not with a whimper. In short, go out in style.

Because while I (wholeheartedly) appreciate the principle of having Yvonne Strahovski (pictured above) dress up in different outfits each week like a sort of sexy Mr Benn, I don’t believe you can build a forty-plus minute show around it (although by all means send me the rushes and I'll reappraise its viability) and ideally there has to be something more to command audience attention week after week.

So to finish off this particular TV dinner, I’ll settle for a 13-episode sub, as long as it’s fresh.

SAF

Destiny's Child

2011-10-13T06:03:00.000-07:00

Q: What do Amelia Lily and the other contestants summarily dumped from The X Factor last Sunday have in common? A: Absolutely sod all. (Heck, I'm not gonna even mention their names in the same blog post.) And I honestly trust that music industry execs recognise that.

According to news reports in the aftermath of the show, Amelia herself has described the 'surprise twist' as unfair (true and then some) but doesn't hold any grudge against her mentor, judge Kelly Rowland (gracious and yet more evidence of this talented young girl's maturity).

My own take? Well, for what it's worth, I felt that soul sister Kelly didn't have too big a clue as to what to do with a talented 'rock-chick' like Amelia, hence the unnecessary re-branding with the pink hair and giving her a rocked-up version of a Jacko song to perform on Saturday's live show. For my money, a poor choice of song, for all that Amelia then went on and aced it in spite of the 'unsuitability' factor. Seriously seriously good and if she hadn't been announced as a contestant, you couldn't have told her from some of the professional guest acts they have on the Sunday results shows. Come to that, she was *better* than a lot of the guest stars.

But that's part of the problem with The X Factor, in any case, isn't it? This week-by-week urge to hammer contestants into roles and songs where they don't fit. Fact is, there was no need to mould Amelia Lily. She struck me as an original from the get-go, a genuine talent.

At her audition, judge Tulisa was bowled over and told the (about to turn seventeen, then sixteen-year-old) girl, there were people in the business who'd been at their trade for years and still weren't at the level she, Amelia, had reached. (Never mind that in Saturday's show, Tulisa then attested that she hadn't really seen Amelia as a contender until her opening performance - er, a little less hippo in your crit there, Tulisa.) Also, back at the audition stage, Kelly and Gary were appropriately awed and Louis was heard to declare "A star is born." Well, yes and no. This star was born sixteen years previously - a real natural, gifted and so mature for her age - and was only waiting to be discovered.

In retrospect, it's interesting that the producers chose to play Beyonce's Best Thing I Never Had as a soundtrack to the tail end of that audition segment. Not because she's been denied her X Factor opportunity, but rather that she is, in my opinion, the best thing the show has never had. I do still love lil Janet Devlin and her enchanting vocal style, but Amelia Lily was the competition. There are other kids in there who might be moulded into something, but there's nobody left in there who so obviously had everything the show is always allegedly looking for. I can't think that they've ever had anyone who was so obviously a ready-made star.

All I can say to Amelia is, you're free of the circus and you can go on and write your own material and totally be yourself. Of course, I'm only sorry I miss out on 10-12 more probably stunning performances, but you're clearly so much better than the talent-show level already. Watching and listening to the few videos Amelia has posted on YouTube (see just one example, above), that much is patently obvious and a poor webcam mic in the bedroom is completely inadequate to show off her vocal talent.

And I hope Kelly Rowland's sincere about her offers of support. Because now that the Destiny's Child singer has seen fit to send her star home, I think the least she could do is open a few studio doors for her. And on the plus side I hope this might mean we get an Amelia Lily debut album all the sooner.

This girl's destined for great things.

SAF

Quel Dommage!

2011-10-08T22:49:00.001-07:00

Here in the gulf between Doctor Who seasons, it's customary to review 'other stuff' and as it turns out we have a few things in the experiential archive to catch up on... First up, a spot of crime impassionale.

Some things are doomed by their advance press. I mean, how often has your entertainment appetite been whetted, your expectations been built up by a trailer? Pretty frequently, I would guess, since that’s the trailer’s job. And then there’s word of mouth, which is allegedly the best form of advertising. Any form of advertising is only good though if the product lives up to the hype, while if it doesn’t, well, the product itself will suffer in the comparison.

Poor Engrenages (aka Spiral). It never stood a chance.

No trailers came my way for this, but I’d heard excellent things about it. Not least of which was – courtesy of a friend – that it was like the French cousin of The Wire.

In fact, it bears such little relation it seems like one of those long lost relatives who only show up out of the woodwork hoping for a share of the inheritance. For one, there’s none of the complexity or social layering of the American show, albeit that there is a political angle to proceedings. Sure, plenty of the characters are fils des plages (sons of beaches) but I can’t think of any who are as brilliant (and even likeable) as so many of The Wire’s lowliest lowlifes. It’s a different bête altogether. As such, it’s unfair to judge it in those terms, but unfortunately my expectations had already been coloured. And I daresay some of my criticisms will have arisen from that accidental letdown that had nothing to do with the series itself.

So bear in mind through my ramblings, s’il vous plait, that the series is by no means terrible.

It’s well-acted. The direction lends the whole thing a suitably arthouse, suspenseful and occasionally haunting quality and it’s structured to deliver a clever dramatic upper cut at each episode end. It’s probably well-scripted, although my French falls far short of being able to tell that and the subtitles are frequently lifeless and drab. Then there’s episode six or seven where the subtitler fell asleep or something and allowed some painfully clumsy and lazy faux pas to litter the translations.

What it has in spades is grimness. Its depictions of crime scenes and autopsies are uncompromising and never fail to genuinely horrify. As a gritty realistic portrayal of police – and judicial - work in la belle France, it convinces. (For all I know.) While as a drama, for me, it ultimately fell un peu flat.

Trying to be objective and leaving Wire comparisons out of it, the key shortcomings for me lay in the cast of characters. (NB Not the actors, none of whom I could really fault.) The only one I had any empathy for was Laure Berthaud (Caroline Proust), the female detective heading up the various investigations. The chief prosecutor (Gregory Fitoussi) is a big wet blanket, far too easily manipulated by his wife and his parasitic pal Benoit (Guillaume Cramoisan). Both of whom, by the way, whinge and complain about their lot, despite the fact that they each got themselves into their respective messes. And here a measure of contrast with The Wire is called for, because these French criminals are the socially privileged sort, far far removed from the disadvantaged, disenfranchised communities of Baltimore. So hearing them moan when their hands are caught in the metaphorical cookie jar is a test of patience.

There’s a washed-up junkie detective (Thierry Godard) who I think we’re meant to sympathise with, but he has none of Jimmy McNulty’s redeeming charm. And a number of characters spend time being enigmatic and impenetrable for no other reason I can fathom than they’re in a French production – like the bitch lawyer who buries evidence of a man’s false rape conviction because, er, well I guess because she’s a bitch. Possibly there were some subtleties there I missed, but they’re easily missable when there’s no emotional connection to the characters. There’s an aloofness and a distance to almost everyone - apart from the victims, who are, alas, generally encountered on a mortuary slab or mutilated and dumped on some patch of the city’s wasteland.

Storywise, while the tone is definitely one of mystery, the actuality is somewhat lacking and left me strangely unsatisfied. As initially compelling as the central case was, all leads appear to dry up shortly after the victim’s diary is appropriated by the criminals and the investigation largely dead-ends (or cul-de-sacs), until it’s left to bleating Benoit to fess up and the fate of the poor girl with her face bashed in is finally revealed to us in flashback. Rendering the whole thing a lot less spirally and less complex than it would have you believe.

We end, inevitably and perhaps predictably, on a shot of another unidentifiable corpse as a lead-in to the second series. But I can’t decide whether it’s promising better or more of the same.

At the very least, now knowing what to expect, a second series will stand a good chance of being judged entirely on its own merits. So I may be persuaded to give it that opportunity.

Until then, I can't be sure how much of my sense of dissatisfaction is down to comparison and how much is down to a simple matter of taste.

C'est la view.

SAF

X Factory

2011-10-04T11:39:00.000-07:00

No Doctor Who next weekend, boo hoo, so perhaps a good time to look at another source of Saturday night popular entertainment...

And it’s that time of year again when the workers have clocked in, the products are all lined up on the production line and the rest of the music industry hangs its head and/or probably wishes it had come up with the idea before Simon Cowell.

People knock The X Factor. And justifiably so. It’s a circus. Complete with performing animals, although some of them prefer the title ‘judge’.

Louis the Leprechaun chuckles all the way to the bank to collect his pot of gold every year, surely with no actual aims or hopes of ever seeing one of his category emerge as a winner. He’s the one who’s consistently seen pushing through the joke acts and the sub-Eurovision wannabes. Seen, because I’ve every confidence there are those at work behind the scenes nudging the clowns and contentious as far through the competition as they can to generate the appropriate level of ratings and tabloid coverage.

But the show is a guilty pleasure for many, myself included. Originally I think I ended up watching it in a fit of Saturday night boredom some years ago and finding myself entertained by the long line of execrable early auditions. A lot of vocal Verbal Kints in a row of Unusual Suspects. And not a single Keyser Soze among them, but some just as scary all the same. But then what would happen a number of years would be that a handful of actually pretty good singers would show up in the mix and you’d end up supporting them through to the live shows. Might be down to my imagination or my tastes, but it seems to me that’s happened more often latterly.

And on those (admittedly rare) occasions when you come across a real star in the making, it’s scarcely a guilty pleasure at all. Just an unashamed treat.

Those who mock and state that true talents are never discovered in this way demonstrate a limited grasp on reality. You might as well say that true writing talent is never discovered through hard graft, countless submissions and pure dumb luck of landing on the right editor’s desk at the right time. Come to that, I’m currently prepping a submission for a writing competition; the only thing that prevents it from being such a circus is that it’s not being televised. And, after all, who would stick a writing competition on the TV? (Trust me, this stage is not very exciting – essentially a lot of tapping at keyboards, procrastination, banging heads on desks and frequent frustration with the standard of prose.)

Heck, it’s impossible for me not to relate to some of these young hopefuls, chasing their life’s dream. Been there - still chasing and still, if not young, then not exactly grown up. Comic asides aside though, there’s a great deal for aspiring authors to empathise with and even to envy. Would that we had that kind of platform, eh, to publicise our talents. HarperCollins’ authonomy site was a step in that direction and, in its own way, as much a circus, but let’s face facts, it could never command the same ratings.

In terms of music competitions, well, I do believe there’s room for one. (Because The X Factor isn’t that.) Indeed, I’m surprised the Beeb hasn’t shown a little more creativity – hmm, what am I saying, this is the channel that brought us Don’t Scare The Hare and Epic Win – in launching a rival reality show that focuses on bands (you know, actual bands, with instruments, not groups of boys or girls lining up for a go at the autotuner) instead of promoting another singing comp in the form of The Voice.

Still, never mind that, this is the 21st century – sorry, all those lute-strumming Luddites out there – and if you’re not using YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and all the rest to raise your profile, then you’re doing yourself out of an audience. Likewise, as long as ITV are providing the opportunity, then singers might as well avail themselves of the chance for some proper wide-reaching media exposure. These days, you can even fall at a relatively premature hurdle and still get noticed or even signed up for an album contract.

It’s not for everybody, sure. And while that stigma remains attached in some people’s eyes, I guess it *could* be as effective a career-killer as a career-launcher. The main risk you run in the pre-live-show stages is getting passed over in favour of one of Louis’ gag acts. Which, I appreciate, would be gutting. But to my mind, I think the only real potential career-killer is that crucial debut album. Followed by, assuming you survive that first one, the even more crucial follow-up album.

It’s not the winning – or the coming second or third etc – it’s what you do with it that counts. Last year, I was a firm supporter of Matt Cardle, Rebecca Ferguson and Cher Lloyd, all of whom have albums on the way. So far, Matt_Cardle’s singles haven’t impressed as much as his songs from his pre-X Factor Seven Summers album, but they’re pleasant enough pop songs that could use a bit more memorability. While Cher Lloyd’s Swagger Jagger is appalling and all too memorable. I detect the hand of Will I Am at work there, buy whoever’s to blame, it’s too easy for producers to funnel these youngsters into something they’re not. Cher Lloyd was a wonderfully spiky sort of peg and, unless there’s better material making up the rest of her album, I fear she’s been hammered into a god-awful square hole.

This year, I’m championing Amelia Lily:

And little Janet Devlin:

Seen above in 'home video' mode. Both 16, both amazing.

The girls were the strongest category by a bazillion miles and although I personally don’t feel they were whittled down to the absolute strongest four (I’d have put lil Melanie McCabe through for sure – and I’d add, to the likes of Melanie, just remember the X Factor is an opportunity, no more, no less – it’s not the be-all and end-all - *nobody* should buy into this horribly pervasive idea that, if they don't make it through, that's it for them, it's all over), they’re the only category with a clear winner (two, in fact) at the outset.

The boys are an odd mix and I’d be hard pushed to tell you their names, although James, I think it is, strikes me as the best of that bunch. Frankie seems like a mini-Robbie and therefore so far from my cup of tea as to be chamomile, which I find (for the record) horrible and not at all calming. The groups are doomed. Poor Tulisa, she started out by impressing me as someone who knew her business, but she has her work cut out for her there. In fairness, she had precious few materials to work with, but she went and broke up the one group that seemed to have something – throwing away The Keys, in favour of cobbling together another group on the spot. And the Over 25s are, apparently, there to pad out the numbers and provide the comedy and controversy. That would have been even more the case had Goldie not turned down her spot on the show and you have to wonder how Sammi feels, being told, sorry it’s such short notice and I know we initially rejected you and all, but our chief gag act couldn’t make it, we’d like you to take her place. This year’s Mary Byrne replaces this year’s Wagner, while – thank heavens – we still have this year’s Katie Waissel, in the shape of uber drama queen Kitty, to divide the nation. Yawn.

But Amelia and Janet, for my money, are genuinely exciting and it doesn’t matter that this is the arena in which they were discovered, they’re authentic talents. X Factor mentor, Kelly Rowland, whatever you do, don’t mess with them too much. (I was a bit concerned with the makeovers that have been inflicted on them for the live shows and just hope it doesn’t too dramatically alter what they are in the minds of the viewing public.) Janet Devlin perhaps needs a teensy bit more work to get her to pop-star status, but only in the confidence department. And even then, when she sings, she’s perfectly at home, her Ellie Goulding/Cranberries-esque, unaffected but wonderfully affecting voice naturally transforming anything she sings to make it very much her own. Amelia Lily, meanwhile: pop star name, pop star image, rock star voice. Such a mature sound for her age, incredible. Ready made star, you might as well just go ahead and record her album now.

Inspirational. Love em both.

If just those two alone are what comes out of the pop-singer factory this year, then that's all the validation this annual process needs.

So, sure, in summary, The X Factor’s rubbish. But it’s nothing worse than a televised slush pile. You have to hope the best of the talent rises to the top. Unlike a slush pile, at the very least, they’re going to get noticed.

Go, Janet! Go Amelia Lily!

SAF

Married Bliss

2011-10-02T06:48:00.000-07:00

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today, in the sight of blog, to witness The Wedding Of River Song. If anyone here knows just cause or impediment as to why we shouldn’t consider this an entirely fitting and perfect finale to the season, they should speak now or forever hold their peace.

Well, there’s the title, for one thing. I remember back in the golden age when we had ‘Of’ titles, they’d be like Planet Of The Spiders, The Hand Of Fear, Horror Of The Daleks, The Evil Of Doom, The Curse Of Fatal Death, all that sort of thing. Now we get The Wedding Of some woman or other. Honestly, I ask you, where’s the unbridalled terror in that?

But, in the modern TV fashion of overstating the obvious, this is not a serious complaint. There are, yes, a few little gripes here and there and doubtless more will occur when the honeymoon period is over, but in the context of everything it had to achieve, this was as perfect a season finale as you could ask for.

As much as I was entertained by Let’s Kill Hitler, it didn’t feel like a follow-on from the mid-season closer and that’s because it wasn’t. This, but for a few details to join the dots, is the other half of the excellent A Good Man Goes To War.

There’s a huge amount of common ground in tone and its early stages involve something like A Good Man’s planet-hopping vignettes, with the Doctor here, instead of roaming time and space in search of a maginificent alien seven, doing his utmost to track down the Silence. It’s not quite as magical as its precursor, but what can you expect when you don’t have a lactating Sontaran nurse, a lesbian Silurian adventuress and a fat blue man among your guest characters. In their place, you have a couple of strange geezers with eyepatches, a shape-changing robot crewed by little people and, oh yes, a fat blue man’s head. In a box.

Dorium’s return is welcome – even though the poor chap has lost a lot of weight – and the various settings we’re treated to – the ‘live’ chess tourney and the ‘cave of skulls’ – are more evidence of Moffat’s twisted imagination on overdrive.

And of course, it’s all preceded by that fantastically madcap opening set in London, April 22nd 2011, 5:02pm. Where all of history is happening simultaneously, but time is stuck in the same single moment. It’s all utter nonsense, of course, and would take a better temporal physicist than me to analyse, but (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again) Moffat’s a magician. An illusionist. It’s all sleight of hand and keeping the show moving so, crucially, you’re not generally asking too many questions at the time. You’re more frequently hanging on the next scene, too intrigued by what’s going to happen next.

The only question I recall in my head at the time was “WTF?” But in a good way. In fairness, at the very start, I wondered if I was watching a car ad – there’s one with cars suspended from balloons – but when you’ve thrown in steam trains chuffing out of the Gherkin on viaducts, Do Not Feed The Pterodactyl signs in the park (ha! you think those predators are bad, you should see the seagulls preying on unsuspecting holiday makers in some of our Cornish resorts), Charles Dickens (Simon Callow, yay!) on BBC Breakfast, and Churchill, the Holy Roman Emperor, presiding in Buckingham Palace, you kind of have to just nod, accept the madcapness of it all and say, okay, Steven, you’ve got my attention.

The construction of having the Soothsayer Doctor relate events to Churchill could have slowed things up, but the bouncing between storytelling and past events was skilfully handled and what’s more there’s a wonderful progression in the Churchill scenes where the Doctor’s been making tally marks on his arm. A signal of the Silence’s presence that we should all have remembered from the season opener, The Impossible Astronaut/Day Of The Moon. Deftly done and culminates in that fantastic reveal with the Silence hanging vampire-like from the ceiling.

Followed swiftly by the arrival of Pond, Amelia Pond on the scene. Brilliant, laugh out loud moment, and eyepatch or no Karen Gillan looked, if possible, better than ever. And on a less superficial level, she, like pretty much everyone here, was on top form.

First eyepatch geezer was a bit bland, maybe, and second eyepatch geezer was little more interesting than a Buffy demon-of-the-week cast-off, appearance-wise, but they did their part in adding a touch more colour to the whole Silence mythos. I will say that the shot of eyepatch-demon being consumed in the pit of skulls struck me as dead dodgy. A spot of CGI trickery that wasn’t quite up to the task set by the script. Still, it’s over and done with shortly enough and the jarring effect is fleeting. The captain of the Tesselector is still dull. Sorry, but there it is and it’s only the way many a captain in Doctor Who has gone before. Dorium’s great. And it’s a pleasure to have Iain McNeice back in the role of Winston, a reminder of one of the best aspects of Victory Of The Daleks.

The regulars are all deserving of a far grander label than ‘regular’. I believe I may have mentioned how much I’ve enjoyed the chemistry of this team and I’m still steadfastly clinging to the hope that Arthur Darvill and Karen Gillan will be rejoining the Doctor on his travels next year. This goes double now. No, screw that, go ahead and multiply it by the average Sontaran birth rate. The alternative reality Amy and Rory were wonderfully written, beautifully played, with the notion of their love as a constant throughout different realities – Amy will always find her Rory – providing a terrific balance of romance and out and out laughs. Loved the artist’s impression sketch Amy had done of her fella and then Rory’s ready acceptance of her suggestion of a date and marriage. Hilarious and touching at the same time. The darker, harsher edge the story gives Amy is very real and there’s tremendous power in the revenge she visits upon Madame Kasabian (Frances Barber). Wow. Brave, ferocious stuff. Her return to save Rory with a hail of gunfire is pure gung-ho grandstanding action but for such an ostensibly violent scene there’s also a smidgen of rom-com about it. Moffat’s something of a matchmaker like that, able to mix these conflicting ingredients freely and somehow concoct a bizarre kind of harmony.

Or Melody, even. Yes, I’m biased, but Alex Kingston gives another star turn as Melody/River Pond/Song. Never mind the absurdities of the monochronological clashing histories, the fact that it’s her selfish passions and her love for the Doctor that’s brought this all about is utterly credible. She sells it completely. And while my poor mind will never quite get around the idea of Alex Kingston as Karen Gillan’s daughter (that’s time travel for you), she sells that relationship too. Moffat gives the character the appropriate closure - with the added option to have her return – and while we know that, in proper Pulp Fiction style, her life ends in The Silence (no relation?) In The Library/Forest Of The Dead, she’s left here living the dream, adventuring with the younger Doctors. Strewth, no wonder poor old Billy Hartnell’s Doctor first showed up with white hair and not long for this world.

The kiss that restores time to normal could have been so dreadfully corny, but wasn’t. The one thing that does, unfortunately, nudge it ever so slightly in that direction is that irksome and totally unnecessary LCD digital clock caption slapped over the money shot. What the hell was that for? An annoyance and a distraction at an otherwise magical moment. Even if someone (writer or director?) was concerned we wouldn’t get that time marched on without some visual cue, there had to be a better way. A shot of Churchill at his desk, the clock ticking onward? Whatever. Embed it in the scene, don’t emblazon it across the bottom of the screen.

Like the duff CGI in the skull pit, it’s a minor grumble, but it’s one of the few flaws that struck me at the time of viewing and hence worth a mention.

Meanwhile, a word about the groom. Matt Smith delivers a Doctor who, despite being given to the occasional maudlin self-absorbed speech, manages to engage in a way that, for me, the TennantDoc didn’t. He has an eminent likeability – the avuncular quality that Terrance Dicks always spoke of as an essential characteristic of any Doctor - and his misery in the face of impending doom is nowhere near as pervasive as his predecessor’s. (And just to clarify again, this is no reflection on Tennant’s excellent performance, but rather on the direction in which the character was driven by the writing.) Smith and Moffat work fantastically well together as a couple, actor and material complimenting each other perfectly.

The absolutely note-perfect homage to the passing of Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart – as moving a tribute to any past character and the actor who played him as the series has ever done – is an exquisite piece of writing that has the beneficial side-effect of reminding us that the death of the Doctor is as much about others – all the lives he has touched during the course of his own - as it is about himself. It’s the brilliant flip side of the message from A Good Man: heads, there’s the figure of fear and hatred the Doctor has created among his enemies; tails, there’s the man who’s loved by so many.

His resolution here is a wily one and although in essence a ‘cheat’, you don’t feel cheated. Fixed point or no, you know the Doctor isn’t actually going to die, but Moffat – for all his ‘time can be rewritten’ standard – is not about to simply undo what he’s shown us. Rule 1: the Doctor lies. And so does Moffat. But it’s in the manner of an illusionist, you know he’s not showing you everything and there’s going to be a trick up his sleeve. You have to read between the scenes, is all.

This season handed us two shape-shifting herrings of varying shades – the Flesh and the Tesselector – and it was always going to be something along the lines of a copied Doc getting shot and torched there at Lake Silencio. In that sense, the resolution is a predictable one, but it is – like a wedding dress that needs no alteration – a perfect fit. The ‘look in my eye’ reveal is a triumph, no matter if you did see it coming.

The question of The Question was predictable too. Doctor Who? Hidden in plain sight, it was the only question it could be. The main danger Moffat presents for himself is, in setting that up, he may be faced with the task of answering it and I’m naturally wary of anything that perhaps promises to lift the veil on our beloved hero. Ultimately, it’s a matter of degrees though, and so far Moffat has demonstrated a talent for subtely in amongst all the marvelous madcappery. And I’m encouraged by the Doctor’s resolve, in the wake of his fake demise, to withdraw a little, to play a quieter role. It’s the reining in that the character perhaps needs.

A less powerful Doctor – or a Doctor who is less given to exert that power – leaves more room for the universe – and those all-important threats and menaces – to grow around him. The next time a million – or even fewer – Daleks or Cybermen show up, we need to fear them, instead of them fearing the Doctor quite so much.

A satisfactory tying of several knots, hand in hand with a lot of promise for the future. Can I just slightly unsweeten these heaped spoonfuls of praise by requesting a teeny bit more attention on some of the individual stories in between all the brilliance?

All in all a memorable event. And there was a beautifully decorated, multi-teared cake. I’ll have another slice of that, please.

SAF

Only Fools And Cybermen

2011-09-25T13:29:00.000-07:00

Last night saw the return of the show’s spin-off sitcom Two Pints Of Vraxoin And A Packet Of Jelly Babies, penned by Gareth Roberts and currently enjoying a season of only one episode a year. This time it’s The One With The Cyberman In The Changing Room and, like The One With All The Football, it’s funny stuff.

Unlike the Cybermen, our hero Craig (James Corden) has progressed, becoming a dad and the episode gives us a far more credible portrait of a father struggling to cope than Doctor Who’s earlier (and less hilarious) Night Terrors. This rarely falls short of being entertaining, liberally peppered with laugh-out-loud lines – and even Corden is liberally peppered at one point – with pepper – as customary guest star, the Doctor, does a dazzling bit of faffing about in the kitchen shortly after his arrival. It’s just one of many inspired touches of visual comedy to go with the positively fizzing dialogue. And Roberts does a good job of running with Moffat’s idea that the Doctor can speak baby. You’d have to be a fool or a Cyberman not to find this amusing.

Indeed it’s so good, the sooner Gareth Roberts lands a BBC 3 sitcom commission and retires from Doctor Who, the better for us all.

Briefly, I had to cast my attention back to what I wrote about The Lodger last year, because as I pondered the delights of this episode I grew wary of repeating myself. Because – very like the Cybermen – this is exactly like the previous iteration but slightly worse. For the framework for all the domestic comedy antics, I can only imagine Gareth retained the original script and did a quick cut and replace on a few details. Hidden TARDIS-like ship upstairs becomes hidden Cybership downstairs, defeated by the combined psyches of the two singularly unadventurous protagonists becomes destroyed by emotional feedback from one of said protagonists.

Honestly, Mr Roberts, did you deem your own story so forgettable that we wouldn’t notice? Lazy, abysmal stuff. Utterly unworthy of most of the writing that fuels proceedings, insulting to the audience and the people who paid your cheque, and about par for the Gareth Roberts course.

I remember being pleasantly surprised by The Lodger because, finally, it seemed that Roberts had found his appropriate level and delivered something that wasn’t entirely expected. (1. The Shakespeare Code: comprehensively unsurprising Who-meets-Shakespeare-by-numbers, feeble resolution. 2. The Unicorn And The Wasp: atrocious and puerile Who-meets-Agatha-Christie-by-numbers guff, feeble resolution. 3. the 'special', Planet Of The Dead. Overblown and shallow Pitch Black imitation, feeble resolution.) The Lodger is still his best offering – on this steeply downward sliding scale - but unfortunately now this new (sitcom) format seems to be the new pro forma.

In Who writer terms, Roberts always strikes me as the equivalent of one of those X Factor contestants who really shouldn’t have been let through to the judges’ houses but, you know, Louis Walsh insisted because they were ‘fun’ and camp enough to promise some basic lowest common denominator popular appeal. Jedward or Wagner, say. In this regard he does, I suppose, realise his potential.

It’s a shame, because there’s cleverness at work here and there and the man plainly has a gift for funny lines. But ultimately his tales fall over like, well, Cybermen in the face of pretty much anything.

Far from my (admittedly remote) hopes for realising the Cybermen’s potential, this tale blatantly fesses up and admits just how crap they really are. I don’t know what it is exactly, a syndrome or a disease, but for the series ‘second best’ monster, they’ve been treated abominably by their writers over the years. Here, only the poor deluded Cyberleader believes that six would be enough to conquer the world. I’m only stunned that the Doctor doesn’t contest this point, shrug off the ‘threat’ and go and have a nice dish of fish fingers and custard with Craig and little Stormageddon. An army of them would be about as dangerous as the stockpile of Iraqi WMD we all went to war over a few years back.

Through the course of the series, these poor machine creatures have been susceptible to radiation, gravity, gold stars for mathematical excellence and a zippy silver-clad mime artist. Here, they reach their saddest nadir yet, courtesy of the emotional inhibitor chip introduced in modern Who, defeated by a father’s love for his wee bairn. Awww. (I’m reminded at this point of that great sound effect from The Five Doctors of a Cyberman throwing up.) Spare parts? Spare us.

What makes this painfully worse is that the Cybes have apparently downgraded their conversion process to an eminently reversible process of ‘donning a suit of armour’. This regression is in keeping with their modern clunky, trudge-dread aesthetic, but it beggars belief that, in a universe where technological advances outpace evolution by a factor of umpty-gazillion, a machine-race are not constantly evolving. Hate to say it, but Star Trek:TNG’s rather plodding and pedestrian Borg addressed the perpetual adaptation concept better, even if it was only to add the occasional bit of hosepipe or groinal socket attachment.

Worst. Cyberman. Story. Ever.

Ah, but of course it’s not a Cyberman story. It is, as stated, a story of a guy struggling with his recent promotion to fatherhood. That’s the key and it’s echoed in the way this episode opens with a nod to Rose (assistant staying late to close up shop, something lurking in store): Who is less about Auton mannequins breaking out of shop windows to terrorise the nation; it’s much more about the people who work in that shop. The late, great Barry Letts (whose role Steven Moffat now occupies, albeit in the modern capacity of ‘showrunner’) told me that his mission was simply to produce entertaining sci-fi action adventure and, despite inheriting a setup he didn’t want – a time and space traveller stranded on contemporary Earth – succeeded, for the most part, in investing a succession of alien invasion and mad professor stories with respectable degree of variety and creativity. Back in his day, incumbent Doctor, Jon Pertwee, said that "there's nothing more scary than coming home and finding a Yeti on your loo in Tooting Bec", as opposed to in some alien environment. And there’s something to that. The contrast between the alien and the everyday and mundane makes for a potent mix.

New Who follows that recipe to a large extent, but the balance of ingredients has shifted. Character and emotion has been brought very much to the fore and this is a good thing. But I do wonder sometimes if this hasn’t been at the expense of the sf adventure side. A lot of these 45 minute episodes barely present scenarios, rather than fully fledged stories (at best, this week’s would have made for a poor if amusing short story in an anthology) and perhaps a greater deftness of touch is needed to give equal weight to both elements.

We live in a world where ‘getting away from it all’ is increasingly difficult. While on holiday, I’ll usually make a point of going offline as well as away somewhere. My mobile phone’s available for emergencies, of course, but escape – let alone actual isolation – is a challenge in this increasingly interconnected society of ours. Thus, we see this reflected in Doctor Who – at one time the ultimate in escapism – where we have companions, whisked away in the TARDIS, all of time and space opened before them, and a string of strong, independent female companions possessed with a need to frequently touch base with home and family. Once was okay as an exploration of that facet of the time travel experience, but to have the experiment repeated ad nauseam was a bit too much for my tastes.

Now at last we have the domestics packed up and travelling with us, with Rory and Amy’s relationship centre stage in the TARDIS, but – much as I love em, I really do – their love has been often been put under the microscope, pushed to the forefront and, coupled with the arc concerning their daughter, has often nudged the framing SF adventure story into peripheral vision territory. As I've noted here before, there's this too-frequent appearance of an "It'll do" attitude, as though the importance of a strong scenario has been comprehensively underestimated in terms of selling us on the emotional import at the heart of the presented situation.

At the same time, the tricky issue of Amy and Rory missing out on raising their own child has been conveniently swept under a carpet – sure, the temporal shenanigans have rendered it somewhat moot from a practical perspective, but I think it creates an odd disconnect with the powerful parental – and particularly maternal – bond. It’s something that was clearly in evidence after the birth, when Amy was pleading with her captors against the baby being taken and demanding that the Doctor get her back. And it’s an especial oversight in such an emo-centric incarnation of Doctor Who. It’s as though the (laudable) aim to lend these adventures extra depth goes hand in hand with a desire to keep things simple.

Roberts exemplifies this modus operandi. Hence we have this effective domestic sitcom married to a token hidden alien ship scenario and a resolution straight out of the appalling Doctor Who For Dummies handbook. It has its merits – yay, verily, it abounds with merits: the humour is consistently above most current BBC1 sitcoms (not fantastic praise, I know, but still), forget the BBC 3 ones; there are some nice guest characters (must mention Lynda Baron, much more successful than her panto pirate turn in Enlightenment); I loved the inclusion of Rory and Amy, and the nice little extra of Amy stopping to sign an autograph, as the face of the perfume. (Although it fills me with this niggling feeling that Amy and Rory have been given a future and a life together so, maybe – noooooo! - they won’t be returning, after all. Grounds for an upside down smiley at the very least!) And the Doctor’s little talk with Alfie at the end would have been thoroughly lovely if only not undermined by the sinking feeling that we’ve been there before. Oh dear god, it’s TennantDoc all over again, getting all maudlin and self-absorbed about his impending end. May I make this humble request: in the future, when or if the Doctor is actually about to meet his ultimate demise, can he please please not know about it in advance? All this prophesy and foreshadowing is getting a teensy bit lame and tiresome. Fair dues to Smith, he subtly underplays it to a welcome degree and there’s none of the self-referential “I don’t want to go” mopeathon to which we were subjected in Tennant’s final stages.

But viewed on its own with all the episode’s undoubted strengths in mind, I just can’t see where the harm could have been in framing all this in a smarter, more involved and – oh, what the hell, let’s go all out here – original story with a resolution that didn’t suck lemons.

Emotional feedback is a long way off destroying Doctor Who, but this isn’t the first tale this year that has suffered its effects. Emotional weight, like good CGI, should serve the story and ideally the story should serve that emotional weight. What would have been so wrong with embedding the good material in a decent Cyberman story? (Assuming such a thing could ever be written.) If you have something worthwhile to say, give it all the thought and attention – and the story - it deserves. Just a suggestion.

As it is, yeah, that was amusing. Next.

And talking of next, we can’t let this pass without touching on the promise of the impending season finale. The transition, through the young eye-witness accounts, to River Song and the lead-in to next week, was skilfully done – Moffat at work, maybe, tail-ending Roberts’ efforts? – even down to the minor detail of the Doctor liberating his ominous blue envelopes from Sophie’s stationery supplies. Nice.

Fair warning, Mr Moffat: we anticipate great things. Because there is at least one writer who has – apparently – crafted a complex and fiendishly clever story to the credit of all the themes and character relationships he is out to explore. At least, he’d better have. Since the arc has been so pervasive and all-important throughout this and the previous season, the longer term investment warrants a greater return.

The banks may have slashed interest rates, but in the closing stage of this patchy season (patchier than a one-eyed pirate dog named Patch) I’m trusting Doctor Who will not end up doing likewise.

SAF

Fawltless Towers

2011-09-18T05:52:00.000-07:00

Pictured Above: Distant cousins.

Faith. You gotta have faith. For preference, mine comes in the form of Eliza Dushku, but whatever your personal brand, it pays with Doctor Who to always trust that, no matter how disappointing an episode – or even a run of episodes or a season - might have been, there will be better along soon enough.

This week’s, The God Complex, was my cup of tea. In many respects, everything that the preceding instalment, The Girl Who Waited, should have been. A strong emotive concept, this time brilliantly executed. For one thing, it doesn’t rely on people being stupid. In fairness, this one probably had as many inconsistencies of internal logic but it cleverly weighted all explanations towards the tail end so that I was properly hooked and engaged in the story from the get-go. The questions it raised were of the ‘Ooh, I wonder what the hell is going on?’ variety, rather than the ‘How utterly dumb and contrived is that?’ sort.

The Toby Whithouse experience has been a variable one. School Reunion was a tale of two halves – on the one hand a powerfully emotional exploration of the Doctor-Sarah Jane relationship and the impact on a companion’s life post-Doctor; on the other a fairly feeble story of aliens taking over a school, ultimately to be defeated by K9. The best of Who, the worst of Who, but ultimately still magical in the memory thanks to the Sarah Jane thread and a parting scene that tugs on the heartstrings in all the best ways. Vampires Of Venice, veering more towards ordinary, although definitely with merits (including but not limited to hot vampire babes). And now this, The God Complex, outstanding in every respect that counts.

Gorgeously creepy and ever so slightly insane, it opened with shots of empty corridors just waiting for people to run up and down them. The direction was superb throughout, painting this already bizarre scenario of the mock 1980s hotel in a singularly surreal light. Freaky montages, extreme eye close-ups, warped views of corridors stretching away forever, a consistently dark tone expertly interwoven with the chintzy decor,and a perfectly measured restraint in the reveal of the monster. Shadows, more ocular close-ups, ominous sounds and an exquisitely framed shot through glass when the Doctor first confronts it face to face. And it’s a monster which, quite frankly, you’d be seriously tempted to show off.

A beautifully realised creation. It must be said. Sure, yes, it’s ultimately ‘just’ a minotaur, but a fantastic bit of animatronic workmanship. Not quite Farscape's Pilot level, but fantastic all the same. When Amy says he’s beautiful, she’s not wrong. Kudos to the production team on that alone. The line about it being a ‘distant cousin of the Nimon’ is comedy gold.

Loved it, loved it, loved it.

And I understand now why The Girl Who Waited couldn’t have been set in a prison with lots of individually tailored nightmares. Unless these stories could have been combined somehow. Hmm.

Such speculative food for thought aside, this for me is the best standalone story of the season so far, up there with Neil Gaiman’s The Doctor’s Wife, with perhaps a few extra trimmings on top. There’s a deftness of touch ranging from the simple facet of set-dressing – the pictures of previous victims on the walls, for instance – to the characterisation of the lovely Rita (not a meter maid). Actress Amara Karan and script conspired to invest her with a similar ‘instant companion’ quality to the likes of Sally Sparrow (sigh) and I for one would have welcomed her recruitment as a regular at the end. Of course, it’s all engineered so that we properly feel for her in that horrible, wrenching scene of her demise. A true shame, but the engineering is pure craftsmanship.

Memory cheats, but I do recall wondering, back in ye olde times during (the somewhat overrated) Curse Of Fenric, whether the Russian captain was intended as companion material, before he met is fate. There’s other Fenric common ground here as the Doctor endeavours to break his companion’s faith in him, only this time the scene involves actors instead of Sylvester McCoy.

The initial hypothesis that the creature is feeding on fear is the stuff of bulk-standard DW monsters, preparing us for a foray into familiar Orwellian Room 101 territory, but thought has gone into the range of hot and cold running fears on offer in the hotel rooms. Clowns and ventriloquist dummies are obvious ones, of course, but you would need the more common fears in amongst the quirkier ones. The conspiracy-theorist geek’s fear of girls and that single shot of the huddle of girls all talking and laughing about him was again deftly done and told the character’s whole story in as few seconds as possible. Naturally there’s a burning desire to know the greatest fears of the regulars – the Doctor most particularly - and the episode frustrates us with its restraint in this regard, but it’s pitch perfect. Any more would have been wrong, as would any less. As the story progresses, we know there has to be more to this than just fears and when the question of faith then rears its head, further fascination is folded in with the suspense.

And the range of faiths is as creative as the range of fears. Faith in conspiracy theories, faith in luck. And how fantastic to have a practising Muslim in the mix. In passing I did wonder whether the Doctor’s reference to pointless superstitions and faith was ill-judged, in the light of Rita’s religious beliefs, but it’s clear that he respects and admires her. It’s fitting that a Time Lord with a God Complex, eponymous or otherwise, would be something of an atheist, but I couldn’t imagine him being so glibly dismissive of the deeply held beliefs of a person so clearly valued and recently lost.

As dark and potentially heavy stuff as all this is, there is comedy aplenty. All that was missing in this hotel from hell was a guest appearance from John Cleese. We had David Walliams – not in the same league, all due respect – but he puts in a good turn as the cowardly alien from the most-invaded planet in the universe. The fact that this snivelling spineless Orc survives when better people have lost their lives is simultaneously galling and inspired.

Like all good things it comes to an end. But we have to hope that at least part of the end is temporary. When the illusion of the hotel is stripped away and all that’s left is a Tron-like virtuascape, bringing into sharp focus the isolation and loneliness of the minotaur’s death. His line about one so drenched in blood embracing the end was, for me, so clearly referring to the Doctor it didn’t necessarily need spelling out, but it’s at least not as bluntly hammered home as, say, the end note in Moffat’s The Beast Below. But that’s ultimately the extent of my quibbles with it, really, because as I said it managed to sell me on the scenario and fully hook me in, before any triggering of the internal critic could occur. Damn it, it even managed to have me feeling sorry for the beast, without any sense that anyone was ham-fistedly trying to push my buttons. Even the music was – gasp!! – understated for a (blimmin welcome) change.

So in the end not quite entirely faultless, but perhaps as close to it as Doctor Who ever comes.

Still, with all that praise heaped upon it, I must balance it out by adding that Toby Whithouse is a bastard. Sure, he can claim he was only following orders but that doesn’t alter the facts that responsibility lies with him – for being the man who wrote Amy and Rory out. You utter git, sir. Shame on you!

Of course, if this had occurred at season’s end, I would be more convinced – and horrified – at the prospect that this was indeed their actual final departure. But I can’t buy that this is really the last we’ll see of them. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, maybe it’s because I’ve been fed on a diet of more recent companions who always return no matter how final their departure seems. Mostly though it’s because Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill have been for me the best Doctor-companion combo since Tom Baker, Lis Sladen and Ian Marter and that’s something real special. I have faith that they will be back.

In grudging deference to Mr Whithouse, he delivers a beautiful departure scene which does the relationships justice. The bastard writes terrific tear-jerking farewells. So, in case there’s any misunderstanding or in the remotest case Mr Whithouse is paying attention, ‘bastard’ is in this instance a term of respect and admiration. With the blame, sir, comes due credit.

That final closing scene of the Doctor’s isolation and loneliness inside the TARDIS is as perfectly judged as most of this episode and this is the first time in a few weeks now that the episode itself has honestly outdone anything in the NEXT TIME... trailer at the end.

NEXT TIME has a lot to live up to now and unfortunately it features Cybermen – and the modern clunky, trudge-dread ones - which puts it at a disadvantage before it’s begun. Let’s hope we finally get a story that realises their potential.

Looking further forward, I’ll be hoping for more Amy and Rory soon. And more from Toby Whithouse next year. He’s definitely earned his place as a regular guest at the Doctor Who hotel.

SAF

Blunderworld

2011-09-11T06:51:00.000-07:00

You know how it goes. You press the wrong button and suddenly there you are fighting for survival for the next thirty-six years in a quarantine facility for sufferers of a rare disease that only affects dual-hearted races, chased by medical robots whose treatments will be toxic to you because their designers, despite being avid collectors of human cultural treasures, apparently neglected to program their nurses to make any distinction between their own species and other identical single-hearted races. (Robots who, by the way, see with their hands – which has to be the most dumb-as-a-stump sensory apparatus since the Dalek eyestalk.) Ah well, never mind, it’s not like you have any great story full of dramatic and emotional import to convey, so why not base it on such a foundation of layered absurdities?

Oh, wait.

The Girl Who Waited smacked of a missed opportunity. Like last week’s Night Terrors, there was a much stronger story dying to break free of its writer’s limitations. Too many dumb contrivances piled on top of one another managed to disengage me from proceedings long before the real substance of the story showed its weight.

Such a shame too, because the cast really gave it their all. The culmination was a brilliantly played Pyramus and Thisbe scenario to outdo the Rose/TennantDoc one from Doomsday. Arthur Darvill especially was acting his socks off and my only reservations about Gillan concerned her old age version, where I couldn’t quite determine whether the stiffness of features was down to the makeup or an acting choice.

You could cynically boil down Rory’s choice to one between his beloved, youthful, spirited, chipper, sarcastic Amy and the old, wrinkly, selfish, deeply embittered one who kept a robot effigy of himself as a pet. Not exactly a dilemma to task Solomon. But given a much stronger setup, I would have totally bought into the situation.

She was, after all, his Amy, but one who had suffered, one he felt he had let down or betrayed. That’s bound to plague the conscience of a softy like Rory. And from Amy’s POV, well, of course she’s not going to want to ‘die’. It’s potent stuff.
But it suffers, I think, because it’s built like a house of straw.

As with his Cyberman two-parter which tried so hard to be a Hollywood action blockbuster and ended up just being a mechanical trudgeathon, MacRae’s inventiveness apparently fails to match his ambitions. There’s some creativity on display, with the fantastic imagery of the giant temporal magnifying glass, for instance, but there seems to be two streams of effort at work here: one where the writer has tried hard to make this scenario work, the other where he’s either been lazy or just not up to the task. I’m going to take the charitable view and assume these scripts are produced in a hurry to tight deadlines. But even then I can’t quite believe that nobody – say, a script editor or someone of that sort – looked at this and thought, hang on, Tom, don’t you think this is a bit weak? There's a worrying "It'll do" attitude that seems to creep into Doctor Who now and again. And again.

Never mind that we’ve already had alien medical AIs who haven’t a clue about human medicine (The Curse Of The Black Spot) in this same season. (Yawn.) But channeling one third of the TARDIS party into a separate time stream by virtue of an erroneous button press is pathetic. Disbelief is compounded by the way neither Rory or the Doctor recall that there are two *completely different buttons* when they shout instruction to Amy to “press the button”. Getting past that, we then have to buy the notion that Amy has survived for thirty six years against what must have been a vast army of robots before any programming kicked in to register that, what with all these robots getting knocked out and the ‘unidentified bacteria’ still present, perhaps some alternative approach was needed on the part of the administration.

Fair enough, Interface didn’t seem that bright. But for such a contrived and ‘advanced’ system for humanely dealing with this terrible disease, you might expect a few more complex protocols to have been built in to handle the occasional hiccup. Thousands of time streams all overlapping, we’re told, and yet the system is to all intents and purposes a one-trick pony, with absolutely no grasp of events outside the norm.

All the while, outside of Amy’s machine-room safehouse, we’re only shown one garden, a check-in area, a gallery and one stretch of corridor. We can assume she ranged a bit further afield in her thirty-six years, but the overall effect is to portray an extremely limited quarantine area and a consequently less convincing impression of the time that has supposedly passed.

And to top it all, the Doctor singularly fails to spell out to Rory that the rewriting (here we go again) of Amy’s timeline will actually spare her ever having suffered this ordeal. And nobody even mention that Rory waited two thousand years for Amy not all that long ago. And he still has memories of that.

In retrospect, I wonder if the tale would have worked better had the facility been a form of prison. The stretched time stream being some form of extending a sentence indefinitely, the different areas being different ordeals – a choice of hells, as it were, as opposed to gardens and theme parks etc, the robots being guards. And the Doctor and Rory are left in the time stream designed for visiting hours, as you’d have in a prison or public viewing – perhaps the victims’ families, who might wish to view the criminal’s suffering as some form of closure.

All decidedly nastier, but for my money simpler and more believable.

Obviously it’s just one idea I’ve come up with off the top of my head and it would need work, especially at the beginning when it came to how to separate Amy from the Doctor and Rory. But in that respect it’s no different to the episode we got.

All in all, another story that looked much better in the trailer. And ultimately one fine example of why actors are often more celebrated than writers.

Thankfully, there’s always next week.

SAF

The Nightmare, The Glitch And The Wardrobe

2011-09-07T05:26:00.000-07:00

After the grandstanding antics of Let’s Kill Hitler, this week’s episode – Night Terrors – feels like a real back to basics Doctor Who episode for the modern era. It’s a welcome toning down and reining in of the usual extremes, relying instead on atmosphere and basic horror-flick ghost-story scares – and turns out to be all the more effective for it. At its core there’s a very simple idea, but like The Unquiet Dead (Gatiss’ contribution to the Eccleston season) it’s let down by an ending so pitiful you almost feel sorry for it. Sorry for the story that could have been.

And it doesn’t have the great period setting or the formidable Simon Callow going for it. What it does have is a well-realised Victorian dollhouse (pretty easily figured out where Rory and Amy had been deposited, some while before they worked it out themselves), uber-creepy wooden dolls and oodles of terrific direction, with all the shadow play and spooky shots you’d expect from a suspenseful tale designed to give kids nightmares.

Appealing to the audience’s inner child and inviting us into the world of little George, so chronically frightened of all the monsters under the bed, outside the window and most especially in the cupboard, is a worthy aim and seems all part of Gatiss’ ongoing mission to mine the quintessential ingredients of good Who. I always get the impression that Gatiss is trying hard to capture some elusive, perhaps mythical ideal of Whodom that, like a faulty TARDIS, never quite materialises. In many respects, Victory Of The Daleks smacked of more of a creative departure for him, while this represents a return to form. There’s a twisted imagination at work, but it’s never quite twisted enough – The Unquiet Dead, for example, would have been much more interesting and memorable if it had properly pursued its conceit that we humans have no further use for our dead, so why not let aliens make use of the corpses. Here, making little George the alien is a nice twist, but one that somehow fails to turn expectations on their head in the way it should have done. Maybe this should have gone further and made the child a fully-fledged monster. Have George as a proper 'cuckoo in the nest' perhaps, having displaced a previous child - a daughter, maybe, which would explain the presence of the dollhouse and possibly her banishment within it.

Maybe though it’s simply all a bit too familiar. In pushing traditional buttons, Gatiss seems to produce something that’s a little too pedestrian and average. Even tired - perception filter, for instance, seems to be the new reversed polarity of the neutron flow, trotted out as a throwaway explanation for everything. To be fair, it’s not all in the pen work – there’s doses of dark humour to go with all the shadows – and some of the fault here has to be with the cast. I don’t think anyone outside the regulars (and the dolls) managed to entirely convince and possibly better actors would have helped connect me more to the situation. But there’s also a distinctly unreal quality to the domestic setup that possibly stems in part from the direction, and just as probably is there in the script. It’s like kitchen sink drama from someone who’s only ever known automatic dishwashers. The dialogue frequently doesn’t ring true (the dad is too gormless and the landlord pure caricature) and although there’s a clear effort to paint the kind of surreal perspective you’d envisage through the eyes of a child, I think more realistic characters might have provided a more solid grounding and involved me more in the fantasy elements of the tale.

On top of which, it’s all unfortunately a bit close to the Tennant ‘adventure’, Fear Her. Not a Gatiss story, but basically instead of a frightened kid putting everyone into drawings, we have a frightened kid sticking everyone in the cupboard. Which, while a change from the Rusty era of every other character coming out of the closet, ultimately makes for nothing very new.

This is better than Fear Her in that the fear element is more present and there are some actual terrors to justify the title. Plus it doesn’t have the silly shenanigans with the Doctor and the magic (Olympic) torch.

Rory and Amy don't actually achieve much, reduced to sneaking about in corridors, but it’s here that the story delivers its best scenes. It is the stuff of suspense and the dolls, as I say, are supremely creepy – all the way up until the point when Amy is converted, when you realise that, oh dear, it’s all going to be undone with a horribly rushed and overly easy resolution.

Little George just needs to feel like he belongs. Quick, dad, run and give the boy a hug.

But wait, this all came about because of Alien George’s insecurities that he was going to be ‘taken away’. And yet, mummy and daddy (not altogether believably) only discussed packing him off into care because of his chronic fear syndrome. There’s an internal logic failure in there somewhere. And if you’re going to have those, you really need to follow Moffat’s example and make your tales so complicated it’s easier to trust that they’ll all hold together come the end than attempt to unravel the tangled threads. Internal logic has perhaps rarely been Who's strongpoint, but here it's freely abandoned, both in Amy's absurd conclusion that the only way to take control of the situation is to let the dolls in - d'uh? - and I can't say I saw any reason for little George to enter the wardrobe - and the dollhouse - based on the Doctor's pleas. It would have made much more sense - and the situation much more difficult for the Doctor and friends - if he'd just gone ahead and locked the wardrobe at that point and waited for mummy to come home.

Anyway, what it all adds up to and balances out as is an average Doctor Who story. Right alongside Gatiss’ The Idiot's Lantern. Make no mistake, average is better than bad, but it’s also unfortunately more forgettable. Indistinctly average, I suppose. So I suspect that by season’s end, this one will have faded in the mix and we will be left with the usual bipolar episodes characterising this year’s (so far uneven) memories.

It’s always a less than encouraging sign when you’re left more excited by the Next Week trailer than the preceding episode and sadly – despite all of Hitler’s comedy clout - that’s been the case for the past two weeks now. White robots, white backdrops, sword-wielding Amy, fantastical setting – are we due a revisit to the Land Of Fiction?

At this stage, a straightforward remake of The Mind Robber would feel like the series upping its game. It could use some magic about now.

SAF

Back To The Fuhrer

2011-08-30T12:14:00.000-07:00

Ah, that old time travel dilemma: whether or not you would kill Hitler, given the chance. It’s a wonder that Doctor Who hasn’t explored this previously. Then you watch the brilliantly titled Let’s Kill Hitler and realise that it still hasn’t. (Except, of course, where it really kind of did in Genesis Of The Daleks.) But it doesn’t entirely matter, because although there is a small measure of disappointment to discover that the eponymous dictator spends most of the episode locked in a cupboard, the whole affair is every bit as spectacularly madcap and entertaining as the title promised.

There’s an old Pertwee episode where the Doctor claims to have met Hitler and glibly describes him as a ‘bounder’. Which trivialises the man’s more monstrous deeds a tad. And it’s a similar sort of deal here, played for comedy rather like Indiana Jones' detour to Berlin in The Last Crusade which culminates in the acquiring of Hitler’s autograph. But that tone is well and truly telegraphed and the more serious emotional/moral core of the story centres around the Let’s Kill The Doctor thread as, lest we forget, young River Song (nee Melody Pond) was abducted by agents of The Silence and reprogrammed as a weapon to be used against the Doctor.

Alex Kingston is on top form here, playing River with a twist. And by twist, I don’t mean that Mels turns out to be Melody/River. I mean, thank gawd she regenerated into Alex Kingston because the young actress who appears at the beginning isn’t very good, but her grandstanding arrival in the flash sports car cutting across the excellent crop calligraphy is so River as to be unmistakable. The pointing of a gun at the Doctor is a surprise and the subsequent line – “I have a gun. You have a time machine. Let’s kill Hitler” – nothing short of immortal.

It’s a sure sign that we’re in for a ride with all of Moffat’s characteristic chutzpah, wit and joyful inventiveness. The notion of a shape-changing robot driven from the inside by a miniaturised crew is bold and daft (and reminiscent of a chapter from Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Too Afraid To Ask) and works a treat in context of the story’s irresistible tone. It’s a shame the tissue-compressed crew are so po-faced and dull and their mission raises the most interesting moral question to my mind.

The Doctor scorns the idea of using time travel to mete out punishments on history’s war criminals, fair enough. It would seem a bit of a waste of such a miraculous technology. But the crew’s moral high ground is rendered even more shaky by the fact that they (apparently) don’t execute said war criminals (preferring instead to keep them alive in their own personal hell), while it’s perfectly acceptable to condemn culpable subordinates (such as the officer whose shape their robot assumes) to death at the hands (or tentacles) of the jellyfish-like antibodies. But I guess it’s fair to say that deeper questions are not part of this story’s turf.

Indeed, when it does slip into something more serious, it tends to over-egg the pudding somewhat. There’s some serious over-labouring for the hard-of-understanding on the point that Mels is Melody is River Song and I didn’t think the situation needed quite so much spelling out, but in contrast to the manic goings on for most of the episode, scenes involving the Doctor’s slowly dying – like the one in the TARDIS with Amelia Voice Interface seem to drag on a tiny bit too long. It’s funny and touching, but it would have been just as funny and touching – perhaps even more so – with a few iterations of “I’m not Amelia Pond” trimmed. Still the idea of fish fingers and custard giving the Doctor a second wind – so to speak – is inspired. And the scene does feature the best modern past companions cameos ever – Rose, Martha *and* Donna – and none of them speak! Yay!

Additionally as programmed assassinesses go, River’s change of heart is, I’m afraid to say, utterly unconvincing. The basis for that turnaround strikes as flimsy at best and the master-weaver that is the Grand Moff could have come up with something better, I’m sure.

This is much more about the magic laugh out loud moments – Rory punching Hitler, River making the Nazi uniform look good and riding off on a motorcycle, a pair of Schmeissers on her back, to go ‘shopping’ for a new outfit, her own manic Doctorish post-regeneration seizure (“I have to go and weigh”), the Doctor dressing up as Fred Astaire for his impending death – complete with sonic cane. Etc etc. Chock full of sharp lines, as you’d expect, and – for Doctor Who anyway – a reasonably tidy resolution. Which also happens to fill in most of the remaining blanks about River. Actually a few too many, for my liking, because I feel like her tale has essentially been told. River comes full circle and is there anything to add? I fear the most we can expect in future will be in the form of The Untold Adventures Of River Song from Big Finish Productions.

There’s still the mystery of The Silence to maintain our interest through the rest of the series. And this new question of the Oldest Question, the asking of which will mean the end of everything. Or something. Whatever the implications it seemed a bit stupid of the Doctor to ask the Amybot what the Question was. Hidden in plain sight, sure, but probably not just residing on the future equivalent of Ask Jeeves. If I was in the mood to quibble, I’d also be sceptical about the whole “Time can be re-written except for the Doctor’s death by Lake Silencio, which is absolutely set and unalterable” issue. It smacks a little of time can be re-written except for the bits Steven Moffat wrote. It’s a too-blatant message that this is ultimately an arc instalment rather than a story in its own right and there’s precious little of any actual substance.

But this is one Nazi parade I’m not inclined to rain on. Ultimately it’s an episode that’s not quite everything it could have been (and falls short in comparison to A Good Man Goes To War), but I think it was almost everything it promised in the title. The implicit statement of intent is that this will be fun. And it is, no less and little more. Viewed as pure larks, it works. Laugh a minute plus that one nicely pitched counterpoint to the Hitler comedy: where in response to Adolph’s gratitude for saving his life, Matt Smith delivers the perfect response. “Believe me, it was purely by accident.”

Next week’s episode looks terrifying, so I will take temporary comfort in the fact that there’s a spare Riverbot left back in 1938. That or the Doctor took her on board the TARDIS. I wonder if he does next day delivery.

SAF
(Credit to iCowboy for this post's title!)

Something Wicked This Way Comes

2011-08-08T07:04:00.000-07:00

Faction's Got Talent

2011-07-11T07:40:00.000-07:00

They’re here. They’re not here. Get used to it.

So we’re told at the back of the Faction Paradox anthology, A Romance In Twelve Parts, from Obverse Books. And I wonder if Obverse are aware just how apposite that tag line is, when all is said and done and the stories have all been read. Sometimes the Faction feature prominently, sometimes they don’t appear to feature at all.

Now, I’m a Faction novice. I’d read of some of their exploits in the BBC Books Doctor Who range and all I really knew about them was that they were a time-travelling voodoo cult who took a contrary view to the Time Lords’ official policy of non-intervention. They were all blood and TARDISes and animal skull masks. There endeth the sum of my knowledge.

Post-anthology, I can’t swear to being any further informed, but the journey through these twelve different takes on the Faction universe made for an interesting exploration. Not a rollercoaster, because these tales are almost universally thoughtful, deserving of a more measured and attentive pace, and while story length varies widely only one drags its wheels like a repeatedly delayed train.

But let’s accord a few words to each, since one of the great disappointments when reading reviews of anthologies to which I’d contributed was finding I’d failed to get so much as a mention. (Declaration of interest: I know some of these authors, at least their internet personae, and I can only hope any brutal honesty from here on in may compensate for any accusations of bias aimed my way. It also may lose me some friends!) So, here we are, in no particular order but saving the best until last:

Daniel O’Mahony, I’ve long suspected, operates on a different intellectual plane to me and unfortunately his tale, Print The Legend, stands as Exhibit B in this respect. It’s probably incredibly clever and some of the writing is exquisite, but I found the story bordering on impenetrable and taxing on the patience, with no real reward come the end. A sort of value subtracted tax. It’s a grander, more ambitious exploration of the theme of the opening story – The Storyteller by Matt Kimpton - and, for my money, ultimately less successful. For his part, Kimpton really captures the spirit of a campfire storyteller and the doomladen mood of a Viking saga, and even if the voice isn’t especially reader-friendly, it’s convincing and consistent and delivers a simple and effective twist.

Gramps by Jonathan Dennis is something of a curiosity – and yes, it does kill the cat. It’s an engaging piece right up to the end when it ultimately leaves you shrugging and moving on to the next story.

Blair Bidmead (Now Or Thereabouts), Scott Harrison (Holding Pattern) and David N Smith & Violet Addison (Nothing Lasts Forever) do a better job of serving up well-written tales that leave a more lasting mark. Bidmead’s offering suffered a little for me in that it parodies The Apprentice and I’m about as familiar with the show as I was with the Faction, but I could appreciate the humour in a detached sort of fashion. Harrison kicks off with what feels like a very traditional SF story, which becomes a sort of Tomb Of The Faction and ultimately illustrates just the kind of bloody temporal shenanigans I’d imagined the Faction got up to – the slitting of throats and timelines. Meanwhile it’d be easy to dismiss Smith & Addison’s contribution as a sort of Doctor’s Wife without the humour – and I’m still half-tempted to do so – but it has just enough going for it to mark it out as something different.

Alchemy by James Milton falls into a similar above-average bracket, but has a more interesting concept at heart – a conflict between magic and science, and the inevitable hollowness of vengeance. There’s more of an imaginative vision at work too.

Less visionary, perhaps, but better still is Mightier Than The Sword by Jay Eales. It surely owes a lot to Quills, but it has a novel feel to it and what really sells it is the voice, giving us one of the few central characters in the book who we can properly connect with. Makes for a refreshing and accessible read, while still being as intelligent as the O’Mahony tale, for example.

Stuart Douglas’ Library Pictures is similarly entertaining and accessible and, unlike a lot of the stories on show, remembers to bring the fun. By throwing Iris Wildthyme into the mix, he gives us the Faction tale that has most in common with Doctor Who and even though I’m not especially familiar with Iris – and know nothing of her companion, Panda – this was the story I felt most at home with.

The top stars of the anthology though were Dave Hoskin, Ian Potter and Phillip Purser-Hallard.

Tonton Macoute by Dave Hoskin is freakishly imaginative and the eponymous creation is a truly fearsome figure, highly memorable, and the twist is ingeniously cruel. The Story Of The Peace is a tale that – like Library Pictures – remembers to bring the fun and when it comes to razor wit, Ian Potter’s is the Gillette Mach Fusion Supersonic Turbo model. The best a reader can get. Very sharp stuff.

And finally, A Hundred Words From A Civil War by Phillip Purser-Hallard is – as well as supremely witty – a truly epic tale of wonderful impossibilities, each constituent piece in the jigsaw a masterpiece thumbnail sketch on imagination overdrive. Ambitious, smart and entertaining. It’s the longest story in the collection in terms of pages, but doesn’t feel like it at all.

Overall, it’s a beautifully packaged and presented volume and Messrs Miles and Douglas have done a professional job of editing. Yes, there’re a few typos that slipped through the net, but pick any commercially produced hardback or paperback and hand it to my wife and she will find you errors. It happens. In any case, the technical nitty gritty aside, the job of editing an anthology hinges on gathering together a suitably engrossing set of tales around a central theme and on that front they score major points. The collected talent is impressive, albeit that the writing sometimes impresses more than the story.

And did I need to know about the Faction prior to reading? Well, there are a few references to 'the Enemy' and so on that might leave you with questions about the ins and outs of the background, but nothing too distracting. And a good percentage of the tales can be considered in the ‘They’re not here’ category, so the Faction aren’t really a factor.

One thing I will say though, Obverse Books are here. Get used to it. And. more than that, do give their range a try. They’re producing some very worthwhile reads and they definitely have an eye for talent.

Do check out their site for this and other titles:

Obverse Books

SAF

Creative Consulting

2011-06-17T08:03:00.000-07:00

Continuing our semi-irregular highlighting of the works of other authors, we're privileged this week to play host to Justin Richards, who really should need no introduction.

Not only was he the editor, presiding over BBC Books' Doctor Who range 'back in my day' - and continues in his role as Creative Consultant for the range - if you want some idea of just how prolific he has been as an author, you need only check out this list on Amazon and prepare to be impressed. Even setting aside the mountain of Doctor Who books and audio dramas, he's written a host of other original series, collaborated - creatively! - with Jack Higgins, and has recently ventured into the Kindle arena with another creation of his own, The Skeleton Clock. So it's even more of an honour that he took time out of his scribely schedule to answer a few questions.

Now, for openers, I already have my copy of The Skeleton Clock on my Kindle, so technically you don't have to sell me on the book, but give us an elevator pitch for the novel. What does the story have going for it?

The main thing – I hope! – is that it’s a good, exciting story. It’s set in the City, which is London some time in the future when the sea level has risen and the Thames has flooded out across the city. The ground has fractured and moved, so there are areas that are completely under water, and others where just the tops of the buildings stick out of the flood. So it’s sort of recognisable, but very different – St Pauls Cathedral is just the dome above the water and called ‘Whispers’. If you look out from there you can see the twisted, broken remains of the Gherkin, with the glass shattered and the rusting skeleton of the structure just about intact and that’s The Twisting. But to get there you’d have to take a boat – maybe from Nelson’s Mooring, which is this statue on a short plinth sticking out of the water. Or maybe you can find a way through the old tunnel network under the city – though that can be dangerous as the tunnels are liable to flood without warning...

So it’s a fascinating environment, society breaking down and everything sort of skewed. Into that, let’s add a mysterious antique bookshop, and some nasty villains, some secret experiments, a talking statue and of course sea monsters!
Sorry – I think our elevator travelled through a lot of floors there, didn’t it?!

You are a prolific author with a host of published material to your credit. Why on earth would you choose to add to your workload by venturing into the independent publishing arena?

It’s an experiment and an adventure. I wasn’t really sure what to do with The Skeleton Clock once I’d written it, so I thought it would be a good novel to try as an eBook. Seeing the royalty rates publishers are offering, and watching some ‘independent’ novels doing so well as eBooks, I thought I’d better find out what it’s all about. I read almost everything on my iPad now, and while I don’t think eBooks will replace the physical printed editions the market is going to be huge. So I wanted to know what’s involved – the formatting, submitting, publishing... And I’m getting into pricing and promotion as well. That’s where it gets trickier as I want to be an author not a publicist or marketeer. But even in print-publishing the author these days has to be more involved in the non-writing side of things...

Has it been a successful experiment? Too soon to know – but I don’t think I’ve lost anything by trying and who knows, maybe Spielberg will find the book...

As an author, I'm a fan of having two or three different projects on the go at any given time - in case inspiration runs temporarily dry on one, I always have something else I can turn to. But with so many different series and individual titles to your name, how do you juggle the various projects?

Panic usually. Well, actually it’s a complex algorithm that combines: (a) what do I want to do today? (b) which deadline is the soonest and (c) what was I working on yesterday as that’s likely to be easiest to pick up on again.

I tend to have things at different stages. So I’ll have several projects that I’m working on proposals or outlines for, some that are coming back to haunt me in the form of rewrites or proof reading or whatever, and I’ll have one that I’m actually working on the main writing part of. So I don’t actually write several things at once. Well, not really.

Also of all the creations and series to your name, which would you consider your favourite and why? (Setting aside Doctor Who!)

Ooh, that’s tricky. In fact, impossible. I love them all as much I think. I’m very proud of my standalone novels like The Chaos Code and The Skeleton Clock. But as series go The Invisible Detective was a great breakthrough for me – and such fun to do. The I sort of moved on with the books about the Department of Unclassified Artefacts. That was never really devised as a series, but there are three of them now (The Death Collector, The Parliament of Blood, and The Chamber of Shadows) – all of which have been great fun and very exciting to write...

Then I’m also proud of the work I’ve done with Jack Higgins – which was such a privilege, working with a literary hero of mine. And for sheer enjoyment, my younger children’s spy series Agent Alfie made me laugh the whole way though – even though writing funny is very very difficult!

I remember a favourite quote, from Sol Stein, that you used to cite to me: "A writer is someone who can't not write." Obviously with contracts and commissions come deadlines and demands, but is that creative impulse still very much a part of what drives you or is making time to write purely a discipline and/or part of the job?

I’m glad you remember that – it’s a good and apt quote isn’t it? And it applies to me just as much now as ever, I think. ‘Driven’ sounds a bit pompous, but if I go for a few days without actually writing anything then I do get itchy fingers – I need a keyboard. I need to write... something.

Doctor Who formed a large part of your writing - and editorial! - career for a long while and that was clearly a labour of love. How much of that influences your writing outside of the Doctor Who universe?

I suspect it’s a huge influence. I write the sorts of things I would love to read – or see or hear. And my absolute favourite series in any format is Doctor Who. So whatever I write will be to an extent tinged with that, I think. I don’t mean I’m writing Doctor Who without the Doctor, but I love that style of story – which may be quite realistic in so many ways, but underlying it is a huge fantasy or SF or horror conceit. There is something – in the true sense of the word – extra-ordinary going on. Maybe it’s ghosts, or the supernatural, maybe it’s monsters, maybe it’s extrapolating science, or maybe it’s flooding London and filling it with sea monsters and animated toys...

Back to the Skeleton Clock. It's a great title, but where and how was the idea for that story born?

I started with the setting – which I think is probably unusual for me. Usually I have an idea for a plot or a character. The Chaos Code came from the character of Julius Venture, for example. The Parliament of Blood came from a new take on Victorian Vampires... The Skeleton Clock started to tick (as it were) when I was watching an Alan Titchmarsh series on the BBC about the making of Britain in geological terms. There was sequence where they took London back to Jurassic times, or whenever, and they used CGI to flood Trafalgar Square I think – showed the water rising to where it would have been. I watched that short sequence and first I thought it was a terrific image. Then I thought that it could happen again in the future – just like they showed. Then I started to wonder what sort of stories you could tell set in that environment.

Finally, what's your take on the age of the Kindle and ebooks? And are there plans for a paperback edition of the Skeleton Clock?

To take the second question first, I’m not sure. I don’t want to become a print-publisher. But I might well take The Skeleton Clock round and try to sell the print rights. We’ll see – for the moment it’s ticking over (ha-ha) as an eBook.
As for the future of publishing, well now you’re asking. I think eBooks will become hugely important. More than that is difficult to predict. There’s the whole democratisation of publishing as well – anyone can publish a book. So how do Publishers fit into that? Will they be gatekeepers in the sense that readers will look to see if a ‘real’ publisher is behind a book as a guarantee of quality? How will Publishers persuade authors that they can add value to their work? Because I’ve seen both sides, I know that a publisher brings editorial advice and judgement as well as marketing clout and ‘branding’. But will that continue to be important?

There was a point, I remember as I was in the computer industry, when it was obvious that the whole video-game revolution would be driven by the film studios. They had the visual authors, they had the technology and expertise to produce what would be basically interactive films the user could control somehow. But it didn’t happen. The film industry stepped away from that – or rather, never realised it was there. A whole new industry grew up instead and for a while we talked about how the film industry would die as a result. We’re at a similar turning point now – or soon will be. Print books will survive, no question. But for the new, exploding eBook industry – will the existing publishers step up and bring their expertise to that, will they reinvent themselves and learn how to add value and stay in the game? Or will a new industry develop – like the teenagers and young entrepreneurs who jumped into the video-game vacuum? So far, eBooks are just print books put online. Will that continue to be the case, or will the eBook branch off and mutate into something very different?

We live – and write – in exciting times!

You can find The Skeleton Clock for your Kindle on Amazon or for other e-readers on Smashwords.

Further information on The Skeleton Clock, including a free sample, can be found on Justin's site along with details of many of Justin's other works.

SAF

Dancing With Dinosaurs

2011-06-13T13:21:00.000-07:00

There are some rules they don’t tell you about going to concerts. Like when the doors open on a Shakira gig, there’s no hurry because she won’t be on until much later. (She’ll be well worth the wait, mind you.) But for a Rush concert, well, rush. The clue was there in the name, I’ll grant you, but I was, for the first time in my life, late for a show.

Admittedly I took a laid back attitude to the schedule – courtesy of the lessons learned at the Shakira concert in December. Doors open at 6:30pm, show starts 7:30pm, I figured the latter time was more than good enough to aim for. But on Wednesday 25th May I should still have been at the O2 in fine time for the Canadian trio’s Time Machine Tour.

But: (adopts Reggie Perrin voice) 10 minutes late, delays on the Jubilee line. Followed by a hold-up at the doors as, thanks to having my ticket displayed prominently on the side of my fridge for the last few months, the print had faded somewhat so they had to print a fresh ticket for me so that their machine could read the bar code. Then I foolishly attempted to grab some fast food before taking my seat, and suffice to say it wasn’t. Fast, that is. It was food, of sorts.

And, perhaps as punishment for my joking on twitter about who might be supporting Rush – Hans Zimmer? – there was no support act and the main act had kicked off at or near 7:30. Ouch.

So I missed the first twenty minutes. I’m guessing about four songs. Although with Rush, that could just as easily have been two songs. Depends on which era they started out on in their Time Machine.

Ah well, all these things are part of the adventure and, like the winter wonderland outside at the Shakira concert, certainly serve to characterise a given occasion in the memory.

The fact is, I’m glad to say, missed songs aside, the band pretty much scotched all my jokes about dinosaurs and the chance to see them again before fossilisation set in. They have been around for aaaaaaaaaaaaages. I grew up with my Dad playing their albums (loud) (in amongst Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes, King Crimson and others) on Saturdays when my Mum went out shopping. Fair to say, I didn’t actually get into them myself until early to mid teens, maybe, but that still makes for thirty years I’ve been following their progress. I saw them live back in the days of yore of their Roll The Bones Tour. The memory cheats, I know, but to me they didn’t seem any less live this time out.

More so, I would say, since Roll The Bones – along with Hold Your Fire, which featured prominently on that tour - was heavier on the synthesisers and lighter on the heavier stuff. Whereas, what with Time Machine intended as a tour through their own history, this packed enough punch to defibrillate a dinosaur. Such hammering bass you could feel the vibrations in your chest. In a good way.

The set – as in physical set – was relatively simple but had a beautiful Jules Verne steampunk aesthetic going for it, backed up with fireworks (loud enough to nearly give the guy next to me a heart attack) and spurting pillars of flame, with Peart installed at its heart like a cross between Captain Nemo and Animal from the Muppets – and delivering a sensational drum solo midway through the second half.

That’s right. Second half. For all their age, Lee, Lifeson and Peart gave us a *three-hour* stormathon of recent tracks, a smattering of new material and of course the classics. Lifeson doesn’t move a whole lot but he gives his all on the guitars, while Lee bounds around the stage like a kid. One section of the show is devoted to a live performance of the Moving Pictures album in its entirety. Yay! Because I love that album. From Tom Sawyer to Vital Signs, (even if I can’t always hear Red Barchetta these days without being reminded of that damn Milky Way ad – “The red car and the blue car had a race!”) it’s something of a bridge between their purer metal years and their flirtation with more commercial leanings (like Hold Your Fire) – but at least they never did a full Genesis. It’s something of a miracle in rock genealogy terms that the three of them have remained together for so long. Whatever chemistry they have between them, it works.

On first impressions, the new songs were what I’d call dependable Rush, not blow you away stuff. But in fairness to the band, when you go to see a show like theirs, there’s a sense of an unspoken trade agreement – sure, fellas, you can play your new material as long as you give us a healthy slew of the oldies. And they held up their end of the bargain.

The one and only area I feel a bit cheated on (apart from what the O2 vendor charged me for a burger and a few chips!) is that there was no Xanadu. I have this horrible niggling feeling that maybe they opened with that track and I am going to have to put it on the CD player when I get home just to remind myself of its awesomeness. We did get the exquisite Closer To The Heart from the same era, but part of me always (and when I say always, bear in mind I’ve only seen the band live twice) feels a Rush concert is incomplete without Xanadu. I’d rather hoped it would be one of the encore numbers, but instead we were treated to the powerhouse Villa Strangiato and (oddly reggaed up to initially disguise it) Working Man. For my money, the latter was a curious choice of closing number, but on the other hand it hails from their very earliest album and I guess it’s fitting that the Time Machine ends up back at what was essentially the beginning.

It’s like if Doctor Who was a rock band, they might play out with An Unearthly Child. And that would by no means be a bad thing.

It’s an oldie but a goodie. Just like Rush. Thanks for that guys.

Not sure what kind of dinosaurs they are, but I’m sure the word ‘bronto’ is in there somewhere.

SAF

Extraordinary League

2011-06-05T07:39:00.000-07:00

Before I get stuck into a review of Saturday’s Doctor Who episode, let me just get something out of my system:

I knew it! I knew it! I knew it!

It’s tough to be entirely objective when buoyed up by the satisfaction of having been right all along, but on the other hand it’s one helluva neat trick to deliver an episode that gives the answer you expect while also magically avoiding the trap of predictability. The Grand Moff is quite the conjurer.

A Good Man Goes To War was everything it needed to be and more. I was concerned that the mid-season break might damage the show, with too large a chunk of the audience losing interest during the summer interval. Autumn may prove me wrong, but now I’m pretty confident that anyone who watched it will be back for more. Hopefully along with a lot of others who just heard about how bloody good it was.

It was big, bold, gutsy, brave and tugged at the heart-strings. This is the first episode in ages I’ve rewatched the following morning and I shed genuine tears. In amongst the genuine out-loud laughter and woo-hoos of delight. My main grumble is that we should have had two episodes of this, instead of the dreary Flesh runaround of the preceding couple of weeks. Plainly, the Flesh plays a significant part in this season’s arc, but there was more life and excitement and suspense and emotion in any randomly selected five minutes of this than there was in the entire Almost story.

The opening scene was enough to confirm for me the identity of Amy’s daughter – the name Melody Pond on the side of the crib – so it kicked off with a little Yay! From me from the get-go. The destruction of the 12th Cyberfleet was a bit of unnecessary grandstanding and further undermined a Who monster reduced to a bit of a joke by too many rubbish stories... *but* it served to underline a key point which comes up later *and* finally gave us a Rory full of authority and maturity, one we could believe had stood guard over his beloved Amy for millennia. “Don’t give me those blank looks.” Brilliant. And then the punch: “Shall I repeat the question?” to a backdrop of a fleet breaking apart in fireballs.

Grabbed my attention.

Then we’re treated to a look-in on Demon’s Run and its residents: the creepy order of Headless Monks and the Anglican army (previously seen as good guys in Time Of Angels) - both of which have an irresistably (Robert) Holmesian flavour – and some elaborate, extensive trap laid for the Doctor by Mrs Eyepatch. Amy’s declaration to her captors is highly-charged and the subtle introduction of Lorna, watching on as Amy’s baby is taken is superbly done. I will say the gay Anglican couple were amusing, if not great in the acting department – but the horror of the fat one’s conversion is expertly dished up – without the need to show us anything but an empty – waiting – box.

Then we’re off on a whirlwind tour of time and space as the Doctor and Rory recruit their Magnificent Several for their own battle beyond the stars. And they’re a fantastically colourful collection of characters too. Sword-wielding Victorian lesbian Silurian and her maid sidekick (Tipping The Scales, anyone?); Sontaran nurse (I can just picture him in Casualty); and wheeler-dealer Dorium (“What do you need me for? I’m old. I’m fat. I’m blue!”). Storming little scenes that deftly paint the characters and backgrounds (and doubtless spawn several thousand works of fan fiction, but these scenes are honestly all we need!) And, of course, Rory the Roman turning up to enlist River.

Oh my god, I loved that scene. River: “Turn it off. I’m breaking in, not out.” The whole thing is beautifully laced with emotion and razor-wit, both of which cut deep. Is Rory the ‘Good Man’ that River kills? I ask this because although we have seen the Impossible Astronaut shoot the Doctor, I’m not sure we can be sure the young River was in the suit at the time or indeed how or by whom she would be arrested for the crime. I foresee a certain future ahead and how this all might play out, but I’m reserving speculation for the moment – partly because of the spoiler potential, I suppose, but mainly I think because I doubt the chances of my being right twice. ;-)

Anyway, what’s true of that scene holds true for most of the rest of the episode. Moffat writes rollercoasters that spiral around themselves and take you on topsy-turvy heart-wrenching rides in the best possible way. The triumphalism of the Doctor’s battle on Demon’s Run is very RTD-like, but it has the advantage of occurring early on and we know it’s all just been too easy and that there is a bitter downfall to come. We’d know it even without River’s prophesy.

Where a two-parter might have enhanced that would be in elaborating on that battle, making it a little less obviously too easy. What we get is something of a shorthand version and the bad guys’ trap might have seemed a touch cleverer – and we would have gotten to see the Extraordinary League in action some more. As it is, within the time allotted, it works – even if I did fully expect the Doctor to be revealed under one of those Monk hoods and when he says, “Surprise!”, I wasn’t really. But I still enjoyed it all the same and the story had further surprises to come.

The Anglicans chanting “We’re not fools” went on a bit too long for my tastes. That’s an incidental though and the magic carries on around it, culminating in the Doctor’s 3 mins 42 seconds victory (NB not without bloodshed as the Sapphic Silurian – thanks, iCowboy! – later claims) and is not even sullied by the pirate captain and the space spitfires turning up to remind us of two of the poorer stories in the last couple of years. The great truth is that there’s almost too much fantastic stuff going on *after the battle is over* to properly cover in the space of this review.

You know me, I never like to harp on too long. But I have to cite just a few of the special moments.

The Doctor’s anger and his breaking of Colonel Runaway. That’s the vengeance of a Good Man. Amy’s tearful reunion with Rory and her baby – and the Doctor joining them and speaking baby. The Doctor and the Silurian discussing when the baby ‘began’. The Monks and their attack prayer. River's voice-over 'Demon's Run, When A Good Man Goes To War...' recital while everything is coming undone. Dorium’s wasteful death. The Magnificent Several’s heroic stand. The ‘fool you twice with the same trick’ flesh-baby. Hands up, I did not see that coming. I feel like I should have done, but hats off to Moffat. And Amy’s reaction. I get a chill now just thinking about it, the way she screams out Rory’s name.

The Sontaran’s death and his connection with Rory: “Rory, I’m a nurse.” Lorna’s death and the Doctor’s lie: “Who was she?” “I don’t know but she was very brave.” “They always are.”

The cot. Not only a wonderfully quirky example of Gallifreyan meets Gipetto carpentry, but it raises so many fascinating questions. Some of which Amy and Rory put to the Doctor, of course: “Have you ever had children?” To which there’s clear evasion going on and surely the Doctor’s lying when he tells them the cot is his. Thank goodness he’s not a suspect in LA Noire, because I’d never have been able to read the lie. Later, River is asking him if he’s forgotten how to read and there’s a close-up of the Gallifreyan script. So it’s her cot. Sure it could have been his as well at some point in the distant past, but I don’t mind admitting I have trouble getting my head entirely around the River-Doctor timeline. Moffat cooks a mean pasta dish but I can’t wait for him to properly untangle all the spaghetti.

River’s arrival on the scene is, in any case, the crowning moment. The speech she gives the Doctor is a rude awakening for him, a home truth. It happens to echo something I’ve wondered for a while now and harkens back to that scene with the destruction of the cyberfleet: has the Doctor become too powerful? The man who can turn armies around at the mention of his name. And, as River puts it, if he carries on this way, what will his name become? What will he become?

It’s inspired, to explore the consequences of that. I wonder if it will lead to a sort of reining in of the Doctor, something of a return to his older ways where he wasn’t quite so in command all the time. At the same time, it’s difficult to see how he could take a step back from what he is now, without some kind of regeneration or otherwise cataclysmic trauma. (And who knows, with the teaser shot that followed this week’s episode, that could well be what’s coming...!)

That is ultimately part of the beauty of what Moffat has left us with. This has all the spectacle and grandeur and epicness of a season finale, with all the advantage of also feeling like part one of a however-many-parter. The ending strikes a kind of Empire Strikes Back note, with the Doctor heading off to recover Amy’s daughter while the others remain behind with, er, Amy’s daughter.

On the subject of which revelation (I knew it!), it just bears out how superbly it’s been played all along. I sensed a bond between Amy and River, a similarity even – to an extent they’ve been played like female Doctors and that has to have contributed to the chemistry that’s evident whenever we’ve seen the Amy-River-Doctor team in action. (That and you get the sense the actors have a whale of a time.) And I totally buy it, as long as River never actually calls Amy ‘mum’. That would just look/sound really odd. Temporal shenanigans will do that, I guess.

There are questions. Umpty-gazillion, I’m sure. For one, exactly who is it that the Doctor has scared so much that they’ve gone to these lengths? The Daleks? The Silence? Silent Daleks? Whoever or whatever, the season has a real villain, a real enemy at its core - no matter how long we have to wait before we see them. But what Moffat pulls off with this halfway finale is to ice this cake with a major major answer and sprinkle all those other questions on top like hundreds and thousands. And as if that wasn’t enough to make us sit up and eagerly await Doctor Who’s return in the autumn, they then promise that he’ll be back in an episode entitled:

Let’s Kill Hitler.

That alone was worth a laugh out loud and a huge round of applause.

Genius.

SAF

Death Is A Lonely Business

2011-06-01T08:17:00.000-07:00

So said Ray Bradbury in one of his titles. And far be it from me to argue with the great Mr Bradbury, but of course that's only one reason why we might choose to explore the topic in our creative writings.

And it's a recurring theme for children's writer and illustrator, Janie Bill, who guests here today as part of our occasional mission to highlight other authors.

Over to you, Janie.

Janie's Fantastical Floridian Tales

Dying is serious business. Growing up with strong family ties, much of my childhood involved attending funerals for extended family and elderly relatives. I wasn’t allowed to wear black because back then it wasn’t a proper color for a child even when in mourning. I saw open caskets and closed ones, flamboyant floral arrangements and coffins inside homes.

Despite all the support I gave to my extended family and friends of my parents, most of whom I saw once a year at Christmas if that often, death didn’t strike me as a monumental occasion until it visited my immediate family. Although my novels intend to uplift readers, death consistently makes an appearance.

In Lochness, a boy named Lochlan drowns while saving his dog during from a Floridian hurricane. His guardian angel in the form of a dragon fairy helps him find his way through the passage between life and death. As Lochlan struggles to survive underwater, he searches for the path back to his home before being devoured by a lochness monster.

In Halo Light, a boating accident at the moment an enchanted island disappears takes the life of Ivy’s dad. Determined to bring her father back, Ivy develops her ability to understand the miracle of Halo Light. When Ivy learns fate intends to take her mother’s life also, she embarks on a quest into the Everglades where she confronts paranormal demons and discovers the secret to everlasting life.

In Mystery Under a Full Moon, while snorkeling, teenager Anatolia finds a Spanish treasure that possesses supernatural powers when placed under a full moon. An hour later her dinghy overturns and she lands on a waterlogged body floating in the lagoon. She sails through the Caribbean, hiding from the killer who hunts for her treasure, and collecting clues to reveal his identity before he attacks.

Simon, I deeply appreciate the opportunity to visit your website. Please stay in touch and discover the inspiration behind my Floridian tales at

www.janiebill.com.
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You'll also find a range of Janie's illustrations and thoughts on writing and her unique world view over on her site.

SAF

Pound Of Flesh

2011-05-29T09:34:00.000-07:00

You know how when you bounce a rubber ball, subsequent bounces will fail to reach the same height as the first? We got to see the same principle in operation with The Almost People, this week’s Doctor Who. It basically does much the same thing as the previous episode, but with some loss of its initial energy.

What it needed to do was to expand in some way, take us in an unexpected direction, or pretty much just do anything to justify its two-part stretch. But the main impression I’m left with is that it dished up more of the same. More running up and down corridors, more rubbery CGI, more crying about human rights for mannequins, more ham-fisted hogwash. Worse, it seems riddled with contradictions and character motivations in constant flux. Even its most dramatic, shock moment managed to cheapen and undermine the entire principle it had been flogging us with throughout and ultimately all we’re left with is a molten puddle, but – unfortunately - the molecular memory remains.

As far as I understood it, the battle lines had already been drawn and the gangers were already ganging up on the humans, and yet this week we have Jennifer 2.0 turning up to whip the gangers into a war against humans. This turns into the most pitiful war in history, as it lasts for about six minutes before everyone’s changed their minds. Naturally, I can understand anyone losing their appetite for such an ugly, horrific business, but this particular war never really got as far as the ugly, horrific part. Nothing much happened.

This change of heart is nothing compared to the Doctor’s u-turn on Fleshly Rights, as he – both of him - embarks on a personal mission to convince all of us – and Amy in particular – that gangers should be treated as equals. The dull-dad ganger is good enough to take the place of the dull dad, the copy-Doctor is still the Doctor etc. But as soon as he concludes that Amy is a copy, he insists Rory stands back so he can disintegrate her. And Rory isn’t nearly as insistent about protecting her as he was about the Jennifer clone.

While a measure of hypocrisy is perfectly human, I just didn’t buy it here after the message was so heavily hammered home again and again throughout this dismal two-parter. I get that the writer wanted to deliver a shock (ooer, Rory and Amy have been rubbernecking all this time?) – and one that brought us back onto story-arc territory with a bang – but there were other ways of handling that reveal.
The implications are intriguing, of course, but the revelation generates more interest in and reflection on past stories than any prolonged contemplation of this one. I had thought that Amy might have been replaced when they rescued her from the Silence in Day Of The Moon, but I’m reminded that she saw eyepatch woman peering through a hatch as she searched the orphanage. So it would seem she was duplicated at some point during the season break, which would be a bit of a cheat, since I do like to at least feel like I had a chance to spot the clues.

Also, this story doesn’t quite remove the possibility that the Doctor we see get shot is a copy. (That line about the molecular memory enduring does hint of a potential return.) But I rather fancy that’s a red herring, since temporal jiggery-pokery is much more Moffat’s style. But anyway, I might save any further speculation for after the mid-season finale of next week’s episode. The decision to split this season in half strikes me as a poor one – a mid-season break didn’t do Flashforward any favours – but a strong halfway point should pique audience interest enough to keep them going through the summer. I just worry that the next half will have to be preceded by a massive Previously On... – the like of which tends to be attached to every episode of Fringe, Season 3.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, The Almost People.

Positives. Erm. I’ll try.

The pile of discarded Flesh was a genuinely disturbing and horrifying image.
The Doctor and Doppeldoctor were well-played by Smith, and he’s genuinely scary when he throws a complete wobbly at Amy and shoves her against the wall. The comedy double act, like a lot of the comedy in this one, is variable, ranging from amusing to the teeniest bit annoying. A touch too smug – like a Jimmy-Carr standup routine. And the whole past-regeneration schizophrenia skit was over-egged, with the dubbed-in Tom Baker voice really not working at all. Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill excellent as ever, although with similar provisos to last week’s: Rory’s devotion to Jennifer seems even more obsessive and poorly founded, Amy again has little of note to do, beyond doubting the copy-Doc.

Commander Kinko knew her original so well, she knew the chosen code word, and yet the Commander herself never seemed to be able to guess her copy’s thought processes. The wall with eyes was a bit pointless. The way in which characters were killed off to ensure there was only one of each by story’s end was corny and predictable. And the sequence with the holo-call between father and was pure Tate & Lyle. I’d rather wade through acid than that much syrup. And the shuttle that was presumably hovering above or even landing in the courtyard when the castle blew up was conveniently forgotten so we could skip ahead to the happy ending of peace on Earth and goodwill to all rubbers.

There was some, er, lovely irony in the way Jennifer who so strongly protested that she wasn’t a monster ultimately transformed herself into a weird-ass monster.
Except by lovely, I mean lame, of course. Sorry, I was meant to be trying for positives. What can I say, I failed.

Like the path of a bouncing ball, it was predictable.

In a word, rubberish.

SAF

Towel Day

2011-05-24T14:20:00.001-07:00

"Sass that hoopy frood Ford Prefect, there's a guy who really knows where his towel is."

Ford Prefect is, of course, one of my heroes. As is the late great Douglas Adams, so I couldn't let Towel Day (25th May) go by unmarked.

In honour of the occasion then, I've decided to offer all ebook versions of my very own Evil UnLtd Vol 1: The Root Of All Evil for a mere 99 cents (or 70p in the UK!). For a limited period only, you can obtain this book - a book not quite but almost entirely unlike The Hitch Hikers Guide - for the sort of price only mad professors could conceive of from:

Amazon.com
For the Kindle

Amazon.co.uk
For the Kindle

Smashwords.com (Enter coupon code RA62R)
For all other ebook formats

Offer ends this Friday (27th May).

Happy reading and here's to DNA. Certainly an essential ingredient of who I am.

SAF

The Paceless Ones

2011-05-22T05:36:00.000-07:00

As the title sequence ran on this week’s Doctor Who, I was hurriedly putting the finishing touches on Saturday evening dinner so I missed the bit where they flag the title and the writer who was to blame. As the story unfolded with all the haste of a an origami sloth coming undone, I honestly thought it must be the work of Chris Chibnall – you may remember him from episodes such as last year’s Silurian waste of time and space. The Hungry Earth and – the other one. I then mistakenly thought it must be by Matt Jones, the guy who gave us The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit . The clues were there in in that scene where everyone stands around and makes introductions and explains the basic set-up. But turns out this hailed from the pen of Matthew Graham, who previously brought us Fear Her, a dull and unimaginative reworking of Paperhouse, with a silly bit about the Olympics tacked on at the end.

It’s a minor distinction, except it’s Chibnall who I get the impression spells plotting with a double d. Matt Jones' The Impossible Planet does at least build suspense to a terrific three-way cliffhanger – which it then blows in the second half, but never mind. While this has barely enough going on to warrant a single episode let alone two. Seriously, the biggest surprise for me came as I was waiting for the thing to gallop towards some sort of climax, then the end music struck and I suddenly realised this was going to be a two-parter.

I groaned. I actually groaned.

But hey, who knows, maybe this one will buck the more traditional trend of second halves not living up to the first. As I’ve said before, one approach is to make the first part tedious. So far, so promising.

For now, part one was a Chibnall-level case of Drudge Dread. A special brand of horror, with nothing added and all the interest taken away. The Rebel Flesh may have been alive but the story was lifeless. (Compare and contrast with last week’s Gaiman-penned episode!)

Slavishly adhering to the principle of predictability, it managed to be a singularly poor example of something that had been done a hundred times before. I mean, the whole point of doppelgangers in a horror tale is to play with identity, the tension and suspicions (see The Thing) and yet we’re never in any doubt as to Who Goes There? Sure, on top of the horror there’s the mawkish “we’re people too!” cry of the ‘replicants’, but even that’s handled obviously and clumsily. It gave me more cause to suspect Matt Jones' involvement, with the same Impossible Planet-style pat character backgrounds thrown into proceedings in butterfingered expositional manner.

Would sir like any more ham on his fist?

Likewise the way the story revealed the Doppel Doctor like it was meant to be a major shock/revelation, well, if you didn’t see that coming as soon as he touched the liquid plastic in the tank you really need to invest in a pair of One-D glasses. Everything’s telegraphed and there’s never any sense that this story has any secrets hidden up its sleeves.

And I just didn’t buy how readily Rory warmed to Jennifer’s tearful speech *after* her Stretch Dude and Clobber Girl moment in the toilets. That might have worked better the other way around perhaps, the compassion then the horror. Who knows, who cares. Darvill pours in a brilliant performance, but his actions just aren’t convincing, Over the course of a properly paced two-parter there ought to have been room for a credible bond to form between Rory and Jennifer, but it’s far too emphatic here for such a brief acquaintance. Still, I do have to applaud the fact that he’s given a more active role, since I’ve been harping on about that for a while now. And, hey, they haven’t killed him. Yet.

Can’t fault Gillan – can I ever? - although I struggle to recall anything significant Amy Pond did, other than experience another glimpse of eyepatch woman. Which is fine and subtle enough, but the other story-arc stuff – the TARDIS pregnancy scan shtick is really being heavily laboured every week now. Are we to believe the Doctor spends every spare hour in the TARDIS standing in front of that screen and pondering the mystifying readings? Cos, if so, it’s plain dumb. Especially as he appears keen to keep Amy from finding out –the more he stands in front of that screen, the more likely she’s going to spot something over his shoulder, non?

Smith in this episode is also fine, doing his best with some variable material. The jokes are a bit hit-and-miss, as though the writer’s trying too hard to be funny.

The setting, now that I think of it, is the best thing this story has going for it. A beautiful old castle dressed up with CGI. Lovely and full of dark, shadowy passages ideal for all that pointless runaround and nicely incongruous with the, er, acid-mining operations. Huh? Don’t worry about it, they were always mining or drilling for odd resources and what not back in the days of all those Troughton Base-Under-Seige days, so there’s no pressing need for anything to make sense here. I did idly wonder why there was so much urgency to secure protective suits when they didn’t do much for the bloke who fell into the vat at the beginning, but why should we let such incidental questions spoil our enjoyment. Particularly when there’s so little else to be said for this dull escapade.

Honestly, if this is intended as Mr Graham’s homage to Fury From The Deep, say, I’d rather they just gone with the sentient seaweed. There are hints that the eponymous Flesh – the living latex – is something the Doctor’s seen before, and the notion of imprinting a consciousness in plastic inevitably calls to mind the Nestenes and Autons, but I can’t say that the possibility fires me up with any great expectations or anticipation for next week’s installment.

With The Rebel Flesh, I’m certainly not crying “More! More! More!”

SAF

Relation Ship

2011-05-16T04:07:00.001-07:00

So The Doctor’s Wife is not actually his wife. No more than The Doctor’s Daughter was actually his daughter. The big difference is that one of those stories was so pedestrian that the TARDIS should have been a zebra crossing instead of a police box, while the other positively bubbles over with joie de vivre. Even more importantly than the vivre, perhaps, The Doctor’s Wife is full of joie de Doctor Who.

Wonderful.

Bizarre, creative fantastic, creepy, romantic, dark, colourful, hilarious, tragic, soulful, moving and not a little bit mental.

There’s one other show this would have fit very comfortably and that would have been Farscape. I can just picture Crichton, Aeryn and Dargo having to deal with the situation of Moya’s essence transferred to a humanoid body while a sentient, ship-devouring planet seeks to take possession of the vessel. (And while Rygel ferrets through the space junkyard for anything of value.) Complete with madcap patchwork characters like Auntie and Uncle and you can safely bet that alien Nephew would have looked just as odd as an Ood. Then again, I used to say that Farscape offered good pointers on how to approach modern Who. Small wonder I enjoyed the story, in that case, but let’s assume that Neil Gaiman isn’t even aware of Farscape. (I wouldn’t know if he was aware of Compassion, the human-form TARDIS from the books.)

What we have is a story firmly stamped with his personal brand of fantasy, which marries with Doctor Who extremely well. For me, his foray into the Babylon 5 playground was not a success and last week I was hoping this would be more on a par with Stardust.

And instead of a love story with a fallen star in human form, well, we get the Doctor’s lifelong affair with something borrowed and blue. His box of delights. Invited into the Who play room, Mr Gaiman plunders the toy box and gets to work with his imagination on overdrive. Time Lords, telepathic message boxes (from The War Games), the Matrix, artron energy, auxiliary control rooms, room deletion, the original theft that sparked this special bond between a Time Lord and his ship. The question of who chose Who. And a throwaway line opening the way for transgender regeneration.

Fans will love it or be livid. All that trespassing on the sacred turf of continuity.
What it felt like to me was a celebration – of Doctor Who and more specifically that relationship that has been at the heart of the show all this time without really being explored.

Interestingly, another thing that hadn’t been explored in modern Who was the rest of the TARDIS. It’s a minor shame that the first time we see any of it, it’s just a stretch of samey corridors – albeit nicely designed ones. But it’s in the way that you use it, as they say, and the scenes where Amy and Rory are lost in the shadowy TARDIS interior and Amy’s encounters with a decrepit and a decayed Rory are utterly chilling. Enough that I could postpone my cry of They Keep Killing Rory! until afterwards.

Michael Sheen provides House with a coldly sinister voice but it’s heavily treated such that it’s ultimately a bit of an anyvoice and I can’t help feeling if you’re going to hire an actor of that calibre you owe it to yourself and him to give him a more substantial (ha) role. In similarish respects, I did wonder why, given the body of a Time Lord named Corsair, the best House could do with it was lop off an arm and graft it onto Auntie. Auntie and Uncle themselves were terrific characters, but although they’d served their purpose for House – in a sort of Condo-Solon (Brain of Morbius) contract of employment – they could have served a fuller purpose in the story. Nephew is given more to do at least as the visible monster deployed by House to stalk Amy and Rory.

Still, these omissions leave more room and screen time for Suranne Jones to truly shine as the TARDIS trapped in the limited confines of a human mind. Might have been fun to give her a shock of white in her hair for a hint of Elsa Lanchester (Bride of Frankenstein), but either way it’s a magical, heartfelt, compelling performance. The fact that she has this quirky sort of attractiveness about her lends a great charm to the Doctor calling her ‘Sexy’, that just wouldn’t have worked if she’d looked like Seven-of-Nine. Matt Smith, by the way, responds to the storyline by effervescing throughout. He’s not merely in characteristic fine form here, he’s buzzing with sheer unbridled Doctorness and the two of them are, quite rightly, the main driving force whisking us along on this emotional rollercoaster.

Laced with truly laugh out loud moments (e.g. “the pretty one?”), brilliant touches (the choice of images when Amy works the telepathic lock) and pure fantastical fantasy (the cobbled-together star-like TARDIS chasing the familiar blue box), this is brave, playful and energetic stuff. Great heart, without being saccharinely sentimental.

Like a lot of fantasies, it has a rather-too-easy ending. And why could the TARDIS attack House in the main control room and not in the other control room? Possibly there’s an answer in there I’ll catch on a rewatch. For now, it doesn’t much matter because my overriding impressions are that this story is like that big, complicated, sad word that the TARDIS struggles to remember until the end:

Alive.

SAF

Swash & Go

2011-05-08T06:42:00.000-07:00

Now I admit I enjoyed the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies, even if the third one was a tad overlong and low in Chow Yun Fat for my tastes. But they wrapped it all up nicely and I didn’t really see the need for another one. So I’m in two minds whether to give the fourth instalment, On Stranger Tides, a watch or not.

In the meantime, we have Doctor Who’s foray into Cap’n Jack Sparrow’s territory.

First of all, what a relief there was no Captain Jack (Harkness) in this one. The trouble with immortal characters is they can quickly outlive their usefulness, interest and entertainment value. Fortunately for this adventure we have the best TARDIS team in ages.

Unfortunately, Curse Of The Black Spot is not the greatest vessel for showing them at their best. It kicks off with a nod to its Caribbean cousins, fogbound ship and distinctive medallion, and while the pre-title teaser is not the captain of all hooks it is, despite hobbling at one point on some wooden dialogue - ("We're shark bait, every single one of us, stuck on the ocean." "Until the wind changes." Ah, thanks for spelling that out for us, me hearties) - decently intriguing enough.

But most of the episode seems, like the ship, strangely becalmed in too-familiar waters. There are many things this story could have been, but it falls short of being any of them. It could have been a sort of Horror Of Fang Rock – handful of people stranded in isolated maritime situation, stalked by alien predator, oodles of fog and suspense. It could have been more of an action adventure, a more definite nod to the Caribbean series. Instead it delivered token rum rations of each while never properly coming alive as either. The storm even seems thrown in because the script was found lacking at that point.

It was fun and far from being a total, er, shipwreck – loved Amy buckling her swash -, but it was leaky at best. I’m all for two ships occupying the same point in space-time (worked okay in Nightmare Of Eden), but reflections as the gateway between dimensions strikes as a bit random. (I mean, sure, pay homage to Mirrors if you want – although I couldn’t recommend it - but why in a pirate story?) And towards the end when the Doctor talks Amy and the captain into a suicide pact, the Siren appears even though the lid has been firmly replaced on the barrel. I’m all for artificially intelligent alien medical programs who don’t have a clue about human anatomy (worked beautifully in The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances), but the notion that this ambulance Siren couldn’t handle simple cuts and grazes beggared belief. The remains of the alien crew looked like they had the sort of bodies that might have been prone to minor abrasions and the like. Also, she had no knowledge of human anatomy, but was able to assume the appearance of a serenely beautiful human female - well, Lily Cole, anyway. Without, as far as I’m aware, any reference material. All this while understanding the significance of a wedding ring.

Add to that the fact that the most sophisticated method of sterilisation this advanced alien medical AI has at her disposal is flame and, well, you can easily run out of digits trying to plug the leaks.

It never helps either to be thirty minutes ahead of the Doctor in solving the mystery, and I’m afraid the alien nurse theory came to me very early in proceedings. But when we encounter the scene (straight out of Coma) of all the pirates plus Rory laid out in the alien sick bay, the Doctor is still seen hurrying to piece all the clues together.

So to the good. We’ve already mentioned Amy and her swashing buckles – and she really should dress up as a pirate – or WPC, or let’s face it, pretty much anything – more often. Less superficially, she once again proves her acting chops here being perfectly at home larking about with cutlasses as well as absolutely pouring out the heartache as she believes she has lost the battle to save Rory. But even here I have to detour into gripe territory, because although Darvill is as fine as always, Rory is once more reduced to victim status. It’s getting to the stage we should have an episode called They Keep Killing Rory. I knew he was going to get cut and that, along with my alien nurse theory, was one time when I would have liked to have been disappointed. Throw in the drowning and you really have to wonder why too many writers can think to do with him is to make him suffer like the female companions of old. It’s some sort of penance, isn’t it, for all that sexism of the past. Even if some writers think of the guy as a tool, that’s just more reason to actually make use of him.

Matt Smith is on good form, bumbling his way through in hyper-Troughton mode, but as I say his Doctor seems to be dragging his mental heels just too much on this one. Hugh Bonneville makes for an oddly sympathetic captain, especially given his foolish greed and the fact that he abandoned his wife and kid. But he’s the only real character among the crew. Obviously pirates pre-dated the Star Trek red shirt syndrome, but there’re none of the standout scurvy knaves of the Caribbean series and I tend to think that even if – or possibly especially because - your story is going to be killing your characters off one by one, then you owe it to them to make them as colourful and individual as possible.

Not much to do with this particular story, but as a side note I am enjoying the little and genuinely "What the-?" appearances of the strange woman in the sliding panels who keeps cropping up to speak to Amy. (She’s this year’s crack, I guess, if she’ll pardon the expression.) And of course the ongoing pregnant-not situation, although I hope that’s not going to be laid on quite as thickly every week.

All in all, there’s probably more I could say of the Black Spot, but I think we get the picture already. It’s almost certainly not as poor as this review makes it sound – it’s just unfortunate that the positives all appear to be qualified with countering negatives. With a Gaiman story to look forward to next week – and let’s hope it’s more Stardust than Day Of The Dead (his Babylon 5 episode) – I can imagine the Spot being one of the less memorable episodes of this season. I currently have a bruise on my foot that’s similar. Must have been some impact at the time, but I can’t recall for the life of me how I got it.

As a fantasy concept, I did like the idea of the Siren’s song as an anaesthetic, although the stricken crew launching into a chorus of Cabin Fever from Muppet Treasure Island would have brightened things considerably. Just one of a number of other pirate tales on which this was not a patch. Yo ho ho.

SAF

Moon Zero Two

2011-05-04T10:42:00.000-07:00

Doctor Who two-parters can be such a let down. The resolutions are often sloppy and hastily cobbled-together, the end results riddled with plot-holes and, more often than I’d like, culminating in a Big Undo. (I’m not a fan of all this ‘Time can be rewritten’ malarkey – that way lies unwriting. Which is fine for unwriters, but Steven Moffat is better than that.) Anyway, second episodes can easily fail to live up to the promise of the first.

It seems to me there are two keys to avoiding this disappointment. 1) Make sure the first episode isn’t any good. 2) Defer much of the actual resolution in the second episode until later.

Since The Impossible Astronaut failed so spectacularly at Option 1, Day Of The Moon took a stab at Option 2 and, I thought, succeeded brilliantly.

From the beginning, it’s big and bold, moving us three months on from last week’s incredible cliffhanger and incidentally ticks off two items on my wish list in the process: more (and beautifully grand) use of the American setting and more significant involvement for the character of Canton Everett Delaware III. The Hollywood-style action and breathtaking visuals command our attention while our minds are duly flooded with a hundred more questions.

What are those strange markings on Amy? Did she hide out in a tattoo parlour while on the run from the FBI? And, out of idle curiosity, where else on her body does she have these markings?

Oh yeah, and why is CED III chasing down Amy, Rory and River? Why’s the Doctor being held in an Area 51 hangar? What’s the story on the little girl astronaut that Amy shot? Etc, etc, etc? What the hell, in short, is happening?

It’s brave, it’s exciting, it’s sit-up-and-pay-attention TV. It’s a terrific hook. When you realise it’s all a scheme to bring the Doctor and friends all together in the secure confines of a dwarf-star-alloy-walled cell, free from eavesdropping aliens (it’s not too far removed from the Doctor’s ploy to have his Time Lord presidential office in Invasion Of Time lined with lead to keep the pesky Vardans out) - well, rationally, part of you asks where and when they had a chance to concoct this plan without said aliens overhearing, but it’s pulled off with such chutzpah and pizazz that it’s one question that’s easily overlooked until after the show.

It’s sort of like a stage magician, encouraging us to look at his pretty assistants while he exercises some sleight of hand to wow us with an illusion, and it’s not until after the show our sense of wonder is replaced with a sense of wondering how the trick was done. During the show, there’s no time for scrutinising every trick, because the magician’s already moved on to pulling rabbits (thankfully no robot hares!) out of hats and sawing ladies in half. Or, in this case, more of the Grand Moff’s beloved temporal shenanigans.

The dazzling trickery here is matched (and possibly even outshone) by the mesmerising mystery as the leads embark on their fascinating investigation of an alien species who are instantly forgotten the moment you look away. Ironically, in conjuring up these beings, Moffat has created – once again – one of the more memorable races in modern Who. It’s a great concept and serves up a deliciously creepy sequence in an abandoned orphanage, where CED III and Amy get to play Mulder and Scully – complete with (pregnant) Scully’s, I mean Amy’s, abduction - and I’m personally rewarded with the satisfaction of being entirely spot-on with one of my theories from the previous week. Namely, the relationship between Amy and the little girl astronaut. Similarly gratifying was the confirmation that these strange smart-suited beings were more than simply related to the Silence and were in fact said Silence. (Evidence enough to my mind of the passing Hush-homage, and I especially liked the shot of one of them gliding along like the Gentlemen from Buffy.) To all the kids who must surely have been given nightmares by the creatures and this episode as a whole, I can only offer this message of scant comfort: you are not alone.

The mood of that orphanage scene is so pervasive that it’s surprising how well it marries with the bolder, brassier elements. The gorgeous shot, panning back from the Doctor in the nose-cone of the Saturn V rocket must have been one of the most expensive gags in Who history, but so it should be. It was priceless. And like the episode’s wham-bam opening moments, the climax is a captivating action-packed blastathon that only gives rise to a niggly question or two after the fact.

For instance, I am obliged to query just how River (as supremely wonderful and undoubtedly talented as she is) can take out quite so many aliens arrayed around her when as soon as she looks away from any one of them she (allegedly) forgets they were there. Lightning reflexes, naturally, but if the aliens cared to move a bit more, they could have made life that little bit tougher for the sharp shooter.

By story’s end I still felt that Rory warranted better treatment as a character and a more active role, but he is very much at the emotional core of the story if not at the heart of the action. And the spelling out of CED III’s sexuality in his closing exchange with Nixon struck me as a tad clumsy next to the deftness of last week’s allusion, but more importantly I still don’t know what purpose his (older) presence served at the Doctor’s lakeside death. But perhaps we’ll get our answers there.

Because the bulk of the quibbles and/or questions we’re left with though are deliberate and the clear message that this is far from over furnishes a sense of promise and anticipation more commonly associated with a first episode in a two-parter. Which sort of leaves the true measure of this story largely dependent on another future episode because at some point the Grand Moff will have to wrap all this up satisfactorily – including the Silence and the consequences of their removal from human history, Amy’s daughter, the River-Doctor relationship, the future-Doctor’s death (surely prime target for a Big Undo?). Etc etc etc.

Even if I do wonder why the mere fact of Amy being pregnant while travelling in the TARDIS would give rise to a Time Child and even if I saw it coming, ending on the regeneration of the young girl was a master stroke.

Hooks, as it turns out, make for as effective endings as they do beginnings and there’s nothing in this two-parter that at this stage gives me anything but confidence in Moffat’s ability to ultimately deliver. Stage magician he may be, but it’s smart, clever, entertaining stuff. So don’t be surprised to learn that I’m currently sitting in the audience, applauding and calling for an encore.

SAF

A River Runs Through It

2011-04-26T07:19:00.000-07:00

Oh. My. God. What the hell was that?

Not wishing to miss a single minute of Saturday night’s Doctor Who, I set the recorder timer five minutes early and caught what appeared to be a bizarre nightmarish quiz show featuring Jason from The Gadget Show and a robot hare. I can only pray it was some kind of one-off Easter weekend ‘treat’ and not a virus that will be attaching itself to all my future Saturday tea-time recordings.

Thank Moffat for what followed.

True to say, he’d have had to come up with something seriously screwy to look bad in the wake of the Easter Bunnybot. As it was, it was only madcap in a good way.

In some respects it was a familiar Moffat medley. Much playing with time, including the Doctor sending messages to himself; quantum-theory-inspired aliens – in place of the Weeping Angels who only moved when you weren’t looking at them, we have aliens who are only memorable while you’re watching them. An homage to a number of RTD episodes – the titles of which escape me for the moment - if ever there was one. In appearance, the creatures here are like a creepy hybrid of the classic abduction-myth alien with a hint of Oodishness and the tall, spindle-limbed Gentlemen from Buffy. Makes you wonder whether Moffat is working towards an homage to the masterful Buffy episode Hush with his ominous, mysterious ‘Silence’ that’s still a threat lurking in the wings from last season. Wherever we are headed, however, this first episode was infused with Moffat’s customary energy, drive and wit, tinged with darkness and tragedy, laced with healthy doses of downright creepiness and spiked with a dozen intriguing hooks.

It’s a potent concoction and although like many a two-parter before it, it could all fall apart next week, at this stage it’s managed to generate a positive buzz in the way that last year’s Time Of Angels did. The expectation and anticipation are all very much there for a great second half. To say nothing of a host of speculations and theories, all of which I’ve no doubt will be proven wrong. Whatever I think the answers are, another familiar element to the Grand Moff’s writing is his capacity to surprise.

There are niggles so minor they’re hardly worth mentioning, but I will just to be fair. First and by any means least, River’s gun, when she fires off a few shots at the eponymous Astronaut, makes revolver sounds but there’s no smoke from the barrel. Nothing. It’s only a stupid little detail, but it did give rise to a momentary disbelief-suspension malfunction.

It was great to see Mark Sheppard, from BSG, Firefly, X Files and a host of other things, involved as the impressively named Canton Everett Delaware III, and the throwaway reference to his marriage being illegal was as deft a hint of a character’s sexuality as I’ve ever seen in modern Who.

But his character seems a bit underused so far. I’m not sure what purpose he serves, least of all in the four invites to witness the Doctor’s death. His older self declares, “I probably won’t see you again, but you’ll see me.” So presumably he was invited there for, what? His own sense of closure, a chance to say goodbye? What? Inquiring minds need to know, Mr Moffat. Still, that’s part of the mystery – the niggle lies in his younger self’s role – apart from advising Nixon (a passable and entertaining turn from Stuart Milligan) to hear the Doctor out, all he’s done thus far is tag along and get biffed on the head. Rory, brilliant as ever, seems similarly sidelined and/or displaced. Here’s hoping we see both get to do more integral proactive stuff next week.

Likewise, since they went to the trouble of filming on location, I’d like to see more of America. I’m not talking Oval Office sets. More use of real-world setting, whether scenery or identifiably American interiors – even though I appreciate they’ve made life difficult for themselves by zapping back to the 60s.

Otherwise, fantastic. As dull as a conclusion that is, I’m sorry but I thoroughly enjoyed it. The chemistry between the Doctor and Amy (I’m sure I’ve mentioned how much I love Karen Gillan) and River (I think I’ve mentioned how much I love Alex Kingston) creates sparks all over the place and it’s all too easy to get caught up in their interchanges as well as the pace of the whole thing. And yet Moffat is careful to make sure it’s not all break-neck speed. We get moments to reflect, time outs like the lakeside picnic and River’s confiding in Rory, so that when the accelerator ramps up we really feel the rush. The suspense and the scares are all very well handled, the shot of all those aliens lurking in the tunnels, caught in River’s flashlight beam, is a particularly great slice of chill. And Amy’s and River’s grief at the Doctor’s death is played with such conviction, it’s genuinely affecting. Sure, we know he’s not dead and there will be timey-wimey trickery at work, but the reactions lend it the impact it needs. The Doctor’s immortality may be a certainty in episode one of a new season and it’s all so clearly staged like an Agatha Christie murder mystery where the host wants the guests to believe he’s dead, but I definitely feel invested in the how and why of the resolution.

Obviously I’m not going to share any of my wild speculations here, for fear that they are far too wild and I will end up looking a fool. Except, River Song is an anagram of Snog River... Coincidence? I think not. Something to ponder anyway.

Meanwhile, I am anxious to discover how long I have to go without seeing that robot hare before it fades from memory. Sadly, it hasn’t happened yet.

SAF

RIP SJS

2011-04-20T06:17:00.000-07:00

When I first encountered Elisabeth Sladen, it was love at first sight. As crushes go, it was all very innocent: I was six going on seven years old at the time. And it’s fair to say I knew her as someone else then. A plucky reporter named Sarah Jane Smith.

The role of a companion in Doctor Who is vital. We’re enjoying the adventures in the TARDIS vicariously through them. Lis Sladen embodied that role perfectly, engaging with great warmth and charm, and a wonderfully balanced blend of intrepid spirit and vulnerability. The ability to scream with conviction when it counted without undermining the courage, strength and independence of the character. To feel the fear and face the monsters anyway.

I was there facing those monsters with her all the way through from 1973-1976.
I cried when she left. I was nine. And there have been companions in the series since – and previous companions I discovered later on in life when watching episodes that hailed from before my time - that I’ve liked and even loved, but I can’t think of any with whom I empathised to the same extent. Obviously it’d be tough for anyone to compete with someone who made such an impression on me during such formative years. But that takes nothing away from what she meant to me and so many others on our Saturday tea-time travels through time and space.

Did we see her a lot after that in any other role on TV? Even if we had, could we have seen her as anyone other than Sarah Jane Smith? I don’t know. She convinced us as Sarah so heartily, she’d created an unshakeable memory. And when she returned to the role – in K9 & Company and The Five Doctors (1983), for instance – it was always a welcome pleasure to see her. In the episode School Reunion (2006), I shed tears over her departure all over again. And then she was capturing the imagination - and I’ll bet the hearts too – of a whole new generation of young fans in her own series, The Sarah Jane Adventures.

In 2005, when I attended the Gallifrey convention in LA, I met actually met Lis Sladen for the first and only time. (I’d seen her at Longleat’s Doctor Who 20th Anniversary Celebrations in 1983, but only for a passing photo op.) You can’t know anyone from a brief encounter, least of all when your heart is aflutter with fannish infatuation, but she was warm and charming and gracious and friendly and spoke with infectious enthusiasm for Doctor Who and the role of Sarah Jane, as you might expect. And she showed an interest in what I did as a writer. That’s a memory I treasure, as is the farewell hug. I also met my wife to be but she understands the competition for my fond memories of that convention.

People often remarked on how great she looked for her age, which is true. But then, she’ll always look fantastic to me.

Today my thoughts are with her family and friends, those that knew her personally. This is just my own small farewell to a lady who brought magic to a lot of young lives and who’ll be greatly missed. Part of me is that nine-year-old boy again, shedding tears at having to say goodbye.

SAF

Epic Fail

2011-04-13T04:28:00.000-07:00

It seems thematically fitting to follow up on my Evil April Fool’s gag with a review of an actual video game. Although make no mistake, the Evil game will happen – but when it does, I hope it will be a much more rewarding experience than Dragon Age II.

I suppose the clue should have been in the II. It’s a sequel, so it stands a fair chance of being a disappointment. Still, in my (admittedly limited) experience, the law of diminishing returns doesn’t apply as frequently in the game industry as it seems to in the movie biz. What you tend to get more often than not is more of the same - with improvements. And, for those games where it’s about more than the shoot-em-ups or the beat-em-ups, a new story. Which is great, because that is precisely what you’re looking for.

Bioware’s Mass Effect 2 is a great example of this, managing to pare down or expunge the more laborious aspects of the space-exploration experience, while retaining so much of the feel of the original game. Heck, if it hadn’t made the unfortunate error of omitting the lesbian sex it might have scored 10 out of 10.

The previous Dragon Age output (Dragon Age: Origins and the Dragon Age: Awakenings expansion) scored high on the interpersonal interaction front, quite a remarkable feat considering your character was mute, his or her words left implicit from the text dialogue choices at the base of the screen. Primitive, but it did mean you had a wide range of characters to choose from, with no worries about whether the voice talent fit the appearance. Similarly your relationship choices were broad, accommodating pretty much all tastes and (non-bestial) proclivities. The mechanics of interaction were quite straightforward and part of me still hankers for a game where the handling is subtler. (Where, for example, the hostility-friendship scale is hidden from the player and AI responses are not purely player-prompted – I mean, wouldn’t it be great if an AI unexpectedly propositioned you for a change?) But there was no denying the freedom of choice and the supporting cast of characters (in Origins at least) were a terrific bunch of misfits. (The lot in Awakenings were for the most part so lame that you’d be more likely to keep the Ring and hurl the Fellowship into the cracks of Mount Doom.)

Alas I can’t tell you whether the same freedom of choice is available in Dragon Age II, because – in contrast to the original - a second play-through just wasn’t something I wanted to contemplate. In Dragon Age: Origins your choice of hero(ine) really did alter the experience. In this next-gen version, I didn’t get that impression. I could be wrong, but frankly I’m not going to invest another 40-plus hours to find out.

40 hours. Wow. I used to think of video RPGs as interactive movies, but that’s getting on for three seasons of a US TV show. Time cheerfully invested if you’re finding it gripping and entertaining and if the main characters appeal and if it delivers with each season finale.

An especially useful analogy here, since at its heart Dragon Age II has a promising central concept: three separate years picked out from the history of one city and a hero(ine). Okay, great, because each segment can work towards a climax and developments over the years can build into a compelling overall arc.

Storywise though it’s all a bit Babylon 5. Since the war against the Blight (read Shadow War) is over, we’re mostly left with the political-economic fallout and the growing tensions between mages and templars (read Telepaths and Psi Cops). There are clear pointers that there are greater menaces to come (in Dragon Age III, I’ll warrant) but for the time being it leaves this instalment feeling a lot like filler. It doesn’t help (at all) that the big final battle in this arises from the singularly twattish actions of one character – who happens to be one of those lame chumps from Awakenings. Seriously, when it came to that point, even my noble-hearted heroine had to kill that idiot for what he does. He reminded me in fact of that complete dufus who leads the Telepaths in Babylon 5 and if B5 had been interactive he would have met a similar end at my hand, much earlier on in the fifth-season arc.

Anyway, Blandalf (as we shall call him) plunges you (and the city) into disaster and it seems that no matter which side you choose you will end up having to fight both mages and templars anyway. Call me picky, but I’d like to feel my choices made a difference. But that aside, there are two key facets of the climactic battle that make for a significant letdown from a story POV.

Imagine you have reached the last episode of the third season of that hypothetical show. Imagine that the last episode is such an immense struggle to get through you have to restart it I-don’t-know-how-many times. And then imagine that once you finally get to the end there’s no actual closure. No reward, no chance to bask, just a cryptic epilogue that appears to have more to do with leading into Dragon Age III and close to precious little to do with your story.

Sure, part of that is down to game mechanics. This is one area in which the developers elected to make ‘improvements’.

Now to be fair, where they did succeed was in borrowing from the Mass Effect series and – despite the resulting limitations on character choice – the decision to apply some voice talent to the hero(ine) does work in terms of lending the dialogue sequences a much more cimematic non-static quality. (Complete with the signature blood-spattered faces in post-battle talks.) And it’s good voice acting – which, believe me, can make or break a game – even if the female rogue does sound a bit posh. Also it’s worth mentioning that among the supporting cast, the character of Merrill, as voiced by Torchwood’s Eve Myles, is a wonderful creation. Her passing observations on the Dragon Age world are a beautifully scripted and exquisitely delivered treat. And I didn’t even like her in Torchwood. She should do more voice acting. Likewise, Kate Mulgrew makes a much better witch than she ever did a starship captain. Anyway, about half the members of the adventuring party are great characters, with plenty of appeal and I’ve no doubt any player would grow attached to at least one or two of them.

The graphics have evolved too and, with the removal of the little rings around each active combatant the fighting feels more immersive and dynamic and less tactical. The few programming glitches I encountered were of only minor irkdom level – e.g. at one point one of your team gets abducted and, very sensibly, you can’t include him in your party – but you can still go visit him for a chat over a pint in the local tavern. The music, as ever with these Bioware mega-productions, is gorgeous. Movie-soundtrack quality. And there’s still girl-on-girl action on offer.

So much for the pluses. Because the main ‘improvements’, put simply, aren’t. For one thing, that more dynamic battle feature makes it awkward to target different enemies quickly. Many’s the time I couldn’t activate a special ability because my character wasn’t lined up just-so on the screen. To exacerbate matters, your party members are driven by an artificial intelligence with a very small i and not very much ntelligence. Which means if you want to get them using their best abilities, you have to keep pausing the game and telling them what to do and point them at the desired target. Which, er, is not very dynamic. Then some weird let’s-make-it-stupidly-tough mentality appears to have crept into some of the battles.

Me, I am up for a challenge. Especially in those climactic confrontations. Bring it on. But when you’re swamped and totally overwhelmed and dying repeatedly when the game’s been notched down to casual difficulty, that’s the point at which you can stop bringing it. Game suggests to me it’s meant to be fun. Not hard bloody work. (Bloody is okay – there are swords involved, after all.)

It’s not only the final battle that’s stupidly over-egged in this way. The best (ie. worst) example comes earlier on with an encounter with a ferocious dragon. Great, because the battles with dragons in the original were something not to be taken on lightly, but they were nonetheless a challenge to be relished. They were enormous, ferocious beasts and tackling one would test your party’s abilities and if you defeated it you’d get a nice sense of satisfaction. In this, apparently the majestic mighty dragon was not enough. No, for this, what was needed was a dragon plus repeated waves of smaller dragons thrown in at intervals throughout the confrontation. Totally overdone. The game’s climactic battle felt even more never-ending and, like I said, isn’t even followed up with a chance to bask in your immense sense of relief once you’ve finally scraped your way through. It’s as though the game is finished with you, rather than the other way around.

The middle-year finale is better-judged by far, with a one-on-one duel against a tough-bastard opponent (watch this trailer for a falsely representative - but impressive - impression) and you get some time to enjoy the results of your endeavours.

Fantasy tales of yore have been replaced by a tale of chore. Epic struggles are part of adventure, tis true, but thankless toil against overwhelming odds feels too much like my day job when what I’d prefer is a dash of challenging escapism.

Dragon Age II is by no means a total failure. But the level of disappointment is proportionate to how much I enjoyed the original game. Turnabout is fair play, as they say, so now Bioware have to face overwhelming odds in convincing me to buy a third game in this series. Good luck, guys.

Not that they need worry too much. They’ll be getting my money for Mass Effect 3 later this year. The swines.

SAF

Evil 360

2011-04-01T05:17:00.000-07:00

Naturally enough, it's always been our aim here at Evil UnLtd to take over the universe. So it's with immense (evil) pleasure that we can announce a new development that will allow us to expand our conquest into the virtual world. After all, why stop with reality?

Although dates have yet to be finalised and much development to be done between now and commercial release, we're proud to announce that the world will see an Evil UnLtd game, initially available for the XBox 360, but sure to spread like a contagion to other consoles.

If it weren't for our efforts to maintain a Dexter Snide-like dignity and aloofness, we'd be tempted to say this is the Most. Exciting. News. Ever.

The virtual Evil universe will offer a wide variety of gameplay, involving a great many challenges and profound moral choices - whether to be just moderately wicked or downright irredeemably Evil with a capital E. Play as one of the main Evil UnLtd characters or create your own villain and build your empire, all the while having to battle bothersome heroes and not so much avert universal disaster as bring it under your control and turn it to your advantage. Think Mass Effect meets Grander Theft Auto.

Watch this space for further news. Currently we're anticipating the first playable demos to be available as of next April 1st.

SAF

Books Plus Me

2011-03-21T09:33:00.001-07:00

Every conquest of the universe has to begin somewhere. I suppose Evil UnLtd began theirs in the Kindleverse, back in October 2010. But now, of course, they have broken through into our reality in paperback form. And they - along with me! - are very fortunate to have found willing allies in their campaign for galactic domination.

Today I'd like to extend my (since they're Evil and not given to a great many expressions of gratitude) sincere thanks to the folks at Books Plus in Penzance, who graciously hosted my first ever book signing in an actual bookshop on Saturday (19th March).

Until then, I'd only signed books at a Doctor Who convention in LA, which was undoubtedly special, but signing something that is entirely your own and the beginning of your very own series, well, that's extra special. The kind people at Books Plus kept me well supplied in coffee throughout and, although I have no frame of reference for such things, it felt like a success to me.

Of course, now we're looking to arrange other book-signings, starting with bookstores around Cornwall, naturally enough. And, fingers crossed, expanding our Evil empire from there.

Many thanks to all those who turned up for a spot of chat and/or bought a copy. Hope you enjoy the read. And many thanks to those who were there in spirit, with support and encouragement from afar. For those in the Penwith area, there are signed copies still available at Books Plus, so hurry and get yours while stocks last. :-)

Alternatively, see here for other means of getting your mitts on a copy.

As one famous pepperpot-shaped evil being says at the end of Doctor Who's Genesis Of The Daleks, this is only the beginning...!

SAF

Paper View

2011-03-04T07:10:00.001-08:00

Some people are never satisfied.

Like Evil UnLtd, for instance. It wasn’t enough that they’d launched their enterprise on the Amazon Kindle and then spread their malign influence to other ebook formats, via Smashwords. They weren’t even content to set up their own publishing house. They had to go and set up a broadcasting company. Or hijack an existing one.

Yes, Galaxy Six Broadcasting – the people who brought you Celebrity Minefield Clearance and I’m An Asshole! Make Me Famous! – are under new management. And in addition to the various electronic formats, they will be broadcasting the Evil UnLtd series through the medium of paper.

The first copies of Vol 1: The Root Of All Evil arrived this week and it is a thing of beauty. A shiny, chunky 380pp glossy-cover paperback on clean white depleted rainforest, including three full episodes of the series plus bonus extras, such as The Lonely Planet Guide To Goyle and an exclusive extract, in print for the first time, from Vol 2: From Evil With Love.
(Publishing date TBA soon!)

You can already order this objet d’artfulness through Amazon, both here in the UK and from the US site.

You can also get your hands on a signed copy via Amazon.co.uk (just click Add To Basket from the seller calling himself sa4ward).

But as an alternative - which will save you on postage - just write to:

Simon Forward

Galaxy Six Broadcasting

5 Alexandra Terrace

Penzance

Cornwall TR18 4NX

supplying your name, return address, how many copies you would like and enclosing a cheque for £9.99 per copy - (that's £8.99 plus £1 P&P) and we'll ship you a signed copy, personally dedicated to whoever you'd like.

Galaxy Six. Entertainment, Infotainment, Edutainment and all-round Lobototainment.

NOTE: Evil UnLtd Vol 1 ebook is currently 50% off until March 12th on Smashwords!

SAF

Snowkira

2011-01-01T08:02:00.000-08:00

We have night storage heaters in our place. They’re rubbish. As the name suggests, the heat’s stored up overnight so that in theory it can then be released in a controlled fashion throughout the day. What it actually means is that by late afternoon said heat is all gone and our place is a fridge.

Going to a Shakira concert on a snowy Monday in December in the UK is the opposite of that. All day, everywhere we went, no matter what we did, it was bloody cold. Then all the heat gets unleashed in the evening, just when you need it the most. Bliss.

As it happened we had a relatively full day before the concert, since my wife had discovered that Matt Cardle was attending a book-signing in Waterstones, Piccadilly, that same day. (I know, he’s 27 years old and he’s landed a major publishing contract within a week and a half of winning the X Factor – it should make me sick. But luckily there’s not any actual writing in it, mostly pictures.) Anyway, so we queued there for a while, which kept us off the frosty streets. Myself, I’d have been happier if they’d arranged the barriers around to the left, which would have taken the queue through Sci-Fi and Fantasy instead of Gay & Lesbian Erotica. But there were people either side of us in the line to chat to – mostly, it must be said, fourteen-fifteen year old girls. I think I was one of only three guys there, but on a day when you’re due to be seeing Shakira, it really wouldn’t have been right to deny my wife’s teen-fangirl fantasy crush. Anyway, she got to meet him and he signed her music book. And I shook the fellow by the hand and congratulated him because, frankly, he is talented and he deserves the success. By which I mean his impending musical career. The autobiog is, let’s face it, just a cash-sponge hastily released in time for Christmas to fill the gap between the Winner’s single and the guy’s first album. I will say, he seemed really down to earth and completely lost in all the surrounding trappings of fame. Living the dream, I guess, can be a bit like surviving while the dream lives on around you.

Still, a special event for my wife and I hope a great memory for her. Not least because I was in charge of photography and my mobile phone camera let me down. All I got was one fuzzy pic which was not a worthy visual souvenir. Thanks a bunch, LG. I knew I should have taken my actual camera and not relied on the one handy jack-of-all gadgets.

Never mind, fingers crossed my wife has forgiven me by now. I’d hate to think of my photographic failure being thrown in my face during an argument when we’re both in our seventies. Perhaps it will be of some consolation that I don’t have any crystal-sharp pics of Shakira to lust over – I mean commemorate the occasion of the concert either.

For top quality digital images that day – after a chilly tube ride and a trudge through the snow and ice to drop our bags at our hotel - we had Tron:Legacy at the O2’s IMAX theatre. Spectacular 3D action, less spectacular 1D dialogue. But an entertaining enough way to pass the time before the concert.

Ordinarily at concerts I find myself arriving well on time and ending up waiting ages for the start. The movie meant we arrived a good while after Doors Open, which I figured would mean less of a wait before the main event. But alas, it wasn’t to be and for those who hold to the belief that anticipation is half the fun, I’d venture they’d never had to sit through the feeble support act with which thousands of Shakira-hungry fans were presented.

Parade, they were called. Fly-Past would have been more appropriate, except that would have suggested some measure of excitement. They were on-stage at 8, off by 8:20. Four whole songs, pretty much the one dance routine (although they may have arranged some of the moves in a different order). Maybe it’s just me, but if I was a supporting act at a Shakira gig, I’d feel some pressure to really put on a show. But these five girls appeared to have come to the conclusion that they didn’t have a chance of competing, so let’s just turn up, do our (entirely) routine and disappear. Brevity was, in this case, the soul of something that rhymed with wit. Oh well, wave Parade bye-bye, because Shakira’s on next.

Where next is over an hour later. Ahem. Yes, the short support act was only a brief interlude in the long wait. Shambolic planning or some backstage hiccup that I wasn’t aware of, I can only guess. We could have watched another movie in the time spent sitting around – and missed Parade. True to say, I would have waited longer for Shakira if necessary, I’m just saying it wasn’t ideal, that’s all.

Fortunately, all that was blown away by her eventual entrance that was part-fairytale, part-diva, all magical. Borderline religious, in the way this tiny figure makes a serene procession through the crowd, singing the beautiful hymn-like Pienso En Ti, blessing many lucky fans with a handshake while others stretch out for the slightest touch.

All this in a voluminous gown pinker than anything ever worn by Barbie, then as she ascends to the stage, it’s whoosh – off with the gown – and the more familiar slinkier, streamlined version notches up the tempo and the temperature.

Exercising her constitutional right to bare midriff, she hits full rock-chick belly-dancer mode in chainmail crop-top and spray-on trousers. And there I’d been, afraid that the big freeze would prompt her to perform the whole show in parka and Ugg boots like some strange Eskimokira. I’m sure she’d have still been good, you know, but we’d have missed seeing those muscles in motion that are unique to this lady.

I swear I have never seen anyone move the way she does and if there is anyone who commands the stage and an audience better, then I’ve yet to see them. This is a woman who’s fully aware of her sex appeal and her charms, she’s mastered this particularly exotic body language and she knows how a few exquisitely pronounced phrases will drive a crowd wild. And yet she’s not cocky or aloof with it, there’s no sense of diva-ish distance. There’s great humour and warmth in her stage personality. She’s playful and she’s here to party.

“I’m here to give you pleasure,” she says. “Tonight, I’m all yours.”

It’s tough not to cheer at that, even when your wife is standing right next to you.

The beauty of Shakira is not merely skin deep though. And my wife wasn’t only present to keep an eye on me – not that she needed to – we were safely some distance back in the audience and anyway I would have been on my best behaviour even if I had been among the very lucky handful to be invited on stage for a dance and a hug (sigh) with the star. No, my wife is an admirer of Shakira herself and even she would agree that Shakira’s attractions extend beyond the physical.

Musically, she’s superbly talented, fearless, emotional and refreshingly quirky, offering a blend as unique as those muscles of hers. How many belly-dancing rock-chick pop princesses are there out there? Her voice ranges from sweet and soft to something powerful that seems to echo down from the Andes and she’s able to invest even the more straightforward poppish songs like She Wolf with so much of herself that there’s nothing else out there quite like her. I applaud the electronic experimentation behind the She Wolf album, but it’s not my favourite. Live, I’m glad to say, that She Wolf – the single – comes properly to life and Gypsy, the finest song on that album, provides for one of the (many) fine moments in the show.

The mix of numbers was inspired and as well as being a great recipe for a party, they really showed off the full range of what Shakira’s all about. There was a generous focus on older tracks – the storming, stomping Te Dejo Madrid, Ciega Sordomuda with its glorious Mexican fiesta-vibe, an innovative rockier arrangement of Whenever, Wherever - and songs from her latest album, Sale El Sol, including the beautiful title track and the pure party piece, Loca - which I think are far greater celebrations of her roots. Along the way she takes moments to tug at our heart strings with exquisite love songs like Underneath Your Clothes. Even better, the majority of songs are in Spanish which – coupled with that body language of hers – lend her music a richness that a number of her English-language tracks can’t quite equal.

And in case none of this appears to boast that ‘refreshing quirkiness’ of which I spoke, well, there is always the giant head that appears about halfway through the show to form a centrepiece to the stage set. More quintessentially Shakira though is the part where she dances horizontally. Lying flat out on stage, she has her drummer perform a kind of percussive CPR, her body responding to each and every beat until she rises in one graceful motion. It’s simultaneously comical, sexy and captivating.

Above all, she’s a dazzling entertainer and she puts on a real show.

At one point, at the climax of a number, she rips off one of those chainmail crop-tops. She’s wearing a bra underneath, I hasten to add, but it’s far less than anyone should be wearing in one of the coldest British winters on record.

Nobody minded (and for me the temptation to shout "More!" proved too much), not least because by this point the temperature in the O2 is positively tropical. Even when Waka Waka is performed under a shower of artificial snow, she has taken us on a journey through South America (including Hips Don’t Lie – far from it and they have a highly flexible vocabulary), by way of the Middle East (the thumpingly powerful Ojos Asi), and then on to South Africa. Never once have our spirits veered towards the Arctic and to be honest mine were buzzing nicely enough to keep me warm all the way back to our hotel and throughout the next day when meeting up with friends in the still-frosty streets of the capital.

Now if only I can figure out how to get Shakira fitted at home, that’ll be me warm and happy for the rest of the winter.

SAF

Miranda Writes

2010-12-09T09:38:00.000-08:00

You have the right to remain silent, so say the Miranda Rights. But there's one Miranda I'd particularly been looking forward to having as a guest on my blog and since she agreed to pop over here for an interview, what would be the point in her remaining silent? So, a big welcome to Miranda Dickinson, fantastically talented and pretty wonderful bestselling author and one of the true stars of HarperCollins' authonomy site back when I used to patrol that virtual beat.

Anything you say here will be taken down and used, not against you, but very much for you in a promotional capacity.

So, first of all, we're about a year on from Fairytale of New York. Is it all still a fairytale for you?

It is, in that I can walk into my favourite bookshop and see my book there. I will never get over the thrill of that. It’s very odd when something you’ve done for fun becomes the thing that pays your rent (or not, as the case may be…) because suddenly you don’t have the luxury of having a day off, or writing whenever the mood takes you. It always amuses me that, when I’m surviving on three hours sleep, writing like a madwoman every minute I get and panicking about impending deadlines, someone invariably comes up and says ‘Wow, you’ve got a dream come true, haven’t you?’ Living the dream, baby, living the dream… But when all’s said and done, it is a dream come true and an incredible honour to be able to write books that are read by people all over the world.

As far as I understand it, you initially landed a two-book deal with Fairytale. Did you have ideas in hand for the second book or was that something you had to come up with after the deal was signed?

It was a three-book deal, which scared the living daylights out of me because at the time HarperCollins first got in touch with me I only had two ideas! When I had the initial conversation with them, they asked me if I had any other ideas besides the one that eventually became Fairytale. After an embarrassingly tumbleweed moment when I mentioned my mystical wombat novel (it’s still on Authonomy and I think it’s really good, although perhaps not rom-commy enough for Avon!), I mentioned an idea I’d had where for most of the book the protagonist was locked in the middle cubicle of the ladies’ loos at a village hall after an almighty argument at a party. They loved that idea – and that’s what became Welcome to My World, my new novel.

This book concerns Harri and we leave Rosie behind, although I remember you saying that the story took place in the same fictional world and there may be references readers can pick up on. Was there ever a part of you that wanted to do a straightforward sequel to Fairytale or did you consider that story closed?

There are tiny links to Fairytale in that Rosie’s mum Rosemary is in the story and the action takes place in the small Black Country town where Rosie grew up before she moved to America. I like to sneak subtle links in as little rewards for people who’ve read Fairytale, but it’s not vital to have read that before reading this story. As for a sequel to Fairytale, I’ve been asked about that a lot, but to be honest I want to leave the characters where they were. I would only consider a sequel if I felt there was sufficient room for the characters to move their stories on; as it is I feel like I left them in a good place and I’m happy for them to work out their own futures without my intervention!

How was the writing process for your second novel compared to the first?

Very quick! It’s true what they say that you have your whole life to write your first novel and four months to write your second. In my case it was more like three months for the initial draft. The first four chapters were already written before Fairytale was ever spotted on Authonomy, so I had a bit of a head-start, but it was still a lot of work to get done – especially as I still work three days a week.

The main issue I faced was a sudden bout of nerves, which almost stymied me for quite some time. I think this was largely due to Fairytale’s stratospheric rise: within the first month, it had become a Sunday Times Top 10 Bestseller and by Christmas it had passed the 100,000 sales mark. I found the whole thing unbelievably intimidating and instead of enjoying the rollercoaster success ride I’d always dreamed about, I found myself terrified that I’d never be able to live up to the success of my first novel. The words ‘disappointing second novel’ hung over me like the Sword of Damocles and I battled with doubts throughout the whole year.

That said, I’m a big believer in the theory that the things in life that are worth something are the ones you have to fight the hardest for. Welcome to My World is a definite step up from Fairytale and I can see that I’ve learned a great deal from the experience of publishing my first novel. I think Welcome is more of a slow-burner success-wise than Fairytale and actually that’s come as a bit of a relief after all the hype and craziness last year. The point is, I know it’s a better novel and the reaction from reviewers has been a lot more positive – even those who haven’t liked the genre have said it’s well written.

What was the inspiration for Welcome To My World?

When I wrote Fairytale it was as an avid Armchair Traveller – and what interested me was the ambitions so many people hold dear yet never pursue. What stops us from following our dreams? Is it fear, circumstance or history? And how do we break out of that? So Harri, the main character, is completely in love with travel but has only experienced it though other people’s eyes. Worse still, she works as a travel agent in a town where most of the population isn’t bothered about seeing the world. I wanted to see what would happen to her when she met other people who had taken the leap of faith and what effect this would have on her own dreams.

Of course, these days, it's de rigeur to have a preview chapter of your next book included in any novel and I already notice a preview for your third book in the back of Welcome To My World. Does that pile on the pressure or do you see it as part of the ongoing dream?

It was actually a conscious decision of mine to include the first chapter of the next book in the back of each of my novels. This was mainly because they are written in very different styles, so I wanted people to get a taste of what to expect from the next story so it didn’t come as a shock! I want to take people with me on the literary journeys I create, so I think it’s really important to leave people wanting more!

How do you handle the publicity side of your career? It must be pretty hectic for a bestselling author. Would you prefer to shy away from all that and stick to the writing or do you relish that? How on earth do you balance the two - as well as your music career?

I don’t think you can exist in splendid isolation as an author any more, particularly if you write romantic comedies or chick-lit like I do. A crucial part of encouraging people to stick with your writing is to be very open and accessible and now, with social media so much a part of everyone’s lives, this is even more important. I actually love it, if I’m honest. I’m a chatterbox and very gregarious at heart, so chatting relentlessly about writing, life and just about anything else that blows into my mind comes incredibly naturally to me (as my lengthy answers to your questions so far will attest!) But I know I’m fortunate in that respect and that many authors struggle with having to be publicly on show so much. I strongly believe in engaging with the wonderful people who choose to pick up my book when there are so many other shiny titles in the bookshop. It’s a responsibility I take very seriously.

Now, I've read Fairytale and enjoyed that very much. It struck me as very readily translatable into a Hollywood Rom-com. Is that something you'd like to see and if so who would you cast as the main characters?

Absolutely! I write very visually, in short scenes like a film, so it would be fantastic to see it realized on the big screen. As for casting, probably someone like Anne Hathaway or Carey Mulligan as Rosie (good English accent would be crucial), Patrick Dempsey or Justin Bartha (Failure to Launch, The Hangover) as Ed, Alison Janney (The West Wing) or Wendie Malick (Just Shoot Me) as Celia, Zooey Deschanel (500 Days of Summer) as Marnie, Matthew McConaughey as Nate and Jake Gyllenhaal as David.

You wrote about New York for Fairytale and now in Welcome we travel to Venice. To my poorly informed perspective, New York always conjures cop shows and the like, but you painted it with such warmth in Fairytale. While Venice is definitely romantic territory. So first of all, have you been to Venice? And whether you have or not, how do you go about capturing the character of a place for your novels?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, (after writing Fairytale about a place I’ve yet to visit) I’ve never been to Venice! I think the key to making the setting realistic is to really research it. It’s important to get a sense of a place, not just the facts that you’d glean from a travel book. I talk to people who’ve been there, asking them for details like the smells, sounds and feelings they got from the city, and read anything set there. I think it’s an art to get the balance between facts and feelings right: hopefully, if you succeed, you give the reader enough detail to provide a framework and then their imagination will fill in the gaps.

Welcome To My World seems a very inviting title. So go ahead and invite us into Harriet (Harri) Langton's world. What can readers expect to find there?

Harri’s world is one of hopes and dreams yet to be fulfilled; love and friendship from those around her; and a longing for the family she has lost. When she is talked into helping her best friend Alex’s mother Viv into finding him a suitable date, Harri unwittingly sets a chain of events into action that end with her locked in the middle cubicle of the Ladies’ loo at Stone Yardley Village Hall after all hell breaks loose at an engagement party. Find out what causes it – and, more importantly, what lies in wait for her when she finally emerges from the grey-green vinyl sanctuary to finally face the music…

Thanks so much for having me!

M xx

My pleasure!

Readers should know that Welcome To My World (which I'm currently reading!) is available from Amazon (both paperback and Kindle versions) and all good bookstores. As is her first novel, Fairytale Of New York. Miranda herself can be found at her website, where you'll also find details of a competition to win a trip to Venice. And be sure to check out her blog, Coffee & Roses.

SAF

Merlignant Enterprises Competition

2010-11-26T07:33:00.000-08:00

Merlignant Enterprises, something of a spin-off of Evil UnLtd, in that I just made them up, are offering 5 copies of The Nightmare Begins, my most recent novelisation for BBC's Merlin series. Which, if nothing else, has a picture of the lovely Morgana on the cover :-)

It may seem an oddly unrelated 'prize', but we can't really sign Evil UnLtd, what with it being an ebook, so our best alternative is to scrawl our moniker across a page of another of our works.

Anyway, we're offering two ways to win one of these books. (I'll only ever be signing these five so they are in that sense, a limited edition :) )

1) Write and post a review of Evil UnLtd Vol 1: A Root Of All Evil on Amazon.com (only $2.50) or Amazon.co.uk (only £1.99!). You're under no obligation to be glowing either - just your fair and honest opinion will do. Email me the link to your review along with your Amazon invoice no. for the purchase of the ebook.

2) Email as many of your friends and contacts as possible telling them about Evil UnLtd - link to the FREE E-Shirt post on the Evil blog, or to the ebooks themselves on Amazon.Com, Amazon.Co.Uk or Smashwords if you like. BCC me in the email and whoever has sent word to the most contacts will win.

Note: my email address is available via my website, under Contact. And don't forget, even if you don't have a Kindle, you can download the software for FREE for reading on your PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Android. And the Smashwords Special Edition is offered for a variety of ereader formats. And remember to let me know in your emails who you'd like the autograph made out to! (Perhaps you're parents of young Merlin fans, for instance, who might like a signed copy.)

Since reviewing will take longer and involves a purchase and a spot of critiquing, we'll be holding back three of the books for reviewers, while two will go to the top email marketers.

Closing Date 31st Dec 2010 for email marketers. 31st Jan 2011 for reviewers. Names of winners will be posted to this blog and I'll be happy to post links to their blogs or websites here, as a bonus.

Good luck and I'll be practicing my handwriting to make sure my autograph won't be too much of a scribble. :)

SAF

Kindle In The Wind

2010-11-23T06:06:00.000-08:00

Goodbye paperbacks
Though I've got a load of you at home
You pose a minor bulk problem
When I'm reading on the roam
They have this neat new gadget
And it's lighter than my brain
All the books are virtual
Though the price is oft the same

[chorus]

And it seems to me that what we need
Is a Kindle in the wind
Never turning pages over
When the breeze blows in
And I would have liked to have one
When I was just a kid
I had so many schoolbooks in my desk
I could never close the lid

Reading books was tough
When they were on computer screens
Amazon created a super toy
About a ton was the price you paid
Though it seems a lot
Oh it's really small potatoes next
To the paper you could save
And you can get a cover or keep it nude

[chorus]
And it seems to me that what we need
Is a Kindle in the wind
Never turning pages over
When the breeze blows in
And I would have liked to have one
When I was just sixteen
Easier for reading with one hand
Some virtual magazines

Goodbye paperbacks
Now I'm really running out of shelves
I've had to go and get this toy
Made by Amazon's little elves
Goodbye paperbacks
From the young man who loved all his books so
It's really quite something - but not sexual
More just sort of biblical, you know

[chorus]
And it seems to me that what we need
Is a Kindle in the wind
Never turning pages over
When the breeze blows in
And now I'm out to sell an ebook
Evil UnLimited
It's really something special
For just under two quid

SAF

Evil UnLtd is also available at Amazon.com and a Special Edition (with all sorts of extras) can be found (in different e-formats) at Smashwords. Remember if you don't have a Kindle you can download the software for FREE to enjoy the read on your PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, Android or Cuddly Panda.

Ode To Katie The Wastrel

2010-11-21T07:14:00.000-08:00

The song Katie should have sung in the X Factor Beatles Week:

What would you think if I sang out of tune
Would you still call and vote in for me
Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song
And I'll try not to sing out of key

Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm, I get high with a little help from my friends
Mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends

What do I do when my fans fail to vote
To be always in the bottom two
I sit on my butt and say sod it then
And trust the judges to still put me through

Yeah, I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm, I get high with a little help from my friends
Mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends

I just need everybody
I need them all to love me
Oh please just anybody
Someone to love little me

Would you believe that I'm still in the show
When so many don't like what they see
I just change my disguise, wear feathers in my eyes
Then tell them this is the real me

Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm, I get high with a little help from my friends
Mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends

I just need everybody
I need them all to love me
Oh please just anybody
Someone to love little me

Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends
Yes, despite weekly audience trends
Mm, on Cowell and Walsh I depend
Yes I get by with a little help from my friends
With a little help from my friends

SAF

Psi Fi

2010-11-06T05:15:00.000-07:00

We Are Not Alone, said the tag line for Close Encounters. Since I've met other indie authors over the internet, the encounters may not be counted as close, but it's good to know that the tag line still applies.

Continuing our showcase of other authors, today we feature Debra L Martin, a sci-fi fantasy author who braved the world of Kindle and indie publishing before me.

Can you tell us about your novels?

My co-author, David W Small, and I have two full-length novels in our RULE OF OTHARIA series, Quest for Nobility and The Crystal Facade. The books revolve around royal Otharian twins, Darius and Dyla Telkur and their struggle to maintain control of the throne of Telkur. The reader will delve into a world of PSI powers [telepathy, empathy, telekinesis], betrayal, intrigue and murder. There is an evil mastermind bent on eliminating the twins and, of course, there is a deliciously evil telekinetic assassin. There is also a connection back to Earth which Darius and Dyla uncover. To unravel the mystery, they must shift through the clues from the Arthurian legends of Merlin and the Lady of the Lake.

We also have two novelettes in our DARK FUTURE series, Path to War and The Right Path. The stories are set in a bleak post-apocalyptic world where only the strongest survive. Food and water are scarce and gangs roam the streets preying on the weak. System cops try to keep the peace any way they can but it’s not always pretty.

You write with a collaborator. What is your process?

We both live on opposite coasts and our writing process has evolved over the past four years. With email, Instant Messenger and Skype we are able to keep in touch to plot out the next scene, chapter, or action sequence. We’ve found through trial and error that what works the best for us is to do edits/additions in real time. We send chapters/scenes back and forth to each other for comments. It’s always a wonderful surprise to see what kind of twist Dave has put on a chapter especially when I thought I knew what was going to happen. That keeps our writing exciting.

How do you research the science in your science fiction?

My coauthor, David W Small, and I like to have the science we use in our books grounded in reality. For example, in our Otharia books, we use crystals to enhance PSI power. We wanted these "crystals" to be something that people would recognize easily and so we chose to use diamonds as the model. Anyone who has purchased a diamond knows that diamonds are rated by 4Cs - cut, clarity, color, and carat. We enhanced the 4C rule and had the Otharians discover another intrinsic “C” within the nature of diamond: conductivity, the 5thC. This fifth C is what fuels their PSI abilities and the largest 10K crystals open their portals for interplanetary travel.

What will your readers like about your work?

I think readers will enjoy our novels because my co-author and I create fast moving action-packed stories. We strive to keep the reader turning the pages through tension, challenges and the conflicts our characters face.

What inspires your stories?

I get inspiration from many things from catching snippets of conversations during the day to reader comments on my blog and forums. It’s amazing how you can spin a story from one seemingly innocent comment.

Why did you go indie?

It was very discouraging hearing from a number of agents that they liked our book and thought it had commercial potential, but they just didn’t love it enough to offer representation. When Amazon offered the chance for authors to self-publish their works, it was the perfect solution for us.

Where can we find your novels?

In the US, my author page at Amazon is:
Debra L Martin, Amazon.Com
In the UK, my author page at Amazon is:
Debra L Martin, Amazon.Co.Uk

I also try to visible as much as possible on the internet and frequently comment on forums such as Kindleboads.com. You can also find me here:

Blog: http://twoendsofthepen.blogspot.com/
Website: http://martinandsmall.com/
Facebook: Debra.L.Martin.Author
Twitter: dlmartin6

What is your current WIP?
Dave and I are actually working on two manuscripts at the moment. One is a new fantasy involving assassins, witches and an ancient prophesy. We hope to finish this in 2011. The second project is another novelette in the DARK FUTURE series tentatively titled, Zia’s Path.

Thanks Simon for hosting me!

Pulp Fiction

2010-11-03T03:20:00.001-07:00

For those of you who thought this blog was all me-me-me, today we offer something completely different. First in a series of guest spots, showcasing the talents and thoughts of other authors. Since, as writers, we're all in this together.

I'm still very much a newcomer to the world of Kindle and independent publishing and when finding your way through the fog, you can encounter all sorts of strangers. Luckily, most of them are friendly - not a monster among them. One such fellow is William Meikle, who coincidentally knows quite a bit about strangers, monsters and fog.

William Meikle - Why I write pulp
___________________________

I choose to write mainly at the pulpy end of the market, populating my stories with monsters, myths, men who like a drink and a smoke, and more monsters. People who like this sort of thing like it.

My pat answer as to why has always been the same. "I like monsters."

But it goes deeper than that.

I write to escape.

I grew up on a West of Scotland housing estate in a town where you were either unemployed or working in the steelworks, and sometimes both. Many of the townspeople led hard, miserable lifes of quiet, and sometimes not so quiet desperation. I was relatively lucky in that both my parents worked, but I spent a lot of time alone or at my grandparent's house.

My Granddad was housebound, and a voracious reader. I got the habit from him, and through him I discovered the Pan Books of Horror and Lovecraft, but I also discovered westerns, science fiction, war novels and the likes of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E Howard, Louis D’Amour, Mickey Spillane, Ed McBain, Alistair MacLean and Dennis Wheatley.

When you mix all that together with DC Comics, Tarzan, Gerry Anderson and Dr Who then, later on, Hammer and Universal movies on the BBC, you can see how the pulp became embedded in my psyche.

Pulp is all about the struggle of the dark against the light. The time and place, and the way it plays out is in some ways secondary to that. When you're dealing with archetypes, there's only so many to go around, and it's not surprising that the same concepts of death and betrayal, love and loss, turn up wherever, and whenever, the story is placed, whether it be in crime, fantasy or horror.

I also have a deep love of old places, in particular menhirs and stone circles, and I’ve spent quite a lot of time travelling the UK and Europe just to visit archaeological remains. I love what is widely known as “weird sh**”. I’ve spent far too much time surfing and reading fortean, paranormal and cryptozoological websites. The cryptozoological stuff especially fascinates me, and provides a direct stimulus for a lot of my fiction.

So, there’s that, and the fact that I was grew up with the sixties explosion of popular culture embracing the supernatural and the weird. Doctor Who, Gerry Anderson series, The Avengers and Adam Adamant on TV, then Hammer horror movies got me, and led me back to the Universal originals. My early reading somehow all tended to gravitate in similar directions, with DC comics leading me into pulp and to finding Tarzan.

Mix all that lot together, add a dash of ZULU, a hefty slug of heroic fantasy from Howard, Leiber and Moorcock, a sprinkle of fast moving Scottish thrillers from John Buchan and Alistair MacLean, and a final pinch of piratical swashbuckling. Leave to marinate for fifty years and what do you get? A psyche with the urge to beat up monsters.

When I was at school books and my guitar were all that kept me sane in a town that was going downhill fast. The steelworks shut and employment got worse. I -could- have started writing about that, but why bother? All I had to do was walk outside and I'd get it slapped in my face. That horror was all too real.

So I took up my pen and wrote. At first it was song lyrics, designed (mostly unsuccessfully) to get me closer to girls.

I tried my hand at a few short stories but had no confidence in them and hid them away. And that was that for many years.

I didn't get the urge again until I was past thirty and trapped in a very boring job. My home town had continued to stagnate and, unless I wanted to spend my whole life drinking (something I was actively considering at the time), returning there wasn't an option.

As I said before, I write to escape.

My brain needed something, and writing gave it what was required. That point, back nearly twenty years ago, was like switching on an engine, one that has been running steadily ever since.

And most of the time, the things that engine chooses to give me to write are very pulpy.

I've also been criticised for it by people who don't get it. Willie Meikle is..."the author of the most cliched, derivative drivel imaginable...the critical acclaim he receives from his peers is virtually non-existent." is only one of the responses I've had.

Now, I don't write for the critical acclaim of my peers. I couldn't give a toss what other writers think of me. I'm writing for two reasons... myself and a readership. Posterity, if there is one, can decide on whether it's any good or not. Besides, the harder I work at it making my writing accessible, the more readers I get, so I'm doing something right.

But that's still not why I do it.

I think you have to have grown up with pulp to -get- it. A lot of writers have been told that pulp=bad plotting and that you have to have deep psychological insight in your work for it to be valid. They've also been told that pulp=bad writing, and they believe it. Whereas I remember the joy I got from early Moorcock, from Mickey Spillane and further back, A E Merritt and H Rider Haggard. I'd love to have a chance to write a Dracula, Tarzan, John Carter, Allan Quartermain, Mike Hammer, Dr Who, Quatermass or Conan novel, whereas a lot of writers I know would sniff and turn their noses up at the very thought of it.

I write to escape.

I haven't managed it yet, but I'm working on it.

_________

You can check out William Meikle's impressive catalogue of books at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

Wednesday Night Music Club

2010-10-17T03:40:00.000-07:00

We all have those artists and bands we’ve longed to see live. This year I get to see two of them. Yay me! Turns out in order to make some dreams come true, you don’t need a genie, you don’t need a Fairy Godmother, all you need is cash or credit. But who cares when it’s worth every penny.

Fair warning now: I’m a fan of Sheryl Crow and I arrived at the concert on a high anyway, (met up in the afternoon with a very dear friend I don’t get to see nearly often enough), so the chances of any objectivity here are slim.

Let me just begin then by saying exactly what you’d expect me to say at this point.

Sheryl rocks.

The Hammersmith Apollo was a new experience for me and it’s a great venue with all the character of a lovely old theatre, which makes for a more intimate setting than the huge arenas you’d expect to see stars of Sheryl’s magnitude playing. Magnitude, by the way, not being any reference to size: she looks great and she has no qualms about telling the audience she’s 48. And if I look that good in five years’ time, you can bet I’ll be doing international music tours and shaking my stuff on stage with just as much vibrant energy. Scary thought, I know, but don’t worry, it’s just my way of saying it’s never going to happen.

But it’s not about the looks, it’s very much about the music with her. She’s one of the artists I welcome (most) covers from, because there’s more of a sense she’s doing it not to sell more records but because she loves the song. And she’s managed to evolve her sound and explore fresh avenues with each album, without uprooting and moving on altogether. True, a lot of it comes down to voice – you ought to know those textured velvety tones anywhere – but she does put a certain instrumental stamp on whatever she does. And I love a talented artist who, when hearing a new record of theirs for the first time, no announcements or even halfway through, I know right away it’s them.

What she gave us live was an electric (not eclectic) mix of old, new, borrowed, blues – which is what you want from a Sheryl Crow concert – with never more than two newbies or classics in a row, so there’s no sense of this is the new section and now for some old favourites. Which worked really well. It’s all one body of work, it’s all Sheryl and it all fits comfortably together.

Regrets? I’ve had a few, but then again too few to mention. But what the heck, in the interests of balance, I’ll go ahead and say that there were – inevitably – some songs I’d been hoping to hear but didn’t. (Good Is Good and Diamond Road, for instance.) At the Peter Gabriel gig I attended, in a momentary quiet spell you could hear my solitary voice in the crowd shouting a request for Solsbury Hill – and lo! the nice man obliges. But alas, Sheryl wasn’t listening to me. In fairness to her, it was a loud crowd and there were a couple of tracks where the sound mixers even managed to drown her out – most notably in the middle of the Terrence Trent D'Arby cover, Sign Your Name. Which is a song I’ve never especially liked, I don’t know why, but even with that I like Sheryl’s version more.

All I Wanna Do was a predictable choice for an encore number, but hey, it’s not like she could have gotten away with not playing it and I’m happy to say, as familiar as I am with that number, it – if you’ll forgive the cliché - rocked the house. And in that vein, the rest is just awesome, I’m afraid, but I’ll spare readers a long list of glowing reports and just recall a few select highlights.

Which would have to include the sublime I Shall Believe (grand piano wheeled out especially) and (Are You) Strong Enough (To Be My Man?) – the latter of which she entertainingly turns into a sort of personal ad in the middle, reminding us she has two little uns now and therefore might be a lot to take on. Most of the males in the audience were undeterred and were keen to take her up on the offer. Although not me, of course, I’m married and my wife reads this blog. Although having said that, at one point she leans down to take the hand of a guy in the front row and sings directly to him. And it wasn’t me, damnit. Sigh.

Most of the oldies hailed from Tuesday Night Music Club and her second album, Sheryl Crow, with the belting If It Makes You Happy (it did), the uplifting Every Day Is A Winding Road (helped me forget I nearly got run over on one of London’s not-so-winding roads) and the gorgeous Redemption Day (I have no glib comment to make). But she found room for My Favourite Mistake, which is one of my favourites and not at all erroneous – from quite possibly my favourite album of hers, The Globe Sessions – and Soak Up The Sun from C’mon, C’mon.

If the whole thing had gone on until the sun came up over Santa Monica Boulevard, I’d have been over the moon. Actually, what with the time zones, for all I knew it had. But anyway for two hours, between 9pm and 11pm I was a very happy bunny. And several days later, I still am.

Next up in the dream concert series, Shakira in December. I anticipate more belly dancing. But for the time being, I have to concur with Sheryl. Good is good, bad is bad – but I know full well which one I had.

Kindle Surprise

2010-10-11T05:02:00.000-07:00

The other day I was walking into town and bumped into a friend of my sister's, who happens to be an avid reader and she always asks how my writing's going and from there – not least because she always has a book in hand - we usually end up talking about what we've been reading lately. On this occasion I answered that I was reading some Jules Verne (Mysterious Island – seen the film, never read it before) and showed her my shiny new Kindle, on which said work resided along with two or three other e-books that represented my earliest purchases from the Kindle store.

Whereupon this lady, who is really funny in all the best possible ways, backed away and held up her fingers in the sign of a cross and, like a true exorcist, urged me to return to the world of real books.

I laughed, discreetly tucked the offending device away in my pocket and promised I'd still read proper books as well.

The funny thing is, it probably wouldn't have been all that long ago that I might have reacted like her. Call me a literary Luddite, but when it comes to reading there's no real substitute for the feel of a paper book in your hand and anyway, after my experiences of so much proofreading of other people's work on authonomy, I think I'd rather have gouged my eyes out than read another document off a computer screen. Add to that my lifelong dreams of publication and an e-book just doesn't cut it from an author's perspective either.

When I think of the trees that have died to bring us the works of Katie Price and others, well, my material's worth many a rainforest next to that, damn it. But setting those green sentiments aside, nothing beats seeing your books on the shelves and I've always looked forward to the day when I could add volumes of my original works next to my previous Doctor Who output and so on that currently have their own little shelf at home.

So when others recommended I publish one of my own works on Kindle, I stopped short of making the sign of the cross, but was sceptical and resistant to say the least. But after a prolonged period of coming up against similarly resistant publishers and agents – the two worst forms of writers' block – you owe it to yourself to investigate alternatives.

These same agents and publishers were, after all, telling me that my work was “excellent”, “colourful, imaginative, well-written” etc and declaring that as an author I should be encouraged. All the while, in spite of those endorsements, acting as barriers between my books and potential readers. Nervous because of the state of the industry, ridiculously high advances paid to a select few (like the Katie Prices) whose books end up immediately discounted in the windows of WHSmith and the inevitable reservations when met with anything original. (Wot no Teen Vampires?)

Now if I'd had the resources, I might have set up as an independent publisher, but at the end of the day I'm a writer and I was cautioned by an independent publishing friend that basically I'd end up with little or no time left for writing. Not good. On top of which, I doubt I would have been able to produce books at a comparably affordable price to compete with the mass marketed slush pile known as popular fiction.

Time then for me to embrace the 21st Century. (In a purely Platonic way, you understand.)

Me being me, if I was going to publish some work of mine on Kindle, I was going to treat myself to a Kindle gadget.

Now I do like gadgets, it's true. And you might suppose a certain bias on my part, since I have now made one of my books available on the device, but this is not a sales pitch – you don't need a Kindle to enjoy my book, you can download the software free to your PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad and what have you – no, it's more just a shared revelation, in that I can't quite believe how quickly a staunch paperback traditionalist like me has become a convert to the e-reading experience.

Admittedly, it's still early days and any toy has a degree of novelty value, so maybe my current enthusiasm will wear off. Allowing for that then, I am impressed.

The Kindle is a good deal slimmer and lighter weight than I'd expected and, especially for something grey and rectangular, it's an elegant design. First and foremost though, it's the reading experience that won me over. There's no screen glare, it's as easy on the eye as reading a cleanly printed page and the refresh rate means the delay between pages is no more than you get from physically turning a paper page.

Obviously it scores in the portability department over a paperback and I'm not entirely sure how many books you can store on it, but I'm pretty sure it's more than my entire collection. (And I have too many books for our shelf space at home.) Plus you can 'archive' books that you've read and they're removed from the device but available to re-download at the touch of a button. The downloads, by the way, are very fast and the range of titles available (now including Evil UnLtd folks ;-) ) is , well, what you'd expect from Amazon really. It's tempting to spend more time browsing than reading, almost too easy with its one-touch purchasing, and you could spend a fortune on books without feeling it at all. Luckily I confined myself initially to the 'FREE' list – and even though some titles on the list will cost you £0.49 for example it's been a great way to catch up on some classics without breaking the bank. Meanwhile there are plenty of other titles I already have my eye on and it has genuinely reawakened my reading habit, which can only be a good thing.

In addition, you can email your own documents (Word, PDF) to the device, and make notes on them, so potentially ideal for proofreading. I'm aiming to put that to the test on Evil Vol 2 and a new YA fiction idea I'm developing, I'll let you know how that goes. Supposedly there's also an MP3 player on there, but I've yet to put that through its paces. It's not crucial, and I honestly would be happy with it as a dedicated e-reader.

The downsides? The keyboard is serviceable for the little I've needed it so far, although numerical digits are only accessible via a 'Symbol' key and that can be a minor nuisance. Far more grating, I gave the speaking book feature a whirl and frankly it made a hash of it. It struggles with pace and intonation, 'just a bit'. The words were discernible, but – no offence – unless you relish the prospect of Stephen Hawking reading you your book at bedtime, I wouldn't bother. (Although listening to it read the first page of Evil UnLtd last night did provide some entertainment value.) Maybe technology will allow for a voice of your chosing – Holly Hunter or Emily Procter would get my vote. Or, for Evil, Stephen Fry, Richard E Grant or Benedict Cumberbatch could do a worthy Dexter Snide, I think. Yeah, a voice to suit the work, that'd be the way to go.

Since I don't need that feature, it's not a real gripe. So my only proper grumbles arise from an author's viewpoint. It's not the uploading of your work that's a problem, that's as easy as pie. But, and I appreciate I'm a learner here, while the conversion process from PDF (or Word) to Kindle is a breeze, there are formatting issues and I had to download the resulting HTML and edit that in order to polish my processed MS to presentable standard. (This after the original doc – and hence the PDF – had been polished and smartened to the nth degree.) It wasn't anything major, but I did have to go through and check every line break and scene break etc, and then each time changes were made and I uploaded the altered document, it could take anything up to another 48 hours before the book was 'live' again on the Amazon Kindle site.

So, a bit fiddly in that respect, but that's the process for the author, rather than the device. And as I say, I'm a learner, and I'll know by the time it comes to uploading Evil Vol 2 (this time next year, Evil fans!) to attend to all the relevant formatting changes in one go before re-uploading. Also, once I'd finished smartening up the document, I had some trouble downloading the updated version, since the device still retained the old version in its archive. Happily, the Kindle support people were prompt and helpful and emailed the updated version direct to my Kindle. Sorted.

And I have to say, all bias aside, it looks the business. (Obligatory plug here: take a look – you can download a sample for free. Also available on Amazon.com, for readers across the Atlantic.)

It's true that I still aim to see Evil UnLtd – and other works from yours truly – in paper form, a nice collection of spines all in a row on the bookshelf. Luverly. But in the meantime I'm at least happy that now some of my work is out there and available to readers because, well, that's the whole point, isn't it.

But the biggest turnaround for me – and the biggest surprise – is how readily I've become a convert to the electronic age of reading. I love it. Just don't tell my sister's friend that. She'll likely drive a wooden stake through my heart and chop off my head.

EVIL RE-KINDLED

2010-10-08T05:18:00.000-07:00

Some people might think Cheryl Cole was Evil for choosing Katie over Gamu. But that's nothing compared to Evil UnLtd.

They're Evil. Their Evil knows no limits. And they work exclusively for themselves.

And now they're launching their enterprise on the Kindle. The first volume of their exploits - Evil UnLtd: The Root Of All Evil - is now available, from the Kindle store on amazon.co.uk and amazon.com.

There's no greater volume of Evil.*

And don't worry, if you don't happen to have a Kindle device (although I treated myself to one recently and I can thoroughly recommend it), the Kindle software is available to download FREE for a variety of platforms: PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android and Uncle Tom Cobbly and all. Although Uncle Tom would appreciate it if you asked him nicely before using him as an e-book reader. He's funny like that.

Please Support Evil. Every two minutes and seventeen seconds another villain falls prey to some big dumb action hero. They need your help.

As Dexter Snide himself says,

“All that it takes for evil to succeed, someone once said, is for good men to do nothing... In a word, bollocks. Evil needs nurturing, looking after, hand-raising by those who understand its little ways.”

So please spread the word, tell your friends. And go on, treat yourself to a quick download. All proceeds will go towards Gamu. Okay, not really, but one more random mention might earn us more hits.

*Evil UnLtd were filmed using Evil extensions and enhanced in post-production.

Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey

2010-07-13T02:54:00.000-07:00

Everyone has their bugbears. Reset switches are one of mine. When it comes to writing, I always figured Undo and Delete were for the stuff you don't want ending up in the story. Unfortunately when time travel is involved, there seems to be a temptation to throw bigger and bigger wham-bam dramatic oh-my-god-how-will-they-get-out-of-that events at the screen because whatever happens can simply be undone.

The writers even seem to be labouring under some delusion that it's clever. And yet it's more often than not exactly what it looks like at the cliffhanger stage: a dramatic dead end. They've painted their central characters into such a corner that the only way out is to reverse out of the cul-de-sac. And they seem to convince themselves that the way to improve upon this formula is to raise the stakes. The bigger the catastrophe, the bigger the drama, right? Well, no. The bigger the catastrophe, the Bigger the Undo. Hence, the bigger the catastrophe, the harder it is to care about the outcome.

The Doctor Who TV Movie left me singularly unimpressed for a number of reasons (although I quite liked McGann's performance and loved the TARDIS set design), chief among them was the way in which the end of the world was undone with the TARDIS rolling back time. That and two companions brought back from the dead. Clearly, no series arose from that pilot because the addition of this handy feature to the time capsule's capabilities rendered any subsequent adventures pointless.

If that's how time and space work in your fictional universe, one may as well travel in dreams or virtual reality, since although characters remember the experience, there's precious little difference between events that didn't really happen and events that are just going to unhappen.

Sadly that TV Movie has become the template for season finales, coupled with an obsessive compulsion to go bigger and 'better' each time. Threat: millions of Daleks. Solution: Rose 'Holy Ghost' Tyler and her mass-disintegration and resurrection schtick. Small potatoes. Threat: millions of Daleks and Cybermen. Solution: handy Invasion Reverse lever. Still, for all its convenience there was a cost: poor Rose was cast into a parallel dimension, lost forever. Well, until she came back. Next up, we had the Earth completely subjugated by the Mad Master and his Amazing Levitating Balls. But luckily Doctor Dobby was able to transform into a more helpful floaty Messianic being who could roll back time just like a TV Movie TARDIS. (Ironically, a miracle achieved by the power of storytelling. Ha.) Next, Rusty has the Daleks relocate the Earth to a remote part of the universe. There's plenty of other guff going on, but naturally the Earth has to be returned to its rightful place and in fine TVM tradition this is achieved by adding another absurd capability to an already ridiculously comprehensive and drama-cheapening TARDIS spec. Planet-towing. And they used to worry that K9 made things too easy for the Doctor. Finally – thank God – we had a sort of Being John Simm scenario plus the return and unreturn of Gallifrey, handily rectified by some thoroughly unconvincing gubbins that I couldn't care enough about to remember the specifics. I recall a gun being fired, followed by a nauseating twenty minute pre-regeneration goodbye.

With the bar set so high, how in the name of Rassilon was the Grand Moff ever going to top that lot?

Perhaps the most unfortunate thing about his two-part season closer - The Pandorica Opens/Big Bang - is that he tried. Frankly, I would have been a happier bunny if he had diverged from the template altogether. If he had, I could have dispensed with all this comparison, for starters. But context insists on playing its part.

Clearly any two-parter will consist of setup and resolution. Too frequently, it's more a case of setup and upset and the scale of disappointment is usually proportional to the scale of the setup. If a Part One has done its job well, it will have built up the drama, the suspense, the expectations etc, so that it's more full of promise, Eastern or otherwise, than Turkish Delight.

The Pandorica Opens is damn near perfect in that respect and boasts enough key differences to overcome some worrying commonalities it shares with a Rusty finale.

The pre-credits sequence is a joy, treating us to cameos in an inventive and meaningful way that feeds us into the story as well as celebrating some of the season's best characters. (Contrast this with the overblown appendix to End Of Time – the aforementioned nauseating departure sequence, because, let's face it a simple touching farewell – a la Green Death, say - is just not good enough for a guy so central to the universe. There was at least one person I know of who was checking his watch and asking, “Aren't you gone, yet?”) In the opening of The Pandorica Opens, we're treated to a brisker procession through the Moffat character archives and one that amuses and entertains rather than makes me want to throw up.

A clever little temporal line is deftly traced from Van Gogh through to Churchill and Bracewell to River Song and her very own 'Great Escape'. Liz Ten practically had me standing and singing the national anthem. Well, okay, it was more of a simple “Yay!” but she is one of those magical characters where great writing, the right actress and a sparkling performance all combine brilliantly. Moffat, I'd argue, has a gift for writing 'female Doctors' – which is what Liz Ten, River Song and even Amy Pond are, to varying degrees. It's a good job Matt Smith is so charismatic and likeable a Doctor, otherwise he'd have a tough job getting noticed when these other characters are on the screen. Credit where it's due, he and Gillan are a key contributing factor in why I didn't hate this season ender.

They – both their characters and their performances – along with the best ratio of good stories to duds we've seen since Doctor Who's 21st century return earned a lot of goodwill. What's more, despite the clumsily chucked-in prophesy in The Eleventh Hour, the cracks in time, the threat of Silence (it feels like it should be capitalised) Falling and all that have featured sufficiently prominently in a number of stories to develop a genuine sense of intrigue and a worthwhile mystery in a way that scattered references to Bad Wolf in Season One didn't.

Thus, there was more eager interest and anticipation for me, going into this finale, than I'd felt for a loooooong while. And, quite crucially, I cared about the outcome.

And as the first episode drew me in, continuing to impress and surprise (and, by the way, I had to applaud the Hitch-Hikers homage with River's message on the mountainside), I was given no reason to doubt it would deliver on that promise.

On a very basic level, the choice of setting – Roman Britain – lends it a different feel to a Rusty finale from the get-go. Naturally, as soon as we get the Cleopatra name-drop, we know it's going to be River. But I'll be honest, I never thought the shadowy legionary would turn out to be a resurrected Rory.

Interestingly, this rang the first real alarm bell. Since he was killed - and erased from all time - in Cold Blood, I was dreading a Big Undo and here, apparently, it was. Dead major character, brought miraculously back to life. Yawn. Crafty Moffat even plays on that, with Rory having no idea how it happened, no explanations are offered and it's all attributed to, well, a miracle. The truth, when it hits, is a master stroke.

Before that we're treated to a refreshingly measured and suspenseful build-up as our heroes investigate the shadowed vaults under Stonehenge. It's creepy and atmospheric and surprisingly patient in terms of pace. The presence of the Cyberman throws in a perfectly timed and exciting setpiece, with the parts coming to life – particularly the head scuttling about spider-fashion, like a machine re-enactment of The Thing, and the skull inside – making the Cybermen as genuinely scary on screen, for the first time, as they've always been in my imagination. And throughout it all, we're kept on edge by the central question of what is in the box. In Pandora's original, all that remained inside was hopelessness. Five years of Rusty finales had primed me for disappointment. One year of Moffat's who had reintroduced the concept of optimism. What would this deliver? Will it be the 1p or one of the Banker's power five?

Moffat precedes the reveal with a dose of Rusty-ish excess. Correction, he sees Rusty's excess and raises. Cybermen vs. Daleks, pah! The Master conquers the world? The Daleks steal the Earth? The return of Gallifrey? You might think that's big, but that's just peanuts to The Pandorica Opens.

What do you say to death of the TARDIS and River Song, the killing of Amy Pond, the Doctor imprisoned in the trap set for him by an alliance of aliens straight out of a Doctor Who Monster Book and the end of the universe? How'd you like them apples?

There can be no denying the dramatic impact of such a multiple whammy ending. It is, however, a curious double-edged thing.

Like the Monster Alliance itself, it cuts two ways: on the one hand it's big and bold and appeals to the child in every fanboy heart (what kid didn't imagine or even write a story that united a compendium of their favourite monsters against the Doctor?); on the other, it's big and dumb and makes a joke of the Doctor Who universe, the notion that all these races would band together in such an involved and convoluted plan is a bit silly. On the other hand – if I might allow myself a third – the fanboy in me was more disgruntled that they went and mentioned Draconians and Zygons and failed to include them in the monster assembly. No fair.

Alongside the wow or ooo-er factor, whatever you want to call it, there's more of those alarm bells. Surely the only way out of this is a rewind. In an effort to outdo his predecessor, has Moffat upped the ante too far? Amid all the galaxies winking out and the Earth left alone in darkness, the most powerful element of that episode conclusion for me was the emotional battle fought by Auton Rory and the killing shot still sends cold shivers through me. A potent reminder that small is beautiful. And you wonder, could that sound effect be the report of Moffat shooting himself in the foot?

When, in an earlier moment, the Doctor is confronted by a host of alien ships in the sky above, he resorts to the increasingly tired ploy of driving them off with his reputation. And what I really wanted to see at that point was for all the ships to open fire at the end of his grandiose speech and see that plan backfire for the first time. That would have been priceless. However, although we're robbed of the comedy, we are then shown that the alien menaces only withdrew for the purposes of their trap. So in that sense, Moffat once again proves his ability to undercut our expectations.

So I could take some encouragement from that and look forward to the closing episode with some confidence.

Does he disappoint? Well, as with Time Of Angels/Flesh And Stone the answer is Yes and No. In other words, in many respects it's perfect, despite its flaws.

The critical flaw is that it is a massive Reset. A far bigger Undo than it is a Bang.

On the plus side, for the most part it's fabulously low-key. In Rusty-eval times, we would have seen the excesses of the previous episode ramped up for the final part. More monsters, greater absurdities and, er, more universes ended - I'm not quite sure, but he would have managed it somehow. Here, Moffat takes it down a notch or several. For actual enemies, the Monster Alliance is gone and there's just the one Stone Dalek. Which, forgetting that it doesn't make any sense – why would races wiped from existence persist as stone relics? – is a great idea in terms of pure imagination.

What it is, is the stuff of fairy tales. And that is the realm in which we find ourselves.

Are we sitting comfortably? Then I'll explain.

It takes us back to the beginning, where Once Upon A Time there was a little girl praying to Santa and a mad, raggedy Doctor crash landed in her garden and changed her life forever. That scene establishes this season's fairy-tale credentials and it's entirely fitting that we find ourselves back in that territory for the ending. Amy's the Cinderella, the Doctor is her Prince, Rory is Buttons and River Song is, um, the Fairy Godmother, I suppose. There are no Ugly Sisters because this is TV and only glamorous people need apply. But tenuous analogies aside, it's the tone that counts. 'Wibbly wobbly timey wimey' has become something of a catchphrase, courtesy of Moffat's accomplished story, Blink, and he evidently regards it as a magical, wonderful thing, something to be waved about playfully like a wand. The idea that, as long as you remember someone, you can bring them back is plainly a nonsense, even when 'supported' by some questionable Doctor Who pseudoscientific mechanics, but it is perfect fairy-tale fare. The emotional aspects of it are handled with that in mind and, for the most part, are pitched beautifully – less drawn-out and less desperately hammered-home than we're used to, and that degree of restraint - and, at times, understatement - is a blessing. Even the Doctor's farewell speech to a sleeping Amelia is fairly gently done and is a further credit to Matt Smith's very likeable Doctor. It persuades me that I will be sorry when he eventually goes, although of course we knew damn well that wasn't going to happen here. A fairy tale – especially a Steven Moffat fairy tale – is going to have a happy ending.

It's only a shame that it's all a bit too Happy Ever After for my liking and could have done with being a bit more Grimm.

Although there's no denying the cleverness of the timey-wimey weaving going on – including discreetly embedded clues, like the jacketed Doctor having a quiet word with Amy in Flesh & Stone, and thematic pointers like Amy's Protest or Forget choice in The Beast Below – it's in some ways too clever for its own good.

It furnishes us with too neat and far too tidy a conclusion for my liking. Not satisfied with zero dramatic cost, Amy ends up ahead with a gain of two parents. The price? She gets to watch the Doctor's embarrassing-dad dancing at her wedding reception. Don't get me wrong, I found that hilarious – this episode was loaded with great comedy. Even the Bill And Ted-ish time-shenanigans offered some amusement, despite being rather hackneyed by now, and it wouldn't be the first time the Doctor extricated himself from a difficult fix with a comic turn. But the main problem I found with it, was that it does kind of make a joke of the ominous cliffhanger in Part One.

As is entirely customary with Doctor Who, in other respects it's not nearly clever enough. While part of me gazes on in wonder, the other part is brimming with questions and niggles. I'm sure there's some wand-wave explanation in there, but to my mind when you put a dead person in stasis it keeps them dead. Also, it takes the gift of River Song's little blue book (“something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue”) to jog Amy's memory, so we must assume that, despite all the blank pages, River recalled the Doctor and events with sufficient clarity to remember to present Amy with the book – and yet her memories weren't enough to bring him back. To say nothing of why she kept a blank journal with a distinctive TARDIS-motif cover, or are these things freely available from gift shops and if so where can I get one?

But any further focus on the quibbles would paint a misleading picture of my overall impressions, which were on balance positive. In the midst of it all, there was a lot of terrific stuff – Amy meets Amelia, the Stone Dalek, Rory's vigil (a touching twist on Marvin the Paranoid Android's long service as a Milliway's parking attendant in The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe), River Song, that bedside farewell from the Doctor to Amy. Just, oh, lots and lots.

Time is relative and so are season finales. To say this was the best season ender of 21st century Who would be faint praise, but equally it's no understatement. It's a well-crafted piece of writing within it's inherited framework. It pushes all the right emotional buttons, rather than thumping the console repeatedly in order to get a response. It does everything right... except perhaps the story.

Like the season as a whole, what the Grand Moff Steven delivered wasn't radically different to what we got from his predecessor, but the differences were enough to restore my optimism. For the most part, he knew which parts to keep, which to play around with and what new things to bring to the mix. Among them, a degree of restraint and subtlety. And through the eyes of Amelia Pond and a charming avuncular young Doctor, he breathed fresh life into the show, making it feel magical again.

It's only a shame, as I say, that, out of admiration for the supercalifragilistic something-quite-atrocious finales of previous years, he felt the need to fence himself in with that same kind of framework. He's proven his ability to toy with and undercut audience expectations and some borrowing from the past is both inevitable and often desirable, but as for impossible odds and dramatic back-pedalling or the Big Undo, please, it's time to seal that particular evil in a box and if that minx Pandora comes anywhere near it with a glint of piqued curiosity in her eye, somebody shoot the woman. We can do without having that unleashed on the Doctor Who universe ever again.

By all means, give us more timey-wimey - since Mr Moffat clearly delights in playing his temporal games - but less of the wibbly-wobbly, if it's not too much to ask. What we've seen over the past thirteen episodes – well, ten of them anyway – are some key steps in the right direction and I've thoroughly enjoyed this series as a result. Next, let's see some bolder, braver strides and see where that takes us.

For the first time since we've had Christmas specials, I'm already looking forward to the next one – Orient Express (In Space)? - and please oh please let the “Your Majesty” the Doctor referred to be Liz Ten! Listen to me, I sound like a fan again.

Meanwhile, the sad fanboy in me will be over there remembering Draconians and Zygons on the off-chance that will do the trick of bringing them back.

Doctor In The House

2010-06-18T06:55:00.000-07:00

In much the same way that certain things in Doctor Who (Churchill and Daleks, return of the Silurians) fuel anticipation with possibilities and promise, some things just ring alarm bells and put you on your guard. The name Gareth Roberts, for instance, is like a big Beware Of The Dog sign at the gateway to an episode.

In canine terms, I suppose he'd be one of those yappy little ones who'd like to prove he has teeth and go for the jugular, but only manages to annoy with lots of attention-seeking jumping around and nipping at your ankles. He's rated by a bewildering number (where any number above zero can be considered bewildering) of Who fans and as far as I can tell he is convinced of his own pedigree.

As such, when you're met with a story that's as average, unambitious and unpretentious as The Lodger from a writer who's so spectacularly failed to impress in the past it's a refreshing change. It didn't appear to aspire to much beyond being fun. It certainly didn't aim for a decent, well-constructed plot. So as long as you weren't expecting anything of that sort, you were pretty safe from disappointment.

I guess one remedy for a writer too often bound up in his own cleverness is to write a story that's not even trying to be especially clever. What you're left with is a script that clearly delights in its characters and their situation. Arguably, a sitcom.

And like a sitcom, it works to maintain the status quo because, since the comedy arises out of the situation, the last thing you want is for the situation to change too dramatically. Of course, this is Doctor Who, so ultimately it has to change – the evil has to be defeated and so on, so we can move on to the next episode, the next situation.

But that's essentially the level The Lodger is on. Two Pints Of Vraxoin And A Packet Of Jelly Babies – so to speak.

And it's funnier than a lot of sitcoms. In being out of his element, the Doctor is in his element and whether it's playing interfering gooseberry to his landlord's relationship, building fantastic Scrapheap Challenge contraptions in his bedroom or swapping Black Orchid's cricket for a spot of footie, Matt Smith is hilarious. Even James Corden, who I'm not a fan of, is perfectly cast and there's a nice enough rom-com chemistry between him and Daisy Haggard as Sophie.

As a rom-com it's less successful. Many (all?) rom-coms blatantly identify which two characters are destined to kiss in the final reel, but they work (the ones that do anyway) by throwing in more barriers, setbacks and misunderstandings to romance than are in evidence here. It's fair enough, because there's only 45 minutes to play with and also the small matter of a Doctor Who story to tell.

In this case, a mysterious predatory presence living upstairs, luring innocent victims to its lair. Despite a decent stab at atmosphere and the creepy images of shadowy figures on the stairs, it's on this level that the episode is weakest. The identity of the menace – a TARDIS hunting for a pilot - is sufficiently novel, but the resolution is rushed, messy and not immediately clear.

Ship wants pilot in order to leave. This desire is overridden by combined psyches of two inveterate stay-at-homes. So ship self-destructs or simply vanishes - it's unclear: the Doctor says 'implode', the fx say disappear. I freely admit I could have it all wrong there, but explanations were hurriedly shouted under a crescendo of sparks and Murray Gold.

I'm all for throwaway lines, but you're not meant to actually throw them away. Least of all the ones that (perhaps) explain what's going on.

Worse than that, though, is the fact that this is a climax without any proper build-up. It's because of that sitcom need to maintain the status quo, but it means that in terms of the mystery there's no carefully measured peeling away of layer after layer. It's all just the one big reveal at the end when the Doctor and Craig charge up the stairs because Sophie is the latest in a long line of victims. Story progression prior to that is minimal, essentially limited to the spreading stain on the ceiling, which is little more than a flag to tell us that the crisis, whatever it actually is, is worsening.

All of which is incredibly critical of a story that, it must be said, I enjoyed watching.

My main gripe with it at the time of viewing was the manner in which Amy was horribly sidelined. It's fair enough that she needed to be out of the picture in order for the premise to work, but for preference I wouldn't have done that by placing her in a predicament where the character was largely hapless and helpless. The rest of the season has worked well to build her as a resourceful and resilient – and highly spirited – companion and here that's all rather carelessly tossed aside because the writer apparently considers it too unimportant to give the matter any thought.

It's half-arsed and the Bill & Ted-style timey-wimey 'plot twist' with her placing an ad (in red pen) in the local post office just so the Doctor can find the right house etc falls far short of mitigating the laziness.

Oh and the one-storey house at the end looked really odd. To the extent I did wonder if it wouldn't have made more sense to have the offending TARDIS appear as an out-of-place third storey, which is what first attracts the Doctor's attention to the mystery and in the resolution the building goes back to looking like every other house in the row...

Other than that, expectations played their part again, this time to the episode's benefit. I wasn't expecting a decent story from the pen of Gareth Roberts, so could sit back and enjoy the comedy. It's not particularly cutting edge stuff - the Doctor fails to fit in is hardly news – but it does deliver plenty of giggles.

It's a fish-out-of-water situation, and that generally involves a lot of flapping about before expiring feebly at the end. Enough said.

Chicken Little

2010-06-12T06:35:00.000-07:00

And now a welcome break from my opinions, as guest blogger, Zoe, airs and shares her views on Richard Curtis-penned Doctor Who episode:

Vincent And The Doctor has a very poignant, very touching message which has very little to do with the invisible bloodthirsty space chicken terrorising both the "mad" artist and Provencal ladies.

For those of us with loved ones in the creative industries, the sad truth is that recognition and popular success often has little to do with either talent or skill, and this is ultimately the story of Vincent Van Gogh, the tragic artist who, during his lifetime sold only one painting, to be "discovered" less than 20 years after his death (by self-inflicted gunshot wound at 37).

Whilst the causes of Vincent's real "madness" are far more complex than portrayed in the episode (his depressive moods were likely the downswings of bipolar disorder which he attempted to correct with nearly lethal doses of absinthe - a side effect of which is the tendency to see more yellowing tones or yellow spots - alternately, this may have been caused by one of his doctors treating his epilepsy with digitalis; visualising halos around objects as seen in The Starry Night would be consistent with lead poisoning from using lead based paints), we see through Amy's eyes how the story should have unfolded: once Vincent was shown that he was indeed a great and beloved painter - in the future - he was meant to cast aside self-doubt and and frustration at the small-mindedness of mid 19C society and happily paint into old age. And although the story did not show Vincent's all too quick spiral from elation at his eventual appreciation to punctual suicide, one cannot imagine it as separate from the crash-landing to the status quo, where drinks must be paid for, and anyone who considers buying a Van Gogh must surely be laughed out of town.

This sobering message aside, I urge anyone slaying their own invisible creative bloodthirsty chickens, or creative demons, take Amy's lesson. Somewhere, someday, someone will appreciate your work. Someone who makes the effort worthwhile. It may be someone you know, but someone who, because they are not a publisher or agent, doesn't have a ... valued opinion. Or it may be most of the world, but in the future. Or it might be most of the world, just in ten years' time.

If there is any lesson we can take from the Doctor, it is that things happen in their own time, not when we want them to. Don't let the invisible chicken win. Keep creating as though you know your work will be valuable one day, whether you will live to see it or not. It is the only way to live. Make Amy proud.

But as for that chicken...

The chicken has it's pluses and minuses. On the plus side, it's an engrossing way to get the Doctor and Amy into Vincent's life, to put him in danger, that just going for a visit with Amy's favourite painter wouldn't have done. The design was imaginative, but ridiculous, so I suppose that's a plus and a minus. And the big minus is in its demise. A little tear-jerker moment when they realise they've just murdered a, well, admittedly a killer alien monster, but a blind, frightened killer alien monster, who was just shredding local girls out of its own terror (which begs the question, then why didn't it respond to the Doctor speaking so kindly to it?). There's a moment of pathos when they all feel guilty, then the moment passes and there are no real consequences of what they obviously feel, in retrospect, was a rash act. And also, I hesitate to point out, no clean up. I mean, surely it is even more important to dispose of the body when the corpse is enormous and invisible. Imagine someone coming into the chapel and running into it?

So, in summary, a beautiful story about a complex and tortured man, stunning visuals, excellent use of Amy, extra 100 points for Bill Nighy's cameo, but no extra credit for the invisible bloodthirsty space chicken.

Z

Flat Earth

2010-06-10T06:59:00.000-07:00

I've said it before (quite recently too) and I'll say it again: if you want a decent rule of thumb for what makes a good Doctor Who story, you could do worse than 'something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue' (where blue is just a handy metaphor for mood/atmosphere). It's that special blend of the familiar and the original that, to my mind, makes for the best stories, the ones that endure and lodge themselves in the imagination for years. If you get the balance right.

Unfortunately, something old, something borrowed, something borrowed, something borrowed and precious little new is not going to do it. If The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood leaves any lasting impression at all, I'll be surprised. Which, given the two-parter's inability – with a single (arc-related) exception - to surprise in any other respect, seems unlikely.

Was it rubbish? Well, it wasn't a complete landfill, but for me it qualifies as the poorest offering of this season so far. As with Victory Of The Daleks, the scale (haha) of disappointment is inevitably measured against expectations and a revisit of Doctor Who And The Silurians territory, one of my all-time favourite DW stories, is saddled with the burden of high promise. Truth to tell, the anticipation was tempered by the knowledge that Chris Chibnall (of Torchwood 'fame') would be scripting the episodes and the trailered glimpses of a new brand of Silurians who looked a lot more ordinary.

With optimism duly kept in check - after a return from a rather lovely holiday - I sat down to watch the two episodes back to back and found a story that fell spectacularly short. Sadly, it was for the most part a bit flat and dull.

It's almost a cybernetic reconstruction of an old story, with all its complex organs removed and replaced with functional mechanical parts, along with an artificial heart. Not content to retread And The Silurians, it stops to riff on Inferno (drilling project reaching to the depths of the Earth), The Green Death (infection of popular alien hue) and The Daemons (energy barrier seals off village from rest of world) along the way.

Within its scenario, it does at least succeed in generating a degree of tension in the first part, with the ground swallowing people up, the impending menace of monsters making their way towards the surface and the flitting of shadowy figures about the graveyard. But it never really conveys any sense of a global threat in the way that And The Silurians does, with its widespread plague. Unlike The Green Death and The Daemons, it doesn't even manage to give us the sense of a community under threat. Probably because the village that's been targeted has a current population of about four.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for small-scale threats focused on a handful of characters in isolated locations – Horror Of Fang Rock is another favourite of mine, for example. But this story doesn't have the predatory suspense and tension necessary to pull that off. It appears to want the best of both worlds, and although it shows us a vast reptilian army in stasis, it never properly evolves to extend its scope of menace beyond the regulars and limited guest cast.

And by 'limited' I only mean in terms of numbers, because to be fair the performances are pretty much all better than the script warrants. But nobody in particular shines. Meera Siyal is good, dependable guest star material but her character feels a bit sketched and generic. It's a nice little bonus to have Stephen Moore in the mix, throwing in a spot of voice-over to accompany a shot of the Earth and adding a dash of Hitch-Hikers nostalgia. But at the same time, it feels odd, thrown in at the start of the second episode – and then not really satisfactorily tail-ended. Wouldn't it have been better to use that device (albeit better-written) to frame the entire thing? Perhaps giving us at least the illusion that there was some point to it all.

Because pointless is what it felt like to me.

As well as the need to be great, it really needed to have something new to offer. All it had in the new department was bio-manipulated soil (fair enough) and a lashing lizard-tongue for the Silurians. Which, okay, was a reasonably interesting accessory, but not remotely as interesting as the third eye which they lost. Indeed, this branch of the Silurian race is as ordinary and dull as I'd feared and instead of the creative vision inherent in the original Silurian (and Sea Devil) masks are reduced to your bulk-standard Star Trek reptilians. I'm not averse to a change in design, I just would have liked to have seen more evidence of inventiveness applied. It's as big a misfire, albeit in different ways, as the re-modelled Daleks in Victory. I gather these Silurians may have owed their humanised appearance to budgetary constraints, but back in the days of old man-in-a-suit Doctor Who monsters I was always led to believe that tight finances were one of the things that inspired the fx experts and creature creators to be more creative. Lady Gaga looked more alien in a green scaly outfit in her Bad Romance video. (It you don't know the outfit I'm referring to, it appears at around the 3:30 mark). These Kermit-coloured Klingons completely fail to convince.

When one of them - Alaya - is captured, the story hands itself an opportunity for a major twist, as she declares she knows one of the humans will kill her and she knows which of them will do the deed. Then blows it, by it turning out to be exactly the same one you thought it would be. It's that level of predictability that compounds the (unforgivable) averageness of it all.

There are, of course, some compensations to be found in the mix, snatches of amusing dialogue here and there, for instance, and even if it lacks the sharpness of a Moffat script, say, Matt Smith continues to prove his credentials as the best Doctor since Davison. His lecturing a desperate mother on morality doesn't sit quite right next to his declaration of love for the Silurian vivisectionist, but that's the script's fault for not letting the Doctor in on the scientist's habit of dissecting living human specimens. But heck, even his subjects appear to forgive a bit of surgical probing a tad too readily for my liking.

Gillan's still great, even if the signs are minimal that Amy values Rory any more since making her Choice in the previous episode and, not for the first time, it seems she only appreciates him when he's gone. Which makes her look like a slow learner. More attentive script editing could have taken care to show better character/relationship development there. Meanwhile, Rory is as entertaining and engaging a character as ever, whether it's the business with the ring, being mistaken for a plainclothes detective or being left in charge of the group on the surface.

His death, when it comes, is the two-parter's only genuine shocker and there's real tragedy in Amy's battle (which she loses) to retain her memories of him. It's the first time in the two episodes my emotions are engaged. Then, of course, there's the follow-up whammy when the Doctor reveals the piece of wreckage he fished from the fissure. Okay, that last revelation wasn't totally unexpected, but it still delivers a pleasant oooer tingle. And the fact is, it's all so much more dramatic than anything that precedes it. (My only concern at this stage is that this, coupled with Rory's demise, points towards a big Undo at the climax of the season... but I guess we can worry about that when the time comes.) It's not all Mr Chibnall's fault then, because clearly this critical arc material needed to be squeezed in and that takes charge of proceedings at story's end. In a better story though, it might not have dominated quite so much and with the materials handed to him, the writer really should have been able to deliver something that was at least equal to those closing events and not so easily overpowered.

As it is, the effect is rather like following a meal with one of those mouthwashes that practically makes your head explode. The taste of what went before is obliterated, but actually in this case it's no great loss, because the meal was mediocre.

Those rumbles? Not the Hungry Earth. That'll be me hankering for something a darn sight better and a good deal more substantial.

Judging Amy

2010-05-21T04:02:00.000-07:00

Star Trek: The Next Generation. DS9. Star Trek: Voyager. Stargate SG1. Heck, probably Andromeda for all I know. Name one of my least favourite sci-fi shows ever and they've probably done a scenario similar to Amy's Choice. Whether it's down to a holodeck malfunction, the empathic emissions of some overly amorous space cloud attempting to hump the Enterprise or a Gou'ahoohahould mussing with your head, you can rely on these is-it-real-or-is-it-a-dream situations being largely pointless at best. For one thing it's usually obvious which is which, so you're left waiting for the characters to wake up and snap out of it – assuming you haven't fallen asleep yourself.

In that regard, it's the same here. Amy's living in a quiet English village with a pony-tailed Rory and she's heavily preggers. And I mean not just a bun in the oven, but an entire Mr Kipling delivery truck. This is such a bizarre set of circumstances and such a big jump from last week, while the alternative situation – on board the TARDIS – slots comfortably in as a continuation, that there's never any doubt that the village setup is a dream. The only guessing game left for the viewer to play concerns the identity of the Dream Lord. For fans that means lots of potential for excited speculation: could it be the Master, an impish Omega, the Celestial Toymaker, a more twisted incarnation of Romana than we encountered in The Ancestor Cell, or Adric taking out his abandonment issues on the current TARDIS crew?

For my part, I only considered one of those possibilities seriously. Despite the absence of a chess set or Monopoly board (although I suppose these days most of his recreational entertainments would come in the form of apps on a Celestial iPhone) something about the Dream Lord's apparent nature and the rules of the game suggested the Toymaker to me. The notion seemed a bit of a random out-of-the-blue return, but even a relatively modest experience of Doctor Who will teach you there's no real telling what might strike a given showrunner as a good idea. Regardless, it soon became clear from the little clues (e.g. “There's only one person in the universe who hates me as much as you do.” and the focus on Amy) that there was something more personal about this – more personal than any of the possible enemies from the Doctor's past could account for. And I'm glad to say, I twigged to the twist a nice few minutes ahead of the reveal. I don't know about you, but I like it when that happens. That way the viewer gets the satisfaction of a story that kept them guessing and the satisfaction of being right. Always a good combination.

It's brilliantly judged, in fact. Simon Nye's script appears to be consciously playing on all that fan speculation and ultimately delivers an adversary who is 'none of the above' – no matter where our imaginations have run. And yet he gave us the big clue right up front, with the mysterious intruder dressed as the Doctor. If it had turned out to be any of the usual suspects I'd have been disappointed. As it is, it's entirely right for the story and it lends a fascinating insight into a darker and highly self-judgmental side of the Doctor's character. (Without it having to be the Valeyard putting him on trial.)

Next to that, the story's other big twist is, sadly, Star Trek-level poor. One aspect of it not being the Toymaker or whoever is that you need a root cause for the schism. No holodeck malfunctions here. No, in this one it's all down to a hansful of space pollen getting into the multiphasic plot generator. It's so weak that it's very rightly treated as a throwaway – literally, as the Doctor tosses it out the TARDIS doorway – and that saves it really. It's almost as if the script is saying, what does the cause matter when the effect has been this much fun? And I have to say, it makes a good case.

Although I'm not completely letting the episode off the hook for that, there's so much more to the story that leaves an enduring impression.

The comedy is priceless. Like The Vampires Of Venice this is laced with hilarious gags, but for my money it has something greater going for it in the darkness and substance department. The frantic and frequently funny scenes in zombie-pensioner land contrast beautifully with the dying TARDIS drifting in icy silence. More than that, the goings-on in the village are as sinister as you'd expect from Doctor Who, with eyestalks sprouting out of mouths making for seriously gross monster material and kids, no less, being reduced to piles of sand. And it all culminates in a powerfully emotional decision – the eponymous choice – that might be counted among the grimmest moments in the series.

This damaged young woman who grew up with Rory as a friend and has grown too accustomed to having him around, finally wakes up to her true feelings for him and realises, dream or no, she doesn't want to go on living without him. Cripes, that's heavy. If it wasn't couched in the midst of all the scenes of zimmer-frame chases and old grannies being whacked off of rooftops, it'd be too heavy for Saturday teatime viewing. As it is, it strikes a perfect counterpoint to the sinister-seniors slapstick.

Space pollen aside then, there's bold, deft writing here conspiring with some top-notch performances and great direction to breathe plenty of new life into this familiar scenario. (They even manage to get Murray Gold to keep quiet where it counts.) Toby Jones' coldly comic portrayal makes you wish he was a recurring villain. Matt Smith continues to be a delight to watch as the Doctor, from the subtler touches to the out-and-out clowning (on which, highlights have to include his drunken stagger as he tries to stay awake and cupping his hands ready to catch Amy's baby). Likewise, Gillan does it all, giving us a quirky, quippy Amy who's both gutsy and vulnerable, sensitive and fiery-tempered. You can believe the bitterness she aims at the Doctor cuts him deep. Meanwhile Arthur Darvill sells Rory as a genuinely sympathetic likeable character as well as a grade-A buffoon – he's the Roy Castle of New Who.

Arguably, there's one other weak point in the way the Doctor blows up the TARDIS, convinced that too is a dream based on the idea of a cold star being nonsense. The concept is not at all un-Who and one can imagine an alternative ending to Planet Of The Daleks, to name one example, where the scientific improbability of a tropical jungle planet with a core of molten ice prompts the Doctor to end it all for himself and Jo Grant. I'm guessing now the series will have to exercise caution when incorporating some of the more fantastical concepts.

But the tongue is firmly in the cheek at that point. When you enjoy something this much, it's impossible to pick serious holes. I think this fits that old rule of thumb of mine about the recipe for good Doctor Who: old, new, borrowed, blue. Which, I guess, goes double for pre-wedding adventures in time and space.

Pesce Al Dente

2010-05-15T06:00:00.000-07:00

Only a week or two ago I was browsing in the local bookshop and was dismayed to see a whole shelf full of vampire novels from different authors, different publishers, all with similarly styled covers. Like clones they were. Spawn of Twilight, we'll call them, although I'm not sure if Twilight was the first so much as the one that just happened to soar higher than the rest. It's a tad depressing for authors who are constantly striving to break into the publishing world with something a little more creative and original. Fair dues to those vampire authors, for all I know, many of them had put a brilliantly fresh and different spin on their bloodsucking creatures of the night, but the fact is I wasn't remotely tempted to pick up any of the books and read because their publishers (a breed of people often known to express concerns that they 'don't know how to make [insert name of original work here] stand out in a competitive market') had made them *all look the same*.

But I'll climb down off my soap box because I'm meant to be here reviewing The Vampires Of Venice and soap and canals just don't mix. Too many bubbles. Curiously enough though, bubbly is exactly what this latest Doctor Who story manages to be. For all that I'd reached the stage where I thought if I saw another vampire I'd scream, this histhorrorical romp was never short of entertaining.

Perhaps in recognition of the perennial surfeit of haemovores, the story works a little too hard at giving them their sci-fi twist. But it deserves points for trying and the creature design (more fish-headed lobster-thing than 'fish from space') is an interesting one, with even the traditional vampiric fangs lent a more piranha-like look. The perception filter is a familiar concept to fans, of course, many of whom have one of their own – and they are apt to malfunction at the slightest knock. Joking aside though, it's a decent enough Doctor Who plot device and works well here up to the point where Rosanna (played superbly by Helen McCrory) removes it and slips into the water while retaining her human form. It's possible she fiddles with it beforehand to ensure that it somehow maintains her appearance remotely – thus facilitating her suicide – but it's not clear.

Similarly on first viewing I had some initial concerns that the effects of daylight on the Venetian vamps were too selective, but second time around I realise it's all a matter of brightness and in that respect the story is reasonably consistent. When they're out parading the streets and piazzas there's generally some cloud cover or they're shaded from direct sunlight by the buildings and/or lacey parasols or veils. That said, timing seems to have been fudged during the attempted rescue of Isabella, as our heroes venture into House Calvieri in the dead of night and don't appear to spend long enough inside for it to be morning when they emerge. Still, if it's for the convenience of the plot it's also for Isabella's inconvenience and the closing of that door in the Doctor's face (never mind the added electrocution) has genuine dramatic punch as well as investing Guido (Lucian Msamati) with convincing motivation for his own ultimate self-sacrifice.

It's one of a handful of moments that keep this from being entirely light and superficial. Which is not to underestimate the appeal of the superficial. The combination of a gorgeous setting and that almost Merchant Ivory sumptuousness you tend to get with BBC period drama is a visual treat. (And if we're permitted to be a little shallower for a moment, so are the vampire belles of the Calvieri school.)

What this story really thrives on is its humour. The Doctor's - and Amy's - sheer delight at the prospect of facing vampires sets the tone (and both Matt Smith and Karen Gillan are clearly revelling in their roles), succeeding in pushing the scare potential firmly into the background. The story does have a reasonable go at generating a dose or two of fear, notably with Amy's experience in the 'green room'. And once again they strike the right balance for a companion, allowing her to be brave enough to get herself in trouble, gutsy and defiant when she's in it but also allowing her to be genuinely frightened when she's helpless, strapped in the chair and at the mercy of Rosella's fangs. (Isabella's death would have been scarier if she hadn't been narrating so much - “I'm Venetian, we can all swim. Something's touched my leg. They're all around me. Glug.” etc.) Laughs are the main order of the day though. It has a lively wit coursing through its veins and the jokes keep coming, from the Doctor bursting out of the cake (saw that coming, but it's not so much that he does it, it's what he says afterwards) to his finding the off switch on the alien weather control device. Even the simple visual gag of having Guido in the stag party sweat shirt is comic genius. Ninety percent of Rory's scenes are hilarious and those that aren't are because he's meant to be serious, levelling some heavy accusations at the Doctor. As misguided as I thought adding a boyfriend to the TARDIS crew was, I think he'll be a welcome addition.

There's just enough real drama to keep it meaningful and the contrast drawn between the Doctor as last of his race and Rosanna trying to save hers underlines it all effectively without over-egging the point. Their face-to-face chat is, unfortunately, one of those largely expositional conversations too common in Who, but it's played well and it calls to mind the similar meeting of two quality actors – David Tennant and Anthony Stewart Head - in Toby Whithouse's previous offering, School Reunion. I would have preferred a greater sense of the alien culture, some better idea of what the universe was losing, before Rosanna throws herself to the fishes and seals her race's fate, but it's just a feature of these 45-minute episodes that there's rarely room to make as much of certain elements as would be ideal.

Along the way there are some nice directorial touches: Rosanna and son describing different orbits around Isabella at the beginning, as though emulating the orrery-like device the Doctor has to disarm at the end; the shot of mummy's-boy Francesco sprawled in his mother's lap after she's done hydrating, evocative of Shakespearian tragedy; and Francesco, again, frozen in mid-dive as the camera cuts away before he strikes the water. A few artistic flourishes that show considerable thought and attention to detail.

They also make up for the slightly dodgy shot of the Doctor climbing the steeple at the end. Maybe the CGI wasn't quite up to it, maybe it's that the framing of the shot that reminds me of Batman and Robin scaling buildings in the old Adam West TV series, but something about it fails to convince. It's a small enough thing and I think there are bigger problems that aren't really to do with this story per se but are an issue of context.

The Doctor telling Rosanna that time can't be changed strikes a distinctly odd note, after making such a big deal of his conclusion, that time can be rewritten, the previous week. (In a musical scale that odd note would go something like, Doh! Ray! Me! Fah! So! La! Te! Huh?) Fair enough that Doctor Who has never really established a firm set of rules for time travel - generally it's 'whatever suits the story at any given time'. But if the stories are right next to each other and you're (apparently) building your arc around one particular principle, then you might expect some effort to have them vaguely agree. I'm sure it can be rationalised away, but for the moment it makes little sense. Which would bring us back to D'oh! I suppose. I've heard Who fans before complaining about magic in Who, but to my mind we may as well have spellcraft - and the purely supernatural - as variable internal logic. But then, I'm completely at a loss as to how the urgent mission to fix Amy - by playing matchmaker to her and Rory - will translate into repairing time and space, restoring Amy's memories of previous Dalek invasions and returning ducks to the village pond. So that's probably my perception filter going wonky. That or I'm a bit thick.

By episode end, it's fair to say that, as much as I am tired of creatures that you would think must have been sucked dry by now, I'm persuaded there was probably a better story that could have been told under the same title. The words The Vampires Of Venice incline me towards a darker tale, for instance, but here they opted for a romp that, minor niggles aside, was a lot of fun. And on that level it delivers very satisfactorily.

Not completely solid then. But firm, with just enough bite to keep it interesting.

Romancing The Stone

2010-05-08T04:33:00.000-07:00

My love for any Doctor Who story is rarely unconditional. There's generally something that could have been done better, be it in the writing, the production, the acting, whatever. Of all the 21st-century Who we've seen so far, the Time Of Angels/Flesh And Stone two-parter came pretty damned close to winning my unqualified admiration and affection. In fact, taken on its own, the first episode was there. I could have confined my review to something like “I absolutely love this”, those who didn't like it could have said, “Why don't you marry it then” and that would have been that.

But you know how these Doctor Who romances can be. There's the honeymoon period where you can't keep your eyes off the episode. Then you start to notice their annoying little habits and the whole thing falls apart. There's nothing quite like a two-parter to highlight this, since – with few exceptions – the second episode fails to deliver on the promise of the first. And as with two-headed beings and self-marriage, divorce can be messy.

The Time Of Angels/Flesh And Stone is something of an oddity in that it does reveal some annoying habits and lets the side down in the second part, but somehow still managed to leave me on a high. If I could draw a graph of the highs and lows, the good and bad, then average out the peaks and troughs, I'd end up with a very impressive peak. It's an imperfect gem.

It's the sort of thing a jeweller might appraise, pointing out its serious flaws, and tell me it's only worth fifty quid, but ultimately it doesn't matter because for me it has a great deal of sentimental value.

Did it dazzle me? Definitely. Did it blind me to its faults? Far from it.

That said, we have already established that I loved the first episode unconditionally. I mean, really. The buzz of excitement at end of part one was palpable and as far as I'm aware I hadn't inadvertently electrified my sofa. It was a great mix of sci-fi action-adventure and archaeological mystery/horror laced with creepy atmosphere and suspense. River Song (Alex Kingston) kicks off in fine Jane Bond mode before trading her gown for camo and becoming a sort of thinking man's Lara Croft, Iain Glen blends empathy and authority as Bishop of the Church Of Ghost Recon, a Weeping Angel pays supremely chilling homage to Ringu, and sparkling dialogue keeps flowing in a script that gallops along but isn't afraid to ease up on the accelerator where it counts, allowing us to properly enjoy those suspenseful turns. And it all culminates in a singular, exceptional cliffhanger.

Loved it, loved it, loved it.

The challenge then was to contain myself for a week and the following Saturday, mixed in with the anticipation, was the question: had it set the bar too high for itself?

Are you on the edge of your seat yet? Then we'll begin.

Part Two came out of the gates running, with a great flip side to the cliffhanger. To be fair, at first I wasn't sure about the sudden jump cut but in retrospect it's obvious that any attempt to show the transition from floor to ceiling would have robbed us of what is a terrific reveal of everyone standing upside down on the ship's hull. What follows, with the chase through the interior is a Weeping Angels riff on Aliens. It's so good I would have welcomed a bit more of it: run for it, break through a bulkhead, seal it behind, run, bulkhead, seal it behind. (While Amy continues her mysterious and troubling countdown.) But no matter, because it soon emerges – in another 'blinding' reveal – that the Angels are not the major threat. Ooooooo-er.

Yes, the crack is back.

It's clear we're in crucial arc storyline territory and it's nice to see it playing such a key factor at this stage in the series, rather than just another hint. Something to make us sit up and pay closer attention, not that our attention is in danger of flagging in this story.

Pace does drop off a little here and there, primarily for the conversations between the Doctor and Angel Bob. It's a by-product of Moffat's having created an enemy whose motives are not easily shown to the audience and have to be communicated/explained. I think I would have opted for more deduction as opposed to the sit-down chats, but in its favour it does build in the Angels' need for the bodies – or part thereof – of their victims and their previous MO – that of zapping victims back in time – might not have constituted a sufficient threat for the purposes of this scenario. To say nothing of the fact that it could have led to a more complicated cat's-cradle plot where even the Grand Moff, with all his love of wibbly wobbly timey wimey, might have had trouble keeping track of all the threads.

As it stands, there's enough in this to make you go, 'Hmm...' as you wonder if it all quite works. It's a potent menace, the crack, with its power to erase everyone in its path from existence, but there are instances where it prompts the question of whether the consequences have been properly followed through. If, say, troopers 'Bill' and 'Ted' are wiped from existence, wouldn't the Church Of Ghost Recon have still fielded the same number of men on the mission and so 'replacements' would miraculously appear? Similarly if the guy who handed Amy the spare communicator never existed, how could he have given her the communicator? And if the Angels never existed, then wouldn't all their victims – apart from the ones who also never existed – reappear, although presumably elsewhere because clearly there would have been no need to dispatch the mission in the first place...

But why risk brain meltdown as long as you're enjoying the show, right? Best just to accept that the crack – since it is a fracture in time and space – does a very messy job of erasing. Rubs out the portrait of the individual but still leaves those smudgy pencil marks around it.

None of the timey wimey stuff even registers on my critical radar next to the two (count them) problems relating to the Weeping Angels themselves.

Now, this story gives us everything a returning monster story should: brings everything to the table that made them a great monster in the first place and adds things to the mix, changes things up so that we're not just doing a retread. All well and bloody fantastic.

But Part Two features one change up too many for my tastes. “Whatever you do, don't blink” was pretty much the tag line for Blink and the Doctor gives Amy the same warning in Part One of this story. In the second episode that's revised to “Make them think you can see them.” Which, on top of making no sense, makes a nonsense of that original 'tag line'. Presumably the Angels previously knew when you were blinking, so - if their awareness plays any part - why oh why oh why would they be unable to detect when your eyes were closed for a prolonged period? Also the Angels ought to be aware that Amy's keeping her eyes closed – they're very aware of what's going on with her, to the point of making her speak her countdown (“for fun”) to the moment when the Angel within took over. The Doctor throws in some half-assed explanation that the Angels are confused and scared and not especially interested in Amy, but it's unconvincing at best. Sorry, but this was, to my mind, as weak and feeble a plot contrivance as any employed by Rusty. I rather fear that Moffat was so in love with the fairytale imagery of Amy fumbling through the dark forest, unable to see, surrounded by Angels that he had to come up with a fudge to make it work. Well, it doesn't.

I'm not sure what would. And usually when you hit a stumbling block like that in your plotting, it's better to stop being so precious about a scene and sacrifice it in favour of something that works. In Blink the Angels can't look at each other, so what if Amy's last line of defence was to open her eyes? Some sort of stalemate could be achieved, but at the risk of Amy succumbing to Angelhood. So we see her start to turn to stone... but she's teleported out by River just in time. Or something like that.

Ah. but alas, Amy used up her full countdown, didn't she. And then some. In a useless bit of editing/direction, when she can only open her eyes for a second she stands there staring at the crack for (in TV terms) ages. What the hell was the director thinking? It says a second right there in the script, did he think no-one would notice the disparity? More ham-fisted than a space pig.

The good news is that there I've exhausted my reservoir of criticisms. Well, it's more of a pool really. A puddle. The word count I've spent on them is disproportionate and probably paints a more negative picture than intended. In a bad story such problems might amount to no more than a couple of beans in a hill (of beans). But here, after such a startlingly brilliant beginning it seems incredibly sloppy.

Ultimately though, for all their significance relative to the surrounding quality, they are only glitches and to its credit the story still comes out on top. I could easily spend another page or more rattling on about this shining line or that magical moment. (In fact, I started to cite some favourites, then I realised I was going on too long.) The two episodes are absolutely loaded with them. To the extent that to list them would be tantamount to reproducing the script right here.

It's true that Alex Kingston must take her share of the blame for my enthusiasm, but River's return is handled at least as well as that of the Angels. Same character, with more added to the mix and a few more pieces of the puzzle – of her past/future with the Doctor – are revealed. Those revelations are fed to us in nice bite-sized pieces throughout – from Amy's questions about her being the Doctor's wife, through to the Bishop's asides to River and his parting warning to the Doctor, to River's final admission. Of course, I can't help feeling that 'hints' like “A good man. A hero to many” from the Bishop and “The best man I ever knew” from River are too blatantly meant to make us think 'Doctor' (it's hardly Derren-Brown-level power of suggestion) that there has to be more to it than that. There's plenty of emotion behind the look River gives the Doctor at that point, but it doesn't strike me as quite the confession of a murderess to her victim. If it does turn out to be that she kills the Doctor, that wouldn't be a twist and one thing I am confident of is that Mr Moffat does like his twists. I'm partial to them myself and it adds a further note of fascination to an impressive double helping of Doctor Who.

My only other concerns pertain to the potential impact on future episodes. “Time can be rewritten” comes dangerously close to an attempt to justify some sort of reset switch at season's end. Please, no. There's a clue that there's something clever at work (a surely intentional continuity error involving the Doctor's jacket) and I just hope the Doctor turns out to have something more than a big 'Undo' up his sleeve.

And then there's the romance issue. I was worried this might surface after Amy's talk of “fancying someone you know you shouldn't” in Victory Of The Daleks. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with the idea of a Doctor-companion romance in itself; it's just that I feel that goose has been well and truly killed, plucked, cooked and served up too often already. It's tired and old and a platonic, best-pals relationship will feel like a refreshing change.

So, within this story, Amy throwing herself at the Doctor is fine. (And, after all, the girl has been dreaming about this guy for years then when he shows up, in the midst of all that exhilaration of saving the world, she gets to check out his arse.) What it leads to is a cracking, hilarious scene and the Doctor's reaction is priceless. At this stage it appears to suggest an intention to get those urges out of the system and move on past it. Amy's damaged and the Doctor aims to fix her – without a quick servicing. Which works for me, because I really felt that the Doctor and Amy dynamic was developing nicely as it was and with the best will in the world to do things differently I think there are a limited number of spins you can put on the Doctor-companion lurve cycle.

As you can probably tell, I'm enjoying my current romance with Doctor Who and it'd be too ironic if love was the thing that got in the way.

New Model Army

2010-05-01T06:07:00.000-07:00

The Second World War. Cabinet War Room. Bombers incoming. Winston Churchill gives the order to roll out the new secret weapon. Someone pushes a little model Dalek into play on the map. Cue vortex and titles.

It's a great opening. But while the Daleks conquered stairs a long while ago, what they really need to tackle next is the troubling tendency for their stories to go downhill.

Ironically, Victory Of The Daleks improves on a rewatch. With expectations removed from the equation, the scale of disappointment is no longer measured against promise and we stand a better chance of assessing it on its own merits. Unfortunately, it's impossible to set aside the story's potential entirely and the basic ingredients should have added up to utter, dazzling blow-you-away brilliance. Indeed, everything in the first ten or fifteen minutes is fine and there's no reason to believe it's not going to live up to that potential.

Ian McNeice turns in a wonderful Winston and it's great to see Bill Paterson (Bracewell). The Ironsides' entrance on the rooftops is a terrific moment considering that we know exactly what it is before it's emerged from behind the sandbags. The Daleks look good too, all khaki-ed up, sporting kit bags and a Union Jack. Smith and Gillan are a pleasure to watch, although I am left with a feeling they're doing their best with a script that's sometimes working too hard at keeping the Doctor-Companion dialogue buzzing. It's lacking much of the natural spark of Moffat's scripts so far this series. That said, there are flashes of brilliance (Amy: “I love a squaddie.”) and I absolutely love the scene where the Doctor is poring over those blueprints, when we get a close-up on Matt Smith as an Ironsides Dalek glides quietly by in the background.

But that is really the height of the menace we're treated to in this story and, similarly, we're shown the beginnings of a connection between Amy and an anxious WAAF officer but nothing comes of it beyond a truly odd “oh dear, she's lost her fella” moment near the end. I'm all for a subtler touch, but this feels like the most token of nods to the fact that, yes, this is all good fun but people also died in the war, don't you know.

Perhaps it will all be revealed as crucial arc material, like the cracks, and then I will look a fool. Right now though it just looks like a crack. Maybe some leftover from a lengthier script that had to be cut down? I do think this story could have benefited from being longer – a two-parter would have given its setting and its ideas more room to breathe. More could have been made of the Daleks' menace and the Doctor's efforts to get at their true purpose.

As things are, those scenes are reduced to some (somewhat repetitious) declarations on the Doctor's part and Smith's hatred for the Daleks is more subdued than Eccleston's when he was faced with his old foe in Dalek. It only really comes alive when he starts to bash the Dalek with a giant spanner, but that is, for me, a magically insane desperate Doctorish thing to do and as he tries to provoke the thing into killing him you know he hasn't thought this through. Even Amy starts to worry at this point that the Daleks might be dangerous.

The Doctor wants to know what the Daleks want. We do too. Careful what you wish for. The revelation that this has all been to secure the Doctor's testimony still strikes me as weak. No two-part expansion would alter that. Fair enough that the Daleks would lay a trap for the Doctor, but I think they ought to have been after something more than a reference.

That's not where the story falls down. Just sort of stumbles and keeps on going. No, what trips it up more effectively than a scarf in the path of a rampaging Kastrian, is that we then have the Doctor racing off to an expository conversation with the Daleks on board their ship. It's almost worth it for the sheer unadulterated joy of the sight of him keeping his enemy at bay with a Jammy Dodger. Like it says in the Mastercard ads, priceless. But at the end of the day, it is just talking and explaining the plot. For a fair proportion of the episode's 45-minute runtime. And biscuity self-destruct device aside, that's not very satisfying.

But wait, it's all building to something. Something BIG.

The door opens. Smoke pours forth and through it something is set to emerge...

Yes, tonight, Matthew, I am going to be a Dalek! Try to ignore the fact that I look like a new model Renault Megane. (As soon as more footage is available, expect YouTube videos to the tune of I See You Baby (Shakin That Ass)) Focus instead on my pals and delight in the news that we're available in a range of exciting colours. There's a certain retro-chunkiness to them that reminds me of the Cushing-movie Daleks, there are also shades of the Apple design school. They're big, but you're more likely to be tempted to take them out for a test drive than consider them a convincing threat. This is what Hate looks like. Would sir like his Hate in Colgate white, Post Office red or canary custard yellow?

Questions arise as to why these new Daleks don't simply gun the Doctor down (once they've seen through his Jammy Dodger ruse), but that kind of basic failure is nothing unusual for a Doctor Who monster and this lot do at least take some pot shots at the Time Lord as he runs for his TARDIS. It's not remotely a factor next to the credibility-stretch that's awaiting us.

Spitfires in space, I have no problem with. It's a great slice of spectacle. I also love the fact that it's Amy who is once again instrumental in the resolution. But I'm left with only one hand to applaud all that, since the other one is needed for scratching my head as I wonder how the hell they got three WWII fighters spaceworthy and kitted out with laser cannons in ten minutes.

All right the time frame is not precisely pinned down. But the enemy bombers' ETA is clearly given as ten minutes, Amy and Churchill race to Bracewell to discuss options, we're given no indication that the Professor has anything more than blueprints at this stage. Let's allow that the weapons are Dalek guns (which we know he has available), that he does in fact have (three?) gravity bubble generator prototypes and that the bombers are reported to be dealing damage to the capital, hence the interval has been perhaps a bit more than ten minutes. But seriously, even then, how long would it take to fit that tech to the three Spitfires, launch them and for the planes to complete their climb into space?

I'm all for switching off my brain and just enjoying some mindless entertainment, but this kind of fudge switches my brain back on and jumps me right out of the action. So by the time we're dealing with the oblivion continuum device, aka the walking talking bomb, I'm unfortunately in a more cynical frame of mind. Despite that, it's not the logic of the disarming process that bothers me - convincing Bracewell of his humanity might make no sense but it is a very Doctor Who-ish way to disarm a bomb. It's the way the scene is realised, with poor Bill Paterson reduced to blubbing feebly on the floor while a game of Simon (no relation of mine) plays out on his chest. Subsequently letting him head off in search of his beloved (invented?) Dorabella, with all those Dalek tech secrets in his head, is weak and just highlights the loose end without properly tying it up.

In the midst of it all there are, on top of the positives already cited, other nice touches – Daleks serving tea, Churchill's “Keep Buggering On”, and use of the call sign “Broadsword to Danny Boy”, from Where Eagles Dare, which serves as a nod to all war movies. It's not all bad and it's by no means the first Doctor Who story to have a big dumb ending.

Casting my mind back to 2005, it was at this point – the third episode in the new series – that I felt that Doctor Who had properly arrived. Impressions of The Unquiet Dead faded somewhat on a rewatch, to be honest, but there were qualities to it that made it feel like a step up from Rose and The End Of The World. As a side note, it troubled me slightly that this series appeared to be subscribing to a pattern – contemporary Earth introductory story, far future spaceship-based adventure, pseudo-historical penned by Mark Gatiss. 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' is fine, but falling into formula would be dreadful. But formula is not the problem here.

I'm not anti-Gatiss the way some Who fans seem to be and although his second story for New Who, The Idiot's Lantern, struck me as distinctly average, I was looking forward to this one. And as much as we try to set them aside, expectations do play a part. But on a second viewing, it's a simple case of the whole thing failing to add up to sum of its parts. For all that a lot of Dalek stories aren't very good, the opportunity to write for them is a gift, as far as I'm concerned. Then when you throw in Churchill and, yes, even Spitfires in space, you really do owe it to yourself and your audience to deliver something really special.

At the end of the day, this is shiny but, overall, only okay.

This, I guess, is what disappointment looks like. At least it comes in a range of exciting colours.