Doctor Who: The Snowmen Review

That was pretty good.

This episode allows Moffatt to do what’s needed to be done for a while. Reset the Doctor and his motivations. As with his series “Jekyll” the problem with Moffat’s Who is that the quality is extremely high for very short periods of time. The rest ends up as filler, sitting there in the middle of the series, cashing cheques and whistling while attempting to avoid your death stare. This, in theory should be a step up from the later T Davies days where there seemed to be policy of quantity over quality, leading to everything being bad. However, of late, Who has been suffering both a lack of quantity and quality  - what were they thinking with that dinosaurs episode?

This episode is an opportunity to break free from the bonds of what can only be described as a rut with bow tie in it and give some new life to the show. And we certainly get that.

We get a new companion, a new TARDIS, new costumes. This is basically the beginning of series 5 all over again, except nobody had to regenerate. But that’s also a bit of a problem. While I enjoyed watching the Doctor do his depressed recluse thing, it really wasn't very different from the 10-minute depression sequence from the tenth Doctor’s departure.

Also, looking at all the above points from another perspective, it isn't especially new; the Doctor, having suffered some great trauma, meets an “impossible” girl, in the process revealing his new TARDIS interior, costume and discovering a threat to the universe to continue through the whole series. Err…we’ve seen this before. In this respect, Moffatt’s just following a formula; a good formula, but it’s still predicable.

Looking at the episode more specifically, the new companion (as played by Jenna-Louise Coleman) is very good. Both her genius and personality agree with me far more than the loudness and “feistiness” (cough annoyingness) of Amy Pond.

Richard E Grant is doing a very good Scrooge-meets-Dracula act, but is vastly overshadowed, by the VOICE OF IAN MCKELLEN! – seriously, this episode could have been absolutely awful and all it would have needed is McKellen to show up at the end as say “Mordor” and it would have been saved. 

I personally hope he’s back in the upcoming series, as you do not waste that kind of presence on one voice acting job.

So…this episode is good…very familiar, but good, the new TARDIS looks pretty awesome, the new companion is pretty good and the “smaller on the outside” line is a very welcome change.

How to make Plot-Holes work - spoiler warning - Dark knight rises & Looper

Every film has plot holes. A gripe of internet folk is to complain to no end about them, making claims that they undermine the whole film. This is not true. It is wholly possible to have a film loaded with plot holes, that’s still a good film.

What’s crucial about whether a plot-hole can destroy a film is how it’s executed. For example in Star Trek: Generations, there’s a bit where basically everyone’s dead, but Picard, has the ability (god knows how) to go back in time, to any point he wants, in order to stop the bad guy killing everyone. He chooses to go back to the point a few minutes before the bad guy kills everyone. This is an example of very poor execution, as the entire outcome of the story pivots on Picard’s decision. There is no explanation for why Picard doesn’t choose to go back to a point several days, or weeks before the bad guy killed everyone and stopped the whole situation from happening.

The key to a plot hole not destroying a film, is it resulting from a more minor part of the film.

During this year, I have seen two films that contain significant plot holes, but that do just this.

The first is the Dark Knight Rises, which has some really big gaps in common sense. The biggest of these is the fact that Miranda Tate, is in fact Talia (one of the baddies) who becomes aware of Bruce Wayne’s return to Gotham before Bane does and (despite tricking Gordon into attacking the wrong bomb truck and informing Bane of the special forces team that got sneaked into the city) doesn’t tell Bane that his nemesis is back.

This significant hole is covered, by the fact that the story remains full enough, for us not to notice it right away. The important issues of the film remain forefront in the audiences’ mind and therefore, Talia suddenly forgetting to tell her friend that his about to get is arse kicked by someone dressed as a bat, gets pushed aside, so that we can enjoy the action and Anne Hatheway in a catsuit.

The second film I’ve seen that has a truly huge plot hole, is Looper. Time travel stories especially have the major problems with plot holes, as the only way to really do much with them is to construct paradoxes, which (in the majority of cases) don't ever fully make sense.

To this effect, the first time that the nasty plot hole in this film shows it’s head, is when we get our first example of what happens when you “let your loop run.”

This is shown through Seth, when is older self starts to lose body parts as a result of Abe cutting bits of his younger self off. This doesn’t work. If we are to assume that the injuries of younger Seth can affect older Seth, then we have to assume that cause and effect is the driving force behind it. We are saying here, that younger Seth is the beginning of the line and that older Seth is the end. Changes made to the beginning affect the end. But they don't just affect the end. Every part of the line would have been changed, by any changes to the beginning, therefore older Seth wouldn’t just lose body parts, he never would have had them; his younger self would have lived the rest of the line, without them. Given the amount of damage that is done younger Seth, older Seth would probably never even have been there, given that he would have been in no condition to have been sent back.

This same plot hole exists at the end of the film, as when young Joe figures out that he’s responsible for creating the Rainmaker, his older self’s entire perception of the events should have changed. As a HISHE parody as already said, the very knowledge should have been enough to alter the time lines, without him having to kill himself.

In a similar way to the TDKR, this film remains interesting enough for us to really be bothered, by this gaping inconsistency in the time travel rules. The differences in the priorities of the two Joes’ is the primary focus, making the holes in logic a secondary concern.

Err…so that’s how to make plot holes work.

Merry Christmas!!!  

Stupid Law!!!!

So, did anybody ever hear about that law in Hereford that says you can shoot a Welshman, with a cross bow, provided he’s standing on the Cathedral Green? It’s one of those stupid laws that no one’s ever bothered to repeal and that people like to imagine entitles them to some sort of awesome legal defence if they ever do it. Heads up, it doesn’t actually work like that; killing someone is killing someone no matter what some ancient law says.

I only bring this up, because the sheer stupidity of someone saying to the Police, “I’m allowed to do this because I used a cross bow, I was on the green on a Sunday and he’s Welsh” is round about as stupid as someone saying “I was offended by what he said therefore he should go to prison”…oh…wait a second.

Yes it’s this one and while I am a little bit late to start moaning about this shiny new law, I’m going to do it anyway.

How the hell are judges getting away with sentencing people to prison, for saying things? This makes literally no sense  - usually with these sorts of laws, the legal layman tends to misunderstand sentences, largely due to factors such as newspapers misleading them and Politicians outright lying about why a case has been decided the way it has (incidentally, the reason that guy got to stay in this country wasn’t because he had a cat).

But anyhow, the weird thing about this new law (section 5 of the Public Order Act) is that it isn't subject to this misunderstanding or Political opportunism. Someone feels suitably offended by something you say, you could end up in court. Put it on your Facebook page, your Twitter feed or your T-Shirt and you could well be booking a court date.

Section 5 (1)(a) of the Public Order Act 1986 states that it is an offence to use threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour.

Threatening; yes, if someone threatens me, I think the law should be there to protect my well-being, abusive; can shrug it off, but in certain circumstances, say someone in a position of power like a teacher or an employer, then maybe there should be a safeguard – Insulting…what exactly does that mean?

Having studied law for over three years now, I know that the words in the statute are never the end in terms of meaning. The court will always clarify what they believe any important word that’s passed through Parliament means. This is why I’m so shocked by the recent cases. The court has taken what is referred to as a literal interpretation of the word “insulting”. True they seemed to have given it some meaning in the case of Matthew Woods, his comments on his Facebook page being described as “disgusting” but that’s not a definition. I don’t see why the court would act in this way without proper definition.

 Now, onto what this means. In basic terms, you “insult” enough people, you go to prison. That’s all you need to do; do something insulting. I don't know about you, but I insult six people a day. Most of the Doctor Who writing staff can probably bring charges against me for the sheer amount of ad hominem I slip into when writing reviews.

I insult my University on a regular basis, I insult my bank on a regular basis, I insult my friends on a regular basis. This doesn't mean I’m a criminal, this just means I’m a person – insulting things and people is how the majority of us vent frustration and avoid giving into our more violent urges (something that actually would be a legitimate reason to haul someone before the court).

This rant has taken up far too much of my time, but I’m going to attempt to bring it back round to Sci-fi with a quote.

“With the first link the chain is forged, the first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably”  - Star Trek, The Next Generation, Season 4 Episode 21 “The Drumhead”

Please note that if anything in this post has offended you, you are welcome to contact your local Police Station.

Doctor Who Series 7 Episode 5 - spoiler warning!!!

This is what Moffat does best. Sad endings, weird time stuff and creepy bad guys. He plays to all his strengths with this episode, which almost makes up for the deteriorating standard of the series thus far.

It’s awesome to see the Angels back in their original motivation and not trying feed off cracks in time or talking through dead people. While the Statue of Liberty is a bit stupid, it’s made up by the Cherubs and their endlessly creeptastic laughter.

River’s back and judging on her new title of Professor, it’s not long before she gets her very own write-out episode (which I know will please one particular person who follows this blog).

Time is reassuringly messed up to the borderline, where we still make reasonable sense of what the Doctor’s saying. The “once you’ve seen it” rule is a very nice, though it doesn't really fit with many other established rules in who, but then again none of those rules fit with each other anyway, so I suppose we could call this problem some sort of adherence to tradition.

The exit of Amy and Rory is extremely well done ad I have to admit that under Moffat’s penning, the vast majority of my hatred for the extremely loud redhead dissipated.

The Doctor’s reaction is also spot-on. True, it does look a little juvenile, but the Doctor has always got younger with each regeneration (in mind if not always in body).

To draw a comparison, the Tenth Doc gives up the woman he loves, to another version of himself, then just walks off. This always pissed me off – well that whole love story pissed me off  - but ending with the Doctor shrugging and essentially going “well best go off and have a Christmas Special now” really irked me.

The ending of this episode is really nice, even if the slow motion running and black and white freeze framing was a bit hammy.

The only real downside to this, as it so frequently is, is that it makes me wish that Moffat would take more control and write more. His first series as head writer is my favourite of the revived era, because he wrote is much of it and kept it on track. Letting the other writers have their time is one thing, but over the course of this series alone, the characters have been conveniently re-written so many times, seemingly so the particular writer at the helm needed them to be for the sake of their plots.

As head writer, Moffat should have been saying “no” to a fair few of the scripts that got greenlit, simply because they didn’t fit at all with the world that he’s built since taking over the show.

But as for this, it’s a Stella ending, well written, well directed and well performed. Ad the best part is, you don’t really have to watch all the episodes before it to understand what’s going on, so if you haven’t, you can save yourself a lot of cringing and yelling at the TV.