The Obligatory Doctor Who Christmas Blog

It’s hard to think that it is now 10 years since the first Doctor Who Christmas Special of the revised series. It wasn’t the first Christmas episode of the entire series, though, as there was a curio called “The Feast Of Steven” that was first broadcast in 1965 that was designed as a light-hearted, stand-alone episode offering some seasonal cheer in amongst the battles with Daleks. It is long lost although the audio track remains along with some fan-reconstructed stills photos. It was rather controversial at the time as William Hartnell (along with co-stars Peter Purves and Jean Marsh) break the 4th wall with a Christmas message delivered to the audience at home:



The Christmas episodes of the revised series have been a hit-and-miss affair. The first, A Christmas Invasion, was a gloriously enjoyable tale written by Russell T Davies and was the first to star David Tennant giving his popularity an immediate boost. From there on the RTD era Christmas scripts were rather patchy with star casting taking priority over decent scripts and only The Next Doctor coming close with a great turn by David Morrissey as a man struggling with his identity but somewhat spoiled by some nonsense with Cybermen: a real Curate’s Egg of an episode.

The Stephen Moffat scripted Christmas specials seem to have gone in a cycle of excellent-then-mediocre. His first, A Christmas Carol was a real standout one-off episode which made excellent use of both the guest actors and the mercurial talents of Matt Smith. This was followed by The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe which I can only vaguely recall even after a few viewings as the one with the Ents from Lord Of The Rings in it. We went back to form with The Snowmen with Matt Smith in full Dickensian mode but that was followed by the somewhat patchy Time Of The Doctor which suffered from having to tie up all of Matt Smiths hanging story threads. Last year we had Last Christmas which I would regard as the best of the bunch but did that mean that this year’s episode was going to be pants?

My initial reaction after watching last night’s Husbands Of River Song was that they had rounded off an excellent year of new Who episodes with something of a Christmas Turkey but I’m actually feeling a little more charitable towards it this morning. Just as The Next Doctor had a great human story mixed amongst the aimless action, this year’s episode had one great aspect: a last dinner date between the Doctor and River, somewhat weighed down by a pointless jewel-heist MacGuffin of a plotline. The jewel heist story in itself could have been OK but it made scant use of what was a decent support cast: Matt Lucas may as well have stayed at home as his character was completely surplus to requirements and, whilst Greg Davies was on good form, why bother casting a famously giant comic actor (he is over 2 metres in height) when all that was required was a disembodied head?

The ending of the episode made up for the aimless romp of the previous 40 minutes and the Doctor’s realisation that River is approaching the end of their timeline is quite touching and shows a sensitive side of Capaldi’s characterisation of the Doctor that he seldom gets chance to explore. It also brings another hanging storyline from Steven Moffat’s reign as lead writer to a pleasing conclusion. In fact it leaves both Moffat and Capaldi with a largely clean slate for the next series.

The details of the next series of Doctor Who are rather scant at the moment. We don’t know who the next companion(s) will be and as the filming is not due to start until May it could be quite a while before the next series airs. In fact I am wondering whether the plan is to treat the next Christmas episode as the start of the next series which would provide a longer canvass to introduce the new cast members and would provide a larger audience of casual viewers to re-introduce the series afresh. I’m sure that we will hear more details in the coming months but right now, it feels a very long way off.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

I saw the original Star Wars film when it first came out. At least I saw it when it first came out at our local cinema. It came out originally in the US in May 1977 but didn’t make it to the glittering heights of the West End of London until the end of that year. By the time the film had worked its way around the country to us it was nearly May 1978 and my father offered to take us to see it for my elder brother’s birthday treat. This in itself took two efforts as he initially booked the tickets for a suspiciously quiet Wednesday. It turned out that this was the day of the European Cup final which was being held in Wembley that year and created something of a double booking dilemma. I think we actually saw it the day after but I wouldn’t swear by it. Regardless, I saw the original Star Wars film when it came out (sort of).

In fact, aside from being a cinematic event of the highest order it was also the sort of film that was right down my dad’s street. He was very much a fan of the action-adventure genre and would have spent a childhood watching a mixture of westerns and Saturday morning serials like Flash Gordon. Unfortunately, his big sister held the purse strings on the matinee entertainment budget so it was Busby Berkley musicals all the way. I’d like to imagine that the surroundings of the picture house had improved by 1978 although in truth it was probably little changed: the film still had an intermission half way through, tubs of Walls’ ice-cream were the order of the day (I seem to recall a Cornetto was still more than the ticket at this time) and the film was watched through a veil of cigarette smoke with a mono soundtrack crackling away in what used to be the organ pit. I loved it every second of it.

I have actually seen all the Star Wars films to date at the cinema. If I’m being honest this has been a case of diminishing returns. The Empire Strikes Back seemed a bit of an anti-climax at the time although once its place in the original trilogy became apparent it is arguable the most dramatically satisfying. The Return of the Jedi was a reasonable conclusion but the plot was essentially the same as the original except they ended up on the planet of the teddy bears. Aside from some needless reworking of the original trilogy with some dreadfully ill-conceived CGI fiddling the next films were “the prequels”. Given the hype, The Phantom Menace was destined to be underwhelming and it did succeed on that dubious point: even setting aside the excruciating Jar-Jar Binks the plot was dull and the action sequences looked as if they had been designed purely with a video game in mind. Attack of the Clones was better but it was apparent that these were films that could only really appeal to fans of the original trilogy and it is noticeable that The Revenge Of The Sith tied up the series mythos with little regard to the casual viewer and was probably a better film for it.

I hadn’t intended to see new film, The Force Awakens, on its opening weekend but this changed last week when the opportunity of a spare ticket came up. It’s actually quite fortuitous as I had been intent on avoiding any spoilers until I saw it. This is actually very hard these days with a buzzing internet of fevered fandom enthusing for the new chapter but even in 1978 I practically knew the original film by heart before seeing it as I had been collecting a set of bubble-gum cards with a scene by scene resume of the plot (I hated the bubble-gum, by the way, but it seemed a small price to pay to collect the cards). So on Sunday evening, I went into the cinema with pretty much no idea of what to expect: well, I was expecting light sabres, space battles, weird aliens and an assortment of droids, but in terms of the plot I knew practically nothing.

So without actually giving the plot away, what did I think? Well first of all, I have to say I loved it and in a similar way to JJ Abrams reboot of the Star Trek film. It assumed that everyone knew what to expect and proceeded to offer exactly that. He seems to have ignored the prequels as a misstep and what he has offered is actually very close to the original film in both content and style: a simple story of good vs evil set in the stars, with David Lean style desserts and Akira Kurosawa style wipes. It’s worth remembering that whilst the original Star Wars felt fresh and new, it wore its influences on its sleeve and The Force Awakens does the same, except it is very much a homage to George Lucas’s original film but without being the cinematic game changer that Star Wars was in 1977. What it doesn't offer is any unexpected twists and turns aside from one very big name actor that has a surprisingly small part at the beginning. But what it may lack in originality it more than makes up for in cinematic flair: many Star Wars fans will probably hate me for  saying this but I think Abrams is a far more accomplished director than Lucas ever was.

I suppose the critical thing is whether I would like to see the film again. As it is my son’s birthday next week I will get the chance to see it again very soon and I’m actually looking forward to that as it will give me a chance to appreciate many of the subtleties of the direction. I suppose that is as good a recommendation as any.

Christmas Songs

“Ooh, I like this one...” I thought the checkout girl was commenting on my shopping. They quite often do this, especially if it’s something that they didn’t know that their shop sold. In a worrying parody of Scottish grocery retailing this usually turns out to be some form of fresh fruit and veg. However, her face then looked glum, “… but it’s Elton John next.” She was actually talking about the shop’s piped selection of Christmas songs which is played on an endless loop by the supermarket to torture their employees as if they were Guantanamo Bay inmates. No doubt the staff Christmas night out involves waterboarding.

In fact the song she liked was a little known Kate Bush single, December Will Be Magic Again, which has never appeared on Ms Bush’s albums and only rarely appears on Christmas compilations. It’s rather a shame as it is actually a very good song in its own right:

I can sympathise with shop workers who have piped music inflicted on them. I actually boycotted our local Lidl supermarket earlier this year when they tried to introduce it: they eventually relented. However, there is a general consensus that all Christmas songs are appalling. Not Christmas carols, of course, which exist, quite rightly, in their own context, but songs that have been written specifically for the Christmas market. Essentially commercial music: cashing-in on Christmas. For the most part, I’d agree with this but there are exceptions to this rule. I’d strongly recommend anyone to listen to Phil Spector’s Christmas Album which dates back to when he was an innovative record producer rather than a convicted murderer. As commercial records go that was originally a flop but it captures perfectly the R&B girl group sound from the period.  In a similar vein is Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You. I normally regard Ms Carey as a dreadful, warbling harpy but this record is genuinely uplifting:

I think to make a genuinely good Christmas song they need to be written about Christmas rather than for Christmas. Joni Mitchell’s song, River, is a great example of this: the song is set at Christmas but is about a relationship breakup and the emotional debris that goes with it:

Another song that is seemingly a Christmas tune but is actually something else is John Lennon’s Happy Xmas (War Is Over). Written primarily as an anti-Vietnam war song the Christmas message makes it far more accessible to a wider audience:

The interesting thing with most Christmas songs is they tend to appear as asides, throwaway tracks that don’t appear on the artists albums or in their main repertoire. One of the exceptions to this is Jethro Tull’s Ring Out, Solstice Bells which appeared right in the middle of their Songs from the Wood album. The other interesting thing about this song is that it draws upon the pre-Christian pagan origins of the mid-winter festival rather than the celebration of the birth of Jesus (let alone the worship of money that most “Christmas” celebrations seem to centre on.)

There is of course the anti-Christmas song that protest the commercialisation of Christmas. A gereat example of this is Greg Lake’s I Believe in Father Christmas which not only takes a swipe at the avaricious hijacking of Christmas but also uses a cracking refrain from Sergei Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kijé:

So is there no place for a commercial Christmas song? Probably the most overplayed song at Christmas is Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody but I still think it’s a brilliant piece of song writing. In the early 1970’s there was a distinct gap between commercial single-orientated pop music and the more album-orientated “serious” music. Slade were definitely a singles orientated band but they were also superb song-writers. I have a greatest hits compilation by Slade and every song is a classic. It is in chronological order for the most part but Merry Xmas Everybody is the closing track which makes for a great party album. Noddy Holder often calls the song his “pension scheme”. Well why not? None of us are getting any younger.

Hell Bent

The series finale of Doctor Who, Hell Bent, is all set on his home planet of Gallifrey which, as a serious Doctor Who fanatic, should be Manna from Heaven. Except, I’ve never really been that bothered about the Time Lord mythology behind the series. I much prefer that there is an element of mystery about the central character and the big reveal of 1969’s War Games about the Doctor’s origins is as much as I really need or want to know – I would much rather that he was this mysterious traveller that ended up getting into scrapes with Daleks or whatever. In a similar way, I was never that bothered about the internal Federation politics in Star Trek; I much preferred it when the Captain was picking a fight with Klingons.

Hell Bent actually brings us to the climax of a trilogy of episodes with Clara getting her comeuppance in Face The Raven and the Doctor being trapped in a riddle of a prison in Heaven Sent (which I watched again in the week and, if anything, gets even better on a second viewing.) Now we get Clara back in pretty much the first scene (and the last one as well) but quite how we get to that point turns out to be rather interesting. In fact I was pleasantly surprised by the whole thing as I had seen a couple of spoiler-free previews that were less than enthusiastic.

As for the Gallifrey thing it was really the opposite of what I had feared. Rather than dwelling on the shows own internal mythos it was, in fact, closing many of the threads that were dangling from Matt Smith’s last series. I am wondering whether these stories were meant to have been used for Matt’s Doctor if he had done a forth series – sadly we will never know. What I had expected was something like The Deadly Assassin which is regarded as an all-time classic but which never really appealed to me other than the Master’s face rotting off. That seemed to dwell heavily on Timlord backstory but with Hell Bent we have Gallifrey as a backdrop with a few loose ends tied up and the Doctor is away again.

One of the tropes of Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who stories is that he never seems to be able to let a character die and this is also true of Clara. However, the device he uses here of salvaging her last moment of life and then wiping the Doctors memory of her (the inverse Donna effect) is really required for the series to progress. Her original story was the “Impossible Girl” arc in which she is meant to have been a ghostly figure in the Doctor’s timeline: always there but never spotted. By wiping the Doctor’s memory she is able to return as that ghostly presence whilst the Doctor can move on to bigger and better things.

There were lots of other little things with the episode that I loved. Seeing the original 1960s TARDIS interior again (complete with wobbly doors) was a great nod to the show's past as was the Doctor’s guitar: I originally thought this was a Gibson SG but on closer inspection it was actually the budget Epiphone version – apparently Doctor Who’s budget still harks back to the 1960s as well! It’s worth noting, too, the total running time of the three-part series finale. In terms of the classic series this would have clocked in as a 7 part story which we haven’t seen since the 1970 adventure Inferno (well, as long as one discounts the linked Trial of a Timelord series which I strongly advise most people to do).

So what of the series overall? Back in September when it started I was feeling surprisingly uninspired: not unenthusiastic, exactly, but not waiting with baited breath either. As the series has progressed I’ve been cursing the tardiness of the week that brings us Saturday night more and more - even being tempted to poke around fan forums for snippets (not that the BBC haven’t done a sterling job in feeding huge great spoilers anyway). I really enjoyed last year’s series; the return to a single long run has helped no end. But two factors have really propelled this year’s series forward: the return to a long format multi-part story has allowed the scripts room to breathe and really allowed the lead actors to develop the dramatic potential of the stories; and secondly the fact that both the lead actors were known to the writers has meant that the scripts are finely tuned to the traits of the main characters. As I mused back in September: it is often the lead actor’s second series where they really make their mark.

If I had to pick a single episode that I liked the best it would without a doubt be Heaven Sent even though half a dozen of the other episodes would be up amongst my favourites. If there was a low point I’d probably go for Sleep No More but I’m still undecided as to whether that was meant to be an actual adventure or a meta-Who episode: I think they missed a trick with this one by not showing it as a Halloween special – that would have swapped it with the Zygon story and made for a more balanced series. That’s nit-picking, though, and I would otherwise find it hard to fault this run. Of course, we still have the Christmas special to come in just under three weeks: The Husbands of River Song. I’m a little weary of where that one is going but I thought that about last year’s festive episode, Last Christmas, and that turned out to be something of a classic.

Heaven Sent

I think I spent the first 45 minutes of Saturday’s Doctor Who, Heaven Sent, trying to work out exactly what was going on. It looked fantastic, Capaldi was brilliant (even if he seemed to be morphing into Tom Baker at times) and I even liked the score (Murray Gold throwing a snippet of Beethoven’s Seventh at Prokofiev and catching the debris). I had fathomed some things out such as the Doctor somehow managing to leave clues to himself but it wasn’t until the last 10 minutes or so that the whole picture fell into place whilst stirring some sort of deeply buried memory from the back of my mind: "How long is a second in eternity?"

Now, initially, I thought this was some biblical reference. Possibly this was because I first heard the story in a Sunday school class but given that the young priest that ran it was more fond of magic tricks, Germanic folklore and Ray Harryhausen movies than anything as dull as the bible I should have throught better of it but the story of the bird pecking away at a mountain struck a chord with me. I looked it up and it is recorded as the Brothers’ Grim faery tale KHM 152: The Shepherd Boy (Das Hirtenbüblein) in which a king quizzes a shepherd boy, renowned for his wisdom. The passage comes from the king’s third question:

Sprach der König: "Die dritte Frage lautet: wie viel Sekunden hat die Ewigkeit?" Da sagte das Hirtenbüblein: "In Hinterpommern liegt der Demantberg, der hat eine Stunde in die Höhe, eine Stunde in die Breite und eine Stunde in die Tiefe; dahin kommt alle hundert Jahr ein Vöglein und wetzt sein Schnäbelein daran, und wenn der ganze Berg abgewetzt ist, dann ist die erste Sekunde von der Ewigkeit vorbei."

The King spoke: "The third question is: how many seconds are there in eternity?" Then the shepherd boy said: "In Lower Pomerania there is the Diamond Mountain, which is three miles high, three miles wide and three miles deep; every hundred years a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on it, and when the whole mountain is worn, then the first second of eternity has passed. "

Actually, in the German it uses eine Stunde meaning an hour’s walk which will take me about three miles if I’m not in a rush. The bird, in the case of Heaven Sent, is the Doctor trying to punch his way through the diamond wall. Personally, I think he would have been better off hitting it with his shovel. Jon Pertwee’s third Doctor might have managed this a bit quicker as he was fairly handy in a fist fight but I suspect he would have just punched the Veil’s lights out and had done with it.

Thanks to the BBC managing to stick great big spoilers in the TV paper the big reveal of the Doctor getting back to Gallifrey wasn’t such a surprise but the Doctor announcing that “The Hybrid is Me” was a bit of a novelty. However, does he mean that he himself is the Hybrid or does he mean Ashildr who refers to herself as “Me”? Thanks to another bit of a spoiler in the Next Time trailer we also know that Maisie Williams is in the series finale.  I thought avoiding spoilers was a case of ignoring the internet, not the bleeding episodes themselves? Oh yes, the Doctor now says “Arse” – I’m sure that would have offended Patrick Troughton’s Giddy Aunt.

Anyway, having enjoyed the series so far I’m split between whether this one  or the Zygon story is my favourite. Heaven Sent is certainly the most original idea and also one that I think will still stand up to repeated viewing. Whether it will go down as well with the casual viewer (or at least those that are not as well versed in Grimm tales) is another matter. However, I’m going to call it as a classic.

Face The Raven

Alas poor Clara… Considering the Doctor Who production team are so secretive and tight lipped over their scripts it seems surprising that Peter Capaldi turned up on The Graham Norton Show on Friday and pretty much gave away the ending of the following day’s episode in one go. The odd thing is that it didn’t actually pan out as I expected it to. Doctor Who assistants don’t usually get killed off (Adric was the notable exception when he was blown up back in 1982) although they do sometimes have a less than rosy ending, for example Amy and Rory being zapped back in time to eventually die of old age or Donna losing her memory.

The episode itself was fantastically written. I checked out Sarah Dollard’s writing history and she started out on Neighbours. She has also done some good stuff too such as Merlin, Being Human and a Welsh language series called Cara Fi (which I haven’t seen since it’s years since I’ve been able to pick up S4C). In some ways this had a Harry Potter feel to it which is very much what Steven Moffat has tried to allude to since Matt Smith’s first episode. This worked well for this story, not least of which it was easy to suspend disbelief and enjoy the human drama that was central to the script.

One thing I wasn’t expecting is just how dark Maisie Williams’ Ashildr character has become. Since the last time we saw her she has become quite tyrannical – not just manipulative but now a megalomaniac control freak, ruling over her band of misfits with threats and malice. This does seem to rule out her becoming the next companion but I can see the character appearing again in the future.

I suppose that leaves Clara’s exit which I had imagined would happen as some sort of timey-wimey, happily-ever-after way but instead we got to see her stoically facing up to her imminent demise. It made for genuinely moving drama – as my wife put it: they now warn against sex, violence and bad language before programmes but they never seem to have a box of hankies warning. The only thing I am wondering is whether this really is the last we will see of Jenna Coleman – I caught a glimpse of the cover of Doctor Who magazine in Asda and… well, spoilers anyway!

This is the first part of a three part finale. The last time they did this was with Utopia / The Sound of Drums / Last Of The Timelords which struck me as being one of the best build-ups with a grossly unsatisfying climax. I hope they don’t make the same mistake again but from what I can tell, the three episodes this time will be very different from each other. Next week will see Peter Capaldi’s Doctor on his own. I’m looking forward to it.

Sleep No More

How do you make an original show with an idea that has been done to death. We found out this was with Sleep No More, the latest episode of Doctor Who, that uses as its basis the concept of the “found footage” film – the supposed journals of a lost soul who perished whilst documenting some unknown supernatural peril.

It’s surprising that Doctor Who hasn’t done this before as the big advantage of this style of production is that it costs sod-all to make. At least, traditionally it has done with films like Man Bites Dog and The Blair Witch Project; it has also been used on more recent films such as Cloverfield which had a more substantial budget with fancy CGI effects and no excuse whatsoever for the wobbly camerawork (one of my bugbears in modern film making is the lack of a tripod).

Sleep No More shouldn’t work. One of the main criteria of “found footage” is that the suspension of disbelief should hang on the fact that the film is of real events and I’m pretty sure that footage of a 38th Century space station orbiting Neptune doesn’t fit that narrative. However, this does come from the pen of Mark Gatiss who as well as being one of the most consistent Doctor Who writers (never a bad episode but probably never a classic either) is also so steeped in the horror genre that if anyone could pull it off, he should be able to.

What is a delight here is to see how many references from other films, and other Who episodes, can be packed into a single episode. There is an obvious Alien reference (via Ark in Space) and a big nod to Event Horizon (passing 42 alone the way). The standard found footage claustrophobia and muddled viewpoints are straight from the likes of Cloverfield (it certainly never feels at the budget end of the genre). It is also sneaky that Reece Shearsmith  has starred in the 9th episode of the 9th series of the revived Doctor Who which nods nicely towards his own, excellent, Inside No 9 series – in fact the whole episode could fit more easily in that series than Doctor Who itself. But the clever thing here is that Gatiss has seemingly offered up one thing (a found footage film) and actually produced something that is more in the mould of Japanese horror, notably the original Ring film.

Every so often Doctor Who goes off on a tangent and produces something unconventional. On occasion, these are lauded as masterpieces (such as Blink) or derided as missteps (such as Love and Monsters – although I personally liked that one). I’ve only watched this the once, so far, at broadcast and I have to admit that I was a bit tired at the time I watched it (it is really is on at an arse of a time at the moment). I’m going to re-watch it in the week but I suspect that this is one that will either become revelatory or fall apart on repeated viewing. Sleep No More is certainly unique but at the moment it feels like most of Gatiss’ work: another good, solid episode but probably not a classic.

The Zygon Metaphor

The whole Science Fiction and Fantasy genre works best when, at its core, it is asking fundamentally human questions. On the face of it, it may be about fantastical worlds, bizarre aliens, space-ships and lasers, gods and monsters; but this is a façade for the more intriguing questions of what makes the world tick. The Zygon two-parter (Invasion/Inversion) harks back to the shows 1970s heyday with a strong, allegorical, political message only slightly masked by the fancy effects and monster-of-the-week conventions.

I was a little anxious about this story as it was written by Peter Harness who’s previous episode, Kill The Moon, was the only one from last year’s run that I didn’t particularly like. In fact there was much to like about that story and a great deal has been made of its metaphorical take on the abortion debate but it did niggle with me in a way I could quite articulate. Someone pointed out on a Sci-Fi Forum that they couldn’t quite connect with it as it required such a large suspension of disbelief from a plausible alternative universe that they couldn’t accept it at face value and I think that is how I felt. However, with the Zygons, Harness has created a world that is not only believable but so close to current anxieties about refugees, extremism and fear of “the other” that making his world any closer to reality would have detracted from the themes being examined.

If I had to pick out quite why I found the whole thing so brilliant, it’s that it seems to stand an entire genre on its head. We are used to seeing stories and characters built up over an hour or so only to have the whole thing quickly brushed aside in a blaze of CGI enhanced special effects but here the build-up used all the SFX budget up to give way to the real on-screen fireworks: the Doctor, and essentially a role-defining moment for Peter Capaldi, to deliver a breath-taking 10 minutes of single-scene, dialogue-driven action in which he not only resolves the situation but also dismantles the futility of war, the infantilism of radicalism and the eternal cyclical nature of the struggle between civilisations to boot.

Aside from the finale there was much to like about the rest of the episodes. Jenna Coleman actually had something to do this series and her dual role as both Clara and her evil Zygon clone is probably one of her best performances to date. Ingrid Oliver managed to upgrade her character of Osgood from being merely a fangirl to a fully-fledged character with ideas and motivations of her own and Jemma Redgrave managed channel the late great Nicholas Courtney with his famous “5 rounds rapid fire” line. In fact looking closer at the episode it looks more and more like an early 70s Who adventure but with 21st century budgets: the best of both worlds if there ever was.

So, overall I would put this as close to a 10/10 as could reasonably be expected. The only one criticism I would make would be in regard to the Zygon costumes themselves. They are very Nu-Who, which is to say that the prosthetics and makeup are excellent but this is still, most definitely, a bloke in a costume whereas the original 1975 Zygons really did look truly alien: humanoid, yet obviously not of  this world. It’s a minor point but it does show that the mid-70s series was not just the wobbly sets and bubble wrap that it is often accused of (OK – I’ll not mention the Loch Ness Monster…)

The Road From Hell

Last week I had the utter misfortune to work in Hampshire for the week. I’m sure it is a lovely place really but all I saw of it was the inside of a high tech datacentre, surrounded by razor-wire and with the sort of high tech security gubbins that would give a Bond villain a wet dream. Well, it would have done if any of it actually worked in the appropriate manner but mostly it just served to lock people in or out of wherever they didn’t want to be. At one point I even had to rescue a somewhat pissed-off dwarf that was trapped inside a security cubicle.

Anyway, aside from the horrible working environment I also had a long and mercilessly tedious drive from Scotland to the South of England and back. According to the route planner this should have been straight forward enough and, travelling down, it was. On the way back it should have been a case of sticking on the Rammstein albums, aiming the car Northwards and trundling up the motorway for just over six hours. However, it is never that easy as I discovered when I came across the misery that is the M6 between Birmingham and Manchester. It is a journey that should have taken about an hour. In fact it took over four.

The odd thing is that I had already had to drive through various roadworks which one would have thought would cause some traffic congestion, but on the stretches of road where the traffic kept grinding to a halt there was nothing obvious that had caused it: no road works, no accidents, no breakdowns or other blockages. This is actually a well-known phenomenon: the phantom traffic jam. These are caused when vehicles are travelling too close together and something causes one car to brake (for example, an inconsiderate lane change). This may only be a very slight change of speed but the effect is that the vehicle behind must brake at least as hard and the vehicle behind them at least as hard again. The end result is that the vehicles at the end of the line of too-close vehicles brake to a standstill and the phantom traffic jam snakes its way down the motorway until the number of cars leaving the stoppage exceeds the number of new cars arriving. Last Friday, this was in Birmingham.

There have been various attempts to try to stop these phantoms occurring: variable speed limits, chevrons on the road or traffic lights to restrict the number of vehicles that can join the motorway. Around Birmingham they have even pressed the hard shoulder into use as an extra lane thus downgrading the motorway into a particularly wide dual-carriageway. Presumably, these schemes have had some effect but they don’t appear to be effective enough. This is not surprising as the motorway system around Birmingham was designed for traffic levels in the 1960s and precious little has been done to improve the situation (aside from the comically ill-conceived toll road which sits as a folly to the idea of privately run infrastructure).

What I am wondering is whether the real answer is staring road planners in the face. I had to drive through a few roadworks which had a reduced number of narrowed lanes. In all these places the traffic was dense but free flowing. What appeared to make the difference was that they had 50 mph speed limits enforced by average speed cameras. The traffic, whether restricted HGVs or over-powered executive cars, all travelled at a steady 50 mph. They didn’t (for the most part) change lane and didn’t attempt to exceed the limits for fear of incurring the wrath of the digital average speed cameras. I’m probably like everyone else in that I dislike these things as they follow the counter-intuitive “less haste, more speed” mantra but it could have saved 3 hours off my journey last week. If that is what it takes to make the road system work then it must be worth considering.

Who Wants To Live Forever?

We are already half way through this series of Doctor Who and I am quite enjoying the new, longer-format, two part serials. The last two were more of an “unconventional” two part story in that the episodes are linked but exist as separate stories on their own. They were two that I had been particularly looking forward to due to their writers: Jamie Mathieson who wrote my favourite two episodes from last year, Mummy on the Orient Express and Flatline; and Catherine Tregenna who wrote some of the best stories for the spin-off series Torchwood including Out Of Time which was possibly my favourite single episode from that, admittedly, hit-and-miss series.

The first part of the story, The Girl Who Died, was probably not exactly what I was expecting as it turned out to be one of Doctor Who’s “romp” adventures: high on humour and slapstick action but, for the most part, rather light on plotline. Some reviewers likened it to last year’s Robot of Sherwood which I can see to a point but whilst that one felt like it was written with Matt Smith in mind this was definitely done for Capaldi’s Doctor with his irreverent humour and (now rather more subdued) grumpiness. Rather more low key was Clara who now feels like she was written in after the event – I’m wondering if her last-minute change of mind over leaving has led to some hurried script changes?

The humour worked well with the rubbish Vikings (all the backroom boys – I’m sure they should have had a chartered accountant in there) pitted against even more rubbish aliens who could be frightened off with a little slight-of-hand trickery. The one-liners all hit the mark (calling the Vikings everything from Noggin the Nog through to ZZ Top) and the action suitably chuckle-worthy. It was really only in the last ten minutes that something much darker came to light in which the Doctor brings the “girl who died” back to seemingly immortal life. The Doctor clearly breaking the laws of time and uttering the haunting line: “Immortality isn’t living forever, that is not what it feels like. Immortality is everybody else dying."

The second episode sees us drawn to 17th Century England and the adventures of the immortal “Woman Who Lived”, now a prototype  Dick Turpin in an episode surprisingly low on action and high on dialogue which was, at least in my opinion, far better for it. It is also interesting that Clara featured as a mere cameo in this episode which does make me wonder about what brief Catherine Tregenna was given. The action did pick up towards the end and I suppose that being Who we had to have a “monster of the week”. I don’t think it was really required as the discussion between the Doctor and Ashildr on the true nature of immortality was actually far more interesting. The brief twist at the end (and possibly a link for the future) seemed to be lifted straight from Tregenna’s Torchwood work. I hope we see more stories from her in the future.

Much of the interest of these episodes has been around the performance of Maisie Williams as Ashildr. She is best known as Arya Stark in Game of Thrones, the sword wielding tom-boy, and I suppose it is easy to draw comparisons between the two. I think she did pretty well with it although I would like to see her in a non-fantasy role (I have heard good things about Cyberbully although haven’t seen it yet). Surprisingly, she is now 18 years old although still looks about 12 (which is probably due to me being a couple of series behind on Thrones). Still, I think she has the talent to break the barrier between child and adult actor. I’m interested to see what she does next.

I’ve been trying to spot the series arc over the last six episodes and whilst it looks like the Doctor may be having a mid-life crisis with his partying, shades and electric guitar, the real theme has been examining how much he can interfere with history itself,  whether this was saving the child Davros to preserve the timeline, creating a causal loop to save himself or meddling with time to save others. This was a common theme with the early years of the show: particularly the First Doctor stories The Aztecs, in which the Doctor warns against trying to alter time “You can't rewrite history! Not one line!" and also The Time Meddler in which the Doctor stops a fellow Timelord from altering the events of 1066. What this series appears to be addressing is exactly what happens if the Doctor is the Meddler. Anyway, it’s Zygons on Halloween next week complete with UNIT in tow. It’s like it’s 1975 again…

Klopp of the Kop

I think you can tell how tedious English football has become when the most exciting thing to happen is that a German coach takes over at one of the clubs. Actually, I’m quite a fan of Jürgen Klopp and his time at Borussia Dortmund certainly brightened up the Bundesliga for a few years until money restored the monotony. There have been quite a few Kloppisms in the paper as well as much discussion of Gegenpressing: essentially high-tempo, counter-attacking football as opposed to the standard diving in the penalty area that makes much of modern football unwatchable.

I think Klopp should do quite well at Liverpool – if they don’t win anything they should at least have a good laugh trying. He also has pretty good English which is an advantage given that much of his team will speak it as a second language. However, I wonder if anyone has actually pointed out to Jürgen that this also applies to the majority of the fans. It’s a quite few years since I lived in the Liverpool area and even more since this book was written but it might be a good starting point for Herr Klopp:

In fact the Liverpool accent is rather unlike anything else found in Britain, originating in North-West England but combining both lyrical Irish intonation with a bucket of Welsh phlegm. However there are some elements of the local dialect that anyone hoping to live and work in the city would find useful. Here are a few:

Scouse: This is the accent of native Liverpudlians and is also the name of a cheaply made stew consisting of a small amount of leftover meat along with root vegetables that have been boiled to buggery (at least that is how my mother made it). Confusingly, these both derive from the German Labskaus, a culinary specialty from Hamburg. Scousers were originally the people, often sailors and their families, who subsisted on this.

Togga: A game of football. I’m not sure if this is still in regular use and, as far as I can recall, used to refer more to informal street football games.

Casey: This is what a standard association football is called, originating from the time that such an item would be made from a “case” of leather surrounding an inflated bladder. Such an item was once a prized possession and the keeper of the casey would therefore have first pick when it came to a game of 28-a-side togga.

Onion Patch: A derogatory term used by Evertonians to describe the pitch at Anfield. In fact, prior to the introduction of under soil heating they probably had a point. In mid-January the pitch would resemble something closer to the Flanders Christmas armistice than a top flight football match.

Ead the ball: Although this sounds as if this should be a footballing term it is actually used to describe someone who is psychotically deranged.

The Ozzy: Leeds United have been out of top flight football for a number of years however there is still the possibility that a particularly meaty tackle may result in Mr Klopp having to visit his players in “The Ozzy”. In fact if he checks out his squad list he will probably find that most of them are already there.

Bins: As Jürgen wears spectacles it is worth remembering that these are locally known as “bins” (possibly from binoculars?) I used to have perfunctory  NHS spectacles similar to Klopps that were known locally as “spazzy ‘ealths” due to the belief that myopia was caused by cerebral palsy. I’m hoping that phrase has since died a death as opinions do now appear more enlightened. At the time I was so mortified that my optician convinced me that wearing round, metal framed “granny glasses” would make me look like a rock star such as John Lennon. This worked for 6 months and then some bastard shot him.

Clobber: Ones clothes. This may also consist of “Kecks” (trousers) “Gruns” (underwear) and also “Trainees” or “Trabs” (footwear) but despite what Harry Enfield’s “Scousers” sketch may have implied, shell suits are not mandatory.

La: A friend or compatriot.

Made up / Sound / Boss: These are all various phrases to indicate that a scouse person is in a state of contentment. Such phrases may be heard when one’s football team have performed particularly well.

Getting a cob on: This will describe a Liverpudlian who is not in a state of contentment: It is not “boss”, certainly not “sound” and the antithesis of “made up”.

Scally: A local ne’er-do-well.

Kirby Kiss: A head-butt – the favoured formal greeting of the scally.

Berst: Another pugnacious term, loosely meaning to administer a beating (“Ah’ll berst yous”)

Bizzies: The local constabulary – charged with keeping the local scally population under control.

Twirlies: Old age pensioners - supposedly derived from bus-pass wielding OAPs enquiring of the bus driver as to whether the non-peak service had begun with the phrase, “Ama tw’early?”

Antwacky: Again, I’m not sure if this is still in regular usage but is used to describe an item that is old-fashioned, redundant or otherwise past its sell-by date. Such items will usually be littering the homes of Twirlies and, no doubt, the trophy cabinets of the city’s football clubs.

Butties: a packed lunch. The mid-day meal is always referred to as “Dinner”. The evening meal is “Tea”.

Yewoh?:  A scouse expression commonly used by the hard of hearing and translating loosely as “Excuse me?”, “I beg your pardon?” or “Could you please repeat that?”

Like: This is used in scouse as a form of punctuation, similar to a period, full-stop etc.

Anyway, language issues aside, I suspect Jürgen Klopp will enjoy his time in Liverpool. It is a lively vibrant city with friendly locals and a trusting nature. In fact it is not that uncommon for people to leave their doors unlocked at night which is quite surprising given the city’s reputation for being in close proximity to Manchester.

The Bootstrap Paradox

Well, I took the good Doctor’s advice and Googled it. It turns out that a bootstrap paradox is what is also known as the causal loop: an event in the past that is caused by an event in the future which has knowledge of that past event prior to its creation. The bootstrap bit comes from a Robert Heinlein short story By His Bootstraps which itself derives from the expression “pulling yourself up by the bootstraps” to indicate a seemingly impossible task. Self-causing events? Timey-wimey? Interestingly this was also used in the recent film Predestination, based on one of Heinlein’s other stories. It has also been used in previous Who stories - notably, Blink.

So much for the explanation but I’m wondering if the entire Doctor Who two-parter was originally to be called The Bootstrap Paradox until the author noticed that this would give the plot away at the start – in which case, why did he do just this in the pre-credit sequence? Regardless, Under The Lake and Before The Flood were far more enigmatic titles and this return to longer form story telling (the two parters are now the same length as the typical 1970’s four part stories) seems to be paying dividends.

Last week’s Under The Lake almost felt like it was lifted from a late 1960s Patrick Troughton adventure: base under siege: check; small cast of guest actors: check; running up and down corridors: check; Zoe in a tight fitting catsuit: well, you can’t have it all. Where it seems to differ is how the cliff-hanger was treated. Back in the day, the cliff-hanger was more of a contrivance to allow a longer story to be split into neat 25 minute chunks whereas here it was critical to the story and only resolved at the end of the episode even though the seeds of the resolution had all been sown in the first part. This was also used to great effect in the opening Dalek two-parter.

Another difference is the actual tone of the two episodes. Although the two halves make a greater whole I think it would be entirely possible for someone who had missed the first part to easily pick up the thread and enjoy the second episode in its own right. Much of this comes down to the fact that most of the elements were pure MacGuffinry: the big bad monster, the Fisher King, effectively plays no part in the story other than forcing the Doctor back in time to create the Bootstrap Paradox. In a way, it was a pity because it rather wasted an intriguing looking monster and the voice talents of Peter Serafinowicz.

If there was one thing that did niggle with me over the two episodes, it was the fact that the Doctor couldn’t communicate in British Sign Language because that is exactly the sort of thing that the Doctor would be able to do. From an entirely practical point of view of storytelling,  I can see why the writer, Toby Whithouse, chose to script it this way but I think it was a bit of a missed opportunity given the intriguing possibilities of having a deaf character. However, this was somewhat made up for (and presumably of help to the hard of hearing) by having a Heavy Metal makeover for the theme tune. I’ve often thought the current arrangement is a bit insipid so couldn’t we have this every week?



Anyway, we are 4 episodes in and my fears that this series wouldn’t live up to expectations appear to have been confounded. If anything my enjoyment has been enhanced by the production team delving back in to the very best of the classic series. I also think this was the very best of Toby Whithouse’s episodes – could he be the showrunner in the future?  Anyway it’s Vikings next week with Arya from Game Of Thrones.

The Demon Diesel

I’ve been hiding. Not behind the sofa whilst watching Doctor Who (a base under attack and lots of running down corridors – Oh yeah! But more on that next week) but because I drive a VW Golf and am now labelled as an environmental vandal even though I am one of those rare people who drive a petrol engined variety. At the moment it is not entirely clear what VW are going to do to fix the problem of their dodgy diesels but it is suspected that they will have a major recall of affected models so that the owners can have a paper bag fitted over their heads to re-establish the boring car anonymity that they believed they had bought into.

In fact what VW appear to have done is actually so ingenious, in an evil Bond-villain kind of way, that I almost have a certain amount of admiration that they have been able to pull  it off for so long. The vehicles have been fitted with a piece of software that ensures that they conform to the toxic emissions regulations whilst being tested and only whilst being tested. Once out on the open road they happily spew whatever they feel like into the atmosphere. Now real Bond villains usually have a plan to steal a gazillion dollars, irradiate the US gold reserve, spark off World War Three or benefit from televising the affair. Spewing crap from motor vehicles into the atmosphere seems a bit low key although it was once the plot to an episode of Doctor Who (The Poison Sky).

Whatever VW’s nefarious motives it does reinforce one particular prejudice that I have had for quite a while: that is that diesel engines have no place on passenger cars. Diesel cars actually have many fans who would willingly pay out extra for them but from my experience I can only assume that they are deaf, daft or stupid. In fact much of my abhorrence of the technology comes from the fact they fail abysmally to do what their fans claim that they capable of: i.e. that they are cheaper, more reliable, cleaner, more powerful and more efficient than their petrol counterparts. It is a technology that promises much and delivers very little.

The first point is fairly self-evident: check out any range of passenger cars and the diesel variant costs more to buy. It doesn’t stop there. Years ago I wrote a short piece for an early version of the Top Gear website in which I compared the cost of servicing and fuel for the diesel variant of the car I had at the time and proved that it would never actually break even over the lifetime of the vehicle. Admittedly, fuel was much cheaper back then but even at today’s prices it wouldn’t make economic sense once the extra cost of servicing was taken into account. In terms of reliability, it was probably once the case that a well maintained diesel car would be less trouble than its petrol equivalent but whilst the petrols lost carburettors, points and electro-mechanical distributors (i.e. the things that caused problems) diesels gained such delights as dual mass flywheels and DPF filters (i.e. the things that will empty the bank account when they go wrong). The idea that they offer more power comes down to turbo chargers – remove that and the performance is miserable (and two can play at the turbo game).

The last point, and one I would still grant to diesel overall is that they use less fuel – at least in terms of litres consumed. In part, this has been down to fundamental differences in the design of the engines but it is also down to the fact that diesel fuel is more energy dense than petrol. The fuel economy is why I went for a diesel variant of the Mazda Premacy which on paper looked like a sensible economic choice (45mpg for the diesel compared to 31mpg for the petrol). At least it made sense until I took into account the astronomical servicing costs, the sheer embarrassment at the mushroom clouds of black soot that were emitted from the back of it and the fact that the dismal reliability of the diesel unit cost me far more than the supposed savings in fuel. However, it was genuinely efficient when using it on long motorway journeys. That was the one thing it seemed good at but if I compare the real world fuel consumption of my petrol Golf (around 50mpg) to a colleagues similar diesel engined model (55mpg) it doesn’t make a clear case for itself and, considering that diesel produces 15% more CO2 per litre burnt, it would appear that the petrol wins even on the level of greenhouse gasses – supposedly the diesel car’s forte.

So why am I bothered? Aside from my miserable experience with the Mazda I’ve avoided this abomination of a technology but our (and most of Europe’s) government have been doing their best to encourage diesel car ownership. In part this has involved subsidising diesel through preferential duty rates. Even in this country, where petrol and diesel duty is the same per volume, diesel has benefitted from not having to pay for its additional 15% CO2 emissions and, more importantly, it has benefitted from preferential rates of Vehicle Excise Duty and company car taxation based on its largely fictitious emissions ratings. The problem with this is that it causes a great glut of diesel vehicles to hit the second hand market. When I was looking for a petrol Golf, the local dealership didn’t have a single petrol variant on the forecourt. Whilst VW may have been wrong in gaming the system they were actually responding to the rules that our governments set out for them to play with.

In terms of rebalancing the public policy I would like to see the taxation move away from standardised tests that merely encourage the manufacturers to fix the game. Toxic emissions are difficult for the average consumer to spot but it would not be beyond the wisdom of legislatures to design regulations that would monitor emissions in real usage. As for the CO2 figures it would make far more sense to tax the fuels for their carbon content and tax the vehicles according to their weight and size which have a far greater bearing in real life motoring and would be very difficult to fiddle.

Fixing broken regulation is one answer but what is the real solution? Petrol engines still burn copious amounts of fossil fuel and they still produce significant levels of toxic pollution. There has been a slow but steady move towards electric and hybrid solutions. Our local taxi firm now uses almost exclusively Toyota hybrid vehicles and for their work, which largely involves driving around urban areas, they are ideal with a vastly reduced fuel consumption and far superior reliability compared to either of their exclusively dinosaur juice competitors. I’ve also seen quite a few all-electric cars being used locally and these have the advantage of being both emission free at the point of use and being capable of being powered by energy produced by the large local windfarms.

Diesel does still have its uses – at least in the medium term. It is still by far the most versatile way of powering large, heavy vehicles such as HGVs and public service vehicles and, considering I am still expecting goods and services to be delivered to me, diesel would seem to be the best way to do this until such time that a viable alternative can be found. But as far as the passenger car is concerned, could we just accept that diesel has had its day?

The Witch's Familiar

Series 9, episode 2 of New Who and of course everyone is watching… the Rugby. Oh well, I’m just going to assume that anyone reading this posting has actually seen it (if not, SPOILER ALERT… Wales beat England 28-25). Anyway, I’ve been looking forward to this episode of Doctor Who and the resolution to the philosophical conundrum that Terry Nation posed some 40 years ago:

"If someone who knew the future, pointed out a child to you and told you that that child would grow up totally evil, to be a ruthless dictator who would destroy millions of lives... could you then kill that child?"

This quote from Genesis Of The Daleks appeared at beginning of Episode 6 when the Doctor was pondering whether he had the right to commit genocide against the Daleks. As good as that story was Terry Nation seemingly bottled the question. So what would Steven Moffat make of it? For a start the resolution to the cliff-hanger wasn’t given immediately, which I think was a very smart move, although the explanation for how Missy and Clara survived was rather long-winded. However, splitting the major protagonists up was a very clever idea and not one that the show has done much in recent years. I suppose back when 6 part serials were more common it was a necessary plot device.

The Missy-Clara sub-plot was clearly the comic relief with Clara becoming “witch” Missy’s familiar. In fact it was far more like watching a sadistic child teasing a puppy – tying her upside down, dropping her into a deep ditch and eventually encasing her in a Dalek shell (not the first time this has happened.) I really love Michelle Gomez in this part. Whilst she might lack Roger Delgado’s urbane charm she perfectly captures the concept of an anti-Doctor: deliciously cruel as the Doctor is ultimately compassionate. I did feel a little sorry for Jenna Coleman, though – I know it’s acting but some of that stuff looked decidedly unpleasant.

The meat of the episode was really the confrontation between the Doctor and Davros. The original duelling between Tom Baker and Michael Wisher takes some topping but if anything I found the Peter Capaldi / Julian Bleach to be more intense. Bleach seemed to be channelling Ian McDiarmid’s Emperor from the Star Wars films at times but his faking of compassion to hide his conceit and duplicity actually had me fooled for a while. Capaldi, on the other hand, managed to show the almost unbridled rage and hatred that the Doctor has for his adversary in a way that only Christopher Eccleston has ever managed to pull off.

If I have a complaint about the episode it is the ease at which the Daleks were ultimately defeated. In fairness, this is almost always the case in Dalek stories as the resolution relies on exploiting their Achilles Heel. However, what of Terry Nation’s original conundrum? It is answered in typical Moffat style with the Doctor going back full circle to complete the beginning of the story he has just told. I did ponder this as it seemed to be rather a cop out until I remembered the rest of that speech from Terry Nation’s script:

"But if I kill. Wipe out a whole intelligent life form, then I become like them. I'd be no better than the Daleks."

If he was to have killed the young Davros, he changes time and merely becomes an inexplicable child murderer, lashing out at what may be. As it is, he alters the past in a small but subtle act of compassion. Maybe this long-form story telling appeals more to the classic Who fan but having watched a lot of 1970s Doctor Who over the summer I’m finding the extended narrative quite refreshing. The last two episodes are being repeated this afternoon as a feature length presentation – presumably to allow any Whovian Rugby fans to catch up. It’s the start of another two parter next week (which is on against the crunch match between England and Australia). Could this be the start of dual pace programming?

The Magician's Apprentice

It must be that time of year again. The nights are fair drawing in, the football season is back on (not that I have been that bothered about it) and Doctor Who is back on the TV. This time last year I was greatly anticipating the prospect of a new Doctor in a new series. For some reason I haven’t been that excited about it this year. Not that I haven’t been looking forward to it but it’s one of those events that I have just been expecting to happen – like Christmas or the inevitability of Scotland messing up qualification for the next big football tournament.

I suppose it’s a combination of the same cast being in place combined with knowing, at least to some point, of what we can expect from them. I really enjoyed Peter Capaldi’s first series in the role but it is often the lead actor’s second series where they really make their mark – partly as they are more comfortable in the role and also because the writers have a much better idea of what they are aiming for. Even though I enjoyed most of the episodes of  series 8 it was very obvious at times that they had been written with Matt Smith in mind. As good as both Matt and Peter are, their interpretations of the Doctor are radically different from each other.

For the first time in a while we start the series with a two-parter. Actually, this was really the case last year but the opening story was presented as a feature length episode. Nevertheless this does give the opportunity of a big cliff-hanger and we were presented with a huge one – the highlight of the episode for me. As for the rest of the episode, we were presented with a million and one things to look at but I do feel some sympathy for the casual viewer. Last year’s opener was intended as an introduction to the 12th Doctor but it would also act as a reasonable introduction to the series for someone who is vaguely familiar with the concept but who has never actually watched an episode. This year’s opener delves deep into the show’s history and mythos which is fine for an obsessive fan like me who has seen most of the episodes since the show’s beginning but must be perplexing for the first time viewer.

In essence, this story is a sequel to the classic 1975 adventure The Genesis of the Daleks. I’d guessed this almost from the outset of the pre-title sequence with its seemingly 20th Century battlefield inhabited by a confusing mix of weaponry from both the past and future. This was confirmed almost straight away. However, the premise of the story centres upon philosophical questions posed between Davros and Tom Baker’s 4th Doctor back in that 1975 classic serial. This was alluded to, even including a clip of Tom, but I do wonder whether many viewers will have realised the significance of this 40 year old clip.

Anyway, aside from my newbie angst I did think that this had much to offer including yet another trip into the darkened imagination of Steven Moffat in the form of the “Hand Mine” a Dantesque vision of Hell as disembodied, mono-ocular hands emerge from the mud to drag their victim below. I’m sure that would have had me fleeing behind the proverbial sofa as a child. That aside the episode seemed to be filled with much frippery including the Doctor playing rock guitar in a medieval castle (didn’t make that much sense to me either) and the largely unexplained return of Missy – played by the wonderfully insane Michelle Gomez.

As it is, I’ll wait until the story concludes next week before drawing any conclusions but it looks promising. I’ll also try not to put any major spoilers in the posts (the few in this are very minor and are mostly in the trailer) as I realise that many of my friends that read these posts will be watching on catch-up as the Rugby World Cup is on. I wonder how long it takes Scotland to completely mess that one up?

A Very Civilised Leader

I’ve been watching the Labour party’s leadership debate with a mixture of fascination and bemusement. For the most part these kind of debates are as dull as dishwater as the party faithful mull over which Machiavellian stuffed suit is best placed to make trite soundbites for the next few years – all in the name of making their party “electable”. This time it has been rather different as the centre of the media storm has been about Jeremy Corbyn who, although I was vaguely aware of him, I didn’t really know much about prior to this campaign. Having heard him speak a few times over the last few weeks I’m actually rather taken with him but not necessarily for his general political stance.

Corbyn wasn’t even meant to be standing as leader but a few of his fellow Labour MPs put his name forward so that they could keep the left wing fringe of his party happy. As it turns out, a majority of the Labour membership have embraced him with open arms. Who’d have thought: those with a left of centre leaning are actually members of the Labour Party! Of course there are those who have recently paid their £3 to participate in the vote and it is possible that there were a few mischief makers amongst them but he genuinely seems to have chimed with rank and file members as well as those who have been dispirited with the British political monoculture.

So why do I like him? It’s not necessarily his politics even if they do seem more in line with my views compared to the morass of unprincipled power graspers. It is not even so much that he actually has principles (the same could be said of tyrants like Hitler or Mao so it is not necessarily a good thing). It’s actually the considered, thoughtful way he seems to answer questions: not soundbites, not parroting party policy, but actually thinking what would be an appropriate response that a civilised man in a civilised society should be making. The frightening thing is to think of how few politicians are now left in this country that seem to have any regard for civil society. I could think of no more than a handful in any of the main political parties and oddly enough the last British political leader that seemed to behave this way was the former conservative Prime Minister, John Major.

It’s this concept of civility that I think is most lacking within modern politics. For me the primary aim for any politician of any political persuasion should be to maintain civil society. They may have differing outlooks and perspectives, as one would expect from different backgrounds, but their ultimate aim should be to maintain that civility. The alternative is too horrific to contemplate but we have seen so many examples of tyranny, civil war and bloody revolution that the concept should never been taken lightly. However, what we now seem to have moved towards is a system of government that has no regard for its citizens welfare provided that it can merely cling to power. I don’t see that ending well and we need someone in authority to call them out on it. Corbyn could well be that man.

So is Corbyn electable? According to the perceived wisdom of the Labour Party he doesn’t stand a chance but remember that this is the same Labour Party that managed to lose an election with the moderate Ed Miliband in charge. With their focus group sieved policies designed to appeal to the aimlessly weak minded they lost and lost badly. I don’t blame Miliband for this but the Labour Party in general as it seems clear that they wouldn’t give their full support to their leader and I think that was telling. I can see this happening even less now but I am actually far more minded to vote for a Corbyn led party than whatever ill-conceived Tory-lite option that they somehow feel to be preferable. I’m wondering if others feel the same?

I actually think Corbyn could win the next election but it rather depends on him surviving the threat from those in his own party that seemingly would prefer to mimic the Tory party than offer a well thought out alternative. The reason I think he could win is that he could appeal to the largest single section of the electorate: not left or right or the tiny and reducing number of floating voters, but to the 1 in 3 people who never vote in an election at all. The precedent is there in Scotland which has gone from being one of the regions with the lowest turnout to one with the highest, simply because one party, the SNP, has chosen to engage with those that have traditionally been disenfranchised by the political system. The result for them was remarkable.

If Corbyn can engage with the disenfranchised and has the sense to seek common ground with those civilly minded people of a different political persuasion we could find that he is a force to be reckoned with. Of course the losers in this would be the Machiavellian back stabbers, economic parasites and intolerant thugs who have run this country for too long. I’m actually hoping that they leave in a huff – we would really be far better off without them.

Climb Every Mountain

It’s already September and yet we are still waiting for Summer to arrive. In fact, over this last weekend it almost did - at least we seem to have had an entire weekend without intermittent showers which I’ll take as a positive. So how to make the best use of this belated sunshine. Well, naturally I decided to takes the kids out for an extended session of dog walking. Oh how they cheered at the prospect of being removed from television sets and video game consoles for a few hours.

Peacock Butterflies and not a dead shrew in sight

Saturday saw a trip back to Devilla in Fife and a walk around the woodland. This seems to have seen a good deal of logging since I was last there (which admittedly is what it is there for) but the Forestry Commission has also done a good deal to make it accessible with a new carpark and signage around its labyrinthine pathways. There was also a good deal of nature on display with  dozens of butterflies, frogs, red squirrels and a few birds of prey to see. So what did Jake take great interest in? A dead shrew. The other thing to remember about the forest is that for every mile that it takes to walk out, another mile is needed to walk back. I haven’t walked for three hours for a while. The dogs sort of appreciated this although Eddie ended up moving along like something animated from a Ray Harryhousen film.

I thought I would take it relatively easy on Sunday so I walked the dogs and kids down to the Helix Park in Falkirk. That takes about an hour and a half and it gives the kids a chance to play in the park before being picked up. It was after being picked up that Nina thought it would be a good idea to climb up one of the Ochil Hills. Partly this was because we were looking after our friend's dog – a sort of Staffie cross that is built like a tank and could quite happily pull over small buildings if given the chance. This was actually quite fortunate as whilst walking up mountains seems like a good idea, in practice it is blooming hard work and having a mutt with the pulling power of a Clydesdale is no bad thing.

As it was, we tried to go up Dumyat in Clackmannanshire. The dog made it half way up but Nina thought as it was too hot and it would be better if she took him back down to get some water (yes, I’m sure it was that way around.) I took the kids up to the top although, in the same way that mirages torment the thirsty that an oasis is just beyond the horizon, the summit of hills manage to suddenly go from looking just a few metres away to a distant spectre. I was contemplating this but eventually worked out that they are fractal in nature: the closer you get, the more of them there is. The view at the top was good, at least.

Can I see my house from up here?

Fire TV

After much mulling about whether to go for Amazon’s Fire TV box I ended up plumping for their offer – largely as it wasn’t going to cost me much. As well as their half price offer, I also had a pre-paid credit card which I received for signing up with the AA so I only had to spend out £9 on it. I also tried out having the package delivered to our local Post Office after having a few parcels going AWOL lately. That seemed to work quite well and as it is located in the local Spar and I can (apparently) pick up parcels any time up to 10 at night.

The Fire TV box itself is quite tiny – about the size of a small cigar box. It comes with a wireless connection but I connected to the internet using the Ethernet cable that had been feeding the TV (and, latterly, the Blu-ray player) and connected to the TV via an HDMI cable. Initially it updated the software which took about 15 minutes and then it bust into life – seemingly recognising my Amazon prime account without prompting which I found a little disconcerting. I’m assuming that Amazon put the device’s MAC address into their system when they dispatched it.

First impressions are actually very good. Aside from having a working Amazon Instant Video connection, I was amazed at just how fast the whole thing is. Using either the smart TV or Blu-ray connections was glacial. The Fire TV box responds almost instantly to the simple remote. I downloaded a couple of apps and found the fast response to be replicated on the iPlayer which had been a torturous click-wait-click-waitsomemore procedure previously.

One of the tricks of the Fire TV box is that it has a voice enabled search. This actually only works on the Amazon products which is a little annoying but I can see that it would be awkward to program this as a standard input device. However, it works very well. I tried a few searches and it picked up everything I said perfectly. There is an old joke (mostly true) that voice recognition doesn’t work with Scottish accents so I thought I’d put this to the test by inflicting the kids’ Falkirk accents on the box. Happily it dealt with requests for “Toy Story”, “Paddington” and “Doctor Who” without the slightest of issues. Also, on the subject of kids, the parental controls appear to be quite thorough on this – just as well as the Amazon side of things ties into my credit card details.

I wanted to push the voice search to the limit so I decided to see what it would make of Eddie the talking whippet. I managed to get him to say something into the speaker and it resolved this as “Rom Com”. For all these years I had thought Eddie was wanting to discuss the global geo-political situation, interpretations of quantum mechanics or Friedrich Nietzsche’s atheistic existentialism. As it turns out, he simply has a desire to watch a series of disappointing movies starring Jennifer Aniston or Hugh Grant.

Where the voice search did fall down is when looking for foreign movies. I tried seemingly simple searches for “Das Boot”, “Abre los Ojos” and “Le Retour de Martin Guerre”. OK, my pronunciation may not be perfect but it made almost no sense at all of what I was asking for. I suppose it might work a bit better if the English equivalents were used but then it is equally possible that it will merely default to English language remakes. It does have a text input method for the search but this is a dreadful thumbwheel type affair which I would rather avoid.

 Now for the downsides. Generally, this appears to have a well written operating system but I have experienced a Blue Screen of Death whilst browsing. This is actually a mixed blessing as, whilst any catastrophic software error is unwelcome, at least this doesn’t just freeze interminably requiring switching off and on at the wall of which many home entertainment devices seem to suffer. The reboot is also very swift. Rather more annoying, considering I was hoping for a one-box streaming solution, is that it doesn’t have the Channel 4 catch up player, All-4 (previously 4OD). It does seem to have some of the Channel 4 content available via Amazon so maybe this is a commercial decision but it is very annoying.

So overall, I’m quite happy with this – especially given how little I had to pay for it. However, this does appear to be a gateway into Amazon’s universe in a similar way that NowTV ties into the Sky empire, Apple TV will tie into the Apple-sphere, Chromecast into Google and so on. I suppose this all comes down to the lack of standards for streaming devices but that appears to be the nature of the beasts: ultimately, someone, somewhere is trying to sell you something.

Inevitable Obsolescence

I bought our current living room TV back in November 2011. It is a Smart TV: that is a television that has internet connectivity built into it. On the face of it this is a handy thing to have as it allows online streaming services such as the BBC iPlayer and film services such as Amazon and Netflix to be accessed directly from the set. However, the whole thing relies on up-to-date software to work and I have had a rather patchy relationship with such integrated devices in the past.

My previous television was bought in 2001 and was a widescreen CRT unit which was one of the earliest integrated digital TVs (IDTV): it came with a terrestrial digital receiver built in as well as a slot for an On Digital decoder. It also came with built in Dolby surround sound. This was a TV that could seemingly do everything and was described as “future proof” as it could have its software updated by the manufacturer. Unfortunately, it started to fail a component at a time: first On Digital (then rebranded as ITV digital) ceased trading rendering the decoder redundant. Half the features of the digital receiver never worked and it eventually ceased to function altogether as the software updates from the manufacturer never materialised and the Dolby sound stopped working reducing the rest of the TV to a large monitor.

The problems with my old TV were down to one simple thing: software. TVs are effectively several components packaged into a single unit: a monitor, a receiver, an amplifier, speakers and, potentially, a streaming device or other software based interface. Where the TV is required to work within fixed standards (PAL reception, SCART or HDMI inputs etc) there is little that can go wrong provided there is a suitable input to work with. This is why prior to the digital switchover many people had TV sets that were potentially 20 or 30 years old. They conformed to a standard and, subject to the lifespan of the electronic components, they could work indefinitely. Once software is introduced into the equation with its moving target compatibility the concept of “future proof” should be really seen as “inevitable obsolescence”.

The Smart TV function on our living-room set has always been rather hit and miss. After the initial novelty of being able to use the iPlayer and (as was) Lovefilm Instant on the big screen the service has been a bit variable. Some services that we did try initially would be removed after a while: possibly due to a change in the service providers’ business plan but often because a change in the software meant that the TV could no longer support it. YouTube was a case in point as it stopped working and then was removed with little notice after a new feature in their software made it incompatible with what the TV could support.  Another problem was with Amazon Instant Video (rebranded from Lovefilm) which seemed to suffer from an existential crisis for a few months until some software (I’m not entirely sure if theirs or Samsung’s) was updated.

The last straw for the TV’s software dilemmas emerged a few weeks ago when we discovered that high definition films on the Amazon service wouldn’t play correctly on our TV. Rather than showing everything in letterbox mode it reverted to full screen. This is fine if the film was made in 16:9 but when we started to watch The Imitation Game we discovered that Benedict Cumberbatch had been stretched out into a wafer thin stick insect whereas Keira Knightly had practically disappeared due to the messed up aspect ratio. I contacted Amazon who said that they would investigate the problem…

Amazon did investigate this for me and they do appear to have tried out various solutions. However, the eventual reply from them was that they have decided to discontinue their streaming support for Samsung Smart TVs built in 2011. There are a few other apps that still work on the TV (iPlayer, for example) but it looks like the smart functionality on the 4 year old set is reaching the point of “inevitable obsolescence”. I do have a workaround at the moment as we also have a Sony Bluray player which has smart functionality and the Amazon streaming service still works through this although the sheer slow clunkiness of the interface rather indicates that it is heading inexorably towards its own demise.

In fairness to Amazon they have made a reasonable offer of a workaround to this which is to buy their Fire TV streaming box (a similar idea to Apple TV) which they are offering to me for half price. Whilst I’m rather put out at having to fork out for yet another piece of home entertainment hardware this does appeal to me in one particular sense: it is a stand-alone, dedicated device which is not dependent on riding on the back of a TV, Bluray player, games console or any other device with needlessly packaged software. If it was to go wrong or hit its own point of obsolescence it is the only thing that would need replacing and given the rather cheap discounted price it isn’t going to break the bank even if it does nothing for the flow of defunct electrical devices to our local recycling site.

The only fly in the ointment as far as I am concerned is that I have run out of connection points for the TV. It has 4 HDMI slots and they are currently being used by the PVR, Bluray, German Satellite decoder and Wii games console. Something would have to go or, at least, share a connection. Maybe it would be nice to have a streaming device for the bedroom but do I really need all this hassle? I’m starting to long for the days of 3 channels and a decent book.

Bo'ness Motor Museum

I have often seen signposts for Bo’ness Motor Museum but never quite worked out where it was. Out of curiosity I plugged it into the Sat-Nav system and took the boys along to have a look around. In fact it isn’t that hard to find but it is a bit further away than the railway museum that I had always assumed it was next to.

Lotus Esprit from The Spy Who loved me - Works in water (allegedly)

The museum is relatively small but packed with exhibits. However to call it a motor museum is something of a misnomer. It certainly has plenty of cars on display but these are not merely restored classics of yesteryear but are mostly tied in to film and TV appearances including an impressive array of James Bond’s vehicles, a DeLorrean (best known from Back to the Future), the flying Ford Anglia from Harry Potter and even Del Boy’s Reliant Regal van from Only Fools and Horses.

Aston Martin DBS from OHMSS

It’s not just cars either as there is a TARDIS (which is a mode of transport, I suppose) and various other film props including many of the iconic Bond gadgets (such as the Golden Gun from the film of the same name). In addition there are also hundreds of classic models and merchandise including many of the Dinky miniatures. All of this adds up to it being a display that is primarily a collection of film and TV memorabilia. I loved it - I felt like a kid in a toy shop again.

Citroën 2CV from For Your Eyes Only - not all the Bond cars were state of the art

Reliant Regal van from Only Fools and Horses. Built by Brummies, driven by plonkers.

DeLorean DMC-12 from Back to the Future. Supposedly a time machine (they do have a TARDIS prop there as well)

The Weasley's Ford Anglia 105E from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The muck and rust is actually painted on.

Inside Out

I always have a sense of trepidation when taking the kids out to the cinema. On the one hand I want them to be suitably amused (i.e. bums to the seats and mouths shut for two hours) whilst at the same time I hope to be reasonably entertained myself for the duration. I think that’s why I have enjoyed the Pixar films over the years because they are intelligently written, well-acted, beautifully animated and often take the possibilities of cinema in  new and intriguing directions. At least, that’s what they manage at their best – at the other end of the scale (and let’s face it, I’m talking about the Cars films here) I am at least guaranteed some quiet children and I can easily endure the proceedings with most of my brain-cells intact.

I’ve noticed that the Pixar films seem to be split between what the film-makers themselves want to produce (Ratatouille, Wall-E, Up and possibly Brave fall into this category) and those that are driven by the bean-counters at Disney (any of the sequels, to be honest). I wasn’t sure what to expect with their latest offering, Inside Out, but it seems to fall into the first category: one that Pixar had imagined themselves and it is no coincidence that it is directed and produced by Pete Docter and Jonas Rivera who devised Up.

The premise for Inside Out is examining the workings of the mind of 11-year old Riley, a happy girl from Minnesota whose life is turned upside-down when her family have to relocate to San Francisco due to her father’s job.  The bulk of the film centres on the anthropomorphic manifestations of Riley’s emotions, Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust and Anger controlling her mind from an engineering style console. This concept actually rang a few bells with me as it is very similar to the Numskulls cartoon that used to appear in the Beezer comic (I’m wondering if someone at Pixar is a fan of Dundonian comic strips).  With Riley’s new experiences causing conflict amongst her emotions the dominant Joy is lost amongst the labyrinthine mind along with Sadness leaving Fear, Anger and Disgust to steer Riley’s personality, causing her to have something of a meltdown in the style of 11 year old children everywhere.

In a way, this is familiar territory for Pixar as the two characters finding their way back home could just as easily be Buzz and Woody from Toy Story or Nemo and Dory from Finding Nemo. However, what I found intriguing about Inside Out is that it found a unique way of representing the mind that could only ever really be achieved via animation. The workings of the mind are explored with “personality islands” showing core identities and concepts such as imaginary friends and nightmares explored in unexpected ways. The look and feel of the animation is somewhat atypical as well, falling between the psychedelia of The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine and the idiosyncratic anime of Studio Ghibli.

This may sound like it is all very high concept and “not really for the kids” but it’s actually far from the case and my children enjoyed it at their own level: from my 7-year old daughter who liked the idea of a person’s mind being a squabbling morass of conflicting characters through to my 13-year old son who appreciated the plot subtleties and the idea that a happy individual is one whose emotions are in balance (he also seemed amused by the portrayal of a teenage boy’s mind on meeting a girl – I didn’t enquire further). As for me, I enjoyed the film greatly and would be happy to watch it again once it's out on DVD - which I suppose is a ringing endorsement for family entertainment.

Coda

After Led Zeppelin decided to disband, following the death of drummer John Bonham, they were left with a contractual obligation to produce one more album (and not, as many suspected, an appointment with the tax man). This obligation resulted in the 1982 release of the album Coda – a short collection of outtakes and oddities from the band’s career. I bought it not long after its release and I must have played the entire album no more than half a dozen times since. When I finally got round to replacing my old vinyl Led Zeppelin albums with their remastered CD equivalents, I didn’t bother with it as it really wasn’t worth spending out again on a collection that really wasn’t that good - at least I hadn’t bothered replacing it until this week.

Over the last year, Jimmy Page has been re-releasing the Led Zeppelin studio albums in a newly remastered form with additional material supplied on a companion disk – usually either alternative mixes of the originally released songs or “works in progress”. I’m always a bit suspicious of the whole remastering exercise as it is often merely a ruse to coerce obsessive fans into buying the same recordings yet again. In the case of Led Zeppelin it was a project that was not only worthwhile but which the discerning listener deserved given that the original vinyl albums contained many glaring production errors. At least that would have justified the original remasters – surely after that it merely becomes persistent electronic noodling?

Remasters aside, the companion disks seemed to me to be the most intriguing element of this exercise. Even back in the pre-internet age there were dozens of Led Zeppelin bootlegs that offered an insight into a wealth of cutting room detritus that was often obviously left out for a reason but occasionally offered a glimpse of a stillborn single or embryonic classic. The series started quite well with the live companion material on Led Zeppelin I providing a document of the raw energy that the band possessed in the late 1960s. The later albums also included occasional outtakes but many of them merely proffered “alternate” mixes which could only be differentiated from their previously released versions on close inspection.

In a way, many of these companion disks have been a disappointment although with occasional intrigues: The instrumental La La from Led Zeppelin II, Jennings Farm Blues and Key to the Highway from III, a radically different early take of Physical Graffiti’s In The Light and some evidence that John Paul Jones did take his keyboards to the Presence sessions with the oddly titled 10 Ribs & All/Carrot Pod Pod (Pod): a piano based piece very much at odds with the rest of that album. All of interest but not in themselves a strong case for purchasing an expensive re-release for all but the most determined completest. However that brings us to Coda – the album that was actually meant to be the outtakes collection.

The first disc in the set contains the remastered version of the original UK released Coda album. In terms of the sound quality it is brighter and, having listened to the whole collection for the first time in years , it’s actually far better than I remember it with the highlights being We’re Gonna Groove – a great Ben E King cover, Poor Tom a pleasing acoustic outtake from Led Zeppelin III  and Wearing and Tearing a superb hard rocker from the 1978 sessions at ABBA’s studios. The other tracks are reasonable salvages from the cutting room fodder including a decent live version of I Can’t Quit You Baby and some indulgent bashing from Bonham.

The subsequent discs are where it gets really interesting. Baby Come On Home  was previously released on a box-set only collection and Travelling Riverside Blues was a single from the superior BBC sessions. Hey, Hey, What Can I Do  was the B-side of the Immigrant Song single that has never been officially available in the UK (I bought my copy whilst on holiday in the USA). Also on the first companion disk is Sugar Mama, a track which I have previously heard on a bootleg album but the difference here is that the sound quality is superb. It really shows up the comparison between a badly copied third hand recording and what can be achieved from the original tapes in Page’s vaults.

The second companion disk starts off with the two recordings that Page and Plant made in India. Again, this was material that I had heard before but never with this clarity. The two recordings are of Friends and Four Sticks and are effectively a pre-cursor to the No Quarter project that they would produce for MTV in the 1990s. Also on this was St. Tristan's Sword – an outtake from Led Zeppelin III that was new to me although it seems to contain familiar elements used elsewhere (similar to the manner in which The Yardbirds’ Little Games contains the genesis of many early Led Zeppelin songs). Aside from these there are other rough mixes and early versions of well-known tunes (an early take of When The Levee Breaks is particularly intriguing as well as a killer version of Bring It On Home). It also contains another worthwhile interpretation of Physical Graffiti’s In The Light – similar but at the same time very different from the familiar version that was released back in 1975.

So has Coda now been transformed into the album it always should have been? To a great extent I believe it has, but it is also nagging that there are recordings that are known from the bootlegs that have been passed over. Possibly the top of this list would be Swan Song which was recorded as an instrumental but never saw the light of day on Physical Graffiti. However, that song was eventually completed as Midnight Moonlight from Page’s mid 1980s collaboration with Paul Rogers (The Firm) and releasing an instrumental outtake with long pauses where vocals were required would seem to be a disservice to what was a great vocal performance by Rogers. Ultimately, I think Page has chosen the right point to put the Zeppelin legacy to rest – unless, of course, he was planning a new compilation called “Scraping the Barrel”.