Review: Doctor Who: The Story and the Engine

So we start to edge closer perhaps to what has been underpinning the most recent years of Doctor Who. Many people had pointed out that there seemed to me some 'meta' element to the stories, with characters breaking the fourth wall and generally events taking a more fantastical approach.

With 'The Story and the Engine' we have, more or less, a remake of the sixties story 'The Mind Robber', wherein a writer had been trapped in a Land of Fiction, and this self-styled Master of the Land of Fiction wanted the Doctor to take over his role and position there so he could escape, on the basis that the Doctor had a lot of stories to tell. The twist being that the Doctor had to be careful not to 'write' himself into any of the Master's own stories or he would become fictionalised and could then never escape.

Well, I was totally expecting the Barber to want the Doctor to replace him here, but that didn't happen. Instead we get a rather nice little story within stories, where the Barber is an ancient of some sort, the power behind the gods we have heard of as he refined their stories so that they could be retold and thus keep the gods alive (very much shades of Neil Gaiman's American Gods), and he uses the barber shop as a method of capturing people with good stories so they can tell them while he cuts their hair (which instantly regrows allowing it to then be cut again). Why he is doing this is to feed 'the Story Engine', a metaphysical creation of a heart within a brain in the back of the barber shop which is itself being carried on the back of a giant spider. It also somehow powers the spider.

There was so much story thrown at us here that I couldn't jot it all down or get it all, so I'm not sure where the spider was trying to get to, but the Barber's endgame is to destroy the Story Engine and thus the gods with it! But this would cause much disruption and so the Doctor needs to find a solution.

The whole thing though is completely tied up with the Doctor's own adventures. There's a woman there, Abby, the daughter of Anansi (the spider god) who the Doctor once won in a bet and then rejected (this was when he was the Renegade Doctor, and we see a nice cameo from Jo Martin as that Doctor). Also, the Barber has tales of rocket ships ('The Robot Rebellion') and a cinema ('Lux') which suggests that these were stories rather than 'real' adventures. Mrs Flood cleverly appears in a story the Doctor tells about Belinda ... so is she something in this fictional realm also? Belinda meets Poppy from 'Space Babies' in the market outside, further suggesting that the Doctor has been walking in 'fiction' for some time now.

Rather than the stories and characters doing battle as in 'The Mind Robber', here the Doctor is for some reason linked to the Story Engine (as the Doctor was linked to the Master Brain in 'The Mind Robber'), and we see clips from many of his past adventures, past Doctors and so on ... and the sheer number of them causes the Engine to overload and explode ... meanwhile the Barber sees sense and opens the door so his captives can escape, similar again to 'The Mind Robber' where the destruction of the Master Brain causes all the 'captured' fictional characters to go their own way.

I found this episode well made and interesting, far more cerebral than perhaps the previous episodes in the season. It has a lot to say about the nature of story, and the nature of gods and how to survive they need the people to sing their songs and tell their stories ... and should we be drawing a parallel with the Doctor here that he needs the fans to sing his stories and his adventures for him to survive? I don't know. The performances were all first rate, but I struggled to capture who anyone actually was - what their character names were. I probably need another watch through to see if I can get them a second time.

The plot too was muddled and hard to follow. I'm not sure why the TARDIS convulsed every time the barber shop door opened and closed and the Story Engine's power supply dwindled. I'm not sure why Abby had to intricately create the map for the labyrinth behind the barber shop into the Doctor's hair (another call back to 'The Mind Robber' where the Doctor has to navigate a labyrinth). It was a nice touch though. Also, while the Doctor claimed to have visited the barber shop before to see his friend Omo, I assume it wasn't at that time a collection point for stories for the Engine? So when did it become that? When did the Barber take over ... and what was the Barber using as a collection point up to then, given that this spider machine thing, the gods and the stories had to have been around for centuries!

Despite this, the episode is visually rich, and fascinating in its blending of stories and whatever 'reality' is at this point. Elements may or may not become more important or return later in the season, so it's hard to try and figure out what the endgame might be for all this ... but there's certainly elements of messing with the Doctor's timeline and his 'story'. The ongoing mysteries of Mrs Flood and Belinda. Hints of greater powers being at work. And of course perhaps more of the pantheon of Gods. It's all building quite nicely.

Review: Doctor Who: Lucky Day

'Lucky Day' is another Doctor-lite episode, and, like last year's '73 Yards' this focusses on Ruby Sunday, with brief appearances from the Doctor at the start and the end.

It's New Year's Eve 2007 (it's not clear if this is 2006 into 2007, or 2007 into 2008) and the Doctor and Belinda arrive in London as the New Year fireworks are going off). The Doctor takes a reading with his device, and they meet a lad called Conrad who sees the TARDIS appear. Conrad is eight years old at this point, but this event triggers a life of trying to find out more about the TARDIS (in a similar way to Clive in 'Rose', except that Clive was essentially harmless).

Flash forward 17 years - which is 'last' year - so in 2024 (taking the 2007 year as mentioned) and Conrad again sees the TARDIS and witnesses the Doctor and Ruby battling a creature called a Shreek. He gets green gunk on him and learns from overhearing the Doctor that this is how the Shreek marks it's prey for the following year (it only hunts on one day a year). Ruby (who seems to be having an adventure with the Doctor set between 'The Devil's Chord' and 'Boom') who was also marked, is given some antidote by the Doctor.

Thereafter Conrad spends a year searching for Ruby, eventually finding her and wooing her, making her think he's falling for her ... only for her to discover, after a terrifying night where it seems a whole pack of Shreek are hunting for Conrad (as he failed to take the antidote that she gave him), that these Shreek are fake, being played by Conrad's friends, and that Conrad is in fact denying that any of this ever happened and using his podcast to spread misinformation about the various alien incursions, with UNIT being at the forefront of his attack.

His lies gain traction and spiral outwards, gaining him news time and protests taking place around the world. People would prefer to believe the lies than the truth of the situation.

He infiltrates UNIT HQ and live-streams Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and others holding guns on him. He refuses to believe any of their talk is true, and demands that she reveal what UNIT is really up to, so Kate, in a last ditch attempt, releases the original Shreek which they had kept in storage, and it attacks Conrad. But he still refuses to believe!

We end with Conrad locked in a cell, when the Doctor visits and materialises the TARDIS around him. Sadly even the Doctor's little 'talk' cannot sway his mind that it's all tricks and the Doctor puts him back where he found him.

But the governor of the jail appears - it's Mrs Flood! - and she lets him out! I wonder how this then plays into the forthcoming events?

If you wanted a Doctor Who with a 'message' then this is it! But what staggers me is that this episode was written one or two years ago! And yet the whole theme: of there being 'bad actors' out on the internet who believe and spread conspiracy theories and lies with little or no actual evidence, and then refuse to believe the truth even when it is presented to them in black and white is more relevant now than ever before.

This is the current nature of the world in 2025. People believe their own versions of 'the truth' and violently and stringently refuse to acknowledge that there might be an alternate view, or that they might be wrong. Those doing the deliberate misleading hide behind their computers and pump this toxic rubbish out into the world ... maybe they're political opponents, maybe they're foreign disruptors, maybe they are contrarian bots ... maybe all of these and more ... I have no idea. But there are also those with no particular agenda who have been taken in and fooled by others ... believing everything they are told or read in the dingy corners of the internet, and dismissing facts and evidence from scientists, doctors and many others who have no reason to lie, and every reason to keep the facts in the public eye.

And it's dangerous. People do increasingly become misled by corrupt advisors or those with other self-aggrandising agendas at work. And they share and believe wholly the lies and the misinformation. And they spread. And they cause harm.

It's a brilliant, brilliant episode to hook into the narrative and to give voice to the concerns and the problems that this can cause. Absolute kudos to Pete McTighe for writing it, and to Russell T Davies for getting it on air. It truly is an episode for our time. It picks up themes from 'The Giggle' and runs with them! I guess there will be people out there who believe that Conrad is the hero here, and everyone else is wrong for trying to stop him ... but that's the whole point of the story!

Jonah Hauer-King as Conrad is superb. He plays the part to elicit our sympathy at first, and then when his motive is revealed, he is a thoroughly nasty piece of work. Not just misguided, but a true ignorant and dangerous monster of the first order. My sympathies were with the Shreek, an excellently realised creature, terrifying, but really just following its own urges. 

In fact all the cast are exceptional here, with no weak links at all. Even the Doctor manages not to cry - not that he's in it much - but his speech at the end to Conrad is very pertinent. 

'Cowards weaponise lies!'

Indeed.

I think we all know people who have gone off down the rabbit holes and usually we just delete and block them (well, I do!) ... but there are sadly those around with greater power and ability to influence others. So being able to sift through their lies and false assumptions becomes paramount in a world which is increasingly subject to the general public just believing what they see and read without checking.

I also like the idea that UNIT has a containment facility where they keep all the nasties they capture. I wonder just what they've got in there ... and what might happen if they escaped one day ...

Overall this is another very strong episode in a season which has already presented three excellent adventures in a row. I wonder if they can keep this level up to the end.

Review: Doctor Who: The Well

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS SO PLEASE STOP READING IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED!

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OK THEN ... YOU WERE WARNED ...

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Doctor Who has enjoyed several 'sequel' stories over the years, most often of course featuring (and because of) the popularity of the monster that featured in the first one. Thus we have 'sequels' featuring Daleks and Cybermen and Sontarans to name but three. There are others of course: The Meddling Monk returned for a second outing in the season following 'The Time Meddler', the Yeti were back for another outing in the season following 'The Abominable Snowmen'. Sil was back the season following  'Vengeance on Varos' ... you're sensing a theme here ...

In 'New-Who' there have been some returns with quite a distance between the new and the original appearance. The Autons and the Nestene Intelligence returned in 'Rose', 34 years after 'Terror of the Autons'. The Macra were back in 'Gridlock', a mere 40 years between that and their first appearance in 'The Macra Terror'. With 'The Well' we are treated to the return of an enemy from 2008, just 17 years ago. To put this in context, it's a little like the Sensorites turning up in 'State of Decay'! 

Let's get to the story though, and it's a cracker. The Doctor and Belinda are still trying to get back to Earth using this 'vindicator' device, and so the TARDIS lands on a space ship, but not before the pair get changed out of their gear from the previous story and into some rather natty spacesuits which just happen to completely be the same as those worn by a bunch of marine-like soldiers who are about to descend to the surface of the planet below. That TARDIS wardrobe is darn clever like that!

No sooner have they left the safety of the TARDIS than the Doctor and Belinda are completing their suiting up and jumping out of the ship to arrive safely on the planet surface. The Doctor does his vindicator thing, and then they're off exploring with the soldiers.

We're totally in Aliens territory here. There's a mining operation which they have lost contact with, a missing crew, and a blasted planet. So they explore and find a lone individual, Aliss, who is deaf, but who seems to be the only surviving person there. All the rest of the crew apparently went mad and killed each other. Except Aliss.

All the mirrors are broken as well, and, it seems, no-one has heard of the Earth. They are far in the future, and whatever happened to the Earth on 24 May 2025, it wiped the planet from existence.

So they try and work out what happened. Belinda starts seeing glimpses of something behind Aliss, and the Doctor discovers that this was a diamond mine before the star was destroyed. He further discovers that Planet 6767 used to be called Midnight ... and he has been here before (in the story called 'Midnight').

So they now have a dilemma. They want to save Aliss, but the mystery creature has latched onto her and is always behind her. Anyone who ventures behind her is violently killed. And also, the creature wants to get off the planet ... so they can't take Aliss with them.

A solution presents itself when the Doctor, using the fact that for some reason the mine runs on mercury, blows some holes in the pipes behind Aliss to create a huge mercury mirror. This allows them all to run ... but the creature is also fast and latches onto one of them again - this time it's Belinda! The Doctor tries to get it to switch to him, but no dice. Thus the marine commander Shaya, shoots a hole through Belinda, just missing her heart (we have been told several times that she is a crack shot), and the creature switches to Shaya, who then runs to the mining shaft and falls down it, apparently taking the creature with her.

But then, as the remaining marines return to their ship, one of them seems to have something behind her ... the creature has escaped the planet!

As a story 'The Well' is excellently put together and is quite claustrophobic and scary. As I say, it's very much influenced by the film Aliens  and I also caught a sense of 'The Waters of Mars' episode of Doctor Who which has a similar bleakness to it, and a noble suicide at the end.

Where it fell down for me was in the realisation of the threat. In 'Midnight' the plot revolved around this unseen, unknown entity which could take over a person, making them speak the same thing as someone else the creature wanted to possess - the Doctor fell into that trap! Whereas here it's completely different. The creature lurks always right behind someone on their back, and anyone who goes behind them is killed. Maybe the thing got fed up with there not being anyone to take over by the speaking thing and changed the way it attacked?

But also, given that we are many hundreds and thousands of years after the events of 'Midnight', how long does this thing live? And why didn't it attack the mining works when they were first set up? Why wait until now? Maybe they found it deep in the planet's surface and brought it to the surface while looking for diamonds?

The mercury thing was a nice idea, but very convenient when they needed a mirror to try and break the thing's influence on Aliss. I'm also not sure why Aliss being deaf was significant. There was something to do with people it attached itself to being able to hear the thing whispering, but what was it saying? And why was that important? Not sure. 

For an entity which wants to get off the planet, killing everyone violently would not seem to be the best approach to be honest. Why not lay low and wait for a ship to arrive and then get on it? Much easier.

And the Mrs Flood moment? This comes at the end when the Senior Officer of the marines bizarrely turns out to be Mrs Flood (remember this is in the far, far future) who is interested that the Doctor was using a vindicator. Why, we have no idea! So is Mrs Flood a series of splinters like the last of the Jagaroth (from 'City of Death') ended up as - that story also had a time fracture which is what happened to Belinda in 'The Robot Revolution'? Is she a time traveller who is stalking the Doctor? At this point ... I've no idea.

Overall, another superb episode of the show, with a great setting and some stellar performances from all concerned. 

News: New DOCTOR WHO book!!!!

It's been twenty-seven years!  Twenty-seven years since I was last commissioned by an external publisher for a new Doctor Who book. In that time I set up Telos Publishing, and of course we published some of my books, like The Target Book and The Who Adventures. I also self published two volumes of my Doctor Who reviews, called Then and Now (available from https://samantha-lee-howe-ltd.sumupstore.com/search?search=David+J+Howe)... but this is news of a totally new book, from a new-ish publisher in town!

BEDFORD SQUARE PUBLISHERS ACQUIRE TITLES FROM HUSBAND AND WIFE

Editor-at-Large Maxim Jakubowski is thrilled to announce the acquisition of two strikingly different books by a married couple. USA Today bestselling author Samantha Lee Howe introduces a smart and seductive new cosy crime series, Mel Greenway Investigates, while David J Howe – renowned Doctor Who authority – shares a heartwarming and delightfully geeky memoir, Who Me!

Maxim says 'It's not every day you get the pleasure of acquiring two very different books from authors who happen to be husband and wife! I've long been a fan of Sam's fast-paced and cinematic USA Today bestselling writing, her new series introduces a gutsy British heroine and sleuth of the first order. While^.  David's memoir of how the iconic TV programme changed his life is a monument to geeky charm and Terry Pratchett-like in tone, and will become indispensable to its millions of fans.  

Samantha Lee Howe says:

'I've always been fascinated with post-War thrillers and I love quirky independent investigators, so combining the two fed straight into my passions. In addition, I have christened this novel "co-sexy" as its cosy crime, but mixed with simmering and sexy undertones, all filleted with the twists and turns and unpredictability that I know readers enjoy in my novels. I hope readers will love Mel as much as I do!'

In contrast, David J Howe's memoir is a nostalgic, emotional, and often humorous journey through a lifetime spent immersed in the world of Doctor Who.

'It seems like I've lived my whole life to be able to write this book,' says David J Howe. 'I often say, if you cut me you will find Doctor Who written through my flesh like the words in a stick of rock! I feel that many readers will find echoes of their own lives in the pages, and it's superb that a shared appreciation of a television programme can bring so much love and hope into the world.' 

For both titles, Maxim Jakubowski acquired World English Language rights from Camilla Shestopal at Shesto Literary.  

Bedford Square can be found at: https://bedfordsquarepublishers.co.uk/

David J Howe is at: www.howeswho.co.uk

Samantha Lee Howe is at: www.samanthaleehowe.co.uk

The plan is to publish Who Me! in October 2025, so watch out for it!

Review: Doctor Who: Lux

Way back in the late sixties, Doctor Who presented a story set in the Land of Fiction. 'The Mind Robber' included the Medusa, a Unicorn, Clockwork Soldiers, the Minotaur and a strange man named Gulliver ... Doctor Who is no stranger to episodes which push the boundaries and play fast and loose with 'reality' as we know it. And so 'Lux' is the latest entry to go down this route and to present a story which is very inspired by the TV series Sapphire and Steel as well as allowing the characters to have a little fun with the nature of film and television.

Unlike 'The Robot Revolution', 'Lux' is fairly simple. At a cinema, the Palazzo, in 1952 in Miami, Florida, a stray beam of moonlight reflects off a spoon and joins with the light from the projector and brings a cartoon character called Mr Ring-a-Ding to life. The character then traps the patrons of the cinema in a strip of film where they live on forever.

Unable to get to 24 May 2025, the Doctor decides to try and use a circuitous route, and so arrives in 1952 to find the cinema locked and chained, and segregation in place (the cinema and the coffee shop across the road are 'whites only'. The Doctor being the Doctor ignores this, and gets some information from a lady in the coffee shop, before he and Belinda break into the Palazzo to confront Mr Ring-a-Ding.

Turns out that he is one of the Pantheon of Gods mentioned by the Toymaker, the God of Light, and introduces himself with the laugh from 'The Giggle'. He turns the Doctor and Belinda into animated versions of themselves, and they have to try and work out how to escape.

I liked the idea of giving them 'depth' by adding emotion and backstory to their 'characters' which brings them back to themselves, but they're still trapped in the 'film'. In true Loony Tunes/Screwy Squirrel style, they break through the screen at the front and are confronted by three fans of Doctor Who ... it's all gone proper meta with them arguing that the best story was 'Blink' and that they love the show. But the Doctor and Belinda have to return to the screen to continue the fight, so they do this and end up back in the cinema, where they call on the projectionist Reg to burn the acetates and destroy the cinema. He is encouraged to do so by his dead wife who he had a reel of film of, and the explosion blows out the back of the cinema and allows sunlight in.

Mr Ring-a-Ding bathes in the light and grows larger and larger until he grows so large he eclipses the Earth and floats off into space! It's a little strange as it left me wondering what Mr Ring-a-Ding's plan was ... he could never, by his own admission, leave the cinema because the sunlight would do this, so what was he hoping to gain?

So the Cinema is saved, and the people trapped in the film strip are returned to life and leave to find their families and friends. All is good.

Except that Mrs Flood is there again, telling people the show ends on 24 May ...

This date is quite clever at this point, as it's when the penultimate episode of this season is expected to air ... so how did they know that when they made the show a year or whatever ago. I suspect plans for this season have been in progress for some time, and this included the air dates ... and maybe, just maybe, all the fan 'noise' at the moment predicting doom and gloom and the show's cancellation and whatever (Doctor Who must be the only show on television where a proportion of the fanbase actively campaigns for it to be taken off air. Very bizarre!) is smoke in the wind, and there is a plan ... the BBC, Bad Wolf, Disney and BBC Studios just aren't prepared to reveal it as yet ... all part of the fun and games of the season.

We shall see!

So here I loved this story, It's simple to follow, a neat idea, and riffs on another of my favourite shows. Mr Ring-a-Ding is marvellously created, and I liked how he became 3-D as he drew in the Doctor's energies (but how much energy does a bi-regenerated Time Lord have? Quite a bit it seems!!) and Alan Cumming's vocal talents for the character were superb.

The subsidiary character of Reg was nicely played, and the whole segregation thing was more throwaway - it didn't probably need to be there at all - but overall the effect was very pleasing. Even the fourth wall breaking and the meta-playing was OK for me. The three Doctor Who fans were a little stereotypical (recalling the character of Whizz Kid in 'The Greatest Show in the Galaxy') but one had exceptional taste in wearing a 'Telos' T Shirt. Thanks Russell! Overall again it worked ... achieving something that probably only Doctor Who could achieve in this day and age.

I'm reminded of the episode of UFO where they end up running around the real TV Studios where the show was made ... but is there an episode of any science fiction TV show where the characters actually meet the actors who play them ... in a very meta way? Some alternate dimension type thing? I'm sure people will let me know if there are.

A great second episode for this season. Clever and self-aware in a way rarely seen in Doctor Who before.

Review: Doctor Who: The Robot Revolution

 A new season ... a new set of adventures for Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor, and as usual with the introduction of a new companion, the old one is pretty much all but forgotten immediately!  Poor Ruby ... but apparently she crops up again later on ... a little like Rose, or indeed Clara, who just didn't know when enough was enough.

'The Robot Revolution' is a tough tale to start a season with in that it's very 'timey wimey' and you need to keep your wits about you to understand all the twists and turns courtesy of an unexplained 'time fracture' (shades of 'City of Death'!) which sends Belida Chandra all over the place.

So 17 years ago, a would be boyfriend buys Belinda a Star (well he buys a certificate saying that the star is now called 'Miss Belinda Chandra' and of course that has no significance beyond the Earth and the bank balance of whoever sells these things ... but let's gloss over that!). 17 years later and Belinda is working at a hospital as a Nurse, and the Doctor is inexplicably looking for her. He keeps missing her, even as she goes home, and then in the middle of the night a rocketship arrives along with a bunch of robots who kidnap her, claiming she is their Queen. They also bring along with them the certificate which she had kept above her bed.

These Robots want her to marry the AI Generator which runs the planet Miss Belinda Chandra (so called because that's what it was named - actually the star was named that, not the planet, so presumably the planetary inhabitants somehow knew that the star was called this (on Earth) and so named the planet likewise).

It gets confusing because the Doctor arrived six months previously, and has managed to become a historian of some sort, and the Robots cannot hear every ninth word (!) and so he relays a message to Belinda about rebels and an attack ... 

Ten years previously, the robots went and grabbed Alan Budd, Belinda's would be suitor because she told them to do this in the rocketship and the time fracture and timey wimey. So Alan was made sort of king of the planet and put in a machine and changed into some half (literally) human half-robot thing which now wants Belinda to marry it! Are you keeping up!

But he's not a nice person - an Incel Belinda calls him - so thanks to a convenient duplicating of the star naming certificate, Belinda is able to get the two 'the same' certificates to touch and the resultant explosion kills Adam and sets the planet back to be ruled normally again and for the robots and humans to live in peace. Hoorah!

There's some strangeness going on as well ... how does Belinda know what the TARDIS is called? She seems to pull the word from the air. And how are she and the Doctor connected as the Doctor keeps claiming? And why at the end can he not get the TARDIS to go to 24 May 2025? And why are the destroyed remnants of the Earth floating around in space along with a calendar which suggests that the destruction happens on 24 May 2025?

Oh and Mrs Flood lives next door to Belinda and again breaks the fourth wall, telling the viewers that they haven't seen her.

Visually the episode is a delight with the effects really knocking the budget out of the park! The spacerocket is pleasingly retro and the Robots are nice and clunky. The makeup for Adam is amazing when he is part robot - very impressive.

So as a season opener I enjoyed it a lot. There's a lot to like (even if the Doctor cries again), and Belinda seems likable and sparky if a little complainy and obsessed with getting back home ... 

Review: Frida Kahlo and the Skull Children

Catching up on some Doctor Who reading and releases, and there's four new titles which came from BBC Children's Books in recent months, all under the Puffin imprint.

First off, there's two titles in a new fiction range which is unexplained in the books themselves. The range is called Icons and seem to pair a real life person with an incarnation of the Doctor in a new adventure. The first in the series is Frida Kahlo and the Skull Children by Sophie McKenzie, an award winning author of young adult fiction, which is a creepy title indeed. I have to admit that I had never heard of Frida Kahlo and so had to Google her. She was a Mexican painter who lived from 1907 to 1954: Quoting from the Wiki: 'Kahlo's work as an artist remained relatively unknown until the late 1970s, when her work was rediscovered by art historians and political activists. By the early 1990s, not only had she become a recognized figure in art history, but she was also regarded as an icon for Chicanos, the feminism movement, and the LGBTQ+ community.'

Apparently she has met the Doctor before (or later) in an 8th Doctor comic story in Doctor Who Magazine in 2011 called 'The Way of all Flesh' (#306, 308-310, written by Scott Gray)

Perhaps a little obscure for a subject, especially as there is no explanation in the book itself as to who she was or why she was famous. Not even a little biography or anything. There's also nothing to explain what the Icons range is all about. It's all a little odd.

Anyway, we're introduced to Frida as an 18 or 19 year old girl, after a bus crash which broke all her bones meaning that she's now in pain all the time.  I assume the biographical details of her life are correct (the Wiki seems to corroborate them). 

Frida meets the Thirteenth Doctor and they have an adventure together involving sentient lines of computer code or something. I found it all a little confusing to be honest, and the Skull Children of the title come into play when youngster lines of code inhabit the bodies of Frida's schoolfriends. It's all resolved by the end and the Doctor leaves Frida to decide to start painting again. 

All in all it's not a bad little story, if a little obscure. But to my mind if you're launching a range based on famous real life people, then why not explain that somewhere in the book, and introduce the person you're basing this story on as well. At least the reader then has a clue!

The second book in the series is Charles Darwin and the Silurian Survival by L D Lapinski, another writer of young adult fiction. At least here I've heard of Charles Darwin, but otherwise the same arguments apply. Again the Sixth Doctor already met Charles Darwin with the Silurians in a Big Finish Audio ('Bloodtide', 2001 by Jonathan Morris) and in one of the BBC Novels the Third Doctor also claimed to have met him (Island of Death, 2005 by Barry Letts).

Also recently published is a new and updated edition of Fifteen Doctors 15 Stories. This time it adds a new Fifteenth Doctor story from Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé to the mix. I suspect before long the book will be too long to reprint if the BBC keep introducing new Doctors in the series! As it is this volume has 678 pages.

Finally, there is yet another reprinted and updated volume of The Official Guide which was originally published in 2013 as The Essential Guide to Fifty Years of Doctor Who, and then in 2018 as The Handbook, and then in 2020 as The Thirteenth Doctor's Guide. 

This edition adds 12 pages of material on the Fifteenth Doctor, and provides a visual overview summary of all the Doctors, selected adventures, their companions, some of their foes, and how they regenerated. There's a bit more on everything from the Twelfth Doctor onwards and it's not a bad overview, but not complete and very simplistic.

Review: The Lair (2024)

Neil Marshall's latest is a great monster action movie, with lots of thrills, spills, and of course monsters!

The basic idea is simple: a female air force pilot, Kate Sinclair (Charlotte Kirk), finds herself downed in Afghanistan and takes refuge in a huge underground bunker. Exploring she finds vats containing some sort of humanoids, and when one gets broken, the thing in it revives and chases her out of the bunker again, where she is rescued by friendly troops.

However they won't let things lie, and are soon back with Kate to explore further, only to find that more of these genetically engineered nasties are loose, and set on hunting down and killing anything that they can find, either in the bunker or outside of it.

The film is great fun and the opening is fast and furious as we go from a crash in the desert to the bunker, escape and back to base ... then there's a slow section where we find out more about the soldiers and so on, before it's back to the bunker and more deep underground shenanigans with the monsters.

The pace and action overcomes any concerns over casting or how many of these soldiers are just dreadful shots and you just get swept along with it. As a Saturday night with beer and mates movie, it's perfect.

Review: Longlegs (2024)

Longlegs is something of a strange film. It follows a path and turns out to be not quite what you expected come the end.

Nominally it's about a female police detective, Lee Harper, who is hunting a serial killer who kills following a somewhat eccentric pattern of dates related to the birthday of his victims.  But the killings all seem to be carried out by the father of the victim, who kills his daughter, but anyone else around also.

So there's a pattern but no obvious motives until an occult element is thrown into the mix involving a life-sized doll which each victim is sent, in the head of which is a strange silver orb which seems to contain something and yet nothing.

As the plot unfolds, Harper finds that she is at the centre of events, and that the mysterious Longlegs, so called as by the name he signs coded messages left at each killing, has plans for her personally.

I enjoyed the film, though it is somewhat hard to work out what is happening. Not as hard as some critics made out though, and ultimately all becomes clear. The ideas are rooted in Satanic beliefs and in evil, as well as a touch of voodoo. There's a healthy dose of Silence of the Lambs in here also, and while Nicholas Cage, who plays the deranged (or is he) Longlegs is not a patch on Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lekter, there is much to appreciate and enjoy in his performance.

The explanations when they come are impactful for Harper and her family, and leave a lot of thoughts in the mind as to what happened next. I don't think it needs a sequel though as this is complete in and of itself.

It's telling that the BluRay I have has a very non-descript cover on it (same as the poster shown here). Obviously the marketing team had no idea what to make of this either.

I have often said that I have not seen a film with Nick Cage in that I haven't enjoyed, and this does not break that run. Enjoyable and thought provoking, which is what every film should be.

Review: Abigail (2024)

Abigail is a film which, when people came to review it, they were skirting around and tiptoeing as they didn't want to spoil the surprise of the film.  To be honest it is pretty good, and so as to try and review without mentioning it would be really hard ... if you have not yet seen this film and want to see it ... then stop reading now.

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Have you stopped?

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If you carry on then you will learn what the film is all about ... Your choice.

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Right then.

Okay, so we start like an everyday thriller. There's a rich gang boss type chap, and a group of thug-types (although they are a pretty hopeless bunch) are sent by a third party mystery person to kidnap his 12 year old  ballerina daughter to hold her for ransom. So far so good.

They end up in some old mansion somewhere, with the girl hooded and in chains in a bedroom, while the rest of the gang lounge about and wait for the ransom to be paid. The house is one they were told to go to ... and only one of them is to ever interact with the girl, no names to be used ... normal ransom stuff.

But then we discover that this little girl isn't such a little girl after all. She's instead an old vampire with incredible strength and ingenuity. Her father is also a vampire, and this is a little game they play to stop them getting too bored.

The house locks down on them (shades of The House on Haunted Hill, or 13 Ghosts) and they're left to try and survive with a hungry vampire kid on their trail.

The film is great fun. It takes 30 minutes or so before the realisations start to kick in, but once it gets rolling it's very enjoyable. The deaths are great and there is A LOT of blood ... vampires explode with a very wet and messy geyser of blood (reminiscent of the vampires in Planet Terror) and some of the gang get vampirised and are then controlled by the girl ... imaginative and fun stuff!

With so many vampire films out there, it's great to come across one which is different and which just rolls with the premise and takes it to its natural (or unnatural) conclusion.  This is a film that I will certainly watch again.