A Pleasant Weekend

I don't often blog about how I spend my time, but I have had a most enjoyable weekend, with some of my most beautiful friends.

Thursday was spent aimlessly drifting around Brighton with one of my closest confidantes. A beautifully sunny day, we were planning on taking in a film but it was just too gorgeous. So instead, it was lunch on the seafront with live music, ice creams under the overhang and noodles in our favourite packed Chinese restaurant. Just wandering and chatting and happily achieving nothing.

On Friday evening, I went to see The Grand Budapest Hotel. An absolutely gorgeous film. It's Wes Anderson's latest, and had been on my radar for a while, but was subsumed by all the comicbook movies that are being released these days. Thankfully, it was lady's choice, and she's clearly more discerning than I am. As well as being really quite beautiful, with some stunning cinematography, it's probably the funniest film I've seen in years. Some of the funniest moments are very subtle, just the tiniest glance or the composition of a shot being enough to make me crease up. Other times, it was the sheer joy of Ralph Fiennes swearing his tits off as Gustave, the hotel's concierge. He has a wonderfully unlikely pairing with Zero Moustafa, played by Tony Revolori, only eighteen and definitely one to watch. Add to that performances from an unrecognisable Tilda Swinton, a terrifying Willem Defoe, a captivating Saoirse Ronan and many others, including some wonderful cameos, and you have a perfect way to spend a hundred minutes (not that it felt that long at all - it really flew by). Just gorgeous.

Saturday was spent with family and friends, including my best's sprogs. Three tiny blonde hooligans, who have developed a penchant for putting their fingers in my ears as hard as they can. I am not known as Dan in that house, only as Hatman (really, the younger two don't even know I have another name). After watching The Lion King (still wonderful, and only slightly spoilt by the alleged grown-ups reciting all the best lines), I introduced the sprogs to The Real Ghostbusters, which went down a treat, although Wedge, the middle one, is the biggest pansy ever and was scared. Even though I specifically chose the least scary one on the disc ('Killerwatt,' for those who may wonder). Also, really good chilli.

Sunday was spent in Brighton again, at and around the Twisted Market, the bizarre bazaar and fetish fair that appears every so often at the Latest Music Bar. And an eye-opening experience it was. I caught up with some very good friends, made some new ones, met a vampire and a man who was a dog (or a dog who was a man?) had a really cracking bacon roll and managed to resist buying a lot of tempting things. I steadfastly refused to take part in the human snail racing - I was wearing my best togs and was not going to get them oily - and missed the kinky cabaret because I had to get back due to moderate to severe man flu. Still, it was a highly enjoyable event.

This coming week promises to be distinctly less enjoyable.

(A wonderful few days courtesy of Sophie, Jonesy, Shelly, Rosie and Jasmine. Thanks for a lovely time girls xxx)

REVIEW: The Amazing Spider-Man 2

REVIEW AFTER THE BREAK - SPOILER HEAVY!

CAPTAIN'S BLOG: TOS 2.9 - 2.10

2.09) Metamorphosis

or

Captain Kirk vs. Zephram Cochrane

The Mission: Get Federation commissioner Nancy Hedford to Epsilon Canarais 3 to prevent a war.

Planets visited: An iron-nickel planetoid in the Gamma Canaris region, rocky and with a purple sky. It is home to only the Companion and her human lodger, Zefram Cochrane.

Stellar Cartography: The region includes an asteroid field containing more than seven thousand bodies, 30 % of which have atmospheres of classes H to M.

Alien life forms: The Companion – an electrical life form, composed mostly of ionised hydrogen. It's a vague, cloudy blob, and looks a bit like the transporter effect. The Companion is female, although there is no evidence of the existence of any other members of its species. The Companion is inextricably linked to its planetoid, able to travel into space at warp speed but unable to leave permanently. She's been keeping Cochrane alive for decades, and has fallen in love with him. In the end, she merges with the dying Hedford, saving her life and giving Cochrane a human companion.

Captain James T: He's explicitly a soldier, but also a diplomat. He's a good deal more patient with Commissioner Hedford than we've seen him with previous bureaucrats, even though she's even more obnoxious than anyone we've met in her profession on the series. He's troubled by, but perfectly willing, to attack the Companion if it means he can get his people off the planet. He promises to keep Cochrane's location and identity secret.

Green-Blooded Hobgoblin: Supposedly doesn't understand love, but has observed it in other life forms. He's the one who works out the Companion's nature, and also devises ways to both attack it and communicate with it.

The Real McCoy: His bedside manner is the best we've ever seen it, perhaps because he knwos that, without getting back to the Enterprise, he has no way of curing Hedford of her terminal case of Sakura's disease. He's the first to realise that the Companion is in love with Cochrane.

Warp Pioneer: Zefram Cochrane, described as Cochrane of Alpha Centauri, invented warp drive around two hundred years ago. 150 years ago, aged eighty-seven, he decided he wanted to die in space. He flew towards the unexplored regions, where he was rescued by the Companion, who rejuvenated him. He's now bored out of his brain, and the Companion brings Kirk's shuttlecraft down so he has someone to play with. He knows what Vulcans are, but isn't all that comfortable with aliens, freaking out when he learns the Companion is in love with him.

Future Treknology: The universal translator works by analysing brainwave patterns. Certain concepts are universal to all intelligent life, and the UT compares the frequencies of the brainwaves associated with these to facilitate communication. Spock is able to adapt the shuttle's UT in order to communicate with the Companion. It gives her a female voice; supposedly, the concepts of male and female are also universal concepts, which is heteronormative crap.

The Verdict: Terribly dull. Glenn Corbett gives an incredibly wooden performance as Cochrane, a character who would be totally forgettable if it wasn't for his place in Star Trek's fictional history. Hedford is the most disagreeable of the series' many disagreeable officials. It's all incredibly heteronormative. This isn't suprising – it's a sixties US programme, we were never going to get much in the way of gender exploration – but it makes the whole thing really very trite and irrelevant.

Nine villains who should appear in new Doctor Who

The Toymaker:


A lot of fans love The Celestial Toymaker, for some reason. I'm not really sure why. It's dull, ill thought out, and horribly racist. Still, the Toymaker himself is a good concept, one that is ripe for an update and a rethink. You'd need to scratch out all that racist orientalist stuff - just the Toymaker, no 'Celestial' appenditure. 'Celestial' is a lovely word, meaning 'cosmic' or 'of the stars,' but it is also an old-fashioned term for the Chinese. Given that the original Toymaker was played by Michael Gough dressed as a Mandarin in an archaic Chinese parlour, making an 'inscrutable Asian' sort of face, I don't think we can give the producers of this story the benefit of the doubt. And that's before they started throwing the N-word around, which wasn't acceptable for children's television even in 1966.


Take the character back to basics: a powerful alien being that creates living toys and sets monstrous games for its victims. Strip away all the questionable 'Celestial' stuff, and you've a villain for a fun, creepy episode with a hint of sixties Batman to it.


The Meddling Monk:

The first adversary we ever met from the Doctor's own people, the Monk was fabulous fun, a mischievous time traveller who tinkered with history for the joy of it. Played by Carry On... star Peter Butterworth, he went up against the first Doctor twice, and had a run-in with the Daleks. A rather more dangerous version of the Monk since went up against the eighth Doctor, now played by former Goodie Graeme Garden. Cheeky and capricious, the Monk has set his sights on perfecting history, ironing out the errors and remaking it.


I'd not be at all surprised to see certain Time Lords escape from the Gallifreyan exile and return to the universe at large, now that the Doctor is on a quest to rediscover his homeworld. While we're bound to see the Master again at some point, a new incarnation of the Monk would fit in nicely with the more mutable version of history that we see in the series now. I could see someone like Stephen Fry playing him (after all, he's in everything else).


The Draconians:

Now that the Zygons have finally reappeared, the Draconians are the fans' favourite one-off monster. Even in 1973 it was a brilliant make-up job, so imagine how good they could look now. A civilisation of noble reptilian warriors, they're rather like the reinvented Klingons, but better, and fifteen years before The Next Generation. The series has taken a fairer hand with alien cultures lately, with the Silurians and Ice Warriors reintroduced as complex peoples with as much variation as mankind. We even have a nice Sontaran. The Draconians could take their place as a broad civilisation out in the stars.
race.


The Rutans:


The Sontarans were the fourth big baddie to come back, following on predictably after the Daleks, the Cybermen and the Master. Since then, they've become part of the background of the series, called on whenever some extra alien heavies are needed. We're well overdue a proper Sontaran story, and one thing we haven't seen on TV, in the whole history of the series, is the conflict between the Sontarans and their mortal enemies, the Rutan Host. The two species have been at war for ten thousand years, and we've never seen them on screen together, unless you count the Adventure Games. It's about time.


The Krynoid:

We love us a bit of body horror. The original series got away with some shocking stuff, at least until Mary Whitehouse got her way. The Krynoid could work fantastically again today; horrific plant life that infects a human host, slowly transforming him into a shambling mound of vegetable matter. In the 1976 serial The Seeds of Doom, Tom Baker put in an intense performance that totally sold the threat to the Earth when the Krynoid landed. Imagine Capaldi in the same role? Alternative extraterrestrial infections such as the Wirrn would do just as well.


The Eight Legs:


The giant spiders of Metebelis III ended the third Doctor, and returned to face the eighth on radio, thirty-odd years later. Russell the Davies made several plans with his co-writers to bring back the Eight Legs in an invasion of Earth in The Sarah Jane Adventures. However, this never came to pass, the writers unable to square the spiders' defeat at the hands of Sarah Jane with their besting of the Doctor back in 1974. The Eight Legs were not the best realised of props, although they were more effective than many fans suggest, but imagine how brilliant they could look today. The twelfth Doctor facing Shelob, two eyes staring down eight, would be a sight to see.




The Chelonians:


Gareth Roberts created these beasties for his novel The Highest Science, and they became recurring foes for the seventh Doctor in the New Adventures. At once stage, Roberts and Davies were going to use them in Planet of the Dead, a story very vaguely based on the aforementioned novel. It's about time we saw them on screen. Giant, green, hermaphroditic, cyborg tortoises – what's not to love?


The Eminence:


The Eminence is a being created by Matt Fitton for the Big Finish audio plays, and is perhaps the perfect audio villain. Nothing more than a voice – the voice of David Sibley, in fact – the Eminence is a powerful intelligence from the edge of the universe, determined to conquer all of space and time. The sixth and eighth Doctors have already faced it, with the Doctor's first encounter, in his fourth incarnation, upcoming. The Eminence sends itself out in gaseous form, inhabiting the bodies of human slaves and turning them into his Infinite Warriors. It's rather like a more effective version of the Great Intelligence, and could make a formidable threat. And it wouldn't cost much, saving money after all the spending on giant spiders and Rutan shapeshifters.


Cardinal Richelieu:

Doctor Who has a long tradition of having the Doctor meet individuals who have a surprising resemblance to himself. William Hartnell played the Abbot of Amboise, Patrick Troughton faced himself as both the Doctor and the dictator Salamander, and Colin Baker got to shoot his predecessor Peter Davison, as the Gallifreyan guard Maxil. Twelfth Doctor Peter Capaldi has already appeared twice in the franchise, as the Pompeiian Caecilius and Frobisher in Torchwood. Supposedly, some kind of explanation for this repetition of forms is coming once Capaldi takes over as the Doctor.


With this in mind, and given the success of the BBC's new series The Musketeers, howsabout a crossover? Capaldi is unable to reprise his role as the Cardinal Richelieu due to his commitments to Doctor Who, but given a crossover production, what's to stop the twelfth Doctor meet his lookalike in 16^th century France?

Iris Wildthyme of Mars - coming soon!

Author and editor Philip Purser-Hallard has now posted the full line-up for Obverse Books' next anthology, Iris Wildthyme of Mars, at his blog, Peculiar Times.

The stories, collected in pseudo-chronological order (from classical philosophical heavens to postmodern soft science fiction) are:

'Wandering Stars' - Ian Potter
'Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Bad Weekend' - Daniel Tessier
'Iris: Chess-Mistress of Mars' - Simon Bucher-Jones
'Death on the Euphrates' - Selina Lock
'And a Dog to Walk' - Dale Smith
'Talking with Spores' - Juliet Kemp
'Doomed' - Richard Wright
'The Last Martian' - Rachel Churcher
'Lilac Mars' - Mark Clapham and Lance Parkin (sequel to the New Adventure 'Beige Planet Mars')
'City of Dust' - Aditya Bidikar
'The Calamari-Men of Mare Cimmerium' - Blair Bidmead
'Green Mars Blues' - Philip Purser-Hallard

Yes, that's my name right there. My story, being a sequel to an early planetary romance, comes second in the evolving scheme of Martian fiction. I'm in incredibly esteemed company here, alongside some of my favourite and most respected authors. Nerve-wracking, but exciting, in equal measure.

Iris Wildthyme of Mars should be available in print and e-book formats from Obverse Books in the summer. Pre-orders should be available soon.

LINKS

Just reblogging some links to articles. Required reading, I feel, for the male geek contingent. Time to buck our ideas up.

Fake Geek Guys

Doctor Who and the Women

Some books of note

In and amongst the Doctor Who and Star Trek and H.G. Wells I've been reading so far this year, there are some other books that have made an impression on me. As well as the ones described below, I've particularly enjoyed Unnatural Creatures, a collection of monster stories edited by Neil Gaiman; the third volume of Saga, still the best comic out there right now; and Paul Magrs's gorgeous novel Could It Be Magic? 

I conclude several things from my recent reading. Firstly, I really do read a hell of a lot of Doctor Who related stuff. Secondly, I am still mostly reading books written by men, and need to read more written by women. Maybe I should spend six months only reading stuff by female authors. Thirdly, I should probably spend more time with non-fiction.

Junk by Melvin Burgess, 1996


Recommended to me by my good friend Naomi. Quite why I'd never picked up a Melvin Burgess book before now is beyond me; I'd heard great things about him, but never read his work. Junk (called Smack in the USA) is a very adult children's book, telling the story of two teens who run away from home, and slowly descend into heroin addiction and its related joys and horrors. It's written in an easy style, but harsh in its truths, and doesn't flinch in showing the junkie lifestyle in honesty – both its attractions and its consequences. It's not a story where anyone really comes off well; everyone has their selfish reasons for doing what they do.


Adventures With the Wife in Space by Neil Perryman, 2013


An utterly charming account of the life and love of Neil and Sue Perryman, and their monumental quest to watch all of Doctor Who together, as long as their marriage could stand it. Neil is the sort of obsessed Doctor Who geek I can easily relate to, who has achieved such magnificent feats as planting a Cyberman at the peak of Kilimanjaro. Sue was never a fan, she didn't like Jon Pertwee because he looked like her mum, and she was more interested in carpentry than production styles. Who better to find new things to say about the series than Sue, who had no fan preconceptions? She calls the third Doctor a cunt and the first Doctor a “total knob.” It's a joyous read, funny and sweet, and now I have to go and read the whole blog from start to finish. And, like most men following it, I've developed a bit of a crush on Sue.


The Doctor and the Eye Doctor by Aboud Dandachi, 2014


A very different account of Doctor Who, this one. Aboud Dandachi is one of the many Syrians displaced by the civil war, and lived through some of the worst events of its first years, sneaking reports to the BBC. During the time before he finally fled to Turkey, he discovered Doctor Who, and his intermittent downloads of the latest series gave him a comforting distraction from the horrors around him. Comparing the Doctor's approach to that of the murderous dictator and incompetent Bashar al-Assad is a strange concept, but works surprisingly well. The Doctor and the Eye Doctor takes a look at life, death and warfare that is eye-opening and sobering, yet good-humoured.


The Railway Man by Eric Lomax, 1995


Eric Lomax grew up with a love of trains. My own obsessions are self-evident, so I can understand a man with a desperate need to understand engineering specifications and line layouts. During WWII, Lomax was stationed in Singapore during its capture by the Japanese, and became a prisoner of war. He was part of the brutal slave labour team that was forced to build rail links between Bangkok and Rangoon. This was not the worst of it, though, and he was later imprisoned for crimes against Japan and interred in a truly appalling prison. The treatment of these prisoners by the Japanese was horrific, and enough to break any man's spirit. Lomax, however, was able, with great difficulty and support, to move beyond his experiences, and even came to befriend and forgive his former interrogator. It's a very upsetting read, powerful in spite of the plain prose, and quite humbling. Having been to Kanchanaburi, the location of the POW camp where Lomax was first imprisoned, and seen the River Kwai Bridge, and the graveyards there, made reading the first-hand experiences of one of the labourers all the more powerful.



One final conclusion: perhaps the best way to be happy with oneself is to be serious about hte silly things, and silly about the serious things. Spend less time dwelling on the failures and sufferings of our past, and more time on train timetables and episode guides. We all need something to obsess about.

Robert Rankin's ridiculous illustrated book, Alice on Mars, is being adapted into a film!

Bestselling writer of far-fetched fiction Robert Rankin, author of the Brentford Trilogy, Armageddon: The Musical and The Toyminator, among others, has joined forces with producer/director Martin Gooch, director of the award-winning films Search for Simon and After Death and contributor to such productions as Judge Dredd and The Muppets.

The team have launched an Indiegogo fundraiser with tons of perks to help finance this movie. They've also created a promo video to give a flavour of the production and introduce the cast. Check it out.

Star Trek: Axanar

I've just become aware of a very interesting fan production entitled Star Trek: Axanar, which is currently seeking funding through Kickstarter. Axanar tells the story of the Battle of Axanar, the pivotal engagement that saved the Federation. It takes place in 2245, the year of the launch of the USS Enterprise under Robert April, ninety years after the series Enterprise and twenty years before the original series. Garth of Izar, the legendary hero of Axanar who appeared in reduced circumstances in the episode 'Whom Gods Destroy' is the primary character, but several other new and established characters are involved too.

http://startrekaxanar.com/ has all the details. The test footage shows some really remarkable effects. Filming should have just begun, but the production is still seeking funding. It will be preceded by a documentary-styled 'Prelude to Axanar' which will set out the background of the conflict. There's an impressive cast that boasts some familiar faces. If all goes well, the film should be out by the end of year. I'm looking forward to this one.

HAMMERAMA: The Reptile (1966)

Hmmm, The Reptile... I'd expected good things from this one. It's supposedly a bit of a fan favourite. To be honest though, it was a little boring. By 1966, Hammer already had the “two strangers come to an isolated village” format down pat, but even so, this feels pretty formulaic and takes an age to get going. The Edwardian setting doesn't really add anything; this could take place at pretty much anytime with little change to the story. A great deal of the story takes place in the daytime, which is eminently sensible from a filming and logistics point of view but does rob the film of atmosphere. This is crying out to be filmed at night! The best scene is undoubtedly where the protagonist, Spalding (Ray Barrett) and his publican ally Bailey (Tom Ripper) exhume Spalding's brother from the cemetery in the middle of the night and the pissing rain. It's creepy as hell, with the sort of atmospherics that the bulk of the movie lacks.


The film only really gets going once Private Frazer – I mean, John Laurie – turns up at Mad Peter, an excitable vagrant, but they kill off this most enjoyable character quite early on. Jennifer Daniel is pretty good as Mrs Spalding, a more proactive heroine than most films of this genre tend to have, although she inevitably needs rescuing in the climactic scenes. The misguided antagonist, Dr. Franklyn – given great presence by Noel William – is a treat. Sinister at all times, he completely loses his shit with his daughter in one disturbing scene, leading Spalding to protest in the most English way possible. “I know it's not my place to interfere, but -” He's pretty useless for most of the film, even if he does man up when the Reptile bites him. Bailey from the pub is the real hero.


The Reptile itself is a great concept, but doesn't come off too well on screen. It's gimmick – a bite that injects a necrotic venom – is brilliant. The victims of the “Black Death” - more of a bluey-green death, really – die in a truly horrible fashion, their flesh putrefying as they foam at the mouth and collapse. Once we see the Reptile in all its glory though, it's disappointing. I realise the monster is an iconic Hammer image, but it's a frankly terrible make-up job, poorly designed and clearly impossible to see out of.



Jacqueline Pearce is wonderful as Anna, Dr. Franklyn's cursed daughter. She's sexual and innocent at the same time, terrified of her father yet doting on him, with an undercurrent of inappropriate attraction between them. Marne Maitland has little to do as her Malay keeper – he mostly just stands around, looking shifty and foreign. Pearce is excellent as Anna, but clearly suffering under the Reptile make-up once her character transforms. It's a shame that her experience under the make-up was so bad that it put her off this sort of role permanently.