Review: Torchwood 4.10: The Blood Line (Finale)

I do find it incredibly ironic that the last episode of this really quite dreadful series is the one I most enjoyed. And that didn't just stem from the fact that I wouldn't be tuning in to disappointment each week - The Blood Line was a marked improvement on the past few weeks and one of the first episodes of the series to actually excite me while watching it. Yeah, there's still a lot of issues to cover, but the episode itself tied up everything nicely (apart from the odd sequal hook) and actually left me positive about the show's future. Every time Miracle Day took me to the lowest low, it always picked me back up again in small ways.

     One of the episode's greatest benefits was that stuff actually happened to further the plot; a given for any other show but a pleasant surprise here. The team focussed in on the Blessing with CIA help; Gwen, Jack and a weirdly-associated Oswald visited the Shanghai opening while the CIA helped Rex and Esther in Buenos Aires. There are some quick explanations; The Blessing controls the average life expectancy of the world, and the Families have been "feeding" it to cause the miracle. After the CIA team in Buenos Aires (carrying a whole suitcase of Jack's blood) are blown up because of Families spy Charlotte Willis, she begins to trace them and thus she is forced to kill John de Lancie and crew. At either end of the Blessing, the Families spokespeople explain to the teams what's been going on.
     The Miracle was caused when they fed the Blessing Jack's blood at both end. The Blessing recognised Jack's lifespan of forever and decided to help the Human Race by copy-and-pasting the results. The Families hoped to control the world after crashing the banks, the governments and the systems standing in their way. Jack threatens to give his blood to the Blessing but the spokesperson explains that it won't work because it has to be entered on both sides; Rex then reveals that he had Esther transfuse him with Jack's blood beforehand. Despite Esther being shot and Gwen's father about to be incinerated, they both give their blood and luckily both survive the ordeal. Months afterwards, at Esther's funeral, the team kill Charlotte Lewis, but not before she inadvertantly reveals that Rex is now immortal.
     And now I'm really stumped. Because I don't know what to write. I mean, Miracle Day hasn't been easy to watch, but it's been really easy to review. There's so much to complain about, so much to moan about, so little good to praise. Now I'm faced with an episode that I actually really enjoyed, and I have to go back to square one.

  Of course, this is still Miracle Day and thus there's a lot to nit-pick. One of the most controvertial in fan circles has been the Rex + Blood = Immortality thing, especially when we know why Jack is immortal and it has nothing to do with his blood. While they're getting themselves in a tizzy, I find myself really not caring - it adds a new dynamic to things and it doesn't stand out as much as some of the series' other discreapancies. Despite how spherical or not spherical the earth may be, there cannot be a creature that runs through the centre of the Earth in an exact straight line. One of the things that I did get irritated by was the lack of explanation about the Miracle beyond its mechanisms; they were clearly going for a, "terrestial enemy" story but it doesn't make sense when it's never been seen before or since despite how important they claim it to be.
      Miracle Day ended on what by their standards could be called a high, but I'm still emotionally detatched from the characters and plot. There are murmurs that a Series Five is in the pipeline, to be released as soon as January 2012. I'm not excited about that in the slightest, because I feel that Miracle Day will leave its own legacy. A legacy comprised of terrible scriptwriting, shoddy research and pacing that snails look upon with contempt, but a legacy nonetheless. Now I say goodbye to Miracle Day, and like the creepy stranger in a back-alley I will never meet it again.

Thanks.

Review: Doctor Who 1.6: Dalek

The "Metaltron"

Introduced in the series' second ever story back in 1963, the Daleks quickly became Doctor Who's most iconic enemies. Inspired by Terry Nation's memories of the Second World War, these genocidal cyborgs appeared on over 14 occasions in the classic series. When RTD brought back the series, he made it clear that they would be returning, and soon. This story, an adaptation of a Sixth Doctor audio story called "Jubilee", is an exercise in bringing the concept back to our screens and bringing them up to date.
      Before going into anything I will admit that despite my many problems with the stylistic choices during RTD's era, his Daleks are the best of the lot (and certainly better than the Moffatian teletubbie hunchbacks}. Unlike previous and future models, where the design feels very shoddy, the RTD Dalek is sturdy and both looks and feels like a real machine. This particular Dalek is an anomaly when it comes to the rest of the era, mainly because of the superb writing in the story which sees the single-minded creature slowly become more liberal.
     Nine and Rose land in Utah 2012, on the bottom floor of an underground museum owned by greedy industrialist Henry Van-Statten. The Doctor, who has demonstrated his alien know-how, is sent by Statten to identify his only living specimin - a creature known only as a "Metaltron." When The Doctor is locked in with the creature, he is distressed to find that it is a run-down Dalek. In one of Ecclestone's best monologues, he angrily taunts the Dalek because of the destruction of both their races in the Time War, exposing a lot of guilt and anger rarely seen in the Doctor up to this point.

Exterminate

     While The Doctor is taken away and examined himself (being an alien n' all} Rose and the base's British Boy-genius Adam (Bruno Langley, get familiar} visit the Dalek for the themselves. The creature is resigned to its fate as the last of its kind, gaining Rose's sympathy. When she touches the Dalek's casing, however, it takes some of her DNA and rejuvinates itself, killing its handlers and absorbing the entire internet.
     As Adam and Rose try to escape the Lockdown, the Dalek mows down rows of guards. It's shown to have a rotating mid-section, a bullet-melting force field and the ability to fly (dismissing a joke about Daleks and stairs that persisted due to its disproval in 1988 not sinking into the public consciousness}. Along the way The Doctor and Van Statten argue endlessly due to the latter's greed and insistance that the creature, being the pride of his collection, not be shot. The Doctor manages to come up with a plan to lock the Dalek deep within the museum, the problem being that Adam and Rose are still inside. Adam manages to escape and The Doctor assumes her for dead; later disproved when it's revealed that the Dalek spared her. Not willing to take the chance of losing her again he lets the Dalek through.
     On the way to Statten's office the Dalek begins to question its purpose, Rose's DNA having corrupted its genocidal ideology. While The Doctor goes off to get some alien weaponry, it arrives in his office and begins to question him. Rose persuades it to spare Van Statten by giving it "freedom" - she takes it up to the highest level, where it blasts a hole in the roof and opens its casing to feel the sunlight. The Doctor arrives and is prepared to kill it before Rose shows him what's happening - the Dalek is mutating into a creature with human ideologies and ideas, something that to a Dalek is torture. In incredible pain, the Dalek orders it own suicide and kills itself. The Time War over, the two head off, bringing a confused Adam with them.

The Atoner.

     Before I start gushing, I'll get down with this episode's negatives. Dalek is the intro story for Adam, the shortest-lived companion to have travelled in the TARDIS. Bruno Langley, whose main role before this was Todd on Coronation Street, simply doesn't act the role well. Couple that with his annoyingly arrogant boy-genius status and his actions in the next episode, and he feels like an Adric for a brand new generation.  Luckily his performance is drowned out by the main cast, who are on top form here and perform some of the best material of this era. We'll talk more about Adam next week.
      The thing that stands out the most for me is the direction, which manages to take the bland set and ensemble and squeeze every last drop of emotion onto the screen. It's cinematic in a way that isn't distracting, and the shots through the Dalek's eye play a much greater role here than in the past. Compared to Euros Lyn's theatrical style, Joe Ahearne is much more modern and gives the story the required treatment.
     This is the culmination of our reintroduction to the series in many ways. The Daleks are finally back in the picture after 17 years waiting, The Doctor and his Companion are well-characterised and the series' arc is feeling rewarding. The real arc of this series is the constant mention of "Bad Wolf," but Davies does another, more subtle one to do with the Time War. The War is crucial to Nine's characterisation as the atoning veteran and it seems fitting that nearly every episode of this series contains some reprecussion of it, as if Nine is stumbling through the consequences of his actions. By Dalek, he has realised that the War has made him become the thing that he despised - a killer - and makes the effort, like the Dalek, to become more human. 

The Dalek Mutant is ill.

     Dalek is one of my favourite episodes of Nine's series because of its powerful direction, well-written story and the excellent caliber of acting from Ecclestone. There was a minor quibble here or there mainly due to some of the guest cast, but overall it brought back the series' most popular villain in a way which secured it for the remainder of RTD's reign. Not quite a masterpiece, but enjoyable and intelligent nonetheless.

Thanks.

Review: Doctor Who 6.10: The Girl Who Waited

The Doctor links two different time-streams.

I'm impressed. After a series of episodes which have all felt off-tone, The Girl Who waited captured the spirit of Doctor Who in a way that didn't leave me groaning or trying to figure out what the hell was going on. A typical Time-Travel conundrum, the episode uses this to advance the characters rather than create a confusing narrative, and thus is one of the most engaging episodes of this series so far. At the same time, the episode grappled this series' themes and did so exceedingly well.
     Writer Tom MacRae's last Doctor Who writing credit was 2006's Rise of the Cybermen two-parter, a story that fell below many people's expectations. He more than makes up for it here, however, and the writing takes the fluency with sci-fi concepts used in that story (about Cybermen in a parallel Universe} and instead focuses on Moffat's famed temporal twists. Here our protagonist for the long-haul is the eponymous Amy, now using said title twice in her existence, and thus the episode is notable Doctor Lite, with Matt Smith mostly contributing via scenes in the Tardis and through audio.
     The Doctor brings his companions to the planet Apalapucia, famed for its natural beauty. Instead they find themselves in a plague facility that holds the people of the planet in different, compressed time-streams so that visitors can watch their ill relatives live out their lives in peace. Unfortunately Amy ends up in a different stream to her boys, and thus she is sent further into the facility by The Doctor over a time-based spyglass linking the streams. They attempt to travel to her stream. Meanwhile, the facility proves a dangerous place for Amy, whose relative alienness means that the robots that control the facility are constantly trying to pump her full of alien drugs which will no doubt kill her.

"It is a kindess." Unless you have one heart...

     Unable to go in, seeing as the plague only affects two-hearted-beings, The Doctor sends in Rory. There he finds an Amy that's spent the last four decades in the facility, avoiding the robots and developing a deep-seated hatred against The Doctor. While it isn't convincing at first, the Old!Amy character really shows Gillan's range and after only a few minutes she is convincing as the bitter, survivalist Amy.  Old!Amy refuses to help The Doctor help herself, because she knows that the last 36 years of her life would cease to exist. After Rory (wearing glasses that give The Doctor an audio and one-way visual link}persuades her otherwise by showing her, with the spyglass, her younger self. They both laugh and discuss Rory, in what is the episode's most poignant and well-made scene.
     Old!Amy agrees to help The Doctor, on the condition that she's allowed to co-exist with her younger self. Based on this, The Doctor helps Rory to turn off the engines keeping the streams seperate. This, however, notifies the robots, and they fight their way back to the Tardis. Before Old!Amy can get in, The Doctor shuts the door, explaining that her existance is now a paradox. Rory, concerned for the welfare of both wives, is told by The Doctor to choose; Young or Old. Old!amy gives herself up, telling Rory to grow old with her. They then fly away and she ceases to exist.
     One thing I love about the story is the setting; the design of the plague facility was creepily clinical and mundane, and there are some of Moffat's signature, "Just trying to help" villains. This came coupled with a holodeck impersonating a garden and a creepy corner by the Time Engines where Old Amy had spent her time in isolation. This mundanity seemed to act as a base-layer for the main point of the episode, which was the relationship between Amy and Rory. Series Five spent a lot of time developing it, but the beginning of Series Six diluted it slightly with Rory's over-the-top, far too common deaths. In a way this honest appreciation of one another after a long period apart told us a lot more about the strength of their relationship than any one-sided sobbing ever could.

Old!Amy takes one last look at Home.

     The only thing I can really say negatively about this story is some of the direction. There's copious use of Slow-mo, which after its disastrous use at the end of The Impossible Astronaught really jarred and disrupted the episode's emotional punch. Often it felt like padding, which really disappointed me in this otherwise superb piece of television.
     The Girl Who Waited raised the bar after several average episodes and delivered the character work and emotional poignancy that this series needs, while also covering a series of incredibly interesting and well used sci-fi ideas. More importantly, it gave humanity to characters fast becoming charicatures of themselves. It's really given me some optimisim for the rest of the series and for the future of these characters. Good Work.

Thanks.
     

Review: Torchwood 4.9: The Gathering

Bloody Oswald meets bloody Torchwood.

It's become somewhat of a cliche for me to even discuss how tired I am with Torchwood's fourth series. And, while the penultimate episode in this yawningly outstretched tale attempted to give us some answers, it only threw up more questions. Where it wasn't failing to move the plot along, it was being irritating inaccurate in some of its claims or simply wasting time on events that would later be rendered pointless. As the penultimate episode of not only this series but also maybe of Torchwood itself, it still clung close to the problems endemic in this painfully long series.
     Set two months after the previous episode (thus trespassing into Moffat's territory}, things have very much changed. While Rex leads his CIA in investigating the Miracle, Gwen has smuggled Jack and Esther into the UK and is acting as a drugs-runner while protecting her dad. A government official (named Finch, funnily enough} arrives to search the house as they're looking for her father, who they claim is an unauthorised Category One. Luckily he doesn't find her father and leaves. This raises some important questions. Like, for example, why the fuck is the government looking for Category Ones? Finch later calls her father a corpse; that just makes it worse! What reason is there to hunt for corpses - Gwen's dad isn't carrying an infectious disease, he's just had a few too many heart attacks and thus from where I'm standing is doing nothing to harm society. Also, Finch is a dick. Just thought I'd mention. At least for the first time this series the main characters aren't the ones irritating me.
     Oswald Danes then appears at the house, asking for Gwen's help. For the first time he's written semi-competantly, becoming (according to the sketchy sources at TARDIS anyway,} "redeemed." He asks for Jack and Esther because he has information, and when they're brought in he reveals that he used his skills with computers to hack into Jilly's account after she left, finding something call the Bosco technique. Esther explains that it's a subtle manipulation of language to influence public opinion on a subject. Using Rex's connections in the CIA they translate one of the videos she used back into the original dialect and back again, finding that "The Blessing" is in Shanghai, at the same time finding it in Buenos Aires. Then Finch raids again and takes Gwen's Dad after making some more dickish comments. Gwen shrugs it off. Oh well.

The team do stuff. It made little sense.

     As Jilly goes through a series of elusive people on her way to see the Blessing in Shanghai, the team work out that Shanghai and Buenos Aires are antipodes of one another (they're not - really} and that the Blessing, whatever it is, runs through the whole planet. Conveniently, half of them hop onto a plane to Shanghai (four people in a fucking crate, no less} and the other half to South America.
      Now we get to The Blessing. This is the most important moment of the entire series, and despite this only appearing very recently, it's something we've been waiting for for a while. This has to be interesting, clear and interesting beyond belief. Is it? Well... I don't know how to put this. It looks like a giant asshole in the ground. Literally. Apparently it runs all the way down the planet. And do we get any explanation besides cryptic riddles? No. We get fuck all. And then Jack's blood becomes alive, and I gave up.
      Yep, that's right. After weeks and weeks of perseverance, I gave up on trying to like Torchwood. I really want to be positive about the show but this episode really felt like a spit in the face because of the gaping void in what the show could have been and what it is. This penultimate episode should have been an exciting eye opener, but instead we got more riddles and more questions that don't leave me hoping for a good resolution. Worst of all are the smug little add-ons by the writers that seem so pleased with these damaged goods. Russell T Davies voices an announcer at the beginning of the episode for no reason other than to create a, "where have I heard that voice," moment. It was pointless.
      And that, unfortunately, is how I feel about this series in general. All I can do is hope for a resolution that doesn't disappoint me as much as the rest of the series has. The Gathering, the episode that promised us so much, instead brought us the pale imitation of what could have been, the real thing seemingly dangling so close and yet so far. The inconsistencies, inaccuracies and absurdities were all still there and there was truly no reprive from this series' problems.
      Join me this time next week, as this series comes to an end. Pray that it's a good one.

What. The. Fuck. Is. That.

Thanks.

P.S. John de Lancie was very good in this. But he's really good in everything.

P.P.S. I was going to put this series under the "Bad Sci-Fi" tag that I reserve for just that, but I don't really classify it as Sci-Fi anymore. It's more political fantasy.

Review: Doctor Who 1.4-5: Aliens of London and World War Three

"I could save the world but lose you."

Cliffhangers on Classic Who were a big deal. They were the long-lasting, make or break judge of a story's quality, the scenes which the viewers remembered for long afterwards. In NuWho's first two-parter, RTD returns as writer and delivers a story which aims to show exactly what the modern series' cliffhangers could do. Unfortunately it also stands out as a story with a lot of internal strife of the sort that I've already mentioned when discussing RTD's work - brilliant satire and social commentary mixed in with appeals to younger children. As will become the norm now, I'll be covering this two-parter in one sitting.
     As I mentioned, RTD's tenure on the show saw us explore companions' private lives so much more than before - the predecessor, really, to Moffat's very character-based arc. At the time it was an innovation in storytelling that felt completely modern and cutting edge (in Who terms anyway...}. Despite how advanced it seemed, this focus only really equated to two characters, Jackie and Mickey, as well as more frequent trips to the "present." The Aliens of London two-parter was, for convenience, filmed with the last "present" episode Rose as one of the first episodes shot. But that's not why it's rough around the edges, so I'll move on for now.
     After the future-past tour, The Doctor takes Rose back to London to see her mother and boyfriend. Despite his best efforts at arriving twelve hours after she left, he finds out too late that she's been gone a year and Mickey's been suspected of her murder in the mean-time. Despite how whiney Camille Coduri's portrayl can sometimes get, I do enjoy these scenes at the beginning of Aliens of London because of their realism and how they explore what was then unknown territory. This is followed by a discussion on the rooftop - a rather obvious greenscreen set, but it's perfect for what happens next - a spaceship flies over London and takes out Big Ben before crashing in the Thames. The world thinks that this is First Contact, and so while London celebrates and Rose faces Mickey's tale of the year he's had, The Doctor uses the Tardis to get a little closer to the action.

"It's only a model." "Shh."

     The scenes in the Morgue are some of the best in the first episode, despite sharing a lot of the episode's symptoms. The "alien" from the crashed ship was taken there and The Doctor follows the trail. They believe that it's dead, but when it awakens - in a scene that pays homage to one of the best scenes in the Movie - the current doctor there, one Dr. Sato (three-fifths of the Torchwood Cast is in Series One alone, it's awesome} ends up meeting The Doctor. The "alien," it turns out, is a pig with an augmented brain, and literally walks on hind-legs before being shot down by gunsmen, who are then berated by The Doctor. Ecclestone here doesn't betray the fact that this is one of his first episodes. In it, he portrays the vision of his Doctor that makes me like him so much - grief and sadness over the death of any living, feeling thing.
     The action segues into 10 Downing Street, where the majority of this story is set. Here we meet out villains for this episode, who besides being incredibly unbelievable in their characterisation are the sole reason that this story is on so many fans' worst episodes list. I'll spoil it now, because a point really has to be made. The villains of this story are ambitiously-used green aliens called the Slitheen, an evil family of gangsters from a tribal society that have inflitrated the UK Government by killing major figures and then using their skins as suits. To do so they wear a compression device around their necks, which due to pressure on either their bodies or the writer's spinal cord causes them to be incredibly, incredibly flatulent.
      Now, before I go any further, I'd just like to say that I am not a prude. I swear punctuatively. I do not "look down upon" certain types of humour - my only requirement is that I find it funny. I'll even allow it if I'm somehow not in the target audience - as long as I feel that it is funny to them. The Slitheen, on the other hand, belong in the same region of absurdity as burping bins and skin on a frame. RTD said his target age range was 8-12 years of age. I was 8 when this story first broadcast and like Cassandra, I didn't find it funny then and it's still bloody irritating now.

MP for Flydale North.

     The most mind-boggling thing for me is that when I think about it, the Slitheen work. I mean, they really are perfect in all but a few important respects. They've got a great design that scares kids and interests adults, a methodology that borrows from Invasion of the Bodysnatchers and Tony Blair's foreign policy and they, like the majority of good Doctor Who monsters, are green! And then comes the problem. I mean no disrespect to Annette Badland or David Verrey, who played the main Slitheen leads in their human guises. I've seen them in other things and they are individually good actors. Therefore in my mind the blame falls soley on the writing. These villains, these creates with no regard for the six billion people on Earth, need to be intimidating. Threatening. Dare I say it, Scary. All impressions of fear vanish the moment that I watched Annette Badland have to act out a scene in which she shook her bottom and farted while grinning like a loon, and some small part of me died a slow death. They speak in baby-talk, act like children in a way that doesn't make them more terrifying and un-zip their heads every. fucking. scene. If it's so difficult to get into one of those skin-suits, then why do you keep taking them off?!
     Back to the plot. The Slitheen Leader, known by his human name Joseph Green, somehow ascends to PM in the incumbant's absence. He and his two friends are blasted by the head of the Army but they swap one of the bodies for him, giving them control over the military. Meanwhile, Harriet Jones (Penelope Wilton of Shaun of the Dead fame} is being a back-bench busybody and manages to accidentally discover the Slitheen's identities.
     Jackie, meanwhile, witnesses the Tardis and is scared out of her wits. She calls a Government hotline for sightings and his Years with UNIT have he and Rose escorted to Downing Street. The Doctor is sent to a meeting of alien experts while Harriet breaks down in front of Rose and reveals the Slitheen's existence, as well as finding the Prime Minister. On the estate, a portly-looking policeman with a flatulance problem visits Jackie and starts un-zipping his head. At the meeting all of the experts begin to be electrocuted as all of the our protagonists find themselves in danger in a three-pronged cliffhanger.

Green! Wicked.

     So, after a 16-year wait for a cliffhanger, how does Aliens of London shape up? Well... it's a double-edged sword. One one side, the cliffhanger is ambitious in its three-pronged approach and is quite exciting. On the the other side, there's no tension whatsoever, plenty of ways to escape the cliffhanger as readily avaliable and the fact that the Next Time trailer played a few seconds after it.
     World War Three is by comparison a much more interesting experience because it lays off the Slitheen (for the most part} and focuses more on character development. The Doctor turns the electric device back onto the Slitheen, whose psychic link makes it possible for all parties to escape. The Doctor, Rose and Harriet end up in the steel-reinforced cabinet room, questioning the Slitheen's intentions. Over the phone to Mickey, they help he and Jackie kill the Police-Slitheen by dousing it in Vinegar. In turn, The Doctor executes his contingency plan - he helps Mickey hack into the Royal Navy to send a missile to destroy downing street, where all of the Slitheen are gathered. To cut a long story short, it worked, and everyone lives happily ever after.
     There isn't that much to go at with World War Three because a lot of it is composed of tense faffing about. My favourite bits would have to be The Doctor's speech in the cabinet room, one of Ecclestone's best ever line-reads - "I could save the world but lose you." - and Joseph Green's excuse that the aliens have "Weapons of Massive Destruction, capable of being fired in 45 seconds," a clear dig at the Iraq War, which was still fresh on everyone's minds.

Can you have a cameo if your show doesn't exist yet?

     The Aliens of London two-parter will go down in Who history for its more infamous segments than its well-made ones, which is a real shame because one thing that RTD can do is domestic drama. The episodes were let down by their unconvincing and irritating villains, not to mention their posterial activity. (I sicked up a little in my mouth just writing that. Urgh.} A selection of ideas that would have worked perfectly well on their own and ones that felt better in a Seltzerberg movie came jumbled into this disappointingly bad 90 minutes, with only the main protagonists' performances to salvage it. To quote Nine, "What did you do that for?"

Thanks.

NEXT TIME: Dalek! Yay!

Review: Doctor Who 6.9: Night Terrors

A good excuse for wooden acting....

Having just reviewed an episode by Gatiss, I was looking forward to this episode. I've been getting tired by the arc episodes and I was hoping for a change to preceedings. While the episode is certainly the best Gatiss has done since The Unquiet Dead, its initially creepy exterior collapsed into a bit of a disappointment. The episode promised so much in its initial premise that I can't help but feel a little put-out by the results.
     For a reason that's not explained, The Doctor's psychic paper alerts him the cries of a small child in contempory Bristol. Amy and Rory acted rather blasé about going to find their child, surprising after the ordeal with Melody. This is because this episode was written for before the break but got moved back for one reason or another. Interesting. The boy, George, is frightened of everything and his father Alex (Daniel Mays, last seen in Outcasts and Ashes To Ashes} and he doesn't know what to do. Amy and Rory are somehow transported into a doll's house as The Doctor arrives at the house and identifies something very powerful inside his wardrobe.
     Inside the Doll's House, empty-eyed dolls stalk the halls and transform anyone sucked in into another doll. It's quite a creepy transformation scene, especially when Amy's plan to surprise the dolls ends up with her being made into wood. The Doctor persuades Alex that the monsters in his cupboard are real, but when he looks there's nothing but the toys that George is afraid of. When The Doctor realises (and reveals} that George can't be Alex's son because his wife is infertile. He surmises that George is in fact an alien called a Tenza that was attracted to his "parents" need for a child, but is so powerful that he makes real his fears. They get sucked in, but the day is saved when Alex finally accepts George as his son and everyone is returned to normal.
      The dolls, so heavily featured in this episodes' publicity, are incredibly creepy - their wooden hands and charicaturish heads, as well as their echoing childish giggling meant that they were the first genuinely scary monsters in quite a while - for me, anyway. My only problem with them was the fact that they didn't actually make sense - they were the personifications of George's fears but were stunningly specific. It was as if Gatiss was trying to write a Moffat-esque horror story and went wrong along the way.

"Claire CAN'T HAVE kids!"

     Episode placement really buggered this episode up in far too many ways. As it was written, Amy is still a Ganger here, and she also doesn't give a damn about her child. I gave it some leeway when I was watching the episode because stylistically the tone was so very different to Let's Kill Hitler, but if I view it in context (which, with Moffat's arcing, I have to}then they seem incredibly cold and out-of-character. When I watch this, Amy is still a Ganger and The Doctor's oblivious to his fate. And to top it all off, this episode is paradoxically family oriented. Jamie Oram, who plays George, portrays a vision of a really messed-up kid, but it's not unreal. The story's ultimate solution is The Power of Love and acceptance of Family, and because of the fact that this episode wasn't written with the events of AGMGTW/LKH in mind, it lost all of its potential gravitas.
      Gatiss' Night Terrors was tense and its villains creepy, but it failed in the one key area where this current series has a specialisation. The main characters were sidelined in an episode that was well out of its time and a pale impression of what it was aiming for. I still enjoyed the first half, with the tension and the mystery surrounding it still intact, but once we learnt what the secrets behind the episode's yarn it soon became tiresome. If anything, Night Terrors was a sorely missed oppourtunity to do something really interesting and potent, but was let down by its scheduling on a massive scale.

Thanks.

Review: Doctor Who 1.3: The Unquiet Dead

"Pity the Gelth."

Mark Gattis has been a life-long fan of Doctor Who. Mainly a comedy writer in the League of Gentlemen Quartet, he often used his love for the program to influence his comedy during the Cancellation Era. His scripts for NuWho haven't always been up to scratch; his disastrous Victory of the Daleks is a good example. But he was chosen as the first writer of the series other than Russell T Davies, so this should be a marked difference from the first two episodes.
     The Doctor and Rose, heading for 1860 Naples instead end up in 1869 Cardiff, where corpses are coming alive sporadically, much to the chagrin of the Undertaker and his psychic maid (Gwenyth, played by Eve Myles of Torchwood fame}. By coincidence, the great Charles Dickens (Simon Callow} is in town, and one of the corpses interrupts a reading of A Christmas Carol. While the Undertaker has chloroformed Rose, The Doctor and Dickens {after a little flattery} head off in chase. Rose awakens to find herself in a room, where a mysterious blue gas animates another corpse. The Doctor figures out the nature of the creatures and manages to get her out of there. The corpses tell him to open the Rift, as they're dying.
     Charles denies the existence of these creatures. The Doctor explains the Rift for the first time (this episode is the base for Torchwood's entire mythos} explaining that there's something trying to come through. Charles listens to the gas and inspects the corpses, but The Doctor challenges his skepticism. Gwenyth and Rose talk, with Gwenyth talking about "big metal birds" and mentioning the Bad Wolf (this series' arc words}. The Doctor appears and reveals that because she grew up on the Rift, she's keyed into it.

What the Shakespere?

    They hold a "seance" and the aliens use her to communicate. They're called the Gelth, and claim that they've been removed from their own bodies by the Time War. They want to occupy the bodies of the dead. Rose is passionately against the idea but The Doctor wants to let them through. Gwenyth gets power of veto, and they head down to the Morgue to let them through. It turns out the Gelth actually want to take over the Earth, and so Charles escapes while Rose and The Doctor get trapped.
     As The Doctor apologises to Rose and informs her that she can in fact die before she was ever born, Charles works out how to defeat them, and turns all of the gas taps up in the house, which forces the Gelth to evacuate their bodies. Gwenyth, unable to send them back and already dead because of what's happened to her, she sacrifices herself by blowing up the house and trapping the Gelth. They mourn her, and then allow Charles his last Christmas present by letting him watch the Tardis materialise.
     This episode's guest cast are superb and provide some of the episode's best moments. Notable Literature-lover Simon Callow performs the role of Dickens perfectly, and his character undergoes a rather appropriately Scrooge-esque transformation over the course of the story. The moment at the end where The Doctor says that Dickens' work will live on forever is moving and well directed. Eve Myles, meanwhile, doesn't give us the over-the-top stereotype that the "psychic" archetype demands, and instead portrays a realistic 19th Century servant girl cursed with unusual circumstance.
       The Rift element within the Historical is not very well utlized here, but I don't hold that against the story as does introduce the device for later stories in this series and in Torchwood to do more with. The Gelth are an incredibly interesting species, their nature not only tieing into the ongoing idea of The Time War but also perfectly fitting the story's Dickensian Ghost motif.

The Doctor gets a stiff reception.

     Mark Gattis' first script for the series doesn't disappoint, with a clever and touching script that pays homage to one of the greatest writers of the 19th Century. For some, this is where Doctor Who "came back," and I understand why. The Unquiet Dead is a brilliant episode and surely heralds great things to come. What's that? The next episode is Aliens of London? Oh dear. Til next time.

Thanks.

Review: Doctor Who 1.2: The End of the World

Welcome to The End of the World.

"At the time of broadcast, it featured the most extensive use of CGI yet seen on Doctor Who." So says my main Doctor Who reference guide, The TARDIS Index File, on today's episode, The End of the World. After the opener, the best way for the makers of any series to cement a show's good image is to produce a good Second Episode. In the minds of RTD's production team, this amounted to splashing out on the special effects budget and creating lots of aliens and special effects. While the episode certainly does not lead up to it's title's expectations of quality, it does have a few issues that stop from doing its job properly.
     The episode opens with a continuation of Rose. The Doctor, trying to impress her, takes her five billion years to the future. They land on a space-ship, Platform One, designed to witness the destruction of the Earth by an expanding sun. Using The Doctor's psychic paper they're brought in as guests, and we get a strangely theatrical showcase of a wide variety of aliens, like The Moxx of Balhoon and the Tree People. Most interesting to Rose, however, is Lady Cassandra O'Brien (voiced by Zoe Wannamaker} who is the last human - a sheet of skin stretched out over a frame. The female tree person, Jabe, flirts with The Doctor, while mysterious men in cloaks hand out spheres. These spheres open out into spider-like robots that sabotague the ship and kill the ship's steward (an excellent performance by Simon Day, who we'll see more of in Being Human}.
     Rose is a little put out by the ordeal, and in another room she argues with the Doctor, who refuses to reveal his home planet. They reconcile and The Doctor alters her phone so that it can make phone calls throughout time and space. The ship shakes and while The Doctor and Jabe go into the Maintenance ducts to find out what's happening, Rose is knocked out and shoved into the room. Jabe reveals that she knows about The Doctor and is amazed that he even exists - and that she is very sorry. The Doctor manages to save Rose by the skin of his teeth.

"Sun Filters. Rising"

     In a poirot-esque scene, The Doctor uses the robot to identify the culprits - the shady guys, who it turns out are androids. They in turn are controlled by Lady Cassandra. She'd hoped to use the droids to create a false hostage situation and claim millions in compensation so as to further fund her operations. She teleports away, planning to kill them all. In true sci-fi style, The Doctor tracks the system restore switch to a big lever at the end of a corridor bolstered by three giant fans. The Doctor attempts to get across, with Jabe assisting by holding a switch to slow the fans down. Soon she becomes too hot and spontaneously combusts, leaving The Doctor to Matrix-style phase through the final fan and save the day - minus Jabe and the Moxx of Balhoon. Cassandra is brought back via some jiggery-pokery, and an angry Doctor watches as she dies without moisterisation by her assistance. The Doctor takes Rose home, reassuring her about the fate of humanity and revealing that his planet, Gallifrey, was destroyed in a war leaving him the only Time Lord left.
     The episode, despite how much it suffers from being a demonstration of the New Series' budget, does actually have some interesting ideas. The majority of the weird and wonderful things we're shown at the beginning of the episode get expanded upon, and while the aesthetic of the aliens is a little childish, the villain's motivation is straight out of political satire. It doesn't get the balance of ideas right, but that in mind it is an episode that I enjoy. It has a camp demeanor to it that I love, no doubt helped by Simon Day's Steward.
     One problem I certainly do have with it is the near-theatrical direction. The opening showcase of the various aliens felt very forced and trailer-like, and there's a scene later on where to show his angst The Doctor simply looks away from Rose in the manner of a small child. It's scenes like these that make some fans accuse Nine of being emo, and while it's important to show that the genocide of his people actually has an effect on him I do see their point. While Ecclestone's acting is usually superb this is one moment that really stands out and really it's more the fault of the director, Euros Llyn.

Moisturise me!

     Zoe Wannamaker really chews the scenery with Cassandra. The execution seems a little fake because of the 2005 CGI, but the core ideas behind her are sound - the human quest for immortality, the nature of purity and eugenics etc.. It's just that... well... she's a piece of skin over a frame with a face that hangs there without any real means of doing so. It stretches not only belief but my tolerance. Cassandra was a stupid character idea when I was a nine-year-old and it's still as stupid now.
     Yeah, the thing feels like a school-play and the alien designs comply with nothing Darwin ever thought of, but there is a charm to be found within The End of the World. Its writing is excellent, portraying a future which, despite being strangely focused on the 21st Century, still holds some of the constants we've come to know. There are "lower classes" of blue people, rival companies fighting each other and one big compensation scam to fund plastic surgery. The End of the World is a study of humanity's flaws, but it takes a strange method to do it with.

Thanks.

P.S. This is the last of my daily reviews. I'm going back into school on Monday, and thus the only reviews I'll be posting are of Torchwood 4, Doctor Who and Merlin and Misfits when they return. I will try to keep reviewing Series One, but don't be disappointed if I can't.

Review: Torchwood 4.8: End of the Road

Shapiro looks over operations.

I certainly enjoyed this week's episode of Torchwood more than previously, although I could sense from my family that they were incredibly bored by the affair. End of the Road (a title that's been exploited by a lot of the series' cynical reviewers} was more about ideas than anything else, and it soon became incredibly convoluted as several weeks' worth of exposition was shoved into an hour-long period. There was a lot more to chew on, but on a base level it wasn't very entertaining.
     Taken to the house of Jack's former lover Angelo, his granddaughter Olivia revealed that her grandfather remained alive via normal means, and also exposits that the series' villains are three families who all have "The Blessing", providing them with immortality. Soon rogue-CIA agent Friedkin arrives to sort them out, being the Families' representative, but through some trickery that didn't make much sense, Rex managed to get Friedkin to confess his crimes in front of proper CIA agent Shapiro (Star Trek's John de Lancie}. After that little sojurn is taken care of, Jack says goodbye to the older Angelo who then dies without warning - the only corpse in the world. Jack finds the solution to be a panel under his bed that nulls the morphic field sustaining the human race. Jack decides that he needs to escape for some reason and so attempts to get away from the house, but he's shot in the process and Esther is left to drive him away.
     Oswald and Jilly, meanwhile, returned on the scene but were in fact less interesting than before. Oswald, keen to further confuse his character, ordered Jilly to get him a whore. When she arrives he unintentionally reveals that he wants her to be his first date, and she then laughs at him because he's going to become a Category Zero - people previously sentenced to death get put into the Modules. Oswald is pissed, and after fighting with Jilly he runs off, and she is invited by her contact to be granted "the Blessing."

Esther makes a personal call.

     The return of Oswald and Jilly only served to highlight their inconsistancies. Now Oswald is somehow a shy and lonely individual frightened for his life, and then moments later he's beating Jilly like there's no tomorrow. I don't really see why they were here, as apart from a bit of exposition to do with a new category, not much happened. The episode's other guests were a lot better. John de Lancie is an excellent character actor, and his appearance in the main story improved things immedately - his fast-paced snark and wit meant that he had a lot more life than the rest of the characters. Nana Visitor's Olivia Colasanto was also interesting to watch, despite the fact that she was burdoned by most of the exposition before being offed quite nastily.
     And finally we got something close to Torchwood's premise. The panel under the bed is the first plot-relevant piece of alien tech in Miracle Day, and the fact that it's taken eight hours to get here is irritating. Some people are calling Miracle Day a "mystery" series and that like a good mystery novel it should hold its cards to its chest for the viewer to work out the answers. The problem with that theory is twofold; A.} There haven't been any "clues" to pin together, and B.} I don't watch Torchwood for mystery. I watch Torchwood for well-made sci-fi.
     It's obvious that Torchwood is gearing up for it's big finale, but at this rate it's more likely to go out with a whimper than a bang. Despite some good guest characters, it's a little belated and the episode was still bogged down with everything that afflicts Miracle Day - inconsistant character motivations, misplaced political commentary and a pace so slow as to put the majority of viewers off.

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Review: Doctor Who 1.1: Rose

The Doctor explodes into Rose's life.

When Doctor Who ended in 1989, it was the end of an era. The sci-fi phenomenon that had so affected British Culture for over 25 years was cancelled at the request of television executive Michael Grade, who hated the program. Aside from a few disasterous attempts like Dimensions in Time, the next Who wouldn't appear for seven years, when the Movie was released in 1996. That flopped, but it did inspire a producer by the name of Russell T Davies to revive the show and, 16 years after its cancellation, the revived show aired in 2005. The Ninth Doctor, played by Christopher Eccleston, was joined by former 90's pop star Billie Piper as Rose Tyler.
     The weight upon this story's shoulders is understandably immense. Rose was faced with the task of not only proving that the show could be revived, but introducing the show and its mythos to a brand new generation while reinventing it to meet modern standards. The careers of everyone involved were on the line. Suffice to say that my reviews of Matt Smith's series are proof of how it fared. Rose has its issues, but before I go on about the specifics it is important to recognise its role in Who history.
     We're introduced to our companion for this season, Rose Tyler, almost immediately. She's a normal girl living a normal life; a blond shop assistant living with Mum Jackie (Camille Coduri} and happy with loser boyfriend Mickey Smith (Noel Clarke, whom I mentioned in TW:Combat}. Then one day she's attacked by show-window dummies in the back of her shop and meets an eccentric stranger known only as The Doctor. He helps Rose escape before he blows up the building; he's getting rid of the transmitter that's making the plastic beings (Classic Series monsters known as Autons} work. In the process she's given an Auton arm, which her boyfriend Mickey disposes of.

100% Polypropelene!

     The arm crawls back up to try and kill her, however, but The Doctor picks it up. Rose brings him into the house and questions him, but he walks out and tells her to forget him. Researching, Rose (with Mickey} goes to see a Doctor enthusiast named Clive {the creepy Mark Benton} who gives some backstory. Meanwhile, Mickey is... eaten by a wheely bin. That burps afterwards. Dear oh dear. Mickey is replaced by an obvious-looking Auton duplicate. The Doctor arrives and beheads the duplicate, taking Rose with him to the TARDIS.
     They trace the origin signal from the head but they can't get too close. After Rose gets over the shock of The Doctor being a space-travelling alien, they banter about Mickey and where the signal is coming from, which turns out to be the London Eye. Climbing down into the base of the Autons' leader, the Nestene Consciousness, The Doctor's calls for negotion fall on blind ears as they know that his Tardis was involved in the war that destroyed their home planet. While an invasion rages in London, Rose manages to save the day by pouring The Doctor's pre-prepared Antiplastic into the Consciousness. They all escape in the Tardis, and the two are dropped off at home. Rose initially rejects The Doctor's invitation, but when he says that the Tardis also travels in Time she agrees. In slow motion.
     The Autons are a risky move on the part of RTD, despite their use twice in 1971-2 to open a series. Their execution here is mostly brilliant - the alien invasion scenes are perfect but the scenes with burping bins and the like are incredibly silly even for the intended audience. These scenes tended to lean towards a more physical comedy strand, frighteningly close to later Red Dwarf. Despite this, their inclusion does act as a symbol, passing the torch from the original series to the new, and their storyline neatly introduces one of NuWho's main background events - the War that The Doctor talks about briefly in front of the Nestene.

The RTD Tardis makes its first appearance.

     Ignoring my fondness for Peter Davison and Colin Baker, Christopher Ecclestone is my favourite Doctor by far. I have the utmost respect for his incredibly prolific career and his portrayal of The Doctor is one of my favourites - the manic, eccentric humour hiding a more serious, cynical interior born of a dark past. His introduction is the monosyllabic summation of the series to date - "Run" - and sets a tone for the series better than any long speeches could possibly do. His best moment in the episode is the monologue that he gives to persuade Rose to forget him, in which he describes how he can feel the Earth turn and spin around the sun. Billie Piper, despite contempory worries, is brilliant as our companion Rose, who more than ever acts as an Audience Identification figure. Never before has the companion been so thoroughly written as to stand for the everyman.
    The TARDIS, after its last incarnation as a grand library in the Movie here scales down a bit into this earthy, coral-themed version. While it feels a little naked compared to the Matt Smith version, the design is very evocative of the machine's tempermental nature, as well as taking the central tenets of the old console room (hexagonal segments, a round console and a central column} and giving the design a new spin.
    Rose does pale when compared to some of the better episodes of NuWho, but as a premier to the new series it did its job spectacularly well. The leads are excellent in all respects and the use of the Autons is inspired. The episode's only low point is a few rare scenes that are too childish for most tastes, and that did lie with the execution of the Auton concept, but it did nothing to harm the story in the long run. Rose is a brilliant start to the revived series and left me desperate for the next Saturday to come.
The Doctor Does Not Save The Day.
Thanks.