Neil Gaiman villainously links to the YouTube posting of Monday's Mastermind, in which a chap called Nick Duffy answers questions on the Sandman and explains - in some detail - the appeal of lurid kiddie comicbooks.
Blimey. I was at university with Nick 10 years ago and fondly recall an evening spent conjuring names for imaginary indie bands. "Weirdshit Chronicle" was one of mine then. Came up with "Ginger Stepchild" more recently.
According to the super-soaraway Lanacashire Evening Post, Nick still lives in Preston. Ha.
Also, I beat him into the LEP and infamy with the 1997 headline, "Sci-fi Simon reaches for the sky by degrees" - in which I had lovely hair and a face writ over with innocence.
But he'd make the better Shane McGowan.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
If you believe in prayer, pray
Several years ago, a wise old hermit who lived on the hill behind our house dared suggest that there are two types of lecture. There are those done with PowerPoint, he said, and there are those where you actually learn something.
I thought of him and his befuggled wisdom while watching “An Inconvenient Truth”, in which Albert Gore Jnr – who woulda, coulda, shoulda been president of the US of A – gives a slideshow on how we have to save the planet.He makes an interesting, terrifying and clearly and concisely argued case. It’s not just him on stage with a whole series of statistics, either. He includes silly cartoons about frogs and muggings to get the point across.
Admittedly, the cartoons aren’t quite as memorable as the history of guns in Bowling for Columbine (which is, I learn from Wikipedia, not the work of Matt Stone and Trey Parker). But they do show one thing: it’s not a complicated idea and the consequences are utterly appalling.
Gore apologises for explaining the science, and briefly explains that the more human behaviour clogs up the atmosphere the less heat can escape the planet. This is already happening at an unprecedented rate: the 10 hottest summers on record have all been since 1990, and the new rising tides, floods and hurricanes threaten the lives of millions.
It’s damning and evidential – the point about global warming being that it’s not proven by any one given statistic, but by the vast and ever-growing evidence that all points in one direction.
That said, Gore does tend to refer to what “scientists say” generally, rather than always providing specific sources. The peer-reviewed scientific community does, Gore says, agree unanimously on the reality of climate change, even if they argue about specifics. The conflict of opinion is in the non-peer-reviewed news media.
I’d have liked to have understood more of what scientists disagree on. Is it the conclusions we draw from data – that some top men think we’ve got five years of Greenland being icy, and others as much as 50? Or are there more fundamental differences about what the causes are and what can be done?
For all he’s on the side of the scientists, Gore does use terms that would appal scientists I know. He refers to earlier summers meaning baby caterpillars are born earlier than they used to be. This means they no longer dovetail with the births of baby birds, so the birds are going hungry. Gore calls this messing with “nature’s plan”.
This anthropomorphising carefully avoids having to talk about why the Earth’s creatures so well fit the conditions of the places they live in. We get no mention of why human beings suit a particular, small range of climatic, temperate and atmospheric conditions. Yes, he mentions ice ages from 10,000 years ago, but there is no hint of a whiff of a mention of the dreaded evolution.
The Dr cynically suggests that tying the need to adapt our behaviour to the environment to the way we’ve already adapted would be a turn off for too many people.
Evolution is about adapting to circumstance or dying out. Now we can see how things are going wrong – and how they’re going to get worse – we either adapt or die.
But that doesn’t contradict the firmly held beliefs of those who refute all the first principles. The way we live now is soiling God’s creation and we are already being visited by plagues and tornadoes of Biblical proportions. There is evidence all over the world that says in very big letters, “Don’t make me come down there!”
Gore is keen to engage with arguments against, and his point about the US car exports is fascinating. The industry argues that enforcing better fuel efficiency and lower emissions will damage their sales. But because US standards are so way behind China, Japan and Europe, US cars cannot be sold abroad. So the only way to up sales and so increase revenues and numbers of jobs is to, er, enforce these standards.
Gore also argues that global warming is not a (party) political issue but a moral one – we have to save our planet. He didn’t say, though he really have ought to, “Or we’re all going to die!”
For all it’s above party politics, the lecture was explicitly critical of the current US president and former Republican regimes. Gore is damning about conflicts of interest with lobbying groups, though it would have made a more balanced case if he’d shown where the Democrats got it wrong, too. That would also make it less easily dismissed as a party political tirade.
The film is aimed specifically at US audiences (we’re told to write to Congress rather than to our political leaders), and I can see why some have seen this as a prelude to a presidential campaign.
That feeling is not helped by Gore using the personal life of his family to get his point across: stuff about his dad’s farm, his son being hit by a car, his sister dying of lung cancer. Yes, it made things more personal and gave us an insight into the man, but – bar the parallels with the decades of denial from the tobacco lobby that cigarettes were carcinogenic – it felt like it was straying from the point.
So will it make a difference? The Dr and I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 in the US while on our honeymoon and were amazed by the audience’s reaction. We couldn’t possibly believe, after all the evidence on screen, that Bush could get re-elected. But he was.
I think Gore’s film is different, though. While challenging Bush to ratify the Kyoto agreement, he also lists the states and cities who have pledged their agreement – acting despite the president. The credits roll explaining what we can do – yes even us foreigners.
A good place to start is http://www.climatecrisis.net/.
I thought of him and his befuggled wisdom while watching “An Inconvenient Truth”, in which Albert Gore Jnr – who woulda, coulda, shoulda been president of the US of A – gives a slideshow on how we have to save the planet.He makes an interesting, terrifying and clearly and concisely argued case. It’s not just him on stage with a whole series of statistics, either. He includes silly cartoons about frogs and muggings to get the point across.
Admittedly, the cartoons aren’t quite as memorable as the history of guns in Bowling for Columbine (which is, I learn from Wikipedia, not the work of Matt Stone and Trey Parker). But they do show one thing: it’s not a complicated idea and the consequences are utterly appalling.
Gore apologises for explaining the science, and briefly explains that the more human behaviour clogs up the atmosphere the less heat can escape the planet. This is already happening at an unprecedented rate: the 10 hottest summers on record have all been since 1990, and the new rising tides, floods and hurricanes threaten the lives of millions.
It’s damning and evidential – the point about global warming being that it’s not proven by any one given statistic, but by the vast and ever-growing evidence that all points in one direction.
That said, Gore does tend to refer to what “scientists say” generally, rather than always providing specific sources. The peer-reviewed scientific community does, Gore says, agree unanimously on the reality of climate change, even if they argue about specifics. The conflict of opinion is in the non-peer-reviewed news media.
I’d have liked to have understood more of what scientists disagree on. Is it the conclusions we draw from data – that some top men think we’ve got five years of Greenland being icy, and others as much as 50? Or are there more fundamental differences about what the causes are and what can be done?
For all he’s on the side of the scientists, Gore does use terms that would appal scientists I know. He refers to earlier summers meaning baby caterpillars are born earlier than they used to be. This means they no longer dovetail with the births of baby birds, so the birds are going hungry. Gore calls this messing with “nature’s plan”.
This anthropomorphising carefully avoids having to talk about why the Earth’s creatures so well fit the conditions of the places they live in. We get no mention of why human beings suit a particular, small range of climatic, temperate and atmospheric conditions. Yes, he mentions ice ages from 10,000 years ago, but there is no hint of a whiff of a mention of the dreaded evolution.
The Dr cynically suggests that tying the need to adapt our behaviour to the environment to the way we’ve already adapted would be a turn off for too many people.
Evolution is about adapting to circumstance or dying out. Now we can see how things are going wrong – and how they’re going to get worse – we either adapt or die.
But that doesn’t contradict the firmly held beliefs of those who refute all the first principles. The way we live now is soiling God’s creation and we are already being visited by plagues and tornadoes of Biblical proportions. There is evidence all over the world that says in very big letters, “Don’t make me come down there!”
Gore is keen to engage with arguments against, and his point about the US car exports is fascinating. The industry argues that enforcing better fuel efficiency and lower emissions will damage their sales. But because US standards are so way behind China, Japan and Europe, US cars cannot be sold abroad. So the only way to up sales and so increase revenues and numbers of jobs is to, er, enforce these standards.
Gore also argues that global warming is not a (party) political issue but a moral one – we have to save our planet. He didn’t say, though he really have ought to, “Or we’re all going to die!”
For all it’s above party politics, the lecture was explicitly critical of the current US president and former Republican regimes. Gore is damning about conflicts of interest with lobbying groups, though it would have made a more balanced case if he’d shown where the Democrats got it wrong, too. That would also make it less easily dismissed as a party political tirade.
The film is aimed specifically at US audiences (we’re told to write to Congress rather than to our political leaders), and I can see why some have seen this as a prelude to a presidential campaign.
That feeling is not helped by Gore using the personal life of his family to get his point across: stuff about his dad’s farm, his son being hit by a car, his sister dying of lung cancer. Yes, it made things more personal and gave us an insight into the man, but – bar the parallels with the decades of denial from the tobacco lobby that cigarettes were carcinogenic – it felt like it was straying from the point.
So will it make a difference? The Dr and I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 in the US while on our honeymoon and were amazed by the audience’s reaction. We couldn’t possibly believe, after all the evidence on screen, that Bush could get re-elected. But he was.
I think Gore’s film is different, though. While challenging Bush to ratify the Kyoto agreement, he also lists the states and cities who have pledged their agreement – acting despite the president. The credits roll explaining what we can do – yes even us foreigners.
A good place to start is http://www.climatecrisis.net/.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
"I’m pretty rubbish, now you point it out."
Have had a happy day's writing (plus a brief excursion to hand in a contract) and am onto Scene 10 of 47. The intrepid little brother is coming round tomorrow so we can go through it.
Also agreed a couple of exciting new things having met with a new editor yesterday. And 1,800 words of what might be a book is now a chapter-by-chapter breakdown with all sorts of viceral detail. Perhaps something will come of it.
Currently listening to the first episode of Mr J Lidster's "Reaping", and am delighted to hear Dr Who refer explicitly to the Mim. Hooray!
Our sponge-like chums put in a pretty thrilling appearance before the end of the year. Should have that to finish just tomorrow...
Also agreed a couple of exciting new things having met with a new editor yesterday. And 1,800 words of what might be a book is now a chapter-by-chapter breakdown with all sorts of viceral detail. Perhaps something will come of it.
Currently listening to the first episode of Mr J Lidster's "Reaping", and am delighted to hear Dr Who refer explicitly to the Mim. Hooray!
Our sponge-like chums put in a pretty thrilling appearance before the end of the year. Should have that to finish just tomorrow...
Monday, September 18, 2006
Straight bit
'Strain current affairs edutainment "60 Minutes" just ran The Overlanders, a 15-minute theeng on the younger brother's horseplay.
The theeng (which you can experience in real, live video) shows off footage from his forthcoming documentary, "One Straight Road". (No, not this one.)
Strangely I'm biased but it's all a bit impressive. Git. And about time we saw some of his moving pictures.
Still haven't seen the brother since he got back from the bush, what with his being so bustlingly showbiz. Though he is coming next week to tidy up the cat poo. Hope he doesn't want to film it.
The theeng (which you can experience in real, live video) shows off footage from his forthcoming documentary, "One Straight Road". (No, not this one.)
Strangely I'm biased but it's all a bit impressive. Git. And about time we saw some of his moving pictures.
Still haven't seen the brother since he got back from the bush, what with his being so bustlingly showbiz. Though he is coming next week to tidy up the cat poo. Hope he doesn't want to film it.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Bond Watch: Sir Roger Moore
Live and Let Die
Yes, I’m rather impressed with Alex and Richard’s idea that Sir Roger Moore learns he’s the new James Bond in his opening scene with M (discussed in the comments of this previous Bond post).
Unlike OHMSS, they keep the new Bond out of the pre-credit sequence and instead tease us with fragments of plot. What connects a killing at the United Nations, a killing in a New Orleans street and a killing in a weird voodoo ritual? The new Bond will surely work it out.
It’s the second film in a row to be set in America, but it’s got a grittier, harder edge than Diamonds Are Forever. We see an America that’s dirty, dangerous and racially segregated. George Martin’s atmospheric score also reflects the changing times.
Roger Moore is a skinny little bloke compared to his predecessors and suffers from 70s fashions, with dweeby patterned jackets and ironed creases in his flares. It’s all a bit fussy and uncool.
Is Felix Lighter an inherited title as well? If they’d been worried about establishing the new man, they could have wheeled out Norman Burton again (he’s the one in Diamonds Are Forver). Can’t see him in Licence to Kill, though.
The Man With The Golden Gun
More silly things done by Bond: squeezes a fat bloke’s bum.
Does Scaramanga’s obsession with Bond mean that he thinks Sir Roj is the same man as Sir Sean? Alternatively, do their paths cross because Sir Roj is pursuing Gibson, the man Scaramanga is planning to kill?
The stuff about Gibson and the energy crisis works quite well, lending some weight to the cock-fight plot, though there’s some especially crass infodumping about halfway through, with M detailing science that everyone in the room already knows.
Which is a shame because there’s some deft and witty writing here. Top marks for Bond’s threat to shoot a bloke in the cock if he doesn’t answer questions: “Speak now or forever hold your piece.”
I think Sir Roj is at his best when being a bit ruthless – shagging Rosie Carver in the last one when he knows that she’s a wrong ‘un, or holding Maud Adams to ransom. Yes, in For Your Eyes Only, it is a Good Thing he kicks the car.
Other silly things: Scaramanga’s Shadow Gallery has a life-size Sir Roj on display and it doesn’t occur to him that Bond might use this. And why does the dummy have a real and loaded gun?
The Spy Who Loved Me
The Making of… will tell you that this was a new direction for Bond, pushing the franchise into off-the-wall fantasy.
But it’s the first to obviously repeat stuff: a ski chase as in OHMSS, the swallowing whole of vessels like in You Only Live Twice, underwater battles as per Thunderball and a gagdet-strewn car as in Goldfinger.
We also get the first explicit reference to Bond’s wife since she died. Gogol calls M “Miles” (the only time the films mention his name) and XXX calls Q “Major Boothroyd” – so he is the same man as in Dr No. We also see Bond (again) as a naval Commander.
Setting things up for the future, Walter Gotell makes his first appearance as Gogol and Robert Brown appears as Admiral Hargreaves. As well as taking over as M, he’s referred to as "Admiral" in Octopussy, which might mean he’s the same bloke all along.
The Dr Who cast is pretty good in this one: George Baker, Jeremy Bulloch (though not as Smithers), Kevin McNally, Cyril Shaps and Edward de Souza. No, you can’t count Caroline Munro.
An odd thing: 007 and XXX join forces in Egypt and are briefed by Q. They then take the train to Sardinia (no, I don't think that's possible either), where, er, Q is waiting for them with the Lotus. They don't seem surprised or say, "Didn't we just see you?"
Another odd thing: how many chances does Stromberg give Jaws to kill Bond? It’s far less credible than the number of times he survives buildings falling on top of him. You can almost hear Stromberg saying, “Maybe fifth time lucky…”
Moonraker
It’s been slowly creeping up on us, but this is the first film to really go out of its way to give M and Q more interesting things to do. Bernard Lee’s final film sees him looking unwell in Venice and running an office in Rio. It's like Bond can't be trusted to go out on missions on his own.
This is a sign of a franchise: where the practical wants of the actors supersedes what their characters would do. I gather something similar happens in the West Wing with a promotion for CJ (though I’ve only just finished Season 5).
Moonraker feels a hell of a lot like the last one as Bond gathers evidence on the bloke he already knows is the villain. The villain’s plan to start civilisation over is the same, as is the final gag of Bond caught doing the deed.
The Star Wars-inspired finale is kept relatively brief, though I remember all the marketing pushing James Bond In Space. (Sir Roj even appeared on the Muppet Show with a laser gun).
How many times do they need to tell us that Jaws and his missus have been rescued?
For Your Eyes Only
Blimey. It’s all a bit small-scale after outer space. Bond doesn’t even leave Europe in this one. Bill Conti’s music is very much of its time. It’s not bad, but it lacks the timeless style of John Barry and makes this feel just like any other (low-budget) action movie.
It does feel like a new kind of Bond film (again), and continually undercuts the grandeur of the past. Bond visits his late wife’s grave and finally sees off Blofeld. But:
Why is Teresa buried in England, and in a tiny little church? Her dad Draco seems to be based in Portugal and could probably afford something swankier.
Blofeld is as we saw him at the end of OHMSS - bald, in a neck brace and wheelchair. Which suggests that OHMSS is canon and Diamonds Are Forever is not. Which is a bit odd.
There’s a car chase with Bond behind the wheel of a 2CV, and the countess he shags turns out to be a scally. The finale is not Bond going one-on-one with a terrifying villain or chasing after bombs in a spaceship. He breaks a computer by throwing it off a rock.
Bond is looking old, and Lynn-Holly Johnson’s character just makes that more obvious. As well as turning down a dead-cert shag, Bond is toe-curlingly patrician with her, with lessons on how to behave. Up, I thought, yours grandad.
He’s no less patronising to Melina, and though she laughs at his jokes in the car chase I didn’t feel there’s much chemistry between them. At the end of the film they’re (inevitably) lovers, and I couldn’t help but wonder, “When did that happen?” They’ve not even snogged until then.
Yeah, the plotting is a bit weird. There’s a gratuitous cheat when Bond and Melina go scuba-diving and Melina FOR NO REASON AT ALL takes off her aqua-lung and leaves it by the underwater Greek ruin. Well, NO REASON AT ALL other than that she has read the script and knows that she and Bond will need that aqua-lung there in a few scenes time.
The Greek Temple appears to be near the Corfu coast, whereas the sunken ship is out to sea (and something of a journey). Kristatos captures Bond and Melina as they surface from the sunken ship, but tries to kill them in the water above the Greek Temple (where their handy aqua-lung comes in). So, er, does he take them back towards Corfu because that’s where the scratchy coral is? Doesn’t that mean he’s more likely to be seen doing his killings?
Oh, but bonus points for Charles Dance as a thug!
Octopussy
Cor. It looks amazing, John Barry’s score is gorgeous and the whole thing zips along. Maud Adams is really rather marvellous. Suddenly Bond has got his groove back.
They make less of Bond being an old man now, but play a nasty card with Moneypenny when Sir Roj smarms all over her new assistant.
I’d missed Bond disguising himself as a gorilla from my list of Bond being silly. He also manages to remove himself from the gorilla suit and escape to the back of the train carriage while Kabir Bedi is watching him. But Bond being magic, he is not seen.
It feels like there are a lot more action set pieces than usual, and there’s a nice mix of the exotic (in India) and the very political real. Weird to see Checkpoint Charlie and a divided Berlin having been there a fortnight ago.
Also odd to see Détente creeping in – a theme since the Spy Who Loved Me. I gather this is because the Bond films sold well in Russia, so the producers were keen to push us all being chums. But it means Bond seems ahead of more war-mongering spy stuff from the time. Eat that, John le Carre.
And, er, Q’s set up a workshop in India. Now I can see it might be helpful to give Bond his gadgets, but this makes it feel like there’s a whole industry behind Bond, following wherever he goes. Q even helps in the field, leading Bond into a siege and saving pretty ladies in the process. While Sir Roj is sliding down banisters.
Perhaps Desmond Llewellyn was being considered to take over from Sir Roj? Don’t laugh – have you seen who else they considered?
A View to a Kill
So, Sir Roj’s last one already. Blimey, that went quick. And you can tell by the hair and the rubbish robot dog that it’s from more than two decades ago.
It’s a bit slow, actually – with lots of scenes of people just talking to each other about their various allegiances. The 80s “fashions” don’t help because rather than looking stylish and cool, Bond seems to be stalking the blousy wives of the crassest chinless wonders.
Like For Your Eyes Only, they’re continually undercutting Bond’s cool: his rifle only shoots rock salt, the police think he’s talking bollocks and he woos a girl by making a quiche. Tanya Roberts is also not the most brilliant leading lady, and there’s far more sparkle with both May Day and Fiona Fullerton.
There’s another lady in it who I kept trying to place. The Internet explains that it is her from Last Crusade.
Why does Bond give control of the fire truck to Stacy, and then climb out on to the back? Surely it’s not just so the ladder can detatch and swing him about over the road to add excitement to the chase. That would be silly.
The mine set is amazing, and the fight on the Golden Gate Bridge very impressive. But then it ends in a cut-price version of the endings to Spy and Moonraker. This time, Bond’s having a shower. Half an hour earlier and Q could have caught him taking a shit.
It just seems a bit of an ignominious end for the most prolific of Bonds. I’d been rather sniffy about Sir Roj’s efforts compared to the hard stuff of his colleagues, but some of that was downright cool. Good job, 007.
Yes, I’m rather impressed with Alex and Richard’s idea that Sir Roger Moore learns he’s the new James Bond in his opening scene with M (discussed in the comments of this previous Bond post).
Unlike OHMSS, they keep the new Bond out of the pre-credit sequence and instead tease us with fragments of plot. What connects a killing at the United Nations, a killing in a New Orleans street and a killing in a weird voodoo ritual? The new Bond will surely work it out.
It’s the second film in a row to be set in America, but it’s got a grittier, harder edge than Diamonds Are Forever. We see an America that’s dirty, dangerous and racially segregated. George Martin’s atmospheric score also reflects the changing times.
Roger Moore is a skinny little bloke compared to his predecessors and suffers from 70s fashions, with dweeby patterned jackets and ironed creases in his flares. It’s all a bit fussy and uncool.
Is Felix Lighter an inherited title as well? If they’d been worried about establishing the new man, they could have wheeled out Norman Burton again (he’s the one in Diamonds Are Forver). Can’t see him in Licence to Kill, though.
The Man With The Golden Gun
More silly things done by Bond: squeezes a fat bloke’s bum.
Does Scaramanga’s obsession with Bond mean that he thinks Sir Roj is the same man as Sir Sean? Alternatively, do their paths cross because Sir Roj is pursuing Gibson, the man Scaramanga is planning to kill?
The stuff about Gibson and the energy crisis works quite well, lending some weight to the cock-fight plot, though there’s some especially crass infodumping about halfway through, with M detailing science that everyone in the room already knows.
Which is a shame because there’s some deft and witty writing here. Top marks for Bond’s threat to shoot a bloke in the cock if he doesn’t answer questions: “Speak now or forever hold your piece.”
I think Sir Roj is at his best when being a bit ruthless – shagging Rosie Carver in the last one when he knows that she’s a wrong ‘un, or holding Maud Adams to ransom. Yes, in For Your Eyes Only, it is a Good Thing he kicks the car.
Other silly things: Scaramanga’s Shadow Gallery has a life-size Sir Roj on display and it doesn’t occur to him that Bond might use this. And why does the dummy have a real and loaded gun?
The Spy Who Loved Me
The Making of… will tell you that this was a new direction for Bond, pushing the franchise into off-the-wall fantasy.
But it’s the first to obviously repeat stuff: a ski chase as in OHMSS, the swallowing whole of vessels like in You Only Live Twice, underwater battles as per Thunderball and a gagdet-strewn car as in Goldfinger.
We also get the first explicit reference to Bond’s wife since she died. Gogol calls M “Miles” (the only time the films mention his name) and XXX calls Q “Major Boothroyd” – so he is the same man as in Dr No. We also see Bond (again) as a naval Commander.
Setting things up for the future, Walter Gotell makes his first appearance as Gogol and Robert Brown appears as Admiral Hargreaves. As well as taking over as M, he’s referred to as "Admiral" in Octopussy, which might mean he’s the same bloke all along.
The Dr Who cast is pretty good in this one: George Baker, Jeremy Bulloch (though not as Smithers), Kevin McNally, Cyril Shaps and Edward de Souza. No, you can’t count Caroline Munro.
An odd thing: 007 and XXX join forces in Egypt and are briefed by Q. They then take the train to Sardinia (no, I don't think that's possible either), where, er, Q is waiting for them with the Lotus. They don't seem surprised or say, "Didn't we just see you?"
Another odd thing: how many chances does Stromberg give Jaws to kill Bond? It’s far less credible than the number of times he survives buildings falling on top of him. You can almost hear Stromberg saying, “Maybe fifth time lucky…”
Moonraker
It’s been slowly creeping up on us, but this is the first film to really go out of its way to give M and Q more interesting things to do. Bernard Lee’s final film sees him looking unwell in Venice and running an office in Rio. It's like Bond can't be trusted to go out on missions on his own.
This is a sign of a franchise: where the practical wants of the actors supersedes what their characters would do. I gather something similar happens in the West Wing with a promotion for CJ (though I’ve only just finished Season 5).
Moonraker feels a hell of a lot like the last one as Bond gathers evidence on the bloke he already knows is the villain. The villain’s plan to start civilisation over is the same, as is the final gag of Bond caught doing the deed.
The Star Wars-inspired finale is kept relatively brief, though I remember all the marketing pushing James Bond In Space. (Sir Roj even appeared on the Muppet Show with a laser gun).
How many times do they need to tell us that Jaws and his missus have been rescued?
For Your Eyes Only
Blimey. It’s all a bit small-scale after outer space. Bond doesn’t even leave Europe in this one. Bill Conti’s music is very much of its time. It’s not bad, but it lacks the timeless style of John Barry and makes this feel just like any other (low-budget) action movie.
It does feel like a new kind of Bond film (again), and continually undercuts the grandeur of the past. Bond visits his late wife’s grave and finally sees off Blofeld. But:
Why is Teresa buried in England, and in a tiny little church? Her dad Draco seems to be based in Portugal and could probably afford something swankier.
Blofeld is as we saw him at the end of OHMSS - bald, in a neck brace and wheelchair. Which suggests that OHMSS is canon and Diamonds Are Forever is not. Which is a bit odd.
There’s a car chase with Bond behind the wheel of a 2CV, and the countess he shags turns out to be a scally. The finale is not Bond going one-on-one with a terrifying villain or chasing after bombs in a spaceship. He breaks a computer by throwing it off a rock.
Bond is looking old, and Lynn-Holly Johnson’s character just makes that more obvious. As well as turning down a dead-cert shag, Bond is toe-curlingly patrician with her, with lessons on how to behave. Up, I thought, yours grandad.
He’s no less patronising to Melina, and though she laughs at his jokes in the car chase I didn’t feel there’s much chemistry between them. At the end of the film they’re (inevitably) lovers, and I couldn’t help but wonder, “When did that happen?” They’ve not even snogged until then.
Yeah, the plotting is a bit weird. There’s a gratuitous cheat when Bond and Melina go scuba-diving and Melina FOR NO REASON AT ALL takes off her aqua-lung and leaves it by the underwater Greek ruin. Well, NO REASON AT ALL other than that she has read the script and knows that she and Bond will need that aqua-lung there in a few scenes time.
The Greek Temple appears to be near the Corfu coast, whereas the sunken ship is out to sea (and something of a journey). Kristatos captures Bond and Melina as they surface from the sunken ship, but tries to kill them in the water above the Greek Temple (where their handy aqua-lung comes in). So, er, does he take them back towards Corfu because that’s where the scratchy coral is? Doesn’t that mean he’s more likely to be seen doing his killings?
Oh, but bonus points for Charles Dance as a thug!
Octopussy
Cor. It looks amazing, John Barry’s score is gorgeous and the whole thing zips along. Maud Adams is really rather marvellous. Suddenly Bond has got his groove back.
They make less of Bond being an old man now, but play a nasty card with Moneypenny when Sir Roj smarms all over her new assistant.
I’d missed Bond disguising himself as a gorilla from my list of Bond being silly. He also manages to remove himself from the gorilla suit and escape to the back of the train carriage while Kabir Bedi is watching him. But Bond being magic, he is not seen.
It feels like there are a lot more action set pieces than usual, and there’s a nice mix of the exotic (in India) and the very political real. Weird to see Checkpoint Charlie and a divided Berlin having been there a fortnight ago.
Also odd to see Détente creeping in – a theme since the Spy Who Loved Me. I gather this is because the Bond films sold well in Russia, so the producers were keen to push us all being chums. But it means Bond seems ahead of more war-mongering spy stuff from the time. Eat that, John le Carre.
And, er, Q’s set up a workshop in India. Now I can see it might be helpful to give Bond his gadgets, but this makes it feel like there’s a whole industry behind Bond, following wherever he goes. Q even helps in the field, leading Bond into a siege and saving pretty ladies in the process. While Sir Roj is sliding down banisters.
Perhaps Desmond Llewellyn was being considered to take over from Sir Roj? Don’t laugh – have you seen who else they considered?
A View to a Kill
So, Sir Roj’s last one already. Blimey, that went quick. And you can tell by the hair and the rubbish robot dog that it’s from more than two decades ago.
It’s a bit slow, actually – with lots of scenes of people just talking to each other about their various allegiances. The 80s “fashions” don’t help because rather than looking stylish and cool, Bond seems to be stalking the blousy wives of the crassest chinless wonders.
Like For Your Eyes Only, they’re continually undercutting Bond’s cool: his rifle only shoots rock salt, the police think he’s talking bollocks and he woos a girl by making a quiche. Tanya Roberts is also not the most brilliant leading lady, and there’s far more sparkle with both May Day and Fiona Fullerton.
There’s another lady in it who I kept trying to place. The Internet explains that it is her from Last Crusade.
Why does Bond give control of the fire truck to Stacy, and then climb out on to the back? Surely it’s not just so the ladder can detatch and swing him about over the road to add excitement to the chase. That would be silly.
The mine set is amazing, and the fight on the Golden Gate Bridge very impressive. But then it ends in a cut-price version of the endings to Spy and Moonraker. This time, Bond’s having a shower. Half an hour earlier and Q could have caught him taking a shit.
It just seems a bit of an ignominious end for the most prolific of Bonds. I’d been rather sniffy about Sir Roj’s efforts compared to the hard stuff of his colleagues, but some of that was downright cool. Good job, 007.
Friday, September 15, 2006
The old bloke’s a porker
Today I held in my very hands The Centenarian – the newest Dr Who anthology of thrilling short stories.
Wodged within its great wealth of pages are a story of mine (I’ve written about “Incongruous Details” on the Centenarian blog) and a thrilling preview of Time Signature – the next Dr Who anthology of thrilling short stories, as edited by little me.
So that’s all a bit exciting.
Spent the afternoon going though an archive (i.e. two cardboard boxes full of CDs), gathering materials for a forthcoming thingie. As is the way with archives, I also found a few excitements I wasn’t exactly looking for. Pretty baubles! In one case, literally.
Also suggested an idea to the chief that may even happen into being. It is not merely a cockle-warmingly good idea but a cheap one too, so here’s hoping.
I have also deleted quite a lot of words about an education programme, done the washing up and discussed current affairs in depth with the cat. He thinks the pope should have known better and that it’s not very Christian to say to people, “Your Mum’s rubbish”.
That is (if Shag’s memory serves him correctly) what John 14 refers to as “asking for a slap”.
Wodged within its great wealth of pages are a story of mine (I’ve written about “Incongruous Details” on the Centenarian blog) and a thrilling preview of Time Signature – the next Dr Who anthology of thrilling short stories, as edited by little me.
So that’s all a bit exciting.
Spent the afternoon going though an archive (i.e. two cardboard boxes full of CDs), gathering materials for a forthcoming thingie. As is the way with archives, I also found a few excitements I wasn’t exactly looking for. Pretty baubles! In one case, literally.
Also suggested an idea to the chief that may even happen into being. It is not merely a cockle-warmingly good idea but a cheap one too, so here’s hoping.
I have also deleted quite a lot of words about an education programme, done the washing up and discussed current affairs in depth with the cat. He thinks the pope should have known better and that it’s not very Christian to say to people, “Your Mum’s rubbish”.
That is (if Shag’s memory serves him correctly) what John 14 refers to as “asking for a slap”.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Prints of darkness
I have learned two new things – both of them obvious to anyone with a brane.
Kept awake last night by a rather smashing storm. The pause between purple lightning and the gurgle of thunder remained a constant seven elephants, which scientifically proves the storm was either sitting perfectly still or using our house as a pivot.
The cat was not impressed at all by this and kept nosing up for a cuddle. The moment he felt a bit better about life, he would bravely scamper off to pursue invisible mice.
“I don’t need you,” spoke his behaviour. “I am helluva tough with my animal instincts.”
He’d then scurry back into my armpit the moment the storm got more noisy.
Shag had been acting odd all evening – the anxious running about between our feet and wauing that either means its bedtime or he’s made some smelly bears. (You can usually tell the difference by whether your nostrils are aflame.)
But it was early and my nose was still intact. “Don’t be so silly,” I told him, though not too sternly as he is quite impressionably dim.
Later, I headed up to fetch some Robinsons Apple and Blackcurrant for night-time slaking (we can’t have water because the cat sticks his head in it). Our kitchen, just to be different, is up in the converted roof. And was liberally glossed over with water.
The cat was busy pressing his forehead into the back of my ankles. “See?” he seemed to say. “See?”
The skylights in the roof of the kitchen can be locked just-a-bit-open, which is useful if you’ve been griddling chicken breasts for a rather scrummy tea and want to be rid of the steam. The just-a-bit-open nature of the locking mechanism means that any previous rain has been easily kept out.
Thing learnt #1: If it storms particularly hard, the just-a-bit-open locking system isn’t waterproof. Well done the redoubtable British weather. And well done that man with the late-night mop who cleared up all the mess.
So it looks like the summer is over. The nights are drawing in and we even got a Goth weathergirl after the BBC’s 10 pm news. The Dr was delighted to spot black fingernails and everything.
“I guess that means the clocks will be going back soon,” I said. But there’s weeks and weeks left before that.
Thing learnt #2: British summers are longer than the winters. We get 21 weeks of Greenwich Mean Time each year, and 31 weeks of British Summer Time.
Kept awake last night by a rather smashing storm. The pause between purple lightning and the gurgle of thunder remained a constant seven elephants, which scientifically proves the storm was either sitting perfectly still or using our house as a pivot.
The cat was not impressed at all by this and kept nosing up for a cuddle. The moment he felt a bit better about life, he would bravely scamper off to pursue invisible mice.
“I don’t need you,” spoke his behaviour. “I am helluva tough with my animal instincts.”
He’d then scurry back into my armpit the moment the storm got more noisy.
Shag had been acting odd all evening – the anxious running about between our feet and wauing that either means its bedtime or he’s made some smelly bears. (You can usually tell the difference by whether your nostrils are aflame.)
But it was early and my nose was still intact. “Don’t be so silly,” I told him, though not too sternly as he is quite impressionably dim.
Later, I headed up to fetch some Robinsons Apple and Blackcurrant for night-time slaking (we can’t have water because the cat sticks his head in it). Our kitchen, just to be different, is up in the converted roof. And was liberally glossed over with water.
The cat was busy pressing his forehead into the back of my ankles. “See?” he seemed to say. “See?”
The skylights in the roof of the kitchen can be locked just-a-bit-open, which is useful if you’ve been griddling chicken breasts for a rather scrummy tea and want to be rid of the steam. The just-a-bit-open nature of the locking mechanism means that any previous rain has been easily kept out.
Thing learnt #1: If it storms particularly hard, the just-a-bit-open locking system isn’t waterproof. Well done the redoubtable British weather. And well done that man with the late-night mop who cleared up all the mess.
So it looks like the summer is over. The nights are drawing in and we even got a Goth weathergirl after the BBC’s 10 pm news. The Dr was delighted to spot black fingernails and everything.
“I guess that means the clocks will be going back soon,” I said. But there’s weeks and weeks left before that.
Thing learnt #2: British summers are longer than the winters. We get 21 weeks of Greenwich Mean Time each year, and 31 weeks of British Summer Time.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
This offence of the curry bread
Over curry and beer with the Joffstar a couple of weeks ago, we fell into talk of good comics. He kindly leant me the first volume of Ranma ½ which I devoured on the Victoria line home.
Mr Tendo owns a "school of indiscriminate grappling" and three daughters. He's keen to have his daughters marry, so send word to an old pal with an eligible son. The son, Ranma, is soon engaged to the youngest daughter Akane. But she's still at school, fancies the local doctor and anyway she says she hates boys.
But there's another wee problem. Ranma and his dad are both cursed, having fallen into some Chinese ponds when out training. Now whenever Ranma's dad gets hit with cold water he turns into an enormous panda.
Ranma's curse is all the more terrible - cold water turns him into a girl.
It's a weirdly compelling story, with a love triangle and school bullies and unrequited crushes. With it’s martial arts and teen-loves and curses-from-the-dawn-of-time, it’d be a bit obvious to say it’s like Buffy. Well, yes, but imagine Buffy getting her tits out all the time. If you hadn’t already.
As Joffstar said, for all the plot, ahem, requires accidental disrobings and people wandering in on showering, bosomy teenagers, it’s endearingly innocent. Though I am amused that the noise for prodding someone’s boobs to check that they are real is “Poit! Poit!”
It's also giddily silly, with the panda using hand-held signs to communicate his despair because he's unable to speak. (There's a nice moment where he answers the phone and then just looks exasperated at the reader).
By the end of this first book, we’ve set up the regulars and all the tangled love-geometry of triangles within triangles, and things are getting complicated by visiting cast – such as an old schoolmate of Ranma’s hellbent on revenge. The schoolmate is, as is everyone, a martial arts whizzkid, but his terrible sense of direction is the source of many jokes.
Joffstar tells me it continues in this vein, with other people turning up with their own strange curses. He’s moving house, though, so he can’t find volumes two and three. Gah.
Mr Tendo owns a "school of indiscriminate grappling" and three daughters. He's keen to have his daughters marry, so send word to an old pal with an eligible son. The son, Ranma, is soon engaged to the youngest daughter Akane. But she's still at school, fancies the local doctor and anyway she says she hates boys.But there's another wee problem. Ranma and his dad are both cursed, having fallen into some Chinese ponds when out training. Now whenever Ranma's dad gets hit with cold water he turns into an enormous panda.
Ranma's curse is all the more terrible - cold water turns him into a girl.
It's a weirdly compelling story, with a love triangle and school bullies and unrequited crushes. With it’s martial arts and teen-loves and curses-from-the-dawn-of-time, it’d be a bit obvious to say it’s like Buffy. Well, yes, but imagine Buffy getting her tits out all the time. If you hadn’t already.
As Joffstar said, for all the plot, ahem, requires accidental disrobings and people wandering in on showering, bosomy teenagers, it’s endearingly innocent. Though I am amused that the noise for prodding someone’s boobs to check that they are real is “Poit! Poit!”
It's also giddily silly, with the panda using hand-held signs to communicate his despair because he's unable to speak. (There's a nice moment where he answers the phone and then just looks exasperated at the reader).
By the end of this first book, we’ve set up the regulars and all the tangled love-geometry of triangles within triangles, and things are getting complicated by visiting cast – such as an old schoolmate of Ranma’s hellbent on revenge. The schoolmate is, as is everyone, a martial arts whizzkid, but his terrible sense of direction is the source of many jokes.
Joffstar tells me it continues in this vein, with other people turning up with their own strange curses. He’s moving house, though, so he can’t find volumes two and three. Gah.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Shipping forecast
Sent this shippy review of The Time Travellers, which seems generally pleased with the thing. When I wrote that chapter, the snog seemed less crucial than ensuring I got the 1966 bus routes and fares 1966 correct. Even asked the London Transport Museum for help, and they went and looked it up. Hooray!
Shippers will be pleased to hear that there are more snogs to come in the life of Bernice Surprise Summerfield. A week ago I was just finishing a holiday but it seems like another life now. Work continues apace and things are getting signed off in one manner and another.
"Collected Works" is at proof stage and I've seen the final cover. We race towards a final version of the words and then it can go and be published.
"Old Friends" has gone back to its authors (Jonathan, Marc and Pete) so they can argue with my comments and agree on the appropriate Japanese.
Edits of some plays are done and we've even had time to do trailers. E. Robson responds that this is the first of his audio work he's actually ever heard, because though he's all prolific and that, none of it is out yet. (There is a trailer for his rather lovely Memory Lane on Joe's Reaping, but E. Robson has yet to get a copy.)
Have also seen the final artwork for "Summer of Love" and am filled with paroxysms of pleasure.
Now reading the first draft of the first play of Benny's Season 8 (so far into the future there's nowhere yet to link to), and have another draft awaiting my attentions. Any time soon I should get responses back on two other projects which may require hasty rewriting on my part.
In the meantime, another company entirely has asked for a more detailed breakdown of something I sent them in May. I'd rather expected a "Thanks but no thanks!" as I've since learnt a bit more about what they're after. But instead they just said a bit more about what they're after and have asked me to suitably respond. This is pitching for a big and paid gig, so that's all a bit exciting.
And then there's the script I promised the brother, and something for that there John S Drew. And, you know, attending to the needs of both wife and cat.
And watching the rest of "For Your Eyes Only"...
Shippers will be pleased to hear that there are more snogs to come in the life of Bernice Surprise Summerfield. A week ago I was just finishing a holiday but it seems like another life now. Work continues apace and things are getting signed off in one manner and another.
"Collected Works" is at proof stage and I've seen the final cover. We race towards a final version of the words and then it can go and be published.
"Old Friends" has gone back to its authors (Jonathan, Marc and Pete) so they can argue with my comments and agree on the appropriate Japanese.
Edits of some plays are done and we've even had time to do trailers. E. Robson responds that this is the first of his audio work he's actually ever heard, because though he's all prolific and that, none of it is out yet. (There is a trailer for his rather lovely Memory Lane on Joe's Reaping, but E. Robson has yet to get a copy.)
Have also seen the final artwork for "Summer of Love" and am filled with paroxysms of pleasure.
Now reading the first draft of the first play of Benny's Season 8 (so far into the future there's nowhere yet to link to), and have another draft awaiting my attentions. Any time soon I should get responses back on two other projects which may require hasty rewriting on my part.
In the meantime, another company entirely has asked for a more detailed breakdown of something I sent them in May. I'd rather expected a "Thanks but no thanks!" as I've since learnt a bit more about what they're after. But instead they just said a bit more about what they're after and have asked me to suitably respond. This is pitching for a big and paid gig, so that's all a bit exciting.
And then there's the script I promised the brother, and something for that there John S Drew. And, you know, attending to the needs of both wife and cat.
And watching the rest of "For Your Eyes Only"...
Monday, September 11, 2006
It should be in a museum
The brother in law played something of a blinder with the DVD of “One of our Dinosaurs is Missing” for the Dr’s recent anniversary. Cor, it’s a corker. And, of course, an essential bit of reading for anyone interested in the history of museum acquisitions and their interpretation.Sometime soon after the First World War, Derek Nimmo’s dandy secret agent escapes China with the top secret “Lotus X”. With Chinese hoodlums (led by Peter Ustinov) hot on his trail, he hides the secret in the skeleton of a dinosaur in the Natural History Museum, but then has a nasty fall.
Lucky for him, he bumps into his old nanny just before he passes out, and she’s able to take on the case. While Nimmo languishes in a cell perishing all thought of his being a spy, the hoodlums and the nannies both plot to recover the Lotus X whatever way they can – even if it means scousing the dinosaur.
It took the wife a bit by surprise to find that this was a Disney film, especially considering the cast – which includes Joan Sims, Bernard Bresslaw, Jon Pertwee and Roy Kinnear, and suggests a sexless Carry On or, even an Ealing comedy.
It was the last film of director Robert Stevenson, who’d been responsible for Mary Poppins, Old Yeller (a favourite of my mum’s), The Absent-Minded Professor, and Bedknobs and Broomsticks.
(He also directed Darby O’Gill and the Little People, with its lurid Technicolor Oirland, complete with shamrocks and leprechauns. It features an all-smiling, all-singing Sean Connery three years before he became James Bond. Yes, it’s why Ian Fleming responded, “What? Him?!?”)
Dinosaurs is a very low-budget runaround in comparison to all that – a clue to that being the absence of American stars other than Helen Hayes. The cast are quite amazing, the leads ably supported by some fantastic cameos. And the whole thing is a set-up for two brilliant set pieces: the chase through fog-enshrouded London with the stolen dinosaur, and the final fisticuffs between hoodlums and nannies.
It does feel like something from another age, with Caucasian actors made up (in some cases almost not at all) to play the lead Chinese. The Dr and Nimbos both felt sure it hailed from the late 60s, though it’s from 1975 (so post, not pre, Pertwee’s commitments to the universe as Dr Who).
It is very funny, but in an especially mild-mannered way. The villains are all good eggs really, if only you take a moment to chat to them. Like Talons (made two years later), what racial jokes there are more readily mock English pretensions than bully the Oriental.
I couldn’t understand why Clive Revill, as Ustinov’s ambitious number two, seemed so familiar – and his make-up only made him more so. And then I remembered that he used to be the Emperor before Fidgeting George cut his bits out. Do put those scissors down, dear, or you'll end up the subject of a rhyme in Struwwelpeter.
What I especially like is the way Dinosaurs constantly undercuts the gritty tension of the thriller. So it sets itself up as something like Fu Manchu, but we discover along the way that the Chinese super-villain had a nanny, too, and that anyway Nimmo doesn’t work for M but for a supermarket.
Nimbos, always eager to spoil the fun, points out that the dinosaur prop looks like a skeleton, not a fossil. But he was impressed enough with the set to not always be sure what had been filmed on location.
Friday, September 08, 2006
Just like Salisbury
Bob’s my uncle (and his Mrs used to be my boss at the same time my sister was my landlady). You can now hear the noise he makes at his shiny new site.
Stung
A bit surprised by the response from some chums to the death of Steve Irwin (sorry to pick on that site in particular but it's indicative of stuff said in the pub last night). Some have said Irwin was reckless or a madman, or even deserved what he got.
I can’t help feel that if those gorillas had mauled David Attenborough instead of hugging him, it’d earn a different response. No less reckless a stunt for making good telly, it’s just Irwin wasn’t so immaculately spoken.
I can’t help feel that if those gorillas had mauled David Attenborough instead of hugging him, it’d earn a different response. No less reckless a stunt for making good telly, it’s just Irwin wasn’t so immaculately spoken.
Danger men
Watching a 70s drama about Philby, Burgess & Maclean the other night (in which Derek Jacobi got Richard Hurndall and Arthur Lowe all cross), the Dr asked why spies so appealed.
The things the spies did and reported on led to the deaths of thousands – and they colluded willingly. (This led to a discussion of party politics, team games and all this current rubbish, my thoughts on which I’ll write up once I’ve prised “Interesting Times” from her paws.) She also decried what ruthless, vicious bastards spies are.
I concede she does rather have a point.
So what appeals? The charm and sex appeal of the style begun by Bond does lend the bastards some humanity, and a lot of what I like is the tension caused by the wretched ruthlessness of the job. Then there’s the tedious wish-fulfilment bullshit of one man who can make a real difference.
Spies are also clever protagonists, relying on wits and skill. They face constant danger in the field, battling against all the odds. Though they may have support and resources back home, they’re very much on their own. They face terrible, unforgiving brutality should they get things a bit wrong. As a result, they immediately make a plot into a thriller.
One of the great appeals of Casino Royale when I read it all those years ago was Bond getting things a bit wrong. Am hoping the new film (full trailer now here) will include his penance-by-tennis-racket.
See also: Millennium Dome on DangerMouse.
The things the spies did and reported on led to the deaths of thousands – and they colluded willingly. (This led to a discussion of party politics, team games and all this current rubbish, my thoughts on which I’ll write up once I’ve prised “Interesting Times” from her paws.) She also decried what ruthless, vicious bastards spies are.
I concede she does rather have a point.
So what appeals? The charm and sex appeal of the style begun by Bond does lend the bastards some humanity, and a lot of what I like is the tension caused by the wretched ruthlessness of the job. Then there’s the tedious wish-fulfilment bullshit of one man who can make a real difference.
Spies are also clever protagonists, relying on wits and skill. They face constant danger in the field, battling against all the odds. Though they may have support and resources back home, they’re very much on their own. They face terrible, unforgiving brutality should they get things a bit wrong. As a result, they immediately make a plot into a thriller.
One of the great appeals of Casino Royale when I read it all those years ago was Bond getting things a bit wrong. Am hoping the new film (full trailer now here) will include his penance-by-tennis-racket.
See also: Millennium Dome on DangerMouse.
The whole brevity thing
Rob complained last night that my posts here go on a bit long. I patiently explained that cutting stuff down is the difficult bit and usually something I’m paid for. Rambling is extravagant luxury.
“But I don’t read to the end,” he said.
I think I replied along the lines of this blog being for my own personal amusement. But I have a notebook for that and its good practice anyway, so shall attempt more frequent concisisity.
“But I don’t read to the end,” he said.
I think I replied along the lines of this blog being for my own personal amusement. But I have a notebook for that and its good practice anyway, so shall attempt more frequent concisisity.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Intelligent design
After a day trawling through the washing and inbox, the Dr and I last night attended a soirée at the Royal Chelsea Hospital which included a talk and free fizz. Chatted to a couple of other punters, all linked to art institutions of some kind. The Dr spoke knowledgeably of effigies of Queen Anne and what conservation cleaning can reveal, and I mugged a bit and ate canapés.
One of the pensioners showed us round the chapel, and explained the prominent baptismal font. Pensioners’ grandchildren are eligible to be baptised (and married) in the place.
Then it was on to the smart Council Chamber for two quick talks explaining the hospital’s role now (with 300-odd pensioners today, and a new infirmary in the works - donate here), and the history of its origination. The latter made use of portraits round the room of the founding heroes and villains.
Charles II (yay!) set up the hospital at about the same time as he did the country’s first standing army. Work got underway quickly, and then stalled for over a decade when the Earl of Raneleigh (boo!) ran off with the money.
The hospital didn’t just deal with the social problem of former soldiers now begging. Charles had been newly established as king by a government who’d cut his dad’s head off, and the “sentinels” – as the pensioners were originally described in all the documentation – had an implied remit to act, should he need them, as bodyguard.
Christopher Wren (yay!) positioned the building at a slight angle to the river, so that the pensioners are shaded from the sun in the summer and get maximum sunlight in the winter.
The design also includes shallow, wide steps ideal for old blokes and a clever mix of public and private space in the long wards. Pensioners can hide away in their berths, or sit chatting in the corridor. Which is all a bit clever, really.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
I am a doughnut
Saturday
Climbed into a cab at a little after 3 in the morning on Saturday and had a very easy ride up to Stansted. Behind us in the check-in queue, two female exemplars of English moderation and kindness took their time explaining the obvious: that the airport is very busy even at this time in the morning; that it’s still dark outside; that there’s a lot of people going to Berlin.
They also get mardy about a young couple just ahead of us they’ve decided jumped the queue. When they start saying, “Well then we should push ahead, too,” I point out that the young couple have been there all along. They glare at me right up to the check-in desk.
Security is no more of a palava than usual, apart from them not allowing cigarette lighters in your hand luggage. Well d’uh. Your hand luggage must also be, er, hand luggage, and not just a suitcase which you can demonstrably lift. We pass swiftly through the arguments with patient airport staff, whose mantra goes, “No,” and, “No,” and, “No,” and, “Even in this circumstance there aren't any exceptions.”
Had hoped to pick up “Lost Girls” in the airport bookshops, which are often ahead of the outside, real world. No such luck, and the Internet is available for just £1 per 10 minutes. Bah.
We shuffle onto the plane, and no one is allowed any sleep because Ryanair has exciting news of drinks and scratchcards and hire cars and shit. Everyone is already cranky from no-sleep, so this makes things all the more lovely.
Then we are in Berlin, sleep-starved and lost by the route into town. There are chatty volunteers at the railway station showing what tickets to buy, but they’re so chatty we miss a train while they “serve” the people in front of us. The train then stops for 20 minutes at one station and terminates at the next. We spend longer getting the miles into town than we did in the air.
“It’s a lot like London,” says the Dr as we plod out of Friedrichstrasse station, friendly commuters bowling past us, between us and sometimes right over the top.
We amble down the street to where our hotel is meant to be. On first sight, Berlin reminds us of Chicago, our favourite American city from our honeymoon. The hotel is sumptuous and we sleep a couple of blissful hours, me dreaming of Bernice Summerfield and spaceships full of cats. The Dr indulges in a bath (we don’t have such things at home), and the Hotel even provides its own rubber duck.
After a spot of lunch we wander up to the Brandenburg Gate, both so blinded by prejudice we’re amazed to realise we’re staying in what used to be East Berlin. Poster campaigns show the city’s gleaming tube network peopled by every demographic – young, old, scruffy, smart, disabled, gay and into rock music. I think I even spot someone who isn’t white, but it might be my imagination.
We gawp at the gate we’re so familiar with from old news, and then go for a peak at the Reichstag. Deciding to do the climb to the roof another day, we amble back through the park comparing notes on our A-levels and what we learned about the fire.
Feeling jet-lagged we explore the Gemaldegalerie, where there’s a Botticelli sketch of Venus and a lovely Vermeer of a girl polishing off a Glass of Wine. We pootle around for a good two and a half hours, and spent an anxious time in the shop afterwards looking for postcards. Why do they never have ones of our favourites?
On the way back to the hotel we marvel at the swanky new shopping centres, and then stumble over what used to be the border. We follow the line of the old Berlin Wall, picked out in colour stone in the pavement, and take photos where there are odd fragments of tall concrete, like the ruins of a skinny Stonehenge.
We reach Checkpoint Charlie and instead of trying its museum (which we’ve been warned is a bit gaudy), we read the many information boards all round the crossroads. It’s an eerie and moving experience – both of us remember watching this place on the news and seeing the world change. It could have all so easily played out more violently, more miserably, more slowly…
Then back to the hotel and the Dr has a swim while I snooze. We eat at the same nice place we had lunch in and then crash into an early night. The Dr dreams of monkeys without legs after I tell her I glimpsed one on the television.
Sunday
We get up lateish and head towards Museum Island, the reason we are here. On the way we pass through Bebelplatz, the square where the Nazis burnt 25,000 books.
The well-read Dr quotes Heine’s remark that,
The destruction of books is the destruction of social structure. The law is in books, as is religion and science and history. To burn a book is a refusal to empathise, to think, to engage. When you have burned down people’s ideas and opinions there is nothing left to stop you burning the people down, too.
Bebelplatz is an empty, open space amid the university, and though there are a couple of artworks about books in general, I think there should be something more lasting. They should have something like the stalls of mixed second-hand reading outside the National Film Theatre, with all kinds of well-thumbed, unsuitable ideas at tantalisingly affordable prices.
We move on, and the Dr adores the Altes Museum, speaking highly of a video presentation that shows where the ancient objects were taken from and how. We cheer as it shows an original Firman (a Turkish certificate saying they Ottoman government okay any looting), and I’m introduced to Furtwangler, whose marvellous moustache – as Charles Newton said – makes him look like the Dying Gaul.
There’s all sorts of detail in the objects on display and we coo at intricate glass and gold works and the insights into everyday life. We collect a mass of photocopied sheets with their additional facts about each display, the Dr marvelling at how well interpreted it all is. Again, though, the selection of postcards misses several favourites.
The museum is on a shared square with the vast, dark edifice of Berlin Cathedral and the building site that used to be the East Berlin government. The secular cathedral of classical gods easily holds its own against the Christian fella, and a great neon sign declares that “All art has been contemporary”. Feeling taller and happier and properly on holiday, we go find a suitable beer.
Next stop is the Pergamon, and the Dr marvels at how cheap the museums are before remembering that in London all this would be free.
The Pergamon is on a much bigger scale than the Altes, with whole reconstructions of pillaged ancient streets, but leaves us less impressed. I like the vast paintings of the relics in situ, hanging above the same relics on display. Yes, they look better where they were. And they wouldn’t have been quite so bombed, either.
We head home, get changed and head out for dinner. After a bit too much red wine we see in the Dr’s birthday with what cards I’d intercepted and the book on Victorian London she’d already intercepted.
Monday
Breakfast arrives at 7am, courtesy of the not-too-bad husband. We then amble down to the Health Club for the morning of indulgence I’d booked. The Dr chose the special “strawberry bath” while I was lead away by an agreeable-looking blonde to have an all-over massage.
She gently suggests I’d be more comfortable without the swimming trunks on and then sets to work on my knotty bits. Its odd to sprawl out in the all-together for a complete – and pretty – stranger, but I am soon blissed out by the pummelling. Point out later to the wife that it’s the first time in nearly seven years another woman’s got to have a prod at me naked. Does this count as a scratching of the itch, and do I have to wait as long for another go at it?
When it’s the Dr’s turn, I have fun playing in the saunas and then in the pool, and but for the last ten minutes have the whole place to myself. The Dr should have birthdays more often.
Floaty and content we find some clothes to put on and head out to again to explore. We pass the rather groovy British Embassy building, a cube of yellow inset with fun blue and pink shapes. It looks like a military headquarters run by children.
Queued and queued to get into the Reichstag as we passed through the various airlocks of security and up into Norman Foster’s splendid roof. The fine panoramic views remind you how flat Berlin is and why there are so many bicycles.
We then wandered East down the Spree and into the old Jewish quarter. Having marvelled at the great palace built for the Post Office’s horses, and at the magnificent rebuilt synagogue, we had a happy time poking around the fashionable, studenty shops. The area around the Nikolaikirche was very badly bombed, and the rebuilt area is rather smart and foreboding. A bar seemed a bit perturbed to be serving tourists, so we left them to it.
Instead, we dined at the 12 Apostles, a lovely pizzeria just next to the Pergamon. It was bustling with locals – always a good sign – and we got to sit right up by the open-plan kitchen. I had a huge calzone (a folded over pizza), and managed manfully to finish it. Cor, it was good. We bickered amiably about the selfish gene and about lost bits of stone off Malta and where our travels would take us next, and then plodded home.
Tuesday
Breakfasted and checked-out of the hotel, and then made our way to the Jewish Museum, which was something of a surprise. It was less about the Nazis as about the history of Germano-Jews since the time of the First Crusade. Charting the highs and lows of bias in the law and acts of violence, to the contributions to society by Jewish scientists and artists, it’s as much a celebration as a warning.
I found it moving and involving, and was impressed by how much it engaged the gangs of noisy schoolkids. The interactive elements included difficult yes/no questions about citizenship and immigration, such as “Should those born in Germany automatically qualify for German citizenship?” (68% of visitors when we were there said, “Yes.”)
Then we had a foolishly long walk across town to the Humburger Bahnhof – a former railway station and now a contemporary art gallery. It had been recommended by a few people, and we were hugely disappointed. As well as the usual pretension of the things on display, the place was stark and unfriendly, the staff keen to tell us off for carrying a cardigan the wrong way.
Only contemporary art makes you feel like a trespasser, and I found it difficult to get anything from the work. Were scuff marks just discernible in the blinding-white walls some new, untitled piece? Or were they just what was left behind when a piece had been relocated? In different cases, both.
There was little signage or – so important to the Dr – interpretation. The café was not open but didn’t tell say so anywhere (so we got told off again for blundering in), and there were various building works going on and things set up, with nothing to explain which areas on the map were newly out of bounds.
We did like some of the things – some fascinating photos from inside the ruin of the Palast der Republik, built in 1976 to govern East Berlin. But much of the collection was large, abstract, plain-toned stuff, presented against large, plain-toned walls so as to reduce any hint of excitement.
Also, of course, none of the things we liked were available as postcards. Instead they had lots of pretentiously rude ones – dead-eyed women fingering their bits, a bloke looking bored with his half-hearted cock out. I suppose there’s an argument that it’s not dreary porn because of the building its in. But, you know, piss off.
We had curried sausages before taking a train back to the Altes Museum, where the Dr was keen to make notes. On the way back to the hotel to fetch our bags we nipped into the Friedrichswerdersche Kirche and had a look at the collection of sculptures by Schinkel. The church was largely destroyed during the war and has been rebuilt elegantly. Some of the early 19th century sculptures were also missing limbs, and seemed oddly so much more like the classical works that had inspired them.
There was time for a beer before getting the train back to the airport. Our place was late leaving London, but they didn’t tell us that until we were on the plane. We mooched around the meagre airport facilities – a coffee bar, a shop and a sickly-stinking Burger King – and then huddled in a corridor with our fellow passengers.
Air travel brings out the worst in people anyway, but the half-hour lateness turned boarding into a scrum. There is something especially galling about people pretending not to see me as they shove past – I am tall, I am freakish-looking and I spend my whole life in the way.
We left the tangled morass at Stansted, climbing into our waiting taxi as people around us swore at each other for all having been off on holiday. Home about half one this morning, to the Dr’s remaining cards and presents, and a pair of new shoes for me.
Climbed into a cab at a little after 3 in the morning on Saturday and had a very easy ride up to Stansted. Behind us in the check-in queue, two female exemplars of English moderation and kindness took their time explaining the obvious: that the airport is very busy even at this time in the morning; that it’s still dark outside; that there’s a lot of people going to Berlin.
They also get mardy about a young couple just ahead of us they’ve decided jumped the queue. When they start saying, “Well then we should push ahead, too,” I point out that the young couple have been there all along. They glare at me right up to the check-in desk.
Security is no more of a palava than usual, apart from them not allowing cigarette lighters in your hand luggage. Well d’uh. Your hand luggage must also be, er, hand luggage, and not just a suitcase which you can demonstrably lift. We pass swiftly through the arguments with patient airport staff, whose mantra goes, “No,” and, “No,” and, “No,” and, “Even in this circumstance there aren't any exceptions.”
Had hoped to pick up “Lost Girls” in the airport bookshops, which are often ahead of the outside, real world. No such luck, and the Internet is available for just £1 per 10 minutes. Bah.
We shuffle onto the plane, and no one is allowed any sleep because Ryanair has exciting news of drinks and scratchcards and hire cars and shit. Everyone is already cranky from no-sleep, so this makes things all the more lovely.
Then we are in Berlin, sleep-starved and lost by the route into town. There are chatty volunteers at the railway station showing what tickets to buy, but they’re so chatty we miss a train while they “serve” the people in front of us. The train then stops for 20 minutes at one station and terminates at the next. We spend longer getting the miles into town than we did in the air.
“It’s a lot like London,” says the Dr as we plod out of Friedrichstrasse station, friendly commuters bowling past us, between us and sometimes right over the top.
We amble down the street to where our hotel is meant to be. On first sight, Berlin reminds us of Chicago, our favourite American city from our honeymoon. The hotel is sumptuous and we sleep a couple of blissful hours, me dreaming of Bernice Summerfield and spaceships full of cats. The Dr indulges in a bath (we don’t have such things at home), and the Hotel even provides its own rubber duck.
After a spot of lunch we wander up to the Brandenburg Gate, both so blinded by prejudice we’re amazed to realise we’re staying in what used to be East Berlin. Poster campaigns show the city’s gleaming tube network peopled by every demographic – young, old, scruffy, smart, disabled, gay and into rock music. I think I even spot someone who isn’t white, but it might be my imagination.
We gawp at the gate we’re so familiar with from old news, and then go for a peak at the Reichstag. Deciding to do the climb to the roof another day, we amble back through the park comparing notes on our A-levels and what we learned about the fire.
Feeling jet-lagged we explore the Gemaldegalerie, where there’s a Botticelli sketch of Venus and a lovely Vermeer of a girl polishing off a Glass of Wine. We pootle around for a good two and a half hours, and spent an anxious time in the shop afterwards looking for postcards. Why do they never have ones of our favourites?On the way back to the hotel we marvel at the swanky new shopping centres, and then stumble over what used to be the border. We follow the line of the old Berlin Wall, picked out in colour stone in the pavement, and take photos where there are odd fragments of tall concrete, like the ruins of a skinny Stonehenge.
We reach Checkpoint Charlie and instead of trying its museum (which we’ve been warned is a bit gaudy), we read the many information boards all round the crossroads. It’s an eerie and moving experience – both of us remember watching this place on the news and seeing the world change. It could have all so easily played out more violently, more miserably, more slowly…
Then back to the hotel and the Dr has a swim while I snooze. We eat at the same nice place we had lunch in and then crash into an early night. The Dr dreams of monkeys without legs after I tell her I glimpsed one on the television.
Sunday
We get up lateish and head towards Museum Island, the reason we are here. On the way we pass through Bebelplatz, the square where the Nazis burnt 25,000 books.
The well-read Dr quotes Heine’s remark that,
“where they burn books they will also, in the end, burn people,”and wonders whether the burning of the Satanic Verses all those years ago was the first symptom of more recent religious tensions. I start to answer that burning books is easier than burning people, but that’s not actually true.
The destruction of books is the destruction of social structure. The law is in books, as is religion and science and history. To burn a book is a refusal to empathise, to think, to engage. When you have burned down people’s ideas and opinions there is nothing left to stop you burning the people down, too.
Bebelplatz is an empty, open space amid the university, and though there are a couple of artworks about books in general, I think there should be something more lasting. They should have something like the stalls of mixed second-hand reading outside the National Film Theatre, with all kinds of well-thumbed, unsuitable ideas at tantalisingly affordable prices.
We move on, and the Dr adores the Altes Museum, speaking highly of a video presentation that shows where the ancient objects were taken from and how. We cheer as it shows an original Firman (a Turkish certificate saying they Ottoman government okay any looting), and I’m introduced to Furtwangler, whose marvellous moustache – as Charles Newton said – makes him look like the Dying Gaul.
There’s all sorts of detail in the objects on display and we coo at intricate glass and gold works and the insights into everyday life. We collect a mass of photocopied sheets with their additional facts about each display, the Dr marvelling at how well interpreted it all is. Again, though, the selection of postcards misses several favourites.
The museum is on a shared square with the vast, dark edifice of Berlin Cathedral and the building site that used to be the East Berlin government. The secular cathedral of classical gods easily holds its own against the Christian fella, and a great neon sign declares that “All art has been contemporary”. Feeling taller and happier and properly on holiday, we go find a suitable beer.
Next stop is the Pergamon, and the Dr marvels at how cheap the museums are before remembering that in London all this would be free.
The Pergamon is on a much bigger scale than the Altes, with whole reconstructions of pillaged ancient streets, but leaves us less impressed. I like the vast paintings of the relics in situ, hanging above the same relics on display. Yes, they look better where they were. And they wouldn’t have been quite so bombed, either.
We head home, get changed and head out for dinner. After a bit too much red wine we see in the Dr’s birthday with what cards I’d intercepted and the book on Victorian London she’d already intercepted.
Monday
Breakfast arrives at 7am, courtesy of the not-too-bad husband. We then amble down to the Health Club for the morning of indulgence I’d booked. The Dr chose the special “strawberry bath” while I was lead away by an agreeable-looking blonde to have an all-over massage.
She gently suggests I’d be more comfortable without the swimming trunks on and then sets to work on my knotty bits. Its odd to sprawl out in the all-together for a complete – and pretty – stranger, but I am soon blissed out by the pummelling. Point out later to the wife that it’s the first time in nearly seven years another woman’s got to have a prod at me naked. Does this count as a scratching of the itch, and do I have to wait as long for another go at it?
When it’s the Dr’s turn, I have fun playing in the saunas and then in the pool, and but for the last ten minutes have the whole place to myself. The Dr should have birthdays more often.
Floaty and content we find some clothes to put on and head out to again to explore. We pass the rather groovy British Embassy building, a cube of yellow inset with fun blue and pink shapes. It looks like a military headquarters run by children.
Queued and queued to get into the Reichstag as we passed through the various airlocks of security and up into Norman Foster’s splendid roof. The fine panoramic views remind you how flat Berlin is and why there are so many bicycles.
We then wandered East down the Spree and into the old Jewish quarter. Having marvelled at the great palace built for the Post Office’s horses, and at the magnificent rebuilt synagogue, we had a happy time poking around the fashionable, studenty shops. The area around the Nikolaikirche was very badly bombed, and the rebuilt area is rather smart and foreboding. A bar seemed a bit perturbed to be serving tourists, so we left them to it.
Instead, we dined at the 12 Apostles, a lovely pizzeria just next to the Pergamon. It was bustling with locals – always a good sign – and we got to sit right up by the open-plan kitchen. I had a huge calzone (a folded over pizza), and managed manfully to finish it. Cor, it was good. We bickered amiably about the selfish gene and about lost bits of stone off Malta and where our travels would take us next, and then plodded home.
Tuesday
Breakfasted and checked-out of the hotel, and then made our way to the Jewish Museum, which was something of a surprise. It was less about the Nazis as about the history of Germano-Jews since the time of the First Crusade. Charting the highs and lows of bias in the law and acts of violence, to the contributions to society by Jewish scientists and artists, it’s as much a celebration as a warning.
I found it moving and involving, and was impressed by how much it engaged the gangs of noisy schoolkids. The interactive elements included difficult yes/no questions about citizenship and immigration, such as “Should those born in Germany automatically qualify for German citizenship?” (68% of visitors when we were there said, “Yes.”)
Then we had a foolishly long walk across town to the Humburger Bahnhof – a former railway station and now a contemporary art gallery. It had been recommended by a few people, and we were hugely disappointed. As well as the usual pretension of the things on display, the place was stark and unfriendly, the staff keen to tell us off for carrying a cardigan the wrong way.
Only contemporary art makes you feel like a trespasser, and I found it difficult to get anything from the work. Were scuff marks just discernible in the blinding-white walls some new, untitled piece? Or were they just what was left behind when a piece had been relocated? In different cases, both.
There was little signage or – so important to the Dr – interpretation. The café was not open but didn’t tell say so anywhere (so we got told off again for blundering in), and there were various building works going on and things set up, with nothing to explain which areas on the map were newly out of bounds.
We did like some of the things – some fascinating photos from inside the ruin of the Palast der Republik, built in 1976 to govern East Berlin. But much of the collection was large, abstract, plain-toned stuff, presented against large, plain-toned walls so as to reduce any hint of excitement.
Also, of course, none of the things we liked were available as postcards. Instead they had lots of pretentiously rude ones – dead-eyed women fingering their bits, a bloke looking bored with his half-hearted cock out. I suppose there’s an argument that it’s not dreary porn because of the building its in. But, you know, piss off.
We had curried sausages before taking a train back to the Altes Museum, where the Dr was keen to make notes. On the way back to the hotel to fetch our bags we nipped into the Friedrichswerdersche Kirche and had a look at the collection of sculptures by Schinkel. The church was largely destroyed during the war and has been rebuilt elegantly. Some of the early 19th century sculptures were also missing limbs, and seemed oddly so much more like the classical works that had inspired them.
There was time for a beer before getting the train back to the airport. Our place was late leaving London, but they didn’t tell us that until we were on the plane. We mooched around the meagre airport facilities – a coffee bar, a shop and a sickly-stinking Burger King – and then huddled in a corridor with our fellow passengers.
Air travel brings out the worst in people anyway, but the half-hour lateness turned boarding into a scrum. There is something especially galling about people pretending not to see me as they shove past – I am tall, I am freakish-looking and I spend my whole life in the way.
We left the tangled morass at Stansted, climbing into our waiting taxi as people around us swore at each other for all having been off on holiday. Home about half one this morning, to the Dr’s remaining cards and presents, and a pair of new shoes for me.
Friday, September 01, 2006
Rhymes with "Vimto grins"
If seasoned smokers, tokers and pipe-pokers can blow Smoke Rings (and Tolkein implies such activity is the finest part of havin' a puff), surely the same technique - the same articulation of the throat and tonguing action - might be used in the forging of vomit rings.
Imagine the joyous bafflement inflicted at bus stops besplattered in acidic hoops... like the Mysterons have had a night on the tiles.
Surely there's a research grant in this. No, really.
ETA: That should be "Anagram of", not "rhymes with". I am a twat. And much in need of a holiday.
Imagine the joyous bafflement inflicted at bus stops besplattered in acidic hoops... like the Mysterons have had a night on the tiles.
Surely there's a research grant in this. No, really.
ETA: That should be "Anagram of", not "rhymes with". I am a twat. And much in need of a holiday.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Attack of the memory cheats
Blimey: The official Dr Who website has posted up Nightshade, former Dr Who Mark Gatiss’ highly acclaimed first forage into BBC endorsed Who.
Here's a review of it I wrote earlier:
The readers of Doctor Who Magazine voted it best New Adventure of 1992, despite competition that included Paul Cornell’s dazzling "Love and War" and strong entries from Marc Platt, Andrew Cartmel and Ben Aaronovitch - three men who’d contributed some of the McCoy Doctor’s best TV stuff. The reliable reckoning of I, Who thinks it one of the "most emotive Who novels [...] striking a deep melodious chord with most readers," (p. 164).
The story is relatively simple – in marked contrast to the Doctor’s adventures at this time. The setting is a small town in late December 1968. Among the community is Edmund Trevethick, who used to play "Professor Nightshade" in the [fictional] BBC sci-fi series of the 50’s. He, the Doctor, the town and the staff of the nearby radio telescope are besieged by initially welcome, ultimately deadly ghosts from the past.
The book moves at a cracking place, full of drama. It’s built up of dialogue and action sequences, so reads like the novelisation of a TV story. It’s brief compared to many of the later books – only 228 pages – and keeps the reader on tenderhooks right until the end. The fact that it’s set in the days up to Christmas 1968 lends a significant atmosphere of invaded cosiness, as well as establishing a strong sense of time and place. Gatiss also takes us to the Civil War, albeit briefly, another potent time of English order being invaded.
"Nightshade" evokes the best of "Remembrance of the Daleks" – the first TV McCoy story to really impress. The 60’s setting is immediately identifiable, and would have ensured good production values had this been produced for television.
The interplay between the Doctor and Ace is excellent, giving both plenty of interesting character development. The way that McCoy’s Doctor and Aldred’s Ace speak on screen is nicely observed and mimicked: unlike a lot of books before and after this, we can really hear them speaking the lines. On page 198, Ace even gets to repeat the emphatic "Boom!" from "Battlefield", episode one.
There’s also a high demand for thrilling special effects sequences that screams for TV presentation. Thus, "Nightshade" transcends cursory similarities to classic Who of earlier eras – most notably "The Daemons" – and the ilk of English horror where evil whispers behind the walls in sleepy villages – without ever losing sight of its television heritage. Perhaps that accounts for the broad appeal.
This is the anti- Heart Beat, thank ****. There are terrors lurking behind the cosy façade and nostalgia kills. There is continual effort made to undercut a rose-tinted view of the period. Veterans of ghastly world war still suffer the effects of gas poisoning and the loss of friends and family, while an age of free love and drugs for the young and the rioting in Paris leaves people anything but safe and secure. This all adds to the threat that the demons from the past present: Ace herself offers a telling critique on the contrast between the era and her mum’s own lovestruck recollection.
What is also gratifying about a re-reading eight years after publication is noting the foreshadowing of 1996 TV Movie Dr Who. The book opens with the Doctor listening to scratchy gramophone records, and wearing a russet waistcoat. Ace has the same sense on entering the tertiary console room as on her first visit to church: post TV Movie books have tried to render the TARDIS interior as sepulchral, a cathedral like Notre Dame.
Gatiss signposts several of his own later efforts: the failure of religion to comprehend or answer the attacking monsters foreshadows his more pointed dismissal of the church in "St Anthony’s Fire." The character of the Civil War suggests much of the activity of "The Roundheads", while he even uses the word "Phantasmagoria" on page 72.
Billy Coote, the vagrant, could easily be a comedy yokel taken straight from a cosy Pertwee script. His running off in terror at the arrival of the TARDIS is, however, laced with his "malicious" desire for the deaths of famous people. Celebrity death means fatter newspapers and therefore comfier bedding.
This scintillating morbidity comes straight from League of Gentlemen. Crook Marsham is a "hotchpotch of small houses," (p. 32) akin to Royston Vasey. As the Doctor and Ace walk through the drizzle into town, we almost expect them to stop off at a Local Shop for a can of Coke. League of Gentlemen and this kind of Doctor Who (and, to some extent, Withnail and I, which is cited on page 5) are funny and scary – in a disturbing rather than wholly gory way – with well-observed, over the top English archetypes.
The crowning achievement is the depiction of social interaction between a range of characters, and the ways that this inter-linking group buckles and strains under pressure. The characters of batty pensioners and a carer who’d far rather be a political activist, the tensions amongst those working with the radio telescope – all are glorious.
The way the town hangs together is perhaps best shown right at the beginning of the book. Jack Prudhoe is aware that "there had been a lot of gossip recently about how ill Betty [Yeadon] was looking," (p. 4). This ginger suggestion of possible domestic violence and its evident interest to the townsfolk serves to ensure the close-knit feel of the town. The suggestion itself is soon forgotten in the wake of a cause far more horrifying. And yet, at the end of the novel, the town again closes ranks. Even "those who’d had the worst scares were the first to deny anything out of the ordinary," we’re told (p. 230). The novel rewards as a convincing case study in human behaviour.
Some of the cast are exceptionally engaging. Trevethick’s character is slyly observed. Like some other veteran actor whose telefantasy work is much adored, Trevethick is staunchly opinionated, loves to lose himself in Dickensian London and is a regular in the pub.
His relationship to the fictional Professor Nightshade recalls (in my mind, at least) a 1978 Nationwide interview, where Frank Bough accused Tom Baker of actually being the Doctor in ‘real life’. Tom muttered darkly that he only had to ‘be’ the Doctor as much as his accuser had to live up to being ‘Frank Bough’. The TV persona is a projection of a fallible, flawed man. If only Bough had listened and not laughed: it was exactly this dilemma between public and private personas that lead to his own plummet from grace in the 80’s.
Trevethick, as a retired actor whose private life is quietly evaporating, clings more and more to the strengths of a man he used to ‘be’. Rude and cantankerous, he’s still quietly delighted by the renewed success and longevity of his work, harbouring grand thoughts of a new series. But it’s not just this wonderful figure who suffers the crisis between public and private lives. The Doctor, too, experiences crisis as the misery and memories he has subdued for so long threaten to engulf him, overwhelming the space hero with all the answers that Ace enthuses him to be. Both Trevethick and the Doctor eventually have to face and live up to the responsibilities of their projected selves – it’s the only way to defeat the monsters.
Overall though – and despite the novel’s title – It’s not about Doctor Who and it’s not about Nightshade. This is Ace’s story. It is Ace who solves things, not only besting the Doctor but also provoking him into action when he has surrendered. Facing the angst of her past in the way she does resolves the ongoing issues explored in Season 26 - the final year of the TV series. As she acknowledges in the book, the Doctor has helped her grow up, straightened her out. She’s competent, brave and wise – knowing not only enough about Pulsars to explain them to Robin, but shrewd enough to manipulate the sly Time Lord.
Robin is a likeable, earnest, worthy and just bloody nice guy, and surely Ace earns her right to stay with him. In the books that follow this one, she’s never as happy with anyone else. In many ways, ‘Nightshade’ would have been a richly rewarding exit for Ace, and far more deserving of the character than what eventually got done to her.
If we can muddy the lines between TV and novels (as Doctor Who Magazine did in issue 287), ‘Season 27’ ought really to have ended with Ace’s victorious departure, the Doctor heading off to new adventures and a strong, new companion without her. Just think of all the crap she and we would have been spared...
"The ending breaks your heart," says I, Who. It’s certainly a stunning, powerful finale, and one that promises a new realm of forward-looking adventures. It’s a bit of a shame then that the loss of Robin is only fleetingly mentioned in "Love and War", and that such a genuine emotional match is eclipsed in favour of the unlikely and unlikeable Jan: something rather nicely made up for by Robin’s cameo return in "Happy Endings".
"Nightshade" is a richly satisfying book, superb to revisit. It’s also the sort of thing you can duplicitously hand to those strange and terrible Not-We if they enjoy League. Rah!
Here's a review of it I wrote earlier:
The readers of Doctor Who Magazine voted it best New Adventure of 1992, despite competition that included Paul Cornell’s dazzling "Love and War" and strong entries from Marc Platt, Andrew Cartmel and Ben Aaronovitch - three men who’d contributed some of the McCoy Doctor’s best TV stuff. The reliable reckoning of I, Who thinks it one of the "most emotive Who novels [...] striking a deep melodious chord with most readers," (p. 164).
The story is relatively simple – in marked contrast to the Doctor’s adventures at this time. The setting is a small town in late December 1968. Among the community is Edmund Trevethick, who used to play "Professor Nightshade" in the [fictional] BBC sci-fi series of the 50’s. He, the Doctor, the town and the staff of the nearby radio telescope are besieged by initially welcome, ultimately deadly ghosts from the past.
The book moves at a cracking place, full of drama. It’s built up of dialogue and action sequences, so reads like the novelisation of a TV story. It’s brief compared to many of the later books – only 228 pages – and keeps the reader on tenderhooks right until the end. The fact that it’s set in the days up to Christmas 1968 lends a significant atmosphere of invaded cosiness, as well as establishing a strong sense of time and place. Gatiss also takes us to the Civil War, albeit briefly, another potent time of English order being invaded.
"Nightshade" evokes the best of "Remembrance of the Daleks" – the first TV McCoy story to really impress. The 60’s setting is immediately identifiable, and would have ensured good production values had this been produced for television.
The interplay between the Doctor and Ace is excellent, giving both plenty of interesting character development. The way that McCoy’s Doctor and Aldred’s Ace speak on screen is nicely observed and mimicked: unlike a lot of books before and after this, we can really hear them speaking the lines. On page 198, Ace even gets to repeat the emphatic "Boom!" from "Battlefield", episode one.
There’s also a high demand for thrilling special effects sequences that screams for TV presentation. Thus, "Nightshade" transcends cursory similarities to classic Who of earlier eras – most notably "The Daemons" – and the ilk of English horror where evil whispers behind the walls in sleepy villages – without ever losing sight of its television heritage. Perhaps that accounts for the broad appeal.
This is the anti- Heart Beat, thank ****. There are terrors lurking behind the cosy façade and nostalgia kills. There is continual effort made to undercut a rose-tinted view of the period. Veterans of ghastly world war still suffer the effects of gas poisoning and the loss of friends and family, while an age of free love and drugs for the young and the rioting in Paris leaves people anything but safe and secure. This all adds to the threat that the demons from the past present: Ace herself offers a telling critique on the contrast between the era and her mum’s own lovestruck recollection.
What is also gratifying about a re-reading eight years after publication is noting the foreshadowing of 1996 TV Movie Dr Who. The book opens with the Doctor listening to scratchy gramophone records, and wearing a russet waistcoat. Ace has the same sense on entering the tertiary console room as on her first visit to church: post TV Movie books have tried to render the TARDIS interior as sepulchral, a cathedral like Notre Dame.
Gatiss signposts several of his own later efforts: the failure of religion to comprehend or answer the attacking monsters foreshadows his more pointed dismissal of the church in "St Anthony’s Fire." The character of the Civil War suggests much of the activity of "The Roundheads", while he even uses the word "Phantasmagoria" on page 72.
Billy Coote, the vagrant, could easily be a comedy yokel taken straight from a cosy Pertwee script. His running off in terror at the arrival of the TARDIS is, however, laced with his "malicious" desire for the deaths of famous people. Celebrity death means fatter newspapers and therefore comfier bedding.
This scintillating morbidity comes straight from League of Gentlemen. Crook Marsham is a "hotchpotch of small houses," (p. 32) akin to Royston Vasey. As the Doctor and Ace walk through the drizzle into town, we almost expect them to stop off at a Local Shop for a can of Coke. League of Gentlemen and this kind of Doctor Who (and, to some extent, Withnail and I, which is cited on page 5) are funny and scary – in a disturbing rather than wholly gory way – with well-observed, over the top English archetypes.
The crowning achievement is the depiction of social interaction between a range of characters, and the ways that this inter-linking group buckles and strains under pressure. The characters of batty pensioners and a carer who’d far rather be a political activist, the tensions amongst those working with the radio telescope – all are glorious.
The way the town hangs together is perhaps best shown right at the beginning of the book. Jack Prudhoe is aware that "there had been a lot of gossip recently about how ill Betty [Yeadon] was looking," (p. 4). This ginger suggestion of possible domestic violence and its evident interest to the townsfolk serves to ensure the close-knit feel of the town. The suggestion itself is soon forgotten in the wake of a cause far more horrifying. And yet, at the end of the novel, the town again closes ranks. Even "those who’d had the worst scares were the first to deny anything out of the ordinary," we’re told (p. 230). The novel rewards as a convincing case study in human behaviour.
Some of the cast are exceptionally engaging. Trevethick’s character is slyly observed. Like some other veteran actor whose telefantasy work is much adored, Trevethick is staunchly opinionated, loves to lose himself in Dickensian London and is a regular in the pub.
His relationship to the fictional Professor Nightshade recalls (in my mind, at least) a 1978 Nationwide interview, where Frank Bough accused Tom Baker of actually being the Doctor in ‘real life’. Tom muttered darkly that he only had to ‘be’ the Doctor as much as his accuser had to live up to being ‘Frank Bough’. The TV persona is a projection of a fallible, flawed man. If only Bough had listened and not laughed: it was exactly this dilemma between public and private personas that lead to his own plummet from grace in the 80’s.
Trevethick, as a retired actor whose private life is quietly evaporating, clings more and more to the strengths of a man he used to ‘be’. Rude and cantankerous, he’s still quietly delighted by the renewed success and longevity of his work, harbouring grand thoughts of a new series. But it’s not just this wonderful figure who suffers the crisis between public and private lives. The Doctor, too, experiences crisis as the misery and memories he has subdued for so long threaten to engulf him, overwhelming the space hero with all the answers that Ace enthuses him to be. Both Trevethick and the Doctor eventually have to face and live up to the responsibilities of their projected selves – it’s the only way to defeat the monsters.
Overall though – and despite the novel’s title – It’s not about Doctor Who and it’s not about Nightshade. This is Ace’s story. It is Ace who solves things, not only besting the Doctor but also provoking him into action when he has surrendered. Facing the angst of her past in the way she does resolves the ongoing issues explored in Season 26 - the final year of the TV series. As she acknowledges in the book, the Doctor has helped her grow up, straightened her out. She’s competent, brave and wise – knowing not only enough about Pulsars to explain them to Robin, but shrewd enough to manipulate the sly Time Lord.
Robin is a likeable, earnest, worthy and just bloody nice guy, and surely Ace earns her right to stay with him. In the books that follow this one, she’s never as happy with anyone else. In many ways, ‘Nightshade’ would have been a richly rewarding exit for Ace, and far more deserving of the character than what eventually got done to her.
If we can muddy the lines between TV and novels (as Doctor Who Magazine did in issue 287), ‘Season 27’ ought really to have ended with Ace’s victorious departure, the Doctor heading off to new adventures and a strong, new companion without her. Just think of all the crap she and we would have been spared...
"The ending breaks your heart," says I, Who. It’s certainly a stunning, powerful finale, and one that promises a new realm of forward-looking adventures. It’s a bit of a shame then that the loss of Robin is only fleetingly mentioned in "Love and War", and that such a genuine emotional match is eclipsed in favour of the unlikely and unlikeable Jan: something rather nicely made up for by Robin’s cameo return in "Happy Endings".
"Nightshade" is a richly satisfying book, superb to revisit. It’s also the sort of thing you can duplicitously hand to those strange and terrible Not-We if they enjoy League. Rah!
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Usealla planeetalla on pohjoinen
Panic sorted, thanks to those that asked. Have tomorrow and Friday in the studio and am then off to Berlin for a bit. Am hoping that another country and looking at their Greek bits will distract the Dr from being so much horribly older.
Speaking of foreigners and Drs, the Finns get Dr Who next month and their blogs are jolly excited about it, as Alex recently posted. He’s even had a post translated into Finnish by a bloke called Tero Ykspetäjä:
Sent Alex’s thing to Jonathan Clements, who is knowledgeable about Finns (and also about Vikings which are apparently not the same thing). He comments:
"You'd probably really enjoy Talons of Weng-Chiang," I tell the wife
on a regular basis for six years. Nothing. Doesn’t even look up from her book / cat / book with a cat sitting on it.
"You'd probably really enjoy Talons of Weng-Chiang," Matthew Sweet tells the wife. And she’s watched it all within a fortnight, and voluntarily too. I wonder what else he’d endorse for me.
Jonathan also remarks on the Finnish translation of “Tohtori Kuka”:
But then what about his studying under Lister?
Of course, the title of this post is the Finnish for “Lots of planets have a north” – as, Jonathan adds,
Speaking of foreigners and Drs, the Finns get Dr Who next month and their blogs are jolly excited about it, as Alex recently posted. He’s even had a post translated into Finnish by a bloke called Tero Ykspetäjä:
“Tohtori uskoo vapauteen ja vihaa tietämättömyyttä, yhdenmukaisuutta ja eristäytyneisyyttä. Hän ei ole kenenkään työntekijä eikä käytä univormua tai kanna asetta.”I am inordinately envious, not having had anything I scribble so much as translated into English.
Sent Alex’s thing to Jonathan Clements, who is knowledgeable about Finns (and also about Vikings which are apparently not the same thing). He comments:
“I know Tero Ykspetäjä, he is indeed a terribly nice chap … I spent much of my first Finnish convention appearance in 2003 trying to impress people with my Doctor Who associations, but nobody gave a flying toss, as only a single person had ever heard of it at that time, and he was Swedish.This strikes something of a chord, as I shared with a fellow passenger on a much delayed train this morning:
However, the Finns are very excited about Doctor Who now, because:My personal Finn, who has demonstrated little to no interest in Doctor Who for the last three years, despite editing an SF fanzine and being offered the chance for all sorts of insider gossip, came back from last week's Finncon in Helsinki full of squeeing fangirl excitement about it.
- the marketing for it has very smartly targeted blog-crazy Finnish fandom, with a screening at Finncon
- it's got London in it (nobody has told them yet that it's mainly Cardiff)
- Billie Piper looks like a pixie
I have now realised that the way to get her to do anything is to get a stranger on the internet to tell her that something is cool, since she immediately rushes off to get anything recommended to her by anonymous bloggers, but doesn't pay an ounce of attention to anything I suggest.”
"You'd probably really enjoy Talons of Weng-Chiang," I tell the wife
on a regular basis for six years. Nothing. Doesn’t even look up from her book / cat / book with a cat sitting on it.
"You'd probably really enjoy Talons of Weng-Chiang," Matthew Sweet tells the wife. And she’s watched it all within a fortnight, and voluntarily too. I wonder what else he’d endorse for me.
Jonathan also remarks on the Finnish translation of “Tohtori Kuka”:
“Finnish has at least two words for ‘Doctor’, and they’ve plumped for the academic variant, Tohtori, rather than the medical one, Lääkäri.”I delude myself with happy thoughts of serious debate in Helsinki over the on-screen evidence in the old-school show. Does his being a valeyard, his special knowledge of Article 17 and his donning a wig for the Megara mean he’s really a doctor of law?
But then what about his studying under Lister?
Of course, the title of this post is the Finnish for “Lots of planets have a north” – as, Jonathan adds,
“A mystified Finn has just confirmed.”I enjoy mystifying Finns.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Rewriting in his own hand
Things can be spoken of: the Big Finish website now thrillingly details much that I’ve been up to.
I have edited another book of exciting Dr Who short stories and it is called Time Signature. Philip Purser-Hallard came up with the title (after we decided “Music of the Spheres” was a bit wussy) and the incredible cover is by the incredible Stuart Manning.
No, actually, that’s most soaps I can think of…)
Also in the news is Nick Briggs’s book of exciting Dr Who short stories, Dalek Empire. Nick is of course the voice of the Daleks (and the Cybermen and the Autons and Mr Crofton) as well as chief of new old-school Droo on CD.
Dalek Empire is also the name of an audio series he did (bits of which starred David Tennant), and in that there is a planet called Guria. Nick assures readers on page 300 of his Dalek Empire scriptbook that this is assuredly not named after me because – he says – he didn’t even know me then.
But he did. And so I hold that he did.
Guria makes an appearance in that what I’ve written. And not just in the way I am credited.
Also of great excitement, but only until midnight tonight: my Sapphire and Steel heads the Play Bank Holiday sale. Which may explain why I’m currently numbers 5 and 24 in their audio drama chart.
Hooray and hooroo! It’s been a bit of a slog, but life is pretty damn -
[Mobile is rattled by a text message bearing not entirely fab news. Cue leaping about in a panic and howling full tilt at the sky.]
Gah! Thank you, the Fickle Finger of Fate. I hate it when this happens…
I have edited another book of exciting Dr Who short stories and it is called Time Signature. Philip Purser-Hallard came up with the title (after we decided “Music of the Spheres” was a bit wussy) and the incredible cover is by the incredible Stuart Manning.
No, actually, that’s most soaps I can think of…)
Also in the news is Nick Briggs’s book of exciting Dr Who short stories, Dalek Empire. Nick is of course the voice of the Daleks (and the Cybermen and the Autons and Mr Crofton) as well as chief of new old-school Droo on CD.
Dalek Empire is also the name of an audio series he did (bits of which starred David Tennant), and in that there is a planet called Guria. Nick assures readers on page 300 of his Dalek Empire scriptbook that this is assuredly not named after me because – he says – he didn’t even know me then.
But he did. And so I hold that he did.
Guria makes an appearance in that what I’ve written. And not just in the way I am credited.
Also of great excitement, but only until midnight tonight: my Sapphire and Steel heads the Play Bank Holiday sale. Which may explain why I’m currently numbers 5 and 24 in their audio drama chart.
Hooray and hooroo! It’s been a bit of a slog, but life is pretty damn -
[Mobile is rattled by a text message bearing not entirely fab news. Cue leaping about in a panic and howling full tilt at the sky.]
Gah! Thank you, the Fickle Finger of Fate. I hate it when this happens…
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