Review: Doctor Who Classic: Castrovalva

Five levitates in the Zero Room.

Doctor Who, Season 19, Story One - Castrovalva. Written by Christopher H. Bidmead.

The Doctor that I knew the most as a child, due to repeats on UKTV Gold, was Peter Davison's Fifth Doctor. He was mild-mannered and more agile than his predecessors, as well as being more satirical than pragmatic. Under the watchful eye of head writer Eric Saward, Five was often more likely to walk through a series of events than do anything about it. Five's post-regeneration story is notable for being the true beginning of JNT's style, and also for having to deal with seven years' worth of familiarity with the previous actor. It's also written by Christopher Hamilton Bidmead. We've been over this once already.
      Though certainly not as mind-numbingly tedious as Logopolis, Castrovalva shares many of its problems. Nothing really happens until the second act, and with the new broadcasting schedule of two episodes a week, this means the entire first half appears worse off. There's also some terrible, terrible science, this time on a level understandable by primary school students. I wouldn't really mind; Doctor Who has never really been, "hard sci-fi", but our writer is someone from a scientific background, and he doesn't even have the excuse of the "advancement of science" - these ideas are wrong even by 1981 standards.
     The first episode recaps from Logopolis and then has the quartet escape back the Tardis, being chased by the Pharos security (played by different extras) all the way. Once inside Adric, who's been blasted by The Master's pursuing Tardis, sets the co-ordinates while a confused Doctor goes wandering through the corridors of his time machine. There's a really nice touch where to mark his path through the corridors he unravels Tom's trademark scarf and deposits parts of Tom's costume until he's forced to wear the new costume he conveniently finds - that of a cricketeer. All the while he goes through the personalities of his past incarnations.

Adric: Whine! Master: Cackle!

     Meanwhile in the Console Room, the two girls ramble and try to learn how to pilot the Tardis. They think they're drifting in space and Nyssa says that they might collide with something, because "the star density is very high." Really? Yes, Nyssa was brought up on the very introverted Traken, but their technology couldn't have advanced to the stage it had without them realising that a small object the size of a police-box is not big enough to find the light-year distances between stars "dense."
      The girls wander back as Adric seems to have disappeared. They follow the Doctor's path and help him into the Zero Room, a room isolated from the rest of the universe that will help him to heal after his regeneration. Apparently outside his neurological structure "gets conflicting outside signals", something that Nyssa agrees with. Then again, this is "high star density" Nyssa, so I'm not surprised. Tegan is, as usual, adapting incredibly well to the situation. After a really emo message from Adric, who's been trapped in a kinky-looking web by The Master, they realise that the ship is getting hotter and eventually discover that the ship is heading towards Event One at the beginning of the universe.
     Oh, I'm sorry. I surely meant, "galaxy", because that's what the science-expert's script says. Apparently the Big Bang wasn't any sort of expansion - rather, says our expert, it was a "Hydrogen in-rush" and "the biggest explosion in history." Let's get something straight here. The theory behind there being a universe of other galaxies originated in 1919. The Big Bang theory with all the appropriate evidence for this example originated in 1927. This isn't a scientific opinion on the part of Mr. Christopher "Scientific Journalist" Bidmead. It's lazy writing.

1980s Wikipedia

      The Doctor, now temporarily made magically better by the heat of the ship making "the adrenaline bridge the synapses," manages to work out a solution - they turn down the heat by turning a bloody valve and then jettison a quarter of the Tardis' mass to launch them away from Event One. It all goes well and, despite The Master's camp speeches, they survive. In the Tardis database, Nyssa discovers that certain planets act similar to Zero Rooms - one such as Castrovalva. Nyssa and The Doctor head back to the Zero Room, which it turns out has been jettisoned to help them escape. Since the doors remain, and they're made of the same material as the room, Nyssa follows The Doctors instructions to create a "Zero Cabinet." Tegan is very easily able to fly the Tardis to Castrovalva (don't worry, it's an actual plot point instead of lazy writing) and they carry the cabinet to the main city.
     Spending the next ten minutes or so wandering aimlessly through what looks like the British Countryside, the two set down the Zero Cabinet with The Doctor inside. While they're climbing up rocks, they're being stalked by tribesmen in ridiculous-looking masks and The Doctor goes wandering off, for some reason suffering from a bleeding wound. The two girls are chased by the tribesmen and find The Doctor wandering about. He's suffering from some pretty bad amneisa, and has absolutely no idea who he is. The tribesmen have take The Cabinet and find The Doctor, who they nicely introduce into Castrovalva. It turns out they're just the hunting parties of a much more civilised Catrovalva, run by a shifty looking bloke in black called Shardovan. He's the Librarian of Castrovalva. The place is looked after by the mystical Portreeve (played by Neil Toyney, who loves anagrams very much.) The people of Castrovalva are very well-characterised and much more like Doctor Who than I'd been used to with Logopolis.
     The Portreeve is of course The Master in disguise. At first it's difficult to see, but after the first viewing it's incredibly obvious. Nyssa and Tegan end up climbing to Logopolis and make their way into the city by natural means. A night goes by. Nyssa has the Zero Cabinet brought to The Doctor's chamber, but while there she sees a projection of Adric in a mirror, who tells her that the Master can find him anywhere and that The Doctor should wait in Castrovalva until better. The Master cackles.

He's wearing black, he must be evil.

     While Nyssa and Tegan go to the Library, the Portreeve shows The Doctor a "magic" tapestry that shows past events. The two girls decide to read the planet's history. There's a charming scene where a young girl teaches The Doctor that three follows two and this helps him remember Adric. He remembers everything and they try to escape, noticing that every path they take leads them back to the same square. The Shardovan acts all sinister as The Doctor realises that Castrovalva is subject to "recursive occulsion" - a "space-time trap."
     The two girls go off to find the Zero Cabinet to help The Doctor while he reads the history of Castrovalva, and discovers that the 500 year old books are hand-written by The Shardovan. He asks the hunting leader, Mergrave, to draw a map. It appears that Shardovan is the only person in Castrovalva to notice the recursion. Mergrave's map of the city includes four of every place. The trio basically paint the darkly-dressed Shardovan as the villain of the piece.
     As the citizens of Castrovalva take the Zero Cabinet to the Portreeve, The Doctor takes the Shardovan off to the side and realises that he's ok. The Master reveals himself and The Doctor breaks into the room by a back way. Shardovan, now persuaded of The Master's evil, swings along a lampshade into the Tapestry, which is Adric's kinky cage. This frees Adric and starts the collapse of Castrovalva. The quartet escape, as does The Master, but Castrovalva disappears into a haze of pixels. They head off for their next exciting adventure.

Turns out Cabinets have an NHS...

     Tegan and Nyssa carry this story in its first half, which is dreadfully important because while The Doctor is suffering from Spearhead Syndrome (where a Doctor is incapacitated for the majority of his post-regeneration story) they act as the main protagonists. And aside from some really dodgy science, I can't help admit that these scenes generally are interesting and well-written. Despite their major characterisation isses (Tegan adjusting supernaturally well to preceedings and Nyssa rarely batting an eyelid to the extinction of her race) they are genuinely likeable characters in most respects. They're human, and that's all they need to be. Adric meanwhile is an irritating twit in this story, spending 99% of his running time as The Master's b***h and generally being the whiney, smug caricature that people stereotype him as.
      Davison's introductory scenes in the first episode, and his actions throughout the serial, are some of the best in at least the JNT's period. They introduce a character that's immediately likeable that not only has all of his predeccessor's good traits but also a much more refreshing personality when compared to the later Tom Baker. They also use it as a tribute to the past while looking very confidently to the future of the program.
      Anthony Ainley's incarnation of The Master in this story, at least, is a bit of a loser. He seems to be trying very hard to channel the original traits of the original, Roger Delgado, but is forced to filter it through early Eighties culture. Ainley would be The Master for the remainder of the classic run, and he only really gets to shine in the final broadcast story of the original run, Survival. Here he only seems to have absurd numbers of backup plans - he has a backup plan when The Doctor survives the fall from the telescope, a plan for when he survives Event One etc. . It's all very disconcerting.

To the future... three years.

      The script for the second half of the story is much more well-written than the first and I really do enjoy the ideas put across. It really is a delight to behold, and in the culture of Castrovalva is demonstrated so well in such a short space of time. For all of the story's faults, with horrifically bad mistakes in scientific accuracy, its characterisations and later concepts make it a fundamentally good story that sets off Davison's era with the right amount of oomph.
      So when it comes down to it, I can't bring myself to truly hate Castrovalva as much as I want to. It's JNT's best intro story and certainly arrives as a breath of fresh air from the heavyness of Logopolis. I still think that it's concepts are either blatantly wrong or too difficult for the casusal viewer to invest in, but in the second half at least the central concept is really interesting and our new young lead is introduced in the best way possible. Hurrah for three years of Peter Davison.

Thanks.

P.S. The music is lovely in this story, as in the last two. Also, this is the end of the New Beginnings trilogy, but I will be reviewing the following story, Four To Doomsday.

Review: Torchwood 4.6: The Middle Men

It's comparatively difficult to get these images...

There's little, in fact, to say about The Middle Men. I've reached a point in the series where I really don't care. The plot holes are gaping, the characterisations are irritating and inconsistant and, worst of all, the story isn't going anywhere fast. My experience of the series so far has been like swimming in maple syrup - it may be novel to begin with, but it's slow, incredibly difficult and wrong on a couple of levels.
     Again our cast was seperated into American and Welsh, with the two originals not appearing until half-way through. The Americans faced Maloney in the stupidest way possible; Rex got himself kidnapped, tried to appeal to Maloney's sensibilites and then got tortured. Esther acted like a bumbling busybody (sorry, acting isn't the appropriate word here) and then wrestled Maloney to save Rex, and she still had to be saved by a Camp Guard. Gwen saved her Dad (third time's a charm, then) before blowing up the Wales camp and, using her lenses, somehow exposing the camps to the world. Jack, meanwhile, went and harrassed the head of PhiCorp who knew less than he did. The episode ended on the cliffhanger that the Triangle Group have not only been monitering Gwen's lenses, but have also kidnapped her entire family.
     That's very exciting, I assume. The truth is that I don't care about Gwen's plight in the slightest - I haven't since the series began. Maybe it's because I'm not a parent and I "don't get it," or maybe it's the more likely explanation that Gwen's character has strayed so far away from the likeable, human Gwen in the early series that I've no empathy left. Like Abby Grant, Gwen has become nothing more than a tedious distraction to the main chain of events. At least Oswald Danes had the courtesy to not be in this episode.
     The reason that, last year, I was afraid to review Lost (which I will complete... at some point) was because I thought that the heavily serialised nature of the episodes would make it too different from my norm to actually review. That didn't happen with Lost, but it is happening with Miracle Day. The direction, the music - it's all ultimately forgettable, something that Torchwood, a show devoted to spectacle and outrage, shouldn't be.
    I tried not to give into temptation, but I'm afraid that unless next week's Torchwood manages to captivate me in some way, I'm not reviewing it. Simple as.

Thanks.

Review: Torchwood 1.7: Greeks Bearing Gifts

Tosh doesn't like the mind-reading Pendant.

This episode was written by a man who I've always relied upon to produce good television in a variety of forms. He is the main writer and conceiver of the excellent Being Human, as well as the writer of two very good episodes of the modern Doctor Who. Here, however, his style doesn't seem to translate, and the issues surrounding this mistranslation are hampered further by poor direction and Daniela Denby-Ashe's miscasting seals the terrible, terrible deal.
     Daniela Denby-Ashe (rightfully stereotyped as Janey from My Family - eleven years is too long)
plays Mary, a strange woman who, after appearing to be shot in 1812, appears at the site of a Torchwood investigation and starts to seduce Toshiko. To this end she presents Tosh with a pendant that gives her telepathy, much to her distress. Using this pendant Tosh hears about the rest of the team's thoughts - Gwen and Owen's affair, Ianto's self-pitying dark mumbles and the dead emptyness of Jack's mind that comes from immortality. She also, in between arguing and bonking Mary, discovers the depravity inherant in human nature and actually saves the lives of a family about to be murdered based on the killer's single-minded thoughts.
     Mary, however, reveals herself as an alien (from a race that Sarah Jane Adventures would later call the Arcateens). She wants to get the tech that the team recovered from the site. A shaken Tosh lets her right on into the Hub, where she's eventually tricked into using the item, a transporter, which teleports her into the centre of the sun.
    We waited seven episodes for this first Tosh-centric episode and it's such a shame that it wasn't given the justice it deserved. Aside from a plot that relies on one woman's idiocy, (Just TELL TORCHWOOD like you said you were going to! This is clearly causing you distress, and there is a clear and open option avaliable!) the episode is reserved not for the examination of Tosh but for the other characters. I mean, sure, she cries a lot, and has an irritating monologue at the beginning, but like a few other centric episodes (Cyberwoman comes to mind) this side of her character is never seen before or since. Whithouse's gift for witty dialogue made some of the mind-reading bearable but it often went too far, stretching to the point where everyone on the street was on some sort of register.

Mary reveals her true form.

     Also, I thought the point of a centric episode was to make it easier for the audience to empathise with the character in question. Here Tosh, who had previously been shown to be a shy but proud computer nerd, became a whimpering, anal slacker. Of course she is reacting to Gwen and Owen playing football in her area, which is understandable. The amount of sports this group plays near all of the alien artefacts, you'd think they thought it was a youth club. I really didn't like her personality here for a variety of reasons, and that's pretty much mission failure.
     But, hey! The concept of Mary and the pendant are what's really important here, at least as far as I can tell. Toby Whithouse does specialise in great fantasy concepts, and I think that here he focussed on that a little more than the overall characterisations. The idea of the Arcateens is great - a societal system run by telepaths where abstract concepts and ideas are their method of communication. What let it down by a massive margin was Danby-Ashe's performance. It isn't necessarily that she's a bad actress, it's just that she is fundamentally wrong for the part. This character is supposed to have seduced the normally heterosexual Toshiko into bonking her, and yet she appears less sincere than a Coallition politician. (Agenda, you say? What agenda?) In fact, the only reason she seems to be here is so that we can have a full compliment of bisexuals in the cast.
     I haven't really commented on direction in my previous reviews, mainly because it doesn't get in the way of things. Here the direction is filled with fast-forwards, which make the whole ordeal feel like they filmed a two-hour long episode and needed to fit it in. This potent epilepsy-hazard style is just really unpleasant to watch and adds next to nothing to the episode. Case in point: There's one scene after Tosh bonks Mary where she's sat in a bed looking mopey. That's alright. Then there's a whoosh and the camera zooms out incredibly quickly to reveal... more of the bed.

Mary stalks Tosh

     I wasn't looking forwards to reviewing this episode because unlike the other stories in this series that are wrong in certain areas and great in others, Greeks Bearing Gifts is more of a decent show that's been skewed into something ugly. With Toby Whithouse at the helm this episode had great potential but it didn't deliver, and that's a real blow for me.

Thanks.

(The next review will be more Torchwood, but this time Miracle Day's "Middle Man".)

Review: Doctor Who Classic: Logopolis

Hang on in there, Tom!

Doctor Who, Season 18, Story Seven - 
Logopolis

Tom Baker, in his record seven years on the program, came to become the audience favourite and define the series around the world. With 42 serials, 9 companions and 3 producers, Baker's long reign as The Doctor put his image and noteworthy voice into the hearts and minds of the British people and culture. It should be expected, then, that the final serial in his long tenure would act as a fantastic send-off and a tribute to his seven years. Well. Not if Christopher Hamilton Bidmead was on the scene.
     Chris H Bidmead, hereafter CHB, was the head writer during Season 18. A writer of of scientific journals, it was his decision to transform the show into something he deemed more serious. Logopolis is an example of this, unfortunately, and while it suffers from many other problems (of which I will get to) the main fault, in my eyes, is the staunch and often quite frankly dull tone this story takes. Hard science shouldn't have to be boring, but the way that CHB takes it and tries to mix it with the lightheaded scifi-fantasy of Who makes this story a bit of a let down. Not that I don't like Bidmead, of course - I think he's a nice guy with a penchent for science, but I'm disappointed by what he did here.

      Another reason why the serial has some issues is JNT’s masterplan for the end of Tom’s tenure. To offset the public despair at the loss of “their” Doctor, and to help viewers of the program who’d grown up watching him, JNT created a team of new characters (Adric, Nyssa and Tegan) and really foreshadowed the Doctor’s death. This leaves little room for everything else, as well as striking the episode in much the wrong direction. For example – a lot of the first episode is taken up with a very clumsy introduction for Tegan, who simply wanders into the TARDIS, which happened to materialise on the same spot as a real Police Box. Even Chris Bidmead himself says on the commentary that her scenes don’t really go anywhere or contribute anything to the bigger story. Furthermore, there's little actual reason for Tegan to want to travel with The Doctor at all - despite being effectively (albeit accidentally) kidnapped, she seems to get used to the ordeal in an unrealistic amount of time.

"In some ways have the same mind."

     Into the story. The Doctor and Adric are sat in a more rundown part of the TARDIS, discussing such topics as Entropy, why they can’t return to Gallifrey and, principally, The Doctor’s desire to fix the chameleon circuit. We introduce Tegan, an Australian flight attendant being driven to her first day at the airport by her aunt. They end up with a flat tire on a motorway lay-by, where the police box has been copied-over by the Master’s TARDIS. The Doctor is planning to do the same and take the measurements of a police box to a planet named Logopolis. They arrive, and discover a series of recursive TARDISes inside The Doctor’s. Meanwhile, Tegan wanders in and gets lost in the more rundown room, and The Doctor is arrested as we see that Tegan’s aunt has been shrunk, a la The Master’s method of killing, and The Doctor identifies it as such.
     The first episode is mainly composed of slow-moving segments of Tegan fixing her car, which really slow down the episode, and Adric and The Doctor talking in thick scientific jargon (courtesy of CHB). The soundtrack is carried over from the last episode, and is still as chilling and potent as it was there. Not at all chilling or potent is the cliffhanger, especially for the so called “new fans” that they were trying to attract.

     Adric creates a diversion to help The Doctor escape the police by doing what he does best - moaning. They get away and inside the Tardis notice that The Master's Tardis has gone. They try to escape but don't have enough power, so they burn up Romana's room as fuel using one of the Tardis' functions. The police here are pretty much dull, apart from their closing line upon discovering an empty, normal-sized policebox. Tegan finds herself in the run-down room, where The Master's Tardis lands. The Doctor receives a message from Traken, explaining that The Master had taken Tremas' body. They come up with a rather infamous idea to flood the Tardis by materialising underwater, "flushing out" the Master. 

Tegan and her Aunt

     Pardon? The Tardis, which has a more or less infinite interior mass, would not be "flushed out" by the River Thames as The Doctor attempts. Even if the water could have filled the Tardis interior, what then? The Master is safe and sound in his Tardis, there'd be no way of getting the water out as neither The Doctor nor Adric have gills. Even Bidmead admits that it was a silly idea, as before. Anyway, the plan doesn't work, mainly because The Doctor materialises on a boat rather than on the riverbed. Tegan goes wandering around, looking for "the pilot," and ends up in the same room again.
     Eventually she stumbles upon the Console Room just as they materialise on Logopolis, a planet where the people value mathematical computations and don't use computers - until recently. They've installed a large telescope like the Pharos Telescope on Earth and also have a shiny new computer. Logopolis is run entirely by lots of old men calculating things with abacusses and passing numbers along. The Moniter, a Noel Edmonds lookalike, assists The Doctor in his needs. Tegan recovers from the shock of landing on another planet ridiculously quickly.
     The Master, however, is keen on ballsing everything up. He kills one of the little old men. This buggers up the Doctor's plans royally, and his TARDIS shrinks with him inside in another limp cliffhanger. Also, Nyssa appears out of nowwhere with a handwave explanation. Oh joy.

The Moniter

     Like a scene out of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the tiny TARDIS is taken through the streets. The Master appears and cackles randomly. Inside, Four is having a drugs-trip. The Moniter tells Adric to check all the computations. Along the way, he explains that computers can't be used because Logopolis' mathematics somehow change the real world and thus need living people. They track the errors down to a section of the street where the old men have been turned into dolls by The Master. Nyssa and Adric head off to look for The Master on the streets of Logopolis. The Doctor rambles.
     Adric thinks The Watcher is The Master. Nyssa is pulled aside by the real Master, who of course looks identical to her father Tremas (apart from the evil laugh and the penchent for black). He gives Nyssa a brainwash-brooch. The Doctor is shocked to hear about The Master as he escapes (now fully sized). Nyssa is brainwashed. Surprise surprise. The Master brainwashes all of the Logopolitians and outside the world becomes silent. The Master threatens the Moniter with the destruction of the Universe. He and The Doctor banter. Brainwashed!Nyssa strangles Adric to demonstrate The Master's power. 
     The Master attempts to restart Logopolis using Brainwashing but he's now started "Entropy". The world begins to collapse and a "wave" of Entropy spreads across the Universe. This includes destroying the brainwash brooch. It turns out that they've been "channelling Entropy into other universes." I'm sorry, but that's not how Entropy works. It's not a thing, it's a process of energy. Regardless, The Master and The Doctor band together to save the universe as a cliffhanger. 

Tegan wanders the TARDIS

     Tegan stays on Logopolis as The Doctor and The Master look for The Moniter. They look at some information about something or other. The two "The"s talk technobabble while The Moniter dies... "of entropy". The Master is knocked out by falling rocks as The Doctor talks inpenetrable technobabble. They get to the Master and free him, and they head towards the Pharos project. The Watcher is flying the TARDIS outside of space and time and they arrive at the Pharos project as well. 
     The Watcher chats to Adric out of scene as the Thes babble more. From the TARDIS they can see the entire universe, with Earth visible at scale (The Physics Proffessor is Crying Again!!) Traken has been entropy'd, which Nyssa finds upseting for five seconds. Escaping some guards, the Thes climb up the Pharos telescope (an obvious Jodrell Bank photofit). The Doctor has to connect a cable together to make sure that the "Entropy" escapes our Universe but The Master uses the Project to hold the remaining Universe to ransom. To stop The Master, Four must crawl out across a walkway and connect a cable. He does so, but at the cost of having to hang onto the telescope for dear life. He falls. The audience cries. We get a quick montage of his enemies and friends as Tom Baker is replaced by the white-faced Peter Davison.
     The review took a month to complete. Not to write, but to gather the willpower necessary to sit down and watch more of this serial when I could be doing better things. The number of definite articles alone is enough to irritate me. Unlike Traken, where our setting and main characters are introduced within the first ten minutes or so, the themes are clear early on and the plot has some oomph, here we bugger about for the first half before rushed running through heaps of technobabble. The first time I watched this I had absolutely no clue what was going on.

The Thes run to the Pharos telescope.

     Nyssa's appearance feels incredibly forced and contrived, while Tegan's less-than-endearing entrance and ridiculously quick acceptance of the matter made things all the more ridiculous. The Master, despite being the story's driving force, felt like he didn't deserve to be there at all. The entire concept of leaking Entropy as if it were a liquid is so against anything scientific that it's a wonder that it didn't blacken Bidmead's career in scientific journalism. For once Adric is the only character in this story (besides Four) whose presence feels at all warranted. 
     Tom Baker isn't my favourite Doctor, I'll say it now. I much prefer the camp satire of the later 80s and the ultra-serious Season 18 doesn't feel right. But he is excellent when he needs to be, and is perhaps one of the most varied and well characterised of the Doctors - not hard to understand, considering the length of his tenure. Tom, for those seven years, was the Doctor - their personalities were identical, and this incarnation grew along with him. He didn't deserve such a badly-written story to end on, and it's a damn shame that he didn't get the send off that he, the most prolific Doctor in the show's history, deserved.


Thanks.


P.S. This is very, very late, I know. This story was so dull and so longwinded that I kept postponing it for other things. Also, this is my 300th post! Hurrah.

Review: Torchwood 1.6: Countrycide

The team go camping.

Chris Chibnall is this series' main writer and so far has written every even-numbered episode. All of them share their ambition and all of them have decent sci-fi ideas at their core, but bad dialogue decisions and poor execution have meant that Countrycide is the only once that comes close to reaching its own image. His on-and-off authorship is a smart move on the part of the production team but it does mean that this episode skips over the events of Small Worlds and follows straight on from Cyberwoman. Not a good accolade early on. Countrycide by itself is probably one of the most gruesome episodes of this series, a horror appealing to dark fears about human nature.
      The team head to the middle of the Brecon Beacons, with only one town in a 30 mile radius. They're investigating a spate of 17 disappearances from this one spot, and the team are making sure that aliens aren't involved. They set up camp, and there's a lot of bantering about kissing, noticeably covering Gwen and Owen's snog and the death of Lisa. When Gwen discovers a corpse stripped of all meat and internal organs in the forest, the team is distracted long enough for the strange killers to escape with the SUV.
     Following the SUV's tracking signal, they arrive at the small village of Brynblaidd, where Tosh and Ianto investigate the SUV while Jack, Gwen and Owen look inside a pub. There's nothing there, and so they go next door, where a frightened young boy shoots Gwen, mistaking her for "them." Tosh and Ianto are kidnapped and thrown into a dungeon room with fridges full of human meat. As Owen treats Gwen, Jack finds another person who seems to know something.

Ianto finds some Human meat.

     A creepy old woman comes into Tosh and Ianto's room shaking, telling them that she needs to take them to "them". When they arrive at a butchers' kitchen full of human meat, the true enemies reveal themselves - the villagers of Brynblaidd have a "harvest" every ten years, where they kidnapp and canibalise anyone coming through the area. In a rescue attempt Gwen and Owen get captured as well, but Jack saves the day by storming the place and shooting the villagers in the foot. When Gwen, who's pretty freaked out by the whole caniballism thing, asks the leader of the village why they do this "Harvest," he says only that it makes him happy. At the end of the episode there's a Gwen monologue as it's revealed that she and Owen are bonking.
     While there's certainly something deeply unsettling over seeing (what appears to be) human meat and human carcasses, the mainly scary aspects of this episode were all in the subtext - firstly in the "unseen enemy" that stalked our characters and then in the savagery that Human beings could commit. With the number of atrocities commited in the last 100 years alone, it's not that difficult to image something like this happening and no-one batting an eyelid. For once Chibnall's imagery isn't too heavy handed, as with this level of idea he doesn't need that to get his point across.
     On the character side of things we finally got some development for Toshiko, ready for her Centric episode next time. She's been one of the most potentially interesting characters and yet we only know about her now. Strangely enough, her character is the oldest there, having starred in Doctor Who before Jack. (Eve Myles was in Doctor Who before her but that's hardly the point here.) Gwen and Owen got some lesser development as well, with Gwen getting more used to her new career and giving in to Owen's temptation.

Our enemy doesn't just look human...

     There were of course some of Chibnall's more problematic features. Dialogue like, "When was the last time you came so hard you forgot where you were?" doesn't exactly fill one with a sense of confidence about this episode's quality. The villians were certainly a comment on human nature but despite how horrific humans can be, their motivations felt a little empty. "It made me happy" was chilling but ultimately silly. Typical, then, of Chibnall's episodes.
    Most of all, I'm just disappointed by Countrycide. Like its author's previous stories for Torchwood, the story is based on a brilliant sci-fi idea but doesn't execute it with any of the necessary skill. This time came near to acheiving the blackened image of humanity that it's clearly trying to portray, and at times it is genuinely scary, but once one knows that humans are involved the only horror comes from one's own beliefs about morality and the potential of mankind for evil. So close, yet so far.

Thanks.

Review: Torchwood 1.5: Small Worlds

Jasmine laughs as the Fairies frighten her bullies.

Torchwood Series One is, over all other things, inconsistant in quality. After the silliness of Day One came the serious sci-fi of Ghost Machine, and now to follow the farce that was Cyberwoman we're given Small Worlds, a chilling episode that focuses on a mix of ancient myth and real adult fears about the world. It also deepened Jack's character some more, which is always welcome, yet again leaving Tosh in the lurk. What strikes one most about Small Worlds is its relative maturity and quality in comparison to the rest of the series so far, with Peter J Hammond's (who also wrote one of the best stories of the following series) script on shining form.
     The episode follows Jack's investigation into the Fairies - a group of timeless, time-travelling creatures with almost omnipotent powers. They disguise themselves as the fairies of legend and choose little girls to "take" and turn into them. The sightings are first made by Jack's now-aged wartime-girlfriend Estelle Cole, which frightens Jack who has experience with the Fairies from an incedent in 1909. Meanwhile, a peadophile stalks a little girl, Jasmine Pearce, and finds himself being chased by the fairies until they kill him in his sleep by suffocating him with rose petals.
     As the Fairies are invisible to any trackers, the team has to rely upon strange weather patterns. They investigate the death of the peadophile and Jack surmises that the Fairies are back and protecting their chosen one. Jasmine returns home to her worrying mother and her evil stepdad Roy, who makes fun of her for having few friends and always wandering into the forests behind the house. Estelle meanwhile gets a little too close, and the Fairies come and drown her with an incredibly localised storm. Jack mourns her, but moves on when Gwen returns home to discover the place trashed by the Fairies.

Estelle photos Fairies.

     The next day Jasmine is bullied by two other girls and the Fairies intervene with a sudden storm. Torchwood arrive for the aftermath and find out about Jasmine, who's come home to her parents' five-year anniversary party. Roy, who's been a bit of a cock in boarding up the back fence and slapping Jasmine across the face, riles up the Fairies as the Torchwood team arrive. They kill him and open up a path back into the forest as Jasmine wanders off with Jack and Gwen following. Initially Jack is reluctant, but when the girl threatens to destroy the earth (as there are more Chosen Ones in the past) he is forced to let her become one of them.
    The episode's themes are particularly more adult than the previous episode as well as being perfectly executed. The theme of cherishing youth expanded not only over Jasmine's storyline but also in Estelle and Jack's relationship, with the episode eventually leaving the viewer to ask the question as to whether Jasmine, who is by this point a complete social outcast, is better for being with the Fairies, her only friends. Jack, in a way, must envy her new existence as his immortality leaves him alone for billions of years, destined to watch all of his friends (like Estelle) die around him.
     So steeped in mythology, metaphor and meaning this episode is that it's hard to view it when coming off the back of an episode like Cyberwoman. John Barrowman is certainly one of the key parts in this endeavour, his acting experience paying off as his silent gireving was much more poignant and meaningful than any of Ianto's sobbing. This episode's morose moments actually stemmed from real, "adult," fears - a double whammy of the fear of death and the fear of losing one's children - things much easier to empathise with than having one's girlfriend turn into a cybernetic killing machine. The only downpoint is the rather obvious CGI for the the Fairies, but that doesn't dampen their impact.   

The (obviously CGI) Fairies attack Roy.

    Really what Small Worlds does, in the wake of the previous episode, is give an example of how these things should be done. It's a shockwave of potent imagery and emotion, with excellent acting from the leads and a chilling portrayl of an outcast little girl. It's fundamentally well made, and that can't be said for a lot of episodes in this series. Small Worlds is simply a treat to behold, and stands as a key part of the series' development.

Thanks.

P.S. Ianto had three sentences in this one. And no sobbing whatsoever.

Review: Torchwood 1.4: Cyberwoman

Lisa Hallet: Cyberwoman! (Worst Superhero Ever...)

Aside from the pilot, the only other episode from the first series that I considered reviewing back then was this episode, Cyberwoman. Written by Chris Chibnall, who when it comes to sci-fi isn't a fan of mine, the episode's ridiculous premise and hammy acting make it painful to behold. It is, however, Ianto's only character piece until the end of Series Two and it starts off a few other storylines, most of them important to the rest of the series. Importantly, Cyberwoman comes straight off the back of Doctor Who's second series finale, and thus the audience expects a certain standard of episode. Ho, boy. This is going to be fun.
     While the team play basketball... for some reason, Ianto is left alone in the Hub. He orders the gang's pizzas and then greets a Japanese scientist called Tanazaki. They head down to the basement, where, he reveals, he has been keeping his partially-converted Cyberman girlfriend.
     Only four minutes in and so much stupid to cover. Firstly, the whole keeping it quiet business. This is Torchwood, a society that hordes alien weapons and has surveillance everywhere in Cardiff. If they can't tell that there's something big and lethal only a short way down a corridor of their base, then something seriously wrong is going on. Ianto couldn't cover it up; he's the bases' admin guy, sure, but even with the almighty powers of bureaucracy you couldn't hide the thing which caused the demise of the original society.
     Then there's the design of the "Cyberwoman". It's pure fanservice, blatant and unrepenting - big metal breasts and even heels for god's sake. It doesn't even make sense from a story perspective - the Cybermen from the modern series of Doctor Who take people's brains out and put them in suits, not cover them in randomly placed metalic segments with anatomically correct features! Even the excuse - that the Cybermen were running low on supplies - doesn't cut it beause surely moulding breast-cups would be more complicated than a basic suit.

Not a good look...

      Back to the story. Tanazaki is from a Cybernetics society, and has been brought in to try and "cure" the Cyberwoman, who's Ianto's girlfriend, Lisa. She's conscious and still "human" inside, for now. Tanazaki operates in the main area of the Hub, and gives her systems to allow her to breath by herself. The operation nearly fails, and the Torchwood team start to head back to the base. Lisa and Tanazaki are rushed downstairs and by the time they get back Ianto is totally nonchalent. Downstairs, Lisa's Cybernetic personality, which consists of a bad synthesiser and a massive chip on her shoulder, takes over... for some reason (you'll be reading that a lot) and she tries to convert Tanazaki. The team notice this immediately, as there's a massive power drain. Ianto blames it on a problem with the generator, and pops down to find the partially-converted (and dead) Tanazaki.

     Here we have the first of Ianto's grief moments, and while I don't think Gareth David-Lloyd is a bad actor overall, this story isn't evidence to contradict that. He simply can't do realistic grief, and his pained looks are often more hilarious than heinous. Here he completely freaks out, going from pained sobbing to random anger. Dude punched a Cyberman!
     Ianto, busy sobbing, doesn't notice when Lisa uses the Hub's power again to power herself. The team actually use their technology and, what do you know, discover an unknown-heat signature. One can only assume they've never used this technology before, seeing as Ianto's been in the group for the best part of a year. Gwen and Owen are sent down to investigate as the team gears up for an attack.

Still not a good look...

     Gwen and Owen go down and actually take a look.Tosh discovers that the CCTV from that room has been deleted... for the past year. Strange coincidence there. Gwen and Owen go in and discover the Cyber-conversion unit, which freaks Owen out considerably. They turn the machine off. He recalls them but they discover Lisa, which understandably sets the whole base on red alert. Jack gives orders to shut down everything in an emergency to make sure that Lisa doesn't escape.
     Owen incapacitated, Lisa attempts to convert Gwen. Jack's about to kill her when Ianto makes a dick-move and stops him from doing so. To turn the machine off they have to activate the lockdown mechanism. As they leave the basement, Jack gives a quick rundown on the Cybermen. When they get back to the main room Tosh reveals that total lockdown means that they can't gain access to the weapons room. Convenient, and, of course, totally non-intuitive. Jack gets ready to execute Ianto, who gives his reasoning as feeling unappreciative with his job and afraid of what Torchwood would do to Lisa. Jack reveals that this incident could start an entire Cyber Race again.
     Lisa pops up again and Ianto tries reasoning with her to attempt to save her humanity. Jack tries frightening her by showing her that she is not fully upgraded. She suggests transplanting her brain into Ianto's body and being converted again. When he rejects her, she knocks him unconscious (thank god) and the team do a "Code Nine" maneuver, which consists of running into a room. Tosh gets the job of unlocking the doors with an alien gizmo while Gwen and Owen are sent towards the medical area to get some weapons. So... no guns then? You can't use any of the many, many guns you had outside the weapons room earlier? Whatever.

Pterodactyl versus Cyberwoman. Awesome.

     While Lisa whales on immortal Jack, shocking the rest of the team (who still don't know he's immortal), Gwen and Owen are forced to hide on top of one another in a morgue-chamber. As Jack gives Ianto the kiss of life, Owen starts off a subplot by snogging Gwen to shut her up. Unfortunately, in the classic cliche style, Gwen's phone goes off and, as they climb out, Owen stabs Lisa with a screwdriver. (A screwdriver... in a medical bay. Whatever.) She still survives and is only incapacitated by the well known classic... barbecue sauce? The sauce gives the team's pet pterodactyl a target, leading into the episode's only really "awesome" scene, in which a dinosaur attacks a cyborg.
     Anyway, the team all escape up through an emergency shaft and Lisa is left to be dino-dinner. Not content with having nearly cause a world-ending apocalypse, Ianto punches Jack in the face for killing his girlfriend. Not, of course, that he faces any reprecussions for this. At all. The power comes back on and Ianto rushes off to once again try and save his psychocyber girlfriend. Meanwhile, the pizza lady arrives and is intercepted by Lisa.
     Ianto threatens the team with a gun but predictably Jack just takes it off of him. He strikes Ianto a deal - he can go in and see Lisa, but only to make sure she's dead. Ianto sprouts some BS about Jack being the biggest monster of all but considering what a dick he's been, it doesn't really stick. He goes down to the basement and finds Lisa's dead body. He does some more sobbing, his most hilarious yet! To further the hilarity, it turns out that she's actually just transfered her brain to the body of the pizza girl, in a way that's completely impossible. Pizza!Lisa talks and Ianto sobs some more. They share a hug, but Ianto backs off when Pizza!Lisa starts talking about Cyberconversion. Unable to do the job himself, Jack shoots her from a distance. More sobbing ensues.

It's ok. This is the last one.

     The next morning, Ianto arrives for work. He has suffered absolutely no reprecussions for nearly causing Armeggeddon and instead gets some pitying stares. The final dialogue presents it as a tale of love and devotion, which if you ask me is a bit of a long-shot. What Cyberwoman is attempting to be and what it is are two very seperate things. It is enjoyable on a cerain level, but I really doubt that it's for the same reasons as the producers intended.
     This is supposed to be the first series' Ianto-centric episode, but rather than explore the character in any meaningful way it gives us an exaggerated and hilariously hammy personality that is never seen in the program again. Putting a Cyber(wo)man into the mix is an interesting concept and for the first ten minutes or so the execution was fine, but once the random new personality asserted itself, Lisa became a walking cliche and Ianto's character became less and less believeable. Love does strange shit to people, but still loving your girlfriend after she's become a murderous, emotionless cyborg that's tried to kill you twice? Please.

Bodyswap!

     Inevitably, with my history, I have to comment on Chibnall's script. I will give him this one not because it's particularly good, but because it doesn't contain many of his flaws - the obtrusive technobabble is noticeably absent here, and his character work is for once more than one-note. I admit that on a fundamental level the concept works - the idea of a Cybermen that's been left behind in our reality, still holding semblance of humanity, is a good one. Where the episode failed in that regard was in its execution and the number of glaring plot holes and unintentionally hilarious performances that execution delivered.
     So, to sum up. Cyberwoman has a great concept at its heart - a tie-in with its parent show that also explores the series' most one-note character up to that point. But in its execution in both artistic design and in the performance of the otherwise brilliant Gareth David-Lloyd, it becomes a work of unintentional comedy much better than any of the cheap sex gags the series throws up. It had so much potential to be a great piece of sci-fi, but I enjoy it as a piece of bad television just as much as I would otherwise. Also - pterodactyl vs cyberman! Awesome!

Thanks.

Review: Torchwood 1.3:Ghost Machine

Owen, using the device, feels a woman's fear from 1963.

Straight after that silly premise, Ghost Machine presents something quite different. Helen Raynor, who's good at this sort of thing, gives us a character-driven thriller based on memories and the odd bit of foresight bias. It's a welcome change from the opener and, as the first two episodes were broadcast together, feels like a more adequate summary of what Torchwood can do. Strangely, despite all my reservations about this series of Torchwood, this episode is an immediate standout.
     The episode surrounds a strange alien artefact, retrieved by the team from a youth called Sean. The device, first used accidentally by Gwen, uses a "quantum transducer to transfer emotional energy" - it allows the user to witness events in the past and empathise with the people present. Gwen sees a little boy evacuated from London, who they find living happily; Owen uses the device and witnesses the rape and murder of a girl called Lizzie in the 1960s. This hits him hard, and he finds the killer, Edwin Morgan, the next day. Morgan has spent the last fourty years becoming claustrophobic and paranoid. Owen goes and scares Morgan, and on the way out he discovers (and chases) Sean.
     The team get to Sean, who reveals that the device came with a bunch of strange (aka alien) coins from a warehouse along with the device's twin. The second device interlinks with the first in a pair and, as Gwen finds out, the device allows the user to see the future instead of the past. Gwen sees her with a knife and bloodied hands, but Jack tells her not to worry about it. That night Gwen goes to reassure Sean, who'd also used the device and saw himself dead, but the two are met by Ed Morgan whom Sean had been blackmailing after witnessing the murder himself. Sean doesn't die but Ed does after he accidentally runs into Gwen's knife.
     This episode was principally an Owen-centric character piece. So far he's the character with most development (bar Jack, but he was on Doctor Who) and this episode shows us both a lighter and darker side to his personality, making him much less of the one-dimensional womaniser from the pilot. At the moment Gwen has moments running through all of the episodes, and her time with Rhys isn't irritating, but it's a shame that Ianto and Toshiko haven't been looked at yet. The concept of the episode itself was a fun piece of sci-fi that, at the time, the parent program wasn't using too much; ironic for a show about Time Travel.

The modern Edwin Morgan.

     The only criticism that I can level at Ghost Machine is that the future aspect feels a little tacked on, popping up in the last ten minutes of the episode and yet providing a lot of the climax's drama. It would have been a bit better for the team to have the second device from the beginning and not realise what it was until the incident with Owen. What's there works well, and it's good compared to last week's basic runaround but it still needs a bit of tweaking.
     Ghost Machine is a standout episode of the early Series One that focuses on my favourite character while providing an excellent commentary on society via sci-fi technobabble. It may have some issues here or there but principally it's intriguing, poignant and notably tense in its climax, three things that this series needs to be able to deliver.

Thanks.

Review: Torchwood 1.2: Day One

Carys is possessed.

I reviewed Torchwood's pilot just under a year ago and decided that I would lay off Torchwood until I had new material to work with. My reviews of Miracle Day have brought me to a low ebb, and so I've decided that I'll revisit the first series via DVD and see if I can have any more fun here. Day One is The Second Episode and thus has to stand of representative of what the "average" episode of the show will be like. The episode does this, but the image we're given isn't all that attractive...
      Before I get to the plot, I have to talk about the elephant in the room. Day One is a perfect example of what is wrong with Torchwood Series One, in that it attempts to be more adult by throwing in plenty of over-eighteen sillyness and not by treating things more seriously. I'm not averse to the odd bit of childhood silliness, and indeed, my ten-year-old mind was intrigued by the series at the time, but there is a limit to what is acceptable before it becomes a parody. Torchwood crosses that limit. When I think of a more adult outing in the Whoniverse, I'm looking for high-concepts and serious drama - not sex monsters and masturbating security guards.
     A meteor falls while Gwen and boyfriend Rhys are on a night-out. Torchwood calls her in. They head to the meteor in their SUV, which is covered in Computers linked to the police. At the site she throws a tool to Owen that splits the asteroid open, releasing a purple cloud. The cloud  posesses a girl in an alleyway called Carys. She goes into a nightclub and has sex with a random punter, but upon orgasm he explodes into dust. Back at the Hub, and Gwen is chastised by the other members of her team. The team get the news about the death and head to the nightclub.
     After discovering the circumstances of the death they plan the coverup and then look for traces of the meteorite. More CCTV reveals Carys' possession. At home, we see that Carys doesn't remember. They track her down and stop her from killing a postman and take her back to the base. There she's locked up, and alternates between her personality and that of the entity. The entity explains to Gwen that it lives of "orgasmic energy" and needs it to survive. When the entity moves back, pheromones it's emitting mean that Gwen starts making out with Carys, until she claims that the entity needs a man.

Gwen talks with The Entity.

     The team eat Chinese and Gwen claims that the team should be running more than scientific tests. She creates a character profile of Carys. They examine the cell's air and discover the aphrodisiac pheromones, then finding Owen locked up her stead. Carys fights with Jack and then escapes after threatening to drop The Doctor's severed hand. Owen reveals the results of a practical test on a rat, showing the results of prolonged posession by the gas - the host explodes. Carys goes round to her ex-boyfriend's and kills him before heading to her workplace.
     Following from that lead, they trace her to her workplace, which is a Sperm Bank. With Carys cornered, she collapses. Jack "breathes" his excess life into her. Gwen prepares to let the gas posess her instead, but Jack captures it with a forcefield and it dies. Carys is retconned and returned home, as Gwen returns to a lasagne and her boyfriend.
     I'm speaking in hindsight, of course, and the things most noticeable to me are the characterisations in relation to the modern series. Gwen, being new, has a much more amiable personality - she cares for humanity and feels like an identifiable human figure instead of the shrill, ridiculous parody we see now. The characters in this series are really fun because they have a wide range of well-written characters that sometimes make the silly scenes worth it. Particularly strong for me at this stage is Burn Gorman as Dr. Owen Harper, and it's a shame that I can't talk about his brilliant trilogy of episodes in Series Two.
     I think upon reflection that Day One was spoilt by its ridiculous premise and childish way of dealing with these things, but it does present a set of great characters and a lead pair, in Gwen and Jack, that are compelling to follow. I'm not saying that I haven't written this just to complain about Miracle Day, but I do think that one should look back on a series to test its quality. Torchwood is no exception.

Thanks.

Review: Being Human 1.6

"It doesn't remove my humanity. It... proves it."

The pace of this first finale really doesn’t reflect the series’ tight plotting at this early stage. Being Human really has a problem with finales, and of course, this is where it all started. However, like later finales, it does have some excellent climactic elements and it follows up on its preceding cliff-hanger in both an exciting and logical way. Most of all, it finally did justice to the character of George, whose cutesy little subplot with Nina felt like an unnecessary add-on up to this point. With Annie and Mitchell incapacitated in story-terms, George takes a rightful centre-place in an excellent climax to the series that would ripple in series to come. It also acts as a swansong (well, for now) for Jason Watkins' character Herrick, who uses this episode to royally ham up.

     The action is preceeded by a prelude that shows the two main characters first meeting - Mitchell saved George from being killed by a bunch of Vampires, led by Seth. 
      While Mitchell recovers from his staking (which is convenient, seeing as every other staking we see is pretty much instant-death for vampires – Mitchell’s second staking included) in hospital, George watches over him. After being surprised by a visit from the hospital vicar, played wonderfully by bit-part actor Michael Begley, the two ward off two vampires sent to finish Mitchell off. Mitchell recovers and, after Josie dies in her sleep, arranges to fight with Herrick in exchange for George and Annie's lives. George is understandably angry, but after visiting the Chaplain once more he arranges the fight as promised and tells Mitchell that he accepts his choice.
     Dumping Nina via letter, George makes his way to the hospital at the same time as Herrick and Mitchell. Instead of fighting on the roof, Herrick finds himself in the dungeons where a transforming Geroge prepares to finish him off. Mitchell and Annie come to see him, and try to persuade him to stop. Nina rushes down and, ignorant of George's condition, she gets scratched. George, who all this time has been told that the werewolf was taking his away his humanity, asserts that his act of sacrifice instead proves it.

George and The Chaplain face off two hitmen.

     Yes, it was a satisfying end to this particular storyline; the often clichéd and laughably stereotypical vampire plot to take over the world ending with a massive showdown. The storyline had the potential to be so much more. I won’t reiterate what I said about the vampire storyline in 1.5, but the waste there meant that this episode was all the more bittersweet from my point of view. It certainly helped that  Jason Watkins was given free reign in this episode to give as many long-winded speeches and diatribes as possible, which are all enjoyable and at times make up for the lack of plotting.
     Other than that, I haven't much else to say on Being Human Series One. It was a fundamentally well-constructed show with excellent dialogue that was not only funny in all of the right ways but explored deeper ideas central to deconstructing those cliches. Mitchell himself is a deconstruction of the "Freindly Neighbourhood Vampire" archetype, while Annie's storyline is a near-perfect example of an abusive relationship. It really is just text-book well done, with the right amount of charm and wit to bolster the novel premise. The finale to this series, while not number one from a plot point of view, was a brilliant character piece. 

Thanks.