Posts Tagged ‘time travel’

The first, new episode of the 2011 run of Dr Who The Impossible Astronaut is a joy.

If you’re going to do a Doctor Who in America why not go for it. Using the vast scale of the wide open spaces and light gives grandeur to the scene that chalk pits never could. Later the TARDIS appearing in the beautifully realised Oval Office. The villain in a NASA space suit.

The dialogue was snappy with great one liners, jokes, catch phrases and playing with in show jokes for regular viewers.

I’ve read some complaints that Steven Moffat is using time travel within episodes too much. Frankly that almost points up that writers in the past haven’t used it enough. The old formula used the TARDIS to drop the Doctor and friends into an interesting situation and then let them leave at the end.

The incidental music I am the Doctor and its variations are now as inextricably linked musically to the show for me as the theme. I keep catching myself tapping the rhythm.

River Song as always a joy from the Mrs Robinson gag. She continues the complication of someone who can travel in time in a non linear way independently of The Doctor that Captain Jack began. In some ways she is exploring companions in a way they’ve not been looked at before. We got a hint of this with Sarah Jane in School Reunion. Here we are seeing the slightly obsessive side of the jilted companion replaced by younger companions. Then there her prophetic, metaphorical sense that the day she meets The Doctor for his first time and he doesn’t know who she is may kill her foreshadowing Forest of the Dead.

Having Rory aboard the TARDIS for a whole season will change the shows dynamic. We get away from the RTD model of the companion. The adult side is still there thanks to River and Doctor flirting but now we have Doctor with companions that doesn’t apply to. Now she has Rory to share screen time with Amy seemed a bit more toned down.

It was a really nice touch having William Morgan Sheppard and Mark Sheppard playing Canton Everett Delaware III at different ages rather than resorting to dodgy makeup. Really hope we’ll see more of Canton in Day of the Moon as he quickly established an interesting character. Will we get an explanation of why Canton getting married was a crime?

The first of the stories two monsters in the story is scary. Creepy 1960s suited MIB / Grey hybrids who make people forget. Is the one there just before the Doctor killed significant? Is it there to observe the death? Are these monsters just a bit Oodish. We only see its mouth when it kills but not when it speaks.

The other apparent bad guy is the space suited killer. Is the girl in the Space Suit the same one as at the lake? Steven Moffat seems to like space suit as monster motifs – The Vashta Nerada infected skull faced spacesuits in Silence in the Library had the space suit motif. These new monsters are being called The Silence which is odd since they cause people to forget them. It’s probably all just be a coincidence or playing with fans heads. If nothing else Moffat likes monsters with scary heads we can add his gas masked villains of The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances.

Then we have the mysteries: River in Flesh and Stone says she killed the best man she’d ever known. There is a girl in the space suit when we see it in 1969. Someone in a space suit kills the Doctor. Could it be that River is the girl in the space suit?

We get little time travel games – Rory the Roman used and then invented later by the earlier Doctor is a nice touch.

Amy is the first character to experience nausea after seeing The Silence. Then River is later and blames it on prison food. Is Amy really pregnant or is there more to it? Is it natural or is it related to The Silence or is there something else going on?

Rather than following more recent series where a series of episodic stories build up to reveal a mystery we’ve had a series of big mysteries dropped in out lap. Will the next episode clear them all up or have we been shown the shape of some or all of this series?

• The Silence can at least know names. Can it read thoughts?
• The Silence killed Joy in the bathroom but other than that do we see them do anything bad?
• There are Tunnels under the entire planet for centuries or something added by the Tardis rebuilding the planet?
• What hit Canton on the head?
• How does this tie to the control room in The Lodger?
• Why has the Doctor been practicing escapes? Is this more significant than an opening joke?

I know in the past I’ve complained about there not being enough cliff hangers. I can hardly complain about that this week with not one, not two but three cliff hangers…

• Rory apparently zapped by The Silence
• The girl in the space suit shot by Amy
• The dead Doctor

I’m really looking forward to the next part and the rest of the season. Fingers crossed it lives up to this cracking series opener.

Source Code is a very specific kind of Science Fiction that toys with a single concept like a cat toying with it’s pray. That concept becomes what that the whole story is built around. It’s the nature this kind of Science Fiction that it is often more about a piece of technology or a plot than about characters. In this case it is the plot and two mysteries that is the focus. Hopefully you’ve already seen the trailer so I don’t need to explain that (I’ve posted it above if you haven’t). Each time we go through the eight minutes before the attack again more parts of the mysteries is revealed. Each time we jump back to the real world some parts of the mysteries are revealed. Until we get to the end of the ride after 93 minutes.

The concept at the core of Source Code’s plot is a loop in time of sorts in which one person assumes another person’s identity for a short period of time before a disastrous event. It would be easy to point to Ground Hog Day with Phil’s romance with Rita; or if you prefer to focus on the occupying someone else’s life trying to put something right its Quantum Leap; or a military project using short-term time travel to fix something that’s gone wrong Seven Days; and anyone who watched Star Trek: The Next Generation could easily point to the episode Cause and Effect with the Enterprise blowing up repeatedly after a sequence of events. If this was a film without its own twists and play on the idea that would be fair but fortunately this film is its own take on those ideas.

The characters are nicely acted within the confines the structure gives them to develop but inevitably they are largely stereotypes: so inside the source code we have an air force pilot, a stand up comedian with a drink problem, a non descript terrorist and other passenger while outside we have the Bureaucratic Scientist, the military superior and the boffin who operates the machine. At least once the hero details off the Christina’s main characteristics he has identified in his various runs through their eight minutes together.

The plot relies on a series of twists and the parallel plots in the Source Code world and Real World to keep the tension level up. I have to congratulate the trailer makers because it would have been very easy to give away the first twist in the trailer. It would also have been quite easy to lose the films pace in an explanation of how time travel really worked – a few lines of appropriate technobable cover up that crack and leave it to the audience to fill in the blanks if they care. If this was British Science Fiction I’d predict a more down beat twist for the ending. However the ending was still satisfying. I’m pretty certain it was foreshadowed earlier in the film but I’d have to watch it again to be sure.

The effects, action sequences and stunt work are all solid. I can’t honestly remember anything about the soundtrack although I’m sure there was one solidly contributing to the film.

Ultimately Source Code is a good, solid movie in all departments although I’m not sure how much rewatch value it will have on DVD.

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?