Doctor Who Season Ten: Half-Time Report

Halfway through Season 10 of Doctor Who (the modern, circa 2005 revamped version, no idea how many seasons there have been altogether since 1963) and things are beginning to take shape in terms of various plot strands. Pearl Mackie has bedded seamlessly into place as new companion Bill Potts and even the mystery of why Matt Lucas is aboard the Tardis has become less a vexation and more the possibility of his character Nardole stamping himself into Whovian folklore as a secret badass.

Hanging over everything this year is the fact that it is public knowledge Peter Capaldi is leaving the show. Internet theories abound as to his replacement, theories I have little response to other than to hope the Kris Marshall fans are disappointed when the announcement is finally made. Other theories skitter across the web too, such as the possibility that Capaldi might not last until the end of the season. The first show of the series included a look ahead clip package at the end which showed the Twelfth Doctor in the now classic regeneration pose, something akin to Christ on the cross only with more golden light and no halo.

Tradition tends to insist that the Doctor becomes a brand new version of himself (or herself) in the final show of a season or, more, frequently, at the conclusion of a slightly oversentimental Christmas special. But there is a precedent for replacing a Doctor within the season itself, albeit not an especially encouraging one for older fans. Back in the mid 1980s when another Peter, Mr Davison, had announced he was to step down the role, his replacement came along at the tail end of the penultimate storyline that series, The Caves of Androzani. The season rounded off with The Twin Dilemma, Colin Baker's first full appearance as the Sixth Doctor. Yes THAT Baker, the ridiculous costume one, the portly one, the worst actor of the lot with some of the worst storylines and lowest effects budgets. That went well, then.

In its present form Doctor Who is twelve years old which is pretty good going for any prime time show. Altogether it has been around for fifty four years although of course there was nothing but a wonderful Doctor in a poor TV special to keep us going between 1989 and 2005. The freshness of the Russell T Davies era, the cocksure swagger of the opening couple of seasons under Steven Moffat, these have faded a little yet Capaldi has been given some of the best genuine science fiction stories of all the Doctor's incarnations. As well as a few duffers such as In The Forest Of The Night. Hey, Tenant has Fear Her on his Timelord CV don't forget, and Matt Smith somehow chewed his way through the dialogue of The Power Of Three.

Along with a new Doctor will come a new show runner in Chris Chibnall. He has Who previous: sadly The Power of Three was his work but he was largely responsible for the tour de force power of the first season of spin-off show Torchwood. Apparently he's been doing some detectivey thing with David Tenant in the main role more recently. So how is this season shaping up to hand over to Chibbers (as nobody calls him)?

So far so awesome. The fallibility of The Doctor is not always properly explored but seeing as he's spent two full episodes blind as a bat and was unable to prevent Bill from making a potentially disastrous decision on behalf of the planet at the end of the most recent episode it's fair to say that Capaldi's Doctor will in part be remembered for the times he did not just waltz in and save the day with a wave of his sonic screwdriver (a huge criticism of the Tenant and Smith eras). Uncertainty and vulnerability were an integral part to the role as portrayed by William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton so this might be a chance to re-establish the character as well-meaning but not always triumphant.

Too much failure, however, and you're in Fifth Doctor territory. We forget, given how great a job Matt Smith did of making his youth irrelevant in terms of how we saw the Tenth Doctor, that Davison struggled throughout his tenure to stamp authority on a role previously associated with the brusque bossiness of Jon Pertwee and the maverick genius of Tom Baker. The Thirteenth Doctor will need to hit the ground running and establish themselves as firmly as Smith managed to do on the heels of Tenant or the next series might be the show's last in its current guise.

Which would be a shame as the scope of the premise is, as always, limitless. Alien nutjob with a penchant for doing good owns a space-time travelling device so s/he can literally rock up anywhere, anywhen and anyhow in search of adventure and televisual feast. Bill's story arc is more subtle, perhaps, than the days of Rose or Amy but she's strong, funny and unique. If they decide she should stay to help bed in the next Doctor it can only be a bonus. After all, Clara's main detractors forgot their trolling when she was shown in new lights playing against Capaldi's version of the main character.

Still to come this season we have two versions of The Master/Missy colluding to do whatever vile things they can come up with together and we have Hartnell-era Cybermen returning, possibly to wear Capaldi a little thin and cause his regeneration. I've got a boner the size of all space and time just thinking about it. Haven't you, madam?

Doctor Who - Smile

Future cities, The Doctor likes taking his fresh companions to future cities so it's no surprise that Bill gets the same treatment from Number Twelve in her first proper Tardis outing. Viewers have already seen that all is not well in the apparent paradise they find themselves in and it doesn't take the time travellers long to suss this out for themselves.

Swarms of flying nano bots are apparently linked to emoji-faced base-station droids, and their insistence on happiness from human occupants of the city would add sinister overtones to everything if it wasn't so reminiscent of both The Beast Below's 'smilers' and the 'this is a kindness' robots from The Girl Who Waited. I wasn't a huge fan of Frank Cottrell-Boyce's first Doctor Who script (In The Forest of the Night) and am not entirely convinced by this follow up. 

I do, however, like the intention of making it largely a double-hander to more fully embed Pearl Mackie into the role and into public consciousness but there is a danger of straying too far towards the late excesses of Tom Baker's time at the helm when wordy exposition regularly supplanted action. Not to worry, action does happen once the duo begin to integrate with the robots and the newly awakening citizens of the colony.

It's a morality tale disguised as a thriller, just like Cottrell-Boyce's previous fare: the robots have achieved a degree of sentience that entitles them to be considered a new species. Not only that but, as they have constructed and maintained the city out of themselves (literally, they form the buildings and break out of the walls only to deal with crop necessities or damage control) the city is arguable more theirs than it is owned by the emergent humans.

Yes it is true that damage control to these new life forms somehow translates into killing off unhappy humans but once The Doctor turns them off and on again (I'm still hoping the Kris Marshall rumours are untrue and that Richard Ayoade can be persuaded to take over when Capaldi regenerates) they have no memory of that unpleasant murdery business and seem willing to tend to the needs of the newcomers. Peace in our time.

In the bigger scheme of things this is all about as likely to affect the story arc of the season as little as Rose's first trip with the newly regenerated Doctor Ten affected season Two's grand narrative but buried right at the start of the episode an exchange between Nardole and The Doctor may prove more meaningful. Whatever vow the time lord has made to stay on Earth and guard the mysterious vault in the basement of St Luke's, Nardole appears to be integral to holding The Doctor to his promise. He also appears to be crap at his job and easily distracted with tea making errands.

Bill continues to ask the questions nobody ever seems to have asked. She continues to get few direct answers but that's ok as we love it when companions work stuff out for themselves. I'd now like to see both her and The Doctor given a meatier story to chew on: we've met her, we like her, it's time she was thrown properly into the deep end. London frost fairs anyone?

Doctor Who -The Pilot

Doctor Who is back. Peter Capaldi's final season kicked off with a new companion, a fairly rubbish alien lifeform, a robot other companion who has robot alopecia, apparently, and some bonus stuff thrown in for the fans. Well, it wouldn't be Easter without Easter eggs, eh?

The fan stuff included Daleks fighting Movellans (very Fourth Doctor); photos of River and of Susan on display in The Doctor's office (he has an office now, offices are cool); many sonic screwdrivers; montage of Bill's days echoing the montage of Rose's life before she met the Ninth Doctor in the first episode of the rebooted series; Leela running around naked in the background.

No, that last didn't happen but I wasn't sure you were paying attention.

Reboot. An interesting concept. Effectively Steven Moffat rebooted Doctor Who for the second time in five years in 2010 with the Eleventh Doctor and Amy meeting in her garden when she was a tiny. And now he's once again provided a season opener that could serve as a kicking off point for brand new fans. There is often a hint of the new every time a fresh companion hooks up with our favourite time travelling nutjob and through Bill we get to remind ourselves how out of this world the Doctor truly is. 

Only Bill isn't quite like most of the other newbies we've met down the years. No, I don't mean because of her ethnicity or sexual persuasion, those are just her being her. I mean the questions she asks that somehow nobody has quite got round to asking in 54 years of the show. Like, if he's from another planet why does the acronym which gives his time machine its name work in English, not Gallifreyan? No, you can't go back to the real first ever episode and say Susan came up with it because that ignores the fact that every Time Lord we've ever encountered refers to the machines as Tardis too. Tardises? Tardi? 

Bigger questions not yet answered mostly revolve around why Doctor Twelve is loitering with very obvious intent at St Luke's college. There is a vault he's guarding in the basement. What's in it, why is he guarding it and why did he locate it at the university (if indeed he did)? Will the answers to such questions have anything to do with Hartnell style cybermen or double incarnations of The Master/Missy later in the season? 

As I said, this week's alien was pretty rubbish, a sentient puddle that took on the form of a girl Bill fancied in such a way as to remind me of the scary aqueous life forms in The Waters of Mars from 2009. The aliens can often be lame when the season starts with a new companion being bedded in (Prisoner Zero was fairly shit, the Adipose were terrible, The Judoon looked scarier with their space helmets on). The big bads come later. The more we get to know a companion the more we truly feel the jeopardy their travels with The Doctor place them in.

For now we have a madman with a box, a robot Matt Lucas whose purpose has yet to be defined or justified and a crazy-haired new girl. And all of time and space. Good enough for me.

Ghost In The Shell

This is a much anticipated live action adaptation of the hugely acclaimed cyberpunk manga by Masamune Shirow, it has also gained a fair amount of attention for its casting of caucasian Scarlett Johansson in the lead role amid accusations of ‘whitewashing’

Well Johansson plays ‘Major’, a woman, who’s brain has been placed into a cybernetic body, and against the wishes of her Doctor/Designer Dr. Ouelet (played by Juliette Binoche) now heads up a combat unit for Section 9, dedicated to tracking down cyber terrorists, most notably the mysterious ‘Kuze’ who is rather busy making scrambled egg out of the brains of Hanka Corporation employees involved in a mysterious project 2571 , the very company that built Major…. Da Da Daaaaaa!

Much chasing of Kuze with sidekick Batou and unit boss Chief Aramaki ensues, more Hanka peeps get turned into breakfast bites, and Major discovers that she is not who she was conditioned to believe she was before her fantastic drastic plastic makeover. As she delves deeper into the motivations of Kuze’s beef with her makers, apple carts get upset, truths get exposed, mums get met, and nasty corporate bosses get even nastyerish.

This movie is a near future cyberpunk flick, so you don’t need Sherlock to deduce it’s fairly big on the CGI, but there is nothing groundbreaking in its look. The influences such as Blade Runner, Fifth Element, and under-appreciated Tarsem Singh movie ‘The Cell’ are worn pretty heavily on the old sleeve. It looks good without wowing ya, but on the plus side it’s not so busy that it makes you boss eyed, but instead allows you to take in the view, which compared with some recent fare (Latest instalment of resident Evil a prime example) is a blessed relief and gives me hope I will not develop celluloid induced epilepsy anytime soon.       Script and pace are pretty sound and overall Rupert Sanders filled the directors chair ably.

This is not a great movie. If I had to categorize it I would say it sits somewhere between Okay and good, but it is a must see. Why you ask? Well I will tell ya, and you are not gonna believe it kids! Put the whitewashing guff to one side. Scarlett Johansson was cast in this movie because she was able to convey the very basic theme of the movie, and that is asking the question ‘How far do we embrace technology before we stop being human?’ Scarlett Johansson showed us in the Indy flick ‘Under the Skin’ that she is able to physically convey un-humanness to a spectacular degree, and that is why she was cast in this movie. Miss J is truly unnerving in this film. The way she walks, her posture, the way she interacts, are all infinitesimally ‘off’ to the extent that you don’t notice it at first, but it kinda pulls you in and subtly freaks you out over time. This is an actor doing what they do at the top of their game, and it’s worth the ticket price for that alone.

The persona of Johansson’s ‘Major’ absolutely dominates this movie, to the extent that few others manage to really get a look in, but Juliette Binoche, and Takeshi Kitano as ‘The Chief’ both manage to give their characters some depth.

If like me you are into the Ghost in the Shell lore, you are more than likely to find this a strong(ish) addition to what has gone before, otherwise it’s a fairly entertaining watch that will leave you slightly weirded out by an actor with alt-human bones….

Kingsman: The Secret Service

Colin Firth is...Colin Firth, same as always. But that's a good thing, isn't it? We haven't got totally fed up of his suave Britishness like we did Hugh Grant's stumble-bumble Britishness. Not yet. Anyway, he's a spy but it's not a government run thing, it's a secret society known as Kingsmen. But otherwise it's basically Bond with a junior Bond storyline thrown in for good measure.

Which is where Taron Egerton comes in with his kind of odd name as though he's American or made it up but he's actually like well chavvy n that. In this movie. When he's being Eddie the Eagle he's not chavvy. But he is much dumber. Lovably dumber. The Brits love a plucky loser. Wonder why more of us don't like Donald Trump, then?

Anyway (again), lost my train of thought there (again). Yup, Firth owes Egerton (even his surname sounds made up) a favour as he was present when the teenager's dad died during final training to become a cool spy. So he throws him a chance to do the same training and maybe die during the final part of it.

Michael Caine is the boss but don't get excited, he's emailing most of his performance in. Some young posho types are also in the training which we see scenes from alternating with an escalating plot involving the deaths, disappearances and some form of control over influential people of the world. Behind this scheme is Samuel L. Jackson but channelling Will.i.am for some reason. Trigger warning, one scene contains a very, very bad pun at the expense of McDonald's.

Egsy (Egerton's character has almost as odd a name as he does in real life but it's ok as it's a nickname), goes through various rites of passage scenarios. Yes they're faintly predictable but this isn't a movie trying to reinvent the wheel. This is a Matthew Vaughn film which from the off should lead you to expect some high class violence without too much gore and a better sense of humour than Guy Ritchie's films have displayed since Snatch. Much of the best violence comes from Jackson's henchwoman, Sofia Boutella.

End of the world as we know it scenario for the climax?  But of course. That's what we want from our spy films. Oh and for Michael Caine to say the word 'fuck' in that peerless guttural way of his. Does the world end? Does Samuel L Jackson get away with it or does he get thwarted by some pesky kids? Let's just say there's a sequel in the planning. Which is a good thing.

The Rack Pack

Well today's  movie can best be described as a curio. It's about world matchplay snooker, as far as I am aware only the second of its kind after the weirdly wonderful 'Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire' This however is a biopic set around wild boy Alex Higgins and socially inept Steve Davis and reads like a tabletop Hunt Vs Lauda, but with a completely different set of balls. Inexplicably I had a bit of a thing about snooker during the time this is set so I kinda relate to it, but just like ‘Rush’, and indeed every other sports related movie I can think of, the script takes some liberties with the historical events to adrenaline up what is essentially a bunch of men nudging balls around a table with little sticks. If you look behind the rather overblown personalities however it rather effectively shows the transformation of a slightly seedy niche game into a money spinning televised ‘sport’.  

What really lets this movie down is the Danny Dyersville acting. From Luke Treadaway’s angst ridden Alex Higgins and Will Merrick’s fright wigging Steve Davis, the cast stomp around the script like toddlers in Doc Martins. Surely the BBC and the UK can do better than this for thespy talent? The only person who comes out of this with any kind of distinction is Kevin Bishop as svengali/manager Barry Hearn. Overall an experience that slices a yellow rather than pots a black.

Whisky Tango Foxtrot

Afghanistan unsurprisingly has been 'done' a fair bit on screen over the decade or more, but this movie doesn't do the big badda boom badge of honour action, but focuses on the lives, interactions, and mindsets of war correspondents and the people around them, within a context of light drama with (for me at least) laugh out loud moments, and does it rather well, despite the director team of  Glen Ficarra and John Requa having previously given us the soul numbing ‘Bad Grandpa’ There is a sensitive balance in tension between the seriousness and ridiculousness of reporting on armed conflict without it turning into Boo Ra!  or ‘War Inc’ pastiche, and it has something serious to say about major news services treating conflicts as fashionable commodity. It also shows, and I know ‘cos I’ve met a couple, what an utterly bonkers lot conflict journo’s are.

The storyline? Well jaundiced copy editor chucks herself into the void to escape the walls closing in, wonders briefly what the fuck she’s done, and then chases the big story. Big story nailed, she hangs in and racks up some scare miles until eventually realizing that no one in the big comfy news media offices gives a flying Taliban anymore unless it’s a biiii………iiiiiiiiiiig story. Throw in a bit of romance, some mad soldiery, droolly politicians, and warlordiness… and that’s your Kofta’s served.
Tina Fey? Well I've seen her in a few light comedies that have not exactly set my synapses on fire, but .with her particular brand of wide eyed neurosis she carries the lead in this one well enough. Margo Robbie is solid. Billy Bob Thornton continues his 'second wind' as a serious actor and gives superb sarky military in this one, and

Add caption

Martin Freeman surprises in a relatively un-type loose limbed performance, even if his Scots accent was a bit…erm…odd. The stand out for me though is Christopher Abbott (who I must confess I know little about) as Afghan guide/security man Fahim, in a remarkably nuanced performance. An actor to watch out for I reckon. The only casting blip is the choice of Alfred Molina as an Afghan minister. Seen him do some fine work previously but so miscast here it almost seems he is in a different movie to everyone else.
Where this movie really wins out is scripting and pace. There is no fat here, and I found myself engaged throughout. All in all maybe not a must see, but if you do come across it? It’s worth a punt