Starve Acre

Bunroaming

Starve Acre
UK 2023 (2024 releaase)
Directed by Daniel Kokotajlo
BFI/BBC Film

Warning: Tried to talk around the spoilers but they may have crept in regardless.

Starve Acre is a new folk horror movie from director Daniel Kokotajlo. Now, I’m not as enamoured of the folk horror sub-genre as I perhaps should be, mainly because it’s often quite clumsily rendered. I think what a good folk horror film should do is bring in a slow, haunting strangeness for the first half of the movie, steeped in locale specific folklore, before stepping up the pacing and leaning into the fantasy element, which would then start building for the last half of the movie. And so I’m very pleased to say this is exactly what Kokotajlo does with this tale and it works really well, conjuring up a nicely unsettling film with a couple of worrisome beats near the start which set up the strangeness of the rest of the story as it unfolds.

Now, I have to be honest here... I didn’t realise this was set in the 1970s (I had to look it up, too) until I finally twigged nobody was using a mobile phone in the picture so it might be set in the past. I think I’m kinda period blind to anything taking place after about 1930 because fashion styles all look pretty much what I’d be wearing after that date, to be honest. It’s also set in Yorkshire which, I also had to look up to find out what accent the main lead and many other characters are speaking in. I’m also assuming Starve Acre is the place where they all live because, no real mention is made of the title in the dialogue anywhere, that I heard.

Anyway, the film concerns Richard (played by the great Matt Smith with said Yorkshire accent) and his wife Juliette (played by the brilliant Morfydd Clark from Saint Maud, reviewed by me here) who have, two years prior to events portrayed here, moved back into the area where Richard’s father raised him (in somewhat unusual and traumatising ways, it transpires). They have a young son and, you can tell right from the opening that he’s not quite right because, at a local gathering/activity, he pokes out a donkey’s eye. This obviously worries the parents who want to put him into psychological evaluation but, it’s not long after this that something else significant happens and a few seconds of just a black frame denotes a timescale shift of... some months after this specific incident.

Juliette’s sister Harrie, played by Erin Richards, comes to stay with them for a bit as Juliette is suffering from depression... as is Richard, who buries himself in his archeological work revolving around the people who used to live in the area years ago and their use/worship of a once powerful oak tree which had some significance to them, the roots of which Richard thinks he may have found in he earth near to where they live (he has been given a year’s leave from the local university at which he teaches, due to an earlier incident). When a non-human skeleton of... some description (spoilers, I suspect) which he has dug up begins to regenerate organs, things start to take a turn for the strange and uncanny, leaning into the folk horror more as Richard and Juliette come under the spell of whatever is going on and Harrie is discovering that not all the locals who live in the neighbourhood are necessarily what they seem (another important ingredient of folk horror, I reckon).

And it’s an absolutely fine film. It’s suitably creepy and there are some nice shots of the landscape, which is often filmed in ways you wouldn’t expect, with close ups of details (on the interior shots as well, such as concentrating on the hand of an actress first, before giving any kind of establishing shot). The camerawork does feel like it’s very voyeuristic a lot of the time. Like a lurking, perhaps menacing presence is watching all that transpires in a fly on the wall kind of way.  

The actors are all terrific, of course. Matt Smith seems to be playing it very differently from many of his signature roles and somehow manages to nullify any baggage from other movies or TV performances he might have been carrying... you totally believe in this man drowning in his own despair. Ditto for the brilliant Morfydd Clark, who goes from giving up on the world to the confident, feminine Earth power she needs to be for the sinister enchantment of the film to be able to work effectively. And as for Erin Richards, well, she doesn’t have quite as much chance to shine in the spotlight as the other two but she certainly does a great job... in particular and without giving anything away, the last ten seconds or so you see of her character is absolutely unsettling and a brilliant physical performance. I can’t say anymore for fear of spoiling the ending of the movie.

And all this, coupled with Matthew Herbert’s folksy terror scoring means that Starve Acre is a wonderful viewing experience and absolutely something that the great Severin Films in the US should be considering including when they get around to putting together the inevitable All The Haunts Be Ours Volume 3 box set in a couple of years time (I suspect). This one is up there with the best of these kinds of movies and it’s always great to see something made by film-makers who absolutely understand the power of the sub genre and know how to deliver. Also... and excuse me for being cryptic but spoilers need to be jumped on here... it doesn’t quite go the full Monty Python And The Holy Grail, but it comes pretty close. I absolutely loved this one.

His House

The House
That Roared

His House
UK 2020
Directed by Remi Weekes
BBC Films

His House is the feature length directorial debut of Remi Weekes and it’s quite a nice, morally uplifting film, in a way. After some brief footage of the two central protagonists... Rial (played by the wonderful Wunmi Mosaku) and Bol (played by the equally watchable Sope Dirisu)... escaping from Sudan, we get wind that something has happened to their child as they are crossing the ocean to England. We then join them waking up in a holding cell in the UK, being released ‘on bail’ and given a fairly big house (though it’s extremely dilapidated). Their conditions on staying in the UK are that they must not work or supplement their income, which is provided them by the government to the tune of £74 per week. They have a case worker assigned to them in the form of actor Matt Smith (yup, The Doctor himself) and they are told that they need to stay out of trouble, aren’t allowed any guests etc.

However, when the two start to try and fit in and begin a new life in their shoddy but spacious new home, it becomes clear fairly quickly that either the house, or at least some spiritual presence residing there with them, is not all that friendly. So that’s the set up... a haunted house story, of sorts, where the victims cannot leave because, if they do create a disturbance, they are faced with being deported back to Sudan.

And... it’s very well done, actually. There’s a certain atmosphere of foreboding in the earlier parts of the picture which is sustained for just a tiny bit before the director brings on the big scares. This is not the kind of ghost story that focuses on the shadows in darkened rooms... I mean, okay there certainly is a lot of that but it’s coupled with what I should maybe call a more practical, physical manifestation of the supernatural. So what we have is a bunch of ghosts/demons etc seeming to come from behind the walls (which by the end of the picture has loads of holes banged out of it for reasons I won’t get into here) and getting actually quite aggressive. These are not ghosts gently pursuing a suggestion of a soul in a state of unrest. These are aggressive, ‘coming to slash your throat with a sharp knife when you least expect it’ kind of demonic manifestations, for sure.

Now, quite honestly, this kind of practical, hands on approach to the way in which the evil present around Rial and Bol is handled can often kill a film stone dead and, truth be told, the last 20 minutes or so of the movie do seem a little less scary than anything that comes before it but there are some effective jump scares (and a nice double jump scare in one place early on in the running time) that help the movie come alive and are extremely effective.

Now one criticism I did have of it... and perhaps this is a big contributing reason as to why the scares faded away to nothing by the last act of the story... is that there’s a strong suggestion that there’s a twist coming and the opening shot of the movie is a big heads up to that, it has to be said. Indeed, there are a couple of sequences at the end which fill in the blanks and gives more fuller disclosure to the ‘highlights version’ of the trip from Sudan to the UK and, while it’s a nice reason for the hauntings which are manifesting themselves in the house, it does tend to pack less of a wallop than it might have without all that extra telegraphing.

That being said, it does have some good actors in the leads (and, honestly, does Matt Smith never age?) and it’s also aided by composer Roque Banos’ interesting score... sadly not released on CD at time of writing (which is a shame... I like this composer and I won’t now be able to listen to the score as a stand alone experience). There are also some nice touches lurking in the background which help re-enforce the sense of alienation the family are feeling... such as a security guard in a local store keeping an eye on Bol in the background when he’s shopping  or various local kids being pretty much as unhelpful as they could be to Rial when she’s trying to find her local doctor’s surgery.

And, that’s that. A short review perhaps but I quite liked His House and thought that, for the most part (especially the first half of the film), it’s a nicely made scary movie and while I don’t think it’s necessarily a ‘must watch’ for a lot of people, fans of the genre should certainly get something out of it so, if you are into some of the less subtle manifestations of supernatural dread in movies, you might want to check this one out, for sure.

Morbius

Suck, You Ducker

Morbius
USA  2022
Directed by Daniel Espinosa
UK cinema release print.

Okay, so I managed to get a relatively Covid safe screening of Morbius with only two other people in the audience, due to my suspicion that, a) nobody wants to go to the cinema on a Thursday morning and b) nobody liked this film enough to go for a repeat screening. And I really have nothing against this movie... I don’t know the character all that well (I think I had a Marvel comics sticker of him on a wardrobe somewhere in the early to mid 1970s and I possibly may have read his first appearance in a reprint of a Spider-Man story) but, really, all I went into this movie with was that he always used to be called Morbius, The Living Vampire (which would have been much more of an audience magnet of a title for this movie, I suspect) and that he was a Spider-Man villain, back in the day.

The film is not great, it has to be said but, neither is it terrible. I don’t like Jared Leto in pretty much anything I’ve seen him in, except for Requiem For A Dream where he really did a good job but, yeah, I’ve not enjoyed any of his performances since then, to be honest. In this, playing the title role, he says his lines with conviction and gives a more than adequate performance of the character as written on the page. He’s really not bad in this although the screenplay and dialogue is... well, it’s not great and somewhat out of its time, I thought...

By that I mean, it feels like it was made in the early to mid 1980s and it all seems very simple and, I dunno, somewhat flatly presented. I can imagine this fitting in well with certain things Marvel were doing in TV land and in their attempts to translate those properties into cinematic terms in the late 1970s to early 1980s... so it feels a little like a companion piece to something like the old, Nicholas Hammond Spider-Man TV show or that Dolph Lundgren attempt at a movie of The Punisher. It’s all a bit lifeless and like something you might feel a little cheated by in terms of ticket prices these days, at least that’s the way I felt about it.

Again, though, nothing wrong with it. One of the problems about the lack of any real stand up personality in the form of Leto’s, quite acceptable, turn as Morbius would be the possible mistake of putting an actor with a true powerhouse personality up against him as the villain. I remember when the previews of the Kevin Costner version of Robin Hood were screened and the studio had to slice out a lot of Alan Rickman’s scenes as the Sheriff of Nottingham out of the movie before it got released, because everyone in the preview audiences liked his character a heck of a lot better than the main hero. Well, it feels like something that maybe should have happened here because, well, they’ve put former Doctor Who incarnation Matt Smith in as the villain. And so, as you would expect with a giant personality like that, the only person you are watching when he’s on the screen is Matt Smith... the other characters all kind of go out the window. Personally, I think the studio should have had Leto and Smith switch roles if they wanted a better shot at a lucrative franchise out of this thing.

Which is something they obviously are going for because there are shout outs in here to the Marvel 'blip' plus both Venom and Spider-Man, including two mid-post credit scenes featuring a returning villain from one of the MCU Spider-Man films (in a couple of moments which completely contradict the way that character would logically be imported into this facet of the multiverse and, also in a way which, if the writers aren’t careful, may completely contradict the wonderful way in which that character was left in the post credit scene of an earlier movie).

There are some nice things about the movie... such as a line paraphrasing the Bill Bixby catch phrase of the old TV show of The Incredible Hulk, where Morbius says to a policeman, “You wouldn’t like me when I’m hungry.”... but there are also lots of not so great things, such as the editing and lucidity of the big confrontations scenes between Leto and Smith where, frankly, I was confused as to what was going on half the time. There could have perhaps been a bit more visual clarification in the action set pieces.

Another curious thing is, it sometimes feels more like a DC universe movie than something starring a Marvel comics character. The night time setting on most of it and the frequent shots of swarms of bats certainly are reminiscent of one of DC’s flagship characters, for sure. But more than that, in some of those scenes, the music almost feels just like what James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer were doing for Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy so, yeah, it just felt a little like I was watching one of ‘the other company’s’ movies at some points in the story.

And there’s not much more for me to say on Morbius, I think. At the end of the day, it wasn’t a bad movie and, if they feature Leto in the role in upcoming team-up movies (which I’m sure is the plan), then I’ll happily go along and watch them in the hopes the writing gets better. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this one but, hey, if you’re big on the superhero and super villain movies right now then, you’ll probably have an okay time with this one and it’s just nice seeing someone like Matt Smith on the big screen. They really need to get him in some bigger title roles, for sure.

Last Night In Soho

Puppet On A Sting

Last Night In Soho
UK 2021
Directed by Edgar Wright
Universal Pictures

Warning: I guess this has some mild spoilers.

Trust modern wonder director Edgar Wright to make a movie which transcends initial expectations of what it actually is... perhaps an homage to 1960s British horror, Italian giallo etc... and deliver something which actually only nods to those kinds of movie more as an acknowledgement... instead bringing something fairly new (although not strictly too far out of the box) into the mix. Last Night In Soho is probably not the film most people may expect it to be and although some of those touchstones are in here... there are certainly elements of a ‘Dario Argento Meets Mario Bava’ influence in both the lighting (which is even given an on screen rationale in terms of a character’s bedroom window in proximity to a flashing neon sign) and odd half winks to their various movies (are the mannequins in one shot juxtaposed to the previous a little nod to Bava’s Blood And Black Lace... reviewed here... for example?)... this one is so much more than the sum of any stylistic parts and very much its own thing.

Now, I have to admit, it took me about 25 mins to get into this one and I’d have to say, my first impressions of the central character were quite bad. For a little while, the way sixties obsessed main protagonist Eloise (played brilliantly by Thomasin McKenzie) was written, in terms of her dialogue... well I was having a hard time liking the character for a bit. However, she did grow on me fairly quickly once she leaves her grandmother’s house (her grandmother played by wonderful 1960s icon Rita Tushingham) to come to London to the famous London College Of Fashion (I think I went there to use their library once when I studied Graphic Design at the London College Of Printing back in the day). It probably helped that the majority of her fellow students are just really horrible and so she seems way better than them anyway and, I soon got used to the naivete of the character to the point where she became the reason why I was watching.

It’s pointed out very early on in the movie that Eloise is one of those people who can feel and see psychic/spiritual vibrations from objects and things quite vividly and, when she rents a room off of a landlady played by another 1960s icon, Diana Rigg, she starts tripping back to the past in her dreams and becomes Sandie, played by the always watchable Anya Taylor-Joy, as she tries to be a to singer emerging from the Soho scene in 1965. However, Sandie falls in with a ‘manager’ played by Matt Smith and things don’t go exactly as she planned. Meanwhile, back in the present day reality, Eloise starts to pick up on people and things from the sixties Soho of her dream life and starts to unravel a long standing mystery leading to a darkness at the heart of Sandie’s world... while fighting for her own life as the dreamworld she has let in begins to splinter into her day to day reality and take her mind.

Okay, so I really can’t say anymore about the story because, a) it will spoil it and b) you’ll probably work out most of the twists and turns a fair bit before the film gets you there. The film is obviously referencing the 1960s a lot and includes another couple of iconic performers of the time... these being Terence Stamp and Margaret Nolan (both she and Rigg have dedications on the film... one before it starts and one after it’s finished, I think this was both of these two actresses last movie role and it’s a shame neither of them lived to see how well the film has been received by the critics). However, the one way this film disappointed me slightly was by telegraphing (despite some obvious misdirection on the part of one of the male leads) the true identity of two of the characters and their actual relation to Eloise’s dream adventures.

And, after my initial reluctance to follow the central character which, as I said, was soon overcome, I have to say I found the film to not only be a tight and technological marvel in terms of the art of putting together something like this but also a thoroughly entertaining romp too. If horror is your bag (which this film plays on the periphery of but, due to the ‘visions’ experienced by the central protagonist, it certainly gets there in terms of slipping into that genre pretty well by the end) then you will probably have a good time with this although, I have to say, it’s a very slow burn of a movie which really doesn’t push any of those buttons until a good way through, when things begin to emerge and bleed over from both worlds. That being said, it doesn’t take long before some really beautiful and stunning non-horror set pieces are visited on the audience. Such as the first introduction to Eloise’s dream world as the character watches bewildered, becoming the mirror image of Anya Taylor-Joy and vice versa.

 And, yes, I’d like to say ‘it’s all done with mirrors’ but there looks like there was some clever, practical stuff which was done ‘in camera’ here to use the actresses mirroring each other to both interact with the same co-star at the same time and so on. What’s more, the ways those actresses both reflect and then sometimes not, as they watch each other, shows a real intelligence from, not just the performers but from the way Wright has obviously worked out that you can enhance a scene by using the actions and expressions of each of the two female leads to add a commentary to the events they are caught up in. I was very impressed, for example, when McKenzie apes Taylor-Joy for part of a scene but then is left surprised or doing her own thing as the character splits away from her to fill her in on what may, or may not, be somebody’s back story. Not to mention the technical brilliance (and timing) of the scene where Matt Smith dances with both girls simultaneously by swinging each of them around the camera to transform into the next person and then back again... I expect it took a fair few rehearsals to get right and it certainly wears its trickery on its sleeve but it doesn’t make it any less impressive and well timed, for sure.

And, of course, there’s a sonic backdrop of old 1960s hits such as two of my favourite Sandie Shaw songs... Puppet On A String and (There’s) Always Something There To Remind Me... to get the nostalgia receptors engaged and even, in one sequence, an actress playing a young Cilla Black (what a shame that Work Is A Four Letter Word never made it onto the songtrack, to revive interest in both the song and the movie). The film really hits a nice groove and I’m sure a lot of the younger audience will be discovering the ‘sounds of the sixties’ on the back of this movie, for sure... if Wright can hook them on it. I’m not sure its box office has been all that it could be (well... we are still in a pandemic) but I’m sure this is going to do very well on Blu Ray sales and I, for one, can’t wait to grab a copy of this one to show my folks.

So, yeah, that’s me done on Last Night In Soho. It’s a lot of fun and it looks absolutely beautiful. The twist reveals, such as they are, are maybe not too cleverly done (you probably will be ahead of them) but it really doesn’t hurt the film any because they are also inevitable points that the film needs to hit and it all gives some of the nightmarish, Roman Polanski inspired (surely there’s a little bit of Repulsion in here?) supernatural dream vibrations a good sound logical reading within the context of the story and especially the characters as they are represented later. I’m also pretty sure that, now I’ve processed the content of the film a little bit, I am going to really enjoy watching the heck out of it on subsequent viewings... I reckon this is one of those ‘fine wine’ kind of films that get better with age and familiarity once you start noticing the accumulation of details which you missed the first time around. This is definitely one for fans of spectacular and well crafted cinema, for sure.

Doctor Who - World Enough And Time

Telos About Mondas

Doctor Who - World Enough And Time
Airdate: 24th June 2017
BBC 1

Warning: Yes, this one’s got big spoilers in it.

This review marks another little 'anniversary' for me. When I first started this blog the first Doctor Who story that aired live and which I wrote about at the time was the first Matt Smith story The Eleventh Hour (reviewed here) and since that first Doctor Who review I did, well... this is my 100th Doctor Who review for this blog (not including the odd book review and episodes of Torchwood and The Sarah Jane adventures, some of which you will also find here). And I'm very pleased to be still reviewing them now after all this time.

So, okay, this was a really great set up episode but, as has been pointed out by various critics over the last few years, Moffat’s really good at openings and really bad at endings... so we shall just have to see how the wind blows when the second episode of this two (maybe three) part story ‘sort of’ concludes next week.

This weeks episode, though, was a real humdinger...

World Enough And Time started off with the lone Doctor, supposedly injured, stumbling out of the TARDIS and beginning his regeneration process. And then the credits play and there’s no more mention of this sequence and we are left to assume that the rest of the story is being told in flashback. I'm still unsure if he’s going to be completing that process at Christmas, as everybody says, or will be regenerating next week... perhaps he’ll do it at the end of next week but still make an appearance in the Christmas special. Who knows? Apparently.

So the next thing we have is Missy being the new ‘Doctor Who’ (in a somewhat distressing shout out for fans who are probably all, like myself, hoping that Moffat hasn’t decided to make that The Doctor’s real name) as a test to see how helpful she is and to decide whether she has turned over a new leaf. So they go to the aid of a real distress call and it’s Missy, Bill and Nardole answering while The Doctor watches their progress from the TARDIS as they try and figure out what’s going on with a starship which is slowly reversing away from a black hole... with the time at one end of the ship going very rapidly as opposed to the relative time at the other end of the ship.

And then we get our next big shock as somebody blows a big hole through Bill’s heart and she falls lifeless to the floor before a bunch of ‘heads covered in rags’ patients take her away to repair her at the other end of the ship... while The Doctor, Missy and Nardole are left to wonder what’s going on... a few minutes passing at what is a rate of months for Bill as she is somehow revived and her heart replaced with a big cyberchest thing. Oh yeah, that’s right... we knew the original, William Hartnell cybermen from The Tenth Planet (reviewed here) were back and, by the end of the episode, Bill is fully converted into... the very first cyberman. Or cyberwoman, I guess.

And there were some nice things about the episode which were really well written.  For instance, as Bill stands there in shock and we see a hole the size of an extra large fist punched through her body where her chest was, we flash back to point where Bill is warning The Doctor about this whole ‘trial run for Missy’ thing being a bad idea and asking The Doctor to keep an eye on her safety... so a nice poignant moment there. Although, I’m still not 100% sure that she’s not talking to a version of The Doctor who has already seen her die... but I’m guessing that this would be too inappropriately ‘timey wimey’ for Moffat in terms of the sense of gravitas purveying the episode... which is really atmospheric and scary, in all honesty.

Bearing in mind the Mondasian* cybermen are held back until the very end of the show as a surprise moment, one has to wonder why the BBC announced they were going to be on these episodes at all... if you’re going to have a surprise then have a surprise, for goodness sake. Although, truth be told, these new costumes, while scary, aren’t a patch on the original costumes from 1966 and have some very marked differences, it has to be said. As it was, though, we were all just sitting around assuming Bill would be ‘converted’ at the end of the episode. I mean, not even Murray Gold’s music gave the game away in that... he didn’t use his cyberman theme once, it seemed to me.  So, it’s like they were playing the episode completely for a big surprise and then just decided to tell everyone a few months before it happened. Bit of a silly thing to do, if you ask me.

And talking of surprises, we have John Simm back as the previous incarnation of Missy... The Master... and I’m assuming well be seeing him regenerating into her before the end of next week’s episode, maybe? Now, again, Moffat plays it really clever here and, aided by John Simm’s quite remarkable acting skills, hides him in plain sight for most of the episode. And that could have worked really well, again, if the BBC hadn’t let the cat out of the bag about him being in this final story. As it was, though, I was still fooled by the tactic up until only five minutes or so before he pulled off the prosthetics and revealed himself. At which point I exclaimed... “You don’t think that’s John Simm in disguise, do you?”... to the rest of the room and was told... of course not. However... it turned out it was.

Never mind though because World Enough And Time was still a smartly executed episode and, as usual, Peter Capaldi, Pearl Mackie, Matt Lucas, Michelle Gomez and John Simm were all doing some marvellous stuff here. There was also a nice little moment where The Doctor performs Venusian Judo (for the first time in decades in the show, I suspect) which ties in nicely, kinda, to the reappearance of the character Alpha Centauri a couple of weeks ago (I think Jon Pertwee first used this fighting style in the story The Monster of Peladon, right?). In fact, coincidentally, I was only talking about The Doctor fighting using Venusian Judo on a train back from a concert the other week so, yeah, it’s nice to have the reference.

Other than that, though... well I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that Moffat doesn’t screw up the season finale next week. I can’t say I’m looking forward to the conclusion of the story and I really hope he doesn’t forget to tie up all the loose story threads which he dangled in the first episode of this season. Especially since Bill deserves a lot better than the fate she has been given, to be sure. So, yeah, a nice episode, well put together and hope they don’t all screw it up next weekend. Fingers crossed for that, then.

* From the planet Mondas, one of the two worlds of cyberman legend, along with Telos.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Gored On Bennet

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
2015 USA
Directed by Burr Steers
UK cinema release print.

It is a truth perhaps less than universally acknowledged, that a Hollywood made horror parody in possession of a good budget must be in want of a good review. You will, of course, have to read on to find if a review of that passion and temperature is to be found in this humble blog.

Alas, by way of apology, in terms of my qualification to deliver a fair and less 'prejudiced' review of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I must hasten to add that, having read neither Jane Austen’s original tome, Pride and Prejudice, nor the Quirk books bestseller of less than a decade ago - Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith - I am in no way in a position to point out the merits, either good or bad, of the movie in question in terms of its adaptive qualities. The transformation of a work of written literature into a celluloid or, alas, digital medium can, at times, be a transformative process where either the baby or the bathwater can be found to be cast out and not survive the process which brings forth such hybrid creations, Frankenstein-like into this world.

However, in my defence, I will say that this also gives me a stronger viewpoint to judge the creation of the writers, directors and actors who have blessed us with their talents here on the strength of the primary intent of the final result that such a pot pourri of ingredients may bring to light in full view of the public. That is to say, my judgement is unclouded by the long road and legacy of the creation of the final product and, though this may mean I may not pick up on all the subtleties inherent in the narrative by the writers, I can in fact ensure that I am reviewing the film unhindered by the troublesome baggage that comes with a relationship to past variations of the theme, now made flesh on the cinematograph screens of the world.

It is pleasing for me to therefore report that, contrary to my expectations that such a woven concoction could not necessarily provide sufficient entertainment for the current generation of artistically impoverished souls who queue outside the picture houses up and down the country, myself included in this sometimes less than noble group, the artistic creation in question... that being the motion picture called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies... is indeed a thrilling and most entertaining yarn including extremely exciting scenes and visual depictions of romance and action. Both qualities rendered in equal measure upon a backdrop of atrocities of reanimated zombie horror that, despite being the sum of scenes which, essentially, all hang on the status bestowed upon it of being a ‘one-joke-wonder’ or ‘one-trick-pony’, so to speak, is both a cracking good piece of storytelling and also quite creative, at the very least, in the many ways in which the rendition of said, single, jape can be supported in terms of the comically inventive sequences. For example, the prejudice shown between the origins of a young lady’s skill at martial arts training, hinging upon whether one was trained in the Japanese or Chinese fighting styles, provoked smiles and noises of approval from this jaded cinema goer.

The actors in the movie are all very strong and bold and positively sterling in their upright depictions of the characters ‘borrowed’, or should I say ‘plundered’ from Miss. Austen’s original source novel. Lily James, so magnificent in both her beauty and her poise, soulfully renders the character of Miss Elizabeth Bennet animate with a grace and skill which positively brings one up into the narrative along with her. Sam Riley’s Mr. Darcy is as subtle in expression and deed as Ms James and his face is perfectly suited to that darkness and sense of haunted unease which plagues the character and paints him an ogre to the uninformed outsider. Former Doctor Who actor Matt Smith is also astonishing, playing a truly annoying and unsympathetic character, so much so that I was finding it hard to watch him to the point where his consummate skills as a thespian were painfully obvious in my inability to find anything likable about this charmless bore... I’ve always said Mr. Smith is a great actor and I think this film may not do him any favours in some ways because he is just so good and enthusiastic at his flawless portrayal.

All the performers in this are good and the cinematography more than adequate... incorporating long flowing shots and static tableaux which are a constant pleasure to behold and which lead the eye in to the plot with the other senses following obediently and without regret in their wake. I especially enjoyed the director's power to surprise the audience with the sudden bursting apart of a zombie’s head from a musket shell in mid conversation and also his audacity to then repeat this particular surprise joke again at a slightly later stage of the film while still managing to retain the veracity of its grizzly punchline without recourse to boring the audience or, indeed, popping them out of the narrative structure for any great length of time.

Similarly, the spectacle of the film, where the counties of London and Hertfordshire are rendered in their sheer and filthy zombie ridden beauty, is utterly that to which one must withstand a good and abundant smacking to one’s gob in reaction to the charming aesthetic which is followed through, from scene to scene, with a visual fervor which doesn’t stray from the continuity of the style of the opening sequences of the movie. Some directors can sometimes lose themselves with their incapacity to maintain a sense of kindred spirit between scenes as they flit around different ideas which sometimes burst apart the visual paste designed to cement them together into a single whole but Burr Steers shows not one jot of endangering his finely crafted entertainment with distractions to which an audience may find themselves suddenly left to their own devices.

Even the opening credits, with the back story of this twisted alternate history of the realm, is quite clever, employing a Pollock’s toy theatre illustrative style of the period to quickly keep the audience up to the fast pace of a stirring and noble steed in its expedient and entertaining delivery of the information required to maintain the steady course promised by the thoroughly thrilling pre-credits section. And, of course, the whole of the cinematograph sensation is also much sturdily bound with a score composed by the increasingly potent Fernando Velázquez which is pleasing to the ear, heightening the tenacity of the drama on screen without being untruthful or placing one outside of one’s attentions with any inappropriate or redundant musical atrocities. I have sent off to the Amazonians for a cylinder recording of said musical refinement to assail my ears with its lyrical charm and heart poundingly atonal, horrifying effects at the first opportunity.

And that, dear readers, is my summation of the newest entertainment of the screen, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which is showing in limited engagements around the country’s capital and many of the provinces local to yourselves. My best advice would be to take the opportunity to see such a merriment of mesmerising and humourous yet bloodthirsty shenanigans when the occasion first arises as it would be a shame for you to miss it at the cinema, although I understand some kind of home viewing apparatus may mean that many of you can enjoy the subtleties and juicy delicacies the film has on offer in another environment in a few months time. I would certainly urge you to do one or the other, or perhaps like myself, both, since this is truly a much better viewing experience than I had expected from the material and should be seen by many people to ensure it reaps the financial reward and encouragement for the producers that it does, in fact, deserve.  

Terminator Genisys

Pie In The Skynet

Terminator Genisys
2015  USA
Directed by Alan Taylor
UK cinema release print.

Well, I have to admit, I was expecting this movie to be a huge train wreck. Colour me surprised that, while it has some problems, Terminator Genisys was a really entertaining time at the movies and I’m really pleased about that.

I saw the original 1984 James Cameron film, The Terminator, between one and two years after it was released at cinemas, courtesy of a rental VHS tape from my local off-licence. I got to see it again on a big screen and in the right aspect ratio years later and, as such, it’s the only one of this series of movies, at time of writing this article, that I’ve seen twice. Although I’m thinking of getting a blu ray set if they release them all uncut towards the end of the year.

I loved that first movie at the time. It was obviously low budget and it was the kind of midnight movie style offering that made you wonder why they ever bothered to release it into cinemas in the first place. A B-movie exploitation film but a cool one... as far as I was concerned. When we all queued up a number of years later to see Cameron’s sequel, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, I was really disappointed with it and just didn’t have much good to say about it, in comparison to the origuinal. I preferred Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines because it had a sexy lady Terminator and it had a Schwarzenegger tribute to the original Django movie in it... really enjoyed that aspect of it. The one I really liked was the fourth one, Terminator: Salvation, for some reason, which I enjoyed almost as much as the first movie.

This fifth movie is really starting off from a point which is, frankly, a load of nonsense. None of the same actors apart from Schwarzenegger are back and it’s something I criticised some of the other films for... if the same actors don’t want to come back... don’t make another movie. Simple. So right away you know it’s a ridiculous load of tosh and the story seems to be full of so many mistakes in the temporal logic of the thing, similar to the stupid errors in films like Back To The Future Part 2 and X-Men: Days Of Future Past (reviewed here), that you have to completely ignore any grounding in trying to make this a valid sequel to anything... so the main thing is to not take this movie in any way seriously and you should have a good time with it.

Yeah, I understand if I say it’s a “switch your brain off movie” it’s just validating the lack of attempt of film studios to make more robust and logical movies but, heck, I can only respond to what’s in front of me here. And I fully understand that my lack of remembrance of pretty much anything of the previous movies makes me unable to properly comment on any possible continuity problems in this chapter of the series. That being said, if something is changed in the past, you can’t just go back and sort it out from a future point because the future point of what you just changed no longer exists... that’s pretty much a no brainer. There’s lots of that kind of anti-logic in this one but, you know what, I’m just going to let it slide because it’s so self evident that I can’t imagine anyone not having a problem with it and you certainly don’t need me to point this stuff out.

However, what this film is... is a non-stop action movie. And it’s a well oiled machine of an action movie, at that. It isn’t confusing, keeps up the pacing (which is pretty much action crescendo all the way through... like the recent Mad Max: Fury Road, reviewed by me here) and has a great set of actors. In addition to the always underrated and always brilliant Arnold Schwarzenegger, we have Jason Clarke as John Connor, Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor, Jai Courtney as Kyle Reese, Byung-Hun Lee as the Jason Patrick version of The Terminator (?), J. K. Simmons (playing slightly against type compared to what I’ve seen him do, though no less brilliantly) and the wonderful Matt Smith (in a not so visible but highly effective role). All more than capable actors, all doing a bang up job. So that’s all good, then.

The film is really well directed and Taylor keeps the camera moving a lot of the time. The rhythm of the editing is pretty neat (a scene where Schwarzenegger and Courtney are competing at ammunition loading springs to mind) and the lighting and colour palette seems to be pretty cool throughout and also helps stop things flagging on a visual level. There are some really cool sequences in terms of shot design and the way the editing works too...

For instance, there’s an amazing scene where we follow Jason Clark in profile as he walks through a load of vertical machinery like pipes, at speed, with the verticals rushing past to the right of shot as his character is walking towards the left of the screen... while he is kept in the middle of the shot via the moving camera viewpoint. Then the shot suddenly cuts to a pan of the same character continuing his walking... however, we see him from the front and we are panning in to him from the right... at exactly the same speed as the previous shot... which means the verticals rushing to the right are just continuing at the same pace, making it a completely seamless transition despite showing a completely different angle, because of the “visual glue” of the camera movement in relation to the foreground elements. Unbelievably cool and, although the two shots put together probably last less than 5 to 6 seconds, it just blew me away. The director completely won me over with these couple of shots.

Another great thing is the music. Now, apart from a couple of moments where literally just a few notes of the original Terminator theme are referenced, before being properly brought into play in the end credits suite (which plays like a new version of Brad Fiedel’s original) there aren't a lot of similarities to the thematic elements that have come before. However, Lorne Balfe’s score is robust and, like his score to The Sweeney (reviewed here) is an absolutely awesome and appropriate set of musical cues to accompany and enhance the emotions and dynamics of the movie. I felt myself admiring the music more and more as I got further into the film, which managed to thankfully hold its own in the sound mix during some of the fast and furious bullet ballets which the movie has on offer. This composer is definitely one of the "new guard" to watch out for, as far as I'm concerned... Taking his place among such modern soundtrack maestros as Alexandre Desplat, Michael Giachhino, Bear McCreary and Brian Tyler, as far as I'm concerned.

Ultimately, although there are some really big flaws in the thinking of certain elements - such as being able to grow new flesh which is designed to age and have it all blending in somehow - the film gets a lot of things right. True, there is a, presumably deliberately left, loose end in terms of just who or what sent the Schwarzenegger version of the Terminator nicknamed "pops" back to Sarah Connor’s childhood and there's a certain amount of predictability in terms of the ultimate fate of that version of the character (which will become obvious to you as soon as you see the interior of a certain interior set about half way through the movie) but the lack of logic and surprise doesn't mean an awful lot, bearing in mind that they throw it all away right from the start anyway. This film won't explain or fix any timeline issues of the previous movies but, at least, the audience can have some fun with the competency and creative flourishes inherent in the visual side. And, hey, there are some nice one liners in there too, which may make you smile. So, yeah, if you're into science fiction movies in general, Terminator Genisys is a flawed but fun picture to put on your "to watch" list. Not as good as the first or fourth installments but, yeah, it's definitely worth a watch and, I'm pretty sure after this one, Schwarzenegger will be back.

Doctor Who: The Time Of The Doctor

Capaldi Other One, 
It’s Got Jingle Bells On...

Doctor Who: The Time Of The Doctor
UK Airdate: 25th December 2013
BBC 2

Warning: Yes, more spoilerage I’m afraid.

Well that was a bit better.

In fact, it was a lot better. This time around Steven Moffat went back to getting almost everything right about giving us an entertaining Christmas special where everything actually made a bit of sense.  “Almost everything right” did I say? Well, yeah, come on... if you’ve been reading my reviews of the show ever since I started this blog you’ll know I usually have at least a couple of gripes with an episode (at best) and, at worst, a whole load of them.

Fortunately for me, this is definitely an “at best” situation, which means, well you know, like I said... I have a couple of gripes. I’ll save those for a little way down the page though as I’m going to focus on some of the positive stuff here first and, as a “for instance”...

The tone was perfect and just the right mixture of joy tinged with deep and bitter sadness which is the thing you always need to travel through and get a really good Christmas special... Doctor Who or otherwise. The performances of Matt Smith and Jenna-Louise Coleman were, as was expected, absolutely brilliant and, as another expected bonus, but a bonus nonetheless... so were the performances of everybody else. Especially that of Orla Brady as Tasha Lem, who is a character who you cotton onto as being kind of interesting and just what the show needed right from the start. Unfortunately she’s dead and dalek channeling before the end of the episode but, hey ho, you can’t have everything.

The story was great and, in addition to having just the right blend of fairytale and tragedy that was required, it actually tied up (hopefully for good) a whole lot of loose ends which had been occurring since Matt Smith first made an appearance. Some things I knew were going to be back... Amy’s crack in the wall, if you didn’t see that one coming then... seriously? And some things I didn’t... but that’s only because the various people in question had been lying to us all on behalf of the BBC and saying they would never ever return to the show... yeah, I’m looking at you Amy Pond/Karen Gillan. Nice to see you but, if I’d have been less trusting, I would have put money on an appearance from you in the last of the Matt Smith episodes.

More importantly though... the Moffster put right something that the fans had been waiting to be addressed for quite a while now... and I’m going to ignore continuity with The Brain Of Morbius for now because, seriously, cut the guy some slack. Hopefully he’ll get to it.

But anyway, what I mean is, he’s addressed the issue of The Doctor only having 12 regenerations. He explains how he’s actually the 13th version of The Doctor (12 regenerations means 13 bodies... makes sense, right?) and the Time Lords (presumably benevolent to him after hiding their planet away in the last episode) have given him a reset with a whole new set of twelve regenerations to get through. So that’s good... let the writers in 50 or so years have another crack at solving that problem again with their own deus ex machina to thrown into that mess.

For now though... he’s throughly reset.

The special effects were okay again on this one... or at least they certainly weren’t terrible and Murray Gold’s score, whilst seeming to have a lot of tracked cues again (been a while since we heard the tenth Doctor action theme All The Strange, Strange Creatures isn’t it... and completely out of context, all leitmotif aside), was serviceable and, mostly, appropriate to what was going on... if not all that memorable compared to some of the episodes he’s scored.

And so I come to my gripes... you knew they were coming so fair warning to you. Don’t read on if they’re going ot upset you.

Number one gripe is I found the last ten minutes or so a bit, well as I said above, deus ex machiney wheeney... but, a far greater crime than that, I thought that last fifth was... well... kinda dull. But that’s okay... I loved the rest of the episode and often, as in some really good sex, getting there was as rewarding as the actual orgasm itself (although those are always fun too, obviously) and so it’s just a minor gripe, honest guv. I can live with that.

Gripe number two is a minor disappointment too and it concerns the new incarnation of The Doctor, Peter Capaldi, who I have to confess is not and actor I am all that familiar with... since I’ve only seen him in Doctor Who and Torchwood before now. So was it a good performance or was it a bad first impression? Well I’m afraid I’ve got only one answer to that... I have no idea, the sound mix was so bad I couldn’t understand a word he was saying!

Seriously, I couldn’t hear him through all the hullabaloo on the sound mix and that was quite sad. Now it may have been a ploy by the production team because they don’t want to give you too much of a decent impression of him yet before they’re all properly ready... or it might just have been either bad mixing or something which went wrong with the broadcast... who can say? All I know is that I have no idea what Capaldi’s Doctor is like as yet... but at least that gives me something to look forward to in the new year, at least as far as this show is concerned.

So there you have it. A cracking Christmas episode, a bit overdone at the end like a turkey that’s been too long in the oven, and not quite up to the brilliance of the last two Christmas specials... but good enough. Like I said at the start of this review... Moffett got almost everything right, so that was all well and good then.

Doctor Who: The Day Of The Doctor

Miss Zygon

Doctor Who: The Day Of The Doctor
UK Airdate: 23rd November 2013
BBC 2

Warning: Spoilers sweetie!

This year, two very famous fictional doctors are celebrating big anniversaries. The first of these was in March when Doctor Clark Savage Jr, aka Doc Savage: The Man Of Bronze, celebrated his 80th. To celebrate this, a new Doc Savage novel was written by Will Murray (the current incarnation of the Kenneth Robeson pen name, although this one went out under his own name) in which Doc Savage crossed paths with another fictional character who shares his 80th anniversary year with Doc in 2013. This particular Doc Savage adventure is called Skull Island and the other 80th birthday boy is, of course, King Kong. 

But the other fictional doctor, who is quite young in comparison, a mere 50 years old as the time lord flies, is of course The Doctor from the BBC TV show Doctor Who. And last night I watched the 50th anniversary episode of the series, not in 3D at the cinema (although the temptation was certainly there), but in 2D at my parents home, as a family unit... as I had mostly, off and on, watched Doctor Who for the last 43 of my 45 years of existence.

So did it live up to the hype and incredible amount of fan expectation that preceded it?

No, not really. It couldn’t possibly, could it? But, although I found myself a little underwhelmed at the time, mainly due to my own “what if...” kind of expectations, the episode certainly wasn’t terrible and it was, actually, really jolly good, mostly. Up to a point.

It wasn’t greatness but then again, the other two anniversary specials, The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors, weren’t the best stories of their respective contemporary Doctors either and, well, the less said about The Two Doctors (reviewed here) the better, I think (not even “the great Troughton” could save that one).

So it’s probably a little unfair on Moffat to expect multiple Ogron orgasms from the episode so... if anyone did really hate this one... seriously boys and girls... cut him some slack.

Now then, one of the reasons my expectations were raised so high is because, two nights prior to this, I’d just seen Mark Gatiss’ own tribute to the show, the excellent An Adventure In Space And Time (reviewed here) and, frankly, after seeing that, I was prepared to accept miracles from the regular incarnation of the show. At the end of that review I wrote “If the 50th anniversary episode shown on Saturday 23rd November 2013 is even half as good as this one, then we’re in for a good time on that one too” and I did have a good time with The Day Of The Doctor... but there are a fair few negatives with it that didn’t sit too well with me either, I’m afraid. On the other hand, there were a fair few positives too and so I’ll save those for the end of this review because, I do want to go out on a positive note on this one... I hate being a grump when it comes to this show but this is kinda what the show has turned me into over the last few years, it has to be said. It’s a much more “hit and miss” affair than it used to be before David Tennant left the show. And that’s not a pop at Matt Smith, who is briliant in the role also, whether he’s got a good or bad script.

Okay, my first negative is that, apart from not having a sorely missed Christopher Eccleston in it properly, I did think the Zygons were a little underwhelming. Now I don’t remember the Zygons too well. I think at the time of their first appearance opposite Tom Baker in Terror Of The Zygons, I was busy watching a new pretender to the Saturday night science fiction throne which, quite deliberately, aired on ITV at the same time. The show was called Space 1999 and it didn’t take me all that long, it has to be said, for me to lose interest in that and return to Doctor Who but, these were the days before commercially available (let alone affordable) video recorders, remember. So I never got to actually see the original Zygons in their first round with The Doctor but, I did like the make-up/costumes and, thankfully, the BBC haven’t really changed them all that much this time around.

However, the clue was in the title to the original story... Terror Of The Zygons. 

As in terror.

Actual terror.

As in monsters you were supposed to be terrified of... and by all reports of people I know who did tune in for it... they were kinda scary. Which brings me to my main problem with The Day Of The Doctor. The Zygons here were not terrifying and, even when they appeared to have the upper hand (in the most obvious manner where every kind of escape is entirely possible), they really weren’t all that threatening and were mostly played for laughs, really just the straight men... er... straight creatures for Matt Smith and David Tennant to bounce off, for the most part. In fact, the actual Zygon story didn’t even come to a proper conclusion that we were shown. They were just tools used to get a few incarnations of The Doctor together so those three could reminisce about an important moment in their collective past which they were about to undo and so the aliens in question were just kinda jettisoned when they were no longer needed. I really think that monsters such as these could maybe have had a stronger entrance into the modern era version of Doctor Who before Moffat played around with them in this fashion. Even the comic relief Sontarons had a few truly deadly missions in new versions of the show before they became the, admittedly quite entertaining, joke that they are now. Never mind, though. Let’s let Zygons be Zygons and forgive, shall we?

Then there was the fact that bits of it really made no sense. Queen Elizabeth the First would not be able to remain disguised, or is that undisguised, as a Zygon long enough to learn the intricate details of their plan down to the Nth degree to explain it to The Doctor(s) really, would she?

And then there was the Time War.

Great gravitas from John Hurt and I’ll get back to him in a little while but, ultimately, as much as I regretted Russel T. Davies’ decision to make The Doctor the last of the time-lords (with occasional convenient exceptions) and as much as I knew that the only way to keep running forward with this show was to bring them back at some point, I really think this episode unmade that decision very quickly and with no sense of it being a hard thing to accomplish. Bit rubbish. Nice effects, to be sure, but the time war seemed to me to be a bit of an inconsequential battle, and not the war of different aliens and collisions of history the event had been made out to be in numerous episodes. So that was kinda trashy.

The only other negatives I got were that sometimes Smith and Tennant seemed to cancel each other out, almost, in the funny man stakes (which are stakes The Doctor shouldn’t necessarily be playing about with anyway) and also the fact that Billie Piper’s return to the show was not as Rose Tyler, but as an interface based on her and who was unable to interact with any of the incarnations who would actually have known who she was. That felt a bit like a kind of missed opportunity, to be honest, but at least there was a plus side to both these last two negatives... so let’s start getting happy and brightening things up a little.

When they weren’t cancelling each other out, Tennant and Smith did have some wonderful exchanges between them such as the “reversing each other’s polarity” scene and which culminated early for me with the wonderful line that Tennant says to John Hurt’s “true ninth Doctor” character... “I dunno where he picks this stuff up from”, in response to Hurt’s enquiry about the legitimacy of Tennant’s (and Moffat’s) original “timey wimey” phrase which Smith uses. That, for me, was the highlight of the episode, in fact.

And let’s look at that performance by Billie Piper. She may not have been Rose but she was truly stunning as the conscience of the most powerful weapon in the Time Lord arsenal, “The Moment”. And put her in a room with one of the greatest English speaking actors going, aka John Hurt, give them both a script with a particular thorny issue (genocide and the mass murder of billions of children) and you get a truly great set of scenes which, alas, lead up to a conclusion which, as I said earlier, wasn’t won with too much struggle but... you know... what a lead up to it, though. John Hurt was, of course, excellent and I really didn’t expect anything less from the old war horse... now transformed into the “War Doctor” as a means of keeping out fans comments about the hasty renumbering that has to be done now.

Oh, and that reminds me. I’m not finished with the negatives after all. Here’s another couple for you...

It’s unfortunated that, during the end of the Fourth Doctor’s era, it was established that a Time Lord can only regenerate 12 times (flying in the face of continuity with prior bits of the show’s history actually, but people seem to forget that bit). However, with that bit of established lore, having a line in it from the all powerful “The Moment” which says that The Doctor’s punishment is to carry on living is really a sorry excuse for losing that rule. Really? That’s it? I do hope not but, since future Doctor Peter Capaldi (who made his debut in this episode actually, just like I tweeted I thought he would some weeks ago... otherwise why announce him so early? Gotta get him into the audience consciousness so the cameo has weight.) is actually now Doctor number thirteen, I really hope that Steven Moffat does the right thing and addresses this long standing issue properly at some point.

And then there’s Tom Baker, Who turns up playing “The Curator” but makes jibes about being The Doctor, completely breaking the barrier between verisimilitude and fiction and being completely “meta”, as the kids say... destroying all credibility of the show, once again. He was brilliant and entertaining and, maybe even seeking redemption for not returning for the 20th Anniversary special but, for me anyway, the cost was too high. Further explanation was needed but, alas, none was forthcoming.

Okay, so back to the good stuff.

Lots of Doctor Who references, both visual and audio related. I loved the new character Osgood, played by Ingrid Oliver, and would love to see more of her in the series please... and even didn’t mind the fact that she was wearing Tom Baker’s scarf. The UNIT archives, or whatever they were, had lots of references of course but, for me, the best reference came from David Tennant when he delivered the line “I see you’ve redecorated. I don’t like it.” This was, of course, a quote from Patrick Troughton’s Doctor in the 10th anniversary special The Three Doctors and it was particularly gratifying to hear my second favourite Doctor, Tennant, quoting my all time favourite Doctor, Troughton. So that was a nice bonus.

And that’s about pretty much all I’ve got to say, if I’m honest. I understand why we just saw Peter Capaldi’s face in extreme close up... they want to reveal the true personality and costume of that character in the next series and, truth be told, I reckon they probably didn’t even know what that was going to be yet when they filmed it. And all the archival footage of the various incarnations of the character on the view screen and even the overly cheesy construction of them all standing together at the end was all very entertaining. But I did feel underwhelmed and I think I’ll probably get more out of it when I give it a second watch sometime next year on Blu Ray or DVD (yeah, I know it’s out in a week or two but I’m pretty sure I won’t get around to watching it again for a good few months yet).

However, although I didn’t like the story arc on this one, I did think a lot of the dialogue... not all but a lot... was particularly good and it’s certainly not the let down, nor indeed the triumph, that I could have foreseen. Just a nice little celebration for a nice science fiction hero who deserves to have a nice slice of cake and a cup of tea on his Birthday so... Happy Birthday and Happy Times And Places to you Doctor. And may you have many more.

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 Crimson Horror

Value Added Strax

Doctor Who - The Crimson Horror
Airdate: 4th May 2013. UK. BBC1

Warning: Crimson spoilers waiting 
to slowly seep through you below...

Well that was all rather a lot of fun for the hundredth episode since the new era of stories started, counting from when Russel T. Davies ressurected of the show.

The Crimson Horror is the third, so far, Doctor Who story to feature one of my favourite triumvirates of regular characters... the Silurian Madame Vastra, her human lover Jenny and their Sontaran assistant Strax. The story is, like their previous outing in The Snowmen, set firmly in Victorian times but shifted away from their regular “beat” in London, instead moving to the Yorkshire town of Bournv... err... Sweetville. It’s possibly not as great an episode as either The Snowmen or A Good Man Goes To War, but it’ certainly not far from the standard set in those and Mark Gattis, a man I trust for writing homages to the pulps of this particular period, shows he’s more than up for the job.

The story starts off with the old chestnut of the last thing a person seeing before death being retained by the eyes and the opening hook, after a man has been struck down by the delightfully lurid pulp terror known as The Crimson Horror, is that his last image was of The Doctor. Then, post credits, we follow an investigation by our three Victorian heroes which eventually, after some time, leads us to The Doctor, who has turned crimson himself and is held prisoner and paralysed almost... until he can reverse the process in a convenient cabinet which I guess one has to write in for these kinds of stories.

Then, rescued by Jenny, he relates to her and the audience the story which has led up to his near terminal crimson complexion and this is done in a beautifully treated flashback which looks like old grainly filmstock and photographs. Now, I could be picky (and I might as well be, for when am I not?) and mention that the style of moving image used in this sequence or the sounds used to trigger to a modern audience the capturing of still images, are not actually as old as the period on which they are being used... of course, I’m no expert on that so please comment below if I am wrong, but the fact that they made an effort to give these flashback moments a sense of the past which could artistically be linked to that kind of period was both admirable, with a slight dash of genius... so I’m quite happy to forgive them any amount of what I would call deliberate, controlled anachronism within the delivery of the story.

What’s more compelling is that this means that the story has actually started mid-way through, Now I’m guessing it was probably scripted like this but it could also have been an editing decision, since a lengthier selection of footage from the flashback starting off the story would have done the same thing in a more linear fashion and placed The Doctor and Clara front and centre, right from the outset. However, a smart decision harkening back to the days of early Marvel comics and before, in terms of a useful narrative structure to lead you to the hook of the story in a more timely and dramatic fashion, has been made and since this method is not all that often used in Doctor Who (although taken to the Nth degree, as you can get away with in science fiction, then show runner Steven Moffat’s original Weeping Angels story Blink could also be considered an extreme version of the same technique, if you chose to decode it that way), I was very happy to see the episode structured in this manner and it certainly made sense to do this in a story that was so aptly grounded in late nineteenth century pulp fiction.

The action and detective work never really flagged and it had some very nice moments in it which I am very grateful to Gattis for. The fan-pleasing reference to Fourth and Fifth Doctor companion Tegan Jovanka was very much “on the money” for instance, and a scene which was built around a terrible joke, with Strax making use of Thomas Thomas, who is the living Victorian embodiment of the modern Tom Tom satellite navigation systems in cars is one of the reasons I’ll continue to watch the show even though it does seem to be going a bit pear shaped as of late. The relationship between the characters played by Diana Rigg and her real life daughter as villainess and blind daughter was all very nice and there were some truly cool musical moments to support scenes such as the brilliant bit where Jenny strips down to black leather fighting gear to knock a few heads. All good stuff and I think the show needs more of these characters and more scenes like these, please!

My only real disappointment with this episode was the baggage I brought with me. I assumed that since Vastra, Jenny and Strax do not know about the living version of companion Clara, that we were going to get some kind of big revelation this week when they think that their version has returned from the dead. All we got, alas, in return for those kinds of questions throughout the episode was, unfortunately, answers along the lines of “It’s complicated.” They’re playing their cards very close to their chest again on this one but I’m assuming we’ll find out whether Clara is either friend (a regenerated time lord such as Romana, or The Doctor’s Daughter or even The Doctor himself) or foe (The Rani, The Master, a construct of the Great Intelligence or the Daleks) or something I haven’t quite worked out yet in two weeks time... when River Song returns to our screens.

But, ultimately, my own expectations of the story did not stop the episode from being, mostly, a brilliant addition to the show and, if not a rival to the likes of shows like the Victorian set story The Talons Of Weng Chiang, certainly a good stab at being a worthy successor. Not sure if I’m looking forward to Neil Gaiman’s take on the Cybermen next week but we shall see what we shall see, I guess.

Doctor Who - Journey To The Centre Of The TARDIS

Fiddling While TARDIS Vernes

Doctor Who - Journey To The Centre Of The TARDIS
Airdate: 27th April 2013. UK. BBC1

Warning: New spoilers waiting to be discovered as you journey to the centre of this article.

For a long time now, Doctor Who fans around the world have been given occasional little audio and visual glimpses of other parts of The Doctor’s famous time and space travelling machine, TARDIS, besides the main console room which features in a lot, although not nearly all, of the stories. But rarely are we given a real chance to see what the rest of the TARDIS is properly like and even just the sound of the cloister bell, a famous chime in the Doctor Who universe, is enough to light up fans' eyes en masse (first used in Tom Baker’s last story Logopolis and still used in the Matt Smith series more than it ever was in the past, strangely enough).

So it was with much trepidation that I embarked on this episode with the Jules Verne inspired title of Journey To The Centre Of The TARDIS... after 50 years of not having enough budget to show us much else of The Doctor’s good vessel (in spite of at least one Hartnell story taking place in its entirety on board this ship). I was really not wanting to see much else of it in all honesty.

Moffat does like to change things and tinker with the established myth of Doctor Who more than The Meddling Monk and sometimes that can get quite interesting (when confined to certain acceptable parameters) and other times that can just seem quite arrogant, unnecessary and, frankly, leaving a downright tragic aftertaste in the mouth. I’m dreading what is going to be revealed in four weeks time at the end of the current series, for example... he’s already made some horrible references to The Doctor’s name in some scenes that really didn’t work in the last series and onward and... well... let’s all wait and see.

So, did the episode which was advertised to be an exploration of some of the parts of the TARDIS we’ve never seen before prove to be an interesting and respectful look at the space/time vehicle of this beloved show’s history or... did it fall flat? My expectations were not really going too much in either direction, well... with the exception of aforementioned trepidation, that is... and I can say now that this episode proved to be...

Okayish.

There was, as I’m sure a lot of us were all expecting, a lot of running down corridors and some of the rooms (and you really didn’t get to see much more than the corridors for most of the running time) looked like cheap CGI backgrounds as opposed to actual sets... but the episode certainly wasn’t anywhere disrespectful to the shows of the past and, considering it was presumably the “bottle neck”* episode of the current series, it was mostly quite entertaining too (Bottle neck episode is a term for an episode of a TV show which is deliberately “written cheap” to allow money allocated to be used for other episodes when unexpected costs happen. These episodes frequently feature few sets and often a lot of flashbacks to previous episodes, to the extent that many people also refer to them as “flashback episodes”. Many shows have them and they’re often not very hard to spot.).

This episode offered a few tantalising glimpses of things every fan would want to explore further, such as a Gallifreyan library with a certain book charting The History Of The Time War which gave Clara a mini moment of epiphany in regards to The Doctor’s name and his place in the universe, so to speak. Unfortunately, the episode also managed to cop out on all these little things because the way our heroes got out of this week's story was, frankly, a big time and space reset button which erased the versions of our characters out of history after they’d saved themselves from earlier folly, thus rendering the majority of the characters (at least the important ones) without a memory of the episode. So that was a bit pointless.

And, yes... we got to hear the cloister bell again. Briefly.

Nevertheless, although there was some hellish imagery used in the story, there were also some wonderful, visual delights, with a very diverse set of colour palettes used from scene to scene... especially the moment when The Doctor and Clara went from running through orange and green lit corridors to the side of a “snarling” plateau which used colouring more reminiscent of the Pertwee era. Pertwee, in fact, was also heard in this episode... as were a few Doctors and companions, since the removal of a panel on the TARDIS console triggered a series of sound bytes from the shows past, starting with a sample of The Doctor’s grandchild Susan Foreman (as played by Carole Ann Ford) explaining the TARDIS acronym from the very first episode of the very first story, An Unearthly Child. 

And talking of children, and possible grandchildren, it was also nice to have a glimpse, once again, of Melody Pond’s (aka River Song’s) cot from the A Good Man Goes To War episode too. Nice touch and one is still wondering, or at least I am, if Clara will eventually be revealed as the daughter of River and The Doctor at some point... or is she a future incarnation of The Doctor’s Daughter perhaps, ripped from David Tennant’s DNA in his third series as The Doctor. That’s another of my many theories this week... I’m hoping Moffat’s got something a little more clever planned for his big reveal though.

It wasn’t a fantastic story, it has to be said, but it certainly wasn’t a big letdown like the five episodes which comprised the first part of “Series Seven” were either, so that’s okay. It kept me interested and it really feels like the producers of the show are working up to something big. Now I’ve been twice bitten by that already with this series over the last couple of years so I’m not going to get my hopes up just yet... especially with Moffat now threatening that this year will somehow change the show.

What I will do, though, is look forward to next weeks Victorian London shenanigans with the return of my favourite lesbian Silurian, my favourite Sontaran and Bond/Avengers gal Diana Rigg in it. Wish I could leap seven days into the future and check it out now.