Time To Reflect

Today we had a lovely day out in Warrington, at the Waterstones there where Sam and I were signing copies of our new books.

One of the customers, a lovely lady called Emma, was in a bind as she needed a two-hander script for her College work, and had no idea how to source it. So I offered to write her something.

Here's what I put together ... presented here for your enjoyment. I hope it helps her out :)



TIME TO REFLECT
(c) 2011 David J Howe


KATIE is in her room, reading a book, when there is a knock at the door. KATIE puts her book down and gets up to answer the door. She moves with a depressed gait. Life is pressing down on her.

She returns to the room with SUSAN, who is talking really fast.

SUSAN
… sorry to burst in like that, it’s something of a new thing for me and I’ve not had the time to …

KATIE
Woah. Slow down will you, what are you on about.

SUSAN
Sorry. Yes. Well. You see. It was …

KATIE
Slow. Down.

SUSAN relaxes a little and KATIE gestures to the sofa/chair to sit down. SUSAN smiles and sits. SUSAN gives a couple of deep breaths and then does a long exhale as her hands, outstretched and palms down move towards the floor as she breathes out.

SUSAN
Thanks. That’s better.

KATIE
Yes it is. Now. First things first.

KATIE fixes SUSAN with her eyes.

KATIE (cont)
Who are you?

SUSAN
Oh! Of course. Yes. You’ve not met me yet. That’s funny.

KATIE
What’s funny?

SUSAN
That you’ve not met me yet.

KATIE (giving a withering look)
Well of course I’ve not met you. I have no idea who you are!

SUSAN (giggling)
Oh, you will …

KATIE (Shaking head)
What?

SUSAN
Nothing. Nothing. Sorry. Who am I? Yes. I’m Susan. And you’re Katie.

KATIE
How do you know who I am, I’ve never met you before.

SUSAN
Oh you have, but you don’t know about it yet.

KATIE (confused)
I have … but I don’t know … look … what are you talking about?

SUSAN
I’m sorry.

KATIE
And stop apologising.

SUSAN
Sorry … (smiles) Sorry.

KATIE
So where do I know you from?

SUSAN
Oh, you know me very well indeed.

KATIE (looks at SUSAN critically)
Do I?

SUSAN
Oh, yes.

KATIE (studies SUSAN)
So … from Uni … no. I don’t remember anyone like you from there. Maybe … maybe from the Bar? Are you one of the girls from the bar?

SUSAN shakes her head.

KATIE (thoughtful)
Not the bar then … hmmm … are you … are you a friend of … of Peter’s? Yes! You’re a friend of Peter’s.



SUSAN
Peter! PETER! That loser. Do me a favour.

KATIE
Not Peter then … now you’re just trying to confuse me.

KATIE stands and starts pacing while SUSAN watches her, an amused expression on her face.

KATIE
So not Uni, not the bar, not Peter …

KATIE stops and point at SUSAN in triumph.

KATIE
Got it! You’re someone from the town … one of those girls I met the other month while working at Boots.

SUSAN
I wish it was that simple …

KATIE
OK.

KATIE slumps back in the chair.

KATIE (cont)
I give up. How do you know me?

SUSAN
Well …

KATIE nods and looks attentive

SUSAN (Cont)
This isn’t going to be easy …

KATIE frowns.

SUSAN (cont)
You see. Katie

SUSAN swallows and there’s a long pause

SUSAN (cont)
I’m your mother.

There is silence.

KATIE silently mouths ‘You’re my mother’ and shakes her head.

SUSAN
I knew you wouldn’t believe me.

KATIE
But … but my Mother is dead … she died four years ago.

SUSAN nods

KATIE (cont)
And she was sixty five years old.

SUSAN smiles

KATIE
And you … you are what … the same age as me? Seventeen?

SUSAN
Eighteen.

KATIE
I don’t get this at all.

SUSAN
Nor do I to tell the truth.

KATIE
Why do you say you’re my mother then? Her name was … was …

Realisation dawns over KATIE’S face.

KATIE (cont)
Her name was Susan …

SUSAN
Indeed … and I am she. No. I mean, she is me.

KATIE rubs her hand over her face.

KATIE
But if you are her.

SUSAN
Yes.

KATIE
And you are here.

SUSAN
Yes.

KATIE
And you are eighteen.

SUSAN nods encouragingly.

KATIE
Then … then … HOW THE FUCK CAN YOU BE MY MOTHER?

SUSAN smiles

SUSAN
Oh, that’s easy.

KATIE
Is it?

SUSAN
Yup. I came back in time.

KATIE
… what?

SUSAN
Yes. Back. Or probably forward. Yes. Forward.

KATIE
Forward?

SUSAN
From the past. Yes.

KATIE
Erm …

SUSAN
Oh, I know what you’re thinking. The girl is nuts. She’s bonkers. Crazy in the coconuts … but every word is true.

KATIE moves away from Susan, looking at her warily.

SUSAN
Yes. I have come forward in time, from the past, with a very important message for you.

KATIE shakes her head as if to clear it.

KATIE
A message.

SUSAN
Yup. Not everyone can do the travelling thing.

KATIE
Well, to be honest I’m surprised anyone can …

SUSAN
Tell me about it.

KATIE (muttering)
I wish you would.

SUSAN
Well, it’s like, you know Doctor Who?

KATIE
Erm … Doctor Who? What like off telly?

SUSAN
That’s the one.

KATIE
Yeah … I’ve seen a few episodes. The one with some statues that came alive, and something else with that bloke off Gavin and Stacey …

SUSAN (overjoyed)
You got it! Yes!

KATIE frowns again and looks at SUSAN quizzically

KATIE
You’re … telling me you came here in a police box?

SUSAN (laughs)
Oh no, don’t be daft. That would be stupid.

KATIE
Stupid. Right.

SUSAN
No, I meant it’s like that timey wimey stuff they go on about there … sometimes you find yourself moving about in time … just kinda happens yeah?

KATIE
No. Not really. I can’t say I’ve ever found that myself.

SUSAN
No? Ah, well, maybe that comes later. Anyway … the important thing I need to tell you is …

KATIE
Go on … am I going to be kidnapped by Daleks or something?

SUSAN (amazed)
How did you guess!

KATIE
What?

SUSAN (grins)
Kidding.

KATIE
Yeah, thanks for that. Look. What do you want?

SUSAN
Lottery.

KATIE
What?

SUSAN
Lottery? I wondered if you did the lottery?

KATIE
No. Not at all.

SUSAN
Good. No point. You’d never win.

KATIE
Oh, thanks for that. So you came all the way from the past to tell me not to do the lottery? Brilliant.

SUSAN
Sorry. Got distracted there.

SUSAN checks her watch.

SUSAN (cont)
Whoops. Nearly out of time. Look. Katie.

KATIE
You are a very strange person.

SUSAN
I know. But listen. I came from the past to tell you … tell you …

KATIE
Yes?

SUSAN
Well … I love you.

KATIE
What?

SUSAN
That’s all. I love you. And I’ve always been proud of you.

KATIE looks at SUSAN and starts to sniffle.

SUSAN
I’m sorry, dear. What with everything going on, I never actually got to tell you. And now … well … now I can see how that has held you back. Stopped you trying because you thought there was no point. Well there is a point, and you have to keep trying.

KATIE
What?

SUSAN keeps an eye on her watch.

SUSAN
Sorry … I only have so long, and only one chance. So use it Katie. Get out there and kick ass like there is no tomorrow.

KATIE nods.

SUSAN
Atta girl.

KATIE
But … if you’re my mum, then …

SUSAN
Sorry. No more time … just know that I love you and I’m proud of you … so get on with your life …

KATIE nods tearfully.

SUSAN
Right … that timey wimey stuff is happening again … got to get back to the point of collection …

SUSAN jumps up and hugs KATIE tight.

SUSAN
Be happy love.

Then SUSAN rushes for the door and off set.

KATIE is left standing there with one hand over her mouth, wondering what just happened.

KATIE shakes her head and frowns a little.

Then the frown turns into a smile.

KATIE
She did love me. And I never realised.

KATIE looks up into the air.

KATIE
Thanks mum.

KATIE moves off stage with a spring in her step which was not there before.


ENDS

Busy Bee

Time has a habit of slipping away from you ... and in the worlds of publishing even moreso. Since the last time I penned words for this blog a lot has happened. My IT Job has reached another breakpoint and I left my contract at the end of July, so after a quick holiday in the sun, for the moment I'm catching up on all sorts of other things. The new series of Doctor Who has started up again, and I'm very aware that I just couldn't make the time to talk about all the episodes in the first half of the season ... and so far I've not had time to comment on the one just past - the one about killing Hitler, though in fact it was about nothing of the sort. However we have plans for a new edition of The Television Companion for the 50th anniversary in 2013, and so I suspect that my comments on the Matt Smith episodes will find their way into that book ... But enough of what has not been happening ... time for some news of what has! Taking advantage in the break in IT work, and I am absolutely delighted that Telos has picked up a collection of my horror fiction. Called talespinning, the book should be published very soon now, and pre-ordering is available on the Telos site. The cover is by the amazing Bryan Talbot, and the book contains all my horror fiction, completed over the last thirty years or so, plus the scripts for the film Daemos Rising and an unfilmed sequel called Face of the Fendahl, extracts from two incomplete longer works ... it's a great selection of the macabre and the humourous and I hope people will enjoy it! Copies can be ordered direct from Telos: http://www.telos.me.uk/category.php?id=3#120; and every copy pre-ordered will be dedicated and signed by myself. Another book out at the end of September of which I am very proud is a fantasy/horror anthology called Full Fathom Forty. This is being published by the British Fantasy Society, and is a stonking 500 page tome of 40 of the very best stories by members and friends of the BFS. I have edited it for the BFS' own fortieth anniversary this year, and it's one of the strongest anthologies of fantastic fiction I have ever been pleased to read.

For forty years the British Fantasy Society has been promoting and appreciating fantastic fiction in all its guises. Now, to celebrate the many worlds of wonder and terror, the BFS presents an anthology of works by members and friends of the Society past and present. Here you will find angels and vampires, werewolves and killers, magicians and gentlemen, alien worlds and urban nightmares. Let the British Fantasy Society be your guide through a selection of the best fiction to be found on this world ... or beyond! Featuring the fantastic fiction and poetry of: Nina Allan, Suzanne Barbieri, Carl Barker, Mike Barrett, Ramsey Campbell, Jonathan Carroll, Adrian Chamberlin, Simon Clark, Raven Dane, Jan Edwards, Murray Ewing, Paul Finch, Christopher Fowler, Matthew Fryer, Stephen Gallagher, Cate Gardner, R B Harkess, Ian Hunter, Wilf Kelleher Jones, Jasper Kent, Joel Lane, Stephen Laws, Mark Lewis, Alison J Littlewood, Steve Lockley, Graham Masterton, Peter Mark May, Geoff Nelder, Kim Newman, Stan Nicholls, Martin Owton, Cas Peace, John Llewellyn Probert, Tina Rath, Steven Savile, Robert Shearman, Jim Steel, Sam Stone, Deborah Walker and Conrad Williams.

If you are not a member of the BFS, then copies are available for sale. Unfortunately the BFS Website is unavailable at the moment which makes providing a link there somewhat challenging, but copies can be ordered using this PayPal link:

Please select destination

UK £19.49 Europe £21.99 Rest of World £26.99

I'm also out and about quite a bit coming up. Here's a list of the events which I am appearing and guesting at. Hopefully some of you might be able to pop along and say hello!

THE ASYLUM, Lincoln, 9th-11th September 2011 The Asylum Steampunk weekend is an opportunity to do all things Steampunk. Sam Stone, David J Howe, Frazer Hines, Raven Dane, Robert Rankin and Toby Frost are among the guests for this fun weekend event. I will be taking part in panels, signings and readings. Date: 9th-11th Sept Address: Lincoln Castle, The Lawns, The Victoria, Lincoln. For more information visit: http://steampunk.synthasite.com WATERSTONES, Llandudno 17th September 2011 I will be launching talespinning, at this very popular North Wales Store. Time: 12pm-4pm Address: 37 Victoria Centre, Mostyn Centre, Llandudno, Conwy, LL30 2NG WATERSTONES, Warrington, 24th September 2011 Science Fiction and Fantasy Day. Join Sam Stone, David J Howe and Frazer Hines (and many more) for readings, discussions and talks based around Sci-Fi/Fantasy in the Media and in print. More info on this later. I'll also have copies of talespinning for sale. Time: 12-4pm Address: Waterstone's Warrington, 22 The Mall, Golden Square Shopping Centre, Warrington, WA1 1QP. THE CRYPT, Manchester Vampire Society Meet, Manchester, 25th September 2011 Sam Stone and David J Howe will be reading from their latest works. With Q & A session. Books will be on sale. Address: The Seven Oaks, 5 Nicholas Street, Manchester, M1 4HL Time: 4-8pm FANTASYCON, Brighton, 30th Sept - 2nd Oct 2011 I'll be launching talespinning on Saturday 31st September at FantasyCon in Brighton. Telos also has a strong showing in the British Fantasy Awards which are to be announced at the convention on the Sunday. Address: The Royal Albion Hotel, 35 Old Steine, Brighton, BN1 1NT. Further Information: http://www.fantasycon2011.org/hotel.htm WATERSTONES, Trafford Centre, 8th October 2011 I'll be signing copies of talespinning at this popular Manchester store. Time: 12-4pm Address: Waterstones Trafford Centre, 42 Regent Crescent, Barton Dock Road, Manchester, M17 8AP WATERSTONES, Preston, 15 October 2011 I'll be signing copies of talespinning. Time: 12-4pm Address: Waterstone's Preston, 3-5 Fishergate Preston PR1 3LJ WATERSTONES, Bolton, Lancashire, 29th Oct 2011 I'll be signing copies of talespinning. Time: 12-4pm Address:Waterstones, 32-36 Deansgate, Bolton, BL1 1BL WATERSTONES, Wrexham, 30th Oct 2011 I'll be signing copies of talespinning. Time: 12-4pm Address: Waterstones, 9/11 Regent Street, Wrexham, LL11 1SG. WATERSTONES, Liverpool One, Liverpool, 26th Nov 2011 I'll be signing copies of talespinning. Time: 12-4pm Address:Waterstones, 12 College Lane, Liverpool, L1 3DL. GALLIFREY 2012, LAX Marriott, Los Angeles, USA, 17th-19th Feb 2012 Sam Stone, David J Howe and Frazer Hines will be appearing as guests at Gallifrey. Time: ALL Weekend. Panels, Interviews, Creative Writing Workshop. Address: LAX MARRIOT. Los Angeles, California. GALAXYFEST 2012, Colorado Springs, USA, 24th-26th Feb 2012 I'm overjoyed to be International Writing Guest of Honour at this convention. Other guests are Sam Stone and Kevin J Anderson, with Robert Picardo, Angus Oblong, Christie Golden, Frazer Hines, Robert Elrod, Clare Cramer, Claudia Christian, Dean Haglund, Denise Crosby and Tori Higginson. Time: ALL Weekend. Panels, Interviews, Creative Writing Workshop. Address: Antlers Hilton, 4 South Cascade, Colorado Springs, CO 80903-1695, USA.

That's all for the moment. Hopefully it won't be too long before I can share some more news and views with you all.

Oi Spaceman!

Whenever I come to write my thoughts on Nu Who, I'm always aware that I might be in the minority. Brief statii posted on Facebook bring a cavalcade of comments as to how I am wrong, how I didn't 'get' it and so on, but generally when I post my thoughts here, I get nice comments and people saying that they're glad I said what I did as they thought the same and felt somewhat bludgeoned by the rest of fandom for not thinking as per the collective ... So I'll do as usual here, and pass on my thoughts and feelings about the opener for Season 6 (or Season 32, or Season 11.2 depending on how you're counting). This year I managed to stay pretty much completely spoiler free - so I had (and have) little clue as to what to expect. So 'The Impossible Astronaut' kicked off with no expectations at all. First of all, the title. It's rubbish. From what we saw, 'Silence Falls' would have been better, or maybe 'Space 1969' ... 'The Impossible Astronaut' sounds more like a novel or comic story ... but then that's what we were presented with, a story which seemed to be more at home in any media other than television. We kick off with the Doctor at various points in the past: being painted naked; in some wartime tunnels; and dancing on film with Laurel and Hardy. All very nice, but what was the point? To attract Amy and Rory's attention? Why not just call on them ... it's not very Doctory. And another thing, for all this episode's bleating on about not being able to change the past, that's all the Doctor seems to do - inserting himself in people's past and changing how the future will pan out. Anyway, he sends Amy and Rory and River Song (who seems to be in a jail or something but is allowed to leave by her captors?) invitations to America to meet with him by a lake ... and the first clue is that he says he is 1103 years old, but last time Amy saw him he was 908 ... so some 200 years have passed for the Doctor. But then a car arrives bringing an old man bearing a can of petrol .. and the Doctor talks with an Apollo astronaut down by the lake who then seems to kill him ... and then while he is regenerating kills him completely. But we're used to all this by now ... regenerations that are not, events which are not what they seem ... even in the Pandorica episode the Doctor was apparently killed ... but wasn't. I wonder if the production team know the story of the Boy who Cried Wolf (or should that be Bad Wolf?). So all this outpouring of emotion from Amy left me cold ... seen this before. Got the t-shirt. And as usual the music was awful. Murray Gold seems to have a sledgehammer approach at times, and the choral stuff here really annoyed me. And the plot now starts to twist and turn. The Doctor's body is burned (so he does seem to be really really dead), and the old man - Canton Everett Delaware III - has another of the invitations, numbered 1 to 4 ... so who had number 1? Surprise! It is the Doctor ... this time aged 909 - so just a year after last meeting Amy and Rory ... but he doesn't seem to know who River Song is yet ... Spoilers! So they head to 1969 to where the TARDIS seems to want to go - to the 8th April to be precise, and the Oval Office, where President Nixon is troubled by a strange child who keeps phoning him for help. He has called in ex-FBI man Canton Delaware (which number we're not sure of) to assist him and before long the Doctor, Amy, Rory and River are all embroiled in the mystery. Amy meanwhile is seeing alien creatures which she then forgets about, and, feeling sick, heads for the toilets where she encounters it again. She works out that once you can't see it any more you forget about it and so takes a photo on her phone. The creature tells her that she must tell the Doctor what he must know ... but what that is, is somewhat obtuse ... that he died? The creature is quite spooky but is overused - scary is half seen in the shadows and background, not in plain view in a toilet. And is it only me who thinks it looks a bit like the Headmaster from the Pink Floyd video for 'Another Brick in the Wall'? It kills a woman in the toilet for no apparent reason other than to establish that it is a threat, and then Amy rushes out - immediately forgetting it. So how did the creature expect her to tell the Doctor anything? Come to that, why doesn't it tell him itself? All this creeping around ... what's the point? No-one could ever reveal its presence as everyone forgets it the moment they can't see it ... The Doctor figures out that the calls from the child are coming from a warehouse about 5 miles from Cape Kennedy ... because the kid mentioned three names when asked where they were and who they were ... this borders on the mcguffin for me. A convenient hook to bring the Doctor to a place where there are all manner of alien gadgets and tech just lying around. River investigates some underground tunnels, and, apart from lots of the forgettable monsters, she finds a locked room with some sort of control console in it. This looked to me like the alien craft from last year's 'The Lodger' to me, but it's function is unknown as the alien creatures move in on Rory and River. Meanwhile upstairs, Amy admits to the Doctor that she is pregnant. What a time to pick ... and immediately one is asking, so is the Astronaut her child? Is River Song her child? Is the Doctor her child? But then River is complaining of feeling sick as well, so is she pregnant too? Is her child the Doctor? Or even Amy? It's all timey wimey wibbly wobbly stuff. So the Astronaut appears again and the suit is revealed to have a child in it (and it would be impossible for a kid to fill and operate such a suit, but never mind) and Amy shoots it with Canton's gun ... And we crash into the closing credits. There's some lovely dialogue in the episode. I liked all of River Song's musings on her life with the Doctor, running in different directions (in case you had forgotten this) but it just served to confuse things more really. You have to keep remembering that River cannot remember any of her past (as far as we are concerned) adventures, and the things she goes on about haven't happened yet as far as we are concerned. It's all a little cerebral for a kid's teatime show really. And that's another of the problems I have. Personally I *like* Doctor Who to be thought provoking and exciting and horrifying. 'The children's own show which adults adore'. And yet ... and yet we have a magazine aimed at 5 year olds (Doctor Who Adventures), lego sets, activity books and novels aimed at the 8-10 age group (or younger) ... there's no merchandise except perhaps Doctor Who Magazine which is aimed at the older age group. So the show is actively courting and cultivating fans who are young kids, and then presenting material on the show itself which they could never follow or understand! Heck the merchandise is aimed at people who were not even born when Christopher Eccleston saved Rose from the Autons! It's food for thought. And so while I'm looking forward to see how this story pans out - and kudos to Steven Moffat, I have no idea at all what might be going on - I am strangely ambivalent about it all. I like my Doctor Who to have a plot, to excite and engage on a level more than just wondering how the characters would react and so on. There are too many shows out there which are unwatchable for a single episode because they are all about the backstory and not about the viewers and presenting an entertaining hour of plot and excitement. Many shows start life as a series of great stand alone stories but then, as they beome popular, alienate all but those who have watched every episode, by making the mistake of thinking that the characters and backstory is more interesting than the plots - The X-Files, Buffy, Supernatural all made this mistake, and recently I've tried to watch episodes of Warehouse 13 and Witchblade and come out the other end having no idea whatsoever about what the show was about - it was all about backstory I didn't know and characters I didn't care about. I really, really don't want Doctor Who to go down that route.

Goodbye Sarah Jane

I can't remember the first time I met Elisabeth Sladen. I mean, over the years I've met many, many people from the worlds of Doctor Who, both the actors and behind the scenes technicians, and it's hard to pin down when you first meet someone. The first Doctor Who convention was in 1977, and at that time the companion was the lovely Louise Jameson, and she and Tom Baker came to that inaugural gathering in a Battersea church hall and enthralled those who were there. But Lis ... I'm wracking my brain but I can't remember her attending a UK con at all in the seventies or eighties - at least I have no photographs of her attending any of them. So I couldn't have met her then. When Keith Barnfather and Reeltime Pictures made the independent drama Downtime, although I was involved (I played one of the Yeti!) the days I was on set were not the ones that Lis was on set so I didn't meet her then ... The reason that this is so puzzling to me is that despite the fact I can't remember when I met her, she knew who I was. I know we met at one of the Gallifrey conventions in LA a few years back, when it was at Van Nuys and rained all the time. She was lovely and charming, perhaps a little put out by all the people there, and the rain ... always the rain ... but surely that can't have been the first time I met her? I know she was gracious enough to speak to me for the book I wrote for Virgin on the Companions - I probably still have the tape of that somewhere in a cupboard - but that was a phone interview as I recall ... And yet ... I was at one of those Memorabilia fairs in Birmingham a few years ago. A friend wanted to get some signatures and so we decided to drive up there and see what it was all about. It was packed and busy with people and costumes ... mental. While wandering around I saw that Lis was signing in one of the booths - I think she was being sponsored to be there by a retailer - and in one lull in her never-ending queue, I approached and said Hi. She looked up at me and the most beautiful smile cracked her face. 'David!' she said. 'How lovely to see you again!' and we chatted about how she was doing and so on for a minute or two before the people behind me started to mutter. So I bade my farewells and wandered away. I think my memory must be breaking away like icebergs these days. Great chunks of my life drifting away ... I must have met her before ... But then I think Elisabeth Sladen was one of those rare people ... someone who makes you *feel* that you know her through her warmth and friendliness. She obviously knew me and remembered me from whatever passing nod we had enjoyed in the past, and yet she greeted me as an old friend, a familiar face. And that meant so much! As I mentioned, I've met so many people. Some have become close friends, some I know well enough to call up and chat, some I see at the occasional convention and we have a nice natter about stuff, catching up. But many have met so many people over the years, and it all starts to blur. When I was a kid, growing up with Doctor Who, my main eras were the Troughton and Pertwee years. I still love Troughton's era with a passion and have listened to the soundtracks and watched the videos so often ... but then, with 1971 I turned 10, and it was the Pertwee era that I remember watching. I remember missing episodes too due to holidays. This was when I started to collect the books ... the magazines ... the ephemera ... this was my formation as a fan and collector. I recall getting the Radio Times 10th Anniversary Special and seeing for the first time, the preview of the next season - the show's 11th. With a new companion who looked modern and funky. New monsters - a spacesuited Sontaran (whatever that was), dinosaurs and spiders (I hate spiders and so this show held a special fascination for me). Within moments of appearing on screen Lis made the part of Sarah Jane Smith her own. She was real and natural, a proper woman - not all girly like Jo could be - but someone capable who could manage quite fine on her own thank you very much. She was great! The greatness continued into Tom Baker's era, with shows like 'The Ark in Space', 'The Sontaran Experiment' and 'Pyramids of Mars' cementing her brilliance in my mind. I never fancied her ... I think I was a little too young ... but she was like an older sister, someone you could depend on, and she loved the Doctor with a passion that was plain to see. When she left at the end of 'The Hand of Fear' it was a sad time ... the Doctor called to Gallifrey and he couldn't/wouldn't take her with him - how times have changed - and so Sarah was consigned to a roadway anywhere but where she should have been ... And an era passed. Then, thanks to the tenacity of Russell T Davies, she was back ... an episode with David Tennant and it was as though she had never been away ... and then her own series, The Sarah Jane Adventures, with more monsters to fight and wrongs to right. Here she had her own companions, a likable bunch of kids who looked up to her in the same way as I had looked up to Sarah when she was kicking the ass of anti-matter monsters and Kraals. But the great wheel turns, and times change. The past we love stays as a memory, and the people we know and love, whether we have met them in person or not, move on and up and away. I was privileged to have met Lis. She was happy and friendly and had time for everyone, and she remembered my name. You can't ask more from your childhood heroes.

The Shark Whisperer

Christmas day is never the best time to enjoy a Doctor Who story. You're full of turkey and trimmings, replete with wine and port. Concentrating on some timey-wimey action is out of the question really, and in previous years, the Doctor Who story presented on Christmas Day has tended to be packed with action and adventure and never-mind-the-logic to keep the kids happy and looking forward to when they might be able to buy some toys related to what they have just seen (usually months and months later when they have forgotten all about what was on anyway, having been distracted by more presents from the late-arriving Aunt Ada or something). Anyway ... in the lead up to more 11th Doctor adventures, I realised it was high time I cracked open the Sky Planner and re-watched the Christmas Day adventure from just 4 months ago - but it seems like forever! So I settled down with a glass of wine in one hand and a notepad in the other ... as 'A Christmas Carol' unfolded before me again. The first thing to say about Nu Who is that textually and narratively it's very rich. When I was making notes on a Russell T Davies story, I might fill 3 or 4 pages of my notepad. For 'A Christmas Carol' I filled 8 pages. Every line brings some new information, something to be noted, cross referenced, stamped and filed. Steven Moffat loves to fill his scripts with character and interest and this offering did not disappoint on that level at all. From the outset we're plunged into danger as a very Star Trek spacecraft is plunging to its doom on an unknown planet. There is the squeaky voiced captain from Voyager there, complete with tight fitting white uniform; the multi-racial crew to appease the PC brigade; the navigator who seems to be blind ... all the stereotypes are here. But then there's Amy dressed as a policewoman and Rory dressed as a Roman Soldier fresh from the honeymoon suite ... hmmm ... something for the dads to ponder on I suspect, while the kids realise that more action figures are on the horizon. The spaceship us crashing because there's a machine on the planet which is affecting the sky ... and the Doctor needs to turn it off, but he can't because the controls are isomorphic (cue a nice little bit of tete a tete referencing 'Pyramids of Mars' and the whole Doctor Who isomorphic thing), so instead he needs to change the mind of the grumpy curmudgeon who seems to run the planet Kazran Sardick, who sounds like his name is spelt backwards. For some reason Kazran has people kept on ice in his basement while he lends people money. How he sees any return on this is unknown as he never appears to get repaid ... but a family member is kept as security for the loan. A very strange arrangement. The Doctor arrives down the chimney for no good reason other than it looks cool, and talks everyone to death for a couple of minutes before the family trying to get to see their family member is thrown out. The Doctor realises that Kazran cannot hit the child, and this shows him that Kazran is not beyond redemption. There's a nice verbal reference to 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer' here with Kazran's 'Bored now!' utterance, before the Doctor leaves to try and figure out why there are fish flying in the fog. This is a lovely touch, and is quite magical - you really can accept that the little fish fly around in the fog, suspended on the ice particles therein. Beautiful idea and very well realised. But Amy and Rory and their crashing Star Trek ship have less than an hour! Good job the Doctor can travel in time then ... failing to convince Kazran by any normal means, the Doctor leaves the old man watching a video projection of his younger self, and the Doctor arrives in the video to meet the boy Kazran. This is a very well thought through conceit, that Kazran Sr can watch Kazran Jr meet the Doctor and feel his memories changing as the Doctor changes the course of his life for good. So the Doctor charms Kazran Jr and agrees to attract a fish to his bedroom using the Sonic Screwdriver ... except that it's a massive shark which comes hunting and ends up with half the screwdriver in its belly. There's lots to enjoy here as the Doctor plays leapfrog with time, allowing houseworkers to win non-existent lotteries and popping back to see Kazran Sr to get the code number for the ice vault in the basement (it's 7258 if you ever need it). The shark is dying and the Doctor intends to take it back into the sky but needs an icebox, so they choose the one which was seen at the beginning of the show, occupied by a beautiful young woman called Abigail Pettigrew. Luckily Abigail can sing beautifully and sings to the shark to calm it down. This is now starting to get a little daft and convenient. Plot going out the window as opportunity comes in its place. Why is this woman of all those in the vault the one they choose? Why is she the only one who can sing to calm the shark? And why does her casket have 000 008 on the front counter? Somehow Kazran Sr is still watching all this, but there's no evidence of the Doctor using a camera or anything, so it's all a little strange. Then, for no apparent reason (though I suspect it's to try and make Kazran Sr a nicer man) the Doctor and Kazran Jr spend the next 7 Christmas Eves waking Abigail up and heading off on many adventures together. Kazran Sr has many many photographs of everywhere they went (and it seems to be more than just 7 days). But Kazran Jr slowly grows up ... and he falls in love with Abigail. He also seems a lot older than the 18 or 20 he must be by the end (assuming he's 10 or 12 years old at the start). Kazran is told a secret by Abigail and he puts her back in the box for the last time (the number on the front is 000 001) and tells the Doctor he doesn't want to see him for any more Christmas Eves. Meanwhile (remember the Plot) Kazran's father completes his machine to control the fish (I'm not sure why he wanted to, something to do with people paying to see them, so maybe he was paid to bring sharks and the like down onto the planet for some reason ... all a little vague) but Kazran Sr still won't help the Doctor to save the crashing spaceship (and given that they had an hour to go, it feels like days have passed ... but never mind!). The Doctor tries showing him holograms of the passengers of the ship singing (no idea how he did this) and then somehow transports a hologram of Kazran to the ship so he can see it (again, no clue how this worked). It transpires that Abigail was ill when she was frozen and only had 8 days to live ... which is why the counter was counting down. But how did Kazran know that when he froze her in the first place? Why take as security for a loan someone who's going to die anyway ... he was such a hard-nosed character, that doesn't make sense at all! He would require someone that the family would want back, not someone who was about to die. And what number did all the other caskets have on them? And why a count down? If the idea was that Kazran maybe charged interest on the number of times the families had their loved ones back, then it would count up surely, so at the final reckoning, Kazran could see how much they had to repay him? As I say, this aspect really makes no sense at all. The final straw is when the Doctor allows Kazran Jr to see what he becomes, and Kazran Sr goes to hit his younger self but cannot. I wondered here what happened to that good old Doctor Who trope the Blinivitch Limitation Effect, as admirably demonstrated in that paragon of Doctor Who continuity 'Mawdryn Undead'. If the same person from two different points in their timeline meet and touch, then there is a massive explosion of energy. Except that here there isn't, and Kazran can hug his younger self with no problem whatsoever. The ship is still crashing ... remember the ship? ... but the Doctor discovers that Kazran's machine now won't respond to Kazran either as the Doctor has changed him too much! So the Doctor decides to use his broken Sonic Screwdriver to set up a resonance with the part still in the shark (which apparently has lived all this time - maybe 60 years? According to Google this might be possible though) but they need to transmit something that they know will work - Abigail's singing. So they have to break her out of cold storage again - and thus make her live her last day - singing to save the spaceship. Now the practical side of me says that the Doctor actually had a recording of Abigail singing - Kazran was watching it - so why couldn't they have played that on a loop through the Sonic to sort it all out? The Doctor didn't seem to think very laterally here, and just morosely accepted that Abigail would have to die to save everyone on the ship ... would he have done that if Amy and Rory had not been on it I wonder? So the Doctor returns Kazran Jr to his timestream, and then leaves with a rescued Amy and Rory, and Kazran Sr spends his last day with Abigail flying around in a carriage being pulled by the shark. The End. Whoah! What happened there? Why didn't the Doctor at least try and save Abigail? That's not very Doctory ... He doesn't leave people to die and not even try? We don't even know what was wrong with her, or why they knew it was exactly 8 days she had to live ... she certainly didn't seem very ill or sick in any way. I didn't like this aspect of it as it cast the Doctor in a very poor light. Rather than battling valiantly to save her, and perhaps failing, he was never seen to even try. Even Amy and Rory seemed pretty unconcerned by it all ... such a difference from 'The Fires of Pompeii' where the Doctor is forced by Donna to save just one family from the devastation ... you'd have think he'd learned something. So overall it was a rollicking ride, with some great imagery and surreal scenes of sharks and fish and crashing spacecraft. The performances were brilliant - Michael Gambon as Kazran was superb, being pig-headed and evil one moment and oozing with pathos the next; Katherine Jenkins was cast as Abigail because she can sing, and she was pretty good at all aspects of the role; Laurence Belcher was excellent as the young Kazran; and the award for the best ever actress name on television goes to Pooky Quesnel as the spaceship Captain. The regulars of Amy and Rory barely got a look in however, and one suspects that for the most part the actors were not available at the same time as the Doctor and others, necessitating a split in location which meant they never really met. 'A Christmas Carol' is perhaps the best of the Christmas Specials presented by the new series. A great piece of television, with only a few elements which fail to hold together in the cold light of Boxing Day morning. I can't wait for the next series!

My Garden

Someone at the Gallifey Con (Hi Alan) recorded me reading my short horror story MY GARDEN ... and here it is ... enjoy: http://www.ilike.com/artist/David+J+Howe/track/My+Garden#ap

New Short Fiction

Hi Folks I was absolutely over the moon the other day to learn that my short fiction piece SUSAN had been picked up by Dark Fiction Magazine for their new issue. It's online now at http://www.darkfictionmagazine.co.uk/episode-4/story-susan/ Please head over there and have a listen - it's an audio magazine and I originally wrote the piece to be read. Hope you enjoy it. David

I Bid You Welcome

When out looking for Christmas presents recently I stumbled across a Dracula triple bill DVD in Asda of all places. This is one of the previously released Universal Collection, but here is was £5 ... so I snapped it up. The collection contains the original Universal Dracula with Bela Lugosi, the 1931 Spanish version of the same film, then two other films: Dracula's Daughter and House of Dracula. I'd not seen the latter three at all, and so we were set for a few evenings entertainment. In reverse order, House of Dracula is a curious beast. Not quite a horror film but also not quite a comedy - that would come later when Abbot and Costello got in on the scene. But the set-up is distinctly farcical. Count Dracula visits a Professor to try and find a 'cure' for his vampirism, and the Professor and his beautiful hunchbacked nurse set about helping him. Then Larry Talbot arrives seeking a cure for his lycanthropy, and, when it's not forthcoming, jumps off the cliff into the sea ... the Professor goes down the cliff and they find a cave wherein lies the Frankenstein monster ... as well as some sort of fungal spores which will cure Talbot. Dracula is however trying to trick the professor and passes some of his blood into the human, so the Professor turns, Jekyll and Hyde-like into a human/vampire hybrid ... Honestly if you submitted this as a plot for a film or book then you'd be laughed out of the office ... It's all very hokey, but all played straight, and this helps matters. The cast are all pretty good and make the most of the ludicruous script, and the whole thing is entertaining in its own way. Dracula's Daughter is pretty dire though. Lacking the real thing, the plot is about Dracula's daughter and her attempt to ressurect her father ... it's slow and tedious and has comic characters inserted for no good reason. Not the best thing I've ever seen by a long shot. Then we come to the two Draculas. I'd always been told that the Spanish version was superior to the American one, but I beg to differ. The Lugosi version is far far better, with more atmosphere and character. That Lugosi was very comfortable in the role of the count is obvious, and he takes it all very seriously, wheras in the Spanish version, Carlos Villarias is something of a ham, playing it much like generations would spoof the character later on - all expressions and raised cloak. It is interesting to compare the two versions though as they both used the same script and were filmed on the same sets - but with different actors and directors, the end results are quite different. I preferred Dracula's appearance from his coffin in the Spanish version - wreathed in smoke and mist, but the general settings are better in the American one. I think that perhaps the cinematography just has the edge in the Spanish, but Tod Browning is a better director with more interesting ideas as to how it should all come together ... it's a fascinating exercise and I'm aware of only one other film which has two versions, both from the same script - though in this case filmed on entirely different sets. This is Psycho, where the 1960 Hitchcock version is reportedly vastly superior to the colour 1998 Gus van Sant version.

Doctor Who Live!

Interesting idea ... hire some stadium-sized venues and then put on a Doctor Who extravaganza with Monsters and everything ... Hmmm. When they announced Doctor Who Live, I, probably like everyone else, was quite excited. Sounded like fun and something different. I'd seen the play The Ultimate Adventure which was OK - a fun little diversion - but this promised to be bigger and better. So we got tickets to the Manchester News Arena, and the day arrived. When we got there, the place was packed with people all buying merchandise from the stalls around the outside corridor. It's always a little sad that these events seem to thrive more on how much money they can extract from your wallets than on word of mouth. So lots of stuff was being bought. Aside from the items produced specifically for the event (a glossy brochure, T Shirts, Mugs and the like) they were also hawking old Top Trumps card sets and other things which presumably had been sitting in boxes somewhere unsold and unloved. We had good seats - in Section C right down the front. So we settled down to see what might happen. The first slight surprise was that the place was not full. There were lots of empty seats around, but there was enough of a crowd for it to feel full of anticipation. There were lots of kids in Fezs and in David Tennant-like suits. I love seeing that :) When Doctor Who transcends fandom and everyone is dressing up. And so the show started. Live music from the band was excellent, and Nigel Planer comes on stage as Vorgenson, a showman who has a captured selection of monsters in his Mini-scope-like device. Yes, it's a riff on the old Pertwee story 'Carnival of Monsters'. Nice idea, but it got tired very quickly. Planer would talk a bit, then announce a monster, they appeared at the back of the auditorium and stomped around a bit, before going on stage and back into the machine. We saw some Silurians, Ood, Judoon, Scarecrows, Clockwork Robots, Vampire girls, Cybermen ... and all did pretty much the same thing. There was a faintly amusing bit of business where a stooge in the crowd is taking pictures and the Cybermen take him on stage and 'convert' him ... but anyone not in the immediate area would have had trouble seeing what was going on. All this monster stomping activity was interspersed with some clips from the show set to music ... hmmm ... if I'd wanted to watch some clips on video, then I could do that at home without spending £45 to sit in an Arena. The first half came to a close, and we stretched our legs and watched people buying ice creams for inflated prices. Then it was part two ... More of the same. A lengthy video thing about Amy Pond, the Doctor on a video screen ... I thought this was Doctor Who Live! But the Doctor wasn't there! What a disappointment. I held out hope to the end that Matt Smith might bound from the TARDIS in the flesh, but no. He remained a distant video image throughout. The only live aspect was the music, and the two actors who spoke - Nigel Planer and Nick Briggs as Churchill. Briggs was wonderful. A brilliant performance. He was obviously having a great time. But Planer seemed out of sorts - going through the motions. In the second half, some of the audience cottoned on that this should be a little like a Panto and so booed and hissed Planer when he appeared. But this was too little too late. The script was pretty dire, and where it should have been obvious that this was a Panto with audience participation required, the script did not allow for that interaction to happen. Even a somewhat forced element of the Doctor wanting the audience to shout something out when he called ... it was all practiced, but then never happened ... disappointing. There was a sequence with the Weeping Angels which was pretty neat - soldiers coming in from the back to investigate and then all being whisked away by the Angels. Nicely done on stage with lighting effects hiding the transformations and vanishings. The climax of course featured the Daleks - the large, chunky wheely-bin-like Tellytubby Daleks, and they looked pretty good on stage, trundling about barking orders. The Doctor saves the day from his video hideout, and a White Dalek floated around on a pretty well hidden crane arm. Then it was all over. Ultimately, Doctor Who Live did not live up to the hype. It had a basic script, pared down to the minimum to make it as cheap as possible to stage. Two speaking cast members, and a crew of maybe 8 or 10 others who played all the monsters. There was too much video footage and music - this was not billed as a Proms event, so why try and highlight that? - and not enough innovation and variance in the script in terms of how the Monsters were used. Nigel Planer seemed to walk through the whole thing and lacked any real conviction as a villain, and overall the fact that the Doctor was not live and in person at an event billed as 'Doctor Who Live' was really inexcusable. We enjoyed it, don't get me wrong, but at £45 a ticket, we expected perhaps a little more than just an extended, animated exhibition of monsters, accompanied by music and big-screen videos.

New Book on Digital

Readers with a long memory may recall that in 1997 I did a book with BBC Books called A Book of Monsters ... a rather lavish illustrated tome all about the monsters in the Classic series of Doctor Who. Well, flash forward a few years, and I get a letter from BBC Books telling me that they'd like to reprint it. Fantastic news! But when I call them to discuss what they want to do, it seems that it's all a mistake. They don't want to reprint it at all ... in fact they don't want to do anything with it! So I arranged to reclaim my rights in the written material, and, having got that back, decided that rather than just have it sit on my hard drive, I might as well make it available for people to get hold of. So I have put it up on a variety of digital formats for anyone interested to buy. I've called it Doctor Who Monsters: A Bestiary 1963 - 1996 to try and make it obvious that it doesn't cover the new series at all. I was always very proud of the book, the text is a great look at how the monsters were conceived and developed, and contains interview quotes with just about everyone who played a part in the process, from the writers to the designers to the actors who played them. The digital edition is just the text from the previous book - there is no new content, and none of the illustrations - but I felt that there are probably a few new fans out there who might like to find out about how it was all done 'in the old days' :) Here's some links as to where to find the various editions. There are supposed to be basic PDF type ones as well, but they don't seem to have gone live yet. I'll add them in here when they do: Kindle USA - http://www.amazon.com/Doctor-Who-Monsters-Bestiary-ebook/dp/B004CLYOD2/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&m=A7B2F8DUJ88VZ&s=digital-text&qid=1290357389&sr=1-2 Kindle UK - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Monsters-Classic-Bestiary/dp/B004CLYOD2 iPhone App - http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/doctor-who-monsters/id403204578?mt=8 iPad App - http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/doctor-who-monsters-hd/id401640251?mt=8

30 Days and 13 Hours

Watched a couple of new films of late, so some thoughts ... I really enjoyed the original 30 Days of Night film ... a great idea, simple, and yet effective. If you've not seen it, it's basically about a town in Alaska which, every year, experiences a month of night as the sun doesn't rise there. When this happens, the town effectively closes - everyone leaves or settles in for a month indoors. But on this year, the town is targetted as the hunting ground for a pack of shark-like vampires who swoop in and kill anyone and anything in their path. Now there's a sequel to the first film, called Dark Days, and it takes a different tack. The surviving woman from the first film (played by Melissa George there, and by Kiele Sanchez here) travels the country warning people about the Vampires. She meets up with a group of hunters and they start seeking the creatures out. They eventually discover that they are planning an attack on another Alaskan town, and so get on board the ship with the vampires in order to try and stop them. It's more character driven than the first film, and is interested in itself, although I found it slow. The vampires are placed in the background here which is a shame, and you don't really get to see them except as killing machines. There's a queen vampire controlling everyone, and she comes over like Alice Krige as the Borg Queen in that Trek movie, and a policeman Renfield who wants to be a vampire ... The film very much ticks all the boxes of everything that we have seen before and does nothing new. It introduces the idea that the crispy vampires that have been burnt in the sun can be revived with blood - which actually makes a nonsense of the first film where the lead Vampire's girl is crisped, and he kills her with the words 'That which can be broken must be broken'. If all it needed was blood to restore her, then why kill her? I'd probably only give this 5 out of 10 ... The other film is called 13 Hrs, apparently from the producers of Dog Soldiers ... well they really shouldn't have bothered. It's another werewolf flick, but so vastly inferior to Neil Marshall's epic, that it doesn't really bear comparison. A girl, Sarah, returns home to find a group of her friends drinking and smoking pot. They are a disparate bunch: Emily, who is sleeping with Sarah's ex-boyfriend apparently to get back at her, a younger brother, and a couple of other lads, one of whom is I think her other brother. They are so generic that I can't actually remember who was who or what their names were. Anyway, they inexplicably find themselves trapped in the family home with a werewolf on the rampage. The creature kills Simon McCorkindale in a very short cameo appearance in what might have been his last film, and then hunts and chases the kids all over the house, through secret passages and up into the attic. Along the way they argue and bicker and disagree ... one by one being polished off. The denoument is very predictable indeed, and the werewolf effects are terrible. The editing is also awful, rendering fight scenes impossible to follow as the cutting is too quick - one second shots of what's happening all cut together does not make for excitement, it makes for bemusement on the part of the viewer who has no idea what's happening. The dialogue is also risible, with some dreadful lines being delivered dreadfully. Overall the script is not good. Even the title, 13 Hrs is not explained - apparently it's how long they have to survive in the house ... but nothing is made of this in the script. A shame that a british horror film should turn out so poorly, but there you go. Basically actors off of Hollyoaks and Lads Mags (Gemma Atkinson, take a bow), My Family (that's you Gabriel Thomson) and Harry Potter (stand up Tom Felton) do not make for an endearing film when the script is as bad as this one. Just gets a 4 out of 10 from me. For a great werewolf experience, I suggest you check out the aforementioned Dog Soldiers, or Ginger Snaps, or even the reliable classics The Howling or An American Werewolf in London. They knew how to do it properly.

Hot Tub Time Machine

Chose this film from Blockbusters because a) it's a comedy and we were in the mood for something a little lighter, and b) it's got time travel, which suggested something a little different. It's actually a very ordinary film. I don't think I laughed at all throughout, and the situations were very predictable and staid. Just what you might expect a generic 'lads' film to be like after it's been filted through 200 studio executives, all having their own crack at the scripting. Far superior is Doghouse - similar initial idea of a bunch of pussy-whipped losers heading off for a holiday, but far better in execution (and it has zombies in, which is always a winner). About the best bit in it is when one of the young ladies comes racing into a room dressed in a skin tight ski outfit - she certainly has a nice figure! But the promise of anything more is non-existant. The humour is, if anything, down at the Porkies level, with projectile vomiting and removing faeces-covered keys from a dog's bottom being just two examples of the gross-out factor in the film. Completely out of place and unnecessary really. The time travel element is very lightly used. Basically the hot tub gets some 'Hi Energy' drink poured in it and transports our leads back in time. Then there's some slight interest in that one ends up being the father of the youngest in the group, and a running gag about how a bellhop loses an arm ... but it's all very predictable. A shame as the basic idea - a back to the eighties type of vibe - is not bad. They should have ditched the crude gross-out humour and gone for some good belly laughs instead ...

Whirlwind

Sometimes life throws stuff at you ... again and again and again. I'm aware that I've not blogged as yet on the ending of that Matt Smith season of Who. Not talked about Sherlock. Not mused on the new merchandise which has come out. Not discussed FantasyCon, nor told you about all the films I've been watching on DVD ... or the old Telly shows I picked up from Network DVD ... and probably lots lots more. The reason. Life. And having too much to fit into the days. I seem to have been living in a whirlwind of late - travelling hither and thither, visiting friends, going to conventions and events, working, more working ... So a few highlights! At FantasyCon, the annual convention for the British Fantasy Society, I was humbled to win the British Fantasy Award for Best Small Press! So taken aback was I, that I stumbled through my words on stage, welling up, and barely got away intact! It was amazing for Telos to win in our 10th year of operation, and on the Telos site blog, there's a piece about it all in more detail. Check out www.telos.co.uk for that. I also managed to leave FantasyCon as Chair of the BFS! Not sure how that happened - I volunteered! Must be mad ... but there's some great things that the Society can achieve, and I hope I can help them do that ... we shall see. Visit www.britishfantasysociety.org for more info on the Society. My partner Sam has been doing very well indeed with the launch of her third novel, called Demon Dance, it's a vampire tale with a difference. Time travelling vampires! There's a thing. She's a great writer and I urge you all to check out her books, starting with Killing Kiss (which as well as a paperback from www.murkydepths.com, is also available as a download for Kindle, iPhone, iPad and a variety of digital editions from places like W H Smiths and other online stores). Telos has just released several very cool titles, including a guide to the last days of Tennant (End of Ten) plus horror from Graham Masterton (The Djinn) and an amazing crime noir novel by Graham with William S Burroughs! Not often that Burroughs has a new work in print these days as he died in 1997 ... but Telos has one! Seek out Rules of Duel if you're intrigued, and like a shot of sixties paranoia fiction about authority and private investigators and surrealiarity in Burroughs' expected style. It's a book which challenges the reader, but which really delivers in a poetic and insidious way if you persist. All available from www.telos.co.uk. We also have pretty much wrapped on Wiped! a new guide to all those frustratingly missing Doctor Who episodes. It's a fascinating tome of tables and discovery ... really enjoyable and informative. I'm proud to be publishing it! That should hit the mailboxes and shops in maybe 3 or 4 weeks time, depending on how long it takes to print. I know I keep saying that I'll blog more ... and honestly ... I mean to. I have no idea how Neil Gaiman does it! The man's a genius, and yet has time to write witty and erudite blogs every week! I guess it's organisation and routine ... I tend not to have either of those (well I do, or nothing would get done ... I mean that blogging tends to fall to the bottom of my things to do list all the time). Until I can find an hour or so to share some thoughts of new films, DVDs, and to get those comments about the Pandorica opening down on here ... be seein' you.

The Descent Part 2

The Descent was one of the best and most original horror films of recent years. Superbly written and directed by Neil Marshall after his success with werewolf-fest Dog Soldiers, it took a group of female spelunkers into some caves and pitted them against each other, as well as an army of underground monsters. The film was notable for its ending which, depending on which version you saw, allowed the main female protagonist to escape, or otherwise. Now we have 'Part Two', which is another way of saying that we're returning to the same well (or cave) for more underground shennanigans with monsters. This time Neil Marshall has had little to do with it - despite the Exec Producer credit - and it is all but a retread of the first film. The lone survivor has been taken to hospital where she is asked about her friends by a couple of police officers. Rescue workers have found an abandoned mineshaft down into the caves, and so they decide to take the silent, traumatised girl with them! This is really a leap to far. There is no way that anyone would allow her to undergo this in her condition, but assuming we accept that, the two police officers and a handful of caving experts descend into the darkness once more in order to find the other girls. Of course they get lost, trapped by a rockfall and are once again prey to the bat-like human nightcrawlers which live down there. The film succeeds despite itself but only because the premise of the original is strong enough to take a remake. One by one the humans are slaughtered again, and have to crawl through horrifically tight spaces and underground rivers to survive. Once again the girls are pitted against each other. Once again the crawlers attack and are beaten off. Once again you have to stay silent to survive. If you are claustrophobic, then you won't like this film any more than the first one - it's nightmarish from that angle. But there are plenty of shock moments, gore as the crawlers are despatched, and surprises along the way. It's not quite as good as the original, but it's not a bad sequel as sequels go. It's main failing is that it really doesn't try and do anything new with the material.

Doctor Who and the Lesbian Vampire Killers

Lesbian Vampire Killers is a film which I got out on Blu-Ray when it first came out, and recently I picked up a cheap DVD of it to keep. It's also a film which is not as funny as it should be, but on second viewing, a lot better than I thought it originally was. The plot is great: two stoners, Fletch (James Corden) and Jimmy (Matthew Horne) decide to head for a holiday in England as Jimmy has just been dumped by his cheating girlfriend again. They wind up in the village of Cragwich which has been cursed by Carmilla the Vampire (Silvia Colloca) such that all women there will become lesbian vampires on their 18th birthday. The lads join up with a group of girls on an archaeological field trip from Scandinavia, and end up battling them as they all (bar Lotte for some reason) become lesbian vampires. Paul McGann plays a vicar out to destroy the curse before his daughter succumbs, and there's lashings of decapitations and fangs and boobs along the way. It's a fun film for a beery evening in, and had me laughing out loud on a few occasions. The whole thing is pitched at a comic book level, such that head movements are accompanied by 'swoosh' sounds, and the vampires pose seductively all the time while wreathed in mist, their hair blowing in the breeze. The effects are superb for what was presumably a low budget film. There is no blood as the vampires seem to be filled with a gooey milky substance which splatters everywhere, and no-one is safe from the curse - even Jimmy's ex-girlfriend is turned - except for the virginal Lotte (MyAnna Buring - who played Scooti Manista in the Doctor Who episode 'The Impossible Planet') who manages to survive the film to fight another day. Corden plays a sex-and-beer obsessed lout, cowardly and self-obsessed who feels he has landed in heaven initially, and then bumbles through the film quipping and joking like a poor man's Jack Black. Horne ends up the hero with a penis-handled sword, and even gets the girl at the conclusion - all the other girls amusingly remain lesbians leaving Corden with no-one to love. The film bombed at the box office, probably because it cannot really live up to the hype it was given at the time, but as an enjoyable piece of Brit-horror it's not at all bad. James Corden seems to be flavour of the year at the moment - he's got some sort of World Cup football program on, and is even number 1 in the charts with a remake of the old Tears for Fears song 'Shout', alongside rapper Dizzee Rascal, as well, and was even in the recent episode of Doctor Who, 'The Lodger'. I enjoyed the episode a lot, but unfortunately it all went wrong at the end. There's a lovely build up which puts the Doctor trapped on Earth as the TARDIS cannot materialise due to a time distortion, leaving poor Amy trapped on board (and able to take a holiday as she's not really in the episode that much). The Doctor discovers the source of the time disturbance to be the upper floor of a flat owned by Craig (Corden), and so rents a spare room there to investigate, trying to appear human in the process and mostly failing. Meanwhile, strangers off the street are lured into the upper flat by a variety of characters, and then screaming and flashing lights ensue. There's also a mysterious stain on the ceiling of Craig's flat which is getting bigger and bigger. Typically, Craig's 'girlfriend', Sophie (Daisy Haggard) is a girl from work but they've never told each other their feelings, and so there's an awkwardness about their relationship which neither seems able to correct ... The problem with the story comes in the revelations at the end. The early part is great - Matt Smith is brilliant as an alien trying to be human, with a quirky edge to everything he does. There's some great visual gags and dialogue here, and Smith and Corden bounce off each other well. But the ultimate problem is that there's nothing in the upstairs flat except some sort of alien machine which is trying to find a pilot to go home (in fact, there's no upstairs flat at all - it's a perception distortion). So the machine is intending to try out everyone on the planet with a holographic lure. The Doctor seems suitable, but he works out that everyone chosen so far wanted to escape, but that Craig doesn't. Why doesn't he? Because he loves Daisy. Craig and Daisy proclaim their love for each other, and the ship destroys itself. What? The 'love conquers all' theme was very poorly used here, and with no monster/alien to fight, the ending was very anti-climactic after what had gone before. I was wondering during the episode whether whatever it was in the attic was using the humans to build something - an idea slightly reminiscent of the story 'Frontios' where the Tractators used human body parts to power their drilling machine - but this wasn't the case either. Other commentators have said they like that there was no CGI monster ... but I agree and disagree ... I would have loved to have seen an honest to goodness prosthetic creature there ... doing something nasty with the humans that the Doctor has to try and stop. Maybe they were using the episode to save money or something as well before next week's climax with the opening of the Pandorica - whatever that means.

Return to House on Haunted Hill

It's always a surprise when a sequel turns out to be good fun in its own right, and this one, a sequel to 1999's House on Haunted Hill, which was in turn a remake of the 1959 original, is not at all bad. First off, however, it really has little to do with the original film, aside from featuring the same house, and a similar collection of ghostly inhabitants. This time, there's an idol hidden somewhere in the house which is trapping all the spirits there. The idol is the focus for a disparate group of people to assemble at the clifftop mansion, and go in search of the object. The film is somewhat confused in terms of all the different characters, and I couldn't hope to try and explain it without help ... so here's what Wikipedia says about the basic set up:

Ariel Wolfe is the sister of Sara Wolfe, a survivor of an massacre some years ago in the sanatorium known as the "Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane", which was overseen long ago by the sadistic psychiatrist Dr. Vannacutt. Sara claims that ghosts had killed all those who entered the building, but no one believes her. When Sara commits suicide, Ariel tries to find out why. A diary of Dr. Vannacutt leads Ariel to the cruel past of the Institute. She and her friend Paul are then kidnapped by an unscrupulous dealer, Desmond, who knows a lot about Sara and Vannacutt's Institute. While meeting Desmond and his crew, Ariel realises Sara didn't kill herself, Desmond killed her. Ariel is required to help Desmond to find a precious artifact, a figurine of the demon Baphomet. The artifact in question being said to be hidden somewhere inside of the Institute. While Ariel, Desmond and four of Desmond's accomplices walk into the building, Paul and one accomplice are told to wait outside. Inside, Ariel and her kidnappers meet Dr. Richard Hammer (a university professor) and his assistants, Kyle and Michelle. Desmond used to be a student of Richard's and they begin arguing about the idol. While bickering, it comes out that Michelle is Desmond's new lover, who seduced Richard only to gain information about the sanatorium and the Baphomet idol.

The film is enjoyable as something you can watch and appreciate the GCI effects, inventive deaths, and general ghostly mayhem as it all careers to the ending. The characters are also quite interesting: the two girls are pretty good to look at, Amanda Righetti (Ariel) seems to get wet quite a lot and Cerina Vincent (Michelle) has an amazing chest. There's even Andrew Lee Potts off of Primeval in there - with an American accent - and lots of guns. Another thing I liked was that on the Blu-Ray version, there are nine places in the narrative where you can choose what the characters do, leading to different scenes, characters dying at different points, all leading to - it seems - one of four different endings for the film. The disk also includes the Director's cut - which I assume is the one which Wikipedia's synopsis details (here). I didn't watch that, but chose to experiment with the interactive film, leading to some degree of fun, as the film really does play out differently if you choose different options. I liked the way in particular that, at one point, if Ariel goes for the map, all the cast are killed in gunfire immediately afterwards and the film ends about half an hour early! Some would be cruel and suggest you take that option to shorten the misery, but I did genuinely enjoy the film, and will watch the Director's cut at some point to see what was actually in that version. As I say, as sequels go, it's a good way to spend an evening and quite diverting. There's even some lesbian zombies, and a nurse ghoul who seems to be straight out of Silent Hill (though nowhere near as creepy as those rubber-clad ghoulies). Sometimes a horror film doesn't have to pretend to be high art, and is just there to be drawn along with, laughed at, and in this case, interactively adjusted.