Review: Lost 4.11: Cabin Fever

Richard Alpert observes Baby Locke.

"...destiny, John, is a fickle bitch". Ben

After the banality of last week, we return to the core storyline with a Locke-centric episode that sets the ground for the finale. As this season's penultimate story, it feels like a fitting tribute to a character whose signficance is set to rocket in the succeeding two seasons. Elsewhere, the episode finally knuckled down and got moving.
     Since Locke doesn't get off the island (not yet, anyway), we have a long series of flashbacks for this episode. First we see his birth; his teenage mother gave birth to him prematurely after a road accident and then subsequently gave him up for adoption. The immortal leader of the Others, Richard Alpert, is watching, and arrives at his foster parents' house a few years later, claiming to be from a "special school." He presents Locke with a number of island related items - a vial of the Island's sand, a knife, a comic book talking about other lands, and so on. He asks Locke which of the items "belong to [him] already." When the five-year-old boy picks the sand, the compass and then, in particular, the knife, Alpert storms out, claiming Locke isn't "ready".
     Later, in middle school, a science teacher releases a 16-year-old Locke from a locker. The science teacher tells him about a program for gifted students up in Portland (where we know, from Season Three, that Alpert's off-island company is based). Locke refuses, saying that "science camp is what gets [him] put in lockers." The science teacher offers him some advice, telling Locke that he is a certain type of person and no matter what he wants, he will never be the "popular kid". Locke rebuts him with his catchphrase, "Don't tell me what I can't do." Thirty years later, after Locke is paralysed by his father, the mysterious Abbadon poses as a hospital porter and tells Locke to go on a walkabout in Australia to clear his mind - the same walkabout that led to him being on flight Oceanic 815 in the first place.
     These examinations of Locke's past feel sporadic and out of place, despite how much they key into the character as a whole. They were edited well into the other sections of the episode but ultimately they were distractions from the rest of the action.

Keamy's device.

    In the present, two yarns were unfolding. We once again followed Locke, Ben and Hurley in their quest to find Jacob's Cabin, the home of the island's legendary deity. Ben, who is supposed to be Jacob's intermediary, admits that he has little to no idea where he is going, and has simply been following Hurley. They camp for the night, and Locke has a dream where 70s DHARMA member Horace Goodspeed tells him to find his corpse. The next morning, Locke leads the others to the DHARMA mass burial, where Ben dumped their bodies fifteen years prior. In Goodspeed's corpse's pocket lies the cabin's schematics, with which they then locate the cabin. Locke goes in alone, finding an eerie Claire and Jack's father, Christian Shepherd, who appears randomly about the island. Christian gives Locke "Jacob's message," which he then relays to Locke - "We have to move the island."
    Meanwhile, on the boat, Martin "Obvious Villian" Keamy and what remains of his mercenary troupe return. He finds out about Michael, but leaves him to prepare for his final assault on the island - his "Secondary Protocol" to kill everyone on the island. He has a strange device strapped to his bicep. The Captain is wary of Keamy's plans and knows that he will mutiny, and thus conspires with Sayid and Desmond for them to use the freighter's Zodiac Raft to begin ferrying people from the island, where Keamy intends to go, to the safety of the Freighter. Just before Keamy and his troupe set off for the island, The Captain confronts him with a gun, but is shot before he can work out what Keamy's device is for.

See quote.

    Unlike last week, where things dragged a little, Cabin Fever kept up the pace and moved everything into placein a compelling way. A lack of anything to do with the Quadrangle certainly helped in matters, with conversation here more stimulating that trite. My favourite exchange cmes from the Locke storyline, where Ben warns him about the dangers of being "chosen," digging at the philosophy that seems to keep Locke standing. It adds another dimension to both characters - emphasising Locke's idealist stubbornness and Ben's frustration with his current situation. Meanwhile, on the Freighter, we got yet another glimpse (as if The Shape of Things To Come wasn't enough) of Keamy's destructive tendencies - notably in his killing of the Doctor, who because of the time differential between the island and the outside world has already washed up on the beach back in that earlier episode. All good Time Travel fun.
     Next week - the first part of the three hour finale, There's No Place Like Home!

Thanks,

News: Close to Miracle Day

With this series of Doctor Who stuck on the back burner for three months, the BBC aren't letting up on the Whoniverse. Come 8th July we get a brand new series of Torchwood, the confused Who spinoff, this time made hand-in-hand with US Company Starz. This means that we'll have a few American cast members, but most of all I'm wondering about how the completely different American attitude to drama will affect Torchwood, whose plots have often been convaluted or silly. Even last year's excellent, week-long powerhouse Children of Earth had some key flaws, and I'm not sure if Starz is going to fix any of that.
     But I wouldn't be a decent critic (cough) if I was biased beforehand, so expect regular reviews of Torchwood: Miracle Day from 8/7/11 onwards.

Thanks.

EDIT: Turns out the UK transmission date is the 14th, six days after the US.

Review: Being Human 1.4

Mitchell guides Lauren away from Bernie.

"We're deluding ourselves, here. Thinking we could ever be accepted by normal human beings."

I know what you're thinking, reader. This is a Brian Dooley script, the man who brought the world BDSM vampire orgies in a 9:00 slot on BBC Three. This review is going to be one of the most biased I've ever done, right? Right? Well, Dooley certainly has his problems, but a good reviewer approaches his media with fresh eyes. Not that looking on it with fresh eyes improves this episode in any way...
   Mitchell gets focus for a change, this time showing a caring side. After a cold-open monologue talking about self-identity, he protects a child, Bernie, from bullies. Father figure absent, the boy's mother allows Mitchell to take him bowling and take him to see films. While they're interrupted once by Lauren, who's singing the praises of the vampire world, everything is going swimmingly. In an attempt to show Bernie the wisdom of Laurel and Hardy, Bernie accidentally picks up Lauren's Vampire Porn and the resulting furore has Mitchell and George branded "peedos". Annie and George are appropriately pissed at Mitchell for even keeping the DVD. When Bernie tries to visit the house, a mob tries to kill Mitchell, but when the boy is knocked down by a car Mitchell helps him get to hospital. Mitchell tells his mother about vampires and promises that he can save her little boy - as long as she lets Mitchell turn him into a vampire. And... well... she does so. Creepy. Anyway, we wave goodbye to  and we never hear from him again. Pissed off at Humans, Mitchell heads back to the Mortuary and announces he's rejoining the Vampire Masterplan.
     It's nice that Mitchell gets a starring role again, but Bernie, like most child characters in low-budget dramas, is twee and annoying. The character's end felt unnecessary and it would have made a much bigger statement to have the boy simply die; not because of any malice on my part, but because it would make more sense considering what Mitchell does next.
     George meanwhile is worrying about whether Nina won't like him now he isn't sexing her up with the power of the moon, but she soon admits that she's glad that he wants to take it slow and be romantic. However, after the mob starts their assault, George tries to break it of with Nina, taking into consideration the risk he's putting her in with his lycanthropothy. She isn't having it, and turns up outside his egg-stained door. She assumes that he's a peadophile, but he explains that there's other stuff going on. She storms off. After Bernie is hit, George seeks out Nina's comfort, where she reveals to him her "secret" - she has horriffic burns on her stomach from when she was a child.

Mitchell tries to hold back his hunger for blood.

     George took more of a back seat this week, and that helped his character a bit, but it had a few good moments for the fast- developing Nina too. Annie meanwhile felt like a footnote, her main moments coming during a visit by Owen, where she became a poltergeist and started unintentionally destroying things. At the end, she destroyed her photos of Owen and mvoed on, becoming more powerful in the process as well as visible to everyone. This is a key part of her character and it sets the scene for the penultimate episode, which forms part of the finale.
     For George and Annie, this week's episode felt straight on target, while Mitchell seems to have missed by a few inches or so. On the whole it wasn't in any way unpleasant, but there were little problems here or there that stained the copy-book, making a watchable episode a litle more irritating. And yes, while it isn't as blatantly terrible as Dooley's later contribution, there are still the seeds of things to come (vampires' adverse sexual behaviours, a teenage vampire). It needed a quick buff to get rid of the creases, one that I hope will be apparrent as the first series' finale roles upon us.

Thanks.

Review: Doctor Who 6.7: A Good Man Goes To War

I'm sure that "late" doesn't cut it.
    A Good Man Goes To War is burdoned with a dual purpose - a climax to not only the clumsy arc of this demi-series, but also to the story of River Song and questions surrounding her identity. Maybe it's a bit of a cop-out to say so, but I'm really quite tired at this point - the show was always better as independant stories with tenuous links at best, so each story could be marked on their own merits. When the show turns over to this overly serialised nature, it makes viewing (and reviewing) more difficult.
     Amy's baby having been born and named Melody, Amy awaits her rescuers in a future human base known as Demon's Run. The Doctor appears to the Cybermen (only a cameo, unfortunately), a Silurian (and her maid) and a Sontaran. As the soldiers, belonging to the 51st Century Church from all the way back in S5, ready ot fight the Doctor, we're shown The Headless Monks, a mysterious race of robed warriors. The army is being controlled by Madame Kovarian, who appeared throughout this demi-series, and by Colonel Manton. As the Colonel gives a speech to the troops revealing the literal nature of the Headless Monks, The Doctor appears and inflicts his Silurian army, with the help of his Sontaran friend, Silurian Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh) and her maid Jenny (Catrin Stewart, Misfits) - the subjects of a sly cunnilingus joke - and trader Dorium. A motley menagerie of cameos and guest characters, this episode notably feels a lot more flashy and expensive than the rest of the series.
     The Doctor and Vastra look at Melody's DNA, discovering that because she was conceived in the TARDIS she got partial Time Lord DNA. Before they can think further, the Headlessmonks slaughter quite a few people, wnader off again and then it is revealed that Amy's baby is a 'Ganger as well and thus the real baby has been taken by Kovarian, off to Earth in the 1960s. Disheartened, a previously reluctant River Song pops in and gives an undeserved rant about how dangerous the Doctor is, before telling him her true identity - she's the Time Lord offspring of Amy and Rory.
    And I, like many others, didn't see this as much of a surprise. It had been rather obvious for a while, and the name Melody Pond in itself was enough for most perceptive viewers to work it out. Moffat advertised this cliffhanger as "gamechanging" - really? I'm not convinced.

Amy monologues.

    AGMGTW wasn't in any league bad, but it felt very fluffy and stuffed full of grandiose proclamations in lieu of any plot. What reason is there for bringing back such unconnected monsters for the sake of a few flash sequences? Was it to throw the Spoiler-Hounds off the scent? Whatever the reason, it turned this episode into something more aesthetic and Lowest Common Denomintor, despite the otherwise complex themes that the demi-series has been working with up until now. The episode depreciates on rewatching, when the adrenaline from the initital runthrough passes in favur of sly cynicism.
     I enjoyed the episode on a base level. It just disappointed on so many others.

Thanks.

P.S. No, Let's not Kill Hitler...

Review: Doctor Who 6.5-6: The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People

The Doctor, Amy and Rory accept a friend's sacrifice.

Unlike many overseas viewers, my reason for a late review of this two parter is for more personal reasons, mainly to do with my work schedule for School. Regardless to say it's been a while since I've have to chance to look upon the episodes with fresh eyes.
     Many would say that so far Series Six has either been one of the best ever made or suffering from issues to do with Moffat's general style of series-writing. I am hesitant to say so, but I've been in the middle; I've enjoyed the episodes but there's some underlying problems that might spoil my enjoyment if I think about them for too long. The Flesh Two-parter is an example of a story that divides opinion, and for very good reason. The rest of the series (keep getting tempted to call it a season because of the whole Summer-Autumn fiasco) so far has been quite extraordinary, boundary-stretching Who, and at times this story feels a little too close to formula for the standard we've been given.
     Set in a 22nd Century Acid Factory (built out of an old castle on an island, for whatever reason. The reason that they're mining acid isn't explained either), the Doctor arrives with an agenda, interested in the site's use of "Flesh" technology - living biomatter that can be programmed into any state and controlled, like vehicles, by the workers in the factory. If a worker gets injured or killed, a new body (or 'ganger in these terms, short for doppelganger) can be made right away. The workers in the factory are shy Jennifer (Sarah Smart, Five Days), doting father Jimmy (Mark Bonnar, Psychoville), cheeky Buzzer (Marshall Lancaster, Life On Mars/Ashes to Ashes), quiet Dicken (Leon Vickers) and leader Gleaves (Raquel Cassidy, Lead Balloon). They're all pretty one-note.
     As they arrive, a solar storm hits the factory. While The Doctor manages to prevent most of the system damage, the storm severs the links between the 'gangers and their hosts, leaving a set of clones with identical memories. The Doctor insists that these clones are equal to humans in every way in terms of rights, even when the two sides want to kill each other. Meanwhile, Rory takes a shine to who he thinks is Jennifer, who is in fact a 'ganger and the one most insistent on killing everyone.

Ganger!Doctor in his half-state.

     Real Cleaves is freaked out and kills 'Ganger Buzzer, leading to the two sides being "at war." The cliffhanger of the first episode has a clone of The Doctor appear, he having touched the raw material earlier on.
    The Rebel Flesh sets up its concepts interestingly enough, but the pace feels rather slow when set against the past few weeks and it takes a while to get used to. The idea itself, of biological clones, is certainly not new, but ex-Life On Mars writer Matthew Graham examines the moral dilemmas in a way unlike, say, Chris Chibnall's story last year. The comparison is justified - both stories feature The Doctor holing up with a group of humans angry at a species who they share their world with, both written by an ex-Life On Mars writer. Graham has some stigma here, having produced the fan-reviled Fear Her in 2006, but I like that particularly story and I think Graham has a better grasp of character, something which makes his characters a little more real (no pun intended) than Chibnall.
     We return from the cliffhanger with Ganger!Doctor reacting badly to having to clone an eleventh body, having him quote Doctors 1,2,3,4 and 10. He stabilises, and The Doctor "introduces" him as his exact equal, despite any biological difference; the only difference in Amy's mind is their shoes, of which the Real!Doctor had to change. Regardless, the humans remain suspicious and when the group ventures out, Ganger!Doctor is left with the 'Gangers. In the interim, however, a somewhat prejudiced Amy slips to the 'ganger about The Doctor's death back in The Impossible Astronaut. The ganger is angry because he can feel the suffering of the Flesh - it remains partially alive through the deaths of its hosts and "rejected" Gangers are left to rot.

Amy keeps herself firmly with the Humans.

     Wandering about, Jennifer (now most definitely a Ganger, as the real Jennifer died a while back) uses Rory to help her destabilises the factory's coolant systems, which will eventually cause it to explode. Both the Gangers and Humans catch on, the Gangers using the Humans' security codes to call for help. Jennifer arrives with Rory, but the Ganger!Doctor has already been humanising his colleagues by exploiting their main character traits and Jennifer is left to fight alone.
     Ganger!Jimmy tries to save his real self but he dies; the same with Dicken, and both are allowed to resume their original's lives. The Tardis falls through into the factory from the outside world just as The Doctor and Ganger!Cleaves discover that Jenniffer has turned into a massive monster. Everyone meets up, and The Doctor reveals that he and his ganger switched shoes, and that Ganger!Doctor was him all along, proving to Amy that she can't tell them apart. Gangers Doctor and Cleaves decide to stay behind and stop the Jenn-Monster while the rest go off their their specific destinations.
     Now; the devisive cliffhanger. In a lead into next week, it's revealed that The Doctor's reason for visiting the Flesh was to exmine the technology based on his core suspicion that Amy is in fact a Ganger being controlled from elsewhere - a theory confirmed when The Doctor dissolves Amy and she wakes up in a birthing chamber, 9 months pregnant and the woman in the eye patch telling her that she's ready to pop.
     Fan reaction to the cliffhanger was, in my opinion, exaggerated - the cliffhanger's shock appeal works on the first viewing but feels somewhat of an inevitable burdon on the second time-around. It builds up the Semi-finale well, but other than that the end feels tacked on and not fluidic.

     So; my final verdict? Well, the story didn't feel as powerful as the rest of the series but it kept the same tone and feeling as well as containing potent writing and a series of ideas not only capitvating but well-presented for what they were. Fundamentally, the main aversion of type was the avoidance of cringe-comedy clone moments - the clones managed to create serious drama instead of "hilarious" exploits. Not what I expected, at all, but in most ways better, and worth my time if only as good entertainment before the semi-finale.

Thanks.

P.S. A Good Man Goes To War coming some time soon.

Not enough hours in a day...

It's probably not escaped your notice (it certainly hasn't escaped mine) that I've not been posting a lot recently. I'm not going to make up excuses for why I've not been active; other than the fact that I've not been able to keep with with the blog when finished with my homework schedule.

I'm going on Holiday for a week so there's little chance of me updating anything while I'm there, but when I get back I hope to write another triple-bill Doctor Who review with The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People and A Good Man Goes To War.

Heading towards summer my schedule should start to free up a bit. You'll hopefully be getting reviews of Lost, which is beginning to wrap up, Being Human Series 1-2 and an overview of this series of Psychoville.

Thanks.

Review: Lost 4.10: Something Nice Back Home

Jack supervises his own operation.

My main problem with both Jack and Kate is simply that they're either not doing anything particularly interesting or they're being incredibly unlikeable in a variety of ways. Both of these things are true in this episode, whose main focus is yet again the series' tiresome Love Quadrangle between Jack, Kate, Sawyer and Juliet. However, quite like the last Kate episode, Something Nice Back Home provides us with some other useful distractions to keep us interested. And, with only four episodes of this season left to go, it needs to.
     In the future (after Eggtown and The Beginning of the End but before the Season Three finale), it turns out that Jack is living with Kate and is helping to raise Aaron. They're quite cosy; Jack's starting to take a few pills, but otherwise everything fine and dandy. Upon his request, Jack visits Hurley who tells him that he now believes that the six are in Purgatory, that they died on the island. He says he knows this because Charlie has been talking to him in visions, and has asked Hurley to pass on a message - that Jack shouldn't be raising his child.
     Jack is a little freaked out but he tries to keep it off his mind. Later, Jack proposes to Kate and she accepts.  That night, at the Surgery where he works, Jack goes to fix a faulty fire alarm and sees a hallucination of his father, as predicted by Hurley. Completely stressed, Jack hits the pills and the bottle, heading home. The following night Kate returns home to find Jack drunk on the sofa. He probes her about why she's been late the past few nights, and after some coercing she reveals, frightened, that she was running a last errand for Sawyer. Jack goes off on one, telling her that Sawyer made his choice to stay and that Kate isn't even related to Aaron.
     I've never really liked Jack's character. Every character needs flaws but there's nothing really redeeming to go with Jack's daddy issues, and his main system of belief (that science is the way forward) is shattered by the series end. And just think; considering my general opinions on the vapidness of Kate's character, realise that this episode manages to make her seem like the vicitm! Jack's behaviour in this episode casts a long shade of doubt over the series finale, which settles the insipid quadrangle by pairing these two together.

Jin confronts Charlotte on her eavesdropping.

     The present storyline isn't much better either, a series of events driven by inconsistent quadrangle stroking. On the beach, we pick up where we left off with Jack collapsing after confronting Daniel. Jack manages to wake up and settle the survivors, telling them not to get too angry about it, before collapsing again. Although Jack tries to shrug it off as a stomach bug, Juliet confronts him and says that they both know that he has apendicitus. Jack says that she can operate; on condition that he can assist via use of a mirror.
    Jin, Sun, Charlotte and Daniel are sent off to the The Staff (a medical station left by the island's previous inhabitants) and Jin realises that Charlotte can understand Korean and has been eavesdrpping on all their conversations. He makes a deal with her to do whatever she can to get pregnant Sun off the island in exchange for keeping Charlotte's secret.
     Jack insists that Kate (whom he's suddenly decided he loves) has to be by his side during the operation. In practice it doesn't go well, and Juliet sedates him and finishes the job herself. While Jack sleeps, Juliet and Kate talk, with Juliet telling her that, "that kiss was for you."
     The only interesting thing about this side of the storyline was the interaction between Jin and Charlotte, which was some fun character development for what is an otherwise undeveloped character. Again, I abhor this romantic nonsense and it really added nothing of any value to the episode.
     Elsewhere in the present, and Sawyer, Miles and Clare (with Aaron in tow) are wandering back to the beach. Nothing much really happens in this side of the storyline, but there's some interesting character work. Sawyer acts like a protective big brother and warns Miles not to talk to Claire. Miles discovers the corpses of Rousseau and Karl in shallow graves using his powers. The night after having to hide from Keamy's group moving thrugh the forest, Claire disappears after seeing her father (who just happens to be Jack's father, too) leaving nothing but a baby behind.

Sawyer gets protective over Claire.

     Claire's disappearance has always really bugged me - in Season Four the issue is forgotten and in Season Five it's never spoken of; when the character returns in Season Six she's a gun-toting lunatic. Way to ruin the character, writers! I know Claire wasn't the most exciting person in the world - her main arc was about motherhood and with Charlie, both of which were were running thin. I just think that the haphazard way in which she was temporarily offed was rather opaque; mysterious for the sake of being mysterious.
     Something Nice Back Home is strangely captivating despite its many flaws - notably its reliance on the show's romantic angle as a structure, which offers very little narrative tension. Where the episode tried its best o stray from that, it provided some mediocre entertainment in the meantime. It's a shame that Lost's "protagonists" are its weakest characters; Ben and Locke were absent here for the first time in a while,and it really shows. All of this extra stuff had to happen while they were busy, I suppose, but it doesn't make for captivating watching. We've only four episodes left, and I can tell you that Jack's apendix is not a key part of this season's arc...

Thanks.

Review: Doctor Who 6.2-4: Day of the Moon, Curse of the Black Spot and The Doctor's Wife

Spoilers will always follow.

Season 32 / Series 6, Episode 2 - Day Of The Moon

More like an episode of drama Twin Peaks than Doctor Who, this conclusion to the premier made Monty Python look like Have I Got News For You. The solution, of what little existed, was controvertial and the way in which the episode neglected it for more soap-opera moments got collossally tiring.
     Picking up three months after the premier, and Canton is chasing the companions around the US, killing them whereever he goes and bringing them back in body bags. The Doctor, locked up, is being trapped in a small prison made of white-dwarf-star-alloy, which is the densest substance in the Universe. Once the bodybags and Canton are locked into the prison, they awaken from the body bags in what turns out to have been an elaborate ruse to escape the Silence. Piling into a conveniently hidden TARDIS, the five discuss their progress in tracking the Silence. The Doctor inject's everyone's hands with microphones so as to allow them to make a recorded description of the creatures before they forget them. Trying to find the little girl from the spacesuit, Canton and Amy are sent off to a creepy children's home while The Doctor hacks into Apollo 11 and places a microphone system there, too.
     Amy discovers entire rooms of the Silence at the children's home as well as what appears to be the child's room; it features pictures of the child, as well as one of Amy holding a baby. Canton shoots one of the Silence and holds him captive, shortly after which they abduct Amy, just in time for The Doctor, River and Rory to arrive. 

    Tracking her back, The Doctor finds The Silence at one of their underground bases and reveals his plan. Canton had asked the wounded Silent what Humanity should do, and then recorded it saying "You should kill us on sight" The Doctor, receiving this recording, implanted it into the broadcast of Apollo Eleven, turning it into one massive subliminal message encouraging the human race to destroy the Silence. He encourages them to run. After River gets into an over-long and gratuitous gun-fight with the Silence, the five leave. Canton is dropped off at the White House, River at Stormcage and the three go off on their merry way. Concerned about Amy's uncertainty regarding her pregnancy, The Doctor does a scan that seems to reveal that she is both pregnant and not pregnant in a Schondinger's Cat way. Meanwhile, in an American back alley, the Girl from the suit regenerates.
     Of course, turning the entire human race into a subliminally drived army doesn't really place The Doctor anywhere on the moral high-ground. Oh, it's awfully clever, for sure. And to be honest, it's not that out of place with The Doctor's character, but it doesn't sit easily on my stomach. (Although that might be the bug I've had this past week.) The episode is still good, and provides a lot of food for thought, but some of the more gratuitous and soap-opera like scenes, as well as this contant feeling of repetition, are starting to get to me.

Season 32 / Series 6, Episode 3 - The Curse of the Black Spot

Guest stars Hugh Bonneville and Lily Cole arrive to mark the first stand-alone story since last year's The Lodger, which despite still soaked in this series' darker themes manages to be a little more fun than the premier. I think you have to make sure that your turn into serious drama doesn't go over the top, which I think this series is doing; instead it seems melodramatic and ridiculous to an extent that makes me uncomfortable. The companions are starting to really wear and for me, at least, their appeal is running thin.
     Not following directly on from last week, the Tardis Three find themselves on a 16th Century pirate ship anchored in the middle of the ocean, its crew plagued by a "demon" known as the Siren (played through blue-screen by supermodel Lily Cole) who seems to destroy anyone ill or injured after automatically marking them with a black spot. Soon Rory is "marked" and the pirates (led by troubled Captain Avery, Hugh Bonneville) stock up downstairs. Believing that she can travel by water, they hide in the powder room, but the Doctor's encounter with Pirate treasure shows that the Siren can travel through any reflection. Pirates disappear left, right and centre until Rory and then the three survivors are "killed". Awakening on what appears to be an alien ship, The Doctor realises that the sixteenth century ship crashed into a future ship parked in the same spot, and so the ship's automatic healing hologram (the "Siren") went around abducting and taking care of the human sailors. There's a terribly melodramatic climax where Rory for some reason relies on Amy alone to give him CPR, and then both the pirate crew, on the alien ship, and the Tardis three, fly off.

     This was, disappointingly, an episode that hung more off of its ideas than its plot. The character movements were dull and the plot revelations came in a jarring and splintered form that almost certainly writes this off as a one-view. However, those ideas were captivating enough in themselves to justify this to an extent. True, especially, for our main guest star, Hugh Bonneville, whose character is an interesting addition and slightly more realistic (despite the more piratey overtones) than Canton. Oh, and Rory dies again. I really, really didn't care.
      My opinion is an unpopular one to say the least, but I really couldn't help but enjoy this week's more straightforward tale to last week's labyrinthine abyss. It has its problems, and it may seem disappointing when compared to the last forthnight's premier, but I think it has a hell-of-a-lot of charm.

Season 32/Series 6, Episode 4 - The Doctor's Wife


The Doctor and Idris (promotional picture)

Fantasy writer Neil Gaiman, a known Doctor Who fan, delivers us an enchanting and poignant episode this week that stands out amongst this series' trappings so far. Originally intended for the previous series in place of The Lodger, the episode does feel a lot like series Five, except this time it can take a little more pleasure in its indulgences now that the Tardis is out of danger.
     Upon collecting a small box, The Doctor immediately identifies it as a Time-Lord distress call belonging to The Corsair, a renegade whose calling card was a tattoo of the Ouroboros. Following the signal, they pass through a rift into a bubble universe containing only one, very dense, asteroid. Upon landing they meet the mad Idris (the stunning Suranne Jones), who calls The Doctor "her thief", two weird-looking people named Aunt and Uncle (Adrian Schiller, of Being Human fame, and Elizabeth Berrington, who last played Ruby on Waterloo Road.) and a green-eyed Ood named Nephew. Aunt and Uncle reveal that the asteroid is occupied by a green sentient mass known only as House (voiced by the magnificent Michael Sheen), who can possess Aunt, Uncle and Nephew as well as "fix them when they break."
     Amy and Rory are unwittingly locked back into the Tardis by a concerned Doctor, who investigates further to find that any Time Lords he thought lived here were long dead. Examining Aunt and Uncle, he finds that they are "patchwork people," made up of the bodies of dead Time Lords that House has lured here. Fascinated by Idris's previous ramblings, he finds her locked up and she reveals that her mind contains the sentient matrix of The Doctor's Tardis, which House has now possessed and is flying off with Amy and Rory inside. House eats Tardises, but he has to get rid of the immensely powerful core before he can even try, so he places the core into a human body so it can fizzle out safely. This time, however, House knows that there are no more Tardises left, and so has gone off to find more food in the Outer Universe.

     Argueing with the now-sentient Tardis about various things ranging from which way the doors are supposed to open and how reliable it is, the two recreate a Tardis console out of scraps of Tardis left on the planet's surface. Meanwhile in the Tardis, House is torturing Amy and Rory by making them run through the Tardis corridors and essentially mind-rapes Amy into believing that Rory has died. Again. Idris and The Doctor, ready to set off, send a telepathic signal to Rory telling them to go to one of the Secondary Control Rooms, which in this case is the Tardis used in RTD's era, a welcome return. The two materialise just in time, and The Doctor bluffs House into deleting the old console room just before Idris finally dies, unable to support the Tardis matrix. However, this redeposits them back into the main console room, where the Tardis Matrix returns to the ship's core and essentially eats House.

Nephew keeps Idris captive.

     The most essential contribution that this episode makes is to finally settle the nature of the Tardis's consciousness, showing that the Tardis stole him by deliberately leaving itself unlocked. Suranne Jones' manic and often loving portrayl made it all the more poignant when she had to return to the console, revealing a side of the Doctor's relationship with the Tardis that we've never really seen before. This, combined with the episode's myriad of well-placed references to the Classic series and to Time Lord mythology (aparrently Time Lords can traverse gender with their regenerations.)

     For the first time this series, the episode left me excited for next week; maybe it's because I'm a real who fan and I loved all of the little references, but I also think that even Not-We can appreciate this episode's magic and potentcy. It was complex in a delightful way and most importantly, the complxity payed off for a powerful finale.

Thanks.

List: The Top Five Songs I Hate (At The Moment)

You all know that here at Audenshaw Reviews I like to keep things positive (with a few exceptions). I don't like pain, and so I try to avoid reviewing anything that's actively or offensively bad, but I can't help but find these things in daily life. Especially in the horrendous modern music scene. So here, to apologise for my lack of posts due to illness, are my least favourite five songs in the charts, or about to enter the charts, at the moment.

5.) Party Rock Anthem - LMFAO ft. Lauren Bennett and Goonrock




Not all of the songs on this list are wrong, offensive or necessarily bad. I'd never heard of the brashly named LMFAO before this rather quite clever song, and I probably won't hear of them again. The video is very clever, and the song does fit its purpose as a dance track, as the nearly eponymous title suggests. However, you didn't read this article to here why I liked these songs.
     The simple fact is that this song is on every UK music channel at several times throughout the day. It's on the mainstream radios, it's on soaps and on supermarket song-systems. And, being a dance song, it's fairly repetitive. To make a long story short; I'm sick of it. I'm sick of hearing it, I'm sick of hearing about it. It's the Number One at the moment, and like many other tracks before it it suffers from crippling over-playing. I never, repeat, never want to hear this song ever again.

4.) Wonderman - Tinie Tempah ft. Ellie Goulding



Ah, Ellie. I've reviewed some of her music before; in my last review I was wondering whether she was heading in the wrong direction, trying to feed the populist market after her less than stellar chart history. Here she proves my point exceptionally by lending her talents to the modern British superstar, Tinie Tempah.
     I don't usually find Mr.Okogwu so offensive; I actually liked his two Number Ones, "Pass Out" and "Written in the Stars." They weren't perfect, by any means, but they were well constructed and pandered to the modern chart-music audience. Here, however, Okogwu decides here to simulatenously boast and whine about his newfound fame in a song disguised, at least in the chorus, as one about a comic-book superhero down on his luck. Apparently his main advice is that, "when the fans start grabbing you, Show gratitude with a little brag or two." Need I say more?
     Also, the video gives us no context as to exactly why blowing up a building is a heroic act. Could be an arsonist for all we know. Luckily enough, the structure of the song is decent enough and it's perfectly listenable... if you don't focus too much on the lyrics.

3.) On The Floor - Jennifer Lopez ft. Pitbull



It was Number One over here, guys. Pitbull. This walking insult to modern pop music releases a song with a washed out popstar, and the wise people of the UK decided to put it to number one, giving a boost to both of their careers.
     The song's lyrics are, of course, vapid and empty. This is a club song, a song mass-produced for no other purpose than to facilitate the gyrations of several drunk and sweaty people in dark, expensive night-clubs across the country. I think we can all accept that this is not a song that starts out with any reputation for musical integrity. I think what clinches the real hatred for me is the crippling repetition of the main verses, which make it often akin to fingers drawn down a blackboard.


2.) The Lazy Song - Bruno Mars 


I'll say it now; I thought Bruno Mars was actually quite a promising star when he appeared onto the British Charts in the Summer of 2010. He wasn't annoying, and his songs felt like genuine, modern love ballads with some real point to them. His collaboration with B.O.B, "Nothin' On You," was a favourite of mine during the summer, and felt like the best love song the other side of the Pond had produced in quite a while.
     Then, for some reason, Mars released "Grenade," a whiney song whose hyperbolic, logic-bomb melodrama made it unbearable. It wasn't, however, particularly hateful, unlike this entry. The Lazy Song is cocky, arrogant and irritating, taking an appropriately laidback track and inverting it with lyrics so horrible that they beggar belief.


Tomorrow I'll wake up, do some P90X
Find a really nice girl, have some really nice sex
And she's gonna scream out
This is great
(Oh my god, this is great)

What a long way we've come from, "You look amazing, just the way you are." I could accept that this was tongue-in-cheek, but that's no excuse to be so obnoxious and cockey about it. This, and the song's inane video, means that this song makes my skin crawl. Also, it's Number effing Two on the UK charts. Pull yourself together, UK.

1.) Bass Down Low - Dev



We're here, ladies and gentlemen. The song that inspired the list, a horrific American splodge that insults the neurons and destroys the eardrums. A sequel of sorts to the equally vapid "Like A G6," Bass Down Low takes the abject stupidity of that record and manages to fully drain it of any miniscule positives. 
      Its similarities to G6 are immediately apparent; the bassline is identical and Dev's contributions to that earlier track help to imbue this opus with much of its familiar obnoxious arrogance. That, of course, coupled with both songs' meaningless lyrics, tinged with only the slightest smudge of relevance. Dev claims with some confidence that any possible suitors of hers must be aware that, "I like my beats fast and my bass down low." And? What does that have to do with anything? The irony is especially apparent; the song's tempo is surprisingly casual and the bass isn't particularly lower than any other song I've heard recently.
      Of course, to any American readers this is old news; the song dropped out of the charts there with a peak of #64. But the song is currently in my native charts in the UK, climbing because of an impromtu remix with that omnipresent figure, Tinie Tempah. I can only hope it goes the same way as in the States. 

And that was my Top (Bottom?) Five Songs I Hate. I hope that the above songs haven't offended your sensibilities too much, as they offended mine. 

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That Doctor Who review will appear some time next week, as either three seperate articles or as one bumper-review covering Day of the Moon, Curse of the Black Spot and the highly anticipated The Doctor's Wife. I also hope to finish Lost 4.10 and maybe take a glance at Being Human 1.4, but I'm making no promises whatsoever. 


Thanks.