Archive for the ‘TV’ Category

Tonight’s Doctor Who, The Big Bang, was farce.  Not quite pure farce.  More like 90% farce.  Not bad farce.  Proper farce.  Farce in a good way.  In a The Importance of Being Earnest or Noises Off kind of way. It could take its spiritual importance from the second half of The Importance of Being Earnest’s full title: Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People.

Steven Moffat had real fun playing with the timelines this week.  Each of the characters in the story has a timeline that we dip in and out of.  The Big Bang shows the power of the point of view in a story.  We have the camera’s time line which starts out following Amelia Pond.  The Doctor keeps steering her to be in the right place at the right time for the Pandorica’s opening.   When did he put the postit on the Pandorica and when did he write it?

Then it swaps to Rory in 102AD (1894 years ago) anchoring us to the love story and to the Previously.  Then we get the first view of the farce.  One of the Noises Off sections where the Doctor gives Rory his instructions so he can escape from the Pandorica.  I’m not entirely sure there isn’t a paradox there.  Given the Doctor is trapped in the Pandorica with the sonic screw driver how did he escape the first time?  That’s really going to play with the heads of anyone who takes Who too seriously.  However he did it it was soon enough that he could still get River Song’s time travel doodad.

Then we get the Doctor’s alternative way of looking at life.  He can put Amy in the Pandorica for 1894 years to get healed.   Rory guarding Amy for 2000 years sets up his love and allows his dramatic entry to save the day.

Once the Doctor hops forward using the doodad we begin to follow him almost immediately.  We get a brief moment of Amy to set up her knowing of Rory’s 2000 year vigil that sets up their reunion and his coming to the rescue.  That lets us tie up the earlier action with Rory and Amelia.  We follow him up to the point where he is shot by the Dalek then it switches to Amy except for an excursion to River Song in the exploding TARDIS.

River Song’s time line trapped in a loop but unlike Groundhog Day or the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Cause and Effect this is an unvarying time loop of just a few seconds that she has been trapped in for an eternity.  2 billion to 10 billion times.  No wonder she says “And what sort of time do you call this?”

Amy then has to sell the sadness of the Doctor’s sacrifice.  That no one will remember him.

Then its back to the Doctor as he rewinds back through his timeline.  The moment he checks himself echos a post regeneration.  He knows he’s escaped but isn’t 100% sure he hasn’t been regenerated.  He discovers Amy can hear him and before sacrificing himself to close the crack he plants a thought in her head and reinforces it before he does.  The line in Flesh and Stone which didn’t make perfect sense at the time is explained now we see it wasn’t the Doctor from that episode but the Doctor from this episode who spoke it.  Then he sacrifices himself into the crack.

So finally to Amy again on her wedding day.   Slightly confused.  Trying to work it out.  Glad they avoided the wedding and skipped to the reception.  TV weddings have a way of feeling artificial.  The River Song, the blank diary, the bow tie and the man wearing braces.  The embarrassed guests at the reception.   All of that to set up the TARDIS makes its big entry.  Love the way the TARDIS makes its big entry.  Karen Gillan really sells her delivery of a cliché that takes on a whole new meaning.  The dramatic incidental music becomes more and more powerful each time its used.  Its almost more powerful than the main theme now.  In combination the two of them can be played as a double emotional whammy as they use it at the end.

All of this took a lot of plotting, writing and planning to make it make sense.  The camera is clever and it helps us follow the story and play some tricks on us but we’ll forgive it for that.

There are just some really fun things in the episode…

A Dalek in a Museum

Someone had fun dressing the set putting the time anomalies together leading up to the Pandorica.  Plus a certain someone as the leader of a star cult.

The Pandorica looks so cool.  It opens and closes in such a fun way.  Need Pandorica dice.  And again – one broken down DALEK scarier and cooler than an army of DALEKs.

“I dated a Nestine duplicate once swappable head, did keep things fresh.” River gets such good lines.  Then the moment, just a glance, between Amy and River when they destroy the Fez.

The writing has a wonderful knowingness without being smug.  A universe reboot not just a figurative or cynical, marketing ploy.  A character plotting one.  A literal one.  To save the universe.  It adds onto River’s work to avoid spoilers.

The Doctor dancing like a drunk giraffe.  Fun and reminding us he doesn’t entirely fit in.

The solution to the destruction of time and space has a mad logic that has been set up over thirteen episodes.  It’s crazy but it was set up.

The fez: that is going to really upset the hate the bow tie crowd.  It’s a really clever technique to let us keep track of the timeline.  If there is a Fez craze for kids next Christmas I’ll have a good laugh.

Having the Doctor have to work it out as he is going on.  Setting out each leap, no matter how fantastic, as logical.

Once its all over and we’ve had a moment to enjoy their success we have the set up for the Christmas special.  Alongside that we’ve the next series mystery – why did the TARDIS go then?

Who is River Song.  River casual high noon moment with the DALEK.  Is there a hint there when she tells the Dalek to recheck his records about her being one of the Doctor’s companions?  The Dalek’s fear moments later after, presumably, rechecking and discovering something.  Is it just that she will kill or that it finds something more?  Anyone that can scare a Dalek is emphatically someone to take seriously.  Yet on the flip side she nudges Amy to free the Doctor and her unguarded “I’m sorry my love.”  Whoever she is I don’t think she’ll do a sixth season Buffy Bad Willow on us.

And of course what is The Silence?  Is that a reference to Silence in the Library?  Is that just a red herring.

All in all both an excellent finish to the two part story and an excellent end to the series.  Do you agree?

So here are my random thoughts on tonigh’s Doctor Who episode The Pandorica Opening but first a little sillyness…

This week’s episode could have been titled: How do you solve a problem like the Doctor?  Now I know my theory about Graham Norton as the series bad guy and the crack being the gap under the curtain is rubbish but see it fits.  Really it does

And now with that out of my system let’s get down to The Pandorica Opening…

The opening worked well pulling together the disparate threads from the series through vignettes to pull the Doctor, River Song and Amy together and then make the revelation of Vincent’s painting.  River Song gets a moment to shine showing she is the best female rogue since The Stainless Steel Rat’s Angelina diGriz.

Tonight showed one broken down Cyberman scarier than all the ones in the new series so far.  The arm; the head with tentacles, skull, poison dart and added snappy front action; and then the headless body.  The original series could have gotten an entire episode out of that.  There would have been lots of screaming and running.  It would have been glorious.  Even the potted version was excellent.  Several reports on Twitter suggest it was a proper old fashioned Doctor Who hide behind the sofa scare for the kids.

Then we get the Big BADDS (Bads Amalgamated Doctor Defense Society): an alliance of lots of old enemies who are unfortunately working on a mistaken assumption.  A great excuse to bring all those costumes and prosthetics out of storage.  It would be silly but I’d love a Reservoir Dogs style slow motion shot of one of each of them walking towards camera.  Instead we got a nice panning shot across them.  By avoiding a dodgy CG battle they weren’t made into a disappointment.  They got to be ominous.

The crack in time was always going to be a hard sell as a season bad guy.  It has the same problem as Sauron in Lord of the Rings:  it can’t do a dramatic scene.   The Big BADDS working together is a nice touch as something so awful that it can unite all of them really must be a really Massively Big Bad.

I think I spotted a couple of passing references to the old series (along with a little Star Wars Cantina action)…  a fleeting reference to Ghost Light when the Doctor comments about ghosts?

“I hate good wizards and fairy tales they always turn out to be him”.  In the old series story Battlefield the Doctor is mistaken for Merlin. Now there is a myth started by Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae that attributes the construction of Stonehenge to Merlin.  Looks like Geoffrey got it wrong.  Looks like the Big BADS built it to mark the location of their trap. 

The monsters weren’t the only risky moment.  The CG space fleets was also handled well where an overstretched budget could have left it looking ropy.   “If you bury the most dangerous thing in the universe you’d want to remember where you put it”.  The risk with Stonehenge is Spinal Tap; it’s like Monty Python and the Holy Grail and coconut shells for horseshoe sound effects; I think they got away with it.  Using the real location for establishing shots definitely helps.

I really enjoyed The Pandorica Opening and it will be a long week waiting for The Big Bang.  That’s where I’d usually leave this except I was thinking how the other episodes this series tie up with the story (and a few from earlier series by Steven Moffat)…

Blink – Introduced the Angels

Silence in the Library – Introduced River Song and her non synchronous timeline with the Doctor.

The Eleventh Hour – Established the crack in time, the new Doctor, Amy and Rory.

The Beast Below – Liz 10 having the picture in the future.

Victory of the Daleks – Churchill’s phone being able to call the TARDIS.

The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone – The crack in time, the Angels and more River Song.

The Vampires of Venice – The crack in time being really scary to Monsters.

The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood – Rory vanishing.

Vincent and the Doctor – The Painting to set up the picture being sent along with the impact of Rory being wiped from time.

I’d say it’s a safe bet that time machine causing all the problems in The Lodger is going to turn out to be TARDIS.

That leaves Amy’s Choice as the one episode this season that doesn’t seem to tie in.  So is there something I missed, is it a set up for something past this series or was it just a one off?

I was worried about Richard Curtis writing a Doctor Who for two reasons – first that it could be too Richard Curtis; second that it could be Richard Curtis free. I’m glad to say that Vincent and the Doctor was Doctor Who and it was a Richard Curtis Doctor Who.

First let’s get some of the small stuff out of the way.  There were nice jokes about the sunflowers and only using the screwdriver to screw in screws.  I’m not sure if The Doctor actually talked too much in this episode or if that was just the impression I was left with from reading Curtis’ interview on the BBC.  There were times I felt a slightly quieter Doctor might have had a bit more impact.  Music can be a powerful tool for stirring emotions but it is a dangerous tool that can distract from the impact of a scene too.  I’m also not sure if the music was needed over the scene in the gallery at the end or it real bravery would have been to let the emotion of the scene play by itself.

This year’s Bad Wolf, The Glowing Crack, didn’t appear but Amy’s relationship with Van Gogh kept the Crack’s implication centre stage. The early joke of the children in the gallery with the Portrait of Dr. Gachet reminded us of the mystery of why no-one remembers the Daleks, Cybermen or other events.

Tony Curran is one of those actors who I look forward to seeing.  He turns up in so many interesting roles.  The camera angles, costumes and Curran’s passing likeness for Van Gogh’s self portraits help sell his performance.  Why is it that the Scottish accent can pass for other accents?  There was a time only Connery could pull that off but it appears Curran can now carry it off too. The Scottish Van Gogh only pulled me out of the story once.

Bill Nighy’s cameo at the start and the end was wonderful.  His inclusion is an obvious tie to Curtis’ previous work.  He had a difficult job to do – he had to pull off not one but two info dumps.  The first had to set up Van Gogh for anyone unfamiliar with the artist.  It was always going to be a bit awkward like any info dump.  The second was essential to completing the emotional journey of the story.  He nailed the moment at the end with just a move of the head when he’s not sure if he’s just met the real Van Gogh.  Nailing that moment and the moments before it nailed the story.

It took the darkness that can be found in Doctor Who in a new and powerful direction.  Amy’s Choice reflected on the darkness inside The Doctor by externalising it and personifying it as the Dream Lord. Vincent and the Doctor tackled complex and difficult questions of depression, creativity and suicide in a way that felt both sympathetic and honest.  It’s easy to remember Curtis for his RomComs but Blackadder Goes Forth deals with one of the most difficult settings a SitCom has ever tackled and in its final scene conveyed a powerful truth about the futility of war.  Tonight he managed that again.

The easy end would have been for history to change.  For the slaying of the external monster invisible to all but Van Gogh to be the slaying of mental illness.  I’m glad Doctor Who is still a drama capable of avoiding the easy path.  The result is Vincent and the Doctor, one of the best Doctor Who episodes since the relaunch.

I’ve been lazy and didn’t do a post for last week’s Doctor Who, Flesh and Stone.  So this week I’m doing a read one (post) get two Doctor Who reviews.  I’ll come to The Vampires of Venice soon but first Flesh and Stone and then at the end the Crack and River Song.

Second parts haven’t been the new Who’s strongest stories.   Fortunately Flesh and Stone worked from start to finish.  The escape by jumping onto the crashed space ships gravity.  Having the Doctor use a gun as a tool to engineer the escape was a nice touch.

Amy’s spooky countdown was a nice play on the old countdown timer gimmick.  The solution to the Angel inside her was clever and created another problem.  That in turn set up the problem of her escaping from the angels and the crack with her eyes closed and walking like she can see.

The end of the episode caused complaints but nowhere near the same scale as the last episode.  Interesting that the it’s a kids show and must be pure and nice with nothing adult mob didn’t even come close to the you spoilt our episode mob for numbers of complaints.

The Doctor had some nice snappy dialogue.  He also got some nice monologues.  Really liked the lines about the plan not being ready because he’d not finished talking yet and about having to trust him because he doesn’t always tell the truth.  Personally I’d have left the nanight off his climatic comment about them having forgotten the gravity of the situation.

The Vampires of Venice:  This week we got fishy, venetian vampires.  I was hoping for the return of the haemovores from the Curse of Fenrick but it wasn’t to be.  Lots of fun plenty of running around, an explosion, a sword fight and action but also a good building tension through the story.

The location worked wonderfully.  The set dressing was beautiful and costumes.  And there were the vampire girls.  They made up for the lack of haemovores.  Will the buxom, vampire girls get complaints to the BBC?

Overall, although I enjoyed it, I’d say The Vampires of Venice frothy a bit light.

Both episodes gave us more about the cracks.  Flesh and Stone revealed the danger of the cracks as they destroy people so they never existed.  Is the crack following Amy?  The crack unwrites time.  The crack can be fed to slow it down.  The Vampires of Venice was more of a teaser than a revelation with the bits about silence.

Who is River Song?  Who did she kill?  I’m not convinced by the idea that she’s the Masters wife or that she killed the Doctor.  The hints have been too broad and too obvious.  If either of those were true I doubt Moffat would have given such big clues away already.  Unless its more complicated and there is another layer to unpeeled below the hint.  A twist or two yet to be revealed.  Will she be back this season or are all the hints setting up for the long term?

Wow that went fast!  One of the best signs of a really good drama is that it feels like it was shorter than it was.  Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy always felt twenty minutes long.  Tonight’s Doctor Who clocked in at 40 minutes but felt like 30.

First there was River’s demonstration of how to make an exit and an entrance both at once.  Nice way to send a message etching it into the black box in a lost language with an anachronistic message too.  River Song flying the TARDIS lovely touch knowing about the stabilisers and parking without leaving the breaks on.

Amy Pond definitely my favourite companion since the revival of the show.  She just has a range: she does the curious companion, the scared companion and the ballsy companion.

This week was not full of the references in the last few episodes were.  The writing was excellent: some really sharp and fun dialogue.  Spotters guide to the Doctor love it – I’m guessing Paul McGann’s Doctor is worth the most points due to rarity if not quality or popularity.

Iain Glen’s Bishop was nicely played.  The comment about having to write letters after the Doctor flies away in a little blue box was quite telling.  It would have been more telling if it came from UNIT’s Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.

The Weeping Angels newly revealed capabilities were neat but in keeping.  If Blink is Alien then The Time of Angels is Aliens.  I’m not sure if they’re as scary as they were first time around.

Nice trick having the characters’ walk deeper and deeper into the trap before they realised what it was.  It set up the Doctor’s nice little monologue at the end.

On a side note one thing spoilt the otherwise excellent episode:  BBC please don’t put notice about the next program over the climax of a drama. Don’t put it over the face of an actor.  Don’t put it over an important piece of dialogue. It’s an insult to the audience and to the artists and professionals who created the work.  If you have to put it over the titles but I wish you’d stop doing that and let us enjoy what we’re watching.  Or to put it another way – if that’s the BBC’s new look please have it look away while in a room full of Weeping Angels.

So we got jammy dodgers, Where Eagle Dare, Asimov, Troughton and Daleks references for fun.

Nice Dalek model on the plotting table to set them up and I thought the olive drab Daleks looked really good with the little Union Jack.  The new look Daleks don’t look quite so good.  I wonder if the main idea was to make them taller and more threatening. Maybe it means they can fit taller people inside to operate them.  Nice to see the variety of colour as my first memory of Dalek’s has them in a variety of colours from the films.  The best thing about them is the eye in the eye stalk.

Lots of fun Dalek dialogue.  Really fun to see them carrying files and making a cup of tea.

Letting the Dalek’s get away was an excellent choice. We don’t have to yet another Sherlock Holmes coming back after the falls to get them back.  Leaving Bracewell in the wild nice too.   I really didn’t see the Bracewell is a machine coming – nice twist.

The War Rooms nicely put together.  Not authentic but authentic to the story.  Beautiful set design and dressing.

Churchill played nicely.  Plenty of biting one liners from him.  Nice twist by playing with the usual Doctor meeting a historical figure plot. Having them already knowing each other leaving the question of where they met.  An opening for a prequel or sequel perhaps?

This didn’t bother me during the episode but afterwards I’m trying to work out: no one blinked an eye at the length of Amy’s skirt.  It’s a miracle men around the War Room didn’t keep walking into things.

I’m starting to feel like a stuck record: for the third episode we got all the pulp goodness but with the inclusion of logic.  The Spitfires in space could have been played as someone just comes up with the idea and then they appear.  That would have been easy.  All the references needed were dropped in as throw away lines earlier on, then later starts the ball rolling and then they appear.  It makes the whole story hang together so much better.

Next week to look forward to: River Song and the return of the monsters from Blink.  Interesting to see if Steven Moffat’s excellent touch runs to a two parter.  Fingers crossed they can keep up the excellent quality of the series so far.

So the second outing for the 11^th Doctor tonight in The Beast Below.

Interesting take on future Britain as a starship.  The sets were nicely dressed and with some interesting colour.  There was a lovely mix of retro, post war, grimy Britain littered with British icons with incongruous details like the rickshaws.  Small quibble if Scotland has its own ship and presumably doing its own thing why does the Union Jack still incorporate Saint Andrew’s Cross?

The scary end of the pier head-in-a-box bad guys were excellent.  I’d like to have seen more of them but the single episode story format doesn’t really let the new bad guys get built up the way the old ones used to.  Being physical objects rather than a CGI effect helps.  The winders becoming smilers using a physical effect in combination with CG was a good choice.

There were lots of nice gags and references littered in the show.  The moment the Woman in cloak (later revealed to be the queen) said “Save us Doctor you’re our only hope”.  The noise in the rubbish dump.  Touches of The Prisoner, Star Wars, Fairy Stories and Douglas Adams.

Liz 10 worked well and was nicely played.  The ruler who is trapped in a perpetual cycle of discovery and denial.  There seems to be a deliberate move to putting children in jeopardy to build tension and both the main child  actors in this episode gave excellent performances.

Amy gets an opportunity to show the kind of companion she is.  The Doctor goes for the dark solution and Amy brings the heart and finds the better solution to the same problem.  The story telling could have just had her hit the button but it showed us the logic very quickly and solve the problem.

Once the excellent story was over they brought out the DALEKs for next week.  Since the revival of Doctor Who that’s become something I dread.  For the first time in several DALEK stories I’m not worried that it will be a disappointment.

So one episode and he fixed it.  Fixed the big problem I had with the RTD Doctor Who.  RTD can do fun.  RTD can do pulp.  RTD can do adventure.  RTD’s plots sometimes relied on an unforshadowed solution at the end. Steven Moffat shows you don’t have to throw logic out the window to do it.  The Elevent Hour’s plot held together right up to the end. It did all the other things too.

And did it without the TARDIS or, by the end, a sonic screwdriver.

I enjoyed the twist on the new assistant, playing with the fandom with the Police Woman outfit and all the “she’s too young to be a copper” comments I’ve seen. The guest appearances were fun without getting in the way of a new Doctor and a new assistant. The new look TARDIS interior was also pretty cool.

Of course Doctor Who lives and dies by the actor playing the Doctor. Matt Smith has the role down nicely. He had me 54 minutes in with “Hello; I’m the Doctor.” I have admit my favourite Doctors are Peter Davison and Sylvester McCoy. I may not be the best person to ask.

One thing I wasn’t sure about is the new theme and title but they’ll probably grow on me.

Then there was the extended preview for the series. Tasty.

I finished watching Season 2 of A Town Called Eureka tonight. I like TV shows about quirky communities. A Town Called Eureka is an excellent addition to the likes of Twin Peaks, Northern Exposure, the first season of The League of Gentlemen and Trumpton. Each uses an outsider as a way into the strange place: Special Agent Dale Cooper, Joel Fleischman, Benjamin Denton and Brian Cant. Eureka has Jack Carter a U.S. Marshal who arrives in the town by accident. Twin peaks has its murder, Northern Exposure has oddness, The League of Gentlemen has its dark goings on and Trumpton has its musical box. It’s not a huge spoiler to reveal that Eureka has the largest collection of geniuses anywhere on the planet with budgets for all sorts of things to go horribly wrong.

By season two he is settled into town and the main characters have been established. The actors or possibly it’s the writers who are more comfortable with the characters. The inclusion of Joe Morton (Terminator 2) and Matt Frewer (Max Headroom) gives the show a certain ambiance without resorting to some of the more often used guest actors who might be brought in to add geek appeal. The large number of recurring characters gives the town the feel of a real place with real lives at risk when things threaten to go horribly wrong.

Season 2 has more of a story line connecting the episodes. It sticks to a style of story telling I like as there is no recourse to endings that come out of nowhere supported by a bit of technobable. Stories tend to misdirect both the characters and the audience before revealing how pieces already revealed fit together. Personally I find that a lot more satisfying than, say, some Doctor Who episodes. Not that Eureka is above technobable or extrapolated science but its a comedy not a documentary.

I’m not going to risk spoilling a series which relies on the viewer being a visitor to a strange place by going into anymore detail.   Highly recommended for anyone who like comedy science fiction but if you’ve not seen Season 1 watch that first.

Before I get to any more lucid thoughts – was it just me or did the two water zombies marching around look a lot like Ray Liotta and Mark Kermode?

So the long awaited second Doctor Who special The Waters of Mars was on tonight.   It was good fun.  From the trailer I’d expected a lot more of the creaping horror in space and not so much of the Doctor running through corridors.  Which brings me to a little gripe: if lifting a bicycle from Earth would have used so much fuel how much did lifting those long corridors use?  It’s the daft things like that that pull me out of the show.

Good points the acting was good, the effects didn’t let it down.  Excellent points: the early parts with the scary, martian, water zombies.  Best bit: the Doctor walking away – Tennant’s wordless performance reminded me of Bob Hoskins at the end of The Long Good Friday.  Part of me wishes he’d just kept walking because that would have been more powerful and dramatic.

Anyway I’m looking forward to the next special. Especially given who it looks like is coming to Christmas dinner…

Update: Dark Dwarf and Kim Knox have now posted their thoughts too.