Beh

You know, there is a friend of mine who often links to a blog for people with disabilities, where they basically hammer everyone without a disability for being 'ableist'. Thing is, as someone with some of the conditions they talk about, I find them far more offensive than anyone else. I wonder what they'd do if I told them that.

Vote of No Consequence

It's amazing how brainwashed some people have become into believing that their vote gives them meaningful influence over the next five years of politics. If they stopped to think about it, they'd realise what a farce it was - How can writing a cross in a box on a piece of paper carry any significant meaning at all?

Similarly, people don't realise how arbitrary our voting system is. There are people - many people, most of them the same group as above - who will condemn someone who doesn't wish to vote for any of the four parties on the ballot. Yet if the Electoral Commission added a 'Protest' box to the ballot, those same people would be fine with people checking it. But whether it is present on the ballot or not is just the whim of a few people in power. It's ridiculous this notion that a protest vote when there is no official option for one is morally wrong, but that a protest vote if it was officially recognised would be completely OK. The fallacy is immediately apparent.

I am, at least, mildly relieved that people are beginning to realise the gaping flaws in First Past the Post, anyway. It's a start.

God, I hate elections.

All Possible Worlds

I always think of concepts like jars of coloured liquid. Every concept has in it a certain amount of story potential liquid. It might be the case that you have an elegantly crafted story based around a few simple premises which, for all their simplicity, afford you reams of material. Indeed, the really simple ideas are sometimes the richest. But excavating every last corner of the material might undermine the elegance and purity of concept of the story. So you revisit the concept in a later story. Here, then, is a perfectly good idea for writers to bring back good ideas. There's no rehashing, no laziness. Here is a reason predicated on getting as much interesting material into the audience's eye as possible.

Here's one of those ideas, that's really simple, but is a vast ten gallon tank of plot juice: The Holodeck. You know, from Star Trek. Concept: A room in which you can create alternate worlds in full detail. That's simple to explain, immediately grasped. And it is FULL of story concepts. You couldn't hope to cover everything it offers in a single story. There's a richness of ideas there that can only be dug into by many stories, from many angles, in many genres.

So it can't just be left to Star Trek. Here's the issue. It's a common one, I've seen it plenty of times, but here's the specific encounter that has me thinking about it right now. I just listened to the Doctor Who story 'Auld Mortality' (Review here), in which the Doctor is an author using the 'Possibility Generator' to create historical worlds for him to explore, in order to better devise his novels. It's a cracking good story, and most of the reviews have yielded to that view. And yet even the ones that are full of praise for it snark at the 'Possibility Generator' and make silly comments regarding the similarity to the Holodeck. As if it's just a stolen idea parcelled under another name.

What a stupid attitude. Auld Mortality mines a bit of the Holodeck concept plot material that hasn't - and couldn't be - explored in Trek. So such comments are ridiculous. People need to be less precious about ideas, less quick to cry rehash or plagiarism, and start engaging their critical faculties. Because maybe, far from being plagiarism or a rehash, the writer has used this concept because he's seen in it the potential to spin a yarn that's genuinely new. Maintaining that attitude only serves to inhibit the exploration of innovative ideas.

Doctor Who - Blue Forgotten Planet - Review

And so, the end. It's been, on the whole, a succesful season. It created a great deal of anticipation which would probably have been even stronger if I weren't listening after the fact. But I do think it peaked early and slowly weakened. Now I come to the final story, and it has got its flaws.

One of the great things about Patient Zero was the way that all the aspects of the plot had a bearing on each other, and I think this story really needed that coherency, but lacked it. The Blue Forgotten Planet Project strand had very little to do with Charley's departure, either plotwise or thematically. Similarly, Mila's story didn't really feed into the departure in the end. On top of that, some of the interesting aspects set up by the season just disappear. Mila, we are told, has spent so long with the Doctor she's become an ersatz-Charley, rather than the creepy stalker she was in Patient Zero. Far better it would have been to see the transformation, rather than just hear that it happened during off-screen adventures (and indeed, the change does not ring true as presented, her seeming absolution and acceptance at the end feels off as a result). Likewise, Charley's infection has been cleared up by the Viyrans, when more mileage could have been gained from that (why not have THAT be the virus the Viyrans are dealing with on Earth, for instance?).
A prime example of the disparate nature of the plot strands: the Doctor and Mila only run up against Charley and the Viyrans by sheer coincidence, rather than due to any of the various things that link them which could have provided a stronger tie.

There's also a disappointing tendency to set up all sorts of potentially interesting things and then make nothing of them. I already noted that Mila doesn't get much mileage, and there's various other examples in the plot. The humans are suffering from a condition where they regress to a mad savagery if they don't get the drugs they depend of the Viyrans for. But the specifics of the condition aren't really relevant - the degeneration into savages serves to provide a secondary threat for some action sequences, but otherwise doesn't drive the plot at all. It could have been anything really, a wasting disease, a disease that turned you into daleks (Oh, right), a disease that caused incredible pain, and it would have worked pretty much as well in the plot (except for the base siege action sequence, but that was largely ephemeral anyway). Slightly more is made of the dependency of the humans on the Viyrans, but even then it doesn't figure much. There's really rich ground for thematic exploration here; losing your mind is a horrible but morbidly fascinating concept, it could have been a major theme, but instead it's not really discussed. Likewise blind dependency on a higher power. Or the fact that the humans have lost all memory of the planet's past. Plenty of ripe ideas there. Ignoring the human situation, there's Charley and Mila - loads of questions about the nature of identity spring up, but the plot isn't concerned. Perhaps the one that bothered me the most was Charley's relationship to the Viyrans. She's been doing errands for them in between centures in cryofreeze, popped out to do their dirty work then returned to oblivion. And the Viyran's mission is not exactly palatable. Charley is complicit in five genocides. Why doesn't the story explore that at all? It's rushed past, as, similarly, is the Doctor's breaking the web of time at the end of the story. There's a hint that the Doctor is actually repairing the web from damage somehow related to Charley's time-twisting in the first place, but it's gone before you know it. There a big consequences here, with great dramatic potential, but the play does not acknowledge them.

It seems Nick Briggs didn't want to do a story that did 'issues' though, but more of an action romp. Fair play, that worked great guns in Patient Zero, and for the first half of BFP it does here, too. Unfortunately, the second half seems to require a bit too much technobabble and coincidence to dig itself out of it. (Most clonkingly, the fact that time travel just so happens to be the cure for the disease they've stumbled upon. I mean, really, couldn't it have been worked in any better at all?)

I'll quickly mention one last weakness, then I'll get on to the good stuff. The guest cast are pretty good for the most part, but the characters they're playing are not particularly interesting. They're distinct enough people - sometimes I've found supporting casts in stories like this blur together - but largely uncompelling. Part of the problem is that they're just bland. They could be anyone. This is a group of people who've lived every day with only a weak lifeline linking them to their sanity, and surrounded by exemplars of what they could so easily become. But none of this really seems to have shaped them, they're generic 'crisis survivor' types - the specifics of their situation don't come through in their actions and thoughts. They start out promisingly, though, and get some decent interplay early on which gives them a realism, but as the story progresses the disparity between their situation and their flat behaviour grows. In the second half they're mostly relegated to giving one sentence reactions to each plot point as it passes. Even a fairly significant death doesn't register much.

Still, as I said, this is mostly down to writing and direction, not performance. The acting in the play is pretty tight; nobody is letting the side down, and there are a fair few strong moments from multiple characters. What it really lacks, though, is interplay between Colin and India. As they're seperated for much of the story we don't really get to see them sparking off each other, and it feels missing. Their parting is imminent, so it feels like they should be playing off each other, but they're not, and the absence is noticeable. Colin and India are both on good form, but there is a feeling when, say, the Doctor is talking to Ellen and Ed that, no matter how good Colin is being, he'd be even better if it was a scene with Charley.

That said, I felt India was very good here. She plays Charley more muted than we are used to, somewhat less ebullient due to her new existence as a worker for the Viyrans. She comes off as knowing, a bit jaded, but still Charley - not cynical and depressed. And she contrasts it well against Mila, who's still bouncy and happy as ever. The only time it goes out the window is when the pair meet, and again this might be more down to the writing and direction. Unfortunately all the potential of the Charley-Mila scenes is reduced to the tedious 'No, *I'm* the real one' type bickering that's become very much the cliché in such stories.

A nod should also be made to Michael Maloney. The Viyrans are still misappropriating poor Fratalin's voice, so Maloney is back to play them, and he's very good. He makes them sound almost melancholic - they don't want to make any enemies, but they really do need to blow up this planet, and they're faintly sad about it.

Backing up the performances is some great sound design. It's a very rich soundscape that prevents the story ever becoming stagey. The music is superb, although sometimes it seems to swell up during moments when the drama is not similarly coming to a head. The voice modulation on the Viyrans adds to Maloney's already fantastic performance and complements it perfectly.

Ah, the Viyrans! The other real success of the story. They've lost a slight layer of mystery and creepiness in coming to the forefront, but in exchange they've gained the tinge of melancholy mentioned above. Their motivations, now we have a decent grasp of them, are very much alien and interesting to think about. This is one area of the play where the concepts are finally given some examination. They've maintained their intimidating qualities well. Perhaps because they don't gloat or show it off, it's very easy to believe the Viyrans really do possess some pretty phenomenal power. You can totally buy that they would, and do, scan every face of a planets population to locate a disease. Wisely, Briggs has still kept them a step removed from things though - they never have a feel of immediacy - so they still have plenty of mystique to trade on in a potential (and hopefully likely) return.

Finally, the send off itself. First of all: Charley tells the Doctor the truth, at last, and... We get NO reaction at all? The Doctor says nothing as she explains, and then the scene is interrupted by Ed and Ellen. This felt like a resoundingly missed moment. As for the actual departure, I don't know quite what I think of it. I suspect I'll need a relisten to really decide. I do think the understated ending was the way to go, though. It would have been easy to do something really big, but that has all the more chance to fall flat. When I saw the chapter title R101 I wondered if she was ultimately going to die on the airship after all! That would have been quite the twist, but it, or a similar grand exit, could easily have come off feeling overblown. I also like the way it's kept possible that it's actually Mila that has survived, which casts things in a much darker slant. I was hoping that the solution to the tangled timelines would be something clever than a memroy wipe, though, because that was always the obvious and rather predictable way out. My other issue is with the final words between them - I feel they should have been something more personal. As it was, they're something about Mila, who has only just recently become part of the arc, and I would have liked last words which felt like they addressed all of the pair's history. I don't know WHAT I think of the open endedness... It is left very loose.

Ultimately it's a story that feels like too many missed opportunities. It rides on a very strong and exciting build-up, and so it really needs to tie the various strands together satisfactorily, but it doesn't. Instead it adds new and unnecesary aspects which then pull the story apart and leave it feeling under explored. But it's well performed, it sounds great, the Viyrans are undeniably brilliant, and the first two parts are pretty exciting, so it's not a total wash. Provisionally I'd give it around a high 6 or low 7, but I haven't really made my mind up yet.

Doctor Who - Paper Cuts - Review

This is an enjoyable story, but a lightweight one. The sort of thing I can give a lazy replay to when going to bed, quite happily, but not one that's overly gripping or challenging. As has been noted, in really suffers for its placement; it fails to capitalise at all on the arc connecting the previous and the succeeding story. This seems like a huge mistake. Whilst I'm getting that BF wanted to make a distinct, standalone story to prevent the season feeling like one huge plot, they could have developed one with greater thematic links to what was going on. As it is we get a few interesting moments between Mila and Not-Gomori and little else. In addition, the get-out from the previous cliffhanger is fairly underwhelming, and the time explosion seems to have no greater significance beyond spreading the viruses as we already knew.

Still, let's take it on its own terms. First things first: It is a play of beautiful imagery. Paper warriors, walls that echo memories, tombs in space, chess games. There is an almost poetic quality to the setting here. The visuals in my head were as rich as any I've had with a Big Finish play. Better known for clever plotting than sensual flourishes, this was an unexpected pleasure coming from Platt.

On the other hand, the story isn't quite as thoughtful and smart as Platt is known for. It's a fairly ordinary court intrigue story for the most part, with a few unexpected turns mostly in the final part. I felt that the revelations towards the end were a little underexplained, not fully set up or resolved. It didn't really detract from the story, but there was a slight non-sequitur feel. There was a hint of a 'chess game' structure in the final part, with the Sazou figures freezing when it wasn't there turn and such. This could have been developed further. I've always been a sucker for the battle of wits in stories, and would have enjoyed it more if the Sazou game had been ongoing from part three onwards as a backdrop to events. On the whole it's an amiable, unassuming tale. Enjoyable without being standout.

As others have noted, there is a bit of overacting in the performances, most notably that of Sara Crowe, who is probably the weakest link in the story. The other performances are alright, though there is a distinct lack of subtlety. The Captain, played by John Banks, is perhaps the only one exempt from this, and he makes a fairly simple character feel quite real - the Captain is the best of the Draconian lot. The Prince is a bit shouty and loud most of the time, and also has an odd habit of beginning his scenes calmly, even if he was raging last we saw him. India Fisher is a bit underwhelming here. She puts in an OK showing, but doesn't bring anything of anything much to the script than what's already there, and does nothing with the interesting Mila-Charley set up. (Admittedly, based on the interviews, it seems like Briggs might have specifically told her to act exactly like Charley, which would probably left her feeling a bit stifled, one would imagine.) As with Patient Zero, Colin puts in a good showing, but doesn't hit his A game. He does have a few more sparkling lines than the previous tale, though.

Lastly, a good word for the sound design. Whilst it's very spartan, it is quite effectively so. The rustling of paper is the key sound effect of the play, and everything else is neccesarily muted to suit it. It works well, and the smattering of musical accompaniment is quite pleasant too.

My overall impression is that things might have worked better as a three part story. As it is the pace is very slow - an intentional choice, rather than a poorly structured story, but things may have felt tighter in three parts. This would have also opened up a one-part story in order to explore Mila-Charley a little more, perhaps having Gomori accepting his ride home to Mila's chagrin, setting up a little three-hander in which Mila shows a bit more of herself when she's alone with Gomori and not happy.

As such fancies might indicate, I am a little disappointed with what was actually delivered, but as noted, it isn't so much an inherent problem with the story that prompts such, but rather its unfortunate positioning. Taken alone it's a lighthearted bit of fluff, enjoyable and very much listenable, but largely unremarkable save for some striking visual imagery. 6/10

Doctor Who - Patient Zero - Review

So, the Doctor is finally confronting Charley about her secrets. There's no way out now! Unless, of course, she suddenly collapses from a mysterious virus. Thus begins the end for Charlotte Pollard, as the Doctor heads to the mysterious Amethyst Station to try and find a cure...

And it's really rather exciting! It definitely has a bit of a 'series finale' grandeur feel to it. It's not a wholly self-contained story, either, but part one of a mini season that looks as if it will all be one long story, in essence. Everything's scaled up, the stakes feel really high. There's a lot of edge of your seat moments.

The appearance of the daleks isn't one of them. Why, oh why, must Big Finish put them on the front cover of every release they're in? It utterly undermines the work the writer puts into their reveal if BF are going to broadcast them in advance. OK, so they sell discs. But the stories WITHOUT daleks sell well enough that surely you could avoid slapping one on the cover just for once?
The other problem with the daleks is simply that... Well... They're daleks. Again. It's only two stories since the last lot. And that one wasn't very good. Big Finish are seriously grindind them into the ground... And there's more next season, too. Dalek fatigue is setting in.
Partially because of that, it was surprising just how good the daleks are here. They're well integrated into the plot, and their story ties into Charley's departure arc. Plus they're not the lacklustre cut-out daleks that populated Enemy the other month. These are real daleks. They're ruthless, terrifying characters. A scene in which the dalek commander blackmails the Doctor is devastatingly effective.
As well as this, we have actual characters among the daleks now. The dalek commander is the epitomal dalek. Utterly relentless, single minded and destructive. The Time Controller on the other hand reinforces the idea that the daleks are actually phenomenally intelligent creatures. A calm, intellectual dalek, he monitors the web of time to maximise the daleks' devastating potential across the continuum. The story is very succesful in portraying the Time Controller as conscientious, intelligent, unwilling to kill the Doctor whilst blind to the consequences, without making him any less of a dalek. He is just as threatening, just as malevolent, but in a more sinister, more thoughtful way that contrasts the Commander.

The other hook is those mysterious Viyrans. We've known about them for a while now, and yet we really don't know anything about them at all. And we still don't! This isn't really a Viyran story, their part is fairly small and late in the game (although their presence is felt throughout). One gets the feeling that Blue Forgotten Planet will be their story. This is just a reminder, to reinforce their existence, hanging over proceedings. To remind us that something is up, and they will be along to fix it one day. And it won't be pleasant.
They're not quite so creepy here as they were in Mission of the Viyrans, but then that story was a horror, whereas this is more action orientated. They're still pretty unusual though, and they definitely come off as being intimidating foes. Quite the enigma, and still rather unsettling - The notion of having them speak only with other characters' voices is a coup. I'll be looking forward to hearing more of them.

Moving down the scale of alien-ness we have Fratalin. A memorable and well realised character from BF, he's made up of 800-odd seperate little selves which can fuse into larger ones. All of them share his voice and personality, but they're not a hive mind, so they can talk amongst themselves.
Fratalin himself(s) is on the surface quite a nice fellow. He's very calm, pleasant in demeanour, and very patient with people. He's also utterly, unshakably dedicated to his cause, which leads him to put the Doctor in some rather unpleasant situations.
Maloney plays him well, there's a real sense of rock-and-a-hard place when he's forced to do some difficult things in service to his conviction. He seems genuinely saddened and apologetic when he is forced to place Charley's wellbeing below the sanctity of his duty. He also inflects the generally calm and reserved character with a strong sense of desperation during the growing tension of part two, as the Doctor desperately tries to force him to abandon his calling. His reaction to losing some of his 'familiars' similarly does well at fleshing out another emotional side of him. It's not a masterpiece performance of great range, by any means, but a solid showing that backs up a good character concept.

The other non-regular character is Mila, and she's an odd one. As a character there's a lot of potential here: She's deranged by two very different ordeals. Sociopathic yet seemingly quite innocent. Possessed of quite phenomenal power to exact vengeance, but apparently not particularly vengeful. And later on, she begins to slide into a different personality altogether.
Jess Robinson is far from bad in the role, but I felt there was potential for more. There could have been some real depth to the character, the suggestion of counterpoint emotions underlying her surface facade. Instead we get what I am sort of inclined to call the 'easy' option. The chipper-psychopath angle isn't new, and its effectiveness is not guaranteed. Here it works alright - moreso early on, when we are less certain who Mila is - but it's not spectacular. Ultimately, Robinson overplays the cheerfulness a little too much for my taste. I thought there was some potential there to have a little bit of acid underneath the sweetness, and a coldness behind the fake warmth.

As to the regulars, they're pretty good. Have Colin and India ever been anything other than pretty good together? No, I don't think so. That said, they're not at their absolute top showing. Colin is a bit more shouty and blunt than usual, and he doesn't get any really resoundingly memorable moments. The first-part cliffhanger is great, but I thought it could have been even better if Colin had been at the very top of his game.

India's a bit of a mixed bag here. Her anxiety regarding her secret seems to have tapered off somewhat since Raincloud Man. Given that we have reached crunch time, she seems to have become a little more relaxed since the last outing, which isn't exactly fitting. She's also not so good at portraying someone suffering terribly from an illness. 'I feel terrible' she says, but she doesn't sound like she does. She groans and mumbles a bit, but it's not the voice of someone who feels like death warmed up. She just sounds like she has a headache, not some monstrous space lurgy.
She's better later, though. Given reign to act a sort of alternate take on Charley she really takes off, much as she did in the Doomwood Curse. She's quite convincing as being New-Charley rather than normal old Charley. On the other hand, when she has to flick back to being normal old Charley, she seems lacking once again. The situation she's in is pretty dire, but there's no great urgency in her performance. Certainly she has sounded more worried in other stories.

As for the plot itself, it's certainly not high minded, conceptual stuff. It's big bangs and daleks and explosions in corridors. It is very fun, though. Probably the best thing Briggs has done since Creatures of Beauty (which was high concept). Everything ties up quite nicely, which is maybe the main thing. With Charley's departure, her secret revealing, daleks and viyrans in the pot it could be quite a mess. Thankfully all the elements are very much related to one another, so there's a great feeling of coherency. And for a story which is actually mostly shouting in corridors, as someone else described it, it feels quite pacy and action packed. It certainly kicks off in the latter half, and the Viyran-Dalek battles are quite exciting.

The sound design is effective, making it easy to picture what's going on without ever throwing up the confusing wall of sound that occaisionally plagues the more action packed stories. It is perhaps a little sparse, though. Sometimes that's inkeeping - it works to set the scene of this enormous, sparse, desolate clinical facility - but it could have maybe used a bit more of an interesting soundscape. Thinking back now I can't recall anything of the incidental music work. Now, I'd rather have something unobtrusive than something jarring, of course, but the really good audios usually have a few strong, memorable cues that reinforce the action.

So, that's Patient Zero. It's a very entertaining beginning to a compelling arc, that leaves me excited to hear what's next, and indeed a little intrepid. Whilst I never found myself hugely invested in her with the Eighth Doctor, she's really grown on me with the Sixth, and her departure will probably pull a few strings.
It's also a refreshingly good dalek romp, thankfully after the so-recent Enemy, and with Plague just around the corner. An 8/10. Onwards to Paper Cuts.

Doctor Who - The Beast Below - Thoughts

Not quite as out and out fun as last week's, but then, it wasn't really a 'fun' episode.

Pacing seemed off, as if it had been heavily editted, especially at the start. Perhaps the episode originally overran quite a bit?

Ending belaboured its point rather too excessively, and there was a bit of anticlimax after Amy forced the queen to press the button.

Mostly another fine episode, though, if not super-memorable.

Liz Ten (I am amazed this wasn't a pun) wasn't the *greatest* performance we've ever had, and Moffat runs the risk of making all his female characters these spunky amazonwarrior types.

Not sold on Gillan yet. She seemed to be overdoing it and pantomiming quite a bit. Actually moreso than last episode.

Smith's performance is a really odd kettle of fish. He varies between genuine and intentional self-parody, occaisionally lapsing into this sort of massively emphasised enunciation, like the language is unfamiliar to him. He needs to watch this - push it too far and the performance will seem like Smith is contriving it. BUT, if he's careful with it, I think it works well. It's like the Doctor's words feel sort of unfamiliar to him even as he says them, and he's conscious that there's a gap between his language and his self. Plus it's counterpointed by quieter, more 'normal' moments. I've noticed that in between the 'weird' dialogue, Smith's Doctor actually has the most urbane. He uses colloquialisms and talks like any normal guy, as if he's not the Doctor at all. It's the exact opposite of the overstated weirdy performance. I think in this episode he sided a bit too much on the weirdly and could have done with a bit more of the super-normal talk. (I like this weird contradiction. It is odd because it is banal.)

Based on last week's episode, and on those threads I picked from this weeks, it's still too early days to judge this performance, because none of that stuff is heavily dramatic/emotional. Seeing how he adapts to performance to the extremes will ultimately decide how good he is. (It wasn't until we saw Tennant try to handle moments of real anger that it became evident there was a big weakness.)

But then there was (quite unexpectedly) the moment in the dungeon. The Doctor, coldly telling Amy she doesn't get to make choices with him, telling her she's going home, then losing his cool and yelling that nobody human has anything to say to him. And then the follow on, in which he says he'll have to get a new name (this moment, this line, really resounded with me - divesting himself of his name, AGAIN, he is truly disgusted with himself). For me this was a moment of more powerful pain and anger than Tennant ever managed. Now I am really hopeful for Smith's Doctor, and it won't take much more for me to be sold.

The story as a whole was patchy, with odd pacing, but quite good. Maybe a 7/10 or just short thereof. Smith's performance rates higher.

A couple of sidenotes: The design work on this series seems to have been stepped up a notch even as the CGI has stepped down. Also, I like the return to the early Hartnell style of having each story end by beginning the next.

Further thoughts: The Smilers pretty much extraneous. Just there to add a creepy visual monster to proceedings. Never really serve a purpose or gain any explanation. Probably would have worked *better* without the half-smilers. Prior to that they are just creepy-humourous alternative to the hackneyed CCTV police state imagery, with the little trick up their sleeve that they're also the enforcement. Adding the half-smiler line suddenly makes more of them than their presentation can live up to.

Also, why the 'You look Time Lord' retread? This was jarringly unneccesary. Smith seemed to have trouble making it fit in, too.

Appreciated the tying into the Ark in Space timeline.

Did I imagine it, or did they boost the bass in the themetune this week?