Doctor Who New Series 1.8 - 'Father's Day'

Plot - At her request, the Doctor takes Rose back to the day her father is killed in a hit and run road accident. When she decides to save his life, the paradox causes an apocalyptic catastrophe which brings the world to an unexpected end in the year 1987.

So before I begin nattering away about this episode, I'd like to have a brief gander at the pen welder behind this story. By this point in history, Paul Cornell is not new to Doctor Who; as he is indeed one of the few writers from the wilderness years of the 1990s to make his way into Davies' 2005 revival. Cornell became most established during the new era for the remake of his Human Nature novel; a story which was adapted to television for New Who's third series. At first, I was of the understanding that this was one of Cornell's only writing gigs from pre-2005 Doctor Who, however it transpires that he's written multiple stories during the final decade of the 20^th century; stories such as Timewyrm: Revelation, Love and War, No Future, Happy Endings, Goth Opera, The Shadows of Avalon and so on and so forth. It would be safe to say that Cornell has dipped his toe in the Doctor Who waters on more than one occasion.

Yet Father's Day is the first story that Cornell has had the opportunity to write for the official Television series, and oh boy, what a début it is. The episode manages to achieve something quite extraordinary, doing so by taking a highly common yet impossible human desire and using the freedom of Doctor Who's narrative to explore it.

One of the most common emotions which spring up within a humans' life time is regret. Life is one big trial and error game. We all make mistakes, hence how we learn and grow as individuals. Despite blossoming from our screw-ups we still regret many of them. It doesn't matter whether those regrets were the fault of others or the faults of our own, we still often dream of altering them for our own present day benefits. When we think of time travel and the possibilities which could be achieved with such a tool, I'm quite sure that changing our own histories and removing our regrets are amongst the top ten of most peoples' wish lists.

But such yearnings are impossible, as time travel is a luxury we can never actively experience. Sure, we can use books, film footage and our own memories to explore the past from a passive perspective, yet we can never actually go back there. We are stuck in the present, forever fearing the future and obsessing over our yesteryears. It is a fact that we must live with from now until the day we die.

Doctor Who, on the other hand, is a show which pulls down this barrier for the characters of its mad and impossible universe. Rose has access to a time machine, she can actively step into any era in any part of reality that she so pleases. If she wants to go to the end of the earth, she can; if she wants to check out 19^th Century Cardiff, then why not; and if she wants to go back and visit the father who she never knew, then visit her father she bloody well shall.

This is where the big premise of this episode comes into play. What if Rose prevented her father's death? Well, we are about to find out what happens when she does; well, at least what might happen within this universe at the very least.

What is most interesting about this episode is how it steps up the bar for New Who quite considerably. These days, we'd pretty much take such a story for granted (as many did during 2011's absurdly underrated episode The Girl Who Waited). During the past seven series, we've had enough wibbly wobbly timey wimey narratives to desensitise us from all kinds of complex story structures. Yet at this moment in history, New Who has been hugely simplistic in its design. Each story premise has been reasonably straight forward. They have mainly been stories of Charles Dickens fighting ghost like creatures, shop window dummies invading 21^st century London, Aliens attempting to trick the human race into wiping one another out and an angry pepper pot trying to escape from an alien museum in Utah. I'm not saying that New Who has been lazily written or unoriginal. This is far from the case. What the show has been doing during the previous seven weeks is taking previously established concepts and finding unique ways to explore and execute them.

Heck, even this episode contains a premise which has been done to death. The only difference here is that it takes a lot more time exploring the story's concept than the previous episodes of this series have. The plot is still hugely simplistic in its design. Rose goes back in time, rescues her father from a fatal hit and run accident and then watches the universe unravel into a realm of terror and chaos. There's no timey wimey complexity, no unique premises jumping out left right and centre and no huge plot twists which make it difficult for the viewer to keep up. Instead, Father's Day explores Rose's relationship with a man she's never met before; her own father.

Pete Tyler died when Rose was still a baby, during a hit and run accident during 1987. She has no memory of him, instead her understanding of her absent father was incepted by her own mother; who spoke of Pete in the highest of esteems. He was a loving, creative, genius of a man who would have gone on to do great things if only that nasty driver hadn't hit him with his car. As Rose grew up, those positive beliefs toward her deceased dad never went away. Instead they grew and intensified in strength. Despite never knowing this man, Rose loved him dearly and wanted nothing more than to meet him in the flesh.

I've never had the misfortune of growing up without my father in my life, yet I can imagine how painful it must be for those who have to live such a life. Unable to know or be loved by the man who helped to give you life must be a sad and tough feeling, particularly during those younger years when love and attention mean so much to a growing human. If someone like Rose was given the chance to reverse that, then wouldn't such a chance be impossible to resist?

Which is where we enter this story. Rose has now travelled with the Doctor for what appears to have been quite some time. She's grown from the passive companion into the active time traveller. What we must remember about this series is that Davies' characters are complex and very much alive. They've their own pasts, their own emotions and their own minds. It's only a matter of time before they break out of the role of merely being the Doctor's assistants and into human beings who want to take something from their marvellous experiences for their own gains. Rose wants to bring her previously deceased father into her own life and that is an idea that she's going to try and put into place during this very story.

Such a choice however, has drastic consequences. According to Father's Day, changing history is monstrously dangerous. It rips holes in the fabric of time and space, grants vicious time eating beasts the freedom to enter our world and devour lives away at will and pretty much brings the entire planet to an unexpected and abrupt end during the year 1987.

The destruction of 1987 earth is the setting for this episode and it is the result of a reality breaking paradox. Yet this is a rule which does not fit so comfortably into the overall continuity frame of Doctor Who. As I've mentioned on numerous occasions, one of the main issues with the history of this television series is that rules change on a weekly basis. This year, saving ones own father destroys the world, yet several years down the line, we will see Steven Moffat writing stories which contain an absurd number of paradoxes in a single episode; without the universe doing so much as batting an eyelid (although in all fairness, the Universe has ended twice during Moffat's era already).

Once again, I must mention that it is pretty much impossible to generate a coherent and valid claim to help explain all of these contradicting rules within Doctor Who, yet my brain still frustratingly whirs away in order to attempt at coming up with some kind of reasonable explanation. The conclusion I came to, after much pointless thought investment, is that paradoxes in Doctor Who's universe frequently do sort themselves, yet it all depends on the size of the paradox, the time period which the paradox occurs in, and what sort of paradox it is. During the end of David Tennent's era, the Doctor explains that some time periods are in flux, whilst others are fixed points which must forever remain the same. This theory suggests that history is able to consciously rewrite and fix itself if it is perverted by any lifeforms who possess the ability to travel amongst time periods. Essentially, it suggests that 'small' events can be altered, yet history can avoid a butterfly effect by manipulating the following events into grooming the time lines back into a state of consensus normality. This leads on to the theory that the consequences of a paradox are entirely influenced by the type of paradox which is occurring. If, for example, a mother and father decided to name their daughter after a girl who turns out to be their future daughter (as is the case in New Series 7.8 Let's Kill Hitler), then it just becomes an infinite idea that circles throughout a specific era of time without any drastic consequences taking place. If, however, someone goes back in time and creates a paradox which ultimately creates an impossible loop that cannot come to any solid conclusion, then reality is pretty much fucked.

Ok, so none of the above actually makes any sense, but I tried my best. Basically, Doctor Who's rules make no sense and will continue to contradict one another until the show inevitably collapses on itself in some sort of insane timey wimey paradox. It really is best to just not think about these issues and continue to remind yourselves that the writers of this show will forever be changing the rules in order to make their concepts and stories work.

If you do manage to put the temporarily established paradox rule to one side throughout this episode, however, it works a bloody charm. It may have an out there premise, but as the narrative strives forward, it becomes an episode driven purely by its characters than it does by its ideas.

As I said above, Rose has created her own version of Pete Tyler within her mind's eye. But like always, the positive idolisation of a life form whom you've never met is almost certain to disappoint. We often forget that no matter how much an individual is praised, humans are still humans. We are flawed, screwe up, damaged individuals who are far from perfect. Pete Tyler is no exception to this fact. He's not the brilliant inventor that Rose's mother made him out to be. Instead, he's more of dodgy Del Boy character; forever coming up with daft and naive ideas to try and make himself wealthy. He's even accused in one scene of being a womaniser who's committed adultery on numerous occasions. By using her recently obtained science fiction tool, Rose Tyler's desires are slapped head on in the face by a cold hard slab of reality. Much like the pilot episode being a tale of the Doctor colliding with a soap opera, Father's Day is an episode about the harsh truths of real life colliding with the Doctor's companion.

After the collision of reality into science fiction, the Doctor, Rose, Pete, Jackie and a handful of the remaining survivors of a dying 1987 earth find asylum within an old church. Much like in World War Three, Father's Day manages to successfully isolate the story within the confines of a minuet environment, helping to scale down the episode to fit perfectly into its 45 minute time frame. Whilst The Long Game suffocated its promising potential by isolating the story within the confines of satellite five, this one manages to turn it into a miniaturized drama piece that just so happens to be surrounded by the end of mankind. As a result, it feels and functions like an absolute dream.

The existence of this episode also gives the viewers an opportunity to dig even deeper into Rose Tyler's character. We've seen her present home life, her mother and her happiness-hindering ex-boyfriend from the year 2005/2006; this time, however, we are given an opportunity to dig even deeper into her world. So far into it, in fact, that here we get to experience a character from her life whom she's never actually met before. New Who has been bumping into characters from Rose's world from episode one onward, yet here, we are bumping into characters from a could-have-been world of hers.

Another fascinating element to this episode is its portrayal of the 1980s. Whilst the previous episode set in the past was a stereotyped 19^th century England, this time we get a far more watered down representation of a contemporary historical period. The 1980s is an incredibly recent era which many of us remember (except for me, who failed to exist during that moment in history). This gives it the aesthetic of a semi-foreign world which is only slightly dissimilar from our own. This is a fact that is excellently established in a single sentence uttered by the Doctor during the early part of the episode:

“The past is another country. 1987 is just the Isle of Wight”.

The fact that it is a distant foreign land allows the production team to recreate a highly authentic costume drama. It is still slightly hyped and romanticized, yet it gives off a far more genuine appearance than any story set in the distant past could achieve. This aesthetic assists to generate a similar feeling to that of a home video. Father's Day allows its viewers the opportunity to glance into a world which is so familiar to us, yet now feels so old and lost; reminding us that history is forever changing and that we are all witnesses to, despite being seldom aware of such alterations. Such a feeling helps to add an extra layer to this kitchen sink, apocalyptic tale. We, the viewers, also experience the feelings of a world which has been lost to the jaws of time. Whilst Rose is interacting with a man who was taken from her life, we are (passively) interacting with an era which many of us have experienced and inevitably lost to time.

Father's Day is a fascinating instalment to Doctor Who. Instead of taking its audience on a roller-coaster of a journey, it instead decides to be a story which explosively ignites a concept right in the faces of its viewers; only to then spend the remaining 45 minutes exploring the debris of such an explosion. Rose makes a decision and then spends the entire story interacting with its consequences. She's saved her father, now she must deal with the truth of who he was. Forget about the world falling to pieces around them, that's just the icing on the cake. This week, it's all about the characters.

This maybe the first episode of the revived Doctor Who which manages to raise the bar in terms of how it responds to an episode's catalyst, however next week will see the show raise the bar in the level of its story telling complexities. This is where Davies' era of Doctor Who begins to take its shape. Everything which came before this was simply testing the waters.

This is where everything changes, but not for the last time.

Man of Steel

I've never been a huge fan of Zack Snyder. There's something about his films that feels far too superficial and void of depth for my liking. When 300 came out, I couldn't help but see it as an over the top, aesthetic obsessed cartoon of a movie which had next to no purpose, other than to show off how sexy its special effects were (and its burly built, topless protagonists). Watchmen was quite an impressive feature to be fair, however a lot of the depth and cerebral qualities of Moore's & Gibbon's original graphic novel were lost amongst the highly fetishized visuals once again. Sucker Punch was the worst of Snyder's productions; a film which I thought was an absolutely rotten piece of trash which served as nothing more than several hours of superficial eye candy which had an extreme obsession with filming young girls in skimpy fetish outfits.

So when I found out that Snyder was going to be in the director's chair for Man of Steel, it would be fair to say that I was not the most optimistic of individuals. But then footage began to bleed into the public mainstream. Promotional teasers and trailers started to reveal something that looked different, enigmatic and down right exciting. I decided to completely forget about Snyder's previous productions; focusing all of my attention instead toward the fact that a brand new era of Superman was soon going to explode onto our screens.

The previous installation of Superman hit the silver screens back in 2006. The result of that film was quite a sad experience really. It was a loose continuation of the original Christopher Reeve's universe and was directed by X-men's Brian Singer. The trailers were truly exciting; stuffed to the nines with camp nostalgia and cutting edge special effects. Superman was coming to the 21st century and it looked like he was  going to arrive with a bang, not a whimper.

Unfortunately, the film tanked and Singer was dropped by studios. It was at this point that Warner Bro's decided to not continue the timeline of this universe and were going to start from scratch. In a world of reboots, this was Hollywood's inevitable second move.

In all honesty, I actually kind of enjoyed Superman Returns. I felt that it was a huge, multimillion dollar film that actually managed to somehow become a character driven drama piece along the way. There was something quite charming about a film of this size managing to be so small in its contradictory epic scale. It was also drenched in heavy dressings of nostalgia, something which always seems to win me over. But the film was still incredibly flawed and what really made Singer's version so weak was the fact that it decided to lift a majority of the story from Richard Donner's original 1978 film, making it come across as down right lazy in terms of storytelling. Also, after getting over that initial character driven element to the film, the whole thing felt sort of...well...boring. It's never good when a film which cost around $270 million comes across as boring.

Nonetheless, I was still quite sad to see Brain Singer and Brandon Routh get the axe. I was quite looking forward to seeing what direction this interpretation of the series was eventually planning on going in. But I can see why it was axed. The film failed to make its money back, and in a production of this size, commissioning a sequel would have been nothing more than financial suicide.

The death of Returns inevitably made way for Snyder's 2013 reboot. A film which plans to take the story back to its roots and avoid the confusion that was brought to modern audiences back in 2006. Here we were promised to see something new, exciting and different. This was Warner Bro's attempt to bring Superman back into the mainstream consciousness once and for all.

Early box office results pretty much suggest that Man of Steel will not be repeating the same financial disaster that the last feature did. But never mind the financial figures, what is the film itself like?

I saw this film last night and my first response is this: part of it is absolutely fantastic, whilst the other part is a bit of an over the top mess. This all gets meshed up to make the film strangely an overall decent experience. There are some truly outstanding moments in this film, but there are also some seriously sloppy pieces which get in the way of all those magical occasions.

The first half of the film is genuinely my favorite part of Man of Steel. It mostly focuses on Clark Kent wondering through the lands; taking up odd jobs and staying underneath the public radar. As he goes about his business, random objects result in him looking back to his childhood. This is where viewers are invited to explore how Clark grew up with his otherworldly powers. He struggles with trying to control his abilities (see-through vision, heat vision powers, mind reading trickery and all that jazz), is aggressively bullied for being an outcast and is hopelessly terrified about who he is and what he will one day grow up to become ("did god really do this to me?").

These scenes are the best moments of the film. I honestly cannot express enough how much I loved them. This idea of Clark growing up to be an outcast is an idea which is absolutely wonderful. What makes these scenes even more captivating is the breathtaking performance by Kevin Costner; who plays Clark's stepfather, Jonathan Kent.

Jonathan knows that his son will one day grow up to be an outstanding life form who will change the direction of humanity. He's convinced that the world will ultimately reject his son; for he is different from that of the rest of society. Throughout the series of flashbacks, it becomes clear that Jonathan is working to help his son control his godly powers; pushing him away from the temptations of using his abilities for darker motives.

What makes this back story even more sublime is how Costner chooses the execute his role as Jonathan Kent. He's subtle, does not take center stage during these character defining moments and subtly reveals his character's motives through carefully executed dialogue and facial expressions. Ironically, this subtle, non-center stage, acting results in Costner stealing all of the scenes that he's in. He draws the audience in, hammering his intentions all the way home. Through his performance we know exactly why he is doing what he is doing. He loves his son, he doesn't want the world to reject him and he will do anything to raise Clark into becoming a man of greatness (even when that means stopping him from retaliating when bullies attack and dehumanize him).

Even though I saw the film no more than 24 hours ago, I'm already certain that these are the scenes which I will remember for a long time to come.

The film begins to loose most of its magic around the half way point, however. This seems to happen around the point where Amy Adams' Louis Lane makes her way into the plot. I honestly don't know what is the real problem here; David S Goyer's portrayal of the character, or Adams' performance. Which ever one it is, Louis Lane comes across as an emotional robot who takes everything far too seriously.

Her mono toned earnestness becomes very annoying considerably quickly and drains all belief from the story's love plot. When Clark and Louis are standing together in the desert, it's very difficult to believe that these two characters really care for one another. Not only does Adams' earnestness make her appear to have zero feelings for Clark, but it's also incredibly difficult to believe that Clark can possess any feelings for someone who is as close to a robot as any life form will ever be. By the time they finally kiss, I'm just not buying a single second of it. There may have intended to be a love story in this film, but the emotions of that theme were lost somewhere within the story (or acting. I still cannot tell).

Then there is the final act (or the final 45 minutes should I say), where the entire film just goes absolutely insane. Seriously, the action is just far too much. It feels like a head on collision between Dragonball Z and Transformers. Half of Metropolis is destroyed, spaceships and villains fly around the earth like characters that have escaped from a bonkers anime series and there are enough explosions in each scene to blind a man standing on mars. It's utterly insane and when you think its all over, things become even more frantic.

But in all fairness to this film, it's nowhere near as bad as Transformers. In fact, it was quite cruel of me to compare it to that garbage. For a start, a lot of the crazy action does at least make some sense. Plus, there are actually some great action set pieces amongst all of this chaos. The main problem, however, is that as soon as things start to look quite impressive and entertaining, everything goes ape shit once again; sending one's senses into yet another meltdown.

Then there is the opening scene. On its own, I kind of like this sequence. In the context of the entire film, however, it's just totally out of place. Yes, the film is far fetched and more akin to a comic book/video game hybrid than that of a realistic portrayal of Superman. Yet the scenes with Russel Crowe are on a completely different level to the rest of the story. Everything is ten times as over the top and is at least seven steps further away from our reality than the rest of the feature is.

You could argue that this huge gap in reality is to do with the fact that the opening scenes of the film are set on Krypton, whilst the rest of the story is set on earth. This is a fair assumption, but it is still highly distracting and out of place. We open with a story that is essentially Skyrim meets Avatar; next up we get those beautiful scenes surround Clark and his stepfather; only to then fall into the realms of Dragonball Z colliding with Transformers.

It all just becomes a tad too much for the senses to take. All these different films, colliding head first into one another. It was, at times, quite a disorienting experience; making it very difficult for me to figure out exactly what sort of film I was suppose to be watching. Am I suppose to be watching Russel Crowe battling an army of alien spacecrafts on the back of a dragon? Is this meant to be an exploration of societies' rejection toward those whom they fail to understand? Or am I suppose to be watching Goku versus Optimums Prime?

I am starting to sound grossly unfair, as I actually did enjoy this film quite considerably. Ok, so there were some issues with Amy Adams, the action goes a little bonkers from time to time and there are a number of different ideas bouncing off of one another in a disorientating manner. But what the heck, this was something totally different and unique in the context of Superman (at least in terms of films. I've never read the comic book source material, so this could very well be what all Superman stories are like). This was something entirely different from the camp, fun era of the original movie line and it ventured down some new and hugely interesting paths. It was a comic book movie that tried to do something incredibly different to most. I do admire it deeply for that and I couldn't help but feel that everything going on was a breath of fresh air.

As my friend Patrick mentioned (yes, you just got a mention in my blog, I hope you're proud), what wonders a good rewrite for this film would have done. He's bang on the nail here. There was a lot of outstanding potential lurking within this story, but a lot of that potential was drowned out by the oceans of chaos and clashing ideas.

Large portions of the film were something of a shambles, but seriously, the good parts really do make up for it. It may sound as though I thought otherwise, but I did actually like this film.

I do recommend checking it out, but before doing so, can I just recommend one bit of advice? Skip the 3D version. For those who don't know, I'm a fan-turned skeptic when it comes to 3D. When I saw Avatar back in an Imax theater in December 2009, I was absolutely in love with the potentials of stereoscopic film making. I was convinced that this was the future of cinema (even though the technology has been in some form of existence for the same amount of time as cinema itself) and I was certain that before long, everyone around the globe would be watching all their content in stereoscopic formats. In the end, I started to see 3D as nothing more than a useless method of trying to fool audiences back into cinemas. The picture quality was too dark, fast paced camera movements made scenes ghost like crazy and a majority of 3D features were so poorly designed that it was hard to even notice that the film had been given an extra layer of 'depth'.

The most obvious problem with Man of Steel in 3D is that a large portion of scenes are incredibly fast paced. Characters zoom around the screen and fight scenes are played out at an abnormal speed. The added darkness and ghosting of 3D makes it incredibly difficult to see what is actually going on for a majority of the time. Also, the 3D was almost unnoticeable during the flying scenes. This was a huge disappointment, as just under a year ago, Avengers Assemble managed to inject a bit of excitement back into stereoscopic cinema by delivering some incredibly terrific three dimensional flight scenes for Tony Stark's Iron Man.

But whether you choose 3D or 2D, do go and check this film out. Regardless of its good and bad sides, Man of Steel is something which overall feels as though it's something considerably fresh. I dearly look forward to seeing which directions they decide to take this reincarnation in during the inevitable sequels.

Superman is back.

Doctor Who New Series 1.7 - 'The Long Game'

Plot: The Doctor, Rose and newcomer companion Adam Michell arrive on Satellite 5; a space station that broadcasts news to the whole of humanity. During his travels, the Doctor begins to grow suspicious toward the mysterious existence of floor 500.

The seventh episode of series one is quite an odd little number in my opinion. It is the first episode in this revived series which has a bland feel of normality to its presence. It feels as though it is nothing more than a filler episode; merely existing to help move the series through its thirteen episode run. The episodes preceding never had this feel of normality attached to them. Episodes one to three introduced audiences to how Doctor Who functions in past, present and future spaces; episodes four and five introduced the two part story structure; and episode six reintroduced the Daleks to the 21st century.

To have an episode that feels like business as usual is not necessarily a bad thing when it comes to television programs. Most of the time they work just fine and help to move things along. Yet I really cannot help but look at this episode with negative eyes. I loved the event feel of the first six episodes and I wanted this theme to remain throughout the entirety of series one; but it doesn't and for that reason The Long Game turns out to be one of my least favorite episodes of New Who.

Strangely enough, however, there is more going on in this episode than is apparent upon its first viewing. It exists as a form of exposition for the series one final; setting up a space in Doctor Who that will ultimately become the platform for episodes twelve and thirteen. Likewise, the episode is also a catalyst for the final. The Doctor's reaction to the events of this story ultimately go on to initiate the series final battle. Here, the acts of the ninth Doctor are sowing the seeds of his own doom. This is a fantastic idea and I really should applaud Davies for making this move, yet I just can't bring myself to do so. The episode may work in order expand the world surrounding the grand series final, as well as helping to give it more of an emotional punch, however the whole story does not possess any value as a separate piece. Yes, it will create more of an emotional punch several episodes down the line, but here it serves as a dull filler story that lacks the excitement which was easily found in earlier stories.

Despite the uneventful nature of this episode, however, the story is huge in its scale. The story is set in the year 200,000 during the fifth great and bountiful human empire; making this one of the biggest story spaces that has been used in the revived series. But this is where the main problem stems when it comes to this episode. It's a huge, vibrant idea that is crammed with potential to tell a massive story, yet none of that potential is utilized. The episode is set in a small, contained space where viewers are never allowed to learn about the rules and cultures of this vast, intergalactic human society. Instead we just get a story about some mysterious floor that packages and manipulates humanities news broadcasts. This self contained space may have worked well in Davies' similarly sized Aliens of London/World War Three story, yet here it just makes the whole episode come across as a great big waste of potential (plus the fact that it only has 45 minutes to tell the story causes even more problems for such a massive story platform).

There could very well be a reason why this episode has a far bigger space than its 45 minute run required, however. Davies actually wrote this episode many years prior to his involvement in the show and actually pitched the idea for this story to Doctor Who producers during the 1980s.  As we know, the format of the show during the classic era was much different to what it is today. Episodes were told over a number of weekly stories, twenty-five minutes in length. Run times for each story could sometimes cover over three long hours of television; spaced out over multiple episodes. If Davies initially wrote this story with that sort of a format in mind, then it makes perfect sense as to why he would sketch out a space of this size. This episode would have worked perfectly with a longer run time to play with and Davies would have been able to explore more aspects of this universe than he was able to do in a self contained 45 minute piece.

The episode was rejected by producers in the 1980s and instead of leaving the script on the shelf, Davies has used his position as show runner in 2005 to bring it to life. I honestly think that if this episode was made during the show's classic era, then it could have worked brilliantly, however it is an episode that does not work with the 2005 format. Yet when I say 'work' I don't mean that in the sense that the episode fails to run in a coherent manner. In fact the episode's narrative runs along quite smoothly in this episode; successfully sporting a beginning, middle and end. What I mean by the term 'work' is in terms of the story's quality. This is an episode which sits amongst the below average mark; failing to be anything that is remotely special.

So what is actually wrong with this story? Well it's just quite a bland and overused idea. The whole point of the episode is the idea that in a futuristic society, the media is used as a device that serves to manipulate and influence its viewers for its own gain. It's an attempt to explore a satirical theme that has been explored by countless authors before this episode's existence.

But maybe I am being too harsh on this episode, because it really isn't a terrible one. It works just fine and gets from point A to point B without any trouble. The problem is that I just find it a dull episode. It ticks all the right boxes, but it doesn't tick any boxes which I would like it to tick. Average episodes are not a bad thing, but then I am a spoiled brat who wanted this series of Doctor Who to be above average week after week (a want that no show can ever truly deliver).

The Long Game does actually explore another idea other than the media plot, and is an idea that apparently existed within the original 1980 script. I'm referring to the failed companion concept that exists within this story. During the previous episode, the Doctor and Rose allowed Adam Mitchell - a boy genius from the year 2012 - to accompany them on their travels. For one episode only, he becomes a transient companion for the series. In this episode, it transpires that Adam is not cut out for space/time travel. Not only does he react negatively to the reality of what is happening around him, but he also decides to exploit his access to time and space by stealing future knowledge and sending it back to the past. He essentially become selfish; using time travel for his own personal gains.

The idea is nice, but it is not utilized to its fullest potential. Firstly, the role of Adam could have played a far bigger part in this episode. It would have been quite nice to see Adam's naivety exploited by a villainous character. There were so many ways that Davies could have used this failed-companion role to tell a real tragedy of a story.   Adam could have fallen in with the wrong crowed, throwing him into the role of a companion-turned-villain. They could have even drafted out a story where the realities of time travel could have driven him insane. Davies is great at character development and I'm confident that he really could have made a narrative like this work a treat. Instead we just had some kid who wanted to take advantage of the information that the world of tomorrow possessed.

Secondly, the Doctor's reaction to Adam's sub-plot is just down right...odd. He gets angry at Adam's actions and sends him back to his own time period. At this point, the Doctor becomes something of a hypocrite. I say this because during the events of the story, Adam has a computer device installed into his head which allows him to download knowledge and information into his brain. At the (literal) click of a finger, the device activates and a door in the front of his head slides open, revealing a piece of his brain. If the Doctor is so furious that Adam's attempts to take information back to the year 2012 could rewrite all of history, then why is he fine with dumping a human back there who has a magic door slapped on the front of his forehead? Surely the fact that the Doctor takes him back to his present time period makes the past just as vulnerable to change as Adam's own actions were.

Furthermore, the Doctor is angry mainly because Adam has used time travel for his own personal gain. Who wouldn't do this? I'm pretty certain  that most humans would exploit time travel if they were ever granted access to such a privilege. Additionally, surely it's the Doctor's fault that all of this has happened in the first place. The Doctor was the one who took Adam 200,000 years into his future, which makes him the one who is responsible for Adam's selfish actions. The Doctor's dumping of Adam feels more like he is pushing all of the blame onto Adam; washing his hands of the whole affair in the process.

To make things even more unusual, the very next episode revolves around Rose well... using time travel for her own personal gain. It's strange that episode seven ends with the show confirming that selfish time traveling is the work of a bad companion in the making, only to start episode eight with Rose committing the very same act. Why is the Doctor happy to abandon Adam in his present time period, yet he's happy to let Rose continue traveling with him after her own timey wimey fuck up? I guess it makes sense, seeing that Rose and the Doctor have a stronger relationship than the Doctor does with transient companions, yet the fact that both of these plots take place right next to one another burdens the ninth Doctor's character with a stale aroma of hypocrisy.

But what the heck, I am being incredibly bias to this episode. I just didn't really enjoy it all that much. The story was bland, the episode felt like a dull filler piece and Adam Mitchell was an incredible waste of a character. I'm probably being horribly unfair on the whole story, but I just can't help myself from feeling this way.

This one just wasn't my cup of tea. But that doesn't really matter, as the next episode really does raise the bar in terms of quality.

Alien

One theme which seems to keep making itself apparent within this blog is that of memory intertwining with film viewing experiences. This is probably most apparent in my piece on Toy Story 3, where I spend the entirety of that post discussing what the series meant to me as a child.

The idea of film experiences inter tangling themselves within life events/emotions is a subject which I find hugely fascinating. Most of my favorite films of all time acquire this status usually because they were witnessed during particular parts of my life, or because they brought on some sort of significant change in the way which I understood the world (likewise, the merging of childhood and film experiences is also a theme that keeps making itself heard in this blog too).

I'm sure that there is an actual name for this concept, as I'm most certainly not the first individual to recognize it. Heck, I even recall reading several journals and other blogs this year which examined this subject in far greater detail than I ever could. Due to my sheer idleness, however, I simply cannot invest the time nor energy to dig out these previously consumed texts in order to provide sufficient referencing for this post. This means that I will probably end up committing several acts of cryptomnesia (or accidental plagiarism as it is also known) whenever I mention this very topic. But what the heck. Not only do I have a tiny reading base, but this is also a non-profit blog. I don't see why anyone would get upset if I fail to hyperlink the above paragraphs to any coined terms which I was not the founder of.

Nonetheless, film and television programs often obtain high statuses within my mind due to nostalgic and emotional connections that occurred alongside them. The most perfect of this, for me, would have to be with the first two Alien movies.

I remember fondly of my encounter with the first of these movies; Alien. I was first exposed to this story not through the film itself, but through the retelling of it via my father's own words.

I was only five years of age and we were watching a documentary about alien abductions. It must have been during a Saturday evening, as I was up far later than my bedtime (it was probably about 10.30. Oh the simplicities of childhood). At one point during the documentary, a shot of a U-shaped alien craft popped up on screen. This was followed by a group of astronauts exploring deep within some sort of bone structured cave. The image captivated my imagination like none before that.

My father must have caught on to the fact that my mind had been seduced by these brief images; as he begun to explain to me where those images originated from. It was during these moments - on that late weekend evening - that my father told me all about Alien.

The film starts with a wide shot of deep space. Gradually, a series of slender white lines fade onto the screen; one-by-one spelling out the word Alien in a simplistic, bold font. Moments later, a spacecraft drifts into shot. The craft is gargantuan in size; it possesses the appearance of a dead, godforsaken metropolis. Deep within the bowels of this drifting metropolis, seven humans are tucked away deep in the frozen safety nets of hyper sleep. Their stasis induced dreams are soon brought to a sudden close, however, when a distress call delivered to the ship awakens them prematurely. The signal is of alien origin, sent from a nearby world. As the ship's crew set down to investigate, they encounter a mighty U-shaped corpse of a UFO that has imbedded itself into the mountains of this world. Inside, the crew find the decayed body of an alien pilot, sitting motionlessly in its chair and sporting a huge hole right at the center of its chest.

My dad went on to explain the rest of the story to me. He told me of the snakelike creature that forces its way from the chest of an unsuspecting crew member; the ship's captain crawling through the intestines of the floating metropolises air vents, failing to incinerate the best which lurks nearby; the moment when one of the crew turns out to be a murderous android; and the point where the crew's last surviving member finds herself trapped inside a miniscule shuttle with a murderous extraterrestrial.

Before even seeing the film with my own eyes, Alien became my captivating nightmare. The images from the words alone painted pictures in my mind which were far grander than anything I presumed to be conceivable. I just had to see this film.

And then I did managed to view it.  A couple of weeks later, I found a VHS copy of the film in one of our cupboards. My mother was out visiting her mother, whilst my dad was busy playing the drums in our garage. He would have protested to his five year old watching such a film; so I had to be extra careful. Each time he left the garage for a drink or toilet break, I would quickly stop the VHS; pretending that I was about the put a film in to watch (I'm quite surprised that he didn't get suspicious at the fact that I was trying to put a film in for 2 continuous hours. But then that's dad for you).

Hearing the story told from my father's lips was terrifying enough, but the experience of the film evoked such emotions on an even grander scale. Everything I had heard - the floating metropolis, the barren alien world, the extraterrestrial corpse sat in its chair, the long headed beast stalking a group of terrified humans through thin steel corridors, the final showdown in a claustrophobic shuttle - it was all real. It was a surreal, mortifying, engaging, heart stopping experience. At five years of age, I had just seen hell, and it was strangely beautiful.

The film never traumatized me, it never gave me night terrors and it never injected fear into my mind (oddly enough, it was Steven Spielberg's E.T. that resulted in those horrors being bestowed upon my mind), yet it fueled my imagination for decades to come. The images of this Ridley Scott directed masterpiece leaked into my dreams. These dreams were not horror stories, but exploration journeys. Journeys which descended down into the deepest darkest corners of my childhood imagination. The hair-raising bowels of this film sparked all new life into my imagination. I was able to explore the byproducts of this spark in the land of my unconsciousness.  It created a sub universe deep within my head which was far more ravishing than horrifying.

Yet the film really was horrifying. The after effects of the film may not have scarred me, yet the actual experience was almost impossible to bear. The reason for my initial terror was more or less down to the film's bog standard Jaws in space concept. When the film was pitched to studios back in the late 1970s, its writers promoted it by stating that it was essentially the film Jaws, set within a spaceship.

This premise hits the nail bang on. The film is exactly that. Both Jaws and Alien are twisted horror stories surrounding a monster in a haunted house. In the case of Jaws, the haunted house is the ocean whereas the monster is the shark. In the case of Alien, however, the haunted house is the Nostromo mining ship whereas the alien is the monster.

The choice of objects for the film's monster and haunted house was what petrified me the most on that first ever viewing. As a child, I feared two things more than anything else in the world; extraterrestrials and enclosed spaces. The choice of an isolated 'house' and a none terrestrial monster pretty much grabbed both of those fears and took them for the ride of their lives.

As I grew older, the terrors that felt for this film still remained, yet the reasons began to differ slightly. Most people who watch this film often like to compare the story to a metaphor surrounding the horrors of rape. Their claims are 100% correct. Alien is a movie which is one big metaphor for this subject. The facehugger that impregnates its host against their will, the genital shaped designs of the extraterrestrial structures and the mortifying scene where Lambert's character is violently mutilated off screen are all warped personifications of non-consenting sexual attacks. Yet there is more behind the anxieties lurking within the film's text which also still manage to haunt me right up until this very day.

I am referring to the film's themes of control; or lack of it to be more precise. This is a theme which is flawlessly established within Alien's hook-line; in space, no one can hear you scream. The distress signal which forces our protagonists from hyper sleep; the lack of knowledge surrounding the alien world; the facehugger forcing an embryo into Kane's chest; the monster bursting from within; the confined corridors of the Nostromo; the almost-immortality of the brutal antagonist; the company's expendable outlook toward the crew; the remaining survivor's only choice to blow up their ship; and mother's refusal to prevent the impending destruction of the Nostromo leave put all seven on these characters in positions where they possess absolutely no control over anything that is happening.

Even the film's core protagonist - Ellen Ripley - has absolutely no power over the narrative. She acts solely on survival instinct. She has no say or influence on any of the matters at hand. What she does is only done because the characters have been forced into making that decision. Even blowing the ship up is not exactly a choice, as there are no other alternatives left. No matter how hard Ripley and the crew try, their only valid option is to destroy a mining ship and escape into the stars with a shuttle that's only designed to house one (and even that plan goes to the dogs).

Ripley does not control the narrative, it is the narrative which controls her. From start to finish, the world of this story is the only one with any power. Our heroes are nothing more than mere chess pieces; unwillingly participating in a game that is being played by the hands of the narrative. It will not be until James Cameron's 1986 sequel to this film which finally allows Ripley to take control of this universe's narrative. Here she is nothing more than a player; operating solely on her survival instincts.

In actual fact, Ripley shouldn't have even survived this story in the first place. In one of the earlier drafts, Ripley is slaughtered by the alien in the shuttle, moments before the end credits role. As she attempts to harpoon the beast out of the ship's airlock, the devilish life form rips the hook from its chest, crawls back inside and massacres Ripley almost instantaneously. After the antagonist's barbaric success, the creature picks up a microphone and reports back to earth; using the voice of Ellen Ripley as a disguise.

The fact that Ripley managed to survive this film is a miracle in and of itself (be it a miracle that was brought about either by the fact that the studio wanted to give the film some sequel potential through Ripley's survival or because the creative team decided that the idea was one step too far in the context of this story). No one was suppose to survive, as survival was not initially intended to be an option.

What also assists in making this film so intensely terrifying is how easy it is to relate to the story's protagonists. These are not super intelligent, futuristic, overly handsome space warriors; but are nothing more than your bog standard average Joe and Johans. They are just a group of people who are out on the road, doing their job. They are the truck drivers of space travel. Working/middle class guys and gals who have seldom interest in the wonders and mysteries of the universe. They are flawed, self-interested individuals who are only out there in order to make a living in the only way that they can.

Throwing such people into an intense situation such as this one is a perfect way to capture the minds of a large audience base. A majority of people can easily relate to them. We know these people. They are our brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, friends, enemies, colleagues and even ourselves. Being able to relate to characters in horrifying fictional situations can help audiences to understand the feelings that such individuals are going through. None of us will ever have to experience what these people had to, but their connection with our own existence gives us a great sense of empathy which manages to pulls us further into their traumas than we may have initially liked to have gone.

And there really is no doubt that what the seven humans in this film are going through is nothing short of truly awful. As I mentioned, they are merely a group of truck drivers in space; only out there to earn a living. Nothing in the universe could have prepared them for the nightmare which they were destined to find themselves trapped within. Just imagine, locked inside the claustrophobic bowels of a ship which drifts amongst the vast vacuum of deep space; sealed in with a beast whose life began after forcing its way from the ribcage of a fully conscious human. A beast whose sole aim is to murder any other being who is not one of its own.  

This living nightmare of a creature could very well be the devil himself, yet is he really the one and only true villain of Alien?

Maybe not, because this is where the film manages to become even more brilliant in my eyes; as there is another terrifying theme that lingers deep within the background of this story. 

I say maybe not, because despite the horrors which this beast commits, there's certainly little evidence to suggest its acts are consciously committed. For all we know, this creature is acting on the basic survival instincts which are wired into its being. It is a life form born into a world which consists solely of a group of people who are terrified and evidently hostile toward its presence. Naturally, in the most aggressively Darwinian of manners, the life form is going to do all that it can in the selfish name of survival. 

Now there are a great number of theories on the awareness that the creature in Alien possesses. Many suggestions point toward the idea that this is an entity that is far more intelligent than the animalistic qualities depicted on screen. Such ideas can help to explain the horrific and hugely ambiguous scene toward the end of the film where an audio of the alien murdering Lambert gives off the impression that it is doing more than just killing her.

Yet if we dismiss this ambiguous audio and that potentially bizarre alternative ending which I mentioned above, the visible on screen creature appears to be nothing more than an uncivilized animal who is only striving to continue its own survival.

If this is the case, then can this sort of creature really be seen as a true villain? Or does a villain have to be a character who can make choices; who can pick between the path of darkness and the path of light; who knows full well that what they are doing is morally corrupt? More to the point, can such a villain actually be found in alien, and if so, where?

Well surely the company is the answer to that. Let us look at the company in the context of this narrative for a moment. In Alien, the company have decided that the entire Nostromo crew are completely and utterly expendable. The company are also aware that there is an extraterrestrial - and potentially dangerous - life form living on the planet that they have (as revealed at the end of act two) consciously sent the Nostromo to. Not only that, but they send an android - in disguise as a human shipmate called Ash - along for the ride, so that it can make sure the other crew members do not kill their findings.

Some may say that Ash is one of the true villains of this story - as it is he who is performing the company's desires - but remember, Ash has been programmed to obey its masters. He has no conscious choice over his actions. So surely the only definitive guilty party in this story are the off-screen murderous; the men and women who have free will and who have decided to drop all of their ethical views toward the loss of innocent human life so that they can obtain an extraterrestrial specimen.

This back-story does not diminish the horror of the creature from Alien. Instead, it adds to the film's terror. Not only is this a story about the dark corners of the universe being dangerous, but it is also a story of a world in which the future of humanity is similarly just a brutal. No one is safe; whether that's because of the claws of a murderous alien, or because of a greedy company who has no empathy for the value of human life.

Alien is a nightmare of unfathomable intensity. A universe where no one is safe and no one has control. It is a  film that has fueled countless imaginations decades after its release. This is a story that no self aware life form would ever dream of finding themselves in. Yet regardless of the film's horror, it is an absolute treat to witness.

Two whole hours of unforgettable brilliance.     

Doctor Who New Series 1.6 - 'Dalek'

Plot: In the year 2012, Henry Van Statten - a wealthy collector of alien artifacts - has imprisoned the last surviving member of the Doctor's greatest enemy in his underground Utah bunker. After a single touch from the hand of a time traveler, the creature awakens; ready to rise up and wipe all of mankind from the face of planet earth.

So here it is. The episode that everyone wanted from day one. No matter what one may think, the most popular form of hype surrounding the return of Doctor Who was to see the Daleks make their way back onto the small screen. Sure, everyone wanted to see the Doctor and his TARDIS, but they were also dying to see how the Timelord's number one enemy scrubbed up in the 21^st century.

The phenomenon surrounding the Daleks is vast in its size. They are so iconic in their existence that they make up as much of the program's history as the Doctor himself. It seems that you cannot have one without the other. The Doctor and the Daleks. New who would not have been the same without them, and their very existence were solely responsible for creating a large chunk of the curiosity surrounding the modernization of Doctor Who. The Daleks just had to come back, but strangely enough, this was almost not the case.

In actual fact, for a brief period of time, the Daleks were not returning for the revived series. The reason for this is because the BBC do not actually own all of the rights when ti comes to using Daleks. The rights to this iconic enemy are actually in the hands of the Nation Estate. The Nation Estate is the family of Terry Nation; the creator and writer of the original 1963 Dalek story.

The reason for this being that back in 1963, some of the original series producers (most notably Sydney Newman) did not realize that these villains would go on to become such in iconic figure amongst popular culture. At this point, they were perceived as a one time monster. As a result, Terry Nation decided to pack his bags and take the Daleks off to the United States; where he planned on setting up his own TV series which featured the shouty nazi-tanks. When that idea finally fell on its arse, Nation returned to the UK and continued to write Dalek stories for Doctor Who.

Yet he still owned the rights, and after his death, those rights were passed on to his family. It would be the members of the Nation Estate who had the power to give the Daleks the greenlight for a 2005 revival; meaning that the BBC had to go crawling to them if they ever wanted to use them.

The reasons why they were initially reluctant to grant the rights are still unclear to this day. In the BBC press statement that announced their absence in the revival, the BBC claimed that producers and (the then alive) Terry Nation could not come up with a way to successfully adapt the creatures for a 21^st century audience. Yet we all know this to be a load of nonsense. As we'll see over the next few years, Davies and other writers will become obsessed with using them in a great number of stories. Whatever the real reason behind the temporary hiatus, it had nothing to do with the new production team struggling to find ways of utilizing them. Davies and co were dying to have them in their series, and would have wanted nothing more back in 2003 to snatch up the rights without further questions.

In light of this brief cancellation, the writers of the new series were forced to come up with an alternative plot for this episode. Their solution was to replace the lone Dalek from this episode with a creature called the Toclafane.

The Toclafane did, as a matter of fact, finally receive an episode of their very own in the wildly disappointing final of Davies' third series. In that episode, the Toclafane were written in as members of the human race who had been mutilated by the Master at the end of the universe and sent back in time to overthrow their 21^st century ancestors. If they had been used as the Dalek replacement back in 2005, however, then their back stories and execution would have probably been universes apart from what they eventually transpired into.

The Toclafane would have been the murderous race of aliens who were the Timelords' number one enemy. Essentially, they would have been the ones who the Doctor presumed were all dead, who referred to our time traveling hero as 'the oncoming storm' and who would have been responsible for the gargantuan time war which the Doctor barely survived.

Looking at the what if's of this rewritten premise, it doesn't actually sound half that bad. The Toclafane were poor villains in the series three final, however that was mainly down to weak execution on Davies' behalf. If they had decided to use them in the context of this story, they could have been scary, sinister, and something completely new. Just imagine that sinister, childlike creature hovering in one of Van Statten's cells? The glowing sphere, which spoke in such an innocent and playful manner, would turn out to be one of the universe's most destructive monsters; responsible for playing a vital role in the biggest war conceivable. Their innocent demeanor juxtaposed with their history of mass slaughter would have made them absolutely terrifying.

But none of this really matters, because it never transpired this way. At some point in 2004, the BBC were granted the go ahead by the Nation Estate to use the Daleks and the rest was history.

There are rumors that suggested BBC bosses wanted the Daleks to come back as early as the pilot episode of this series, however Russell T Davies chose to hold them back until episode six. I couldn't agree more with Davies here. Placing them in the pilot episode could have lead to some problematic consequences for the future of this show.

As I mentioned above, one of the main hooks that lured so many viewers in for the 2005 revival was the fact that the Daleks were coming back. They had not been on our screens for almost fifteen years (excluding Steven Moffat's 1999 Comic Relief parody; The Curse of the Fatal Death) and people were desperate to see how they would be reestablish within 21^st century culture.

During the promotional footage released for the new series, we only managed to get one glimpse of the contemporary pepper pot. The official trailer revealed a brief shot of a battle torn Dalek wrapped up in chains. The shot was no more than a second in length, but it gave viewers enough information to understand where this was all going. The damaged armor, the dark and gold-plated paneling, the harsh brown paintwork gave us all a solid idea of what they were going to be like. These new pepper pots would be merciless soldiers; damaged, tainted and possibly even imprisoned by the deathly battles of war. A monster, repackaged for the world of today.

Throwing such an eagerly anticipated villain into the very first episode would have been a poor move on the BBC's behalf. As I have mentioned before, the aim of this series was to try and generate a mainstream interest for Doctor Who once again. This was a show with a colossal budget. For it to work, it needed to be big and remain so in the long run.

This made it the producers' job to lure as many people as possible in and keep them there for thirteen long weeks. But if a large majority of those people were only around to check out a new Dalek, then throwing it into the very first episode would not give those viewers any reason to come back during the second, third, fourth and fifth week.

They needed to keep people in their seats for as long as was possible. They had to prove to them that Doctor Who was more than just as show with Daleks. By placing the core icon in the middle of the series, it gave audiences a reason to stick around for long enough to understand the show a little better.

Remember, non-fans were not avid researchers of the new series. They didn't know when the Daleks would show up. Whilst the more passionate viewers knew that episode six would be the return of the killer pepper pots, most people were unaware of this. So they tuned in on week one, not knowing whether or not they would get what they had come for. When this turned out to not be the case, they tuned in for another week, then another, then another, and so on and so forth.

By the time they finally saw what it was they wanted, they had already been exposed to a select number of stories. This gave Davies and co enough time to lure these viewers in by showing them what else Doctor Who was capable of doing.

Due to such a wise decision, the Daleks never made an appearance in the pilot episode, but were instead left untouched for the five preceding episodes; not making a single appearance until Rob Shearman's episode six; Dalek.

Shearman was on board to write a script for the revived series of Doctor Who from as early as 2003. The reason why Russell T Davies hired him was because he wanted Shearman to adapt his Big Finish audio play, Jubilee, for the sixth episode of this series.

Jubilee was a Doctor Who audio adventure released back in January 2003. The story revolved around the sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) discovering a lone Dalek being held prisoner by a family who ruled the “English Empire”. Their reason for keeping this metallic monster locked away was so that they could use it for their own political propaganda purposes.

During the adaptation phase, Shearman was asked to rewrite several aspects of his original story so that it could fit more comfortably within Russell's interpretation of the series. The main change revolved around replacing the Empire rulers with Henry Van Statten; a multimillionaire who lived in Utah and collected alien artifacts for a living.

Shearman was one of the few writers from the wilderness years of the 1990s who managed to secure himself a position within the 2005 series revival. His integration into the new era showed that Davies and team were not willing to ignore the creative force behind the less mainstream years of the program.

At the same time, however, the fact that Davies wanted him to rework and essentially remake a story that was a member of the wilderness years suggests that he may not have wished for that era of the show to be established as officially canon. I say this because in order for this story to exist, the events of the original Jubilee story could not be a member of the same Doctor Who universe. The story was too similar, meaning that both events could not occupy the same universe simultaneously, as it would be just too much of a coincidence (but then again, seeing that this is Doctor Who - a show where absolutely anything can happen - the idea that two highly similar stories existing within the same time frame may not necessarily be that too far-fetched of a concept).

Jumping forward in time a little bit, Davies will prove to make the same move again during the revived shows third series. He will hire writer Paul Cornell to adapt one of his classic adventure novels for a 2007 story; Human Nature/Family of Blood. Again, seeing as the events and premise of this 2007 episode are similar to the premise and events which transpired in the novel, it is almost suggesting that Davies is establishing the idea that Cornell's novel didn't actually exist within the 'official' run of past Doctor Who. There is only room for one version of these stories, and seeing as Davies' version of the show is a member of the official televised series, these adaptations are the 'definitive' account of the Doctor's time line.

What is also interesting about Davies' decision to hire only a select number of writers from previous eras of Doctor Who, is that he hires only a small number of them. The authors of the novels and audio spin off's of the Doctor Who television series were plentiful in their numbers. They had spent the past several decades dreaming up all kinds of arcs and stories within the book and audio mediums. If Davies wanted to, he could have hired a large portion of these writers to help him bring the show back to BBC One. Except he didn't. Instead, he only brought a handful of them on board.

This could suggest that Davies only selected the members of the wilderness years whose interpretation of the show he preferred the most. The many writers of the wilderness years all had their own ideas on how Doctor Who should be made. Some believed that the show should venture down the science fiction route, whilst others preferred the fantasy path.

By hiring members of this group to write for the 2005 revival, Davies could very well have been picking the individuals whose idea of what Doctor Who was suited his preferences the most; simply ignoring the rest. 

Here Davies crafts his own style of the wilderness years. His version of the show will promote some of the aspects of this era whilst happily ignoring the rest. He's picking the stories and concepts from the dead period and using them for the benefit of his own era, whilst leaving the rest to exist outside the mainstream realm; far away from his vision of this universe. This is as close as he will ever get to influencing a part of the program's history.

So Davies hasn't chosen to ignore the past decade of Doctor Who, but instead he has nominated to pick the styles and stories that he liked from that particular decade.

And this leads on to another interesting question regarding the wilderness years period; was any of it actually canon? I mean with Dalek alone, we've already had a story lifted from that era and retrofitted for this one, so surely that has removed one story from there already. But what about the others? Did all those off-screen adventures with the sixth, seventh and eight Doctor ever happen? Did all those novels set after the 1996 TV movie really take place in this Doctor's time line? We know that the events of the 1963 to 1989 series, as well as the 1996 movie were 'officially' declared as part of the 2005 revival's universe, but what about all the tales supposedly set in between?

I think that this is a very difficult question to answer, but I have my own theory, which is that it's entirely up to the viewer. Like Davies, every audience member of the wilderness years would have consumed stories that they felt fitted perfectly into the Doctor Who canon, whereas they would have also consumed ones which had the opposite effect. There were so many different versions of the show during this period that people learned to cope by picking and choosing which stories they wanted to follow.

This essentially turned a decade duration of the show into a modifiable canon of the Doctor's life. Not one person can confidently state which stories took place in the Doctor's 'official' time line. Therefore it is up to their subjectivity to make the choice that suits their perception of the show the most.

But I don't want to linger around in this subject area any further. There are a hundred different theories and claims regarding the canon of the series. Some will state that none of the audio plays and novels existed in the Doctor's 'real' past, whereas other will state that some did and some didn't. 

At the end of the day, who knows, and who outside the fan base really gives a damn?

So anyhow, I digress. How did the iconic pepper pot come across in its 21^st century début? Well it came across as an indestructible death machine of course.

The direction of the episode made heavy use of showing off what this creature was capable of doing. It could revive its battle-scarred shell simply from the touch of a time traveller; glide up stair ways; dissolve bullets moments before impact; unlock high security doors in a matter of seconds; absorb vast quantities of data in mere minutes; and blast people from existence with a single ray. It was a monster with uncomprehending levels of strength and fire power.

It was fuelled by its existence to hate anything that was different from itself. It had no concept of mercy, empathy or understanding for the value of human life. Nothing could destroy it and nothing would survive it. The ultimate killing machine that was immune to human weaponary.

This was how the Daleks were brought to life for the 21^st century. Their fear factor had dried up years ago. No longer were they simply the shouty pepper pots of the classic era, they were ultimate warriors. They were dedicated murderous who were more or less invincible to the resistance of any other life form in our universe.

But the level of their destructive force was not the only way that Shearman upgraded the Daleks for New Who. The modernisation of these icons was also executed through the use of dialogue and character confrontation.

To voice the Daleks, Davies hired actor Nicholas Briggs to take on the role. Briggs had worked on Doctor Who prior to this episode. Much like Shearman, he was a man who was lucked straight from the wilderness years of the show.

Briggs had written for and starred in a number of the audio adventures. What he was most famed for, was his ability to add great depths of character to the Dalek voices. He was not simply a man who made a living by voicing iconic monsters. He took on the role as if it was any other performance. Instead of portraying the Daleks as nothing more than shouting nazi metaphors, he gave them personalities. His Daleks could be angry, sad, scared, confused and all kinds of emotions that would promote them into fully functioning characters of their own.

He would portray the Daleks in a way which would make them dominate the narrative. No longer were they just killer henchmen who screamed “exterminate” at the top of their lungs (though he still does that); now they were killer henchmen who were complex individuals in their own right.

To bring Briggs into the new series was a wise and grand move. This was their chance to show that the Daleks were more complicated than just their iconic presence. Briggs uses the script of Dalek to deliver this message across to its audience perfectly.

The Dalek in this episode is a lost, melancholic soul who is the last member of his race. It has fought in the time war and is now trying to survive in a universe where it no longer has a purpose. On top of this, its greatest enemy has now arrived back into its life. It is confronted by its greatest target and biggest fear; the Doctor. Briggs uses this back story to deliver all of these conflicting emotions through the power of his performance.

Writer Rob Shearman also contributes to this element of the Daleks through the execution of his screenplay. What we should recognise with Shearman is that he is also known for being a play writer for the medium of theatre. He has written plays such as Dented Crowns (1991), Breaking Bread Together (1993), Fool to Yourself (1995) and Shaw Cornered (2001).

The medium of the theatre is one which makes great use of self-contained set pieces and heavy dialogue. Due to the constants of limited sets, as well as the intimacy of a live audience, theatrical plays must utilize closed set pieces and narrative driven dialogue in order to tell its story in the best way conceivable.

Television use to also be written in this manner. Back in the early days of the medium, lack of editing techniques, small television screens and limited sets to film upon meant that writers and actors had to tell a story as if it was being performed live within the same room as its viewers. As technology progressed however, these constraints were freed from the medium; allowing it to become more cinematic in its execution.

And so far, New Who has been very much a piece of cinematic work. Fast editing, single cam shots, plentiful special effects and hasty-paced forty-five minute stories have been all the norm. But here, Doctor Who reverts back to a time where intimacy and dialogue were vital members of televisual storytelling.

This works perfectly when it comes to establishing the Doctor's relationship with these creatures. The Dalek and the ninth Doctor spend a decent number of scenes locked in a small room; expressing their anger, disgust and sadistic hatred toward one another in the most intimate and dialogue driven manner imaginable. Both characters are terrified of one another. Both of their existences infuriates the other; showing them to be the war-torn lifeforms that they are.

The utilization of intimacy and dialogue on top of Briggs in-depth performance breathes new life into the Dalek race. They are more than just mindless henchmen. They are brilliant, smart, complex beings who have real motives behind their existence. They may very well be a race that have had all their emotions removed (minus hate), but deep inside, there is far more going on than could possibly meet the eye. In the 21^st century, where all popular dramas are driven by deep character-based narratives, this is the perfect way to modernize such an iconic monster.

Surrounding all of the intimate dialogue scenes of Dalek, however, lies a classic base-under-siege story. The base-under-siege formate is one that was used frequently in classic Doctor Who; particularly amongst Patrick Troughton's second Doctor era. The set up is simple, The Doctor and companions land in a base that is isolated from the rest of civilisation. After a number of the base's characters are established, an external force invades. The Doctor, his companions and the recently established natives of this base must use their resources and character archetypes to help fight off the invading force.

Dalek uses this narrative from the inside out. Instead of the enemy being an external force, it is one that comes from the inside. It is one of the base's previously established props which transforms into the destructive forces. Yet regardless of this switch in structure, it is still essentially your typical base-under-siege episode.

Yet despite the bog standard narrative layout, this format works perfectly for Dalek. Not only does it give the Doctor a chance to commune with his greatest foe in a locked off environment, but it also allows Shearman to show off what one lone Dalek is capable of doing.

The base essentially becomes the Dalek's own playground. It is his sandbox for destruction. There are plenty of stairs for to glide up, combination locks to hack and enemies to slaughter. The base is a linear, closed-world environment which lets the Dalek put all of his skills into action. The perfect setting for its début.

In conclusion, Dalek is a fantastic instalment to the new era of Doctor Who. Shearman's dialogue driven, closed-set narrative and intense take on the Dalek is just what this villain needs in order to be promoted into an icon for 21^st century popular culture. The use of Nicholas Briggs as the voice of this complex beast is also a perfect move; introducing a persona bearing, enigmatic version of the Daleks into the program's main text.

Apart from the final episode of this series, this is probably one of the finest utilizations of the Daleks during New Who's run. From series two onwards, their execution will become somewhat predictable and problematic; failing to make a solid comeback until as far ahead as the seventh series.

But more on that later...

The Terminator

From my corner of existence, James Cameron is one of the greatest filmmakers who ever lived (and still lives to this day thankfully). One of the many things I adore about this filmmaker is how he has managed to stay on top of his game during three distinct eras of Hollywood Cinema. He is essentially the David Bowie of the film world. He has taken on many of the themes and aesthetics from the 80s, 90s and (for one time only) the 00s; coming out on top each time round.

The Terminator is a beautiful example of this. He takes the mechanical, cyber-punk style of the early 1980s and uses this effect to create a dark science fiction thriller which soon became a huge cultural icon.

The Terminator is now a hugely recognizable figure amongst popular culture. It sits comfortably around the top spot of this scoreboard with Back to the Future, Indiana Jones, E.T and even Star Wars. Yet this is not the only reason why I love The Terminator so unconditionally. There is also something else which pushes this feature even closer to the perfection mark.

What is so marvelous about this film is how it manages to portray two very distinct realities amongst a single textual space. There is the story of the dream world and the story of the nightmare.

The story of the nightmare is the world of tomorrow; humanity versus machine. The opening shots of the film reveal a cold and dead world. The low, harsh slashes of Brad Fidel's mechanical score give us a crystal clear idea of what this world is like. It's dangerous, terrifying and a place which no one should ever find themselves in. Further exposition - in the form of subtitles - inform us of a brief history to this eerie realm.

LOS ANGELES 2029 A.D. 

THE MACHINES ROSE FROM THE ASHES OF THE NUCLEAR FIRE. 

THEIR WAR TO EXTERMINATE MANKIND HAS RAGED FOR DECADES, 

BUT THE FINAL BATTLE WOULD NOT BE FOUGHT IN THE FUTURE. 

IT WOULD BE FOUGHT HERE, IN OUR PRESENT.

After the opening titles, the world of tomorrow vanishes from our view. We are not allowed to witness it any further. It is not a world that the viewer is meant spend too much time in. For this story to work, the nightmare must be limited in its presence. It is not the space that this film's text is meant to be set within. It works as an idea, a vision of a potential tomorrow. It is a premonition, not a physical space for the story to be told within.

Instead, we are whisked back to the present day. It's 1984 and at first it appears as though we are still in the story of the nightmare. The streets are dark and two highly dangerous individuals upset the status quo of the midnight streets which occupy this environment.

Yet regardless of what we think we see, this is not the world of the nightmare. Instead, this is the world of the dream. What results in this deceitful misunderstanding is that two characters from the yet-to-exist nightmare have leaked into this world. They have thrown themselves back in time in order to invade the dreamlike space of The Terminator's core narrative.

The difference between the two characters of the nightmare world is that one is here in the name of good, whilst the other is here in the name of evil.

The good is Kyle Reece; a soldier who has been sent back in time to protect a woman named Sarah Conner. Sarah is destined to one day give birth to a child - John Connor - who will become the main catalyst in the uprising against the dominating machines of planet earth.

The evil is the Terminator, a cybernetic death machine who's mission is to murder Sarah before she is able to give birth to humanities' last hope. Both Reese and the Terminator race against one another, each determined to complete their mission successfully.

The ultimate irony of this story is that both of them will end up becoming the architects to the thing that they are fighting against. Kyle Reece will end up becoming the farther to John Conner. His presence in 1984 will result in the conception of this child. He is partly to blame for the uprising that will defeat Cyberdyne. Likewise, the death of the Terminator who has also traveled back to 1984 will go on to be the model that inspires the inception of Cyberdyne systems (however this is a plot that will not make itself known until the director's cut of the film's breathtaking sequel).

But regardless of these opening moments, the world of 1984 is still a dreamlike realm of sorts. Both Cameron's direction and Fidel's score will portray this world as a period of bliss which is on the verge of an apocalyptic meltdown. Their melancholic portrayal of contemporary LA will ignite an enigmatic quality within the story. Even the most mundane of streets will eminate the feel of something wonderful, something that is destined to be lost in the near future.

And this is where Cameron excels beautifully in his directing talents. Today, Cameron is celebrated as the builder of worlds. This title took on most of its meaning upon the release of Avatar; a film which created an alien world which was vast in its scale. But Avatar was not where Cameron's talent formulated. It started as far back as here.

Cameron has successful structured a version of LA that sits on the edge of reality. It's soft lighting and use of emphasizing empty spaces will make it appear almost like a character of its own. It is a world that is almost a ghost town. But what makes this ghost town so enchantingly beautiful is the characters that occupy it.

Sarah Conner starts out as your average, 1980s, everyday woman. She goes to work, shares a flat with her friend Ginger, and is a hopeless romantic who wants to find the right man to spend her life with. Kyle Reese, on the other hand is a soldier from the future who is really in the past to fight in the name of love. As a younger man, he saw a photo of Sarah Conner, and from that moment on, his heart belong to her.

It is these two characters who end up being solely responsible for what make this story the workings of a dream world. Sarah is just an average girl who is terrified at the fact that she will one day give birth to a history defying soldier. As the narrative moves forward, she herself will begin to grow into a soldier. Kyle Reese, on the other hand, will begin to reveal his inner human flaws. He overplays the role of the hero, but deep down he is functioning solely to protect a woman that he is madly in awe over.

Both characters slowly begin to switch roles as the plot progresses. As Sarah becomes more in tune to what her future will entail, Kyle starts to fall for the beauties of everyday life. He's in love and is trying with much difficulty to adapt to the world which he will now spend the rest of his life in.

The aesthetic of the dream reaches its all time height during the climax of the film's second act. After Sarah and Kyle make love for the first time - finally conceiving the fate of the future - the two of them playfully tease one another. What makes this moment so painfully heartbreaking is that that it's the last glimpse that both the characters and viewers will ever get of normality in this story. This is the end of the dream. The nightmare world leaks in throughout the entire duration of The Terminator, but it is here where it finally invades in full force.

Amongst all the surrounding cyber-punk/science fiction imagery,  The Terminator is essentially the first and most definitive version of the James Cameron love story. Two characters from hugely distinct worlds collide with one another. At first they reject one another, but as things progress, they begin to realize how much they mean to each other. As the seeds of their love are planted, both characters will begin to influence the other. They will start to immerse themselves within each others worlds. They ignite bliss within one anothers hearts and will fill the voids in both of their lives.

Two worlds colliding, creating a love that is only inseparable by death. And in good old fashion James Cameron style, this is how the story will go about separating them.

The love scene of the Cameron love story is always the moment of doom for the male lead. It is during these moments that both lovers sign the death warrant of one of the main protagonists. Cameron's narratives are the collision of dreams, but as is the case in all dreams, the leading character - in this case Sarah - must sooner or later wake up. This means that no matter how hard one tries, the love story must inevitably come to and end. Once they tie the not, they essentially make it impossible to break these characters apart. This leaves the narrative with only one last option; death.

The love story of The Terminator is almost identical to that of Titanic.  It is essentially the same film, only belonging to a different genre and universe. Kyle and Sarah are essentially the Jack and Rose of 1980s science fiction. Both of them will be members of opposing realities. Both will find one another in an environment that is inevitably doomed. As the two of them find themselves in one another's arms, the apocalyptic consequences of their immediate environment will separate them for eternity. In response to their loss, the surviving member will go on to alter the course of their lives in remembrance of their deceased lover.

It is this very love story that makes 1984 LA a dreamland in The Terminator. It is not our own reality, but a fantasy of the main character's. They live in a world which is on the verge of destruction. A place that is set to become a nightmare, yet the power of unexpected love brings them both great bouts of joy for a premature period of time.

The Terminator is not only a film which gives birth to the Cameron love story, but is also a film which brings the director's strong portrayal of female leads into contemporary cinema.

Yet this feature does not throw such an empowering representation into the story straight away. Instead it plays with the idea, slowly introducing it into the plot as time moves forward.

At the start of this story, Sarah is a highly passive character. She possesses no knowledge of the future war against the machines and spends a majority of the time trying to escape from both the antagonist and male protagonist of this film. She is a terrified damsel in distress who wishes to play no part in this so called future.

However Sarah will soon begin to take control of this narrative. At first, it is Reese who is in control of the narrative. He wields the knowledge of the future, he makes the decisions for Sarah, and he understands all the rules of this story. Though as both characters begin to switch roles, it will be Sarah who takes control of this world.

Conner becomes a soldier in her own right. As the blindfolds come off of her, she starts to see that the world that Reese and the Terminator come from are very much real (or at least will be so one day). She is not forced by Reese to believes this, but comes to a conclusion by herself. Once she understands the rules and knowledge of the story, she possess complete control over the entire narrative.

By the end of the story, Kyle is dead and Sarah is left alone in the world. The era of the dream is on the bring of extinction. Sarah is now willing to walk into the jaws of the nightmare by herself. She chooses not to get rid of the baby that she conceived with Kyle and chooses to mold this baby into John Conner; the leader of humanity during the war against the machines.

As Brad Fidel's otherworldly score blasts onto the screen during the final moments of the story, Sarah acknowledges that "there's a storm coming". With this realization, she drives head on into the storm; both literally and metaphorically. She is the one true ruler of this narrative; the controller of the entire story.

The twisting of female representation is not the only trick that Cameron has up his sleeve however, as the film also decides to flip another convention on its head. This is done in the form of the film's antagonist.

Cameron is not the most original of storytellers when it comes to his films. Most of his stories will take a previously established idea or narrative and then twist them in a number of ways. In the case of The Terminator, he puts together a classic robot science fiction thriller, then reshapes the execution of the murderous antagonist to amplify the film's effect.
 
Whilst many classic science fiction stories would tell a story that would involve a man dressed up as a robot, Cameron dresses up his robot as a man. The character of the Terminator comes across in appearance as nothing more than an overly built human. The metallic monster lies deep underneath a sentient exterior of muscles, sweat and flesh. Not only does this work as a great disguise for the android who has taken up temporary residence in a time period where such creatures do not belong, but it also acts as a great anticipation tool.

Audiences know that there is a beast lying amongst the flesh of this heartless beast, but we are not allowed the privilege of witnessing its true from until the film's climax. We are gradually teased with brief encounters of the beast below, but not until the moment where the battle torn Terminator rises from the flames of the final scene do we finally get to witness its definitive form.

It is a gripping plot technique and makes it all the more breathtaking when we finally do get to see the monster with our own eyes. Even after almost thirty years of the film's aging, that moment still holds up perfectly. This is all thanks to the incredible build up that the film's twist provides us with.


These are just a few of the many reasons why The Terminator is one of the most incredible stories of the past thirty years. No matter how many times I witness it, I never grow tired of its beauty. The entire viewing experience is a form of cinematic perfection that will never fade for my mind's eye.

There's only one film that has been able to beat its brilliance, and that is Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

That is all I have to say on this film for the time being. I'm sure I will write another post on it at some point or another - as I have a million and one things to say about this masterpiece - however I think that this is enough for one entry. But before I go, I would just like to leave you all with a piece of dialogue from one of the film's most beautiful scenes:

"John Connor gave me a picture of you once. I didn't  

know why  at the time.  It was very old, torn, faded.  

You were young  like you are now. you seemed just a  

little sad. 

I used to always wonder what you were thinking at  

that moment. I memorised every line, every curve. 

I came across time for you, Sarah. 

I love you. I always have."