Return of the Land of the Living Dead

A couple of interesting Zombie films were on the agenda this week ... George Romero's Land of the Dead, and Return of the Living Dead from Dan O'Bannon. Land of the Dead is a peculiar thing, a Zombie movie which doesn't feel like one. It comes over more like some sort of vigilante film than anything else. The world has become infested with Zombies, and they stand around trying to recapture their lost humanity by continuing to do what they did before ... shopping, serving customers and so on ... while in a protected enclave, the last of humanity lives in a high rise development with its own shopping mall and every convenience you could imagine. However the owner of the complex, Kaufman, played by a fairly laid back Dennis Hopper, needs to get food and supplies in from somewhere so he has hired Cholo, played by John Leguizamo, to get the supplies for him. There follows a fairly predictable path, as a special 'supplies truck' is stolen by Cholo when Kaufman cuts him off after he has delivered the goods, and it's up to a small group of humans led by Riley (Simon Baker), and which include reformed prostitute/dancer Slack (Asia Argento), to retrieve the truck ... The film is most interesting for the zombies though, in particular 'Big Daddy' played by Eugene Clark who turns in a movie-stealing performance as a hulking brute who seems to have more intelligence than most - working out how to use a gun and other implements as weapons. The other zombies are mostly defined by their old jobs: a butcher, a cheerleader, a Salvation Army band member; and they follow 'Big Daddy's lead in attacking the complex and killing everyone inside. The film ends with zombies and surviving humans going their own way in a sort of 'live and let live' approach to the menace. I can't say it's a great film, but it has its moments and is never dull. The other film is a favourite of mine and I never get tired of revisiting it. Return of the Living Dead is a straight zombie film which is a sequel of sorts to Night of the Living Dead. Some zombies from that outbreak have been canned up by the Army, and accidentally delivered to a medical supplies centre where they have stayed for years and years before worker Burt (Clu Gallagher) decides to show newby Freddie (Thom Mathews) what is in the basement. Cue the escape of gases which overcome Burt and Freddie, and which bring all the organic objects in the supply warehouse to life. In a great sequence we see a split dog (a dog mounted and cut down the middle, nose to tail, to show all the internal organs) whining, and butterflies flapping in a cabinet. Then a cadaver comes alive and runs amok before it's pinned to the ground with a small pickaxe. This still doesn't kill it and so they then cut it into pieces and take them over to the local morturary run by Ernie (Don Calfa) who destroys them in the incinerator, causing poisoned rain to fall over the nearby cemetary where a group of stoner mates of Freddies are partying. Next thing they know, the dead are coming back to life ... It's a wonderful fun film, and the leads play it straight, the laughs coming out of the situations rather than any overt comedy. I love the Tar Man zombie in the cellar - one of the best zombies ever committed to film - and the idea of the things being able to run and reason is very nicely handled. The 'Send more Paramedics' line deserves especial mention of course, as does the idea of Ernie and Freddie literally turning into zombies as we watch, and without dying in between. The production design by William Stout is exemplary, and the zombies are brilliant as a result. The old woman one which is captured and pinned to the table is a case in point. Her backbone writhing and weeping fluids as she explains that the creatures want brains to eat to ease the pain of being dead is a neat twist, and lends a little sympathy to the creatures. The stoner crew are amazing ... what a bunch. And what on earth Freddy's girlfriend - who is a 'nice girl' - is doing with the likes of Trash (Linnea Quigley) who strips off faster than you can blink and dances on a tomb before being got by the zombies, is anyone's guess. I have to also point out that the two main leads here are called Ernie and Burt ... something of an homage to Sesame Street perhaps? Definitely worth a watch, it's one of the gems of zombie cinema.

Bubba Ho-Tep

Sometimes films pass you by for no reason at all. Bubba Ho-Tep is one such. I am a massive fan of the Phantasm films and thought that Beastmaster from the same director was pretty cool as well, so I have no idea why I didn't catch up with this gem sooner ... The premise of the film is somewhat strange: Elvis Presley is alive and well and living in a rest home suffering from a fractured pelvis and an infected pecker. Seems that The King swapped places with an Elvis tribute act many years ago, and it was the tribute act (Sebastian Haff) who allegedly died on the loo with cheeseburger in hand, while the real King continued to perform as Haff until he broke his pelvis in a fall from a stage, and went into a coma. Also in the rest home is John F Kennedy - not dead at all from a bullet taken in November 1963, but living as a black man (he was dyed!) with a sack of sand in his skull. There are a series of deaths at the home, and Elvis and JFK realise that there's an ancient Egyptian soul-sucking mummy on the loose, and only they can bring him down before he sucks their souls right out of their own ass-holes! It's a mind bending concept, but the direction and performances are so spot on that it is nothing but enjoyable. Bruce Campbell as Elvis is a revelation. He is spot on as the aged crooner, with his mannerisms and voice down pat. It's a brilliant performance, and a shame that it didn't garner more widespread acclaim at the time. Ossie Davis as JFK is also superb - delivering the revelation that they dyed him black with a straight face. The whole thing is played completely straight and this enhances the film. It's a fun romp through horror, played by folks who know just how to pitch it all. The effects veer from the slightly naff - the scenes with the giant scarab bug reminded me a lot of the similarly naff giant fly sequences from Phantasm - to the superb - Bubba Ho-Tep's appearances in the rest home are creepy and well developed. He's one scary mummy! I really appreciated the conceit of the hierogyphic graffiti on the toilet wall, and also that when Ho-Tep spoke, you saw the pictograms appear from is mouth before they are translated on screen - the images match what is said as well, and these alone are very funny. I'd recommend this film to anyone who hasn't seen it. It contains enough surreal touchpoints for people who are not that into horror, while the frightening elements are enough to keep a horror fan happy as well. Very enjoyable indeed.

Return of the Blinky Angels

This was what we were waiting for! Steven Moffat in full flow with a great little horror tale which just builds and builds. To be honest, this episode wiped the floor with the others. The standard suddenly jumped up a notch, and everyone seemed to be well into their stride with it all. Of course, the Weeping Angels were one of the success stories of earlier years - a genuinely original monster which was creepy and scary into the bargain. I wasn't sure though about bringing River Song back into it. I liked her in the Library story, and of course she was always a cert to return, but it all seemed a little bit like 'the best of Steven Moffat' - all we were missing was a kid wandering about in a gasmask, and a clockwork robot to make it complete. The episode was so full of good bits that it's hard to single one out. I loved the take on The Ring, with the Angel coming for Amy through the TV screen ... the idea of Amy maybe being 'infected' by the Angel was interesting, but perhaps an idea too far as this never happened in 'Blink' - are we to assume that poor Sally and her boyfriend are now 'infected' as well? The sets were amazing, and the filming in Clearwell caves superlative. I loved the way that the story kept unfolding: so it's one angel that's a threat, no, it's hundreds of them ... I even spotted the anomoly before they did on telly, wondering why all the statues had one head when their creators apparently had two. The reviving angels were brilliantly realised. Zombielike in their visage and slow approach, they certainly gave me the willies! I'm not sure what giving the Angels a voice achieved though - other than referencing the Vashta Nerada in 'Silence in the Library', with poor skeletal Dave forever wondering who put out the lights. Why did the Angel want to talk with the Doctor anyway? To scare him? But why? Then there's the whole River Song question ... who is she? Seems the Bishop knows (and what a wonderfully realised idea of having a Bishop with Clerics as the armed forces. Wonderful! So she might be the Doctor's wife? Sam thought that maybe she was actually the Doctor himself ... interesting idea and I'm not 100% certain that this is entirely disproved by whatever evidence we have been presented with so far. Parts of the episode reminded me of the Resident Evil game and film - having to go through a maze to get to a control centre, while being attacked on all sides by a zombie-like enemy. Not a bad thing to copy if that was the idea. But we shall see tonight how it all pans out, and I really hope and pray that it doesn't drop the ball as so many other two parters have done over the last few years. After a cracking first episode, we need a brilliant conclusion! Can't wait to see if it delivers.

Daleks in the Wartime

So, that last episode of Who ... in anticipation of something better tonight when the Angels are back (wonder if they'll nick the Doctor's wheels again ...) some thoughts on last week's episode. Well it started well, is about the best I can say. The wartime setting was nicely handled, and even Churchill was a nice cameo - even though I find it hard to believe that Churchill would ring the Doctor and ask him to come and see a new weapon ... why would he do that? Unless of course Bracewell encouraged it as part of the Daleks' shaky plan. I loved the initial reveal of the Dalek in olive green, and the very 'Power of the Daleks' homaging of 'We are your ... Soldier!' I loved the Daleks gliding around the base serving tea and coffee, and the fact that only the Doctor knew they were a menace. But then it all fell apart. The nice sense of paranoia which the aforementioned 'Power' played on so well was missing and the Doctor started hitting a Dalek with a spanner! Then we go off into some technobollox about the Daleks having this cute little device (*1) which lit up and which somehow contained pure Dalek DNA ... we learn that Bracewell (*2) is a Dalek robot and has built the things on Earth - but where did he get the Dalek DNA from I wonder ... and then the Daleks, having had the Doctor identify them, can now get their little Dalek gadget to create some 'pure' Daleks ... ... and here they come now! Tinky Winky Dalek! Dipsy Dalek! La La Dalek! and of course not forgetting Po Dalek! The Dalek Tellytubbies roll out looking for all the world like giant toys (*3) and proceed to exterminate the other ones ... erm ... Then, realising that there's a lack of action, Churchill sends some Spitfires into space (erm ... OK ...) and they attack the Dalek saucer ... How on earth they 'flew' is anyone's guess - Bracewell's anti gravity wassname maguffin might have got them into space, but there's no gravity there so how did the craft actually manouver - propellors won't work (no air) and the wings are useless (no atmosphere) ... never mind. Bracewell turns out to have a Dalek bomb in him as well, and so the Doctor and Amy, accompanied as usual by Murray Gold's inappropriately loud and intrusive music talk him out of it! Didn't we see that before in reverse in 'Remembrance of the Daleks' where the Doctor talks a Dalek into destroying itself. It didn't work there either. At least this time we get some lovely performances from the leads, and Gatiss does his best with the dialogue. Then the Daleks escape. The End. It was all way too rushed for 45 minutes, and what there was made little sense even on first viewing. Interesting how Amy can't remember the (many) Dalek (and Cybermen) invasions of previous years at all ... and of course we get to see Amy's crack again on the wall behind the TARDIS as it leaves. It's a story which could and should have been so much better, even with a lot of the same elements. A wartime adventure where the Doctor finds that Daleks are being used and has to side with the Nazis to destroy them ... or even more of a skit on 'Power' with the Daleks plotting to destroy and no-one listening to the Doctor so he has to use his wits to get him through it all ... And the new Daleks - woeful. They're too big, wobbly and brightly coloured. Daleks should be tight, small, bundles of power and threat and paranoia. If these were 'pure' Daleks, then we should have seen original 1963 versions, or those from 'Genesis of the Daleks' ... but then maybe this is all part of this parallel world/whatever it is thing going on with Amy here ... maybe this is what the Daleks looked like in her world ... maybe they were kid's toys which took over when the time was right ... who knows. All in all a very disappointing third episode which perhaps tried to do too much but ended up collapsing due to the weight of the requirements put on it, and the need to try and bring the Daleks back as 'new and improved'. Why try and improve something which just doesn't need it ... we shall never know. PS: The little asterisks are my somewhat cynical way of highlighting the elements which were included because they'll make great toys rather than having any real relevance to the story.

Beasts and Tricks

The title of the second Who episode in the series has an intersting ring to it. 'The Beast Below' ... as others have stated, perhaps something of an euphamism there. I liked the episode overall, though it did leave me a little cold on first viewing. There's also a few loose ends which I didn't appreciate, having hoped that we had seen the end of this sort of thing in the scripts. The Smilers are a case in point. What exactly were they? Some sort of robots? But who was controlling them, who made them, and why do they sit in little fairground booths? And how could their faces spin *three* times to show, smiling, sad, and then angry. I know it looked great and spooky, but then it was unexplained, and I didn't like that. And Queen Elizabeth X ... I wondered when she got black and cockney? And was she supposed to be 100s of years old? I heard something about slowing time down but it didn't make much sense really. And when did Amy record that frantic warning to the Doctor on her voting booth screen? There weren't even any controls allowing you to do that were there? And then there's the elevator shaft of doom ... leading to the Beast's mouth. The Doctor makes it sick ... and they're back on the spaceship? Why weren't they vomited out of the creature's mouth into space then? It was suggested to me that maybe they wee ejected out of a blow hole back into the ship ... but that was never mentioned or seen. And come to that, how did that kid who was 'taken' at the start end up back in the ship - the space whale could tell the difference between a kid and an adult when they're in its mouth? I dunno, it all seemed to be hanging together by threads really, but as with the last 5 years of Who, it rattled along at such a pace that you don't have time to notice these things while you're watching it. I quite liked the ending with Churchill and the Dalek ... but I always cringe when I see impressions of real characters in Who, it just seems wrong somehow - the action should be alongside the events of history, not slap bang in the middle of them ... but we shall see ... In other news, watched a couple of films recently: Up was great fun. It's another Pixar piece and that company can really do no wrong. It had us crying in the first ten minutes, and then presented a very funny and fun journey to a wilderness waterfall for the main characters. All animated superbly, and on the blu-ray it looked awesome. Think we'll have to buy that one. Squirrel! The other film was a horror called Trick 'r Treat, a wonderful Halloween piece of the type which we all thought would never be made again. Someone commented to be that it was a film about Halloween, which celebrated it, and this is spot on. It's not a slasher or a gore film, but an intelligent portmanteau movie of four stories which all cross and intersect as the film progresses. There's the tale of four twenty-something girls out on a night out, looking for male friends to spend the evening partying with ... We have the local Principle, and how he spends his Halloween - preparing 'special' candy for the local kids, and then going out in fancy dress ... There's the couple who don't really like the holiday and who decide to dismantle it all before the night is over ... There's the story of a group of kids who decide to visit the site of a coach crash many years previously, and in doing so disturb something which should have been left alone ... And finally the tale of a Scrooge-like old man, and how he is visited by the spirit of Samhain before the evening is over. All the cast and performances are superb, the film is wonderfully directed and rich in imagery and idea, and the little Samhain demon creature is a brilliant creation, appearing in all the stories somewhere ... watching ... waiting ... and perhaps claiming more than just candy ... I loved the film, and can see it becoming an October 31 staple to rewatch.

Days and Weeks

I've just been watching the DVDs for the two Zombie films 28 Days Later and the sequel 28 Weeks Later. I'd seen the first one years ago, probably when it came out, but the sequel I'd not seen before. 28 Days Later is one of those films which gets a good rep from the mainstream, probably in part because the director, Danny Boyle, is seen as being cool and hip after films like Trainspotting. It's actually not a bad little film, with some awesome cinematography of a deserted London at the start. I do have a problem with the chief scientist guy as he's played by David Schneider, who I know from the comedy The Day Today. So I find those scenes a little hard to take seriously. Our Hero, Jim, awakens in a deserted hospital and then goes walkabout wondering what has happened. You can see parallels here with the old BBC series Survivors, and indeed that the remake stole some of the ideas and imagery from this film in turn. Unfortunately, Jim meets up with some fellow survivors of the virus - called the Rage - and they set off across country, ending up captives of a group of soldiers led by Christopher Eccleston in a great little performance. The problem I tend to have with all these 'post apocalyptic' films - and indeed novels - is that few have anything really interesting to say, and it's all down to the basics: how do the survivors get food, power, water, medical supplies and so on ... fighting against both themselves, and whatever random threat is 'out there'. The film ends on a sort of hopeful note with an airplane being spotted - signalling that perhaps there are others out there who survived the virus. It has been argued that the film doesn't have zombies in ... as these are just humans infected with the Rage virus which makes them get angry, vomit blood, get bad teeth and complexion and run after normal humans to eat them ... sounds like zombies to me. And if it looks like a zombie and acts like a zombie ... The sequel, 28 Weeks Later, follows a similar trajectory, although it focuses initially on the rebuilding of life in the UK once all the infected people have died of hunger. This time the 'hero' is a man called Don, who is reunited with his two kids after a horrific zombie attack at the start of the film. Predictably, the kids disobey the rules and go back to their old house to collect some things, and find that their mother is there in a crazed and animalistic (but not zombified) state. She is taken back to the labs (strangely housed in the same residential block where all the survivors have been placed as part of their return to the UK. A brilliant piece of tactical planning by the US army there). Of course she is still infected with the virus, though immune herself, and when hubby finds her and kisses her .... ten seconds later he has the Rage and escapes to infect the rest of the humans in the complex ... The film then descends into zombies versus soldiers ... and guess who wins? Unfortunately from a very well directed and exciting opening, and a good idea about how the infection takes hold again, the film gets boring quite quickly. It's the same as everything else out there unfortunately, but without a strong underlying plot or characters to drive it forward. One thing about it though - the music. During the opening sequences, as Don is running from the zombies, and again at the end of the film, I found that I recognised the music ... to the extent that I had to check. And yes, indeed it is, the music is all but identical to Murray Gold's music for the Doctor Who episode 'Doomsday' where Rose is on the beach at the end ... that haunting score which everyone loved so much. The scores are so similar, that I even played them together ... the Who one is a tad faster, but otherwise ... 28 Weeks Later was released in 2007, and the 'Doomsday' episode of Doctor Who was broadcast in 2006 ... so maybe the composer for 28 Weeks Later (John Murphy) is a Doctor Who fan? We shall never know.

Nothing Human Lasts Forever

Watched the film The Hunger (1983) on DVD last night. Another one that I'd never seen. This is the one with David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve as vampires, with Susan Sarandon as the human who stumbles into their world. I'd seen all the TV series of the same name, and the film does share a certain similarity in the editing and surreal nature of some of the filming. The film was directed by Tony Scott who was also behind the TV series, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. But the film ... what an interesting idea and way to discuss vampires. Deneuve was suitably icy and emotionless as Miriam the vampire, which is a little strange as it was all about her not wanting to be alone. Bowie played her latest companion, John, and was just brilliant. I loved him as the young man, and then when he aged to old man in the space of a day, he had the stance and performance down pat all the way through. I appreciated the conceit of him aging 50 years while waiting to be seen in a clinic ... something we have all felt! Kudos to Dick Smith for the brilliant old man make up as well - really superb - and I also loved the really really old make up effects too at the end of the film. The crumbling corpses were really creepy and well done, especially when combined with some great lighting and visuals on screen around them. It's a very simple film on one level, but leaves a lot to think about. Deneuve's companions never die, just suddenly get ancient in the space of a few days - and when they do she shuts their bodies in boxes in her attic. And as they also cannot sleep, this is an eternity of living hell. Which is really not a very nice thing to do to those you profess to love. But then when she herself dies, they too die, and she ages and crumbles to dust herself. So was she living off their everlasting life force in some way? The film suggests so, closing with Sarandon now taking on the mantle of female vampire, ever young, ever perfect and ever in search of companion after companion to share her eternity with. I found it a little languid in places, slow paced, and yet the film has a beguiling elegance which perhaps demands that it is told in a measured way. It doesn't lend itself to fast-paced action sequences at all. Overall a good slice of vampire cinema, taking a different tack - there are no fangs in sight here - and with much to consider past the closing titles.

Star Trekking

We watched the latest Star Trek film last night, and as I said when we saw it at the pictures - see the earlier post on that - what a cracking film it is! J J Abrams has managed to reinvent it so well. The plotting and characters are both new and yet seem to fit like a comfortable pair of shoes. Lovely performances from the main leads playing Kirk, Spock, Sulu, Chekhov, Uhura, Scottie and Bones, some great and awe-inducing effects pepper the film, and the intelligent plot is lovely to watch unfolding. We saw it on Blu-Ray and certainly the quality is there. It's also around 200 minutes long and yet never dragged or sagged. Testament to a good film methinks. Hopefully there will be more to come, but even if this stands as a one-off, it's a great little film, and sort of reaffirms ones faith in science fiction movies, especially after the exscrable Pandorium ...

Four Films

Easter is a time for films, and so courtesy of the local Blockbuster, we rented four for the long weekend. THE FOURTH KIND I'd read a bit about this one, and nothing was very complimentary. We got it because Zee wanted to see it, and, well, it has Milla Jovovitch in it. It's a fairly standard alien abduction story, with a conceit (which I don't believe at all) that it's all real. This exends to having supposed genuine footage in the film itself of the actual protagonists, while Milla et al act out what happened. It does have a couple of very nice sequences in it which are unnerving. When the chap has a fit on the bed around 100 minutes in, it's really quite creepy, as is the bit where the policeman sees the UFO over the house - and so do we for about 1 second. The ending however is totally spoiled by being 'seen' in fizzing and fuzzing camcorder tape while we hear the voice of the alien speaking to us in Ancient Sumarian (translation helpfully provided). I was impressed that they got through the whole film without ever actually showing the alien - the scene where it enters Milla's house and abducts her is very scary, and you never see a thing. But this is also the problem - these days we expect to see something ... and to have everything relayed to us during the exciting moments through a third person camcorder picture which is blipping all over the place making the picture unseeable was somewhat disappointing. Overall the film wasn't a total wipeout, and I'd give it maybe 5 or 6 out of 10. THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS I had no pre-expectations of this at all. I knew that Heath Ledger had died mid-way through making it and that as it was a Terry Gilliam film, I should expect something surreal. But it blew me away. The plot is fairly straightforward. Dr Parnassus (Christopher Plummer in best Dumbledore mode) has made a deal with the devil (Tom Waits) to see who can first get to 5 souls. Parnassus has a rickety sideshow trailer and through a cheap fake-glass portal on there, people can enter into a land from their own imagination. At some point they must make a decision, and if they choose wrong then the devil wins the soul. Travelling with Parnassus is his 15 year old daughter (Lily Cole) who will be forefit to the devil if he wins before she turns 16; a dwarf (Verne Troyer in a brilliant performance); and a young man in love with the daughter (Andrew Garfield). Into their lives comes con-artist Heath Ledger, on the run from the mafia for money owed. He manages to turn the sideshow around and to start to get what Parnassus wants ... but can it all be done in time. As with all Gilliam's films, the visuals are rich and amazing. Whenever anyone enters the mirror, they find themselves in some fantastic CGI land, but it's all so well done, and genuinely leaves you wide eyed in amazement. I loved the way the film all hung together, and appreciated the use of several London locations which are very familiar to me: Blackfriars bridge, Borough Market, Southwark Cathedral ... The acting is all top notch, and Ledger's death caused some rewriting where his character is played by three other actors when they go through the mirror at different times: Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law, all of whom do a fantastic job at inhabiting this character through the adventures. I loved this film, and it's one I will buy for myself when I can find it cheap on Blu-Ray :) Probably 9/10 from me. NEW MOON Oh dear. We got this one because Zee wanted a laugh ... but it wasn't a laugh, it's possibly the worst thing I've seen on DVD for some time (and considering that we watched Zombie Flesh Eaters 2 the other night, that's saying something). The plot ... there isn't one. It seems to consist of sulky-faced teenager Bella being dumped by her sparkly vampire man Edward, and then moping about it for months and months. She is so joyless that I can't see why anyone would spend any time with her at all. And Edward is just as bad! We got about 45 minutes into the film, and the Blu-Ray player decided that it had had enough and started to slip and pause the film. We thought this was a sign and so stopped watching it. A dreadful, dreadful piece of cinema with no redeeming features that I can see. At least Twilight was fun to watch in some areas, but this, this is angst-ridden plotless rubbish. The makers should be ashamed at themselves. 0/10 from me on that one. Waste of film. DOGHOUSE I'd heard about this one, and even saw some of the preproduction images for it (We had dug them out for Telos' book It Lives Again! as Axelle discussed the film in there). It's a comedy Zombie film, probably most aligned to Shaun of the Dead, but in the mould of Zombieland too. A group of blokes, all having been dumped or in trouble with their wives and girlfriends head off to the deserted town of Moodley to get drunk and forget their troubles. One of their number is getting divorced and this is their excuse: to help their mate. When they get to Moodley though, they find it deserted except for hoards of zombie-like women, all insane and out to kill any man they find. Their mission is then to survive to the end of the film. I loved this. It's a great fun film with lots of silly moments - I laughed out loud at the Zombie granny with the Zimmer frame. The acting is strong - it has Noel Clark in it for that almost obligatory Who connection - and the set-up is very neat. It transpires that it's all a government test of some toxic weapon to turn women on men and thus win wars without needing soldiers ... nice. The effects are grisly and gruesome - I had to look away at the finger cutting scene - but the comedy is also played to good effect. The female Zombies, or Zombabes as they are termed, are brilliant. All with the tools of their trade: cleaver for a butcher, scissors for a hairdresser, dressed as a shopgirl, a hooker, a bride, a goth monstrosity, a huge hulking housewife with curlers ... and they move fast too, with intelligence to take an axe to a pole supporting a platform on which one of our heroes is hiding. It rattles along at a nice pace, and is a very good way to spend an evening. I don't think it's quite as good as Zombieland for entertainment value - but then that film is pretty amazing - but it does a very good job. 8/10 from me for that one. David

End of Ten and Starter for Eleven

Hiya my little chickens (well, it is Easter after all) This is the annual 'David determines to write on his blog each week -athon' ... let's see how far we get. Honestly, I do often think that I should pen something each week, but every week there's way too many other things to do. But today, Easter Sunday, with the sun shining, Sam in bed with the baddest flu/cold I've ever seen, I have an hour or so to spare, so here I am putting some thoughts down. This year has been hectic already, and it looks like continuing in the same vein. We were out in LA for the annual Gallifrey Convention at the end of Feb, and it was a great event as always. Lovely to make some new friends there, and to catch up with all our old mates. Highlight was seeing Ben and Kim get married at the event, but there were so many wonderful moments. The costumes were again awesome, with everything from multiple Zoes to Sally Sparrow to White Robots and even the Ergon strutting the corridors. And best not to mention the soriority girl party one evening - about 1000 cloned 5 foot tall, skinny, blonde all-American teenagers in little black dresses and red shoes invaded the convention halls! Now there's a story to write about! After the convention we stayed on in LA to relax with Frazer, staying with mates Josh and Em. We got to visit Redondo Beach where Sam got a genuine rare black pearl from an oyster bought at a store selling them. We got to see the incredibly brilliant film Batch Slap for the first time - and this film is superb. Trust me. Get some mates together with some beers and wine and slap it in the DVD. A rollicking grindhouse release about three gorgeous girls with big boobs and big guns looking for diamonds in the desert. It's smart and sassy, violent and cheesy ... everything you need from a fun film. Check it out. Another film we saw at Josh's for the first time was Trick r Treat, a smashing little Halloween film about a town and what happens there one year. It's clever and thought provoking as well as creepy and scary ... what if Samhain really does come and visit ... another recommended DVD. Back from LA, and last weekend we were off to World Horror Convention in Brighton (which is probably where Sam picked up the sickness). The event was great, but the hotel was too cramped and way too airless and hot. Apparently loads of people got sick there ... not good. It was lovely to meet up with old friends Jim Herbert, Neil Gaiman and Graham Masterton again, as well as to make lots of new friends. Tanith Lee was beyond awesome and it was an honour to sit and chat with Chelsea Quinn Yarboro. Telos launched some brilliant books by Simon Clark and Vincent Chong, and all in all everyone seemed to have a great time. We managed to find a really nice gluten-free Indian restaurant on Saturday lunchtime and spent a quiet and relaxed time in the company of Farah Mendlesohn and Edward James which was an appreciated respite from the mania of the convention. And so to Who, the usual reason why I put finger to keyboard and muse on what's been going on. I realise that I never blogged on the last David Tennant special, and the reason is that despite watching it a couple of times, I really couldn't find the energy to write about it. It was big and bombastic, full of giant, crazy ideas ... and totally lacking in any depth or plot whatsoever. Every turn of the wheel brought more unexplained nonsense: the Master is dead but can be resurrected with some DNA from his human wife, who has a plan to stop him, but he comes back anyway as some sort of flying superhero who can burn people to death with electric bolts fired through his hands ... then there's a machine which can make everyone the same ... and aliens ... and a spaceship ... and then Time Lords who can somehow send a crystal back in time through a hologram, and who made the Master mad all along so that they could return ... only for them to be banished again ... while the Doctor goofs and gurns and ends up saving Wilf only to die himself - but not after he has time to re-visit everyone he has ever met ... I *still* have no idea what it was all meant to be about. And then the Doctor regenerates and the TARDIS explodes ... well that makes about as much sense as anything else we'd seen in the story, so why not. Which brings us sort of up to date and the debut of young Matt Smith as the Doctor. I had very few ideas as to what to expect - I tend to avoid spoilers and reading news pages - and so it was all pretty fresh and new to me. The one thing I *really* disliked was the incidental music. From the choral harmonies through the 'jokey music' as the Doctor tried to decide what to eat, through the bombastic symphonies and back to choral again ... Murray Gold seems to have no idea that drama should not need the music to tell you what to feel at every moment along the way. It was all too much. I wish that someone else had been brought in to look after this critical aspect of the show as Gold seems to layer everything with sledgehammer precision, and leaves no room for appreciating the acting and performances as his choir sings in the background. Other than the music, the other aspect which I find it hard to like, at least initially, is the title music, and the title sequence. Now Doctor Who has a long history in this area. Successive producers have tweaked both to try and keep it all up to date, and, more importantly, timeless. This worked just fine for the first 17 years or so, but then John Nathan-Turner decided that rather than creepy electronics and timeless graphics, he wanted the theme to be played on a kazoo, and the titles to be composed of starfields and a logo created from an old Letraset pack. This then got worse and worse until we ended up with the McCoy 'tumbling kid's blocks' logo, and music which was dated at the time. I don't know about you lot, but when I look back today at those stories, I *still* feel the same today as I did then, that the titles and music did the stories no favours whatsoever. And I feel the same about this new set. The theme seems to have lost all it's oomph, it's weak and spangly where it should be pumping and driving, and it's not otherworldly at all. And the sequence - well the last little bit is OK, when the 'DW' splits away from the logo, becomes a TARDIS and vanishes down the tunnel of fire ... but the first bit, with the TARDIS spinning along a cloud tunnel, being hit by bolts of lightning, is desperate. I am actually reminded of the C Baker sequence, where they added in lots of little wooshes and stuff to try and hide the fact that the music was so poor. I've seen this a couple of times now on YouTube and it's not improved for me. It seems very 'young' as well - maybe I'm just getting old - but Doctor Who should have a timeless appeal and not be rooted in today's CGI world. It is especially unfortunate that this is the case, as otherwise the episode was really good. Matt Smith seemed to grasp the mettle and made the Doctor his own, but Karen Gillan as Amy was just awesome. I guessed she was a strippergram straight off - no Policewoman would have a skirt that short - but she was sparky and endearing, and had the best backstory yet. The girl playing her as a young girl was also excellent, although she really needs a talking to about letting strange men into her house at night. All the stuff with the food was padding ... unnecessary, and strangely worrying to see the Doctor spitting out good food like that. There wasn't even a clever way that this was worked into the plans of the Atraxi (the 'Eyeballs in the Sky' from the old Perishers cartoon made large) later on. I liked the direction and the idea of the monster ('Prisoner Zero') being one or more objects ... the whole thing rattled along nicely, and I can't think of any annoying lapses in logic which threw you out of the narrative and rendered it all meaningless - something which tended to blight the last five years of the show. So for the moment it's a thumbs up from me for the new series. Steven Moffat knows what he is doing, and I hope and trust that the next few weeks will get better and better. There is a tradition of the opening episode being a little lighter in tone and content (New Earth, Smith and Jones etc) and so this bodes well for the rest of the season. I can only assume that Steven was on holiday when the title sequence and music was approved ...

Wow

Hi all Yes yes yes I know I need to blog on the end of Tennant ... meantime ... here's something amazing on the 'tube. Enjoy ... David

Doctor Who - The Waters of Mars

So that's what it takes ... a new Doctor Who episode to drag me kicking and screaming back to the keyboard to pen some thoughts ... soooooo much has been happening since I last posted here it's unbelievable. Those who keep up with me on Facebook will know some of it ... but every time I vow to post more here, everything conspires to get in the way. Anyway ... enough of that, and onto the latest Who episode, The Waters of Mars which was on a week or so back. What an intriguing episode. The trailers and pictures really got my imagination going, especially as they revealed the monster and all ... but what of the story itself? Well as usual I'm just gonna waffle on and we'll see where it takes us. The TARDIS arrives on Mars ... possibly the first time the Doctor has visited there since Pyramids of Mars (and I know people will correct me if I'm wrong) and it's a rather lovely red quarry, and the Doctor has a fetching spacesuit which looks very similar to other spacesuits he has worn (maybe to make it easier for the people who make the little figures to release another variant). As the Doctor had a helmet on, I wondered how he heard the cute Gadget robot when it threatened him ... and that robot ... hmmm ... another merchandise opportunity perhaps. To diverge slightly, I had to laugh watching the Confidential episode when they showed a drawing of Gadget and everyone sort of nodded sagely in the face of Russell T Davies' obvious enthusiasm and love for it ... when all I was thinking was that it was the same as Number 5 from the Short Circuit films ... at least it was changed for the televised version as presumably someone else spotted the near identicalness of the drawing. We head to a space-base which looked very CGI to me, more so than other exterior CGI shots in other episodes, and there the Doctor meets the crew. I liked the Doctor's response to 'Name, Rank, Intention' with 'Doctor, Doctor, Fun' ... but I was less impressed by the woman in charge - Adelaide - waving a blaster around. In a pressurised room? What if she missed? Maybe it was just some sort of Stun Gun or something, a taser perhaps. The flashes to the future-Wikipedia were nice at first, but became increasingly laboured as we saw them for every crew member. Alright already, we get the idea. They're all going to die. Today. The whole scene was further let down by the wall-to-wall rubbish music which irritated me throughout the episode. Please would someone tell Murray Gold that less is more ... But the monsters are afoot, and I liked the first transformation taking place in the background to the shot. It's a shame then that every transformation was then seen like this, weakening the initial good idea and making it all feel very samey. The lights go off in the Biodome, but they seem to make a noise when they do. Do lights actually make a noise when you switch them off and on? They do in films and on TV, but in real life? I know that when you switch on hot outdoor floodlights, there can be a sizzle as any moisture on the casing is evaporated ... but on Mars? In a partial vacuum? I don't know. And then they analyse a roar and decide that it's Andy's voice print. Rubbish! How could that possibly work? A speechless howl can be tracked to a person's normal voice print ... disbelief is beginning to be stretched here. Before we can say Lynx Deodorant, the monsters are sweating just like the poor man in those advertisements. Water literally pours off them, and the effect was very well done and very unsettling. When the coloured girl, Maggie, changes into a monster, she's the best of them all as she stands in the isolation ward. Now why does that have door seals of a lesser quality than elsewhere in the base? Don't the designers know what 'isolation' means ... Ah ... but of course ... the base was designed by the same lunatic who designed the spaceship in 42 and the walkway with the giant fans in The End of the World ... that also explains the hideously long, vast, pointless hangar-like connecting walkways to the external domes. So as it's all getting a bit scary for the kids - and Maggie is very scary and unsettling indeed - we need some light relief, so the Doctor manages to make a robot that is designed to go at 2 miles per hour, somehow sprout rockets and go at 10 miles an hour instead. Baffling but fun. I liked the ice field set a lot - very simple - and I hoped that something might come up from the ice later, but no such luck despite all appearances to the contrary. But the chat here between the Doctor and Adelaide is tedious. It drags the whole thing down for a good five minutes. Moments in time being fixed ... I dunno ... sounds a bit like make-it-up-as-you-go-along to me. But then a Dalek interlude. What a rubbish Dalek! Why didn't it kill her? The Daleks were dragging Earth light years off course ... killing countless people into the bargain. If Davros' plan had worked, then everyone would have died anyway ... so are they now trying to say that it would never had worked because Adelaide could not die until her allotted time? Makes it all seem a bit pointless then. Back to the plot, and how can water get in through airtight seals? Air has smaller molecules than water, so there's no way it could happen. And in any case, if water did get through, why didn't the air inside then escape? The pressure seemed quite great later on ... Now we have messianic choral music which is OK, and the bit in the airlock where the Doctor talks with Adelaide was much better than the earlier scenes. And so the Doctor walks away ... listening as the humans all struggle to survive behind him. This is a lovely sequence, very nicely played and quite original I felt. However, where the Doctor said that Adelaide's dying to save the Earth was what inspired her granddaughter ... how does that then reconcile with the ending? But the Doctor has a change of heart and returns to try and help save who he can. I liked the hopelessness of it all when Roman was splashed with a drop, and then the Shuttle-guy, Ed, getting sprayed was nice, leaving them all with no hope. The shuttle explosion was spectacular - lovely effect and very impressively carried out. The hull is breached ... so how does everyone breathe then? And the Doctor can electrify the doors? Why didn't he do that before? And how does that work anyway? On what sort of space-base does a control panel allow you to electrify the doors. It would have to have been designed by a lunatic ... oh. The point of including the Gadget robot becomes apparent as the Doctor sends it to get the TARDIS. How convenient that it can hold a key, is the right width to get through the doors, can operate all the correct controls and get the TARDIS back to the Doctor in the nick of time. Lucky that the TARDIS console didn't need hitting with the rubber mallet then. But I was wondering ... when the Doctor first got to the base, he left the TARDIS and climbed over mountains and ended up looking down on the base from a quarry-like area which was in a crater of sorts with a mountain range around it ... so how did Gadget manage a straight run to the TARDIS then? Slightly puzzling. So the people are saved and the base and the water is blown up. A great climax, which is then spoiled by a rubbish final ending. I appreciate the Doctor's mindset of 'I can do anything I like' and being Timelord Victorious, but it all came over as wrong handed. I could see that they were riffing on Donna telling him he needed someone to rein him in sometimes ... and it put me in mind of how perhaps the Master justified his actions ... because he could. I also wondered if the climax to David Tennant's run will see the Doctor and Master change places, with the Doctor being the menace to the universe and the Master having to stop him ... All of which would have worked, except that the Doctor had no need to dump everyone down on Earth on the day the base exploded, outside Adelaide's own house! Why not anywhere else in the world, and tell them to take on new identities and allow everyone to think they all perished on Mars ... much more sensible and logical. So Adelaide's granddaughter is going to be inspired because her gran blew her brains out? She didn't save Earth doing that now did she? I can see it being all hushed up by the family anyway, and them pretending she died on Mars ... which makes her death ultimately pointless. There's also the question of why Adelaide killed herself at all - she never once gave the impression that she was a quitter, that she would accept her fate. It was only when all other options were exhausted that she set the base to detonate ... so it's so out of character for her to do what she did. So unworked for in the narrative and the acting. Just very disappointing. And finally, to cap it all, a comedy Ood Sigma appears like the Watcher of old, and stands, silently watching the Doctor as he gets all griefy and angsty about it all ... and as the Cloister Bell tolls in the TARDIS, so the credits roll. Overall then ... it was a great episode. Exciting and rollicking, you bet! Some brilliant monsters which were creepy and scary, genuinely unsettling and very well acted and brought to life by the cast. I loved the base under siege setting, so redolent of Doctor Whos past, and another great performance by David Tennant capped it all really. The script was generally strong - and I think the juxtaposition of Phil Ford and Russell T Davies' ideas really worked well, though I would be at a loss to guess who came up with what bits. I would hazard a guess that the basic plot of alien water monsters on Mars came from Phil, while Russell jazzed it all up with the Adelaide/Doctor interplay, and the ending. But I could be completely wrong. It had moments where it dragged - like the Dalek sequence half an hour in - but also moments of magnificence - like the Doctor walking away listening to humans die as he goes. Overall it was perhaps the best of all the Specials to date, managing to maintain the excitement and tension, to tell a nice little story, and to keep interest throughout. Personally I know very little about the final two episodes due for transmission, but as I'm not a fan of the Master, I'm kind of ambivalent about them. We have already seen a climactic two parter with the Master and I have a sense that this will be more of the same - all the characters from the past rolled out in a potpourri of deja vu, feeling like some sort of 'best of' all the previous season enders. Maybe I'm wrong ... but as always we shall see.

A Day at the Races

'So, David, back to the race ... how do you feel Something Perfect will do?' I'm standing on a small green, speaking with Jonno from Channel 4 Racing about a horse running in the next race to start; the 3:15 at Newmarket on Saturday the 20th June ... and I've never so much as stepped foot at a Race before! So how did this happen? Since when was I a Channel 4 pundit on the races? It all started because I was enjoying a nice weekend away with an actor friend, Frazer Hines, and we decided to spend the Saturday at Newmarket, which is where Frazer has his stud farm. So Sam, Frazer and I all roll off down to Newmarket on the Saturday. I am as green as anything, not having a clue what to expect. Sam had booked tickets for the Premier enclosure, so we finally figured out how to get in there and of course the first thing we did was get a jug of Pimms and settled down to watch the first race, and study the horses running that day. For me, it was all a case of seeing which one had the best name, but horses called things like 'TARDIS Travel' or 'Tennant's Fancy' weren't listed ... so I had no idea. Then Frazer spotted that a horse owned by a friend of his was running, so he decided to make a call ... seconds later, he's back with a big smile ... his friend's wife was there, and she had invited us into the paddock to see the horses with the other members of the Silver Lining Syndicate before the race. Now, to me, a paddock is a big straw-filled area bounded by wooden fences like you see on telly ... and I imagined we'd perhaps be sidestepping the piles of dung and trying to avoid getting trampled by these racehorses, all fired up before the race. Not at all ... the paddock is apparently a lovely big grassy area with a sort of track around it, where the grooms lead the horses next up to race, warming them up and getting them ready. So we wandered in there and stood watching the horses going around us. The horse owned by Frazer's friend was called Polly, and raced under the name 'Something Perfect' and she looked very smart. In fact, she won the 'best turned out' prize and we all applauded politely. Then the jockey arrived and we had a chat before he headed off to get on Polly to ride her down to the starting gates for the race. But Polly was having none of it. She got a little skittish and kicked out ... not at all a happy horse. The jockey hopped off and calmed her, and then led her out onto the racetrack before mounting her again and riding off to the start. We then decided we ought to put a bet on her, after all, the syndicate which owned her had been kind to us and ... well ... you just do that sort of thing don't you. So we popped out to the betting huts and Sam put a small bet on her. I nipped to the loo, and when I emerged, Frazer was standing by a fence. 'Here he is,' says Frazer. A nice gentleman on the other side of the fence says, 'Oh yes, hello, good afternoon, I understand you write for Doctor Who?' I smile, I often get this ... 'No, not for Doctor Who, about Doctor Who. I'm a sort of historian?' 'Oh very good, come round here then ...' So I look at Frazer, slightly perplexed, and he nods and smiles, so off I trot to the other side of the barrier. There to stand next to the nice gentleman, who seems to be called Jonno. Next thing I know there's a microphone thrust under my nose with a big Channel 4 logo on it. I look up, and there's a TV camera pointing at me. Oh crikey! The questions start with some stuff about Doctor Who ... that's fine ... I can deal with those. 'I understand you've travelled all over the world with the show ...' Eh? How could he possibly have known that! So I say something about conferences taking place in LA and that it's great the show has such a global following. And then he asks me about the horse ... I couldn't remember its name ... nor even the name it raced under ... at that point I couldn't even remember if it was a boy or a girl! We had enjoyed a jug of Pimms remember. I mention that the horse seemed a little skittish, but the jockey had sorted it, and we hoped she'd do well in the race ... Then Jonno asks me who else is in the Syndicate ... erm ... um ... but you can't do that on telly can you. So I say that there's quite a few people in it, including TV actor Frazer Hines who is here today ... Jonno seems happy ... he closes the chat and we return to the studio to watch the race. I thank Jonno and return to Frazer, now joined by Sam, who are laughing their faces off. 'You have to be the biggest bulls**tter going, David,' says Frazer when he can speak. 'I'm glad they didn't ask you how the syndicate named the horse!' So was I!! As it happened, 'Something Perfect' came third in the race. Beaten by 'Cosmopolitan' in first place, and 'Penzena' in second. There was a bit of a flurry, as the jockey on 'Penzena' was apparently seen smacking 'Something Perfect' in the face with his riding crop during the race, however on playback, the officials decided it was accidental as the horses were all close together on the track ... but then as there were only 8 horses running in the race, bets only paid on the top two places ... so we were robbed! Like I said to Frazer on our way back, the races have been spoiled for me now as I think you always get to see the horses before and after the races, get to go in the owners' enclosure, drink Pimms and appear on Channel 4 ...

Radio Appearance

Folks might be interested to know that I'm interviewed talking about the old Doctor Who Target Books on a radio documentary being broadcast on Tuesday 23 June, from 11.30am to 12 noon. 'On the Outside it Looked Like an Old Fashioned Police Box' The PR reads as follows: "Mark Gatiss, Doctor Who writer and fanatic, presents a feature exploring the hugely popular Doctor Who novelisations of the 1970s and 80s published by Target books. In an age before DVD and video, the Target book series of Doctor Who fiction was conceived as the chance for children to 'keep' and revisit classic Doctor Who. They were marketed as such, written in a highly visual house style. Descriptive passages did the work of the TV camera; the scripts were more or less faithfully reproduced as dialogue. They were as close to the experience of watching as possible and were adored by a generation of children who grew up transfixed by the classic BBC series. Target Doctor Who books became a children's publishing phenomenon selling more than 13 million copies worldwide. From 1973 until 1994, the Target Doctor Who paperbacks were a mainstay of the publishing world. From humble beginnings they grew into a list running to 156 titles, shaping the reading habits of a generation." I've also heard that Russell T Davies, Gary Russell, Terrance Dicks, Philip Hinchcliffe, Chris Achillios, Caroline John and Anneke Wills are taking part. So give it a listen if you're around, or it should be on the BBC iPlayer afterwards.

Heatwave

England is such a crazy country. One day you have to wear a coat to work in the morning as it's so cold ... the next it's chucking it down with rain so hard that you need a big golf umbrella (ella ella eh eh eh) to keep dry, and then that evening it's so scorchingly hot that you can't wear a jacket! But we live here and so are kinda used to the vagiaries of the weather ... Taking advantage of the nice weather, my partner Sam decided that she wanted another car (to be fair, we need two as I will be using the one for work, and so she needs another for her work) and so headed out and ended up getting the most adorable little silver softtop MG ... so we have been posing in it with the roof down, catching the rays, and generally enjoying the sunshine and the weather. The other week we ended up down by the river Thames and spent an amazingly relaxing afternoon eating tapas and drinking Long Island Iced Tea and beer while watching people go by. Both Sam and I love watching people ... I think it goes with the territory of being writers. Sometimes you see someone and a story just pops into your head! Their background or history or something equally bold and diverse and strange about them. Film-wise we finally saw Twilight ... hmm ... not that impressed. Some nice scenes where the evil vampires are hunting, but apart from that. And, I'm sorry, but vampires do not 'glitter' in sunlight. They smoke and scream and writhe and burn ... burn ... BURN! Much, much better was Ultraviolet, a kick ass SF vampire romp with Milla Jovovich. I liked the stylish way it was put together, the effects were great, and Milla struts her stuff wonderfully. The vampiric element was effectively handled as well, but it was also quite subtle too. Until next time ...

Forgotten Warriors

I managed to pick up a paperback edition of Tony Lee and Pia Guerra's graphic novel The Forgotten a month or so back and had a happy time reading it on the way to and then back from Paris, bracketing a nice weekend away. The strip had been published originally by IDW in their Doctor Who series (which, in a very rubbish way, is only available in the US. Such a shame as it's really very good) and now has been collected in this graphic novel format. I picked up a copy from Forbidden Planet, but it should be available online I guess. FP also stock some of the individual comic magazines, but a good place I have found is Graham Crackers, a retailer based in the US. Their website (www.grahamcrackers.com) lists just about every issue still available. Anyway, the idea behind Tony Lee's tale of ten Time Lords is straightforward, and yet it manages to work so well that I think it's probably the best multi-Doctor story we'll never see on television. The Doctor and Martha (for she was the companion at the time of writing) arrive in a museum which seems to contain a multitude of objects all related to the Doctor in some way. Unfortunately the Doctor has lost his memory and has no idea why this is. The pair stumble across a room which contains all the Doctor's standard outfits, along with a key item for each. 1st: cane; 2nd: recorder; 3rd: keys to the TARDIS; 4th: bag of jelly babies; 5th: cricket ball; 6th: cat badge; 7th: umbrella (ella, ella, eh, eh, eh); 8th: cravate; and 9th: psychic paper. By holding each object in turn, the Doctor is able to 'see' an adventure his earlier self had, and in doing so it returns part of his memory to him. The ideas come thick and fast, with mini-adventures interspersed with the main narrative. As the Doctor remembers, so he comes under attack, first from Autons, and then by giant spiders before finally being hunted by a Sandminder Robot and a clockwork Droid. However a mysterious someone is controlling events from behind the scenes, and I won't say more or it will spoil the lovely surprises that this story has to bring. I loved all the continuity elements - and there are a lot of them - but they are worked into the story brilliantly and don't seem forced at all. Indeed, some points of continuity are worked into the resolutions as well. Overall the story has a very satisfying feel to it, and you can tell that the creators have a great love for the subject matter. One of the small pleasures for me was trying to spot as many of the objects in the museum as I could, I managed quite a few, but I wonder if there is a definitive list anywhere ... Another wonderful item which I have to rave on about is an Ice Warrior Helmet ... a what I hear you cry! Well, the Ice Warriors from Mars are probably the last, great, Who monster from the dim and distant past not to make an appearance in the new series on television. We've had the Daleks, the Cybermen, Sontarans, the Master ... even the Macra ... but no Ice Warriors as yet ... give it time I say. Anyway, this is one in a range of scale helmets produced by the amazingly talented people at Weta in New Zealand. When I first heard about the helmets I was a little unsure ... I had seen similar ranges for Lord of the Rings and Narnia amongst other current film franchises, but wasn't convinced that Doctor Who really lent itself to such a range. Well, if the quality of this Ice Warrior one is anything to go by, this should shape up to be a pretty awesome little addition to the collectors' shelves. It comes in a rather nice little printed box, with a great pic of the creature on the front. Inside, nestled in protective polystyrene is the helmet, and also a smart looking stand on which to display it. The first impression is how heavy the helmet is. After all it is cast in metal, and then painted up. It's a brilliant re-creation of the Martian creature, complete with red eye shields. If I was going to be picky, I'd suggest that a mouth section would have completed it nicely, but I can understand why that wasn't done, as the mouth is not really a part of the helmet, being part of the creature underneath. However in the series, it's suggested that the helmet might also be a part of the creature, with electronic 'ear pieces' and so on ... The helmets are limited to 500 each, and the limitation number is given on the base of the stand. With others in the range including a ceremonial Time Lord headpiece and a Cyberman head, they would look very nice indeed lined up in a display cabinet I think. Even the price isn't too shabby, being around the £35 mark each with shipping of £7.62. They are available from Weta direct from their website at www.wetanz.com. The helmets also ship from the UK directly, and don't come winging their way from New Zealand!

Star Trekking

That's the way to do it! Went to the pics recently to see the new Star Trek film and had one of the best times I can remember at the cinema in recent years. What a brilliant film! I have to admit that I am not the world's biggest Star Trek fan. I'm not even sure I have seen every episode of the original series and certainly can't name them or know what order they came in. Later Star Trek variants bored the pants off me, with perhaps only the Borg episodes coming close to interesting me (and that's only because the Borg were a cunning reworking of the Cybermen from you know what). But this film had it all. J J Abrams takes us back in time to before the original crew of the Enterprise were in situ, documenting the events which surrounded and led up to them all meeting and ending up at the helm of the USS Enterprise in the first place. The touches were all there - Captain Pike, Romulans, Vulcans, Kirk's legendary way with women ... but recast and mixed up so that it's not quite what you expect. The actors are uniformly brilliant, with each managing to capture traits of the original cast members without it being too forced. I particularly liked Simon Pegg's Scottie (along with the almost obligatory appearance by Deep Roy who must hold some sort of record for genre film appearances by now) and Uhura was also nicely played, though I couldn't get my head around her romance with Spock. Sylar out of Heroes played Spock and was suitably broody and logical (even if I did expect him to wave his finger at Kirk and start to trace a line of blood across his forehead ... a little Heroes reference there for the initiated). The effects were awesome, with so many magnificent crowd-pleasing sequences on show. To pick just two: the sight of Vulcan imploding into a black hole was jaw dropping, and I loved, just loved the shot of the Enterprise rising up above the atmosphere of Titan like some sort of submerged behomoth hoving into view. The film managed to play with the emotions maginificently as well, eliciting tears in the pre-credits sequence - and any film that can bring you to tears in less than ten minutes is doing something right! But it then handled the comedy well, with Kirk's inflated hands and tongue, as well as his chase by the plant-monster-thing on the ice planet. Of note in all this is the sequence with Scottie in the water tube - a nicely handled piece of sctick which ended, predictably with Scottie being saved. The plot was well worked out (Doctor Who take note), playing with time in a way which got the brain cells working overtime. I adored the sequence near the end where Nero's ship is being destroyed on one side of the black hole in the sequence at the start of the film, while simultaneously being sucked into itself at the end of the film. Lovely stuff. Nero himself was suitably loony, but perhaps was also the weakest character as although he talked a lot, we never really saw what was driving him apart from his insane desire for revenge at any cost. Overall it's a rollicking two hours, which pass like lightning and which never drags. A brilliant way to revisit and reinvent the series, setting it up for more films, and along the way, by means of the cunning 'alternate time line' conceit, avoiding problems with the hard core fans of maintaining continuity with the original series. Truly a magnificent achievement.

Doctor Who - Recent Specials

Finally ... getting some time on a Sunday afternoon to sit down and pen some thoughts about recent Who and other things ... Thanks to those of you who nudged me to see if I was still alive after all this time. I am ... and I'm OK, though there have been some quite dramatic changes in my life since last I blogged. Anyway, onwards and upwards and first on my list of things to catch up with are the two latest Doctor Who specials. We had The Next Doctor at Christmas, and at Easter there was Planet of the Dead. Heading back to Christmas first, and at the time I wasn't sure how to take The Next Doctor. It seemed to be quite a fun romp at times, but scattered through with disjointed elements which didn't seem right. Overall I felt it was certainly one of the weaker Cybermen adventures, with only the very cool black and silver with brain showing variant to elicit much interest - though quite why this CyberLeader was like that is anyone's guess. I liked the setting and the idea of David Morrissy being the Doctor was a nice conceit which unfortunately fell into the Doctor's Daughter school of not being that at all, and all being something else entirely ... a shame really as again, the 'gosh wow' idea of it was better than the actuality. As usual for BBC Drama, the setting was well realised, but I'm not sure that the number of black gentlemen who were seen around could have been correct - at this time in England's history, weren't black men and women menials rather than toffs? Which brings us to Rosita and her perfect Cockney accent, let alone that she's treated as an equal ... hmmm. The Cybershades were frankly rubbish. Eliciting no form of excitement at all and looking like something which had been constructed from the pages of Doctor Who Adventures Magazine (but then perhaps that was the intention, to feature a monster which every child could effectively pretend to be with a sheepskin rug and a cardboard mask ... And why would the Cybermen convert cats and dogs anyway? There are enough people around after all. Then it all goes Oliver with Miss Hartigan's Fagin capturing the kids to work in a factory ... again, not much explanation as to why the kids were used ... why not controlled humans? Why were they needed at all? And of course finally it turns into Transformers and a giant Cyberking rises from the Thames to stomp all over London ... I have no idea what the point was, but it all looked nice if you disengaged your brain. Yes ... different from the other Christmas specials, perhaps not as good as Voyage of the Damned, but better than The Runaway Bride ... But then we get Planet of the Dead. Oh dear. I had high hopes for this, but it turned out that everything we had heard about it was exactly what it was. Recorded in a Dubai which looked like sand dunes in Cornwall, and featuring some woman off EastEnders and The Bionic Woman who acted well but had no clue really, and a race of giant flies who eat excrement, and you start to think that it's all going to hell in a handcart. What niggled me most about this was the lack of plot. The Doctor is on a London bus acting like the loony you try to avoid and wittering on about easter eggs and fiddling with something electronic when the bus is sucked through a space time portal and dumped in the desert. As happens you know ... We then have most of the running time taken up with Doctor on said bus trying to figure out how to get back while another loony on the bus goes on and on about death coming (no love, it's just a swarm of alien stingray things), while on Earth, UNIT has it's hands full as they've inexplicably put Lee Evans in charge of the tech ... Lucky that on board the bus is the Bionic Woman who can't do anything useful really, but who has a gold chalice she just nicked and which is exactly what the Doctor needs to turn the bus into something out of Harry Potter and fly back home again. And that's about it. Obviously co-writer Gareth Roberts has a thing about flying beasties as he's used them in The Shakespeare Code and The Unicorn and the Wasp as well as Planet of the Dead. Maybe we should call it Lara Croft on the Planet of the Flies and be done with it as that was really what it seemed to be about. Of course we had to end with the loopy woman going on about something returning and knocking four times ... but then her predictions of death were so way off kilter that if the Doctor has any sense then he'll ignore her. But then again, he's so used to everyone he's ever met suddenly turning up again on a giant Dalek saucer, or at the end of the world, or in a submarine or somewhere equally unlikely, that if I were him, I'd just assume that Rose was coming back for him having worn out her clone Doctor, or that Donna had remembered her past and rather than Wilf have to put up with her whining about that, decides to find the Doctor himself and give him a piece of his mind. I've been hearing the rumours about Tennant's swan song and thinking ... oh no, not again. It's interesting to look back just a couple of years ... I watched a repeat of Army of Ghosts and Doomsday again last week, and I was again reduced to crying my eyes out over the ending. They should have left it there, they really should. The production team seem to have stopped trying in many respects. Now that Doctor Who is rightfully back on top of the schedules, and that it's pulling in more money than ever before in its history through merchandise and overseas sales, it seems like the golden goose cannot be harmed. So the scripts get a little rushed and shoddy, less care is taken over the finer details than in which celebrity casting we can use this time around ... it's all worryingly like the slow decline of the show under John Nathan-Turner, when scripts came second to crowd-pleasing reunions and a wacky opportunity to record in Spain gave us The Two Doctors rather than spending the money on a decent set of scripts and some great ideas. I worry because I care ... I love that Doctor Who is top of the telly pops again, and that my interest in it is seen as being cool and interesting rather than geeky and sad ... but if the scripts aren't cutting the mustard, then the public will turn away quickly and find something else to watch. Primeval perhaps, which has really given Who a run for it's money with this new season. The episode shown along with Planet of the Dead apparently killed off one of the lead characters in a way that was dramatic and effective. Not just for show, or to try and grab viewers (as no-one knew it was going to happen), but in a script that was tense and well thought through. The Who production office has many, many very talented people working in it, and I know they do care ... but complacency has a way of creeping in. I'm glad that Russell T Davies has stood down and that Steven Moffat now needs to prove himself against the mirror of Davies' television juggernaught. This should provide the necessary boost and up the ante for everyone to create not just Doctor Who, but a bigger, bolder, better Doctor Who. Something that amazes and terrifies in the same breath, something which is thought provoking, touches on the human condition, and which works on a number of levels. No pressure then ...

Guilty

My word, doesn't time fly ... I'm feeling very guilty at having completely neglected my blogging and hopefully will be able to make some time to catch up a little over the next few weeks. There's a lot been happening for me personally which is the main reason for the the lapse but I have notes on the Christmas Who special, and the recent Easter episode to talk about (Lara Croft on the Planet of the Flies), as well as hopefully some other random subjects. So apologies to all, and I'll try and pen something more pithy over the coming weeks.

Story Publication

I wrote a few posts back that one of my short horror stories had been accepted for publication in a magazine called Murky Depths ... well the cover for the issue (number 6) has just been released, and it's a doozy :) The magazine is fairly new ... been running for just over a year now, but the editor, Terry Martin, is very proficient at seeking out the best content. It's a mixture of graphic novel stories and prose fiction, all designed to the highest calibre and illustrated by artwork from some impressively talented artists. Basically it's a horror fiction magazine with an agenda to present disturbing fiction of all sorts, along with some top-notch artwork. I hope folks reading this might be moved to give an issue a try (maybe the one with my story in *grin*) and so please head over to www.murkydepths.com to find out how to get hold of a copy. As I know myself all too well, small presses in the UK need support to survive, and when someone is putting a lot of time and exceptional talent into a project, then news of that needs to be spread so that more people can discover it, and hopefully ensure longevity in a difficult marketplace.