Darth Vader pretty much appears in final episode of Doctor Who #DrWho #DoctorWho #JodieWhittaker #TheBattleofRanskoorAvKolos

Episode 10 (The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos) is very good indeed. It brings closure to the tragedy of Grace’s death in episode 1. The companions Ryan and Graham finally sort out their man-nonsense. There’s a nice religious element (with a false God) and plenty of scifi spaceships too – a proper dark science or gothic episode, this one.

The Doctor and companions answer a distress call and materialise amidst the wreckage of a recent battle. Broken spaceships lie all around. The psychotropic waves emanating from the planet play tricks on the mind and make people forget their own names. They find a survivor who has retrieved a powerful device, but knows not from where. Neither can the survivor remember what he needed the device for… nor where his crew have gone.

Turns out, a baddie has the crew hostage and will kill them one by one if the Doctor doesn’t return the device. Also turns out the baddie is an adversary from the start of the series too. Graham has murder in his eye and swears he will have revenge for his wife’s death in episode 1. This sets Graham at odds with the Doctor (who will never sanction killing) – and there is a fascinating stand off between them. The viewer genuinely has divided sympathies, especially as the baddie is proper bad (definitely channelling Darth Vader) and intent on destroying the universe with his sick superweapon.

There are moral dilemmas and genuine jeopardy in this episode. It looks like the Doctor is properly out-gunned this time… and it’s all of her own making too. There’s a lot of dark and cosmic irony going on. The Doctor’s also not the biggest noise in the universe either, cos we meet a couple of beings more powerful than her!

Suffice it to say, this episode redeems the series somewhat (cos there were some definite duff filler episodes along the way). It makes me proper look forward to the New Year’s Day Special too! Hurrah! Onwards!

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Downsizing is far from a diminutive movie #Downsizing #MattDamon

Imagine a Norwegian scientist discovered a way to miniaturise people so that they were only six inches tall. Each person would eat far far less and pollute far far less. They wouldn’t even need to work for a living really, cos just one normal-sized apple could feed a town of mini-people for a week. World hunger would end and we would save the planet to boot.

That’s the premise of the extremely thought-provoking movie Downsizing, starring Matt Damon. Now imagine you were normal-sized, in a dead end job and struggling to pay your bills. You work so many hours that you only have time for fast food and you’re becoming overweight. Wouldn’t you want to completely change your life? If you were to miniaturise yourself, you would suddenly be resource-rich and time-rich. You could start spending time getting fit and developing your inner self (doing art, writing, whatever you want)! Your life would be like one of the rich and famous. You’d socialise with similar people and start partying like a celebrity.

Surely you’d want that, right? Matt Damon takes the plunge. He wants to escape his humdrum life of poverty and depression. But he arrives in the palatial village for mini-people and just doesn’t feel comfortable in his own skin. Somehow, he just can’t quite seem to fit in. It all seems too good to be true…

And of course, so it proves to be. I’m gonna avoid spoilers at this point. Suffice it to say, people don’t really manage to escape their problems and get to paradise. No. They bring their problems with them. Because people ARE the problem.

The movie Downsizing is as satirical as it is big-hearted. It has political messages, eco messages, social messages and a philosophical stance. No wonder it has divided critics so much.

Take it from me, though. You won’t watch a more interesting and potentially more provocative Hollywood movie this year. I enjoyed it immensely. Give it a try. Or end up short-changed. It scores 8.5 out of 10 from me. So there.

Winner of the British Fantasy Award for non-fiction #genderidentity #fantasy #BFS

Here’s a rum do: I wrote an academic essay on gender identity and sexuality in science fiction and fantasy, and the collection it was published in won the 2018 British Fantasy Award for non-fiction. Woohoo. No prize money, not even a tin trophy for my mantlepiece… but karma points praps.

The collection from Luna Publishing (@LunaPressGlobal) is ‘Gender Identity and Sexuality in Current Fantasy and Science Fiction’.

 

The witch who would buy your tears #gothic #witch

I saw a young girl weeping

And an old witch then approach

‘I’ll buy your tears, my girl,

For I have shed all my own.’

The maid was much affrighted

But wanted none of sorrow.

‘Take them with my blessing, then

As they’re just a curse to me.’

Doctor Who saves Amazon in episode 7 #Kerblam! #DoctorWho #JodieWhittaker #DrWho

A robot delivery man carrying a mysterious parcel teleports onto the Tardis. It’s a Kerblam! delivery (a sort of intergalactic Amazon) and the Doctor gets all excited. But there’s a message in the parcel: ‘Help me!’ The Doctor and her pals decide to go undercover in the Kerblam! distribution centre to find out who needs their help. The centre is of course highly automated – full of creepy robots – with only a 10% quota of human staff (the lucky ones in the galaxy, apparently).

It emerges that the human staff have been disappearing! One of the staff is Lee Mack – he’s allowed one decent joke before he is spirited away in the spooky lower levels of the centre. It’s a shame we don’t see more of him in the episode really, as he displays far more verve than the other staff, who are mainly dull sorts (to be honest, we don’t really care too much what’s happening to them).

Yes, this episode sets out satirising Amazon, SportsDirect and warehouse companies in general. Except the satire is a bit confused. The working conditions aren’t that bad, although the jobs are dull. The staff are grateful to have the jobs, because it seems that the rest of the galaxy has been made unemployed by automation and A.I. So is the episode a criticism of automation and A.I.? Well, no, not really, as the ending completely retreats from any real condemnation of automation (I’m avoiding spoilers here). So it’s not entirely coherent, sadly. The end is a bit of a fudge and a fumble.

There are nice things about the episode. It feels properly near-future and relevant to today. It’s a warning of what will happen if we don’t take steps now. There are the usual quips and moments of pithy moralising from the Doctor, and the compulsory chases down long corridors. The BBC attempts it’s usual edutainment for the masses. But the social politics and socio-economic underpinnings are an utter mess, in truth. It’s an episode of the week, a filler and ultimately a bit of a sell out. It only gets 6.5 out of 10 from me. Hopefully, normal service will be resumed next week, cos there are witches in the time of King James I.

 

Doctor Who bears witness in episode 6 #DemonsOfThePunjab #DrWho #DoctorWho #JodieWhittaker

I watched episode 6 of the new series with a certain trepidation: for the second time this season the BBC was choosing to revisit a highly sensitive moment in recent history. In the Rosa Parks episode (4), such revisiting had come disturbingly close to revisionism, cultural appropriation and the Doctor playing white saviour, all in the name of light entertainment/edutainment! It was a relief, therefore, to see the BBC judge it perfectly with ‘Demons of the Punjab’. Phew. This was an extremely moving episode. It was far more than light entertainment. Far more.

The Doctor’s assistant, Yaz, convinces her to take them all back to the Punjab of 1947 so that they can see the wedding of Yaz’s grandmother (an episode the grandmother is too reluctant to talk about). They arrive to discover that the Partition of India and Pakistan is just about to take place. Added to it all, the holy man who is due to oversee the wedding winds up murdered (apparently by demonic aliens), so it seems that the wedding won’t take place and Yaz will never be born! She’ll be erased from history.

More than that will spoil it, but it’s safe to say all is not as it seems. Of course, there can be no happy ending either. And it was extremely pleasing to see Yaz central to events, since she barely got a single line in episode 5. I highly recommend this episode – and trust that it represents the series really getting into its stride (after a slight wobble in episodes 4 and 5). Keep the faith!

Find your inner Viking! #Norsemen #Netflix #viking @NorsemenO

Series two of the hilarious Norsemen is now available on Netflix. It follows the story of a village of warriors who have found their way to the west and who go on periodic raids for the new riches to be found there. A competing tribe/clan/group is after the map so that they too can share in the wealth. Much chicanery and double-crossing inevitably ensues. This Norwegian series feels properly authentic (in part thanks to the spectacular landscape and Viking village setting) despite the fact that it contains a lot of modern humour. And don’t go thinking it’s dumb, because the full range of the humour will ‘test’ many a viewer – from surreal humour (with definitely a Monty Python influence/homage), to irony, to slapstick, to visual, to wordplay, to spoof (of A Game of Thrones and The Lord of the Rings), and it goes on. And the humour always has a point, as it sits in counterpoint to the brutally violent lives of the Norsemen – creating a philosophical and psychological interplay throughout.

You don’t really need to have watched series 1 to appreciate series 2, although it helps. And the series is only six half-hour episodes, so you can do a whole series in a single fun-filled sitting, like I did.

My favourite scenes usually involve the Norsemen having a motivational workshop (in which they agree shared values, etc, a bit like in Ricky Gervais’s The Office) or the ‘volunteer’ slave Kark (@oysteinmartnsn) who ‘enjoys the exercise and social aspect’ of being a slave! Fundamentally, the series deals with questions of identity, manliness, heroism, sexuality, etc, but never becomes judgemental or preachy – it always remains whimsical or wry, reflective and cheerful. There’s even a love story at its heart which feels quite credible. It’s all a bit like life, with its highs and lows, but refuses to get bogged down in navel-gazing.

Without giving too much away, series 2 does move the over-arching story forwards, so I’m now awaiting series 3 with relish. I wonder if I can get a cameo role if they film it on location in the west! If you haven’t caught up with Norsemen yet, then you’re missing out. I score it a civilized 9 out of 10.

(If you enjoy Viking fantasy, you might want to check out The Book of Orm too!)