BBC1 - 28th June 2008 - 7.10pm

Poor old Wilf. All he wants to do is join in the nearly 14 billion conversations that were made by 12 million users of Skype by the end of last year but Sylvia wouldn't let him even have a web cam as he innocently quips, 'she said they're naughty.' I suppose in a way they are but if it means Harriet Jones can pull together all the conversations that matter in the world then, bugger it, Wilf should have a bit of naughty even if it is to allow Rose an 'I just called to say I love you' moment.

The Stolen Earth is another chapter in Russell T Davies' ongoing fascination with forms of mass communication. Here, he's utterly beguiled by sensory communication using telephony, text messaging, video conferencing and social networking and how shared interpretations affect storytelling styles and propel the narrative. There is a sense here of a society's huge engagement with media products and its capacity to intervene in and contribute to the course and content of the communicative process. Our heroes are participants in a structured process of symbolic transmission where constraints such as time and space are reordered and eliminated. Hence, we have all the major characters talking on phones and via the internet with that hugely symbolic moment of mass messaging the Doctor's mobile just simply to get him away from the rather dull sub-plot with the Shadow Proclamation and bring him back into the action. At one point, I thought Davies might even be so cheeky as to ask the millions watching to 'vote' and choose their own, or any, plot. Because, let's face it, there wasn't really one much in evidence here.

It's the skilled art of taking information transfer and adding on a whole set of sensuous economics to provide a strung together series of character presences and big action moments and making them work just by themselves. There's a huge amount of crowd pleasing, and fan pleasing, moments in The Stolen Earth and they're used, in the absence of plot, to get us to the apex of revelation. That cliffhanger. Those of us 'in the know' were aware of what the cliffhanger would entail but even so it was an enormously grand, epic and funny ride to get to that closing scream of the theme and the rolling credits. Having said that, most of the audience will have read their papers or been on the internet and are perfectly aware that David Tennant will be in the Christmas Special and thus, the cliffhanger is a bit of bluff on the production team's side and the question we're all asking now is how does the Tenth Doctor get to remain as the Tenth Doctor despite that oncoming regeneration? It's a deliciously manufactured tension.



So as the episode strings together the Super Friends of the Doctor (the 'children of time') we also get to see Davies indulging in another of his favourite storytelling devices - the comic book. The power of comic books, scene-to-scene, to take great leaps in time or space is immediately evident in those typewritten captions 'Far Across The Universe' 'New York' 'Cardiff' that close off and reopen narrative in rapid succession. There are the illogical non-sequiturs of comic books that produce a weird alchemy in the viewers minds in even the most jarring of combinations. So we get Richard Dawkins popping up with a bit of pseudo science juxtaposed with Paul O'Grady being watched by Ianto in the Torchwood Hub in a typical piece of Davies flippancy and knowingness that relieves the very palpable tension but also suggests that Davies himself has been at the furniture polish whilst writing this script. He emulates the comic book team ups and the grand narratives of stuff like DC's Crisis On Infinite Earths. The twelve part comic book series dating back to 1985 was not just an exercise in bringing together their stock range of superheroes in one gigantic meta-narrative but it was also an attempt to tidy up a 55 year long continuity. I do get the sense that this is also Davies clearing his desk and having a go at wrapping up narratives whilst also giddily chucking lots of references out to the audience. And he does it with the customary recycling of many of his more familiar narrative tropes that work in both subtle and crass ways. It's his Greatest Hits compilation CD and this phenomenon of observing the parts and perceiving the whole has a name. It's called closure. And this sense of sprawling comic book sagas and Greatest Hits compilations are a closure of sorts on Davies' reign.

OK. French critical theory time. It's a bit of a tradition. Don't sigh. When Harriet Jones emerges from the ether via an untraceable sub-wave signal and starts to gather together the 'children of time' I think we get a sense of an alternate Shadow Proclamation being formed. It's a strange little emergency government - and yes, that 'Harriet Jones - Former Prime Minister' joke is taken to its logical conclusion here - and Michel Foucault noted that the science of government developed out of an earlier conception of economy as the art of managing family and household. Harriet gathers together the 'family' of the series, past and present, and grapples with ' how to introduce economy - the correct manner of managing individuals, goods, wealth within the family and of making the family fortunes prosper - how to introduce this meticulous attention of the father towards his family into the management of the state'. For Foucault, governmentality thus comes to depend upon the family and household more as an instrument of government than as a model for government. The trick here is that as the family comes together to form an ad-hoc government it's being done in the absence of the Doctor. The Doctor's a bit busy having shouting matches with a woman in a hairnet - the Ena Sharples of the Shadow Proclamation - in order to find his way back into the centre of the narrative. And he does that with a virtual, Skype powered community and ensemble mythology. The business of fathers and their relationship to their children is also an underlying theme too with Davros and the Doctor as symbolic opposites where the Daleks represent a physical, non-humanoid extension of their creator and the ensemble companions embody the extension of the humanistic ideals of the Doctor.



The script keeps the Doctor pretty much out of the way, trying to solve the mystery of where the earth has gone and finally working out the real reason for the disappearing bees, until the closing act and for that massive cliffhanger bluff. Giving everyone screen time is problematic here but only because we're seeing part one of a two part narrative. So the roles that Sarah and Martha will play isn't yet clear and unfortunately they are are slightly short-changed here. I don't really know how effective it was to bring the worlds of Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures crashing into this but somehow the script copes with it all and manages to leapfrog between all out action, comedy and tragedy with all the characters. It's great that Harriet's redemption is addressed and she doesn't capitulate on her original decision to shoot down the Sycorax ship whilst standing in the path of Dalek extermination. As one moment in a succession of great moments, it makes up for the missing plot and The Stolen Earth is, in the end, closure on a huge, giddy, entertaining scale. A fairground ride with so many cool, de rigeur rides that in the end you do feel a little nauseous.



Julian Bleach superbly channelling Michael Wisher, Briggs camping it up with the utterly loopy Caan, the massed ranks of Daleks, the Dalek Supreme, the Independence Day style visuals are the massive wheels moving this juggernaut but there is still room for the wonderful laugh out loud scenes with Wilf paintballing a Dalek, Sarah telling Mr. Smith to pack in the fanfares and tons and tons of continuity references - everything from the Medusa Cascade, mentions to Donna that there had been "something on her back", Mr. Copper, the airborne aircraft carrier Valiant, the Defabricator gun, and the crossovers with the other series with mentions of Sarah Jane's encounter with the Slitheen, the deaths of Torchwood personnel Toshiko Sato and Owen Harper. Excuse me whilst I have, what is commonly referred to as, a fangasm. Phew.

Get through all that with your nerves in shreds and you've still got the question of that regeneration, the weird drumming sound as Donna stares into space and the exact nature of Davros' plan to look forward to. Russell has emphatically cleared his desk and by sheer dint of his personality has had the balls to get away with this epic. It might not stand up to repeat viewings but as a 'watching it live' experience you couldn't help but get carried away by the sheer gobsmacking giddiness of it all.

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Previous reviews:

Turn Left
Midnight
Forest Of The Dead
Silence In The Library
The Unicorn And The Wasp
The Doctor's Daughter
The Poison Sky
The Sontaran Stratagem
The Planet Of The Ood
The Fires Of Pompeii
Partners In Crime

BBC1 - 21st June 2008 - 6.40pm

In William Burroughs' Naked Lunch, where 'nothing is true, and everything is permitted' insects are symbolic of authoritarian control. They allow the central character access to the alternative dimension of Interzone. It's clear that Russell T Davies' hallucinatory Turn Left, whilst a wholesale revision of his ideas for the entire series, is concerned with Donna Noble's own fateful journey into the Interzone of her own life and times with the Doctor. Her possession by the time beetle also gives Davies an opportunity to boldy offer up a kind of 'state of the nation' address and a rather pessimistic view of humanity that he first articulated this year in Midnight.

He views contemporary society as a global village under constant attack and in Turn Left he takes many of the submerged political subtexts in his work for the series and sets them centre stage. His argument here is that we must not be blind to significant and insignificant actions and he illustrates this by removing, from the entire Donna Noble narrative of The Runaway Bride and Series 4, the active symbol of the Doctor. When you take the Doctor out of events unjustifiable choices become a reality and chaos ensues. Davies is not only echoing Edward Lorenz's Chaos Theory and the predestination paradox of It's A Wonderful Life but he's also taking the personal context of an episode like Father's Day and giving it a universal scale.

The end point of history (and here I'm going to use a bit of Baudrillard so those of you with a nervous disposition around French postmodernist thought had better skip this paragraph) is seen here as a collapse of universes vast and small - from the breakdown between worlds that allows Rose to intercept Donna to the very bleak loss of hope within the Noble family itself. Baudrillard argued that by the end of the 20th Century we no longer actually believe in utopias and that historic moments, like 9/11 for example, only petrify our societies further. Our sense of forward progress, a belief in history continuing was, he believed, just an illusion. In Turn Left Donna is forced to turn away from history 'in progress', with none of the crises of her adventures having been resolved, and she plunges into a regressive history where, metaphorically speaking, she will never pass on into the future.

Davies also postulates, cleverly, that the effects of Donna's history go in two directions: not only does it put an end to time in the future, where the Doctor declares it to be the 'end of the universe', but it also exhausts itself in the obsessional revision of the events of the past, from the Racnoss invasion through to the Sontaran stratagem. The ultimate revision is the crash of the Titanic into Buckingham Palace and the footage of which Donna is convinced is from a 'sequel' and thus a clever in-joke on Voyage Of The Damned itself by Davies. Donna's wrong turn is equivalent to a non-occurrence of memory - equivalent to a non-occurrence of current history. As part of this non-occurrence we hear of the deaths of Sarah Jane, Martha Jones and the remaining members of Torchwood. It's almost as if Davies is saying that Donna wipes out the very series and stories he created for them too. This destruction of history does have a final trajectory and it reminds me of Arthur C. Clarke's story, The Nine Billion Names of God which is in the same way about hastening the end of history as a result of recording the many names of God. In the story the stars go out, one by one, and in Turn Left, Donna understands that, as the stars go out, her own history and her death, have become unavoidable. She must go back into history in order to reclaim it for herself and the Doctor.

As we see the consequences of a hopeless and, could we even say, Godless world where the Doctor is dead, Davies script concentrates on the smaller drama of the Noble family. We see Donna as she was in The Runaway Bride, bolshy and gobby, and yet the Doctor's demise and the arrival of Rose still ensure that she is transformed into one of the bravest characters the series has ever seen. As this journey progresses, the Noble family become representative of an audience struggling to make sense of a modern world where human rights are abused and eroded ('we can't even vote'), immigrants are deported or held in camps, nationalism becomes an excuse for oppression ('England for the English') and the relationships between family members shatter through poverty and a lack of faith in each other. I think here that it is worth highlighting the brilliant performances from Jacqueline King as Sylvia and Bernard Cribbins as Wilf. Just as Love And Monsters superbly expanded the character of Jackie Tyler, this script allowed us to see an emotionally drained Sylvia and a disillusioned Wilf. Cribbins was particularly moving as Wilf recalled the use of labour camps during wartime and his fear of history repeating itself. Particularly effective is the scene with Sylvia, in close up, seemingly shell shocked by events, contrasted with an out of focus Donna who resigns herself to her complete redundancy - '...suppose I've always been a disappointment'.

And then we come to Catherine Tate. She was stunning. Her ability to articulate the choices that Donna must make, from the mother-daughter arguing that informs her possessed self to take a different direction to the final sacrifice where she throws herself in front of the lorry, ensured that the entire episode was a completely satisfying emotional journey for Donna in and of itself. Her conviction that she will make a difference by traveling back in time and won't die is full of inevitable tragedy and her chemistry with Billie Piper for that scene was spot on. She also provided much of the humour in this bleakest of episodes, the scene where she's sacked and packs up her desk being particularly funny. Piper wasn't as impressive, unfortunately, and seemed to spend much of the episode trying to break in a new set of teeth. However, by the last half she had improved and was effective as a symbolic Doctor like figure working with UNIT and trying to get Donna to accept her fate. The scenes on the bench and in the circle of mirrors were superbly played - 'the whole world is stinking...' and 'I'm nothing special' with the ' You're gonna die' coda giving both actresses some very poignant moments to play.

As these events for the Noble family play out and Donna continues to meet Rose, we are kept aware of the time beetle's presence through some chillingly evocative sound effects and the reactions of people around her. However, the animatronic version of the creature isn't terribly convincing and this was further compounded by the comparison to the Metebelis spider in the accompanying Confidential. Slightly worrying that an effect from 1974 is better than one in 2008. Murray Gold's music was also understated where it needed to be, often quite funereal, and made use of established themes for Rose and Bad Wolf. The music for the scene where Donna enters the circle of mirrors - 'it's a time machine' - was particularly effective and shows that he's back on form and that bit of military fanfare as the Italian neighbours are driven away to the camps was a little stroke of genius.

That final Bad Wolf revelation provided an immensely satisfying punch to the episode and a solid segue into the finale as well as building up the meta-narrative of the last four series. Turn Left can't simply be dismissed just as a fanwanky prelude to the two part finale or as a budget saving, empty clips show. It's far, far too good for that. In fact it doesn't put a stroke wrong, Piper's uneven performance and 'Ringo' the beetle aside, and very beautifully emphasises the power of the absent Doctor as a unifying force for good, protector of humanity and of history itself, the equally special qualities of Donna as his companion and the sheer scale of Russell T Davies bravura gameplan.

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Previous reviews:

Midnight
Forest Of The Dead
Silence In The Library
The Unicorn And The Wasp
The Doctor's Daughter
The Poison Sky
The Sontaran Stratagem
The Planet Of The Ood
The Fires Of Pompeii
Partners In Crime

Charlton Heston has earned himself a special place in science fiction cinema. Not only for the outstanding performance in the equally outstanding original Planet Of The Apes but also for his early 1970s action heroics in Soylent Green and The Omega Man.

The Omega Man is a deliciously entertaining cult B movie and Heston plays Robert Neville, a scientist who has survived germ warfare and lives a lonely but violent life in what remains of Los Angeles. He manages to develop a vaccine to the plague but not before a gang of vampire-like mutants set out to destroy all that remains of the modern technological society. There's a semi-religious analogy going on in the film and for the time it was pretty right on with its inter-racial relationship between Neville and a black woman, fellow survivor Lisa, played by Rosalind Cash.

Perhaps it now has a camp appeal but there are some rather good action sequences and the scenes of a deserted Los Angeles are exceptional. Anthony Zerbe also provides Heston with a wonderfully satanic foil as the leader of the albino mutants, Matthias. It also not too subtly echoes the hippy concerns of the late 1960s and the worries over how technology would bring down society and enforce a return to communal living. You could even extend the themes of the film now to encompass the AIDS crisis and the fundamentalist fervour that it too has generated. It is both a film about a bygone era and one perversely echoing the oncoming crises of the future.

One of the outstanding elements of the film is the original music composed by Ron Grainer. Grainer is, of course, familiar to us all as the composer of the themes for Steptoe And Son, Doctor Who, Tales Of The Unexpected and The Prisoner. Bear in mind his work on McGoohan's wonderful 1960s allegory when approaching the music for The Omega Man. The flaring brass sections and the memorable melody line from that theme are all echoed in his work for the 1971 film.

What you get is a gorgeously eclectic cocktail of symphonic rock, folk, rhumba, lounge music and some great aural, often atonal experiments with electronics, waterchimes, congas and brass that flirt with the melodic intensity and urgency of The Prisoner theme and a weird, achingly sad riff on Greensleeves. There are a number of themes and motifs that are spread throughout the tracks and that turn up in various guises - rhumba versions on 'Surprise Party' that have a lovely organ bit that's just like something Air would do - big bold brass versions on 'Needling Neville', for example. Then we have light, frothy cocktail jazz with 'Swinging At Neville's' and by contrast the electronic experimentalism of 'The Spirits Still Linger' and 'Where Did Lisa Go'. And it's all beautifully arranged and highly memorable.

The centre piece of the soundtrack is probably the six minute plus 'On The Tumbril' which seems to encapsulate all the motifs at once in a really dizzying piece of bravura composition. It is at once big action movie sound and discordant electronics in one neat package. The charging brass and strange electronic palettes are quite lovely and his superb scoring for strings and woodwind, in 'Richie On The Roof' for instance make this one of Grainer's major triumphs in composition and use of sound. Yes, it has its moments of cheese with the rather treacly music for the film's bittersweet conclusion but you have to admire the breadth of Grainer's ideas here. Yet it is largely forgotten despite it providing huge value through repeat listening.

It's a truly magnificent score and it's melancholic aura is further enhanced by the inclusion of Grainer's version of Max Steiner's In A Lonely Place which plays over the opening pre- titles sequence and versions of Round Midnight and All Through The Night nicely augmenting the themes of loneliness and loss in the film and Grainer's original compositions.

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Continuing through to the end of Sunday 22nd June, this inaugural showcase of regional, national and international contemporary design is well worth a visit. It encompasses furniture, glass, ceramics, jewellery, textiles, fashion and much, much more and we hope it is the first of many design shows that will become part of Liverpool's creative renaissance.

Tickets available at Design Show Liverpool

SkyHD - 17th June 2008 - 9.00pm

Oh, look. It's Gaeta. He's back, minus a leg and being a clumsy sod on the bridge. Sorry. I've missed him. Right, back to the episode. For a mid-season finale it managed to get back to the very heart of the series: the journey to Earth. In fact it seemed to happen all rather too quickly and after some far more satisfying, much deserved reveals.

As the basestar jumped back to the fleet, D'Anna, played with steely ruthlessness by Lucy Lawless, started laying down the rules. A hostage situation develops in which the fleet will hand over the Final Five in exchange for Roslin, Adama and the other crew members. There was that marvellous scene where D'Anna arrives on the Galactica and immediately twigs who the already revealed four are. And it was obvious that selfish old Tory would immediately jump ship. Of the four she's the one most convinced by her Cylon status and desperately wants to join her sisters and brothers. Get rid, I say.

As the tension mounts in this very satisfying episode, Tigh finally confesses his Cylon status to Adama. It's a wonderful scene between Eddie Olmos and Michael Hogan and lived up to its promise. How long have we waited for this? And Olmos does rage and betrayal very well. Adama smashes himself up and gets very drunk. Lee has to come in and sort the old man out whilst also calling the Cylons bluff by threatening to chuck Tigh out the airlock. Pity it wasn't Tory - she deserves it more.

Meanwhile, Anders, Tyrol and Tigh start hearing that crackling radio tuning in and out. They really must get some new batteries in it. How the hell do they expect to hear music? And as Anders and Tyrol are led to Kara's Viper, as the source, they get arrested and lined up for 'eating space' duty by a twitchy Lee Adama. Kara figures out that the cojoining of the basestar and the four Cylons is revealed as a signal to Earth. It's so simple when you know how. The most ridiculous bit of this is that she basically sprints several lengths of the ship to finally burst in on Lee and prevent him from spacing the Cylons. Darlin', just pick up the phone! That was a silly scene and a weak attempt to rack up the tension.

Kara seems to convince all and sundry that it is indeed a signal to Earth. You would be sceptical, I have to say. She is mad, after all. D'Anna shakes on a truce whilst looking as if she's sucking on ten lemons at once and off we go. Big visual effects sequence of the fleet jumping to Earth, very conveniently in one jump. How many bloody times did the basestar have to jump to reach the fleet again last week? Lovely shots of the fleet with shining Earth and backlit by the sun. Everyone cheers and hugs and the like. Bottom lips are trembling as they all congratulate each other. For one minute it looks like Lee is gonna jump on a table and rip all his clothes off. Oooohhh, yes please! What a heartwarming scene...yeah, right, we all knew there was going to be the bitterest of all pills to swallow, yes? This was just too darned easy.

Off they all trot down to the surface. Oh, it's grim. Oh, it's radioactive. Oh, they're back to looking miserable again, especially D'Anna and Tory who both look like they could spit razor blades. And look at the state of the place...oh, no...'you damned dirty whoever you are...you've blown it all to hell!' Yes, Planet Of The Apes...consider yourself totally ripped off! A fitting 9/11 coda if ever I saw one. I didn't gasp in shock. I just sort of went...oh.



A good episode, memorable for many of the plot threads getting tied up and the four Cylons coming out of the closet and those terrific scenes between Olmos and Hogan and later between Olmos and Bamber. Well paced too, compared to some of the really uneaven episodes this season where for a while I thought they'd mislaid everything else as well as the plot. Please also put your hands together for Bear McCreary's incidental music which was utterly magnificent in this episode, full of Asian and Celtic harmonies and some lush, killer strings and his trademark drums.

But a somewhat odd conclusion. Yes, D'Anna, 'where do we go from here?' January 2009 is gonna be a long wait.

Previous reviews:
The Hub
Sine Qua Non
Guess What's Coming To Dinner?
Faith
The Road Less Traveled
Escape Velocity
The Ties That Bind
He That Believeth In Me & Six Of One


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Robert Fuest's barnstormingly elegant horror flick from 1971 has often been highly regarded by fans of early 1970s British Gothic cinema. The tale of a hideously deformed surgeon searching out and killing the doctors that operated on his wife with visitations of Biblical plagues is best remembered for a mesmerising performance from Vincent Price, lavish period design and, for our purposes, the enchanting, ethereal and melancholic music of Basil Kirchin.

Basil was held in great esteem by jazz musicians and their immediate circle. He was a talented drummer and composer who worked in his father's band which went onto record with Decca and Parlophone with producer George Martin. The band toured the country, accompanying signers like Sarah Vaughan and Billy Eckstine. Basil took over the band, after his father was involved in a car crash, and played regular residencies in Edinburgh and in Manchester.

When the big band sound dwindled away in the mid-1950s, Basil went on his travels to India and Australia. In 1961, he began to write music for films, including The Shuttered Room (1967), The Strange Affair (1968), I Start Counting (1969), The Abominable Dr Phibes (1971) and The Mutations (1973). Whilst the films might now be considered B movie material, he did have a certain freedom to do what he wanted and he harnessed the talents of some of London's most inspiring jazz artists like Tubby Hayes, Alan Branscombe and Kenny Wheeler.

He even worked with Led Zepp's Jimmy Page when he was contributing library music to the De Wolfe catalogue. Albums like the gorgeous Abstractions Of The Industrial North have a minimalist, jazz feel, are quite freewheeling and often experimental in nature. Kirchin later went on to experiment more and more with 'found' sounds, manipulating sounds and music in an improvisational style.

On the Perseverance CD release, now alas more or less out of print, the music for The Abominable Dr. Phibes is a lush, melodic suite of variations on the themes Kirchin composed for the lead character and his female companion Vulnavia. Both themes are reinterpreted throughout with the motif for Phibes emerging on "Phibes Waltz/Cage Full of Bats" and the melody for Vulnavia first heard on "Phibes Visits Dr. Longstreet/The Curse of Blood/Injection" and "Vulnavia."
The waltz and theme for Phibes are stirring, jazz fanfares that reek of 1920s big band opulence, vast dance halls and long dead, lost times. They descend into some disturbing bass plucking to suggest a lurking dread under the artifice.

There are some very short cues, in poor quality, sourced from the film print itself that are dotted amongst the soaring strings, flaring brass and sweeping melodies on the Perseverence CD but the majority of the mono recordings are in good nick if sounding a bit confined in the mix. It's gloriously camp and bonechillingly eerie at the same time and beneath the fusty big band sounds there are abstract and atonal notes that give the compositions an edge. The experimental can largely be found the in the 11 minute long "Music Suite" which contains some music that is in the film and some that isn't. I believe that all the Kirchin compositions were meant to be heard as a suite and the way the tracks are split does give the album a sort of start-stop quality. A shame, as the music is as decadent as the blackly comic film needs it to be and it has a strange fin de siecle aura about it.

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BBC1 - 14th June 2008 - 7.10pm

As the Government heaves a sigh of relief over its narrow victory in the vote over the 42 day detention ruling for terrorist suspects, I keep wondering where this is leading us all? The manipulation of public fear, by such disaster capitalists, to erode civil liberties is one that taps into our very primal reactions to 'otherness'. The strangers who deplore our foreign policies and the strangers who migrate to our borders are, deep down, tokens of our own fractured human psyche. There is a single moment in Midnight that tells you all you need to know. When Val Crane spits out venomously 'Immigrant' at the Doctor then we know that as a human being, and like most of us, she's reacting to the strangeness of the 'other'. Here she's attacking the Doctor who can't tell them his real name and is far too clever for his own good, and dealing with her xenophobia with one of two choices. Either you try and understand and accommodate this experience of strangeness or otherness or you repudiate it by projecting it exclusively onto outsiders, in this case the possessed Sky Sylvestry and the seemingly arrogant and alien Doctor. By having Val utter that one word, Russell T Davies encapsulates the arid mind-set of millions of Daily Mail readers.

All too often we choose to use our paranoia about outsiders to make sense of our confused emotions, resorting to schizoid states where we will follow a pack mentality and seek to follow an individual, around whom a leadership consensus might form, and also identify scapegoats whom we can blame when disaster strikes. The cleverness of Midnight is that it flips this troubled state back and forth between the ensemble of characters like a barometer traveling between right and left wing views. Eventually, even those who might be considered liberal humanist in their outlook descend into monstrousness. The consensus forming pack leader is, to begin with, the well meaning Doctor but this status terrifyingly unravels as we see the 'other' that possesses Sky, and the effects of this, reverse our perceptions of the rational and liberal inquisitiveness of the Doctor. In the eyes of his fellow passengers, he's seen as the arrogant, clever alien and he is rapidly demoted from leader to scapegoat in 45 minutes of screen time. I like the way that Davies shows us a mirror image of the Doctor where those that don't know him at all would probably react with suspicion and fear especially when there is no companion to mediate on his behalf. This also is an interesting position for the Doctor to be seen in - he switches between the role of a monster and a god as a result of the unconscious fears projected onto him by the passengers.

The passengers are also an interesting social structure in and of themselves. They, as Jean-Francois Lyotard might say, define their culture, imposing their own order and hierarchy within that culture. However, as we see in the course of the drama, the ownership of power in that hierarchy constantly switches and becomes oppressive, exclusive and incomplete. Even the social structures around education, gender and age are used by each of the passengers to perpetuate their own values and the relative worthlessness of those not in positions of power. This constitutive otherness is deferred upon the Doctor and Sky. Sky, once possessed, can only mimic everyone's speech patterns but only truly learns how to manipulate by possessing the Doctor's intelligence and to play on the fears of the other passengers to eliminate him. Davies trawls through the grand narratives of humanity and what he finds isn't pleasant at all. This ugliness is in complete contrast to his more optimistic view of humans in the series and it is even such a revelation to the Doctor that it quite obviously leaves him with a very bitter taste in his mouth. What's exciting here is that the Doctor fails to deal with the ambient fear on board the bus. It's the same fear that saturates day-to-day living and in monstrous form is the entity that possesses Sky. The Doctor is fascinated by the monstrous simply because he needs to, as a function within the series itself, name that which is difficult to apprehend and to domesticate and disempower the threat.

It's a tautly written and performed episode, reminding me much of Jean Paul Satre's No Exit, the source of that very apt quote, 'Hell is other people' , The Crucible, and also of The Twilight Zone's The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street. Davies is assisted by some phenomenally good directing from Alice Troughton and some stunning editing by Philip Kloss which combines precisely coordinated long takes with very brisk visual punctuations - short visual impressions, quick close ups - that feel very Hitchcockian. This was also, by far, Tennant's most emotionally interesting performance of the series and he took the Doctor from cheery ebullience to desperation with great dexterity. His utter helplessness as he realised he wasn't able to contain the paranoia and was dragged by the other passengers towards the airlock was disturbing and powerful. Lesley Sharp pretty much matched him and was stunning as Sky Sylvestry, glowing with a fierce intensity and mesmerisingly subtle as she depicted the entity slowly turning the tables on the Doctor and stoking the fears within the passengers pack mentality. Kudos should also go to Lindsey Coulson as Val Crane who managed to summarise with great accuracy the most repellent qualities of the human condition. David Troughton's Professor Hobbs was an essay in bloated, hand-wringing academia and he uncannily sounded like his father in some scenes. The coda for the ensemble of characters is terribly bleak as they don't seek reconciliation or attempt to apologise for their actions. That their fear might have led to murder is left unsaid by any of them, even the Doctor. The absence of Donna is also a profound admission that the Doctor needs a companion to temper his arrogance and his hollow victory here may well have taken a different course if she had been around. But what we see of Donna is a supreme exercise in deftly summing up the character in the few scenes in which she was present.

It's an episode that breaks a number of boundaries. It makes the human monstrous rather than a prosthetic or CGI creation, it questions the Doctor's modus operandi more succinctly than ever before and suggests that the way we idiosyncratically use language can actually define who we truly are. It also shows that tightly scripted, purely character driven drama can still work its magic on television. Sublime.

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Previous reviews:

Forest Of The Dead
Silence In The Library
The Unicorn And The Wasp
The Doctor's Daughter
The Poison Sky
The Sontaran Stratagem
The Planet Of The Ood
The Fires Of Pompeii
Partners In Crime

(Oh, why not! Gratuitous James Callis image. So, sue me!)

SkyHD - 10th June 2008 - 9.00pm

That's better. And about time too. After the decidedly weak Sine Qua Non, the series takes us back two days and shows us what exactly happened after the base star, together with Roslin and Baltar on board, jumped away. We'd seen trashed base stars and a morgue like Raptor as brief evidence of what might have happened in Sine Qua Non but this week's episode was less about the aftermath of civil war and the plan to grab D'Anna and more about Roslin's personal journey.

This was classic BSG - a kick ass, visual spectacle as a combined strike team of Cylon and colonial pilots trashed the hub and a bunch of basestars combined with a profound parable about what makes an individual's actions denote that person as either good or bad.

As the Bathing Beauty kept yellng "Jump", D'Anna was indeed unboxed by Cavill and his 'pet 8' as he believed she's the solution to the Cylon civil war. Whoops, ya got that wrong. D'Anna, in no mood for reconcilliation, promptly strangled Cavill and moved forward with her own agenda. Good to have Lucy Lawless back and in fine form whilst spending the episode clad only in a bathrobe. Costume designer on strike or something?

Meanwhile 'Pet 8' came over all chummy with Helo, trying to convince him she's capable of taking on Athena's memories and feelings in an attempt to further blur the boundaries between human and Cylon. Unfortunately, it all goes awry when Helo follows orders and obeys Roslin's desire to meet with D'Anna separately before the Cylon resistance can get their hands on her. 'Pet 8' was a tad upset by that. And she wasn't the only one - Helo's plan for a united human and Cylon assault on the hub generates enough tension and mistrust as it is, without his and 'Pet 8's' personal spats. Another grudging move towards a collaboration between the two races? Also, Roslin's betrayal of the original plan with the Cylons would surely have pissed them off big time yet this was glossed over with the brief scene between 'Pet 8' and Helo. D'Anna and Roslin may well have been left alone to talk but wouldn't the others, all capable of knocking seven bells out of anything or anyone, have forced an entrance?

But the core of this episode quite rightly belongs to Mary McDonnell and James Callis. As the assualt is underway Baltar and Roslin are left together and the drama gets very dark indeed. Baltar is injured and Roslin is forced to try and help stop him from bleeding to death. Pumped full of painkillers he confesses his part in the the original Cylon attack on the colonies. A collective mutter of 'about time' must have echoed through the hordes of BSG fans at this as this has been a very long time coming. 4 years to be precise. Roslin's immediate reaction is to rip off all the bandaging she's put on him and watch him die for his crimes. Yeah, too right, Roslin. I'm sure many of us were pretty much convinced that Baltar was going to be dead by the end of this and I'd have actually been rather glad. But that's exactly the reaction this scene is trying to provoke in the audience and in Roslin. It's superbly played by McDonnell and Callis. Compelling and satisfying.

However, whilst the base star had been jumping, Roslin was also having visions that reunited her with the priestess Elosha. Basically, the beturbaned one popped up just to say 'You has turned into a beeaaattccchhh, girlfriend. And no one loves ya.' Essentially, this week's moral is: all our good intentions often turn bad and vice versa and who are we to judge. Not sure if that would have convinced me to save Baltar, though. Roslin, mortified by this revelation, thus desperately rushes to Baltar's side. Roslin also sees her demise in a hospital bed with Adama at her side. A very moving and affecting scene indeed. And a lovely choice of head wear.

It's not all doom and gloom and big explosions going off, pretty as they are. There's some hilarity when both Roslin and Baltar try to fathom out what the Bathing Beauty is trying to say and are reduced to shouting at her. Baltar tries to do a religious conversion on a Cylon Centurion which may have some deeper ramifications down the line. Equally funny is the conversation between D'Anna and Roslin about the Final Five where for one minute D'Anna naughtily kids both the audience and Roslin that Roslin herself is the last Cylon to be revealed. And then she breaks into laughter. Priceless.

The final scene is certainly the icing on the cake and is a very emotional coda to the story. The base star reappears near Adama's waiting Raptor and he makes a rendezvous, fearing the worse. But he's reunited with Roslin and they both tearfully declare their mutual love. Awww. Another milestone reached after a very long courtship. Both actors were fantastic and Roslin has obviously heeded the words of Elosha. That lovely, gruff 'About time' from Adama was a fine touch too.

Good to have an episode showing the series getting back up to speed and moving the plot forward properly. The decision to drop whole strands of narrative over the last few weeks isn't helping the coherence of the story much. There are whole episodes where nothing much really happens and where sub plots involving Tyrol, Tory, Starbuck et al disappear too and that may be a distinct sign of stalling on the part of the writers. Mind you the landscape has completely changed now with the destruction of the Hub. Cylons can die - just like humans. That should give them pause for thought.

Next week is the finale before the mid-season break so I expect some further revelations and a decent cliffhanger to keep us interested.


Previous reviews:
Sine Qua Non
Guess What's Coming To Dinner?
Faith
The Road Less Traveled
Escape Velocity
The Ties That Bind
He That Believeth In Me & Six Of One

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SPOILER AHEAD

An image has leaked out onto various forums over the last 24 hours and it's a huge spoiler for Series 4 and confirms that a certain classic series character is definitely in the finale of the current series of Doctor Who.

Like all the disappearing planets in the series, various threads keep being wiped on forums but it keeps spreading.

If you really want to see what everyone is talking about then click: HERE

Don't say I didn't warn you.

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BBC1 - 7th June 2008 - 7.00pm

The nature of reality is a tricky one for television producers. It is clear that genre hybridisation is the central thrust of shows like Britain's Got Talent and I'd Do Anything where the talent show collides with variety and the 'soap' anxieties of 'real' people who are participating in such super-genre shows either as contestants or even as members of the audience. Forest Of The Dead quickly, and rather dully, dispenses with its cliffhanger resolution (the bloody squareness gun again) but as a result opens up a door in the narrative that takes us to a reality in which the very act of watching, making and editing television is commented on and then juxtaposed to the fiction of the Doctor Who universe with a child watching the Doctor's adventures on TV.

Forest Of The Dead, as the series own collision between reality show, adventure and romantic fiction and soaps, suggests the jump cuts in Donna's new reality are the jump cuts imposed by an eager child surfing through programmes and channels with a television remote. Moffat's take on virtual reality has much to say on our own perception of the kind of lives we lead and this is by far the most interesting concept at the heart of the episode. It takes the series well outside of its normal boundaries and with its digital children questioning their own existence offers an uncomfortable and disturbing insight into how we love and are loved in return. Donna's fictional life, and Catherine Tate's superb playing out of its tragedy, is echoed by the lynchpin plot turn of Lux revealing that he isn't a hard hearted business man but simply a relative searching for a lost and dying child protected in a computer created reality.

As well as this, Moffat also riffs on the out of time romance of The Time Traveller's Wife and the relationship between the Doctor and River Song is the episode's other narrative triumph as it mimics the notion of julia Kristeva's concept of 'women's time' where narrative structures are built around the cyclical nature of changing seasons or the natural cycles of reproduction. Here birth becomes death and vice versa and narrative is folded in on itself in an unorthodox attempt to return the Doctor and River Song to the moment before loss, before death. This also plugs into Bakhtin's idea of the chronotope - a time-space in which the conscious mind frames and organises the real (the library) but it can also be the time space where it disorganises and re-presents the real (virtual reality). The chronotope allows shifts in reality and features in pretty much all of Moffat's scripts as his mind-bending observations on the nature and structure of time and space. It is also interesting to note that it is Miss Evangelista who unpicks the virtual reality of Donna's life and the progression of 'women's time'. Virtual reality in the story is dominated by the feminine and the female with Evangelista as literally a digital distortion in the episode's most powerful reveal.

In my review of Silence In The Library I made the point that Moffat seemed to be recycling a number of his own tropes and this second part of the story very much recycles the 'everybody lives' coda of The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances and here he further postulates on some ideas about what an afterlife might be and that it may well be a sort of heavenly download for the dying soul. But it is an afterlife that is rather disturbing and blunts the positivity of The Doctor Dances and its joyous 'everybody lives' narrative climax. He may be cleverly riffing on his own ideas here but should he undo the satisfying coda he wrote for that episode in the process and propose neither life nor death at the hands of the Doctor but instead a kind of living death in the library's hard drive? I also felt he undermined the stunning scene of River Song's self-sacrifice and the Doctor's loss, which we all knew was coming and was one of many elements - the hard drive saving the visitors, Dr. Moon as a kind anti-virus/reboot programme - that we'd already second-guessed him on last week, by using the 'cheating death' epilogue involving the sonic screwdriver. You could argue that it isn't cheating death at all because River and her crew are, in effect, still dead. But I've a sense Moffat is providing himself with some insurance so that he could bring the character back easily if he so desired. It's almost as if Moffat can't bear to let the tragic really remain tragic - he intervenes here with River Song's death as much as he requested Russell T Davies to not kill off the abomination of Jenny in The Doctor's Daughter. Can we just put the Doctor through the emotional wringer and be done with it? I suppose River is different in that she exists in the Doctor's hypothetical future that's already been hinted at and might be properly described in future episodes.

Donna very much comes off the worse in this situation. Her kids may have been digital creations but her husband Lee was one of the surviving visitors and it was achingly sad that at the conclusion they both were whisked away from each other. Tate's performance in the alternate life of Donna is nothing short of brilliant and both she and Alex Kingston actually outshone David Tennant this week. Tennant's exuberance is wonderful but he spent a lot of the episode rattling off various info dumps at such speed that many of the scenes lost focus and clarity and I suspect a lot of the concepts, and his delivery of them, would have left many younger viewers confused and, in the end, somewhat indifferent. There were an awful lot of ideas that Forest Of The Dead packed in with a slightly detrimental effect on Tennant's blustery performance even if in the end it worked merely as a reflection on the Sky+ record and rewind, edited highlights of Donna's life in the hard drive. Life is complicated and you often don't get to edit out the bad, confusing or boring bits its seems to say. But I forgive him his over-ebullience of delivery just for that sublime and far subtler interplay with Alex Kingston.

What fails here is the rather unsatisfactory use of those flying piranhas of the air, the Vashta Nerada. It's a great concept but their threat is hurriedly dealt with in that rather ineffective scene where the Doctor tries to reason with the Vashta Nerada and finds out they came as microspores in millions and millions of books and then hatched. He just tells them off and they go away? Their threat dissipates completely from that point on and they are reduced to being the story's MacGuffin rather than being part of its central narrative in the way that the Weeping Angels were in Blink. Rather, Moffat is more interested in the 'romance' between the Doctor and River Song, the wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff and narrative construction. The pell-mell pace of Forest Of The Dead rather begs the question that with a bit judicious editing the entire story could have been told in 45 minutes and it may be a clue as to why the pace of Silence In The Library was so sluggish where he obviously recycled any number of his motifs in it.

The problem here is that he's trying to have his cake and eat it and, for example, where he, at once, redefines the symbolism of the sonic screwdriver as a potential life saver he also uses it again as a dumb 'get out of jail free' device that makes a mockery of imbuing the object with these better qualities in the first place. It's a kind of frenetic narrative indigestion that plagues the episode and with the biggest culprit being the sad ending / happier ending reverse payoff. Strip way the flummery about the Vashta Nerada and the library and you do have a potent story where both the Doctor and Donna have the 'happy ending' carrot dangled before them but for each it's cruelly removed. Donna gets Lee and the kids and has them taken away from her. The Doctor's whole relationship with River Song is destroyed by a huge spoiler (Moffat's witty side swipe at obsessive fans as well as a cautionary remark about the dangers of time travel) because he already knows how she will 'die' and her doom is the driving force behind their future encounter. The Doctor loses this version of River the day he meets her. However, the allusion to an afterlife, is for me, a rather unsubtle bit of symbolism that didn't need gluing on as a meaning to the episode's conclusion

Whist it might struggle to be comprehensible, it's still a powerful, intelligent episode (best of the series this year, no doubt) and, as an emblem of narrative complexity, will reward repeated viewing. As a two parter it suffers from structural and pacing problems, with a very slow first 45 minutes followed by a desperate race to the finish in the final 45 minutes. As an hour long finale this would have been absolutely great but the longeurs of Silence In The Library with its misdirected focus on the Vashta Nerada don't dovetail well enough with the central conceit, at the heart of Forest Of The Dead, of the Doctor meeting his future wife only for it to be the last time he sees her. It's got bags of rich ingredients and some very interesting ideas about reality, love and death but the resulting pudding is only properly baked on one side. These more conceptual episodes only work in relation to the other stories that surround them and it would be disastrous if Moffat, as head honcho, made an entire season of them. I believe his comedy writing talents and his flair for misdirection will allow him to prove otherwise and Series 5 may end up far and away removed from the expected Hinchcliffe Mark II that many fans are already salivating about.


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Previous reviews:
Silence In The Library
The Unicorn And The Wasp
The Doctor's Daughter
The Poison Sky
The Sontaran Stratagem
The Planet Of The Ood
The Fires Of Pompeii
Partners In Crime

Quiet Village is a collaboration between Matt Edwards, AKA house impressario Radio Slave, and Joel Martin, who had a hand in putting together Bite Hard, a sampler of 1970s library music from De Wolfe. The resulting album, Silent Movie is an arresting mix of slow disco, soul, house, synth and prog rock as well as echoing the cinematic qualities of library at its best.

The danger here is that they tread a fine line between the genuinely clever and the cheesily generic. There are moments where they almost allow their exquisite use of source material to out manoeuvre their own additions, treatments and edits. This is best appreciated as music to be played in that brief period between club-comedown and rain-lashed drive home in a taxi through sulphurously lit streets.

'Victoria's Secret' opens the proceedings in a romantically inclined swoon with a sampled string and oboe section whilst the sound effects of waves crashing and seagulls calling flit across the soundstage. Then a deep, humming female vocal swathes you as the sweet strings lull you into a reverie of rocky California beaches and surf. It's very beautiful and highly camp in its ability to conjure up everything from 'From Here To Eternity' to cheap romantic pot boilers like 'Tim'.

A key track is 'Circus Of Horrors' which is quite atypically going for the Italian horror soundtrack meets psych rock pastiche. What sounds like a train pulls in (or is it just a synth wail) and some psych rock guitar churns repeatedly. And then...distorted and treated flute gives way to a huge scream and yell followed by bluesy backing vocals. It's a weird blend of prog rock, John Cameron library funk a la Psychomania which ends with chanting vocals and fluttering flutes adding to the cycling guitar and drum crescendos. Quite fabulous and likely to be used in a film coming to a cinema near you.

'Free Rider' loops a harmonic vocal with a strangely treated vocal line that sounds like a strangled cat. There's a lot of sound effects of people at a party having a bit of a jolly whilst acoustic guitar samples fall over each other. It sounds like something out of 'Beyond The Valley of The Dolls' with added breakbeats, wife swapping and fondues and...er...cackling laughter.

One of my favourites, 'Too High To Move' is all piano riffs, more crashing waves, a loop of some woman pissing herself with laughter and glasses clinking to add to a Beverley Hills type vibe. A vocal tells the story of a bad man who does the dirty on a good woman. A delicious piano refrain tumbles along, with pumping bass and drum, a gorgeous swirling synth backdrop and then a break with brass - it sounds a bit like the 'Shoestring' theme - with a following solo trumpet passage. A slow disco stunner.

'Pacific Rhythm' will raise a smile with its sweet confection of reggae guitar, drum and piano trot, spacey synth strings and a Sister Sledge breathy female soul vocal. It chugs along with an infectious glee. A heavily treated male vocal joins in, sounding a bit like something that Air would probably do, and it jams with the galloping funk.

Soft funky guitar and Hammond organ clip in with an aching string sample on 'Broken Promises'. A brass melody takes over and the track then plunges into a quiet organ section, with more waves, a glissando of percussion and then we get a sinister whistling..yep, whistling. It's akin to something Billy Goldenberg might do for 'MacMillan And Wife' or 'Columbo' but with a disco slant.

There's a creative use of the Alan Parsons Project in the sampling for 'Pillow Talk' and it gets rather guitar prog in the middle complete with whooshes of white noise and synths. Likewise part of the string section of 'Days Of Pearly Spencer' is stretched, slowed and twisted for 'Can't Be Beat' with its dreamy cycle interrupted by some vari-speed vocals that do tend to channel Barry White on valium. Nice bubbling synths working away, Moroder like, underneath it all do compensate as do the funky guitar bits.

'Gold Rush' is Tangerine Dream synth washes, circa Phaedra, with psych rock guitar passages and a speeding up, slowing down tempo. Very atmospheric. And 'Singing Sand' wouldn't sound out of place on 'My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts' as it's complete with treated, distorted vocals, pumping bass and a tribal percussion with a delicious drum and piano break. 'Utopia' is a triumphant reworking of new age synth confections from the likes of Vangelis or the harp whimsy of Andreas Vollenweider but this sampling trips over and over itself and meshes with a whooshy blast of white noise. It's captivating and really very kitsch.

The album climaxes with more seagulls and surf, harp and Hammond and treated drum track with lilting strings. 'Keep On Rolling' even comes with a vocal sample that suggests the same and you can also imagine the end titles rolling at this point on some imaginary movie.

A dreamy, kitschy confection with Italian film soundtracks blurring into Tangerine Dream and Moroder electronics, Chi-lites soul mixing with rock, orchestral lounge music and stuttering beats. It might be accused of wearing its influences too well and coming off as one more DJ set recorded for posterity but I reckon most of this will get picked up by advertisers, film companies and television stations as the ultimate accompaniment to their product whilst it still retains an experimental, cut-up edge. Essential summer listening.

Quiet Village - Silent Movie (iK7 Records K7225CD Released 28th April 2008)

Webpage:Quiet Village
My Space: My Space.com - Quiet Village

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(Cover courtesy of Doctor Who On Line)

The Invisible Enemy

October 1977

‘Contact has been made’

Now, I know the Williams era isn’t everybody’s cup of tea and I’m always of the opinion that you can find something to cheer you in an under par story so I’m going to try and be as even handed as I can with the stories I'll review from the next few seasons. In my opinion the quality – whether that be production values, storytelling, acting etc – does go up and down rather dramatically in the Williams era but I’m trying to be fair where possible.

Ok. So let’s get a positive in first. The plot not being one of them, I shall keep the summary brief and then move on. The Doctor and several humans become infected by a space borne virus. He and Leela travel to the Bi-Al Foundation in order to combat the virus nucleus. The opening episode is actually rather good in that it really shows off the work of the BBC Effects Unit under Ian Scoones. The shuttle sequences both in the asteroid field, being attacked by the virus and landing on Titan are excellent and there seems to have been a real effort here to raise the bar with this work.

And you do have to bear in mind that when this was actually being made the production team wouldn’t have yet heard about a low budget science fiction film called ‘Star Wars’ despite received opinion that K9, the spaceships and the blaster battles were directly influenced by it. Williams just had his finger on the pulse as there’s a sense here that the programme begins its shift from adult/teen-orientated ‘monster’ stories to space fantasy aimed more at the kiddies. I’m not saying that some of the concepts and ideas that the show would go on to present are ‘childish’ in that sense but rather that the series throws off its reputation as a scare-fest entertainment and aims squarely for the younger members of the family audience – particularly those who would soon sign up for the ‘Star Wars’ bandwagon . I would say that at least Williams knew which way the wind was blowing and had the sense to recognise that and keep the ratings up and the popularity of the programme intact. Adults and teenagers might not have found much to divert them in the next few years but the kids did. This is symbolised here more than anything by the arrival of K9.

However, his laudable ambitions were over-reaching and he was saddled with a smaller budget because of the hyper-inflation of the times. So things do often end up looking cheap and in the dawning days of ‘Star Wars’ using a vivid imagination does not necessarily equal small budgets and the lower expenditure would be felt more so after that film’s release. This story is problematic in that, whilst the effects are good, the sets often feel a bit shabby, particularly the Bi-Al sets and the new TARDIS console. It’s a shame as Williams was trying to ride not just on the wave of Star Wars and its ilk but also to tap into the burgeoning science fiction literary styles of Larry Niven and his contemporaries and certainly this particular story could have been inspired by the ‘hospital in space’ novels of James White.

There is a genuine urgency to the first episode as the virus possesses the humans and the Doctor and efforts are made to defeat it. It does look moody on the Titan base, if a bit cramped, with some good studio lighting adding to the atmosphere. This completely dissipates once we’re off Titan and at the Bi-Al.

For me personally, Doctor Who is at its best when there is total conviction behind it, even when it is at its most outlandish. My main problem with the last three episodes is that we see all attempts at conviction, building of tension and dramatic conflict being undermined by variable acting (sorry Frederick Jaeger but you were miles better as Sorenson in Planet Of Evil), unconvincing make-up that makes the virus’ victims look like they’re doing drag at La Cage Aux Folles and finally that Virus Nucleus shrimp/prawn disaster that makes Muffin The Mule look sophisticated. I know…I know there are other similar disasters in other eras but here I feel it is one element amongst many that send this into a spiral of the unconvincing.

And we could get into a real mess when we look at the science of the story. The cloning of Leela and the Doctor is done so matter of factly and so amorally, knowing the clones only have a brief life, and the process even recreates their clothes and Leela’s accessories. It’s as bonkers as the Fantastic Voyage miniaturisation scenario. I know…I know, we usually forgive the programme its bad science as long as the rest of it is entirely engrossing. But this isn’t remotely in the same league as Talons or Ark In Space where we can forgive certain inadequacies because the rest of it is just so bloody good.

A shame as there are some interesting ideas struggling to get house room - the notion of viruses becoming sentient prefiguring all the nasty computer viruses that our hard drives are attacked by these days. Viruses as ideas and languages that infect society can be seen in a bizarre echo of today’s radicalising of disaffected immigrants. A very Burroughs-like concept for a tea-time show.

But for me it culminates in the sad feeling that in the end I don’t really care about the mad prawn thing threatening to dominate the universe and The Invisible Enemy gives us a future where nothing of interest seems to be going on. By the time the Doctor figures he’ll just blow the virus up, I was already thinking of what to have for my tea. From this moment on it seems that even the Doctor starts to care less about all the would-be conquerors of the cosmos and if he doesn’t give a sod, then why should I? He’s more interested in chess and painting, judging by some of the TARDIS scenes in this season.

The regulars also don’t inspire much either. You’re really aware that Tom is no longer under the thumb of his previous producer and the new guy is more likely to indulge his ad-libs and tolerate his ambivalence towards the role at this time. He’s getting way too nonchalant about the things that matter to the hero of the show. And Leela is treated as a stupid thug and thus ends the really wonderful character development of the previous stories. And then there’s K9. I like the idea of K9 and the look of K9 but like most things in the Williams era it just hasn’t been thought out. We thus end up with a know it all computer on wheels that shoots people to order but can’t manage to get into and out of the TARDIS on a regular basis. He’s such a good idea that for most of the time he goes AWOL whilst the writers try to figure out what to do with him. Nice concept, shame about the realisation.

Do I like The Invisible Enemy? Not really. A reasonably good first episode with some good effects work and then it all goes wrong. Baker and Martin try and throw lots of ideas at the wall and hope some of them stick so you end up with a rather schizophrenic story that can’t decide what it wants to say and a production that limps to the finishing line having fudged whatever dramatic tension there might have been.

Oh, dear..

THE INVISIBLE ENEMY (K9 TALES Box Set - Region 2 DVD BBCDVD2439 16th June 2008 Cert PG)

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Beyond the question of why on earth it took them so long to actually do a fourth installment, you must ask yourself...well, why bother? Aren't the original trilogy of films just enough Indy to be getting on with? George Lucas is notorious for tinkering too, so the other worry is that he'll completely 'rape your childhood memories' of the trilogy just like he did with the Star Wars films, according to various denizens floating around the circles of Star Wars hell. The truth is he made a series of kids films, not particularly good ones, as a follow up to an original set of...er...kids films, of which two were quite good actually. The shit one, as we all know, is the one with the teddy bears in it.

Likewise there are two good films in the Indy trilogy and one not so good, mainly down to Kate Capshaw being a bit of a prize tit in most of it. The prospect of a fourth installment has been echoing down Hollywood's halls for decades. Fortunately, Spielberg is back on board and the resulting film seems like a wobbly balancing act between Spielberg's notion of epic film-making (Y'know, where you actually build the sets and all) and Lucas' hollow, whizzkid, techno-zealotry wherein poor old Indy would have ended up being a completely CGI creation whilst any notion of good entertainment flies out of the window against a green screen.

What we do get is actually a competent slice of entertainment. It doesn't piss all over the franchise but neither does it raise it to another level. It just is what it is. It does deviate from the usual Indiana Jones formula by dragging in all the Von Daniken 'ancient gods were aliens' bollocks that even Doctor Who ceased draining for inspiration back in 1978. I'm ambivalent that Indy is shown as much older and reluctantly concur that the film, purposefully, must acknowledge this. If they hadn't and instead had tried to make Harrison Ford look younger or indeed recast the part, then quite frankly I would have been somewhat irritated. The problem here is that, rather than making him an aged icon, they do the very predictable and a)give him a son he didn't know he had and b)marry him off in the sentimental ending. This surely clears the way for a reboot starring the annoying Shia LaBeouf (Isn't that French for'The Beef' - what kind of a fucking name is that, I ask you?) and for Ford to take over the Connery duties as the equally annoying dad. A sort of Indiana Jones cum Steptoe And Son. Burn my eyes out if this ever happens, please. Form an orderly queue.

If Lucas and Spielberg are really going to be clever, and of course being positively drunk on the dollar signs in their eyes that's a moot statement, they'll treat the franchise just like the 007 one and recast and reinvent as they go. It can't go on as it is forever. The venerable Harrison Ford and his Indiana Jones are not indestructible even though the film has you believe he can lock himself in a fridge to survive a Nevada atom bomb test. It's one of the many swings from the sublime to the ridiculous that the film makes and, granted, there's always been an element of the ridiculous in the Indy trilogy. But not to this extreme. The survival of Indy in the fridge (a nice joke about kids avoiding playing in empty fridges saves it) is later pissed on when Shia does a Tarzan and recruits a horrid looking CGI monkey troupe to bitch-slap those pesky Commies chasing our heroes through the jungle. In fact it's the culmination of a whole sequence where three vehicles seem to endlessly chase each other side by side through dense jungle. So who the fuck cleared all the trees? Sure, we're shown an 'instant road through the jungle' vehicle thingy rumbling away but it quickly gets sidelined before this sequence starts so your disbelief needs suspending, hanging, drawing and quartering as the action plays out like some weird Royal Ballet amongst the trees.

Anyway, leave your brain at the door, ignore the aforementioned sequences and just enjoy the hokum. Indy and the Commies are on the trail of crystalline, mind bending skulls that belong to alien gods buried in the Amazon. That's all you need to know and if you hadn't guessed that's what the plot is about five minutes into this then I pity you. Cate Blanchett mangles an accent to give us the obligatory,ice cold KGB agent and plays it for camp value, sporting a number of butch looking outfits, being a dab hand at fencing and getting a very Indiana Jones comeuppance. John Hurt, as the batty Oxley, is on hand to assist Indy but looks like someone you'd find under Vauxhall Bridge and they've exhumed Karen Allen to reprise the Marion Ravenwood role from Raiders. In Raiders she was a superb foil for Indy, here she just comes across as...well...as old as Harrison, and a bit mumsy, I'm afraid. Cruelly, it does sometimes feel two geriatrics have somehow got entangled into the plot of a pulp action film by mistake. Both often have to have a rest after some exuberant physical jerks, giving LaBeouf centre stage to do a sort of James Dean/Marlon Brando number as the troubled teen lumbered with two old fogeys. It's actually quite amusing. Pity LaBeouf's rocker wig isn't CGI because half the time he's combing his hair and I half expected the wig to come off mid-comb or get snatched by a passing monkey.

The ensemble playing between Ford, LaBeouf and Allen does engagingly prop the film up and there's a nice line in witty repartee between them. Allen does tend to get sidelined and has little to do and even Ford suffers towards the end when the CGI takes over and he's left standing watching, along with us, in mock admiration of ILM's geek wizardry depicting spaceships breaking out of Mayan temples.

Besides the laughs, intentional and otherwise, there is plenty of proper Indiana Jones to wallow in - planes flying across maps, boats plunging over waterfalls, tribesmen attacking with blowpipes (there's a nice gag there too), man eating ants, lots of sword fights, punch ups, destruction and mayhem. It's brilliantly choreographed - perhaps too much so - and the effects are good but for a man of pensionable age (Ford, not me) much of this is now hard to believe. Ford is great, obviously having fun, but he's left it a bit late in the day to ask audiences to be completely taken in by a very grey haired ol' fella beating the living daylights out of hordes of Commie soldiers.

The other problem is that much of the trilogy's action tropes have since been trumped by pretenders to the throne like The Mummy films (the third of which is imminent) so this film really needs to raise the bar or lay down the challenge. The riddles and puzzles are right out of National Treasure and the Von Daniken nonsense is hardly the stuff of comebacks. Some of the laborious puzzle solving actually makes the film sag in the middle and then there is that silly bit of padding involving the quicksand and re-capture all within the space of ten minutes. It's only there to do the reveal about LaBeouf being Indy's son. The rest is fluff to stall the picture. The last twenty or so minutes don't quite provide the climactic ending the film cries out for. Remember the end of Raiders? That was really 'hairs on the back of your neck' stuff. The aliens recovering and taking their saucer with them just doesn't have that Biblical 'end of the world' wig-out (Labeouf not included) of Raiders.

It's an entertaining romp, not nearly as half-baked as Temple Of Doom, but far from the heights of Raiders. It looks spectacular, the pace is more or less maintained despite some longuers, it's fun to hear that familiar John Williams music, there are little acknowledgements to Connery and to the late, great Denholm Elliot, and the cast are uniformly good, even the hammy Blanchett and nondescript flavour of the month LaBeouf. It doesn't completely embarrass the franchise but the ideal vision of Indy - an icon never changing and never aging - is truly destroyed by the presence of some old, cantankerous, curmudgeon pretending to be Indiana Jones. Like father, like son I suppose.

INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL (Cert 12A. Released May 22nd 2008. Directed by Steven Spielberg)


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BBC1 - 31st May 2008 - 7.00pm

'C'mon, give me the remote. There's a dancing dog on the other side and it's got to be better than this shit set in a library.' One would be forgiven to think that this might well be the reaction in quite a number of households up and down the land tonight during the transmission of Silence In The Library. It's a terribly brave thing to face off against Cowell's vacuous freak show any night of the week but trust Doctor Who to decide to be at its most atypical when most people aren't looking.

Moffat gets out his clipboard and once again runs through his checklist. Wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey stuff - check, recognisable everyday fear or phobia - check, catchphrases - check, fan-baiting - check, and technology running amok - and, check. You could almost accuse him of being a one trick pony...well, a five trick pony to be specific...but he does this stuff so well that you tend to allow him some room to manoeuvre. Such is the case here. For the first ten minutes you simply have the Doctor and Donna wandering around a deserted library, slowly teasing out the narrative. It looks spectacular, atmospheric and odd but moves at a snail's pace. Once the expedition arrives, things do perk up a bit but again there are quite a number of scenes where all the characters are simply standing in the middle of the library...erm...chatting, arguing, debating with each other. All adequately performed, complete with superb production values and a slowly building tension. Slowly. And then the narrative is stopped stone cold dead for a long sequence in which the rest of the characters watch the death throes of Miss Evangelista. It's just not on. Those other writers and directors fairly rattle through 45 minutes with lots of short scenes punctuated by explosions, with cameras often doing a St. Vitus dance and the Murray Gold dial turned up to maximum plus. Not this week. Not by a long chalk. They'll be switching over in droves to Britain's Got Bugger All Talent when in fact all the real talent is busting its balls on Doctor Who.

And if you didn't turn over? You can count on Moffat to riff on a number of proper science fiction ideas, everything from Jorges Luis Borges story The Library Of Babel, where a vast library contains all of the secrets of the universe, to Vonda McIntyre's Starfarers which takes the internet beyond computer access to symbiosis with the human brain where data storage and human memory allow experiences to be recorded and reshaped as a form of living art. I suspect Moffat's thesis here is to argue that the human brain is like a library or a computer memory where information is organised into some accessible form. The first library was the human brain and still is the source of information we rely on the most, but it's got a fair amount of flaws: variable capacity, potential memory loss or alteration, and access issues. Mix into that ideas about books telling the stories of lives lived, hence the Doctor's comment on biographies being his favourite, and the idea that the Doctor's future is written down in a book that he isn't allowed to see. Everyone can be turned into information that can be 'saved' but data can be corrupted and infected so that consciousness and reality can often become nightmares, as Dr. Moon so eloquently, and frighteningly, explains to the girl. Technology gone awry is something of a motif in Moffat's scripts and the ideas expressed so far, including data ghosts and nodes with living/dead faces, seem to chime with the misdirected nanogenes of The Empty Child and the self-repair droids of The Girl In The Fireplace.

There are problems with the pacing early on, despite Euros Lyn's lyrical direction, and the slowness, whilst building the story in a magical, atmospheric way, as the Doctor and Donna enter the labyrinth of the library, is perhaps taking too far the episode's determination to entirely misdirect its audience. The pre-titles sequence of the girl and Dr. Moon is intriguing and later cleverly loops back into the main narrative after the Doctor's initial arrival in the library and the episode keeps switching back to these scenes, suggesting that the bits in the library are happening in the girl's head. This meshing between the human brain and technology is further compounded when the Doctor establishes a link through a security camera and, later, the television set, to talk to her. Moffat makes no concessions and sets out to tell his story in such an idiosyncratic way that it sometimes bashes up against the televisuality that Euros Lyn lavishly applies to it. For most of the episode they are working hand in hand but just occasionally there are too many static scenes and no amount of visual flair can force life into them. The core of the episode is most certainly the death of Miss Evangelista. It is rather heavily signposted that she's the air head who will get bumped off and then make everyone feel guilty for them being so rotten to her but it is an astonishingly powerful scene, brilliantly played and again highlighting Catherine Tate's acting chops. It's heartbreaking as Donna tries desperately to deal with the "Data Ghosting", where a copy of Evangelista's conscience cries out temporarily from the suit's communication device. Tate does get slightly sidelined in the rest of the episode simply because Alex Kingston arrives as River Song and blousily charms her way through the episode, particularly evident in her lively chemistry with Tennant. And watch that great scene between her and Tate when Donna asks about her future because it's a masterclass in the 'less is more' school of television acting.

The other risk here is in trying to make shadows that eat flesh translate into the truly scary concept, for a child, of not being able to sleep with the lights off. It only gets a genuine pay-off when Proper Dave gets gobbled by the microscopic Vashta Nerada and the Doctor spots his double shadow on the floor. Again, it's a scene with a genuine frisson to it that just about manages to get the concept over well enough. It isn't quite as potent as Weeping Angels and kids wearing gas masks but it works. I'm not sure if the resulting zombie skeleton in the space suit does work, coming across as a bit of pulp 'Monster Of The Week' nonsense amidst the dream-like, surreal and esoteric quality of much of the episode. The triple whammy of the cliffhanger not only develops out of the lurking skeleton and the closing shadows but also from the far more chilling fate that befalls Donna. She's teleported to the TARDIS but it goes horribly wrong and her blood curdling scream as she 'dies' is one more powerful moment to savour. Lyn does rather over-egg the pudding though and dwells for far too long on the Node, now with Donna's face, constantly intoning one of the episode's many catch-phrases, " Donna Noble has left the library; Donna Noble has been saved". Frankly, it got a bit annoying.

It's also Murray Gold's best score in ages and he goes for a very appropriately subtle palette of sounds here, including a rhythmic piece that echoes some of the tonalities of Martin Slavin's 'Space Adventure' stock music from The Tenth Planet. And did my ears deceive me but did some of the crescendos sound very similar to those by Michael Giacchino in his scores for Lost? He balances the music in much the same way that Euros Lyn manages to provide more than enough space to air Moffat's weirder ideas and concepts.

Overall then, it isn't as immediately striking or likeable as Blink or The Girl In The Fireplace and it's the sum of the glorious parts that just about make it work. It is too slow to begin with and some of the expedition crew are slightly lazy caricatures that flatten out the drama when it cries out to be allowed to hitch up its skirts and get running but then it seems a bit churlish when this is so leftfield compared to the majority of the episodes this season by virtue of the ideas Moffat is toying with. Difficult to grasp how all this fits together just by the first part alone, which is another thing in its favour, and I eagerly await the conclusion and hopefully Moffat's cleverness at arranging the layers of the narrative to provide a satisfying pay-off.


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Previous reviews:
The Unicorn And The Wasp
The Doctor's Daughter
The Poison Sky
The Sontaran Stratagem
The Planet Of The Ood
The Fires Of Pompeii
Partners In Crime