Ravens of Death

The calm before the storm of next week's half-season finale, The Power of Three is a fun, fluffy adventure that struggles with its resolution, but still manages to provide a nostalgic and heartwarming penultimate outing for the Ponds.

As Amy states in the episode's opening narration, this is the story of the time the Doctor came to stay. When millions of small black cubes arrive on Earth overnight, the Doctor moves in with the Ponds to ascertain the exact nature of the inanimate invaders. As time passes and humanity begins to assimilate the cubes into their everyday lives, the Ponds start to wonder if the mystery of the slow invasion will ever be solved...

Perhaps the most enthusiastic investigator of the cubes is Rory's dad, the returning talent of Mark Williams. Last heard from on the Jurassic planet of Siluria in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship's closing moments, Brian lends the episode several of its finer humorous elements - 'Brian's log' being my particular favourite - but he also gets to deliver some very heartfelt lines, the most memorable of which being his closing speech to Amy and Rory. Far from being one-dimensional, or comic relief, Brian has swiftly become a genuinely lovable character, and it's a real shame that this is likely to be the last we see of him. Fortunately, the same cannot be said for Kate Stewart, UNIT's new scientific adviser and one of the highlights of The Power of Three. Jenna Redgrave's performance as the assured, intelligent commander is an absolute joy to watch, and I think it was a very wise move to leave her character open to return. Though she gets a fair amount of screen time, and her history with the Doctor is both touching and punch-the-air cool, she isn't really the main focus of the episode and it would be wonderful to see her return in future UNIT stories, perhaps to flesh out her character a little more.

That isn't to say, though, that any of the eponymous three are anything other than on top form. Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill have been sharing the screen for more than two years now, and their innate chemistry continues to make their scenes together sparkle, from eating fish fingers and custard on the couch to the Doctor's impassioned speech about 'running towards things before they flare and fade'. This scene, incidentally, is one of writer Chris Chibnall's highest points - I haven't really been massively fond of his previous works, from 42 to The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood, and more recently Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, but the Doctor and Amy's quiet talk in front of the tower of London here is most certainly his finest contribution to the show. It captures quite brilliantly the depth and soul of their relationship, and it sheds a more optimistic light on one facet of the Doctor's personality - he isn't running away, trying to escape his past; he's running forwards, building the best future for himself and his friends by showing them everything the universe has to offer. This speech, like so many of the tender moments between the Doctor and the Ponds in this story, is only made more moving with the knowledge that next week will see Amy and Rory's final adventure.

Though the characters and performances of this episode were memorable, the story's other main plot - the invasion of the very small cubes - could have been handled a little more deftly. While the initial slow rise of tension as the episode progressed was very well done, and the cubes were actually rather menacing and unnerving by the episode's end, the resolution and reason for them being there was very weak and badly explained. As intriguing a villain as the Shakri was, with the Doctor's mutterings of Gallifreyan myths and 'the pest controllers of the universe', their actual role and motivation was pretty poorly written. Aside from a reference to 'the Tally', a judgement day-esque event (perhaps meant to play on the idea of the 2012 apocalypse?) which they supposedly serve, the Shakri really had no reason to be assaulting the human race. Furthermore, the two grill-mouthed orderlies, working for the Shakri and hiding in the hospital, were equally unexplained; what were they? What purpose did they serve? Were they Shakri themselves, or just minions? Were they alien, robots, something different? Answers never come, which is especially frustrating as there was plenty of spare time to write in some exposition - The Power of Three ran a little short, at around 40 minutes, so it isn't as if they had to cut explanations due to time constraints. In addition, after all the build up involving the cubes, their real purpose is a bit of a let down - after all of their research, investigating every aspect of humanity's strengths and weaknesses, their only purpose was as a weapon, to wipe out the people of Earth. Whether or not the Shakri really needed a whole year to figure out that heart attacks equal dead people is a question that's on shaky ground, and I think perhaps the villain's plot needed to be a little more intelligent and unusual to justify such thorough research via cubes.

But something that bothered me even more than this week's substandard villain was the Doctor's 'reset button'; literally, all the Doctor does to defeat the Shakri, reverse the effects of the cubes and save planet Earth is point the sonic screwdriver at a computer screen and babble. As far as resolutions go, this smacks of a writer who's reached the climax of his script and realised he has nothing to offer for an ending. While it's true that much of Doctor Who's storytelling comes down to technobabble and made-up words, the show almost always surpasses that, skilfully twining the plot threads together in a pattern so intricate that it's easy to look past the gibberish and see the true brilliance of the characters and their actions. This story's ending, however, lacks this quality, and instead seems to have been hastily knotted and held together with a paper clip. It's fortunate, then, that the episode's other ending is far less fumbled and far more enjoyable; after a full year of trying to cope with real life and Doctor life slowly merging, the Ponds finally decide (with a little help from Brian) to go off travelling with the Doctor full-time once more. It's here, with a clever bit of wordplay, that The Power of Three subtly connects its two stories together through its title; the year that the Earth got cubed, and the perfect number for adventuring in time and space. In the final moments of the story, with that last shot of the time-travelling trio framed by the TARDIS (one of many excellent angles in a story laden with smart, kinetic direction), this episode almost feels like a precursor for another set of wondrous adventures with the Ponds, resolving their series arc of losing interest in the Doctor and his travelling and rejoining him on his exploration of the universe. But as we are all only too painfully aware, these happy days for Amy and Rory cannot last forever - the lights are flickering, and the Angels are almost upon them...

If you enjoyed my review of The Power of Three, then please do leave me a comment letting me know what you thought. You can also find me on twitter and tumblr if you like, or read my reviews for the other stories from this series - Asylum of the Daleks, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship and last week's A Town Called Mercy. Last but not least, thank you for reading, and I hope to see you again soon for my review of The Angels Take Manhattan!

Good Point, Susan

His fourth foray into the Doctor Who universe, Toby Whithouse once again shows off his innate talent in writing dialogue and characters; visually stunning and ingeniously scripted, A Town Called Mercy is both an excellent Who take on the Western genre and a surprisingly complex study of the Doctor's ambiguous morality.

The backdrop for this character study is Mercy, an old western town under attack from a lone cybernetic figure known as the Gunslinger. His target is Kahler-Jex, an alien surgeon who's taken up residence in the town following the crash-landing of his ship on Earth. The origins of the Gunslinger - and what Jex has done to incur his wrath - are both mysteries to be solved by the Doctor and the Ponds, who've arrived in Mercy to find the town at breaking point, their supplies depleted, the Gunslinger waiting ominously beyond their borders. As he investigates, the Doctor uncovers the truth about Jex's dark past; a past that's uncomfortably similar to his own.

The driving force in this story is the Doctor's character arc - travelling sans the Ponds for so long has left him distant and dispassionate, as evidenced in his treatment of Solomon in last week's Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, and as a result we see here a much darker side to him, a hint of the Time Lord Victorious last witnessed at the tail end of Tennant's era. Matt Smith is at the top of his game; whilst there's still plenty of humour to be found in his performance ('His name is Susan, and he wants you to respect his life choices!'), there's also anger and vengeance, particularly in his scenes with Adrian Scarborough's Jex. These two alien doctors crackle off of each other, debating morality and reformation in a manner that invokes Whithouse's sensational Being Human series, in particular the character of Mitchell. Jex is, as he states in the episode, very much a distorted reflection of the Doctor; filled with rage, guilt and solitude, tainted with the horrific atrocities of his past and desperate to repent. Ultimately, it is these similarities between them that drives the Doctor over the edge, that forces him to pick up a revolver and threaten to hand Jex over to the Gunslinger. This, I think, is the true genius of this episode - whereas in any over scenario the Doctor's actions would have been horrifically out of character, in A Town Called Mercy they are completely justified because the Doctor sees himself in Kahler-Jex. The Doctor has always feared himself more than any of his enemies; even more so than Whithouse's previous story, The God Complex, this episode drives that point home.

However, it simply wouldn't be Doctor Who if anger and hatred won out over compassion, and so it falls to Amy to realign the Doctor's moral compass. Her confrontation with the Doctor is written and portrayed with sincerity, and as with last week's episode we see that Amy has very much been shaped as a person by her travels with the Doctor, standing up for the condemned when even her closest friend wants him dead. This strength of morals, the clear view of what's right and what's wrong - 'this is not how we roll, and you know it' - is a role that would usually fall to the Doctor himself, so it's very telling to see him instead be reprimanded by his companion after he's been travelling alone for so long. 'My friends have always been the best of me,' the Doctor once said; a statement that has never been more true than here. It's a shame, then, that Gillan is given little else to do outside of counterbalancing the Doctor's rage, while Rory is similarly underused throughout the story. Though it's perfectly reasonable to have an episode focus more on the Doctor than his friends, with the final days of the Ponds approaching it seemed rather unusual to have them play relatively minor roles in one of their last adventures with the Doctor.

Though this dark twist to the Doctor's persona is the crux of the story, it resolves itself around the two-thirds mark. Fortunately, the episode's other story, of the cyborg Gunslinger on its hunt for justice, is there to pick up the slack, and for the most part it succeeds. This is the part of the story that really embraces the western genre; from the moment the Doctor sidles through the saloon doors, to his high noon showdown against the Gunslinger, it's clear that the production team are clever enough to pay homage to the genre without feeling cliched or tacky. Isaac, Mercy's concerned sheriff, could have been very one-note and caricatured, but thanks to Ben Browder's lovely performance and the elegant flow of the dialogue, he is instead a genuinely likable character. Moreover, many of the tropes of the western are subverted here, resulting both in comedy and drama - the lone journey through the desert on horseback, for example, becomes a lot less lonely when the Doctor starts conversing with his horse, and having him whip the sonic screwdriver from his holster during the showdown, instead of the pistol he so infamously brandished earlier in the episode, was another fun addition. It also helped that the production value of the story was so high, with everything from the direction to the set design feeling very polished. The location filming in Spain qualifies the story as a genuine spaghetti western, having been shot in the same province as the famous Fistful of Dollars film trilogy, lending the episode an air of authenticity that no studio stage can replicate. Furthermore, Murray Gold produces some of his finest work here - his music is always to a high standard, but this episode in particular encapsulates his talent, with two particularly powerful pieces being the Gunslinger's hostile, electronic theme and the stylised, slightly haunting underscore that plays as the TARDIS trio first enter Mercy.

 Ultimately, the two plotlines - The Doctor's strengthening violent streak and the Gunslinger's quest for revenge - dovetail together in Khaler-Jex's escape from Mercy. The entire scene is so wonderfully revealing of the Doctor's character; despite his immense dislike for Jex, the Doctor urges him to flee rather than face the consequences of his actions, yells for him to leave Earth and escape his cybernetic assailant. Why? Because this is exactly what the Doctor does. He travels onwards, running from his past and the terrible things he's done, searching for a way to help people so he can repent for his sins. Once again, Jex acts as a mirror to the Doctor; but rather than run, he chooses death, decides to end the violence and chaos he has caused by sacrificing himself. The significance of this single act is phenomenal - for all the people he helped, and all the suffering he stopped, Jex still ultimately decided that the world would be a more peaceful place with him gone. Why, do you think, is the Doctor forever so eager to sacrifice himself to save others? Is it pure heroism, or is there a part of him that thinks the universe would be a better place if he wasn't around? These questions, amongst others, are most likely to be left unanswered for the time being, but there's no doubt that Whithouse has once again presented us with a thoroughly fascinating insight into our favourite Time Lord.

There's a common theme running through the stories Toby Whithouse has produced for Doctor Who since its revival in 2005. School Reunion sees the Doctor explaining in pained tones why he so often leaves his companions behind; Vampires in Venice has Rory angered that the Doctor 'makes people want to impress him'; and the Doctor's desire the save people, his very own god complex, is explored in, well, The God Complex. It seems that Whithouse's talents lie in exploring the depths of a character's thoughts and motivations, and - while this series' arc seems to take the question of 'Doctor Who?' a little more literally - in A Town Called Mercy, we are in many ways given a piece of the answer, in coming another step closer to understanding the fascinating character of the Doctor.

If you've enjoyed my review, please feel free to read my reviews of the other stories from this series - Asylum of the Daleks and Dinosaurs on a Spaceship. You can also, if the mood takes you, follow me on twitter or tumblr. Thank you for reading, and I'll hopefully see you next week with my review of The Power of Three.

Popping Out For Some Liqourice

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship was never going to be a game-changer; a romp at heart, this is a story designed to be mindless entertainment on a Saturday night. Despite that, it feels slightly disappointing, an episode of mishandled moments and wasted potential.

The story kicks off with a speedy sequence of time jumps, as the Doctor hops around history picking up a Scooby Doo gang of characters to join him on his latest adventure. There’s the Egyptian queen Nefertiti, Edwardian explorer Riddell, and of course Amy and Rory (plus an unexpected guest in the form of Rory’s dad Brian, whom the TARDIS materialises around while he’s busy changing a light bulb). Without wasting any time, the episode gets right to the meat of the matter; the dinosaurs themselves, rendered with excellent CGI, who appear before the titles have even rolled, trapped aboard an ancient spacecraft on a crash course with Earth.

It seems like the set-up for a fun, simplistic but enjoyable episode, but unfortunately there are several flaws in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, which let the story down and make it feel like a huge missed opportunity. Its biggest issue is the unevenness of the tone - one minute, The Doctor, Rory and Brian are comically riding a Triceratops as a method of escape while bickering robots (voiced by comedy duo Mitchell and Webb) chase behind them; the next, that same Triceratops is brutally gunned down by the robots, just so Solomon - their melodramatically malicious commander - can make a point. Portrayed by David Bradley, Solomon was another weak point in this story for me, his villainy and malevolence seeming decidedly over the top and unnecessary. When the Doctor doesn’t immediately help fix the pirate’s injured legs, he has the robots shoot at Brian as a form of coercion. Surely, not a smart move to anger the only man who can mend his crippling injuries? On many occasions it felt as though Bradley and the script were trying too hard to make Solomon seem despicable and evil, and although that plays into a moment towards the end of the episode that I’ll talk about later, it felt extremely out of place in an otherwise light-hearted story.

Though Bradley’s character was a little unsuitable for such a cheery episode, Mark Williams fitted in perfectly with his depiction of Brian. A practical, somewhat sheltered man, his interactions with Rory provided more than one heartwarming moment throughout the story, helped out enormously by the wonderful chemistry between Williams and Darvill, who honestly do feel like father and son here. Whilst I was expecting a lot more of the relationship-building between the two, the moments we did get (piloting the ship together, ‘it’s all about the pockets in this family’, Brian getting over his fear of travelling) really helped build up the character. I’m looking forward to seeing him return later this series in The Power of Three, where hopefully we’ll gain a little bit more of an insight into his developing relationship with the Ponds, now he knows the truth about their ‘travelling in Thailand’.

Unfortunately, not everybody in the Doctor’s new gang is given as much development and screen time as Brian. While the Doctor is hanging around with Williams senior and junior, Amy is left to explore the ship’s upper levels with Riddell and Nefertiti; this provided for some great dialogue (‘And you, Amy? Are you also a queen?’ ‘Yes. Yes I am.’) and several of their antics had me grinning, such as Riddell awkwardly hopping across a sleeping T-Rex and chuckling as he goes, but sadly neither of these new characters were given much of importance to do, aside from flirt with each other. Riddell’s sole contribution to the group seems to be shooting at things, and Nefertiti’s only real role as a character is to get taken hostage by Solomon in the final act. Though she handles it with a great deal of gusto, and her self-sacrifice for the sake of the dinosaurs is inspiring, the moment is very quickly glossed over and it left me feeling cheated that we got to spend so little time with two potentially very interesting characters.

This under-use of Rupert Graves and Riann Steele is not, I think, the only part of the episode that was mishandled. There were several moments throughout the story that I felt, had they been treated differently, could have made the story much more exciting. Although it was a great ‘ooh!’ moment when the ship was revealed to be Silurian in origin, the Silurians themselves were never really given much of an explanation; to casual viewers, it must have seemed rather baffling that a race of lizard people had inexplicably built an ark for the dinosaurs. With a little more exposition in the Silurian’s dialogue, this confusion could easily have been avoided. Furthermore, the Silurian’s line about ‘all but one of the species are thriving and ready to repopulate’ was something I immediately picked up on - what is the one species in particular that isn’t coping within the artificial environment of the ship, and why not? - but then that plot thread was dropped, and never mentioned again. Perhaps after Asylum of the Daleks, where several innocuous lines turned out to be vital clues (‘where do you get the milk?’), I’m just reading too much into the dialogue, but nonetheless I felt disappointed that this wasn’t picked up on later in the story.

Moreover, there were several plot points, minor and major, that felt just a little bit too convenient to be believable. The biggest example is the spaceship’s controls, which could only be controlled by two people ‘with the same gene code’. If this fact had been dropped in earlier on, perhaps during Solomon’s discussion with the Doctor in the medical bay, then it might have been a little bit less jarring when Rory ‘just so happens’ to have brought his dad along on this occasion. That wasn’t the only thing that threw me about this scene, as I also thought it was rather slow of the Doctor to not pick up immediately on the fact that Brian and Rory would share a gene code. I just feel that overall some of the exposition in this story was a little rushed, and that it wouldn’t have taken anything more than a few quick rewrites to remove many of the small, irritating issues with this episode.

In terms of the overarching story of the season, we do get a lovely little nugget of a scene where the Doctor and Amy discuss how their journeys together are becoming more and more infrequent, and a moment of foreshadowing for Amy and Rory’s imminent departure. More imposing, however, is the Doctor’s final scene with Solomon; the Doctor teleports away from the pirate’s escape ship, leaving him at the mercy of the Indian Space Agency’s heavy weaponry. This ruthless, merciless act on the Doctor’s behalf seems very dark and out of character for Eleven; however, I suspect that this new aspect of his character will be explored in detail, in next week’s A Town Called Mercy. This scene is most likely why writer Chris Chibnall felt the need to make Solomon such a downright evil character, so the Doctor could feasibly be driven to leaving him to die.

I’ve been quite critical of Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, so let me say to finish off that I didn’t hate this episode. There were, after all, plenty of great concepts and moments - the beach engine room, Amy and Riddell fighting off Velociraptors, Brian dangling his legs out into space as he tucks into a sandwich. But, equally so, there were the scenes that just didn’t sit right. The humour of the two robots, which often fell flat, and the Triceratops’ ridiculous obsession with Brian’s golf balls (Seriously? The ‘grassy residue’ on the balls was enough to make a fully grown dinosaur gallop after them in hunger?). The reason I’m being rather harsh on this story is because I can feel the potential here, the great romp of an episode that lies underneath the niggling flaws and whiplashing tone. Dinosaurs on a Spaceship is a troubled story, and it deserved to be better than it turned out to be. Still; it’s better than golf.

If you enjoyed this review, please consider following me on tumblr or twitter, or reading my review of last week’s Asylum of the Daleks. I'm actually very happy to say that this is my landmark 50th post on this blog! I've been doing this since last June, and - aside from the whole 'five month hiatus' from April to September - I think I've been doing okay. Here's to fifty more posts! Thank you for reading, and feel free to leave a comment letting me know what you thought.

Total Screaming Genius

DOCTOR WHO IS BACK ON TV after near enough a nine month absence - and to celebrate its return Moffat and the crew have evidently decided to raise the bar on what makes a phenomenal Who story with Asylum of the Daleks.

The episode’s opening moments take place in the burnt-out ruins of a Skaro skyscraper, a sweeping shot of epic grandeur leading us to a hooded woman with a plea for the Doctor, begging him to save her daughter from the Dalek prison camps. It seems like the potential set-up for an entirely different story in its own right, but as usual with Moffat events rush on at light speed and the hood falls away to reveal a sinister and familiar eyestalk. Meanwhile, back on Earth, we find the Ponds in the middle of a marital crisis; they last just long enough to sign the divorce papers before they too are taken hostage by the Dalek slaves. The TARDIS trio are reunited in the midst of Dalek parliament, where they are greeted not with extermination, but with another plea for help. Save us. As the Doctor puts it - ‘Well, this is new!’

What unfolds as the episode progresses is not the grandiose action blockbuster many might have been expecting. There are certainly moments of that - the scenes with the parliament of the Daleks (sidenote: what an interesting concept, and such a shame it wasn’t explored further) are nothing if not bombastic, particularly when they’re all screaming in unison - but for the most part this is actually a very intimate, very intelligent series opener. Though not quite as complex as last year’s The Impossible Astronaut, which left many of the show’s more casual viewers scratching their heads, it still puts forward a lot of very clever ideas and doesn’t patronise its audience by slowing down whilst explaining them. Instead, it roars along at a rattling pace, as we watch the Doctor, Amy and Rory struggle to find a way out of the Asylum - a place for the broken and the battle-worn, the Daleks who are even madder (and quite possibly more dangerous for it) than most.

They are assisted in their escape by the spectacular Oswin Oswald, junior entertainment manager, stranded space explorer and total brilliant brainbox. Jenna-Louise Coleman’s surprise early arrival to the show is the highest point in an episode filled with high points. Her performance is at times hilarious, ingenious, self-assured and heartbreaking, and made all the more touching when the episode’s final big reveal rolls around. The whizz-bang wit of her dialogue with the Doctor (‘Is there a word for total screaming genius that sounds modest and a tiny bit sexy?’ ‘Doctor.’) is a testament both to the writing of the Moff and the performing skills of the pair involved, while her flirting with Rory provides more than one grin-worthy moment. It’s a pity that, Scotland one-liner aside, she doesn’t get much of a chance to interact with Amy, but you can’t have it all, and Amy does have her own problems to be getting on with - like the fact that she’s turning into a Dalek herself!

Speaking of which, it would be unfair to spend so much time praising the performance of the new Who girl without sparing a minute or two to talk about the Doctor’s present companions, Amy and Rory. Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill have been gracing our screens for more than two years now, and yet their characters still seem to be growing and evolving and covering new ground. Rory’s interactions with the half-broken Daleks (‘Eggs?’) were surely cause for deafening laughter amongst audiences everywhere, whilst their scene together on the teleporter, as Amy refuses to let her husband try to save her by being ‘cold and logical’, reveal that even now they are still learning about each other, still growing closer, and still falling ever further in love. Though the bickering and the divorce seem extremely abrupt - and this, I think, is the one weak link in an otherwise solid episode - the resolution is satisfying enough on an emotional level that it can be forgiven.

And if we’re talking about acting, how could we possibly forget the man himself; Matt Smith? The Doctor displays a wide spectrum of emotion in Asylum of the Daleks, and not once is his performance anything less than top notch. His hatred of the Daleks - and their recognition of that hatred - harks back to Eccleston’s Dalek, and his manipulation of the Ponds in his attempts to fix everything is very McCoy. Add to that a dash of hyperspeed dialogue, some subtle tweaks of his bow tie, and even a little bit of pure, uncontrollable terror (not an emotion I think we’ve ever seen Eleven really truly display before) and you have another excellent episode for Smith. And while we’re on the subject of terror, let me introduce you to Harvey’s crewmates…

Moffat’s been promising an episode that will make the Daleks fearful again, and I’ve got to hand it to him, I can’t ever remember being this afraid of any other Dalek story. Though the two stand out moments are Harvey’s escape pod and the intensive care unit (both of which are extremely claustrophobic and horror film-esque), the entire story has a feeling of palpable tension, a sense of danger and death lurking just out of sight, around the corner. And if Oswin’s big twist doesn’t give you a nightmare or two, I think you might be a tiny bit mad. Ultimately, the Asylum feels like the stage for a survival horror escapade, featuring a ragtag band of unwilling explorers on a mission to return home safely, against terrifying odds.

Though Asylum of the Daleks raises more than one question - the issue of the Doctor’s supposed demise at the climax of last series, and the impact it has and could have on the Daleks, is raised - it by and large feels very much like its own creature, a self-contained, handcrafted masterpiece of a Doctor Who story. The arc-heavy approach of series six is gone, replaced with a renewed appreciation of the standalone and the sensational. The episode ends with just a touch of optimism, as the Doctor spirals round the TARDIS console, off on another adventure in another time, on another world. Though we know there are dark and difficult days on the horizon - the end of the Ponds, Oswin’s return, and of course the First Question - right now, it seems like all is well in the world of the Doctor. He’s not a predator - he’s just a man with a plan.

PS: Hello everybody, I'm back! It's been a while since my last blog post - early April, I believe. What can I say? I warned way back in my first post that I've always been a very temperamental blogger, and I just sort of lost interest in writing reviews and the like over the summer months. I don't know whether it's the threat of college lurking on the horizon or (more likely) the return of my beloved Who, but something's pushed me to start writing these again, and here we are. I can't say if posts on this blog will become a regular thing again or if I'll vanish for another six months after this, but I suppose we'll find out. Thanks for reading!

Ever In Your Favour

Earlier this week I went to go and see The Hunger Games at my local cinema. Since I re-read the first book in the trilogy very recently, both the novel and its big screen adaptation are very fresh in my mind, so I thought it would be as good a time as any to talk about the film.

The story of The Hunger Games is a familiar one; twenty-four children, between the ages of twelve and eighteen, are entered into an annual competition know as the Hunger Games. Stranded in a massive arena, these 'tributes' are forced to battle to the death until only one is left standing. It's a story that's been done many a time before - Gamer and Battle Royale are two popular examples of the death match story structure, while The Running Man and Series Seven are both about ultra-deadly game shows. Suzanne Collins, the author, does inject a little originality into the story by setting it in a dystopian, far-flung vision of North America, circumventing the genre norm of framing the story in a near-future world, but for the most part it's a genre many viewers will have had prior experience with.

One of the most striking things about the film is its style of direction. When we first join Katniss - our protagonist and one of this year's tributes - in her ramshackle, poverty-stricken home of District 12, the camera is all over the place. It sits at jaunty, unnatural angles, rarely stays still, and blurs in and out of focus. In a way, it very much reflects the everpresent chaos of the District. Similarly, once we move to the ordered, civilised world of the Capitol, the jerky camera movements settle down and are replaced with more static, easy-on-the-eye shots. Rather than maintain a consistent style, the film's visuals change based on subjective factors that change from scene to scene, such as location and the events of the story. This is something of a double-edged sword for the film; while it makes certain scenes more dynamic and interesting to watch, it also results in some very sloppy cinematography in places. In particular, some of the District 12 scenes lay the stylistic shots on too thick and too fast, resulting in a few early scenes that are disorientating to the point of spoiling the viewer's enjoyment of them.

Thankfully, the film is very loyal to the source material in terms of story. Obviously some aspects of the story have been removed due to time constraints - the character of Madge, for example, or the Avoxes - but by and large the film follows the novels beat for beat. This means any viewers who have read the book (which, I imagine, is a significant proportion of the film's target audience) will recognise some of the key moments from the novel, and enjoy them all the more because of it. The scene where Katniss sings to Rue, or the final confrontation atop the Cornucopia; here the film manages to one-up the Harry Potter series, which deviates far too frequently from the books, and loses some of that impact of recognition as a result.

In terms of acting, most of the film's cast performs admirably. Jennifer Lawrence has the role of Katniss, and she does a stellar job of translating the character's strength, determination and Independence onto the screen. She's able to portray several different layers of emotional undertones, showing us both the restrained outer shell of Katniss, as she tries to control her composure for the Capitol audience watching her, but also the fiery inner spirit the character possesses. Josh Hutcherson also does well as Katniss' fellow tribute and love interest Peeta, showcasing the naive good-naturedness of the character very well, and Woody Harrelson takes on his supporting role of Haymitch (a former victor of the Games and a raging alcoholic) with ease. Two actors in relatively minor roles who were also very impressive are Stanley Tucci and Lenny Kravitz, who shine in every one of their scenes.

There are also a lot of underlying themes to this film that give you something to think about as a viewer. Obviously the usual genre-specific thoughts on the commercialisation of violence, the desensitised isolation of the modern TV viewer and the absurd nature of reality programs are all present and correct, but there are also some more story-specific views, like the aforementioned contrast between the high-tech Capitol and the poor, pre-industrial Districts. The deceptive nature of 'reality' television is also highlighted in Katniss and Peeta's psuedo-relationship, as Katniss pretends to fall in love with Peeta to capture the hearts of the audience watching from the Capitol.

All in all, The Hunger Games is an enjoyable film. Though flawed in places, it delivers where it counts, and regains enough of the book's vivid imagery and thematic strength to remain both solidly entertaining and uniquely thought-provoking.

Apologies for the long gap between my last post and this one; I've been working on some other things recently. The frequency of blog posts may start to go down slightly, but never the less, I will endeavour to keep posting with some regularity. Thank you very much for reading.

Preparing For Z-Day

Over the course of the past week I've been on a bit of a zombie high. I had a pretty vivid dream where I was stuck in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, and ever since then I've been obsessed. It's gotten to the point that I'm considering writing a comprehensive article, something along the lines of The Zombie Survival Guide, that talks about how to fight zombies and survive in an infected world. It might take a while for me to get that post completed, but just for today I instead wanted to talk about all of the different zombie-related sources of media I've been ploughing through in the last week or so. If I ever do write a proper zombie post, then consider this the 'required reading' material.

I'll start with films because, to be honest, that's probably my weakest area where zombies are concerned. I have yet to see any of Romero's famous films, and I haven't seen 28 Days Later or the sequel, either. I have watched I Am Legend, but I don't really count the villains there to be 'proper' zombies, so I won't talk about that one. In fact, the two zombie films that I have seen are both satires, rather than the real deal - Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland. Of course, that's not to say that they aren't both stellar examples of the zombie genre; in fact, being able to step back and view zombies with a critical, satirical eye enables the films to use them in new, interesting ways. Shaun of the Dead is usually billed as 'a romantic comedy, with zombies'; it's the story of slacker Shaun and his good-for-nothing best mate Ed, who get caught up in a zombie apocalypse that sweeps across Britain. This is one of my favourite films of all time, and it would take a full blog post to properly do it justice. Since this is more of an overview, I'll skip over some of its other fantastic qualities - Edgar Wright's direction, the stellar main cast, etc - and focus on the zombies. Probably one of the cleverest thing that Shaun of the Dead does is points out that many people, at the moment, are not so different from zombies already. The opening montage, as the camera pans through supermarkets and car parks, shows people going through the movements of their day to day routine, lifeless, eyes half-closed, stuck in the rut of modern society. Shaun's life is just the same, as he spends every day visiting the local corner shop, going to work and then having a drink at the local pub, the Winchester. He lives the life of a zombie, never doing anything new or exciting; it's only when the dead come to life that he, too, begins to live.

The same could be said of Columbus, the protagonist of Zombieland. As a social outcast, he was never really very attached to anyone, not even his own parents. When the film begins, he is out searching for his family in a post-apocalyptic USA. Over the course of the story he meets several other wandering kindred spirits; the slightly psychopathic Tallahassee and sisters Wichita and Little Rock. By the end of the film, Columbus discovers that he has found a family, albeit not the one he was searching for; he finally has friends, people he is close to. Both this film and Shaun of the Dead show how people can change for the better when the world around them starts to fall apart; this is a recurring theme in much of the zombie media I've experienced. The stories aren't so much about the zombies as the people living amongst them, trying to survive, and how living in an undead world can affect them.

A TV show for which that principle holds true is The Walking Dead. The show start off following Rick Grimes, a sheriff who goes into a coma after getting shot on the job. When he wakes up, he finds that America has undergone a catastrophic change, and has transformed into a barren, zombie infested wasteland. Rick eventually meets up with a larger group of survivors, and the focus of the show transitions to the survival of the group as a whole. This is an excellent example of that rule, that zombie stories are about the people and their reactions to the zombies, not the creatures themselves. As such, both the two films I mentioned and The Walking Dead choose not the focus on the grand scheme of things, and instead stick to their established microcosms. None of these stories are about saving the world, or defeating the zombies. They are about survival, on a personal, individual level. I think this is part of what makes zombie stories so alluring; very few other stories, outside the post-apocalyptic genre, are told in this way, with the characters main goal being survival rather than victory. Dead Set, again, is a mini-series which chooses not to show us the bigger picture of the zombie infestation, but instead lets us glimpse it through the eyes of a small, isolated group of characters (in this show's case, they are the fictional participants and crew of Big Brother, a reality show). While Dead Set, like Shaun of the Dead, has many brilliant moments and ideas that I won't be discussing today, the main point to take away from it is that zombie stories are better when so many of the real details are left to the imagination.

Of course, as with every rule, there are exceptions. World War Z is a novel by Max Brooks that tells the history of the decade-long 'zombie war', a planet-wide conflict that humanity eventually triumphed in. The novel gives us plenty of details, shows us the big picture, the grand scheme, all of the things I've just said good zombies stories don't usually do. But somehow, it still succeeds. This, in my opinion, is down to the book's format. It bills itself as 'an oral history of the zombie war', because it consists of a series of interviews with survivors of the conflict. Government officials in America, human traffickers in Tibet, foot soldiers in Russia and doctors in China; all of these and more are interviewed and have tales to tell. Over the course of the novel, a solid, global picture of the apocalypse is built up; but it is done through the tales of those isolated individuals that make the genre what it is. Brooks also wrote, perhaps unsurprisingly, The Zombie Survival Guide; less of a story, more of a practical manual to fighting and defending against the undead. While it doesn't really have a story, you can still interpret the books instructions in parallel to the other zombie stories I've discussed. By that, I mean that the book is not aimed at restoring the world to its former glory or completely wiping out the undead. It is instead focused on keeping people - individual characters, you might say - alive. Though indirectly, even The Zombie Survival Guide follows this pattern.

There are some sources for zombie stories that I won't discuss today, for various reasons. Firstly is Warm Bodies, a novel by Isaac Marion. While it is an absolute joy to read and an excellent zombie story in its own right, it differs greatly from most other stories of this type because it is told from a zombie's perspective. This, and the fact that it offers and somewhat alternative version of the undead to what we are used to, means that it probably won't play a major role if I ever get round to compiling a proper zombie survival 101 post, which I eventually plan to do (if you want to know more about Warm Bodies, you can read the review I did for it last Halloween). I'm also not going to talk much about video game zombies as, while my two main sources of experience in this medium - Call of Duty's 'zombies' mode and Red Dead Redemption's Undead Nightmare expansion pack - are both great fun, they aren't really very story-heavy (the single player campaign in Undead Nightmare has a good plot to it, to be fair, but it is essentially a riff off of the original RDR cast of characters, and not really to be taken seriously).

I won't reiterate my point about individual struggles for survival as a conclusion, because I've probably already run that into the ground, so instead I'll just say that I'll start work on a proper, zombie survival post in the near future, and I hope you'll enjoy it when it's done. Thank you very much for reading this little slog through the zombie stories of the world, and please do go and check out any of the sources I've mentioned. Feel free to comment on this post if you liked it, or follow my blog, or follow me on Tumblr or Twitter, and so on and so forth. Until the next time, thanks again for reading!

Diminishing Returns

Ever since Doctor Who returned in 2005, it has been bringing back more and more villains and enemies from the classic series. For the most part, these recurring monsters have been handled well; the Daleks, though overused, are for the most part done brilliantly; the Sontarans are a vast improvement on their classic series counterparts, and I personally am absolutely in love with the RTD era's portrayal of the Master. However, there is one nemesis of the Doctor's who I think have been mishandled during the show's revived run; more specifically, his silver nemesis. The Cybermen have graced our screens no less than six times over the last seven years of Who, and each of those appearances, I think, has lacked the certain quality that makes the Cybermen the iconic and memorable villains that they are. That's what today's post is all about.

Our first glimpse of the new Cybermen was also the story that came the closest to restoring their 'alpha enemy' status; 2006's two-part adventure Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel. This story is a near-miss, coming the closest to re-establishing the sinister cyborgs, but it trips up in a few vital areas. The Doctor, Rose and Mickey crash the TARDIS through a tear in the fabric of reality, ending up in a parallel universe where 'everything is the same, but a little bit different'. They quickly discover that this new world has its own breed of Cybermen; rather than the augmented, humanoid aliens the Doctor had encountered in the past, these were humans encased in machinery and cybernetics, devoid of emotion, manufactured by the malevolent Cybus industries. The story follows the Doctor and his companions - plus a ragtag group of freedom fighters - on their mission to shut down Cybus industries and stop the creation of these 'upgraded' humans.

As I said above, this story is definitely the strongest for the Cybermen in the new series, possibly because it was their re-introductory story and the DW team wanted the old villains to come back with a bang; their last appearance had been almost twenty years earlier, so many of the show's younger viewers would never have seen a Cyberman before. They appear in the story as threatening and intimidating, and the horror of their creation (a whirl of buzz saws and screaming) is sure to send a shiver down the watcher's spine. Unfortunately, the thing that makes this story so interesting is also its downfall for the Cybermen. These parallel world Cybermen are intriguing in the emotional dilemmas that they present, from Pete realising his wife has been converted to the Doctor defeating them by disabling their emotional inhibitors; but it's a one-shot deal, a clever take on a classic villain, but not one that can be repeated. There's no way of keeping these parallel Cybermen interesting after this initial story has fallen by the wayside, so all of the advantages that these episodes give them are too short-lived to be truly effective. While clever variations on the themes of this episode have appeared elsewhere - most notably in the Torchwood episode Cyberwoman - these ideas are few and far between. To really bring the Cybermen back to their former glory, they need to be given a firm base on which new and interesting ideas can be tested; by starting their new-Who run off with a unique take on them, rather than the definite article, the show left the Cybermen on shaky ground for future appearances.

But return these parallel Cybermen did, in the series two finale The Army of Ghosts/Doomsday. The Doctor and Rose return to present day Earth to find the streets being walked by 'ghosts' - but these blurred figures are not as serene as they seem, and are soon revealed to be Cybermen pushing across from their reality into ours. This time round the Cybermen themselves are less of the focus, as the story also has to deal with the departure of Rose and the return of another classic villain, the Daleks. As a result, the alternate Cybermen are slightly sidelined, and don't get any development or innovation as antagonists. While it isn't always necessary to do something completely different when an old enemy is brought back, this isn't the only problem the Cybermen have in this story. They also suffer at the hands (or plungers) of the aforementioned Daleks; for much of Doomsday, the two species are locked in combat with each other, and it doesn't take long for the Daleks to emerge as the clear victors. It doesn't do much for the Cybermen's status as major villains when we see them getting taken apart so thoroughly by just four Daleks. While it's obvious that the Daleks are a superior race, having it hammered home like that really knocks the reputation of the cyborgs.

The Cybermen then disappeared for a time, making not a single appearance throughout series' three and four. This long absence made their eventual return more effective - but unfortunately, the story they returned in did them no favours. The Next Doctor is really two stories in one; it follows the Cybermen as they attempt to unleash a dreadnought ship upon Victorian London, but it also unravels the mystery surrounding David Morrissey's eponymous character, a man claiming to be a future incarnation of the Doctor. The majority of this episode concerns discovering the truth behind this impostor, and the interactions between Tennant and Morrissey. Just like in Doomsday, the Cybermen become B-plot villains, filling up space and adding tension to a story that they don't quite belong to.

That was the last showing of the Cybermen for the RTD era; when the CybermenMoffat in series five's The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang. As the Doctor and Amy are exploring the underground chamber beneath Stonehenge, a battered, torn-up Cyberman guard advances on them. This is actually an extremely effective scene; the Cyberman's head, detached from the rest of the body, attacks Amy with tentacles of wiring and a snapping 'jaw', making for a scarier Cyberman scene than we've had in a long time. Sadly, though, that's all it is - a scene. Once again, the Cybermen are not the main focus of the story; they are one facet of the Alliance, a collaboration of the Doctor's greatest foes. More than once, Moffat has assembled multiple Who villains in a single story, and - while this generally lends the episodes involved a grand, epic feel - it lessens the impact that the villains can have. This comes across in the next appearance of the Cybermen, A Good Man Goes To War, where Rory sneaks onboard their ship in an attempt to gain some vital information. The Cybermen are shrugged aside almost instantly, in a story that also features Sontarans, Silurians and Judoon. Moffat's bombastic storytelling in that episode comes at the cost of the reputation of the Cybermen as A-grade villains.

The most recent story to feature the Doctor's silver nemeses was Closing Time, the penultimate story of series six. The Doctor, travelling alone, meets up with his friend Craig, and discovers that there are Cybermen hiding underneath a local department store. I wish I could say that this is where things turn around for the steel soldiers, but they are regrettably worse than ever. Between Craig's struggling relationship with his baby son Alfie (Stormageddon, Dark Lord of All!) and the Doctor contemplating his imminent death, there's barely any time left for the Cybermen to do much more than stomp around and look menacing. They get maybe ten minutes of screentime throughout the story, spending most of it confined to the background, leaving most of their monster duties to the pseudo-comical Cybermat. It's yet another example of a recurring problem throughout most of the stories I've discussed here; the Cybermen don't make the story. It could have been any other villain. With the exception of series two's parallel dimension stories, every episode to utilise the Cybermen in the new series would work just as well with any other villain. They don't put an iconic stamp on the stories they appear in, and are relegated to B-plot bad guys, playing second fiddle to other plot lines and characters. If they aren't allowed to preside over their own episodes, how are they supposed to re-establish themselves as the dangerous, threatening forces that the Doctor fought in days gone by?

This has been by no means a comprehensive look at the new Cybermen - I haven't talked about the various additions to their mythos such as Cybershades, for example - but, as an overview of why the Cybermen have been somewhat lacklustre in their recent showings, I think I've covered quite a few key areas. Thank you very much for reading, and feel free to leave a comment if you enjoyed what you read.