Green Piece

Protest or Forget. Those are your two choices. And, let's face it, there's many a Doctor Who story where that'd be all you need. Thankfully, The Beast Below isn't one of them. So I went for a third option: Record & Rewatch.

What would happen? Would everything disintegrate? Would it all fall apart like a lot of other Who stories on second viewing?

No, I'm glad to say. I was as impressed with this the second time around. And although The Eleventh Hour had to handle the additional burden of breaking in a new incarnation and introducing a new companion and, well, new everything, this episode is a much more complicated beast.

A strange future world, part-Bladerunner, part-Eastenders. Creepy carnival faces in fairground fortune-telling booths. Hooded figures with keys. A floating city built around a mysterious 'beast below' and a story constructed around an impossible choice. There's a lot going on in this one.

Added to which, we're still getting to know the new Doctor and companion – and it says something that Moffat can still deliver the sense of wonder and newness of it all, even to seasoned sofa-based time travellers like myself, in the scene where Amy (Karen Gillan) floats in space outside the TARDIS. It's a magical moment, captured in Amy's expression and the intriguing extra touch of a voice-over 'recap'. Can we assume from this that young Amy is keeping a journal? I know I would. The stream of Facebook status updates would be constant when life got that exciting.

The Doctor is full of joie-de-vivre here too, revelling in the beginnings of another new friendship and the opportunity to show off the wonders of the universe to another eager companion. Matt Smith is like Troughton on Duracell, slipping smoothly between Energiser Bunny and the quieter, older, wiser avuncular figure that we know lies underneath that youthful appearance. Watch him in the TARDIS as he tips his head towards Amy, wrings his hands and speaks in soft, slightly gravelly tones. That's Troughton. Any minute he'll be bouncing off the walls like Tigger, but it's rarely over-amped or out-and-out manic. There's a nice measure of control to it, from an actor who knows the value of understatement.

Watching these two play off each other continues to be a real treat. There's a degree of mirroring going on. Moments where, say, Amy hits a quirky note and the Doctor mimics it beautifullly. And when they're separated, Amy becomes the Doctor. Well, I exaggerate, but watch just how incredibly Doctorish she is when confronted with the hole in the road and the KEEP OUT sign. She's more than just your average plucky companion, this girl. It's key to this story, in particular, as we discover later: when she's shown the truth in the voting booth, she immediately recognises the implications for the Doctor – and hits that Forget button and thinks to leave herself a warning message; and more importantly, at the end of it all, she is the one to piece it all together. It demonstrates a great many qualities, not only smarts and initiative, but tremendous courage of conviction when she plants Liz 10's hand on that Abdicate button. And a remarkable understanding of the Doctor, given that she's only been travelling with him such a short while.

But that's the point. She knows the Doctor already. That childhood encounter left an indelible impression on her. She knows all about loneliness. And that quiet revelation about him being the last of his kind is all she needs. It's the missing piece, all she needs to really know what makes the Time Lord tick. (It's also, by the way, a wonderfully understated exchange, when the Doctor tells her – an emotional allusion to his past, it put me in mind of Troughton talking to Victoria of his family in Tomb Of The Cybermen. It seems to be a signal: no more angst-ridden, self-pitying Doctor. Acknowledge the pain, move on. Thank god.) Watching all that dawn on her is a fascinating, brilliant moment and builds a satisfying climax out of what comes down to the press of a button. It's possibly the most satisfying button-press in all of Doctor Who.

It's handled so well, it's only a shame the script felt the need to spell it out further in the subsequent scene between Amy and the Doctor. Still, superfluous bit of dialogue aside, the hug it prompts, in front of that starscape, is perfect.

Perfect is not a word I get to use very often with regard to Doctor Who. So I'd better rein in this rampant positivity, perhaps by switching focus from the Doctor and Amy to other elements of the story.

Best not include Liz 10, because the idea of a streetwise kick-ass gun-toting monarch is inspired and to then go and cast Sophie Okonedo in the role, well, again you're veering dangerously close to perfection. “I'm the bloody Queen, mate. Basically, I rule.” Hilarious. I could query her lineage, since she talks about her family and then refers to the Doctor's escapades with Elizabeths I and II (as well as Henry XII). And as far as I know she can't be descended from both. But what the heck, she gets some good jokes out of it and to be honest my biggest grumble would be simply that she's not in it nearly enough and she spends some of that time behind a mask. We need more Liz 10! Her subjects demand it.

Inspired casting extends to the minor role of Hawthorne, especially since I remember Terrence Hardiman as Reinhardt from Secret Army. Okay, he turned out to be one of the more decent (Luftwaffe) officers, but you see the guy, you think Nazi. So to have him sitting there behind the scenes, playing Big Brother and watching proceedings on his monitors is a terrific way to steer our suspicions in the wrong direction. But I'm meant to be finding stuff to complain about so, erm, yeah, it's a shame he doesn't get to do much.

I loved the Starship UK concept. The image alone gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling because it reminded me of Uluru City in my Big Finish audio, Dreamtime. (Inspired by those Okie Cities of James Blish.) Add to that the impossibility of its travelling through space without an engine and I'm thinking we're facing a scenario along similar lines: a 'ship' powered by belief alone. And, as it turns out, the stability of Starship UK's existence is maintained by a (false) belief, just in a very different sense. Doesn't rule out there being an Uluru City out there in the Who universe somewhere. But, damn and blast, that's just another reason to love this episode.

The truth is, the only real problems, flaws, omissions or questions – and what you call them will largely depend on how easily they are explained or remedied and/or how forgiving you are – are to be found in the scenario itself, of a starfaring city mounted on the back of a starwhale and a police state enforced by the carnival-booth Smilers. I think that when you structure such an involved setup around the need for that very specific kind of resolution, there are bound to be a few missing nuts and bolts.

The vomiting starwhale scene was great (“This isn't going to be big on dignity!”), for example, but I did wonder how they were chucked up into an overspill pipe and not hurled into space. Also, there was a breathable atmosphere in the starwhale's mouth and yet there were clear gaps between its teeth, open to space. We have to assume an atmospheric bubble that encloses the city also includes the whale and presumably Terran air is at least not toxic to it – under normal circumstances we can assume it 'swims' through a vacuum and can at least go without any kind of air for extended periods, possibly doesn't breathe at all. And it's not too great a stretch to assume that ejected material gets funnelled up its whale-ish spout rather than out through the mouth.

The Smilers were wonderfully creepy – just as creepy when grinning as when they revolved around and frowned. They're an oddity, for sure, not your first choice as the trappings of a police state, but a totalitarian regime in Doctor Who needs exactly this kind of quirkiness. You have to pity poor Timmy who gets the full demonic glare from a Smiler (and dropped into 'hell') just for underperforming in class and riding an elevator. Makes me wonder if there's a fourth face reserved for the genuinely unruly kids. (A pickier, rational part of me did want to know the mechanics behind the materialisation of that third face.) We do see some children down in the dungeons of the Tower later and it emerges that the Beast likes kids. We don't see many, but it's reasonable to suppose that most Starship UK kids are well-behaved and kids eventually grow up. Ah, but at what age do they get sent back up top, are they forced to press a Forget button or are they fed to the whale once they become palatably old enough?

For me these were by no means fatal flaws, so I'm going to call them questions. Easily answered ones too. A tightening of a screw here and there and the whole thing stands up fine.

No, I think if there is a 'problem' with the story it's that because it's a complex scenario squeezed into a 45-minute episode it's obliged to explain a fair amount and it hits the brakes somewhat in the Tower scene in order to allow for slightly too much expository dialogue. To be honest, I don't know how you'd avoid that and it is redeemed by that conclusion and some outstanding moments from the Doctor (“Nobody human has anything to say to me today!”) and Amy (“If you were that old, and that kind, and the last of your kind...”)

There's a good message in there too. It's not just Save The Whale. It strikes me that the starwhale is a metaphor for the Earth: if only we'd quit exploiting the life out of her, she'll provide for us plentifully. That's a very green message, but it's fitting because I'm left green with envy at the writing talent.

Which, sorry, is more of that rampant positivity, I know. The lead-in to the next episode (Churchill and the shadow of a Dalek on the wall!) further fuelled my excitement. At the time of writing, I've already seen that episode once. We'll have to see what a second viewing does to this insanely spiralling enthusiasm of mine...

Ooh, cliffhanger.

Rose By Any Other Name?

Spearhead From Space was always one of my favourite regeneration stories. It's interesting that the last time Doctor Who was re-launched onto our screens – with Rose - it chose to borrow from that story wholesale. This time, in The Eleventh Hour, the references are more subtle (there's a hospital that, if it's not actually the one featured in Spearhead, calls it instantly to mind) but they're a very welcome touch for the introduction of a Doctor who, as well as being new and – since it's apparently an essential ingredient of any modern Doctor – a bit hyper, harkens back to the more old-school avuncular figure. It's a remarkable quality for any actor as young as Matt Smith to bring to the role, but it's immediately evident and thrown into focus by the wonderful early scenes in The Eleventh Hour where he first comes crashing into Amelia Pond's life. And ours.

A new Doctor for a new era, so the BBC announcer said before the show started. And this is more than just another regeneration story, after all. New Doctor plus new producer at the helm. New companion, new TARDIS, new logo, new music... you get the drift. But how different can it possibly be?

The answer, as it turns out: not very – and more than enough.

This is Steven Moffat's Rose. A New New Beginning, if you will. Nobody knows this Doctor so Moffat comes up with this ingenious idea of introducing him to Amy as a little girl so that for her he has always been the (raggedy) Doctor, who even manages to become a fairytale figure to people in Amy's life by virtue of her childhood games, cartoons, dolls etc. (She even got her friend/sort-of-boyfriend Rory to dress up as him.) Ever since he left her that night, sitting on her suitcase in the garden, waiting for him to return.

Heart-strings are well and truly plucked there, but we are spared the repeated biffings over the head with the Rusty emo-mallet – CRY NOW! - to which we grew accustomed. It's a genuinely beautiful, measured moment that immediately conveys the impression this strange fish-custard-eating loon has left on this little girl. An impression we get to carry with us as we jump forward to the future to rejoin Amy as a young woman.

Of course it's an ingenious idea. We know that from The Girl In The Fireplace. But it works so well here, we can forgive a little self-plagiarism. And in record time we've effectively seen the building blocks of a Doctor-companion relationship founded on a conflicting blend of hero-worship, betrayed trust and anger stored up over years of psychiatric treatment. Anger which boils over in a single outburst, right into the Doctor's face: “Why did you say five minutes?!” And although I'd already grown to like Karen Gillan as Amy by this point (she has, to my mind, an immediate SallySparrowlike companion appeal), it's this moment where she really arrives as a companion to watch.

While Amy is (in subsequent adventures) rapidly proving herself as quick-witted and clever a match for the Doctor as Madame De Pompadour, The Eleventh Hour is not as clever as Girl In The Fireplace. As the initial mystery of the hidden monster unfolds, the sense of fairytale spirals away into the loopier shenanigans of an alien hunt for an escaped convict. This emerging scenario has more in common with Smith & Jones than Rose. I seem to recall I quite enjoyed that one at the time, although it's one of those that faded on a rewatch. Whereas a second watch of The Eleventh Hour left me just as impressed. Frankly, even if this one had trotted out the Judoon again and relocated a hospital to the lunar surface I'm not sure I would have minded.

For one thing, the loss of that initial fairytale sensibility is reflective of Amy's own change of attitude – she's grown up, she no longer needs fairytales – so she claims – and that strikes me as something of a nice touch. But that aside, I think the difference comes down to something simpler than that.

What a difference a Doctor makes. And companion. And writer.

It's been a while, but I don't think by the Smith & Jones stage that Tennant's Doctor had become quite the intensely unlikeable character he developed into and the full extent of Martha's woodenness hadn't yet become clear. (It was her first story, after all.) But Smith & Gillan beat Smith & Jones hands down. I love the interplay between them. They're both highly charismatic and sharp and animated and fresh and funny.

Smith is the first Doctor I've properly *liked* since Davison's. Wow, now I've typed that I have to stop and think, that can't be true, can it? Hmm, let's see. My reasons for disliking the intervening Doctors are many and varied – Colin Baker a generally unpleasant, misjudged character; McCoy rubbish; McGann too short-lived an appearance in a disastrously bad story; Eccleston “Fantastic!” performance but earned the label Doctor Do Little; Tennant “Brilliant!” performance but a character so far up himself he lost all sympathy/empathy with me somewhere in mid-reign. But yes, so far, I like Smith's Doctor. A bold new concept known as 'subtlety' has crept into proceedings and it's also there in his interpretation of the role. Just as it's there in Gillan's take on the companion.

And I really really really hope this pairing doesn't turn into the (now standard) romantic schtick that was already beginning to feel like a time loop by the time Martha showed up to make (largely lifeless) eyes at her Doctor. The dialogue zings between them and will continue to do so even if (gasp!) their relationship remains this platonic best-friends uncle-niece dynamic they currently have going on.

As long as the writing's as top-notch as it is here. Moffat has the 'gift of the gab', for sure. The dialogue sparkles brilliantly throughout. Plot-wise he retains much of what we've seen from Rusty's Who – not least the frenetic pace and energy. And there are the inevitable (?) plot holes and/or questions that niggle when the episode is over and done. Eleventh Hour examples would involve, perhaps, wondering about a race (the Atraxi) who can scan for non-terrestrial technology but couldn't scan for a non-terrestrial criminal they've been holding prisoner for who knows how long. Or just wondering about the mentality of a species liberal enough to impose a prison sentence on said convict but sufficiently Republican, shall we say, to wipe out an entire world just because the fugitive won't come out with his hands up.

The Atraxi themselves are an oddity in that they call to mind the big bloated eye of the Nestenes (more from the old Target novelisation covers than the TV series) - a good thing - but also make me think of 'the eyeballs in the sky' from The Perishers - a somewhat less fortunate connection to make.

But what are a few bits of peel that get stuck in the teeth when the overall fruitcake recipe is so good? There were, in any case, bigger gripes for me. One would be the use of the Silence In The Library/Forest Of The Dead get-out clause. Although it made for a good moment, I'd really hoped we wouldn't see that argument – I'm the Doctor, look at all the things I've done, you can't defeat me so run – deployed again. Any alien with half a brain cell could break that circular chain of logic by zapping the Doctor with whatever ray they had to hand at that point. In a way, it makes a bit more sense here, since the Atraxi are, presumably, a reasoning species and have no actual reason to kill the Doctor, but the shadows in Library struck me as more elemental and had bugger all reason not to consume the Doctor in piranha-like darkness.

Then there was the heavily-flagged 'this year's cryptic foreshadowing of the season arc' bit. “The Universe is cracked. The Pandoric will open. Silence will fall. And one day we might not feel the need to trot out this tired and formulaic device.” Could happen. Sure, the fissures in time and space are intriguing, but do we really need these prophesies every year? Oh well, you have to hand it to Moffat for coming up with an inventive way to retain another quintessential feature of Rusty's Who – cracks in every story.

My one other gripe has more to do with a trait of modern Who than this particular episode. Back when I reviewed Rose for my blog, I headed up the post 'We Have No Time To Stand And Scare'. It was a comment on pace. Despite The Eleventh Hour's rapid gallop, I don't think Moffat is afraid to slow things down here and there, because it's the quieter pauses that really serve to heighten and intensify moments of action, not to mention fuel suspense. But there is a tendency among CGI monsters to do basically not much more than 'stand and scare'. Fair enough, Prisoner Zero doesn't wish to reveal itself, but Prisoner Zero is by no means the only offender in the CGI-monster line-up who basically does diddly beyond standing there and roaring or otherwise trying to look ferocious. There is, as a rule, very little interaction between CGI monsters and the environment and/or other characters. Here, there could have been more since they'd gone to the trouble of making it a shapeshifter, hence you do have an actor – and his dog – who can at least attack the Doctor or something. Instead, we're treated to seeing Olivia Colman as a (very welcome) guest star and yet left with the feeling that, actually, she didn't really do much. Admittedly any kind of fight arrangement would have been a challenge, what with her having a kid attached to each hand...

But actions speak louder than words. They also speak louder than opening your gob and flashing your fangs. No matter how frightening your dental work.

A proactive Doctor, especially one who bounds around with the energy of modern Who, ideally needs a more proactive enemy. At least on the proactive Doctor side of things, by removing the sonic screwdriver from the equation Moffat makes a clear attempt to oblige this incarnation to resolve the Prisoner Zero situation with a spot of hasty improvisation. That's an effort worthy of applause and leaves a satisfying impression that the Doctor has had to work things out rather than wave a magic wand. Which compensates for the get-out clause he uses to drive off the Atraxi.

And even that does give us the scene of this new Doctor stepping through the scanner images of his former selves, which for my money is a simple, ingenious way of acknowledging the series' past while confirming the arrival of this 'new Doctor for a new era'.

So, all in all, on my second viewing, my immediate enthusiasm for The Eleventh Hour remains intact. Five years on from Rose, there must be kids out there for whom this is the beginning and I hope they're (at least) as excited as I am. I like the new titles, by the way, but am 'not enamoured with' the new arrangement of the theme. Whereas, as far as the show's content is concerned, I wasn't a great fan of Rusty's track record, but so far I'm enjoying the Moffat remix.

Rose by any other name would smell as sweet? If that name happens to be The Eleventh Hour - or Amy Pond - then I'd venture to say much, much better.

Homicide: LOTS

There's an episode of Homicide: Life On The Street where a junkie CI devours Ding Dongs in search of a sugar rush to tide him over until his next fix. It was kind of like that for me after The Wire, I needed something to fuel my addiction once it was over. A friend put me onto The Shield, which I'm currently following on rental and am pretty well hooked. At the same time, I'd just completed my Homicide DVD collection so it seemed the obvious time to revive that habit.

Mostly it was a rewatch and the show was a huge favourite of mine, so in that sense the streets of Baltimore were fairly safe territory for a revisit. But even with favourites you never know for sure how these things are going to stand up and there was also the undiscovered country of Season 7, which I'd never seen because Channel 4 didn't take the option, the bastards, at the time. In the years since, I'd heard it wasn't a patch on preceding seasons and was always caught between wondering if I'd been spared disappointment and curiosity about what I might have missed. Given a choice, I'd rather a great show ended before its time than watch it swirl with a dying gurgle down a creative plug hole. That said, I have trouble resisting curiosity.

So, the verdict.

Technically seven seasons, organised into six for the sake of the DVD box sets and leading to some confusion over numbering if you happened to have bought any of the older US releases. The UK DVDs must be remasters. They're much sharper – the episodes on my US discs seem fuzzy and bleached of colour by comparison. For the purposes of this blog, I'll refer to them by their box set titles – hence, Series One to Series Six, with Series Six actually being the (for me) previously unseen Season 7. And if that is confusing, just buy the DVDs and that'll clear things right up. You won't be sorry either.

While Vic Mackey of The Shield will grab you by the collar – if you're lucky – and slam you against the wall, the detectives of the Baltimore PD Homicide division will very likely command your attention in a quieter, more civilised fashion. Don't get me wrong, it's plenty gritty and hard-hitting, but it doesn't punch you in the face. It's subtler than that. It works, in fact, more like a session in the interview room – the Box – where what often begins as a casual conversation, just talking, develops into an intense, electrifying confrontation that proves that, sometimes, all you need for bloody good drama is a room, great writing and a few good actors.

It creeps up on you and you can't really pinpoint the moment when you were hooked. The roots of The Wire are very much in evidence and even if it doesn't have the same multi-layered complexity, it has more layers than any other cop show of its era. David Simon's fingerprints are all over it and its origins in his journalistic work, the book Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets, are what lend the show its edge of realism. That and the shaky camera-work, which – although I'm being facetious there – is really effective in appointing us as an observer, whether it's sitting us in on those sessions in the Box or signing us up for a ridealong in one of the Baltimore PD's Cavaliers.

It's a network show, so it's more governed by certain rules than The Wire. In that respect, it's more in a similar bracket to ER, setting the standard (at the time) in its genre. Much as patients come and go in Cook County General, here it's the victims and their families we encounter through the eyes of an ensemble cast. For obvious reasons, the victims aren't saying much so, as the series often reminds us, it falls to the detectives to speak for the dead. There are few cases complex enough to task the great Sherlock Holmes. Criminal genius is rare. The reality is a bit more like Columbo in that they usually know whodunnit and the challenge lies in proving it, often with dogged old-fashioned police plod-work. It lacks the slick, Hollywood polish of the CGI, sorry, CSI series, but in Homicide, character is king and the biggest gimmick on display is the simple procedural act of turning red names to black on the all-important Board.

Given the nature of the business, there's no real room for the more blatantly soapish elements of ER – suggesting that detectives have less time for life outside their jobs than doctors and nurses – but I'll leave the respective professions to debate that one. But there is a focus, amid all the crime-solving, on the chemistry of partnerships – by which I mean between partnered detectives. Some pairings work better than others and the divorce rate is high, but the standout teams, the ones who shine most for me, would have to be the old married couple, Munch and Bolander, the buddy-buddy double act of Lewis and Kellerman and, of course, the ever-fascinating love story of Bayliss and Pembleton.

Indeed, in a series so dependent on character and chemistry, the main problem is one of staff turnover. Over the course of the series, there are too many off-screen departures which then have to be explained away, sometimes unconvincingly. At least the mighty Frank Pembleton (Andre Braugher), such a formidable and often ferocious presence on the squad, has his proper exit – even if, inevitably, he leaves a hole that, try as it might, Series Six can't fill. Actually, I don't think it tries – which is probably the more sensible option.

But I'm getting slightly ahead of myself. Plainly there just isn't going to be room here to cite every good episode or even provide a decent season by season overview. Some series are just too darned good for their own good and I wouldn't want to get arrested for criminal overuse of the words 'brilliant' or 'great'. But a journey like this does at least warrant a brief tour through the highlights – and, in the interests of balance, the occasional lowlights. Just take my word for it, I've severely limited myself on the former category.

So...

Series One. Mostly characterised by the Adena Watson investigation, the first case handed to new boy Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor). The murder of a young girl, her name will remain in red on the Board and her ghost will haunt you almost as much as it haunts Bayliss. The hard news – some cases never get solved – establishes the show's credentials and warns us we'd better get used to outcomes that are often far from neat or satisfying. We get mood and humour and a pure character piece in the third episode, Night Of The Dead Living, and we get put through the emotional wringer right along with the suspect in the Box in Three Men And Adena.

Series Two. Too. Many. Outstanding. Episodes. Begins the tradition of the big multi-part season opener, with a 3-parter as Pembleton lands a big serial-killer case, laced with questions of faith and religion. Crosetti – first of the off-screen casualties – turns up as a floater in the episode of the same name and you really feel for Lewis as he refuses to believe his partner's death was suicide. Last Of The Watermen gives us a break from Baltimore and the chance for Kay Howerd (Melissa Leo) to really shine. Every Mother's Son, so bloody good it gave me shivers to watch – again. And a major major 3-parter in the middle, City That Bleeds, Dead End and End Game, with a shock beginning and a gripping journey all the way through to an ending that provokes uncomfortable questions about the squad of detectives we think we know. And the season closer, The Gas Man, although an oddity, puts us on a ridealong with the criminal for a change and hands Pembleton an unexpected slice of real vulnerability.

Series Three. An opening 2-parter, Fire, which brings in Kellerman (Reed Diamond) and treats us to an insight into the world of arson. Heartbeat, for me the first real misfire, delves into the world of Edgar Allen Poe and feels a bit out of place. Full Moon is a much better attempt at off-beat and slightly surreal, as is The Hat. And The Thrill Of The Kill is powerfully haunting with its killer's-eye view. In the midst of those we have Sniper, a 2-parter all the more chilling for the fact there's no real explanation for the shooter's motives and later there's another doubler, Justice, featuring Bruce Campbell and a beautifully handled look at the two sides of the justice – or injustice, depending on how you look at it – coin. Followed by Stakeout, a masterclass character piece letting us see the interplay between different pairings of the squad's detectives. Also notable are The Damage Done, which introduces drug lord, Luther Mahoney – watch out for him again – and Work Related which is the series' first dip into the standard convention of a real season cliffhanger, but trust me it is an out of the blue shocker. At least, it was the first time and it still sent me cold this time around.

Series Four. What do we have here? An opening 2-parter in the shape of Hostage. New to me, since there was a shooting incident at a school at the time which prevented this from being shown. And in typical Homicide fashion, this is too damned real. As a result on the rewatch it feels quite late in the season when the brilliant Michelle Forbes arrives on the scene as Dr Julianna Cox in ME, Myself and I – and she really puts her stamp on he role, offering us another perspective on death that goes hand in hand with the detectives' POV but isn't always the smoothest of relationships. Her relationship with Kellerman is more like Mutually Assured Destruction than romance. And when, in the superb Heart Of A Saturday Night, she shows up in a victim support group to talk about the death of her father, well, if you don't shed a tear you probably belong on her slab. Much of this season is characterised by the drug war and the investigation into the Luther Mahoney organisation, probably the closest we ever get to a story arc. A corruption investigation sets Kellerman on his self-destructive path at a time when, ideally, he'd be there at the forefront of the Mahoney case, but he's right there at its conclusion in Deception. (Apparently it was the network's insistence that Mahoney gets his just deserts it was the network's insistence and the series, and especially the character Kellerman, has to deal with the consequences.) Other recurring themes here are Pembleton's struggle with the aftermath of that Series Three ending and Bayliss' struggle with his history as an abused child and his sexuality. The Documentary is a bit too clever for its own good, making the mistake of featuring footage where we know in-story camera jockey Brodie wasn't anywhere around. The season closes off with Partners & Other Strangers where, with echoes of Crosetti, Beau Felton turns up as another off-screen departed, this time minus a face. (Yeah, ewww.) After a terrific, tense 2-parter, Giardello's announcement of the impending rotation and possible end of the Homicide unit as we know it feels like a last-minute attempt at a season cliffhanger, even if it almost certainly had me shouting, “Noooooo!” at the time. But it brings back Megan Russert for a spell and introduces two detectives we'll be seeing more of next season.


Series Five. Blood Ties is a real whammy of a 3-parter which at times – like the big-screen action at the airport – feels more like CSI:Miami and Georgia Rae Mahoney, along with the revelation that Mahoney had a sister, feels like a creation that belongs in another series. Still, that said, she does make for a compelling story thread that runs throughout this season. Kellerman disintegrates, which is a shame for the character, but at the same time it's a great depiction of a cop steadily being cornered by one moment's split decision. In amongst it all, we have The Subway, another ohmygod episode, with Vincent D'Onofrio wedged between a tube train and a platform. Ouch doesn't begin to cover it. All Is Bright confronts the AIDS issue through the eyes of new detective Laura Ballard – and the Ballard and Gharty pairing is another noteworthy partnership, their brand of old-young, guy-woman just-friends dynamic works really well. Only a shame they don't make more of Ballard as a rival in the detective stakes to the great Frank Pembleton. Mercy is outstanding and Alfre Woodard is more than a match for Pembleton. And Finnegan's Wake has a star turn by Charles Durning, a relic of the 'good old days' of policing. Inevitably it's Fallen Heroes, the 2-part season closer that makes the biggest mark, in part because of Kathryn Bigelow's hard-hitting direction and Mekhi Phifer's last appearance as Junior Bunk, but also because of the ultimate tying up of the Mahoney case and all its consequences. And as you'd expect from Homicide, it's the loose threads that serve to make it all so damned frustratingly perfect.

Series Six. All change, all new. That's what it feels like. Guess it doesn't help that they redecorated the office. But in a show that depends on the ensemble cast and how you relate to key characters, the changes in staff are a lot to cope with. Of the old faces, Lewis and Munch are a welcome presence, post-near-mortem Bayliss is going a bit too out there with his Buddhism. Of the relatively new, Ballard and Gharty are the best and feel like part of the old family. And in the total newbies, Giancarlo Esposito as Mike Giardello brings some interesting father-son – and departmental – conflict to proceedings, but Michele Michael, brings a touch of glamour in much the same way a varnished piece of wood might. Except the wood would likely be less annoying and self-important. Ballard and Falsone's illicit romance feels more soapish than any of the other personal relationships the show explored previously. Luckily there are highlights that prove the series can still pull something remarkable out of the bag: chief among them, episodes like Lines Of Fire, another one with Kathryn Bigelow at the helm – coincidence? I think not – and the masterfully crafted closing episode. The coda is so perfectly judged it feels like, despite the intervening shortcomings of this last season, this is where the story had always been headed.

The flaws aren't exclusive to that last season, but they are weighted there. As a rule of thumb any episode involving the Intelligence community tends to be less successful, but there aren't many of those and there's generally more than one case up in the air and/or other goings on to maintain the interest. The least satisfying episodes for me were the Law & Order crossovers which became an annual feature from Series Three onwards. The episodes belong in there for completeness sake but, despite their tacking on a 'Previously on...' recap at the beginning – leave you feeling, unsurprisingly perhaps, like you've watched half a story. And the show's use of the trademark 'stutter' edit is variable: more often than not its very effective in driving home a dramatic point, but it's sometimes misjudged and intrudes on the moment as a clumsy bit of artifice.

Still, measured against the series' strengths, those flaws don't amount to a hill of beans. Murder laced with drama laced with real life, served up by actors, directors, writers and production crew who maybe aren't A-list, but they're first-class. And humour by the baggie load. The laughs, like the rest of it, have bite – not just in the uber-cynical tirades of John Munch (Richard Belzer) – but in the kind of incidents that are funny in a way that only real life can be. You know this stuff happened on the street or in the squad room somewhere, if not actually in Baltimore.

Like the electrolyte neuron magnetic test scanner used to detect a suspect's lies – better than a polygraph, a simple photocopier. The scene in Series One's Smoke Gets In Your Eyes is duplicated – and, I think, refined – for later use in The Wire, but it's still funny here. As a side-benefit, there's also the chance to play a game of spot the guy – or girl – who was [insert character name here] in The Wire. But don't worry, if you haven't seen The Wire yet, the game works just as well the other way around.

So, okay, this is not the pure heroin of The Wire but forget the sugary cake-bar substitutes, this is good well-cut product. These drugs do work.

Brighter Moody Blues

Lost Innocence

Esther O'Connor | MySpace Music Videos

Sometimes the best things can come along when you're not looking. Or when you're looking for something else entirely.

Last October, I believe it was, I had a lovely time at a Nerina Pallot concert and a short while after I was searching for the MySpace page of one of the support acts, a talented local girl, name of Stef Parker. Mission fairly simple, mission accomplished. But in the process my attention was drawn to a link in a sidebar to one Esther O'Connor.

One click and I'm watching a music video on her page, listening to a gorgeous uplifting song Lost Innocence (watch the video, above). And I mean uplifting like the musical equivalent of the wind under your wings, something to set you soaring out over the ocean waves while, in the video, Esther frolics in the waves lapping gently at the shore like a Scots gypsy revelling in a day at the beach.

It's that kind of spirit that resonates through the songs on her album, Right Here, to which I treated myself as a sort of Christmas present. But hey, it wasn't all selfish: my wife gets to listen to it too and I also hunted down another copy for a friend, who despite being a Scot herself and really into music hadn't heard of Esther. Not nearly enough people have, it seems. Which is just wrong.

Considering I'm a writer, there are plenty of occasions where words fail me and among them is when it comes to reviewing music. Trust me, the songs say it so much better than I ever could. It's why you won't find many music reviews here on this blog, but I'll do my best with my limited powers.

Even if Innocence is Lost in the single, there's a purity to the vocals and an optimism threaded throughout the lyrics and the mood of the songs on the album, all very evocative of Celtic shores and more of that soaring freedom. I'm thinking especially of Out On The Water, but it's true of others. These are songs of hope, new horizons, brighter tomorrows and, of course, love. My wife commented that Esther's voice had a similar quality to Lisa Loeb, whose only song I knew was Stay on the Reality Bites (1994) soundtrack, but she (my wife) has a point, particularly on the title track. But then there are other songs - most notably Saturday Man, Yesterday's Too Late, Chasing Rainbows and definitely the rockier All Right, Right Now - where Esther ranges into huskier Sheryl Crow territory. Which, in my book, is no bad thing. Sheryl often has the knack of producing songs that feel both familiar and like you're hearing them for the first time. As a songwriter, Esther works a similar magic.

Such comparisons are never ideal because even if a singer is reminiscent of someone else you're talking about an original artist with a unique flavour of her own. Suffice to say I now feel like I know what serendipity sounds like.

Perfect for a day like today, when I can look out on blue skies and sun shining down on the local bay. Heck, if it wasn't so cold and windy I might be out there paddling along the shoreline.

And Through The Wire - Part Two (SPOILERS)

Before I started watching The Wire, someone told me I wouldn't want to watch any other TV drama once I'd seen that. Yeah, right, I thought, and of course it's not true. That's what we call hype, short for hyperbole. Naturally enough in the wake of such hype I approached the series with caution and a healthy degree of scepticism. I still had to watch it. Had to. Not least because I'd been an admirer of David Simon's (and Ed Burns') work since Homicide (both Life On The Streets, the TV series, and A Year On The Killing Streets, the book), then The Corner (book, haven't seen the mini-series yet) and Generation Kill.

Anyway, one of the things that surprised me most about The Wire was that the hyperbole was very nearly true. Not quite, you know, because there'll always be other TV dramas I'm interested in. It's just the way I am.

But I've recently been enjoying a rewatch of Homicide: LoTS (one of my all-time favourite shows) and for a series that Channel 4 used to shove back and back into the wee small hours when no-one (except me!) was watching, next to The Wire it seems more like a mainstream network cop show. Which is unfair, because it was breaking the mould – or even shaping a new mould – at the time. But I'll save talk of Homicide: LoTS for another time. This is, as we've established, about The Wire.

It's awesome, yes. But like me you might not be awed by it at all to begin with. It's slow, it's in a foreign language. Okay it's not, but it's in a version of English that's removed from the one we speak. Generation Kill's the same, with its initially impenetrable military speak. The world has its own way of talking and it's uncompromising, there are no subtitles to help us along. I'm reminded of studying Shakespeare in school and some of the language makes you scratch your head but one day you get to watch a play or a film and suddenly it clicks and you're getting it. It is like Shakespeare and it is a thing of beauty.

Somewhere along the way its awesomeness creeps in and you realise that it's not slow in the sense that it's dragging its heels or nothing much is happening, but that it's taking its time and it rewards patience and that, in itself, is reason enough to sit up and pay attention. Or sit back and pay attention, because you realise you are in for the long haul. You are, my friend, hooked.

David Simon has said it's like a novel in TV form. (There's an interesting article here about what The Wire is, link courtesy of Stuart.) I'd almost say it's like a series of five novels. There's a distinct theme and focus to each of the five 'seasons': (basically) street, docks, city hall, schools, press. The themes of each series are neatly encapsulated in the opening-title montages and the different versions of the song Way Down In The Hole lay down the tone and mood.

Of course it's not as simple as that and anyone who tells you its overrated is underestimating the layers of complexity in the characters, the plotting and what amounts to constructing a portrait of the city from street level and up.

But it's not only that, it's also its sense of realism. David Simon's big on verisimilitude, and why wouldn't he be, he's a journalist by nature. And this feels like journalism dressed up as drama. There's a great deal of truth in it, many of the storylines and characters are woven from real events and real people harvested from the fertile Baltimore backgrounds that Simon and Burns hail from – newspaper, police, education. They cast real police, real newspaper men, real politicians – and real perps – alongside the actors. It's sobering too when you learn that when the fictional cops hold a wake for one of their number, it's because one of the cast has passed away. Even when you see an actor you know from something else (for example, Idris Elba as Stringer Bell – just one of several British actors you'd think were American if you hadn't seen them previously) they're so utterly convincing that you're still safely immersed in the experience. For a Homicide fan there are odd moments of recognition that might briefly jump you out of the action as you spot actors from that show, but if it's like the late cameo from the mighty Detective John Munch (Richard Belzer) then it's only long enough to applaud. The spell remains intact.

There's one moment (and thanks to Stuart for prompting me to think about this some more) that doesn't quite gel with the reality being portrayed. In Series 5, it's when Omar makes an end-of-episode leap out of an nth-storey balcony to avoid getting shot (fair enough). For me, it wasn't the stretched credibility of his surviving the fall that niggled, it was that it felt like one of the more standard contrived cliffhangers (although there's no hanging involved) you'd expect from 'normal TV'. Thematically and storywise it contributes to Omar's status as a legend, so there's an additional purpose served, but it felt like playing to the crowd.

Still, if we wanted any conclusive evidence that this is one show that doesn't pander – either to a network or to its audience – it's in Omar's departure. Not from the balcony, but, you know, from this world. Sheeeeeeeeeeit. It's still a shock. And I watched it (relatively) ages ago. You even (eventually) come to appreciate that it's the right end for him, for the story, just right. An anonymous, violent death at the hands of some kid who didn't have any sense of the legend he was gunning down. What else was it going to be? Face-off with Marlo? (Who, by the way, is described in The Wire: Truth Be Told as a 'shark on legs' and I couldn't sum him up any better.) That's what I wanted, it's what Omar was looking for. But we'd had that – when Omar takes down Stringer at the end of Series 3.

And that, for the record, felt good – and bad. Stringer was a bastard and he had it coming. But on the other hand, he was a bastard we loved. But we loved Omar too, goddamnit.

Which kind of brings us to another core appeal to this show. Or rather, we're there already, talking about it. Characters. As multi-layered as the city they inhabit and more shades of grey than the UK weather. Scumbags, sleazeballs, thugs and weasels – and that's just the cops. Ha. Seriously though there's a wealth of richly drawn individuals, but it's less about good and bad, more about the ones you love or hate or love to hate and how much. If I had to list my personal favourites, I'd say McNulty, Freamon, Bunk, Kima, Carver, Stringer, Omar, Bubbles, Carcetti, Bunny Colvin, Beadie, Prop Joe, Gus Haynes, Vondas... and keep on going.

There are those such as the Greek who turned my blood cold with a single throat-slitting scene, so I could never actually like the guy, but he's still a great character. There are those such as Levy, the lawyer, who has – if anything – fewer redeeming qualities than the Greek, but even he is, as grudgingly as I have to admit it, great at what he is. Yeah, I really wanted him to get some sort of comeuppance. Hated him, he was that good a sleazebag lawyer. At the other end of the moral spectrum there's Freamon, great character and undeniably good po-lice, but even he voluntarily colludes with McNulty in his insane fake serial killer scheme. At the end of the day, I just have to dispense with lists of favourites and say that I don't recall being quite so emotionally invested, one way or another, in such a vast array of TV characters from one series.

Brother Mouzone, perhaps, is one example that springs to mind of a character that didn't quite ring true at first. He seems a little too out there, more of a dramatic caricature, but there's something in the actor's performance and the world around him that sells it. It occurs to me that a junkie informant called Bubbles could so easily have been a cliche but it's obvious from very early on that's not going to happen here. Huggy Bears need not apply.

There's a clear love for the city and its characters from all of the writers, and clear evidence that love – this love anyway - is not blind. And there's no telling you or even asking you to love these people or their world, but the drama is letting you get to know them and allowing you to make up your own mind.

Interestingly, I've since read (in The Wire: Truth Be Told by Rafael Alvarez) that one aspect the writers definitely had no love for – at least to begin with – was the political layer that was added from Series 3 onwards. There were objections raised, apparently: it was felt that a foray into city hall just wouldn't be The Wire. But like the tale of the Sobotka dockyard dynasty the series before, it's another layer added on top of the existing story and fitting seamlessly as part of the whole. It's the end result that matters and it feels as authentic as all the other layers.

The story of Carcetti's rise to power is as involving and electrifying as the presidential election in The West Wing's Season 7. And I'm not going to get into a comparison – apples and oranges, and all that – but The West Wing, outstanding and slick and polished as it is/was, paints an idealised view (I believe I've previously bemoaned the conspicuous lack of bastards in the White House). In The Wire, you can have men – and women – with ideals, but even Carcetti who is genuinely set on changing things for the better is obliged to sacrifice those princples in favour of juked crime stats and school tests that have much more to do with saving his political bacon than education.

It's not as though self-serving politicians are original, but it's so real it's frustrating. And it's not just that they're self-serving, because Carcetti is an illustration that the system and the forces that drive it are bigger than any one well-meaning man. He's not blameless, but although he gets to exercise some mayoral powers (I'm remembering a brilliant sequence in which he goes on a whistle-stop tour of the city, flexing a bit of mayoral muscle and gets every department jumping into action), he's not exactly powerful either. In much the same way, the cops are often victims of their institution ad the way it operates, and likewise the dealers and dockers and students and teachers are all caught up in the tidal forces that held sway long before they were around and will be long after.

There are individuals who strike out and do things their own way. McNulty and Omar play their particular systems according to their own set of rules, they even beat the system on occasion. But all they're doing is winning battles in a war that can never be won. Stringer Bell attempts to promote himself out of the street and into the world of business and property development. He doesn't make it, but his efforts are doomed before Omar and Mouzone put paid to him in their particular way. And while Stringer's trying to go one way, Avon Barksdale's going the other, seeking to reassert his hold on those precious corners. Series 4 tells a similar tale of two lives running in opposite directions, with Namond – with a rare note of hope – en route to a brighter future and Michael on the down road to becoming – ultimately - a new Omar. The collective tale of those school kids (including Randy and Dukie) makes Series 4 one of the most affecting. As is the tale of Bubbles' voyage towards recovery, the following season, striking another much-welcome note of hope.

But it's not only that, it's – and we could just go on like that for a while. Any five-year series will – or should – leave you with plenty to talk about or think about. In most US shows that'll amount to over a hundred episodes. The Wire runs for 60, but there's (at my best guess) ten times the depth.

I mean, look at me, I've rambled on for too long already and I haven't talked of the plight of the stevedores, I haven't discussed D'Angelo Barksdale's tragic journey, or Cutty's attempts to give the kids an alternative outlet for their energy and aggression, Bunny Colvin's Hamsterdam as a different kind of alternative. I haven't discussed the various depictions of 'domestic bliss' enjoyed by cops and criminals alike. I haven't touched on the great humour - trust me, when it's funny it's hilarious.

I've not said anything about the beautifully crafted montages. But I guess now seems a good time, since we're (finally!) approaching the point of summing up. US TV drama loves its montages and sometimes they strike me as overused. Wrap up your weekly episode with a sequence of scenes set to a cool music track that'll hit all the right emotional buttons for you. But here the technique's used more sparingly, striking the vital end notes for the various characters and story threads each season. Generally with the same basic message: no matter what else, it's business as usual on the streets of Baltimore.

I wish there was some equally elegant way of summing up the series for the purpose of this blog, but I'd probably need a Part Three to do that and even then I'd be hard pressed to find the words.

On a mailing list, someone cleverly pointed out that in Series 5 you have a cop (McNulty) and a journalist (Templeton) both working (although independently) to create the same fiction (that of a depraved serial killer preying on the homeless), which is reflective of the Ed Burns (ex-cop) and David Simon (ex-journalist) collaborative creative team. (McNulty is trying to secure the resources he needs for getting Marlo, Templeton's all about his own career advancement, but I don't think that's any comment on Burns or Simon.) At the time I figured, well, it's probably one of those things that slipped into a story subconsciously during the writing, but now I come to think of it Simon and Burns are almost certainly that clever. If not more so. Neither of them see the war on drugs as a way forward and The Wire is an illustration of what that war is doing to cities all across America.

And here I am, post-Wire, looking for another fix. But there is no more. (Sob.) So like a junkie who can't score tiding himself over with a sugar rush, I rewatch my Homicides, I seek out another cop show I've heard great things about – The Shield, I buy and read books about The Wire and I blog about it and still find I haven't said all I'd like to say about it. So I'm forced to come to one conclusion: I am an addict.

What Burns and Simon have created in The Wire is a legal drug. And I don't have to kill for it, because it's freely available on DVD. Maybe they're trying to tell us something.

And Through The Wire - Part One (No Spoilers)

Gosh, I hadn't realised how long it had been since I posted here. It's as if I haven't been watching anything worth talking about on TV or DVD. Not so. For one thing, it's true I've just been too busy and as well as deadlines, my other creative blogs have taken precedence. For another, one of the things I finished watching and wanted to write something about was The Wire. And I think I've been subconsciously putting it off.

Why? Was it that bad? (I imagine) I hear you ask. But no, the truth of the matter lies at the other end of the spectrum, where I'm left wondering what I can possibly say beyond 'awesome' or 'amazing' or something of a likewise superlative ilk. I suppose I could just settle for raiding the heaps of praise already piled on the series, from people who saw it long before me.

"You either love The Wire, or you haven't seen it." The Guardian

"The Wire is arguably the greatest television programme ever made." Daily Telegraph

"The most challenging and rewarding experience in television history." The Times

etc...

To all of which I just have to nod in agreement.

Or I could purloin a few lines from the Peter Gabriel song And Through The Wire:

Driving round the city rings
Staring at the shape of things
I talk in pictures not in words
Overloaded with everything we said
be careful where you tread
Watch the wire

With particular emphasis on the last line right there. Because whatever I say, however I chose to express it, that will be essentially what it boils down to. Honestly, just watch it.

And there, pretty much, ends the spoiler free part of my 'review'. I'm left with more to say. I suspect there will always be more to say about The Wire. It's just that kind of show. But there will be spoilers, so in between reading this and reading the next part, rent, beg, borrow, steal, pimp yourself out for the DVDs, do whatever it takes and go and watch all five seasons. I'll probably manage to post Part Two before you've finished watching, but it's okay, because you won't be watching it to find out what I have to say on the matter. You'll be watching it because of all you'll have to say.

Dolly Mixture

Back in the days of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, I suspected Joss Whedon of having devised the series just so he could work - some might even say play - with lots of pretty young people. It seems true of all his creations. But then he liberally sprinkles his series with great characters, sparkling dialogue and lots of just generally clever witty stuff to persuade you that, no, the man is a genius. And heck, even if it's all to disguise his true motives, it's still genius.

That said, I'm not one of those who believes that Mr Whedon can do no wrong. Buffy had its disappointing patches, I really wasn't sold on Angel until quite late into the series and here, at the end of the first season, I'm still not entirely convinced by his latest offering, Dollhouse.

Once again he has assembled a cast of pretty young things, headed up by the superlative Eliza Dushku (so good she even enabled me to see the merits of Tru Calling), and most of them are talented too. With Amy Acker, Harry Lennix, Tamoh Penikett and Reed Diamond among the regulars, it's like Angel, Commander In Chief, Battlestar Galactica and Homicide: Life On The Street all met up for a party and ended up going home with the wrong partners. The series itself is a similarly odd mix of brilliance and 'bits that don't quite work'.

For starters, the premise is ludicrous. Now I'm all for absurd premises - for a while I've followed a series involving a man travelling through time and space in a police box and more recently I've been entertained by the exploits of a tech support guy working at a Buy More who has all manner of state and international secrets beamed into his brain. As to the former, I couldn't begin to tell you why that works for me, but as for the latter - Chuck - mostly it gets away with it with a combination of tone (you never take it seriously) and just not really going into the ins and outs of how it works - or doesn't. But there's something about the Dollhouse that leaves me thinking the foundations are a little shaky.

Even in the (admittedly brilliant) final episode, a character laughs at the revelation that the Dollhouse was nothing more than a high class brothel. And no matter how much the proprietors attempt to justify it, with phrases like 'your ultimate fantasy', when you see Eliza Dushku dressed up in S&M gear and wielding a whip you can't help thinking (amongst other things) that it is all an overly elaborate and expensive setup for what it provides. Those capable of paying the price tag (implicitly *very* high) for a doll could most likely obtain much the same with greater ease, far less moolah, a fraction of the cloak and dagger and ultimately - given that rumours abound on the streets about this secret establishment - just as discreetly elsewhere. There's also a skin-crawling creepiness to it all that's slightly off-putting. (Unlike characters like Miss DeWitt, say - ably played by Olivia Williams - who is creepy in a good way.)

In the midst of it, there are some applications that make a kind of sense - the woman who has a copy of herself 'saved' so that she can extend her life long enough to discover the identity of her murderer and the touching tale of the guy who has a doll help him celebrate the anniversary he never got to share with his deceased wife. And the whole thing is an actor's dream, handing many of the cast the opportunity to play a different role each week and play dress-up.

It begins much like the experience of existence as a doll, waking up to something new each episode, no clear recollection of exactly what happened last week and a degree of confusion as to where it's all leading. But the Whedon sparkle is there in the scripts and that, coupled with the generally charismatic ensemble of characters, tends to elevate a show that you might otherwise pass over. And if on those strengths you do decide to stick with it, it does eventually hit its stride, developing with twists and turns that (assuming they haven't been spoilered!) will have you sitting up and paying attention. Ultimately persuading you that, yes, in fact the producers do have a clear idea of where it's all heading and that it might even be interesting when you get there.

Exceptions would be the Tamoh Penikett thread (he's essentially like Mr McGee in The Incredible Hulk) which, although it does throw some genuinely startling curve balls along the way, has only a limited number of possible outcomes - and I happened to guess the one they went for. Sort of. The breakdown of the memory wiping and the 'revelation' that it's nowhere near as efficient as the Dollhouse management believed is thoroughly predictable from the get go, but on the other hand without it there wouldn't be much of a story at all, so that can be forgiven.

Anyway it's a short first season, so well worth a gamble, and the final handful of episodes are a fantasy drama tour de force that does reward viewer loyalty through the slow series start. And unlike Firefly it actually has been granted a second season. I'm not as fired up and keen to see what's next as I was at the same stage in Firefly - and I'm more excited by the news that, apparently, there will be more Dr Horrible - but it has at least grabbed my interest. The season finale, as I said, is nothing short of brilliant and is full of surprises - although in some respects it feels like the overall *series* finale that Joss made ahead of time in case, like Firefly, it got canned before its time. Second season will in all probability follow on from events in the preceding episode (12) and this thirteenth episode is perhaps best viewed as a tantalising extra for the time being. All in all, a curious - but positive - season closer for a series that can certainly be described as 'unusual'.

Unfortunately because I've endeavoured to keep this review as spoiler-free as possible, I've probably painted as vague and indistinct an impression of Dollhouse as I had after the first couple of episodes, but at the end of the day it does amount to a qualified recommendation. On a purely superficial level, it amounts to a grown man playing with dolls. But since the grown man is Joss Whedon, I feel obliged to take notice.

The Long & Winding Rhodes

'It's the journey, not the destination' might be applicable to life (I'll let you know) but as previously demonstrated by our holiday to Crete, it has nothing to do with travel. I love being places. But going places is invariably a drag. And it was much the same with my very recent (just got home yesterday) week on the island of Rhodes. Scheduled stupid o'clock departure made worse by a flight delay, too many long hours in a very basic airport, the usual story.

Just as well that Rhodes was beautiful and entirely worth the hassle of what Lonely Planet guides tend to refer to rather breezily as 'Getting There & Away'. Especially good as I only booked the (much-needed) holiday last minute, with no particular preference as to destination beyond 'somewhere nice and somewhere hot'.

Yes, the place is absolutely heaving with tourists, but since I was one of them I couldn't very well complain. Besides, most of them were cooking themselves to a crisp on the beaches or by the hotel pools and it was easy to steer clear of that and do my own thing. Of course, there's a certain breed of tourist for whom travel doesn't so much broaden the mind as fatten the brain, but I only really encountered any of them when it came to getting about the island by bus. The local bus service is great, but they do operate according to the principle that the bus is never full. Standing room is regarded as infinite and people are just asked to keep shuffling back, so on longer trips competition for seats is of course fierce. So twice I found myself caught up in a bottleneck at a bus doorway, where tourists of various nationalities battled for pole position. I know queuing is a quaint British tradition but it does work reasonably well and involves a degree of common courtesy. But it'll never catch on in Rhodes: I think I was the only one present actually allowing people to board in front of me.

Luckily the Greeks were a great deal more friendly and courteous than those tourists, ranging from the traders and maitre d's who were merely out to pounce on you with charm to make a sale to the genuinely welcoming and hospitable. Prices were higher than on Crete, which was only to be expected since that was two years ago, but my one main disappointment in the tavernas and restaurants was that the tradition of tailing off a meal with a complimentary little dessert and glass of ouzo wasn't observed at all here. Still, that didn't prevent me from finding my favourite bar, in which I could sit and write and fend off the baking afternoon heat with a nice cold beer: The Blue Palm, ladies and gentlemen, I thoroughly recommend it. Lowest priced beer in Ixia (where I was based), the guy who runs the place really makes you feel welcome and the place even has its own cats who can be found sunning themselves on the veranda or seeking shade under the tables. It's good for evening meals too, although my favourite haunt for dining was (and I hope I'm spelling this right in my clumsy non-Greek alphabet) Derliki, where the food was great, really reasonably priced and I was really well looked after by a lovely Polish waitress, named Agata. Interested in writing herself, she always had time for conversation and, having lived and worked in Rhodes for some while, also helped as an unofficial guide, with advice on how best to see some of the local sights.

She told me to get lost - in the nicest possible way. By which, I mean, she advised me to lose myself in the streets of Rhodes Town - the Old Town - and she was absolutely right. Honestly, it was an amazing experience and, souvenir shops aside, it was like strolling around Tortenschloss. The city featured in my (as yet unpublished) fantasy novel is inspired by St Michael's Mount, of course, but much much bigger, and Rhodes Old Town, for all that it is a thriving, bustling mecca for tourists, manages to impress as a living medieval city - right in the heart of a modern town, but separated by bridges and battlements. It feels truly vast and just by wandering around, taking random turns you can easily stray from the vibrant clutter of cafes, tavernas and tackier souvenir shops into a warren of cobbled streets and alleyways. Surrounded all the while - even in the touristy stretches - by history: Medieval, built on Byzantine, built on Ancient Greek.

That was my first solo excursion. Being on a budget, I only shelled out for one of the agency-organised tours, but that was worth the price as a general tour of the island, painting a great overall impression of the landscape and taking in several key attractions, as well as affording an opportunity to sample some of the local (alcoholic) produce. And why not. I'm not one of those tourists who goes abroad just to drink beer - I like to drink lots of other stuff too. (On the subject of which, Retsina was a hit, Metaxa rather tasty - Souma, not so much, but if your throat ever feels in need of industrial cleansing, it's perfect.) We visited the Valley Of Butterflies, a really picturesque valley where the Jersey Tiger Moths incredibly manage to outnumber the tourists, and Monolithos, a spectacularly situated medieval monastery with a commanding view of the Aegean. But the highlight of that day had to be Kameiros (above) which, for me, was far more impressive than Knossos on Crete, unspoilt by the colony of souvenir shops that flock outside the Minoan ruins and, crucially, spared the indignity of Sir Arthur Evans' ham-fisted efforts at restoration. All this and more taken in along a course down the wonderfully unspoilt West coast (not a hotel in sight!), meandering cliff-edge drives followed by winding mountain roads through the interior, flanked by rugged rocky slopes and/or hills laden with cypress, olive or fig trees. And even the occasional sprawling town, comprised entirely of the ubiquitous modern Greek architecture (i.e. boxes), managing to look pretty from a distance.

In contrast to that busy day, another of my solo excursions was devoted exclusively to one place. And Lindos (below), an hour and a half by bus down the East coast on the East coast, does demand that kind of attention. Not only because you have to climb a winding path (in the sweltering heat) to reach the acropolis, and not only because when you reach the top you'll need to rest in the shade of a handy fig tree, but because you'll want a few hours for admiring both the architecture (and again here different historical ages meet) and the incredible views in every direction. Also, although I'm fairly sure this is not an everyday occurrence, while I was up there, the acropolis was being 'buzzed' by a man in a flying contraption that consisted of a seat, an engine and a parachute. For all the airlines' faults, I just hoped I wouldn't be expected to fly home in one of those things - but it made for another memorable moment.


Sadly, there's a similar problem with stray cats on the island, although I don't know if they're quite as prevalent as on Crete. And, me being me, I befriended a few of the local felines while there - I'd promised my wife I'd take pictures of any cats I encountered. What was more heartening was that I met a lovely lady who was taking care of a lot of the cats in her neighbourhood. And while there were no rescue centres, there was at least a programme for sterilisation as a means of trying to keep the situation from getting out of hand. Heartbreaking to see these poor little creatures starved of affection, amongst other things, but good to know that, unlike on Crete, there seemed to be some people who cared.

All in all then, a great holiday and as well as recharging the batteries, it was fuel for the imagination and I managed to get some useful writing done while soaking up the rays. There were a lot of pubs and bars that were far too British, boasting big-screen footie or X Factor, in their efforts to cater for what must be the majority of tourists, but as I said it was relatively easy to avoid all that and find my own favourite places with more local flavour. By far the tackiest tourist moment had to be the taverna which, as I passed by, was (I think) just warming up for its advertised Greek night with a musician giving a rousing performance of Elvis Presley's '(I Can't Help) Falling In Love With You' on the accordion.

Just one of the many moments that raised a smile. Although that one was very much in passing. No, I couldn't be tempted in to participate. But like Crete, I could easily be tempted to make a return trip to Rhodes some day. Ideally when they've invented the matter transporter because I'm not sure I wouldn't rather have all my bodily particles rearranged and beamed around the globe before I'd spend another hour in a Greek airport. :-)

Of course, there are always alternatives, like a leisurely Mediterranean/Aegean cruise, which has a lot of appeal. But it'd be really bad of me to start thinking of future holidays when I've only just returned home. Wouldn't it...?

More Blogs

There's nothing like the internet for blowing your own trumpet. Of course, with so many others doing the same it's like trying to make yourself heard in the midst of 76 Million Trombones. So what's the answer? Why, don't limit yourself to one instrument, of course.

Quite a while ago - late last year, I think - I set up 4dprefect's Blog as a platform for a few random creative bits and pieces, but after a few initial posts nothing was heard. I guess I ran out of puff. So what on earth do I want more blogs for?

Well, I gather quite a few writers are raising the profile for some of their work through blogging, so I really owe it to my material to do likewise. So, for the time being, I've set up 4d Evil and Tortenblog, which will play host to writings from, respectively, the worlds of Evil UnLtd (TM), my SF comedy, and Tortenschloss (TM), my YA fantasy. There's nothing on either site yet, but hopefully that will change soon and, with a bit of creative juggling (no mean feat when playing the trumpet) I may even get around to posting further morsels on 4dprefect's Blog.

Rambling, generally non-creative waffle will remain here where it belongs.

Foiled Again

Doctor Who fans tend to think of the Master as the perfect foil for the Doctor. But really it's the Vardans. Cheap gag, yes, but surely not as cheap as the production values on the six-part Invasion Of Time.

It is a tad unfair to pick on any Doctor Who story for a failing in the fx department and, nine times - well, eight, or maybe seven times out of ten I can generally look past budget constraints and watch as the merits of the story outweigh the petty visual flaws. But ultimately too much of this story relies on the aliens being a convincing foe and they are, to put it in the simplest terms possible, not.

If it wasn't bad enough that they are, for the most part of their screen time, floaty bits of bacofoil, poorly CSO'd and brought to 'life' by voice-acting so leaden it could be used as radiation shielding, when they finally materialise in their true form, I found myself longing for their return to their floaty bacofoil existence. Because these fearsome enemies turn out to be goons in ill-fitting space uniforms commanded by a guy whose special power is to invest his facial expressions with a fraction of the emotion he put into his voice acting.

Now, on DVD, we do have the option of activating new CGI effects to cover for some of Who's old deficiencies. I'm not normally a fan of them, because I generally prefer to rewatch these - at least in the first instance - in their original form - and because in the main, the CGI effects have been A Bit Rubbish (TM). (Also, I discovered, if you're watching these stories an episode at a time, as I like to do, you end up having to reset the DVD options every time, which is a bit of a pain - take note, 2 Entertain.) However, it has to be said, the CGI people did a great job on the Vardans in their energistic form and, even if you can still see a little bit of the bacofoil poking out, they are much more effective. But even then, it only works until they speak and nothing could be done to remedy the trudging goon form.

Ah well, at least they are all (yes, all three of them) replaced in a dramatic plot twist by Sontarans at the end of Part Four. Unfortunately, I remembered them as being A Bit Rubbish(TM) in this one and it turns out I was not deceiving myself. There's a reason they keep their helmets on for the most part. Although not as sub-Spitting Image as they appear in the later Two Doctors, it seems the production team on this one only had money for one cartoonish mask, while the junior grade Sontaran troops get to traipse (and sometimes stumble) uselessly about in full armour. The actor here eschews Kevin Lindsay's previous decent stabs at portraying a credible militaristic potato-headed alien in favour of a poor man's Ray Winstone with a lisp.

But to hear me go on, you'd think this was one of the worst Doctor Whos ever. And it's not. It's really not.

There is, in the midst of the more disappointing aspects, a great story struggling to get out. And occasionally it even manages to pop up for a wave.

Tom Baker gives a surly, commanding performance and clearly revels in the role of a Doctor possibly gone bad - although his laughing up the invasion at the end of episode two smacks of over-egging it a bit. Louise Jameson is, of course, fab as Leela - although she is cruelly wasted. (There's oodles of potential in the whole primitive savage vs. advanced soldiery angle, but beyond the odd knife in the probic vent it's not properly explored.) And then she's married off in a way so lame I was still cringeing after all these years in anticipation of having to see it again. (It's one of those 'moments' in Who history you'd prefer to deny.) That's no disrespect to Chris Tranchell (another of the Survivors) who puts in a good turn as Andred, captain of the guard. Special mentions in the acting stakes also to John Arnatt as an exquisitely aristocratic Borusa and Milton Johns as Castellan Quisling, who's so obsequious you can only imagine if there had been more aliens queuing up to invade Gallifrey he'd be ready to change allegiances a few more times. And Rodan, the young Time Lady, is almost a precursor to Mary Tamm's Romana - which can be no bad thing.

The dialogue is frequently witty and on the whole - when the Vardans aren't around - the adventure's rarely anything less than entertaining and enough fun to keep you watching through the six episodes. But, much as a Sontaran is prone to falling over a plastic chair, this trips up over a few too many obstacles. And the great story struggling to get out ultimately spirals away down the plug hole of a hastily written script and some potential cleverness poorly realised.

At times, Gallifrey is granted some measure of the scale afforded it in The Deadly Assassin, but at other times the endless passages of this technologically advanced citadel of the Time Lords resemble the boiler room of an old hospital. Equally unfortunately, similar can be said of the TARDIS interior. And while there can be some justification for the TARDIS interior resembling anything it likes, the 'we've been here before' gag as the Doctor & Co parade through the same basements and corridors is overplayed and backfires. And no wonder the Shobogans dropped out of Time Lord society - they serve very little purpose.

These are minor issues though next to the manner in which the story itself disintegrates, with the hunt through the TARDIS taking place in entirely the wrong episode (Part 5 would have been a better choice) and it all culminating in one of the Doctor's flimsiest plans (build a big gun) versus one of the all-time stupidest plans by an alien (I'm fed up with chasing after the Doctor and control over Time, I think I'll just head off to the Panopticon and blow myself, the world, my own battlefleet and the rest of the universe up with this handy grenade).

It's this that ultimately lets down what could have been the (whimsical) epic it clearly wants to be. Suspension of disbelief is tough to achieve on a length of substandard bungee cord and you really need a meatier resolution at the end of a six parter. Here, the main enduring memory we're left with to sink our teeth into is the tinfoil and I don't know about you, but just the thought of that makes me cringe.