Star Trek: Into Darkness - SPOILER WARNING!!!

The more I think about this movie the worse it seems to me. Sure it’s fun enough to watch and the action scenes and special effects are all top notch. But the more thought you put into it, the more you realise that JJ Abrams has no idea what he’s dealing with and through that shows no understanding and more importantly no respect to the original films.

In order to talk about this, I’m gonna have to spoil the major twists of the film, so don't read this if you haven’t seen it. Ok, no bitching about spoilers, I’ve warned you.

So John Harrison is actually Khan. This is the first point at which Abrams pisses all over the fan base. Everyone thought this was going to be Khan and rather than using that as a hook he chose to lie about it, then reveal it almost immediately after the character appears on screen.

Thing is, this isn’t Khan. This man is the Joker, or Loki or Mr Silver. A man with an elaborate plan which involves wanting get caught in order to use his opponents as a way of getting what he wants.

This kind of villain stood up in other films, like the Dark Knight and the Avengers, because the central protagonists had a lot of development to do themselves. The central cast of Into Darkness don’t develop at all.

Closer to home, while Benedict Cumberbatch is doing the best with what he’s given, he only seems to have been hired for the job his voice can score 6.5 Ian McKellens on the awesomeness scale.

Wrath of Khan, showed us a villain who was ten times as intelligent as his adversaries, but massively flawed in regards of his ego. In that respect, this film also repeats the end of Wrath of Khan, word for word, with two of the characters swapped. Mr Abrams, that is not paying homage, that’s just ripping off a far better film.

Wrath of Khan was an inter-textual story about, ego, aging, sacrifice and overall appreciating what you have. Into Darkness doesn’t even compare on this, with a thin story about some crazy admiral in Starfleet and the most important villain of the whole franchise being used as a name-drop.

In conclusion, while I got along just fine with the film while watching it, having thought about it now, I can only see it as an insulting use of a villain, whom the writer/director has no understanding of.

Doctor Who: The Name of The Doctor

Of course we were never going to find out what his name is…but you know, we could have found out something at least.

This episode is based on an incredible premise, the grave of the Doctor, but it ends on what I’m sure was intended to be shocking cliff hanger, but just made me tired. Is Moffatt ever going to resolved or conclude anything?

Every single series ends with a new question and at this point it’s just getting tiresome, given how similar these questions always are. I don’t feel very much curiosity as to which version of the Doctor John Hurt is (if any). I just feel frustration that the series ends on something that it in no way built up to and just serves to just get people to say “oooow who’s this?”

Richard E Grant is back as the Great Intelligence, but has very little to do, other than be evil and set up the Clara plot which turns out to not be too different from the Bad Wolf plot…or the cracks in time plot.

Exploring the Doctor’s timeline is pretty cool and the idea that Clara has been in the background the entire time as a million echoes of herself serves as a good explanation of who and what she is.

River is finally resolved in that she can now fade away. I think this was done pretty well ad he appearance in the episode was well handled with only Clara able to see her. This allowed for her to be in the episode, providing help and exposition, without any of the uncomfortable flirting with the Doctor.

River’s exit is also pretty good, but raises another question of how Clara could have survived and  - yeah I’m tired of these now.

In basic terms, this episode is well written and directed enough. It’s visually striking (especially the Doctor’s tomb) but just ends on a frustrating and tiresome note.   

Doctor Who: Nightmare in Silver.

Slow started but not at all bad.

This was a good episode, which managed to breathe life back into a villain that (like the Daleks) had been rather destroyed by the Tenth Doctor era. Ever since the series 2 finale, I haven’t been able to take them seriously. Watching them clunk around at the slowest possible speed just got to be a bit comical in the end.

These new Cybermen (THAT IN NO WAY RESEMBLE MARVEL’S IRON MAN) make sense. Why would a race that want to destroy or convert all other life in the universe, be content to move around everywhere at two and half miles an hour. It’s refreshing to have them visibly overcoming such design flaws.

The other aspect of this episode is of course, seeing how the Doctor handles an evil version of himself. Matt Smith does a good job with what he’s given, but the cybercontorller is so similar to the Doctor, that the audience can find it difficult to figure out which one’s talking.

But the scenes with the Doctor facing off against this version of himself are very good and seem to pick up the Valyard theme that’s been subtly running through this series.

Ok, some bad things. Kids  - no, just no, I did not look this programme up on iplayer to watch a stroppy girl shout at Jenna-Louise Colman. Keep it in the soap operas. Further to that, it seems a bit at the convenience of the plot for this character to be all “she’s not our mother” just in time to get both of them kidnapped. This aspect of the relationship was not set up in any way prior to this episode, so it’s just a bit contrived.

Warwick Davis being the Emperor is  a bit obvious, which means the conclusion of the episode becomes quite predictable, but this can be forgiven,  as well…he’s Warwick Davis!!

Nothing left to say. It started slowly, but was very watchable. No more stroppy kids please and I look forward to The Name of The Doctor.

Doctor Who: The Crimson Horror

That was shockingly good.

After the trailer last week I was sure that this episode was going to be filler, with the Doctor turning up, saying the standard dialogue and leaving at the end with everyone loving him.

But no, it was different enough from that normal model, to be pretty awesome.

I really liked the way that the Doctor was effectively a secondary character for the first part of the episode. Such a move causes the audience to be anxious to see the main character or find out what’s happened to him. The reveal of what’s happened to him is also visually shocking and very effective. 

The only other time that this has been done in this manner was in “The Last of The Time Lords” and I’d say it’s more effective here, given that make-up is used in favour of special effects.

There’s plenty of light comedy as well; the Doctor snogs a lesbian and there’s falling sequence based 

entirely on reactions, to give two examples.

The Clara mystery continues, with the suggestion that the Doctor may have been trying to bring Clara into contact with Clara Oswin Oswald from “The Snowmen.”

The Bad stuff.

The kids at the end “give us a go in the time machine or we’ll tell dad that you’re a time traveller”…and then dad will just assume that you’re lying. Not really effective  threat, but hey, suppose if there’s place for them in the next episode, there had to be some way of getting them in.

The Doctor snogging someone is quite severely out of character, given his childish shyness around the issue of romance and women.

But overall a good episode.