Well, the Darkness are coming. Billie Piper said so.
When word got out that this episode would show what would have happened if the Doctor had died before meeting Donna, there were a number of things that I could see it doing, and I hoped it would do at least some of them. It met and exceeded my hopes.
They say (and the trailer confirms) that the season finale will be stuffed to bursting with familiar faces, in a way that seems to suggest a desperate attempt to outdo all previous finales - as if there were a need for outdoing, and as if the way to go about it were simply to throw more and more "surprise" revenants into the mix. Here at least there's a genuine need, a compelling reason to bring back all manner of characters and monsters, yet for the most part they're restricted to throwaway lines and cut-in effects shots, so the whole business of revisiting the last two years of "present day" stories is nicely underplayed. Bonus points for that whole side of the story, especially for the subdued effect and music when London is atomised.
The one comeback they couldn't underplay was Rose, and... yes, she did have trouble finding that accent again, didn't she? Billie Piper's good here, but she's completely out-acted by Catherine Tate, which is probably just as well considering who's the focus of this episode. But blow me, now we've seen Tate out-act Piper and Agyeman! Will the delightful revelation of Catherine Tate's acting never end?
There's just one problem I can see here, and that's the fortune teller. Who is she, and why is she so particularly keen to lure Donna in and stick a beetle on her back? How does she know about the Doctor? Perhaps she's been put up to it and we'll find out more next week, or perhaps she's just good at spotting juicy meals for the beetle. Then again, perhaps there is no explanation.
But she's such an incidental part of the story that it's easy to let this go. Overall, this episode is stunning. So many well-played moments, such good music, such good acting from all concerned. Such good writing, of course - if we consider these last four episodes of the season as RTD's swansong (and I think we may, with next year's specials being more of a lap of honour), then he's certainly rising to the occasion.
Next week, it's the New Who apocalypse. Death to the spin-offs! (Except, uh, they've all been recommissioned, so presumably none of them are actually in any danger. Or at least, danger that can't be undone with a last minute reset.) But for now, before the inevitable Daleks fly in and the screen is swamped with returning characters, let's give this episode the full 10.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
You took the words right out of my mouth
Must have been while you were stealing my voice, you freaky alien parasite, you.
Better late than never - my thoughts on Midnight. Review of Turn Left to follow later.
It's easy to complain (as more than enough people already do) that modern telly, and notably modern Who, is too reliant on expensive computer effects. As if you could pull off a series of modern Who without recourse to any kind of CGI. But here's an episode that comes probably as close as it can - naturally there is still CGI, there's still a flying harness shot, there's still an explosion, but the showpiece special effect is the acting. It's like some kind of experiment in restaging classic SF TV in a modern environment, except that where The Quatermass Experiment failed miserably, Midnight succeeds, and the reason is undoubtedly the work that's been put in by the actors and by the crew pushing the actors.
You could easily imagine this as a radio play, what with the central gimmick being purely vocal. Go on, imagine it now. It's the 1950s, and now on the BBC Home Service - not for those of a nervous disposition - is Charles Chilton's new science fiction drama... Except that Charles Chilton would have spent a good long while examining the voice-stealing creature's motives before wrapping up with some sort of moral message.
And that's where Midnight falls short - no explanation. Where did the creature come from? What does it plan to do, beyond take over Sky Silvestry's body and escape? How did it survive in a supposedly uninhabitable environment? There are no answers. (Admittedly there is a moral, which can probably best be summed up as "Daily Mail readers are evil".) Now, a bit of mystery's fine, but with no explanation at all - no story to speak of - all you're left with is a set piece showing off the skills of the actors and the sound editing crew. This is entirely the problem I had with Lost (first series, at least) - that with no answers at all, the whole thing looked like hour after hour of actors showboating with a gratuitously enigmatic script. Thankfully Midnight only lasts fifty minutes, which is short enough that it can get away with this more easily. Wouldn't want Who to do it every week, though.
8 out of 10. I'm very tempted to give it 9, because I'm feeling a powerful need to give something in this series a 9 besides the Moffat story, but with such huge gaps in the plot - not even plot holes, just utter absences - I don't think I really can. But the acting and the writing in this one is so good that I can't give it less than 8. And it is a remarkable script, and a tour de force from David Tennant and Lesley Sharp. A definite high point in the season, but I'm still looking for something more substantial. Cue Turn Left...
Better late than never - my thoughts on Midnight. Review of Turn Left to follow later.
It's easy to complain (as more than enough people already do) that modern telly, and notably modern Who, is too reliant on expensive computer effects. As if you could pull off a series of modern Who without recourse to any kind of CGI. But here's an episode that comes probably as close as it can - naturally there is still CGI, there's still a flying harness shot, there's still an explosion, but the showpiece special effect is the acting. It's like some kind of experiment in restaging classic SF TV in a modern environment, except that where The Quatermass Experiment failed miserably, Midnight succeeds, and the reason is undoubtedly the work that's been put in by the actors and by the crew pushing the actors.
You could easily imagine this as a radio play, what with the central gimmick being purely vocal. Go on, imagine it now. It's the 1950s, and now on the BBC Home Service - not for those of a nervous disposition - is Charles Chilton's new science fiction drama... Except that Charles Chilton would have spent a good long while examining the voice-stealing creature's motives before wrapping up with some sort of moral message.
And that's where Midnight falls short - no explanation. Where did the creature come from? What does it plan to do, beyond take over Sky Silvestry's body and escape? How did it survive in a supposedly uninhabitable environment? There are no answers. (Admittedly there is a moral, which can probably best be summed up as "Daily Mail readers are evil".) Now, a bit of mystery's fine, but with no explanation at all - no story to speak of - all you're left with is a set piece showing off the skills of the actors and the sound editing crew. This is entirely the problem I had with Lost (first series, at least) - that with no answers at all, the whole thing looked like hour after hour of actors showboating with a gratuitously enigmatic script. Thankfully Midnight only lasts fifty minutes, which is short enough that it can get away with this more easily. Wouldn't want Who to do it every week, though.
8 out of 10. I'm very tempted to give it 9, because I'm feeling a powerful need to give something in this series a 9 besides the Moffat story, but with such huge gaps in the plot - not even plot holes, just utter absences - I don't think I really can. But the acting and the writing in this one is so good that I can't give it less than 8. And it is a remarkable script, and a tour de force from David Tennant and Lesley Sharp. A definite high point in the season, but I'm still looking for something more substantial. Cue Turn Left...
Monday, June 09, 2008
Up the library steps, up the library steps
Now there's a two-parter thoroughly rescued by its second part - at last, the first high 9/borderline 10 of the season. Those plot details were a little easy to work out after all (mmm, smuggy-smug-smug) but the execution was first rate. Particularly good was the sub-story around Donna's virtual world, which could have carried an episode on its own.
Amusingly, this side of the episode seemed to be all about television - amusingly, because of it being set in a library. The open acknowledgement of the cuts from scene to scene, of course, and the computer girl being pressed into a secondary role as a parody of the younger viewers, not to mention the direct address to the viewer from inside the virtual world at the end. This does slightly emphasise, if not actually raise, the question of why none of the episode was about books. Or at least, about reading. A library would seem to be the obvious setting in which to explore that theme.
Even this, the last mysterious thing about the two-parter, is kind of addressed by the explanation of why the Vashta Nerada have turned predatory. It's their vengeance for the destruction of their habitat - the pulping of enough trees to layer an entire planet with books. So this part of the episode is about books, only here they're not "the best weapons you can have" (qv Tooth and Claw) - not books as a means of transmitting knowledge - but rather books as objects, as things made out of wood pulp. And to rub it in, they're completely surplus to requirements because the Library computer has the whole lot stored electronically, with the added advantage that anyone who doesn't mind being reduced to digital information can experience them all directly. (And you'd assume there'd be some way in the 51st century of achieving the same effect with a headset and a comfy chair. Make the mainframe a bit bigger, replace the planetwide reading rooms with a modest-sized building filled with comfy chairs and you'd be able to have the tourist attraction and the forest.)
So there's actually a crafty eco-message hiding underneath the surface of this story, although it's not dwelt on at all and one assumes the junior members of the audience will have been too preoccupied with the zombie spacemen and Miss Evangelista's freaky distorted face to have spotted it anyway. Possibly just as well - thought-provoking it may be, but is "books = bad" (or even "books = irrelevant when you've got films") really a message you want to send to the nation's kids when literacy is such a hot issue in the tabloids?
(There is a whole other level of philosophical debate lurking behind this, whereby we see characters being uploaded into the Library mainframe's virtual environment and equate them with the books the mainframe was designed to deal with - i.e. "flesh = irrelevant when you've got mind" - but that'd probably be even less palatable to the general audience.)
Other considerations. Colin Salmon was just fantastic as Dr Moon ("...and then you forgot!") - it'd be nice to think he might pop up again in Who in another role. (Come to think of it, he'd make a great Eleventh Doctor, but then again I assume that, based on RTD's casting of Dr Eccles and David Tennant, the smart money would be on the Grand Moff casting someone he's worked with before - Jack Davenport or James Nesbitt would seem the obvious front-runners. But I massively digress.)
Quite surprising that Lux's blatantly symbolic surname didn't play any part in the story at all, not even as a side joke.
I know what I said last week about it being too early to spot patterns in the way Moffat writes, but oh look - our heroes escape the monsters by blasting a neat square hole in a side wall, and at the end "just this once" (again) everybody lives. Even if they died (so Moffat can do the obvious thing of killing off River Song and bring her back).
Which brings us onto the plot hole (I think there was only the one) - how did Miss Evangelista (and the other victims, at the end) get inside the mainframe? I don't recall any suggestion that the Library was scanning her the whole time, or reading the neural relay in her collar, or that anyone loaded her into the mainframe (as if anyone would have had the chance).
And I can't not mention the whole issue of the Doctor's relationship with River Song, which was delightful and has the potential for a lot of very interesting development further down the line. Always assuming Alex Kingston is up for a few repeat appearances, of course. (And so continues Steven Moffat's "Get Over Rose" agenda! First Madame de Pompadour...)
Next week seems to be another take on disaster movies. I just want to tell you both: Good luck, we're all counting on you.
Also this week: life continues to punish us for owning a car, with the new Toyota fresh from one expensive servicing and straight back in for a week and a half to have its head gasket replaced (there's probably a crafty eco-message hidden in there somewhere too); and congratulations to The Lovely Jo who won two bronze medals at a taekwon-do competition on Saturday, and who's just celebrated her birthday.
Amusingly, this side of the episode seemed to be all about television - amusingly, because of it being set in a library. The open acknowledgement of the cuts from scene to scene, of course, and the computer girl being pressed into a secondary role as a parody of the younger viewers, not to mention the direct address to the viewer from inside the virtual world at the end. This does slightly emphasise, if not actually raise, the question of why none of the episode was about books. Or at least, about reading. A library would seem to be the obvious setting in which to explore that theme.
Even this, the last mysterious thing about the two-parter, is kind of addressed by the explanation of why the Vashta Nerada have turned predatory. It's their vengeance for the destruction of their habitat - the pulping of enough trees to layer an entire planet with books. So this part of the episode is about books, only here they're not "the best weapons you can have" (qv Tooth and Claw) - not books as a means of transmitting knowledge - but rather books as objects, as things made out of wood pulp. And to rub it in, they're completely surplus to requirements because the Library computer has the whole lot stored electronically, with the added advantage that anyone who doesn't mind being reduced to digital information can experience them all directly. (And you'd assume there'd be some way in the 51st century of achieving the same effect with a headset and a comfy chair. Make the mainframe a bit bigger, replace the planetwide reading rooms with a modest-sized building filled with comfy chairs and you'd be able to have the tourist attraction and the forest.)
So there's actually a crafty eco-message hiding underneath the surface of this story, although it's not dwelt on at all and one assumes the junior members of the audience will have been too preoccupied with the zombie spacemen and Miss Evangelista's freaky distorted face to have spotted it anyway. Possibly just as well - thought-provoking it may be, but is "books = bad" (or even "books = irrelevant when you've got films") really a message you want to send to the nation's kids when literacy is such a hot issue in the tabloids?
(There is a whole other level of philosophical debate lurking behind this, whereby we see characters being uploaded into the Library mainframe's virtual environment and equate them with the books the mainframe was designed to deal with - i.e. "flesh = irrelevant when you've got mind" - but that'd probably be even less palatable to the general audience.)
Other considerations. Colin Salmon was just fantastic as Dr Moon ("...and then you forgot!") - it'd be nice to think he might pop up again in Who in another role. (Come to think of it, he'd make a great Eleventh Doctor, but then again I assume that, based on RTD's casting of Dr Eccles and David Tennant, the smart money would be on the Grand Moff casting someone he's worked with before - Jack Davenport or James Nesbitt would seem the obvious front-runners. But I massively digress.)
Quite surprising that Lux's blatantly symbolic surname didn't play any part in the story at all, not even as a side joke.
I know what I said last week about it being too early to spot patterns in the way Moffat writes, but oh look - our heroes escape the monsters by blasting a neat square hole in a side wall, and at the end "just this once" (again) everybody lives. Even if they died (so Moffat can do the obvious thing of killing off River Song and bring her back).
Which brings us onto the plot hole (I think there was only the one) - how did Miss Evangelista (and the other victims, at the end) get inside the mainframe? I don't recall any suggestion that the Library was scanning her the whole time, or reading the neural relay in her collar, or that anyone loaded her into the mainframe (as if anyone would have had the chance).
And I can't not mention the whole issue of the Doctor's relationship with River Song, which was delightful and has the potential for a lot of very interesting development further down the line. Always assuming Alex Kingston is up for a few repeat appearances, of course. (And so continues Steven Moffat's "Get Over Rose" agenda! First Madame de Pompadour...)
Next week seems to be another take on disaster movies. I just want to tell you both: Good luck, we're all counting on you.
Also this week: life continues to punish us for owning a car, with the new Toyota fresh from one expensive servicing and straight back in for a week and a half to have its head gasket replaced (there's probably a crafty eco-message hidden in there somewhere too); and congratulations to The Lovely Jo who won two bronze medals at a taekwon-do competition on Saturday, and who's just celebrated her birthday.
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
When you were young and your heart was an open book
I'm saving "Carried away by a moonlight shadow" for next week, chiz chiz.
So, the annual Moffat story comes around, and sure enough it's better than the rest of this year's offerings so far, but still... only a high 8 from me. As ever, subject to re-evaluation after the second part next week. It's not that it did anything badly, it's that it didn't do enough of it.
Consider the Empty Child two parter from waaaay, way back in New Who's first season. By the time the cliffhanger came round, things were just getting going, and I for one couldn't have said for sure what was going on. It maintained a level of mystery and intrigue through to the end.
This week's cliffhanger could have similarly raised the mystery and piqued our interest as to what was going on (and was presumably meant to), but in fact having Donna's face appear on one of the Library Nodes just confirmed what Mrs Toon and I had both guessed about twenty minutes earlier, the first time someone mentioned the 4,000-odd Library victims being "saved". Yes, "saved" in the same way all the other Node faces were "saved", i.e. to memory.
(Cue argument about how exactly teleportation (fictionally) works, but non-SF-fan readers may take out a subscription to the New Scientist if they really care and SF-fan readers will already have heard it before. The idea that people's bodies can be "recorded" as digital information is at least as old as Star Trek, and though practically it may seem unlikely, aesthetically it's just one step on from the old SF idea that people's minds are just organic computer programs.)
The mystery of how the young girl in (apparently) the present day relates to the Library, initially very intriguing, seems pretty obvious by the end even without the visual clues - the Library logo on the floor, the computer name "CAL" on the psychiatrist's briefcase - and the carnivorous shadows themselves aren't mysterious, they're just something for the Doctor to defeat at the end of the story. (Hopefully without a cheesy closing montage of shadows shot in Cardiff centre for the benefit of the slower viewers, coughcoughBlinkcough.)
Bearing in mind this is only the Grand Moff's second two-parter, and it might therefore be too early to look for patterns, it is perhaps worth noting the familiar elements of the cliffhanger - our heroes penned in by a dehumanised figure that repeats the same phrase over and over and over again. This time there's the added twist of a second dehumanised figure - the Donna Node - repeating its own phrase over and over and over again. It lends a peculiar rhythm to the cliffhanger, but I can't say that it does much for the tension, just having someone lurching towards you endlessly repeating themselves. You might as well be watching an existentialist farce. Admittedly it's the stuff of my nightmares, but I like to tell myself that's down to a deep-rooted horror of banality (insert your own ironic observation here) rather than just some freaky bit of my own id.
Other Who fans may feel that it's the winning formula for the end of a Who episode, but I'm finding it a bit old and a bit tired. The obvious precedent is the Daleks shouting "Exterminate" five times without actually doing anything, and I've long since had enough of them. Still, it'll give kids something to do in the playground, which is presumably the intention.
Where this episode scores highly is in ideas. The Nodes of course, piranha-like dust motes hiding in the shadows, the data ghost scenes. Even the love interest the time-travelling hero hasn't met before, while itself an idea old enough that it's made it into the literary mainstream (qv The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger), is new to Who and played very well. (Would Mr Moffat do the obvious thing and kill her off next week? Surely not?)
And there are at least still a couple of questions we can't yet guess the answers to. Why should the Vashta Nerada have become so aggressive in this one particular place? Why a young girl in the present day? And why does Mr Lux have such a blatantly symbolic name?
So, the annual Moffat story comes around, and sure enough it's better than the rest of this year's offerings so far, but still... only a high 8 from me. As ever, subject to re-evaluation after the second part next week. It's not that it did anything badly, it's that it didn't do enough of it.
Consider the Empty Child two parter from waaaay, way back in New Who's first season. By the time the cliffhanger came round, things were just getting going, and I for one couldn't have said for sure what was going on. It maintained a level of mystery and intrigue through to the end.
This week's cliffhanger could have similarly raised the mystery and piqued our interest as to what was going on (and was presumably meant to), but in fact having Donna's face appear on one of the Library Nodes just confirmed what Mrs Toon and I had both guessed about twenty minutes earlier, the first time someone mentioned the 4,000-odd Library victims being "saved". Yes, "saved" in the same way all the other Node faces were "saved", i.e. to memory.
(Cue argument about how exactly teleportation (fictionally) works, but non-SF-fan readers may take out a subscription to the New Scientist if they really care and SF-fan readers will already have heard it before. The idea that people's bodies can be "recorded" as digital information is at least as old as Star Trek, and though practically it may seem unlikely, aesthetically it's just one step on from the old SF idea that people's minds are just organic computer programs.)
The mystery of how the young girl in (apparently) the present day relates to the Library, initially very intriguing, seems pretty obvious by the end even without the visual clues - the Library logo on the floor, the computer name "CAL" on the psychiatrist's briefcase - and the carnivorous shadows themselves aren't mysterious, they're just something for the Doctor to defeat at the end of the story. (Hopefully without a cheesy closing montage of shadows shot in Cardiff centre for the benefit of the slower viewers, coughcoughBlinkcough.)
Bearing in mind this is only the Grand Moff's second two-parter, and it might therefore be too early to look for patterns, it is perhaps worth noting the familiar elements of the cliffhanger - our heroes penned in by a dehumanised figure that repeats the same phrase over and over and over again. This time there's the added twist of a second dehumanised figure - the Donna Node - repeating its own phrase over and over and over again. It lends a peculiar rhythm to the cliffhanger, but I can't say that it does much for the tension, just having someone lurching towards you endlessly repeating themselves. You might as well be watching an existentialist farce. Admittedly it's the stuff of my nightmares, but I like to tell myself that's down to a deep-rooted horror of banality (insert your own ironic observation here) rather than just some freaky bit of my own id.
Other Who fans may feel that it's the winning formula for the end of a Who episode, but I'm finding it a bit old and a bit tired. The obvious precedent is the Daleks shouting "Exterminate" five times without actually doing anything, and I've long since had enough of them. Still, it'll give kids something to do in the playground, which is presumably the intention.
Where this episode scores highly is in ideas. The Nodes of course, piranha-like dust motes hiding in the shadows, the data ghost scenes. Even the love interest the time-travelling hero hasn't met before, while itself an idea old enough that it's made it into the literary mainstream (qv The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger), is new to Who and played very well. (Would Mr Moffat do the obvious thing and kill her off next week? Surely not?)
And there are at least still a couple of questions we can't yet guess the answers to. Why should the Vashta Nerada have become so aggressive in this one particular place? Why a young girl in the present day? And why does Mr Lux have such a blatantly symbolic name?
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