“It’s a 5000 year old pyramid. There’s one problem with that, one little problem. It wasn’t there yesterday.”
(SPOILER WARNING!)
So, we’re into the middle part of the ‘Monk trilogy’ in this week’s Doctor Who, and while Steven Moffat’s still on writing duties, this time he’s enlisted the help of Peter Harness, who I thought did rather well with the Zygon two-parter in the last full season. Continue reading “Doctor Who : Season 10, Episode 7 – The Pyramid at the End of the World”
“Particle physicists and priests. What could scare them both?”
(SPOILER WARNING!)
We’re at the halfway point of the series, and who should drift back over the horizon but showrunner Steven Moffat, with his first episode since the season opener. Moffat’s kept a lower profile this year than the last, though presumably he’s been a guiding hand where plot arc threads are concerned. This week, however, was a definite return for his usual style – as usual, it screwed with your head. Continue reading “Doctor Who: Season 10, Episode 6 – Extremis”
“The end point of capitalism – a bottom line where human life has no value at all. We’re fighting an algorithm. A spreadsheet. Like every worker everywhere – we’re fighting the suits.”
(SPOILER ALERT!)
Thirty years ago, at the height of Reagan and Thatcher’s monetarism mania, Mel Brooks’ classic Star Wars parody Spaceballs showed us a world that had exhausted its air – but you could buy expensive cans of it (amusingly labelled ‘Perri-Aire’). At the time, it seemed an absurdist, hyperbolic take on the contemporary free market ideology that was coming to dominate the world. In today’s world, where ‘the market’ is worshipped like a god and the only value that counts is monetary, the idea of privatising the very air we breathe seems like a frighteningly believable prospect. Continue reading “Doctor Who: Season 10, Episode 5 – Oxygen”
“You came here. You signed the contract. And now it’s time to pay.”
(SPOILER ALERT!)
After a trip to the future and a trip to the past, this week Doctor Who was back on contemporary Earth for one of the classic story styles it usually does rather well – the tried-and-trusted haunted house tale. The show’s been here before, notably with 1989’s Ghost Light and 2013’s Hide, and the results are usually atmospheric if not always comprehensible (I’m looking at you, Ghost Light). Continue reading “Doctor Who: Season 10, Episode 4 – Knock Knock”
“Conjecture – there’s something frozen under the Thames and it’s eating people. Proposal – we need to get a closer look at it. Plan – let’s get eaten.”
(SPOILER ALERT!)
As with Martha Jones before her, and Rose Tyler before her, Bill Potts’ second trip in the TARDIS took her to the past of her own planet – and what a marvellously unusual area of the past it was. February 1814, the last of the great London Frost Fairs. These were a fairly regular thing from the 17th to the 19th century, in a period known as the Little Ice Age, when Europe’s winter temperatures were much lower, and the Thames was regularly frozen over with ice up to a foot thick. The Doctor’s even been here before, though we didn’t see it; no sign of River Song being serenaded by Stevie Wonder this week though! Continue reading “Doctor Who: Season 10, Episode 3 – Thin Ice”
“They want to help you. Killing you is just a side effect.”
(SPOILER ALERT!)
A couple of years ago, acclaimed writer Frank Cottrell Boyce penned his first script for Doctor Who, In the Forest of the Night.
Not because it wasn’t interesting, or imaginative; it was both. But what it wasn’t was a Doctor Who story. As a deconstruction of classic fairy tales, it would have stood a far better chance as a story unencumbered by the rules of the Doctor Who universe (such as they are), and the stranglehold of the Doctor/Clara/Danny angst fest that dominated that season. Continue reading “Doctor Who: Season 10, Episode 2 – Smile”
“What, in the end, are any of us looking for? Someone who’s looking for us.”
(SPOILER WARNING!)
Yes, I’ve been very lazy about writing on this blog for the last few months. The second half of The Walking Dead’s most recent season left me largely indifferent, though I may return to look at it some time. Meanwhile, the world seems to be plunging into a new Dark Age in which the American public have knowingly handed the keys to their nuclear arsenal to a dangerous man-child whose every petulant utterance is demonstrably untrue, and yet is still considered fit to occupy the Oval Office. Which has been just too depressing to write about. Continue reading “Doctor Who: Season 10, Episode 1 – The Pilot”
“The gemstone is giving you what it thinks you want. You’re a superhero!”
(SPOILER WARNING!)
It was inevitable, I suppose. Given the current domination of the big (and increasingly, small) screen by muscly men in spandex and rubber (the ones who aren’t in gay porn), it was only a matter of time until an honest to goodness superhero made his way onto Doctor Who. In a Christmas special only tangentially connected to Christmas (thank goodness), Steven Moffat managed to bring off this clash of styles with The Return of Doctor Mysterio, which managed to be both an enjoyable (if light) Doctor Who episode as well as a fond homage to comics superheroes in general. Continue reading “Doctor Who Christmas Special 2016 – The Return of Doctor Mysterio”
“Either your heart’s beating or it isn’t. Your loved ones’ hearts are beating or they aren’t.”
(SPOILER WARNING!)
And so, a generally low-key half-season has come to an equally low-key climax. OK, it’s fair to say that you wouldn’t usually describe a mid-season finale in which one of the main characters is gutted by a smiling psychopath while playing pool in the street “low-key”, but this is The Walking Dead. Anything less than a massive battle, a huge explosion or a vast horde of hungry corpses seems a bit anticlimactic. Continue reading “The Walking Dead: Season 7, Episode 8 – Hearts Still Beating”
“You mowed down two of my men with a machine gun, I want something in return for that. Sing me a song.”
(SPOILER WARNING!)
Another week, another tense but leisurely look at one of the post-apocalyptic communities in this week’s The Walking Dead. Following on from episode 3, this week saw a return to the Savior HQ, the Sanctuary, as the ever-genial Negan welcomed his most recent subject – Carl Grimes. I’d been wondering if the show would adapt this aspect of the comic, which sees Carl and Negan building a twisted Clarice Starling/Hannibal Lecter bond, and I’m glad it has. It just had to find a different way of getting Rick’s obstreperous son there, as his place was taken in the season opener by Daryl. Continue reading “The Walking Dead: Season 7, episode 7 – Sing Me a Song”
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