Simon Fernandes

Doctor Who: Season 2/15/41, Episode 1 – The Robot Revolution

“Is this what you do? Are you some sort of time detective?”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Wow, I have been very lazy with the writing of late – I haven’t posted anything here for nearly four months! Now, though, Doctor Who is back, to keep me disciplined on writing at least once a week. Well, for a while at least. The internet has been full of rumblings about the show’s apparent uncertain future, with Disney’s investment deal about to expire and Russell T Davies purportedly dropping ominous hints about some sort of “hiatus” in the near future.

Doctor Who: Christmas Special 2024 – Joy to the World

“The Starseed will bloom and the flesh will rise!”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Loves his catchphrases, does Steven Moffat. Yes, former showrunner and now occasional writer Moffat was back on scripting duties for this year’s Doctor Who Christmas Special – now thankfully back on Christmas Day. After giving us a simple, high-concept episode of the previous season, he was back to his twisty, turny, timey-wimey form, with an ep that took advantage of the show’s premise of time travel, while attempting to tell a heartwarming Christmas story full of spectacle, humour and thrills.

Doctor Who: The War Games in Colour

“You can’t just change what I look like!”

(SPOILER WARNING, ON THE OFF CHANCE THAT YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THIS 1969 STORY)

I don’t know if you can cast your mind back that far, but in the 90s, colourisation of classic movies was all the rage. It was also hugely controversial, as Turner Classic Movies, added what was then a very primitive and unconvincing colour palette to the beloved likes of Laurel and Hardy and Casablanca. “These movies were meant to be seen in black and white,” the purists cried. Generally, people (including me) agreed, and the fad passed within a few years.

My Summer Film Festival: part 3 – The horror, the horror…

Summer in Barcelona. A time of heat, humidity, and the cautious running of that oh-so-expensive air conditioning. Many of my friends, quite sensibly, choose August as the time to take holidays out of the city. But this year, I didn’t have enough money saved to do that, so in between frequent trips to beaches and parks, I’ve been having my own private little film festival instead.

Generally, I’ve been watching at least two films a day. The rule is that, ideally, it has to be a film I’ve never seen. If I have seen it, it has to have been only once, and many years ago (there were a few of these). As we’re coming up to the end of August, and work’s about to begin again, I thought I’d jot down some capsule reviews of the movies I’ve watched, in no particular order. They stretch from the 1930s to 2024, of all kinds of genres, some big budget extravaganzas, some little known indies…

As a big nerd, I love horror and sci fi movies, and lots of them featured in my summer viewing. Often, the boundary between the two genres is blurred (see Alien), so I’ve grouped them together for this post. There’s a lot of them!

My Summer Film Festival: part 2 – film noir

My Summer Film Festival: part 1 – Low budget alien invasions

House of the Dragon: Season 2, Episode 8 – The Queen Who Ever Was

“The dragons dance, and men are like dust under their feet. And all our fine thoughts, all our endeavours, are as nothing.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

House of the Dragon wound to the finale of its second season with the same mix of moments of brilliance and frustratingly uneven pacing that have characterised it this time round. This was a good episode for character development, nicely tying up some arcs that have been seriously dragging for most of the season, but in terms of advancing the plot it mostly meandered along setting up pieces for next season before suddenly dropping a plot bomb in our laps with an excellent final montage and cliffhanger.

House of the Dragon: Season 2, Episode 7 – The Red Sowing

“Well then – let us raise an army of bastards.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Now that’s more like it. This wasn’t a barnstorming, action-packed episode of House of the Dragon; but it didn’t need to be. It’s a penultimate episode, and what it needed was to set things up for the finale while providing a building sense of pace in the narrative. After last week’s ponderous instalment, I’d been uncertain it could do that, but it succeeded admirably.

House of the Dragon: Season 2, Episode 6 – Smallfolk

“There are older things in this world than you, or I, or living memory. You are not the player, but a piece on the board.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

It was another… shall we say, leisurely paced episode for House of the Dragon this week, which may not win it many more admirers from those who find the show very slow going. To be fair, this week, even I had my reservations. I’d expected a lull in the pacing after the Big Battle of ep4, but with only two episodes of the season to go, it feels like the show should be upping its pace.

House of the Dragon: Season 2, Episode 5 – Regent

“Do not underestimate your subjects. They are a thousand thousand living in the shadow of the Red Keep, and forgotten for too long.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

After last week’s Bloody Big Battle, it was back to House of the Dragon’s trademark political scheming this week – but with some justification. The fallout from the Battle of Rook’s Rest is seismic, and even if you find the show’s predilection for men with beards arguing in dark rooms tiresome, given last week’s events it was entirely necessary dramatically.