Simon’s Incoherent Blog

The Day the Lights Went Off in Iberia

On April 28, I was walking back from the shop at about 12:40 when it happened. As I looked down my street, I saw all the illuminated signs and interior shop lights flick off. Shopkeepers emerged, blinking, into the bright daylight, glancing up and down the street to see if they were the only ones affected.

Doctor Who: Season 2/15/41, Episode 3 – The Well

“There’s something behind me.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Doctor Who has never been shy about stealing from… er, homaging other sources for its stories. I mean, The Brain of Morbius is just Frankenstein, The Androids of Tara is The Prisoner of Zenda, Robot is King Kong, and so on. It’s even, on multiple occasions, plagiarised itself – every Terry Nation Dalek story is basically the same as his first one. So it was hardly surprising, in a slew of well-blended ‘homages’ this week, that several of them were to earlier episodes of the show. The new thing here was the realisation that the ‘new’ show has now been going so long it can plagiarise itself too.

The Last of Us: Season 2, Episode 2 – Through the Valley

“This is bullshit, right? It’s just a drill.”
“Yeah. It’s a drill.”
“Unless we’re attacked, and then it’s not.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Whoa.

Well, if you were disappointed by the low key, character-focused opener of The Last of Us season 2, this episode will have more than made up for that. All the spectacle, action and drama you could hope for was here in spades, along with some jaw-dropping plot developments. It’s just that, typically for this show, that first episode was necessary to establish the stakes before throwing us headlong into the carnage.

Doctor Who: Season 2/15/41, Episode 2 – Lux

“And remember, whatever you do – don’t make me laugh!”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

I must admit, when the “Next Week…” at the end of the previous ep showed what appeared to be a homicidal cartoon character, I wasn’t optimistic about this one. I assumed it would be one of those gaudy, kid-oriented ones Russell T Davies seems to prefer at the moment, all bright colours and no depth. Instead, I was very pleasantly surprised by one of the most interesting, experimental Doctor Who episodes the show has produced since its 2005 revival.

The Last of Us: Season 2, Episode 1 – Future Days

“This is where we live. And what’s that?”
“The fence!”
“And what’s inside?”
“People!”
“And what’s outside?”
“Monsters!”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

It’s a typically slow-burn start for the sophomore season of video game adaptation The Last of Us, a show whose first season I very much enjoyed despite never having played any of the games. As before, the most obvious comparison is to the seemingly never-ending The Walking Dead, and as before, The Last of Us is a far more thoughtful show. Both have very strong characterisation, but while TWD’s season openers typically included a spectacular horde of zombies, this dispensed with spectacle to build on the characters and relationships that were so strong last time.

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!