Doctor Who: Into the Dalek review

Doctor: “This is Clara. Not my assistant, she’s ah, some other word.”

Clara: “I’m his carer.”
Doctor: “Yeah, my carer. She cares so I don’t have to.”

 And there we have it – three simple lines of dialogue which sum up the relationship between the 12^th Doctor and Clara. My English teacher taught me that the essence of great art is much in little and this is a great example. It’s funny, sharp and brutal all at the same time.

 When I say it sums up their relationship, it sums it up as it is at this moment – 2 episodes into Series 8. Since the 12^th Doctor is a work in progress right now, so is their relationship. How much you like his series (so far) is going to depend on how much uncertainty you can put up with. Or maybe we’ll be on edge with the 12^th Doctor all the time – when he asks Clara if he’s a good person, we may never get a straight answer.

This has some similarities to Season 5’s “The Beast Below” – which had Amy stepping up to take the role as the Doctor’s Assistant – helping him to see more than just what’s in front of him. Except “The Beast Below” was somewhat heavy-handed in the way it shoved the Doctor/ Assistant relationship in our faces at the expense of the story. “Into the Dalek” is better made.

First and foremost it’s a rip-roaring adventure. The Daleks are presented in grand style – a Dalek Saucer chasing a spaceship through an asteroid field, the Doctor saving one of its occupants and landing on a ship hiding behind one of the asteroids. The Daleks are closing in but the soldiers on the ship have a captive, “good” Dalek aboard. Can the Doc lead a shrunken team inside the Dalek to fix it and turn it against his own kind? Excellent pulp stuff with lots of thrills and spills and action. Inside the Dalek, the team are chased by anti-bodies, fall into slime, race around its insides, turn it bad again and then try to make literal contact with its mind. Outside the Dalek, the ship is breached and a Dalek assault team charges in with the soldiers fighting a desperate rear-guard action.

Yet with all this ferocious charging about, there is time for some well-worked character scenes – when the Doctor is first aboard the ship and his abrasive reaction to anyone with guns, Clara’s sweet burgeoning romance with Danny Pink, the Doctor’s struggle with his morality towards the Daleks.

Capaldi’s Doctor continues to evolve – he’s blunt but not uncaring, but a lot of that attitude is fear about himself – he still can’t work out who he is. Jenna Coleman continues to impress – Clara as the Doctor’s Carer is far better than Clara as lovestruck fangirl of DESTINY.

All in all a stronger episode than the debut; I suspect there is still more settling down to come, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

AND – on to our Flash-fic-fan-fic

HungerTime – part two

 “Run, you clever boy. And remember,” said Oswin. She could feel the Dalek consciousness closing in, just as weaponry rained down upon the Asylum.

The barriers she’d erected in her escape pod burst open. The planet roared as it exploded around her.

“Come on then,” shouted a familiar voice, “run.”

Oswin jumped up. Smoke billowed through the door. A short, dark-haired girl stepped through, coughing. “We need to get out of here,” said Clara.

They ran, stumbling from the capsule and into a snow-filled street, bumping into another short, young lady with dark hair.

“This is strange,” said all three.

Iain M Banks - a wee tribute

Iain Banks, one of our finest sci-fi writers, indeed one of our finest writers, died on June 9^th, 2013. It’s always sad when one of your favourite artists passes – the notion that I won’t get to read another new Culture novel, or enjoy the jet black humour of his, supposedly, mainstream fiction is heartbreaking.

“Excession” was the first of his books that I read – a terrific piece of space opera that, for me, blew the genre apart. At the time, to my shame, my sci-fi reading had largely deteriorated to Star Trek and Star Wars levels, in prose at least. In comics I had soared with Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman (among others), but my novel reading remained distinctly pedestrian.

And my rambling attempts at writing had been at wonky, quest based (Tolkien rip-off) sword and sorcery, and a space war-based (Star Wars rip-off) sci-fi.

And then, I picked up “Excession” from the library and realised that imagination could fly so, so much farther.

The Culture (Bank’s super-advanced space-living, egalitarian, super-liberal society) was light years away from the simplistic societies envisaged by the two big sci-fi franchises. Let’s face it, much as I still love Trek and SW, they are really just Earth bound stories and characters thrown into space. They are hardly “real” sci-fi in that they hardly deviate from modern Earth technology. A gun with a laser beam is still just a gun.

Banks took a step back and really thought about where technology could take us.

The stars of the Culture are not boldly going humans – it’s the vast “minds” that are the heart and souls of the city-sized starships. In Excession, the villains of the piece, for want of a better term, are not sinister megalomaniacs intent on conquest and power, it’s a bunch of many legged gas balloons whose whole society revels in cruelty and oppression. And even the “Afront” pale in comparison to the grim society of “the Player of Games”.

The “humans” in the Culture can simply “gland” mood enhancing drugs into their systems, they can transfer their minds into other bodies (alien, human, whatever), they can change gender, they don’t die - unless they choose to, and even then they may be uploaded to a virtual heaven long before they finally decide to switch themselves off.

After reading Excession, my Star Wars rip-off was retired. My Tolkien rip-off is not quite dead, but if it is ever resurrected it will be in a radically different form.

I can’t claim that my writing will ever reach Bank’s giddy heights of imagination, but the lesson learned is that I have to try.

And his so-called mainstream work? Read “The Wasp Factory” and ask yourself how mainstream that is.

When I see yet another sodding vampire/ werewolf/ shadow world beneath our world/ kids of destiny with exceptional powers story on the shelves – I wonder how those writers live with themselves. Of course, my own work is probably a pale rip-off of Iain Bank’s so I can’t get too judgmental.

I have few regrets in life, BUT – on the one time I actually got to meet the great man, I didn’t ask him anything. He was signing copies of “Dead Air” in a bookshop near my work one lunchtime – I bought a copy in a rush and got it signed for my brother as a Xmas prezzie – I was rushing so much I didn’t think to ask him to explain what the hell “Walking on Glass” was about, or just what that thing was in “Excession”, or at what point in writing “Use of Weapons” did the big twist come to him....

I was lucky enough to meet his one-time publishing editor, John Jarrold*, who explained how he handled the big twist in the publicity and just why “Inversions” is actually a Culture novel, NOT sword and sorcery as my non sci-fi reading friend once thought.

For those who have not read Iain Banks, I’d suggest starting with “Consider Phlebas” as a first Iain M Banks – it’s the first Culture novel and a great trip around how it works. As for the equally superb Iain Banks (without the M) work – maybe try “Espedair Street” as it’s not as jarring as “The Wasp Factory”. Frankly, anything with his name, with or without an “M” will take you places that you never thought you’d go.

To those who knew and loved Mr Banks, their loss must be immeasurable and my thoughts are with them. One hopes it is a small comfort that his work will live on, and continue to excite readers forever.

A wee bit of Culture fan-fic/ flash fic.....

“I need to sublime.”

-Ahem, the Culture does NOT sublime.

“Ok, how can I shuffle off this mortal coil?”

-There’s always the after-life. And there’s lots of options.

“No. That’s just a different kind of physical plane. I want out. Altogether.”

-Tricky. No one has died in the Culture for millenia. Ten thousand years ago, some guy managed to get his body dropped into a star from a non-Culture ship a long way from any Culture influence. Even then, we were able to reconstruct him.

“I know. And I wish you’d never bothered.”

-Heh. No one f**ks with the Culture.

And at some point I will do my Doctor Who Season 7 summing up – hell, what about the Doctor meeting the Culture? Now that would be a Who story and a half...

*And if it wasn’t for John Jarrold, I probably wouldn’t still be trying to write to this day – but that’s another story.

DOCTOR WHO REVIEW - Nightmare in Silver

Nightmare in Silver

Now we’re cooking with gas, or to be more accurate, Neil Gaiman is. I said in my review of Cold War that it was nudging The Snowmen and Asylum of the Daleks in quality. Nightmare in Silver is right up alongside those two – rating as one of the best Nu-Who’s of them all, and definitely the best Nu-Who Cyberman story.

This season has been a little uneven, but the consistent note of excellence has been Matt Smith – and in this story he is better than ever. He gets to play the Doc (of course) but is also on fire as the Doctor possessed (implanted?) by the Cyber-planner consciousness. I’ve often found a lack of strong villain characters in Nu-Who, but this season has made amends (Daleks being supremely villainous, that nasty sod with the Dinosaurs, The Great Intelligence, Celia Imrie, the Ice Warrior, Diana Rigg) – and Smith, himself, provides possibly the best.

There is strong support all round – the soldiers are great, Warwick Davis is wonderful and Jenna-Louise Coleman’s Clara is now firing on all cylinders – being put in charge by the Doc, and making sure that no one blows up the planet.

The Cybermen get a thorough upgrade (naturally). Part of me worried that they were turning a bit Borg, especially the implants and ability to upgrade on the fly. However, as we Who fans all know, the Borg were ripped-off Cybermen in the first place (I’m ashamed to say that the Borg were the Cybermen done right) so I see this episode as just the Cybermen retaining their place as THE sci-fi cyborg/ robot men type of villain. Frankly, even The Terminator would have trouble against these Cybermen.

The story has mystery, then pace, then action, then scariness, then a big reveal, and then a big explosion. What more do you want?

Next time – The Name of the Doctor. Which has some of my UK chums in a right tizzy – in a good way....

And now, can I possibly make some sense out of this flash fic story?

Consequences of Time - Episode Seven

“Would you be the Frozen Terror?” asked the Doctor.

“LET THE SACRIFICE PROCEED.”

Graf started walking forwards. The wind began to pick up again.

“Stop,” shouted the Doctor. Graf halted. The wind died.

“IF THE SACRIFICE STOPS, THE WIND STOPS,” said the Black Box.

“So?” shrugged the Doctor. Beside him, Graf gasped.

“THE WIND WILL STOP.”

“All wind stops,” said Graf. “No wind, no power, no people.”

“Wind happens naturally. You don’t need people to fuel it,” said the Doctor.

“THE WIND IS CONTROLLED. THERE IS NO NATURE.”

The Doctor used the Sonic Screwdriver. Not good, not good at all.

 

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 - 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.