WHO REVIEW: 2013-8: The Name of the Doctor

A bit of a late one this week. I’ve been busy and ill, which do not make for a good combination. What’s more, several of my friends still haven’t caught up with the episodes (you know who you are). I’ve also been taking the time to gather some opinions of this finale episode, and it’s certainly generated some discussion. Altogether, this half-season has been extremely divisive; almost every episode has polarised opinion. While several episodes have, for me, been rather below par, others have impressed me greatly. This is true for most of the fans, it seems; however, what no one seems to agree on is which episodes are the winners and which are the duffs. The only episode that seems to have come through mostly positively is Hide, without anyone taking a particularly vocal stance against it (that I’ve read, at any rate). Season finales always generate some discussion, of course, and with so much riding on it, it’s unsurprising that The Name of the Doctor has generated so much discourse. Pleasantly, most of this has been positive, with fans taking exception at certain elements but enjoying the whole.

One thing The Name of the Doctor won’t do is win over Moffat’s haters. It showcases many of the storytelling flaws that have become crept in during his time as showrunner. The long-running plot threads with unsatisfying conclusions; the inconsistent use of time travel as a sort of magic “get out of jail free” card; the fetishism of the Doctor as the central figure of the narrative. The “Moffat must go!” brigade won’t be swayed by this episode. I made the mistake of checking back on Gallifrey Base to see the opinions of the people who post there, and the incoherent screaming vitriol has made me give up on that forum for good. Of course, we all, as fans, take this show too seriously, when it is most decidedly not a serious show. However, even those fans who have felt that this latest run has been a drop in quality mostly came away from the finale with a huge grin on their faces, looking forward to the anniversary special in six months’ time.

Now, I do wonder how “normal” people took this episode. Inevitably, discussion online is limited to fans, who will view an episode so steeped in the series’ lore in a different way than the majority of the audience. The more casual fans – those of my friends and family who love the show, but don’t take it apart for discussion after every broadcast – seemed to enjoy it. My flatmate certainly did, raising many of the same points and asking the same questions as the Whoheads, and loving the retro flashbacks, despite having not seen more than a handful of classic serials. (I’m sure it was my incessant fangirlish squeeling that really made the episode for her though.) But how would an occasional viewer of Doctor Who take this episode, which was hung up not only on the series’ distant past but the events of the previous dozen or so episodes?

All I can do is view it as a fan, and, as a fan, I loved it. From that opening shot on “Gallifrey... a very long time ago…” to that blinding cliffhanger. Really, The Name of the Doctor was an extended prelude to the upcoming anniversary special, existing merely to bridge the gap between the ongoing series (and the Clara mystery) and the big birthday knees-up. There was little in the way of actual event for much of the episode, with almost all of the dialogue being exposition and explanation. Yet, if there’s one thing Moffat can do with style, it’s exposition, somehow made entertaining beyond its normal means. Take the “conference call,” a fun setup which sees our contemporary companion meet up with the recurring team of Victorian oddities, the Paternoster gang, in a subconscious dreamspace. It’s a great way of bringing the characters together to chat about the Doctor, without actually involving him, setting up the principle purpose of the episode in an entertaining way. It’s all explained away with a handwave – “Time travel has always been possible in dreams” – the sort of lyrical throwaway line we’d expect more from a Gaiman episode. While the Great Intelligence (hereafter GI, for laziness) may demand less poetry from the Doctor, a little poetry helps make absurd contrivances more palatable.

While the continual recurrence of the Paternoster gang and the nanny-ish living setup for Clara makes me wonder why Moffat didn’t stick with Victorian Clara and make the 1890s the base era for this run of the show, it’s great, as always, to have the Victorian trio back. They’ve settled into their roles nicely by now, enough that a little more fun can be had with them. As always, it’s Strax who’s the greatest delight. He only really has two jokes – not recognising genders and a desperate need to become violent – but they keep being funny, so who cares. It’s also nice to see he’s found an outlet for his violent tendencies at last, with Moffat poking fun at his native Scotland (as a Paisley man, he would have grown up just outside Glasgow proper). As things spiral out of control, we see things take a turn for the worse for our favourite semi-regs; Strax loses his civilised behaviour, Jenny is murdered, and Vastra loses all semblance of leadership. It’s only Jenny’s continued death/resurrection cycle that blunts the impact of these scenes.

Of course, there’s a fifth character who joins Clara and the gang for the conference call. I wasn’t too keen to have River back, thinking that there was little left to be done with the character. However, by setting this appearance after her death in the Library (her first appearance in the series, in fact) Moffat let’s us see a different side to the character. This is a more melancholy River, still with a touch of her old facetious charm but predominantly a lonely character. She’s a ghost, whatever pseudo-scientific explanation we have for her presence. While at times, perhaps, Alex Kingston seems a trifle bored with the more subdued version of her character, she comes into her own once there’s some real interaction with the Doctor.

Ah, yes. The Doctor. After a run of episodes in which he’s had few chances to be anything other than zany and quirky, Matt Smith finally gets the chance to get his teeth into some genuine meaty acting. Not only is this post-Library for River, it is seemingly after their final meeting from the Doctor’s point of view, meaning that finally, the two characters are meeting on something of equal terms. Smith portrays tangible grief throughout the episode, from the moment he learns that he must visit his own grave (a fantastic, powerful scene between just him and Coleman), to his emotional goodbye to River. For once, there’s a genuine sense of love between the two of them. There’s also no shillishallying on the Doctor’s part about their relationship; after a moment trying to pass River off as an old friend, he gives up, accepting Clara’s description of her as an ex and then confirming that she was his wife. The inescapable feeling is that Smith’s Doctor is growing up.

When it comes down to Clara, the impossible girl, and the ongoing mysteries at the heart of the series, this episode delivers well in some quarters, less so in others. The final revelation that Clara has been scattered through the Doctor’s timeline in order to save him (“born to save the Doctor,” just as River was born to kill him) is a brilliantly effective way of wrapping up this thread. She chooses to go into the Doctor’s timeline to save him. There’s a sense of free will against the universe, even with the predestination that has brought Clara to this point. Events earlier in the decaying TARDIS, with Clara’s memories being freed up, also rather acquits the troublesome reset-button ending of Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS. In fact, the entire run is rescued somewhat by this episode, making it feel that it mattered in a way that was previously missing. Hopefully now that the mystery of her life has been dealt with, Clara will be allowed to develop some real personality in the next series. With both Smith and Coleman signed up for 2014, and knowing what they’re both capable of given the right material, there’s plenty of hope for the future.

Flesh and Blood

This was my entry for the 2013 World Nomads travel writing scholarship contest. I made the shortlist - twenty-five people out of 1150. Would have preferred to win and get the trip to Beijing of course, but still, I'm pretty damned pleased at that. 

It's well worth reading the winning entry (he also wrote about the Maasai) and the other shortlisters. Here's my entry though, under the topic heading "Understanding a Culture Through Its Food." And yes, it's completely true - this was part of a three-week stay in Tanzania in 2006.

The blood wasn’t the problem. I was prepared for the blood.

We’d spent a day and half in the company of the Maasai. Most of the time had involved walking tremendous distances, embarrassing our poor white selves as we struggled in the heat of the dry season. That said, there had been a brief wet spell the previous weekend, for which we had been thanked. Clearly, being British, it was we who had brought the rains to Tanzania.

I’d expected blood. That the Maasai drank goat’s blood was common knowledge, and I was ready for it. Indeed, I was looking forward to it, eager to taste something well outside my comfort zone. Never again would a rare steak be seen as a mark of manliness – I would forever be able to counter it with my guzzling of goat’s blood. It would demand respect, a visceral experience of tribal life.

The evening drew in and we gathered round, as a group of warriors began preparations for the slaughter. The goat was killed by the slow but reasonably humane method of suffocation, although I wonder if this was a sop for our delicate western eyes. All the while, the tallest of the warriors sharpened his knife. There was an almost tangible sense of time bearing down on the procedure, an ancient historical rite that had been performed again and again in this very spot, for thousands of years. The effect was, admittedly, somewhat spoiled when the knife-wielding Maasai had to pause to answer his mobile phone. “No, I can’t talk, I’m slaughtering a goat…”

It was the kidney that took me aback. Usually, there would have been at least one elder present for this custom, but tonight they were all otherwise engaged, and the prized kidneys were free to go to the warriors. Being one of only two men present in the tourist group, and the only one who had expressed a desire to taste the blood, I was singled out for the honour of taking a bite from the steaming kidney. I was ready for blood; the raw, gristly kidney was something else. I’m told I went rather pale.

Nonetheless, I recovered with, I feel, commendable speed, and happily scooped the rapidly clotting blood from the goat’s carcass. It’s difficult to sup still warm blood without spilling it down ones face and front.  I’d become quite close to one of the young ladies of the group during that trip. For some reason, she wasn’t so eager to kiss me that night.

WHO REVIEW: 2013-7: Nightmare in Silver

Overhyping is killing me this year. The penultimate episode of season seven/eight/7-b/33/whatever, Nightmare in Silver was bigged up ridiculously in the lead-up to its broadcast. Well, so has every episode this year, it’s part and parcel of the Doctor Who publicity engine. Even so, this time it really promised something. Neil Gaiman, fantasy author extraordinaire, vowed to make the Cybermen scary again. This was even described as the Cybermen’s equivalent of Dalek, the episode that redefined the pepperpots as unstoppable monsters to be truly feared and yet pitied. I’m not going to get into the current debate regarding how much of the final script was Gaiman’s work, as opposed to Moffatt’s. I don’t know the ins-and-outs of what happens behind the scenes at Cardiff, all I can go on is the credits on screen and the information on the official site and in the official magazine. Whoever wrote it, though, Nightmare in Silver is a drastically flawed episode, and Gaiman is the name pinned to it. I really, really don’t want to attack his work. He’s one of my favourite authors. But that just means my expectations were particularly high this week. The Doctor’s Wife was Neil Gaiman’s tour de force debut as Doctor Who author, and I guess Nightmare in Silver was his difficult second album. I fully accept that even the greatest writers can’t knock the ball out of the park with every single piece of work they write, but even so, Nightmare in Silver was a disappointment. It’s entertaining throughout, and we shouldn’t turn our noses up at that, but this is Neil Gaiman, for crying out loud. He’s better than this.

After last week’s clumsy linking scene bringing Clara’s young wards into the Doctor’s world, we knew we were getting two kids aboard the TARDIS. I’m fine with that. It’s a kids’ show. The problem is with the kids in question. Both the actors are fine, but aren’t really up to the calibre of some of the child actors we’ve had over the last couple of years, and haven’t the skill to make anything more of the material. Which would be fine if this was Gaiman’s usual grade of material. Instead we’ve got one boring young boy who doesn’t really say much, and one sulky cow who remains distinctly unimpressed by travelling through time and space because, you know, she’s a teenager and all teenagers on telly are like that.

Then you’ve got Clara, who, despite the best efforts of Jenna-Louise, still lacks much in the way of character. In fact, she seems to be rapidly losing character as the series progresses. Perhaps this will all be part of her mysterious backstory that is due to be revealed next week, in which case I shall reconsider her, but for now she’s feeling very sketched in. In this episode the Doctor installs her as commanding officer of some military idiots (who, in fact, follow her because the Emperor tells them to, but more on that later), a task she takes to with aplomb. Essentially, Clara playacts at being a soldier, spouting unconvincing commander dialogue, which might work if she had a character of her own. Instead, she’s simply an unconvincing character, for almost the whole episode. Only her reactions to the children’s assimilation seems real.

So, those soldiers. It’s a punishment platoon, a group of incompetents sent to this isolated planetoid to keep them out of trouble. Fine, if this episode were a comedy. Perhaps it was supposed to be, in an earlier draft, and the idiot soldiers are a remnant, after having had any actual humour removed. I can see no other explanation for this bunch of characterless morons. The only marginally successful character among them is Tamzin Outhwaite’s Captain, and she’s a blandly drawn cypher portrayed by a bland actress. Still, at least she’s canny enough to recognise her Emperor, and to try to deal with the Cybermen in the only sensible way: by blowing the bastards up. However, she’s shot dead whilst trying to do so, in one of the most ineptly directed sequences in recent Doctor Who.

Two actors do their utmost to redeem the episode. One is Jason Watkins, for once getting to play a pleasant character instead of a complete bastard, as Webley. Sadly, he gets little to do before he’s assimilated by the Cybermen, but nonetheless he’s very entertaining to watch. Shame we’ll never see him as the Doctor – I could really see him pulling that off. The second notable actor, and the most impressive in this episode, is Warwick Davis as Porridge, the abdicated Emperor. I confess I wasn’t expecting him to be terribly good, based on previous experience of him outside of monster costumes. I was very pleasantly surprised; Davis gives a subtle, measured and very likeable performance.

There are other niggling problems. The scenes on the Spacey Zoomer ride are cute, but look very shoddy. I realise that they’re supposed to look shoddy, what with this being a rundown park (and possibly as a cheeky wink at the old Cybermen serial The Moonbase), but viewers flicking over to that initial landing would be likely to think Doctor Who had returned to being cheap and cheerful and flicked over to ITV’s Saturday night nonsense. The imperial starship throne room is Cardiff’s Temple of Peace, again, fast becoming the most overused location on BBC drama television.

It’s the plot holes that bother the most, though. Doctor Who has almost had more plot holes than plot this year, but this episode is a particularly bad offender. The Cybermen have been extinct for a thousand years, but are so dangerous that the platoon still has some anti-Cyber technology around. Fine, got that, no problem. I just don’t understand how that millennium of Cyber inactivity fits in with everything else we hear about. Porridge talks about the Cyberwar as if he took part. OK, maybe he is a thousand years old, but a little mention of that wouldn’t go amiss. Webley has been waiting to get off Hedgewick’s World for six months, having arrived unaware that it had closed down. Yet the Cybermen have been holed up there for a thousand years, waiting for a child to arrive so that they could turn him or her into a Cyber Planner. How long has the place been closed? Did it struggle along with no under-18s arriving for ten centuries, the empty Cyberman shell sitting patiently? Did the Cybermen never think to try another planet, where children actually lived?

The Cybermen need children to act as Cyber Planners. I’ll buy that; the Daleks did it once already, so it can work. Yet, once they finally have some kids, they don’t use them, and turn the Doctor into the Planner instead. What a waste. The Cybermen as child-snatchers – that’s a horrible idea, and one with some real mileage, and it gives us a chance to use those kids effectively. As it is, it feels like something left over from an earlier draft, since there really doesn’t seem to be any need for the kids to be in the episode as it is.

It’s also a rare weak episode for Matt Smith, in his dual role as the Doctor and ‘Mr Clever’ the Cyber Planner. Turning the Doctor into a Cyberman isn’t a bad idea, but the way it’s portrayed here is woeful. While part of me balks at the terribly emotional Planner, I can forgive that; the Cybermen are forever going on about how logical they are and dismissing emotions while clearly displaying them themselves. The Doctor’s alter ego is, in fact, a rather damning indictment of the Doctor’s own character. There’s not so much difference between them; Mr Clever is the Doctor with the safeties off, with all the humanity drawn out so that there’s nothing left but the manipulative bastard we all know he really is. In practice, though, what we get is several scenes of Matt Smith arguing with himself. It works reasonably effectively in the Cyberspace of the network, but in the real world it involves an extremely over the top Smith pretending to be two people. SFX likened it to that old sketch in which the drag act sings the male and female parts of a song, with different makeup on either side. It’s not that bad, but it’s not dissimilar.

The Cybermen then. They’re what the episode is all about. The new design is very effective, not vastly different to the one they’ve been using, with some modifications, since 2006, but different enough to feel new. It’s less clunky, simultaneously less robotic and less human looking, which is a feat. The faces, harking back to the Troughton era looks, are very effective. It’s also fantastic to see them really move, sweeping through throngs of people at superspeed.  The Cybermites are a great addition to the mythology, a miniature variation on the Cybermats that crawl inside people’s bodies and convert them to the Cyber cause. A brilliant idea, nicely realised onscreen. There’s more than a hint of the Borg to these new Cybermen, of course, and that’s something a lot of people have picked up on. But why not? The Borg are the Cybermen done better anyway, so why not nick their best bits? The implants that grow across the faces of the Doctor and Webley are very Borg-ish, and the Cyber network is the collective consciousness that marked the Borg out as inhumanly enmeshed with each other back in their debut. Like the Borg, these new Cybermen can adapt rapidly to attack, ‘upgrading’ in moments. They sound unstoppable.

Unfortunately, they’re not. In spite of their superhuman speed, the three million strong Cyber army slowly stomps towards the castle like they did back in 2006, taking an age to attack the platoon. This army, so deadly that it warranted the destruction of an entire galaxy, kills what, two people? The useless squad stand up to them without much bother. While the Doctor’s plan of tricking the Cyber Planner into using all the Cybermen’s processing power to play chess is a very clever one, it does rather reduce the threat that they’ve spent all episode building up. That’s kind of inevitable, I suppose, since they can’t actually be unstoppable, but… damn it, they’re still vulnerable to gold, for crying out loud. That was crap at the in the eighties, can’t we leave it there?

 Of course, they are finally defeated by blowing up the planet. Which is fine, because it turns out the imperial throneship will turn up instantly when it is activated, and beam everyone to safety. Only Porridge didn’t activate it earlier because he doesn’t like being Emperor. Good thing only a couple of people died fighting the Cybermen, then, or he’d really have felt guilty. I’m not surprised Clara didn’t marry him. Although, after the danger he put her young friends in, I am surprised she didn’t tell the Doctor she’s see him next Tuesday.

The big problem is that this episode fails in its stated mission. It was supposed to make the Cybermen scary. Perhaps it did, for a few young viewers. But for most of us, creepy detachable body parts and all, the new Cybermen are an improvement, but still a long, long way from terrifying. Much as Nightmare in Silver was fun, but still a long, long way from quality.

Doctor Data: In Cyberspace, the Doctor teaches the Cyber Planner about regeneration, showing him his previous incarnations (no sign of John Hurt) and threatening to force a regeneration to kill the Planner and knock out his network. When speaking through the Doctor’s mouth, the Cyber Planner cycles through some regenerations, shouting “Allons-y!” in the manner of the tenth Doctor, and affecting a northern accent that, I can only assume, is Matt Smith’s attempt at impersonating Christopher Eccleston. The Cyber Planner says the Doctor’s brain has had “ten complete rejigs.”

Monster, Monster, Monster: We see three Cybermen initially, one of which is one of the Cybus Industries parallel universe models, and two of which are the Matt Smith era version that has been subtly redesigned. Gaiman is of the school of thought (as am I) that these are a hybridised version of the Cybus-men and the Telosian Cybermen. The new version, sleeping in tombs beneath the surface of Hedgewick’s World, are superior upgrades, and can now convert non-human species to Cybermen. Their network/collective consciousness, and their empire, is called the Cyberiad.

Future History: The Cyberwar was fought a thousand years prior to this episode, which is set around 250,000 years in our future. A new human empire (the Fifth?) spans several galaxies. The Tiberian spiral galaxy was destroyed to end the war (so must be no more than a thousand light years from Hedgewick’s World in order for the devastation to be visible).

Links and references: The waxworks in Webley’s museum include a Blowfish alien (from Torchwood), an Uvodni (from The Sarah Jane Adventures), several background aliens from The End of Time and The Rings of Akhaten and a puppet from The God Complex.

Best Line: “Please stand by. You will be upgraded.”

The Evolution of Feathers

Here's a great little video from ed.ted.com briefly outlining the current understanding of the evolution of feathers, from early theropods to modern birds.

TREK REVIEW: Star Trek Into Darkness (Spoiler-lite!)

Four years is a fairly long time to wait for a sequel. The 2009 movie Star Trek revived the franchise and brought it bang up to date, but the wait has been long enough to risk squandering a lot of the goodwill it generated. Star Trek Into Darkness had a hell of a lot to live up to, generating an enormous amount of hype as the publicity machine justified the lengthy development time. Perhaps Into Darkness could never live up to its promise. Certainly, while it is an exhilarating, technically brilliant film, it fails to live up to the promise of its predecessor or its own hype.

All of which is damning with faint praise. But I’m a Trekkie, I’ve invested a lot of excitement in this. (I understand that it was really, really difficult sitting next to me while I fidgeted and complained through the twenty minutes of adverts and trailers before the film started. I have waited four years, you’d think another few minutes would be easy, but no.) I think, inevitably, that being such a fan of Star Trek, I am going to be very hard to please. Yet, for all its flaws, I adored the 2009 reboot. It did everything that it had to do to bridge the old and new phases of the franchise and revive it for a new generation. It was a damned fine blockbuster movie. So I’m trying really hard to not be like the hardcore geeks who dismissed that film because the Enterprise nacelles were the wrong colour, or for equally spurious reasons.

  

The thing is, Into Darkness is clearly aimed very much at the fans, in spite of also being designed as a standalone blockbuster, palatable to ‘normal’ people. It’s a tough balancing act, and it doesn’t quite land on the right side of the homage/pastiche divide this time. But that’s as a fan. There will be people coming to this film whose only exposure to Trek is the previous movie, or who have no experience of it at all. Into Darkness copies some beats directly from its ancestors in the eighties, and new eyes won’t spot that. For me, though, there were some moments that strayed too close to ripping off the greats.

Still, I’m being too harsh here.  Into Darkness is a thrilling action movie, better than most by far, combining a breathless pace filled with constant incident with a great deal of heart and humour. This, in itself, is hard to do, making sure that a film that hangs on its, admittedly spectacular, setpieces doesn’t feel hollow. As with the previous film, Into Darkness is all about its characters, primarily the relationship between Kirk and Spock, but also their relationships with the other core cast. It follows on from its predecessor faultlessly, even answering one its niggling faults, that of Kirk being promoted to captain on such desperate and impulsive actions. In spite of the gap between film releases, the period between the events is only a matter of months, with the crew of the Enterprise still learning how to function as a team and in themselves. Kirk, in particular, is having to justify his newfound lofty position, and is having a tough time doing so.

The film begins with what should have been a routine mission, but has developed, under Kirk’s aegis, into a chaotic situation that has endangered the lives of the crew and broken the Prime Directive. That old bugbear was quite correctly left out of the previous film, but is here wheeled out as an example of Kirk’s inability to follow the rules of Starfleet. Rather than get bogged down in the sort of cod-philosophical debate that often plagued the TNG-era shows, the Prime Directive is used to contrast the conflicting attitudes of Spock and Kirk (we’re also given a simple, believable reason for why following the directive is important.) The bromance between captain and first officer is still developing, but not without some hiccups on the way.

Added to this is the substitute father figure of Rear Admiral Pike, who once again provides both a motivating and disciplinary influence on Kirk. Then there’s the difficult romantic relationship between Spock and Uhura, more believable here than in the first film in spite of having less screentime than I expected. Yet all the main characters have their moments to shine, and I feel none of the core cast would have anything to complain about regarding their time on camera. Of particular note are the performances by Bruce Greenwood as Pike, who I really could watch command his own series; Karl Urban, who livens up any scene he appears in as McCoy; and Simon Pegg as Scotty, who, while following a rather different path than others in the crew, is vital to events and gets all the best laughs.

There’s a great deal to enjoy in the setup, with more of Starfleet’s operations explored and an excursion to 23^rd century London. (While I am pleased by the British presence in this movie, and it’s great to see somewhere other than America in this trip to the future, what about other parts of the world? What’s happening in 23^rd century Riyadh?) Events lead the crew to an encounter with the Klingons, (cut from the first film), rocking a new look that is consistent with their forebears but more aggressively in your face. Although nipping from planet to planet seems ridiculously quick and easy in this version of the future, there’s also the sense that the universe is a very dangerous place.

Like the first film, Into Darkness is about terrorism. Unlike the first film, it actually takes a little time to dwell on the ethics of the war on terror, in only quite briefly. Star Trek was at its best when dealing with contemporary issues through a sci-fi settings, and it’s an approach that should be embraced today. After the attack on London, Kirk proceeds on a manhunt, pursuing the perpetrator across space with a payload of devastating weaponry. There’s something of a commentary on the USA’s use of strike forces and tactical drones against wanted individuals on foreign soil, and the inevitable international repurcussions of such actions. It’s a little lost in all the fireworks, but it’s there.

Many a movie hangs on its villain, of course, and Into Darkness is no different. There has been an exhaustive amount of speculation on the true nature of John Harrison, Benedict Cumberbatch’s super-terrorist, and inevitably, the reveal is a let-down. Not because it’s poorly done, or because the truth is ineffective, but there was never going to be a satisfying result to a four-year-long puzzle with a handful of clues. If he turned out to be Khan, it would have been a disappointment because that’s exactly what we were all expecting; however, if he turned out be someone else, no matter no impressive, it would have been a poor substitute for Khan. It’s lose-lose.

Thankfully, Cumberbatch is excellent in the role. The trailers made it look like there was just going to be a lot of intense glares and a scary voice, and though that’s all part of it, his performance is far better than that. Harrison is snidely arrogant, powerful confident and seething with barely repressed anger, tempered only by his intelligence. Cumberbatch’s performance isn’t subtle, but it is powerful, even if he is yet another British baddie in an American film. He’s certainly far more convincing and effective a villain than Eric Bana’s Nero in the previous movie.

The other two guest stars impress too. Alice Eve is a strong, intelligent, sexy Carol Marcus, who holds her own against the dominant males, although the expected romance with Kirk is barely touched upon, surely to be followed up in the next instalment. As her father, senior Admiral Alexander Marcus, Peter Weller provides a strong secondary focus for the machinations in Starfleet. He’s a hawkish, intense force of nature, with a single-minded sense of purpose.

As events unfold, and the protagonists make and break alliances, a continual wham-bam barrage of action stops the viewer from focussing on the howling plotholes. Some moments are clearly included purely for their visual impact – even Scotty remarks that hiding a starship underwater is ridiculous – while some feel little more than rejigged favourites from the preceding film. On the other hand, there is a devastating starship battle and a truly brutal fight involving none other than Spock. There are some gratuitous sexy moments too, but hey, Gene Roddenberry was keen on that kind of thing, and if he could have had Alice Eve in her pants, he would have. Michael Giachino once again provides a stirring score, and thankfully, the constraints of 3D have demanded that the bloody lens flare be reduced. There’s no arguing against the fact that Star Trek now looks and sounds better than ever.

By the end of the movie, both Kirk and Spock have developed as officers and men, their bond stronger and their understanding of one another greater. So much hangs on the performances of Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto, but not once do either disappoint. With these two in command, the Enterprise can continue to fly for many more excursions. Yet, so much in those final scenes, emotionally charged as they are, feels stale, a bad cover version. It’s here that the film steps over that line, and homage becomes pastiche, veering dangerously close to parody. (And you need to be careful, Star Trek is very easy to parody.)

Engaging on a new, five-year mission of exploration, the Enterprise needs to find something new out in the Galaxy. Star Trek needs to boldly go forward.