TV

Doctor Who [new]
4x09 Forest of the Dead
See here for my thoughts on this story.

Gilmore Girls
4x11 In the Clamor and the Clangor
Finally, after three and a half seasons, Mrs. Kim finds out the truth about Lane. Sadly, in typical Gilmore Girls fashion, it's nothing like as fantastic or victorious as it ought to be. Still, there's time yet...

Have I Got News For You
6/6/08 edition (extended repeat)

House
4x14 Living the Dream

Red Dwarf
2x03 Thanks For the Memory
More of an exemplary episode than the last, in my opinion, as it effectively combines character comedy, character drama, a clever (but not pointless) structure, and a handful of interesting science-fiction ideas. On the downside, it's not the funniest episode, which is obviously a problem for a comedy.

Films

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939)
[#39 in 100 Films in a Year 2008]

Bond from the Beginning #9:
The Man With the Golden Gun (1974)
[4th or so watch]
See here for my thoughts on this film.

Fiction

Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks writing as Ian Fleming
Chapter 8
Bond and Darius have dinner and visit the Paradise Club, "heaven on Earth" for people who like drink, opium, and naked swimming. Mainly, the chapter's about a little exposition and a little local colour. Also includes a reference to the Young Bond books, which seems to nicely affirm them as part of the Bond series as much as this is. (Of course, knowing Higson, he may've been referencing something from Fleming that Faulks is also independently referring to. Just to make things complicated.)

Bond from the Beginning

I'm currently in the middle of a little undertaking (for want of a better word) that I like to call Bond from the Beginning, which I shall now briefly (and, perhaps, pointlessly) introduce.

The task is simple: to watch all of the James Bond films, in order, from the start. The current iteration of this only includes the official Eon films -- so no TV Casino Royale, no spoof Casino Royale, and no Never Say Never Again. I've attempted this before (around 2002), where I only made it as far as Diamonds Are Forever. As you can see from my latest viewing, I'm doing better this time.

There are a couple of reasons for trying this. Like many boys & men in the UK (and elsewhere, of course), I've grown up with the Bond films around, catching them on TV, video and -- starting with Tomorrow Never Dies for me -- at the cinema. In this way I've seen them when I could, and generally out of sequence. I've never watched them progress in order from the start. Considering them in this way obviously puts each film in a different context to viewing them out of sequence, so I was intrigued by the chance to re-evaluate the 21 (so far) Bond films in this way.

Additionally, I've always struggled to definitively list my favourite Bond films in order of preference. Some people like to bandy around phrases like "it's in the top half of Bond films", especially as there are a neat 20 (before the Daniel Craig re-boot) and so they could be split cleanly into a Top 10 and Bottom 10. What better chance to create a definitive list of my favourites than when going through them in order? So that's what I'm doing. Obviously, I'll post said list when I reach the end. As I've been going I've also written mini-reviews of each film (intended for my other blog), which I'll now begin to post here.

I can't say how long this will take me to finish -- I've already been going since about April 2007 -- but now you can follow it all here. And at some point, there may be Bond from the Beginning 2...

Bond from the Beginning #9: The Man With the Golden Gun

I really like The Man With the Golden Gun. There seems to be a consensus (especially among those who only accept For Your Eyes Only, or perhaps The Spy Who Loved Me, as decent efforts from the Moore era) that it's a relatively weak entry, but I think it has more than enough going for it.

Put simply, it's entertaining. Christopher Lee is a great villain, Moore isn't yet too old for the role, the plot's decent enough, the action is exciting, the humour amusing, the one-liners memorable... I even like Lulu's title song. There are numerous other moments that could be expanded on -- most of M's dialogue, the amazingly designed half-sunken ship HQ...

Of course it has its weak points (a few plot holes, J.W. Pepper, and especially the 'woo-oop'ing car stunt), but they don't detract from how flat-out enjoyable it all is. More often than not, that's exactly what a Bond film should be.

Doctor Who: Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead

Steven Moffat's episodes of Doctor Who arrive with no small degree of expectation. Ever since he penned the first season two-parter The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances (which holds the rare honour of having both the best and worst episode titles ever, in my opinion), fans have revered Moffat as the God of new-Who writing. It's not an undeserved reputation: The Empty Child episodes are fantastic, one of my favourite ever stories (and winner of a Hugo); I think his second season effort, The Girl in the Fireplace (which also won a Hugo), is overrated by many, but it's still a good episode; and Blink (which has so far won a BAFTA, and would really be robbed if it didn't make it a hat-trick of Hugos) was an excellent concept wonderfully executed, with the best companion-who-wasn't ever. Then there's the Children in Need short he penned, Time Crash, which is just about perfect.

The news that he'll be taking charge of the whole shebang from season five (airing in 2010) has been greeted by many as if it were the second coming. I think they're being over-optimistic -- not because I think Moffat will do a bad job (quite the opposite), but because many are people who are somewhat unhappy with the way Russell T Davies has run things, and the quality of his episodes, and presume Moffat will bring more of the flavour of his episodes. I'm sure he'll bring his own spin to proceeding, but Moffat and Davies seem to get on well, and the former is clever enough to realise the reasoning behind Davies' showrunning decisions. If he chooses to pen five or six episodes per year, as Davies has, then I don't think anyone can expect them all to be of the same quality -- or indeed style -- as his one-or-two-per-year contribution so far, and he certainly won't make the whole season in the same vein. In my opinion, the correct outlook for Moffat's forthcoming reign is that it will continue Who in more or less the quality and style we've become accustomed to, and that's a good thing.

But analysis of a future that's two years (and nine episodes) away is slightly beside the point: what of the expectations for Moffat's latest two-parter, set in the 51st Century upon a planet that's one big library -- called, simply enough, The Library -- and concerning 'air piranhas' that live in the shadows and a present-day girl who may be dreaming everything... One of the first things that strikes me is Moffat's repeated motifs, which are arguably beginning to cover his Who work to the point of being too easily guessed. There's the faceless monsters (here, a skeleton in a spacesuit, following gas-masked zombies, clockwork droids and living statues); turning everyday things into scary things (ticking clocks, 'the monster under the bed', statues, now shadows); unusual female helpers for the Doctor (two this time -- River Song, who knows the Doctor from his future, and a little girl in another time -- following in the wake of a girl/woman he encountered across her timeline, and a girl interacting with a message he recorded decades earlier); which brings to light another motif, the mucking about with time (see previous examples); also mucking about with structure (more prevalent in his own series, Jekyll); an "everybody lives" ending; and catchphrases ("count the shadows", following "are you my mummy?" and "don't blink"). The only one he seems to have dropped is the banana.

Of course, this is repetition on an unintrusive level (with the possible exception of "everybody lives", which seemed to repeat dialogue wholesale from The Doctor Dances), and it's a tad churlish to pick on these things if the storytelling and new concepts are up to scratch. The latter certainly are: shadows are a great topic to pick on, and cunningly used; The Library is a beautiful idea (and prettily executed by all the design teams, especially the exterior vistas from The Mill); the human-faced helper statues are creepy; and, most effective of all, one of Who's best-ever death scenes, as the mind of Miss Evangelista remains stored in her suit and struggles to understand what's going on -- absolutely chilling, heart-achingly sad, and perfectly executed. Part two contains so many crazy, mashed together ideas that it's pretty hard to pick them apart. Which, in some ways, is a problem: the whole thing is so bold, so mad, so complex, so different, that it doesn't quite seem right at 7pm on Saturday on BBC One. Some people will love it, of course -- some would regardless, just cos it's by Moffat, so their views are virtually useless -- but I'd be fairly surprised if many of the show's target audience truly engaged with it.

As a fan, the main thing that troubles me is Professor River Song. She knows so much about the Doctor that it's incredibly tantalising for a viewer, wanting to know how and why she knows it all and what their adventures together were/will be like. On a practical, production level, the fact that she knows an older Doctor -- specifically, an older 10th Doctor -- is problematic. While it sounds great on the surface -- David Tennant for decades! Hurrah! -- on that practical production level, how do you assure he sticks around long enough to have a suitable number of adventures with River in the future? And that Alex Kingston (who everyone involved seems to think is a much more important actress than the average viewer would) agrees to return too? And if you don't do either of those things, surely this incarnation's final story is locked in as needing to end with some future-revealing montage that explains all this? Perhaps what worries me most is that, in their concern for telling a great story now and in their blithe disregard for such matters (RTD has often said how happy he is to leave continuity debates up to the fans), no one really bothered to consider all this, and it'll just be forever ignored for fans to argue about for eternity (the winner, of course, will be some alternative timeline theory, where the 10th Doctor didn't really regenerate at the end of the 2009 specials / season five / season six / etc, but lived for decades more and had his adventures with River, and somehow this River fell through some portal or other into our timeline and then met our Doctor and blah blah blah). On the bright side, perhaps they know something we don't about who's signed up for 2010's season five, or just what timeline-splitting events may occur in Journey's End...

I shouldn't worry so much of course -- I should, trust and/or ignore, and try to enjoy the story for what it is. But, as a fan, I can't help it; and, on the flip side, as someone who frequently enjoys engaging with Who on the same level as its target audience, I hardly think this new adventure from Mr Moffat is an unequivocal success.

In fact, a bit like Jekyll, I do wonder if I want to like it more than I actually do.

TV

Dirt
2x06 And the Winner is...

Doctor Who [classic]
7x01 Spearhead from Space Episode 1 [4th watch]
7x02 Spearhead from Space Episode 2 [4th watch]
7x03 Spearhead from Space Episode 3 [4th watch]
7x04 Spearhead from Space Episode 4 [4th watch]
See here for my thoughts on this story.

Red Dwarf
2x02 Better Than Life
Fan-favourite episode in which the Dwarfers play a virtual reality game that lives up to its title, Better Than Life. It's all well and good, except that the plot lacks a third act, ending instead with an unsatisfying hurried final gag.

Fiction

The New Traveller's Almanac by Alan Moore
Chapter Two
(from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 2)
This is proving incredibly hard going. In it, Moore cunningly assimilates hundreds of literary locations into a fictional guide to the world. Many of the references are incredibly obscure and it can sometimes be a little dryly written -- more a fascinating and impressive piece of work (laced with clues to the League's history for fans) than an entertaining read. This eight-page chapter (graphic novel size, densely filled with three columns of text) took me almost an hour and a half to get through, as I coupled it with Wikipedia research to try to better understand the things Moore refers to (without such an aid they are almost entirely oblique).

Doctor Who: Spearhead from Space

I seem to be accidentally picking season-openers for my current chronological wander through classic Doctor Who: having had season one's An Unearthly Child and season five's The Tomb of the Cybermen, we now move forward to Jon Pertwee's first story, the season seven opener Spearhead from Space.

Watching Spearhead is almost like coming to a new show, so numerous are the changes made. It's the first story of the 1970s (though only just, as episode one went out on January 3rd 1970); the first with Pertwee's new Doctor; the first in colour; it's shot entirely on location and on film (lending a glossier, higher-budget look that would disappear when the series permanently returned to video from the next serial); the first 'exiled to Earth' story (not a change immediately obvious as the Doctor has had adventures on present day Earth previously); and, by the same token. the first to feature the Brigadier and UNIT as an ongoing regulars (again, a change not necessarily obvious til later). Lump all these elements together -- especially the use of film and location, which give the direction and style a completely different air -- and it doesn't feel like quite the same programme as before.

The story itself gets off to a slow start, however. Episodes one and two almost repeat themselves, with the newly regenerated Doctor stuck unconscious in a hospital bed most of the time. Bits of this work -- viewers keen to know what the new Doctor will be like have such revelations held off for a long time -- but the actual story moves slowly, even for classic Who, and, one or two events aside, it doesn't really kick off until episode three. Personally, I think it would feel better if the events of the opening episodes had been combined, with the rushed part four spread out to fill the gap. As it is, the final episode is far and away the best. The Autons finally come to life en masse (including the (in)famous scenes of them breaking out of shop windows and slaughtering innocents) and there's a nice big battle at the factory. What with the Doctor and Liz heading to Madame Tussaud's to investigate a sideline of the company (an intriguing subplot that's all but ignored), then racing to construct a suitable weapon, before heading to defeat the newly-created body of the Nestene Consciousness, there's more than enough action to fill this single episode. It puts the repetitive first two in the shade.

Which may account for some of the fondness with which Spearhead is remembered -- it starts out with more than a touch of mediocrity, but ends on such a high that it's easy to go away thinking of it as one of the best ever.

TV

Derren Brown: Trick or Treat
2x02 Kitten
The show with possibly the coolest title sequence on TV (it includes clues to every episode) continues with an episode in which a 19-year-old student is offered £500 to not kill a kitten. It might sound easy, but when you've got Derren's array of tricks levelled against you nothing is as it seems....

The Graham Norton Show
3x08 (5/6/08 edition)

Heroes
2x07 Out of Time
Certain media outlets persist in insisting that season two of Heroes is dull. Perhaps their memories of season one are too nostalgia-tinged, or perhaps they listened too hard to the early criticisms of others? Season two has just as much going on as the first -- occasionally not enough, occasionally (like tonight's episode) packed with incident, revelations and cliffhangers... including a fantastic final moment that merged two great surprises into a single shot.

Holby Blue
2x12 Episode 12 [season finale]
Holby Blue has been a lot better this season, focussing more on individual storylines than one arcing uber-criminal plot and spacing out plot developments in the characters' personal lives a tad more realistically. It also swerved away from repeating a first season storyline, in the process thankfully showing us a lot less of that bitch from the CPS. Long may she barely feature.

Red Dwarf
2x01 Kryten
Despite being a fan of Red Dwarf for over a decade, and owning all eight series on DVD, there are still many episodes I've never seen from series two to six. So, having recently re-watched the first series, I'm intending to continue on through them. As much as I enjoy the show's first six episodes, this series two opener seems to be a step-up in quality. Hopefully it continues.

Spooks
4x04 Road Trip (aka Infiltration of a New Threat)

Films

Gangs of New York (2002)
[2nd half; 3rd watch]
When I saw Gangs of New York on its original cinema release it was the first Scorsese film I'd seen. Six years later, I'm more familiar with his body of work, having seen a further seven & a half of his films (including several of his most praised). I think Gangs of New York is still my favourite though. It's flawed, but I like the sprawling narrative, which has an almost mythical style; the brutal fights; and Daniel Day-Lewis' performance is fantastic. Gangs is a very Scorsese film too, using a variety of his usual techniques and exploring his usual themes, but applied almost to their genesis in the early days of New York City. I've only seen the likes of Taxi Driver, Goodfellas or The Departed once and am in no huge rush to sit through them again (well, maybe The Departed), but this is the third time I've seen Gangs of New York. Though, to be fair, I watched the other three within the last year and the last time I watched Gangs was probably four years ago... but still, I like it more. So there.

Fiction

Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks writing as Ian Fleming
Chapter 7
Bond heads to the Middle East for the first time, an area of the globe Fleming disliked (Faulks cleverly uses some of Fleming's views as Bond's own). There he meets Darius Alizadeh, head of station in Tehran and, as a character, a natural successor to the likes of From Russia With Love's Kerim Bey. In what I assume is a move based on Fleming's style, Faulks has an annoying habit of characters finding any excuse (including interrupting more important discussions) to narrate their entire life history to Bond.

TV

Gilmore Girls
4x10 The Nanny and the Professor

Spooks
4x03 Divided They Fall (aka Campaign of Terror)
"A textbook operation," says Harry, 48 minutes into this episode. And while the mission may have a final twist in store after that, this is a textbook episode: tense, exciting, twisty, filled with cool spy tropes, believable, and tackling a depressingly real-world issue. At times it may be heavy handed in its philosophising on the state of modern British politics, but that doesn't detract from its relevance. Accusations of Spooks leaping over certain aquatic animals may have been levelled too soon.

Films

Gangs of New York (2002)
[1st half; 3rd watch]

Fiction

Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks writing as Ian Fleming
Chapters 5 & 6
A tense tennis match between Bond and the villain, Dr Julius Gorner -- very much in the spirit of Goldfinger's round of golf or the Casino Royale card game (among other sporting encounters in Fleming's novels) -- is followed by another Bond obsession -- food -- and a huge chunk of exposition.

TV

Doctor Who [classic]
5x01 The Tomb of the Cybermen Episode 1 [3rd watch]
5x02 The Tomb of the Cybermen Episode 2 [3rd watch]
5x03 The Tomb of the Cybermen Episode 3 [3rd watch]
5x04 The Tomb of the Cybermen Episode 4 [3rd watch]
See here for my thoughts on this story.

Gilmore Girls
4x09 Ted Koppel's Big Night Out

Spooks
4x02 The Special: Part II (aka The Possibility of a Mole)

Fiction

Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks writing as Ian Fleming
Chapters 1 - 4
Faulks' James Bond continuation novel (which, in case you've managed to miss the hype, has been written to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Bond's creator, Ian Fleming) gets off to a strong start, with a dramatic opening chapter in Paris followed by an excellent portrayal of an aged and weary Bond considering virtual retirement as the world moves on. Complete with numerous, well-handled references to previous adventures, it so far feels like a last hurrah for an aging hero. Standing as the 15th (and, perhaps, final) book in Fleming's Bond series, that seems only appropriate.

Doctor Who: The Tomb of the Cybermen

We continue our one-story-per-Doctor journey through the history of classic Doctor Who with this mid-era Troughton adventure, in which the Doctor, Jamie and new companion Victoria encounter an army of frozen Cybermen.

The Tomb of the Cybermen was widely regarded regarded as a lost classic until 1992, when the story was rediscovered in Hong Kong. Since then opinions have varied a little more, as fans were finally able to lose the free-roaming quality-enhancing abilities of their imagination and see the story as it really was, restrained by all the cheapness of 1967 TV production. But, a few set wobbles and dodgy performances aside, this is an excellent adventure. The Doctor and friends join an archeological expedition excavating long-frozen Cyber-tombs on the planet Telos, though some of the team members have more nefarious motivations. Unlike many four-parters, Tomb doesn't degenerate into a repetitive runaround halfway through part two, instead managing to sustain a complete narrative across all the episodes. The Cybermen themselves don't even arrive until halfway through episode two, the story until then ratcheting tension as the team explore the abandoned complex. It's effective storytelling, building mystery and laying groundwork for later. Another positive element is the team -- it's an international group, not just a collection of Brits or Yanks, which lends it a more realistic future feel. On the downside, the good guys are all American or English while it's the villains who have funny accents, the only black character is essentially a slave (to both humans and Cybermen!), and the script occasionally sinks to a '60s near-misogynistic view of women. Not everything's perfect...

The production, while occasionally wobbly, also has it's number of good points. The sets are very well designed and the blank faces of the Cybermen are particularly effective, even if their shiny jumpsuits and tennis-ball-joints aren't. Sadly, with the exception of an iconically cool (pun not intended) emergence from their defrosted tombs, they don't have a great deal to do. The story's primary villains are actually a couple of power-hungry humans from the expedition, while the Cybermen stomp around a bit and add some menace to the final two episodes. It's understandable, really -- they've just woken up; they must be a bit sleep. For early children's TV, the villains are surprisingly complex characters. Yes, their aim boils down to world domination, but their varying levels of self belief, trust in the Cybermen, and opinions of others' abilities (especially the Doctor) adds something more. Klieg is especially varied, and in a wonderful climax is defeated by the Doctor playing on his ego. The whole script is a gift for Troughton, packed with great lines and scenes for him, most specifically a moving scene between the Doctor and Victoria that manages to hold both touching advice on loss and a beautiful assertion on the series' brilliance. It's among Who's very best moments.

If one's disbelief can be suspended enough to look past the wobbliness the production sometimes exhibits, there's a genuinely classic tale here, for all sorts of reasons beyond even those I've mentioned. Hopefully Steven Moffat's love for blank-faced monsters will mean the Cybermen finally get to return to new Who when he takes charge... unless they return sooner, of course...

TV

Gilmore Girls
4x08 Die, Jerk
In which Rory gives an awful ballet a memorably scathing review, and has to face the consequences when the lead ballerina tracks her down. I feel there is some moral lesson to be gained here, especially in light of the content of my blogs...

Shark
2x07 In Absentia
"House with lawyers" continues on the road to cancellation with this episode half set in Mexico. It makes for a slight twist on the format, but the situations and dialogue are as cliché-ridden and humourless as ever.

Spooks
4x01 The Special: Part I (aka Surreal World)
The BBC's post-9/11 spy show kicks off its fourth run with a two-parter, with a different style to most previous episodes: the case is a high-profile media-filling successful terrorist attack, rather than the low-key under-the-radar missions of previous seasons. Has Spooks jumped the proverbial shark?

Fiction

Allan and the Sundered Veil by Alan Moore
Chapter VI [the end]
(from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 1)

The New Traveller's Almanac by Alan Moore
Chapter One
(from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 2)