The Fall And Rise Of The Human Species | 2001: A Space Odyssey - Review

The first time I saw One Minute Past Eight: A Space Odyssey, sorry, 2001: A Space Odyssey (one minute past eight - 20:01 - 2001 - get it? Oh, never mind.) was my early teens, watching a taped-off-the-telly version on a well-used VHS. It was recorded off ITV, so there were ads and everything. It was one of those films that you 'had' to watch, especially if you called yourself a science fiction fan, as I did (and still do). So influential was it on everything that came after it, films I loved, like Star Wars and Aliens, that I felt compelled to watch their progenitor. I did not enjoy 2001 very much. I'd forgotten most of that first viewing but I know I found it too dry and downright boring to care about the story or characters. The opening 'Dawn Of Man' sequence was especially interminable. That said, the scene where one ape batters another to death with a bone lifted the tedium somewhat but was just nasty. The death scenes after that seemed too drawn out to have the shocking effect of, say, Obi-Wan Kenobi's murder at Darth Vader metal hands in the 1977 Star Wars, which, in the 1990's onwards, I would've taken over 2001 any day, however much Stanley Kubrick's film influenced George Lucas'. I didn't care if there was no sound in the vacuum of space, I still preferred watching the Rebel's explosive attack on the Death Star to watching a spaceship's snails-pace float into a revolving space station to the leisurely strains of Strauss' 'Blue Danube Waltz'.

How advancing years evolve one's perspective. Watching the film as an adult, in an actual cinema, newly restored by Warner Bros. with crystal clear picture and sound, is, of course, an entirely different experience and closer to the one Kubrick surely intended. Films like this aren't made for TV, of course and the only break was the unexpected, blessed, intermission (which my bladder was thankful for-bloomin' coffee.) You can properly soak up the majestic, contemplative and even, in the case of the 'Star Gate' sequence, numinous and transcendent visuals. The Pan American space plane (surely inspiration for Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic?) entering Space Station V - cleverly, carefully matching its rotation - is now a thing of meditative beauty, not boredom; like watching a whale swim through the ocean.

It's a testament to the longevity of 2001 that it still draws in cinema audiences nearly fifty years after its initial release in 1968. This is in no small part down to the film's practical effects. Long before the advent of CGI allowing films to be created in a computer, filmmakers had to actually make their effects and everything in 2001 looks absolutely real (excluding one or two obvious ape masks at the start - the white human skin around the eyes gives it away; plus, I'm sure an early close-up of astronaut Dr. Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) revealed that he wore a wig? If so, then his aged self we see later on has better makeup.)  The wow factor of sci-fi films from the last couple of decades is reduced by the knowledge that it was probably done with computers but there were still moments in 2001, such as the zero-G scenes, that had me asking 'how the bloody hell did they do that?' Of course, you can read all about it on the film's IMDb pages and I've probably seen or read about them before but I had thankfully forgotten it all, allowing me to really appreciate it all much more second time around.

If this film's effects inspired Star Wars , then Lucas and his Industrial Light & Magic effects house took it to the next level, ILM continuing to do so through Terminator 2 and Lucas' Star Wars prequels which, for me were the nadir for film effects in that, where 2001, and even the first Star Wars, proved how effects served a decent story, then Episodes I-III allowed them to totally overwhelm it. These films won't last because computer technology is always developing, whereas physical sets, models and people stand the test of time on film. ILM's T-1000 from T2 looked awesome in 1991 but he looks clunky now, especially compared to his upgrade seen in the new Terminator Genisys trailer. Christopher Nolan has cited 2001 as a huge inspiration for his latest film, Interstellar, for which he and his SFX team took great pains to create a scientifically-accurate black hole - using CGI (obviously, attempting to create a real one just for a film is rather selfish and a touch dangerous), which will no doubt look dated itself in years to come.

Of course, with Episodes I-III, it helps to actually have a story that fits three films in the first place but, hey, that's why George Lucas isn't writing or directing Episode VII. J.J. Abrams' The Force Awakens looks set to return Star Wars to its more practical effects roots (alongside CGI), going by the latest trailer, which is a good thing. The story is likely to be good, given Abrams has written it with original trilogy scribe Lawrence Kasdan.

With 2001, the actual plot would easily fit a 45-minute Doctor Who episode - space authorities discover a mysterious extraterrestrial object on the moon, send a team to investigate, the object rejects them and vanishes. Earth sends another team to find it, their ship's computer goes haywire and tries to kill them but one survives, finds the object, which sends him back in time and space to the dawn of his own species, which the object influences the history of in the first place. It's epic in scope but hardly labyrinthine. Looking at it like that, there's more plot in Episode I: The Phantom Menace, only, watching Dr. Floyd (William Sylvester) take about 15 mins to arrive on the space station to the sounds of 'Blue Danube' is more interesting than listening to Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan discuss trade negotiations aboard a spaceship. It has to be said that, given its bare plot and dialogue versus the two-hour plus runtime (made up mostly of lengthy space travel sequences), a lot of 2001 is style over substance but at least there is interesting substance.

I'm confused by 2001's reputation for being confusing, since the plot is fairly simple, even if the ending is left open to interpretation. It's more interesting that way. Is it, as the friend I saw it with surmised, all about God and creation? Is the black monolith an instrument of the divine, encouraging humankind's development and possibly even creating us? Or, is the symbolism of the sun and moon's alignment, accompanied by Strauss' 'Also Sprach Zarathustra' - a symphony based on Neitzche's book of the same name in which he wrote 'God is dead' - an indication of a more atheistic view?  If the monolith is divine in origin, then it inspires humanity to battle itself, although, where the monolith (or the mysterious and omnipotent forces within or behind it) possibly wished to prompt the monkey to use the bone as a tool, the silly ape had to go and get all territorial over his little drinking pool (which was dirtied by him trudging through it anyway) and bashing a rival monkey's head in. Can't we all just get along? Well, if our hairy prehistoric ancestors are anything to go by, no. The ape chucks his murder weapon into the air, leading to a jump cut to a similarly-shaped construct floating above the Earth. I assumed this to be a space station but IMDb informed me that it is a nuclear device, which would make more sense - the progress of man in one cut, also communicating the violence that has been a part of that evolution.

Thankfully, by the future, violence between humans seems to have become a thing of the past and the Cold War has thawed, as the American Dr. Heywood happily meets with a group of Russians at the 'Hilton' restaurant aboard Space Station V to discuss rumours of strange occurrences on the Clavius moon base. Heywood is coy; after all, these are still Russians he's talking to, formerly the US' rivals in war and the space race. Pleasantly distracting me in this scene somewhat was the fact that one of the Ruskies, Dr. Andrei Smyslov, was played by Leonard Rossiter. It was weird that I had been thinking of the '70's comedy TV show in which he starred, The Fall & Rise of Reginald Perrin, whilst watching the film (those long space sequences, although pretty, do allow the mind to wander), perhaps subconsciously aware that Rossiter was in the film - then up he popped!

Despite his best efforts at being Russian, Reggie-style mannerisms crept in (6 years prior to him playing Perrin) - placing a palm on his back hip, the polite 'yes, yes' and an 'absolutely' here and there. He was in the film all too briefly and the other characters don't show half as much charisma as Rossiter does in his brief scene. Yeah, they're bureaucrats and scientists but so's Smyslov. It would've been more entertaining if he had overtaken Floyd's role to Clavius and ended up going through the Star Gate himself. Those still shots of Dave's face expressing fright, wonder, etc as he goes through the Star Gate at the end (looking like he's been snapped by papparazi) would be priceless with Rossiter's facial dexterity. The sequence would lose its power somewhat, though.



Although very serious, 2001 does have surprise with some humorous moments (beyond Rossiter and fake monkey-men), like the wordy ten-step instructions for the zero-gravity toilet aboard the space plane. Well, I know I'd want to be careful if I had to go…Now, if only it were true that Ronnie Corbett played an ape at the start...

Anyway, plot questions. When Floyd and his team investigate the monolith at Clavius, why did it allow them to photograph it by itself but prevent them from taking pictures of themselves in front of it? Maybe it didn't want these damned dirty apes - these monkey men it helped create - getting in its shot? When Dave and Dr. Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) enter the pod to have their discussion about HAL 9000's  erratic behaviour, why didn't Dave ask the computer to rotate the pod back to its original position, so HAL would not have been able to read their lips and discover their intentions? Did HAL just malfunction or did 'he' really want to sabotage the Jupiter mission? If he demonstrated signs of superiority toward humans to begin with and he is aware of Floyd's secret video message Dave views after killing HAL (a strangely disturbing scene; 'My mind is going, Dave. I can feel it.' Ugh!), then perhaps HAL wants to communicate with the monolith himself, maybe try to harness, even control its power?

Did Dave's pod go into the monolith near the end? Where was that nice room he was in? How long was he in there for to age that much? Did the Star Gate trip age him? Who cooks his meals for him - the younger Dave? Do those seven pyramidal objects we see during the Star Gate voyage represent the seven ages of Man - a man - Dave, of whom we see four ages - young man, old man, near-death man and (star) child? Is the Star Child the beginning of a New Dawn or has he been sent back to evolve humanity in the past we saw at the start? Is he just figurative? Who knows? Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke know. But they're dead.

Another thing that aids the film's legacy is its overall design. Hardly anything looks dated at all - only some of the costumes, like the spacesuits of garish '60's colours, like Star Trek uniforms from the Original Series (hang on, isn't 'Space Odyssey' just a more pretentious way of saying 'Star Trek'?) The aforementioned scene in the Hilton looks like it has furniture from Ikea and decor from an Apple Mac store. Indeed, 2001 predicts future technology (for 1968 at least), with the iPad-like view screens that Dave and Frank watch 'BBC 12' on whilst eating their meal. There were only two BBC channels in '68 and only four now but at this rate, we should have 12 BBC channels by the next century! Attention to detail also helps draw you in and everything looks like it really works, with all the nuts, bolts and spacecraft ephemera.

It's clear to see how 2001 influenced and inspired future sci-fi filmmakers. Virtually every big space-set science fiction film since has taken something from this one. Star Wars, Star Trek (especially The Motion Picture), Alien, Event Horizon, Sunshine, Superman (1979), TRON and er, Stargate, all owe some debt to Space Odyssey in terms of design, camerawork, effects or plot. These are all good films but some pale in comparison to Stanley Kubrick's granddaddy of science fiction motion pictures.

Images courtesy of:

 http://www.bfi.org.uk/whats-on/bfi-film-releases/2001-space-odyssey

http://cinefantastiqueonline.com/2007/11/meddling-with-2001/

One Body | Blog Action Day 2014

"There is [now no distinction] neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28)

Last year was the 20th anniversary of women being allowed to enter the priesthood in the Church of England but only to the level of Dean (who is in charge of a cathedral). This July, the church's General Synod ruled that ladies could now go the whole hog and become Bishops, too.

Last Sunday, I attended a harvest festival service at Norwich Cathedral (which has itself recently acquired a lady Dean(ette?) in Jane Hedges) with a sermon by a lady vicar. During it, I overheard an elderly lady behind me say something like "It'd be much better if it was a man doing it." This shocked me a little, primarily because it came from a woman and also that the female preaching could hardly help her own gender, bar having a sex change or dragging up as a man, both of which would be a rather extreme measures to please sexist congregation members, possibly opening up a whole new can of worms. If women and gay people can become priests, what about transsexuals? What would old Ida, who has sat in the front pew for thirty years, think of that one? (Ida's fictional, by the way, I'm just generalising here.)

I  knew two female clergy members during my childhood in an Anglican church, which influenced my own acceptance toward women in church leadership, although there were probably naysayers at that church, too. At the time I was also unaware of the biblical verses that spoke against it and which lead more conservative evangelical churches I later attended to hold the stance they do and no doubt inspired the church (in its broadest sense) to instigate the male leadership that Idas love so much.

1 Corinthians 14:34-35 says that "The women should keep quiet in the churches, for they are not authorized to speak, but should take a secondary and subordinate place, just as the Law also says. But if there is anything they want to learn, they should ask their own husbands at home, for it is disgraceful for a woman to talk in church [for her to usurp and exercise authority over men in the church]."

1 Timothy 2:11-12 concurs that "I allow no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to remain in quietness and keep silence [in religious assemblies]".

The 'Law' mentioned in 1 Corinthians is from Genesis 3:16 (according to Bible Gateway), which tells us 'To the woman He (God) said, I will greatly multiply your grief and your suffering in pregnancy and the pangs of childbearing; with spasms of distress you will bring forth children. Yet your desire and craving will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.'

Strong words. Taken literally, it also means that Idas need to keep their moaning traps shut, too, at least until they get home. Some would argue that Jesus' attitude toward women was more accepting than Paul's. How can we reconcile the latter's Galatians 3 verse with the words of 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy? In Galatians, does he mean we are all on an equal footing with Christ spiritually but, socially speaking, women just aren't allowed to show it in church? Were the women-critical verses just aimed at the Corinth churches? Whatever Paul's stance, I think that certain people's current attitude toward ladies in the pulpit is backward and sexist. We are hardly likely to regress to how the early church was after years of women in leadership but those verses shouldn't be ignored, either, however difficult they are to comprehend in a modern context. I'm caught between my natural feeling of accepting women in church leadership because I grew up with them, verses my later experiences in different church settings.

One long-serving Norwich Canon was opposed to Jane Hedges' appointment purely because of her gender, as discussed in this Telegraph article, although Jane and the Canon, in her words, 'have worked happily side by side'. In the article, Stanford also mentions other Idas in Hedges' former Devon parish that took the same attitude to the one I overhead last weekend. "But where a generation of women has grown up to think of their priest as 'Father'," Jane said, "it leaves a mindset that can be hard to change." Indeed but mindset is one thing when the church you attend accepts female priests but more conservative evangelical churches don't allow a woman to assume a leadership position. One such church I attended for a few years did allow women to announce notices, prophesy, sing and give words of encouragement, not to mention run the coffee shop. So much for keeping silent in church, then, even if, on occasion, some of us may have wished they would have done so. It can sometimes be the ones who like the sounds of their own voices a little too much who get up to speak but this goes for the men, too.

I knew of some (usually young) women who had left because of this attitude toward their gender, although there were plenty there of varying ages who were either unaware of their church's stance on women or had no problem with it.

The Anglican church does not seem to put much stock in the New Testament verses, perhaps holding them in as high regard as verses on slavery or homosexuality, for example. Scottish bible scholar, F.F. Bruce, himself an evangelical, says that, "If in ordinary life existence in Christ is manifested openly in church fellowship, then, if a Gentile may exercise spiritual leadership in church as freely as a Jew, or a slave as freely as a citizen, why not a woman as freely as a man?"

 Without any leadership, there would be chaos (holy chaos - could be interesting) but I've sometimes wondered whether, if everyone's equal in Christ, he really intended for his church to attain the hierarchies it has - the Popes, Bishops, Archbishops, etc - nice people they may be. I guess we're stuck with the systems we've got until he returns. What will he make of it all?

This post is part of www.blogactionday.org (even though it was a day late!)

All verses from the Amplified Bible.

Image courtesy of Neil Moralee

Fear Is A Superpower | Doctor Who: Listen - Review

Now, this is more like it. After three episodes of varying quality, we get an episode from Steven Moffat that harks back to his scary best, namely The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances from 2005 and 2007's BAFTA-winning Blink. The best thing about Listen is that there is no definable monster (or is there?) This is a meditation on fear, deepening the characters of The Doctor and Clara, as well as new boy (and  probably future companion), Danny Pink (Samuel Anderson), whose future descendent Orson seems to earn another of Moffat's titles for secondary characters - The Last Man at the End of the Universe, as Rory Williams was The Boy Who Waited and Clara, The Impossible Girl.

Squelch!

Clara is becoming a more rounded character beyond her Impossible Girl persona - her job as a schoolteacher becoming particularly handy, here - yet she shows a little bit of her old self when she travels back into the Doc's past once more (albeit with his permission this time), ending up under his bed in a familiar barn, during his childhood. We only see this proto-Doctor in shadow but his hair has a distinct Tennant/Smith brunette wavy quality to it. Spooked by nightmares, the diddy Doctor is reassured by his far-future companion with words that will come to form the creed recited by Tennant, Smith and John Hurt in 50th anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor. Hurt even makes a cameo in flashback, making Listen a sort of multi-Doctor tale in the vein of Day (albeit only toward the end).

Earlier on, the Doc has slipped Clara's fingers into some new squidgy sections on the TARDIS console, creating a 'telepathic interface' that allows the timeship to hunt for a childhood dream of Clara's so it can take them to the point at which she dreamed it. 'If anything bites,' The Doctor says of the interface, 'let it.' I love the idea of actual creatures within the TARDIS console. I wonder what would happen if one stuck other body parts in those squidgy bits? No doubt that would be a pornographic interface, although a brief one if anything bit. If the TARDIS is the Doctor's 'wife', then…? No, I've taken that too far. but was the Doctor too afraid to telepathically interface with the TARDIS himself and travel to the point where he dreamed that nightmare? We end up there, anyway but only beknownst to Clara.

Clara can't help thinking of Danny when he phones her after a disastrous start to their date that evening, perhaps with the intention of patching things up so he can later have a pornographic interface with her.

I always like episodes that give a different angle on an established aspect of the show. Apart from possible bitty things in the TARDIS console, I loved seeing the Doctor sat atop his time machine, meditating as it floated in Space (top), then seeing it underwater (above). What I liked most about Listen was The Doctor's assertion that 'fear is a superpower…your heart's beating, you're more alert - ready to run faster and fight harder…' Of course, he means the flight-or-fight response but I'd never really thought of fear that way before. We've all experienced the kind of nightmares in childhood that the Doctor wants to explore, here, waking up to feel like we are not alone. After such dreams, I wasusually too scared to sit up in bed like waking sleepers of varied ages do in Listen, whereupon, a hand reaches out from underneath the bed to grab their ankle. (Better one's ankle than further up, I suppose. Imagine if, after waking from a dark dream, you stand up to calm down and find a hand clasping your crotch. 'Don't be scared.' Whispers a voice from beneath the bed. 'OK.' You say, more out of fear than relaxation. If that hand belonged to Jenna Coleman, as it does when she grabs the diddy Doc's ankle, here.)

The fact that Clara gets to meet The Doctor as a child, let alone whisper words that shape his future, annoyed me. As if being splintered across the Doctor's eleven adult lives wasn't enough in the last series, she gets to influence him as a child too - a privilege she hasn't earned, I don't think. She's only travelled with the Time Lord for, so far, half a series (give or take a couple of specials) and on and off at that. Clara isn't as established as, say, Rose Tyler and not even she got this close to The Doctor and they were in love, although revealing this much of his past that early one would not have had the impact it has now. Is Clara being given such influential scenes because Jenna Coleman is possibly leaving during this season?

'It's Time You Knew Him', is the tagline for this season. At this rate, we'll know everything about The Doctor by the end, bar his real name, which won't even matter, once we know everything about what lead him to become the man he is. If his home planet of Gallifrey features in the way it does here, there's bound to be more of it later on and perhaps at least one other Time Lord. It's rumoured that Michelle Gomez' Missy character and her Promised Land which everyone seems in such a hurry to reach, is a Time Lord and TARDIS respectively. Time will tell…

After affecting the course of universal history in giving a mini-lesson on fear to its frightened greatest champion, Clara returns to the TARDIS, telling the adult Doc to do as he's told and fly away from the barn (which, I couldn't help noticing, had supports not unlike the coral ones in the TARDISes of the Ninth, Tenth and War Doctors - maybe I'm getting a touch carried away, now) she met his younger self. 'I don't take orders, Clara.' Says the Doc, but still obeys. I thought, as in The Beast Below, the Doc dislikes companions making decisions for him. Here, he chose to obey Clara, she didn't pilot the TARDIS away for him but I thought our new darker, angrier, more serious Time Lord would not have taken such a bossy companion lightly. Kick her out, Doc!

In the barn, Clara grabs diddy Doctor's ankle to prevent him finding his future self's TARDIS, before entering it herself to stop his future self finding diddy Doctor. Something to do with big Doctor's earlier nonchalant declaration that meeting one's younger self is 'potentially catastrophic', despite having done so himself several times before. How could the Doctor and the TARDIS fail to realise they were on Gallifrey (if indeed, that's where the barn is? I could see how the War Doctor would head somewhere other than his home planet to detonate the device with which he intends to blow up Gallifrey in Day, if indeed, 'The Moment' weapon does destroy planets?!) or that it was the Doc's younger self outside? OK, he was talking to Orson Pink in the TARDIS but how did The Doctor or his time machine's telepathic abilities not read where they were? What would the Doc have done had he known? Maybe he does but chose not to reveal it…yet?

Gripes and questions aside, Clara's reassuring words to diddy Doctor are good - 'fear doesn't have to make you cruel or cowardly; fear can make you kind.' Thankfully for the universe(s), he listened.

Images courtesy of BBC iPlayer

"It's the way with Scots, they're strangers to vegetables." | Doctor Who: Robot Of Sherwood - Review

The idea of The Doctor meeting Robin Hood reads like Steven Moffat and co were scraping the barrel for episode ideas. It's more the sort of concept for a short history book for kids, using the Doc to introduce children to historic figures. Still, the fact that the trailers showed the Doc questioning the identity of the man standing before him calling himself Robin Hood (Tom Riley) increased my interest without quite piquing it. Robot Of Sherwood was an episode of multiple metatextuality (steady, now…). We've got a Robin Hood played by a Tom, who later poses as 'Tom The Tinker' in an archery contest and who later sees the above image of Robin Hood - himself, I guess - played by Patrick Troughton in the 1953 TV series Robin Hood; Troughton of course went on to play the Second Doctor in 1966! Isn't that cray?! Hang on, what if the Second Doctor was Robin Hood and the Tom Riley version is merely a pretender who comes to assume the role like Jason Connery did from Michael Praed in the Robin Of Sherwood TV show? Phew, I think that's enough metatextuality for this paragraph.

I really enjoyed the bickering and banter between Robin and The Doctor (including this blog post's title quote - although its accuracy is unsubstantiated! I'm sure I've seen my Scottish uncle eat his greens), neither of whom fully trusted the other until the end, at which point, they accepted each other as equals. Robin draws a parallel between himself and the Time Lord, ' that a man born into wealth and privilege should find the plight of the oppressed and weak too much to bear, until one night, he is moved to steal a TARDIS (to) fly among the stars, fighting the good fight.' Both noblemen, both have become fairytales. A clever point from writer Mark Gatiss; after having the Doc question Robin's existence over the course of the episode, it must be acknowledged that, of course, The Doctor is even more of a fictional character than Robin Hood - the current real-world legend being an amalgamation of men and events that may or may not have existed.

The main plot of this episode was standard DW stuff - alien spaceship, crash-landed on Earth, bad robots killing people as they seek to build up their power supply to leave, blah, blah, seen it all before. I know DW always adheres to a certain formula in the end but I thought we were mixing it up a bit this season? Whilst pretty much business as usual, Deep Breath at least gave us our first glimpse of a new Doctor harking back to older ones, as well as deepening his and Clara's relationship and Into The Dalek showed a new perspective on an old, oft-seen, foe. Robot Of Sherwood (shouldn't that be 'Robots', plural? Or is the title a reference to the possibility that Robin himself is mechanical?) showcases Twelve's personality nicely - 'SHUT IT, HOODY!' - but Gatiss could've made more of an effort here. I've only really liked one or two of his DW stories, his Cold War was a highlight of the last series, where he did good work with the Ice Warrior, a DW villain of old ('Ice Warrior hives' get a mention by the Doc at the start of Robot…). The robotic Knights here only resemble better DW monsters, essentially chivalrous Cybermen with lethal mini-crucifix lasers on their frickin' heads (possibly a dig at Christian iconography? DW has had an atheist sensibility since Second Coming creator Russell T Davies' time on the show.) I saw some symbolism between the robot's head-guns and the sunlight shining on the Doctor through the Cross-shaped window in the dungeon:

Whether it's just mirror imagery, foreshadowing the Doc being attacked by the Knights, or visually pointing at him as the later 'saviour' of the peasants, I'm not sure.

The mechanical mickies weren't even in charge, it was Ben Miller's rather dull Sheriff of Nottingham calling the shots. At least he was more Alan Rickman than Keith Allen and he did get a tense dinner scene with Clara and the fantastic line, 'who will rid me of this turbulent Doctor?!' Paraphrasing King Henry II's plea to his own knights to do away with Thomas a Becket in 1170.

Sheriff's knights are thankfully unsuccessful, here. Indeed, the metal Knights were almost as easily defeatable than the clockwork droids from Deep Breath; destroyed by their own laser fire reflected off shiny metal plates helpfully just lying around and utilised by the Sheriff's peasant workforce. Strewth, couldn't the Knights have just pummelled the peasants to death once they found their lasers ineffective? Star Trek's Borg, who can adapt to any kind of attack (presumably also from their own weapons) wouldn't take that kind of crap from a bunch of grotty poor people. It's supposed to be 1109, I know, (the Doc's initial guesstimate of when to find the - he believes - fictional Robin Hood turns out to be eerily spot on. A little help from the TARDIS, perhaps?) the slave peasant's defences are limited and they had to have a triumphant moment but it was a bit pathetic. DW can do better than this, surely? If the Knights are so easy to beat, how did they control that ship, unless this was done by someone/thing we didn't see? That said, it crashed, so their piloting skills can't have been that good.

I wish the plot had been a bit more original. Sheriff's grand plan - overtaking Derby, of all places (well, you gotta start somewhere, even with a timeship at your disposal, this is 1109, after all.) followed by Lincoln, then…'THE WORLD!' was a bit blasé. If the Knight's ship can time travel, couldn't the Sheriff orchestrate himself becoming king, rather than John, in the past, removing the need to fly to London in the present, 1109, to overtake the throne there. Perhaps he isn't smart enough? He is a mediaeval man using future tech. He could've done a Master/Harold Saxon, circa 2007, and ingratiated himself into the monarchy, in his own time, without needing to use much force. Why bother when he has big metal Knights, I suppose (despite their weakness)?

Altogether, Robot Of Sherwood was a reasonable, mixed bag of an episode that improved on second viewing but next week's Listen looks like a return to form.

Into Darkness | Doctor Who: Into The Dalek - Review

Daleks are as synonymous with Doctor Who as tartan is with Scotland (is my blog developing a Scottish agenda to rival Steven Moffat's, now?) Having been rather overused in the rebooted series since 2005, it takes a special angle to make an interesting Dalek story, now. Despite the brilliant Dalek episode during Christopher Ecclestone's 2005 run - where the Doctor was confronted by one of his mortal enemies (at this point thought wholly 'exterminated' by the Time Lord, by his own fair hand, to boot) chained up in a museum and, like The Doctor himself, all alone - Dalek stories of Russell T Davies' Doctor Who fell into the usual category of Daleks attempting to take over or destroy the world/galaxy/universe. Dalek aside, the evil mutants still returned at season one's end with a variation on their usual dastardly plan, as they did for every season after, aside from Tennant's third in 2008 (where The Master was that season's chief villain), where they got a two-parter, Daleks In Manhattan, halfway through. In Matt Smith's tenure, they where thankfully somewhat sidelined, relegated to standalone episodes of varying quality, such as Victory of the Daleks (OK) and Asylum of the Daleks (really good). The metal-encased monsters of course featured in 50th anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor, as it depicted the Time War between Daleks and Time Lords. The Doctor's reversal of his previous genocidal actions now meaning that Dalek creator Davros and his progeny are still at large in the universe. If there can be a full Dalek fleet at the start of Capaldi's second full episode, what of the Time Lords?

Into The Dalek is a big improvement over Deep Breath - cleverer, weirder and shorter, the usual suspense brought by the standard episode running time of 45 minutes; plus more Doctor…and no Paternoster Gang. I would rather have had 80 minutes of this, than Deep Breath, which would have worked better as a regular episode. Making it twice the normal length (probably just to show in cinemas) rendered it a ponderous, especially when the Doctor himself was seen less than his friends. In episode 2, he's in almost every scene. Ones where he's absent, mainly involving Clara pulling new boy Danny Pink, are a bit dull, even if new boy Samuel Anderson is more interesting than I thought he might be, as a former soldier, now a Maths teacher with a dark past. The Doctor is firing on all cylinders now he's recovered from regeneration and slipped on his natty new duds.

A Dalek episode might have made a bigger impact later on in Capaldi's first series, by which time, we would have seen him develop as The Doctor and better appreciate his reaction to coming up against his mortal foes once again but in his new form. Still, we know enough about The Doctor's attitude towards the Daleks to be hooked as soon as he finds his his possibly prejudice confronted by a supposedly good one, willing to destroy its own kind. The Doctor is introduced as a (medical) doctor by the group of space soldiers who captured it (and The Doctor) when he is threatened with death if he doesn't co-operate in being  miniaturised and placed within the belly of the steel beast - 'Rusty' as The Doctor calls it - in order to make it better. 'Fantastic idea for a movie' The Doctor ironically comments on the shrinking process, 'terrible idea for a Proctologist'. If Doctor Who was ever accused of disappearing up its own backside during Matt Smith's time, then it's episodes like this which demonstrate how Capaldi's first season could very well be a true return to form for the series.

With this line, The Doctor is slyly referring to the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage with Racquel Welch, in which a team of scientists are miniaturised and injected into a mortally injured diplomat's bloodstream to heal him. Into The Dalek also put me in mind of the Martin Short film, Innerspace (a childhood fave of mine, itself inspired by Fantastic Voyage), last year's Matt Smith episode Journey To The Centre Of The TARDIS and if I'm being really retentive, Journey To The Centre Of The Punk, that episode of The Mighty Boosh where Howard Moon et al where shrunken down and inserted into Vince Noir's brain. As someone said a long time ago, there's nothing new under the sun, so it seems unfair to criticise Doctor Who for reusing an old sci-fi idea, especially when it's used so well as here, presenting a fresh perspective on an old enemy.

This episode is directed by Ben Wheatley, who, along with Deep Breath, has also helmed Kill List and A Field In England. Where Deep Breath seemed like standard Doctor Who with less Doctor and more talking, Into The Dalek is more effective, presenting some wonderfully weird, arty shots, such as when The Doctor, Clara and a team of soldiers first climb inside the Dalek, as well as a beautiful scene where our Time Lord pal talks 'eye-to-eye' (and mind-to-mind) with his nemesis in a scene reminiscent of the mind-meld between old Spock and young Kirk - a highlight from 2009's Star Trek. Once we've ventured 'into darkness' within The Dalek's insides, previously unseen territory in DW (unless you count moments of brief visibility when they open or they're blown up) is impressively realised, although looks a bit like the TARDIS' interior from Journey…, perhaps they used the same location? Also, have the Daleks mutated again? This one looked thinner and redder than normal but then it wasn't well. It's eye looked normal.

The Doctor's greater visibility throughout Into The Dalek gives the promising traits he demonstrated in Deep Breath a better chance to breathe. That curmudgeonliness is coming along nicely and his curt one-liners, like (regarding Clara being his 'carer') 'Yeah, she cares…so I don't have to,' will be a highlight and he's thankfully less flappy than Matt Smith. I wasn't keen on seeing The Doctor brought into line by schoolteacher Clara, even if it was for a good reason. A slap and a trying question momentarily reducing the Time Lord to one of her pupils. Still, this further deepens their relationship and moments later and The Doctor is back giving the orders, telling people what's what (even though he still doesn't really know what he's doing but at least knows what he wants) His Rock Finger Salute pops up once more, too - index and pinky finger raised for extra emphasis.

'Am I a good man?' The Doctor asks Clara early on. The answer to this question was clearly yes when The Doctor was a hero fighting for his friends in 2011's A Good Man Goes To War. With Into The Dalek, a good Dalek is what The Doctor struggles to deal with, as does Clara her new Doctor's attitude that a Dalek cannot change. Villains are often just a flip side of the heroes they battle - The Doctor and the Daleks are no different. I liked the darkness of a moment where The Doctor uses someone's imminent death to the advantage of everyone else. We have always known that he is capable of dark deeds as long as the end justifies the means (he killed all of his own people to stop the Time War!)

Near the end, Rusty calls The Doctor 'A. Good. Dalek!' So, in Dalek's minds, The Doctor has progressed from the opinion of the Dalek Emperor in Ecclestone's penultimate episode, The Parting Of The Ways, who goads The Doctor, 'You. Would. Make. A. Good. Dalek!' After countless years battling his sworn foes, The Doctor's hatred now mirrors theirs, along with the will to enact it. Like that other genius hero Moffat writes for, he is on the side of the angels but not one of them. So, what's in store for his enemies, then, or friends, for that matter, in the future?

Doctor Hoots Mon! | Doctor Who: Deep Breath - Review

What the world needs now is, as I'm sure you've realised, yet another blog post about the new Doctor Who but I promise, at least I’m not one of those Whovians, fans of the show, who seemingly only watch the programme in order to criticise it. Well, not only for that reason…

I first started watching Doctor Who in the mid to late eighties. I have a hazy memory of Peter Davison dashing around the TARDIS console but Sylvester McCoy was my Doctor; I even liked the controversial question-marked tank top and umbrella. The Seventh Doctor's Scottish brogue was also a departure for the character, previously played by posho Englishmen.

Peter Capaldi is the first 'openly' Scottish Doctor since McCoy and the first since the show’s 2005 reboot. I know David Tennant is a Scot, too but he played the Tenth Doctor with an English accent, albeit with more of an Estuary one than his more middle-class predecessors, excluding Ecclestone's Northern Ninth Doctor, naturally. Ten briefly broke into a Scottish brogue in his Highlands-set second episode, Tooth & Claw but that's the exception. Much is made of Capaldi’s accent in Deep Breath, his first full episode as the Twelfth Doctor, following his introduction at the end of The Time Of The Doctor, Matt Smith's final episode as the Eleventh Doctor. 

Many of Deep Breath's Scottish comments come from The Doctor himself and his assertion that he can now 'really complain about things' possibly gives hope to fans that the Doctor may display the angry tendencies of Capaldi's The Thick Of It character, Malcolm Tucker, although probably not his profane choice of words, at least not yet.

After casting fellow Jock Karen Gillan as companion Amy Pond, having Madame Vastra, played by Neve McIntosh, briefly use her natural Scottish brogue, as well as setting Deep Breath certain scenes in Glasgow, Head Writer, Showrunner and presumably proud Scot, Steven Moffat, has been accused by some Whovians of having a Tartan agenda. Now the Doctor himself is Scottish, or at least picked up the accent, somewhere, this will be grist to the mill for such fans' accusation. 

Previous showrunner Russell T Davies was said to have had a gay agenda and Moffat apparently has a Scottish one. Neither agendas, if they even really exist, have really overtaken the show. Still, Moffat focuses so much on Capaldi’s Scottishness in Deep Breath that it may as well become a feature of the whole series. Why not deck the Doctor out in tartan, have him borrow a kilt from Second Doctor companion Jamie McCrimmon, or Clara’s tartan skirt, redo the theme tune with bagpipes and have the Time Lord bring about Scottish Independence by having William Wallace win the Battle of Falkirk, then fight a Haggis monster. Maybe the fact that I come up with ideas like that is why I'll probably never write Doctor Who? 

A bagpipe version of the theme tune would be an improvement over the latest version, however. Murray Gold’s new rendition is not his best work, which was probably the version heard over 50th anniversary episode The Day Of The Doctor's end credits. The latest is uncomfortably reminiscent of the synthesized Colin Baker one from 1986. It can’t be easy remixing a fifty-year-old tune, though. Not that it needs it, Delia Derbyshire's original still holds up as a haunting piece of electronica.

If the new title sequence looks like a fanmade Youtube video, that’s because it is, sort of.  Professional designer Billy Hanshaw uploaded his own version of the titles to showcase his abilities and ended up getting hired to do it for the show proper. Are Who producers so desperate for ideas, they’re now looking to Youtube for inspiration? Maybe that’s unfair, when Hanshaw’s original video is better than new show titles. Well, at least it’s an upgrade from the mad, psychedelic mess of a title sequence from Matt Smith’s last series. Here, we get lots of spinning cogs and clocks instead of timey-wimey stuff but still, the TARDIS hops from one time-tunnel to another, there's also a quick glimpse of Capaldi's prominent brows, which made their first appearance in The Day Of The Doctor.

The Doctor seems to have to comment on almost every aspect of himself, now, eyebrows included, which I don't remember being the case in McCoy’s time. Companion Clara, played by Jenna Coleman, struggles to get used to a different, older Doctor. However, she makes it clear to that she has never been interested in ‘pretty young boys’, as the Eleventh Doctor apparently was, even if the Doctor himself chose to look younger in order to gain acceptance, as Vastra surmises. This is a reassuring example of Clara being fleshed out beyond her ‘Impossible Girl’ status that seemed to define her as an Eleventh Doctor companion. It's odd that Clara is so fazed by her friend's new voice and form, after having seen all the previous ones in The Name Of The Doctor, so is not new to the concept of regeneration. Maybe she's struggling to accept this new Time Lord because she's not seen him before and it's the first time she's seen him change first hand. 

At one point, Clara is faced with The Doctor apparently leaving the Impossible Girl to her possible death, not his previous usual style, at the hands of clockwork 'droids. Thankfully, Clara realises she can avoid being detection by holding in a 'deep breath'. Never mind the fact that these robots are so slow-moving that briskly strolling away from them would be enough to avoid their attack, even when surrounded by the blighters. These villains are hardly on a par with Moffat's best Who monsters. The Weeping Angels could beat the 'droids easily. I get the point, though, that these robots are of the like that Moffat introduced in The Girl In The Fireplace, only, in Deep Breath, after hundreds of years of changing to survive, they are barely managing. At one point, The Doctor surmises that his old enemies have altered themselves so often, they're not what they were in the first place and perhaps the same could be said of him, even if regeneration is more humane than murdering other lifeforms in order to survive.

Clara flashes back to struggling in her role as a teacher, where she threatens to have all of her class expelled. ‘Go on, do it then,’ one unruly student dares her. Later, Clara repeats this line to the chief  'droid threatening her life in the present moment. Of course, the Doctor turns up to save her in the nick of time. He may not be able to in the future, if Capaldi’s recent comment on The One Show is to be believed, regarding whether Clara will survive this whole series. Clara's not been my favourite companion, before now, partly because there didn't seem to be a lot to her character, other than being 'The Impossible Girl' but, on the strength of this episode, there's more to her, yet. 

 As is usually the case with any first full episode for a new Doctor, it took me a while to fully get into this one, to take a full Deep Breath as it were. It had a strong opening, with possibly the most original entrance for the TARDIS I’ve yet seen. Then, Twelve appears, all over the place, prancing about in a Victorian nighty, with a delivery as as manic his two most recent predecessors but animated face and accent all his own. The Doctor interpreting the sullen moans of a lost, lonely dinosaur was a nice touch, if a bit Eleven. Said T-Rex's fiery death was a horrible, though, even if only seen from a distance. All for the sake of some eye cartilage. At least The Half-Faced Man, played by Peter Ferdinando, leader of the clockwork 'droids, admits that his reptilian victim was 'an ancient, beautiful creature.' That could be applied to The Doctor too, perhaps.

Deep Breath is one of two episodes in this series to be directed by British filmmaker, Ben Wheatley, responsible for Sightseers and A Field In England. It's rare for Who to attract a film director, although since Moffat became showrunner in 2010, he's brought in bigger talents than usual to work on the show, such as Richard Curtis and Neil Gaiman. Capaldi's first episode displays some unusual visual artistry, with one particularly effective moment being when we see Clara's attempted escape from the clockwork 'droids from her perspective. Whilst holding her breath almost for longer than she can bear to, red flares appear at the edges of her vision, as if she's about to pass out. 

As promised in various interviews, Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor is more alien than we’re used to, or is that just less human? It is nice to get a darker and grumpier Doctor, although Ten and Eleven had their cross moments but often came across as emo and sulky. Twelve looks like he’ll do away with some of that, as well as the more child-friendly stuff, like silly hats, 3D glasses and bloody catchphrases. He shows promising hints of  a more curmudgeonly Time Lord, like Hartnell, Hurt and Ecclestone, before him.

 

Madame Vastra, Strax, played by Dan Starkey and Jenny, assayed by Katrin Stewart - the so-called ‘Paternoster Gang’- usually annoy me but didn’t so much, here, probably because of their dynamic with a new Doctor and their efforts to assist Clara in getting used to him. Another familiar, albeit prettier, face surprisingly appears toward the end to give her further encouragement. Whenever this gang appear, we know we’re in Victorian London, a now overused Who location, having featured in almost every season of the revamped series since 2005. If it carries on like this, it'll become as tiresomely frequent as the Daleks.

A marriage between two people of the same gender is somewhat passé on TV, now but two separate species, a human and a lizard, here, is another issue entirely. During a close up of Vastra and Jenny’s snog, I was reminded of Plato’s Stepchildren, a 1968 Star Trek episode, in which William Shatner's Kirk, a white guy, and Nichelle Nichols' Uhura, a black woman, shared TV’s first interracial kiss. Is Moffat trying to one up Trek with TV’s first interspecies snog, even if the reason given is an exchange of air? Surely Trek has given the world an interspecies kiss before now?

Deep Breath had more promotion than even Who's fiftieth anniversary episode. A live show announcing Capaldi’s casting last year, as well as cinema screenings and a world tour just for this one episode, where armies of fans heaped adoration on their new Doctor before even having seen his first proper adventure, was overkill. Good job it was a pretty good start but we’ve got another twelve episodes to go. Deep breath, then…

Picture: BBC

The Rotti Horror Show | Repo! The Genetic Opera - Review

I wouldn’t go as far as saying Repo! The Genetic Opera was 93 minutes amputated from my life that I wish I could have back, as it was at least entertainingly bad, rather than awful enough to make me gouge out my own eyes, like one character does before the end. I’m not one for abandoning a film, especially if I’ve spent money on it – even if it’s only £2.99 - and there is some entertainment factor. I guess the concept of a horror musical starring such high calibre singers as Phantom of the Opera’s Sarah Brightman and Anthony Stewart Head (The Rocky Horror Show, also Giles from Buffy The Vampire Slayer, which had its own musical episode) and Paul Sorvino appealed, along with some cool design. Less so Paris Hilton (erm, House of Wax?) and some bloke calling himself ‘Ogre’.

After seven years of it sitting on my shelf, I’ve finally watched Repo! in which Mr Head, Ms. Brightman and Paul Sorvino give their all to a story that doesn’t deserve it. It concerns the efforts of dying tycoon, the improbably yet aptly-named Rotti Largo (Sorvino) - apt as in, he's rotten, like rotting flesh…or something; to bequeath ‘GeneCo’, his organ donation company, to Shilo (Alexa Vega), rather than any of his wayward, corrupt children, including Amber (Hilton) and Pavi (‘Ogre’). Shilo is the daughter of Rotti’s love rival Nathan (Head), who is also the Repo Man, responsible for repossessing unpaid-for organs provided by GeneCo. Rotti blames Nathan for the death of Marni (Sarah Power) the woman whom Nathan stole from him and then accidentally murdered.

This is an intriguing set-up and what I imagine to be a typical opera-style tale of love, loss and betrayal, yet it’s anaesthetized by crap CGI – the cityscapes are heavily inspired by Blade Runner, which achieved vastly better results without using a computer over three decades ago – as well as some lazy storytelling through crap-looking comic book panels that fill in character’s backstories. The ridiculous makeup is also distracting; Brightman’s Blind Mag character looks like she was made up by an actual blind person (no disrespect) and resembles a Manga version of post-millennium Cher. 

Meanwhile, Pavi’s’ Phantom Of The Opera-like death mask, stapled to his own torn features, is presumably meant to be creepy but, with the addition of 'Ogre's' wild facial mugging and bodily gesticulations, it’s reminiscent of a character from Bo’ Selecta!

Worst of all, the songs of Repo! are completely artless. Most of the lyrics are so repetitive and/or literal as to make them redundant. Before Shilo walks around the mausoleum to catch an insect, she pointlessly sings about it. A little later, she bluntly wails of inheriting her dead mother’s blood disease, ‘Why are my genetics such a bitch?’ Some of the lyrics are also spoken, as if to infuse greater emotion but probably just to cover up the limited abilities of certain cast members. This is understandable with Paris Hilton, but pointless when it’s Head, Brightman, or the rich opera Baritone of Paul Sorvino. In a possible case of art echoing life, Paris’ character, Amber, is so ‘addicted to the knife’, she’s had surgery done all over; just not her vocal chords, sadly.

I get that Repo! isn’t intended to be taken too seriously but even that caveat cannot save it. Rocky Horror is campy and tongue in cheek, where the intentionally bad effects and overacting are all part of the charm but at least the songs were catchy and fun. Repo! Is a horror show of a different kind.

Moulin Rouge! seems to be another influence (not least by the title’s exclamation mark); an early tracking shot zooming out form Shilo’s bedroom prison to reveal the city outside echoes a similar shot from Ewan McGregor’s room in Baz Luhrmann’s film. There is also a stage-set climax, complete with a character cradling a dying loved one in their arms (Rocky Horror also does this, as I’m sure countless other shows do but RH and Moulin Rouge! are most likely more influential. The latter’s name-checked on the Repo! DVD cover, anyway).

 If I have to highlight any redeeming features, some of the melodies are quite pleasant, particularly the beginning of ‘Legal Assassin’, sung with gusto by Anthony Head as he pines for his lost wife. Parts of ‘Chase The Morning’ by Brightman, accompanied by a hologram of Marni shining from Mag’s nifty bionic eyes, is also singable, although the inclusion of the word ‘Godmom’ in a song is, like a lot of lyrics in this film, off-putting in its oddness.

I don’t know much about musical theatre or opera, much like the makers of Repo! I imagine but director Darren Lynn Bousman handles the Grand Guignol horror aspects reasonably well (unsurprisingly, given his work on three of the increasingly gore-over-story lead Saw sequels),  injecting them with some gallows humour. I hope he won’t be making any more musicals soon.

(Images courtesy of:

 http://www.repo-opera.com/flash_home.html

http://s185.photobucket.com/user/twilight_knight_713/media/Wallpaper/REPO%20THE%20GENETIC%20OPERA/vlcsnap-377142.jpg.html

http://i3.bebo.com/028/9/mediuml/2007/06/02/20/4174403883a4566965384b869672891ml.jpg

http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/repo-the-genetic-opera/images/3815539/title/nathan-photo 

http://content.internetvideoarchive.com/content/photos/3342/14036641_.jpg)