Singin' In The Rain (talking picture)

Gene Kelly plays Don Lockwood - a man afflicted with a rare medical condition which makes it impossible for him to do anything without bursting into song and tap dancing.

Teaming up with fellow sufferer Cosmo Brown (Donald O'Connor), the two friends begin the most inappropriate career possible… in silent movies. In a further twist of fate, Don and Cosmo's world is brimming over with loud colours, which are impossible to capture on monochrome film in 1927. It all seems like they were just born too early, until a man with enough cash makes popular an old idea he likes to call a talking picture…

The above paragraphs are my way of admitting that I don't have anything new to say about MGM's 1952 Technicolor classic Singin' In The Rain. It's spectacular, bursting with entertainment, and really does make you wish you had the ability to burst into song and start tap dancing whenever you feel like it. The very idea of these three performers (Debbie Reynolds is in here too) later growing old and losing their flexibility fills one with a determination to at least start exercising a bit more.

Most musicals that I am aware of (admittedly not many) tend to consist predominantly of spoken dialogue, with songs breaking things up. Here it's the other way around, especially in the second half. It helps that the characters find themselves ultimately inventing the film musical, enabling them to not just sing and dance in their own real life, and also in the movie they're making, but even in an enormously elaborate pitch for a scene. Having never seen this movie before, the last thing I expected to find here was satire of Harold Lloyd's famous glasses character, and yet that's exactly what Kelly gives us. Jaw dropping.

No wonder that, 60 years later, this no-holds-barred extravanganza still runs on Film4 almost constantly.

(available here)

Doctor Who: The Angels Take Manhattan

Sting: "I'm an alien,
I'm a legal alien,
I'm an Englishman in New Zealand…"

I don't even have to check back that quote! :)

With Brian's blessing from last week, The Doctor, Amy and Rory are slouching around present-day New York, more specifically Central Park. The Doctor's reading an old crime novel, which is a bit of a pain because he reads out loud. He remarks that he'd quite like to meet one of the characters. Then it dawns on him that he is one of the characters. They all are. The book begins to recount their present, and therefore their immediate future too.

Before you know it, Doctor Who has become a Crime Traveller.

To slip back into the real world for a moment, if such a thing is advisable when reviewing a story that blurs the line between its own real life and fiction, Crime Traveller was an absolutely reprehensible BBCtv series in the 1990s. As the title suggests, it featured a couple who solved crimes using a time-machine. Among its dimensionally-transcedental control room of shortcomings, Crime Traveller kept changing its philosophy on how its central premise functioned. One week they couldn't meet their younger selves. Another they could, but mustn't look them in the eye. Every week, by implication, the operation of the time-machine required the characters to be present in the same room with themselves at the same time. Don't remember it? Lucky you.

The reason why I draw a comparison with Doctor Who: The Angels Take Manhattan, is because this is the point for me at which Doctor Who's own multiple muddled and contradictory statements about time-travel over the years confront each other. A bit.

There are really three worth mentioning:

1. Changing your history causes your present to change.
2. Changing your history causes only some aspects of your present to change.
3. Changing your history is impossible.

In this one, when the Doctor takes the crime novel off of Amy to stop her reading ahead and causing its history to become established for them, he comes up with a fourth one:

4. Changing your history is impossible if you've read it. (I think he meant once you are aware of said history, including your future)

Joined by River, the resulting forty minutes find our two married couples (nice unusual dynamic for a popular TV show there) in a mild battle to avoid reading anything about their futures, lest they seal their own destinies. Not just the book, but signs on doors, and their very own tombstone too.

At the end, you can sense the Doctor's defeat as he sits despondent in the TARDIS, no doubt reflecting on having seen River's future diary in Silence In The Library / Forest Of The Dead. Giving up on fighting it, he invites her to travel with him, apparently finally resigning himself to gritting his teeth through being beaten by causality.

This is just not the optimistic maverick Doctor who in recent years we have come to be inspired by knowing. To see the Doctor defeated is always great. To see him not even try to fight back, well, that's depressing, for the wrong reasons.

For a couple of years now, I've reasoned that to reconcile the various behaviours of time on display in the series, they need to be interpreted more as philosophies. We've had the theory of fixed-points in time being unchangeable for a while now, but I think it functions better as a belief, rather than as a cold hard absolute.

In a show like this one, I think it's enthralling to suppose that all of its statements about time-travel and changing histories are true, but to fluctuating degrees, like the weather. Just as some days can look hot, sunny, cold, rainy etc., so there can also be different fronts of time. You might look at the darkening sky and say with complete faith that "it's going to rain today," only for it to, against the odds, turn out to be sunny. Equally, the Doctor may take in a time and place, declare an upcoming event to be "a fixed point in time," and then turn out to be able to change it after all. Any of the above four laws could emerge as successful today, although some often look a lot more likely than others. That may sound wishy-washy and a bit of a catch-all, but that's precisely why I've had to apply it to take the series on board.

And yet, causality is not a word that even sits well within this episode. One of my most frequent criticisms of Doctor Who's scripts is their lack of being proof-read. It's a pretty basic part of the writing process, and yet in even a short self-aware episode like this one we get:

1. Old Garner not giving young Garner any useful advice, despite the lifetime that he has had to prepare it.

2. Rory, and the others, meeting River apparently by coincidence.

3. River stating that she has a vortex manipulator, and then breaking her own wrist sooner than use it. (indeed, there are a number of situations right into the final scene in which it would have proved extremely useful)

4. River the trained assassin not having a gun handy, throughout.

5. A Weeping Angel, while frozen in its statue state, still being able to move inside to blow Rory's match out.

6. The Doctor stating that he cannot fly the TARDIS to New York without a signal to lock onto, despite the multiple times that he has done so in the past.

7. The Doctor not using his sonic screwdriver as a torch with which to see the Angels, nor the bulb that he was revealed to keep in his pocket in The Vampires Of Venice.

8. Unable to be rescued from New York in the past, Amy and Rory remain there, instead of, say, catching a train to Los Angeles. Even the Doctor doesn't think of doing this in reverse to collect them. He doesn't even discount it. He does say that one more paradox "would rip New York apart", but a book and a gravestone are pretty easy things to falsify. And again, River still has that vortex manipulator, which can can get there "like a motorbike through traffic."

9. The Angels getting wiped out by the paradox, but one of them inexplicably (ie. it wasn't explained) escaping. How on Earth did it manage that?

10. Angels remaining static while no-one is looking at them, for example when Amy and Rory make eye-contact with each other on the top of the building. From the other angle, how could the Statue Of Liberty get so far without being seen by anyone?

I'm also at a loss as to why the Statue Of Liberty was headless while on Liberty Island (to be explained later?), or indeed what it was doing as an Angel in the first place.

River: "It's like they've taken over every statue in the city."

Is that how they reproduce - by taking over existing statues that have been built by other races? That could work, although it would make this episode's Angel-children merely statues of kids rather than more traditional offspring.

And as for his visiting young Amelia as a kid and telling her about her future... well! Like that wouldn't be classified as a paradox! I guess he must have been sketchy about the details, giving her just enough to imagine all those stories with, and maybe promising to be back in ten minutes at the end, if the rest of The Eleventh Hour still happened. (which after The Big Bang I guess it didn't)

Having said all that, it may sound like I didn't like this episode. It was okay. Doctor Who tends to work well when it has a small cast, and with the baddies in this one predominantly being mutes, all the better. All three regulars have come a long way since they began in the series, and the mellowness about their banter makes all their material at the very least friendly. River gets dealt a difficult hand as she doesn't really have much to do except cause tension. No matter what she usually says about spoilers, here she's the spoilsport parent. Still, I think that's more watchable than man-eater.

It all leads to an uncharacteristically downbeat ending, not least because of the 'Next Time' trailer at the end.

What did it say? Doctor Who returns… at Christmas? B-but it's still September - the same month in which this series started?!?

Doctor Who: The Power Of Three

"Is that all you can do - hover? I had a metal dog who could do that."

So, K9 could hover before his regeneration then...

Whenever I write a critical review of these things, I usually try to avoid naming the author. I mean my problems are obviously with the script that they have written, certainly not with the writer themselves, who's probably a fine human being. And yet, on the quiet, I clearly have some kind of prejudice developing.

Two weeks ago we had the episode Dinosaurs On A Spaceship written by Chris Chibnall, which you might recall I rather enjoyed.

And yet, as the words "Written by Chris Chibnall" swam into view once again this week, I realised I was feeling betrayed. Surely we had sat through a whole episode by him already this season? AND a minisode? Surely with his and Toby Whithouse's contribution last week, we should now be inoculated against any further bouts of their pretentiousness for the rest of this series?

Clearly this was not a fair thing for me to be assuming, especially given that I had no major objection to Chibnall's last script. Truth be told, it’s because of how... miscalculated... I found some of his earlier work to have been, particularly on Torchwood.

So, just as how Mission Impossible I soured II and III for me, so it will apparently take time for Chibnall's earlier bruises to heal too.

In the event, I found The Power Of Three (vague title - could equally apply to The Three Doctors among others) to be a black alien cube of just the two sides. The plot was agonizingly lifeless. The execution on the other hand, was terrific.

My problems with the plot mostly boil down to how derivative it was. When Russell T Davies was in charge, you could pretty well lay money that every year he would recycle the same plot again, perhaps three times over. We really should never sit through that boring old formula yet again. That's why I just described this episode's plot as 'agonisingly lifeless'.

You know what I'm talking about: In the present day, something becomes popular all over the world. Cue news bulletins and shots of affected international landmarks. Then everyone is surprised when it turns out to be part of a covert alien invasion. At this point the companion's dad becomes a victim, along with a significant percentage of the rest of planet Earth. Then the Doctor finds their machine and just presses the 'reverse' button, often along with the ability to do anything else that he fancies. Then everyone on Earth clean forgets that any of this ever happened. They have to, because they're up for it all over again in another three weeks' time.


Oh and there are zombies.


In this one there are two sets, neither of whom seem to even have much reason for being there, despite their unnoticed presence in the hospital for several months.

US TV series do something similar, except that over there such an episode is called a 'rerun'.

By the end of this latest retelling, we never even find out how the sinister cubes came to Earth, despite the Doctor's owning a time machine, which you keep pleading with the TV for him to just use to go back and observe arriving.

In 42, Chibnall wrote an episode in real time, although it had no effect on the story. Here he structures the invasion over the course of a year, and again the story potential is just not exploited. The Shakri's plan might as well have taken place over 42 minutes again.

This is also riddled with plot holes. Amy and Rory really shouldn't be missing social functions when their best friend has a time machine. Rory works in the same building as the alien's wormhole by coincidence. The wormhole itself is in a lift which, uh, moves up and down? The cubes' weird behaviour is never explained. Neither is why the one that shoots at the Doctor, indeed shoots at him, and then stops. When asked why he keeps on visiting Amy and Rory, the Doctor omits to point out, even jokingly, that they're his relatives.

Then an estimated third of Earth's population suffers heart attacks, only having their hearts restarted a significant period of time later. Whatever way you look at it, most of them must remain dead afterwards, for reasons too numerous and obvious to go into here.

It may not be the credited author's doing, but this episode also sees the awkward appearance of the Brigadier's daughter - Kate Lethbridge-Stewart - as head of UNIT scientific research, and by implication its latest director. The reasons why this didn't work for me are several:

1. I have no wish to keep looking backwards and being reminded what we have lost. The Brig completed his missions in the series - it's time to move on forwards, and away from him, not drag that loss with us. (only way to fix that now is to add to the loss by losing Kate)

2. Kate has next to no characterisation of her own. Even the new actress finds nowhere to go with this in any of her scenes. She doesn't even argue with the Doctor like the Brig used to, deferring to him on just about everything.

3. She's called Kate. Now correct me if I'm mistaken, but the existence of a daughter for Lethbridge-Stewart, and one named Kate at that, has until now been a fact that only existed in spin-off media. Eg. The non-BBC fan-produced Downtime VHS. If it embraces Downtime as canon, then how many other spin-offs must accordingly come with it? The sequel Daemos Rising I guess (which I haven't seen). If that's in, then I guess we should also count War Time. I gather she's in some of the thousand-odd Doctor Who books, so have they just suddenly entered official history, along with all the boundaries that they have created over the years?

4. In tension against point 3, she's played by a different actress to in Downtime, yet one who is still reminiscent of the original from that video. I just don't like this not knowing. It's playing with fire I tell you.

5. There are plenty of other better-qualified UNIT officials who would make more sense and carry on the Brigadier's work better. Eg. Crichton, Bambera, or Magambo.

Still, as I said at the start, the sprawling story is only one side of things. The other side is its execution, which is just enthralling.

The Doctor, Amy, Rory, Brian and Kate remain passive onlookers throughout. While this inevitably sabotages the characters' capabilities, the opportunity to spend some everyday life with them all is priceless. If Doctor Who is often all action and wisecracks, then here we get a chance to really spend some time with them all, and experience a more daily sense of what life with the Doctor is like.

There's heart to the performances (except poor soulless Kate's), crackling dialogue, and a real sense of freedom. That they nip off for a seven-week jaunt of adventures in the middle of a party is the sort of thing a show about a time-machine ought to take on board more often. We should go with them too - we should have had seven episodes there.

At one point the Doctor is playing on Amy and Rory's Wii. Thankfully it wasn't Return To Earth. :)

And the music. Oh my goodness. I never thought I'd get to type these words, but there's a scene with the Doctor and Amy sitting in front of a video of the Thames when it's quiet. The music is there, but turned down. Well. Probably a fault with our TV.

As we approached the end of this one, the level of invasion was such that it was all threatening to turn into a two-parter. I was really hoping that it wouldn't. I'm afraid that I am still that cynical about the author's work. I got my guilty wish, via an ending so insipid that it goaded me into being pleased that this one was over.

So in summary, an enjoyable episode to watch, but not to follow.

These days, Doctor Who usually features a thinly-plotted comedy episode about ordinary everyday life towards the end of each series.

Is it too much to hope that that one's out of the way too now?

Why My God Is Derivative

I find everything complicated, because I am quite simple.

A complicated thing will not squeeze into my simple brain, so I simplify it to fit.

Now when I consider a thing, I consider my simple version of that thing instead - it's easier.

That book that I just finished reading? I don't need to read it again. I've got it all up here. Well, the main points.

The United States Of America? I've never really been there, but it's just England with different labels, maps and accents isn't it.

History too.

The universe? Yep, even that. Got a tiny model of it up here. It all works. Sorted.

Even God. I actually think that he corresponds to the tiny simple version of him in my brain too. Sorry - He / Him.

This all leads me to draw simple conclusions about many, if not all, of the original complicated things.

God loves. Therefore we are all loved by God.

However my version of a thing will not be the same as anyone else's, because we will have made different choices in how to simplify it.

God is just. Therefore we all receive justice from God.

Well, they can't both be true. Can they?

We will also each form and frame our understandings from our individual experiences too. Hence, I perceive God as a man. Of course I do. I am a man. I can't even get my head around what God might be like as a penguin.

Of course beginning with our differing notes can also lead our calculations in different directions too. I had a terrible argument this morning with my penguin.

But the great thing about objective truths is that we can both keep on clarifying our conflicting versions by learning more and more detail from the same original source. One day we might even agree, at least on some things. That'll probably require us to listen to each other though. A lot. I might find that I need to consider things like love and justice together, rather than as exclusive alternatives.

As a human being, the very brief simple accounts that I have of Jesus seem closer to what I think really ought to be true about God, than any other version that I retain a copy of.

That might sound like a simple outlook. It is. It's an outlook.

Well, that's my understanding.

Lucas On Life / Lucas On Life 2 by Jeff Lucas

If anything demonstrates just how poor a reader I am, it would have to be the dichotomy of how much I have enjoyed these books vs. how long it has taken me to read them.

Well over a year.

I mean it's not as if I've spent some of that time on the other side of the world is it? Well obviously I have, but I took volume one with me, specifically to finish reading it.

And these are both even really really easy books to read. They're compilations of various short quirky articles that vicar Jeff Lucas has written over the years about instances in his life that, for whatever reason, are genuinely interesting. Usually that reason has a lot to do with being funny. So with the best part of a hundred of these things, you would have thought that I could just take the easy way out and read one a day.

Alas, I had no free slot in my day for reading. Funnily enough my Bible-reading has suffered a lot in the last year too…

So in the end I mainly read book one in just a few sizeable chunks. This obviously worked well enough that I eventually made it to the end of the book, however I do think that I did most pieces a disservice by diluting them so. Early on there are even several items that retell the same events, which stands out when you're reading them together, and makes you wonder why they haven't been redacted together.

This year I've read book two, and taken my own advice by generally making it a daily activity. Most stories in here are hugely involving, and Jeff clearly has an axe to grind about what what he sees as religious extremism. Anecdote after anecdote berates certain brands of Christianity for losing sight of God, and the freedom that he proffers in its place is nothing short of inspiring.

Towards the end, both books become a bit serious. The final few entries of book one (admittedly therefore the ones most prominent in my mind as I type this) are powerful witnesses to God's interest in Jeff's life, and as such offer the sort of encouragement that I think all Christians wish they heard a bit more often. By comparison, the final few entries of book two are more teaching orientated, and as such found it harder to hook me.

I'd like to quote a few examples of the sort of thing that the bulk of these books contain, but to do that I might just have to spend next year reading them all over again.

Which probably wouldn't be such a bad thing…

Book one is available here.
Book two is significantly harder to track down. I guess they shouldn't have reused the same cover. :)

The Return Of The Muppets

When adults still want to watch new stories about the characters they loved when they were five, well, then you have a real winner.

When adults couldn't care less about the characters they loved when they were five, well, then you have a has-been.

When you have both, then you have The Muppets, or as this movie really should have been titled, The Return Of The Muppets.

Grown-up brothers Walter and Gary have enjoyed watching The Muppet Show together since they were young. In Walter's case, for some reason, he is still young - he has never grown up, or even got any taller. He is also still devoted to the series, unlike Gary who now merely enjoys it, among his other more grown-up interests, such as his long-term girlfriend Mary. She never actually says it, but it becomes clear that she doesn't really like the muppets that much.

The three go on a vacation to Los Angeles, including a tour of the old Muppet Studios. Hilarity ensues. And heartbreak. For all three. Did I mention how noone ever notices that the perpetually young Walter is himself a muppet?

It is hard to review these 103 minutes of near-perfection without referring to the fact that I am coincidentally midway through watching both seasons of The Flight Of The Conchords. Both comedies feature the actress Kristen Schaal. Both are saturated with songs and music supervised at least in part by Bret McKenzie. Both are directed by James Bobin.

And that last point is probably what really makes this muppet movie stand even further ahead of all the others that I've seen. Almost everything about this film positively excels. The direction, the pacing, the killer gags that just never let up.

Miss Piggy's Receptionist: "She has an opening in early September."
Walter: "Early September? But that's in six months!"
Fozzie: "That's nothing. I once waited a whole year for September."

Walter: "Wait, stop the car! I have an idea."
[cut to the trio eating some chili dogs]
Gary: "These are delicious! Great idea, Walter."

Walter: "But Kermit, you have to try! The Muppets are AMAZING! You give people the greatest gift that can ever be given!"
Kermit: "Children?"
Walter: "No, the OTHER gift."
Kermit: "Ice cream?"
Walter: "No, no, after that..."
Kermit: "Laughter?"
Walter: "YES! The THIRD greatest gift ever!"

Even the casting. When the song Man Or Muppet launches into yet another spectacular music video featuring Gary as a muppet, it's quickly evident that someone is going to have to play Walter as a human. As our muppet approaches the mirror, there's just no way of foreseeing whose reflection is going to gawp back out at him, and kudos to the inspired choice of actor for playing it exactly how we all wanted him to.

The original muppets, and indeed The Muppet Show, haven't dated a jot, and to prove the point, for a while in this we are actually indulged with several minutes of a brand new episode of that series, complete with full opening theme. Even the inclusion of potential replacements The Moopets - "A hard cynical act for a hard cynical world" - seems designed to make the point that updating beloved old shows is usually a terrible idea. To that end, it's a shame that we didn't similarly get to see this alternative group put on their own hard cynical episode for comparison. "It's The Moopet Show… yeah, whatever."

At least, I don't think we did. Please allow this fanboy to be hard and cynical myself for a moment...


I'm sorry to say it, but lead actor Jason Segel looks so embarrassed in the first half, and accordingly seems to perform his songs for crassness. Yes the muppet world is an impossibly happy place, and yes it is your job to believe in it so that we can. I obviously don't know what order his scenes were shot in, but as I say, he does get over this.

Perhaps the greater problem for me was the slightly confused muppet backstory. The implied premise here is that the muppets split up after the TV series The Muppet Show ended.

Gary: "The Muppets haven't put on a show together in years."

However you and I both know that they've never stopped working together. Initially I read this as meaning that only their Muppet Show TV series was being considered canon here, but then Kermit goes and refers to The Muppet Movie, implying that their other films happened too.

Kermit: "Didn't you see our first movie?"

Their scatterment across the globe here is all a far cry from, for example, Muppets Tonight and Muppets From Space, the latter of which even featured them all sharing a house together. Even in a story which contains multiple breaches of the fourth wall, I found this lack of clear premise confusing. I mean is Gonzo still an alien in this, or did that film not happen, and so is he back to being a turkey again? Or is he now an alien who never found out that he was an alien?

I could just acknowledge that Muppets From Space was 13 years ago now, giving everyone ample time to break up, but then we're left asking where the rest of the muppet chorus are, such as Clifford and Sprocket, and whether they're going to appear later. (they don't, even with a whole audience to fill) Bobo and Pepe make it in, just to confuse matters further. Rizzo only appears mute. I don't know, Gonzo without Rizzo just seems wrong now. Yes, Gonzo had been getting character development!

Not to mention the Sesame Street crowd, of whom I understand that Elmo was disallowed to appear because he's not owned by the same company. Groan, this was never a problem in the old days. It all bodes very badly indeed for latest new muppet Walter, poor kid. No point in becoming a fan of him then.

However in a film so bursting at the seams with genuine entertainment, there's just no raining on this parade, not even with a hose. Despite anything that you may have heard to the contrary, this is not a reboot, or even a reunion, it's thankfully just the next one, although apparently on the quiet.

Finally, The Muppets also does a great line in Henson warmth. The defeats that the characters suffer are handled just as sensitively as they have always been. Accordingly, there are plenty of themes running through this that I found inspiring.

Walter: [to Gonzo]"When I was a kid and saw you recite 'Hamlet' while jumping your motorbike through a flaming hoop, it, well, it made me feel like I could do anything."

Likewise, when Kermit made his whole "I believe in you" speech at the end, well, it made me feel like I would never be afraid of anything again. I could finish here by quoting that, but I think Gary may have put it even better.

Gary: "You always believe in other people, but that's easy. Sooner or later, you gotta believe in yourself, too, because that's what growing up is. It's becoming who you want to be. You have to try."

1/10.

Oops sorry that readout was supposed to display 10/10.

(with thanks to Herschel)

(available here)

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

***Here Be Spoilers***

For me, the best thing to come out of the big Star Trek revival of the eighties was the TV series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. (DS9)

I mean Star Trek: Voyager was just awful, man, awful. Its only redeeming feature was that it wasn't quite as shallow as Star Trek: The Next Generation. Fans may have been willing to lower their standards for that, but cinema-goers weren't, and its ill-conceived movie spin-offs ultimately took down the entire universe.

Star Trek: Enterprise? Well they made a moderate effort, leading to a much larger one in its second half. Yes, Enterprise became really enjoyable to watch after a while.

But when it comes to quality, for this viewer the only serious challenger to the original 1960/70/80/90s live-action/cartoon/movie series is Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Although it didn't start out that way.

Essentially a spin-off from The Next Generation, DS9 initially ran concurrent with that series, and was set on a space station that literally wasn't going anywhere. For an episode of this show to happen, new life and new civilisations had to seek them out. It began, it plodded, it stayed there, and for a while it seemed to have even less idea than Next Gen just where the series might be going, boldly or otherwise. Deep Space Nine just sat there spinning its wheel(s).

So they filled-in with comedy.

I'll never forget the moment when I first perceived that mischievous spark in the show's creative forces, and smiled. It was during the first season episode Move Along Home. They're all trapped in some futuristic life or death game. We see the thing that's stalking them's point-of-view. It whirls past each of them, pausing momentarily to threateningly consider each crewmember for attack, even the show's comedy doctor, who at that early stage was such a loser that I found him reminiscent of Red Dwarf's Arnold Rimmer. So there was Dr Bashir, standing there gawping, looking all terrified in a red-shirted sort of way. Then the alien's point-of-view duly swung onto the next person.

And then it swung back.

And then it zoomed-in on his cowardly Dr-Smith type gurning.

Yes, they had abandoned the drama of possible sudden death for laughs, but were still playing it straight! Priceless!

After that revelation, the series really never looked back, which is a good way to go when it's only episode 9 in a run of about 175.

That's not to say that DS9 was a brilliant series though. In most 22-episode seasons, I reckoned there to be one episode that was a stinker, about half a dozen that were the pinnacle of the television industry, and however many remaining episodes at the very least watchable.

As you can tell, it's really those half a dozen GREAT episodes each year that are the source of my gushing here today. Best of all, these were always the editions that moved along the overall storylines, making it possible to actually skip all the rest of the instalments. These ones were cleverly written, hilariously performed (in a good way), and the direction was so good that it would flag itself up pretty well in the opening shot.

It was certainly worth wading through all the other static episodes just to find these classics, but like I say, every week DS9 was usually at least fun.

I suspect it owes much of its success to rival space-station TV series Babylon 5. At the time, that series was making a huge effort over itself to be something really special and intelligent, with the result that DS9 compared as a bit silly. Consequently however, from season 3 onwards, DS9 suddenly upped their game and rushed to catch up. A real-life war broke out across the airwaves, one which was to the benefit of both series, and of course the viewers.

However while Babylon 5 unquestionably proved itself the far more credible of the two shows, the flipside of that coin was that Deep Space 9 enjoyed a much greater creative freedom to be imaginative. For example, in If Wishes Were Horses, the crew's desires became real. You couldn't get away with something as ridiculous as that on gritty Babylon 5.

But what exactly was DS9 all about then? Well, if you're looking for a season-by-season synopsis or episode guide, then I'm afraid you've come to the wrong blog. I'm not here to educate, just to enthuse about how much I enjoyed the whole seven-year yarn.

To that end, the rest of this post is a quick shortlist of my favourite Deep Space Nine episodes. It goes without saying that it is far from exhaustive.

They really should have given the movie series to this team to make instead…

Due to the vagarities of syndication, and BBC2, episode numbers here are approximate.

Season 1:

#6: Q-Less

Two recurring characters from Star Trek: The Next Generation drop in and, once the DS9 cast are safely out of shot, proceed to set about tying up their own series' loose ends. They so know their audience.

#9: Move Along Home

The 'life-or-death game' story already mentioned above. At the conclusion, our heroes survive the deadly game because, heh heh, y'know, it turns out that it actually was all just a game! Brilliant ending!

#18: Duet

Much as I normally dislike science fiction's human-interest stories, this one had me hooked, and condemned.

Season 2:

#33: Whispers

O'Brien spends the entire episode quite logically deducing that his colleagues are plotting something behind his back. At the end, he uncovers their big secret: they all know that he is just a clone of O'Brien, programmed to kill them. Whoa - I didn't see that coming!

#38: Blood Oath

Three Klingons - namely Kor, Koloth and Kang - all return from the original 1960s series of Star Trek, still played by the same actors, and nobody mentions it even once. So cool.

#42: Crossover

The return of the mirror universe. You know the one. They should have called this Spock's Beard.

#44: Tribunal

Chief O'Brien (he gets all the best episodes) is arrested and tried on the Cardassian homeworld (read: police state), where the defence counsel's role is to validate the prosecution. He really doesn't have a hope. Nonetheless, these are the show's final lines:

Defence counsel: "What happened?"
Odo: "You won."
Defence counsel: "They'll kill me!"

Season 3:

#52: Civil Defense

The station's old automated defence systems from years ago kick-in and take over. Gul Dukat looks so at ease swaggering through the storm of automatic phaser beams without getting hit!

#58: Life Support

Accidentally suffering braindeath midway through delicate peace negotiations, our old friend Vedek Bareil has half of his brain replaced with an artificial one, just soas he can complete the vital deal. But then the remaining natural half of his brain fails too. So do they replace that as well?

#63: Distant Voices

Dr Bashir awakens to find Deep Space Nine somewhat deserted and in a state of disrepair. Presently, he realises that he is in a coma.

Season 4:

#73: The Visitor

Captain Sisko is killed in an accident on board the USS Defiant. His distraught son Jake lives out the rest of his life, growing old, and witnessing what becomes of Deep Space Nine over the many years to come. But every once in a blue moon, he impossibly glimpses his dad again.

#78: Little Green Men

The Ferengi characters (the series' comic relief) are accidentally thrown back in time to July 1947, where they crash on Earth in a town called Roswell. Guest stars Conor O'Farrell as a smilier version of his Majestic 12 role in Dark Skies!

#80: Our Man Bashir

Enormous 007 spoof. If you flicked past this, you might well have mistaken it for an actual James Bond movie.

#89: Hard Time

Convicted of espionage for asking too many questions, Chief O'Brien is sentenced to have the memory of twenty years of prison implanted into his mind. This has exactly the opposite of the desired effect, especially when he murders his cell-mate over some pieces of bread. Again, actor Colm Meaney gets another really interesting script to perform.

Season 5:

#97: Apocalypse Rising

For an undercover mission, everyone is surgically altered to look like Klingons. Worf has four hours in which to train them to behave like Klingons, but they are all too polite. This scene felt like watching Dad's Army. I kept expecting Private Gok'frey to ask if he might be excused for a moment.

Worf: "Let's start with you. I'm waiting."
Odo: "I don't understand. What exactly…"
Worf: "I am not interested in excuses! Are you a Klingon warrior or an Alverian dung beetle?!"
Odo: "I really don't see the point…"
Worf: "Don't look away from me! I called you a dung beetle!"
Odo: "I heard you."
Worf: "And what is your response?"
Odo: "You should have your eyes checked."
Worf: "This is not going to work."

#100: … Nor the Battle to the Strong

Jake learns first hand the horrors of war. Yet again, it's like watching a different show.

#102: Trials and Tribble-ations

Charlie Brill as Arne Darvin (yet another returning Klingon from the 1960s series) hijacks the USS Defiant and takes it back in time to kill Captain Kirk and change the past. In surely the most meticulously-planned TV programme ever filmed, our heroes go after him, infiltrate the old-style Enterprise, and stumble around all the old sets and footage trying not to change history, with an ever-increasing fail rate. By the time they've misidentified William Shatner's body-double as Kirk himself, O'Brien and Bashir find themselves involved in a full-scale punch-up with the old goatee-bearded Klingons, for which they then get arrested and interrogated by the real Kirk!


Pretty well every single line in this one is a joke, right down to the characters Dulmer and Lucsly, whose names are anagrams of Mulder and Scully. Joy, pure joy. I think this one was the pilot for Futurama.

#104: Things Past

Sisko, Odo, Dax and Garak spend a harsh while on Deep Space Nine during the Cardassian occupation a few years earlier.

#110: In Purgatory's Shadow

Not so much an episode as an instalment, with umpteen longer plotlines flowing through it. In this one, Garak and Worf take a ship through the wormhole, where they discover that the Jem'Hadar are about to mount a full-scale invasion of our quadrant. They just manage to send back a warning message before getting captured. To protect the quadrant, Sisko has to face destroying the wormhole while Garak and Worf are still in captivity on the other side of it. Garak and Worf get taken to a detention centre, where Garak meets his estranged father and watches him die. Another fellow inmate is Dr Bashir in an old-style uniform, meaning that the one back on Deep Space Nine has been a doppelgänger for some time now. (noone ever twigs that it presumably delivered Kira's baby recently) Back at base, the evil duplicate Bashir sabotages Sisko's plans to blow-up the wormhole, and so the Jem'Hadar do invade…

Season 6:

#124: Rocks and Shoals

A fairly dull episode, but worthy of note for our heroes' opening crash-landing deep in hostile territory, and subsequent hysterics at O'Brien's horror over tearing his pants.

#135: Far Beyond the Stars

In 1950s America, author Benny Russell invents a series of adventures about Deep Space Nine and its occupants, which his publisher then pulps because he is black. In one of the series' trademark long takes, Benny breaks down making an impassioned speech about how the characters are real "because they're in my head!" He gets taken away by an ambulance.

141: In the Pale Moonlight

Romulan Senator Vreenak: "It's a faaaaaaaaaaaake!"

Captain Sisko relates to camera how he tried to tell one lie for the cause of good, and succeeded, despite the final unintended cost turning out to be two people's lives.

Garak: "That is why you came to me, isn't it, Captain? Because you knew I could do the things you weren't capable of doing yourself? Well, it worked. And you'll get what you wanted -- a war between the Romulans and the Dominion. If your conscience is bothering you, you should soothe it with the knowledge that you may have just saved the entire Alpha Quadrant, and all it cost was the life of one Romulan senator, one criminal, and the self-respect of one Starfleet Officer. I don't know about you, but I'd call that a bargain."

Tremendous drama, I felt so bad for the guy. I still do.

Season 7:

#152: Take Me Out to the Holosuite

Calling themselves the Niners, the gang have to beat the Vulcans at baseball. All this one was missing was a laugh-track.

#158: It's Only a Paper Moon

Nog deals with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder by burying himself in a holosuite program of 1960s America. Almost guest-stars Jeffrey Hunter on TV.

#163: Badda-Bing Badda-Bang

An easter egg in the holosuite program of 1960s America activates, and the only way of turning it off is to mount a heist movie tribute. By this point the series has become something of a musical, thanks to regular appearances from holographic cabaret singer Vic Fontaine, who despite not being real, in this one is the only character in jeopardy.

#173: What You Leave Behind

The series' closing episodes leave the more extreme comedy behind to become an unbroken nine-part serial, or ten if you're watching the syndicated two-part version of this finale. The scenes in Mila's home on Cardassia Prime are reminiscent of Father Ted. This last episode features so many guest-characters that the 'also starring' sub-credits go on for just ages.

The story concludes with Captain Sisko existing in some sort of other realm within the wormhole, but promising to return one day, maybe in the future, maybe in the past. It's a strange ending, that to me implied hope of a reunion movie one day. Well, it's been approaching 15 years now, so maybe that day is not so far away.

There is so much more that I could say about this series, but here I've really just tried to convey how much I enjoyed it. I'll leave you with this uncompromising moment from near the end of the last episode. Quark's long-term nemesis Odo is leaving Deep Space Nine for the final time.

Quark: (to Odo and Kira Nerys) "I knew it! When I saw the two of you slip out of the holosuite, I said to myself, "That no-good, misanthropic, cantankerous, changeling is trying to sneak off the station without anyone noticing."

Odo: "That was the idea."

Quark: "Well, it's not going to happen."

Odo: "Apparently not."

Quark: "So now that I'm here... isn't there something you want to say to me?"

Odo: "Such as?"

Quark: "Such as, 'Good-bye, you certainly were a worthy adversary', or maybe something with the words 'mutual respect' in it..."

Odo: "No."

Quark: "No? What do you mean 'no'?"

Odo: "There's nothing I want to say to you."

Quark: "You're telling me that after all these years... after all we've been through, you're not even going to say goodbye to me?"

Odo: "That's right. Nerys, I'll be on the Runabout."

(Odo steps around Quark and leaves forever)

Quark: "I guess that's it then..."

Kira: "Don't take it so hard, Quark…"

Quark: "Hard? What are you talking about? (breaks into a smile) That man loves me. Couldn't you see? It was written all over his back."

All that said, I still think that the final line of the series should really have gone to Morn.

(available, if you have enough gold pressed latinum, here)

Doctor Who: Dinosaurs In Space

If last week's episode was a lot like Escape From New York / L.A., then this week Doctor Who seems to be doing Jurassic Park… or is it Indiana Jones?

This one is a whirlwind comedy, and refreshingly feels as free as being mates with a bloke with a TARDIS should.

And if ever there were a story in which the Doctor were the protagonist, then this is it.

In the future, there's a giant spacecraft heading towards Earth. But it's not a threat. This time the Earth itself is the threat, as its bureaucrats sharpen up their pencils to blow the approaching ship out of the upper atmosphere. The Doctor and Queen Nefertiti could just vworp away and forget about it. But they don't. Except that first they do.

Choosing to get involved and turn the ship away peacefully, the Doctor decides to try out having a gang, and so first he whizzes around the continuum picking up gang-members before boarding the ship that they don't have to be bothered with saving.


As well as current co-traveller Queen Nefertiti from ancient Egypt, explorer John Riddell is recruited, along with stalwarts Amy and Rory Pond. And by accident Rory's dad Brian, who is played quite wonderfully by Red Dwarf's Peterson. Sorry Mark Williams, I know you've done other successful and fast shows, but to me you'll always be Olaf.

In fact, the casting of Mark Williams is quite a cheek, since he wasn't visible anywhere at Amy and Rory's wedding in The Big Bang. In further fact, there seems to have been a quite different looking guy sitting where he really ought to have been in that episode, but the angles on offer are sparing, so maybe he really was just off-camera, if only on the 4:3 version.

No, wait, in Let's Kill Hitler the Doctor claimed to have danced with everyone at that event, including the men.

Oh, and he doesn't recognise the TARDIS. Ah, well, that settles it then - he missed his own son's wedding. Maybe he was away that day bailing out his granddaughter Mels. Hrrrm.

Anyhow, at the end of the very long pre-credits sequence, the spaceship unexpectedly turns out to contain dinosaurs. Well, it ought to be unexpected, since we haven't seen the episode title yet. Perhaps it would be more accurate if I said that the episode title turned out to be the unexpected component here. Good job I hadn't watched the trailer last week.

As with the previous episode, there's lots of creeping around a slightly dangerous environment, with great direction and plenty of good gags throughout. Even Rory got written well here, which makes a change. I thoroughly enjoyed this episode, and was quite pleased to see the homo reptilians getting referred to by Amy as Silurians again, even if I was still a little hazy on why that name was used.

When the Doctor and friends run away from the pterodactyls on the beach, the throwaway line to explain why they can't just teleport away is really lame - "Local teleport's burnt-out on arrival!" - but at least there is a line.

However I don't think the same can be said of baddie Solomon's ultimatum to the Doctor to bring Queen Nefertiti to him. Surely with both his scanners and a functioning teleport he needn't have gone after the Doctor to ask this in the first place? Look, mate, take a leaf out of Peterson's book, and do it yourself.

Some of the CGI lacked weight, but most of it I was convinced by. There's a misjudged joke when the Doctor kisses Rory which rendered the gag that it was setting up awkward, which is never a context that you want for slapstick, but on the whole the comedy throughout this worked well. (I think a hug would have succeeded better there)

Queen Nefertiti turned out to be a weakly written 'tough' female character, who despite all her talk, proved incapable of defending herself against Solomon for ages. No wonder she ended up with the chauvinist explorer John Riddell - he was after just such an incapable waif to look after. Let's hope they can still understand each other's languages without the TARDIS. Or maybe it will work out better for them if they can't.

The whole race against time thing is always going to be a tough sell for a guy who wields a time-machine with such expertise, but what the hey. Matt Smith was firing on all cannons throughout most of this. If he can keep that up for several years - note 'several' not 'two' - then he has the option to become one of Doctor Who's all-time greats.

Here's hoping.

The Blue Kiwi

I'm not reading the Bible at the moment.

I've temporarily replaced it with the book Lucas On Life 2 by Jeff Lucas. This is a series of light-hearted thoughts-for-the-day, as Jeff writes about the amusing events of his walk with God in his own humourous way.

What's that? It's not the Holy Word of God? Well, I dare say that the individual human authors of the Bible would probably say the same thing about their writings too. If their words were indeed God-inspired, or at least honest, then surely there ought to also be some spiritual value in considering Jeff's testimonies as well? I think there is. Arguably not enough to base a whole worldwide movement upon, but there's good stuff to prayerfully consider in here too, of course there is.

A few days ago I read the following:

"I've just finished a lengthy study of the Seven Churches of Revelation, and was stunned to discover that to two of them, Jesus had no word of rebuke at all - only commendation and a verbal pat on the back. The lack of rebuke is… shocking. Why are we more at home with the threat of judgement, but struggle with the idea that God might want to tell us that we're doing all right?

Perhaps there's a big surprise waiting for us when we finally step forward on the last day, when we see Jesus face to face. Is it possible that it won't be heaven itself that leaves us breathless - it won't be the megaton singing of exuberant angelic choirs that blows us away on that day, or the first sightseeing of a new city where the Lamb will be our light? Perhaps the hugest shock of all will be the sight of a perfect God, whispering the most unexpected greeting to plebs like us: 'Well done, good and faithful servant.'" [p.157]

I have to admit that the idea of God telling me "Well done" for anything features nowhere in my worldview either. To others, for sure, but me? I've achieved very little indeed with my life, and shudder at the possibility that I may leave this world a worse place for my input than how I found it.

I also recoil from applauding myself for my own entirely subjective worth because of the danger of nourishing arrogance. For example, hypothetically, if I were to think that I prayed well, then wouldn't that require me to also think that some others pray worse than me?

All the same, the lack of affirmation in my life has been bad for me. While I do admit to trying to hold a high opinion of myself and others (important condition that), the absence of anyone else outside family to really affirm me in my life has led me to a paralysing outlook: I now find it impossible to assume that anyone else will like me, and very easy indeed to suppose the opposite.

Of course I do. Thousands of people have lambasted me throughout my life, but no-one has ever really done its opposite, whatever that is. Consequently I have a pretty strong idea of the ways in which my feelings can be hurt, but very little concept of how they can be empowered.

I therefore find it easy to project that a stranger may think ill of me when I phone them, but very hard to expect them to be pleased. I have this trouble with calling friends too.

Also, now when people do say kind things to me, even if it's just "You're doing a great job!", I have no process for receiving that. I have to bury my distraught face in my hands for a few minutes, and go get a cup of tea and some biscuits to pick myself up again.

I'm not much good at praising others either - too much fear that they may assume the worst of me - that I'm being manipulative.

So it's no wonder that approval also features rarely in my perspective on what God might be thinking of me.

So in my quiet time today, just for once, I took Jeff Lucas' advice. I sat on a bench by the river and asked myself:

If in Heaven God were to indeed greet me with the words "Well done, my good and faithful servant," just what on Earth could he justifiably be referring to?

There aren't many things that I have done in my life which I think have made the world a better place. I showed some cartoons to some kids in a couple of Romanian orphanages once, but that was over twenty years ago. I comforted a friend who'd lost a relative. I taught English to some asian teenagers who clearly benefited from it. This was not mindless work that anyone could have done - I did all three things in my own unique way. Those particular successes required me to do them, or they just couldn't have had quite the same outcome.

So what of the big projects in my life today - those activities which I continue to pour the vast resources of my First World existence into? I won't list them here, but they obviously include my maintaining this blog, which I know 100-200 people read every day, even though response to my posts is mercifully infinitesimal.

The picture that emerged, to me, of my life was one of a faith in God that had endured, despite the lack of evidence that much of it had been worth doing. I'm not just talking about blogging to an anonymous readership (whose lives I hope are in some small way improved by what I share on here, yes even somehow the rants), but other projects too. Film-making, radio, publishing, all those phone calls that I make. I see very little of these things' effects, but I still have faith that some positive effects are out there, and that God uses them.

Even when I moved from the UK to New Zealand. A whole new life emerged for me down under, but I never really achieved anything. The same pattern again: lots of things emerged to do, and I stuck at them, but rarely if ever witnessed any results. Yet I consider my New Zealand odyssey to be a success, whatever anyone else may think of it. I went and I did, and I hope that, somehow, it all made the world into a very slightly improved place. (God only knows how :) )

At the end of my quiet time on the bench this afternoon, I as usual wondered whether or not to bother with asking God for a response to my thoughts. These days I really resent the idea of looking around hopefully for some ordinary event to take on a significant meaning because I want it to.

On December 2nd 2003 - I think the same day that I first picked up a copy of a Lucas On Life book and was encouraged to go to New Zealand - someone told me of a miracle when their lost keys had shown up on their feet.

Four years later in 2007 I mentioned on here how a significant lost pen of mine had similarly - and arguably miraculously - shown up several weeks later on my shoes. I'm still wondering about that. Was God telling me to continue travelling and write about it? Or to go back home and write about that? Or should I have just drawn faces on my shoes?

Anyway, thinking of this today, and daring to again look for a response from God to my prayers, I looked down at my feet. I mean of course I did. They were just there.

At my feet, in the gravel, I spotted what looked to be a small blue gemstone, set in some piece of lost jewellery. I picked it up to examine it. It was a stud earring. The blue gem - probably plastic or something - was in the shape of a kiwi.

Seriously. The national bird of New Zealand.

My mind raced. What could this mean, if anything? Was it really that much of a coincidence? Well, yes, even if I had not been praying, it would still have been quite a big coincidence to find such a thing right underneath where I had been seated for the past hour.

In the Old Testament, an earring could denote a mark of slavery or ownership. So did this mean that I was now a slave unto New Zealand? If so, was that more an instruction, or more an observation? Or had I, by going to NZ, enslaved myself to God? Might the fact that there was only one earring and not two be significant? Could the 'kiwi' actually be a fat penguin indicating that God wanted me to p-p-p-pick up lots of milk chocolate biscuit bars? (and feed them to flightless birds in southern New Zealand?)

As usual when conjuring with the possible meaning of the almighty, it was impossible to interpret this find with any certainty. The only thing that it objectively did mean was that sometime recently, probably earlier today, sitting in this exact spot, there had likely been a woman from New Zealand. Or maybe just someone who had been on holiday there. Suddenly a kiwi earring seemed quite tacky. (no pun about its pin intended)

But, even that was still quite a coincidence.

Or dare I suppose that God was simply saying to me, "Well done, my good and faithful servant, for going to New Zealand"?

Doctor Who: Escape From The Asylum Of The Daleks

"The Time Lord returns next tonight to face his arch enemies! Even more terrifying than ever before, the Daleks are back on BBC1 in the new series of Doctor Who!"

"Terrifying"? Surely he meant to say "hilarious"?

For the first time in the official TV series, Steven Moffat writes a story about the Daleks, and unashamedly goes for comedy. And action. And, unusually for Doctor Who these days, he also sets it in space!

Well, mostly. Yes, this is the first season opener since 1987 not to take place extensively on a planet with 'Earth' in its name. Even before Amy and Rory's kidnap scenes, the episode opens on Skaro, the destroyed planet of the Daleks last glimpsed on TV back in Paul McGann's 1996 outing The Millennium Of Doom. (or 2010's City Of The Daleks computer game, if you played it on your telly - it's even still raining in this)


The evil pepperpots appear to have at long last perfected human Daleks, and use them to kidnap the Doctor, Amy and Rory in turn, accidentally staying the Ponds' divorce.


They wake up in a white room, which since I've just finished watching the first series of K9, I recognised as either VR detention, Gryffen's vidpic of his family, Jorjie's teacher's office, Green Room Entertainment, or somewhere north of London like Canada.

Well, this time it's a cell. Maybe they should have a cell group meeting. Or call River on their cell-phone to compare their respective cells. Or summon the TARDIS to them using said phone's battery cell. Okay I'll stop now.

If you haven't seen The Doctor Who Experience, then the next bit might not make as much sense. The surviving classic Daleks have agreed to a truce with the Power Ranger Daleks over at Dalek parliament, which is a lot like Babylon 5, except that the only races allowed in have to be Daleks. I looked for the movie Daleks. There were none. Given the wild disregard for Dalek continuity already on display, on some level this disappointed me.

The Dalek Prime Minister (no modern allegory there I hope) sends the Doctor and friends on a mission to turn off the forcefield around their asylum planet, where all the mad Daleks are locked up to vegetate. It's a good job that the Daleks haven't heard about the Doctors' death last series. More's the shame that he doesn't appear to remember it himself either.

Quite why the Daleks have grabbed Rory - who they have never met with the Doctor - is anyone's guess. This would have made more sense if he'd been captured by accident together with Amy. I mean they even seem to wait for him to leave before capturing her.

The forcefield around the asylum planet is a classic piece of Dalek double-think. On the one hand, uh plunger, it prevents them from destroying the planet. On the other gun stalk, it allows through a gravity tunnel and the crashing Starship Alaska. When you also factor in that it can only be turned off from inside, the inescapable bottom line is that this is a really rubbish forcefield. So bad in fact, that it's consistent with the similarly pathetic one they attacked in The Parting Of The Ways. Why the Daleks don't send some missiles through the gravity tunnel is a conundrum that the Doctor is unlikely to explain later. Especially if he's been exterminated. It's all a lot like Escape From New York / L.A.

Down on the snowy planet, it all turns out to be even more fun, thanks largely to the sleepiness of the Dalek inmates. Many of them don't have guns, and those who do can barely fire them unless woken up and riled. Let's hope that someone like Rory doesn't go and, oh, I don't know, trip over something loudly. Backwards.

In fact when this happens, it's one of Doctor Who's best sketches ever. Rory accidentally awakens a stuttering Dalek who keeps on demanding "eggs". Despite the high comedy, actor Arthur Darvill plays it for realism as always, culminating in his stampeding for his life away from their drunken firepower, and getting so believably scared that afterwards he even forgets his own name! Brilliant!


There's some other stuff about an airborne nano-virus, more zombies, and a generic lippy Moffat-gal (Oswin Oswald) who turns out to be a Dalek, but none of this seems too consequential.

Well, apart from Amy and Rory getting back together again of course, but that appears to be because Amy finally hits upon the idea of treating the man she married with honesty. Perhaps things might not have got to this stage had she thought of that somewhat earlier.

The really important development of note though is the standard of Dalek audio technology. For while Dalek casings feature distorted voices because of their rubbish low-tech speakers, it turns out that they also contain much higher quality microphones. Oswin's human tones from Dalek wall panels and radios would imply that those devices are similarly better quality too. In fact, I would argue that this was implied by CCTV equipment in both their first story in 1964, and 1975's Genesis Of The Daleks. Whew!

Soon the forcefield is down and the planet duly goes all explodey-wodey, a term the Doctor has previously used in The Doctor Who Prom 2010. The three survivors teleport back to the invisible TARDIS on the Dalek saucer, to realise that Dalek-gal has managed to wipe the Daleks' shared memory of the Doctor (so they don't have individual memories too???), resulting in all the assembled pepperpots politely enquiring of him the question "DOC-TOR WHOOO?"

Well, he likes that. He likes that so much that the episode actually closes on him crowing it in triumph three times in the TARDIS. Not only have the Daleks forgotten his very existence, but he now understands what the oldest question in the universe is, which must be a massive relief. Silence will fall when the question is asked: Erm, who are you?

I personally think he should have gone a lot further with this, turning to camera, declaring "starring me Matt Smith! The new series of Doctor Who continues next Saturday at 7:35 on BBC-1! On the way next tonight: The National Lottery - Secret Fortune!", and then advertising the DVD box set of the series, but that's just me.

This whole episode is wonderfully designed, enthrallingly directed, terrifically written and, I never thought I'd say this, but… it sounds great too!

This is awesome stuff, and starting the series in September again too!

The leap forward in Dalek history is a bit of an ask, and has all the traits of a future episode that is set earlier, but which won't get made because they'll have lost interest by then.

All the same, a great opening, and proof positive that there's life in the old Daleks yet.

Footnote: In addition to the standalone short Pond Life, this morning I learnt that there was an actual prequel for this episode knocking around, in which the Doctor gets summoned to Skaro, somehow forgetting his death yet remembering his wedding. The BBC, in their wisdom, had embargoed this piece of publicity for release on the day after its transmission. For the Americans. Thanks, so-called British Broadcasting Corporation. Your double-think in this matter is worthy of the Daleks.

Overdrawn At The Memory Bank (1983 TV movie)

Rick: "There's nothin' more boring than playin' it safe, Fingal."


I seem to have spent my entire life watching parodies of, and homages to, the movie Casablanca.

Earlier this year I finally got around to watching the classic itself - twice - and liked it. Now therefore seems like a good time to start re-checking out a few of those tributes in other productions, and to find out whether there was much more under the surface that had passed me by first time around. These will include Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Profit And Loss and Sledge Hammer! - Play It Again, Sledge. I have broader reviews for this blog of each of those series, so I don't intend to write about either of those episodes specifically.

Tonight however, the first VHS up was this 1983 Canadian TV SF romcom starring Raúl Juliá in a dual role as world-weary bar owner Rick, and futuristic office worker Aram Fingal.

In the future, Fingal has a dead boring job using a computer, which he endures by sneakily wasting company time illegally downloading movies to watch. Wow, so far this vision of the future is spot on!

To punish him for this transgression, the company's shrink compels him to spend 48 hours in the body of a baboon. While this might sound to us like a somewhat left-field solution to employee motivation, in this version of the future it's fairly normal, except that most other citizens can afford more desirable animals to moonlight as. Noone ever says what becomes of the baboon's mind during all this - perhaps the hospital nurses have to cajole Fingal's body down from swinging around the light fittings or something - unless the simiant is in fact virtual reality.

Anyway while Fingal's monkeying around getting chased by elephants and the like, the company manages to mislay his body, and it's only now that they realise for the first time that they have no procedure in place for storing his consciousness after the 48 hours are over. D'oh!

However, computer controller (and looker) Apollonia James (Linda Griffiths) comes up with the answer - no, not pop him into a different baboon, but instead store his consciousness on the company's main hard drive, which also happens to serve most systems on the rest of planet Earth.

Hmm.

This goes pretty well as first, as Fingal subconsciously generates a virtual reality version of his home, work and movie life to flit between. As you can probably guess, his favourite movie is Casablanca, so it isn't long before he finds himself at Rick's bar (here called The Place), being encouraged by the owner to hack into the computer he's currently stored upon and make a few sweeping changes to better the real world.

Needless to say, different factions in that real world suddenly find themselves following him into VR too, either to stop him, or save him…

I guess that there are really three things that have changed in my perspective between watching this in the mid-1980s and today in 2012:

1. As indicated above, I've now seen Casablanca. As a result, I can report that the representation of Rick's bar here - as 'The Place' - looks to me pretty identical to in that film. It's a relief that the programme-makers of the day didn't attempt to shoot this in black and white or anything, as I think it would have subtracted from its credibility as a location within Fingal's computer-generated world.

Rick is only really realised here as a look and an accent. His dialogue is hardly at all reminiscent of the film, and indeed there is no attempt made to in any way revive the guy's character. He serves only to drive Fingal's motivation, and remain passive to his choices.

However the same cannot quite be said of Louis Negin as Pierre - the Signor Ugarte character. He's just like watching the original, although he survives longer here, and is more passive to Fingal because it is in his slimy nature to be so.

Overall, I found the Casablanca element to be very well played here. It services the plot well, and in no way distracts from it. Full marks for that!

2. Another change in my perspective is simply that of fashion. As with my recent completion of viewing The Running Man, I am amazed at how the more extreme a 1980s production's attempt to look futuristic, the more 1980s it looks here in the actual future. In its day, Overdrawn At The Memory Bank enthralled me twice on the UK's Channel 4, but now looks about as dated as it's possible for a TV play to look. The miniscule budget doesn't help.

3. Attitude - both the production's, and my own.

The production's attitude is one that modern TV seems to have lost. Whenever anything bizarre happens in this - such as Fingal's adventures as a baboon - the whole tone here is so matter of fact. Today they'd drench it in music and make the character gasp in awe at the wonder of it all, as though they'd never heard of this thing called artificial reality before. But no, in Overdrawn At The Memory Bank, everyone just gets on with what they're doing, and you are expected to as well. Excellent.

Sadly, my own attitude has also lost something in the intervening decades. As a teen I understood every twist and turn of this plot. Today it seemed so all over the place that my eyes were closing towards the end. It's probably because I like to think that I pay a bit more attention to storylines now. Oh well.

Perhaps the final irony (to date) though has to be that this story about a man downloading movies to watch at work, is itself available on YouTube.

And perhaps the crueller irony is that the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 version is up there too.

So one day another Fingal may dream of losing himself in this fictional movie world from yesteryear… or is that me?

(available on VHS here)

Doctor Who: Pond Life

All right, I'll admit it - Doctor Who minisodes aren't much to write about.

The regular cast with a guest-star standing around the TARDIS set for three whole minutes, talking their way through a few minor effects on the console… well, it's all a bit of a Jim'll Fix It pantomime isn’t it. Even the TARDISodes and so-called 'prequels' of recent years have unashamedly been just an additional scene to stick onto the beginning of whichever episode they're promoting.

I mean I love 'em. No other show on Earth does this kind of thing as a matter of course, but when it comes to being something epic that you can gush excitedly about and copy the link into your Facebook status over… well, nah. It's just the TV equivalent of a Sweet Tooth tube of sweets with a tiny comic strip inside the wrapper. Special more for its obscurity than its simple content.

Unless it's Pond Life.


If you had updated your digital reception for the 2012 olympics, then for the 80 minutes prior to tonight's premiere of Asylum Of The Daleks, you had the option to press the red button on your remote and, after a bit more prodding, view this 5-6 minute Doctor Who short. (also released episodically online over the past week)

A deleted scene this isn't. The final few months of Amy and Rory's married life are scrolled through at breakneck speed, but predominantly from the point of view of that time-traveller who keeps on dropping-in, at embarrassing moments, and in the wrong order. (dodgy helmet-regulator, we gather)

And my, but how my viewing perspective has changed since the last televised episode. Now when I see the inside of the TARDIS, I recognise it as that place where I went for a flight at The Doctor Who Experience. Similarly, when the Doctor's 'working' music came on, I felt like I was back on board the crashed SS Elysium again. To get these sensations while watching the TV show are great consequences of those real-world encounters.

Anyway, in Pond Life, since ditching his former work-ethic of taking friends with him on his travels, the Doctor keeps on enjoying no end of exciting adventures, while Mr and Mrs Pond are repeatedly left to either do normal life, or cope with cleaning up his loose ends.

Despite what a whirlwind montage this all is, it doesn't look much like fun.

Firstly this is because of how incomprehensible the narrative is. There is very little story to be discerned here, and certainly no puzzle to solve. Are the situations that the Doctor keeps phoning in from all going to be seen in the upcoming new series, or not - like the teasing opening of the last series that never came to pass that year? (Easter Island or Jimmy the Fish anyone?) If so, just what is this jumble intended to mean to us now then? If it's to get us to watch the series, then great, but despite its production standards, this story offers little to recommend itself in its own right.

Quite apart from it featuring the Doctor recording a pop song, despite last season having resolved to pretend publicly to be dead from now on. Oh, they were only backing vocals, oh well that's not so bad then.

Secondly it's coarse. In less than six minutes the author repeatedly takes the easy way out of writing entertainment by just falling back on the same joke about implied nudity.


In one scene Mata Hari hilariously drops her skirt in front of the Doctor.


In another, the Doctor bursts in on Amy and Rory in bed.


In still another scene an ood sits on the toilet.

I dunno, I thought that in comedy, doing the same joke twice was supposed to be unwise... and yet here they still expect us to still be laughing at it the third time! Er, guys, this minisode is only five minutes long y'know…

I guess I should also point out that, for the Doctor, this same gag also opened the last series:



Well, it's quite difficult to be both coarse and original, which is why the two don't usually go together. I very nearly skipped showing this to my mum, which really reverses its power as publicity. I never showed her any of the 41 episodes of Torchwood either, which in many of its similarly worst moments was penned by the same author.

Thirdly, it's no fun because towards the end it all becomes a bit serious. The Doctor's final visit finds the Ponds strangely not in. The Doctor leaves an answerphone message, which he ultimately changes his mind about and deletes. The way it's all cut with music makes it look like Amy and Rory's wedding has gone the usual way of most TV marriages - into a dissolve.

The rest of this short might not have sold me on tonight's season opener, or indeed the rest of the series, but that last dry moment certainly would have.