Doctor Who: Series 6: Episode 7 – A Good Man Goes to War

Before you read on: Spoilers sweetie.

The Guardian series blog, written by Dan Martin, has been my first port of call as soon as the credits roll after every episode of this series. The story arc is so layered and baffling, with the hints and in jokes so carefully hidden, that even after a second viewing it’s difficult to pick up on everything. Thankfully the Guardian blog has been there whenever I’ve really struggled to get my head together and form some thoughts of my own. And the comments section is the perfect breeding ground for theories about where things are going.

This week’s mid-series finale gets a rather bruising verdict on the Guardian website. Very rarely do I disagree with it but this week I definitely do. I see where they’re coming from. It’s certainly true that not a lot happened despite the build up and the scale. And the cleric characters on Demon’s Run, particularly the token gay couple, the thin/fat marines, are chucked into the mix briefly and rather pointlessly. It was undoubtedly disappointing that the Cybermen were waggled before us in the pre titles sequence and that the Doctor’s dark side, whilst brilliant, did not plumb any seriously shocking new depths. But I think Dan Martin is missing the point of A Good Man Goes to War.

In many ways it matters little that the standalone story element was lacking this week because this was an epic conclusion to the first seven episodes. Rather than a war, this was the climactic battle. After the weaknesses of the flesh based double bill, I actually thought the story was improved to a much greater level and it was a joy to get Moffat’s writing back. The Doctor’s dialogue was so much wittier, cleverer and funnier.

Indeed the most surprising thing about A Good Man Goes to War was just how funny it was. The variety of the humour on show really added to the cinematic and epic feel. Besides the usual comedy deriving from Smith’s performance, for example in the scene where he’s trying to work out how Melody came to have Time Lord DNA, there are laughs from the other characters Moffat brings in as the Doctor’s allies.

The Sontaran nurse was absolute genius and perfectly in keeping with what the Doctor would do. When he tells Colonel Runaway to keep his back straight so as not to damage his posture, I laughed, during my first and second viewing.  However it was only on my second viewing that I noticed a filthy lesbian tongue joke between the mysterious Silurian detective and her female sidekick, after the Silurian asks “why do you ever put up with me?”. I can see an adult spin-off show, with the potential to be far better than Torchwood, for those two. There was also a jolly fat blue thing that we’ve seen before, who was a delightfully wise presence.

With all the grim seriousness and concentration required to keep up with the secrets and twists of the story arc, the laughs were absolutely essential to making A Good Man Goes to War enjoyable. After the endless tension that has been coiling and tightening over the preceding weeks, I thought that this seventh episode actually had merits of its own, by leaving the ongoing secrets for the dramatic and emotional final ten minutes. Even if it didn’t go as far as it could’ve done, this episode was a fascinating exploration of the Doctor’s character.

We get to see the theatrical, arrogant side of the Doctor as he pulls off his genius takeover of the base. Matt Smith is in his element here and the impact of his performance is all the greater because Moffat kept him off the screen during the beginning as the team assembled, using the TARDIS alone. Moffat has previously said he wanted to put the “who” back into Doctor Who, and he’s done that with his confused, overlapping timelines and references to off screen adventures. But in A Good Man Goes to War he asks the question more directly and the Doctor ponders his own legacy, just as he did at the end of the last series when the monster sealed within the Pandorica turned out to be him. River Song then delivers some home truths. This episode may have been light on story but all of the key characters are explored in greater depth than before.

To River then. Finally we know who she is! And at last we have substantial answers to big questions looming since the beginning of the series. I was genuinely more satisfied by the big reveal than I thought I would be. But at the same time I am left craving more. I want to see the next episode. Moffat has, predictably, left an awful lot of questions unanswered. With a title like “Let’s Kill Hitler” my mind is already in a whirlwind of excited anticipation about the next episode itself too, let alone the answering of more secrets.

People tend to focus on the big question of this series: the Doctor’s death. But I am still waiting for the unresolved events  of The Big Bang at the end of Series 5 to be explained. Who manipulated the TARDIS? Who organised the coalition of baddies to imprison the Doctor? Surely they must have some sort of connection to this year’s big enemies? Why are the clerics anti-Doctor now after working with him against the Weeping Angels in the last series? Who is Madame Kovarian?

So many questions and so many throwaway lines I can’t dwell on, partly because it would be useless and dull for you if I asked questions forever and also because I am falling asleep. Stevie Wonder performed in 1814 London. Just remembered that. But we mustn’t tell him!

See you in the Autumn.

EDIT: Blimey forgot the Headless Monks completely. And not because they were bad. A good idea but underdeveloped. Worth it just for having new monsters and that wonderful moment when the Doctor disarms all the clerics.

Are video games making kids fat? No, that would be food…

It’s a familiar theme in the news and it only needs the slightest of sparks to get going. If there’s a murder it means that the killer has been honing his skills on Xbox Live, amassing headshots of spotty American teens on Call of Duty. If there’s a horrifically tragic car crash then the kid’s obviously been getting ideas from the mindless traffic weaving, crude language and pedestrian skittles of Grand Theft Auto and the like. If a young girl is sexually harassed by a young guy, he’s been spending too much time working through the levels of Teach that Girl a Lesson: The Titillating Adventures of Spankatron Part II, or something.

What’s even more infuriating than the casual asides of blame in news stories though, is the supposedly in-depth and professional advice columns on the sort of parenting that can banish the evils of the games console. This type of thing is inevitable written by Dr Terri Praisebut Dontsmother or Professor Lilia Mollycuddleova of the Belgrade Child Tantrum Institute. These Gods of infant psychology will proceed to patronisingly explain the dos and don’ts of video gaming, which will ultimately turn out to be common sense.

Rather than appeal to such things as maternal instinct or the law of the bleeding obvious, these articles will be stuffed with lots of studies about the effects of gaming. Profound insights will stem from their findings, such as the fact that gaming immediately before bed might make it difficult for your child to sleep and that too much button bashing might cause inflammation and conditions like RSI in their hands.

Of course the really contentious question is: do games cause aggression? Our helpful Agony Aunt will usually start by admitting what a hotly debated topic this is, before laying out briefly the two views in the debate. The anti-games view will normally be presented with greater weight of evidence and any postives will be qualified, with phrases like “limited evidence shows that they can improve children’s willingness to co-operate”. Wrapped up somewhere in the waffle, will be the admission that the effect of games depends on the child’s environment, i.e. they don’t do any harm in a healthy and stable home, and it’s the badly behaving parents doing the damage in the poor environments, not video games.

Once in a while a reasonably interesting point will arise from one of the numerous studies being quoted. For example, that playing football based games increases appetite. However rather than seeking any positives in this, like, I don’t know, interest in playing ACTUAL football and getting regular exercise, a new evil shall be swiftly created. Football games = fat kids. So no shooting because that makes murderers and no scoring because that makes gobblers.

Some studies will just be frankly ethically dubious. They’ll casually mention that a group of children failed to do as many sit-ups as they once could. Who is making our primary school kids do sit-ups? Who is callously tracking their progress, as if we were breeding an army? I didn’t do any sit-ups in primary school, at least I won’t have thought of them as sit-ups. Forcing painful and sweaty exercise on our young, as if we were training race horses, sounds a lot worse than letting them dabble with escapism that isn’t The X-Factor or In The Night Garden, now and then.

It should be obvious that video games, like anything else that came before it like TV or comics, should be used in moderation. By anyone, not just kids. It should also be said more often that the greater immersion of video games has its developmental benefits as well as drawbacks. Increasingly experimental and quality narratives and technology, like that in LA: Noire, is simply an advancement in storytelling, not an untameable, corrupting beast to be feared.

DVD Review: Zombie Undead

This is one of those films with a Ronseal title. There are lots of zombies and zombies are dead, but also sort of lively in a sleepwalking sort of way, hence the “un”. The marketing material continues the no nonsense approach, showcasing a tag line of “RUN.HIDE.DIE!”. Tellingly a footnote informs me that “this disc contains no extra features”. I say tellingly because you really don’t get anything more than a bunch of shirts smothered in red paint and lips sticky with jam.

Sarah has survived a “massive explosion”. She is rather distraught though that the blast has peppered her Dad with all manner of fatal wounds, from bites to paper cuts. Desperately she tries to stop him from bleeding to death in the back of paramedic Steve’s small car, ideal for students or the elderly. Steve tries to calm Sarah as they drive away from the city to an “evacuation centre”. When they get there, Sarah passes out after the doctor plunges a needle full of adrenalin into poor old Dad from a great height.

Sarah comes round to find no one about, apart from a wheelchair parked shoddily and at a skewed angle in the middle of a typical hospital corridor. Perfectly logically she starts to warily shout “hello” at no one in particular. Finally some bloke turns up, tottering towards her, but Sarah can’t quite make him out because of some lingering concussion and a random cut that’s appeared on her forehead halfway through the scene. Her vision clears up just as he’s right in front of her. Unfortunately for Sarah this fella is in a right state; he hasn’t moisturized for weeks and he’s horny as hell.

Thankfully the first of a few fat men in Zombie Undead picks precisely this moment to turn up with a randomly acquired blade (other conveniently placed objects will star later such as torches and a bottle of pills). He swiftly slices the sex pest’s skull like a melon. Then Sarah’s female failings kick in. Instead of showering her rescuer with gratitude she wails and whines, inching herself away from our chubby chopper. It takes him ages to explain that there are a load of “things” like the sex pest, with awful skin and serious body odour issues, staggering about the corridors leaking goo and munching flesh. Sarah slowly accepts the situation, a bit, and vows to help Jay (for that is our hero’s name) find his little brother if he helps her find her Dad.

Sadly for Jay Sarah never quite embraces the survival instinct, always trying to save the zombies and people they encounter when they are beyond redemption. What are women like hey? Jay also isn’t helped by fellow porker Steve, who was the paramedic with the little car from earlier. Weirdly he is the slowest to come to terms with the blood billowing monsters. They find him cowering in a toilet cubicle, in an awfully amateurish immensely suspenseful scene with Jay crashing open the doors one by one, and despite his medical training he’s prone to chucking his guts up at the sight of other’s guts.

There are an awful lot of innards on show. If our fat protagonists could man up a little and acquire a taste for it there are feasts to be had, indeed zombies are regularly shown gobbling up intestines with grunting delight. One scene in yet another toilet (either funds were tight or the director loved the aesthetics of Condom machines and urinals) has what looks like a shrine to Lidl’s chipolatas, drizzled in organically sourced tomato ketchup and served on a bed of recently devoured homo sapien.

Even the gore lacks any variation or quality, despite unhealthy splutterings of it. The direction and editing is clunky, predictable and poor, but its imitation of handheld horror is competent compared to the script. The dialogue essentially has two levels, sounding either like cliché regurgitations of previous films or as if the shockingly bad and evidently inexperienced actors are improvising in a beginner’s drama class. As for the plotting a half hearted attempt is made to make things modern, with vague and contradictory allusions to a biological terrorist attack. It was obviously decided that to leave everything unexplained would be classier, thus depriving the audience of any satisfaction whatsoever from Zombie Undead’s 86 minutes.

Some answers surface from the pools of irritating disappointment as soon as the credits roll however. Why the unusual and implausible fat hero, with the weird undertaker/security guard costume? The film’s writer, Kris Tearse, was also its male star. The primary location was Leicester’s De Montfort University, which explains the extremely low budget feel. So a bunch of students are living the dream with this film it seems, no matter what its failings, some will be ecstatically excited when the DVD is released on the 30^thof May. It has nothing new or engaging at all to recommend it. But to help justify the dream I will admit I flinched like a child at one point, and was genuinely surprised, although after the zombies had gone.

BlogalongaBond: You Only Live Twice – A review from memory

After getting the ball rolling last month with the underwater mad, but still in my view underrated Thunderball, I was looking forward to sitting down to the even grander and more SPECTRE dominated You Only Live Twice. Here was a Bond film not only hell bent on exotic thrills but a whistle-stop tour of Japanese culture for a Western audience. With such a diverse location to work with, a script adapted by Roald Dahl from one of Fleming’s best novels and the fresh direction of Lewis Gilbert, this would surely be bigger and better Bond. I licked my lips at the prospect of rediscovery.

Unfortunately I came across a substantial stumbling block perusing the beloved and holy row of Bond DVDS. I do not own a copy of You Only Live Twice. I am anxious to keep this knowledge from my friends. Among them my, perhaps unhealthy, obsession with all things 007 is the stuff of notorious legend. I am counting on the fact that they are not good enough friends to read my blog.

You might ask why I haven’t simply gone out to buy a copy. I am not marooned on a desert island with no access to British high streets and if HMV should prove woefully stocked the internet is of course at my disposal. If it were a missing fragment of any other film series I wouldn’t hesitate. But my James Bond collection is comprised of two disc Ultimate Editions with beautiful matching packaging. To my horror, around the release of either Casino Royale or Quantum of Solace on DVD, the Ultimate Editions were re-released with all new (and vastly inferior) packaging. Reluctant to tarnish the perfection of my sacred DVD area, I have refrained from buying a newer copy of You Only Live Twice and have been unable to find a copy to match my collection.

Oh I know you feel my pain reader. Life is a cruel and unpredictable mistress. I felt resigned to my fate and the torturous wait till June where the snowy delights of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service lurked in the Alpine trees. I was on the verge of giving up and leaving a gaping hole in my own personal BlogalongaBond journey. But then I got to thinking: why didn’t I own You Only Live Twice? Why hadn’t I made it a priority when assembling my shrine to the world’s most recognisable spy?

For Sean Connery of course it was the film that took the character too far and into the realm of the ridiculous. He resented the space age driven plot and the increasing repetitiveness of the one liners. In particular he must have felt like a first class prat being initiated as an honorary citizen of Japan, with a haircut that made him look like a monk (perhaps M really did want him to be “half monk/half hitman”). For fans looking back on the whole series of 22 films, Connery’s concerns might seem rather unfounded compared to the silliness to come with the Moore era. But clearly the Scot didn’t agree with the direction of travel away from intimate plots like those in From Russia With Love. The scale of this, the franchise’s fifth film, couldn’t be beaten without being dreadful.

I think some of Connery’s conservatism must have rubbed off on me. As a child YOLT was one of my favourite Bond entries. In particular I thought the climactic battle at the volcano base was one of the most exciting things in the universe, a totally awesome shootout with the baddies. I would have called it “an engrossing and epic finale on an impressive scale. One of the classic scenes in film history” had I had the required vocabulary. I also loved all the scenes featuring Little Nelly, as my Dad would chirp on and on about it, building the anticipation until the treasured scene would grip the household with awe and laughter.

But then as a teenager I obviously sought to reject the things my parents thought of as “good”. Little Nelly became silly. It was the sort of bland nonsense my Dad would always blabber on about. Later on I would find my love for Bond rekindled by the approach in Daniel Craig’s Casino Royale, so that I rapidly acquired and devoured the books (none of Fleming’s are missing from that collection). So enthralled was I by the dark and bleak novel that pushed Bond’s character to the limit, that my attitude to the film as a whole became lukewarm at best.

Most of all it was my view of Blofeld that changed so dramatically after reading YOLT the novel. I was struck by the complete contrast between the cinematic and literary characters, even in terms of physique. In the books he was tall, in the films a short, bald, fat and often wheelchair bound man with a fluffy white pussy. I don’t mean that he was a woman; the contrast wasn’t quite that shocking.

Anyway I might be being unfair because it’s Austin Powers’ Doctor Evil that creates such a daft cultural vision of Ernst Stavro, rather than the portrayals from the Eon films (aside from perhaps the PTS of For Your Eyes Only). But after reading the book I was no longer captivated by Donald Pleasence’s iconic performance. He was THE Blofeld to me and countless others, but after my personal enlightenment he became a wasted opportunity, a stupid cardboard cut out villain and an imitation.  

I’ve already mentioned that unintentionally hilarious assimilation of Bond into the ninja community, which ruined the pace of the film and its focus upon Japanese culture. Another definite reason I came to find YOLT a turnoff was that it tried too hard to do its location justice at times, almost showing too much respect. That is not to say there wasn’t beautiful cinematography of the landscape and cities, just that too much was made of the whole “culture clash” angle. Having said this there were some wonderfully contrasted Ken Adam interior sets, which simultaneously showcased the equally beguiling faces of modern and traditional Japan.

In the aftermath of the recent earthquake and tsunami it is fitting and poignant to watch YOLT this month. Sadly, as I’ve explained, I am not. Everything I have said so far I have said from memory. Some of these files have been saved since childhood, others downloaded from more recent viewings. The trend seems to be that boy me loved it, more recent me had reservations. There are things about the film that the younger me hated that I now love however. Nancy Sinatra’s title song was whiny and not very Bondian back in the 90s, but now I find it a refreshing and beautiful track. Likewise John Barry’s score, which picked up substantially on the Japanese themes at times if memory serves me right, now strikes me as majestic when once it was irritating and plodding (not that I’d have used those words).

I genuinely wish I owned YOLT on DVD, despite what might be a tone of negativity coming across because of my love for the pages of the book dripping in revenge and sensual doubt. I know that the last time I saw the film on TV I found it to be a wonderful snapshot of both 1960s and Japanese culture, with fun as well as thrilling moments and the fresh angle of the space race. In many ways it is the classic film of the entire franchise, adhering more to the globally recognised Bond formula than Goldfinger and coming complete with spiky dialogue with Blofeld; the ultimate confrontation.

 But perhaps this is also why I can’t quite bring myself to love YOLT. Like Connery, and with the added benefit of hindsight, I see YOLT’s sensational and epic tone as the start of a trend away from the style of the early films. I adored these grander and dafter cinematic Bond adventures for different reasons, but in the early films I could indulge my love for the books and the movies at the same time. Whilst good, perhaps YOLT symbolises the end of my own personal Bondian bliss and this is why my memories of it are so mixed.

No need for excessive force? Wii might as well not bother then

Proper funny people, that is to say comedians, often take the ordinary and un-funny happenings of everyday life, apply their own particular, wry comic twist and sit back satisfied as rows of audience members dissolve in laughter. I imagine that for them the knowledge that they took a dull occurrence which wasn’t at all humorous and made it so, simply by looking at it through their own bulging, witty eyes is the ultimate fulfilment of their “art”. I however have always been fairly satisfied with spotting something undeniably hilarious and jabbing a finger in the general direction of such an event, usually accompanying the gesture with subtle shouts such as “Oh my God that’s so funny!” or simply a worrying, wobbly intake of breath and my lips just about gasping “HA!”.

Take the apparently newsworthy and 100% true story of “Wii-type games linked to sprains” provided by the BBC today and the laugh out loud details that ensue upon closer inspection. The article begins by insisting the Nintendo Wii and other such motion sensitive games technology had started to produce its own “brand of player injuries”. By “own brand” we can assume that they mean someone has actually bothered to confirm what we all suspected; fat, unfit people buy the Wii, thrash around with it in their living rooms for a while and claim it to be exercise and the odd unlucky sod does himself a catastrophically embarrassing You’ve Been Framed style injury to himself in the process. To have your concealed fantasies of amusing, lardy louts unintentionally vandalising their own whopping plasma screens and yelping like puppies dangled from the Empire State building after pulling a muscle returning Mario’s serve, or something, is pretty damn funny in itself. But then you pause and consider the authority behind the article.

The BBC says that “doctors”, yes those highly trained professionals admired and trusted by society, have reported on this. They have not merely met a few times to discuss it or had a small handful of them examine the issue, but convened a ruddy conference in San Francisco on the subject! Or alternatively forced the information upon an unsuspecting, unrelated gathering. The enthusiastic medical professionals tasked with the job of investigating this “phenomenon”, apparently consulted the USA’s “National Electronic Injury Surveillance System”. I mean seriously? This database actually shows that in a five year period 696 video game related injuries occurred, of which, disappointingly, only 92 were caused by a Wii- type motion device. I say disappointingly because the other injuries are things such as chronic thumb ache in overzealous, spotty adolescents hunched over a button mashing session of Gears of War or Call of Duty. The Wii injuries have a more harmful and admit it, therefore more comic potential.

At this point I am reminded of my childhood and adults trying to impress caution on me whilst I wielded some sort of sharp object excitedly. “Careful, you could take someone’s eye out with that!” they would whine. Someone else’s, not my own. And so to the funniest sentence of this weird piece of news…

Wild swings of the console’s remote also accounted for dozens of “bystander injuries”.

Now come on that is funny right? Imagine all the possible scenarios; a husband who has just about talked his wife into a game of Wii tennis inadvertently smashing her in the face, a tottering old nan accidentally swiping away her opponent’s walking stick, sending them sprawling across the coffee table, GAME, SET, MATCH! But then I read to the end of the article. Most “victims” of bystander injuries are under 10 years old. I’ve never been a fan of the Wii anyway when I have tried it. It always struck me that it got away with poor quality games, nothing more than cartoons, in comparison to other consoles because of its gimmicky, futuristic tech. Now I have even more reason to shun it. Quite apart from the fact there is no need to get over excited for the controller to respond, you can just as effectively flick your wrist from the sofa as dive around the lounge, it was fun to lose control and pretend. Now “excessive” force is out of the question in case it becomes child abuse, which just isn’t permitted to be funny. Great.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11455144