1. Jekyll. Ah, now I see - the show got so far ahead of itself so that we could have not one but two flashback episodes. Still going well, but where will it all end? The sons, of course, are named after (Henry) Jekyll and (Edward) Hyde, and the trailer seems to suggest some capital may be made of this. Eh well. Be interesting to see how they wrap up the question of Dr Jackman's origin.
2. We've escaped the flooding, hurrah, although we did drive through it on Saturday. High adventure was had as we navigated our way towards a 40th birthday party in Oxfordshire, and the car acquitted itself admirably, pushing through bonnet-high puddles and back with nary a complaint. In the end we had to circle round to Oxford itself and come in from the north, feeling a little sheepish that we hadn't just admitted defeat and done this in the first place. (Well, I say "we", really it was The Lovely Jo egging me on, demanding with increasing fervour that we take the burst rivers on and show them who's boss. No, it was me all right.)
If I learned anything from the experience, it's that it's not proper flooding if you can still see the road markings.
Great party though.
3. Heroes. New favourite show! Yes, there will be something to watch after Jekyll ends, hurrah. Very wise of the Beeb to run those first two episodes together, it really benefitted from that kick at the end of the second episode. Plus it took both episodes to really introduce the characters. There's a higher grue content than I was expecting, but it's tempered with black humour, notably in the case of cheerleader Claire - she certainly seems to be at the slapstick end of "invulnerable". Hiro looks like he has the most potential for audience engagement, though. "Yataaaaa! Hello New York!"
4. Recent reads: Recursion and Capacity by Tony Ballantyne. I now feel strangely moved to buy his third book. One of those authors who makes it all seem so easy, with a very deft touch and a good eye for character. If I have one gripe it's that he doesn't use enough contractions in dialogue. Currently reading my deliciously free copy of Land of the Headless by Adam Roberts. I think this one could unseat Polystom as my favourite Roberts novel.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Monday, July 16, 2007
"Are you my daddy?"
"She was all right as a one-off, but I wouldn't want her for a whole series." - The Lovely Jo, talking about Catherine Tate shortly after watching Doctor Who Christmas episode The Runaway Bride.
Alas, alas. Last week was awash with badness. Not only is Catherine Tate the new Who companion, not only did PM Gordon Brown react to a failed act of terrorism with a gross appeal to flag-waving jingoism, but Jekyll was delayed by a week for a concert that nobody watched. At least this week we had Jekyll back. We like this show. This week's episode was particularly full of Moffaty goodness, with cheeky nods to his Who successes The Empty Child (see above) and Blink (the pre-recorded character talking back).
The great thing about the show is that it seems to be one step ahead of where you'd expect. By which I mean that this week's cliffhanger ought to lead into the sort of thing I'd expect a series like this to pull in the final episode - the big showdown in the villains' lair. See also the previous episode, in which Mrs Jackman finds out that her husband is also Mr Hyde, the kind of thing I'd expect most series to save until the last or penultimate episode. Be interesting to see where it all ends up.
And so we enter the last two months before the wedding, a time of frenzy and mayhem. Blogging activity is likely to be reduced to a minimum. While I'm here, a couple of thoughts on the past month or so's reading.
G.K. Chesterton - The Man Who Was Thursday
Fantastic book, a real thought-provoker. And yet when you go a-Googling, there's not much online comment as to what it all means. It contains such clear religious/Biblical imagery (and Chesterton famously became a Catholic just after writing this) that it seems obvious to read Sunday as God (and the name's a bit of a giveaway too) and the book as some sort of statement of awe at an ineffable creator. However, in the edition I have the publishers have kindly included a fragment of an article in which Chesterton explicitly denies this interpretation, and points to the book's subtitle ("A Nightmare") as the key.
There are three solutions I can think of; I will be giving away the ending, so anyone who hasn't read the book and plans to may wish to look away now. Although to be frank, I'm of the opinion that any book that's ruined just by knowing how it ends hasn't got much going for it. The style, atmosphere, characters and ideas of this one ought to keep you reading even if you do know what's coming (and chances are you'll guess what's going on anyway).
1 - It's political. The whole idea of a central committee of anarchists is patently ridiculous (and the characters say as much), and sure enough it turns out they're all secret policemen. They've all been set up and set against each other by Sunday, who really is an agent of chaos, but is also the top secret policeman who recruited them all. The "Nightmare" here is that the man in charge has fabricated a phantom threat to civilised society to keep his underlings distracted while he himself gets up to who-knows-what and avoids all attempts to hold him accountable. Or am I imposing a contemporary reading on the text?
2 - It's kind of religious. The "Nightmare" here being that Sunday is revealed at the end not as a benign, knowable creator-father god but as a chaotic, capricious demiurge. Perhaps Chesterton wanted to paint a picture of everything he hoped God wasn't.
3 - It is religious, and Chesterton was lying when he said it wasn't. Well, you never know.
Alastair Reynolds - Chasm City
It's interesting to read an author's second novel only after you've read his other half dozen books. This certainly is as strong and as skilful a story as people say, but the dialogue has some serious issues. Far too much lengthy info-dumping, particularly from exactly the characters or in exactly the situations you'd least expect. It gets silly when one major character's father props himself up on his deathbed and gasps out an entire page of exposition. He did apparently then fall back, exhausted. I'll bet he did. Also a very prominent authorial tic for having characters say a sardonic "Oh,..." (e.g. "Oh, I'd heard the stories", or "Oh, that's what they'll tell you", that kind of thing). So many, it's hard not to notice. You even get a couple from a character who has to type his sentences into a voice synthesiser, which comes across as more than a little odd. Memo to self and invitation to others: check Reynolds' more recent novels and play "Spot the Oh", see if he still does this or not. I hadn't noticed it before, so probably not.
Still, it is a very good novel.
Russell Hoban - Pilgermann
Utterly disappointing. Both this and The Medusa Frequency come across as the author staring at a typewriter, trying to force a book out, and just writing around the same couple of scenes. Admittedly I gave up on Pilgermann halfway through, so I've no idea if it suddenly becomes brilliant. Starting to think Riddley Walker was a one-off, though.
Stop press: I've won a copy of Adam Roberts' latest novel! Yay!! This makes me a happy panda.
Alas, alas. Last week was awash with badness. Not only is Catherine Tate the new Who companion, not only did PM Gordon Brown react to a failed act of terrorism with a gross appeal to flag-waving jingoism, but Jekyll was delayed by a week for a concert that nobody watched. At least this week we had Jekyll back. We like this show. This week's episode was particularly full of Moffaty goodness, with cheeky nods to his Who successes The Empty Child (see above) and Blink (the pre-recorded character talking back).
The great thing about the show is that it seems to be one step ahead of where you'd expect. By which I mean that this week's cliffhanger ought to lead into the sort of thing I'd expect a series like this to pull in the final episode - the big showdown in the villains' lair. See also the previous episode, in which Mrs Jackman finds out that her husband is also Mr Hyde, the kind of thing I'd expect most series to save until the last or penultimate episode. Be interesting to see where it all ends up.
And so we enter the last two months before the wedding, a time of frenzy and mayhem. Blogging activity is likely to be reduced to a minimum. While I'm here, a couple of thoughts on the past month or so's reading.
G.K. Chesterton - The Man Who Was Thursday
Fantastic book, a real thought-provoker. And yet when you go a-Googling, there's not much online comment as to what it all means. It contains such clear religious/Biblical imagery (and Chesterton famously became a Catholic just after writing this) that it seems obvious to read Sunday as God (and the name's a bit of a giveaway too) and the book as some sort of statement of awe at an ineffable creator. However, in the edition I have the publishers have kindly included a fragment of an article in which Chesterton explicitly denies this interpretation, and points to the book's subtitle ("A Nightmare") as the key.
There are three solutions I can think of; I will be giving away the ending, so anyone who hasn't read the book and plans to may wish to look away now. Although to be frank, I'm of the opinion that any book that's ruined just by knowing how it ends hasn't got much going for it. The style, atmosphere, characters and ideas of this one ought to keep you reading even if you do know what's coming (and chances are you'll guess what's going on anyway).
1 - It's political. The whole idea of a central committee of anarchists is patently ridiculous (and the characters say as much), and sure enough it turns out they're all secret policemen. They've all been set up and set against each other by Sunday, who really is an agent of chaos, but is also the top secret policeman who recruited them all. The "Nightmare" here is that the man in charge has fabricated a phantom threat to civilised society to keep his underlings distracted while he himself gets up to who-knows-what and avoids all attempts to hold him accountable. Or am I imposing a contemporary reading on the text?
2 - It's kind of religious. The "Nightmare" here being that Sunday is revealed at the end not as a benign, knowable creator-father god but as a chaotic, capricious demiurge. Perhaps Chesterton wanted to paint a picture of everything he hoped God wasn't.
3 - It is religious, and Chesterton was lying when he said it wasn't. Well, you never know.
Alastair Reynolds - Chasm City
It's interesting to read an author's second novel only after you've read his other half dozen books. This certainly is as strong and as skilful a story as people say, but the dialogue has some serious issues. Far too much lengthy info-dumping, particularly from exactly the characters or in exactly the situations you'd least expect. It gets silly when one major character's father props himself up on his deathbed and gasps out an entire page of exposition. He did apparently then fall back, exhausted. I'll bet he did. Also a very prominent authorial tic for having characters say a sardonic "Oh,..." (e.g. "Oh, I'd heard the stories", or "Oh, that's what they'll tell you", that kind of thing). So many, it's hard not to notice. You even get a couple from a character who has to type his sentences into a voice synthesiser, which comes across as more than a little odd. Memo to self and invitation to others: check Reynolds' more recent novels and play "Spot the Oh", see if he still does this or not. I hadn't noticed it before, so probably not.
Still, it is a very good novel.
Russell Hoban - Pilgermann
Utterly disappointing. Both this and The Medusa Frequency come across as the author staring at a typewriter, trying to force a book out, and just writing around the same couple of scenes. Admittedly I gave up on Pilgermann halfway through, so I've no idea if it suddenly becomes brilliant. Starting to think Riddley Walker was a one-off, though.
Stop press: I've won a copy of Adam Roberts' latest novel! Yay!! This makes me a happy panda.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
"Will the drumming stop?"
Ohhhh, so nearly. I know The Lovely Jo and a number of our friends just didn't like Last of the Time Lords at all, but I thought it was doing pretty well.
I liked that it started one year on from last week - showed that the Doctor wasn't just going to pull it out of a hat then and there, gave some scale to the proceedings, allowed for lovely throwaway lines about burning Japan and so on that gave some weight to the Master's evil-doings. I liked that, far from zapping straight back with an instant solution, Martha had to trek around the world for a year laying the groundwork for the Doctor's plan. I liked the little musical number at the start, despite not entirely liking last week's pop moment. I liked David Tennant's hundred-year-old acting.
All things considered, I thought it was going well - but then, alas, the resolution. My viewing of this episode went something like this: brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, oh cheese, CHEESE!!
Just threw it all away, that resolution. That Russell T Davies and those series finales, he can set 'em up, he can follow 'em through, but it seems he just can't wrap 'em up without resorting to deus ex machina (sorry, plural, di ex machina). And what a monstrous one this was, with the Doctor shedding magic fairy dust and flying across the room. And as if that weren't bad enough, pressing the reset button as well and reversing the preceding episode's worth of story. I mean, even though Magic Rose wiped out those Daleks and brought Captain Jack back to life, she didn't actually undo anything. To have a deus ex machina or to press the reset button may be deemed a misfortune; to do both looks like carelessness. (Cf the Paul McGann TV Movie.)
And then, having attempted to salvage something from the wreckage by killing the Master and having that touching (if very strange) moment between him and the Doctor, to stick that Flash Gordon scene onto the end - impardonable.
In fact, it was strangely like watching the last episode of Torchwood. Uncannily like it. Starts out looking grittier, more believable, more earnest, like they're actually going somewhere with this. Then suddenly out come the big CGI guns, a messianic figure (for an atheist, RTD doesn't half have this thing for them) defeats the bad guy with his amazing superpowers, forgives his adversary, then vanishes off at the end leaving all kinds of questions unanswered. (For one thing, where's Martha's brother? He went into hiding last week, and he did such a good job they haven't been able to find him since. For another, what political climate is the Doctor leaving Martha in now that two world leaders have been assassinated live on international television?) And this felt cheesier than the end of Torchwood. It can't be a good thing that I'm even making that comparison.
So overall I think this deserves 5 out of 10. From the best finale set-up last week to the worst finale wrap-up this week. Just marginally better than "The Exciting Further Adventures of Manlek". It shouldn't be possible for a bad last few minutes to drag down a perfectly fine first forty minutes, but I think in this case it just about does.
And yet, let's not forget that for a while there, this was looking like a much better episode than it turned out to be. Some bold bleakness in there too - it emerges that not only does humanity not find a way out of the end of the universe, they end up sticking their heads into murderous flying metal balls and going completely crazy (although it isn't exactly clear why they would do that, unless they went crazy first, and even then it's not exactly the first thing you'd expect them to think of doing). Plus, even though They Woke Up And It Was All A Dream, Martha's family still remember it all and are apparently quite traumatised by it. Also, nice feints with the Doctor's attempted rebellion and that business with the quest for the special gun. The CGI Doctor was regrettable, although it was amusing that just after calling the Doctor "Gandalf", the Master should turn him into Gollum. (Online fans suggest "Dobby the House-Elf" instead, which is visually more accurate - painfully so, in fact.) But who's going to forgive RTD for that ending?
So for my money the final run-down of DW Series 3 looks like this, in descending order of greatness:
The Family of Blood
Human Nature
Blink
The Sound of Drums
Smith and Jones
42
Daleks in Manhattan
Gridlock
Utopia
The Lazarus Experiment
Last of the Time Lords
Evolution of the Daleks
The Shakespeare Code
The Family of Blood remains the only second part of a two-part story that I've enjoyed more than the first part. The overall season quality doesn't seem much different from last year's, although last year we had more of a steady run, while this year seems to have reverted to Series 1's pattern of highs and lows. Roll on the Christmas special.
I liked that it started one year on from last week - showed that the Doctor wasn't just going to pull it out of a hat then and there, gave some scale to the proceedings, allowed for lovely throwaway lines about burning Japan and so on that gave some weight to the Master's evil-doings. I liked that, far from zapping straight back with an instant solution, Martha had to trek around the world for a year laying the groundwork for the Doctor's plan. I liked the little musical number at the start, despite not entirely liking last week's pop moment. I liked David Tennant's hundred-year-old acting.
All things considered, I thought it was going well - but then, alas, the resolution. My viewing of this episode went something like this: brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, oh cheese, CHEESE!!
Just threw it all away, that resolution. That Russell T Davies and those series finales, he can set 'em up, he can follow 'em through, but it seems he just can't wrap 'em up without resorting to deus ex machina (sorry, plural, di ex machina). And what a monstrous one this was, with the Doctor shedding magic fairy dust and flying across the room. And as if that weren't bad enough, pressing the reset button as well and reversing the preceding episode's worth of story. I mean, even though Magic Rose wiped out those Daleks and brought Captain Jack back to life, she didn't actually undo anything. To have a deus ex machina or to press the reset button may be deemed a misfortune; to do both looks like carelessness. (Cf the Paul McGann TV Movie.)
And then, having attempted to salvage something from the wreckage by killing the Master and having that touching (if very strange) moment between him and the Doctor, to stick that Flash Gordon scene onto the end - impardonable.
In fact, it was strangely like watching the last episode of Torchwood. Uncannily like it. Starts out looking grittier, more believable, more earnest, like they're actually going somewhere with this. Then suddenly out come the big CGI guns, a messianic figure (for an atheist, RTD doesn't half have this thing for them) defeats the bad guy with his amazing superpowers, forgives his adversary, then vanishes off at the end leaving all kinds of questions unanswered. (For one thing, where's Martha's brother? He went into hiding last week, and he did such a good job they haven't been able to find him since. For another, what political climate is the Doctor leaving Martha in now that two world leaders have been assassinated live on international television?) And this felt cheesier than the end of Torchwood. It can't be a good thing that I'm even making that comparison.
So overall I think this deserves 5 out of 10. From the best finale set-up last week to the worst finale wrap-up this week. Just marginally better than "The Exciting Further Adventures of Manlek". It shouldn't be possible for a bad last few minutes to drag down a perfectly fine first forty minutes, but I think in this case it just about does.
And yet, let's not forget that for a while there, this was looking like a much better episode than it turned out to be. Some bold bleakness in there too - it emerges that not only does humanity not find a way out of the end of the universe, they end up sticking their heads into murderous flying metal balls and going completely crazy (although it isn't exactly clear why they would do that, unless they went crazy first, and even then it's not exactly the first thing you'd expect them to think of doing). Plus, even though They Woke Up And It Was All A Dream, Martha's family still remember it all and are apparently quite traumatised by it. Also, nice feints with the Doctor's attempted rebellion and that business with the quest for the special gun. The CGI Doctor was regrettable, although it was amusing that just after calling the Doctor "Gandalf", the Master should turn him into Gollum. (Online fans suggest "Dobby the House-Elf" instead, which is visually more accurate - painfully so, in fact.) But who's going to forgive RTD for that ending?
So for my money the final run-down of DW Series 3 looks like this, in descending order of greatness:
The Family of Blood
Human Nature
Blink
The Sound of Drums
Smith and Jones
42
Daleks in Manhattan
Gridlock
Utopia
The Lazarus Experiment
Last of the Time Lords
Evolution of the Daleks
The Shakespeare Code
The Family of Blood remains the only second part of a two-part story that I've enjoyed more than the first part. The overall season quality doesn't seem much different from last year's, although last year we had more of a steady run, while this year seems to have reverted to Series 1's pattern of highs and lows. Roll on the Christmas special.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
