Amateur

I really wanted to like Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor. All of the post-season trailers and promotional material hyped up a new, darker direction for the Doctor. The Doctor has always trend close to the dark side, an example from the modern series being Ten’s punishment of Family of Blood, but Steven Moffat teased the audience with an explicitly dark, ambiguous character. Unfortunately, Capaldi’s Doctor showed very little moral ambiguity. Sure he had a few adventures where people died and he used their death to figure out how to stop the monster of the week but that’s always been typical of the doctor’s adventures. That’s why it’s so special when the Doctor declares “Just this once, everybody lives!”

Instead of ambiguity, The Doctor just seemed a bit confused about the quality of his character. For the first few episodes, this could have been put down to the regeneration which tends to shake things up and take some time to get use to. However, having Clara reply with ‘I don’t know’ felt a bit misleading. Clara had no reason not to know, lest we forget that she was there when the Tenth and Eleventh iterations nearly assisted the War Doctor in destroying Gallifrey. Committing genocide of the Daleks and the Time Lords doesn’t really compare to maybe pushing one guy out of a glorified hot air balloon.

Perhaps the only difference between then and now is that the other Doctors’ actually came up with alternate plan to save Gallifrey at the last minute. So Clara doesn’t know if the Doctor is good or not because he just doesn’t try as hard anymore? Of course, that was at the start of the season. With season 8 now concluded, we can look back and see how it all came together tonight in an explosive finale, right? Normally, yes, but this was one of the dullest, by the number finales of recent memory. Clara had a bigger shift to the dark side the Doctor, and seemed properly unpredictable, rather than the Doctor, who just fell into dramatic situations.

Doctor Who shouldn’t need cheap tricks to engage the viewer.

The whole moral dilemma, which they pretended had been going on for the entire season but only really showed up in about four episodes, was promptly resolved in about two minutes. Seeing two people hug reminded the Doctor that he’s neither good nor bad, he’s just an idiot with a box. It is a kind of resolution but it’s one with no consequences and wastes what little dramatic tension Moffat had built. Consistent storytelling that develops over the course of a season is within Moffat’s repertoire, just look at Season 5 and the ever prominent cracks. So why has he struggled to do the same in recent seasons?

Other plot points that recurred over the course of season 8 also suffered the same lack of resolution. The Doctor’s sudden dislike of soldiers wound up having no purpose other than creating arbitrary conflict between him and Danny Pink. The Doctor spends a solid portion of Death in Heaven pow-wowing with UNIT without too much fuss. He does complain but it’s mostly about them not letting him just do his job. And Moffat knows the anti-soldier attitude is rubbish, going so far as to throw up portraits of the former companion, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart to signal his awareness of The Doctor’s past relationships with military figures.

The conflict between the Doctor and Danny did nothing for the story. The Doctor had no real reason to be suspicious of Danny because of his military background and The Doctor was not an officer, as Danny accused him of being. Danny’s military experience does provide some aid in the end, but their their predisposed dislike spawned from nothing and went nowhere. I was valuable time that could have been spent building up Clara’s relationship with Danny. Instead, we see very little of Clara and Danny alone. When Danny dies at the beginning of Dark Water, her near villainous actions lack potency because the relationship was relegated to the sidelines.

Maybe if Missy could stop making pop culture references her plan might actually succeed.

Most of what we did see of their relationship was Danny being annoyed that she would run to The Doctor in a dangerous situation. And then run into the dangerous situation. That’s not to say that Danny can’t be worried about his girlfriend but too often he would tell her what she had to do, rather than letting her make her own decision on the matter. Danny, on the whole, wasn’t very thoroughly thought through as a character. He was just a plot device, designed to give Clara something to care about when the Cybermen came to town. The only important characteristic he displayed was his military background but with the whole of UNIT at his disposal, Moffat could have plucked out anyone to do the same job.

And so we come to the finale’s villains: the aforementioned Cybermen and The Master, or Mistress, Missy for short. If it’s taken a long time to get around to them, it’s because they don’t really do much. I liked the idea of uploading people and downloading them into Cybermen, although it did remind me a little of The Great Intelligence’s plan from The Bells of Saint John. But the Cybermen aren’t even a threat really. They’re a tool. Missy is the real threat but aside from blowing up one plane, she just grandstands. And the reveal was rather lacklustre. The Missy=Mistress=The Master theory has been floating around since her name was revealed.

It’s become almost cool to criticise Moffat but what else can be done in this situation? Viewers expected more of an anti-hero Doctor but what we got was the same puns and jokes repackaged in older wrapping. Even the name of the episode was horribly uninspired considering no-one in heaven actually dies. ‘Return of the Living Cybermen’ would have been a more fitting title given the zombie theme. I don’t like to criticise anyone just for the sake of it but I know Moffat can do better. This one goes on Nick Frost’s naughty list.

P.S. If you enjoy what you read on this blog and/or my novel and would like to know more about the person behind the blog posts, you might be interested in an author interview that I recently did with thebookreview.net. It looks at my inspirations, how I deal with obstacles and what I’m working on next. You can find it at www.thebookreview.net/plagiarized-book/ Please check it out. Thanks.

Medium

Another season of Game of Thrones has come and gone. As usual fans will be talking about the finale until the next season begins. Season 4 in particular has felt more action packed than previous seasons, having stuffed the purple wedding, Tyrion’s trial by combat, the Wildling attack on the Wall and Tyrion’s exit strategy into ten episodes. Red Wedding not withstanding, season three felt lacklustre and underwhelming, a sentiment I expressed in my review of the season premiere. Thankfully, season four came across much stronger and was far more entertaining and I do believe it was because there were new, interesting characters and more events that engaged the audience.

However, if any viewer had read George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, they would have known all of the key points and shocking reveals. For some they might feel that knowing what is to come ruins the surprise and makes the series less entertaining but for my part I’ve never experienced adaptations that way. Reading about something and actually seeing it happen with actors and sets and effects are two separate experiences for me. Take, for instance, the battle between Oberyn Martell and ‘The Mountain’ Gregor Clegane. That was a special scene even in the novels and it really highlighted Oberyn’s martial skill. It was also interesting because in the novels there seems to be some debate about the advantages of armour. Both Bronn and Oberyn make use of their superior speed against armoured foes whereas Ser Jorah Mormont proves the effectiveness of armour against the Dothraki in the first A Song of Ice and Fire novel.

Mountain climbing can be such a headache.

The Mountain seems less armour-clad in the television show so Oberyn’s tactics aren’t emphasised as much. He moves around quickly and with flourishes in what might be some kind of parallel to Arya’s water dancing techniques but those are just a couple of aspects where the visual representation doesn’t quite match the reader’s imagination. And then there’s the end. You know the bit I’m talking about. The bit where Gregor Clegane confesses his crimes to Oberyn while he crushes the other man’s head. As vividly as Martin depicts that scene in A Storm of Swords, it doesn’t quite match the visceral sight of it playing out in front of you. Hearing Oberyn scream as The Mountain admits to killing and raping his sister moments before his head explodes sends a shiver up your spine in a way that the literature just doesn’t.

So it all comes down to the age old question; which is better the book or the series that it is based on? J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels came under the same scrutiny when they were adapted for screen. Some people prefer the books because the characters are given more development whereas the films are basically just setting up action pieces. Others love the films because they bring the world they had only imagined to life and they cut out a lot of unnecessary padding, such as Harry’s constant angsting. Generally it is a matter of taste and both have their pros and cons.

Personally, I prefer the books because it seems that as the longer the books get the weaker the films become because they have to hit a number of big plot points so some critical character development usually gets hurried through or brushed under the rug. That and the Ginny/Harry romance makes more sense in the books. I don’t think the pairing works either way but with the film series it is clear that the studio realised too late that Ginny was an important character outside of The Chamber of Secrets and they had to hurry to salvage something. In many ways, Harry Potter might have benefited from being made into a television series like Game of Thrones. There would have been far less pressure to fit everything from one book into a single film in that regard.

Imagine this scene with a blow torch.

Then you have a writer like Stephen King who has a tumultuous relationship with adaptations of his novels. King has stated outright that he doesn’t like Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining. Misery as a film is also strangely tamer than the novel. But King’s novels, much like Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, draw much from their main character’s mind set. Much can be understood of their world from their thoughts and introspection and that is a rather difficult thing to depict on screen. That’s not to say that The Shining or Misery aren’t good films, they are just coming from different angles. You could read one and watch the other and come to two separate and no less valid conclusions based on the content within.

As a writer it is my instinct to always say that the books are better but that’s clearly biased. I want to say that because if books aren’t worth reading if television is better then no one would read my work. Yet, I can also understand why one might choose television and film over literature. While novels utilise all the senses, TV and movies rely on one or two at most. Although, it is no longer true to say that television is a simpler distraction. The golden age of television; The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, has made it clear that television is not just for those who want a quick fix. It is emotive and potent and sometimes seeing something just makes it feel all the more real.

The truth is that the question of whether books or television and film are better will likely never be answered. It is a matter of taste more than anything. Some people can’t watch television because they get so caught up on the little details and mistakes that is annoys them. Others don’t have the time or attention to sit down and read, so they would rather watch television while they do chores. Yet so long as creativity and imagination are free those that seek either one will never be starved of entertainment.

 

Demand

Britain’s Got Talent has only been back for two weeks and already it is getting a lot of criticism for numerous reasons, such as scheduling and apparently inappropriate acts. It is all of the same obscenity that the show is criticised for year after year, and yet it continues to get high ratings that mean year after year people continue to enjoy or at the very least watch the talent show. While it might be true that ratings are lower than when the show first started or that the show may have seen better years, it was still the highest rated show on launch night. That would seem to indicate that it isn’t simply that less people are watching Britain’s Got Talent but that less people are watching television on a Saturday night overall.

The criticisms of the show appear rather baseless anyway when you really look at it. Many media outlets reported that ITV were actively attempting to compete with BBC One’s The Voice UK by moving the show forward to seven o clock in the evening despite having always been shown at eight in years prior. In this age of television on demand, I’m not sure that moving a programme earlier in the schedule should really constitute as competing. I guess there might be a certain matter of pride involved in saying that your show was watched on the television screen on the night rather than a couple of days later.

Are the BBC trying to hide away Doctor Who?

That said, the type of show generally affects who watches what when. Britain’s Got Talent is a entertainment programme that you can imagine groups of people gathering around to ridicule the hilariously bad performers and watch with awe at the genuinely talented. Given The Voice UK’s more serious approach to singing and the contest as a whole, it is harder to imagine people gathering around to do the same thing. It feels like the type of show that you would watch later when you might be alone and capable of focusing.

However, I have to say that ITV’s scheduling makes a hell of a lot more sense than BBC’s. In past years, Britain’s Got Talent hasn’t always been preceded by other entertainment programmes such as Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway. It certainly wasn’t last year. This year Ant and Dec’s show had returned and was rating well, even beating the second season premiere of The Voice UK on launch night. It makes sense that ITV would follow through with that and place Britain’s Got Talent in the exact same time slot. In that case, if someone tunes into ITV at seven o’ clock, even if it is purely out of habit, ITV will have given themselves a vital opportunity to engage the viewer and draw them in. It does seem slightly hypocritical because Simon Cowell previously stated that it was a ‘silly game’ and he preferred when reality shows didn’t overlap. That said, we don’t know how much of the decision to move the show forward was up to Cowell or whether it was ultimately made by ITV.

On the other hand, BBC’s programme organisation and scheduling has been much more sporadic. Doctor Who returned at 6.15 on Saturday 30^th of March, with The Voice UK airing directly afterwards from 7 until 8.35pm. The following week was the same, although The Voice UK ended five minutes earlier. Last Saturday, however, Doctor Who aired at 6 pm rather than 6.15 and ended at 6.45pm whereupon The Voice UK aired until 8.20 pm. Although I had read about the change, I tuned in at 6.15 pm out of habit and was one of the unfortunate viewers who missed the beginning of Cold War. Last night the schedule changed yet again. The Doctor Who episode Hide aired at 6.45pm until 7.30 pm and wasn’t immediately succeeded by The Voice UK. Instead the national lottery separated the two programmes by almost an hour, moving The Voice UK almost completely out of Britain’s Got Talent air time. If nothing else, ITV is much more consistent.

Sing for your Nan…on national television.

The BBC recently condemned the clash, suggesting that ITV wasn’t acting in the best interests of the viewer when they moved the programme forward. I guess the BBC thinks that they are acting in the viewer’s best interests by moving their programmes around constantly. Honestly, I just find it frustrating. As previously mentioned, this is the age of television on demand. Networks should have the confidence to place their shows on the schedule that best suits them with the assurance that even if a few people choose to watch a different programme it will all be made up with on-demand ratings. The Voice UK obviously got enough ratings on demand last year to warrant a second series since the programme bombed once it hit the live stages. That will be the real test for this second season and that’s really what the BBC should be focused on if they are more concerned with what the viewers want.

Conversely, ITV because they are funded differently, probably aren’t quite so concerned about criticisms and complaints that viewers have made. One such example would be that the programme is constantly admonished for allowing strippers to be shown when the show airs pre-watershed. Really, though the strippers are barely risqué, I saw part of Keri Graham’s performance and it was really quite tame. Another act, Arisxandra Libantino got a lot of flax for singing ‘One Night Only’, a song from Dreamgirls. It was called inappropriate but if anyone has seen Dreamgirls they would understand the context and, furthermore, the song was meant to demonstrate her vocal ability. It was not a declaration of her personal beliefs or actions. Some news papers called it controversial but a week that includes the Boston Marathon explosions, and the capture of dangerous suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, really puts that into perspective.

So far my favourite acts have been Attraction and MC Boy (not MC Roy, as many thought) . I particularly liked Attraction’s shadow dancing performance as I thought it was uniquely creative and powerfully emotive. It is still a little early to say if there have been any winning acts. Some are good but in this show, as with many things in life, consistency is vital. The acts not only have to perform well at the audition but will have to improve and inspire again at the live voting stage. It is a hard road but for one talented, not lucky, act it will be life changing.

Paintings

Paintings. When pressed on last night’s Jonathan Ross show on ITV, Matt Smith revealed that one word tidbit on what to expect from the upcoming season of Doctor Who. Paintings could refer to any number of events that could take place, such as Clara and the Doctor taking an art class or a vacation to an alien art gallery. He did clarify that viewers will understand the meaning behind that spoiler after they’ve seen the season. That slight explanation would suggest that perhaps paintings will play a role similar to the cracks in series five. Different paintings could appear in the background of certain scenes in each episode or one single painting could recur in two or three episodes before having a major impact on the finale. One of the most likely theories is that the paintings will be connected to Vincent Van Gogh.

It wouldn’t be the first time that The Doctor and the painter have met as they previously defeated an invisible foe in the episode Vincent and the Doctor. Reactions to that episode were mixed, with the plot and the ending receiving the most criticism. However, most people praised Tony Curran’s convincing role as the painter so it’s easy to imagine that Steven Moffat would be eager for him to return. The penultimate episode in that season, The Pandorica Opens, revealed that Van Gogh actually painted a previously unseen picture of the TARDIS exploding. The series has never explained how Van Gogh realistically came to know of the TARDIS exploding. Even time being reshaped at the end of The Big Bang doesn’t really explain how Van Gogh would have come to know of the event. It seems much more likely that the Doctor and Vincent met one more time before his passing.

Is the similarity to the Asylum of the Daleks poster intentional?

Perhaps Van Gogh actually had a whole stash of hidden paintings foretelling events that were yet to come in the Doctor’s life. Or maybe there are a number of clues already featured in the paintings that Van Gogh previously created and those paintings will appear throughout the season, subconsciously hinting at some overarching evil. It is possible also that Vincent Van Gogh has nothing to do with the paintings that Matt Smith mentioned but it seems odd that, given this chance to explore more of Van Gogh’s character and bring back Curran, they would instead go in another direction. That said, it would be interesting and fun to see the Doctor meeting Pablo Picasso or Salvador Dali.

One thing that seems certain about the paintings spoiler is that it will be unlikely to explain who Clara Oswin Oswald is and why she had appeared in two different time periods and die in both. While it’s a good bet that this won’t be like Rory’s near comical repeated deaths, the story will mostly likely be played out over the course of a couple of seasons as the Amy Pond/ River Song relationship was. From River Song’s first appearance, it took about two seasons (or half of series four, series five and half of series six to be precise) before River was revealed to be the daughter of Amy and Rory.

Moffat seems to have a fondness for these types of storylines where something is built up over a long period of time. Russell T Davis definitely foreshadowed his stories, using arc words like Bad Wolf but the scale of his build up was never quite as epic as Moffat’s. The cracks only appeared in series four but had repercussions throughout series five. The Silence of series five were forewarned of throughout series four. Moffat revels in creating large sprawling stories that cover more than one season. After the Amy/River story, it would have been refreshing to take a step away from the overarching stories for one season or at least to have a companion that wasn’t explicitly tied to it.

Last night’s episode of The Jonathan Ross Show also revealed a sneak peek of the first episode of Clara’s run as a companion, The Bells of Saint John, which concerns some kind of evil in the Wi-Fi. Here’s a video of the Matt Smith interview that includes the clip from the first episode:

The preview doesn’t show much of the who or why but what’s more interesting is the dynamic that it showed between The Doctor and Clara. In a review of The Showmen, I expressed a concern that viewers would have to go through a third introduction to Clara. As fascinating a character as she is, three introductions would be broaching the edge of redundancy. The Asylum of the Daleks demonstrated a lot of Clara’s character and The Snowmen already showed her first face to face meeting with the Doctor. Thankfully, the sneak peek alleviated some of my concern. The scene seemed to be extracted from early in the episode and it moved quickly from Clara’s awe of the TARDIS innards to a plummeting plane affected by the Wi-Fi monster. If there is any more of an introduction to Clara it will likely be relegated to the cold open but personally, I’m glad that they don’t seem to be lingering on Clara’s reintegration into the Doctor’s world.

Although Matt Smith was only able to unveil one little spoiler about the upcoming series, there’s a lot that can be extrapolated from that single word, such as Moffat sticking to a overarching story format or the possible return of Tony Curran. I was already highly anticipating the new series of Doctor Who and finally moving on from Amy and Rory but this has certainly increased my curiosity.

And now something non- Doctor Who related. A friend of mine is leading a team of eight young people to Romania to experience living in poverty and injustice. They will be out there for about ten days but even a short time as that requires money for materials, food and transport. If anyone would like to support him then please follow this link and simply donate whatever you can. There is no contribution too small. Thank you.

Farewell

Since the announcement in December 2011 that Doctor Who companions Amy Pond and Rory Williams, played by Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill respectively, would be leaving the show, there has been much anticipation of their final episode. Producer and writer Steven Moffat’s words that the exit would be ‘heartbreaking’ has only increased the speculation that the Ponds will be killed off rather than just deciding to stop travelling with the Doctor.

Such a suggestion was seemingly confirmed throughout the most recent season wherein every single episode contained rather heavy handed signs that Amy will die. I’ve already mentioned the symbolic carrying scene from the premiere, Asylum of the Daleks, but also in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship there was joke on Amy’s part that led to an ominous silence from the Doctor. In A Town called Mercy, Amy had a gun pointed at her head and in The Power of Three, the Doctor promises Rory’s father Brian, played by Mark Williams, that he won’t allow Amy and Rory to befall the same fatal outcomes as some of his previous companions. The death of a companion has been a recurring theme in this season as much as the pandorica and the cracks of Moffat’s first season and the Doctor’s death and the final question of the sixth season.

So then, isn’t it all just a bit too obvious? Moffat has admitted that his aim this season was to step back from arc writing and make the episodes slightly more standalone and grander on their own. While that has worked to a degree, it’s been a bit grating to see the Doctor pick up his companions each week like a strange carpool and it has done nothing to disguise that the constant hints that someone is going to die and it’s going to be heartbreaking. But Moffat never does anything the way that you might expect, such like the Doctor’s death last season. To the world, the Doctor is indeed dead but I don’t think any of the viewers believed for a second that Matt Smith’s Doctor would be killed off in his second season. That said, they did keep the appearance of Jenna -Louise Coleman in Asylum of the Daleks incredibly well covered up.

Even the Doctor couldn’t bear to watch them go.

Once again Moffat manages to trick the audience into hoping that Amy and Rory will survive, even if this fated to be the last adventure for the pair. The last chapter of the book, Amelia’s last farewell, gives the viewers a little hope that perhaps Amy is just saying goodbye. The Doctor despairs a bit too much for that to be true but when she is forced to say goodbye and join Rory’s suicide attempt Moffat allows  the audience to think, even just for second, that the pair might be alright.

However, Moffat takes away the hope almost as quickly as he doles it out. But the timing is precise. Just as the group heads to the TARDIS for the next outing, Rory sees his headstone and creates another fixed moment in time, certifying his death. It’s at this point the episode becomes a little frustrating. Firstly, it feels like Rory’s death invalidates the previous suicide and creation of the paradox that disrupted the Weeping Angel’s time farm. The paradox invokes a cheap method of time travel and an odd one at that. How was the TARDIS transported to 2012 when it was in a completely different building? What happened to all the other people being farmed, such as the detective seen at the start? The Doctor said that Rory would have to flee the angels for the rest of his life. Does that apply to the others in the building now that the building has been erased from existence? That said, I did enjoy Rory’s comedy about coming back to life yet again.

The second issue I have with Rory’s displacement at the hands of the rogue surviving angel is that Amy was extremely quick to follow suit. I guess that its meant to signify the depths of their love for one another, but remember that this is a couple who were on the brink of divorce in the first episode. Chronologically, there has only been a couple of years between Asylum of the Daleks and The Angels take Manhattan and she’s only dooming herself to a life in the 1930s, but it still seems like she jumped at the opportunity just a little too quickly. Perhaps the episode could have benefited from an extra five minutes on the run time. The best part about the paradox suicide was that Moffat gave it the time to have the emotional weight it needed. It was just Rory and Amy. Rory took control and made the decision.  Then the show gave both Amy and the audience the time to let that decision sink in before Amy jumped up on the ledge and joined him. Having to see Amy die anyway after that? Frustrating really is the best word for it.

Did time move for you too?

The afterword was just a little over sentimental too. The audience can empathise with the Doctor’s anguish over their deaths and his helplessness. The recap of their adventures and the picture of Amy as a child in sepia were a tad unnecessary. It was nowhere near as sentimental as Russell T. Davis departure episode and yet, in some ways, that episode is superior. The angels took a back seat in the departure of the Ponds, which is a shame because the angels are a great creation and are consistently a genuine threat. The End of Time was stronger in the sense that it allowed the Time Lords to appear as a major threat throughout and then send David Tennant on his way. The Angels were the cause of Amy and Rory’s deaths but during the episode I was constantly waiting for that event and that distracted from the threat of the angels themselves.

So, despite being aware that Amy and Rory would be exiting (pursued by an angel) for some time, the episode still held a great deal of suspense and emotional weight. Although, it may have faltered just a little at the end and slipped into sentimentality, on the whole The Angels Take Manhattan was a strong showing for the Ponds’ departure and left the Doctor primed for a new companion. How Jenna-Louise Coleman escapes the Daleks at Christmas to become that new companion is a whole other question.