Review: Doctor Who 11.2: The Ghost Monument

With all these extreme close-ups, it's a blessing this director
didn't work on any Eleven episodes.

Okay, now I'm starting to get worried. This series' premier had me concerned about some of the smaller details of the series' new production, and that the "crowded TARDIS" was going to cause issues with the way our characters developed. The Ghost Monument, ostensibly a race episode which leads to a conclusion where we first meet the new TARDIS interior, is a complete mess. The writing actively avoids tension for the whole runtime, and so the result is a messy hodgepodge of boring ideas poorly executed. Couple that with confusingly bad editing and cinematography, and Series 11 has already delivered its first clunker.

With the last episode leaving our heroes floating in space after attempting to use a teleporter to find the TARDIS, we find that two racing spaceships have scooped up half of the team each, with both ships crash landing on a barren planet called Desolation. The two racers, Angstrom (Susan Lynch) and Epzo (Shaun Dooley) are participating in the Rally of the Twelve Galaxies, run by Ilin (Art Malik) who promises a massive cash prize for reaching The Ghost Monument, which turns out to be the TARDIS stuck in a materialisation loop. Despite being a race, the whole six-strong cast travels together throughout the episode, and after overcoming obstacles they declare themselves joint winners and the remaining crew hop on board the new and improved TARDIS.

With the race element of the story being introduced a third of the way in, I expected some kind of tension, but instead the episode has the characters all travelling together at the same pace, explaining their backstories and motivations to the Doctor. Angstrom is a little coarse, but is trying to find her family. Epzo is selfish and ruthless because he comes from Space!Sparta. While the danger of the world is hyped up to no end, we never see any of the negative effects of their travels come to fruition: the water is deadly, they say, but we never get to see someone fall in. The air is poisonous, but nobody chokes. Nobody is thirsty or hungry after three days travel. The tell-don't-show nature of the episode's writing means that you're never genuinely worried for any of the characters, and that's poor storytelling.

Art Malik is wasted on a script that doesn't bother to give
him a character.

A large part of the episode is spent in an underground bunker, filled to the brim with boring robots and, later, intelligent murderous tablecloths that come out of nowhere and are dispatched with equal haste. A lot of emphasis is put on The Doctor wanting to find out why these people disappeared - something she makes a point of mentioning repeatedly. Does she find corpses or diaries, and work out what happened? No, because apparently someone wrote a big message on the floor in a language we can't read, leading the solution of that juicy story moment to be Jodie Whitaker staring at the floor for five minutes and explaining the lore to us. This carries through to the rest of the episode's ideas too - we never understand why Ilin is running the race, as he only appears for a few minutes. The androids and evil scarves could be extricated from the episode and nothing of value would have been lost.

And now we come to the continuing thread from my last review - how is Chibnall developing the characters, bearing in mind there's far too many of them? Ryan, who got by far the most development last week, continues to hold the spotlight as he struggles to climb a ladder. Graham's only real character beats are wishing he could go home and wishing that the 19-year-old who he has no relationship with would call him "Granddad", and Yaz... was here? The Doctor is also confusing here, shouting at Ryan for using a gun on non-sentient androids because she doesn't like guns, and then setting off an EMP bomb that kills them anyway. Later she aimlessly points her "Sonic Swiss-Army-Knife, without the knife" at a Scarf that's strangling Epzo, only for Angstrom to save him with her knife, leaving her looking rather silly. The Doctor's refusal to use guns and knives feels like someone watched the Tenth Doctor and decided to copy over a bunch of traits without thinking,and it feels hypocritical when Thirteen is willing to melt a person alive but having the Sonic cut things is too far? The only redeeming thing she did in this episode was the note of utter despair near the end of the episode when The Doctor believes that they're trapped on the planet without the TARDIS. Whittaker's exhaustion is palpable and it's a strong note in an episode otherwise without them.

Who turned out the lights?

There's a lot more I could nitpick and question, but I think my point is made. This episode's writing, editing and cinematography were all egregiously sub par. I know the second of every era ends up being a little dodgy, but this just doesn't feel right and it makes me really worried at whether Chibnall is the man for this job. He hasn't actually written any good episodes of Doctor Who yet, as far as I can reckon, and by writing so many of the episodes himself and by having too many companions he's really stacked the deck against himself. I will hold out hope that this series will improve in the next few weeks, but at its current rate it looks less likely to stride to the finish and more likely to shamble.

Thanks

Next Week: We visit the 1950s to meet Civil Rights campaigner Rosa.

P.S. Also, the new opening titles are rubbish. And so is the new TARDIS interior. Too dark, and the time rotor doesn't go up and down. Bleh.

Review: Doctor Who 11.1: The Woman Who Fell To Earth

This is late, but then so am I.

Thirteen (Jodie Whittaker) proudly brandishes her
"Sonic Swiss-Army Knife"

Well then. Doctor Who is back after a long wait, now with a woman in its lead role. Casting Broadchurch actress Jodie Whittaker as the new Time Lord was a genius decision, if only for the fact that it brought discussion of the show to an all time high as people of every background argued back and forth about what a woman would bring to the role. I was cautiously optimistic - I knew that the performance of any new Doctor was half performance and half writing, and with Chris Chibnall at the controls it was anyone's guess what the writing would be like. The result of this experiment desperately wants us to think that it's The Eleventh Hour but in Sheffield, but it fails to reach that level for a variety of reasons.

I'm not sure what Jodie Whittaker was aiming for with her characterisation of the Thirteenth Doctor. She's manic, brutally honest, and also breathtakingly human and vulnerable. It's hard to get much more than that because we get precious little time with the Doctor on her own to assess her as a character in her own right; instead, she feels like the leader of a gang of kids, which is what Chibnall seems to have been going for. A lot of her key character moments, like shouting at someone for attacking an already-downed foe, or her triumphant "I Am The Doctor" speech, would have been a lot better if not for the utterly pedestrian editing, which was all over the place and gave the episode an odd, out-of-place feeling. I am confident that she at least knows what she's doing, which is why I'm optimistic, but at the moment I'm struggling to get the same gravitas from her as from previous Doctors.

The TARDIS team (or should I say TARDIS-less for the moment) has been packed with three new companions - dyspraxic Ryan (Tosin Cole), his step-grandfather Graham (Bradley Walsh) and PC-in-training Yaz (Mandip Gill). Most of the episode's focus is on Ryan, as he struggles to learn to ride a bike in the Sheffield hills, with grandmother Grace (Sharon D. Clarke) and Graham watching on. After he discovers a bizarre alien pod in the woods, he calls Yaz, and the two of them eventually end up on a train with Grace and Graham as an alien attacks and an amnesiac Doctor falls through the roof. After heavy publicity around the three companions, Grace's increasing presence in the adventure was immediately suspicious - and, on cue, she dies near the end of the story, creating lasting drama for Ryan and Graham. The two male companions have got the most drama going on, and the most tension for future episodes (although the whole "Call me Grandad" thing is lame, he's 19, he can call you what he wants) which really leaves Yaz in the cold a bit. A lesson not learned from Season 19 here - three companions is far too many, and so far Chibnall isn't even running damage control by splitting them up; they're together all the time, which leaves Yaz with very little to do besides asking questions and making the occasional joke.

Bradley Walsh provides some unexpected emotion at
Grace's funeral

While I did enjoy the episode's villain, Tsim-Sha, and his creepy face, the episode did very little to extract tension from him until the end. Most of the episode is spent working out who he is, and the Doctor comes up with the wrong theory, and so the actual exposition is left up to the villain himself, who monologues extensively and then takes part in a chase sequence about 10 minutes later where The Doctor kills him by melting his DNA with his own weapons. We're treated to a bizarre shot where The Doctor shouts at Karl, the bounty hunter's intended victim, for kicking his remains off of the edge of the crane they were fighting on - right after The Doctor herself saved the day in a painful and gruesome way. I hope this hypocrisy isn't a repeated theme.

Aside from a few other things like some really quite nice cinematography and a cool cliffhanger ending with our leads floating in space, this episode didn't really feel like a triumphant return to form. The decision to have three companions is already causing issues, and the writing isn't making up for the problems that that many side characters brings. I also want to say that I really want to like this Doctor, but there are a few niggling doubts in my mind that I hope are settled in the next few weeks. Overall The Woman Who Fell To Earth was an interesting start to a new era, and I only hope that the show manages to iron out its few kinks by the end of its run.

Thanks.

P.S. It's good to be back! Although I only really wrote this review because I really wanted to discuss next week's episode, The Ghost Monument.

Doctor Who 10.X: The Return of Doctor Mysterio

Nardole looks as out of place on this poster as he does in
the whole bloody episode.

Doctor Who has been away from our screen for an entire calendar year, and we really needed something to bring the series back into the public consciousness. While the episode certainly tried to do this, you wouldn't know from the rest of it - the publicity for this episode was a damp squib. The trailers were badly edited, the premise looked ridiculous and most of my Doctor Who loving friends were completely meh about the whole thing. Which is a damn shame, because I actually enjoyed this episode. Its remarkably fun spirit, owed to superhero movies and general, also comes down to the fact that the superhero story is just a cover for a well-acted rom-com.
      The plot surrounds the flailing relationship between Lucy (Charity Wakefield) and Grant (Justin Chatwin, who had a bit part in Lost), the secret of course being that the latter was accidentally made a superhero by The Doctor has a child. The two's secret-identity relationship has been ripped straight from the Christopher Reeve superhero movies, with a love triangle between Lucy, Grant and Grant's alter-ego, Ghost. Despite the hackneyed ideas behind them, they are the most interesting part of the episode, with the actual threat of the piece being either confusing or boring or both. The bad guys are aliens who want to take over the world. They make lines in people's heads and replace their brains, and want to gather the world's leaders together by blowing up New York and pretending to be a safeguard against alien invasion. I immediately remembered the Aliens of London two-parter, except that had a lot more political satire and didn't just re-use a random special effect from the episode before.
     Grant could have come across as a bit creepy, and I'm sure many people thought he did, but for me I think he hit the balance perfectly and came across as genuinely charming in a kind of" "Andrew Garfield Spiderman" kinda way. Charity Wakefield was also wonderful as Lucy, who I hope will get more roles from this. I wish we'd have just focused on them rather than having this external alien story, because it brought nothing new and was actively dull at times. It didn't help that despite bringing aliens in from last year's Christmas special, no mention was made of them being in both, leading me to simply believe that Moffat had reused a special effect, something which is not particularly unlikely.

This sums up the Moffat era perfectly.. Why use fucking pockets
when you could store a loaded weapon inside your fucking head.

     Peter Capaldi was fantastic in this episode, which makes it all the more irritating that we see the return of Nardole (Matt Lucas) from last year's Christmas special. Quite like one of John Nathan Turner's mad whims, Moffat has decided that we all loved Nardole, so Nardole will be in this episode, and every episode of Series 10. The levels of wtf involved in this decision are baffling - there was no great love for Lucas' character, and he doesn't really add anything to this episode beyond very, very light comic relief that Capaldi could likely have provided himself. The main thing he seems to provide uniquely is an info-dump near the end about River Song, revealing that Capaldi spent 24 years with her before sending her to the Library. Seeing as I want River Song to go away, and go away now, this did nothing to endear the character to me, and seeing him in the rest of Moffat's finale season is going to be a chore.
     The Return of Doctor Mysterio pleasantly surprised me, but that felt very too little too late. You can make a bloody brilliant episode and it'll still fail to get the ratings if the publicity surrounding it is as lacklustre as was here. A few choices - the editing of the trailer, the general lack of advertising and the total lack of hype - meant that the return of The Doctor to our screens occured with a whimper rather than a bang. Capaldi doesn't deserve this level of apathy, this corporate assassination, and I often worry that his entire tenure is going to be draped with the same brush as Colin Baker's - a brash Doctor beset by decreasing ratings, pushed up against ITV rivals and absent publicity.

Merry Christmas.

Red Dwarf 11.2: Samsara

Warning: This review is being published before the official Dave broadcast of Series XI, at the pace of the UKTV Play streaming service. It's free, it's there right now and I love Red Dwarf too much to wait. If you want to wait for broadcast, stop reading now.

Usually I'm not sympathetic to adultery, but I kind of like these
guys?

Red Dwarf XI continues to be fantastic! This is great news! Samsara continues this series' reverence towards Series IV and V with a fascinating episode with a great concept whose foreshadowing is layered from the moment the episode starts. Apparently this episode has been divisive in the fandom - and that's to be expected, with an episode so driven by a simple concept, and one which pushes Red Dwarf norms. I will admit that there are places where this episode could have been considerably improved, but I was laughing throughout and that's generally a good sign.
     The USS Samsara crashes into an ocean planet, a single escape pod launching into orbit. 3 million years later, and after a particularly unlucky game of "Mineopoly", the crew discover the escape pod, its two inhabitants dust and the ship repeating a broken warning. The crew head down to the ship proper and discover through trial and error that the ship was destroyed by its Karma Drive, an offshoot of "Justice Field" technology that manipulated reality to reward those who abide by its moral code, and punishes those who do not. We find out through flashbacks that this was the fault of a pair of crewman, the two in the escape pod, who were engaging in an adulterous relationship and inverted the Karma Drive to continue their affair, only for everyone else on the ship to be punished and destroyed.
     The episode's pacing starts off ambitious, and the mystery hidden within the comedy worked really well, but after the break it starts to go downhill. By the midpoint of the story the mystery becomes a lot more obvious, and the explanations and flashbacks start to feel a little redundant. Added to this is a long, long sequence between Lister and The Cat in the dark which, despite having a great punchline, felt out of character and unfunny. Together they stall the episode and create an incredibly abrupt ending, making me wish that the format of the show on Dave allowed for the extra 6 minutes it's now missing.

Give me strength.

     As to the controversial flashbacks that run throughout the episode, I have no problem with their actual content. While they seem to be following Doug's "dramedy" stylings from Series VII, it works better without the actual cast present, and I don't mind the performances of the two guest actors (whose names I can't find because IMDB doesn't seem to have been updated). I liked the fluidity of the transitions between the past and present, and until the mystery was revealed later on they added a great deal to the tension of the story. I would have watched more of the flashback rather than sit through that cringe-worthy Cat scene again.
    That said, the episode looked just as good as last week, and I really liked that the pacing wasn't as break-neck - I liked the Lister/Rimmer scene at the beginning and I felt that overall the characters were much more familiar. This episode of the season was the one with the lowest budget - and that makes a existence of a few things make more sense - the length of the talking scenes, the relative lack of special effects. I was impressed that the writers decided to do what you *should* do with a bottle episode and make up for a it with a great concept, and as a result this episode is nowhere as bad as it could have been.

Thanks.

Red Dwarf 11.1: Twentica

Warning: This review is being published before the official Dave premiere of Series XI, at the pace of the UKTV Play streaming service. It's free, it's there right now and I love Red Dwarf too much to wait. If you want to wait for broadcast, stop reading now.

The boys are back in town, and the return is fast-paced goodness.
From Den of Geek

This morning, at about 11am, I sat down on my girlfriend's bed, a tray of eggs and soldiers perched before us as I clicked onto UKTV Play. Compared to the anticipation I felt for the arrival of Red Dwarf X four years ago, I could have been watching Poldark. Twentica definitely benefited from that lack of expectation, but at the same time I felt like it didn't really need it - this episode was much more assuredly Red Dwarf than any episode since Series VI, and four years of work and a higher budget mean that the show is looking more gorgeous than ever before.
     The episode's main conceit is yet another historical farce - this time a bit smarter than Tikka to Ride and Lemons, although borrowing elements from both. After a race of time-bending Simulants steal a piece of tech from Starbug under duress, the Dwarfers go back in time to an Alternate 1952 in which said simulants have prevented humanity from developing, culturally and technologically, beyond the 1920s. Instead of living under a prohibition of booze, however, any technology more advanced than steam is banned, leading to the hilarious idea of speakeasies full of Theoretical Physicists. Eventually the Dwarfers manage to piece enough technology to get home.
     Something which made Series X a little bit weird for me was the amount of time I spent analysing each and every joke and scene in a way that I just wouldn't with the older stuff. Unfortunately I've found myself doing that with this episode, noting in particular the episode length. The Dave episodes are a full five minutes long - as trivial as that may seem, that's a lot of breathing room for jokes and ideas. Twentica blew through its 24 minute runtime so fast that there were always going to be jokes that didn't work. A scene in the scientist speakeasy where a guest character reeled off lots of Physics references as jokes was hilarious to me as a Physics student, but it went on a tad too long for comfort. On the other hand, a minute-long gag about the Dwarfers mistaking a bum for Albert Einstein felt a bit rushed and cheap. The jokes about cliches and quantum mechanics had me tickled, but they might not have been to everyone's tastes.
     A lot of the pre-publicity for the series (which I've been following since filming started for Series XI/XII in December of last year) focused on the technical effects, which usually is just something that appeals to hardcore Red Dwarf fans who can tell the difference between shades of green on Starbug models. The new sets for Starbug were gorgeous, as were the steampunk streets of 1952. I was a little disappointed that our only shot of the new Red Dwarf sets was a brief scene at the end, but I'm glad they focused on story instead of just giving us a set tour to satisfy nerds like me. One thing I think is important is seeing whether Doug Naylor has learnt from the mistakes of Series VII and VIII - that good special effects do not good comedy make. Luckily, I was laughing my ass off.
     Comparing this episode to X's premiere, Trojan, the latter definitely feels like it's trying too hard. Twentica, odd name aside (is it some kind of pun on the Twenties and robotics?), instantly felt like Red Dwarf. The gang were all here, doing the same thing as usual, although with the same character development they carried over from the last series. If Red Dwarf X showed that Red Dwarf as a concept would work with older characters, then this season will hopefully demonstrate that the show can be high-tech and flashy and still be as funny as the "Golden Age" of the early 90s.

Thanks.

P.S. Yes, it's been a while. Also, out goes the "Review" prefix at the beginning of articles. You know what you're reading.

Review: Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice

Batman (Ben Affleck) and Superman
(Henry Cavill) square off.

Warner Bros.

This review contains spoilers for the film's climax. I'll try to mark them where possible. 

Are DC and Warner Brothers really so desperate to cash in on the success of Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe that they would rush the production of the Justice League? Well, yes. Yes they are.
     Warner Brothers launched the so-called "DC Extended Universe" with Man of Steel back in 2013, a film plagued by a painfully serious mood, extensive shoed-in messianic overtones, a confusing editing style and a climax in which Superman commits cold-blooded murder and produces $750 million worth of property damage. (That's thirteen 9/11 attacks.) Years later, the loquaciously titled Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice tries to rephrase that film in terms of a serious discussion about the nature of messianic figures and individual vigilantism. It doesn't work, instead providing a painfully long, loud and bland attempt to rush the formation of the Justice League and be "controversial".
      Aside from a very confusing editing style which often randomly goes off into ridiculous dream sequences, the film gives itself far too much to juggle - it's quite sad when a film lasts the same length as a Lord of the Rings movie and it barely feels like any characterisation has actually occurred. Aside from continuing the storyline of Man of Steel, BvS also introduces Batman, Lex Luthor, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg and The Flash. (Although to be fair the last three are glorified cameos.) Batman is arguably the main star of the film, with Ben Affleck actually being surprisingly good in the role, giving a seriousness which is more serious than his predecessor Christian Bale, but which feels like it has more authority (especially as Batfleck uses a voice modulator and doesn't just put on a silly deep voice.) Gal Gadot is also great as Wonder Woman, although mysteriously they decided to leave all of her character development for next year's stand-alone movie, keeping her appearances down to several scenes sneaking around and then a final triumphant appearance in the final Boss Fight.

    As we're meant to eventually care about both Batman and Superman, we need a villain, which takes the form of Alexander Luthor. Instead of the comics' suave genius Lex Luthor, we instead get his son, a nerdy neurotic psychopath whose mannerisms have a lot more in common with Heath Ledger's Joker - although the most obvious comparison was with a slightly deranged version of actor Jesse Eisenberg's most famous role, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Luthor's plans are never clear, and the fact that the finale depends on him seemingly randomly manipulating Kryptonian technology to create a monster seems to come out of nowhere. Lex Luthor's mere existence causes a lot of the film's plot holes, from his bizzare and self-defeating desire to blow up the world, his out-of-nowhere personal vendetta with Superman, and the fact that he's able to gain access to giant amounts of alien technology by basically assaulting a US Senator.

It's not a bad performance, but his character does cause the
movie a lot of its problems.

Warner Bros.

      The film's biggest lasting legacy is its darkness, and that's not just a media circus. Everything is taken to its darkest point possible while still keeping the PG-13 rating. Batman, whose character tends to abhor guns due to the murder of his parents at gunpoint, is seen in this movie carrying dual kalashnikovs and gunning, stabbing and impaling his criminal enemies willie nillie. The film takes the idea of Superman as a vision of hope and grinds it into the dirt, reveling in in-universe right-wing media sources decrying Superman as an alien monster to be treated with utmost suspicion. And, funnily enough, I see there point - this is a Superman who gets angry, who doesn't control his immense power, and this inevitably leads to his destructive battle with Batman. By far the lasting impact of this film's darker influences was a scene in which Superman is tricked into going to a Congressional Hearing by Lex's men - a hearing which turns out to be a trap when an explosion flattens Capitol Hill. The image and shooting of the scene was very well done and caught me completely by surprise, but the subject matter may still be a little raw given the events only three days prior to the film's release.
      By far the worst symptom of this darkness, though, was the ending. Spoilers follow for this paragraph. Once Lex Luthor's plot has been defeated, we find his back-up plan - Doomsday. Via some alien jigory-pokery that isn't really explained very well, Lex Luthor creates the giant Kryptonian supermutant Doomsday, a fella who looks like Azog the Defiler and who can fire immense electromagnetic blasts from his face. Superman and Batman team up with new arrival Wonder Woman to fight him, with Superman using Batman's Kryptonite spear to stab him in the chest. In the resulting melee, Doomsday impales Superman on one of his claws, and Superman dies. The problem is that despite five grueling hours of Dark!Superman material, we still don't know him in as much depth as we do other versions of the character. I don't care enough about the character to be shocked by his death, and I also don't believe that DC is going to permenantly kill off their headline character in the second film of a franchise that already has five more films planned out. This plotline was used far too early, and it essentially destroys any tension in future films from the DCEU. It also continues the ridiculous, lazy messianic archetypes ruling over the Superman character - even to the point where in both the UK and US, the film premiered on Good Friday.

Maybe if people stop obsessing over Gal Gadot's physical
appearance, they might realise she's a fantastic Wonder Woman
and I'd love to see more of her.

Warner Bros.

   At its core, Batman V Superman: Electric Boogaloo could have hit some very interesting points - if they had kept the drama down to just Batman and Superman, following on from the repercussions of Man of Steel and deconstructing the typical Superhero action film by really showing the consequences of mass-scale collateral damage. Those aspects of the film were by far the best, especially the superb performance by Holly Hunter as the Senator in charge of leading the hearings. Sadly, it was Lex Luthor and the endless tie-ins to future movies that took a strong premise and coated it in tar and feathers. Warner Brothers really failed to understand that the reason why The Avengers works is because we had time to get personally invested in each character over a number of years. This film is often compared to Captain America: Civil War, a similar superhero duel movie coming out in May, but that ignores the main difference that will almost certainly make Civil War superior - it is the thirteenth film in its franchise, while this is only the second. Combine that rushed pace with poor direction and a general lack of a sense of humour, and you get one of the biggest let-downs of this year so far.

Thanks.

P.S. Hopefully my review won't make Ben Affleck too sad. (Thanks to my friend Jen for asking me to include this. ^.^)
P.S.S Reasons to watch Channel Five news...

Review: Voyager 4.2: The Gift

Kes says one final goodbye (Shush, Fury isn't, like, a thing.)

Star Trek Voyager - Season Four, Episode Two - The Gift
Written between 30th January and 8th February 2016.

Seven of Nine and Kes share a surprising number of attributes. They're both attractive blond women from very alien cultures who help serve as an audience avatar when the rest of the crew explain things to them. They occupy the same spot in the credits and they both have unique abilities which help the show's writers make stories more interesting. But there's a very key difference between them - Kes was a background character who rarely ended up having a huge effect on the show, while Seven of Nine practically takes over the show for the rest of its run. The Gift is the meeting of two worlds - Kes' definite goodbye and Seven's incredible hello.
     Janeway and crew are trying to help Seven adapt to being disconnected from the Borg, something which the drone greatly resents. As they attempt to treat her, her body now beginning to reject the Borg implants, Kes begins displaying greater telepathic and telekinetic powers. Seemingly brought on by the recent encounter with the telepathic Species 8472, she begins to be able to wield her powers in much greater magnitudes. She uses her mental powers to save Seven's life, and Tuvok begins attempting to train her again like he did in Cold Fire. Janeway tries to have Seven help to remove the Borg technology fused to the ship, but in a moment of opportunity she knocks out Harry and attempts to contact her people. Kes begins to turn incorporeal and to save the ship and herself, she leaves Voyager on a shuttle. As a last gift to the crew who gave her so much, she launches Voyager 10,000ly forward - taking 10 years off of their journey home, and taking them far out of Borg Space. Seven is finally convinced to come round, and The Doctor fits her with a catsuit and a bionic eye.
   Harry Kim couldn't go, but the show couldn't afford to keep him and another actor, so the writers decided to get rid of Kes. As irritated as I am by how much Kes' development felt a little stunted and misdirected over the course of the first three seasons, her departure is at least the culmination of a character arc, with her slowly becoming more independent and headstrong as time went on. The way that it was tied into the examination of Ocampan abilities from Caretaker and Cold Fire felt like a very neat tie back to the show's beginnings, and helped to blend Kes' story with Seven's in a way which felt both tragic and necessary. I really don't see why they couldn't have removed Neelix instead - he was hated by the fans at the time, and the fact he was often coupled with Kes was one of his few saving graces. (Although, as I've said in some of my other reviews, Neelix can be a good character if he tries.)

From one unique female character onto the next.

     The episode's main moral quandary was one that was very much tied into the entire concept of The Borg - the nature of individuality, and of individual freedom. The Federation purports to be the ultimate in individual freedom - there is no money, so everything you do is towards making yourself better, and the galaxy better in general. Want to become a starship pilot? Go ahead, we'll train you up, give you a ship, off you go. Want to be a cook? Go on, enjoy yourself scamp. The Borg, on the other hand, is the most exaggerated nightmare of statism and communism - every being a drone with no individual thought, every action done for the good of the collective. The question that this episode asked was thus: by how much does having been a Borg remove one's ability to hold individual thought once they are disconnected. The answer seems to be, entirely. Seven, now separated from the collective, demands to be reunited with it, but Janeway tells her that, ironically, she no longer has the right to make that choice. I know they had to make this work to keep the character in the show, but it does make Janeway sound a little controlling and hypocritical - especially due to the fact she doesn't even have a long consideration about it.
      Kes' departure from the show and Seven's integration into the cast set forth a new era for the show. It didn't exactly reinvent itself in the way that DS9 managed to do two years earlier, but it did manage to take a show that was spiralling in mediocrity and provide its best season and some of the show's best episodes. The Gift feels a little disparate from the first two parts of this trilogy of story, but I think that's kind of the point - Kes' departure is important, and her decision to leave and launch the crew forward 10,000ly begins the point in the show where Voyager's attempts to find shortcuts home actually work. It's a great departure for Kes, a great development piece for Seven of Nine, and it showed the bright new direction the show was headed in.

Thanks

NEXT WEEK: We finally bring the Tom/B'Elanna romance to a head with the B'Elanna-centric Day of Honor.

Review: Voyager 4.1: Scorpion, Part II

Jeri Ryan finally appears as Seven of Nine

Star Trek Voyager - Season Four, Episode One - Scorpion, Part II
Written between 26/1/16.

The first half of Scorpion was designed as an apology to the fans, giving them a proper Borg episode after the incredible misfire that was Unity. Like Scorpion's spiritual predecessor The Best of Both Worlds over on TNG, the two halves of this story were written months apart, with the second half being adjusted to meet with fan reactions to the first. The main changes became very obvious - the arrival of Seven of Nine as a way to bring in a horny-teenage-boy demographic and shake up the cast, and the decision that instead of finally killing off Garratt Wang's Harry Kim for good, they would ask Kes actress Jennifer Lien to leave the series. Scorpion, Part II ended up being the episode which saved Voyager from complete and total ratings mediocrity, and ensured that it would reach seven seasons.
       The truce continues and Janeway and Tuvok begin working on the weapon with the Borg which will help them to destroy Species 8472. The Borg want to partially assimilate them to enhance communication, but Janeway makes a different bargain - choose one Borg to represent them, or the deal if off. Said Borg chosen is the intimidating Seven of Nine, a human girl assimilated by the collective when she was a small child and has spent the past 18 years as a drone. Eventually the Borg Cube that they are all stationed on is forced to destroy itself to stop a Bioship from attacking Voyager, and so Janeway, Tuvok and the Borg take a ride on Voyager, with the Borg assimilating one of the Cargo bays as part of their "truce". Seven of Nine eventually hijacks the ship and takes it into Species 8472's home dimension, Fluidic Space, revealing that the entire war was due to a Borg invasion of their space in an attempt to assimilate Species 8472 for their genetic diversity. The weapon is deployed and upon the Borg's betrayal most of them are blown out of an airlock - except Seven, who they manage to separate from the Collective by force.
       This episode didn't carry as much of the tension of its first half, although it did rather admirably carry on the themes between Janeway and Chakotay, this time focussing a lot more on Chakotay as he is forced to take command in Janeway's incapacity and the rift it creates between them. I loved the animosity that very quickly developed between Chakotay and Seven, with Seven standing in for what Chakotay considers to be Janeway's worst decision, and the bitterness he has over the fact that he feels obligated to continue following her (slightly crackers) plan until the last possible moment. The scene near the end where Janeway recovers and confronts him over his disloyalty was an incredibly strong moment for Voyager the show in general, finally managing to portray with high drama the conflict between Federation and Maquis philosophy, the problems this causes between two people clearly with love and affection for each other, and the way that each must compromise their values in order to keep things running. It's a dynamic that would make Deep Space Nine proud.

Harry Kim... lives? What the hell?

     Elsewhere, a lot of the character work was also shifted over to Kes and Seven of Nine, with the latter sitting as a big obvious neon sign saying "LOOK THIS CHARACTER IS IMPORTANT." (Well, that and the fact that Jeri Ryan's name had replaced Kes' in the opening sequence.) Seven immediately gives a good impression, with Jeri Ryan managing to admirably catch the spirit of the Borg with a commanding screen presence which makes you want to learn about her story and her character. It was this presence which would make Season Four (and arguably the rest of the show) work so well. I've not done gushing about Seven of Nine, not by a long shot. On the other hand there was Kes, with her magical abilities both serving as some slight character development for her an as the episode's main form of exposition about Species 8472 and their impending threat.
     Part of me knows that this episode isn't as classically "good" as it's first half - there's a lot more focus on action rather than the well-developed character drama, the plot sort of just floats around, and Harry Kim lives. But the arrival of Seven of Nine and the immediate shake-up it has on the cast of characters is incredibly interesting to me, and it puts this episode onto the map of the series as a whole.

Thanks

NEXT WEEK: We carry on the story of Seven of Nine and say a sad farewell to Kes in The Gift.

Review: Voyager 3.26: Scorpion

Star Trek Voyager - Season Three, Episode Twenty-Six - Scorpion
Written 23rd January 2016.

The idea of reviewing Star Trek was always a very daunting one to me when I started here on Nostalgia Filter, mainly because a lot of the context which I had for these shows was from having watched them back when I was a kid. Star Trek was a relatively new addition to the pantheon, and as well as being a more long-winded US show it also had seven seasons. I told myself that I might review it, but that if I did, it might make sense to stop at the end of the third season. That's not going to happen,  but I thought it was important to mention anyway.  Scorpion, like many end-of-third-season episodes for these shows, is something of a game changer, opening up many new avenues for the show and, for a time, taking us out of the doldrums.

Species 8472 are the show's most alien species yet.

     Voyager is about to enter Borg Space - the massive home territories of the Borg, a race of cyborgs who seek only to assimilate and destroy. (We met them back in Unity.) The crew are very tense, planning to continue their journey home via "The Northwest Passage", a thin corridor of space unvisited by Borg Ships due to Technobabble. Being passed and ignored by an armada of Borg Ships, they're later confused to find that all of them have been destroyed by a bizarre species of non-humanoid creatures who use biological ships and who telepathically tell Kes that, "The weak will perish." While exploring an abandoned bio-ship, Harry Kim is attacked by one of the species, and his body starts to be enveloped by toxic vines. The alien race, known only by their Borg designation of Species 8472, turns out to be basing itself in the Northwest Passage, emerging through a wormhole from a place known as Fluidic Space. Debating how to proceed, Janeway consults a Hologram of her idol Leonardo Da Vinci, and decides to make an important decision - to make an alliance with the Borg.
     This episode is often called the Best of Voyager, and it's easy to see why. Voyager often lost a lot of points on the consistency of its characterisation, to the point where even Kate Mulgrew was on board with the fan theory that Janeway had some form of bipolar disorder. This episode sets up a character play between Janeway and Chakotay, in three scenes which explore all aspects of their relationship - the first showing their almost romantic admiration and devotion to one another, the next showing Chakotay's role as an advisor and advocate, and the last showing the ideological divides between them that separate Federation and Maquis. The issues of the episode are discussed thoroughly, and we aren't driven by the narrative to necessarily agree with either of the two on their stances on the Borg Alliance. It's not in-depth characterisation as Voyager often does; instead, it's utilising those characters for the good of the plot, and it works marvellously.
     One of the episode's hallmarks that set it apart from the season it's about to finish is the sense of tension woven through the script. This is before the days when Voyager would go around blowing up Borg cubes willy nilly, and there's a feeling that everyone involved is terrified, either at the possibility of inevitable assimilation, the new possibility of destruction by Species 8472, or the prospect that their 67 year journey will have to be postponed even further to find some way around Borg Space. This comes across in everyone's tone - there is still some mild humour, but everyone feels more alert and the idea that the Borg does this to Voyager lends them an amazing sense of gravitas.

Janeway negotiates with the Borg. I'm actually impressed at
that badassitude.

       This balances out the other side of the episode, the introduction of Species 8472. Their introduction here presents them almost as the "new" Borg, a new villain for the series to hook itself on. Unfortunately they wouldn't get to use them this way (having only two appearances after this two-parter, the latter of which saw them going to great lengths to make peace), but right here it works immensely well - the sheer alienness of the 8472 and their (as yet) unexplained hostility towards our Galaxy, their living ships and their immune system, which is so powerful it can destroy Borg nanoprobes. It was a really interesting concept which was, at least initially, fairly well executed, and the added threat they present manages to make the Borg that more interesting an enemy.
     Scorpion isn't my favourite episode of Voyager - they tend to be the more stand-alone character pieces or great, well-executed concepts. As a piece of serialised television, though, taking Voyager into the next stage of its evolution, Voyager's attempt to reach the heights of TNG's Best of Both Worlds manages not just to reach its target, but excel it and take the show into a brand new direction. Scorpion marks the beginning of a string of amazing Voyager episodes, and I look forward to taking on Season Four with fresh eyes and fresh enthusiasm. And to see Seven of Nine, of course.

Thanks.

NEXT TIME: We rejoin the conflict and meet Jeri Ryan's Seven of Nine in Scorpion, Part II.

Review: Voyager 3.25: Worst Case Scenario

Thank you, Tuvok. At least someone understands. *cough*

Star Trek Voyager - Season Three, Episode Twenty-Five - Worst Case Scenario
Written between 7th and 8th January 2016

Back when this show started, the main conflict set down by the writers was the struggle between Voyager's remaining crew and the Maquis rebels that they had been forced to work with. The Maquis were created and placed into Next Generation and Deep Space Nine just to set the show up, but the conflict between the crews was more or less dropped by the end of the first season. From then on, it would only be discussed in episodes that flashbacked to the first season, and this is the first time that happened. I don't know whether it's too early in the show's life for it to become self-aware, but the tone of the episode does feel slightly like it's closing the door on those old tensions, and throwing one last bone to the storylines that ran through the show's first two seasons.
     We open on what looks like Chakotay planning a mutiny, with B'Elanna playing the part of a Starfleet ensign going along with the rebellion. Janeway and Paris leave the ship in a shuttle, and Chakotay rounds up the remaining Starfleet crew and offers them an ultimatum. The real Paris then walks in and it turns out that this whole thing is a Holodeck program created by an unknown author. We see a couple of scenarios where Tom and B'Elanna try different things in the program, until eventually Tom reaches the end of the story. Tuvok reveals that the program was originally created by him as a security measure in the case of mutiny back in the early days of the show. With Tuvok's help, Tom is given permission to finish the program's story, but it turns out that the program had been booby-trapped by Voyager villain Seska before she died, and Tuvok and Tom are forced to explore the holographic Voyager and avoid being killed while Janeway works on getting them out.
     This is the first outing for two recurring types of Voyager episodes - "romp about in Voyager's past" episodes, and "Alternate Character Fun" episodes. Both of them happen about once a season, and allow the writers and cast to spend some time working with very different characters than they usually would. For what it's worth, I really enjoyed the segments set in Voyager's potential past, especially because for me it fit a lot more with the characters outlines in the pilot. We're given some hints in Resolutions as to why Chakotay basically just capitulated to Janeway straight away, but it never really made sense to me, and seeing him take the first opportunity to take control (and trying to do so without killing anyone) felt really satisfying. Also, despite how slightly one-note she can sometimes be, it was great to see Seska again, in her penultimate appearance on the show.

Oh, Seska. Don't remind me of the Kazon arc, please.

     Therein lies the episode's main appeal, then. What else is here though? There's a strange segment in the episode between the fun hypothetical scenarios and the finale with Seska's revenge in which Tuvok and Paris debate narrative method, and the difference between writing for the art and writing for an audience. It came out of nowhere but I actually found it really interesting, and I would have liked it if the episode had ran this theme throughout the episode. Usually episodes of TV Shows which are about writing are called cliché because it's writers who are writing them, but there's only one other story with that theme in all of Voyager so it wouldn't have gone amiss here. It might have been difficult to work it in with the episode's concept, but that's their job, not mine.
     Part of me doesn't want to find fault with Worst Case Scenario, because it's such a fun poke back at those early days of the show that it builds a lot of good will with me very quickly. At the same time though, the climax with the Seska hologram feels a little forced, and you end up taking a fairly interesting story about narrative structure and the rights of the author and turning it into a silly run-around. Despite this though, it just feels like an important event, and one episode before the arrival of the Borg as the show's main villains, it perhaps feels appropriate that the show finally leaves its old self behind in an entertaining and tongue-in-cheek way.

Thanks.

Review: Voyager 3.24: Displaced

Herp-a-derp, coming ta steal yo spaceship.

Star Trek Voyager - Season Three, Episode Twenty-Four - Displaced
Written 7/11/16

Back at the end of Season Two, Voyager was overwhelmed by their main enemies, the Kazon. This was used as a way of escalating the tension of the situation, as that trope often is, as it showed Voyager being brought to a point of desperation. As ridiculous as the Kazon were, they had the help of traitor Seska to work their way onto the ship, and you believed that they were capable of this one final triumph. In this week's episode, a random, badly-dressed race of aliens manages to overwhelm Voyager in the space of less than 20 minutes. Talk about lowering the stakes as you go along. The feeling you get after finishing Displaced is a feeling that none of this should have happened, and you're not quite sure how it did.
     Tom and B'Elanna are arguing (with much sexual tension) when a silly-hatted alien suddenly appears before them, claiming to not know where he is. The crew discover that Kes disappeared at the same time, and from then on there appears to be a teleport swap of Human and Nyrian every nine minutes. Although Janeway has a gut feeling about there being "something wrong here", everyone is taken aghast when, of course, the Nyrians take over Voyager. As B'Elanna is beamed over, we find that the crew of Voyager have been placed inside an artificial environment suited to their needs. Slowly, the crew begins to build weapons and find gaps between the environments that the Nyrians have created, and with The Doctor's help they take over the Nyrian's spacecraft, teleporting all of them into a cold environment and threatening them with hypothermia unless they send everyone home.
     One of my problems with this episode is that I don't believe the Nyrians as a species. This faction of Nyrians employs the swapping-out method because it's easier to deceive people than to outright attack them. In order to carry out this "humane" method, they built a giant space station capable of holding thousands of prisoners indefinitely, using tons of power to maintain different environments and atmospheres. We never meet the Nyrians again so I can't imagine that they're a huge empire with limitless power - so it seems so strange that they would burn up so many of their resources when they could just use their magical somehow-gets-past-Voyager's-shields transporters to beam people into space. Voyager starts its rebellion and overruns their space station in the course of an hour or two in-show, and the idea that our heroes managed what dozens of other species couldn't also rubs me the wrong way. It's not very believable, is my point. And it's also difficult to be caught up in the tension of an episode where Voyager is overrun when you don't find the villains intimidating, and it's inevitable that they'll lose at the end of the episode.

Technically speaking, this is a B'Elanna episode. Technically.

     The only really important character notes in this episode were between Tom and B'Elanna. It felt a little bit like a retread of the events of Blood Fever in that respect, as they didn't really go over anything more interesting than the fact that B'Elanna gets angry and Tom uses humour as a defence mechanism, both of which we already knew and didn't really need spelling out to us. It was nice to see them continuing to build up the relationship between those two, which would later go on to become "official" in Season Four, but it felt so irrelevant to the rest of the episode's plot that it might as well have been a bit of an afterthought. Elsewhere, we had a nice out-of-the-blue scene between Chakotay and Tuvok where they reminisced about their time at the academy.
      Promising so much in premise and delivering so little, Displaced is one of a long list of classic Voyager filler episodes; you could reasonably drop this episode from your marathon and not lose much beyond one slight gradiation towards the Tom and B'Elanna subplot for next season. Compared to the rest of the season it isn't a particularly bad show, and the action is well-executed, but compared to the last two episodes of this season, it really isn't anything special.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: Mutiny on Voyager? We revisit Season One plotlines for one last time in Worst Case Scenario.

Review: Doctor Who 9.13: The Husbands of River Song

Ten years into the run of the Doctor Who revival, and Christmas specials have rather an odd position in the show's makeup. They can't be too dense or packed with mythology, or they'd exclude a large proportion of the audience who only watch on Christmas Day. But, despite this, both RTD and Moffat have on various occasions packed the Christmas specials with huge, important arc stories. The Husbands of River Song is a very odd attempt at both, having some elements designed for mass consumption and some rather more complicated story work related to Moffat's old messy stalwart, River Song, whose presence on the show in my mind is as welcome as a Jar-Jar Binks cosplayer in a Star Trek convention.

Can we just look at how unpretty this poster looks? It's horrid.

     The Doctor arrives on a human colony in the future at Christmastime, but ends up running into River Song and her servant Nardole (Matt Lucas, Little Britain), who don't recognise Twelve as The Doctor and instead think that he is an assassin they tasked with killing Song's genocidal cyborg husband King Hydroflax. River reveals that her marriage to Hydroflax (Greg Davies, The Inbetweeners) was a ploy to steal the space-diamond from inside his head and sell it to a high bidder, and when The Doctor physically removes the still-living Hydroflax's head from his autonomous body, it chases them into the TARDIS, which River uses to escape. She and The Doctor head off to meet her buyers on a space-ship built for rich genocidal killers, but they turn out to be adherants of Hydroflax's religion and so River is forced to crash the ship on its final destination - the Singing Towers of Darillium. Just after River works out who Twelve is, she also remembers that the Singing Towers is the location of their last night together, and it seems as though her story is about to come to a close.
     I'd made it fairly clear before that I wasn't happy about River Song coming back to the series - her story was convoluted, ridiculous and tiring. There were only so many times I could put up with River's smug caricature popping up as one of Moffat's go-to female archetypes. Strangely enough, though, that archetype seems to not be in effect here - River is a lot more clueless, a lot more fallible, even though this is supposed to be near the end of her adventures with The Doctor. While I wasn't happy that her timeline was being dragged up yet again, I did enjoy the slickness and subtlety with which the "Singing Towers of Darillium" prophecy was fulfilled - especially as that particular thread had already been rather less-than-satisfactorily explored in a DVD extra a few years ago (during the height of the show's River-mania).
     And, of course, that level of continuity made those elements of the story a little impenetrable to a lot of watchers, who certainly don't remember minor one-line mentions from a story which aired seven years ago. Despite how much Moffat and his fandom claim that the show is as strong as ever, ratings are falling steadily, and there's a growing feeling, however accurate, that "it's not as good as it was." It feels a little arrogant of Moffat for this special to unload all of this continuity on us at Christmas without batting an eyelid towards explaining those previous connections, especially as the show has been trying it's best during Capaldi's run to forget the period of the show where most of River's adventures happened.

Greg Davies works as a bumbling school headmaster, but does
not have the presence to play a genocidal alien warlord.

     Aside from that, the episode was... well, it was fine. It was harmless. The episode was clearly trying, in the bits where it wasn't asking you to consult the TARDIS Wiki, to be humourous. The problem was that the whole thing was imbued with gallows humour, from casual talk of murder, mutilation and beheadings to charming races of genocidal conquerors. This extended to the visual style too, with lots of images of exchanging heads and people literally extracting things from their brains while still conscious which, while funny in say Red Dwarf, felt very out of place for 5ish on Christmas Day. It also jarred with the main comedic thrust of the episode, a very Sarah-Jane-Adventures-style misunderstanding in which despite repeated hints, River doesn't recognise The Doctor until the pivotal moment of the climax.
     I didn't expect much from The Husbands of River Song, and I didn't get much, either. Moffat apparently wrote this episode with the intention that it be the last thing he wrote for Doctor Who - until he decided to carry on and write Series 10. I was surprised given that description that this episode wasn't even more ridiculous than it turned out to be, although I don't think I want to know what that looks like. All I know is that however much Moffat's writing has changed to become a little more subtle and little less offensive, the general meh-ness of this episode is a clear demonstration if any was needed that Doctor Who really needs, if you'll pardon the reference, a regeneration.

Thanks.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: The War Games

Doctor Who - Season Six, Story Seven - The War Games
Written between 28th October and 11th December 2015.

The Second Doctor's time on the show was filled with lots of Base-Under-Siege stories and repetitions of famous monsters. It was a transitionary period of the show, between the crapshoot serial drama of the Hartnell Era and the more slick adventures of the Pertwee Era. In that time, Two covered a lot of really great science fiction, and so it's only fitting that his era end on this complicated, long and remarkably watchable ten episode adventure which is fun, exciting and originates a remarkable amount of lore about The Doctor's past and people. While a lot of people skip the serial's first nine episodes and focus solely on Troughton's last continuous appearance, I think that's a grave mistake to make, as the rest of the serial has a great deal to offer.

The first appearance of the Time Lords, including
Chancellor Goth.

     The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe appear to land on the Western Front, where a tyrannical General Smythe is not only sending his soldiers to their deaths but is also communicating with some alien force using the 1960s vision of Skype. When The Doctor and some of his new friends attempt to escape and find the TARDIS, they pass through fog and end up in Roman Britain, revealing the true nature of their surroundings - an alien force has trapped large numbers of humans from throughout history on an alien planet set up to mimic their time-zones, planning to create a force of disposable but incredibly capable human soldiers. This plot is the orchestration of a race known as the War Lords, led by a Steve Jobs type known as "The War Lord" and aided by a mustachioed member of the Doctor's own people, the Time Lords, known as The War Chief. Boy, that's a lot of definite articles. The Doctor initially aides an uprising within the zones, and later confronts The War Chief (who is definitely not The Master, despite how cool that would be). Eventually, as he himself is unable to bring everyone home, The Doctor does the unthinkable and calls in the Time Lords. They take him and his companions back to their home planet, wiping his companions' memories of him and sentencing him to both forced regeneration and exile on Earth.
     The first thing you notice about this episode is that the guest cast are at an amazing calibre. Everyone from minor side characters to major villains are acting their socks off here, and it all makes for an extra wonderful send-off for this era. Notable names in the first few episodes are David Savile and Noel Coleman as Lt. Carstairs and General Smythe, respectively. Savile would appear in the program later in its run, while Coleman would go on later to have a memorable role in Red Dwarf. By far the strongest guests are Edward Brayshaw's War Chief (whom I'll discuss later) and The War Lord, delivered in amazing style by Philip Madoc. Madoc's War Lord is a tour-de-force performance, effortlessly quiet and civilised yet burying a deep ruthless anger. He's got the voice of a man confident that everything in creation is following his design, and it's spell-binding.
     The War Chief is a different beast entirely. I mentioned The Master before, and it's hard not to see the resemblance - a renegade Time Lord, used to be friends with The Doctor, now teamed up with an evil race he plans to use and then double-cross, who eventually double cross him instead. Edward Brayshaw doesn't, however, have a lot of The Master's mannerisms - he isn't hammy or particularly affable. Instead, he is a shrewd and fairly pleasant businessman, and the moment he hears of The Doctor's involvement he tries to make bonds and forge alliances. It's a refreshingly enjoyable kind of villain character where you actually end up routing for them to succeed in their scheme to overthrow the greater evil, even if at the end of the day they needed to be thwarted as well.

The War Lord and the War Lord are intriguing, complex villains.

   This episode's place in the show means that a lot of people are quite confused when they come to watch it. It takes eight and a half episodes before it becomes clear that any sort of final peril will actually come upon The Doctor and his companions. This peril comes in the form of the first appearance of The Time Lords, mentioned by name according to this story's idiosyncratic race naming. The name of their planet, Gallifrey, wouldn't be mentioned at all until 1974's The Time Warrior, but this is it's first appearance as well, albeit without the detail lovingly crafted onto it by later seasons. Watching the penultimate episode of this story, I finally understood the fan outrage at The Deadly Assassin; arguably the first time we got a good look at the depths of Gallifreyan politics. That story would humanise them; here, they are mystical, otherworldly beings of almost infinite power. They are a genuinely terrifying force, Gods by another name.
     By far the most memorable thing about this story, however, is the fact that we have to say goodbye. The means of Two's departure are miserable, and the fact we see Jamie and Zoe return to their lives, their memory of The Doctor lost, is simply heartbreaking. I watched six Two serials over the course of Cyberman Month and the two Ice Warriors stories. Over that time I really genuinely came to love these guys and their cute little adventures. I can't imagine just how powerful it would be if you'd spent three years with them. I can't really say I've fully explored The War Games and its many, many charms, but I can say that even as the show careened off into a vaguely uncertain future, this story was a demonstration of just how brilliant Doctor Who really was during those great old days.

Thanks

IN TWO WEEKS: We finally make our return to the Pertwee Era with The Mind of Evil.

Review: Voyager 3.23: Distant Origin

Star Trek Voyager - Season Three, Episode Twenty-Three - Distant Origin
Written 09/12/15

In 1633, the Catholic Church put Galileo Gallilei on trial for his adherence to the scientific theory of heliocentrism, the fact that the Earth revolves around the Sun and not the other way around. It's held up as a classic case of reason and science being crushed under the power of a religiously motivated establishment, and it's a clear-cut inspiration for the this week's episode, which follows a race of lizard-men descended from Hadrosaurs as they attempt to bypass their race's central religion and prove that they actually hail from Earth. It's a really interesting twist on the idea, but I wasn't as impressed as I wanted to be.
     We follow two reptilian aliens as they retrieve the remains of Hogan, an ensign of Voyager who died back in Basics. They are excited to discover that Hogan shares genetic markers with them, supporting their hypothesis that they are not in fact The First Race, but are descended from species on a far-off planet. This hypothesis is not supported by their race, the Voth's, high council, who follow "Doctrine", the underlay of their society. The originator of this theory is Professor Gegen, who is forced to escape Voth when the High Council attempts to detain him. His ship follows Voyager's path over Season Three, through the Nekrit Expanse. Luckily the Voth ship seems to be much faster than Voyager, and they catch up pretty quickly. Gegen kidnaps Chakotay and forms a friendship with him, but the vast Voth mothership overwhelms and captures Voyager itself, and in order to save them from a life of penal slavery, Gegen is forced to recant his views before the ministry.
     For a while it was interesting to see our characters from a distinctly alien point of view, and this gave the beginning of the episode a distinctly comic tone. This was perhaps not the best episode to begin back on after a ten-week hiatus in writing these reviews, as my sense of who these characters are is a little less toned than normal. The character who shined through the most Chakotay, and it was a difficult balance between the character actually being useful and courageous and the writers indulging the finer aspects of their "mystical spirit guy" schtick. Surprisingly, however, this episode saw Chakotay fighting for the side of science and progress against mysticism. I'm not sure whether this was a deliberate choice to demonstrate the ubiquitous nature of the philosophy of Star Trek, or just a really shoddy character move on the writers' parts.

      The tracing of Voyager's path across the past season was really fun to witness, and the reappearance of Hogan posthumously had me giggling like a madman, especially with the show's patented pattern of introducing a "redshirt" character, giving them two episodes of minor development and then killing them off anyway. I expected (and, for some reason, even remembered) there being a more thorough coverage of the season; if you're going to do a continuity episode, then why only reference two previous episodes? (Hogan died in Basics, Part II, and Gegen visits the space-station from Fair Trade.) The fact that it broke through to allow the main thrust of the plot to develop isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it did render the appearance of Hogan a little bit of a pointless in-joke. How Voyager.
      I made mention of the Gallileo comparison in the intro, and that's true. There are a few other little analogues here or there - there's some racial purity dynamics going on which are reminiscent of backlash against Darwin (Me? Related to a monkey?) The main problem was that it wasn't particularly subtle, and hence didn't add much to the discussion beyond presenting the historical events in a sci-fi context. Great for a Saturday Morning Cartoon, but the fact that the concept wasn't really taken anywhere meant that it lost a lot of its oomph. There was the tragedy inherant within the premise, but this is Star Trek. The whole initial starting point of the show is that these problems have been bypassed. Voyager's crew come from a utopian society where the theocratic repression of the Voth has been thrown off, but they never seemed to have any positive influence besides essentially fucking Professor Gegen over. Which is a real shame.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: A beautiful filler episode. It's the utterly forgettable Displaced.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Seeds of Death

They don't seem to hiss as much in this one.

Doctor Who - Season Four, Story Five - The Seeds of Death

Written between 16th and 26th October 2015

After the joy of Cyberman Month, I was going to carry on the theme, with December becoming Ice Warriors Month. Seeing as there's so much else going on, and the fact I wanted to review the amazing The War Games, I decided to leave the two colourised Ice Warriors stories for my hopefully rejuvenated run-through of the Pertwee years. So here we are with the penultimate story in this little black and white saga - The Seeds of Death, which follows up the Ice Warrior's initial high-concept Base-Under-Siege story with... a high-concept story using the Base-Under-Siege format. While I'm not exactly surprised at this repetition, there are a few things in this story's favour.

     Far in the future (although how far is unspecified), humanity has abandoned its space program in favour of a global teleportation system (known as T-Mat) organised from a Moonbase (no, not that one). Things are going smoothly until a tiny squadron of Ice Warriors invades said Moonbase, and begin coercing its staff into sending poisonous seed pods down to the surface of the Earth. The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe arrive before the pods are sent, and head up on mankind's last manned rocket to find out exactly what's going on. The pods create a self-replicating fungus which begins to spread across the Earth's surface, choking people and killing wildlife. Because the fungus is allergic to water, the Ice Warriors attack a weather station, but The Doctor manages to swoop in at the last minute and stop them, saving Earth.
     This story was broadcast in 1969, six months before the Apollo 11 mission had landed man on the moon. This makes the story's vision of the future rather pessimistic, and at the same time brilliant - sharply contrasting the 60s love of space and adventure (and really Doctor Who itself), the story manages to predict what actually ended up happening - we made it to the Moon and stopped. While we didn't stop all space travel - sending unmanned probes to take pictures of the Solar System and even sending one probe outside of the influence of our Sun - there are some interesting parallels with the defunding of NASA, the abandonment of the manned Space Program in the 1970s and a general sense of anticlimax to the Space Race. All before Man had even set off for the moon.
      The Seeds of Death is a Base-Under-Siege story, it's true, although it never really feels like that. There's a genuine sense that the Earth is in danger this time, even if the effectiveness of the Ice Warrior's soapy bath foam is undermined by both how silly it looks (Zoe is visibly giggling her head off in one "tense" scene) and by the Shyamalan-worthy fact that water stops it from working. The Ice Warriors, who can see Earth from their spaceships, decided to invade a planet whose surface area is 70% water and where water literally falls from the sky using a fungus which hates it. There are no words for this level of stupid. As for the setting, I wish they had a window on the Moonbase like in that previous story called The Moonbase - they could have even replicated that set and had some amazing continuity! For a part-time viewer it's hard to really appreciate that they're alone and isolated on the moon - The Ice Warriors was great for this, showing the hardships our characters faced while wandering the harsh ice of a future Britain. This time, the best we got was a fairly fun shot of an Ice Warrior wandering around in open countryside.

The Doctor is, in fact, afraid of suffocation in this scene,
and not simply enjoying a relaxing bubble bath.

      The Ice Warriors in this story are slightly less effective than in their premier, with their numbers having been knocked down to a measly two guys, and their motives being less "complicated struggle to survive" and more "mwhahaha let's conquer the earth for shitz lol." The serial is the first, however, to develop their culture as if they were actually people, establishing an apparent caste system with leaders called "Ice Lords" who are superior to all others and who get to wear an extra special silly hat. As mentioned, the shot of an Ice Warrior wandering around Britain was actually fairly interesting, even if it confused the narrative (when in the timeline of this story was the Earth frozen over?). The problem is, this story could have easily been done with the Cybermen of this era - and it might even have felt more appropriate, with the use of the Cybermen as a fear of technological progress fitting perfectly with this story's themes.
      The Seeds of Death does have something to offer those tired of the Base-Under-Siege format - it's got a fun and rather appropriate prediction about the future of humanity, its Leader/Voice-of-Reason/Traitor characters are all really well-developed for what they are. It does retread a lot of the format's problems and the appearance of the Ice Warriors doesn't really make that much sense thematically, but the story is exciting and pacey and more than makes up for it. The Seeds of Death's pessimism about the future of mankind may have been somewhat warranted, but it certainly made for a good story. 

Thanks

NEXT WEEK: We say goodbye to black and white stories for the moment, with The War Games.