Spooky Season

This October and into early November I cranked up the spookiness and wrote a bunch of reviews and a little fiction to celebrate Hallowe'en and the drawing in of the winter nights.

I've submitted a new, very short story to Vocal's Foggy Waters competition. You can read "Ginny" here. I also reposted my old story "Don't Drink the Water" as part of the contest since it coincidentally fit the criteria. 

Review-wise, I've written a bunch of new pieces for Television Heaven. As well as my regular installment of The X-Files (now onto the underrated eighth season) I've got Nigel Kneale's Beasts, What We Do in the Shadows (already a little out-of-date since season three has just been released in the UK) and children's classic The Trap Door. Plus we have two vampiric 1980s Doctor Who serials, State of Decay and The Curse of Fenric.

Please go an check them out, and I hope you enjoy. Spooky season isn't over, of course, as the new Ghostbusters film is out very soon and this has led to a surge in psychokinetic activity, so look out for more 'busters stuff soon too. Plus more Buffy, Doctor Who and a little bit of Trek.

WHO REVIEW: FLUX Chapter One - The Halloween Apocalypse

Well, that was pretty good. It's hard to say how well it holds together yet, as part one of a six-part serial, the first such structure for decades. (The last time Doctor Who did a six-parter was 1979's TheArmageddon Factor, unless you count Shada's animated redos, but this is more comparable in length to the 12-part epic The Daleks' Masterplan in 1965-6.) 

To be honest, the episode was a bit messy, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. It jumped all over the place, setting up elements then dropping them to move onto something else, but that's the job of a first part. No one complained when Game of Thrones visited half a dozen different groups of characters per episode with seemingly nothing to do with each other then forgot about half of them for weeks at a time. The proof will be in the pudding, as it were, when we're six weeks in and see if it makes any sense.

"The Halloween Apocalypse" gives us a few firsts. It's the first time we've had a proper overall title for a season since the series came back (the only time other than 1986's The Trial of a Time Lord, and that didn't have episode titles). Beginning series thirteen, it's the first time the Doctor number and series number have matched (unless you're working in a continuous run of seasons since 1963, in which case its season 39, and that's three thirteens so it still seems to fit). It's the first time the series has done a Hallowe'en special, although "The Waters of Mars" certainly felt like one.

It's not as if the episode really feels particularly Halloweeny, really. Other than the reliably spooky Weeping Angels, who had a brief appearance, nothing in this episode is especially ghostly or ghoulish, but then again, it's Doctor Who, so we still have plenty of monsters. And so many monsters! Everyone's turned up, it seems, or will be soon if the trailers and rumours can be believed. Like the Ten/Thirteen team-up in games and comics, there's a temptation to be cynical here: get some popular monsters from the series' heyday back to win back a few viewers. But wasn't it ever thus? Did anyone moan when RTD revamped the Daleks, the Cybermen and the Master for his new vision of the series? Hell, in "Rose," he practically recreated elements of Spearhead from Space shot-for-shot. 

Just the same, the tacked-on Hallowe'en element isn't really any different to the arbitrary Christmassy setting of "The Husbands of River Song" or the entirely pointless Easter egg scene in "Planet of the Dead." It's a hook, nothing more. It's, frankly, a poorer hook than "the universe is ending," as the Whoniverse encounters its own Crisis event that's wiping out planets everywhere. With that in mind, it seems justified that every monster is turning up. And hey, the Sontarans are back, looking like they did back in 1973. A direct update that remakes the classic look with modern methods and realism. More importantly, they're still funny, which is an important a part of what makes the Sontarans work as the clone armies and the probic vent.

I like John Bishop, and while he's hardly the greatest actor the show's ever hired, he's hardly the worst, and he does what he needs to: play the most Liverpudlian bloke in history and be jolly nice. It's interesting we've got an actually, genuinely poor person in the TARDIS, not another essentially middle-class companion. Dan (a fine name) is a decent sort in a shitty situation doing his best to help out and keep his chin up. 

I'm disappointed that we don't get more time with Jodie and Mandip running the show, though. An all-woman team in the TARDIS has never happened, so a Thirteen-Yaz team-up would be interesting to watch. The glimpse we get though, in the unapologetically silly opening, suggests they've been doing this for a while (there's the space for Big Finish's inevitable run of twelve boxed sets) between seasons. At last, Mandip gets to do something with her character, being proactive and impressive instead of just reacting and asking questions. Jodie seems more dynamic too, and I really feel we're missing out on not keeping the smaller TARDIS team for longer. Still, I like that Dan is the damsel in distress and that the two women have to come in and rescue him. 

As for the various new aliens... Karnavista is fun. I like that he's just an ordinary bloke doing a job he's not keen on but he's going to get it done, and the Doctor just keeps hassling him. The serious daffiness of an alien dog for every human dovetails into the reveal of the Flux, the infinity wave coming for the Earth. It's intriguing that Karnavista is, or was, part of the Division, which we'd assumed to be a purely Time Lord organisation.

As for our big bad... well, it's not Davros, in spite of every fan and his aunt's assumption because of the sunken eyes. Swarm (surely that name suggests a composite creature of some sort) is a gnarly skull-faced crystalline guy, apparently imprisoned by the Division donkeys ago. What do you want to bet the Doctor helped lock him up? Are we supposed to know who he is or where he's from? The first thing I thought was Eldrad, but that seems unlikely. Is Chibnall enough of a fan of the Eighth Doctor Adventures to link the Doctor back to the crystalline skeletons of the Council of Eight? Even more unlikely, but it would be hilarious.

Swarm gets out and goes on a little drive to Scandinavia, where he kills some guy who likes chillis and reverses the disguise of a human into his mate/sister/partner-in-crime, whatever, Azure. Swarm's intimidating enough, but the big reveal that the nice lady is actually another crystalline skeleton is a bit of a pointless twist. We don't care enough about her or her husband for it to mean anything, and we don't know enough about Swarm and Azure for the reveal to make an impact. When Ruth turned into the Doctor or O. was revealed as the Master, it was a shock, because the characters had been built up enough and the reveal meant something. This is just... stuff happening.

Claire's story is more intriguing. It's a pretty straightforward update of “Blink” so far, except that we're seeing it from the Doctor's perspective instead. We've a full-on Weeping Angels episode coming, so we'll find out some more then, but right now, it was an effective little tease. Is Claire perhaps being set up as the next companion? We've also the weirdness of Dan's crush Diane being abducted by Swarm and Azure with what seems like some vengeance in mind. This all suggests something much bigger underneath what we're seeing. Everyone has secrets this season, it seems. Is Dan just being cool when he jokes he has a mate with a TARDIS bigger than the Doctor's, or is he hinting at something?

“The Halloween Apocalypse” is, essentially, a string of set pieces introducing various characters and settings. Not much to say about Vinder yet except we know he's going to be a major character. We've still got the real-life mystery of the tunnels under Liverpool's Edge Hill, the promise of Mary Seacole next week and a Sontaran invasion in the offing. So far, it's largely style without substance, but that's OK for a opening episode. It's all flavour. We just have to see if the resolution backs it up.

Ghosts R Us

 This Hallowe'en, why not take a look at my old Vocal spookfest "The Thirteen Most Terrifying Ghosts of the Ghostbusters Cartoons?" Now with more images, and correct spelling!

WHO REVIEW: A Little Help from My Friends/Alternating Current (Houser, Ingranata, Angiolini)

With the new series, Doctor Who: Flux, just a week away, it seemed a good time to review these two lovely trades from Titan Comics. The first goes by the full long-winded title of Doctor Who: A Tale of Two Time Lords - A Little Help from My Friends, and comprised the entire Thirteenth Doctor: Year Two run in the States, published in Doctor Who: Tales from the TARDIS in the UK. This was followed by Alternating Current, the first story in Doctor Who Comic as the series was renamed. This leads directly into Time Lord Victorious: Defender of the Daleks, which was supposed to be published after but ended up being published some months earlier due to various delays. But that's the COVID era for you. These things happen. One oddity that has arisen from the changes is that both these books are labelled as volume one, which is one of those silly little nothings that will annoy me every time I see them on the shelf.

Both stories are written by Jody Houser, illustrated by Roberta Ingranata and coloured by Enrica Eren Angiolini. These ladies are pretty much the DW comics dream team by now, and Houser really has the Thirteenth Doctor down to a tee. In fact, I don't think there's a writer out there who portrays her as well as Houser. Admittedly, we're dealing with comics, which are a totally different skill to TV script or prose writing, but still. 

The big draw, though, is that these stories team up the Thirteenth Doctor with the Tenth, bringing back a host of popular characters and monsters while they're at it. It's easy to be cynical about this; recent sales of Doctor Who material have been flagging a little, and Ten remains one of the most popular Doctors ever. It's a transparent attempt to get fans buying material with Thirteen in that ties into the current programme. But so what? This is not a new idea. We also have Doctor Who: Edge of Reality just out, a video game that features both Whittaker and Tennant providing voices for the Doctor. You have to wonder why they don't go the whole hog and have Tennant turn up in the TV series. (That's assuming they haven't done that anyway. We'll know for sure in no more than seven weeks.)

It's fanwank to the highest degree, but if you can't do this sort of thing in the comics, where can you do it? The comics can legitimately use any character from any era in any setting, unbridled by budgetary constraints (excepting certain copyrights) and without having to worry about actors growing old, disinterested, or dead. Plus, Ten and Thirteen work well together. Whittaker's performance is clearly influenced by Tennant's, and they both have that exuberant energy hiding loss and loneliness, but Thirteen lacks the self-absorbed moping of Ten and seems more self-aware (and, as she points out here, is older and wiser). 

A Little Help from my Friends is the better of the two, taking advantage of a specific period in Ten's life when he was stranded in one location and then dropping Thirteen and the fam on him. The TARDIS is diverted to London in 1969, when Ten and Martha had been zapped back to by the Weeping Angels in "Blink." Not only do the current team have to try to investigate why they were sent back without accidentally nobbling the Doctor's personal history, they have to contend with a cadre of Angels and, for extra fun, Autons. The pick-and-mix approach to the revived series' monsters makes for a visual party, with the Nestene Consciousness appearing much as it did in "Rose," and of course the Autons and Angels are both very visually-based monsters. They're a good fit for the medium. 

The strength of the story is in its character interactions though. The Doctor tracks down Martha while Yaz leads the rest on a mission to keep tabs on Ten. Laying low and keeping things secret doesn't last very long, and while Ten and Thirteen get on pretty well by multiple Doctors' standards, the differences in their outlooks come to the fore. Thirteen, being newly female, much more experienced and with the benefit of hindsight, is baffled by how Ten could have missed how Martha felt about him, and finds herself apologising to her friends and repeatedly cutting Ten off when he's about to go all nostalgic over adventures with Rose. 

It's a fun, pacey story, ending on an effective cliffhanger as Thirteen takes her team home by jumping forward to 2020, only to find London in ruins. This leads nicely into Alternating Current, revealing that all that crossing time streams has led to a timeline shift, with humanity being conquered centuries before as a ripple effect on the Doctor's timeline. It's probably too complex an idea to run with very often, but the TV series could play with this idea to great effect. Changing history is a hazard in Doctor Who all the time, but what's rarely considered is the cumulative effect of the Doctor's actions on each other as they constantly cross their own history.

Again, there's a grab-bag approach to continuity on display here, with the divergence occurring in "Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror," which in this version of reality didn't involve the Doctor at all. Result: Tesla was abducted by the Skithra, who built their technological powerbase, accidentally woke up a Sea Devil colony and teamed up with them to conquer the Earth. In this reality, Rose leads a resistance group, with Pete and Jackie Tyler both alive, well and married. The fanwank perhaps goes a bit overboard here, but you know, why not? Having Ten team up with a different version of Rose, one who's never met the Doctor before, offers some interesting interactions, but we're robbed of "our" Rose being reunited with the Doctor in a new incarnation, which would have been fun. Then again, every time we return to Rose on Pete's World it robs a little impact from that story, so perhaps this new version is best. The standout character, though, is a sympathetic Skithra Queen who allies with Thirteen to help right the timelines. It's another fun story, not quite the level of the previous one, but it works. It also leaves some interesting scope for future stories to follow up some of the characters and ends with a great hook for the next serial.

PLACEMENT: For the Thirteenth Doctor, this must be after Spyfall, since everyone is fully au fait with the idea that she used to be a man. For the Tenth Doctor, the first story takes place during "Blink," but the second story must be sometime later since he has his TARDIS back and is seemingly travelling alone. It apparently leads into Defender of the Daleks which is part of the Time Lord Victorious arc, so the best place is probably between "The Waters of Mars" and The End of Time.

TREK REVIEW: Lower Decks 2-4 & 2-5

2-4) Mugato, Gumato

The Mugato, or Mugatu, or Gumato, or whatever permutation you like, is an iconic monster from the original Trek, one of the visuals that anyone with a passing knowledge of Trek would recognise. But playing with the pronunciation of the name, and even the reversed spelling that was in the original script, that's a deep cut. There are some other lovely little asides this episode, like the two Denobulans on the planet who inflate their faces when threatened (nice to see them back at last) and even a Kzinti on the crew of the Cerritos (more of him later). It's gratifying that Lower Decks embraces all of Trek, from beginning to present.

The episode itself is good fun, giving us some retro-styled Ferengi privateers trading in Mugato, a nice team-up between Boimler and Rutherford, and a funny subplot about rumours of Mariner being a supersoldier. It's a much smuttier episode than we're used to, probably the most like Rick and Morty of all the series so far, and while that's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, I found it pretty funny, because I have a puerile sense of humour. Perhaps more successful across the board is the B-plot about Tendi trying to get Dr. T'ana to take her physical, the classic trope of physicians being the worst patients.

However, I think my favourite of the plotlines is the highly predictable but very funny thread that sees Captain Freeman taken for a chump by an alien conman called Hyde. That it's such an obvious con makes it all the funnier, and you begin to see why the Cerritos has such a rubbish reputation in Starfleet. It's a busy, exciting episode that has a little of every kind of humour, whether you like shaggy dog stories, deep level Easter eggs or alien wank jokes.

Best references this episode: Captain Freeman's collection of space tat includes the obligatory sailing ship, a samurai helmet, a baseball just like Sisko's, a model of the Cerritos and one of the Gorn.

Best line: "Those two beautiful, nerdy men are negotiating us to safety using the power of math."

2-5) An Embarrassment of Dooplers

This episode has a great guest role for Richard Kind as the Doopler Ambassador, who absolutely nails the officious, easilyoffended and tremendously insecure alien. Is it realistic that an alien life form could continually replicate with no energy source, or that a species that can't cope with any embarrassment without reproducing could form a civilisation? No. Is it funny? Hell yes. It's a wonderfully absurd set-up for an episode and really captures the sort of duff assignments the Cerritos gets handed.

The main storyline that links both Captain Freeman and her command crew and the Boimler-Mariner team is the mission to get into the exclusive party on Starbase 25, to which only the crews of the best-regarded starships get invites. It provides a brilliant glimpse into Mariner's storied and sordid past, with her ally-turned-enemy Malvus setting her up. (Fun to see a Mizarian again, and it turns out they're not all capitulating cowards as The Next Generation suggested.) It's a bustling environment with plenty of adventure and sight gags for fans, not least being the entirely unnecessary but highly fan-pleasing cameos by Captain Shelby (promoted since TNG: “The Best of Both Worlds”) and Thadiun Okona (the eponymous guest star of the terrible TNG: “The Outrageous Okona”).

There's a rather lovely ongoing thread this season of Freeman and Mariner bonding in a more natural way since they've given each other some space, and their mutual failure to get into the party, hanging out at the low-rent bar Kirk and Spock used to drink in is a triumphantly heart-warming ending. I also loved the Tendi-Rutherford storyline, bringing some follow-up to the latter's memory erasure while also reaffirming their friendship, far better than in “Strange Energies”.

Altogether, a cracking episode, one of the best this season.

Best references this episode: Of all the many little Easter eggs this week, my favourite has to be Shelby's first officer, whose magnificent, multi-eyed design is the original one for the Kelpiens on Discovery. However, there are tons of recognisable aliens on the station, the most since the trip to Tulgana 4, including Antedeans, Apergosians, Arcadians, Aurelians, Ferengi, Gorn, Lurians, Nasat and Taxors.

Other winners, if you spot them, are the many portraits in Kirk's bar, of characters including Apollo, Lt. Arex, Lt. M'Ress, Balok, Lokai, the salt vampire, the Talosians, and for some reason, Abaddon from the Voyager episode “Alice.”

Continuity query: When did Kirk and Spock actually hang out in that bar? It can't be when they were commanding on the Enterprise, since a captain and first officer of a Constitution-class ship would definitely have gotten into the exclusive party. We don't actually know when they met in canon; it's possible that Kirk joined the Enterprise and befriended Spock before he reached captain.

Best line: An Antedean fish person: “Hey, we're not people!”