Doctor Who: The Power of Three (2012)

Doctor Who is so often about balancing character issues with the exploration of its sci-fi concepts, while at the same time keeping things moving to create a sense of purpose. In this episode it felt that the danger was so slight and its resolution so simple, that it almost wasn't worth bothering. The plot involved strange black cubes suddenly appearing all over the earth, which seemed to do nothing for an entire year before finally bursting into life. A mysterious villain was shown to be behind it but as soon as their expository dialogue was over and done with, the problem was solved in about 5 seconds flat.

Still, this episode wasn't really about the threat to the earth, the premise was more about spending some time looking at the daily lives of the Doctor's companions. I felt it took a bold step in stating that Amy and Rory have been involved with the Doctor for ten years from their point of view (possibly to fulfil a condition from a previous episode where they see their future selves still together ten years in the future). I enjoyed the simple realities of coming back to a fridge full of yoghurt after the Tardis misses its landing by a couple of months. This is something that has been covered before right back when the show was first rebooted but I enjoyed the relative mundanity of the approach here. This set the scene for Amy and Rory reaching a point where they had to decide which life to choose.

The Doctor's frustration at such a non-immediate threat provided lots of amusement and I liked the fact that he did just pop out of the episode while nothing was happening. When Amy confronted him later about running away, his assertion that he was instead running to see things before the fade away seemed like a great summary of the show as a whole. Ever since reading about the concept of 'The Curse of the Traveller' on reddit I keep coming back to applying this to the Doctor and I couldn't help but feel there is also perhaps a mistaken compulsion to his endless travels, that he will never be totally satisfied.

Amy and Rory are also drawn into a brief time travelling distraction for a few weeks/one night. Given that one of their stops appeared to involve Henry VIII, it seemed likely this was the event mentioned last week about Rory leaving his phone charger behind. I'm not sure if the question of whether this series is in chronological order is important (and just what chronological order would be for multiple time travellers) but it gives the whole thing more of a 'Tales from the Tardis' kind of feel, knowing that this series could be jumping around in time.

I've already seen plenty of mixed opinions on this episode, from those who loved the return of U.N.I.T. to those comparing it to the worst excesses of the Russell T. Davies era. Sadly for me I think that its sudden resolution undid any good work built up before that point, rather than being something I could brush aside. It felt more like an episode of Lost, where so many plot elements were abandoned in a manner that suggested they would never be heard of again. Which is a shame as it could have been brave and run with some of the bigger ramifications but instead went with pushing the reset button. I actually found myself thinking about the consequences of the earth suddenly losing a third of its population and the storylines it could generate, so when this was quickly undone it felt like a lack of confidence in their ideas - especially when the final solution should have at least left the survivors with severe brain damage!

This new and terrible enemy really fell down under closer inspection too, leaving seemingly endless plotholes. Why would someone whose powers seemingly surpassed the Doctor's need to create such a bizarre scheme to destroy the human race? Who were the duck faced guys? Why were they kidnapping people? And did the Doctor leave all of the remaining people to die on that ship? Given the huge danger this race would still possess it seemed bizarre to treat them as if they would never be seen again. I couldn't help but think of the clumsy reasoning behind Mass Effect's Reapers and it felt a little like someone wanted to use that idea but forgot that there are much worse threats in the Who universe than the human race.

When it came to the end of the episode, I was a little surprised by Amy and Rory's final decision to continue their travels with the Doctor. Given that it spent most of the episode hinting at the opposite, I'm not sure I totally bought their turnaround - especially given their earlier realisation that it felt good to make plans they intended to keep (while drinking a cup of tea in bed no less, a lovely little touch of grown up married bliss). It also suggests that they are more likely to meet a tragic end, rather than make the decision to leave - if this incarnation of the Doctor will always seek out Amy then it seems logical that one of them has to leave permanently to break their connection. Next weeks episode is already prompting a lot of speculation as to how their journey will end, here's hoping that Amy and Rory get a fitting send off at least.

Dredd (2012)

This review was also posted on ArtFist.org

When I found this film a little disappointing, I felt very alone in my opinion - especially given how much I wanted to love it beforehand. All around me critics and fans were praising it almost universally, with only a few negative knee-jerk reaction reviews that didn't feel like they matched my opinion either. In writing a review of it, I felt like I owed it to the film to really think about why it didn't work for me and to be clear that I didn't think it was a bad film either.

My first thought was to look at the impact of its initial trailer, which created a fantastic atmosphere, perfectly mixing in Skream's remix of Bulletproof. It also encapsulated the whole plot pretty well and perhaps left you with the feeling that there would be few surprises. I'd also watched pretty much every preview clip available, including some of the gory slo-mo scenes, which may have ended up having less impact. One thing that actually seemed to be missing in the cinema was how the blood effects were so over the top that they managed to extend right out of the film frame (highlighted in this preview clip). The final film is also perhaps different in tone than the trailer suggests, with some of the rather clichéd exchanges highlighted in the trailer coming off much better in the final cut. There was also one reasonably big surprise remaining, which I was glad hadn't been spoiled by anything.

Another consideration is just how much I was anticipating the film. For a long time it held a 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, only toppled from this position when the Daily Mail decided to wade into the argument. All this lead me to expect something truly spectacular, when its modest budget should perhaps have suggested that it would be more grounded. That's not to say that its low budget affects its execution much, more perhaps the scope of it seeming quite limited. It was also very slow and methodical in places, being less about non-stop action and imaginative set pieces and more showing the Judges taking the best tactical approach possible to deal with threats. I think that this was a totally valid choice and highlights how rigidly they would have been trained but I could certainly see a lot of people drawn in by its rave reviews being disappointed by this approach.

I have to mention the 3D as well and I wasn't impressed that I had no choice but to see it in this format. While some of the long shots gave a great sense of scale and the slow motion looked amazing, the rest seemed like a mess to me. I doubt it was the film at fault but there was lots of ghosting, parts that looked the wrong depth, reflections on my lenses and of course the discomfort of the cheap plastic glasses gradually pressing into my nose. For this film in particular I would have loved for it to have been able to use 3D only in those big scenes where it worked, with the more fast paced scenes being 2D. I've heard of a few people refusing to watch it in the cinema at all though, which seems a bit extreme and I'm glad I put up with the mild discomfort to show my support for it.

I'll be honest and say that my own experience of the comic book character is pretty limited, which is something that I'd like to rectify but is another possible reason why I felt underwhelmed by it. Other than reading the odd issue in the distant past and hours lost browsing wikipedia articles, the only book I own is a collection of stories leading up to Necropolis, which I mainly bought in the mistaken assumption that it would feature Judge Death. It's actually been interesting to go back and read it again, as I found some similarities between it and the film. A lot of it focuses on Dredd evaluating a different rookie Judge and even features a fight scene while the rookie is in handcuffs. It also mirrors the ending of the film, with Dredd failing his rookie in the book without any concrete reasoning, while Anderson gets a pass in this film despite actions that could have been an instant failure.

I think overall I was just expecting a little more from it on many levels. It's a rather shallow film in terms of any political subtext to it, when I was perhaps expecting something more satirical along the lines of Robocop or Starship Troopers. Its complete and utter committal to an unquestioning portrayal of the Judges is one of its strengths but it also feels like it has little to say on the issue and has become a sticking point for those writing negative reviews. The irony of a right wing paper complaining about 'a fascist dream of a policeman' was certainly not lost on me, seemingly showing a staggering lack of self-awareness. I definitely think that it could have stood to say a little more, though having Dredd be much more human at this early stage may have made the whole thing fall down. Giving only the merest crack in his armour to show he's still a human being is just enough to suggest it could be explored more in future movies.

It was also surprised by how deranged Lena Headey's gang leader Ma-Ma appeared on film, which was strange when there is a prequel comic that shows her in a... well not exactly a more positive light but you certainly get a better idea of how she reached this point. But the film is what matters and I think it missed an opportunity in portraying her as an insane sadist, which just made her seem unrealistic. I would have liked to have seen her as more of a desperate figure, going to any lengths to protect the empire she'd scraped together - at least giving some impression of why she'd become so extreme. It could have also focussed more on the cyclical nature of violence and how the Judges can never bring an end to it. The harshness of the Judge system should sometimes seem unfair and not just make the audience feel it was justified in removing a truly evil villain. I would say that on the whole the comics were aiming to expose just how flawed the kind of justice some people want is. The ending might have felt more meaningful when Anderson lets one of the gang go because she feels he is a victim, if we had also seen Ma-Ma as just another victim in a sense.

Despite all of this, I still think it's a great accomplishment and it feels like the best version of Dredd we are ever likely to see on screen. Details like the body armour feel totally right in the final product, despite plenty of people, myself included thinking that the proportions looked a little off to begin with. The distinctive design is very pragmatic and I feel like that's a good way of describing the film as a whole, which perhaps doesn't quite feel like it could encompass some of the weirdness found in the comics. Even though the writer of the film has talked about potential sequels eventually leading to aspects like the Dark Judges, I'm not sure I could see the two fitting together. It's this that makes it difficult to decide whether this is best served remaining as a standalone film or if it can still be a jumping off point for more films. There's certainly a lot more to draw from without bringing in more fantastical elements, which has me interested in reading some more early Judge Dredd stories to get a feel for what might inspire them. Hopefully I can watch it again at some point in the future, with less pressure or expectations on it and appreciate it for the bold, strong film it is.

Doctor Who: A Town Called Mercy (2012)

I'm probably not the world's biggest western fan and other than Firefly and 'Gunmen of the Apocalypse' from Red Dwarf, I can't think of many times that Sci-Fi and Westerns have mixed well. From the glimpses given at the end of the last episode, it looked more like the latter - especially with the Gunslinger looking somewhat like Kryten. Overall I think I was looking forward to this episode least out of the three so far, so while it may have surpassed my expectations I'm not sure how good it was overall.

It started off well though, with the Doctor happily throwing himself into the wild west with that goofy charm we love him for. I couldn't help but think of Drive to begin with and half expected him to come out with 'Toothpicks are cool'. I enjoyed the line about 'Keep Out' signs being more of a suggestion and the slightly cheesy request for 'Tea, the hard stuff', which just brings you back to its innate Britishness, no matter the American focus here.

This episode seemed to highlight two running themes of this series, the first being people looking for 'a doctor' not 'the Doctor'. I'm not sure if there is more to this or if it is just trying to be clear that the universe at large has now pretty much forgotten him. The other seems to be the Doctor's growing lack of mercy and while I didn't have a huge problem with it last week, there is a big difference between not pulling someone out of a spaceship seconds before it's destroyed and holding someone at gunpoint.

Other than Batman I can't think of many other heroes more averse to guns, meaning I can only think of another couple of times he's even held one in the new series. The first was Chris Eccleston picking up some kind of alien ray gun to take down a Dalek (but even then he found he couldn't go through with it). The other is Matt Smith again, where he used a gun to destroy a gravity globe in 'The Time of Angels', which was enough to shock a lot of fans when it was shown out of context in trailers.

I'm not sure whether there is something building here related to the first episode or if Amy's assertion that he has just been alone too long is correct. It also felt to me like someone wanted to shoehorn in the Doctor holding a revolver for a Western episode, without considering whether it felt right. I was much more impressed by the stand-off against the townspeople later, where despite wearing a gun belt the issue was resolved with words instead of bullets.

I've largely been trying to write these updates based on my immediate thoughts but having some time to reflect on this it did seem rather weak on the whole. The final showdown between the Doctor and the Gunslinger looked great but what followed was pretty silly and made some dangerous assumptions about how the Gunslinger would react. You could say that none of the episodes so far have had a really strong ending with the Doctor creating an ingenious solution but here I think it was exacerbated by there not being much going on for large portions of it. I'd wager that if I hadn't decided to write about each new episode that this one wouldn't have remained on my mind for long, even if I still enjoyed it at the time.

Old Creative Writing - Out of Control

Another piece from my school days, a few years on from the last one and I think it formed part of my GCSE coursework. It's titled Out of Control and again it's presented with original spelling mistakes and teachers comments/corrections in red...

---

It's a well-known fact that when someone has a good idea someone else will eventually copy it. Take the Roboticops of 2147 for example.

opening has impact

In January of 2147 the police of America finally decided that putting officers on the beat was now too dangerous. Instead, they created the Roboticops programmed to stop crimes, protect innocent people and generally keep the peace.

↓ effective sentencing

People laughed at them first, claiming that they looked like floating dustbins; the laughter stopped abruptly however when they found out how the Roboticops kept the peace. Anyone seen committing a crime was shot. Almost immediately after the Roboticops came into service people complained that people who had a criminal record were getting away with the punishment so they re-called all of them and their programming was changed to include anyone with a criminal record. A lot of people died in those first few weeks but people started to accept them and any programming bugs were reasonably quickly ironed out. Soon the police force was almost completely robotic which also got rid of the problem of officers being bribed.

In the February of the same year cyborgs started to commit crimes just about the same time that lots of homeless people began to disappear. The homeless people were the least of the police's problems as they were having a tough time stopping any of these cyborgs and those that they did manage to stop seemed to automatically self destruct. Organised crime was now robotic.

Total Recall (2012)

This review was also posted on ArtFist.org

I'm not sure if it's significant that my wife and I didn't discuss this film at all when we walked out of the cinema. She was very tired and it was a reasonably late showing for us but we would normally have at least asked each other whether we liked it. That initial reaction you have walking out of a cinema is often the most honest, no matter how long you mull things over later but I think if I had been asked at the time I would have had difficulty responding.

I knew I was always going to have trouble with this film being a fan of the original, but I can't honestly say that it's turned out horribly. The design of this messed-up future earth was astonishing and managed to induce that slight shudder of vertigo on numerous occasions. As implausible as it may be to have a lift that can travel through the core of the Earth in around 17 minutes (requiring an average speed of around 28,000 miles per hour), it was executed very well. Weirdly it felt like Mass Effect was one of its biggest design influences, especially when it came to its armoured robots. I felt that it was pretty lazy having no British or Australian accents given they were supposed to be the main world powers but I can let that slide too. I was just left feeling that it was a bit of a waste to go to all of this effort and then tell the exact same story as the original, I would much rather have seen something else set in that same world.

I also can't deny that there were some good action sequences in this, which varied between the unbelievable and more grounded, well thought out sequences that took note of the surroundings and allowed the viewer to follow them through. For example I liked Kate Beckinsale's slide towards a descending lift in the hope of making it through the door, only to miss it but still land in the lift due to the top previously being ripped off. In a sense both the original and this are good examples of a typical action blockbuster of their day but no matter how well this version does in some areas, the original is just so much more interesting because of two areas in particular that this film just doesn't seem to get.

Firstly, it misses out on any kind of proof that Hauser/Quaid (Colin Farrell) was originally a bad guy. The video message left to himself by Arnie in the original made it very clear that his old self was very different. Without something like this I think it detracts from the idea of how we define our own identity and whether our past has any bearing on what we do in the future. Here Brian Cranston's Cohagen might just as well have been lying to Quaid to mess with him, there was no real confirmation that there was any point to it.

I felt that without this to focus on, you start to see more plotholes creep in - why did they go to this much trouble? Why didn't they just capture an actual resistance fighter and implant the fake kill switch information in his head? And just how did doing this help them track him down again once he went to the resistance? Why were they annoyed he'd gone to Rekall and started this whole process when that was what they wanted to happen anyway? All criticisms that could be levelled at the original film too but they don't seem to stand out as much and can also be explained if you take a particular view of the original...

That being the idea that it was actually all in his head and he never made it out of Rekall. Here I felt there was no real ambiguity over whether it was in his head or not, other than some lazy tacked on echoed phrases and a wistful look at a Rekall sign at the end. By opening with a very clear dream as a memory, it really feels like there is no doubt that these are real repressed memories in this version. There are also few cuts in the Rekall sequence that could make the audience believe they have missed something, it seemed very clear to me that the Rekall team had not yet done anything to affect his mind at all.

The genius of the original version is that every single action ties into the idea that it's all in his head. Arnies dreams for example are not of former events but a nightmare about dying from a lack of oxygen (in a very unrealistic manner). He has never actually experienced this and that dream goes on to form the climax of the film. Discovering this theory makes watching the original again a very rewarding experience but here there is not really anything clever that would be enhanced by a repeat viewing.

All of this added up to a film that I felt like I'd totally checked out from by the end. When Quaid escapes from the guards and manages to land on 'The Fall' unopposed I should have been ranting about its lack of logic but I just couldn't force myself to care. Having a final fist fight with Cohagen at the end also felt really out of place as he had done nothing to suggest he could even last 30 seconds against Quaid throughout the rest of the film. When this film was first announced sources suggested that it was going to be a re-interpretation of the original Philip K. Dick short story 'We can remember it for you wholesale'. As implausible as that sounds if you've read that very short, jokey story, it would still have been preferable to see something crazy and different than the bland retread we ended up with.

Doctor Who: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship (2012)

With a title like that, there's really no one who could cry spoilers over a vague description of this episode. Its straight forward title perhaps suggested that this was going to be a less complicated episode on the whole, with that kind of fanboy pleasing charm of combining two favourite nerdy interests and seeing what happens. It added a little more to the mix by beginning with the Doctor rounding up a 'gang' of followers to assist, including Rory's dad Brian played by Mark Williams of The Fast Show. Queen Nefertiti and big-game hunter John Riddell also joined the group, adding some welcome variety to his companions origins.

Just why there are dinosaurs on this spaceship is gradually revealed and I found it a rather satisfactorily logical reason, despite the over the top premise. Though while I initially thought that the ships creators would be the 'one species' that was not acclimatising to life aboard, the true reason for their disappearance was a little simpler than that. This was quite shocking in a way and made the focus of the episode sharply clear - a genuinely evil villain in the form of a black market trader named Solomon.

I wasn't exactly expecting it to go this way, with Mitchell and Webb showing up to voice a couple of comedic robots that felt like a mixture of something from the pages of 2000AD and an english version of the squabbling bots from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen... okay, not sounding like the best of references but they generally worked for me. What initially appeared to be yet another sinister character aware of the Doctor amusingly turns out to just be someone looking for any doctor - but the tone immediately shifts as he shows his readiness to cause harm to others to get what he wants - which probably seals his fate from the get go.

There was no misunderstood enemy here or someone doing the wrong thing for noble reasons, just someone out to make a living any way they could. In a way this felt quite refreshing and he of course also provided the moment most likely to upset children this episode. That's not to say that the whole thing was very dark, on the whole it was a lot of fun as the title kind of suggests. The Doctor spent most of his time with Rory and his Dad, leaving Amy with Nefertiti and Riddell, who had some great lines together. Amy clearly being a fan of Nefertiti and bluffing "Yeah, I'm a Queen", while dismissing Riddell as someone she'd never heard of because "maybe people who go around killing defenceless animals don't go down in history".

They also all had a part to play at the end of the episode, which isn't always easy. Amy teams up with Riddell to hold off a horde of feathered Raptors, showing no qualms about taking them down once they find some tranquillisers. While Rory and his dad end up piloting the spaceship in tandem as it required two users of the same gene pool. I actually quite enjoyed how it ended, making a clear statement that here was the Doctor on unforgiving form. I wasn't really a fan of David Tennant's extreme pacifism while Russell T Davies was in charge, which lead to so many episodes requiring a peaceful solution, so it was great to see immediate justice dealt to Solomon here.

I've seen people suggesting it wasn't really like the Doctor to leave him to his fate but I think there have been plenty of past examples of him being less merciful. You could even look at how he happily blew up a room full of Daleks in the last episode and you have to ask is there really any difference to the Doctor between a human who destroyed an entire race for profit and a race of beings engineered to destroy every race in the universe? He may look human but I think it's important to remember that he's not and doesn't tend to take sides based on species so why should he care whether someone is human or alien if they are completely unredeemable?

On the whole it was quite a simple episode but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing, with the only wider issue being the Doctor's concern over Amy and Rory's future. I'm beginning to wonder why he is so apprehensive about losing Amy and Rory, whether he has some kind of insight as to how they will meet their end or if it's just fear of losing more friends. The episode's temporary companions also got a brief conclusion to their stories, with Riddell and Nefertiti ending up together and Brian starting a tour of the world, which reminded me of Amelie. I was actually slightly disappointed that they couldn't salvage the Mitchell and Webb bots, as it would have been nice to see them re-purposed or re-programmed for future use.

English Literature and creative writing

When I was younger, I used to quite enjoy writing stories at school. It wasn't something that came up particularly often though and as time went on I found that English moved further and further away from being one of my favourite subjects. As I moved through secondary school and 'English' became 'English Literature', it felt like there was less of a creative focus and I can hardly think of any pieces of literature we covered that really grabbed me. Even if some of them were legitimate classics, I think the way we were taught to analyse them could probably destroy anyone's interest in them. Books would be picked apart in mind numbing detail, full of analysis like "the blue curtains represent the depressed mood of this character" when it hardly seemed likely to have crossed the writers mind in the first place. Most of the time I didn't really feel like I was writing what I thought of the literature, just parroting the teachers opinions.

What I would have liked to learn more about are things like the fundamentals of writing stories, character motivations etc. which I feel like I've only really picked up pieces of via some unlikely internet sources. It seems pretty funny that I've been most inspired recently by a fictional perverted old man and a 10 foot tall green rage monster... I didn't get the option of taking a subject like Media Studies or something similar when I was at school but I think that would be a subject I would have really appreciated. Hearing from a friend who now teaches and had the freedom to base work around aspects of Attack the Block for example - I would love to cover something like that and I'm sure it appeals to a lot of kids too. Though no matter what the subject, I'm sure the way a teacher approaches it is just as important.

So when I recently had to sort through a huge amount of my old school work (strangely those folders and folders full of Maths and Physics notes didn't seem so important anymore), I was surprised by how little English work I'd kept. I'm not even sure what this short story was - it doesn't have a name, just a heading of "Task 5C" and I think it's the earliest bit of creative writing I have, being from when I must have been about 13 or so. It's presented below as originally written, with all original spelling mistakes intact and teachers comments in red...

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"Thats another dead one." said the young assistant "Perhaps we're doing something wrong?"
"Maybe," said the older scientist. "But we've got more than enough of these stupid mice and rats to find the right formula. Once we've found it we can test in on something bigger like the dogs and cats. We will make millions from doing this my boy, I promise you!"

Good start

The members of A.L.F. crouded into the room. There was about thirty of them and they met once a week to discuss important issues. The leader Frank Adams called everyone around the table and counted how many where there.
"Has anyone seen Mark Mc. Nabb?" enquired Frank without much hope of an answer. Mc. Nabb was always late. He was the rebel in the group but a lot of people liked him which annoyed Frank greatly.
He snapped back to the present when he heard someone thumping loudly on the outside door. He went to open it. As he slowly opened it to see who it was he was greeted by a familiar voice.
"Let me in you fool! Its freezing out here!" It was Mc. Nabb. "You're late again Mc. Nabb!" shouted Frank "And don't call me a fool!"
"Ach, who cares if Im late and if you're not a fool you're an idiot."
Mc. Nabb walked casualy to his seat leaving Frank fuming mad at the door. He tried to calm down and walked slowly back to his seat.
"Okay." said Frank "Has anyone got anything important they want to say?"
One hand was cautiously raised. "Ah Graham! What have you got to say?"
A small man with glasses stood up and looked nevously around him before starting to speak.
"Well you know the laboratory we got shut down because it was testing on animals?"
"Hmm." remarked Frank
"Well its still being used but only at night."
"What!!" came Mc Nabbs voice from the other side of the room.
"This is terrible! We have to tell the police!" cried Frank "Ach, Ya wimp!" Shouted Mc Nabb "Don't go the police, we can trash the place ourselves."
"Don't be such an Idiot!!"
"Eh? What ye sayn?" Mc Nabbs Scottish accent showed through more when he got irritable.
"If you'd have thought at all you would have noticed that you are more likely to be arrested than the actual criminals!"
"Well we've gotta do somethin. We can't just leave em!"
"Okay then!! I'm going to the police!" Shouted Frank before storming out of the room, slamming the door behind him. The room was silent for a few seconds before Mc. Nabb spoke up.
"So who wants to come with me?"

A good idea, Matthew.

 Excellent use of conversation - in

 fact, there is too much of this

 in comparison to description.

---

Looking back on that is in some ways slightly embarrassing (you have no idea how hard it is to not correct mistakes and tweak a few things) but at the same time feels like it was written by a completely different person. Someone who obviously had pretty strong feelings on animal testing. I still kind of like the detached attitude of the scientists in the opening - when I first picked this up again I thought it would make a good description of 'expendable' human subjects in some kind of lab test, I guess I hadn't got that dark yet.

It's also interesting that other than spelling, my biggest concerns are with cutting stuff out. Redundant sentences like "He went to open it" and extra words like "fuming mad", would be where I'd start culling. But I think school work tends to build up the importance of word count over being conservative with what you're trying to say. I read an article soon after I started writing again, which illustrated this idea very well - ruthlessly cutting down first drafts into the bare minimum of information required. This is something I'm still trying to apply to my own writing and it can be surprisingly difficult to let go of anything you've written sometimes. Of course there is a place for detailed descriptive prose but most of the time you are trying to create something that is easy for people to read and understand.

I did find some kind of plan for a whole story at the back of the exercise book this was written in. I'm not sure why it was cut short, whether the exercise was only to do so many pages or if I just ran out of steam. The group would go on to raid this lab and attempt to release the animals (though most were in too bad of a state to escape) and one of the activists (I assume Mc Nabb) ends up killing one of the scientists there. I didn't seem to have an idea for an ending or a larger point, so in a way I think it's better that it just became a short segment of a larger imagined story, with the last line hinting that people were obviously ready to follow Mc Nabb (not sure if I subconsciously nicked that last line from Van Damme in the Street Fighter movie).

I've always felt slightly apprehensive about writing fiction again and especially about sharing it with the world via the internet. But if I'm happy to share and critique the ramblings of my teenage self, how much worse could my current work be? Hopefully someday soon I'll feel like taking up the challenge of writing something other than criticism.

Doctor Who: Asylum of the Daleks (2012)

There's something that just feels right about Doctor Who returning in the autumn. Ever since the show was resurrected in 2005, it has usually begun a series run in March or April, with one off Christmas episodes bridging the gap over the winter. To me it's never really felt like a show I wanted to watch in the height of summer - it doesn't seem to suit being on while it's still light outside. So I was strangely anticipating it starting in September this year, knowing that I'd be able to sit down to watch it in at least vague twilight, preferably with a cup of tea and some humanoid shaped gelatin based sweets.

Still, I have always been happy to see new episodes of Doctor Who and going back to it's first rebooted season I thought it was all great at the time - though I've revised my opinion since then. One episode that still remains a high point of Chris Eccleston's tenure however was Dalek. After so many dodgy, clunky outings for the Doctor's most iconic foe, here was an episode that showed a single Dalek as a force to be reckoned with and more importantly showed the Doctor in fear of them. Though pretty much all of that goodwill was undone by the end of that series and now we find ourselves coming full circle again, with the Daleks just as much of a joke as they were beforehand.

So Asylum of the Daleks definitely takes a stab at rectifying some of this and I think it was pretty successful. Though it didn't have me hiding behind the sofa the Daleks were certainly threatening, with good reasoning for why they weren't always deadly. Notably it also showed the Doctor in fear of them again, which I think is important in selling them as a real danger. There were points where it created a brilliantly tense atmosphere, not unlike something from Alien and to be honest in one section I would rather that tension was kept up instead of diffusing it with comedy. Though I did like how that little joke was touched on again at the end.

The episode also worked well as a mini-reboot/retcon of the Daleks and I was happy to see the overly mythical status of the Doctor among the Daleks removed (though I'm still not sure about the final lines of the episode). It also introduced a rather disturbing new method of human enslavement, which was especially shocking for the time it was shown. I have to be honest, I wasn't expecting to see Zombie Daleks with eye stalks bursting out of their foreheads...

I hadn't caught all of the mini-episodes of Pond Life before watching this, so I was surprised by how it opened with Amy and Rory's relationship in tatters. On reflection I thought that this was quite a good opening though and after watching the remaining Pond Life episodes it made a lot of sense. I liked the idea that life goes on while the Doctor's away and that it's not always for the better. And that the Doctor's presence can then bring what's important into focus in a life or death situation when things could be left to slip away in mundane daily life.

I kind of wanted to touch on this after Anita Sarkeesian was heavily critical of Steven Moffat's 'disastrous' writing of female characters on Twitter. Perhaps Twitter is not the place for this kind of thing as it doesn't really allow you the ability to go into detail but the idea of Amy now being unable to have children sadly felt all too real to me. As I've learned over time, difficulty in having children is more common than you might think and can easily have an effect on a relationship. In this case having children wasn't really the critical issue anyway - as many people say the biggest problems in any relationship can come from a lack of communication. So in a way the Doctor forced them into a situation where they had to confront each other, rather than allow themselves to drift apart due to Amy's assumptions about Rory's feelings. To extrapolate from this scenario to some kind of awful series finale involving a miracle birth seemed to be overly reaching, though I will eat my words if it does come to pass.

I can't really finish this without mentioning Oswin played by Jenna-Louise Coleman, who at the time I couldn't quite remember whether she was to be a new companion. The knowledge that she will be makes it intriguing to wonder just how she will turn up again and whether she will remain as an intellectual match for the Doctor as she was in this episode. I wasn't sure whether this episode was suggesting that she was naturally a genius or if it was a by-product of her involvement with the Daleks but she seemed like she would hold her own either way and it will be nice to see a companion who isn't from present day Earth. I'm not sure if the Doctor will actively seek her out or whether it will be a case of cosmic convenience, which I think gives just the right amount of intrigue for now in a season supposedly focussing on one off episodes.

Ted (2012)

This review was also posted on ArtFist.org

I've struggled to finish reviews of any comedy films this year, so after seeing Ted I promised myself I would complete one for once. As a formerly huge fan of Family Guy this was a film I was both intrigued and apprehensive about - I wasn't totally sure what to expect from it but had a fair idea of what the humour would be like. I'd also not read a single review of it beforehand - not something I actively avoided so it seems a little weird that there has been relatively little coverage. I certainly enjoyed most of it at the time but some issues sprang to mind as I started to write about it.

Perhaps the best way to describe it as a whole is overindulgent. Despite a strong opening I really felt that it dragged for a while after that, spending too much time on the in depth situation of each character. Sadly I don't remember it being particularly funny either. It didn't really pick up for me until you see Ted in a suit, off to try and get his first job. There was also a section later on that seemed to exist purely to get a celebrity cameo in, which was neither funny to me or moving the plot forward in any meaningful way.

I find it funny that I can pick out large areas to cut when the film itself is just a shade longer than Brave, which felt like a very short, concise film to me. I personally wonder whether Seth MacFarlane had enough experience in telling a story of this length when most of his cartoons are self contained 30 minute episodes. While there have been a few Family Guy stories that span multiple episodes, Ted ends up feeling like everything and the kitchen sink was thrown at it to pad it out. But then that overindulgence has always been a hallmark of his cartoons too. I couldn't help but think back to Family Guy's ridiculously long chicken fight in one particular scene, which managed to go through the feeling that it was much longer than it probably should have been and still come out the other side being funny.

Like Family Guy I also felt that it had an over reliance on pop culture that was very specific to the US and didn't immediately amuse me if I didn't get the reference. Probably my main reason for moving away from watching Family Guy was the realisation that it was starting to rely too heavily on the 'random' cutaway gags and that these generally only made me laugh once out of surprise and didn't really work if you watched them again. You could say Ted took this even further with a random flashback among the character establishing sequences that I didn't find funny in the slightest.

And it makes me feel so old but I also feel like the overuse of the F-word in this was hardly ever funny. Restricted by what you could get away with on a TV network, Family Guy was always pushing against boundaries to see what they could get away with and even the occasional bleeped swear could seem shocking and humorous at the same time. Here it got old fast and I don't think it was just me, I can't recall hearing a single chuckle at an F-word just dropped into conversation but there was plenty of laughter in its more inventive parts. Perhaps I wasn't really there with the target audience since it had been out a while when I got to see it but to me the overuse definitely wore down the impact it could have had if it was used a little more sparingly.

I do feel like there's a good movie in there somewhere and I liked how it approached the idea that Ted could eventually become normal and forgotten about. But there were parts that seemed to hinder the story unfolding as if it was realistic by going so over the top and assuming that everyone is in on the joke. It all adds up to a mixed bag that leaves you feeling a bit unsatisfied. Perhaps I've often struggled to finish comedy reviews as I may have laughed along at the time but not really felt like the film went anywhere or had much to say. Here you question what had really changed about the characters situations by the end of the film but it's played as a happy ending, all problems solved, which just didn't convince me.

People will always say that humour is subjective but I think it can also seem temporary. Like Family Guys one off random gags with a short shelf life, you also had the problem here of seeing a lot of those in trailers. It can be difficult to remember specific funny parts later and even then if I was to try to list or explain jokes it would only lead to them not sounding funny at all. So while I can almost certainly recommend this to people who won't be offended by its humour, I would have just liked it to be a more focussed and consistent film on the whole.