Simon Fernandes

Doctor Who: Series 9, Episode 2 – The Witch’s Familiar

“Imagine. To hold in your hand, the heartbeat of every Dalek on Skaro. They send me life. Is it beyond the wit of a Time Lord to send them death?”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

I’ll admit, last week I was a trifle surprised to find that Steven Moffat had the chutzpah to open the new series of Doctor Who by writing, effectively, a sequel to Genesis of the Daleks – a story regularly voted the best the show ever did. Yet for me, he pulled it off surprisingly well, building cleverly on the themes, characterisation and philosophy espoused by both the Doctor and Davros in that first meeting. Continue reading “Doctor Who: Series 9, Episode 2 – The Witch’s Familiar”

Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 4 – Not Fade Away

“We’re safe inside the fence. Outside, everything’s dead. Everything’s gone.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

As a neophyte, fledgling series coasting on the coat tails of its phenomenally successful parent series, Fear the Walking Dead has thus far been wildly uneven in terms of tone, style and pacing. And yet episode 4 feels like the first time the show has properly realised its USP. It’s the most unsettling ep yet – despite the fact that, for the first time in the run, there wasn’t a single zombie to be seen. Continue reading “Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 4 – Not Fade Away”

Doctor Who: Series 9, Episode 1 – The Magician’s Apprentice

“Davros made the Daleks. But who made Davros?”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

After a divisive first season for Peter Capaldi’s abrasive, sometimes hard to like Twelfth Doctor, Doctor Who was back this week with a busy episode that was an obvious fan pleaser. Continuity references abounded, even outside a main plot that featured Davros, the Daleks, Missy and UNIT. Being a fan, I enjoyed it hugely. Trouble is, will the casual viewer even understand what all this is about? Continue reading “Doctor Who: Series 9, Episode 1 – The Magician’s Apprentice”

Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 3 – The Dog

“She’s not sick. She’s dead.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Fear the Walking Dead continues to get pacier in this third instalment, though there’s still a fair bit of the soap opera that pretty much dominated the pilot episode to the exclusion of most everything else. Like the second episode, this one follows the quasi-real time approach (with a significant gap in the middle) which is apparently going to be the show’s style – a nice way to extend a narrative that logically would be over pretty quickly otherwise. Continue reading “Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 3 – The Dog”

Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 2 – So Close, Yet So Far

“When civilisation ends, it ends fast.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Civilisation may be ending fast, but there was still fairly little plot advancement in this second ep of AMC’s cash cow spinoff Fear the Walking Dead. And yet, despite that fact, this was a much tauter, pacier instalment than the pilot, due in no small part to being told almost entirely in real time. Like 24, but with zombies. Continue reading “Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 2 – So Close, Yet So Far”

Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 1 – Pilot

“She was eating them!”

(SPOILER ALERT!)

There’s a fundamental problem with prequels, which is that you know how they’re going to end. Along the way, you often have to contort your story to make it fit with the pre-existing outcomes (“have the protocol droid’s memory wiped”). Of course, knowing broadly how a story will end doesn’t mean it can’t be enjoyable – otherwise nobody would have gone to see Titanic (SPOILER – the ship sinks). The challenge is to get your audience invested in the characters living through what you already know is going to happen, and hopefully show some spectacle along the way. Continue reading “Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 1 – Pilot”

Game of Thrones: Season 5, Episode 10 – Mother’s Mercy

“He raised his hands, and they all stood up at once. Tens of thousands, the biggest army in the world.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

In previous years, the season finale of Game of Thrones has tended to have the feel of an epilogue, a time to take stock after the tumultuous events of the action-packed ep9. With the last couple of eps having well and truly broken that formula, it was no surprise that this years’ season finale was something quite different; a veritable bloodbath of major characters, and a cornucopia of cliffhangers. Continue reading “Game of Thrones: Season 5, Episode 10 – Mother’s Mercy”

Game of Thrones: Season 5, Episode 9 – The Dance of Dragons

“Sometimes a person has to choose. Sometimes the world forces his hand.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

With the full throttle carnage usually expected from ep 9 of Game of Thrones having come early last week, this week the question was, what will ep 9 bring this year? As it turned out, it was much the same mix as last week, the Big Action Set Pieces split over two eps this year. As with last week, the ep started slow, then built to an unexpected epic battle in the third act; less epic than last week, perhaps, but that’s quibbling. By any other show’s standards, this might have been a season finale. In Game of Thrones, it was ep 9. Continue reading “Game of Thrones: Season 5, Episode 9 – The Dance of Dragons”

Game of Thrones: Season 5, Episode 8 – Hardhome

“I’ve seen the army of the dead. I’ve seen the White Walkers. And they’re coming for us. For all the living.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Holy crap. If you’ve been waiting for the standard epic battle usually provided in ep9 of each season of Game of Thrones, well… it came early. And if you’ve also been missing The Walking Dead, this should have more than filled the void. Continue reading “Game of Thrones: Season 5, Episode 8 – Hardhome”

Game of Thrones: Season 5, Episode 7 – The Gift

“You should hold on to your candles. The nights are so long now.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

After last week’s ep of dramatic payoffs to long gestating political plots in Game of Thrones comes… another one. Don’t get me wrong, that’s not a bad thing; this was every bit as gripping and well—written as last week’s. Tonally though, it was so similar you could have watched the two together and been forgiven for thinking it was one extra long one. Continue reading “Game of Thrones: Season 5, Episode 7 – The Gift”