John Dies at the End

I read the novel John Dies at the End just over a year ago. It's the weird, semi-stream of consciousness story of two slackers who accidentally contribute to the salvation of the universe as we know it, or are incurably insane, or both. The movie John Dies at the End is based on that novel and directed by Don Coscarelli, the creator of Phantasm, Bubba Ho Tep and The Beastmaster (the original one, not the one with time travel in).

In the nature of the beast, the process of adapting the book has meant that a little tightening up was needed, and when I say a little, I mean like the Wicked Queen tightened Snow White's corset*. The result misses a great deal of the anarchic nature of the original and pulls the rambling plot into a fairly coherent form which... feels like a bit of a shame to me. I get it, I just liked the original.

On its own terms, however, the film is a blast. The effects are discount - seriously though, a family killed by giant spiders are played by the costume lady and her family; that's where the budget is coming from - but the film eschews CGI and cheap practical effects are so much better than cheap CG that it just isn't funny, and the film still works with them. Chase Williamson (Dave) is a little wooden, but that can honestly be put down to the fact that Dave is pretty stoned throughout most of the film, especially given the quality of the rest of the cast. Paul Giamatti is the big name, but Rob Mayes carries the ludicrous glee of John, and Clancy Brown as Marconi is wonderfully weird (he was the fucking Kurgan; what the fuck?)

There are some slightly bizarre changes (the fact that the dog is called Bark Lee, not Molly, weirds me out, although apparently that's just because that's the dog actor's name and I guess it's easier to get it to respond to Bark Lee), but overall the film's story is pretty tight for something distilled from such craziness, without losing the craziness altogether.

It's also pretty funny, so yay!

* For those who don't know that version, before going the poisoned apple route, the Queen disguised herself to sell Snow White new corset laces and tightened them until Snow White choked.

Watch with Father: Alphablocks

I fucking love the Alphablocks

Just as a note, for a review of a children's cartoon, I'm going to swear a bit in this one.

Alphablocks is a series which recounts the adventures of 26 letters, each capable of self replicating and of attaching to other letters to form a gestalt entity, and of moulding the very fabric of reality by the simple act of holding hands to spell out words.

It's a simple enough concept, but what sells it for me is the characterisation of the different letters. A is perpetually-bruised from a combination of clumsiness and the apples which fall on her head; B and D being mirrors of each other (the Alphablocks are 'naturally' lower case) are a sister and brother in glam makeup, the one playing bass, the other drums; I is totally self-absorbed, while Q is U's stalker. N is always negative, T loves his tea, and R thinks she's a pirate. X is a super hero with X-Ray vision.

Each letter prefers to use words beginning with their letter (X usually sticks to 'ex' beginnings), and the things that they make by holding hands lead them on adventures, often including songs.

Oh, yes; E has a secret identity as Magic E, who as he is also silent E is basically a ninja in a top hat.

It's not all fun and games though. In one of a series of episodes exploring vowel digraphs, A is unable to say her own name due to hiccups and suffers a crippling identity crisis. I cry every time I watch it, no bullshit.

The depth of references in the series is exceptional. When Y is refused entry to the vowels Barbershop Quintet, he sings a sad song in a 50s melancholic stylee (he also drops in the word 'yacht' just to fuck with people). I name checks 'Stayin Alive' and 'I Will Survive' at her disco party. C and K even make a joke about A Tribe Called Quest in their football episode, which even some of my work colleagues probably wouldn't get.

So, yes; I love the Alphablocks.

Watch with Father: The Pajanimals

I think they pretty much had us at 'Jim Henson'

Hannah has suggested that I review some of the programmes that we watch with Arya, in part as a means of exorcising the knee-jerk sarcasm which will otherwise taint her worldview for life.

Produced by the Jim Henson Company, PBS Kid Sprout and Belfast-based Sixteen South, The Pajanimals is a series about a family of four Muppet children; the Pajanimals. Each episode begins five minutes before bedtime; the Pajanimals play a game, then get ready for bed, in the course of which some complication arises. As a result, one or more of the four has trouble sleeping, asks for or is asked if they need help, at which the four convene on one bed and travel to a magical land to seek counsel and solace from a wise mentor figure. At the end of the episode they return to their own beds and their mother - who has apparently been watching the whole magical transport bit - sings them the Pajanimals' lullaby.

The show's original voices - those of adult pupeteers - are dubbed over by British child actors for the Nick Jr showings we mostly watch.

The four Pajanimals are:

• Sweetpea Sue - a horse, and possibly the oldest of the Pajanimals, taking a lead role in practical matters. She is the sensible one, but also prone to worry. When she is asking for help, it is usually due to her fear of unknown situations. The American Sweetpea Sue has a strong southern accent, but her British counterpart is slightly Northern. Her signature songs include the weirdly sinister 'Twirly Whirly' and getting ready for bed number 'Stick to the Plan'.
• Apollo - a dog, in the same year as Sweetpea at school (they both start in the Season 2 episode 'Off to My School Adventure',) Apollo is the most active and intelligent of the four, but has some serious anger management and competition issues, leading to his signature song: 'I'm Mad!'
• Cowbella - a cow. She is the girly one, loving all things pink and princessy, and her flaw is stubbornness and a bossy streak (her signature song is 'Cowbella Says').
• Squacky - a duck, and the youngest of the four. Squacky is the mad one, and a lot of his problems relate to feelings of isolation. He has a high degree of dependency on his blankie, which doubles as a cape for his super-hero costume. His signature song is 'The Pajama Freeze Dance'.

The four live with their mum and dad in a large house, and share a single bed-and-playroom with its own ensuite and walk-in closet. My assumption is that they are adopted, and probably came up through the foster system, based on both their personalities (they are insecurely attached to their parents, both highly competitive and protective of one another, and each has a pathological dependency on a totem; Squacky's blankie, Cowbella's unicorn, Apollo's nightlight and Sweetpea's daisy cushion. Squacky also habitually refers to their mum and dad as Mother and Father, instead of Mom and Dad) and on the fact that they belong to four different species and two classes (Squacky is clearly defined as a duck, not that this stops him displaying the same uniform row of teeth as the ruminant Cowbella and the carnivore Apollo after brushing; Sweetpea only ever has her two large, front teeth).

Each episode - with the exception of the last episode - follows the same pattern:

1. The Pajanimals play, which may include a song. some issue arises that will later cause problems, usually an incident provoking fear, anger or uncertainty in one Pajanimal, but sometimes a fight between two or more.
2. The Pajanimals get ready for bed, which again, may include a song.
3. One or more Pajanimals has trouble sleeping, help is requested or prompted for.
4. The Pajanimals assemble on one bed to 'bundle up, huddle up, snuggle up and go!', and the bed flies off. Sweetpea's bed changes into a hot air balloon when this happens, Apollo's into a rocket, Cowbella's a coach and Squacky's either a submarine or a plane.
5. The Pajanimals visit a magical land and seek advice from their friend there, who resolves the problem and sings a song, not necessarily in that order.
6. The Pajanimals return to their own beds and their mother sings 'La-la-lullaby' over the credits.

Now, this is all well and good, but I question the competence of some of the characters to offer advice. To take some examples:

• Jerry the Bear is as clingy and insecure as they come, always delighted to see the 'PJs' arrive and devastated to see them leave. He is more balanced in later episodes, in which he shares the Friendly Forest with Otis the Owl, but he still has way too much emotional investment to be an effective therapist.
• Bedtime Bunny is a narcoleptic rabbit from the Land of Hush who masquerades as a peace and wellness therapist specialising in meditation. It is doubtful whether anyone with so much trouble staying awake should be trusted with unsupervised childcare.
• Edwin is a delusional fantasist who uses his custodianship of Storybook Land to inhabit a range of guises; harmless enough as a king or a wizard, but worrying when he passes himself off as a dentist and works on Apollo's teeth!

For all of this, I have a great fondness for the Pajanimals. It's wonderfully paced to help settle a child for sleep, and in later years will have far more to say to her than her other bedtime favourite, In the Night Garden.

Start to Finish: The Revenants

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

Remember Start to Finish? After a long break, I return to my epic review of the Big Finish spin-off series The Companion Chronicles, and another special release that I'd forgotten about in my initial summary: Ian Potter's The Revenants, which was released through Dr Who Magazine and then again as part of the 50th Anniversary package The Light at the End.

The Doctor believes that he can get his companions, Ian and Barbara, back to their own place and time at last, but something goes awry leaving the two teachers stranded on the island of Hoy. Mist and bog prove almost as deadly as any Dalek, but there is something else at work on the island. Marsh Wains stalk the night, and only the ancient spirit called the Wissfornjarl can stop them.

The Revenants is a bit of a throwback by the standards of the later Chronicles I've been reviewing, with a full framing narrative in addition to the main action. Guest actor Sharon Small plays both Jeannie, the woman to whom Ian is telling his story, and the spaywife Janet, who plays a major role in the main narrative. it is another reflective piece, although less melancholy than some.

Notably, it is a story in which the TARDIS crew essentially seem to have caused problems that they are then only incidental in solving. It also suffers a little from the fact that, confronted with anyone's religious beliefs, Ian tends to be a bit of a dick, although the framing narrative suggests some mellowing.

It's a slow story, and not a stand out in the series, but quite listenable.

Next, we crack on with series 7, beginning with more Ian Chesterton - indeed, more than you can shake a stick at - in The Time Museum.

Dracula

Left-to-right: Lady Jayne Weatherby (Victoria Smurfitt), Abraham van Helsing (Thomas Kretschmann), Jonathan Harker (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), Dracula (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), Mina Murray (Jessica de Gouw), Renfield (Nonso Azounie) and Lucy Westenra (Katie McGrath)

Since TV is on a Victorian Gothic horror kick, let's follow up my Penny Dreadful review with 2013's Dracula, a lavish production which crashed and burned after this, its first series.

What is the core of the Dracula story? Obsession, sex, repression, good vs evil, furriners are bad? This interpretation draws on some of the lesser known themes of the narrative, such as geomagnetic wireless electricity, government corruption, manipulation of the media and international Catholic money conspiracies.

Ooo-kay...

So, pathologist Abraham van Helsing revives Dracula in order to obtain revenge on the Order of the Dragon, a conspiracy of powerful and wealthy (apparently Catholic) individuals who made Dracula into a vampire because... reasons, and murdered van Helsing's family because... evil? In order to do this, they set out to promote geomagnetic, wireless electricity, thus shattering the control of the world's oil reserves that underpins the Order's power. The third member of their alliance is R.M. Renfield, here cast not as a scrawny loon, but as a erudite, intelligent African-American lawyer, whose prodigious size and strength actually fit the literary character much better than the conventional appearance.

Drawn into the periphery of the plot are van Helsing's student, Mina Murray (who is thankfully less strident than a female pathology student in a Victorian melodrama might have been) and her colossal jackass fiance Jonathan, ditzy closet lesbian Lucy and slinky, manipulative Lady Jayne Weatherby, the Order's chief huntsman.

The series is interesting for its shift across its run from sexy melodrama to bloody Jacobean tragedy. Early episodes are marked by Dracula's manipulation of Harker and Murray's relationship, striving to be close to the woman who looks like his long-dead wife (murdered by the Order, natch) while placing an obstacle between them so that he can't destroy her, and his athletic sexual relationship with Lady Jayne. Later episodes are more likely to feature ripped throats and decapitated vampires than the Meyers/Smurfitt nudity double bill, and the final episode wipes out much of the supporting cast with a combination of brutal violence, exploding electricity and crawling parental heebie-jeebie horror.

In artistic terms, it's no better than Penny Dreadful, but I will say this for it: It seems to be having a lot more fun. It embraces its concepts and just goes full throttle, however stupid they may be. I also respect a vampire hunting team that utilises numbers, military organisation and daytime raids.

Don't buy it, but if you can see it for free it's worth the sevenish hours of your life.

Date Night

On a recommendation from a friend which I can only accurately describe as glowing, Hannah and I watched the 2010 Steve Carell and Tina Fey romcom Date Night last night (thanks, LoveFilm).

Carell and Fey (thankfully not repeating her accent from Muppets Most Wanted, which we'd rewatched on Sunday) play the Fosters, Phil and Claire, a married professional couple with two children. When their best friends (played by Mark Ruffalo and Kristen Wiig, the first - but by no means the last - of many top flight actors who will be making a flying visit to this film) confide that they are separating due to the romance in their marriage deteriorating to the point that they are 'excellent room mates', the Fosters decide to be spontaneous and replace their usual movie and dinner date night with a trip to the city, where they steal an unclaimed reservation in order to eat at an exclusive restaurant.

This one act of dishonesty leads to a mistaken identity and a madcap chase across the city as corrupt cops and gangsters try to reclaim a flash drive that they believe the couple has stolen. At the same time, the Fosters rekindle their relationship and end up doing all the things they thought they'd left behind.

The story is unashamedly silly, and the film's life comes from the performances - mostly Carell and Fey, but also the unexpectedly prominent supporting cast, which includes Ray Liotta, Mark Wahlberg, James Franco and Mila Kunis, as well as a silent will.i.am as himself - and from a surprisingly adept action set piece featuring two cars joined at the front bumper. The gag reel in the credits reveals that a number of routines in the film were improvised by Carell and Fey from a broad premise, and the strength of the partnership tells in the end results.

All in all, Date Night was a lot of fun.

Pan's Labyrinth

Pan will not be mentioned in this film, it was just felt
to make a snappier title than Labyrinth of the Faun, I
guess.

A little girl enters a magical world and meets with a faun. It's not The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but rather Mexican director Guillermo del Toro's Spanish-set dark fantasy Pan's Labyrinth.

The film follows the young protagonist Ofelia as she flees from the horrors of Franco's Spain into a fantasy world where a mysterious faun presents her with the chance to realise her true identity as princess of the Underworld 'a land without pain or cruelty'. Has she stumbled upon a magical portal at the heart of the old labyrinth, or is she merely fleeing into a fairy tale to escape the all-too cruel reality of life with her sick and pregnant mother, and her stepfather, a brutal fascist captain sent to pacify a rebellious region in the aftermath of the Civil War?

Nightmare fuel. High octane.

Pan Labyrinth is a film which contains both and incredible, dark beauty and scenes of shocking brutality. Ofelia's fantasy world is a place of decaying glory, while Captain Vidal's new Spain is marked by cleanliness and order, yet the inhuman creatures of the otherworld seek primarily to protect and comfort where the human Vidal and his cohorts are truly monstrous.

The exceptions to the general benevolence of the Otherworld are the creatures which directly represent Vidal. The monster toad which consumes all reflects Vidal's tactic of controlling all of the supplies in the region, while the Pale Man sits, like Vidal, at the head of a feast table which is denied to others. There is some suggestion that these figures are manifestations of the faun created as part of Ofelia's tests (in particular, veteran creature actor Doug Jones plays both the faun and the Pale Man), rendering even the hostile elements of the Otherworld benign in comparison to the absolute darkness of the Falange zealot Vidal.

The film is heavy on effects, but ultimately rides on its performances, in particular Jones, Sergi López as Vidal, and 11-year old Ivana Baquero as Ofelia. With these as its backbone and a powerful exploration of human cruelty at its heart, Pan's Labyrinth is able to earn the right to use its scenes of shocking violence in a way that many movies which use such scenes for mere effect do not.

Penny Dreadful

Also, this series if full of spiders. Seriously, dude; don't touch it.

Penny Dreadful is a sumptuous, Gothic-historical series. Set in a monster-haunted Victorian London and populated by a mixture of literary characters and original creations, this is pretty much my kind of show and I wanted from the first to love it.

I did not love it.

I'm not sure why Gray rates a place on the
poster above Frankenstein.

The first series tells the interweaving stories of a group of characters who have all become enmeshed in what is referred to as 'the demimonde', the world of horror and monsters, during the hunt for a master vampire and a girl he has abducted. Wild West Show gunslinger Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett) is - ostensibly at least - the everyman newcomer of the group, which also includes explorer Sir Malcolm Murray (Timothy Dalton), father of vampire-abducted Mina, and his daughter's best friend, the demon-hounded medium Vanessa Ives (Eva Green). Another new recruit is Victor Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway), who is far more British than his name or literary backstory suggest, and Sir Malcolm's stoic and mysterious manservant Sembene (Danny Sapani) completes the set. Hovering around the edges of the group are Brona Croft (Billie Piper), a terminally tubercular prostitute with a God-awful Irish accent, Frankenstein's abandoned Creature (Rory Kinnear), and Dorian Gray (Reeve Carney), the (immortal) human equivalent of a hairless cat.

This show immediately preceded the great
eyeliner shortage of 2014.

So far, so promising; interesting set up, classic quest storyline, and a pretty top-notch cast. So where - aside from Piper's accent - did it all go wrong for me?

For starters, I found almost none of the characters to be all that interesting or sympathetic. Sir Malcolm is a dick, Vanessa is lauded for her strength and power and then shown to exist almost at the whim of greater forces, Frankenstein is a whiner, Chandler is mopey and Dorian is annoying. The only characters I really clicked with were murdered after minutes of screen time. Determined to make the characters cool and unflappable, the series succeeds largely in making them dense, their jaded suavity apparently blinding them to certain key revelations, such that - for example - no-one seems inclined to stop and note that Chandler can control wolves. They also hunt vampires and do so almost exclusively by breaking into their nests at night. The fact that the vampires are almost always at home and slumbering when they do so is perplexing, as is London's apparently inexhaustible supply of white-haired vixens in black dresses, since it seems to take a matter of days, at most weeks, for the master vampire to completely restock his goth snugglepile.

For much of its run, the primary tension of the series seems to be who Dorian Gray will sleep with next. The show sets up its characters to be mysteries, but goes too far and gives us too little to care about. This is thrown into sharp relief in the final episode when two Pinkerton detectives come looking to take Ethan back to his father. This is an interesting twist, but comes too late in the game to be much more than a throwaway.

Oh, and the series keeps teasing Dorian Gray standing in front of an unseen portrait. Gosh, I wonder what that's going to turn out to be about when it finally pays off?

Conversely, Vanessa gets an entire episode of backstory. This suggests that the series sees her as its protagonist, but this is not borne out by the narrative, in which she is constantly a passive player, driven by crude passion into acts of reflexive rebellion which, rather than marking her as an independent and sexually liberated woman, are intrinsically linked with her subjugation to forces of evil. In fact, for a series so obsessed with sex, Penny Dreadful is shockingly sex-negative.

It also lacks any strong female protagonists. Vanessa's power is weakness and her role to be a tool - even in the final denoument she is a passive player and a hostage; Brona just bitches, coughs blood and ultimately dies of TB, leading her to a fate that has pretty much been ordained for her since she first expectorated into a hankie; and Mina is mere a vessel for the voiceless villain of the piece (although for a moment I hoped it had done something interesting and she was the villain.)

Every so often, it gets it right, and something really works, but overall the series is laden with too many plots that do not come together well enough, and characters who are not quite likable enough for me to want to go the extra mile to find out how it all fits in the end. I made it to the end of the series largely on stubbornness.

On the other hand, a lot of people seem to have loved it, so what do I know? Maybe glumly self-absorbed badasses serially sleeping with a smug hedonist is what the people want.

True Detective

"Back then, the visions...most of the time I was convinced that I'd lost it. But there were other times, I thought I was main-lining the secret truth of the universe."

True Detective is a gritty, existential detective story, created by writer Nic Pizzolatto and director Cary Joji Fukunaga and starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. From the 1990s to the present day, two detectives struggle with their own demons as they pursue a serial killer cult who seem entirely at peace with theirs.

Beginning with a cruel, ritual killing in 1995 Louisiana, the story spends six episodes working primarily in flashback, as former State Police Detectives Rust Cohle and Marty Hart are interviewed by younger detectives who seem intent on uncovering a truth that will reveal Cohle as the killer. In the final two episodes, with the past section wrapped up, the series concludes with Cohle and Hart's personal quest to finally get their guy.

Cohle (McConaughey) is a buttoned-down struggling alcoholic who lost his daughter in an accident and subsequently his marriage. His fellow officers call him the Tax Man on account of the ledger he uses in lieu of a regular notebook and his aggressive, nihilistic atheism endears him to no-one in Louisiana. Hart (Harrelson) is a family man with anger issues and a self-destructive sexual obsession with women who resemble his wife. Everyone else in the series is pretty much some form of cipher. The story is told through the two central characters, and thus they are the only characters of substance, with the rest of the world existing only as they perceive it.

The central mystery is as much a psychological quest as it is a police procedural, with the killer less a criminal and more a manifestation of the dark-halves of Cohle and Hart's personae. It is perhaps notable that the last two episodes contain the only scenes which have neither Cohle nor Hart in them, and that these scenes all feature the killer, making him the only other 'real' character in the film. The investigation is in some ways secondary to the clash between Cohle's grim worldview and Hart's equally destructive laissez faire attitude. In many ways, the series is the psychological and philosophical core of the buddy cop genre laid bare and stripped of all the extraneous fripperies of slapstick humour and bonding.

"The world needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door."

The transformation of the two leads between their 1995 and 2012 incarnations is truly extraordinary. Young Cohle is lean, smart and formal, while the older version is a wreck of a man with straggling grey hair. Hart goes the other way, from moderately slobbish to dressed and pressed. I spent the best part of an episode wondering if the younger versions weren't lip-synching body-doubles.

The ending of the series is in some ways bleak, with the realisation that most of the people who were involved in the murders will never be brought to justice, but viewed as an existential journey it is also uplifting. Future seasons are slated to focus on completely different characters, and that feels like the right choice.

If I have a criticism of the series it is that the absolute focus on two male protagonists and a male antagonist resulted in a show in which women lacked agency, and I would like to see at least a female protagonist in season two, not least because it would be different and the format of the show demands different if it is not to simply repeat with a change of clothes. It would not be possible to make another season about Cohle and Hart, at least not without spoiling everything that made True Detective unique, and the risk is of making a season that is about Cohle and Hart with the serial numbers filed off.

"...once there was only dark. If you ask me, the light's winning."

Start to Finish: 6.12 - The Rings of Ikiria

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

Mike Yates (Richard Franklin) ponders ironically the nature of loyalty and betrayal, in Richard Dinnick's The Rings of Ikiria.

An alien has landed on Sark, intent on sharing her art with the world. Is there something more sinister at work than an intergalactic jewelry franchise? Mike Yates thinks that there is, but no-one seems to believe him; not even his closest friends.

Mike Yates is an oddity, the companion - if such a term can be used of one who didn't travel in the TARDIS until the recent Hornet's Nest and Demon Quest audio series - who turned on the Doctor and the world from misguided idealism and psychological damage. To have him at the centre of a story about trust and loyalty is perhaps a little odd, therefore.

The play is mostly about mind control, with Ikiria (Felicity Duncan) trying to take over the world due to her own psychological damage, and juxtaposes rather tragically with Mike's future travails. Duncan also plays Yates' driver, whose relationship with the Captain is rampantly inappropriate for an officer and an enlisted woman, in a PG kind of way, even before she turns out to be a projection who apparently raised no eyebrows in a highly secret taskforce.

I am not entirely convinced by The Rings of Ikiria, although it has some good ideas. After my less than enthusiastic response to The Wanderer, it may be that I'm not on the same wavelength as Richard Dinnick.

There may be a bit of a break as I do some reading on the train, after which I'll be back with either the last special release, The Revenants, or the start of series 7, The Time Museum.

Start to Finish: 6.11 - The Jigsaw War

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

Cementing the move away from the standard enhanced audio book format of the early Chronicles, Eddie Robson's The Jigsaw War is a four-man play with a cast of two.

Under arrest and interrogated by an officer of a harsh, military regime, Jamie is pressed to question his loyalty to the Doctor. When events begin to fall out of sequence, however, Jamie is given a chance to escape, but is he doomed to join the Doctor's enemies, or is it all a trick of the mind?

The Jigsaw War is a one room interrogation play, with Dominic Mafham as Moran, the man asking the questions. The twist is that the scenes of the play are out of order, as Jamie is thrown about in time by the mysterious Si and challenged to work out the correct sequence of events. Si only ever communicates by psychically possessing Moran, and allows the Doctor - his true opponent in the game - to speak through Jamie, thus doubling up the cast within the play as well as without.

The play works on the idea of trust; how far does Jamie trust the Doctor, and why? How far does the Doctor trust his own understanding of the state of affairs on an otherwise unknown planet? How far does the audience take it on trust that the Doctor is infallibly on the side of the angels? It's also fun to work out how the pieces fit together. The puzzle isn't perfect and there are a few rough edges, but overall it's a good listen.

Our final entry in series 6 will be a Third Doctor adventure for Mike Yates of UNIT, in The Rings of Ikiria.

Start to Finish: 6.10 - The Wanderer

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

It's back to pre-Revolutionary Russia for the First Doctor, a century after his encounter with Napoleon (but earlier in his personal timeline, as he is traveling with Susan, Ian and Barbara, rather than Steven and Dodo), for Richard Dinnick's pseudohistorical The Wanderer.

The TARDIS lands near a remote Siberian village in 1914, where a shooting star has the locals in a flap. When a mysterious illness strikes, only the travelling holy man Grigori seems willing and able to fly in the face of superstition to aid the travelers. But what else will Grigori's devotion to his sacred calling inspire him to risk?

The Wanderer pairs William Russell's Ian with Tim Chipping as one of Russia's most controversial figures (and reputedly its greatest love machine), although his actual identity is obfuscated for the first half of the play. The play is about isolation and the status and mindset of the perpetual outsider, comparing the Doctor and his fellow travelers, with their ongoing companionship, with Grigori's solitary wanderings.

In the end, this is not a story that really works for me, I think because the plot fails to create any significant stakes. As well as the TARDIS crew, the guest character's safety is guaranteed by his presence in chronologically later events, and no-one else is introduced in sufficient detail to give the story the necessary stakes. It also feels like a bit of a cop-out not to actually explore the nature of Rasputin's beliefs once you've got him there.

Next up, Jamie McCrimmon is trapped in The Jigsaw War.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 (spoiler free)

Saturday's movie was How to Train Your Dragon 2, unsurprisingly a sequel to 2010's rather excellent How to Train Your Dragon. I will note that I do plan to see it again to pick up on bits that I may have missed while chasing a small child around the cinema and trying to keep her from eating floor food.

HtTYD2 does a number of pretty brave things. Firstly, it advances the storyline of the franchise by five years (some of which is filled in by the surprisingly good Dreamworks' Dragons TV series), and allows the characters and their relationships to grow because of that fact. Secondly, it turns a number of characters against obvious type, especially Stoick the Vast, who has evolved from a slightly one note character in the first film to a deeply layered individual (as fathers do when their sons get old enough to really know them). Thirdly, it is even more willing than the first film to draw blood.

HtTYD2 is a more mature film than HtTYD, in just about every way, and that is not intended as a criticism of the first film. Dragon was the child, and Dragon 2 is what it's grown into, encouraging its audience to take a chance and grow with it. The writer/director Dead DeBlois has likened it to The Empire Strikes Back as a growth and maturation of the franchise, and it's not an unfair nor especially boastful comparison (although I hope this doesn't mean we'll get Ewoks in part 3 and a series of disappointing prequels); Hiccup even has a low-tech lightsabre. The central characters are beautifully realised, and the relationship between Hiccup and Astrid in particular is wonderfully real and rounded, with the animation and voice acting both depicting an impressive chemistry for a cartoon.

Speaking of the animation, now that I've started, the film is absolutely gorgeous. I saw it in Ipswich, and while I can take or leave 3D I do regret not getting to see the film on IMAX, because the world of Dragon is so sumptuously rendered and so full of the kind of sweeping vistas that IMAX is truly good for. The dragons remain impressive in their motion and expressions, as well as their overall design. The human characters avoid the uncanny valley through their stylised, exaggerated appearance, without looking silly or ever causing us to doubt their reality.

I caught this one early, so by request I'm not going to do a spoiler-review part; I might do one later on.

Start to Finish: 6.09 - Binary

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

We now come to a rarity; a Chronicle that is presented as a small-cast play rather than an enhanced audio book with a framing narrative, and which is also a three-hander. Eddie Robson's Binary features Caroline John as Liz Shaw, aided and abetted by Joe Coen and Kyle Redmond-Jones as UNIT soldiers Childs and James Foster.

UNIT have captured an alien computer. Liz has disabled such a device before, but that was with the Doctor's help. This time, the Doctor isn't around, and Liz will have to solve the problem on her own, and from an unfamiliar perspective.

Binary takes the old 'inside the computer' trope and applies it with an interesting mechanical twist, with Liz shrunk and placed in a manual repair network, rather than digitised, which feels far more apt for the era of the story. It also allows the Doctor to appear, when he does, as a remote voice rather than an overriding presence, and gives Liz a chance to spread her wings a little.

Liz's supporting players have similar voices, but present quite distinct characters, both offering hints that neither of them is quite what they seem. Liz herself is able to shine without the Doctor's direct presence, even in a field which - as is made clear - she is not uncommonly knowledgeable.

If it suffers, Binary suffers from the fact that it is not significantly distinct from a regular Big Finish pay, save in the size of its cast, such that it feels more like a limited play than an expanded Chronicle.

Next up, we're back in Russia with the First Doctor for The Wanderer.

Start to Finish: 6.08 - The Selachian Gambit

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

It's giant sharks and bank jobs for the Second Doctor, in Steve Lyons' The Selachian Gambit.

The Doctor needs a loan to pay a parking fine. Unfortunately, the day he visits the Galactibank is the same day a team of Selachian soldiers decided to stage an audacious armed robbery.

The Selachian Gambit is a heist story, with plenty of action, daring ploys and desperate procrastinations, with just enough menace from the brutal, aqua-supremacist Selachians - adversaries from one of the novel lines, making their second appearance in audio after the main range sharks-vs-Nazis play The Architects of History - to maintain the stakes.

Oddly, this title is listed as 'Frazer Hines performs... with Anneke Wills', and yet this is one of Polly's more proactive roles to date. If Hines takes the meat of the play, it is because he is called on to do double duty as the Doctor, with his celebrated Patrick Troughton. The interplay between the three companions - Poly, Jamie, and Ben - is a highlight of this play, with their somewhat blundering attempts at heroics working at odds to the Doctor's subtle plans and caution.

Next up, UNIT secret squirrelry with Liz Shaw in Binary.

Start to Finish: 6.07 - The Anachronauts

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It's a two-disc, two companion extravaganza this time out, with Jean Marsh and Peter Purves in Simon Guerrier's The Anachronauts.

It isn't possible for one time ship to crash into another in the vortex, so when it happens you can bet that it will be serious. With the TARDIS malfunctioning, Steven and Sara are thrown through time, from a desert island to Berlin in the 1960s. The Doctor knew what was going on, but the Doctor isn't with them any more, and there may be no way back.

The Anachronauts lacks a framing narrative, per se. Marsh and Purves alternate narrating duties in the four episodes, but there is no additional layer of text, just the two characters telling their story. The story itself falls broadly into two sections, the desert island and Cold War Berlin, with the transition at the end of part 2.

The story once more plays on the idea of a romance between two Companions, although in the end it comes down on the side of friendship, at least where Steven and Sara are concerned and primarily uses the romance element as a hint to the story's main twist. Overall, as with much of the Steven Taylor and Sara Kingdom material, it's a bit of a downer, set shortly after the death of Bret Vyon, so don't expect wacky hijinks.

The Anachronauts has a lot to like, but it's not one of my personal favourites. Ultimately, I think I find it too bleak, especially coming on top of The First Wave.

Next up, squamous heist shenanigans in The Selachian Gambit.

Fargo

"There’s a fellow once, running for a train, and he’s carrying a pair of gloves, this man. He drops a glove on the platform, but he doesn’t notice. And then later on, inside the train, he’s sitting by the window and he realizes that he’s just got this one glove left. But the train’s already started pulling out of the station, right? So what does he do? He opens the window; he drops the other glove onto the platform. That way, whoever finds the first glove can just have the pair."

Fargo is not based on the Cohen Brothers film of the same name, so much as it is inspired by it. This TV series makes the same (spurious) claim to be based on real life events, and is set in Minnesota, in this case in the small town of Bemidji. It also matches some of the original's beats, but with a shift of emphasis and an entirely different cast of characters.

The core drama revolves around four individuals: Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman) is a weak, put-upon man whose inability to take action or responsibility catalyses a cascade of death and destruction through his chance interaction with Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton), a whimsically malevolent hit man who is basically the Devil. On the side of the angels are Deputy Molly Solverson (Allison Tolman) and Gus Grimly (Colin Hanks).

The series blends dark humour with a disjointed, almost Zen-like sensibility. At least half of the questions that are asked by characters in the series are answered with a riddle in the manner of a Zen koan, most of which are never really explained. As much as it takes its beats from the film Fargo, it is also highly reminiscent of Twin Peaks, but with a tighter and more coherent plot.

The characters are the real strength of the series. Lester's transformation from cringing weaking to reptilian killer is impressively realised, and mirrored in Gus, who spends most of the series seeking to atone for letting fear dictate his actions. Molly is a sheer joy, a strong, principled and courageous character, and one of the most real looking women on television. And then there is Malvo, the star power of the series, a gleeful and apparently indestructible monster who slides away from detection with a combination of luck, brutal efficiency and ruthless intimidation.

Now, here's the thing that I think I love most about Fargo. Twenty years ago, you couldn't have made it. Eighteen years ago when the film was new (feel fear, dear readers), you probably couldn't have made it. Ten years ago, not a chance. I like Fargo not just because it was very good television, but because it is part of a wave of shows which take risks and do something a bit new. We live in an age where for every quirky cop procedural there's a Breaking Bad or a sumptuous HBO historical or fantasy epic, and while that produces its fair share of expensive codswallop, it means that shows like Fargo or True Detective are getting made.

So, Fargo; put it on your rental lists if you missed it.

Maleficent

There's a lot of mileage in retelling old stories from a new perspective these days, and Disney has not been slow to jump on the bandwagon. From Once Upon A Time to the massively successful Frozen, this process has perhaps peaked with Maleficent, a sumptuous live-action Sleeping Beauty from the perspective of the iconic villain of Disney's 1959 adaptation.

As far as first impressions go, this can not be denied: Maleficent is a gorgeous piece of film-making, if a little heavy on the CGI for my own tastes. Maleficent is most impressive in her free-spirited, flying woman phase, although her black-capped, ultra-goth mode is certainly striking. The enchanted Moors are spectacularly realised, and the human kingdom, even with its classical Disney castle, is rather bland by comparison.

The story is a little less sound, and in its attempts to turn Maleficent into the hero without losing her villainy she becomes a little too vacillating. There are some nice touches, and a splendid sidekick in the form of the raven Diaval (Sam Riley). In terms of performances, Angelina Jolie revels in the quieter moments, but falls down a little when belting out challenges to invading armies; her voice doesn't quite have the force. Her interaction with Diaval is delightful, and I'm shipping those two so hard it isn't funny. Elle Fanning as Aurora isn't utterly grating, which is in itself an achievement, and while we don't have much of Prince Philip to work with, I did like that they gave him at least some qualms about kissing the coma girl.

My problems with the film are mostly in the details, and thus require a few spoilers.

As has been noted, it is a crying shame that Maleficent herself doesn't get to turn into a dragon, but more or less inevitable given how the rest of the film is shaped. The betrayal that acts as her start of darkness has her drugged and her wings cut off by the young man she loves, a Wagnerian act of figurative rape-as-female disempowerment which is frankly a little strong for a film with a family focus. Her power can only be restored with the return of her wings, and if she could turn into a dragon herself, she would have wings.

My only other major issue is that the farcical incompetence of the pixies charged with raising Aurora is such that it is impossible to see why anyone would trust them to do it. It's not as if they're just a little bumbling, the baby is literally safer in the care of an untamed carrion bird.

I was disappointed that they didn't go a musical route, as a character with the stalking menace and superior incidental music cues that Maleficent displays throughout the film deserves a really kick-ass villain song.

Overall, I enjoyed the film a lot - I think it definitely helped that I wasn't expecting something sublime - although I was left with the feeling that I'd just watched a propaganda piece commissioned by Sleeping Beauty to explain that historically, the enchanted Moors had always been part of generic Britland.

Start to Finish: 6.06 - Beyond the Ultimate Adventure

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

One of Big Finish's more off the wall projects was the production of audio versions of three Doctor Who stage plays of times past. Curse of the Daleks was a Doctorless outing, loaded with unthinking chauvinism even as it tried to be progressive and Seven Keys to Doomsday was a pretty standard planet-crawl with Daleks and rebels and ancient super weapons. And then there was The Ultimate Adventure, a rollercoaster musical extravaganza featuring Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor.

And yes, I said musical. Some years later, the characters from the play return in Terrence 'The War Games' Dicks' Beyond the Ultimate Adventure.

Barely recovered from saving the world, the Doctor and his companions, Jason and Crystal, are plunged into a nightmare realm where fear is given form. Accompanying mercenary Karl on a good will search for hidden treasure and the peril of the universe, they find themselves in an otherworldly dimension, faced by an ancient and monstrous foe.

The framing device for this Chronicle is pretty straightforward, as Jason and Crystal (Noel Sullivan and Claire Huckle) record an account of the adventure for submission to a non-specific Time Lord oversight committee. The main narrative has shades of The Five Doctors, as the Doctor and his companions negotiate a parade of old enemies to reach a castle which holds a false reward, although this time it is explicitly a realm of the mind. It is also notable for transitioning between the two episodes of the play, not on a cliffhanger, but on a theatrical act break.

Sadly, or perhaps thankfully, there are no songs, despite the return of Sullivan (from Hear'Say) and his incredible French accent as Jason.

Beyond the Ultimate Adventure is a lighthearted romp, even when faced with deadly, ancient evil, and serves as a good palate cleanser between The First Wave and our next installment, The Anachronauts.

Start to Finish: 6.05 - The First Wave

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Note: This review contains major spoilers for the Oliver Harper arc

Yet more First Doctor, as The Companion Chronicles closes out one of its occasional linked trilogies with the third and final appearance of Tom Allen as 60s city gent Oliver Harper, in Simon Guerrier's The First Wave.

The Doctor, Steven Taylor and Oliver Harper will go to the planetoid Grace Alone. They know; they've seen the records. But what is it that will happen there, and can that fate be averted once revealed?

So, elephant in the room (and by the way, spoilers), The Eternal Bond and The Cold Equations introduced Big Finish's first officially gay companion, and The First Wave kills him off. It's a thing, but it isn't all that much of a thing. Harper's run was limited by the need to fit in between the death of Sara Kingdom and the introduction of Dodo Chaplet, which is barely a story break, and a heroic end is more fitting to the character than wandering off somewhere.

Allen portrays Harper as a bright, determined man, unwilling to give up without a fight, as a counterpoint to Steven's depression in the wake of the loss of Katarina, Brett Vyon and Sara Kingdom, and if the trilogy has a significant flaw it is that Harper's death seems almost enough to push Steven over the edge. The two companions have a good chemistry, however, vital in the absence of a separate Doctor, and their story has been involving. It's sad to see Harper go, but interesting to see his death worked into the Doctor's transformation from disinterested wanderer to benevolent interferer.

In a lighter mode, the next story follows from the plot of a certain stage production, with Dr Who uber-scribe Terrence Dicks' Beyond the Ultimate Adventure.