Doctor Who Christmas Special Review.

It was ok…but that’s kind of a bad thing…

So after what I thought was a good but underwhelming series finale we had this. It was alright  - but there was something missing. Throughout everything he writes, Steven Moffat has always gone against the grain, constantly attacking common conventions in whatever genre he’s penning for, but always in a bantering, playful way.

But this episode has little of that  - it’s got the doctor somehow getting dressed into a space suit while falling through the atmosphere yeah, but that’s about all.

Great amounts of this episode were spent with me waiting for Doctor Who to show up. Not the Doctor himself but the feeling of Doctor Who (anybody who’s listened to the podcast for “Forest of the Dead” will know who I stole that turn of phrase from).

This episode, while being a good story could have been in any show  - and considering that it came from the same man who made “A Christmas Carole” (a self-aware take on the classic tale, which somehow managed to have moving love story and a brilliantly silly premise co-exist) it just seems disappointing that this take on the Narnia formula gets so tied up in the very Avatarish feel that gets thrown around.

Even at that, it’s too much about the family at the centre of the story  - last year worked because it was all about saving a large amount of people by resolving the issues of the characters. In essence there was always a goal  - this episode was just about the Doctor doing something nice for someone who’s been nice to him. All very well, but if I don’t happen to be able to empathize with those characters then there’s no real threat for the audience to get involved with.

That’s the problem with for me; I didn’t really find Madge Arwell particularly interesting. Its nothing to do with the way Claire Skinner plays, it’s just that there’s nothing new about the character.

Bill Bailey provides the comic relief for this episode and it’s without doubt the best bit. But it does fall a bit flat and the bit with the subordinate crying along with Madge really didn’t agree with me and fell a bit flat.

The whole episode in general seems a bit underdeveloped and everything seems far too simplistic and shallow. There’s only so much that can be done with trees after all. Oh and if they grew everything themselves where did they get that metal crown?

The twist of the forest wanting a “mother” ship is a much desired and lonely piece of Moffat writing.

This was an alright episode, but not something I’d expect from Steven Moffat.

Twilight Book Review

So, for those of you who don’t live near me, or listen when I talk (which is most of you), I recently read Twilight…and yes, I have now been forced to accept that that does make me less of a man.

I like the fact that the central character, Bella, goes to a small school and is instantly popular. As someone who went to a small school, I understand that if someone from a far larger school transfers in, the common procedure is to regard them as something fascinating and lob them in with the cool kids. 

I like this, because Stephenie Meyer could have easily got away with making Bella an outcast and giving her some empathy with the character of Edward. However, rather than taking that distinctly conventional approach, Meyer opted for the more realistic one. Good move Meyer – my compliments – yes readers, it was very painful for me to say that.

Right, onto the things I don’t like and (surprise surprise), they outweigh the things I did like. Firstly, Bella…what the fuck is with this girl? Everything is seen form her perspective – a perspective, which could make Barack Obama look like Satan. This girl is not only negative about everything, she’s an ARSEHOLE. She moves to Forks and it’s shit, she goes to her dad’s house and it’s shit, she goes to school (and is instantly popular) and it’s shit. Not only does she come across as miserable, but also unappreciative, arrogant and bitchy. I read the first chapter, and literally, the only thing that kept me reading past that was the prospect that Bella might get killed later.

Secondly, I have to make issue of Meyer’s writing technique and one major flaw in it that I just couldn’t get past. To give you an example of this, I can refer to the description of Bella’s mother given from Bella’s perspective, in the first chapter: “my mom looks like me, but with short hair and laugh lines”. That seems fine, until you observe that we don’t get a description of Bella herself, until two pages later. When I raised this complaint verbally, a nearby Twilight fan pointed out that Meyer was simply developing the character later…my response to that, is no she fucking wasn’t…that may have been the excuse she used or she may have honestly believed that…To illustrate the point I’m trying to make here, 

I’m going to use the example of Doctor Who (I'm sure you're shocked about this). In point, I would like to refer to an episode the first of the revived series in 2005. In the episode called the “Empty Child” the Doctor is told by the character Dr. Constance, that before World War Two he was “both a father and a grandfather and now [he is] neither” the Doctor replies “I know the feeling” implying that he is in the same situation and that he himself had children and grand-children all of which are now dead. This point is again referred to in series two (I can’t remember which episode) when the Doctor makes a remark in passing that he was once a father. We then have to wait till series four, before this is elaborated on in the episode “The Doctor’s Daughter.” How does this relate to my complaint about Twilight? Well it’s very simple, our having to wait that long is the result of the Doctor taking four years to properly come to terms with the fact that his children are dead – although we are told that he had children, his character requires four years of development to give us any more information about that fact. This is the concept of development within a long narrative. This cannot be applied in the way that aforementioned Twilight fan attempted, because she was attempting to apply it, not to a developmental part of the character, but to a PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION!!!!! This doesn’t work, if you’re going to describe what someone looks like, in two separate parts, you don’t start with the last part, then mention the first part later, that doesn’t develop it, that just renders the description completely useless…she might as well of put a footnote in saying “see two pages ahead for full description.”

Thirdly, you might have noticed that I haven't written a brief synopsis of the plot to draw on. The reason for this is that, past the first three chapters, there really isn’t much of a plot to speak of. In fact past the third chapter, the story seems primarily based on repetition of the same thing. Now, I don’t wan to boast, but I have written a draft of what you might call a novel and while I accept my limited experience, next to published writers, I can say that I did get to know how hard it is to write a novel-standard amount of pages, without repeating yourself. This means that I can see what I regard as the primary reason that there is so much repetition in this book and I can empathize, to a degree, with Meyer concerning it. However, even factoring my empathy in, I can’t forgive her for it. I haven’t been taught this, but when I was writing and found myself in a situation where I had to repeat a piece of information, I always tried to paraphrase it, add a new factor to it or even use the fact that it was being repeated as a point of frustration or amusement for the character who was having to repeating it.

Meyer barely even attempts this; Bella and Edward literally have the same conversation about eight times, which goes something like this: Bella: “I’m in love with you” Edward: “but I’m dangerous”.

This same argument between them only disappears in the last chapter and the epilogue. Unfortunately, Meyer chooses this point to raise the argument that will probably dominate the next book: Bella: “I want you to turn me into a vampire” Edward: “but I don’t want to turn you into a vampire”…This is the foundation for a series of books…repetitious arguments that aren’t even altered or rephrased…

I have now reached my fourth and final major complaint…James…I liked this character (why then does he not appear in the good-point section of the review?). it’s quite simple really…Meyer fucked this character up. I loved the idea of a classic vampire who was obsessed with hunting young women. This is how Count Dracula does things and while some could call it conventional, I find it slightly refreshing to actually have a vampire whose threatening, unlike all the Cullens, who are, quite frankly, too nice to be vampires. I have to say that I loved the character of James, right up until he spoke and came into conflict. It seems Meyer is massive fan of Super Hero movies, because, as soon as James has Bella where he wants her, he starts MONOLOGING!!!!! Your aim was to kill her, so kill her…with the exception of some really quite unimportant information about a member of the Cullen family, we already know everything James says to Bella, so what’s the use of him saying it…

Let’s sum up:

I hate Bella, because she’s really a bitch

I hate Edward, because he’s repetitious dumb-shit

I hate the Cullens because their niceness renders them not vampires at all, Meyer makes them almost faultless which strips away anything interesting that could have been done with the characters.

And I hate James, because, after being an interesting character, he starts acting like Lex Luthor.

And I hate the other two vampires who make an appearance, because they really serve no real purpose…

Stuff that Annoys Me

So it’s essay time yet again, which means you get to find out what I think about any given thing that pops into my head, when Doctor Who’s not on.

People who say ‘a joke isn’t funny if you have to explain it’

I should qualify this one; there are jokes that are simply too complicated to be funny, but more often than not the person who utters this infuriating phrase, after you’ve lined out the punch-line, was the only person in the room who didn’t get it. My response to this is always to say “I didn’t have to explain it, I only had to explain it to you.” It is infuriating when you’re trying to tell a joke or exchange banter in a social situation and people blame their own slowness on you.

Why was Kylie Minogue in Doctor Who one time?

Yeah another one about Doctor Who – sue me. Why did the production team of Doctor Who feel like they needed to pull in an Australian pop singer to do the job of an actress. Yeah, I know she was an actress before being a singer, but there were far better people out there who could have played the part of Astrid Perth. The most recent Christmas Special (“A Christmas Carol”) saw the casting of Katherine Jenkins and rather than it just being to get her fans involved with the show, he specific talents as a singer were made integral to the plot and resolution of the episode.

Do the writers of Sarah Jane Adventures think the audience is retarded?

Yeah, I know this series is written for kids, but even kids don’t need to be spoon-fed some things. For example a really annoying thing happens in the crossover episode “The Death of The Doctor” while the Doctor is using some sort of awesome, shiny machine to do a sort of teleport body swap with Clyde. This is actually done quite well to start with, with Clyde being the only one aware of anything different, until everyone else notices that on of his hands has changed into one of the Doctor’s. He then says the line “That’s not my hand, because my hand’s not white.” I don’t get why the writers felt the need to remind the audience that Clyde’s black. The fact that he was sporting a hand that wasn’t his was obvious; it didn’t need to be explained any further than the first part of the line.

The Existence of Twilight

Do I even need to explain this? Ok, given my rants about people who write to the BBC to complain about what they perceived hour of filth and violence they had sit through watching Torchwood and how these people should just invest in an off button for their television set, it might seem quite hypocritical to hate the existence of something that I am under no obligation to read/watch/ever interact with. But my problem is not with the books themselves, but more what they symbolise in our modern world.

It centers around the single element of being astonished about the fact that the books of the Twilight Sage can be classified as novels. A set of books filled with spelling mistakes and some of the poorest grammar I’ve ever seen, based on the most superficial elements of the most lazily written “love story” in literary history. While trying to think of a good way to summerise what’s wrong with the love story in these books, I ended up stumbling across the perfect way to describe it, while watching a youtube review of the Star Was prequels. In that, long time sci-fi commentator, RedLetterMedia, said of the love story in those films, something along the lines of “look two attractive people in a beautiful location, that means they’re in love kids.”

The fact that such lazy writing can earn a person so much money pisses me off to no end. J K Rowling made a lot of money, by writing a series of books about morality and good and evil, in the guise of a story of a boy wizard. Stephenie Mayer wrote a template for the perfect domestic abuse victim and topped it off, by making all the supporting characters so fucking superficial and forgettable.

And while we’re on Twilight as a subject, can someone explain to me just what Alice’s power is? She can see the future of any given person so long as said person doesn’t change their mind. Um…anyone can do that; that’s not a special power. 

Doctor Who Series 6 Episode 13 Review.

This episode wasn’t as epic as I was expecting it to be and while I wouldn’t say I’m disappointed by it, I’d definitely say I’m a bit deflated by it.

Last years series finale was a first  - the Doctor breaking all the rules and getting through the story at about 100 miles per hour. This one is very different, with a far slower pace and the story-teller method that Moffat used for the bulk of the episode didn’t quite agree with me.

The Daleks made an appearance  - or rather one Dalek made an appearance then died after being taunted and stripped down by the Doctor. 

That was something I really liked about this episode – the Doctor spends the first part acting like the dangerous force that he is. High point is him walking into a bar, demanding to see someone, then slamming a Dalek eye-stalk on the bar to show how serious he is. If the show keeps going in this direction, I reckon the next Doctor will be played by Kiefer Sutherland.

Another thing I really liked was the skulls in the Headless Monk’s storage place  - the Moff really does know how to come up with something cool to guard the…well large amount of story exposition. But guy being eaten by skulls on family show is almost as good as the bit with the exploding baby from ‘A Good Man Goes to War.”

There is a much desired, albeit slightly overdue, tribute to Nicholas Courtney or “Brigadier Leftbridge-Stewart”. There had been rumors before Courtney’s death that the character was going to be revived, in much the same way as Sarah-Jane Smith had been. The way that in this episode, the Doctor calls UNIT to have an adventure with him, only to find that he’s too late could well mirror the way that the writers felt about not being able to give him one last appearance in the show.

The visual in this episode are stunning  - I really think that the Beeb must have given Who a hell of a lot more money if this is the kind of thing they can come up with. The special effects are good and settings are 100% cinematic. This episode looks incredible.

But in the words of the one and only Judge Judy “beauty fades, dumb is forever”. This episode might look great, but in a few years time the special effects are going to be obvious looking and the settings are going to be trumped by some other show being even more bold.

This is the primary reason that the story is always the most important part of a TV show or film. You can have the best special effects in the world and your story should still be priority 1.

There are pats of this story that don’t really flow very well and it seems to be going out of its way to almost not be complicated enough. The largest aspect of this is the survival of the Doctor  - SPOILER ALERT!

The Doctor using the Teselecta as a means to survive was honestly the first thing I thought of when I found out what it was in “Let’s Kill Hitler” – while it is a far more sensible and logical way of dealing with a problem than say the regeneration fake-out that we got in “The Stolen Earth” it didn’t seem quite insane enough.

There are also some hiccups in the common sense of this episode  - he seems to want Amy and Rory to think he’s dead purely to make them miserable and the Silence all escape their cells by taking advantage of a design flaw I like to refer to as you-made-their-cells-out-of-glass-then-left-them-unsupervised-pretty-much-all-day.

That said, the whole idea that the purpose of this episode was nothing more than the Doctor faking his death was quite good. The Doctor’s death turns out to be the Pandorica of this series; not really as important as the other issues such as the question and such.

Not really much to say – it’s good, but I don’t feel like Moffat is throwing everything in. he’s clearly building a slow-burn story, to lead on to the next series, but after enduring a season break I’m not sure that slowing things down at the end is really a good idea.

But hey, this episode’s good, it looks great, the performances are top notch and it opens another can of worms at the end, with the question; DOCTOR WHO?

So presumably, the Doctor’s name can destroy the whole universe or we’re heading for mass audience disappointment as the Doctor turns to his one true love River Song and says “Patrick”.

Doctor Who Series 6 Episode 12 Review.

Cybermats, the only villain in science fiction that can cute you to death.

This was a pretty damn good penultimate episode  - the comedy is far more dialed back than in the last episode to feature James Cordon, but that’s ok. I was quite surprised by how well Cordon took on the role of the primary companion. The comedic opening with the baby is quite good and the banter demonstrated by the Doctor’s ability to speak baby is put to as good a use as in "A Good Man Goes to War."

Not without fault though  - I got the impression that they were trying to take the Cybermen back to their classic years form in that they were hiding in the shadows and not only getting as far as planning the massive invasion. To this effect it was traditional in the classic Doctor Who for the Cybermen to claim that they had large numbers but for only a few of them to appear on screen. That and they didn’t have the money for more than eight Cyberman costumes per episode.

This return to the old cyber traditions is alright – it makes them have far more impact than they did in the Davies era, but at the same time it raises the same criticism as the episodes of the classic series that involved the Cybermen. It has basically the same story as all of them  - the Cybermen are hiding underground, because their ship crashed a long time ago they were just waiting for power to absorb  - there’s no real difference here between this and the classic stories.

Weirdly enough, the internal storyline  - that of the Doctor coming to terms with the fact that he must soon die  - makes up for the lacking depth in the external story. Now I normally take the view that the main story should always take be more important than the internal parts. That’s one of the reasons that in the past I have been less than pleased with the character of Amy Pond  - take for example ‘The Lodger’ where the Doctor mentions to her that’s there’s something above him that threatens the whole universe and she’s worried about being thrown off into the timestream – like she’s saying ‘and the destruction of the universe itself, but what about MY problems.”

But in this episode there’s some very welcome focus on the Doctor and all he’s done for Earth in particular  - what’s really good is the bit when Craig tells him to stop being stupid and assuming it’s him that gets everyone in danger.

Not really much else to say – oh that he-killed-them-with-love thing is saved only by the way that the Doctor calls him out on it.

Next week River kills the Doctor! – why isn’t one-eyed lady any older?

Doctor Who Series 6 Episode 11 Review.

The beginning of this review was originally gonna be directed at Toby Whitehouse, as I was going to kindly ask him not to tease me with such wonderful lines as “Amy, regrettably, you’re fired” and the there attached thoughts that I may never have to put up with her shouting and elongating the last word of every SEN-TENCE! But then, Mr. Whitehouse went a spoilt that potential joke, by actually having Amy fired at the end of the episode! I’m not sure whether I’m happy or sad about that…wait no, I’m happy.

Is it just me or does this thing look stoned?

So this episode opens with a surreal Ashes to Ashes feel (even got a lost female copper narrating) which is somewhat ruined by a really fake gorilla suit  - I guess Moffat wasn’t lying when he estimated that he’d spent the whole budget on the first page of the Christmas episode.

David Walliams finally gets his chance to be in Doctor Who and he doesn’t disappoint, bringing forward a character that is simultaneously funny and sad. It’s also nice to see a celebrity guest in full make-up  - not since Gridlock has the main guest star been effectively disguised  - it’s a nice aspect and gives off the impression that Walliams was selected for his acting ability and not his popularity, unlike a certain Australian Pop Singer who appeared in one of T Davies’ Christmas specials. Walliams plays a creature that’s survived through surrendering and voluntarily being enslaved by whoever happens want enslave someone. A bit with him that I really liked was when the Doctor essentially told him to man-up, insinuating that, while constant surrender can lead to a higher rate of survival, bowing down and letting whichever force fancies an empire have it, is never the right thing to do. I like this bit mainly for the way that Walliams and Smith play it, with the former acting as though he’s saying something completely normal and latter acting as though he’s observing a unjustly dejected child – the 11^th Doctor, not doing as the 10th would and trying to empathise with him and not what the 9^th would and ignoring him, but straight up telling him he’s rather be here with someone wasn’t afraid of getting into a fight.

I’m starting to notice a trend of episodes moving a lot slower than they did in the Davies days  - which is fine so long as the ever-increasing pauses in the story progression have something good to fill them. When the Moff himself is at the helm, this issue isn’t especially important, as he’s quite good with filler comedy and his unnecessary, yet very entertaining dialogue pieces generally score around 6.5 Tarantinos. But, writer Toby Whitehouse doesn’t seem to have same level of comedic bravery and so parts of this episode fall flat as they slow down, causing the audience (or at lease me) to lose interest.

There is also a bit in this episode, where the process of events is running completely counter to the music. Look I don’t miss the uber-serious, REALLY LOUD, music of the Davies/Tennant era, but I’m not thrilled with whimsical chords being played as one of the characters dies. All other things aside, the music completely kills the creepiness and fright of the sequence.

And turns out the Doctor’s fear is pretty much like his name  - something we’ll never see  - either that or it was Russell T Davies with a cloister bell and type-writer – “Of course, who else?”

And so the ending  - the hotel turned out to be a TRON with a minotaur in it Amy and Rory got thrown out of the TARDIS – I’m pretty happy with it.

You know what I’m even more happy about, the key to killing the baddie was the companion fully accepting that the Doctor is a selfish and fallible man. There is a quote from the classic series, from way back in the days of William Hartnell that goes something like “you must call me Doctor, I am not a god, you must always call me Doctor”. The Tennant/Davies era lost sight of this quote, painting the Doctor as a god and proud of it.

Throughout the 11^th Doctor’s reign so far we have seen reversals of this viewpoint – he’s made massive mistakes, acted out of sheer blinding anger and mistreated his friends  - but to have the conclusion of an episode pivot on this aspect is a huge step in the right direction.