The Ruby's Curse

The Song Ones

The Ruby’s Curse
by Alex Kingston
with Jacqueline Rayner
BBC Books
ISBN: 9781785947131

Warning: Very, very light spoilers, sweetie!

I don’t really read Doctor Who novels these days. I loved the old Target novelisations when I was a kid growing up in the 1970s but, yeah, I tend not to read the spin offs and I think I only ever read one of the ‘original’ stories in my lifetime (so far), by one of my old favourite writers Michael Moorcock (and you can read my review of that one here). However, on my very recent discovery of this particular tome which was written, by the looks of things, in 2020 and then published early in 2021, I found The Ruby’s Curse by Alex Kingston with Jacqueline Rayner a much harder proposition to resist so, you know, I didn’t even try. I ordered this pretty much straight away after I knew of its existence. After all, what better person than Alex Kingston, the actress who played the great semi-regular character River Song herself (opposite David Tennant, Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi in their incarnations of The Doctor), could you get to write further adventures for her. Well, okay, maybe her creator Steven Moffat but, heck, I’d take Alex over him any day of the week for sure.

And not just a further adventure of The Doctor’s wife but, also, the further adventures of her fictional (within a fiction) alter ego too, as the book cover has the tag line, A River Song/Melody Malone Mystery. So, yeah, the story here starts with River Song breaking back into the high security Stormcage facility, where she is being held for a certain crime (that followers of the show may or may not remember) at great peril because she wants to settle down for some peace and quiet in her prison cell for a while, to write the next book in her ongoing series of Melody Malone adventures.

And, for much of the story, the structure of the book... with different chapters labelled up in the various places and also the fictional settings she is writing about... is constantly cross cut as both the story within the story and also River’s new adventure, trying to locate a powerful artefact hidden in Cleopatra’s tomb, shuttles between two main narrative locations: Stormcage AD 5147 and, in the hard boiled Melody Malone mystery, New York AD 1939. Things get a little complicated though and, through the course of the story, River (and sometimes Melody) also end up in Egypt 30 BC, Cisalpine, Gaul 49 BC and Rome of 44 BC. Actually, the BC days are written as BCE in the book but I don’t hold with that kind of labelling myself and, since the other dates are given as AD rather than CE, then it’s BC for me please.

And then things get further complicated but, without giving anything away, the two similarly themed parallel stories start to overlap and so, if you think things are getting confusing when River accidentally acquires a wonderful talking cat of an assistant, wait until the two stories start to merge. There are points in the story where River and Melody interact and help each other out quite a lot, as River gets plunged into the book world and, later, Melody finds herself made flesh in River’s world. Luckily you can tell which is which because River’s main story is set in a different font from the sans serif world of the book she is writing. Alas, the front of the actual book, which usually only lists the one font the book is set in, also only lists one of the fonts in the book... something of an oversight by the publishing house, I suspect.

And it’s actually a really great read. River comes across exactly as she does in the TV show (but since we are privy to her thoughts now, perhaps even a little saucier) and the thing is written with a large dollop of humour and, well, it’s all very cleverly put together. I was quite floored by just how well written this thing was, to be honest. There are also a lot of references, of course, to the show over the years... there’s a lovely and quite subtle, blink and you’ll miss it put down of the Sixth Doctor’s sartorial tastes, for instance and another one I especially liked was a reference to a time travelling villain last seen in the Fourth Doctor story The Talons Of Weng Chian (reviewed coming this year, if my blog backlog keeps to schedule... this book kinda jumped the queue). There are also a lot of nice pop culture references in general which Kingston and co-writer Rayner make good use of, from Edgar Allan Poe through to Oscar Wilde and even a fairly obscure reference, I thought, to Kit Williams real life puzzle book from 1978, Masquerade (Was that Golden Hare ever found by a reader? I’ll have to google it.). I even found it quite educational, as it happens... I now know where the phrase “armed to the teeth” originated.

Added to this, there’s some typical River Song moments which I much appreciated, such as her asterisking a ‘spoiler warning’ for the readers and even a Dramatis Personae section titled... Here Be Spoilers. Added to this, there was one particular turn of events (where I was way ahead of an extra character just turning up out of the blue... maybe it was telegraphed just a little too much) in which a solid clue was, perhaps, inspired just a little from Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next novels.

And, yeah, that’s as much as I want to say about The Ruby’s Curse since I certainly don’t want to properly spoil it for you (sweeties!) but, I will say, it’s an absolutely wonderful, elegant and entertaining read and I would certainly recommend it to any fans of the River Song era of Doctor Who (which I keep hoping against hope that we still haven’t seen an end to... you never know, stranger things have happened and, with regards to that thought, it looks like stranger things soon will be happening within the show, judging from the last episode trailer I saw). But, yes, a fantastic book and it also walks a good tightrope between something that is for readers of all ages but also with an adult sensibility which may go straight over the heads of those too young to get all the jokes. Nice stuff, for sure and, you know, in the words of The Doctor in response to reading Melody Malone fiction in the show once... wowza!

Doctor Who - The Pilot

Fore Play

Doctor Who - The Pilot
Airdate: 15th April 2017 BBC 1

Well this was a very strong start to the latest series of Britain’s most popular science fiction export (arguably more popular than Professor Quatermass, although I really don’t think it could exist without the good Professor clearing the path in the first place, so to speak). This episode introduces a new companion or, quite possibly, an old companion (yeah, alright, I’ll get to my silly speculation bits later) in the shape of lesbian character Bill Pott’s, played by the really very good Pearl Mackie, and also brings back the current ‘sort of’ companion Nardole, as played by Matt Lucas (who is also good... which shouldn’t surprise me but it does). This is the episode which had a preview scene released quite a while ago (over a year?) but I noticed there’s a heck of a lot less dialogue coming from Bill in the version of the scene as it was presented here so I can only assume that the character has undergone some ‘tweaks’ since she was first written in... well they’ve had a very long time between series’ to tinker with her, I guess.

So the episode starts off strongly for me, personally, because we have The Doctor, now seen to be a lecturer at Bristol University, explaining to students as to the nature of time. Time, he says, is an illusion created by seeing lots of static bits placed in such a way that the perception of them experienced one slice after another gives us a sense of a journey over ‘time’. This is nicely demonstrated with a moment which seems like it would better fit right in with Moffat’s other hit TV show, Sherlock, in that the film itself (although we’re really watching digital, right?) is sliced up before us as a metaphor for the explanation of the true nature of time. I’ve been telling people they’ve been looking at time all wrong for years... as a fluid rather than a static state accessed in a specific way we are mostly cursed with looking at it... it doesn’t exist. So it’s good that the universe’s premiere timelord has finally gone on record as saying this.

Okay, so we have a really good opener because it does what Doctor Who does best... gives us a mystery to work on. In this case there’s more than one because we have the introduction of Bill and the mysteries surrounding her and The Doctor’s mysterious ‘secret vault’... and we also have the writer running through the wet paint very fast to distract us with the mystery which gives the story its name. That of The Pilot... who appears as a manifestation of a permanent puddle which can chase you through time from one end of the galaxy to another and reflect your image back as a feedback the right way around, rather than a true reflection. This in itself is good stuff and this underlying plot, which I won’t detail here, helps explore the sexual diversity of the new companion and does it in a romantic way, full of wonder. So that’s all good then.

We also have another encounter with the Daleks which, fortunately, is only a minor appearance and doesn’t hook in with the main plot. There’s one of a few nice little nods to the history of the show which are found in this episode here in that the Movellans are seen with them. I couldn’t believe it because the last and, I suspect, only other time we saw them was in the Tom Baker serial Destiny Of The Daleks back in 1979. My joy was slightly tempered by the fact that the Daleks we see with them are a more updated design than they were when the Movellans were around but... oh, well... that BBC budget thing is getting in the way of authenticity, I suspect.

Another nice and, I suspect, ‘more important than they’re letting on’ reference came up in the scene where The Doctor was persuaded not to use a memory wipe on Bill. The implication of him falling victim of the very same thing in the last episode to feature Jenna Coleman as the deal breaker here was beautifully re-enforced by composer Murray Gold using his old companion Clara’s theme to support those moments... lovely stuff.

But there’s more than one mystery her to solve and, as is usual for the rebooted Doctor Who stories since the time of Christopher Eccleston’s reincarnation of the character, there’s an underlying puzzle thread to be solved which will obviously be an arc for the entire series. We know that Peter Capaldi will be leaving soon, allegedly during the Christmas special but, I suspect, the transformation may be a little sooner than that... after all the Mondas cybermen who are returning for the last two episodes of the series and who haven’t been seen in the show since 1966 saw the death of the William Hartnell incarnation of the character (who I suspect Bill is named after by the writer, in an affectionate tribute) and it would be a nice, fearful symmetry if they were to cause the death/regeneration of the latest incarnation too. But this is not the real mystery and nor, I suspect, is the vault which The Doctor is apparently guarding. He would know better than to have something precious locked up, surely? He’d hide it in plain sight I would have thought. It could be a TARDIS or a nursery even but, I suspect, something timelordy (especially if The Master is making a return) and so I think it’s about time I went into the ‘wild speculation’ section of this review. So I apologise if all this turns out to be silly...

We are used, over the last ten years or so, to seeing references to the previous episodes of the show and they are usually very brief, blink and you’ll miss them, shout outs. However, we have here a Doctor who has a picture of his 'late' wife River Song on his desk at the University along with a photo of his Grandaghter Susan Foreman, as seen in the first year or so of the original series. She was played by Carol Ann Ford and she left the show in the 1964 story The Dalek Invasion Of Earth, which I reviewed towards the end of last year here. And The Doctor keeps coming back to these photos throughout the episode rather than just have this as a throwaway shout out so... the writer wants us to notice something here.

Now I have several theories on the subject but this is my pet one at the moment. I’m betting on something similar to this but, please remember, I’m only one episode in so the pieces of the puzzle might not all have been revealed as yet...

What’s missing from this set of photos? We have The Doctor’s wife and The Doctor’s granddaughter... no Doctor’s son or daughter... whichever that was. That element is decidedly missing. We also have a new companion called Bill who The Doctor has suddenly taken an interest in and whose mother died when she was born. When she is now given some photos of her mother before she died, she spots the reflection of Peter Capaldi’s Doctor in a mirror taking the photo in one of them. And then she, and we, are all promptly asked to forget about it as the ‘puddle story’ takes up the heat for most of the rest of the episode...

However, if we don’t let ourselves get distracted we have the idea that we have The Doctor who knew Bill’s mum before she died and the idea of memory wipes represented. So my number one theory at the moment is that Bill’s mum was The Doctor’s daughter and, since Pearl Mackie doesn’t seem to be expecting to be staying around past this current series, I’m guessing her mind will be wiped a little and that she is The Doctor’s granddaughter and, when she regenerates into the familiar Susan Foreman incarnation of the character through televisual trickery at the end of the show, she will be left with an earlier incarnation of The Doctor (aka William Hartnell) and he will take her to Coal Hill School, sometime shortly before the very first Doctor Who story, An Unearthly Child, takes place.

Well, that’s my most favourite conclusion at the moment, anyway. Although, if that really does prove to be the case, then the LGBT community will want Moffat’s head on a stick for having a lesbian character who regenerates into a character who runs off with a man at some point. So maybe not. But I like the idea that the new companion ‘may’ be Susan or, at the very least, in some way related to her so... lets see if she’s revealed to be in possession of two hearts anytime soon, eh?

And that’s that for me. Great opener and I can only hope the show continues at this quality. I guess I’ll find out next week.

Doctor Who - The Husbands Of River Song

River Deep, Mountain Who

Doctor Who - The Husbands Of River Song
UK Airdate: 25th December 2015
BBC 1

Warning: Minor spoilers in here, I guess.

Well this is probably going to be one of my shortest Doctor Who reviews ever. Not because it’s the Christmas holidays and I need to be getting on with other stuff... I mean... well I probably do but this blog is my retreat and it always gets top priority from me, so I’ll write for as long as I need.

Nope, the reason is because there’s nothing much to complain about, again, with this episode of the show. It’s a pretty solid episode and, unlike a few over the past few years (and last year's also had this quality to it), it’s a bit of a romp. That being said, there’s also nothing much outstanding in the content of the episode either so... you know... liked it a lot and there’s just not much to say about it.

But... you know... I do have a little bit to say about it. ;-)

Okay, so there is some good stuff here and, maybe, just one bad thing but only bad because I wasn’t fully understanding the implications of it, I guess. Now, I hope you all don’t consider this as a major spoiler but, if you’ve got this far on your Doctor Who watching this shouldn’t come as any surprise to you. River Song is The Doctor’s Wife. She is also the daughter of two of his most cherished companions but I won’t say who here just in case people are only jumping on now. The first time the Doctor meets her, in David Tennant form in Silence In The Library, she sacrifices her life in the second part of the story to save The Doctor. After that, The Doctor continues to meet her out of order in time and space, and sometimes quite backwards, as they forge a relationship... one she’s already lived out over the years she has known The Doctor in terms of his first encounter, in his future of the timeline as we currently follow it.

This episode, for River, is set fairly soon after she sees her parents whisked away by the Weeping Angels and Matt Smith’s incarnation loses his two companions forever in The Angels Take Manhattan (reviewed here), although it’s not the last time The Doctor saw her... I’ll get to that in a minute or two.

This is, as I said earlier, a romp with one of River’s husbands in this being a diamond, lodged as shrapnel in the head of a cybernetic dictator of a planet and, once said head has been ‘lifted’ from the owner (in full working and noisy order) it’s all about getting the head back (for the malevalently pursuing body) while exploring how The Doctor and River get on in terms of Peter Capaldi’s current incarnation personality. As it happens, since River knows that a Timelord can’t regenerate for more than twelve incarnations, she has no idea that this Capaldi version is The Doctor. Of course, she doesn’t know what we, the viewers know, that The Doctor has had ‘a thing’ happen at the end of his last regular Matt Smith episode which allows him to carry on regenerating so, when The Doctor gets roped into Professor Song’s current shenanigans, she really doesn’t know who he is and, despite The Doctor constantly trying to make her realise who he is, doesn’t find out until pretty near the end of the story. This, of course makes for lots of humorous shenanigans as The Doctor tries and fails to spell out the obvious while River takes him for an idiot who needs to have things explained to him and, also, confessing a lot of stuff she certainly wouldn’t have told The Doctor if she knew who he was.

The best of these scenes for me was the ‘first entry to the TARDIS’ scene which writer Moffat has been trying to get around being similar to every other time a new companion 'does it' in the last 50 plus years of the show. He’s taken a lot of side swipes at it in recent years but this is one of the best because it’s The Doctor having to pretend it’s his first time entering a TARDIS... and he hams it up with relish and does it just as he’d like to hear it done, with a lot of sarcasm and at great length. Capaldi performs it beautifully, the direction of the scene and the way the camera captures it is beautiful and, of course, the irony is completely lost on River... which gives it a little extra punch. Nice stuff and certainly the best bit of the episode I reckon.

There’s also the ‘almost bad thing’ which is the poignant, almost downer of the ending where we realise that this is ‘the last night’ that River and The Doctor are together before he sends her back with a sonic screwdriver to meet his younger self (where she dies)... the punchline to that being that, on the planet where they are, night last for over two decades. So they have plenty of time to fix some of the unfortunate revelations about River’s perception of The Doctor’s character, revealed as the episode continues on. Now I found this last scene a little bit of a downer but also confusing because... well... if you all can remember back to the Matt Smith episode, The Name Of The Doctor (reviewed here) you’ll also know that she’s also met him again ‘after’ her death. Something which isn’t explained after her personality was downloaded into the library via the sonic screwdriver The Doctor gave her (apparently in this very episode I’m reviewing now) but which certainly means, as far as I’m concerned, that she can come back anytime in the series. Of course, since Moffat has left Orson Pink completely dangling as a loose end, it certainly doesn’t mean River will return again but... well... River Song’s a popular character. We’d all love to see her back again as soon as possible, I imagine. Preferably with The Paternoster Gang in tow but... that’s another issue.

But that’s about it from me on this one. Not much to say. Enjoyed it. A nice dessert to what has been one of the best series of Doctor Who in quite some time so... yeah... The Husbands Of River Song is a nice little story in the continuing history of the show. Nothing more. Nothing less. And as for next year... we shall see what we shall see, I guess.

Doctor Who - The Name Of The Doctor

Tomb It May Concern

Doctor Who - The Name Of The Doctor
Airdate: 18th May 2013. UK. BBC1

Warning: Kinda spoilers... I suppose.

Well that was kinda interesting. It didn’t actually move me in any way like a fair few of the Russel T. Davies era did, for sure, but I didn’t hate that episode. I didn’t quite enjoy it either, to be honest. It felt too much like a mathematics problem about half way through the episode for my taste. Or like I was admiring the blueprints of some very clever machine with great enthusiasm... but without really connecting with it, if that makes sense.

Okay, so four or five years ago I started suggesting to a lot of people that, for the 50th anniversary episode (which we’re just a little over 6 months away if they air it one the day they should be, it falls on a Saturday this year, after all), it would be good if they could get all the Doctors together by CGI-ing the current doctor into scenes with his past lives in much the same way that they did so well in the old Deepspace Nine episode Trials and Tribbleations, in which the crew of the DS9 were spliced and dropped into the old classic Star Trek episode The Trouble With Tribbles. Well it looks like Steven Moffat thought along the same lines but dropped it early, into this episode instead.

Unfortunately, although the sight of seeing “impossible girl” Clara Oswald Oswin interacting with the previous versions of The Doctor from various past stories did cause me to go “ooh” a bit... I couldn’t help but notice that the traditional shoddiness of the BBC budget maybe let things down a bit and we got the equivalent of CGI matt lines and colour balance problems and goodness knows what else showing up as artefacts by the look of it. Not having a go mind you... I’m sure the task of working with such mismatched material in the first place must be incredibly hard and time consuming and it was at least nice that they decided to have a go at it... but all the same I think it might have been better to not attempt it at all if the result was looking like this.

Also, the set up with Moffat’s story arcs, as another blog writer pointed out to me in one of their reviews of an episode from a couple of years ago, is usually a lot more satisfying than his end games and, I have to say, I found that to be the case here. Even in microcosm, taking just this episode by itself, the opening 20 minutes or so were absolutely riveting storytelling which pulled me in but, when The Doctor, Clara, Jenny, Madam Vastra, Strax and River Song finally got to The Tomb Of The Doctor and scar tissue of his timeline, all the promise of something amazing happening with revelations to be told were shamelessly carpeted over with a bit of fakery consisting of half a packet of pseudo-science and the white of an egg.

The great trouble with certain kinds of science fiction writing is that, when you rely on a premise which has no real basis with fact, like time travel, then you can start writing your own rules about the nature of that specific factor of the story and use it as a crutch to write yourself out of anything. This is not the best form of science fiction writing, I think it’s fair to say. Some of the best science fiction is about using those small leaps of technological faith to heighten the way you can push the envelope on real life questions and use the premise promised by a specific scientific idea to explore speculatively the drama at a higher level than you can in real life.

Alternatively, space opera like Star Wars and Star Trek used speculatively changed real life physics to boldly go to places which are still tied in to basic real life truths. Engines get you to so and so, therefore a warp engine will get you to somewhere else where this can happen in the reality made possible by this pretence... and so on.

The worst thing you can do, I reckon, is have science fiction which talks about an amazing concept, like time travel, and then doesn’t follow on from the logical speculation of the way you can play with that, it just throws a few scientific words in together to form an impressive sounding piece of, essentially, mumbo jumbo and there you have it... whatever problem you’ve temptingly lead up to is solved in a jiffy and I’m afraid I’ve noticed that happening more and more in the show of late. An ending nowadays in this series can simply be a bit of “well you did this but that means if I [insert technical sounding jiggery pokery here] then the day is saved and it’s simple as that." Now you could argue that The Doctor has always relied on “reversing the polarity of the neutron flow” over the years but I don’t think it’s usually set up to be the one thing which solves all the problems he is having with his enemies in whichever shows he does this, unless it actually makes some sort of scientific sense, like two poles cancelling each other out might actually help in some situations.

I guess what I’m saying here is that, although it was all very nice to see the original Doctor on his way to steal a TARDIS and Clara suggesting he nick the old Type 40 instead, because it would be more fun, I’d rather have seen a more solid grounding in reality for the solution to The Impossible Girl storyline than this. Introducing John Hurt as The Doctor at the end of the episode didn’t quite cut it either and, although I’m really glad that Moffat really didn’t let slip the name of The Doctor this time around, it did feel just a little bit of a cheat making the title of the episode seem like something to be revealed when, in fact, it was just half of a quote spoken by The Doctor in reference to his John Hurt incarnation. Much as I love John Hurt, and I do think he’s a terrific actor (Will somebody please release Mr. Forbush and the Penguins onto DVD or BluRay please?), I can see that he was obviously chosen to add a certain kind of weight to the character... for me it felt a bit of a letdown, having a cliff hanger onto the 50th Anniversary story end with, to be honest, nothing really happening.

I was also a bit disappointed that the threat of The Great Intelligence did not bring about a reappearance by the Yeti... a basic “give the people what they want, or at least, what they need” should have been the order of the day here after teasing fans with this particular foe only to have his most beloved foot soldiers not make an appearance. So I was a tad let down there, I think.

At the end of the day i have to ask myself, did I enjoy the episode and I have to say... I really don’t know. I loved the interplay between Jenny, Vastra and Strax (as usual) and it was really nice to see a post-library version of River Song here, although I’m really unsure if that’s going to be her last appearance or not. Similarly it was nice to see... um... no that’s it actually. I loved the first 20 minutes or so and the rest of this episode stalled for me there. I didn’t think it was terrible, for sure, but neither was it a great episode, I think. It sets up more questions than it answers (naturally, that’s been Moffat’s main modus operandi for season finales over the last few years, so that was expected anyway) but it would have been nice to get just a little more closure and start afresh next time, methinks, than drag this out any longer.

I didn’t enjoy it like I’d hoped I would but then again, I didn’t hate it either... and that will have to do until next time I guess. Hope you all enjoyed it though. I think I may be getting a bit long in the tooth for it, perhaps. I’ve been watching from Jon Pertwee’s first appearance in the show so... maybe I should accept that the show is going to continue to have some off years, like it always had in the past, I guess. Better luck next time.

P.S. I still like Clara though, so looking forward to seeing more of her in the future.

Doctor Who - The Angels Take Manhattan

Melody’s Song

Doctor Who - The Angels Take Manhattan
Airdate: 29th September 2012. UK. BBC1

Warning: Absolutely loads of spoilers in this one, sweetie!

Right then. Following on from last week’s sentiments... I’m kinda glad I don’t have to write anymore reviews of new Doctor Who for a while after this week (although, stay tuned to my blog... Silurians and Sea Devils will be coming). It’s getting to feel a little disappointing when every episode seems to be a little less than I was expecting/hoping. It’s like writing up Torchwood 4 all over again.

So, anyway...

The much publicised “departure of The Ponds and return of The Weeping Angels” episode started off really well with some moody, 1930s New York set ups and an appearance from a creature who I knew would have to be in it, but whom I was expecting to be saved until the end as a “big gun”. That is to say, and it’s all pretty obvious even to a child, I’m afraid, that as soon as you hear the episode is going to feature these popular foes and the title is going to be The Angels Take Manhattan, you pretty much have expectations that you’re going to see The Statue Of Liberty running around. They obviously thought it was obvious too, because they stuck it  in right from the start... although you don’t see it running around because, presumably, the budget wasn’t big enough. Yes, I know you’re not supposed to see the angels moving but, let’s face it, they did in the last one (even though it made absolutely no sense and broke all the “rules” that were set up in the excellent episode Blink) and, frankly, it’s not like nobody’s not going to notice The Statue Of Liberty running around anyway. It really wouldn’t have made it off its island without being spotted so, well... it’s not really making a lot of sense is it.

The episode starts off intriguing and quite charming until about half way through when all bets are off and you really find yourself drifting through an episode of... um... not much really. The chemistry between River Song (one of my favourite characters) and The Doctor seemed a little stale this time... some of the lines were good but it really wasn’t done with the same sense of fun coming across I usually get from episodes with this character. Still, The Doctor hasn’t sent her off to her final fate as yet (as seen in the David Tennant episodes) and so there’s plenty of time for her to come back and do good in future installments. Although, if The Doctor is supposed to be whisking her away each night from her prison and she’s been pardoned for murdering someone who doesn’t exist... how does that all work? She’s not in jail now for her adventures and, presumably, she’s served some time already for... um... not killing someone? Hmmm... this was all thought through properly wasn't it, eh? I’m kinda feeling let down like there’s not going to be any magical “fixing” of this storyline in future episodes now.

I think, to date, this has been the worst series of Doctor Who I’ve seen in quite some time... and I seem to be saying that a lot just lately. On the other hand there was some good stuff in this one too.

The production values... despite not having the money for miniatures to show The Statue Of Liberty walking... were pretty cool. The thing looked nice and moved along at a good pace... I really think the main weakness on this one was the writing I’m afraid. Apologies about that but there you have it. It’s how I feel. Although, saying that, the idea of having a recurring and constant “human battery farm” of a meal by recycling would be rescuers of their own future selves was a little touch of genius... just not enough to cut it the kind of slack i would prefer to.

Oh well, time will tell for the programme, I think. New companion this Christmas, although she seems to be a Dalek, so it’ll be interesting how they address that issue... and Asylum Of The Daleks was my favourite story of this series so maybe the new gal will breathe life into the show and give it the impetus it so greatly needs right now.  Hopefully I’ll be able to review that for you all on Boxing Day if nothing drastic happens to me, like death or senility, so I’ll enjoy my welcome break from reviewing these shows for now, methinks. Thank you for reading. More film reviews here very soon (hopefully tomorrow sometime).

Doctor Who 6.8 Let's Kill Hitler

WHO do you think you are kidding Mr. Hitler?

Doctor Who: Let's Kill Hitler

Airdate: August 27th 2011.

UK. BBC1

Warning: Yep. Loadsa spoilers bound to cascade into this review as I write it. Don’t be reading this if you haven’t seen the episode but are intending to at some point soon!

Well that was just utterly brilliant, mad fun and unbelievably did-you-really-just-drop-the-ball-that-badly-Mr.-Moffet-? both at the same time. Maybe it’s just because I’m three quarters of the way through what is almost certainly the dullest and most unredeemable series of Torchwood imaginable at the moment, but for once the parent show of the that particular spin-off managed to give me the heady cocktail of fast moving science-fiction and generally the best all round Doctor Who-ing in an incredibly long time.

There were, however, downsides to it and these downsides were pretty hefty dents in the Gallifreyan armour I'm afraid.

Still, it certainly went somewhere I didn’t expect the episode to go... well... even after it started telegraphing itself in the pre-credits sequence. And, of course, the wonderful episode title which they hit you with at the end of the mid-season finale, which by the way BBC, I’m so totally not buying into as it’s a stupidly ignorant contradiction in terms (mid-season "finale"... what rot!), “Let's Kill Hitler” is a bluff lured you into watching what was, admittedly, an astonishingly strong episode which, it has to be said, moved along at a rate of knots which I truly wasn’t expecting. Who says expositional dialogue set-ups for future episodes have to be dull? This one certainly wasn’t. And, of course, it was absolutely nothing really to do with killing Hitler whatsoever... but "Hey! Made you look!" I guess. That's what they were thinking, right?

So we had a very strong opening pre-credits sequence where a totally new character turns up after Amy and Rory have brilliantly summoned The Doctor with a dynamically scrawled home-made crop circle style rendering of his name... or term such as it is. After the titles have finished rolling you get a potted history of this character being best mates with Amy and Rory throughout their life together as they all grow older and by now you’re all probably thinking to yourself... well that’s probably another incarnation of River then is it? Because, you know, new character suddenly dropped out of the blue and given an entire history means it probably somebody important and, frankly, you’re not going to have many important people wandering around the Whoniverse that you don’t already know, are you? And since you know Moffet is hit and miss but he’s certainly a lot smarter than to drop a bit of story like that spun totally from air for the sake of convenience... then you do kinda suspect it. Jasper Fforde already caught me out that way with his "Granny Next" character in the "Thursday Next" novels which I thought was an incredibly bit of totally new character pop-up bad writing in the second book... until I read the fourth book. Same kinda thing here... just a ten minute wait instead of a couple of years in book terms for the resolution. So telegraphing early on then but, you know what, it doesn’t matter because it’s such a brilliant episode that you can forgive the writer from quickly running through the wet paint out of that corner he’s painted himself into.

Now then, the next bit does matter as it seems, at least on what we know so far, that it was a real clunker. River Song's regeneration into the woman we best know her as was a great entrance and Alex Kingston played the part with absolute relish and had fun in this “earlyish” version of River Song... however, after she’d poisoned The Doctor and been machine gunned by a troop of Nazis we hit a problem. She absorbed the bullets and flung out burts of “timelordy” energy to knockout her antagonists and came out with the line that you should never try to kill a gal mid-generation. Hang on a minute folks. We’ve already seen what happens when you kill a timelord mid-regeneration remember? He dies by a lake in the US of A! He doesn’t get a second wind and turn up right as rain does he? No... he gets burnt on the water by his friends.

But that’s alright... it was such a great episode anyway and I’ve got every confidence... well... every hope that Moffet will sort all that out before the final episode (please keep it together... please!).

So then... the timeline goes thus...

1. Amy and Rory give birth to Melody Pond.

2. Melody Pond is kidnapped and programmed to kill The Doctor.

3. Melody Pond, dressed as an astronaut and rising from the lake, kills the Doctor... but she must know she failed (or at least think that because there’s another younger version of The Doctor on the scene soon after). So she comes for him again but Amy shoots her... she regenerates at the end of Day of the Moon and goes on to...

4. Grow up with her parents as their best friend (making sure they get together to give birth to her) until she sabotages the TARDIS by shooting it, gets shot, regenerates into Alex Kingston and attempts to kill the Doctor with a poison kiss before saving him in a fit of “identity recognition guilt” by giving up the energy for her remaining lives (not that she’s strictly a timelord or anything but nice to know they’re now going to have to categorically address that rule at some point soon... maybe even in this current series).

And that was almost it... brilliant action, humour and witty banter all the way through except... yeah there was another big clunker which may or may not be the fault of the writer... could be an editing thing. Amy Pond robot zapped Amy and Rory and miniaturised them... why I don’t know because the robots were only going to kill them anyway. However, when Amy and Rory wake up miniaturised inside a mechanised Amy Pond... they instantly know that they have been... well... miniaturised inside a mechanised Amy Pond. How? Not even The Doctor’s figured that one out yet! How do these characters suddenly get this kind of knowledge? Maybe it was in a scene that was either not shot or edited out... or maybe it was just bad writing. Either way... it was a bit of a leap to ask of the audience I felt.

As was the other clunker. Amy sonics everyone on the mechanised Amy’s bracelets, including her own, which revokes everyones privileges over the mechanised beings that seem to be “running” the... well let’s call it a “mechanaut” shall we? I feel that’s a good term for it. So how is it, after that’s happened, Amy can still ask for access to their records. No family privileges for The Doctor’s files I would imagine.

So there was that... which was a real clunker of a how-to-move-a-story-on-device if you ask me. That and the fact that all the above timeline isn’t quite as complete as it should be. We have, after all, seen an eye-patch wearing version of River, echoing evil eye-patch lady, in the trailers for this half a season... so there’s more revelations coming I reckon.

But.... you know... wanted to like this one and it turns out I did. It delivered in spades and is easily the best episode of the current series so far for me. I know not everyone will agree with me as I heard bad things about the previews... so what? I can only judge it by my own standards and this one hit all the right “fun” buttons for me. Strong "mid-season opener" Mr. Moffet... even if that is a contradiction in terms!

Doctor Who: A Good Man Goes To War

Unchained Melody

Doctor Who: A Good Man Goes To War

Airdate: June 4th 2011. UK. BBC1

Warning: I kinda already spoiled this on Twitter when I figured out who River Song definitely was last night and tweeted it this morning... if you even think like this review is even going to be possible to write without spoilers now that I've actually seen the episode then think again... not only will you know everything but I’m going to give in to some cold, hard speculation so you might get the ending of the other half of the series spoiled too for you if you haven’t already figured things out. Fair warning and here I go...

Ok... a long, long time ago, I think last year when I first started writing this blog... I’m sure I mentioned that Moffett liked watery names such as River and Pond and expressed that they could be one and the same person or perhaps somehow related... well that has now come to pass.

In what is probably the best and most postmodernistically (is that even a word?) referential episode of the so called "sixth series" so far, all was revealed... it was a bit like a big chocolatey dessert served up as a little treat for the fans. Now I’m sure if you’ve not been following the show thus far for the last seven weeks (let alone since the first appearance of River Song in the Tennant/Tate years of the show) then you’ll probably have found this episode mostly as dull as dishwater... even with the great one liners. It’s almost like it's a little bit of an episode which is there to just answer questions for regular viewers and tie up everything in one big package which is clearly labelled, “For Fans Only... Have A Merry Christmas, Love Steven Moffett.” So it’s much like the fifth of the sixth of Kevin Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob movies, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back... so self referential that if you don’t appreciate or at least know of the foundations on which it is built... the whole thing will fall over for you like an unsteady house of cards. But if you’re in on the joke... well... I was really happy with this one.

So what we have here is a very fast paced, blink and you’ll miss another surprisingly consistent dose of all round episode seven goodness... and when I say surprisingly, believe me nobody is more surprised than I that Moffett could deliver such an entertaining slice of the Doctor Who cake after what I see as a mostly poor performance last season. Yeah, I moaned and whined a lot about it last year and doubtless I’ll moan and whinge a lot more later in the year if he lets me down again... but this one was just great. I’m going to have me a mini River Song season next year when all the DVDs are out.

Okay, so the Doctor raises an army in this one, wipes out petty much a whole fleet of cybermen to demonstrate the non-emptiness of a threat and generally gets as close to being a warrior as we’re ever likely to see him. This episode is full of drama as we see Moffett push the Doctor into places he’s not really been before... well... I say that... not really been in a long time may be a little more accurate but what the hell. I only finished watching it a half an hour ago so I’m still caught up in things (glad I didn’t have that second glass of wine now).

On the way to the final revelation, which picks up from the set-up of Amy having been a replicant version of herself with her mind beamed into her fleshy husk (see the previous episode, reviewed here), we see the Doctor raise an army against... um... some shady people aligned with some Headless Monks (the shady people are a bit UNIT like and I’m wondering if they’re anything to do with the plot lines established in The Death of the Doctor episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures last year - reviewed here) and pretty much become a very un-Doctor-like warrior figure... calling in debts from various races and with the appearance of some rather whimsical and utterly delightful creations such as a Sontaran Warrior-turned-Nurse and a warrior Silurian and her human lesbian lover who has been hobnobbing around London in the 1880s... particularly the Whitechapel area because we meet her just after she’s despatched Jack the Ripper as it happens (oh well... there’s another potential historical figure The Doctor won’t get to meet now unless there are some pretty grim continuity errors). She would have been awesome giving Leila and The Doctor a helping hand against that giant rat in The Talons Of Weng Chian methinks.

Added to the mix of action and adventure are some really funny lines and references to past episodes (those bloody laser cannon spitfires are back again) and it’s all wrapped together in a little bundle which has the final revelation (or not if you’ve been concentrating throughout the series) of River Song’s identity. So last spoiler warning right now for all who haven’t seen the episode yet... here are the facts and also a little bit of speculation.

1. River Song meets The Doctor and pretty much dies - Silence In The Library and Forest Of The Dead.

2. River meets grown Amy but doesn’t really say "Hi" or anything much to Amy on meeting her as I recall. Anyone else remember that... kept thinking, this is not the first time she’s met Amy... wonder how longs she’s known her and why is she’s staying quiet? Anyone else remember that? Now we know for sure. And by the way... it’s River who doesn’t give up on Amy and rescues her from the angels in that one! - The Time Of Angels reviewed here and Flesh and Stone reviewed here.

3. Amy is replaced by replicant Amy pre-Series Six.

4. After a few more adventures with the Matt Smith incarnation of The Doctor, River shoots at a little girl in a spacesuit after that little girl kills an older version of The Doctor. SPECULATION: The little girl is Amy and Rory’s daughter Melody Pond (the name you see written in the first couple of minutes of the latest episode and which gives you the answer right from the start... after all, how can River Song know about the events at Demon’s Run when she’s not technically there at that age in her timeline unless she’s heard of things from her mother?)... trained by the ones we shall call, for the time being, “the bad guys” to be a weapon to kill The Doctor. Which she does but somehow gets damaged (we’ll find out later in the year, don’t sweat it) and regenerates to heal (because she was conceived in the TARDIS so has timey-wimey DNA) and probably regenerates into a slightly older looking version of herself... like the River we all know and love? - The Impossible Astronaut reviewed here and Day Of The Moon reviewed here.

5. And then tonight... Amy has given birth to her and Rory’s daughter Melody Pond... who it transpires is young River Song and is a bit timelord in her make-up due to being conceived on the TARDIS (I think I’ve got that right) and is substituted for a replicant Melody/River and kidnapped by “the bad guys” and... SPECULATION: is trained as the perfect weapon and kills The Doctor (which I’ve no doubt he’ll get out of at some point later in the year). She then goes to prison and carries on seeing The Doctor whenever she can. And, of course, she is trained to be a very good killing machine, hence the Dalek begging for mercy in the last episode from last series called The Big Bang... and reviewed here.

And there you go. All wrapped up in a nice little bundle. The Doctor goes off to rescue young Melody while older, wiser River stays to comfort her mum and dad, Amy and Rory, at the end of this episode.

And, of course, being as it’s Moffett, this all raises a whole load of other perfectly reasonable questions with which Moffett can tease us with for a while... but we can easily see the light at the end of the tunnel on this one now so I’m feeling a little more relaxed about the whole thing. Especially seeing that the next episode after the mid-season break will be called Let’s Kill Hitler and especially since we had such a great little teaser trailer for the next half a series in the form of a cold, skeletal hand clutching a sonic screwdriver. Way to treat us to some iconic Doctor Who imagery which I suspect is going to stay with a lot of the little kiddies (and possibly some of us much older kiddies) watching this show for quite some time.

And that’s me done with the current show for a while.. obviously... and I’ll miss reviewing the show live on a Saturday night until the next half a series starts later on in the year. However, please stay tuned if you’re Doctor Who fans because I’m really not done with The Doctor just yet. First up I’ll be reviewing legendary sci-fi/fantasy writer Michael Moorcock’s take on the good Doctor with a little look at his novel Doctor Who: The Coming of the Terraphiles. Then at some point soonish I hope to be viewing and reviewing the Doctor Who classics The Claws of Axos and The Dominators. And I might also get to work on a little time-line illustration project at some point soon on one of the characters who has been featuring regularly on the series at various points over the last three or four years... I wonder who that could be then?

Thanks, as always, for reading. It’s always very much appreciated and I’m very grateful to my readers for taking the time to stop here.

Doctor Who: The Impossible Astronaut

Space 1969

Doctor Who: The Impossible Astronaut

Airdate: April 23rd 2011. UK. BBC1

Warning: If you’ve not seen this episode yet, well... as River Song would say herself... “Spoilers!”

Okay then people... here we are again. The first episode of a new series of Doctor Who is always a good feeling. You may remember that, after the blistering whirlwind of Christopher Ecclestons and David Tennant’s various series... I was kinda disappointed with the first season of Matt Smith’s tenure in the show.

I went on about the fact that all the actors were perfect in their roles and, although I love Karen Gillian’s Amy Pond with a passion, I still think she overshadows The Doctor somewhat... and that’s pretty hard to do because Matt Smith is no slouch in the “energised personality” stakes himself but that was one of my main grouches of “Series Five”... that and the fact that it wasn’t half as clever as it wanted to be.

Now then... I’ve heard some pretty good and completely unspoiler related feedback to the first two episodes of the current series which started today from the preview audiences... so I guess my excitement levels were well up when the episode actually started. How could it possibly live up to my impossible expectations though...

Well it did a pretty good job actually. It wasn’t the scary story that everyone said it was... at least not yet (it’s a two parter so maybe all the scariness comes in part two) but it did have a lot of the elements that I wanted to see plus a spooky, and frankly pretty much expected, reference back to the The Lodger episode in the last series. I wasn’t sure of that at first but I just went back to The Lodger and had a quick peek at the “ship” which was disguised as the second floor in that episode and it was the same ship and control panels which was using spooky electricity to power it that Rory and River discovered in tonight's episode... so it looks like we’re not quite done with last years storylines yet. Guess that’s why James Cordon’s coming back then?

But where was I? Oh, yes... elements in place. We have a post wedding Amy and Rory and Amy reveals near the end that she’s pregnant. That may or may not have some importance in the oncoming events is my guess... maybe she’ll name her daughter River, perhaps?

And speaking of River... Yep! Alex Kingston is back as one of the more intriguing and possibly controversial semi-regular companions of recent years and she’s as amazing as ever. There’s a wonderful bonding moment between her and Rory where she’s explaining her convoluted timey-wimey relationship with The Doctor and she tells him of her fear of meeting The Doctor when he’s never met her before and expecting that when she does she’ll die. And, of course, the audience watching have already seen that story a few years back... and she did indeed die when he first met her. Very touching and a nice reminder to get everyone back up to speed.

Other elements? Well you have time travelling anomalies all round... including a trip back to 1969 which is all related to the moon landings (or seems to be) and some very nice TARDIS-blue envelopes containing invitations from (presumably) The Doctor and sent to River, Amy and Rory, a new character who we meet both for the last time and then for the first time...

And one to The Doctor.

From himself.

From the future.

Which explains the big... not so much "shock" element but certainly the introduction of a big problem for our favourite time travellers companions. The problem is, you see, that not long after re-teaming with his trusty companions... the Doctor is killed by an astronaut rising from a lake. Killed and then properly killed again while he’s trying to regenerate and then cremated by his faithful travelling buddies.

Now of course this wasn’t exactly a surprise (did anyone really not think that was going to happen when he started talking to the astronaut... he knew what the outcome of that little meeting was going to be)... but surprise or not, it was a good move by writer Steven Moffat to use this as a punchy start off point for the series. Just keeping my fingers crossed that it doesn’t deteriorate as last year’s episodes did.

And of course, The Doctor then turns up alive and well, as you knew he would, in a younger incarnation of himself and the others are all supposed to act like they’ve not seen him killed a short while ago and yet still convince him to go to 1969 where his older self was positive they should go.

Nice little conundrum to start the series off in style... and then you had the monsters, known as The Silence I believe, although they’ve not actually been named in the series itself as yet... I’m pretty sure, as I said above, that we’ve seen them before in The Lodger. The Silence, as I will now continue to refer to them until I stand corrected by any unexpected surprises the rest of this series may throw up, are typical Steven Moffat creations. He likes the things which creep around where you can’t see them and they’re already there. Vashta Narada, Weeping Angels... he’s very good at it and has given a very memorable and lasting set of creations to add and enrich the fascinating tapestry of this show. The Silence have a brilliant defence mechanism... when you see these alien beings you can react and fear them and engage with them (whether that’s a good idea or not) and as soon as you turn your head and look away (much like our friends the Weeping Angels in a kind of inverted, filtered way) you’ve clean forgotten about them. You don’t remember them and you have no idea what you were just going on about in all probability... until you see them again. Or maybe some gut instinct in your tummy (possibly growing there) senses them perhaps... oh, bugger. I’m reaching there, arent I?

So yeah... not exactly scary monsters this time around (not like his past creations) but certainly an interesting foe and with some unique traits which make them hard to attack but also, I’m guessing, leaves them more open to being defended against... I just can’t be bothered to work out how you do that yet. I’ll wait until it comes up I guess! I'm a bit worried they've already played the "Oh my gosh they're on us"... looks around... "It's okay, the coast is clear" card one too many times than I care for myself but, hey, I can live with that as a plot device.

We also have everybody’s least favourite president, Mr. Nixon himself and a brilliant new character played by Mark Sheppard who I loved when he played the lawyer in the last few seasons of Battlestar Galactica a couple of years ago.

Al the pieces of the puzzle are in play and I don’t know what happens next. We’ve been seeing an unshaven and presumably third version of Matt Smith’s incarnation of The Doctor for quite some time now on the trailers and it looks like next episode is where he comes in to play. And it seems like River Song is going to become very important to everybody at some point soon in the series... and hopefully that’s not just the usual Songian tease we keep on getting since the character first started appearing.

This was, I have to say, a pretty good episode and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that as the second part plays out it doesn’t let down the set up promise of the first... as these things are liable to do sometimes. I don’t know where they are going with this...

One thing I do know though and that is this. People would be mad to think that the set up from this episode, which in itself seems to be a continuation of events started in The Lodger episode from last season, are going to be neatly tied up in the next episode... I think the events that have taken place in this story are going to linger around for at least the rest of this series... or possibly for a few more years if Moffett and co aren’t feeling that kind.

Looking forward to the next one!

This episode started with a little dedication to the recently deceased but very much loved Elizabeth Sladen who sadly passed away a few days ago. This was very welcome and, perhaps the BBC might put a dedication to the, also fairly recently deceased, Nicholas Courtney up in a future episode? U.N.I.T members are dropping like flies these days and they’re all very much missed by fans and friends everywhere.