Doctor Who - The Crimson Horror Review

The Crimson Horror

And to think, I wasn’t looking forward to this one. How wrong can you be? This was an absolute corker. Mark Gatiss, who wrote the earlier corker “Cold War” produces the goods again.

I was ready to hate Strax – but he wins me over, he is a comedy character but he is let loose to be a proper warrior as well.

Perhaps the Victorian era is overly used in Nu-Who, but the Doc has a very solid reason to go there as part of the quest to figure out what/ who Clara is.

Our Silurian and her lady-friend are on good form investigating the weird goings-on, and actually rescuing the Doc (to some extent). Smith, as always, is on excellent form, and JLC finally gets a decent outing as Clara – bringing the sauciness and sassiness of her debut stories.

With Diana Rigg, we have a proper villain – a thoroughly nasty piece of work, perfectly willing to do nasty experiments on her own daughter (played by her actual real daughter, Rachael Stirling). Stirling is superb, blind, disfigured, abandoned yet still capable of compassion and fury. And Rigg is a villain to the end – as she dies she asks her daughter “Can you forgive me?” The daughter replies “never”. “That’s my girl,” says Mum with pride before her last gasp.

All that AND a sort of cliff-hanger/ lead-in to next week as the kids that Clara nannies for discover her time-travelling antics (although Clara seems bemused by the pic of her in Victorian London...) and insist she takes them along...

....along to meet the Cybermen in the next episode it seems..

And now, fanfic/ flashfic..

Consequences of Time – Episode 6

The wind stopped. “That’s better,” said the Doctor. He looked up, but didn’t let Graf go.

“What have you done?” grunted Graf, his voice muffled with his face in the snow.

The snow, which had obscured everything, was now settling. A dark shape ahead was materializing as the view became clearer.

“Your frozen terror,” said the Doctor, letting Graf raise his head.

“What is it?” he asked. The Doctor climbed off. Both men stood.

“No idea,” said the Doctor as he walked towards the large, black cube.

“STOP RIGHT THERE, OR DIE!” boomed a huge, electronic voice. The Doctor stopped.

Doctor Who Review - Journey to the Centre of the Tardis

At first glance, there was a lot to like here. Creepy monsters chasing our heroes (and villains) around the surreal depths of the Tardis – all very well realised and managing to overcome a severe case of “running down corridors”. Alternate console rooms, a library with the “History of the Last Great Time War” and the Eye of Harmony itself. Unfortunately, it’s all too obvious for a story set on the Tardis to go nowhere – and that’s precisely where this story goes.

A gormlessly contrived reason for the Tardis “crashing” on a salvage ship (they turn off the security settings so Clara can have a go at flying the Tardis, in an attempt to get the Tardis to like her). Three brothers (or rather two and an android) who come from a long line of grubby workmen in space (Alien, Darkstar, The Impossible Planet, 42 and so on...) decide they will tear the Tardis apart. Oh come on – seriously, a bog-standard salvage crew try to take on the Tardis?

To be fair, I quite liked the brothers – they were interesting enough, enough amorality without being actually evil and even a fair bit of genuine good.

Smith, as always, on excellent form. JLC, on good form, but again given little by the script. There’s a possible revelation in the library, a neat plot twist about the salvage crew, a thundering confrontation between Clara and the Doc, a rip-roaring cliff-hanger as the monsters trap the Doc and Clara on a bridge across a seething fire or vortex or something....

And then, as too often happens with nu-Who, especially the Moffat version, the Doc hits the reset button and everything is sorted out again. Tardis goes merrily on its way and so do the salvage boys with never the twain having met.

I assume this Clara storyline is going somewhere – despite Clara being none the wiser, I guess she has to have some important timey-wimey place in the scheme of things. Maybe she’ll turn out to be Amy’s mother or something.

Next week we have The Crimson Terror – with the ridiculous comedy Sontaran, Strax. I don’t like Steampunk, and I’d rather have my Sontarans being Born to Fight warriors instead of jokes. I am looking forward to it, honest.

However, it’s all very well for me to criticise – can I do any better?

Consequences of Time – Episode Part 5

The people started running, into the storm and where the severed head had come from.

“Stop,” screamed the Doctor but his voice vanished in the howling of the wind. More body parts were flying back, blood sprayed through the swirling snow, red and white stripes flew through the air.

The Doctor ran after them. Graf, the last in the line stumbled and looked back at the Doctor. “I must,” he shouted.

“No, you don’t,” shouted the Doctor. He hit Graf with a rugby tackle and the two slammed into the icy ground. “Now, what happens if we stay here then?”

 

Doctor Who Review - Hide

“Hide” starts off as a ghost story, and a good one too. The ghost is suitably whispy and creepy and even quite scary. The streams of fuzzy photos with the ghost’s face in full Scream mode are very good at making the point.

The Doctor and Clara wander in; Matt Smith is superb as usual, Clara still seems to wonder why she is there (the character, Jenna-Louise Coleman is a great actress but the character seems a bit stuck).

Of course, this is Doctor Who, so the supernatural isn’t supernatural at all. The story flips direction as the Doc reveals what’s really going on – a traveler trapped in time is providing the ghosty-ness.

The monster chasing the time traveler is suitably horrible, although the time-traveler doesn’t get a character at all. The whole story has a final twist when the Doc realizes that the monster isn’t being monstrous at all, it just wants to get back with its mate that has been trapped in “our” universe.

Solid stuff, scary when it needed to be, neat sci-fi twists and a pretty smart resolution. I can’t see this becoming a classic, but it is a decent story that continues to put this season on track after its first couple of stuttering episodes.

And on...

Consequences of Time Part 4

The Doctor stumbled in snow, followed by Graf, the terrified sacrifice. The truck sprayed ice as it sped away. The others staggered in hysterics, all with no place to go.

A howl echoed around them. Ppeople starting walking towards the sound.

“Maybe we should head away from the terror?” shouted the Doc. Graf stopped. He was very conflicted.

“I don’t want to die,” he screamed, “but I must go”.

Another howl came with a ground-shaking thump. A dark flurry swished through and a woman vanished with a scream.

Moments later, the severed head flew back, bouncing at the Doctor’s feet.

 

Doctor Who Review - Cold War

Now this is more like it. The very welcome and excellent return of the Ice Warriors (well, one of them anyway). A serious villain, with serious power and strength in a smart setting with a great bunch of supporting characters. Definitely the best episode since Xmas, and only a smidge behind The Snowmen and Asylum of the Daleks.

What’s to like?

The setting – in the midst of the cold war, and trapped on a Soviet, nuclear submarine, with the Tardis deciding to do a bunk just as the sh*t hits the fan. The submarine is suitably claustrophobic, and also starting to come apart. Water is sloshing everywhere and reminding everyone of just where they are – trapped a kilometer or so underwater.

Supporting characters – the Captain, played by Liam Cunningham and fresh from a great role in Game of Thrones, is superb. He’s loyal to the motherland but also fully aware of the threat that his vessel represents. The second in charge is far more ideologically driven and you know he is bound to be the one who will be plunging the situation towards a full-on nuclear war.

And of course the GREAT David Warner – playing a cynical Soviet scientist with a love for Western 80’s syntho-pop. Warner is someone that would play a superb Doctor (and has on the “Unbound” Big Finish audios). He’s on good form here, although it would have been better to have more of him.

Smith is, as usual, terrific. Clara is warming up nicely – stepping up to face the Ice Warrior alone (shades of Rose and the Dalek) but there’s no cozying up to the monster here.

The Ice Warrior – Skaldek is his name and he’s apparently a 5000 year old Martian legend. The Ice Warrior design is subtly updated, and retains its bulky power and strength. Skaldek has character too – he has warrior’s code of honour, he’s smart, devious and brutally murderous when it’s called for. A great touch was letting us see a full Ice Warrior’s face for the first time (and was it slightly Silurian-ish? But then, both species/ races are reptilian – maybe a distant evolutionary connection?).

Cold War is a terrific nod-wink to the old base-under-siege of Troughton’s time – but has enough additional oomph to make it solid 21^st century Who.

Next time – “Hide” – hmmm, haunted house....

And on with the flash-fic/ fan fic:

Consequences of Time – Episode 3

“We’re going to the Frozen Terror?” asked the Doctor.

“Yes,” the terrified man replied. “We must go. Sacrifices are needed to keep the Terror from consuming the world.” The other, scared people nodded.

The Doctor checked his sonic screwdriver. It would be easy to stop the truck. Probably not hard to disable the guards, turn around and rescue the “sacrifices”. But that wouldn’t stop this terror thing.

“Is it much further?”

The scared man checked his watch. “Should be any time now.”

The truck lurched to a halt. A howl, that made the steel walls vibrate, screeched through the air.

Doctor Who Review - The Rings of Akhatan

An episode of a few neat little bits, but an overall sense of ho-hum, another character piece...

What was to like? As always, Matt Smith brings the weight of ages and childlike wonder to his portrayal of the Doc, usually all at the same time. Space moped thing was fun (although, with an anti-grav bike in the previous episode we have a danger of repetition – hopefully there won’t be more bike riding shenanigans coming up). Jenna-Louise Coleman as Clara continues to be almost impossibly pretty, but is yet to turn into the sassy, confident girl of her first two outings. But it is coming, she’s a good assistant, her heart is most definitely in the adventure.

It was good to see it was Clara’s regular, human experience bearing the enormous sense of wonder and possibility that defeated the...uh...thing at the end. While Matt Smith delivers his declaration of the Doctor’s awesomeness with great oomph, it is, again, something we are seeing a bit too much of. Yes Doc, we know you’ve been everywhere and done everything.

And this brings me to the “what’s not to like?”

Defeating the “thing” (we’ll get to that) by just talking to it. Is that it? Seriously, does the Doctor not need to reverse the polarity flow? Is there nothing technical that he can do? Does he not need to outwit the villain? At least last week, the Doctor did show how smart he is by blind-siding the villainess. Nothing so clever and subtle here.

Maybe we’ll let this go – I suppose this is an example of what makes Clara a good assistant, as it was she that provided the “real” experience to overwhelm the thing.

Ok, The thing – a big red, planet thing was the villain of the piece. For most of the episode they had us getting worked about a big mummified, scary monster that was waking up and trying to break out of its cage – which then turned out to be just a stepping stone. There was, as usual, some faceless goons stomping about for the sake of it, but otherwise, just a big churning, planet thing. Ho hum.

Fortunately, Clara was just so human and tragic and tearjerking and caring and everything (although the Tardis doesn’t like her..) – oh, was this just another sodding character piece?

This is the problem with these character driven story arcs – ultimately it’s all about what/ who Clara is, the individual stories just lose their impact beneath the weight of the BIG story – similar to that big crack in time/ space and what it had to do with Amy (and frankly, I still don’t know. Apparently the Silence is coming. Did it come? Are we still waiting?).

Bring on Episode 3 (or is it episode 8, or 9 if we count the Xmas Special...) – Ice Warriors, a big, fat nasty villain/ hardcore monster.

And on with out Fanfic flash fic:

Consequences of Time - Episode 2

Cold. Couldn’t the Tardis land somewhere nice? As a flurry of snow landed on his tongue, he could tell it wasn’t just water ice. A hint of something, but what?

A truck, with wheels taller than the Tardis, thundered out of the snow and squealed to a halt. Two big, armoured figures jumped down and grabbed the Doctor’s arms. “Get in,” screeched a voice.

He was hurled into the truck. The interior was crammed with scared people. The hatch was shut and the truck roared off.

“Anyone know where we’re going?” asked the Doctor.

A man wailed “To Frozen Death.”

 

Doctor Who - The Bells of St John Review

Who returns - and as such, I'm going to try to record my review on this blog each week, with a stab at a wee bit of Fan fiction in the form of a Who story told in by Drabble episodes(100 words, exactly) each week. In theory, there's eight episodes of the series, so we should get 800 words of Who story.

On with the review: The Bells of St John

At long last, Series 7 continues. I was not a fan of splitting up Series 6 (to be honest, I was not a fan of Series 6 overall) – knowing the split was coming turned the first bunch of episodes into just a series of fill-ins, with little larger story arc hints, which would reach a big cliff-hanger at the end of them. If the second half had been more impressive then maybe the approach could be forgiven. Unfortunately, the rest of the series was largely forgettable. In fact, sitting here writing, there’s no stand-out episode that I can think of. I can think of plenty of stuff that annoyed me - another haunted house story, another story where people are snatched from the real world, another bunch of “monsters” that lurch around being scary with their one scary line repeated over and again and so on. The Cyberman story was very poor and the finale made even less sense than the previous series. And the ensuing Xmas special (The Doctor, the Wife and the Wardrobe) was the weakest yet.

And so we come to Series 7, part 2. Thankfully the first part of this series was way, way better. The incredible “Asylum of the Daleks” was the best Dalek story since...”Genesis of the Daleks” (THERE, I’ve said it!), and the best NuWho since “Time of the Angels” back in series 5. Amy and Rory, who so totally outstayed their welcome, are finally gone. The Xmas episode (“The Snowmen”) was possibly the best Xmas Special of them all. So here we are with new companion Clara (despite being killed, again, in the Xmas Special) keyed up for her “proper” debut. Everything is going fine.

Except, “The Bells of St John” is a somewhat seen-it-all-before adventure. People being snatched from reality; a repeated line ("I don’t know where I am.."); a cold-hearted woman in charge of shady organization behind it all; unexpressive robot/ monster goons lurching around, which also crossed-over into the spooky kid area. These are all Moffat-isms which have been around since “The Empty Child” – and it’s all getting a bit tired to me.

Clara, so flirty and smart and hot in Asylum and at Xmas, is nowhere near as exciting this time round. I’ll let this go, even in the space of this episode she was transformed from computer illiterate to genius so the version we caught up with in “Asylum” could be where she is headed. We could be in for quite a journey.

There were things to like – the Doc’s anti-grav bike riding up the side of the Shard; his cunning switch with the “spoonhead” that impersonated him, in fact Matt Smith in general keeps even the poorer episodes watchable.

It was great to see the Great Intelligence turning up again, and turning Celia Imrie (always great to watch) back into a child was genuinely chilling and showed what a ruthless villain he is.

I’ll call this episode solid, but not good. If Clara can return to the form she had in her previous two outings, then one hopes for better things to come. And please, can we give the mind-control, spooky line, boring monster stuff a rest now?

OK, Drabble time - we need to give this adventure a name.. so, in keeping with the fact that it is made up as we go along we'll call it:

Consequences of Time - Episode 1

The Tardis had landed. The Doctor tried to ignore it but the still time rotor and no sense of motion through the vortex reminded him that they were going nowhere.

It was hardly the first time that the Tardis had taken charge but he was determined to enjoy a decent bout of melancholia without saving someone, some people, some planet or some universe.

He huffed in a chair, threw a pebble into the swimming pool, played Angry Birds on the scanner.

Eventually, he gave up and stomped outside. “This had better be good, old girl” he said as he left.

 

Long time - no blog....

Long time no blog – fortunately Cassie Hart (go read her superb blog now) wondered where I’d been so I’ve hit the keyboard again.

The usual worthwhile distractions (work/ family/ exercise) and the usual worthless distractions (TV/ Internet) have kept me from blogging – I will also claim that some actual writing has even been getting in the way. We’ll get to that, but first, my rundown of what media I’ve been sucking up recently-ish:

I’ve been experiencing...

Morrissey at Wellington Town Hall – yes, the Miserable One himself graced the coolest little capital in the world (says Lonely Planet). A cracking gig in a reasonably small venue – having seen him at the cavernous Albert Hall and massive Glastonbury Festival this gig was a far more intimate affair.

And being this intimate, I was able to witness every ounce of anguish that poured from the Moz’s sweating brow. As he wailed “and you go home, and you cry and you want to die” it was every bit as powerful as the lyric he laid down nearly 30 years ago. The shirt was torn off, the followers were touched, a painful departure from stage was made. In an interview the Great man stated that “it’s never a performance”. If that’s true, it must be mighty painful being Morrissey. However, I’m certain I saw a smile crack his face at one point (probably when he told an audience member that she couldn’t be his eighth friend). Heaven knows, not so miserable now.

Which brings me to....

I’ve been reading....

Morrissey and Marr: The severed alliance – THE biography of The Smiths. Their backgrounds, their childhoods, their teens, their coming together, their four or so fiery years in the spotlight and eventual break-up. Does this book explain the, surely, traumatic event(s) that marked Morrissey out as the patron saint of the outsider and the loner? Do we understand how he came to be filled with such outraged angst? To be honest, no. This makes it no less a fascinating read, but my conclusion is that he’s simply a miserable, full-of-himself sod. However, he is also an enormously talented and charismatic sod.

I’ve been watching....

Doctor Who Xmas special – In which we return to the wonderful Osman from Asylum of the Daleks, called Clara now and inexplicably (so far) living in Victorian London. A huge improvement on last years miserable Xmas special, a great intro to the new assistant who has instantly erased the long overstayed Amy and Rory from my mind. Geronimo, as the Doc might say.

The Campaign – an almost very good Will Ferrell send-up of US politics, pitching two congressional candidates at each, with both stooping as low as possible in the hunt for votes. It suffers from what many US movies suffer from – it wimps out at the end. Imagine if Brian got rescued at the end of Life of Brian to give the film a more fuzzy feel? That’s what happens here. They were almost on the point of greatness, skewering the warped values of US elections but can’t bring themselves to go all the way – let the warm fuzzies come in and spoil the ride. To be honest, a quick glance at Fox News shows that the actual US political process is so twisted it should be impossible to satirize, but this film ALMOST went there...

Looper – not half as clever as it thinks it is. Washed out, grainy graphics and odd CGI facial enhancement does not disguise some enormously contrived circumstances.

Argo – a very well made film, but essentially, it all comes down to whether or not our heroes can walk through passport control. What if the focus were reversed? This could be a story about the desperate hunt by the security forces to capture a bunch of devious foreign spies? I don’t know, in this day and age it’s hard to be on America’s side about anything.

Django Unchained – at first, I quite liked it but then got thinking...no, sorry, Tarantino is in danger of becoming a one-trick pony. Lots of stylish, slick and darkly witty dialogue, lots of characters on the edge of fury and violence, lots of opportunities for actors to prove just how good they are – and way too much bloodthirsty, unnecessary violence. I wouldn’t mind so much if Tarantino had something to say, but there’s nothing here beyond telling us that the slave trade meant wicked people did wicked things. I know that without having to put up with the protracted screams of a man being ripped apart by savage dogs.

Hitchcock – two brilliant actors (Hopkins and Mirren) play fascinating characters in a portrait of the great Director and his equally great (but much unsung) wife – while making the slasher movie of slasher movies, Psycho. And it’s got Scarlett Johansson.

I’ve been writing...

I’ve finally got sat back at the PC and continued Ken’s miserable journey to “The Camp”. I’ve also been fleshing out back story and a few plotlines for my possible space opera/ alien invasion saga. I had a sudden bolt out of the blue last night when I realized that revenge is always such a great motive – I need some of that in the story. Simply finding stuff is never enough.

This blog’s drabble – Tarantino in 100 words:

I seeing you, sitting there, being all charming, enjoying my fine wine and my fine women and being just the finest gentleman there is on God’s clean Earth. But you know what else I seeing? I seeing a dirty sombitch who’s wanting to take my money and my bitches and stab my honest soul right through my honest heart. Ain’t that the f**kin truth? Ain’t it? BANG BANG BANG, AAAGH, AAAGH AAAAAGH F***IN SOMBITCH AAAGH BANG BANG GLUG, PLOP, GLOOP BANG. (Pause) Now that’s how we do it down south. Elroy? Get your sh*t. (Cool record plays, roll end credits)