Review: Anna and the Apocalypse (2017)

It's a little difficult to know what to make of Anna and the Apocalypse. It's a zombie film ... but it's also a musical! And for me the two elements just don't mesh together.

Anna is at university/college with her friends when the zombie apocalypse hits. She manages to survive it by breaking into song every five minutes or so and staging impromptu dance numbers and songs with everyone else on screen. It's a little like High School Musical with zombies, or episodes of My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend but with a lot more musical numbers.

The zombie plot and action is actually ok with some nice effects and decent scares, but the musical element intrudes to the extent that you just want them to get on with it! Oh, and it's also set at Christmas ... so it's a Christmas Zombie Apocalypse Musical ...

It's got an excellent cast with Ella Hunt as Anna taking the centre stage and knocking it out the park with her singing, acting and dancing. There's also Paul Kaye as the creepy University Head Mr Savage, and Mark Benton as Anna's dad, Tony.

There's a nicely staged Jocks vs Zombies fight scene, lots of chases, and lots of singing and dancing.

I suppose it depends what you like!  If you are a fan of High School Musical and Zombie mayhem then this will be right up your street. If, like me, you find the singing and dancing a little tedious, then perhaps not.

3/5 on this one!

Cast
Ella Hunt as Anna Shepherd
Malcolm Cumming as John, Anna's best friend
Sarah Swire as Steph
Christopher Leveaux as Chris
Ben Wiggins as Nick
Marli Siu as Lisa
Mark Benton as Tony Shepherd
Paul Kaye as Arthur Savage
Calum Cormack as Santa Claus
Euan Bennet as Jake
Sean Connor as Graham
Janet Lawson as Mrs. Hinzmann
Kirsty Strain as Ms. Wright
Ella Jarvis as Katie
David Friel as Paramedic

Review: Scared Stiff (1987)

It must be tricky trying to name an eighties horror film ... so many of them just try too hard and for every cult classic there's a host of wannabes waiting in the wings ... Scared Stiff is an interesting one. For one thing the title seems a complete misnomer until the very end. A better title might be Bored Rigid, but that might be doing this film a disservice as it does have some elements to commend it.

The basic plot is simple: A couple move into a house which was once where an evil Plantation owner lived with his slaves, his wife and child. The slaves revolted and summoned a demon which possessed the Plantation owner causing him to lock his wife and child in a casket in the attic.

Flash forward to present day, and our eighties couple: David Young (Andrew Stevens), apparently a psychiatric doctor, and his girlfriend Kate (Mary Page Keller), a singer who is making a pop video, and who happened to be David's patient up to a year ago, move into the house with her son Jason (Joshua Segal). Cue all manner of nasty happenings as the ghosts from the past are coming to get them ...

They find a boarded up staircase to the attic in the kid's room, wherein is the casket. Jason finds the key while playing and the bodies are discovered. And also a handiman hangs himself from a rope by the house, not to be discovered for days. Did noone wonder where he was or even look at the outside of the house? He eventually crashes through a window as David goes full on possession and Kate and Jason find themselves in an otherworldly realm of moving pianos and smoke and doors as David/the Demon tries to kill them until Jason joins two halves of a totem together and banishes him ...

It's all a bit confused at the end as before the demon is destroyed he seems to give birth to another demon from within him ... then there's eighties early CGI light effects and Kate is left a catatonic wreck, being visited by Jason. I guess she was scared stiff ...

Overall the film plays well, the soundtrack is passable, but it's slow ... so slow ... lots of talking and normal everyday stuff before the possession shenanigans kick in. The cinematography is good though, and the film looks great in this new transfer.

Interesting that the original script was written by Mark Frost, slightly before his Twin Peaks fame, but coming after The Six Million Dollar Man, Hill Street Blues and The Equaliser ... However in the Making-Of documentary, they explain that Frost's original screenplay was changed around a lot before it became the final film ... and one wonders if the original might have been so much better than the something of a pot pourri of ideas that got to the screen.

Again, kudos to Arrow for digging up another eighties horror that I'd never heard of let alone seen ...

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS
• Brand new 2K restoration from original film elements
• Original uncompressed Stereo audio
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Brand new audio commentary with director Richard Friedman, producer Dan Bacaner and film historian Robert Ehlinger
• Mansion of the Doomed: The Making of Scared Stiff – brand new documentary featuring interviews with Richard Friedman, Dan Bacaner, Robert Ehlinger, actors Andrew Stevens and Joshua Segal, special effects supervisor Tyler Smith and special effects assistants Jerry Macaluso and Barry Anderson
• Brand new interview with composer Billy Barber
• Image Gallery
• Original Theatrical Trailer
• Limited edition slipcase featuring original Graham Humphreys artwork
• Reversible sleeve featuring two original artwork options

FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Fully illustrated collector’s booklet with new writing on the film by James Oliver

Director: Richard Friedman
Cast: Andrew Stevens, Mary Page Keller, Joshua Segal

Review: Terraformars (2016)

What to make of this new science fiction film from Takashi Miike ... First of all, it's based on a Manga series of the same name, and I think this shows in the structure of the piece. Although there is a loose plot, it's pretty simple, which means that the film should stand and fall on its characters, however they are many, and hard to get attached to.

If one took a film similar in idea: Alien, then you hopefully see what I mean about the characters needing to be three dimensional. In Alien, a group of humans arrive on a planet only to find that it is home to a life form which wants to wipe them out. Moreover, one of their number is actually planning to bring said life form back to Earth ... and as such Terra Formars plays out in similar fashion, but without the three dimensional characters or the cool monster at its heart.

What I can see in Terra Formars are echoes of a great many films/TV, all of which did this sort of thing much better. There's Alien as mentioned, but also Blade Runner (the opening could almost be from that film), Starship Troopers with the idea of humans trying to wipe bugs from the face of a planet, there's Transformers and Power Rangers in the strange idea that in order for the humans here to succeed, they must be able to change themselves via injections of some mystery DNA potion into hybrid bugs themselves ... thus we have a chap who can blow flames from his mouth, a girl who can extrude silk, another girl who can implant 'herself' into the brains of others to control them, and a chap with giant hornet stings on his hands ... plus many others.

The idea is that Mars was pre-populated with lichen and with cockroaches, and over years the roaches have developed intelligence and to walk on two legs, and to be seven or eight feet tall!  Thus a group of hand picked humans (criminals mostly it seems) are sent to clear them out.

There's a fair bit of misogyny in the film as most of the female characters are summarily beheaded by the roaches without a thought, while the male characters battle on. There's no mourning, just moving on with the action, and while some of the male characters are killed, it all seems a soulless process. All driven by some fashionista back on Earth who has an ulterior motive which, again, I can't recall what it was ...

There's also a peculiarity that often the film looks and feels like it's an animation (an Anime of the Manga) and I think this is as a result of the extensive CGI which is used. Everything from backgrounds to spaceships to the roaches, to the transformation of the humans ... nothing seems actually 'real' here. It looks as though the human cast have also been airbrushed and treated to make them seem more 'animated'.

This is not a great film, and it suffers from a degree of slowness in the earlier stages, and then repetition in the later acts. The characters are instantly generic and forgettable (I didn't come away with the name of a single one of them), and, just as with Power Rangers/Transformers once you have seen the transformation into a hybrid the first time, it starts to drag with each successive time: a collage of the real insect and information about its particular 'powers' against CGI of the film character growing antennae or mantis-arms or whatever.

Ultimately, I came away wondering what I had just watched, and I'm unfortunately unlikely to want to revisit it.

2/5

Distributor: Arrow Video

Release date: 1st April, 2019                                

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS

• High-Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation

• Original uncompressed Stereo and 5.1 DTS-HD MA options

• Newly-translated English subtitles

• The Making of Terra Formars - feature-length documentary on the film’s production featuring a host of cast and crew interviews and behind-the-scenes footage

• Extended cast interviews

• Footage from the 2016 Japanese premiere

• Outtakes

• Image Gallery

• Theatrical and teaser trailers

• Reversible sleeve featuring two artwork options

FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Fully illustrated collector’s booklet with new writing on the film by Tom Mes

Review: Lifechanger (2018)

Lifechanger is an interesting film. While it basically follows the same character, this character is a shapeshifter and can take on the form of other people. But in order to do so, it needs to kill the person it is replicating, leaving them a sort of mummified husk.

It's a simple idea, and yet I don't think I've seen it done in film before. Years ago, Stephen Gallagher wrote a novel about a shapeshifting killer called Valley of Lights, but that's about it!

Written and directed by Justin McConnell, it follows the character of 'Drew' who narrates the film, and follows the shapeshifter through a variety of personas. What I really liked here was that it's a film with several 'lead' characters in that their appearance (and sex) changes as the film progresses. There's a real sense of loss too as each character dies to allow 'Drew' to continue living, and as each body he takes starts to decay and fall apart after a short time, there's a lot of body-hopping to be done.

There's also a romance element in that 'Drew' loves a girl called Julia, and his body hopping eventually leads him to a temporary happiness with her ... but there's a twist and ultimately he cannot take her body when his own starts to decay, and so he decides to die this time - allowing his body to crumble away. But instead of this happening it becomes a sort of cocoon, and out of this comes an old man. Now whether this is meant to be Drew as he really is, or a different variation on the shapeshifter is unknown, and the film ends on a slightly unsatisfactory note as a result. A little more explanation in the final scenes would have been appreciated.

Overall though it's a good and solid film, with a lot of good ideas and some great practical effects too. Well worth a look.

4/5

Review: Hell Fest (2018)

There's always something rather satisfying in sitting back and enjoying one of those eighties slasher movies. You know, the ones where a group of kids go off to camp, or to a mall, or to babysit, or to a deserted cabin in the woods ... only to find death waiting for them in the form of a deranged schoolfriend, the janitor, someone who died there years ago, or an escaped psycho from the local hospital.  What makes the films good is the tension, imaginative deaths, and a good dose of eye candy for both male and female viewers.

There's a formula for these things, and if you follow the formula, you generally get an entertaining film. Note I don't say a good film as some of these offerings are sorely lacking in acting ability, camerawork, effects or pretty much everything. But they're still entertaining.

We have seen some pastiches on the form in recent years. I'm thinking of course of Cabin in the Woods, the marvellous trope subverting film from Wes Craven, but also Todd Strauss-Schulson's 2015 film The Final Girls which brilliantly plays with the idea of film within film and the concept of the 'Final Girl' ie the one left standing at the end to defeat/unmask the killer.

This brings me to 2018's Hell Fest. Directed by Gregory Plotkin, it seems to be trying to present a take on the genre, but what it doesn't do is present anything new. In fact, the whole film is overall quite disappointing as you're expecting something original, but in fact there is nothing. And worse still, it doesn't follow the 'rules'.

The basic idea is that a group of teens (Amy Forsyth as Natalie, Reign Edwards as Brooke, Bex Taylor-Klaus as Taylor, Christian James as Quinn, Matt Mercurio as Asher and Roby Attal as Gavin)  head off to Hell Fest, a local horror carnival, which features a variety of the sort of thing which happens every Halloween in America, and indeed which features at the various Universal theme parks around the country too. There are 'haunted houses', 'Ghost Train' rides, actors in costume trying to scare people, horror themed food and drink and carnival side shows ... anything and everything horror.

Into this scenario comes a nameless killer, who stalked the grounds of Hell Fest before, killing girls, and now is back to do the same.

So the film follows our six teens as they explore the park, go through the various rides, and get stalked by the killer, who bumps them off one by one. Apart from the production design (by It Follows' Michael Perry) which is superb - some of these Hell Fest attractions are by far the scariest and most imaginative that I have ever seen - the script is lazy. The kids are killed off one by one: one random girl is seen being stabbed with a knife; one of our heroes - the immensely likable Taylor (Bex Taylor-Klaus, who seems to be channelling Warehouse 13's Alison Scagliotti) is stabbed with a knife and one of the guys, Gavin, gets his head smashed in with a mallet. It's all gory fun ... but as the film progresses, there seems little point to the proceedings, and a disinterest sets in.

The killer is just 'the Other' (Stephen Conroy) and as he wears a mask throughout and we never see his face, is nameless and just a killing machine. Whereas 'the Shape' in Halloween and 'Jason' in the Friday the Thirteenth films are masked killers too, these have more personality and some sort of modus operandi. Here the killer just kills and we never know why.

He also does not receive any come-uppance, walking away at the end, despite being stabbed by one of the girls. It's the killings too which have no imagination or cleverness behind them ... just knife stabbings on the whole.  There was the scope to really up the ante here and to present something clever, but this never happens.

So as a film, it's well shot, well acted, and the location and production design is superb. It's unfortunately the script which lets it down. Disappointing.

Released On Digital HD 8th March and DVD 1st April 2019

Review: Overlord

Completely at the other end of spectrum to Redcon-1 comes another War-based zombie fun fest, Overlord. However here, the plot makes sense, the characters are good, and the whole thing is a tremendous film!

Produced by J J Abrams, he of Star Trek, Alias and Lost fame, Overlord opens looking like a fairly standard war film. A crack group of soldiers are paracuted into German territory during WW2 to investigate a German bunker/outpost. The effects here are mindblowing as the poor group of soldiers are under attack even before they leave their airplane: with bullets hitting them, explosions all around, other planes flying with them before exploding, barrage balloons, and all the other paraphernalia of war.

Most of them make it down, some are captured and executed by German troops, but a small number make it to a French village where they befriend one of the locals, a woman, Chloe (Mathilde Ollivier) living with her young son (Gianny Taufer) and mother in a house. Something is wrong with 'mother' though - she seems to be turning into a monster!

One of the group, a black soldier called Boyce (Jovan Adepo), manages to infiltrate the German bunker and discovers that a Nazi doctor has been performing horrific experiments on humans, all to try and create a serum which will revive the dead as Nazi super soldier zombies.

Boyce steals some of the serum, and it ends up being used on one of his own party... they decide that they have to destroy the laboratory, and so return to plant explosives. Of course there is a standoff with the German commander who has injected himself with the serum.

The film has some great moments, and the make-ups and effects are superb. Watch out for a pleading woman's head separated from her body but still on a spinal column! There are elements here of various previous Living Dead films, as well as, I felt, John Carpenter's seminal The Thing, especially in the music which by accident or design seems to emulate Ennio Morricone's score, but also in the decision to blow the whole place up at the end.

I found the film hugely enjoyable, though it does take a long time to morph from what seems to be a standard war film, into a zombie horror film. Oh, and I have no idea at all why it's called Overlord.

4 out of 5!

Review: Redcon-1

Redcon-1 is a new film directed by Chee Keong Cheung and is another entry in the Zombie Apocalypse genre. It's perhaps unfortunate that I have seen quite a few Zombie films in my time, and so I can see that this one is nothing new. It resembles at various points other films which have handled the material far more elegantly.

One of the biggest issues I had was the narrative - it doesn't seem to have one! The idea they are playing with is that the government, or some agency thereof, has developed a virus which will create unstoppable zombie soldiers - creatures that cannot be killed, which are zombies, but which retain the knowledge of who they were and how to function ...

We follow a team of nameless human soldiers who are battling these creatures to try and rescue the scientist who created the virus ... there's a little girl who seems immune, and they try and get her to safety ... along the way, the lead character - whose name I cannot remember ... in fact I can't recall the names of anyone in the film - becomes a zombie but they manage to deliver the girl, the scientist is killed, and that's the end.

The plot is so vague, and the film is totally filled with fast moving action fight sequences, that there's no room for much dialogue or explanation ... it just rumbles onto the next battle, and the next ...

If you like action, violence, blood and gore, and zombie hoards, then this film may tick all the boxes for you. Personally I found it derivative and disappointing. Films like Resident Evil, 28 Days Later and even Escape from New York have handled similar material and themes much better.

One final note, the film I was sent to review had a PREVIEW COPY DO NOT PIRATE message over the top third of the screen the whole time which was both annoying and very distracting ... hard to watch something when you keep being thrown out of it by the lettering. This may have been part of the reason for my disappointment with the film - it really didn't hold my attention. Why not put the message up every 30 mins or so for a minute? Or flag it on the corner of the screen ... It's a little like being asked to review a stage play where they keep the curtain half way down all the time.

Just 2 out of 5 for this one.



RELEASE INFORMATION
Distributor: Intense Distribution & 101 Films
Certificate: 18
Release date: 25th February, 2019
Digital release: 25th February, 2019
Running time: 118 mins

KEY TALENT INFORMATION
Director: Chee Keong Cheung

Stars:
Oris Erhuero
Carlos Gallardo
Mark Strange
Joshua Dickinson
Akira Koieyama
Katarina Waters
Martyn Ford

Review: That'll Be The Day Stage Show

It's not often that we go to the theatre, but when we do, it's usually a treat!

And when a surprise invitation came through to see THAT'LL BE THE DAY at the Lincoln Theatre Royal last night, it was hopefully going to be something special.  And that is something of an understatement.

It was amazing. No, better than that, it was a rollicking, superb, entertaining, mad dash through pop music history, with the most brilliant team of musicians and comedians as your guides.

If you get a chance to go see the show,  then do yourself a favour and go see it. It's the most uplifting and fun evening of music and comedy that you're likely to experience.

It's not based on the Buddy Holly song 'That'll be the Day', although the song does feature. This is not a staged biopic like JERSEY BOYS or WE WILL ROCK YOU ... In fact the title refers to the group of people who put this all together ...

The first half presents music from the Sixties, with perfect recreations of music from Sandy Nelson in a jaw dropping live performance of 'Bring on the Drums', Lulu, the Beatles, Cilla Black, Elvis, The Hollies, Gene Pitney ... they just keep on coming. Interspersed with comedy skits we get Doddy make an appearance, as well as a brief Eric Morcambe, plus Roy Orbison ... they just keep on coming!  We end the first half with the 'Summer of Love' and music from The Mamas and the Papas, The Fifth Dimension (Aquarius) and more!

The second half is even more incredible, with acts like Mick Jagger, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Dire Straits, Abba, Whitney Houston, Cliff Richard, Ah-Ha, Wings, ELO, Billy Joel ... all vying for position as the group lets the music come thick and fast. It's like going to see all the groups live in one evening!  The impressions are superb and the comedy both fresh and occasionally groan-inducing.

If audience reaction is anything to go by, the show is an absolute hit from start to end, with the audience singing along, and, at the end, actually getting to their feet to clap and cheer and dance in the aisles ... and considering that our audience was predominantly over sixty years old, that's no mean feat!

As I said at the start ... if you get a chance to go see them, then please do. If you like music, and enjoy pop from the fifties right through to songs from the MTV era of the eighties, then you will love it! The musicianship is second to none, the singing is amazing and the costume changes perfect.

It's a superbly entertaining night out, and suitable for anyone! (Though some of the comedy is somewhat risque, so perhaps not for the under eighteens ...)

Their website can be found here: https://www.thatllbetheday.com/

Review: Doctor Who: The Women Who Lived

With a new Doctor in the form of Jodie Whittaker about to take the stage, BBC Books decided to celebrate by releasing Doctor Who: The Women Who Lived.  'Amazing tales for Future Time Lords' it says ... but that's not quite what you get.

Several years back, I co-wrote a book called Doctor Who: Companions, which was a look at all the actors and actresses who had played the Doctor's companions to that time ... so basically Classic series, and including a couple from the original novels and comic strip too.  My co-author Mark Stammers and I delved into the factual background of the characters, discovering their origins, BBC Outlines, their casting and so on, and also spoke to as many of the artistes as we could to try and gain a rounded and hopefully interesting view of the role of the Companion and what it meant to the many people who had played them.

Written by Chrystal Dee and Simon Guerrier, this new book takes the female companions only, along with many other significant female characters from the show, and presents a page or two on each, accompanied by a piece of artwork depicting said character. All the imagery is by female artists too ... so it looks like the only men involved are co-author Guerrier, along with all the book's production team.

And it's a strangely insubstantial affair. The text in each case is simply a brief description of who/what/where/how that character was presented. Written in very easy to read, child-friendly text, it's skimmable and doesn't contain anything really new. The 'Amazing Tales' promised by the cover are simply those which Doctor Who as a series has already presented. Maybe this is a storybook to read to children when they go to bed ... maybe ...

So what is it then ... perhaps an art book? When I penned Timeframe, that title was deliberately designed as a scrapbook of images, with the text playing second fiddle to the visuals. Here the text takes up more pages than the visuals, but seems to be secondary to them.

If this is an art book, then I'm really sorry, but many of the pieces look nothing like the characters. Many have over-simplified styles, and others have the characters conceived as almost Manga-inspired imagery, with over-large eyes and boyish figures. It's really not to my taste at all. There are a couple of what I would describe as decent images, but these are far outnumbered by those where I was left scratching my head as to who it was meant to be ... with only a costume element or even the text alongside it giving me a clue.

I think this book should really have come from the BBC Children's Books stable as it's far more on a par with the young-aimed fare that they have been publishing. As a BBC Book, you'd reasonably expect something with a bit of meat and interest in it. At £16.99 for a hardback, this really is not something which appeals to me, and, I wonder, will it appeal to the under-tens who it seems to be aimed at. Do ten year old boys want to read a book of brief character descriptions and plot details concerning a bunch of women from a TV show, many of which they may never have heard of. Maybe that's the point, and the BBC want the series' associated merchandise aimed at 9 year old girls. I suspect this might be true, as Dee and Guerrier say at the end of their Introduction: 'we hope this book will inspire you - to revisit adventures from these women's point of view, to write about and draw your favourite characters ...' Not really something you'd find in a book aimed at adults.

Published on the 27th September 2018 by BBC Books

Review: Recent Doctor Who Books

There's been a few Doctor Who titles released of late ... so a quick round up of thoughts.

With the 13th Doctor now on television (and me not having time to watch and review the episodes at the moment ...) there's been a few titles released tieing into the series. But it's interesting to look back a few months to when a new crop of 'Target' branded novelisations hit the shops, to try and gain something of an appreciation as to what has happened here.

First off is City of Death, novelised by James Goss. In fact, abridged might be the best word to use here as Goss had already written a much longer version of Douglas Adams' City of Death a year or so earlier. This is a shorter version for the Target novelisation market, and reading it through, Goss is certainly channeling Adams bigtime, with much which reads and 'sounds' like something out of Adams' popular The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. There are some lovely moments, like a short sequence where Professor Kerensky is aged to death - but seen from Kerensky's point of view, and overall the book reads well. As a fairly traditional novelisation, this works well, giving the story and characters a little time to breathe (though not as much as in the full length version) while staying pretty faithful to the televised scripts.

Next up is a ninth Doctor story, Rose, novelised by Russell T Davies from his own script. This again feels very much like a traditional novelisation, There is some expansion of the characters, but overall it feels very much like a 'script to screen' adaptation, not much added in, and not much taken away. It's another strong book, reading well, and making a great addition to the Target range.

Tenth Doctor next, and Jenny T Colgan novelises The Christmas Invasion from Russell T Davies' script. This is perhaps the weakest of this batch of novelisations, being again pretty much a straight retelling of the story with not much added or taken away.

The Eleventh Doctor is represented by Steven Moffat novelising his own script for The Day of the Doctor. This is something of a revelation. Moffat makes the best use of the novelisation format and presents something unique and fascinating, a book which manages to follow the events of the televised story, while at the same time, putting a very personal and unique spin on it. Even the book plays games with the reader, promising a chapter which then doesn't appear to exist (but at the back there are marks which show how many times you have read - and forgotten - it). It's a clever book and stands rereading. In fact, it's pretty typical of Moffat's television Doctor Who ... complex and bewildering, but when he gets it right ... supremely satisfying.

The final book in the Target novelisations is by Paul Cornell, having a go at novelising Steven Moffat's Twice Upon A Time. Unfortunately this suffers as the original teleplay also suffered - from not having very much in the way of substance. Cornell has apparently reinstated around 30 minutes of material which was cut from the final episode, and as with Colgan's book, is a perfectly acceptable, straightforward novelisation of the story ...

What makes these books notable is that although they are branded as a continuation of the Target line, they are written for adults. There is no talking down or oversimplificaton of the text - they are readable and enjoyable in the same way that the television episodes were, and the original novelisation range was ...

And that brings me to the new original novels which have been released for the thirteenth Doctor. There are three in the initial batch: The Good Doctor by Juno Dawson, Molten Heart by Una McCormack, and Combat Magicks by Steve Cole.

So far I've only had a chance to read  The Good Doctor, and ... well ... it's a kid's book. When I (re-)read the Target novelisations, I often note if there is a lack of description as to which Doctor is at the controls of the TARDIS, or what people are wearing and so on ... and here there is next to nothing. The Doctor is the Doctor almost by name only, and I even read a part of the book considering the character to be played by Peter Davison in my head, and it worked just fine ...

Maybe this is because the books were commissioned and written before any information about how Jody Whittaker would play the character had been released, but after the aforementioned Target books, this is something of a disappointment.

It's also got a similar plot to the television story The Ark  - albeit that this is one which most readers and viewers will never have heard of let alone seen. The central conceit being that the Doctor and co visit a planet where there is a war, put things right, and then leave, returning 'moments' later (because Ryan forgot his phone) to find it's actually years in the future ... and thus seeing the results of their actions. There's also a hefty nod to Douglas Adams in the narrative, as one of the things they are faced with is a giant statue of the Tardis - and a stained glass window of Graham who is worshipped as 'The Good Doctor' ... definite shades of Arthur Dent there.

Reading the book, there are a lot of characters, but I didn't get any sense of what they looked like or who they were ... everything seemed simplified. Furthermore, it read like a story written by someone who doesn't really 'get' Doctor Who ... I have been considering this a lot watching the television episodes this season ... it feels like a show being written by people who grew up loving the TV Comic or Doctor Who Magazine comic strips ... and there is a similar level of story telling and ideas which you used to find in the comic strips, and which (I at least thought) had no place on television ... With giant cute fluffy monsters, 'Sinister Sponge' creatures, and so on all vying for attention against a Doctor who often acted out of character ...

Maybe this is the essence of the show these days ... that the years of original fiction and comic stories have given birth to a Doctor Who variant which seems at odds with the show which I grew up with and loved. I often felt that the comic stories were a little 'silly', and this feeling has been played out in several of the television episodes this season.

Maybe the books by Una McCormack and Steve Cole will be better (I have no previous knowledge of Juno Dawson's work, so she might be the one out of kilter here) ... I'll report back when I have read them.

Review: Doctor Who: The Woman Who Fell To Earth

Watching the opening episode of a new season of Doctor Who is always a pleasure, and when it's the first episode featuring a new Doctor, moreso.  But this year, with The Woman Who Fell To Earth, we not only had a new Doctor, but a new set of companions, a new Showrunner in the form of Chris Chibnell, new production team, new music composer, new title music, and new titles (although as of writing, I've not seen those yet as they weren't included on the opening episode). So there's lots to be anticipatory about.

One thing that is worth pointing out as well, is that unlike most previous Doctor Who seasons and episodes, this time, I knew absolutely nothing about it ... aside from the actors chosen to play the lead roles, not a single plot point, meaningful photograph, or anything much had crossed my path to either 'spoil' or generate excitement about the show. It was a total blank. So much so, that I had no clue when sitting down to watch it, what to expect at all.

So how did it fare? Not too bad overall. Opening Doctor episodes tend to be a little on the let-down side anyway (thinking Robot, The Twin Dilemma, The Eleventh Hour, Deep Breath) and this time there was so much to try and cram in, that a plot of any depth was probably asking too much ...

However a plot was there, and it was straightforward and understandable, if a bit of a steal from Predator. An alien (strangely called Tzim-Sha (Tim Shaw)) comes to Earth to hunt a human so that he can ascend to lead his race ... along the way he steals teeth from his prey and embeds them in his face ... So does Tzim only hunt humans then? If he hunted ... I don't know ... Elephants, then would he have their tusks embedded there? And what if the prey had no teeth ... what would he do then? Thankfully these questions go unanswered.

So Tzim arrives on Earth because a lad called Ryan touches a hologrammatical map thingy in a forest near Sheffield, and summons him there. I did wonder what would have happened if Tzim's summoner went untouched? Would he then try somewhere else? And why make it appear in a forest anyway? Why not somewhere that there were actual people? Anyway ...

So the map thingy makes a blue container thing appear in the forest - and initial thoughts were that this might be the TARDIS ... but no. It's basically a shuttle? Spaceship? Something in which Tzim-Sha travels ... but he can apparently teleport. So why does he need it?

Meanwhile, there's some sort of tentacled Cthulhuian monster attacking a train from Sheffield to London (it's unclear why), and the Doctor falls from the sky, crashes through the train roof, and is completely unscathed and saves Graham and his wife Grace, and a lad called Karl from the tentacle thing. They then hook up with a junior police officer called Jasmine to investigate. Along the way, the Doctor makes a new Sonic Screwdriver (in part from melted down Sheffield steel spoons), and the pod thing opens to reveal Tzim-Sha ...

Tzim (or the tentacle thing which seems to be working for him, or the people who sent Tzim on this mission) has apparently chosen Karl as the prey, and so the alien tracks him to his job as a crane worker, where he climbs the crane to get him (remember, he can teleport). In a neat bit of flip-floppery, the Doctor confronts Tzim and reveals that the DNA bombs he planted in them had been transferred to the tentacle thing, and from there into Tzim himself ... so Tzim leaves in a flash of logic.

The Doctor then decides to try and locate the TARDIS using Tzim's teleport device, but instead sends herself and her new friends into space!

The presence of a cliffhanger was lovely, I really missed those, and I hope they keep it up ... and the plot was simple enough to follow.  I did feel that Tzim-Sha was a bit of a letdown though. He was too much children's teatime SF and not enough Doctor Who. He would have been completely in place in, say, Lost in Space, or Galloping Galaxies perhaps ... just something about it didn't work for me.

As for the other elements. I found the new companions quite likable. Ryan and Jasmine had a touch of 'Soap Opera' about their performances, but overall they were believable, and Graham I really liked ... a sort of 'everyman' just getting on with life before it's all turned upside down by the arrival of Tzim-Sha and the Doctor.

Finally, the new Doctor. To be perfectly honest, I'm not quite sure at the moment. After just one episode, Jodie Whittaker has yet to make much of an impact. I liked her arrival, crashing into the train (and I guess she's unharmed as she was still regenerating at the time), and I liked the way she took control of the situation immediately. There were flashes of David Tennant's performance in hers, with the mouth movements and facial expressions, and I liked her 'get on with it' attitude. I really liked that the fact she was a woman was really not made much of an issue of - and why should it, as far as we know, none of these people has ever met the Doctor before, so they would not know or realise any different.

But is she the Doctor? A couple of moments I felt, yes, she's got this, and then the next moment it's like watching someone cosplaying as the Doctor, someone pretending to be the Timelord ...

I think the basic issue was, with no opening titles, no TARDIS, nothing to actually tell you this was Doctor Who, it could have been the opening episode from Stranger Things 3, or a new Netflix show about saving the Earth from Aliens (Earth vs Aliens) ... and it would have been perfectly acceptable as such.

One thing which really impressed me was the sound design and music. Absolutely first rate, and a refreshing change from the orchestral approach since the show returned in 2005. I found Segun Akinola's score creepy and effective, and also modern and emotive. Can't wait to get a CD release of that!

In a way, it's nice to have such a clean slate to work from. Pretty much anything and everything which made Doctor Who, Doctor Who, was swept away, and we're starting completely from scratch, with no baggage, and no touchstones to the past at all (except perhaps from the Sonic Screwdriver) ...

A final comment to add: while I'm reminded of it ... the story actually has many 'touches' to Matt Smith's debut adventure: a companion dressed as a police officer, an alien who wants to take the Earth, a secondary alien working for the first, and the Doctor tells them to scarper at the end ... A very similar idea ...

Overall, then, a very promising start for the 13th Doctor, or is she the 14th? Or maybe the 15th?

One final thought ... the episode certainly didn't seem to be aimed at 8 year old girls ... so why are all the books and merchandise suddenly aimed there? Answers on a postcard ...

Fixing PCs

As the old PC or Laptop are pretty essential for all manner of things, occasionally I need to do some maintenance on them to get them running OK, speed them up, clear out the rubbish and so on ...

We have a sort-of policy that no important data is actually stored on the computers themselves - everything is either in Dropbox, or on external USB connected hard drives ... so that we can back them up, have copies, and generally try and protect ourselves from losing everything ...

So I often see people asking online as to how to help sort their own computers out ... so I listed out the following basic set of actions which should help to improve any Windows PC or laptop.  I'm afraid I have never owned or used a Mac, so I have no idea what one would do for one of those machines ...

So I hope this is helpful to someone ...

BASIC STEPS TO IMPROVE A WINDOWS LAPTOP/PC

1) Empty the Recycle Bin and ensure that WINDOWS UPDATES are all installed/up to date.
2) Go to SETTINGS/APPS (This is Windows 10. If you're on an earlier version, then this is the SETTINGS and PROGRAMS option) and go through all programs/apps and uninstall any you don't want/need (Google them if you don't know what they do)
3) RESTART THE PC/LAPTOP
4) Do a Disk Cleanup (WINDOWS ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS) and delete any/all elements showing there with space. There's often old Dump and Crash files there, plus old install files from programs, Windows Update temporary files and other stuff you don't need too.
5) RESTART THE PC/LAPTOP
6) If the internet is not working/connecting, then try opening the Windows Settings for it - in there will be diagnostic tools to check the connections and to help fix them ... (NETWORK AND INTERNET SETTINGS) ... Consider where you are using the PC/Laptop. If you're at home, then you should probably be on a Private Network as this is trusted. If you are at home but set to a Public Network, then it may be doing additional checks and security which are not needed.
7) Download Malwarebytes (https://www.malwarebytes.com/), install the free version and run to check/clean up anything dodgy on the PC - if you don't have internet, then download the install package to another PC and drop it on a removable USB drive, then install on the PC you're working on.
8) Download CCleaner (https://www.ccleaner.com/), install the free version. If you don't have internet, then download the install package to another PC and drop it on a removable USB drive, then install on the PC you're working on.
9) On CCleaner, Run a general cleanup first (ANALYSE and then RUN CLEANER). Make sure that SAVED PASSWORDS is NOT checked - it's greyed out on the free version - or you will lose all your stored passwords. If you unclick DOWNLOAD HISTORY then you won't lose your history of websites opened in the various programs ... so check the tabs carefully and make sure you understand what you are asking the tool to remove. If you don't want to lose the history of files opened in OFFICE applications, then click on the APPLICATIONS tab and Uncheck OFFICE (and any other applications you don't want to be affected).
10) Then on CCleaner run a REGISTRY CLEANER (SCAN FOR ISSUES and then FIX SELECTED ISSUES). It's a good idea on this one to save the previous registry copy to a folder - it prompts you to do this.
11) Then run the REGISTRY CLEANER again ... it sometimes takes two runs to clean it all up.
12) RESTART THE PC/LAPTOP
13) On CCleaner, go to TOOLS and the STARTUP tab. Check what your PC starts at startup. Double clicking on anything here will stop it starting ... so do that for anything you don't want to start when the PC starts - in general, keep things like system and printer software, Dropbox and Windows Defender there, and any anti virus/firewall software you have installed, but any specific programs can be stopped - like SKYPE, TOMTOM apps ... anything which if you want to use it, you can run it anyway. Anything you don't recognise or understand, Google to find out what it is/does and decide whether you want or need it running at startup.
14) RESTART THE PC/LAPTOP
15) If you have any hardware checking programs or tools (sometimes they come on the PC when you buy it) then run them to check everything out.
http://www8.hp.com/.../hpsupportassistant/pc-diags.html is a handy HP diagnostic tool to check out the key elements. I'm not sure if this works on non-HP kit though.
Lenovo have something similar called a Solution Centre (https://support.lenovo.com/gb/en/downloads/ds104494)  ... I'm sure there are others ...

As mentioned, we use Dropbox (https://www.dropbox.com) for holding all in-progress files. This is free and easily downloadable, and you can gain more space for it by carrying out actions like sharing links on Social Media and so on ... of course you can purchase more space too if you want/need to.

Dropbox basically keeps an ongoing backup of everything in the Dropbox folder on your PC. It also keeps old versions of everything, so if you need to recover something or go back to an older version, it's easy to do so.

For other online backups, and after a crash which nearly lost a whole hard drive (!), I'm now using Backblaze (https://www.backblaze.com), as recommended by friends. It's not expensive (about $50 a year) and basically takes and maintains an online backup of EVERY hard drive you have (or can) connect to a computer.  It's NOT a storage facility though, so if you remove the hard drives, then after 30 days it assumes you don't want the data and so will delete it.  But if you have a hard drive go bad, or accidentally delete something you shouldn't have, then it's a great and simple way of having an up to date copy that you can recover from.

And hard drives ... they're always getting cheaper and cheaper, and you can find 3Tb ones now which are less than £100 ... a good investment to keep all your data, pictures. videos and whatever on, and to have spares with backed up copies on ...

Then and Now

Cover for VOLUME 2

It's 2018 and I'm delighted that the second volume of my review book series Then and Now is finally available.

It covers Doctor Who  from the start of the Matt Smith episodes to the end of the Peter Capaldi ones, culminating in the just-transmitted 'Twice Upon A Time'. This time around, many of the reviews are original and not from this blog simply because I didn't review them at the time!  So if you want to know what I thought of the show through this period, then this is the book for you!

To go with Volume 2, I have 'refreshed' Volume 1 slightly, adding some colour to the lettering on the cover, and also making some slight textual corrections ... nothing significant though.

I still have physical copies of the original edition of Volume 1 available if people would like signed copies. Please order them from me direct here:

Original edition of
VOLUME 1

ORDER ORIGINAL EDITION OF VOLUME 1 OF THEN AND NOW

Price Including Shipping

UK £15.49 GBP Europe £16.99 GBP ROW £19.99 GBP

Dedication

ORDER VOLUME 2 OF THEN AND NOW

Price Incuding Shipping

UK £15.49 GBP Europe £16.99 GBP ROW £19.99 GBP

Dedication

In addition, the new editions of Volume 1 and Volume 2 are available to buy from Amazon at the following links ... Obviously these will be unsigned copies - but if you see me at any events etc, then I'm always more than happy to sign my own books at no cost!

New edition of VOLUME 1

VOLUME ONE:

AMAZON UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1518776000

AMAZON USA: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1518776000

VOLUME TWO:

AMAZON UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1981988424

AMAZON USA: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1981988424


And both books are now available for Kindle, Kobo and Nook, so please check them out for your device of choice :)

Review: Life (2017)

Life is described as Gravity meets Alien, and that's not actually a bad way of putting it. Astronauts on the International Space Station manage to 'germinate' a form of life found in some sand from Mars, and this thing grows into a sort of tentacled creature with wings which can survive in deep space, does not need gravity, and which sort of feeds on blood ...

So the astronauts find themselves locked in a battle with the creature as they realise that it must not reach Earth, but also that they must try and save themselves! As you might expect, things don't go all that well ...

It's a well made film, and the small cast make the most of their circumstances. The creature, dubbed Calvin by the crew, is suitably nasty looking and alien ... I felt it was almost cat-like in it's intelligence and persistence, and it's tenacious and horrific too - certainly more than a match for the astronauts who try everything they can think of to neutralise the alien.

Overall it's an enjoyable sci-fi horror, with a creature that benefits from being CGI rather than rubber.