Doctor Who and the Grand Conspiracy #BBC #JodieWhittaker #DrWho #DoctorWho #SylvesterMcCoy

Rumours abound that there is a Sylvester McCoy moment going on with this latest series of Doctor Who. Apparently, there are those who no longer want the Doctor Who albatross round their necks. People are saying that the episodes are sooo bad that it can’t be bad luck or accidental. School kids of 12 that we know are complaining about the quality of script-writing. 12! Even children can spot it’s awful.

I was about to watch tonight’s episode, but the missis turned on me. ‘No.’ Adam frowned: ‘What do you mean? I have to review it for my site.’ Nadine shakes her head and replies, ‘I can’t do it. It’s THAT bad. It’s not even worth reviewing.’

Wow. It set me pondering. The rumour-mill has been saying they’re going ‘full Sylvester’ on it. I can hardly believe it. Why would the BBC do such a thing? A range of reasons, according to t’internet. The BBC has enough Doctor Who content already. The younger generation are starting to watch the old stuff on Netflix. The BBC can ill afford to be making expensive new series when its funding is under threat… and when no one’s really watching terrestrial anymore (oh, the irony).

So… damn. Can it really be the end? I’m insisting we watch next week’s though, cos it’s the Villa Diodati and Frankenstein! Gotta be good, right? It’d ruddy better, is all I’m saying.

The best high-concept science fiction around right now is Picard (Locutus of Borg)! #Picard #StarTrek #Locutus

If you haven’t started watching Star Trek: Picard on Amazon Prime yet, then you’re missing out. This is not the glib, reassuring Star Trek of the Next Gen years, nor the silliness of the recent Discovery series. No. Star Trek: Picard is proper high-concept science fiction. Hallelujah. Rejoice! All if forgiven. There is a subtlety to the whole undertaking that also sets the series apart from the rest: the intertextuality (or metatextuality) of Patrick Stewart being so old (79!) and taking part in possibly his last series, just as Picard is taking part in his last mission. It’s so poignant and resonant – and we really don’t want it to end, do we? – that every second is tragically gripping. And Stewart has finally been given a script that his towering talent and experience deserves (he’s a Shakespearean actor, after all)!!!

Picard is visited by a young girl who has been sent by Data. Data is dead! No!!! Turns out: the girl is his daughter! (But how?) Then the girl is murdered in front of Picard by some black ops team. WTF is going on? The show, brilliantly, gives us clues but refuses to provide clunky exposition. Michael Chabon, thank you: thank you for knowing the beats of suspense and genre. Finally we have a decent writer! Could you write some Doctor Who next? It would really help us out.

The Romulans have been displaced. Romulus has been destroyed. Cue celebrations! Right? Hmm. Genocide is bad. Right? But the fugitive Romulans are still just as subversive as ever. Bastards.

Picard realises he’ll have to come out of his self-imposed retirement – he owes it to Data – as it seems there’s a second daughter… who has been built upon his original code… meaning that a part of Data might still exist… possibly to be reconstituted????

But the Federation is no longer a friend to Picard. It’s political ethos has shifted – so it’s at odds with the too-tolerant nature of Picard. Or have the Romulans subverted the Federation with spies, etc?

And the Romulans have now salvaged a wrecked Borg Cube!!!! The Cube is like a cosmic dice, cos things are looking very dicey! LOL.

The Return of Locutus of Borg!

Come on, you know you want it.

Space rhinos, dead grannies and hope for the Doctor in ‘Fugitive of the Judoon’ #DoctorWho #DrWho #FugitiveOfTheJudoon

A ship of mercenary police called the Judoon turn up and surround Gloucester. And start killing grannies, as you do – their knitting needles are classed as weapons, you see. The Judoon are space rhinos who have been tasked with finding a particular fugitive for their client.

Captain Jack Harkness then comes bobbing through with warning of a lone cyberman – in an episode yet to come.

And Jodie is fretting about the Master – who’s still out there somewhere.

A black tour guide called Ruth turns out to be who the Judoon are looking for, but her bio-shield allows her to avoid the scans and escape with the Doctor. Turns out (spoiler)… Ruth believes she’s the Doctor (a bit like ‘the black slayer Kendra in Buffy moment’). And Ruth has her own TARDIS. Jodie-Whittaker-as-Doctor gets all confused, believing Ruth to be a future version of herself, but Ruth says she has no memory at all of Jodie-as-Doctor.

There seems to be a split in the timeline. In Jodie’s timeline, Gallifrey has been destroyed… but not in Ruth’s. And the mysterious ‘client’ who’s after Ruth is from Gallifrey!

And that’s the episode. It comes at you from all angles. There are twists and turns – but remains coherent (mainly). It’s the best episode of the series by a good chalk. There are jokes, some terrible acting, the Doctor (Ruth) knowingly using a gun to kill someone, and more. It all works! Hurrah!

Doctor Who cares? Worst viewing figures in 34 years #DoctorWho #DrWho #JodieWhittaker #BBC

Doctor Who has suffered the worst viewing figures since Colin Baker was Time Lord in 1986 – but star Jodie Whittaker insists she is not ready to quit yet. Sunday’s episode, Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror, was watched by 4.04m people – the eighth worst showing in the show’s 57-year run – as fans (including 12-year-olds!) branded the new series ‘badly written’. But Whittaker vowed to carry on, saying: ‘I absolutely adore it.’ [Story as reported by The Metro and a local school.]

Doctor Who steals from the best! #DoctorWho #DrWho #Orphan55 #TranquilitySpa

‘Get away from her, you bitch!’ So says the Doctor, using a line straight from the Aliens movie. More than that, the styling of the corridor chase sequences and the early glimpses of the monster in episode 3 of series 12, entitled Orphan 55, are lifted from Alien. And the episode nicks terraforming and teleporters from Star Trek. And there’s more borrowing (call it homage if you like), from Hitchhiker’s Guide, and so on. But you know what? It all works. Indeed, it works extremely well. What a relief after the stinker that was episode 2. You see, we have a new writer on board for this latest outing – thank the heavens and all that’s holy (and unholy, come to that – whatever it takes). I’m going to track down this Ed Hime, whoever he is, and roundly congratulate him.

Why is the episode so successful? Well, there’s genuine jeopardy involved in the action sequences. People die. Important people. And the sequences move the story forward as well, to an inexorable and shocking reveal moment – the answer to the mystery of the planet known as Orphan 55. There’s an eco-message that I was completely down with, though others might whine it’s a touch preachy. Matter of taste, I suspect.

You can actually tell from the opening scene of the episode that it’s gonna be a good one, and that we have a decent writer doing the work. There are refreshing jokes (proper ones) that add new dimensions to the cast of characters. Bradley Walsh has been collecting coupons from the coffee machine that they have in the Tardis – the machine is upstairs, which is downstairs, or wherever it is in the folded space of the place. And he now has enough coupons to take them all on holiday. The Doctor says she doesn’t need a holiday – and then all her companions turn on her and say, ‘No, you really DO need a holiday. Trust us. You do. Really.’ It’s a telling moment, and the Doctor actually learns something new about herself (rare, these days). The coupons are put together and they’re all teleported to… Tranquility Spa! But it’s all too good to be true. Of course it is! It’s Doctor Who, after all.

I’ll leave it there, to avoid spoilers, blah, blah. If you’re one of the legions of fans who’ve switched Doctor Who off, you might wanna switch it back on for this one. (Oo, and Ryan gets a hot girlfriend for himself!)

Mutterings about The Witcher #TheWitcher #TheWitcherNetflix

The Witcher: a Synopsis
The setting: some indiscriminate medieval bobbins. A tree, a castle, some poo, a village full of Pythonesque yokels.
Our hero, Gefript of the Islets of Langherans, enters.
Yokel A: We don’t like your type around here, WHITCHERRRR
Yokel B: Aaaarrrrr, in this tavern we discriminates against moody incels with hidden depths, and indeed ALL DIFFERENCE.
Gefript: *glowers in 14-yr-old boy’s version of hidden depths*
Scene shifts. A castle. Home of King Elderflower of Cor Dial
A thin blonde bird in a nightdress: AAAAAAARGHHHHHHH papa I will not marry the Count of Bacon Quichelands oooh wait am I magic?
She runs into the woods, which are sinister, for REASONS.
Scene shifts again: a pig pen.
A gorgeous bird with a clearly “this’ll be gone by ep 4” disability: I have been abused by my family. Will this mysterious powerful woman save me or abuse me in a different way? Only time and the bleeding obvious can tell.
The Showrunners: Heeeeeeeheeeeee! What you don’t know is…
The Audience, who have watched Westworld and literally everything since: IT’S BEING TOLD IN DIFFERENT TIMEFRAMES WE ALREADY KNOW
A Bard: lol lol lol I’m meta and make jokes about how bad the writing is, which cleverly makes it not bad at all, do you see?
An extra with one line: Sir, we here are but simple folks preyed on by the magical and evil Xfristersinghtin, who are EVIL and definitely not a metaphor for misunderstood difference
Gefript: I will kill you all, but maybe not. I like my horse. For coin I will exposition the fact that the evil Xfristersinghtin are a metaphor for misunderstood difference, as are these elves we chucked in.
Some random girl-on-top shagging: we’re not entirely sure why we’re here, but if the GOT fans made it this far I’m sure they’ll be thrilled.
The Magical Council of Dairylea: Can’t believe we’re getting away with this, tbh.

Distant voice of Sir Terry Pratchett: I was taking the p***out of this kind of offensively awful nonsense in nineteen eighty threeeeeeeeeee…….
*Fade to blackout*

[With fanx to Nadine Dalton-West, legendary second elf of the third house of the ninth clan of the Wasting Tribe of Tinterlandia]

Doctor Who in Spyfall: Oh dear, more is definitely less! #DoctorWho #Spyfall #DrWho

So, series 12 of Doctor Who started with the double-header Spyfall. The name of the two-parter is a reference to the Bond movie Skyfall. It’s a weak pun… and ends up describing what is ultimately a fairly weak start to the overall series. It’s such a shame, because the first part had such promise too! We have Stephen Fry, Lenny Henry (as a convincingly evil and straight-faced Zuckerberg type character), a bunch of white-light baddies called the Kasavin (from beyond our universe) and Sacha Dhawan wonderfully playing an old nemesis of the Doctor (very good acting). Chuck in some Bond-type science fiction technology and a few twists and turns, and it was all sizing up to be an utter triumph.

Yet the second episode was pretty nonsensical, sadly. Quite unnecessarily, even more was thrown into the plot – Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Nazis, Gallifrey (honest!) and… other stuff that flashed by without any true explanation. It was a case of ‘more is definitely less’. There were action scenes that didn’t move the plot along, and which had no genuine consequence or jeopardy. So what’s the flaming point to watching them?People are getting miniaturised (and killed), and the Doctor (quite-out-of-character) simply doesn’t have time to care about murders. It left me numb too. Then we’ll get a talking-heads scene in which the characters are trying to make sense of what the hell’s going on. There are umpteen reveal moments that leave us none the wiser. And we wait for things to coalesce into something meaningful. And we wait. And we scratch our heads and wonder if we’ve missed something important, or dropped off at some important moment, or drunk too much wine. Maybe we’ve missed a crucial clue. But the final explanation of what is going on (after two whole episodes) was unguessable anyway, so the clues weren’t actually clues. And the big showdown finale… when the baddies flick the switch… is a complete and utter anti-climax. Computer says no. WTF?! One of the fundamental rules of writing good drama is that we must not deny the audience any of the ‘riches’ that they’ve been promised – if we have described a terrible threat, we must not simply abort the threat before the bad thing happens!

I watched episode 2 through a second time… and it was no more coherent on second viewing either. Jodie Whittaker was as brilliant as ever, as was Bradley Walsh. Honestly, they deserve better scripts. Still, there was so much thrown in that there were tantalising promises of what’s to come in the other eight episodes. They’d better not deny us those riches!