More Doctor Who trailer speculation

Another new Doctor Who trailer has rocked up.

» And here's some possibly inadvertantly spoilery speculation... «

Me wonders who that voice halfway through is talking to the Doctor about killing hundreds of TimeLords. Is it a Dalek Emperor?

Also as much as I enjoy River Song, I do kind of hope that this is her last season. We find out who she REALLY is and then wrap it up.
I know two people who are adamant she's Amy Pond in the future and I must say I like that idea.

It's also very curious that BBC Books haven't confirmed who the Tardis crew is in the books released in the summer.
Rory seems to be getting a fan-base but I can't see where the writers can go with him. And they can't kill him again. So surely he'll leave when Amy leaves and gut feel is that this will happen with the "game-changing" mid-season cliffhanger.

Time will tell.
It usually does....

Doctor Who experience - postscript

In my review I eluded to there being a little ticketing issue.
As a present we had silver tickets which entitle you to a goodie bag amongst other stuff.
Alas we didn't get these and didn't realise they were uber tickets until we got home.

Cue email to ticketmaster who took over a month to respond with a nothing-doing and invite to write directly to the exhibition organiser but kinda implied there wasn't much of a chance of getting anything as there was no record at the venue of our not picking stuff up.
So we contacted the organiser and scarcely a day later, the Doctor Who Experience write back today asking where to send the merchandise to. Bless them.

So, yay, persistence wins and send us the stuff already.....

Sidekick-o-rama : Ianto Jones

When Ianto first appeared in Torchwood, he seemed a bit of a nothing character. The general dogsbody/butler type.


And then early in the first season, it was revealed that he was keeping his cyberman-ized girlfriend in the basement without the team's consent.
Yeah, that first season was bad and did suggest that Captain Jack didn't run the most thorough of personality tests on his new recruits what with others sneaking aliens in or turning out to be psychos.


In time though Ianto and Jack become lovers. It's done in as subtle a way as first season Torchwood gets in that we just mostly get hints and snarky remarks from the other characters. 


Ianto is a more confident character in season two. And a wittier and more action-y one too. Maybe it's because of the strength of  his romance and because he was no longer keeping secrets. Maybe it's because the writing staff had finally figured out what to do with him.
He's now out of the underground lair and kicking ass whilst being hilarious. (If you ditched Torchwood after the first season, go watch the second one and buy Children Of Earth - you'll thank me for it).
All that said, there is a melancholic edge to his relationship with immortal age-less Jack as shown in the radio play The Dead line by Phil Ford:
"But let's be honest, Jack. I'm… nothing more than a blip in time for you, Jack. Every day, I grow a little older. But you're immortal."
The third series, Children Of Earth, introduces us to Ianto's sister and her family and how he still has to lie to them about both his job and his private life. It's very well-played and echoes the lies he used to tell
And by the tragic conclusion of the season, his character has grown from the dusty bureaucrat to a likeable hero. 

Miss Marple and the curious casting decision

So we have a new version of Miss Marple to look forward to from Disney.
And there's some interesting casting : Jennifer Garner.

No, you haven't fallen through a crack in the wall into the future or anything. And no it isn't April the 1st yet.
Disney are revamping a series that has a reputation as the last steady earner for actresses of a certain vintage. And doing it for no apparent reason.

The film is going to feature a Marple in her 30s and it's not clear if it'll be based on one of Agatha Christie's novels, however loosely.
Maybe it'll be a great witty mystery film featuring a young-ish female detective. Kinda sounds like Sue Grafton's alphabet books, which Garner would suit better.

Personally, I haven't seen much Miss Marple since Joan Hickman's run (dipped into McEwan era and didn't care for it and haven't tried Julia McKenzie's version). Also, confession time, I preferred reading Poirot.
But I've always enjoyed the potential of an elderly amateur sleuth (possibly because I have an aunt who, when well into her 80s, helped police catch a drug dealer that they were previously unaware of).

If we had to have a slightly younger Marple, then why not Alex Kingston, Whoopi Goldberg or Susan Sarandon? Or, possibly the best fit, Diane Keaton? (That'll surely be better than the dodgy romcoms she's been mired with of late)
At any rate, not someone who scarcely a decade ago had just started playing a spy fresh out of college.

Twenty twelve : review

You may have noticed there's an Olympics in London next year.
The BBC (the UK Olympic broadcasters) have been making a bit of a fuss for a fair few years.
And now there's a mock-fly-on-the-wall comedy series about it.
This sort of approach isn't exactly original (and the BBC are alleged to have "borrowed" the idea from an Australian series in the build-up to the 2000 games- here is an excellent sketch from The Games so you can judge for yourself).
However the joy of Twenty Twelve is in the execution.
David Tennant's narration is fun as is Hugh Bonneville but the great treat is Jessica Hynes in arguably her greatest comic turn since Spaced. She plays a vacuous incompetent "head of brand". Stunningly vacuous.

The show reminds me very much of People Like Us - a gentler precursor to The Thick Of It - but alas it's unlikely to be repeated due to star Chris Langham's conviction for downloading very dodgy images.
There'll always be a market for sweetly satiric work comedy and this is a solid enough example of it.
And there's some surprising cameos as well as a better Olympic logo than the "Lisa Simpson" one we're stuck with in this reality...

Doctor Who - prelude scene

The new season doesn't start until the end of April (curse you, late Easter!).
So the BBC have released a very brief teaser and this longer prelude scene with an awesome political joke.

It seems to tie in with speculation that the opening US-set story will feature monsters that you can only see in the corner of your eye.
That's a pretty scary concept as we've come to expect from writer Steven Moffat.

The trailer itself is quite sinister.
There's echoes of The Empty Child in there as well, two-fold in fact.
And setting the story in the near past adds authenticity.

So, all looking rather promising.....

Review: The Children's Hour

It's very easy to be cynical about casting big names to appear at West End theatres.

It would put bums on seats to take in ordinary or obscure material.

To be honest, we decided to go entirely because of Keira Knightley, Elisabeth Moss (Zoe Bartlett from West Wing and Peggy Olsen from Mad Men) and Ellen Burstyn.

I had heard of the play previously but did not know much beyond the name.

Which is a shame.

It's a telling of small-town prejudices and metaphoric witch-hunts, not unlike The Crucible.

Two young teachers, played by Moss and Knightley, run a small-scale girls school, which becomes threatened by accusations that the teachers are lovers.

The author Lillian Hellman was advised by Dashiell Hammett, which makes the pacing issues of the first half all the more bizarre.

Personally, I think it'll be better to have the accusation made public before the interval cliff-hanger and instead close the half on some of the off-stage machinations depicted in the second half.

The set of the school strongly evokes, to me at least, rural New England.

Whilst the accents waver a bit of some of the British cast-members, including Keira, the acting is solid. Keira's anger is electrifying in the second half. The comparative unknown Bryony Hannah is remarkable as Mary, the girl who provokes all the trouble. Her portrayal is a delicate balancing act as the audience would at first assume she is lying but Hannah causes you to believe that maybe she is actually telling the truth.

It's a very affecting play. My only caveat is try not to sit in the upper circle as it's insanely steep up in the heights of the Comedy Theatre.

Action Philosophers

Philosophy can be a bit of a hard sell.
It's fascinating but can be dry.
I remember enjoying Sophie's World though I found, as a novel, it fell apart in the second half.

However I adore Action Philosophers by Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey.
The strip is an attempt at the sort of comics that used to come with Masters Of The Universe toys in the 80s, though intended for philosopher toys instead.














It's a very playful approach, showing lots of popular cultural references from Peanuts to, well, I'll let the below speak for itself.

 
They have a sample PDF here. At the same link, you can also buy electronic versions of Action Philosphers.

Latitude 2011 line-up

Last year was my first Latitude and it felt tailored to me.
Just in case you're unfamiliar, it's the most Guardian-est of UK festivals. There's strong music, comedy and literary line-ups (James, The XX, Vampire Weekend intermingled last year with Jon Ronson and Brett Easton Ellis as well as international ballet companies).

There was a rowdy element last year and, tragically, two sexual assaults.
The lineup for this year feels that the organisers have disposed of some of the edgier bands, focussing on melody, folk and electronica on the music side.
The headliners are, to be honest, not the strongest. The National, Paulo Nutini and Suede (aka London Suede for American audiences) are all solid acts but none of them really get the juices flowing.
The undercard though is terrific. Anna Calvi is a rising star being compared to Jeff Buckley. Check out her cover of Jezebel.
There's two generations of electronica in OMD and Hurts and awesome folkiness from Bellowhead. I'm most looking forward to the deeply underrated Thea Gilmore and the alt-country stylings of My Morning Jacket.

So, Latitude is back on track.
And chavvy hooligans need not apply.

Shades of Shada

The BBC announced this week that next year they'll publish a novel based on a "lost" Douglas Adams 4th Doctor story. The late Hitchhiker genius was script editor in 1979 and the filming of this, his final Dr Who story, was hit by a strike.
The novel will be written by Gareth Roberts, who wrote The Lodger episode last season (the one in which the Doctor lived a normal life with James Corden) as well as the excellent Shakespeare story from Tennant's second season.
So why am I not excited?
I think it's a hard era to recreate on the printed page. Roberts wrote some novels in the 90s set during Adams tenure that were raved about by others but for me were much weaker than his other Who novels.
And also well, it's Shada and this isn't exactly virgin territory.
Some of the location footage was incorporated in The Five Doctors because Tom Baker didn't want to reprise his role so soon. So we saw him and Romana mucking about on the river in Cambridge.
Then in 92 the BBC released a video of surviving footage with Tom Baker narrating.
And then there was this with the 8th doctor instead: http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/webcasts/shada/
Yes, it's easy to be intrigued by a story set in both Cambridge and a secret Time Lord prison planet. And there's some witty lines (it's Douglas Adams after all).
But, surely, everyone who would have experienced it has done so by now.
Me, personally, I would be more excited by darker original stories along the lines of the 1990s New Adventures published by Virgin.
Though if it introduces younger fans to Adams, that would be a good thing.

Monkeys and typewriters : Take That

In the dark years immediately prior to Britpop, I loathed Take That.

Some of their songs were border-line OK (not that I would dare admit it) but their all-pervasive marketing irked.

It became a badge of honour to pour scorn on Barlow et al.

So, I'm slightly surprised to enjoy their new song Kidz. 

It's helped no doubt by the fact that ickle Mark Owen sings the opening verse in a very sinister world-weary manner (and completely inverting what I expect from TT).

What's most surprising is that with the lyrics' talk of younger generations rising up against the powers that be, the song seems to echo events in the Middle East.

Take That being political soothsayers? That's scary....

Walking Dead

Zombies.
They're hard to do something fresh with.
Unlike vampires or werewolves they don't lend themselves readily to character development.

But Robert Kirkman has managed to reinvigorate the zombie story with his Walking Dead series from Image.
The focus is on survivor Rick and the band of survivors he gathers.

Sure some of the characters are portrayed in broad strokes but Kirikman still allows you to warm to them, frequently before zombie attacks.
And he doesn't shy away from showing the worst that humans can do. Often the most danger is posed by the living.
I'm halfway through volume 4 (there are 13 volumes with at least one more on the way) but it's already brutally clear that Rick is becoming increasingly psychologicaly damaged.
Seeing the everyman darken makes you wonder just what you would do to survive.

There's a surprisingly high body-count amongst the supporting cast (but there is time for good character pieces). And there is the female version of Wolverine, Michonne, a mysterious wanderer who uses swords because gun shots attract too many zombies. Michonne injects new life just as Captain Jack does in the first series of the revised Who.

There are flaws, mostly in the dialogue department.
But it's a masterclass in how to sustain tension.
And the images are stunning :

It's also inspired a fairly faithful TV adaptation, starring Andrew Lincoln (Egg from This Life)
Here in the UK, the TV series is sadly stuck on FX.

The originals are available for the iPhone on comiXology for just over £5 a volume and are worth a try-out.

Being Human season finale thoughts (SPOILERS)

I'm not going to reveal how the Mitchell storyline is resolved beyond the fact that I'm glad that writer Toby Whithouse didn't go for a fake-out ending.
There is no neat resolution and there couldn't have been, given the horrific nature of the charges against Mitchell.

What does seem odd is the sudden insertion of next season's big bad deep into the finale without much foreshadowing.
Maybe the producers were unexpectedly told that the show was being renewed. (Certainly lots of storylines were tied up in the final two episodes as well as references to previous seasons and the core of the finale would have been a solid final ever episode.)

So next season, the motley crew will be fighting another vampire conspiracy.
It'll be a struggle for the 2012 vintage to have as much of an emotional impact as the 2011 one. (I can't think of as strong a season of anything as this one since the Angel arc of Buffy's second season).

Also Being Human has always been about trying to live normal lives in extraordinary circumstances. Not vigilantes taking on villains (as the closing scenes seem to suggest).
I hope it works but fear the metaphor is about to get lost (rather like fourth season Buffy).

Random interesting experience: new film market research

So I found myself on a tour of Premier Inns in northern England recently. For those not familiar, they're a chain of budget hotels beloved of business-folk and stag dos (I've been there in both capacities this month).

In the reception of a Newcastle branch, my fellow stag attendee and I were invited by a 40-year-old lady to take part in a film survey in one of the suites.
My religion-dar triggered briefly and I whispered to said chum that we'll run if they're forcing any books down our throats.
We also emphasised that we had to get a train in 30 minutes but were told it'll be quick.
It weren't.
We were taken into a conference suite where we were given the smallest laptops I ever did see and then had to watch footage of a train to confirm that we could both see and hear it, as well as fill in questions one by one. Most were to filter out media types.
And then I was asked how excited I would be by Thor, Pirates of the Caribbean 4 and xXx: The Return of Xander Cage.
Thor I'm keen to see. The others not so much but I'm intrigued that PotC4 is based on a Tim Powers novel.
We were finally shown, on this uber-tiny screen, two versions of the Thor trailer and were asked to write what we expected from the movie on the basis of the trailers.

I did feel like I was cheating as none of the footage seemed new to me. And, whilst not a huge Thor fan, I've read and enjoyed the early parts of Walt Simonson's run.
So I wrote that I expected "viking super-heroics" and did mention that I was familiar with the comics.

And at that point, I ran out of time and had to run to catch the train so God knows how many other trailers I was expected to sit through.
This was a slightly odd insight into the film industry's market research practices. This hotel is on the periphery of the city centre so the researchers wouldn't get much in the way of passing traffic.
And the screens were pitifully small. I know times are tough but surely the industry can provide better screens and also have staff give more accurate estimates as to how long the survey will take.
At least, it were better than ten years ago when my little uni posse were invited to a free screening of Road Trip and couldn't leave (free was the right price for that....)

Great Gatsby computer game

 

OK, it might not be the best game ever but it's very NES, which can only be a good thing.

I found the book rather hard-going and gave up (shame, I know) but I'm informed that the book features less alligators in the sewers than the game depicts.

http://greatgatsbygame.com/

Sidekick-o-rama : Frobisher

Colin Baker's sixth Doctor perhaps wasn't best served by his TV stories.

He was written too moody, even trying to murder his companion in his debut story as well as pushing a foe into an acid bath early in his run.

Character aside, the plots were mired in continuity. Witness Attack of the Cybermen which required knowledge of an 18 year-old TV story that at that time the BBC had lost.

But his strongest stories were in the Marvel comics.

As had been the norm with previous regenerations, the Sixth initially had a comics-only companion.

Writer Steve Parkhouse decided to take full advantage of the unlimited special effects budget and go with a shape-changing alien who chose to stay as a penguin for "personal reasons".

Doctor Who : Voyager. (Parkhouse, Ridgway, Hart)

Frobisher was a Philip Marlow-esque private eye. We first meet him disguised as a telephone, investigating an adulterous husband.
It's quite apt that the Doctor in his supposedly shape-changing Tardis is accompanied by a shape-changer who stays in just as incongruous a form.

Doctor Who : Voyager. (Parkhouse, Ridgway, Hart)

He's a charming addition to the Who myths and a rare example of a TV franchise taking advantage of the artistic freedom of comics.
Also, somewhat improbably, some of his tales were written by future comics great Grant Morrison, including Frobisher's last as a regular companion to the Sixth Doctor.
They're available in reprints and are well worth a read.

Advertising from the vault : FA cup final

This is from my dad's1973 FA Cup final programme.

I love the idea of including the sheet music. If you're curious, here it is in all its "glory" making the Anfield rap from the '88 final seem like a musical highpoint.

Sunderland went on to win, thus becoming the first team outside the top division to win England's premier knock-out competition.

Advertising from the vault : WWII

1943 National Geographic

Found in a charity shop in Plymouth, of all places.

What a fine hat...

From the caravan's shelves: Flowers for Algernon

The other night I caught the trailer for Bradley Cooper's new movie Limitless and it reminded me in places of Daniel Keyes' classic novel Flowers For Algernon.

The novel consists of a series of progress reports written by Charlie, a test subject in a medical experiment.
Charlie has an IQ of 68 and undergoes a process to make him smarter as well as a test mouse called Algernon.

It raises ethical questions of the treatment of the disabled.
As his intellect sky-rockets, Charlie comes to feel superior to the nurses who treated him initially.
Halfway through, Charlie notices that Algernon is starting to decline, with the implication that his intelligence too will fade.

It's extraordinarily gripping and incredibly prescient. It doesn't read like it was written 40 years ago.
In many ways, it works as a science-fiction novel for people who don't think they like the genre. It's well-characterised, well-written, and firmly set in a recognisable world.

As well as inspiring the Oscar-winning film Charly (no, me neither), it also provoked a Broadway musical that on the strength of this trailer that seems to have missed the point somewhat. (To be fair this Michael Crawford song isn't too bad but that ad is horrific)

For many years, I used to say this was my favourite book but have since learnt that it's a difficult sell for some people.
But, hey, it's great and worth investigating.

World Book Night : will it work?

So, World Book Night (WBN) is intended to promote reading.
Maybe the collapse of Borders suggests a fading popularity.

I can see why an initiative like WBN has started.
Giving out free books >could< give people a taste for reading. (I remember at school being shocked by a friend who was surprised that I still read, in the same sort of tone as if I'd confessed belief in Santa)
Record labels put out sample tracks or bung free CDs into Sunday newspapers.

I do wonder about the titles though.
Now I've never read Lee Childs but I can see why he's there. He writes very successful thrillers that aren't (as yet) turned into movies. Maybe he'll act as a gateway drug like Alistair MacLean did for me.
Northen Lights by Phillip Pullman makes sense. It creates an air of wonder from the first page, which I've found surprisingly rare for fantasy.

But Cloud Atlas?
I adore Cloud Atlas. It's a series of six stories set from 1850 to the future and spanning genres, splitting at the half-way mark to be returned to in the book's latter half.
It gripped me when I first read it six years ago. Its two sci-fi stories are perhaps less successful. But the Russian doll structure means that you look forward to returning to the second half of the stories you're enjoying.
Yet I don't know if it'll reintroduce reading to people, particularly if it's thrust into their hands by strangers. It's not exactly accessible to a non-reader.

For this WBN, you've got volunteers giving out books in queues at chipshops, on Tube platforms.
It's wonderful.
The volunteers get to choose the books they dole out.
But looking at the official website, it seems like the Lee Child one's not proving too successful.
Instead Love In The Time Of Cholera is going like hot-cakes.
That might not convert new readers.
And brave is the soul who'll dish out The Reluctant Fundamentalist to a complete stranger.

I'm not wanting the list to be dumbed-down as such but I think there should be more entry-level books : Salmon Fishing In The Yemen, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, The Time-Traveller's Wife, White Teeth and Alan Furst's spy novels to complement Fingersmith, One Day and The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time from this year's list.
Yeah, the Salmon...  film might be released next year but the email-based structure of the novel would show newbies what can be done.

So if the point is to inspire new readers, they need to make sure people are dishing out well-written books but the books need to be ones that'll enthuse and not daunt the reluctant reader.
And I'm not sure that's true of this year's list.

The Adjustment Bureau review

Where would Hollywood be without Philip K Dick?
Three of the trailers we saw before tonight's screening were seemingly influenced by his works: Unknown, Suckerpunch, Source Code (the latter looks like further proof that Jake Gyllenhal will appear in absolutely ANYTHING).

So The Adjustment Bureau, based very loosely on a short story of Dick's, slightly surprised me by being an exploration of free-will with romantic comedy elements.
Damon's rather good doing his Damon thing as a rising politician who just happens to stumble into Emily Blunt's sweet and sassy dancer.
However men in hats are trying to pull them apart.

As an admirer of millinery, I'm slightly tickled that the hats end up playing a very significant plot point. Yes, this may be a weird sentence even for the interwebz but it's true.

One of the good things about the hat men is that, unlike, say, A Life Less Ordinary, the hat men have explicit limits to their powers. Which makes it slightly easier to suspend disbelief.
What also helps is that the movie captures the essence of NYC, including Daily Show cameos.
I think it can be easier to sell a fantasy story, especially one with some serious points to make, if it's grounded. And this it is.
The opening 10 minutes could have led into a movie of any genre, which I think is a positive.

A word of warning: it's nowhere near as Bourne-y as that poster suggests.

So, not destined to be a big hit, but a sweet sci-fi date movie.

Sidekick-o-rama : Harry Sullivan (companion to the 4th Doctor)

Harry Sullivan (Ian Marter)

Poor Harry seems to have faded into obscurity.

He accompanied Sarah Jane Smith and Tom Baker's Doctor for a season and, well, it's easy to be eclipsed by those two.
In many ways, he was the prototype of current companion Rory.

It's hard for writers to create memorable male companions who don't detract from the Doctor. (I can only think of moody Turlough and, arguably, Captain Jack).
Harry's purpose was to be the man of action as the producers had wanted to go for an older Doctor. This was made rather pointless when they cast Tom Baker.
So Harry evolved to be sweet albeit a bit hopeless. Witness this lovely scene from Revenge of The Cybermen.
Harry was a Navy medic and acted as a nice counterpoint as the show switched from an establishment-friendly Third Doctor often working with the military to the iconoclastic Fourth.
His old-fashioned decency stands out. Yeah, he's a figure of fun sometimes but he does the right thing.
And his unrequited unspoken love for Sarah Jane is rather sweet looking back.

He's a bit of a third wheel and who hasn't been there?
And his run managed to include all-time classic Genesis Of The Daleks.
Also, a few years later Ian Marter, the actor who played him, wrote a spin-off novel in which Harry found himself embroiled in Van Gogh-related espionage.

My old French exercise book suggests that I regarded this as the best book I'd ever read. To be honest, this might not still be the case.
But few other companions would come close to inspiring something like this.

Strangely prophetic advertising from 2007

Found in Cable and Deadpool #41 2007

Being Human (mild third season-arc spoilers)

Bless you iPlayer for listing this under Comedy.
Yeah, the first two seasons had a fair amount of light moments.

But this third season is a compelling tragedy in eight parts.
Seeing Russell Tovey play George with all his usual puppy-like enthusiasm for the world just makes it all the harder.
Because George doesn't know what his best mate Mitchell has done.
Yes, we've had to swallow the almighty coincidence in the fifth episode of George finding Herrick, but that only served to heap the pressure on Mitchell.

I was originally going to do a post after the fourth episode saying that the writers are clearly double-bluffing. Making us think that the whole pack of cards is going to come tumbling down and instead giving us a slightly happy ending.
Now, I'm increasingly convinced that we're going very dark places.
But it'll be an almighty cop-out if Mitchell's innocent.

Aiden Turner is absolutely compelling as Mitchell as throughout the season we have moved from liking him to completely fearing him.

And again I find myself somewhat bizarrely looking forward to an appearance by Robson Green, who is in a recurring role this season as a bigoted feral werewolf.

He who was a byword for blandness in the mid 90s and together with Jerome Flynn served to deny Pulp a number 1 for Common People. As well as appearing in the mind-bogglingly titled Extreme Fishing with Robson Green.

In any other show, the most shocking realisation would be that Robson Green has acting chops.

But not this show.

Not this season.

So go on catch-up.

But remember, despite Annie's one-liners, this ain't a comedy.