Siver Metal Lover

Apart from An Unearthly Child, obviously, I always considered Spearhead From Space as the best introductory story of any Doctor. Since my earliest clear memory of Doctor Who is an image from Ambassadors Of Death, Spearhead, being a teeny bit before my time, must have impressed me at some later date, whether on VHS or UK Gold. Robot, Tom Baker’s debut, on the other hand, was very much a part of my childhood, so you can take as granted a certain degree of bias when I say it’s very, very good. It’s not, though, as good as Spearhead.

Where Spearhead, in heralding the new era of an earthbound Doctor, pays homage to Quatermass, Robot goes digging in the vaults of Isaac Asimov for its inspiration and emerges smelling of something like an Avengers episode. It’s a pleasant enough scent to pick up and it’s really no surprise, given Terrance Dicks’ writing background. It’s also King Kong, of course, and in that respect demonstrates all the ambition so typical of Doctor Who – “Hey, we’ve got four whole pounds to spend on the next story. Let’s do an SF take on King Kong!” – that we’ve come to know and love. It’s, as always, the sort of gumption you have to applaud and admire, and it’s also the sort of gumption that should brace you for the inevitable few scenes that might not be quite up to visual scratch.

Let’s get all that out of the way first. For the maximum Kong effect, Terrance’s script calls for his titular Robot to become a giant one. So right there you know we can expect plenty of paper cut-out CSO work where, of course, we will see the join. To really test the limits of the production, Terrance also calls for a tank and that’s the part I remember as being embarrassingly poor, because the armoured fighting vehicle they wheel on is an Action Man tank, and I knew, because I wanted one. Oddly enough though, that was not the worst part: that honour goes to the Sarah Jane doll and, as much as I might now want one of those, flopping about in the claw of the Robot it makes for a very unconvincing visual effect.

All that, however, is towards the end. And fortunately this is a story that begins really well. Originally we had the wonder of the recent regeneration and a slight nervousness hinged on how we were going to take to this new Doctor. All that’s history now, but at least we still get to marvel at the energy Tom Baker puts into his arrival on the scene. There’s a Marxist (by which I mean, Harpo) dynamism to the man and when coupled with some great dialogue (this Harpo speaks), we get a swift portrait of an energetic madman who’s apt to go careening off in all manner of unexpected directions. But it’s not long before he’s firmly establishing himself in the role and putting his authoritative stamp on the situation – in fact, I think I can pin it down to the moment when, after an appropriately bizarre sequence of costume changes, he tells the Brigadier to “try cultivating a sense of urgency”.

At the same time, you have this mechanical menace stalking about the country, raiding this top secret facility and that. Aided and abetted by the stalking menace in the soundtrack and some effective use of the Robot’s POV, these scenes could only have been more effective with a touch better acting from the Robot’s victims. Although the guard dog does a fair job.

You also have Sarah Jane Smith engaging in a spot of honest-to-goodness, intrepid journalism – uncovering a conspiracy as well as landing herself in peril. SJS is no martial artist, but there’s still a touch of Emma Peel to her role as she zips about in her sports car, investigating the government-sponsored Thinktank, who are making use of top secret technology – just far enough on the wrong side of credibility – for their own nefarious ends. This Eau d’Avengers is further supplemented with a brief but amusing splash of Harry Sullivan, showing up – undercover – in John Steed mode and part of me has to pause and reflect that it’s a bit of a shame they didn’t capitalize on that angle a bit further. That would have been huge fun.

Still, what we get is fun too, with the story unfolding at a fair pace, showing off its Asimovian and Kong ancestry with pride: showing off the ‘monster’ in a theatre and, in the absence of an Empire State Building, having the giant Robot deposit Sarah on the nearest rooftop. It plays faster and looser with the Asimov side of things, building the robot’s programming around the Three Laws but, ironically, turns to scientists for its villains and ends up revisiting the very trend in Sci-Fi that Asimov, in devising his laws, was doing his best to steer away from. Complete with Mad Professor and a robot that destroys its creator. Heading up the Nazi scientists, Patricia Maynard makes for a good Susan-Calvin-gone-bad and Edward Burnham does a terrific job as the archetypal Mad Professor, Kettlewell, also managing to achieve an amazing combination of balding and bad hair day.

Talking of achievements, the Robot itself is one of those stunning designs that Doctor Who seemed to pull out of its creative hat almost routinely through much of its history. It’s a great, clunking monster with a terrific voice, and lent more than enough character by Michael Kilgariff to sell us on the love story. Because even if this tin man doesn’t actually have a heart, the story does. And it’s not over-egged. If anything, it’s underdone – but it’s just what’s needed to make the story tick.

The seeds of the solution are sown rather clumsily, with Kettlewell slipping a mention of his metal-eating virus (one that, note, attacks plastic buckets but leaves metal handles of said buckets unaffected) into conversation as casually as that sort of thing usually crops up. And it must be clumsy – it’s Benton who picks up on the information and relates it to the Doctor. The principal absurdities come to light around episode three, wherein we are expected to believe that the world’s nations have entrusted Britain with the arming codes for all their ICBMs and even the ruthlessly efficient Miss (Nuclear) Winters hasn’t thought to check the bunker’s food supplies before committing herself to this insane plan. Clearly, the first is a workaround for the lack of an internet via which control of the world’s weapons might otherwise have been seized. The second, I don’t know what the excuse could be.

That said, despite this slippery slope towards the end, in terms of plot and production, the story – along with its brand new Doctor – manages to win through with a certain irrepressible magic and energy and the overall impression is of one of those stories where the majority of this gem’s flaws can, even when rewatching as an adult, be forgiven by the inner child. And, as the Doctor himself points out, “There’s no point in being grown-up if you can’t be childish from time to time.”

How Green Was My Childhood

It’s true that the word ‘classic’ is too often bandied around with no regard for its meaning, and it’s also true you hear a lot of that sort of thing in the world of Doctor Who fandom. But if there are any stories that deserve that ‘acolade’, then The Green Death has to be on the list. I’d seen a bit of this one relatively recently when they repeated it on BBC3 or some such, but didn’t manage to catch it in its entirety at the time. There was no need for panic though: it was a story I knew I was going to have on DVD at some point. It was one of those must haves – but in truth, I’d forgotten quite how essential it was. Brilliant stuff.

In contrast with The Claws Of Axos, this is a story that knows exactly what it’s about and, after declaring its environmental, economic and horror manifesto right up front in the first few minutes, stays firmly on-message through six episodes. And, within the limitations of contemporary visual effects and shoestring budgets, its great potential is properly realized. Its nicely constructed to fill out its lengthy runtime, ensuring a satisfactory serving of action adventure, jeopardy, fun and scares in each of its six courses. But I’m not going to get too mealy with my metaphors, because this is The One With The Maggots.

They’re disgusting. Horrible. Ugh. They’re also a perfect monster for the job, squirming and crawling forth from the mines to feast on the rotting corpse of a world in state of commerce-and-industry-driven decay. And they play an important role in making this adventure a classic, because they’re very much a part of what helped the tale endure in a few million imaginations. Frankly, I pity the people who were sitting down to tea the first time they saw it. They’re by no means the be-all and end-all of it – you only have to look at Planet Of The Spiders for comparison: with its equally memorable arachnids, the last time I saw that one it was badly let down by a number of other factors. The Green Death, without the aid of nearly so many legs, stands up remarkably, remarkably well.

Again in contrast with The Claws Of Axos, its production shortcomings are much easier to forgive in light of its narrative strengths. Basically those shortcomings amount to some ragged-edged CSO shots – including some weird switching between studio-bound CSO and perfectly fine location filming up on the maggot-riddled slag heaps – and the fly. The fly is, it must be said, one of those examples of Doctor Who’s ambition far exceeding its allowance and is unfortunately a bug too far. Unfortunately, it’s also a worthwhile element, in terms of stepping up the scale of the crisis, illustrating the ease with which these local environmental incidents might blossom into global disasters if not ‘nipped in the bud’. So I can fully appreciate why the production team chose to go ahead and include the fly, even though it was never really going to look any good.

But that, as far as I’m concerned, is pretty much it. Flaws easily remedied by 40 years and several hundred thousand quid to play with.

The rest, far from being green, is evidence of an experienced team at work, with something to say and doing a grand job. Yes, modern demands would necessitate a lot of trimming and fast edits, but honestly there’s not a great deal I would change. Even the Doctor's antics on Metebelis III which, on first impressions, might seem like an unnecessary side-step, both serve a role in the story (that blue crystal proves very handy) and, coupled with the brainwashing of poor old Captain Yates, offers some nifty foreshadowing of the end of the era. (Although it's a shame Planet Of The Spiders dispenses with the good work done here in painting a wonderful impression of the 'famous blue planet' and, from what I recall, depicts it as a world of brightly lit sets and bad acting.) It's fitting because, of course, The Green Death is about endings too - and not only the end of the world. It has flair, panache, charm – all the qualities of Pertwee’s Doctor and like the best-conveyed serious messages, it's related with a sense of humour and fun.

The script is heavily populated with colourful characters, from hippies to corporate execs, brought to life by solid performances all round. A minor exception, perhaps, is Hinks, the Global Chemicals ‘heavy’ who lacks a certain weight and I did groan a little at our first encounter with the milkman, who seems determined to cram every bit of clichéd Welsh into his dialogue, but once that’s out of the way things seem to settle down and we’re treated to plenty of local colour without the use of the heavy handed marker pen. Special mention must go to Talfryn Thomas as Dave the Miner and Roy Evans as Bert (Rest In Green Peace).

Yes, it’s passingly amusing to see BOSS attempting his pre-WiFi takeover of the world, but I take that as an indicator of just one more Doctor Who story ahead of its time and, brilliantly invested with a booming Zen-like (if Zen was played by Brian Blessed) voice by John Dearth the stock sci-fi trope of the mad computer rates as a fully paid-up character, up to and including when he 'does a HAL'.

Top marks as well to the leads, with Jon Pertwee and Katy Manning enjoying plenty of engaging banter and, of course, with Jo sharing a nice chemistry with Stewart Bevan as Professor Jones. (They were an off-screen item, and she suggested him for the role.) Now, it must be said I'm not Jo Grant's greatest fan - I guess I must have liked her well enough as a young nipper, but heck, she's no Sarah Jane Smith. But here she's at her best and her farewell, beautifully understated, is charged with genuine emotion and at least as potent in the tear-jerking department as Rose's (now apparently temporary) permanent separation from the Doctor in Doomsday. Although not quite as moving for me, personally, as Sarah Jane's departure, natch.

Thank goodness there are a few fun extras on the DVD, including an entertaining 'documentary' from Mark Gatiss and a lesson in How To Make Your Own Maggot from the man who originally created them. Like a lot of Blue Peter projects, I don't think I'll actually be trying that myself as, frankly, I'd rather not see one of those lying around the place. Even after all these years, those things give me the creeps.

But I shouldn't be worried. There's a chance, I suppose, our cats would quite happily deal with such a creature. Well, I'd hope so. And if not, as vegetarians, we should have plenty of fungal protein around the place. If any giant maggots show up here, Quorn will be our main line of defence.

March Of The Puffins

It seems ages ago now, but the excitement of being commissioned to write a children's book - even if it was a case of ghost-writing and the finished product wasn't going to be sporting my own name - was nothing compared to the eager anticipation when I was told the book was going to be published by none other than Puffin and due for release in March 2008. Because, you see, it meant that, some day, I was going to be able to use that heading.
Well, now that I've gotten that out of my system, I can announce that the mysterious ghostwritten project in question is called Fright Night - The Shrieking Stones - under the rather unassuming pen name of Steve Rogers. Yes, that's me, folks. Well, it will be for the first two books anyway. It's intended as a series, with the second currently scheduled for release in September. After that, who knows. But buy it - for your kids, for yourselves, and perhaps in some small way, for me. :)
Anyway, just the fact that I'm to have something published by Puffin is enough to make me proud. Choughed, you might say.

Insanity Claws

The words Doctor, Who, Christmas and Special seem to go together with a degree of regularity these days and a small part of what made my Christmas special this year was the veritable feast of Doctor Who DVDs I was lucky enough to receive as gifts. Skipping right past the part where I found myself, mere moments after removing the wrapping paper, absently arranging those gifts in order of broadcast - I'd really thought my days of Doctor Who geekdom were far behind me, but it's clearly chronic - I thought it might be fun to post my impressions of each here, as and when I got the chance to watch them.

First up then is The Claws of Axos. (It was going to be The Aztecs, but my wife wants me to wait on that one until we can watch it together.)
This is one of those mad stories made at a time when Doctor Who wasn't only in colour, it was lurid and playing with all the latest video effects. Presumably to go some way to disguising how theatrical it all was back then - there's a sense in this, more than others I've seen, of someone attempting to produce a blockbuster movie on stage, and where certain costumes or make-up effects aren't up to scratch they try to cover with swirly lighting and wibbly psychedelic 'wizardry'. Which somehow just comes across as being theatrical in a different dimension.
What it has in spades, like many an old Doctor Who, is ambition. Buckets of it. It's something you have to admire - well, I do - and I'm constantly amazed that no-one (apparently) ever looked at a script and said, "No, no, we can't possibly do that on ten shillings."

It's just one of the numerous qualities that helps me look past the visual shortcomings. So if the Axons we see on screen parade around in zip-up yellow leotards, I know that, if the same story was made today, those 'skin' patterns would be animated and flowing all over their shimmering CGI bodies like liquid gold. And in any case, from the neck up, they look rather creepy. Their faces have a rather Medusa-like quality and I can see why RTD might have borrowed the design, give or take a chakram halo or so, for his Heavenly Host robots.

To the story's credit, design is a strong-point in other areas, with the Axons in their "rusty (with a small r) Krynoid" form being reasonably monstrous and generally effective, except where they look like a man rolling around the floor in a big orange bag. (It's just the one scene, but it's lodged in the memory now and there's no shifting it.) And parts of the interior of Axos are well-realised, although the liberal use of CSO is distracting, lending characters an edge they could have done without and the claws that restrain various prisoners are too obviously rubbery, as though limbs were cannibalised from the entire stock of lobster costumes from the local party shop.
The Axos exterior is what really deserves praise. CSO deficiencies aside, a grand job was done making it look like an organic ship - a sort of space-faring leech - and they even go to some trouble to make it look as though it's breathing as it hurtles towards Earth in those opening shots. Fantastic.

Unfortunately, it's in those same opening shots that the story falls down. Because as well as the ship we get a montage of shots of the Axons in their ugly, spaghetti monster guise. And the immediate upshot is a story that strangely misses its own point.

It's a great premise, with bags of potential. But that bag is burst like an overloaded Tesco carrier and the contents spilled all over the place. If the Axons had arrived on Earth and they had been beautiful, golden humanoids ready to bestow their wondrous gifts on humanity *without* our prior knowledge that they were in fact horrible tangled blobs of spaghetti, we - the audience - might have been fooled for at least the length of an episode. Possibly longer, if the writers had played their cards right.

But they show us their hand at every turn. The Doctor, even though he is firmly against the shoot first policy - and quite right too - isn't fooled for a minute, and neither are we. Which is a damn shame, because all we're left with is a just sufficiently entertaining romp while we wait for the situation to be resolved. The Doctor recognises the signal from Axos as a heartbeat, but the heart of the story is given no room to breathe. We really needed to be taken in by the deception with the rest of humanity, even if only for a while.

We're fortunate at least in that the story features *this* Doctor and *this* Master. Pertwee and Delgado are in fine form, both a pleasure to watch. The way the Master is slipped into proceedings almost incidentally, as a prisoner of Axos, is nice and when Delgado stares and declares, "I am the Master. You will obey me", you're inclined to agree. Even so, the solution to the Axos problem - the time loop trap - seems to be sprung, by and large, out of nowhere and the end result is, like the spaghetti monsters, a bit shapeless and not nearly as satisfactory as a plateful of bolognese. And I say that as a vegetarian.

Of the supporting cast, it's good to see Donald Hewlett, of It Aint Half Hot, Mum fame and Peter Bathurst as Chinn provides some entertainment as the essential - and at the time, somewhat ubiquitous - government minister. Bureaucrats being, if not quite the Daleks, then the Cybermen of the Pertwee era. There's a decent bit of action in the mix - as you'd expect from a UNIT adventure - but, with the story's potential so thoroughly wasted at almost every turn, it all seems a bit purposeless.

According to the information on the Deleted/Extended scenes, the story's working title was The Vampire From Space and the amended title was mistakenly transcribed in a memo as The Clause Of Axos. A better title might have been The Seeds Of A Really Great Story, but unlike the Krynoids that the Axon costumes, with the application of a bit of green spray paint, were to become, those seeds never take root.

There are probably other points of appeal I'm overlooking in the interests of being brief, but overall it's a colourful relic I'm glad enough to have but it's by no means the best of what is - and will always remain - one of my favourite eras of one of my favourite shows. Some of those loopy video effects seem a bit drug-induced, but the Doctor had better trips than this, even when stranded on Earth.

Happy New Year!

So you've greeted all your seasonings and securely tied your yules. And if you're anything like me, now comes the hard part: getting back to work, full of good intentions and a lurking curiosity at the back of your mind as to how long it will take this year for all those resolutions to dissolve in a puff of "Oh well, I tried." For me, getting back to work just involves switching back into a working frame of mind, although sometimes that feels just as tough as making yourself walk to an office in the morning! This morning it also involved returning to my (relatively recent) habit of taking a n early swim up at the local leisure centre. That was tough. And not only because of the extra weight I was dragging through the water! Where some things are concerned, it's probably easier not to take breaks at all.
Still, I know some folks already started back to work before Christmas week was over, so I'm not here for sympathy. Quite the opposite. I'm only here to offer a few words of cheer and encouragement, in the shape of best wishes to everyone for a Happy New Year. May 2008 bring you happiness, success in your endeavours and any heart's desires that don't clog the arteries.

Nice Tomatoes

Among the many ambitions I secretly – and now not so secretly - harbour, I always rather fancied writing a spot of radio comedy. I’m sure there are some out there who found my Big Finish audios laughable, but being me I’m simply not content to count that particular dream as fulfilled. Meanwhile, others are doing it better than I could, so that’s fair enough. At least I can consider myself rubbing e-shoulders with those that are. Or one of those that is.

Ian Potter knows what I’m talking about. He’s the man – or presumably artificial intelligence, because no organic life form could be that smart, surely – behind No Tomatoes. 6 quarter-hour capsules of aural tickles that aired on BBC Radio 7 this year. That’s right: aural.

Unfortunately, owing to one of life’s crazy-busy spells I managed to miss two-thirds of them on broadcast, but what I’d heard left me keen to listen to the rest. Mr Potter was kind enough to send me the boxed set – i.e. the discs in an envelope. Now, some might think I owe the creator praise for his works. But when you find yourself sitting laughing at your computer screen when all it’s showing is some swirly psychedelic graphics courtesy of Windows Media Player, you have to conclude there’s more to it than that.

Suffice to say, Mr Potter’s tomatoes – or whatever fruits he’s offering in their place – are funny. Each 15 minutes feels packed. It’s the sort of funny that demands you pay attention – on the first installment I had notions of attending to emails etc while I listened, but it was just too easy to miss good stuff. Maybe I’m just rubbish at multi-tasking, but then again I am currently managing to take sips of coffee between spates of typing, and in any case I’m more inclined to believe that the comedy on (figurative) show in this case was of that clever, intellectual and proudly mad species that must be of the family Pythonidae. Some of the highlights for me included a great Sooty sketch, an in-depth discourse on the Laughing Cow, a skit skit, Word Association Tennis and Generic Cop, There are even sly Doctor Who references for the geeks among us along the way.

Here’s hoping he lands another series. As for me, until those ambitions of mine ripen into some sort of action in that direction, my tomatoes must remain a delicate – admiring – shade of green.

Babython

I know, there's just something very wrong about that title. But what other choices did I have? Babylonathon? B5athon? And Babylon 5 Marathon would just sound so dull. Which would fail to do the experience justice. The journey was, in a word, epic.

And I'm not just talking about length (5 miles long, f'nar f'nar). Although it's clear that this is a case where size really does matter. The show's famous "arc" was always going to be a 5-year mission and the fact that at one point the series faced being cut short delivers a blow like a photon torpedo below the space equivalent of the waterline. In that fifth year, you can't avoid the sense that everyone's walking around on the decks of a sinking ship. On the other hand, thank Valen we had that fifth year. At least, the last few episodes of it anyway. Because an epic of this magnitude demands an ending that will do it justice. Given the show's Lord Of The Rings 'heritage', it's kind of fitting that, rather like Peter Jackson's movie, the series gets several endings and although some of these are scattered around - to be found in the closing stages of Seasons 4 and 5 - and some really aren't up to scratch, the actual concluding episode, Sleeping In Light, rounds everything off so perfectly it makes up for every little disappointment and disruption to the big game plan along the way. It's certainly more fitting than any of the uniforms the B5 crew ever had to endure.

Before we get to the farewell tears, the last time I aired my thoughts on B5 was at the halfway point, right after the station had made the break from Earth in a brilliant three-episode sequence that had to represent the peak of the series at that stage. Surely it all had to go downhill from there? For one thing, I was dreading the rewatch of the Michael York episode (A Late Delivery From Avalon) and in fact we didn't have at all long to wait for that to show up. And as though to prove that some things in life are as reliable as a Volkswagen, yes, it was as bad as I remembered. It's not the worst story ever (that honour may go to Grey 17 Is Missing, featuring Freddy Krueger and a real nightmare of a plot, which follows a little later in Season 3), but its sub-mediocrity is let down by some dreadful acting.

This is, unfortunately, an all too common trait in a lot of B5 episodes. As mentioned previously, the majority of the regulars range from outstanding to dependable, and even those who start out a little questionable, like Claudia Christian as Ivanova, mature nicely into their roles to become a core part of what is essentially a strong cast. Notable exceptions would be Richard Biggs as Dr Stephen Franklin who, if anything, grows even weaker in the light of his journey to 'find himself' (Walkabout) and Jerry Doyle as Garibaldi who, although he continues to deliver his bargain-basement Bruce Willis as ever, grows quickly tiresome during Season 4, and that's even when you know his character's behaviour is not his fault but the product of some Machiavellian Psi Corp personality modification. Maybe I'm just unforgiving, but somehow I just found it a poor excuse for just how aggravating his character became.

Still, ahead of that we have the clever (especially as it had to be rewritten to accommodate the change of B5 commander from Sinclair to Sheridan) War Without End, an excellent bit of payoff to the "timey-wimey" Babylon Squared episode from the first season. And everything in Season 3 builds towards the gasp-worthy moment of Anna Sheridan's return from the abyss and Sheridan disappearing off for his Gandalf-like plunge into his own more literal - or is it? - abyss on the Shadow homeworld of Zha'dum. A finale that leaves us impatient for the next season - luckily never very far away when you're rewatching these things on DVD. Even on a rewatch, though, it was surprising how keenly that next season was anticipated and it just served to confirm for me that, at this stage anyway, the epic is a compelling one.

That season, the Fourth, is the one with all the behind-the-scenes question marks hanging over it - will the show even get its fifth season? - and so while it takes on a greater importance, we also know that from there on in what we are seeing is a compromise. Every episode comes under closer scrutiny, because with JMS' 5-year arc ™ effectively pared down to 4 we expect there to be no loose flab, no unnecessary stand-alone padding episodes. And if the result is not exactly bare bones, it can at least boast supermodel levels of streamlining and wastes no time marching out on that catwalk from the word go.

Indeed, it comes as a bit of a blow that the big climax of the whole Shadow-Vorlon war arrives no more than six episodes into the season. Six. Bloody hell, I thought, I don't remember it being quite that soon. Sheridan has barely had time to make his - dramatically triumphant - return, transformed and bringing a wizard-like alien in tow just to reinforce those Gandalf comparisons. Then the shhh... Shadows and Vorlons really hit the fan.

What we get is a cracking two-parter (The Long Night and Into The Fire) with some seriously ominous stuff going on, the two sides deploying their respective planet-killer weapons, and delivering enough jaw-dropping, oh-my-god moments to persuade us we are really headed somewhere BIG. Unfortunately, I don't think we quite get there. Just as when I watched it the first time around, I was left with the sense that we were missing a third part in there somewhere. As it is, the tail end of that particular tale seems anticlimactic and a tad too easy. There's no sign of the advanced alien weapon, down on Epsilon 3, of which so much had been made in earlier episodes - vaunted, in a tucked-up-your-sleeve kind of way, as B5's ace in the coming War. And there are other indefinite somethings missing, somewhere in the middle-to-end stages. Given the nature of the War's resolution, it was always going to be a gamble, and I'll certainly afford JMS the benefit of the doubt that he could have pulled it off if he hadn't been, er, hamstrung by the studio-enforced "diet". It’s as though that supermodel chowed down on something really (ful)filling only to 'purge' it all from her system before the show. There’s the idea of a hearty meal but at the end of the day you’re left with a hole. What we get on screen never quite outweighs the curiosity as to what might have been.

Added to which, six episodes into the season - six! - we're left wondering what on earth is left to tell.

Storytellers aren't supposed to loiter much after the climax - only as long as it takes to roll over and have a quick smoke. Credit where it's due though, once the War is done, Season Four lets up very little steam and JMS is ready to go again with, it now becomes clear, the part of the story that really counts. With those meddling aliens out of the way, it's all about how the mortals resolve their problems on their own. Post-war is lent greater weight than the War and that's a brave decision - one that we might question, but one that - I think - pays surprising dividends through the remaining course of the season.

And if we're talking courses, then the entree has to be the civil war and Sheridan's "march" on Earth, with the side dishes of Garibaldi's shenanigans and Sheridan's capture, which results in one of those interrogation episodes that JMS seems so fond of: Intersections In Real Time. This one's not as overtly Prisoner-esque as Comes The Inquisitor, but it's far more successful for my money. As well as all that, you have the cheese and biscuits of the Centauri-Narn situation and Minbari politics. And it’s all washed down with a glass of unrequited love between Marcus and Ivanova, surprisingly sweet despite the fact that Jason Carter as the very model of a modern English Ranger is something of an acquired taste. If that’s not enough, there’s the Shadows’ leftovers to polish off and everything basically culminates in a single breathtaking shot of one of those Earth cruisers bursting through a fireball, which is like one of those cinematic belches that make you feel like you’ve dined really rather well.

It’s really only the after dinner mint of The Deconstruction Of Falling Stars which fails to satisfy. Although creative in its efforts to look ahead 100, 1000 and 10000 years, it’s too nutty by half and plays too fast and loose with the series’ future history, managing at times to illustrate that a) all our heroes' efforts are not nearly as successful or significant as we’d hope in the scheme of things and b) JMS is not always at his best when attempting comedy.

Thankfully they had at this stage already filmed a proper ending for the series – the aforementioned Sleeping In Light – but they had also – at last! – been given the green light for a fifth season and so that actual closing chapter is nudged 22 episodes down the waiting list. Originally – for some reason that escapes me right now – I only watched the first three or four episodes of Season Five then caught that final one. So this time around I was curious to see what I had missed. The unfortunate answer is, not much really.

Turns out, all the loose flab that was lipo-sucked out of Season 4 has been transplanted right into the middle of the final season. Providing curious counterpoint to this, the theme music – it changes every year to better capture the pervading mood – is perhaps the most stirring yet for this the least stirring of seasons. There are some minor gems along the way: The Corps Is Mother, The Corps is Father - a neat little examination of life in the Psi Corps which, if only it had been made in a more informed age, might have been given more of a CSI treatment (CSI-fi?). (Ouch.) But the pregnancy has come to term, JMS' real baby has been delivered and you can see the stretch marks. Most especially in the way it Sheridan and Delenn an absolute age to twig that the forces doing their best to spark a war between the various governments of their precious new Alliance are the Drakh, one-time allies of the Shadows. Delenn has met these people and they are so far and away the only suspects, you end up shouting at the screen as the idea fails to occur to anybody for what seems like countless episodes.

Of course, they may only seem countless because many of them feature Byron and his psionic hippy cult. I used to play the Traveller RPG and there was fun to be had from either playing a sneaky telepath or joining in the spirit of the zealous anti-psionic prejudice that was a feature of that universe. I guess the experience also gave me cool ideas of the kinds of elements that would make for a really neat telepath war, should anyone ever attempt to depict one in a movie or TV series. All B5’s version achieved was to bring all those old anti-psionic prejudices bubbling back to the surface. Dear god, they’re a painful bunch. Is it the writing? Is it Robin Atkin Downes as Byron? (Even if he looks like a refugee from a shampoo commercial, he’s really not worth much, let alone “it”.) Unfortunately this all comes to a head in the episode where Byron’s brigade all strike into a hymn, a veritable Kum Ba Yah moment when you pray for B5 security to take them all out in a sci-fi Wako. More unfortunately, your prayers will not be answered and these people are around for an excruciating while longer after that.

Never mind, to amuse us there is Day Of The Dead, an episode by Neil Gaiman, featuring Penn and Teller as B5’s very own Beavis and Butthead. And it’s not nearly as good as that sounds. I couldn’t help feeling there might have been some point to this episode if the series hadn’t lost Ivanova. Tracey Scoggins as Commander Lochley is competent enough, but she’s a substitute and we all know it. And it’s all the more obvious here, when selected characters are revisited by dead folks – for one night only – and the fact that there was something worthwhile to be had from having Marcus turn up for Ivanova. Ivanova’s in-story reasons for her departure feel like a natural enough decision on her part, but in this episode especially her absence is staring you in the face. I’m not sure such a thread would have saved this episode, but it would have lent it something.

Fortunately, in addition to interrogation scenes, JMS appears to be a fan of unrequited love and this year it’s the turn of ever-loyal Lennier who has doted on Delenn even as she fell bony-crest over heels for Sheridan. Tied in with threads related to the Ranger and the hunting down of the Drakh, this actually quite touching tale offers us the first genuine surprise of the fifth series and – not entirely coincidentally – it’s at about this point that things begin to pick back up towards where they darn well ought to be.

The previous year events converged on Earth, this time it’s the Centauri homeworld. More war. But it’s not mere repetition and the overall resolution is generally satisfying, even in spite of the fact that – by now – we have known for some time, by and large, how things are meant to pan out. Fair warning though, there’s a lot of doom and gloom involved. But it’s just that kind of ‘dark matter’ that’s needed to lend the conclusion all that weight and substance that has been missing from much of this last season.

There’s a little thread about a gift from Londo that Sheridan’s son is supposed to open on his eighteenth birthday, which seems to have been left dangling. But it’s not noteworthy enough to spoil the ‘occasion’. When the lights go out on Babylon 5 for the last time, those are your memories – of times shared with (at least some of) the characters. It’s your journey that has come to an end. And it’s been quite a journey, for something set on a station.

That’s part of its achievement right there, that impression of a real mythic ‘voyage’ that Deep Space Nine entirely failed to capture with its own stationary antics. Favourable comparisons with one of the degenerate offspring of the Star Trek franchise are faint praise, but perhaps faint praise is, in the end, what Babylon 5 merits. Like Sheridan after his allotted twenty years, it shows its age – especially in the graphics, although as I stated previously, with the exception of some decidedly dodgy composites, I found it possible to embrace that as a sort of stylistic choice. The designs, after all, are often beautiful, and it is as much a part of the B5 brand as the epic storytelling. That storytelling – with the similar exception of a few decidedly dodgy episodes – would be something to shout about (indeed, it was, the first time around), if only that Fifth season wasn’t such a poor shadow of its four predecessors. That, come the end, would have to be my chief grumble and, just as with that resolution of the Shadow-Vorlon War, as (mostly) impressive as Babylon 5 manages to be, its legacy is married to a lot of wondering as to what might have been. On the whole it's a great series - a monumental achievement, even - but left to develop according to the original plan it might have been greater.

Of course, given JMS’ professed love of British sci-fi (evidenced in those Prisoner-ish episodes, as well as a spaceship allegedly paying homage to Blake’s Seven’s Liberator), it’s perhaps only fitting. With most of our best sci-fi output produced in times of limited budgets and a ‘more innocent’ age, that feeling of “what might have been” should be familiar to us all.

So if anyone’s considering embarking on a B5 marathon of their own, it might help to bear that in mind. That, or do what I did originally, and skip most of the middle of Season Five!

Finally, a couple of warnings. One, according to a friend, the picture quality is improved on Region 1 format. That particular recommendation came somewhat late for me, as by then I had already bought three of the seasons in R2. (Also, as a side issue, but this I felt must be something related to the master tapes, there were quite a number of scenes that appeared to switch between film and videotape for no good reason – or, at least, some odd reasons unknown to me!) Two, and perhaps most importantly, if you do watch the series on DVD, don’t linger on the main menu for too long. As a feature common to all seasons, they present group portraits of the main characters morphing into one another. The cycle of transformation from Ivanova to Marcus is possibly the most horrific to watch but there are others that are almost as warped and cruelly hypnotic. This may not feature on all releases but you have been warned!

Minoan Tours & Other Stories

"Where have you been?" everyone will have been wondering in my absence. Of course, I gave fair warning letting folks know there'd be no blogging while I was busy on another ghost writing assignment. And it's only now I realise how long ago that was: heck, I never meant to be quiet for quite that long. Count your blessings, I suppose, is the message there - assuming you have a machine of sufficient computational power. But now I'm back, ready for more meaningless rambling. And I guess the most appropriate way to break back into the blogging habit is with an update as to what I've been up to in the intermission.
It wasn't all down to the blood, sweat, tears and toil of the ghost writing. (For some reason, that always makes me think of Scooby Doo, but the truth of it is nowhere near as glamorous as riding around in the Mystery Machine with a bunch of kids and an old dog.) No, right after I'd polished off the first draft, my wife and I were off on a holiday to Crete.Chose just the right time too, I think: well past the height of the season so not nearly as clogged with tourists as it could have been and (apparently) just before the weather turned. Even then, our excursions to Knossos and the island of Santorini ran into several dozen coach loads and boat loads of tourists respectively. Knossos, as ruins go, was fabulous, nestling in beautiful tree-lined hills, only rendered slightly less fabulous by the efforts of archaeologist, Sir Arthur Evans, who as well as failing to make proper notes as the dig progressed, managed to erect these heavy concrete reconstructions on top of the original delicate alabaster. Way to go, Sir Arthur: next time I see Indiana Jones tearing through an archaeological wonder like a bull in an ancient world china shop, I'll be thinking of you. Santorini (above) was a pretty sort of place, all picturesque houses atop mind-bogglingly high cliffs, but its narrow streets were a little too crowded, especially on a scorching hot day, and sadly spoiled by all the tacky souvenir shops designed to cater for said crowds. Still, I was very glad to have visited, and quietly nesting in amongst all the other shops was the bakery to end all bakeries. I can still see their window display now: a collection of decorative cakes and confections arranged for maximum temptation and torment. Torment, I say, because it's exactly the wrong thing to encounter in a place where you know you're only going to be once. And it's not like they can do mail order. Trust me, these cakes would not travel well. Some time was spent agonising over the choice of what to have, but I was glad in the end of the sugar, especially as, having sensibly made the ascent in the cable car, we'd chosen to walk down the 600-plus steps to the harbour. It was all downhill, how hard could it be? In the suffocating heat, the way paved with the droppings of the 300 donkeys that were one of the alternative modes of transportation on offer, surprisingly exhausting is the answer.
Much of the rest of the holiday was characterised by swimming, great food, good wine and a smattering of Greek dancing. A great week's R&R, in short. The funniest thing we saw (apart from some of the Greek TV I sampled in a spot of channel hopping late one ouzo-fuelled night) - especially for any of you who have seen Roman Holiday - had to be the coin-operated Mouth of Truth (La Bocca della Verità). What it was doing in Crete, I haven't the foggiest. What it was doing in existence, I couldn't even hazard a guess. The saddest thing we saw, though, had to be all the stray/feral cats that populate the streets and dumpsters and scrubland and, well, everywhere really. Actually we saw family pets that were cruelly neglected, so the local attitudes to the homeless cats and dogs certainly came as no surprise, but even if we didn't have two (precious) cats of our own, I'm fairly sure I'd have been angry/upset/horrifed/offended all the same. So, the Cretans were a friendly, hospitable lot but they don't win any points on animal welfare. Never mind your marbles, Greek authorities, something needs to be done for the animals! Of course, being us, we befriended a few of the natives, including a little fellow we called Swipes (pictured below). The hotel manageress did ask us if we'd care to take some of the cats with us, but luggage space was, sadly, limited.Oh and as a parting side note, Heraklion wins the prize for worst airport I've ever had to pass through. A delayed flight and lots of hanging around in the small hours didn't help, it must be said, but it was dreadfully smoky and crowded, and, in marked contrast to Gatwick which, on our outward journey, was patrolled by assault-rifle-toting police officers (our very own far from sublime extreme), security was rubbish (to the ridiculous). So, anyone wishing to infiltrate the UK could do worse than make Crete their starting point. If you don't mind the long waits in a nicotine-fogged atmosphere, you'll be laughing.
Still, despite the ardours of the actual travel (proving once again that, no, it's definitely the destination, not the journey), we returned refreshed and relaxed. Of course it took all of two days (less, I think) for stress levels to jump back up to normal levels, with work stuff and an impending visit from the in-laws. Er, that will read completely the wrong way. My in-laws are in fact lovely. Where the stress arose was trying to juggle spending some quality time with them during their stay, showing them the Cornish sights and what not, with pressing deadlines. Within three days, yours truly needed another holiday. So it goes :)
Since then, the ghost-writing project has been completed, and it's been a case of getting stuck back into some (quite honestly) more fun projects entirely of my own devising. Sparsely peppered with patches of spare time - yes, there's been some, and although the blog did occasionally beckon, there always seemed to be more tempting alternatives.
For one, I foolishly treated myself to an XBox 360 back in September, and although it's a very very poor remedy for my ongoing insomnia, it did at least serve to occupy some of that time that, in an ideal world, I should have spent sleeping. For two, my wife and I finally finished our Babylon 5 marathon (an 'achievement' which will warrant its own blog, no doubt) and resumed our watching of Alias.
We've paid for the latter, as it happens. By which I mean over and above the rather good price for which we picked up the first four seasons on e-bay. I'm all for a series with a lot of WTF? moments, but really it comes down to the tone in which you're prompted to say, WTF? It all started well enough, then some doubts started to creep in early during the second season (composites that would have looked more at home alongside some of B5's worst, plot twists that had gone from al dente to really tough to swallow etc) until gradually it looked like it might be preparing to redeem itself... then, well, WTF?!!! For the first couple of episodes into the third season, I was waiting for everything to be revealed as a virtual reality or perhaps some alternate reality triggered by the assembly of this ancient device the bad guys had worked so hard to piece together over the past two years. Because, as crap as that would have been, it would have been so much better than what we're being presented now. I'm not generally a quitter, but I think we're safe to give up on that one now. As I said when seeking advice from a friend, it's turned into a big pile of Bad Robot guano.
Never mind, there was BSG: Razor to make up for it. Straddling prequel and nostalgia territory, it wasn't amazing, but it actually managed its straddling pretty well, presented a reasonable 'branch' storyline and fed us a little scrap of Starbuck-related foreshadowing. What was more important, was I realised how much I'd missed Battlestar Galactica in general. And since rumour has it the fourth and final season won't be hitting US screens until April of next year, this was an important and very welcome dose of the show to keep us going in the meantime. Also it gave us more of the brilliant Michelle Forbes as Helena Cain, commander of the Pegasus, and threw in a nice human spur for her 'slightly right of Commander Adama' hard-line approach. Unnecessary, perhaps, in the scheme of things, but welcome.
Somewhere in the midst of all that, I've been catching up on Deadwood (Season 2 going on 3, superb) and a few movies, some long-overdue proofreading for a couple of writer friends. And pausing to consider Admiral Cain's hard-line approach myself when a couple of drunken yobs smashed in our car windscreen for no good reason. I say no good reason, but maybe they had one. According to the local paper, they found some worth in smashing ten car windscreens throughout the town on the same night, so we needn't have felt singled out in any way. As crimes go, it wasn't the most traumatic thing that could have happened, for sure, but it does leave you with an unhealthy amount of anger with nowhere to go.
Still, that, I guess is what the XBox is for. The ogres, trolls and goblins on Oblivion are generally better behaved than most of the drunken youths that roam the streets of most towns on a Saturday night and the Covenant and Flood of Halo 3 were more civil, but they make for a fairly satisfying and entirely safe means of venting any destructive urges. Only a shame the 'youths' don't seem to have discovered that alternative...
Never mind, what's done is done, as they say. Which is as good a point as any to say, I'm done too - and conclude this particular ramble. Apart from the Babylon 5 thoughts, that's pretty much everything, up to date. All that's left to say, for now, is that, if anyone happens to be going to Santorini any time in the next few months, could you please, please - pretty please - bring me back a nice cake.

Good News Is No News

Those of you with memories that stretch back to December of last year may recall me dropping hints about a ghost writing project, which basically involved me being commissioned to write the first volume in a series of children's books, about which I could reveal very little at the time. Well, a full announcement lingers on the horizon, but for the present, there have been further developments - and I can at least reveal that I've now been commissioned to write the second volume as well! Since I'll be doing my best to complete a couple of other projects alongside, it should make for a 'challenging' deadline, but I get the feeling it's also going to be fun. It will probably mean a couple of lean news months here on my blog, but rest assured that, once I'm given the green light to say more, I'll be plastering it all over here. In neon.

40

Yes, 40. The birthday when, if you get the bumps you'd better go have them checked out immediately. But despite a degree of dread leading up to the occasion, it actually feels pretty good. Good things are happening, there are presents, I'm awarding myself a few days off before getting really really busy, and it's bright and sunny (with intermittent showers). What more could anyone ask for.

Babylon 2.5

As a Christmas present, I bought my wife a complete set of Babylon 5 DVDs, the whole five season arc. I mention this not to boast about my generosity, but only because one of the many advantages of married bliss is that I get to watch these things too - and now that we've reached the halfway point, I thought I should mark the occasion.

Rather like me, it's surprising how old it is now, and there's no denying it has dated, but I'm still enjoying it this time around. It's the CGI, a key part of what helped it stand out in its day, that prohibits it from aging entirely gracefully. Now, it's not glaringly awful or anything, it's just that there's an arcade - or early console - game feel to much of it and now it seems more like an interesting stylistic choice than a limitation of technology. Luckily, the visuals are backed up by some gorgeous design work, with a tremendous amount of inventiveness and creativity on display, and the angel-fish Minbari warships are as beautiful as ever, no matter how much better they might be rendered today. To say nothing of the success of the Shadow vessels that, despite only a relatively few appearances thus far, are already a haunting presence and more than just enemy ships, they make for one of TV sci-fi's more memorable monsters. The thought that has gone into the cultures that built the various ships is all there on the screen.

Storywise, one surprising aspect is how often some crucial arc element has been introduced much earlier than I remembered. Of course, I'm much more conscious of and on the lookout for it all, but it's always nice to encounter some minor detail I'd forgotten. On the other hand, it does reinforce the sense that the show is due to largely run out of story by Season 4. I am hoping though that Season 5 will prove me wrong when we get there - I missed chunks of the final season the last time around, and I'm definitely looking forward to discovering what extras it has in store for me there.

Like Doctor Who, it's ham-strung somewhat by irregulars - and the occasional regular - more wooden than the sets, but the majority of the regular cast range from dependable to outstanding. Commander Sinclair is not as bad as I recalled, but Sheridan is a significantly greater presence on screen and his predecessor is all too easily forgotten - again. Claudia Christian really improves from, I think, TKO (truly awful episode unfortunately not sufficiently redeemed by a very emotional thread for Ivanova) onwards, although much more so when she's serious - she doesn't do goofy well, and I'm fairly sure even the alien for whom she faked an orgasm in Acts Of Sacrifice remained privately unconvinced. Surely the most painful scene in Babylon 5 until Michael York turns up? But Andreas Katsulas, Peter Jurasik and Mira Furlan (and even Bill Mumy and Stephen Furst) bring their respective aliens alive with very human performances. Garibaldi is just a cut-price Bruce Willis, but he has his moments.

At the lowest end of the character spectrum you do get non-personalities like the pilot, Keffer - B5's Alan Carter, I guess - whose appearances are thankfully few and whose entire point of existence is his death at the 'hands' of a Shadow ship. And sadly I find it hard to be at all interested in anything to do with Dr Stephen Franklin. I think they needed a medical officer with a bit of spark and, I don't know, va-va-voom - more of an ER doc, and maybe they would have done if the series hadn't predated ER.

At the time, I also recollect thinking it was a fair depiction of an sf military, but in these days of Battlestar Galactica, that side does lack edge - although to be fair, the show's obvious Lord Of The Rings roots as well as the visuals confirm that what we're being served is a more colourful fantasy treatment. Which is not to say it is all light and fluffy. Far from it. There's the (apparently obligatory) sprinkling of standard Star Trek fare (A Day In The Strife), but even those are usually mitigated to some degree by some strong character thread and a stab at giving the story a fresh twist, and when it gets to the big stuff it delivers in spades. And if individual episodes fail, it's as often down to overambition (GROPOS) as just being plain poor (Comes The Inquisitor). And then you have offerings like Passing Through Gethsemane which, as a sci-fi examination of capital punishment, has two-and-a-half-million tons more to say than New Who's Boom Town. At least.

For me though, the highlight so far has to have been the three-episode sequence, at this the halfway point in the third season, where the station breaks away from Earth. It's as dramatic and loaded with punch the air moments as I remember, and when Delenn comes riding to the rescue, ready to kick ass and send those Earth cruisers packing, that - I'm pretty certain - is when Sheridan finally realises he has the hots for her.

Overall it's the ambition that impresses most. That and the mythology, because no matter how much of it is actually borrowed, it has been moulded here into something new and there's a great sense of a full universe having been created here, with plenty of scope for other adventures and events we haven't seen. A real playground for the imagination - and I like those. It's a singular achievement and for the most part retains that sense of an epic novel - one I've definitely enjoyed 're-reading' so far. But I'll be sure and tell you what I think when I get to the end for a second time.

Sonn Tag

Well, apparently it was back on Tuesday that I was tagged by Stuart - but in my defence, I only found out on Wednesday, and my excuse for the intervening four days is that I've been very busy. Still, the main thing is, I'm making the effort now, when I could be shooting aliens or blogging on topics such as Babylon 5 or my rapidly approaching birthday. Anyway, being as old and out of touch with the younger generations as I am, I'd not heard of tagging before, but this is how it works:

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write in their own blog about their eight things and include these rules in the post.
4. At the end of your post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

So, here are the best facts I have to offer on a Sunday night:

1. I have a dream of being a stand-up comic, but am far too shy and retiring to ever a) be any good or b) attempt such a thing.

2. Today I went to the local reservoir at Drift (nothing to do with my Doctor Who book of the same name) to feed the swans. There are about eighty of them, along with a couple of dozen geese and a handful of ducks. No matter how often I've seen them, I always find them an amazing sight.

3. I think I'm a mintaholic. I'm very partial to chocolate too, so combinations of the two are a surefire hit: After Eights, Mint Matchmakers, Mint Aeros etc. Mint Wispa was probably the best chocolate bar ever made and I'd like to know a) why they're no longer available and b) why they never made a dark chocolate version.

4. I'm very much a regular at the local harbourside cafe. I like to take some work along there and do some writing of a morning, even though we have just as spectacular a view from our window at home.

5. I'm a vegetarian, but after giving in to a craving for a bacon sandwich last Christmas, I've decided to make that an annual tradition as a concession to the carnivore in me. I'm not kidding, it was the best bacon sandwich in the world ever.

6. I've only ever given up on four books. Generally, I feel this compulsion to finish a book once I've started and will struggle on through many a duff read, no matter how much my senses scream at me to save time and move on to something better. I'm trying to break this habit though. Bad books be warned!

7. I have a compulsion to watch anything starring Jennifer Aniston or Jennifer Love Hewitt. This is not a habit I am making any efforts to break.

8. I'm going to be 40 on Thursday.

Now, I'm in a pickle as to the tagging eight other people's blogs, since Stuart went and tagged most of the folks I know who have blogs, so my best bet is to a) pinch some from his list and b) see if I can add a couple. I'll also follow Stuart's example and not leave a comment on their blogs, because most of the people I know are probably at least as busy as me.

Eddie
Ian
Jonn
Mark C
Mark M
Phil
Richard
Simon BJ

Master Of Disaster

Whotopia. That's what I talked about last time I was on the subject of Doctor Who. After a clutch of brilliant episodes, the future looked bright for the remainder of the series. But, like Utopia, it turned out to be an empty promise, designed to lure us with false hope into the Master's trap. What awaited us at the end of the series was depressingly similar to what awaited humanity at the end of time. In a word, disaster.
The episode Utopia itself was rather, um, magisterial. A somewhat mundane vision of the future, on a world borrowed from the Blake's Seven archives, it was nevertheless elevated to far greater heights by the august presence of Derek Jacobi and his ultimate emergence as the Master. The reveal is deftly handled, with some rare sleight of hand from the pen of Russell T, culminating with the gentle Professor Yana producing a fob watch very like the Doctor's from Human Nature. Everything clicks at that point and Jacobi's transformation into the Master is a bona fide Doctor Who 'moment'. There are other little sprinklings of magic along the way - I especially liked Yana's alien companion, with her constant 'Chan!' and 'Tho!' lending her a touch of almost Farscape-ish alien charm. There were a few 'Huh?' moments: why doesn't the Doctor think anything of the fact that Yana is dressed, well, like a Time Lord? how does Jack's immortality work exactly - he gets shot, falls down dead then recovers, but when it comes to disintegrating radiation, he just bears it like a real trooper and soldiers on regardless? (And hey, it might have been fun to see him repeatedly piecing his atoms back together.) There were absurdities: the 'big' You Are Not Alone = YANA revelation. But none of these marks against managed to define the episode and the impression left at the end is of a bit of a rollercoaster ride, with Jacobi's Master regenerated into a more manic, Energiser-Bunny John Simm and the theft of the Doctor's TARDIS. And even though we know how the Doctor and Co are going to get out of there, the right dramatic buttons have been hit and it's the television equivalent of a Snickers bar. This product may contain nuts, but ultimately it satisfies.
Unfortunately, if we view the episode as the first part of a trilogy, then the law of diminishing returns definitely applies. The rollercoaster is all downhill from there.
The sad truth is that part of the problem lies with John Simm. As I understand it, he is simply following the script, and that sounds credible: I can think of few other showrunners who would cast a class actor like Simm in a killer role like the Master and insist on him playing it up and acting like a pratt, with all the sinister depth of a saucer of milk. And I appreciate that anyone suffering from a lactose intolerance won't quite get the extent of what I'm saying there. Bring back Jacobi, I found myself thinking at more than one point through The Sound Of Drums - and he only got to be the Master for all of five minutes. Credit to John Simm, he had his moments - even if, ironically, I find the specific highlights have been effectively erased from memory by the absurd excesses of Last Of The Time Lords - but they were few and far between and the overall impression is of a wasted opportunity. The phone conversation between the two Time Lords, most notably, was lacking. What we should have had was something of real moment, like the DeNiro/Pacino coffee house scene in Heat, but whatever dialogue skills RTD undoubtedly possesses they were oddly wanting here.
And this, unsurprisingly, plays a key factor in how things regress from there. Naturally, much of this three-parter hangs on the Master. On the up side, the titular sound of drums serves as an effective tension-builder throughout, Alexandra Moen gives us a sympathetic Lucy Saxon, and there is a sense at least that the snapshot of Gallifreyan history is there to serve a vital, intriguing purpose. But in the absence of a central performance that inspires more than disappoints - and with my inability to take giggly spheres seriously, no matter how much they butcher the guest stars - The Sound Of Drums comes across as fairly standard New Who fare - and more particularly, fairly standard penultimate episode of the season New Who fare. Aside from the customary slapdash plotting, there are emerging patterns that set off various alarm bells and warn us to expect the expected. E.g. it all feels a bit like Army Of Ghosts, so expect something like Doomsday. The Paradox Machine, combined with a mass invasion, the 'decimation' of Earth's population and a Doctor subjected to accelerated decrepitude screams of an impending reset switch. Scale and spectacle, cheap and lazy get-out at the end.
But no, I didn't want to believe that. This year, New Who was going to surprise me and do something different.
Hopes were dashed on that score as soon as the series finale kicked off with the caption declaring One Year Later. With that dramatic damp squib looming, I admit I was somewhat disengaged from the action early on, and the sight of the Master dancing in what appeared to be a daily ritual for him only served to further remove me from proceedings. Whereupon all we're left with is purposeless spectacle that struggles to produce anything emotional beyond a dismayed shake of the head or a burst of laughter. And no, not the laugh out loud comedic exchanges between Daleks and Cybermen that helped brighten Doomsday. No, I'm talking laughter at the wrong moments. The desperation in the Master's plan is reflected in the desperation of both the Doctor's failed escape attempt and the Doctor's ultimate plan, and it's further reflected in the show's battle for those precious ratings.
It's a mess. The escape attempt prompted by the Doctor risks the lives of his friends (those that aren't blessed with a Captain Scarlet-level of immortality) to no good purpose - he has no guarantee that the Master won't have one of them killed. Captain Jack Scarlet's immortality is handled as inconsistently as ever. Martha's plan for getting herself taken on board Skybase - beg your pardon, HMS Valiant - is needlessly elaborate. The Toclafane are rubbish and for some reason after they have gone to the trouble of enslaving the population of Earth to build them a mighty fleet of rockets (rockets, on the ground, no less - not the most efficient way of launching an interstellar fleet, I might add) they are seen shooting off into space entirely independent of said rockets. And in the only real surprise this had to throw my way, the Doctor is super-aged into (and apologies, I'm borrowing from someone else here) the bastard offspring of Gollum (Lord Of The Rings) and Dobby (Harry Potter) and kept in a cage like Tweety Pie. But don't worry, he's then transformed into a floaty god by the power of global thought to bring us a message of forgiveness.
Jesus. Well, that's what I thought at that point.
But wait, there's more.
In place of a lever to drag the invaders back from whence they came, Captain Jack triggers this year's reset by pumping lots of lead into the Paradox Machine - but be kind to him, he didn't have a lot else to do this episode. In place of a climactic duel between the Doctor and the Master, we are treated to an unconvincing blubfest. In the face of the Doctor's forgiveness, the Master folds like a wet blanket and, shot by Lucy, dies in the Doctor's arms rather than face an eternity of imprisonment in the Doctor's TARDIS. (And who can blame him - nobody wants a repeat of that aspect of Scream Of The Shalka.) And my mind goes back to the staggeringly superior Human Nature/Family Of Blood, in which the Doctor hands out those cruel and unusual punishments to each and every member of the Family. And in place of any repercussions for the Doctor's God-like arrogance, we're treated to more of the same here - with no-one to echo my thoughts and raise an objection.
Who the hell is this guy to forgive the Master his crimes? No matter that they've by and large been wiped out by a temporal rewind, he's still committed the act of mass mass murder and the people present have borne witness to much during their year in his service. Not to mention that the President of the United States has been disintegrated, the Cabinet eliminated (both of which are brushed aside far too casually for my liking) and the Jones family pressed into servitude. Personally, if I was Francine, I might have aimed my gun at the Doctor.
By this time, I'm in a hurry for the thing to wrap up, but the episode seems determined to drag its heels on its way out. Martha's departure is fair enough and played well for what it's worth, but it lacks the emotional weight of Rose's fate in Doomsday, and before we get there we are forced to endure a really lame scene where Jack drops vital arc information into the conversation as casually as he can manage, to the effect that he used to be known as the Face of Boe and the ultimate effect of his immortality will be that he ends up as a large head in a tank.
High comedy or tragedy, you decide.
Shame he couldn't have let something slip about Utopia or the nature of the 'drums', as neither is adequately explained - although, if we've any optimism left at that stage, we could allow that this is being reserved for the future. When all was done, I struggled to recall some positives, anything I could salvage from this wreck. In the end, I had to settle for Lucy Saxon and her quietly understated presence in the background here - the bruises that spoke volumes and helped mark her out as the most sympathetic character in the whole thing for me. That, and the possibly quite clever last-resort escape for the Master: having her shoot him and later recover his ring from the (for me, unfortunately Xena-esque) funeral pyre. But even the latter has its less than entirely satisfactory side, in that - unlike the reset switch - we were offered no hints that I can recall as to the significance of the Master's ring - and I'm not sure how that fits with Lucy's behaviour. Although it has been pointed out that she could have been hypnotically primed to act in the event of his ultimate defeat. I'll go with that. If only to scrape back whatever I can from the experience. And it will help counter the heavy Flash Gordon vibe I got when the woman reaches in to collect the Master's ring from the ashes.
Sadly, after three years, I begin to get the impression that scale and spectacle are all RTD has to offer for his season finales. And the greater the scale and spectacle, the cheaper and lazier the get-out clause at the end. That, and a surprise intrusion into the TARDIS as a teaser for the Christmas special. This year, in place of Catherine Tate, we get a ship ramming through the TARDIS wall. Some would argue that this was a significant improvement and they might have a case. But to be honest, as soon as I saw the ship, the word Titanic surfaced automatically and needed no confirmation from the Doctor turning over the life belt. So even that came with its element of predictability.
Still, clinging to optimism in the face of a general sinking feeling, all is not lost. This year's season finale has at least helped lower my expectations from their Whotopian high and lower expectations may well be key to enjoyment of whatever New Who comes up with next.

Flood Of Eden

Some might say, you attend an open-air concert in Cornwall in the summer, you get what you ask for. We (myself and a couple of good friends) went to see Peter Gabriel last night at the Eden Project. (Fuzzy mobile phone pic, left!) And yes, it rained. The heavens opened, the skies poured down - but it was far from a washout. It was amazing how quickly we forgot how wet we were getting. Of course, I don't remember exactly when it happened, but it was pretty shortly after the 'man of the hour' took to the stage.

There would be occasional reminders: one bright spark calling out a request for Red Rain, Peter Gabriel responding that "that would be appropriate - if the rain was a bit more red"; the announcement that it was "now officially raining on stage"; and whenever you raised your arms to clap to the beat, the water running down your coat sleeves. But there were times when, either by virtue of the heavens taking a breather or through some benevolent conspiracy of the lighting, the rain would vanish altogether.

It helped that I am in awe of Peter Gabriel. Not only is he a musical craftsman on a par with Kate Bush, he's still very much a showman. This guy once dressed as a flower, and still manages to command my greatest respect. No flowers made it on stage last night, but there were hosts of them, golden or otherwise, all around. Not that they could be seen as daylight steadily drowned.

But if there's one time the British obsession with the weather can be set aside, it's when there's good music and entertainment to be had. The support bands were an eclectic mix, the show actually kicking off with a kids' choir, bless, specially assembled from local schools to commemorate the arrival of Eden's brand new sculpture, the Seed (left) by artist Peter Randall-Page. But they all impressed - kids included - with folkish combo, Show Of Hands, just having the edge over Charlie Winston and his more bluesy beat ensemble.

So all in all, a gradual escalation in the direction of the main event. The set was a great mix - a real Quality Street assortment, if you will - from the man's back catalogue, opening with the powerful The Rhythm Of The Heat and taking us on a journey through familiar favourites - from the thumping I Don't Remember to the gorgeous Family Snapshot - by way of a few almost-forgotten oddities - On The Air and DIY - that for me (not having replaced my earlier Gabriel collection on CD yet) were like rediscovering some curios at the back of a cupboard during a major tidy-up. Of course, we took in inevitable highlights like Steam and the sublime (and at least partially apt) Blood Of Eden, as well as (for the second of three encores) Sledgehammer. Naturally. (While, notable by its absence, it could be said, was Here Comes The Flood. Har har.) But my personal highlight, if I had to pick one, would be when the band had returned to the stage for their first encore. Just as the crowd had finished hollering requests for "Biko!" and "Sledge!", everything quietened down and yours truly shouted out, "Solsbury Hill!" Which was, moments later, exactly what they delivered. Talk about getting what you ask for. :)

And occasionally, in the midst of the music, I had to remind myself to glance around, to take in the unique setting. In front of me, yes, the band (which included bass-maestro Tony Levin and young Melanie Gabriel continuing the family tradition), their shadows cast large on the stage canopy. To my left, silvery lights swaying in the trees high on the embankment, to my right, tints of red and green from the light show trapped in the cells of an enormous bubblewrap Biome. Above us, a huge dome of grey. And it really felt like that: having a wide expanse of ceiling over us. Albeit a leaky one.

Fabulous. Doctor Who never did anything this special in an old quarry. All rounded off with a tremendous buzz as we all headed for the car park.

Imagine my amusement when, attempting to use the word 'rocked' in an SMS this morning, the predictive text turned it into 'soaked'.

Whotopia

Okay, I know next week’s episode of Doctor Who hasn’t arrived yet, but I feel like I’m already there. Three – count ‘em – three *good* episodes in a row. Now, I know we’ve been treated to that kind of hit rate before – last year’s early hat trick of Tooth & Claw, School Reunion, The Girl In The Fireplace - but a) based on this season’s form to date, I never imagined we’d get anything like that this year and b) these were not just *good*, they were *superb*.

Paul Cornell’s Human Nature/Family Of Blood and Steven Moffat’s Blink are different Doctor Who beasts, so I’m not going to choose between them. I’ll just applaud and thank the writers for showing how it’s done. In fact, right there is the strange reason why I held off slightly from blogging about the episodes here: I was wary of getting into the negative aspect of all this, i.e. just how starkly these stories have highlighted the shortcomings of other New Who offerings. Non Who people have had cause to comment to me just how much better these stories have been and – it will come as no surprise to anyone who’s kept up with my views here – I’ve only been able to nod and agree.

But there it is. That’s it. That’s the sum of the negative side, which is just an incidental side-effect of Cornell and Moffat having crafted such gems. Because the conversations that arose from those remarks just had me and the other participants bubbling with enthusiasm and praise - and positivity, both for these stories and for things to come.

The Human Nature/Family Of Blood two-parter was mature, intelligent, involving and hit an impressive range of emotional notes, provoking genuine tears (as well as a few laughs) and rounding itself off with some genuine poetry. All right, it was poetic justice, and there’s a harshness and cruelty to the sentences handed out to the Family by the Doctor, but it’s prompted by an anger that both David Tennant (who does an outstanding job as John Smith) and the writer make us feel – and that is human nature in action. (At the same time, it’s also symptomatic of this Lonely God syndrome of the Doctor’s, and we wait to see if there are any repercussions lying in ambush for him, just over time’s horizon.) The scarecrows were quirkily creepy, despite being introduced in broad daylight, and I think all the cast delivered strong performances, with special mention to Jessica Stevenson for Joan.

Any quibbles were purely that and I just include them here as examples: since the watch was so crucial to the Doctor’s restoration, why didn’t he leave it in Martha’s care instead of having it lying around on his sideboard? And I did wonder whether the whole thing might have been a smidgen better if we had been dropped straight in at the deep end. That is, flashbacks show us how Martha and the Doctor got into the situation, in any case, and for those of us not famliar with the book from which this was adapted, it might have made for a great sit-up and shout, ‘Huh?’ hook to draw us right in. But that’s not a complaint. That’s just a quiet what if, and I doubt it can be heard anyway above the sound of the rapturous applause. Merci beaucoup, Mr Cornell.

And woe to Mr Moffat, who was left in the unenviable position of having to follow that. Luckily though, Steven Moffat has the advantage of being Steven Moffat. Writer of The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances (previous two-part demonstration of how it’s done) and the slightly lesser The Girl In The Fireplace (sigh, all it was missing was that ballroom scene!) which I nevertheless loved.

Blink was clever, witty and creepy, and had its own share of emotion to offer - with more of those genuine tears to compliment the laugh out loud moments. Lots of twisty timey-wimey stuff that neither made my head hurt nor fell apart at a glance (there were questions, yes, but they fall into that same category of minor quibbles as those that occurred during Human Nature), a novel, interesting ‘alien menace’ played with to good effect, and a central character you could immediately fall in love with – just like Sarah Jane Smith. :) Seriously, Carey Mulligan was fab as Sally Sparrow, charismatic and someone you could instantly connect with – instant companion material and exactly what you need in a story that’s going to feature a largely absent Doctor. Peppered with lots of great Moffaty dialogue (‘It’s so ITV’) and brilliance (the Doctor and Martha rushing by on their way to some emergency, armed with bows and arrows) all rounded off with an entirely gratuitous montage of statues designed to freak out a few million kids. Whatever you do, don’t blink, but by all means, clap. Muchos gracias, Senor Moffat.

All this and next week, Sir Derek Jacobi. Utopia’s up against it, it must be said. It has the return of Captain Jack, a character much undermined by the fact that, ideally, he should still be dead and undermined even more by his involvement in the awfulness that is Torchwood. And it has to follow this triple whammy. But thanks to that triple whammy, I’m feeling a refreshingly positive buzz and I’m optimistic that, with John Simm – possibly maybe who knows as the Master? – we’re in for a tail end of Season 3 that will leave me wanting more.

And preferably, more like we’ve had these last three weeks. See, I’m relatively easily pleased, after all.