Leela and City of Death

Thanks to those lovely folks at Underground Toys, I have a duo of little figures to talk about ... to be more accurate, it's a single figure release, and a boxed set of two figures.

First off, Leela. This was released for the San Diego Comic Con this year, and is a lovely addition to the range of classic characters. The likeness is very good indeed, and the figure is packed on its own, making it slightly more affordable than the boxed sets. I do wish that the classic figures could come down in price though, as they are very expensive for what they are, and I don't really buy the argument that it's because they don't sell as well as the new series stuff.

This is a 'Face of Evil' variant, and so Leela is dressed in the skins she wore in those episodes. There is also a nice crossbow accessory along with a boly, plus her ubiquitous knife, and even the gun that is used later in the episodes.

Articulation is the same as on all the figures, with joints at the knees, thighs, waist, wrists, elbows, upper arms, shoulders and head.

Overall it's a fine addition to the range, and hopefully we'll start to see more of the classic companions and monsters appearing.

The box set is from the story 'City of Death' - one of the better Tom Baker adventures - and consists of the fourth Doctor in a variant outfit from the story (they have even added the little paint badge he wore for the duration to his coat), and also a figure of Count Scarlioni.  The likeness here is just OK I feel, but I really like that he comes with a changeable head, so you can replace his human visage with that of Scaroth of the Jagaroth. In more nice touches, there is a Mona Lisa painting accessory (which in a very nice touch has THIS IS A FAKE written across it in ink which illuminates with UV light), the Doctor has a sonic screwdriver of course, and there's also a pistol for the Count to threaten the Doctor with.

Overall it's a well produced and thoughtful set, with some nice accessories. I like that the Doctor's shoes are scuffed and different colours, as though he has been walking in mud ... maybe a nod to the 'beginning of life' conclusion to the story.

Ward Story

Two films probably from totally different spectrums today ... one is the latest directed by John Carpenter, while the other is a Korean horror film, a sequel to one of the best examples of the art.

First up then is The Ward, a new film from John Carpenter. Now this is Carpenter's first film as director since 2001's Ghosts of Mars, and so it's been ten years since he was at the helm ... and he's not lost his touch. The film follows the story of  Kristen (played by Amber Heard who you will recall I raved about in Drive Angry) who finds herself banged up in a creepy psychiatric hospital for burning down a house. There she learns that she is with four other girls of similar age all looked after by a spooky matron, and subject to the whims of a ghost which seems intent on killing them all off. The ghost appears to be that of Alice, a former inmate, and Kirsten needs to find a way to escape before she is next on the menu.

The film is very well directed, with lots of great tracking shots and atmosphere. Where it all falls down is in the plot, which is, to be honest, somewhat cliched and evokes a groan of 'oh, so that was it?' rather than stunned amazement. For a good example of 'stunned amazement' then checkout a film called Triangle ... but here we have something which seems very old hat and not really cutting it for a 2011 film.

If you've not seen it, then I won't give it all away. However it is a good and entertaining film which should keep you guessing ...

A Chinese Ghost Story 2 is the sequel to Tsui Hark's legendary 1987 film A Chinese Ghost Story (or Sien nui yau wan to give it the original title). I first discovered this gem back when Jonathan Ross presented a series on televison about Korean Horror, and was blown away by it. The sequel is not quite as imaginative and as charming as the original, but it does a good job of trying to match it. Our tax collecting scribe from the first film, Ling Choi Sin (Leslie Cheung), still ruing that he didn't get to be with Lit Sin Seen (Joey Wang), meets up with another mage Chi Chau (Jacky Cheung) and together they find themselves caught between the machinations of a general and of another master magician. Add to this a pair of twins, one of whom looks like Sin Seen (and is played again by Joey Wang) and the scene is set for another batch of magic and monsters set amongst the crumbling temples of the area.

It's a great little film, and the performances are superb. However take my advice and watch the subtitled version - we started to watch the English dubbed version and the English voice actors are awful - totally robbing the film of any sense of professionalism. Another criticism is that there is too much time spent on a large demon monster which stalks them through the film. It's a nice mechanical effect, but it all goes on too long, and the somewhat whimsical 'Freeze' spell routine starts to grate. The cinematography is good as you would expect, and there's a lot of fighting through trees and travelling underground ... but you just have to suspend disbelief and go with it.

Overall the two films are good additions to the old DVD collection ... and worth checking out. I also discovered that A Chinese Ghost Story has just been remade and has an awesome set of posters available ... it seems to be called A Chinese Fairy Tale this time, and I look forward to seeing if it fulfils the promise of a remake ...

Where's David?

This Saturday I'm going to be at the lovely Waterstone's store at Liverpool One, signing copies of talespinning and chatting to folk. So please pop along and say Hi if you're in the area.

WATERSTONES, Liverpool One, Liverpool. 26th Nov 2011
Sam Stone will be signing her new book, Hateful Heart, Book 4 in The Vampire Gene Series, at this very popular store. David J Howe will also be there with his new collection talespinning.

Time: 12-4pm Date: Saturday 26th November.
Address:Waterstones, 12 College Lane, Liverpool, L1 3DL.

Talking Plush Keyrings

I've just been sent the cutest little foursome of Doctor Who goodies! They are from Underground Toys, and are plush characters from the show, which also have keyrings attached, and which talk as well!

They retail for around the £6.99 mark, and if you fancy something different to hold your keys then these could be just what you have been looking for. The only slight issue is that although they are small, you would still need a sizable bag or pocket to keep them in - they stand around 5 inches tall and 3 inches wide.

First up is the TARDIS. Now how can a TARDIS talk I hear you ask ... well it can't. So this makes the materialisation noise when the front is pressed, and in a neat touch a bright blue light illuminates on the top. It's very cute and puffy and for collectors of TARDISes, then this will be a must have.

Then there are two Daleks. A blue one and a red one, and apart from the colour they are the same, with a voice chip that alternates between 'Exterminate! Exterminate!' and 'You would make a good Dalek!'. 

Finally there is a cute little Cyberman. Wheras the Daleks and TARDIS are in proportion, this fellah looks more like the super-brain creature from Colony in Space, with a massive head atop an almost foetal body. This one says 'Upgrading is compulsory!' and 'You will become like us or you will be deleted!'

Released just in time for Christmas, these will make perfect stocking fillers.

The Prison In Space

Missing stories have long been something of a cause celebre in Doctor Who circles. And by 'missing' I don't mean those which were made and shown on telly but which have now been wiped by the Beeb and are unavailable. I'm talking about the stories which were commissioned, but for a wide variety of reasons were then canned, cancelled and not progressed into production.  There are probably more of these than there are actual made and transmitted stories, and in the past, and especially prior to the end of the 1980s when there was a Doctor Who Production Office in London, and John Nathan-Turner was in the hotseat, the official view was that these should not be novelised or put in the public domain as they were probably not progressed for good reasons - their not being good enough being a main one - and so they are not 'lost' or 'missing' or anything like that, but just ideas which didn't make the grade.

However in recent years, the approach has softened, and Big Finish have been allowed (as they seem to be allowed to do just about anything) to make audio stories of these lost adventures.

Last year they released the audio of The Prison In Space, a story by Dick Sharples which would have formed part of season six in 1969, the final season of Patrick Troughton's time playing the Doctor. And now we have a sparkling script book as well. This has been produced by Richard Bignell, and is available from Lulu and comes very highly recommended indeed.

It's an A4 sized book, and contains the full script for The Prison in Space, as well as the initial breakdowns and outlines. Moreover it also includes the original scene breakdowns for Brian Hayles' Lords of the Red Planet - an Ice Warrior story which was superceded by The Seeds of Death. Unlike many of these so called 'lost' adventures, The Prison In Space actually almost went into production - costume and set designers were allocated and work had started on it before it was canned. So it's a fascinating look at a 'what could have been' story.

As most previous commentators have said, the main problem with the story is it's 'planet ruled by women' concept and the inherent sexism that this sparks in certains lines of the Doctor and in the approach ... for example all the guards wear tight and revealing black rubber outfits, and Jamie ends up spanking poor Zoe at the end to break the conditioning that she has undergone to convert her into one of these 'dolly guards'.

The book also contains reviews and commentaries from several worthy folk, and articles by Bignell and historian Andrew Pixley placing it all into the context of the time and what else was going on with the show.

The cover is a startlingly wonderful piece of art by Jason Fletcher showcasing one of said dolly guards along with the Doctor and a representation of the Prison itself.

If you are at all interested in the history of Who, then this book is invaluable.

The Prison in Space: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/doctor-who---the-prison-in-space/18634892?productTrackingContext=search_results/search_shelf/center/1

X-Men Drive the Block Angry

Or ... David has watched some more films. This time I chose three which looked interesting. Two I had heard of, and one I'd never heard of ... so what did I make of them?

First off we watched the new X-Men film, called X-Men First Class, presumably because it's an origins piece as to how the X-Men came to first get together. I'm not familiar with the X-Men comics at all so have no idea whether what was presented was 'correct' or not, so all I have to go off is the film. In it we meet a young Professor Xavier (James McAvoy) who has a talent to read minds. He helps the government when a young Magneto (Michael Fassbender) tries to get vengeance on some thugs and they join forces against Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) in true villain form. The problem I had with the film was that it seemed very disjointed. It was more a sequence of 'what powers does this one have' than a coherent film, and although the mutants were very interesting, it quickly became a little boring. I liked the central idea with Mystique that no-one loved her in her blue form, and that she had to love who she was herself before anyone else would love her. The chap who became Beast was interesting as well as his 'talent' - to have hands instead of feet - seemed pretty useless to me, and it took him tampering with his own DNA to turn him into Sulley, the big blue monster off of Monsters Inc. I liked the dragonfly lady, but couldn't see why she would be able to hawk explosive spitballs around, and the lady who could turn into diamonds was also interesting. But overall ... despite the great effects, the film left me a little cold. Just an okay from me on that one. I think the earlier X-Men films were much better.

Next up was Attack the Block. And oh dear. From the off, the main protagonists are shown to be a bunch of little shits. The sort of kids that society seems to be plagued with these days - irresponsible, lacking respect for anything and anyone, speaking in a sort of dumbed down patois regardless of their ethnic origin, and basically troublemakers looking for trouble. They mug a girl (Jodie Whittaker) on her way home from work, stealing her ring and wallet, and then see a meteor land. But on the meteor (or is it some sort of spacecraft?) is an animal which the gang leader Moses (John Boyega) proceeds to chase and kill. But this seems to anger a pile of other space creatures who arrive, and they then chase and attack the yobs who end up joining forces with the girl they mugged to try and survive. To be honest, I disliked these kids so much that I was rooting for the aliens all the way through. Unfortunately the aliens are beaten and the surviving kids hailed as some sort of heroes ... it all left a bad taste in my mouth. I suppose on an intellectual level I can praise the writer and director for so accurately depicting these little shits, and the actors too for making them so unlikable. But a film needs heroes you can relate to and root for and this failed in that respect. The monsters are bargain basement, looking more like shaggy apes with joke-store glowing teeth than aliens - they reminded us of the Cybershades from Doctor Who a couple of years back, and they were rubbish too. Not a great film by any means, and certainly not one I have any desire to see again.

The third film I got because it looked like a thriller in The Fast and  the Furious vein, however Drive Angry is actually nothing of the sort. The first surprise is that it's a supernatural yarn, and the second that it's really good!  Nicholas Cage plays a mysterious drifter called Milton who seems to have supernatural powers. He joins up with a gorgeous waitress, Piper (Amber Heard), and the two of them head off after the Satan-worshipping cult, headed by Jonah King (Billy Burke) who have kidnapped Cage's granddaughter and who plan to sacrifice her. On Cage's trail is the Accountant (William Fichtner), a brilliantly portrayed being who is powerful and vicious and who just wants to get Cage back in check again. It transpires that Cage has escaped from Hell to perform his rescue, and will stop at nothing to achieve it. So Drive Angry plays out as a sort of road movie, but with supernatural shenanigans (in fact, the TV series Supernatural is probably part of the inspiration for the film), some great characters and performances, and some neat effects and ideas. It was a surprise to me that it was as good and as enjoyable as it turned out to be. The title, by the way, comes from the license plate of Piper's car: DRV AGRY.

Vampire Horror!

As well as their Doctor Who releases, AudioGo also do a range of horror CDs, and recently I was sent copies of the two new ones: Vampire Horror! and Ghostly Terror!

Now I love horror, but here we have some of the usual suspects of the genre - basically out of copyright tales from decades ago - revitalised with some modern readers and some limited musical cues. Unfortunately this reliance on the old stories of M R James and others results in some CDs which are antiquated to listen to, and which ultimately disappoint as those tales might have been fine 50 years ago, but to a modern audience, they feel very dated.

First up on Vampire Horror! is  The Vampyre by Doctor Polidori. History tells us that this was the tale written by John Polidori during (or after) that same Geneva holiday with Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wolstonecroft Shelley which resulted in Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus  being written. Unfortunately Polidori's tale has not stood the test of time. It is long winded and hard to follow, and the reader in this case (Bill Wallis) has a voice which is either too indistinct to hear or too loud resulting in much twiddling of the volume control. It's also unfortunately the only one on this set which actually features a vampire ...

Next up is the best one, M R James' Wailing Well, read by Anthony Head. Head is a brilliant reader and the story is also rather good, setting the scene well in a boys' school, and following the exploits of a group as they decide to visit an old well despite being warned away. For there is something else there, which is capturing the souls of those who get to close.

The third story is For the Blood is the Life by F Marion Crawford, and this is a strangely constructed story within a story within a story, and thus tends not to work too well as an audio piece. Basically a grave barrow has a ghost/phantom laying on top of it which can drain the energy from those who stand on the grave in moonlight (hence the vampire theme). The reader here is John Telfer, and he does a good job with it.

Finally we have An Episode of Cathedral History, another from M R James, read by Cornelius Garrett. This is another story within a story piece, this time about a cathedral and what is found when the altar is dismantled. The tale features some sort of creature, which is very similar in description to the one in Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book (which features on the Ghostly Terror! CDs) and so it's a little hard to see how this fits as a vampire tale.

As a CD set, Vampire Horror! is very nicely produced, and the stories are well read (with the exception of the first). It's just a shame that they are so dated and in the case of James at least, well known and easily available, and that they don't actually feature vampires ...

Where's David?

This coming Saturday, Sam and I will be at the Waterstones in the Arndale Centre, Manchester signing copies of books.

Apparently Noel Fielding from the Mighty Boosh is there at the same time, so this could get interesting ...

WATERSTONES, Arndale Centre, Manchester, 12th November 2011
Sam Stone will be signing her new book, Hateful Heart, Book 4 The Vampire Gene Series, at this very popular store. David J Howe will also be there with his new collection talespinning.

Time: 12-4pm Date: Saturday 12th November.
Address:Waterstones, Arndale Centre, Manchester, M4 3AQ

Looking forward to seeing anyone who can make it along.

The Fish! The Fish!

Now my normal reaction to hearing about fish, is to quote that bit from Red Dwarf where Cat repeatedly orders fish from the spaceship vending machine ... but this blog isn't about that sort of fish ... it's about the sort which have sprung up in just about every town centre at the moment - the little tankfuls of the critters which nibble your feet ...

I mean, what a strange thing to do. Get some fish to nibble all the dry skin off your feet ... but they are all pervasive and everywhere, and the other weekend in Whitby I succumbed to the ministrations of the fish myself.

It was something of an interesting experience.  You sit with your feet dangling in a tank of luke warm water and let these fish swarm and nibble at you. The initial tickling when you first pop your feet in the tank is excuciating, resulting in much squirming and shuddering, but it soon settles down and you have all these fish swimming about around your feet and sort of sucking on the patches of dead and hard skin. They don't have any teeth, so it's all about the sucking and cleaning. And it tickles. A lot.

The fish are called garra rufa and come from Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, and they don't actually eat the dead skin. They are looking for algae which normally grows on rocks and other hard surfaces, but their sucking action cleans and softens the skin on the feet. There was even a typical UK tabloid scare-story about them in the papers in October, something that the NHS was quick to decry:
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2011/10October/Pages/hpa-risk-fish-pedicures.aspx. If only the papers would print the factual denial as large and as prominent as they printed the original scare stories.

What interested me, however, was how anyone discovered about these fish in the first place!  Can you imagine going for a dip in a natural pool or river somewhere and being literally surrounded by hundreds of these fish, all attaching themselves to your body and nibbling away! I would have thought you'd be out of the water like a flash!  And how many people mistakenly go for a dip in a river of piranah fish, thinking they might be garra rufa?  It doesn't bear thinking about. At least they wouldn't make the same mistake twice ...

Another thing crossed my mind too while all these little fish were nibbling away ... they seemed to have a taste for it ... so what would happen if people stopped coming?  Would the fish somehow escape from the tanks and come after humanity in some sort of feeding frenzy?  Or would the action of the fish on the feet transfer some fishy DNA into the human subjects, leading to some incredible half-breeds like something out of Lovecraft's witch-cursed Innsmouth?

Even now I might have some fishy DNA swimming around in my body, converting me into a water-breathing creature of horror ... So far there has been no sign of any gills opening up ... but I'll keep you in the loop if it happens.

Diary Notes

For several years now Danilo have been publishing the annual Doctor Who Calendar, and in recent years have added a diary and other items to their release list. This year's offerings are the Calendar and Pocket Diary, and also a Desk Calendar.

The main release is the large square Calendar, covering all of 2012. The cover features the main players and promotional image from the 2011 season: the 11th Doctor, Amy and Rory reflected in an Astronaut's helmet. The internal pages cover the main characters to have appeared in the season, but the selection is poor and is centred on the first half of the season only. One assumes that Danilo didn't have available to them pictures from the latter part. So we have Pirates and Gangers and Ood and Sontaran and Cybermen, but no Dolls, Minotaur, Silurian or Cybermats.  The design is also very basic - cut out photos of the characters against a starfield background - given some of the amazing design work out there, it's a shame that the product doesn't take advantage of it.

While researching the Calendar, I discovered that a personalised calendar can be obtained from http://www.personalise.com/products/2012-doctor-who-personalised-calendar. This is a nice idea, and allows for something slightly different to be produced and tailored for the fan who likes to see their name in everything.

The Pocket Diary is a slim affair with a cover of the 11th Doctor and Sonic Screwdriver. Inside it has colour pictures on each page, but disappointingly, there are only 6 pictures repeated over and over: 11th Doctor; Ganger; Amy; Silent; Rory; and Ood. There are also no Doctor Who dates noted (for example the 23rd November being the show's 49th birthday) which is again a shame.

The final item is the desk diary. This features the Doctor, Rory and Amy on the cover, and contains a page per month. The imagery is similar to the main wall Calendar, and features cut out images against a star background. At least here we find Madame Vastra, Headless Monks and Madame Kovarian alongside the more standard fare which makes it more interesting, but strangely Rory the Roman makes an appearance (was he in the 2011 season?). Again, there's nothing featured from the latter part of the season.

Overall the Danilo items are well produced and printed. It's a shame that they don't cover the 2011 season more broadly, but for this I blame the BBC for not supplying them with imagery early enough. It's also a shame that the imagery is somewhat unimaginative, giving the items a very bland feeling compared with the magnificent collage art on display in The Brilliant Book or on the Ravensburger jigsaws to name but two licensed products which really went the extra mile. But then again, maybe this generic look is what Danilo and/or the BBC want from the licensed calendars and diaries ... hopefully they will be able to provide something more visually interesting for 2013, which is, after all, the 50th anniversary of the show.

Puzzling

Jigsaw puzzles need to cover a few bases in order for them to really work well. First of all, the image chosen needs to have areas of similarity - making it challenging to work out which pieces go where - and also areas of distinction so that you have a chance of sorting out the obvious pieces and placing them first. Ravensburger, who currently produce the Doctor Who jigsaws, seem to have these elements down to a tee in the designs they choose for their releases.

The latest two jigsaws in their range feature imagery from Season 6, and as usual their designers have done a sterling job in coming up with some superb pictures.

The 60 piece jigsaw features a great image of the 11th Doctor with his Sonic Screwdriver, flanked on one side by two Silent, and on the other by River, Rory and Amy. The bottom of the image is mostly dark and the top is a similar sky all the way across, making for some challenge in those areas. There are two Silent ... so if you have a Silent piece, then where does it go?  Brilliant stuff.

The other jigsaw is slightly larger at 100 pieces, and the image here really deserves to be released as a poster it's so good. It's a collage (again) of monsters, and there are tons crammed in here ... from left to right we have a Silent, two Weeping Angels, the Siren, Gangers, an Ood, a Sontaran, Madame Vastra, three Daleks, two Cybermen and a CyberController ... trying to sort out which pieces are which from that lot would be quite challenging!  However as every part of the image is different, it shouldn't be too impossible ... in fact I can see that the 60 piece one might even be harder to do than the 100 piece.

There have been calls for Ravensburger to produce a larger-still jigsaw. Maybe a 1000 piece one which fans could really get their teeth into. From the design prowess available in the company, I'm sure that whatever imagery they chose to use, it would be spectacular and impressive.

Filmwatch

We watch a lot of films ... most evenings are spent enjoying something on the DVD or Blu-Ray, and sometimes we'll go back and revisit old favourites, or films we've not seen in an age, as well as picking up some new fare from Blockbusters, or buying them when we know they are things we'll want to add to the collection to watch again.

So recently we rewatched the 2002 version of The Time Machine - the one with Guy Pearce and Samantha Mumba as the female Eloi. To my surprise this was much better than I had remembered it. The acting was pretty good, and the effects nicely done. Mumba was OK, and Jeremy Irons as the lead, intelligent, Morlock was chilling and convincing. I remember that the film was panned when it came out, and it's hard to see why as there's not much wrong with it. I wondered what had happened to former popstrell Samantha Mumba ... a quick check on Wikipedia reveals that she seems to have been doing mostly TV reality shows, guesting on daytime TV and concentrating on 'acting'.

This week we pulled three films from Blockbusters to check out. First of all we watched The Green Lantern.  Oh dear. What a two hour something something borefest. It's hard to believe that a film with such amazing visual effects could be so slow and boring. But it is. The plot really stretches the imagination too ... there's an intergalactic consortium of superheroes called 'the Green Lantern' apparently because their power derives from will, which is green. So they can do anything they can imagine they can do - so pretty much limitless power. Except that the human representative who ends up with the power (Ryan Reynolds) has the imagination of a damp sponge. When a helecopter is crashing, all he can think to do is to turn it into a giant Hotwheels car and track and let it go all over the place like that. When bad guys attack, what does he do? Open a black hole and suck them in? No. Create an impenetrable barrier and enclose them in it? No. He gets pushed and battered and bruised and eventually uses the gravity of the Sun to drag the baddie to its doom ... so not much imagination at all. It was a chore to finish the film to be honest.

Next up was I Am Number Four ... which I was hesitant about, but apparently the book is good ... but unfortunately the film isn't.  It's unfortunately from the Twilight stable of teen romantic stylings and concentrates on how the alien 'Number Four' (Alex Pettyfer) falls in love with a girl at high school (Dianna Agron, who is quite cute) and who then jepordises his future, race and whatever else these mysterious nine kids need to do, by mooching and fawing over her rather than battling the evil bad guys who are out to kill him. In this film the power of good is blue, and the power of bad is red, by the way ... and his hands glow like torches for some reason.

The film sort of struggles along until the last half hour when a kick-ass girl in the form of Number Six (Teresa Palmer) appears. She has the usual teenage girl croaky-voice, but Australian this time rather than the usual American croaky-voice which every female in every film has to have. So annoying. But she is cool, wears leather, rides a motorbike and can sort of dematerialise, move at lightning speed and kill the bad guys with a short sword/dagger thing ... so she's OK. It reminded me a lot of the character Nightcrawler from the X-Men films ... but that's good as he was an excellent character too.  The last half hour is actionpacked fighting with guns and explosions and everything ... and then it slows to a dead stop for the last five minutes as our hero has to say farewell to his love, and the evil bully from school turns good guy ... sheesh.

So onto the last film of the week, and after those two I was feeling a bit down. Thank God for Luc Besson! The final film was the French offering The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec, and this has gone straight on my to-buy list as it was awesome. I am a big fan of The Fifth Element, a brilliant, rollicking science fiction film from Besson, and this one matches it for sheer audacity and imagination. The effects and acting are superb, and the plot ... oh the plot ...

What I really liked about it is that it's unpredictable and above all original. I've never seen anything quite like this before. A scientist, Espérandieu (Jacky Nercessian) puts his mind into that of an ancient pterodactyl and hatches it from an egg at the museum. While the creature causes havok in Paris, an incompetant policeman, Albert Caponi (Gilles Lellouche) is assigned to sort it all out ... thus Espérandieu is discovered and arrested. Meanwhile our hero Adele Blanc-Sec (Louise Bourgoin), is in Egypt, raiding a pyramid to try and obtain the body of the Pharoah's doctor as her sister has been badly injured and brain-damaged, and she wants Espérandieu to revive the mummified doctor to see if he can help her sister ... so the film moves from Egypt back to Paris, and Adele has to try and spring Espérandieu  from jail to help her. We end up with all the mummies in the Louvre coming to life, and going on a sightseeing tour of Paris, and Adele riding the pterodactyl bareback across the city!  Honestly, you couldn't make this up ... and it's brilliant brilliant brilliant.

All the actors bring a superb French/Parisien sensibility to it all, and some are quite comic-strip in their characterisation, all wearing bowler hats, and Caponi constantly trying to have something to eat - and being interrupted every time. Everyone is polite and nice, and Adele is the icing on the cake. Louise Bourgeon is simply superb - she is feisty, kick-ass, go getting and sassy, but at the same time polite, gentile and mannered. A brilliant creation indeed.

Personally I have no problems with subtitled films, though I appreciate that they are not everyone's cup of tea, and here the film is in French with English subtitles. So be aware of that if you decide to give it a go.  And I strongly recommend that you do.

Where's David?

Not one but two places to come and chat to Sam and myself this weekend ...

WATERSTONES, Bolton, Lancashire. 29th Oct 2011Sam Stone will be signing her new book, Hateful Heart, Book 4 The Vampire Gene Series, at this store. David J Howe will also be there with his new collection talespinning.

Time: 12-4pm Date: Saturday 29th October.
Address:Waterstones, 32-36 Deansgate, Bolton, BL1 1BL

WATERSTONES, Wrexham, 30th Oct 2011
Sam Stone will be signing her new book, Hateful Heart, Book 4 The Vampire Gene Series, at this store. David J Howe will also be there with his new collection talespinning.

Time: 10am-1pm Date: Sunday 30th October.
Address: Waterstones, 9/11 Regent Street, Wrexham, LL11 1SG.

100 Scariest Monsters

Another book from the Penguin arm of BBC Children's Books, and this time a small hardbacked tome which purports to be the '100 Scariest Monsters' from Doctor Who ... but it's a strange beast indeed.

It contains double page spreads on 100 monsters, but they are not in alphabetical order (possibly because then that would be too much like the Encyclopedia) nor are they in order of appearance, nor are they even in order of scariness ... perhaps the order is that which author Justin Richards thought of them? There's a mix of Classic and New series creatures here too, so Zygons and Zarbi and Krynoids rub shoulders with Cassandra, the Flood and Vashta Nerada, and each entry has a couple of photographs, some slim text, and a 'Fear Factor' chart showing how scary they were.

This 'Fear Factor' seems to have been pulled from the air, bearing no basis in really how scary the things are. For example the Vashta Nerada get 9/10, while the Daleks are 10/10 ... the Werewolf (from 'Tooth and Claw' gets 8/10 as does Prisoner Zero, the Mummies (from 'Pyramids of Mars') and the Ogri (from 'The Stones of Blood') while the Haemovores get 7/10 along with Aggedor, Axons, Quarks and the Time Beetle! Maybe this is why the book is not in order of scariness - it would all fall apart!

It's a nicely produced little hardback, though the designer needs shooting for the text on pages 6/7 which is dark blue against black and barely readable! However I can see this ending up in the bargain bins after Christmas as it is too similar to Justin's The Ultimate Monster Guide from last year, and it's also like the little Top Trumps books from previous years. It's a book without any point or reason to exist, doing nothing, and produced purely because someone thought it would be a good book for Christmas. A shame.

Where's David?

The signing tour for talespinning rolls on, and tomorrow I'll be at Waterstones in Wigan, along with Sam Stone, signing copies of the book and chatting to anyone who wants to chat ... so please pop in if you're in the area.

WATERSTONES, Wigan. 22nd October, 2011
Sam Stone will be signing her new book, Hateful Heart, Book 4 The Vampire Gene Series, at this very popular store. David J Howe will also be there with his new collection talespinning.

Time: 12pm-4pm Date: 22nd Oct
Address: 61 The Grand Arcade, Wigan, WN1 1BH

Head Case

Amidst all the furore about the Character Options figures and what people want to see next, some gems get released from other companies and these can go unreported. Which is a great shame as sometimes these are far more interesting than a simple set of figures. Take Trends UK's current range of science kits. When I was a kid, I loved this sort of thing, and to have a range which also tied into my love of Doctor Who would have been simply awesome.

The company has three products out at the moment. All are science-based toys and some might say are more traditional than perhaps some of the guns and gadgets which are released - how many Sonic Screwdrivers can one actually play with anyway? - but they are all well produced and well thought through, providing a springboard for further thought and investigation into the subject.

First up is a 'Dalek Enemy Identifier' ... or in common parlance, a 20x microscope with some specimen slides and stickers. The toy is nicely designed and can be enhanced with some 'Dalek bump' stickers. The booklet encourages the user to investigate all around them, everyday items from the house, kitchen, garden and so on look different when magnified, so the idea is to find things, look at them, prepare specimen slides, and then to see if you can identify the close-up photographs in the manual.  I can see this as being fascinating for anyone interested in the world around them and with an inquisitive mind.

Next is something called 'Silurian Crystal Lab', and this is a beautifully designed item: for once not an 11th Doctor, Dalek or Cyberman item. Here, the kit contains some play dough and some chemicals. The manual talks about crystalline structures (and I wondered if in an alternate dimension we had such a kit but with Krotons on the front - a 'grow your own Kroton' kit!) and then goes on to describe the process of dissolving the chemical salt in water, and then suspending a small pebble in the water so that crystals can form on its surface. Fascinating stuff. The kit then has some 'Silurian Sludge', or play dough, to pop the formed crystals on in order to display them in a glow in the dark dome. I always found this sort of basic crystallography a little boring as it's lots of waiting for things to happen ... you need patience to grow decent crystals! But if you have the patience, then the results can be rather good.

Finally, and probably my personal favourite of the three toys, is something called 'Cybernetics'. This contains all the parts needed to build a half-size Cyberman head from the Pandorica Underhenge which will then react in different ways depending on the circuit board chosen. The kit is nicely designed such that each part will only fit in one place, and the manual is clear enough about how to connect up all the wires - basically same colours go together, connected via little springs which is a simple and effective solution, rather than messing about with little screws.

The three circuit boards provided are: Infra Red - where by using a television or DVD remote, you can make the head move across the floor for three seconds or so before it stops; Light Activated - where any light will make the head move - so best used in the dark with a torch, and then when the torch hits the head it moves; and Object Detection - where the head will move until it detects an obstruction, when it will go into reverse.

Of the three circuits, I didn't try the Light Activated one as it was daylight and I couldn't see the point. The Object Detection one didn't seem to work - the head moved and then just stopped. I think with this, the field of operation is too limited perhaps, and of course the detector is only in one place on the head. So the one which I managed to get working was the Infra Red one, and indeed my TV remote would activate the head - but only if used about a foot away ... again the range didn't seem very strong. However each circuit also has a little dial to change the range, fiddling with that increased it to about two feet ... still not quite strong enough ... and of course the television was also switching off and on and the volume going up and down all the time.

The head itself is lovely, and makes a really nice display piece once the fun of making it move and changing it around is done. In a perfect world, the head would have been full size, and the circuits a little more sophisticated ... maybe one to make it talk, another to light it up (it's a shame that the eyes and head don't light up when it's activated), but all this would add cost, and as it is, the product is very nicely priced indeed. I guess that the next step might be for Junior to pay a visit to Maplins or Radio Shack to see what circuits and lights they have which could be used to enhance the toy ... and from there we have the development of future visual effects designers.

In larger Boots stores in the UK, the Cybernetics toy is in their 3 for 2 offer, which makes this one at least very affordable for the family of kids who love Who and who have all the figures. Hearty congratulations to Trends UK for producing the range, and I hope it does well enough that they decide to do more. The 'Dalek Enemy Identifier' sells for £20, the 'Silurian Crystal Lab' for £23 and the 'Cybernetics' kit for £25.

Shops stocking them are:
Toys R Us
Entertainer
Amazon
Argos – on line only
Forbidden Planet
Forbidden Planet International
Boots – Cybernetics
Play.Com

The Brilliant Book

Received a copy of the Brilliant Book 2012 the other week, and to be honest, this is probably the best thing to have come along in recent years. Editor Clayton Hickman knows his Who (well he should do, he edited the official Doctor Who Magazine for many years) and the book collects together facts and figures, pictures and interviews from the most recent series. In a way, it strangely reminds me of my own book Timeframe - which people keep asking if there will be another volume of: at the moment unfortunately not as the BBC don't wish to commission 'outsiders' to do the books for them, preferring to rely on staff and 'known' writers to do the work.

The Brilliant Book sort of falls outside this remit as Clayton does not work for the BBC or Ebury as far as I know ... but anyway ... the content follows the most recent season and there are four or so spreads from each of the tales, peppered with additional interviews with Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill and Alex Kingston, plus interview comments from the writers and from Steven Moffat, and even pieces from the effects team on how they created some of the monsters along the way. For me this is wonderful - I've always loved these behind the scenes pieces - and the book blends all this material together along with nice tongue-in-cheek elements like a 'Welcome to Sardicktown' brochure, a flier from the theatre where Henry Gordon Jago presents a 'monstre gathering' culminating in Madame Vastra, a Handroid advertising pack, and 'facebook' updates from Cleopatra and Charles Dickens.  It's superb stuff, written with wit and presented superbly thanks, I guess, to the talents of designer Paul Lang who gets a co-credit with Clayton for the book.

For each story there are also some simply superb pieces of photo art from Lee Johnson. These are some of the very best I have seen in terms of composition and picture selection, and are presented as full page pieces - another perhaps-nod to Timeframe where we presented all the Target cover art throughout the book.  These would make a wonderful series of posters, and Johnson should perhaps be snapped up to work on some of the other licensed merchandise out there to create Jigsaws and covers and designs.

The book is something of a bargain at £12.99 for 164 pages all in full colour, and it complements the other Doctor Who releases admirably - there are some for the younger kids (like Where's The Doctor and the Annual), some for the readers (Dan Abnett's Ice Warrior novel The Silent Stars Go By), and some for the fact-heads (Gary Russell's The Encyclopedia, and of course Andrew Pixley's special magazines from Panini). And of course taking up any slack are companies like my own Telos Publishing with our books on the missing episodes (Wiped) and the more specialist season and story guides.

All you need are bottomless pockets to be able to afford all this stuff!

Where's The Doctor?

It's funny how sometimes things that you think of then become a reality. I was thinking maybe 5 years ago about how it would be really cool to have a Where's Wally type book for Doctor Who, with spreads featuring different monsters and settings ... and then they publish one!

Where's The Doctor? (BBC Children's Books, £8.99) is a large format hardbacked compilation of some of the 'find the Doctor' images from the pages of Doctor Who Monster Invasion Magazine by artist Jamie Smart. I was actually a little disappointed when I realised that they were all from the magazine, but pleased too, as I'm not collecting the magazine - too expensive and something had to give!

We have a selection of scenes: Judoon on the Moon; Dalek ship; Adipose nursery ship, Cyberfactory, Ood-Sphere and so on, and in each image you have to locate four elements: the Doctor, Amy, Rory and the TARDIS; while there are three random items which can be found in some of the images: Fido the dog; Fido's dinner and Fido's ball.

I love the humour inherent in the images. In the Judoon one there are some of the creatures using each other as target practice, there are Judoon in police helmets in a car, one riding a rocket, and lots and lots just standing around. The image of the Underhenge is especially wonderful, with all the different monsters featured. We have Judoon trampolining, Roman soldiers aplenty, Sontarans marching, and Silurians and Cybermen enjoying a slide.

The Silence image is also great, with thousands of the creepy creatures packed into an old house on the landings and stairs. Finding the Doctor here is very challenging, but I managed it :)

Overall the book is a great Christmas gift, diverting and entertaining for kids of all ages, and if you shop around, then you can get it for less than the cover price (Waterstones have it for 25% off for example).

The Fall

I am loving this new song and video by Gary Numan right now. The video is something of a mini-masterpiece - I love them when they have a story and visuals which make you think 'what is happening here' ...

The Power of If

There's an old Doctor Who story where Tegan, the Doctor's companion, talks about the power of 'if' ... indeed she is looking for the TARDIS' Index File, but the deeper connotation of what she is saying is for me one of the things at the very heart of good storytelling.

Sam and I were at Preston Waterstones yesterday, and one of the lovely things about doing store events is that you get to meet all manner of people ... some of them want to chat about the books and might even buy a copy, while others are not interested in horror (they turn away with a shudder) but if you smile and ask them what they do like to read, then you can get a better insight into what people like and why ... and that can be important.

At the store yesterday, a lady came up to us with a young boy of maybe 8 years old ... she wanted to know if we had any tips on writing for her son, as he had been asked by school to write a 'blurb' on something he liked, and also to write some sort of story (I think). It's hard to get ideas and concepts over to an 8 year old, and so I decided to focus on the power of 'what if'.  The way it goes is that anything in life - absolutely anything - can be transformed into the fantastique through the power of 'what if'.  So. We're standing in the bookshop talking ... what if a hole opened up in the floor and swallowed your mum?  What would you think, what would you do next? Where does the hole go? And why is it there?  Instantly you have a story. Another example was 'What if you woke up and your bed, instead of being in your bedroom, was on a cloud ...'  And so on.

The lad got it immediately and seemed quite thoughtful that this making up of stories - something he said he did anyway (probably in a form like 'my homework was eaten by dinosaurs in the back garden' or 'I didn't eat that cake, it was a hungry fridge-mouse') - was a basis for writing fiction, and he wandered off to pillage in the childrens' section of the store.

I love that 'what if' approach ... it's even something that seasoned writer and friend Terrance Dicks has mentioned on more than one occasion ... if you're writing something, anything, and you get stuck, then just have two men enter the room with a gun ... that then gets the story moving again. It's the same basic premise ...

So next time you're out and about, try employing the 'what if' ... what if that man at the bus stop is waiting for a spacecraft to arrive rather than a bus ... what if the greengrocers suddenly vanished ... what if that group of children in the park weren't actually from this dimension at all ...