Doctor Who - The Crimson Horror (2013)

As previously mentioned, I didn't really have high hopes for this episode, so I was pleasantly surprised by it overall. To be honest, I probably should have expected that the return of Vastra, Jenny and Strax would make it at least watchable, with Strax in particular often being the best thing in weaker episodes. This episode could be seen as being written for all those that would like to see the trio on their own adventures, as the Doctor does not even feature in the first third of it.

This provided an interesting angle to the episode, as Jenny takes the lead in investigating the deaths of people in a town in Yorkshire, her being the only one of the team able to blend in easily. They know of the Doctor's involvement from the beginning though, as through some Victorian pseudo-science they discover that his face was the last thing one of the the victims saw. I wasn't entirely sure whether the trio would have taken the case if not for this fact and despite making for a good opening I wonder if it might have added to the mystery if they hadn't known about him at first.

It turns out that the Doctor has fallen prey to the same fate as all of the other victims, his alien DNA being the only thing saving him from death. Red skinned and almost immobile, he's been locked up by the daughter of Sweetville's leader Mrs. Gillyflower, who dotes on him as her 'Monster'. It seems obvious with hindsight but at the time I didn't see this coming, as whatever was locked up did seem malevolent while you couldn't see it. A quick sonic-shower or something is enough to reverse the process though, and we then get a quick flashback of how the Doctor got involved in the situation - I found Matt Smith's attempt at a Yorkshire accent surprisingly amusing. Jenny is naturally confused when the Doctor immediately wants to find Clara, thinking he's referring to the person who died in 'The Snowmen'. I liked how this almost made it appear he was a mad man chasing a ghost in his grief if you didn't know the rest of the story.

Meanwhile, Vastra discovers that whatever is causing the deaths and red skin is not alien in origin but instead another of the Earth's first inhabitants, a red leech that was a problem at the height of the Silurian empire. In low enough doses it merely paralyses and preserves those treated with it, which is the first part of Mrs. Gillyflowers plan to protect those she deems worthy of populating her new world. Essentially a Victorian take on Noah's Ark, she plans to use the pure form of the leech venom to decimate the rest of the Earths population. Her obsession with perfection seemed quite reflective of the Victorian age in general, in a similar manner to 'The Snowmen's villain being the personification of the coldness in their relationships.

It came as no surprise then that Mrs. Gillyflower's own daughter Ada (played by Diana Rigg's real life daughter Rachael Stirling), had no place in her future utopia, her blindness and scarring making her imperfect. This is first said to have been the result of her drunken father beating her but it's eventually revealed to be the result of her mother's initial experiments with the leech venom. This disturbing, twisted mother/daughter relationship was probably the most memorable part of the episode, with their last words to each other being pure spite. I particularly liked how Ada managed to foil the Doctor's peaceful plans for dealing with the red leech once the danger had been averted, a scene that felt quite like something from The League of Gentlemen.

This relationship should perhaps not have worked alongside some of the other comedy elements in the episode but it didn't seem to bother me. Humour is always a very personal preference but some jokes that fell flat for others were still funny to me - the constantly fainting gentleman (who I thought was an attempt to reverse the stereotype of  Victorian ladies fainting - even if tight fitting corsets were usually the cause) and 'Thomas Thomas' giving Strax directions. Strax threatening to shoot his horse for treason before this was pretty hilarious too.

Clara's return to modern day had an unexpected confrontation with the children she looks after, as they've found pictures of her from various times on the internet. The fact that it included her incarnation from 'The Snowmen' throws her and causes her to pretty much confirm the kid's suspicions. They then proceed to  blackmail her into taking them on a trip with her, which I wouldn't perhaps normally have jumped for but with Neil Gaiman on writing duties next episode, I feel pretty confident that he can handle younger characters well.

Doctor Who - Journey to the Center of the TARDIS (2013)

Given such an exciting title and premise, this episode was always going to have a tough time living up to it. On the one hand it was nice to see more of the TARDIS, with callbacks to earlier episodes as we finally get a glimpse of its library and swimming pool (as mentioned in the first episode of Matt Smith's tenure - pointed out by +Adam Rollings). The M.C. Escher touches in the poster left me hoping to see some more surreal touches though, something to really sell the idea of the ship's impossible architecture. All we really got were a bunch of similar corridors that wrapped round to the same location like a retro videogame. On top of that, we didn't really learn much of consequence about the TARDIS, especially given the question of why the TARDIS doesn't like Clara is being pushed as an important point recently.

Depending on your personal influences, I'd imagine the salvage ship that captures the TARDIS brought to mind either Red Dwarf or Alien - I think I thought of Red Dwarf first just because they're both English shows. I quite often enjoy sci-fi that revolves around the more mundane aspects of life, with the Van Baalen brothers being the intergalactic equivalent of scrap merchants. It's just a shame that they weren't really interesting or varied in any way, with the 'twist' about one of them being pretty obvious from the outset.

All the elements were there to tie this together as a strong episode though. The TARDIS was only able to be captured because the Doctor disabled its shields to let Clara take basic control of it, in the hope that they might be able to bond. From the glimpses shown in the trailer I expected this episode to revolve around Clara forming an uneasy alliance with the ship to solve whatever problem had befallen it. Instead she spends the episode wandering around and discovering the Doctor's collection of nick-nacks at random and running away from a monster that looked like it was made of molten lava.

There is an attempt at referring to something of greater importance, as she finds a history book detailing the Time War and discovers the Doctor's true name - something we know is going to play a part in the last episode of this series. There's been hints about the importance of his name for quite some time now but it's not something that really grabs me. I can't personally see a reason why it's going to have such significance and why he is so concerned about keeping it secret (maybe he should have put that book somewhere safer if there was a danger Clara could stumble across it). Is it going to turn out like Voldemort where there is some curse upon saying it out loud?

Anyway, with the Doctor somehow escaping the TARDIS when it's torn into the salvage ship, he promises the crew that they can take whatever they want from his ship if they help him search for Clara inside (which naturally bemuses them until they set foot on it). Even if it's eventually revealed to be a ruse, I really liked the Doctor's ruthless attitude in trapping the Van Baalen's on board to help him out. The line about not getting on a spaceship with a mad man was a nice reflection of the same thing he'd said to Amy on her first trip, giving it a slightly more sinister edge.

Naturally the Doctor has some trouble controlling his scrap merchant guests as they search for Clara and when they split up to cover more ground, they clearly see it as an opportunity to start stripping the TARDIS for parts. This only results in the ship trying to defend itself, temporarily locking some of them in a room when one of them takes part of a techno-organic looking machine that the Doctor assures can create anything mechanical your heart desires.

The molten lava creature takes its first life when one of the Van Baalen's encounters it while scavenging the main control room. I initially thought that this character had been merged with the creature as when you next see it there are two shambling humanoid forms fused together. However they are eventually revealed to be 'Time Zombies', the ultimate fate of all of the characters, including the Doctor, should they die in the heart of the TARDIS.

Seeing no reason to hold back with his life on the line, the Doctor finally confronts Clara with all of the questions he's been skirting around since he met this incarnation. As we all expected, Clara doesn't have any answers for him and I think he finally accepts her for who she is - immediately treating her a lot more warmly. I felt like this worked well as a half way point in this mini-series but I'm not exactly sure what will push the mystery forward now but his attitude to her was starting to drag so I think it was the right decision.

But then the end of the episode pushes a big friendly reset button, leaving it unclear what anyone actually took away from the episode. It clumsily hints that at least one of the Van Baalen's has retained something of his experience but it's very 'timey wimey' reasoning for something that should be impossible. It really felt like each character would only remember what was convenient to the script writer. I'm kind of in two minds about this episode overall, as I kind of enjoyed it at the time but the complete lack of consequences just made it fall flat at the end. Weirdly I don't feel overly enthusiastic about tomorrow's 'The Crimson Horror' either, as it looks more like some of Mark Gatiss' lesser episodes compared to 'Cold War', despite the reappearance of Vastra, Jenny, and Strax from 'The Snowmen'.

Doctor Who - Hide (2013)

Wow. In old Who terms, this episode wouldn't just send your kids crawling behind the sofa, I think you'd be looking at a prolonged period of nightmares afterwards. It centres around something I've always found particularly creepy, ghostly images that only appear in photographs.

It started off reasonably light hearted though, with Clara's opening gambit of 'we're the Ghostbusters' perhaps not really matching the tone of the episode. There was also one line that took me out of the experience slightly, that the opposite of bliss was 'Carlisle'. I could see that it was just a joke but it wasn't that funny and at the same time just didn't seem like something a real person would say. I feel bad saying it but it felt like the one Moffat-like touch in an episode that Neil Cross seemed to have stamped his own identity on quite well. In a way I'm glad it was at least early on in the episode so you could take it as just a bit of fun before things started to get serious.

Compared to the bigger but largely forgettable cast of the last episode, this one really shone by focusing on only two extra characters. There was Professor Alec Palmer, played by Dougray Scott, who I almost mistook for Dominic West to begin with. A world weary ex-spy, he was clearly meant to parallel the Doctor, as he attempted to do some good in the world after all of the people he had lost or killed. His companion/assistant Emma Grayling, played by Jessica Raine, was an empathetic psychic who was essential to communicate with the ghostly presence in the pictures. Again like many of the Doctor's companions, she was unsure of whether there were feelings between her and the Professor, with the added complication of her empathetic powers making her unsure of what she reads from him.

The two of them are investigating a presence know as the 'Caliburn Ghast' or 'the Witch of the Well'. They have photographic evidence going back years, with the manifestation existing even before the construction of the mansion currently on the location. After Clara notices that the ghost was always in the exact same pose (whatever, I was trying not to look at it directly), the Doctor decides to take a quick jaunt through the Earth's history to take more pictures. While he clearly enjoys this distraction, Clara finds how easily he can do this rather cold, unsure of how anyone mortal can mean anything to him.

But that trek through time reveals that this 'ghost' is actually a rudimentary time traveller whose test flight has gone awry, trapping her in a pocket universe where time does not flow the same way we experience it. There is a slightly wibbly-wobbly reason why he can't just use the TARDIS to rescue them, so he constructs a makeshift device to allow Emma to help him create a link to get there and back. This ties together all of the characters as Professor Palmer can finally admit that he cares about Emma but also convince her that she's strong enough to use her powers this way.

While we now know what the ghostly presence is, there is still plenty to be afraid of once the Doctor makes the jump into the pocket universe. A strange twisted creature is stalking the stranded time traveller, which you only see in brief glimpses as it shifts in and out of view. The time traveller manages to escape just as Emma becomes overwhelmed by her efforts, breaking the link and leaving the Doctor unexpectedly stranded. Those who have seen the trailers for this series will have been expecting this scene, as the Doctor deduces that the creature is trying to scare him, begrudgingly admitting that it's been successful.

Once again Clara manages to save the day by insisting that Emma opens the bridge again, which she just about manages with the support of those around her. Meanwhile Clara manages to strike a temporary alliance with the TARDIS (who still doesn't seem to like her) and manages to pluck the Doctor out of the universe without landing, with Emma's psychic powers to guide them home.

I liked the Doctor's post rescue chat with Emma, who is revealed to have been the reason for his visit in the first place. On asking whether she can sense just who or what Clara is, the answer that she's just a normal ordinary girl is clearly not what the Doctor was looking for. I thought this was quite an apt reflection of what I've seen other people say about Clara, that she doesn't seem to be living up to the Dalek enhanced genius of her first incarnation - it felt like the question of 'isn't that enough?' could be directed at both the Doctor and the audience.

So far I'm really enjoying Clara's character and I think it was perhaps a wise move to reign in her more quirky characteristics. I feel that just like the Doctor, we shouldn't just treat her as a puzzle to be solved and I wonder if the Doctor's attitude may lead to his or her downfall as if he continues to undervalue her human side. Despite the fact it was played as cheering her up, I especially found the line about her being "the only mystery worth solving" particularly heartless, suggesting that he would have no interest if it were not for her two previous incarnations - something she's already tried to tell him she's not.

I often find myself complaining about the final resolution of Doctor Who episodes but even though the last twist in this tale managed to turn the episode on its head completely, I couldn't begrudge it having such a sweet ending. In a sense I think it made me laugh at myself for finding the whole thing so scary but at the same time knowing that was absolutely their intention. It'd be interesting to watch again with that last reveal in mind but I don't know if it'd make it any more of a comfortable experience.

Doctor Who - Cold War (2013)

Out of the three new episodes so far this year, this one was easily the most enjoyable from my point of view. It may also be my favourite episode penned by Mark Gatiss so far, it felt like the first one where he has really brought his love of horror to the script. Knowing he is such a horror fan perhaps helped me to overlook some of the more familiar touches or see them more as a tribute than ripping off other films.

This episode was widely touted as the return of the Ice Warriors, after a gap of nearly 40 years. They're not exactly an enemy I'm familiar with, other than their iconic but slightly cheesy, chunky costume. Their new look is familiar but a little sleeker and perhaps more menacing. But the biggest change comes when it decides to leave its armour, a surprise even to the Doctor. This lead to the episode going a completely different way than I expected, which was a good thing as I wasn't sure how well this unstoppable clunky monster was going to fit in otherwise.

While Clara is her usual plucky self to begin with, I thought that the episode handled her gradual appretiation of the gravity of the situation well as people started dying. Her being momentarily paralysed by fear went some way towards showing a more human side to her, rather than just being a puzzle to solve. In fact the Doctor's description of the aftermath and the Ice Warrior's reasoning created quite a strong image in my mind, without any gore actually being shown.

The characterisation of the Ice Warrior being the last of his kind with nothing to lose also made it a more scary prospect than a mindless killing machine. The 80's era Russian sub offering him the perfect opportunity to lash out at the whole of humanity for attacking and imprisoning him. Despite remaining confined to the submarine, this ended up putting the whole world in danger, with the Doctor quite willing to sacrifice everyone on board to avoid mutually assured destruction. This episode seemed to do everything it could to ramp up the tension, including having the TARDIS dematerialise not long after arrival, meaning there was no way for the Doctor to escape if he'd wanted to. This turned out to be a callback to a much older episode, even if it did come across as a slightly lame reason to put them in danger.

I have seen a lot of criticism about this episode and when you look at the wider picture it doesn't really have much impact. We didn't learn any more about Clara's existence by the end and the link to the Cold War of the title was quite tenuous and perhaps wasted the opportunity to really delve into that period of time. But I couldn't help but feel like sometimes this is all Doctor Who needs and it was nice to see a threat taken seriously when there are so many silly episodes, creating a tense atmosphere that keeps you on edge goes a long way towards getting good will from me. I guess the ending did kind of wind down the tension with things being resolved relatively peacefully but I'd been so taken in by what came before that it didn't matter. I didn't even baulk at the rather rubbery alien hands seen through most of the episode, which probably look incredibly lame in isolation. Probably the only thing that disappointed me was the use of CGI for the final shot of the unhelmeted Ice Warrior, though it did at least look like a reasonable solid design - they probably had no more budget for practical masks after last week's extravaganza.

Doctor Who - The Rings Of Akhaten (2013)

If the start of this episode suggested anything to me, it was that while this series may still have overarching mysteries about Clara, that other unknown aspects would not drag on for too long. We join the Doctor as he investigates Clara's mundane but tragic past and discover why the leaf from her diary is 'Page one'. Seeing her whole life so far in flashback may put some people's theories about her re-incarnations to rest, though I'm still considering whether it could relate to The Doctors Daughter, even if she can't be her.

The Doctor must put this out of his mind for the moment, as well as avoid giving away the fact that he's effectively stalked her for her entire life so far. As is so often the case, for their first planned TARDIS trip Clara suggests that he surprise her with "something awesome", which is provided by the titular rings of Akhaten - a series of impossible planetoids orbiting a huge sun.

It was hard to ignore the influence of Guillermo del Toro's take on Hellboy in this episode. From the moment the Doctor and Clara step out onto this bustling alien world I was reminded of the Goblin market from the sequel, though the cramped nature of a much smaller set was very evident. Plus the ominous creatures later named as the Vigil were also reminiscent of Karl Ruprecht Kroenen, the clockwork Nazi from the original. I liked the fact that the variety of aliens had gradually been constructed in sculptor Neill Gorton's spare time, as they would not have the time or budget to create them specifically for one episode.

The meat of this episode centers around the myths and rituals of this group of worlds, which to its followers is the origin of all life in the universe. The Doctor dismisses this kindly as a 'Nice story' and initially shows little concern at the 'Festival of Offerings', a ceremony designed to keep an ancient god from awakening. The hymns that are meant to accomplish this are very simple and literal but I wondered if that was supposed to be a consequence of the TARDIS translating an alien language into English. It got me thinking about how so many Sci-Fi shows feature some kind of universal translator but you never really come across aliens with a really strange turn of phrase or lack of rhyming/subtlety that might result from a simple translation.

As you might expect, the ancient god does turn out to be real and the hymns and rituals were never enough to keep it asleep, instead it's normally pacified via a thinly veiled human (alien?) sacrifice. I thought that the way this was revealed was a little difficult to follow, right on that line where some more explanatory dialogue could have helped but would have stood out at the same time. The Doctor throws himself into saving the child chosen for the sacrifice, with little concern for whether he'll be able to deal with the consequences of doing so. I liked that he showed at least a little reflection on this decision when his initial conclusion was proved wrong, showing that he's not infallible.

Sadly the simplicity of this episode's resolution, that the power of a god could be undone by a Timelord's memories and a dried leaf, made it feel a little disappointing again. Almost any story you can think of that features some kind of ancient god usually revolves around preventing it from awakening, because if it can awake and then be defeated then how much of a threat was it in the first place? I did enjoy the misdirection about just what the god was, especially since the bizarre mummy like creature had featured prominently in the episode preview at the end of last week's episode. It's true form was a little underwhelming though, which again probably couldn't have lived up to anyone's imagination - I felt the same about the unnecessary reveal at the end of The Cabin in the Woods.

Others perhaps got more out of the episode than me, I liked the Badass Digest take on it, even if their description didn't seem to line up with how good I felt the episode was. That piece also highlighted the idea that the episode was almost anti-religious in a sense, which is quite an accomplishment for a mainstream piece of Saturday night entertainment.

Doctor Who - The Bells of Saint John (2013)

So Clara did manage to survive an episode - well technically she kinda died twice but the important thing is that by the end of the episode she was still around and able to consider the doctors offer of travelling through time and space. I say consider as she was characteristically cagey about the whole thing, not giving him a straight answer or jumping on board the TARDIS instantly. I can't recall another companion who's acted like that, so it was a nice little distinguishing factor.

But anyway, back to the start of the episode, which began with a slightly ill-fitting montage of people connecting to Wi-Fi, with an internet conspiratist warning not to connect to a network with strange symbols, lest you find yourself dead a few days later a la The Ring. I found myself wondering how this person came across his information but it's eventually revealed he's already doomed, which I'm not sure makes any more sense. The basic premise reminded me a little of the David Tennant era episode 'The Idiot's Lantern' but something about its approach to modern technology made me cringe a little.

We then join the Doctor at a monastery in Cumbria in the year 1207, where the meaning of the episodes title is revealed. I thought this might be a dual time stream kind of episode but the Doctor quickly returns to the present when contacted by Clara via the TARDIS' external phone. I'm was sure that River had called in this manner before but I can only find references to it ringing in 'The Empty Child'. Either way I wondered why this episode treated it with complete surprise and it also begged the question of just who is setting Clara on her way towards the Doctors 'helpline'. The Doctor is all set to ignore her request for tech support until he hears her repeat her last incarnation's final words as a mnemonic to remember her Wi-Fi password.

Turning up dressed as a monk is not cool though and a quick costume change leaves Clara vulnerable to the 'uploaders'. It's revealed that the Wi-Fi users have been uploaded by a subconsciously camouflaged robot, which had somehow made its way into a locked house, I assume on the off chance that someone connected to the Wi-Fi. I understand that Steven Moffat wanted to make an episode that would play on the omnipresent nature of Wi-Fi but it hardly seemed like it was necessary to their plans.

The Doctor intervenes and saves Clara's life - or brings her back to life, not quite sure - leading the uploaders to attempt to wipe them out. They go about this by lighting up Clara's neighbourhood as a target and incapacitating the crew and passengers of a plane so that it will hit them. The Doctor's response is to land the TARDIS on board and bring it out of its dive, despite not knowing how to fly a plane. This whole sequence was probably only a few minutes long but I loved every second and if I wasn't already sold on Clara, she cemented her position by holding onto and drinking a cup of tea throughout the whole process.

They then take a short Tardis trip to next morning, in an attempt to frustrate the uploaders and discover their location. I wasn't entirely comfortable with the Doctor being totally tech literate in this episode. Watching him engage a keyboard war with elite hackers just didn't seem to suit him and he's often shown more bemusement at Earth technology than anything else. While it can often be a lazy magic bullet that can do anything, this is one occasion where I would prefer to see his sonic screwdriver used to solve some of these problems.

Clara seemed much more at home with technological wizardry though, after receiving an unintended 'upgrade' after her first encounter with the soul sucking robot. It perhaps did seem a little unlikely that someone of her age would know nothing about computers to begin with, but I enjoyed her use of them, including a clever plan to track down the uploaders using social media - a rare example of such networks being referenced that didn't feel tacked on. But once again the Doctor leaves her alone while enacting this plan, giving a robot disguised as him the chance to upload her fully.

What followed from this was another great scene, with the Doctor breaking out his anti-gravity Motorbike to storm the Shard, which wouldn't have seemed out of place in a Platinum game. He cleverly undoes their plans by subjecting their leader to the same fate as Clara, prompting her to order everyone's release. The Doctor was in fact still sitting with Clara sipping a coffee, hacking the uploading robot to enact his plan remotely.

While this episode initially reminded me of  'The Idiot's Lantern', its resolution also reminded me of last years 'The Power of Three', due to its last minute undoing of the soul storage. It was perhaps a little darker than that though, as characters state that many of the uploaded minds won't have a body to return to, giving the episode an implied body count at least. I can't have been the only one pondering whether any would return to a body that had already been buried or stored in a morgue?

The uploaders are also revealed to have only been working for the Great Intelligence, last seen in 'The Snowmen', with Celia Imrie's character reverting to a childhood state, clearly under the influence for a disturbing amount of time. I felt a little cheated that we didn't get Ian McKellen voicing the Intelligence again but it was instead represented by Richard E. Grant's character from 'The Snowmen', suggesting we may see more of them both.

Overall I think I enjoyed this episode, though it definitely had some issues. The slight lapses in logic and its tech angle feeling slightly out of touch was generally outweighed by the fun snappy dialogue and surprisingly good action sequences. Steven Moffat has stated that this was intended to be an action episode above all else, so while it's a partial success in that respect, it's a shame it couldn't have had a slightly better premise. I'm still feeling pretty positive about this second half of the season, which is a world away from my feelings at the end of the last half. I think it just proves that Amy and Rory's involvement had run its course and that a new companion can give the show some life again.

The Perils of Nostalgia

If you'd told me 5 years ago that there'd be new versions of Transformers, ThunderCats and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I'd probably have rolled my eyes in disbelief. If you'd then gone on to say that they'd almost all be miles ahead of their rubbish originals I'd probably have punched you. But one by one these have come to pass and I've slowly been forced to accept it (I'm of course thinking of Transformers: Animated when I write this, not the feature films).

Turtles has been the most recent revelation, as I've been quite enjoying the new computer animated show on Nickelodeon. This new series has been accompanied by a wave of nostalgia for the original series and a box set of the first two seasons was among my Christmas presents. To be honest I was stunned at how bad they were.

In my mind, The Shredder had always been an intimidating, badass villain but in the original series he's reduced to an incompetent villain of the week. Plus it's really hard to not hear Uncle Phil in his voice now. The Turtles themselves have very little consistent characterisation, Splinter is largely useless and the writers might as well have been flipping a coin to decide who wins each battle.

People always say that kids are pretty sharp and won't be fooled by rubbish products but in this case I think we were. The Turtles mania at the time was insane and we probably latched onto the design of the characters more than anything else. We would have made up our own stories and had fun with the toys while being drip fed an episode a week, with perhaps just a few people aware of their true comic book origins in those pre-internet days.

I'll accept that there have probably already been better versions since the original series but there just seems to be something special about this new series. I don't remember watching the mid-2000's cartoon as I would have just finished University and while the CG movie from a couple of years ago was okay, it's not really stuck with me. Here the character of each turtle is defined so well, especially when you compare it to the shallowness of the original series.

I'd always been a Donatello person in the past, with him basically being a geek like me but he now gets uncomfortably close to some of my own personality traits. Raphael's hot headed personality seems much better balanced than other incarnations so that he's still likeable and even Michaelangelo's goofy charm seems to work well here. Leonardo would probably come across as a bit of a dick if it wasn't for the fact that his whole inspiration is a Captain Kirk type figure from his favourite TV show. And perhaps most importantly of all, Splinter comes across as a true martial arts master, who wouldn't be out of place in a Kung fu film or Kill Bill Vol. 2.

The new ThunderCats has been an even harder pill to swallow as I was a huge fan of the original and learning later on that those involved with it went on to form Studio Ghibli, it had a pretty good pedigree when you think about it. I'd watched the entire thing again about a year before the announcement of a new series and it still felt like it held up reasonably well (though there were a few cracks). Similar to TMNT, they had a very scatter shot history and a lot of the characters didn't really have many defining traits.

When I saw the new series I had to gradually accept that this was a much better realisation of these characters, with a cohesive whole to its world that made a lot more sense. Oh and Snarf was sooo much better without a voice. I saw the show in fits and starts thanks to Cartoon Network's irregular schedule but it became very compelling and I saved a lot of the later episodes so that they could be watched in order. I really enjoyed how they pulled in other familiar characters and I was pretty satisfied with how the whole series ended.

I think in a sense it's logical for kids TV shows with a toy line to try and appeal to adults too, as they are the ones controlling the purse strings. I bet I must have pestered my parents for toys back in the day but if they sat down to watch the associated shows they would probably think "this is garbage" and they'd be right. It's surely an easier sell if everyone can find some enjoyment in the series toys are based on - heck, my wife keeps asking me if I want the new figures after hearing I led a deprived childhood of knock off Turtle toys.

It makes me wonder whether those making the shows look at it in this cynical kind of way or if there's just been a concious effort to make better shows. Either way I've learnt not to look back at childhood cartoons with rose tinted glasses, so I won't be instantly dismissive of the next reboot to come along. Unless it's Bucky O'Hare of course - that was legitimately awesome.

A 2012 Wrap up

My friend Stu recently posted a very honest look at his abandoned game projects of 2012. For one reason or another, I seem to have ended up with a lot of unfinished draft posts over this year - not exactly the same thing but I thought it would be interesting to take a look at what I haven't published and look at why I didn't feel like they made the cut. Hopefully it will also allow me to feel like I've aired my thoughts on these subjects, so that I can let go of the half finished versions cluttering up my post history. So without further ado...

This Means War

I saw this film quite early in the year and I think at the time, I was perhaps ready to give it an easy ride. It made me chuckle a couple of times and I wasn't quite sure how to criticise a comedy that's at least done its job once. Looking back on it after seeing more comedies this year, it pales into non-existence when you can count the funny moments on one hand.

In the end I think I didn't publish this because the film felt so slight overall. It didn't feel like something I could totally tear apart (though I did think they were lazy with Tom Hardy's character in the end) and there wasn't a huge amount to recommend about it either (Tom Hardy's paintball scenes were a clear highlight and the main part that made my wife and I laugh). A middle of the road film lead to a middle of the road write up and I guess I just didn't see the point of sharing it.

21 Jump Street

This was a film I really enjoyed at the time and was leagues ahead of This Means War in the laugh stakes alone. I kind of wasn't expecting to like it, situations where characters spend most of their time narrowly avoiding being found out more often than not just make me cringe. The way the film mocks the premise of adults pretending to be high school students perhaps helped to make it more palatable (and in a way is also making fun of so many actors playing characters much younger than themselves *cough* Amazing Spider-man *cough*).

I guess I got a bit hung up on what I didn't like when writing about it though, which seemed like very minor niggles. Firstly that the film couldn't seem to decide if it was trying to mock hollywood cliches and show that they're just not true in the real world or to completely live up to them. It spends a lot of time trying to set up the idea that it is set in reality and that ludicrous action scenes don't really happen and then forgets about it as the film goes on. You could say 'that's the joke' but it just felt a little lazy to throw away the real world consequences of these crazy actions when the repercussions could have been funny too.

It also seemed to have mixed messages about drug use - the whole premise of the film is that there are negative consequences to them but after setting things in motion they are never shown in a bad light again. The hilarious but ultimately tragic youtube video that introduces you to the effects of this new synthetic drug was constantly revisited for comedic effect, which felt slightly... disrespectful, even though it wasn't real. The film also seemed like it was building towards someone else suffering similar consequences from taking the drug but the situation never materialised. I couldn't decide if it was trying to make some kind of point about the drugs themselves not being intrinsically bad but that their illegality has more of a negative impact due to the people involved in their trade. I imagine I'm over thinking things there though and it was just done for what was funny.

Again, these all seem like minor issues and there was a lot to like in the film, including a surprising performance from Channing Tatum. But I just felt like these minor things detracted from the film as a whole, when it could have been more focussed and turned it into a really memorable film. Just perhaps not worth a whole blog post to whine about them.

Bridesmaids

I didn't actually start to write anything about this but it's been on my mind to mention it in relation to this years comedies. Obviously it's not from this year but it's certainly the funniest film I've seen all year. On top of that I just couldn't really find fault with it - working well as a cohesive whole and not overstaying its welcome. I have come across a few people who don't care for it but it seems to be an almost universally liked film and I feel slightly disappointed that I can't bring to mind much more detail to support why I thought it was so good.

A review of games reviews in the 90's

A trip home to pick up any remaining childhood belongings lead to me finding a large stack of old gaming magazines, mostly Sega Power and PC Zone. After reading though a few, I had the idea of writing about them in the same style - firstly attempting to create a mandatory 'hilarious' intro. I thought that I was trying too hard and that it wasn't really funny, though in a sense that may have been the perfect tribute.

I don't know that I had any great insights on what they included in reviews back then, they often seemed very vague and didn't really get across what made games fun. I also noted that 'those programmers' would always be the ones to be criticised for failings or praised for good features. This was probably not far from the truth back then but it did stand out in statements like "that animation must have taken some clever programming".

I was also surprised by how biased some of it seemed, with the hobbled Mega Drive version of Street Fighter 2 still scoring 94% and the future of 'full motion video' gaining Night Trap 84%. It's funny to look back on those 'photorealistic' games that had everyone so excited, when more average scoring games late in the system's history are the nuggets we'd remember today and almost anything on the Mega CD now looks like garbage. I was also going to question how much games journalism has changed in terms of heavily biased scores, with the events of last year proving 'not much at all'.

One Album Wonders

This was an idea for a regular feature so to speak, where I could go back and listen to records by bands who only ever made one album - or who only had one that was good at least. I suppose it's something I could still do, though I really don't get around to listening to music in depth anymore. You could also perhaps say that Jon Croshaw kind of stole my thunder, with his website Keep or Cull covering quite a similar idea with less of a narrow focus.

It was prompted by wanting to listen to One Love by Delakota again but when I finally got around to it, I found it a much less impressive record than I remembered. My youthful inexperience of Hip-Hop had perhaps left me with fonder memories than it deserved, with most of the album resembling a jam session over chunky beats. However 'The Rock', which was the song that brought them to my attention in the first place, still seemed as good as it ever was. I also discovered that their drummer now plays with the live incarnation of Gorillaz, which seemed kind of appropriate.

Expendables 2

Looking back I wrote more than I thought on this. I'm not sure if I didn't think what I was writing was good, if I felt like I'd missed the right moment to post about it or again if I just didn't care enough about it to finish it off.

I did feel a little out of step with critics though, with most suggesting that this was moving in the right direction compared to the first film. There's not much in it but personally I liked the first film just a little more - despite its rather slow and serious feel, when something did happen it seemed to stand out more. I think there was a better sense of cause and effect, with most of its little plotlines leading to a satisfying conclusion, whereas the sequel just felt like a bunch of stuff that happened.

Okay, so I suppose the death of Chris Hemsworth's character was supposed to be the main motivating factor in everything that followed but it was so blatantly telegraphed he might as well have had "Shoot Me" stuck on his back. This was kind of like the first film's Oscar reaching, tear jerking performance from Mickey Rourke, where it was trying to build up this big emotional involvement that it didn't really need. I can understand they wanted to show that Jean-Claude Van Damme was a right evil bastard but they should have had the balls to kill off someone in the main team who would have been unexpected (again, they wussed out on killing off Dolph Lundgren's character in the first one).

I'll always look back to Commando as the perfect 80's action film, how it manages to have constant action and quips throughout but still build up to an even more explosive ending. Expendables got the ending right and the sequel had more action throughout but it was definitely flagging by the end. Hearing that there wasn't originally going to be a final fight between Van Damme and Stallone seemed ridiculous, even Van Damme himself realised that getting blown up on an escaping helicopter wouldn't be a satisfying conclusion. As it stands, their fight wasn't bad but it certainly felt limited by what they could both do physically and didn't feel like Stallone got the upper hand fairly.

All of this lead to me being a bit disappointed by Van Damme's role, having had it built up to near legendary status beforehand. There's no doubt he was the best thing about the movie but he just wasn't in it enough, seeming to disappear for huge chunk of the movie. Maybe I'd appreciate his role more on a second viewing but I'm not exactly champing at the bit to see it again, nor am I holding my breath for Expendables 3. If I'm ever craving a classic action film then there's already plenty in my library.

Sinbad

This was a TV show that showed some initial promise but then went downhill really quickly. It's difficult to explain why I stuck with it to the end, I'm not sure if it was to see if it could redeem itself or if my wife and I were stuck in a chicken kind of situation, with neither of us wanting to speak up in case the other was committed to seeing it through.

The first warning signs came in an episode that tried to cram in backstory for every crew member at once. It made for a very confusing and unfocused story when a simpler concept was just screaming to be used - maybe it just needed to bump up the running time. There were a lot more episodes after this that had no clear purpose.

My biggest issue with it was that it did everything it needed to do, saw Sinbad go through a character arc of redemption and come to a dramatic series finale... but then just carried on going. The rest of the episodes felt pointless and lead to Sinbad going back on what he'd learned as the series continued. The actual end of the series should have been somewhere in the middle, as he should have come to terms with the death of his brother before he could even consider forgiving the man who killed him and in turn taking responsibility for the wrong he'd done.

Of course I don't think he had really done any wrong in the first place, with the mysterious Taryn (played by Orla Brady) hinted to be responsible for everything. There were plenty of occasions where her acting seemed to be totally abysmal but her bizarre shifts in character probably didn't help matters. By the end of the series she'd stacked up a fairly impressive body count but you were still expected to feel for her because she'd done it all in the name of returning her daughter from the land of the dead. Other characters would have been well within their rights to kill her earlier on in the series and it would have saved them an awful lot of trouble later on.

I feel bad to pick her out specifically though as in general none of the regular cast were anything to write home about, with their wildly varying accents not given a second thought. Even Timothy Spall guest starring as Death himself seemed to get dragged down into their milieu of bad acting. I'm not sure if it will get a second series but I certainly won't be watching.

Final Thoughts

At least a few of these posts I never quite finished because I felt like I'd waited too long after the event, which I've already decided I'm going to try and cut out from now on. Others I perhaps thought didn't quite warrant a full blog post and were only for my own satisfaction, so from now on I think those kind of things will either be scribbled in a notebook or on 750words.com. That way if I do think they're worth sharing I can retrieve them but otherwise they're effectively thrown into the Abyss. Hopefully some of that might have been of interest to someone and at least there probably won't be another one next year...

Doctor Who: The Snowmen (2012)

As I started thinking about writing something on this, I found it hard to recall much about it plotwise and on the whole it felt pretty simple. But I knew that I found it enjoyable and it somehow gave me more hope about future episodes than anything so far this season. It was full of great moments that would make you chuckle but didn't exactly stick with me (though others remembered more than me, I was later reminded of such great lines as "If you try to escape I will obliterate you - may I take your coat?").

We initially find the Doctor withdrawn from the world and vowing to never help people again after the loss of Amy Pond. I never really bought this idea but in a sense you just had to treat it as a starting point and go with it. And you could say that while the Doctor has lost companions before, Matt Smith's incarnation has always had Amy, so who knows how he would respond this time. If this little mini-arc was already planned out then it also perhaps explains the overly tragic nature of the previous episode.

It's actually probably a good thing that there was plenty of preview footage around to make you aware of this episode's focus (including the 'minisode' shown during Children In Need), otherwise I might have spent more time questioning it. If you saw the Children In Need segment, Jenna-Louise Coleman's matter of fact 'Yes' response to Matt Smith's question of whether he would save the day made me laugh as we all knew it would be true.

The episode as a whole wasn't completely predictable though, as it gradually gave out hints about Jenna's recurring role in the series. For a little while it seemed that she could be a completely different character to the one seen in 'Asylum of the Daleks', a little like Freema Agyeman's first role in 'Army of Ghosts'. The gradual hints of her former self were well placed and added some intrigue to the proceedings. As it progressed I started to wonder whether she would survive the episode and I'm still wondering whether she will ever survive one.

I thought that she worked well as a counterpoint to the Doctor, with some good lines that marked her out as unique among companions (her dragging him around and asking unexpected questions when the Tardis is finally revealed). Much of the episode focussed around her since the Doctor was unwilling to interfere and I would agree with some people's suggestion that the Doctor should have almost been absent from it entirely, only making an appearance near the end.

So on the whole it was a slightly strange episode that feels hard to justify liking. It's ending wasn't exactly what you'd expect from a Christmas special but it turned a tragic situation into something positive. Even the fact that the ending came about almost totally by accident couldn't put a dampener on it for me. A new Tardis design, Richard E Grant, killer snowmen and a fun cast of aliens - what else could you ask for an enjoyable post-Turkey distraction?

Hebburn (2012)

While there'd been a fair amount of local radio buzz about this show, I only really made the connection the day before its first episode (or rather my wife did) that it was written by a stand up comic we'd seen recently. Written by and featuring Jason Cook, Hebburn is a comedy inspired at least partly by his own life in the South Tyneside town. I went to see Jason as part of a charity night along with a great line-up of other comedians, so not really being familiar with him I made sure to look him up online beforehand. I have to say that some of his previous TV appearances didn't really prepare me for how vicious he could be as part of an unreserved stand up gig - one heckler put down I'll always remember seemed to sum it up quite well: "Shut up or I'll fucking destroy you with words".

Unsurprisingly there was little of this trademark venom here, with his character Ramsey being something of an ineffectual rogue; selling pirate DVDs bought from a kid who had moments earlier decried him as a 'Wazzock'. The show promises to focus on the family of prodigal son Jack (played by another North East comedian Chris Ramsey) and his Jewish girlfriend/secret vegas bride Sarah. Some of the build up to the show described it as being like a North East Royle Family but (and I mean this with no hint of malice) it didn't really feel in the same league as that. While the Royle Family took itself very seriously and you always felt that the characters could be real, this established quite early on that it would be much larger than life and tend to exaggerate some stereotypes in the quest for comedy.

Despite this, I felt that it was most successful when dropping in very well observed little nuggets of real life. As an adopted Geordie Son myself, the immediate warm family welcome for Sarah felt very familiar. As was the assertion that somewhere as close as York was a vaguely exotic 'Southern' place (apparently Liverpool isn't in the North West). Perhaps best of all was the simple resolution to a discussion about helping out with the family, with Jack realising immediately that his father asking for help meant the situation was important enough to just get done, no questions asked.

Vic Reeves (using his real name Jim Moir) was a bit of a revelation to me as the father of the family. I've never been the biggest fan of his brand of comedy in general, so along with numerous reports that he could sometimes not be the nicest person in real life, I had kind of been a little soured towards him. But here he seemed to play the role pitch perfect, reigning in his personality just enough to create someone who was clearly still a joker but knew how to be serious too. I think sometimes you have to remember to try and divorce an actors individual performance from what else you know or expect from them, which suggests to me that he has done very well in the role for me to overlook all of that.

Watching it a day after it aired, I couldn't avoid hearing impressions from the local populace on the radio in the meantime. While it elicited infectious cackles from some, it seemed to draw the ire of the town's local councillor at the very least. I couldn't quite decide what to make of his viewpoint, on the one hand wondering if he had a sense of humour at all but also guessing that even if it had blown him away, he probably couldn't say so publicly. I'm not sure exactly how much I'd agree with his opinion that it just played up to false stereotypes - especially being written by someone from the area, I don't doubt that most characters had some basis in truth. I think it showed enough promise that it would be foolish to dismiss it so early on and given Jason Cook's description of the show as a whole, hopefully the heart of it will be the positive connections that people have - even if he did rather deliberately subvert this by the end of the first episode. Given that I never really expected it to be something I would feel compelled to write about, I think it must be doing something right though.

Doctor Who: The Angels Take Manhattan (2012)

My first piece of disappointment with this episode came even before the title sequence. I'm going to launch straight into spoilers but before the show aired I heard rumour that a certain New York landmark would be revealed as an angel. This sounded like a great idea, with the fact that it had never moved before being covered up by the fact that under normal circumstances there would always be at least one person watching it. Others suggested that perhaps some kind of city wide blackout would finally allow it the chance to move, which the episode would slowly lead up to (or alternatively it would never actually move, remaining a disturbing threat). But in the end there was no clever reasoning, no justification for the entire city missing the Statue of Liberty taking a stroll up the Hudson river, showing that not much thought had been put into it past the original idea. The final words of the opening's Private Detective really sum the whole thing up - "You gotta be kiddin' me!"

While this particular aspect went against everything we already knew about the Weeping Angels (and seemingly served no real purpose), the Angels still worked well for most of the episode. The last episode to feature them seemed to abandon their penchant for sending people back in time so it was nice to see this idea revisited, with the additional caveat that they didn't always have to send people back in time. Mostly they lived up to their usual creepy nature - I could watch almost any situation you could think of where keeping them in view is somehow difficult and find it terrifying. Rory's ordeal with a packet of matches was especially good, even if it should probably have lasted a much shorter time (possibly down to the baby angels seemingly mischievous nature).

How Rory ended up in this situation was a little confusing though, with River Song's sudden appearance in 1938 seeming rather inexplicable. She also initially felt more like her brainwashed incarnation, either being ignorant of Rory's fate or deliberately putting him in danger for no particular reason. You could say that she was just playing up to her pulp novel role but at this point she had no idea she was going to be the star of the story she would write later. It could also perhaps be put down to her inquisitive nature, which lead to her finding herself in the clutches of a chained and weakened Angel.

Bringing the group back together again required a rather ingenious trip to ancient China, which like some of the short trips in the last episode I liked its rather throwaway nature given how convoluted a plan it was. This seemed to be the last great plan the Doctor had this episode though, afterwards seeming almost paralysed by the knowledge of how future events must play out. His joy followed by disappointment at River's method of escape from the Angel was quite believable. I'm not sure I always like the strict view the show takes about pre-ordained events but it perhaps leads to a more consistent universe than one where changing the future constantly splits us into a whole new parallel universe.

However the events that follow see Amy and Rory determined to change his fate, as the Angels plan to trap victims in an endless time loop to feed off their potential life energy. Rory witnesses his future self dying, with his aged counterpart surviving just long enough to see Amy again after years alone (a nice reversal of 'The Girl Who Waited' I thought). In a way I was kind of surprised that this section was still effective given the amount of times that Rory has seemingly been killed off in the past. Needing to create a paradox to break the Angel's cycle, the only way out seems to be for Rory to take his own life, creating the impossible situation of him dying twice. With no guarantee that this plan will work or that they will survive it, Amy eventually decides to take the leap off the building with him, as the Doctor and River look on.

As it turns out they do survive the creation of this paradox but any happiness is short lived, as a surviving Angel zaps Rory back in time, literally setting his death in New York in stone. The smug smile on the Angel's face suggested to me that it knew it would gain a second victim, with Amy unable to leave Rory to die alone, choosing instead to be touched by the Angel and be re-united. I felt that this was always the way Amy and Rory needed to step out of the show, that as long as they were together they could live without the Doctor but sadly I think its implementation left an awful lot of plotholes in its wake. The dialogue surrounding this felt very rushed and confusing, personally I thought that the Doctor meant he could never visit New York again in any time - before taking a jog through Central Park to retrieve his last book page. And there's probably any number of alternate ways that Amy and Rory could have met up with the Doctor, even if he couldn't make it back to New York circa 1938. It has to be said that I didn't immediately think of them seeking him out again though, instead having the opinion that they might take this opportunity to go on and live a relatively normal life.

The question is whether it needed to give that false hope of them surviving the paradox, especially when it had already made the same point earlier about the impossibility of changing your fate once it is known. I think some simple changes could have resulted in an ending that essentially said the same thing but would feel less jarring. Perhaps just have the Doctor reappear in the graveyard after the paradox, with the gravestone now listing Amy and Rory's names together. It's strange that so many of this seasons episodes have been criticized for resolving too quickly, when this one perhaps didn't need this extra twist. I think it would have been better to spend more time on the Doctor's grief and also give a glimpse of Amy and Rory's life in the past, just to highlight that it was more of a bitter-sweet ending to their story. In fact, someone has written an excellent obituary imagining the rest of their story, which may not be canonical but certainly seemed fitting to me.

In the end it seems slightly strange that this episode was such a standalone one. Watching the previous episodes many people picked up on aspects that seemed important but did not have any relevance on the Pond's final exit. For me, the extreme fear the Doctor showed in previous episodes didn't fit right and I'm left wondering if perhaps this season's episodes were not in order from the Doctor's viewpoint. This could actually tie together with him perhaps cheating time and fitting in one more adventure with Amy and Rory - while also thinking about starting up a gang. That's not to say that I think we will see Amy and Rory again, their exit seemed very final and should probably remain that way. If anything it's perhaps been a shame that there wasn't more for them to do this season, feeling more and more like they were being dragged back in to the Doctor's world, when being set up with a nice house and a Jaguar E-Type already felt like a rather natural end to their story last season.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Legends of the Dark Knight

I was inspired by Liam Ellison's recent piece on Batman's cartoon history, to write something of my own on the subject, centering around one episode in particular. Legends of the Dark Knight was an episode from The New Batman Adventures, a series which was the successor to Batman: The Animated Series and also sadly one I didn't get to watch during its original run. I'm not actually sure whether it was shown in the UK but I would hazard a guess that it was shown on satellite cartoon channels, which I didn't have access to. This episode became a cult favourite among fans though and I first heard of it via someone mentioning a sequence in it mocking the Joel Schumacher Batman films (found at around 3:50 in the second youtube video). The basic premise of it is that three kids tell stories about what they think Batman is really like, an idea which was used again in Batman: Gotham Knight.

What stands out the most about the first story now is that it's pretty much a prototype episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold and it comes as no surprise that it was drawn by James Tucker who went on to produce that show. I'm a big fan of The Brave and the Bold, which I wasn't expecting when I first heard about it. While being lighter in tone than most recent takes on Batman, it has always felt like a love letter to fans of Batman through the ages. I perhaps wasn't in on the joke when I first watched the 60's TV version of Batman but there is clearly a lot of love for his campier incarnations too. And on top of that it was full of references that would make devout fans chuckle while remaining focused on simple standalone stories. It's the kind of show that makes me wish I had kids to watch it with to see the different levels we would appreciate it on.

It also includes a variety of DC characters, some of which are less well known than others and puts an interesting spin on almost all of them. In particular, the show's take on Aquaman as a pompous, lovable boaster has taken hold as the definitive version for me and I'm now thrown off whenever I see other versions that aren't quite as "Outrageous!". I also loved their version of Bat-Mite as the ultimate Batman fanboy, regularly using modern internet catchphrases and generally acting like a real life super fan. His involvement in the epic fourth wall breaking final episode takes quite a satirical look at the whole production process and sends the whole thing off on a perfect note. No wonder my wife bought me the figurine of him shown below... and I didn't even mention the infuriatingly catchy songs of the Music Meister, as voiced by Neil Patrick Harris.

The second story in Legends of the Dark Knight is also pretty relevant right now, as it is pretty much a word for word adaptation of parts of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, which is currently being adapted into a full length animated movie. It gives a great glimpse of what we can hopefully expect from the forthcoming adaptation, something I remain cautiously optimistic about. In the recent trailer Peter Weller doesn't seem quite as good a fit for the voice of an older Batman as Michael Ironside in this short and personally I would have loved to see Kevin Conroy take on this role, which would have been a fitting end to his career voicing Bats. I've already had to start dealing with the fact that Conroy is no longer the definitive voice of Batman though, as other animated films have started to bring in a new cast.

I could actually really do with watching the animated version of Batman: Year One again, the most recent adaptation of one of Miller's stories, as I find it difficult to remember whether I actually liked it or not. It was always going to have a pretty tough time winning me over as I think Year One is probably my favourite standalone comic book of all time and I already felt like there was an animated version I could play in my head. The story itself also influenced aspects of Batman Begins and on the whole it feels more grounded than some of Miller's more over the top creations. The art by David Mazzucchelli is also fantastic, I love how it captures just enough detail, while at the same paying homage to the style of the early comics Batman was born from. As an introduction to comics for almost anyone I find it hard to fault.

The closing story of this episode finds the storytellers themselves involved with Batman, mistaking the arsonist Firefly for him and stumbling into one of his schemes. While I was a little disappointed that there wasn't another homage to a different era, this does work well in tying the whole episode together. Apparently there were initially plans for an additional story focussed on the early '70s Batman comics but it was decided that the art style of Neal Adams was difficult to adapt for animation. In the final scene, while the kids still argue over who was right about Batman, I can't help but think that it cements the idea that almost all of the incarnations of Batman have something to offer. Even the kid who thought that Batman wasn't human, might find some evidence to back up his theory...