Not because they are easy

The rather grainy image right is from a few hours after last night’s eclipse. We sat in the Dolphin and peered out the window as the moon turned eerily red. Nimbos nimbly explained why it does that, using empty pint glasses as props. This is the best of my pictures. Oh well.

In timely fashion, I’ve got three episodes into the lavish Tom-Hanks funded dramatisation of the Apollo missions, From the Earth to the Moon.

S. who knows about technical specifications, offered the Region 2 discs cheap having just bought the Region 1 versions. There’s apparently a slightly judder in the NTSC transfer that spoiled the whole thing for him. I explained I forget to change the aspect ratio watching Droo DVDs, and am quite content with Logopolis in widescreen. He went a bit pale at that.

Haven’t noticed any problem with my inferior version. It’s an extraordinarily sumptuous series, the sort of prestigious thing that over here David Attenborough might have commissioned. You can see the money that’s been bunged at it. The first episode is especially grandstanding, a bold fanfare from start to finish.

Hair-raising at times, you can’t help but be wowed by the ballsiness of all those involved. Episode 2 gets is much more involving as things start to go horribly wrong. Death and disaster and steely-jawed jokes really help ratchet up the drama.

It also avoids repeating too much of the stuff covered in The Right Stuff, so – at least to me – feels fresh and surprising. The third episode has also spun a new angle on the format, by telling its bit of the story through the eyes of a documentary team. The hippy director in his rose-tinted specs gives a much better sense of context than the news footage. I also realise now I come to write it that episode two is about two guys eaten up by the system, which helps to convince us of the scale of everything involved.

That said, it’s a pity it’s so US-centric and less about all the players in the space race. There’s no effort (at least so far) to deny that the whole mission is an exercise in pissing higher than the Russians. I’d have liked to have seen more of the Russian programme, comparing their struggles with NASA’s. Appreciate that’s not really in the brief.

In fact it reminds me of The West Wing a lot: brave and idyllic and with exemplary performances, but a little naïve about foreigners. You can play spot the West Wing cast, too.

Bird watcher

K. is staying with us at the moment. Last night we went to see peg-leg P. who suffers with a broken bone. Ate pizza, drank girlie white booze and gossiped outrageously, and then fell into a taxi home.

Prior to the night's festivities, K. managed a brief siesta. She closed the living room door so as not to be disturbed by the cat. But the cat is very disturbing. He clambered up on to his scratch-post / house / wossname and spent the whole time watching K. sleep. In the manner his sabre-toothed ancestors might once have watched sabre-toothed mice.

He is an odd animal.

Write away

The new issue of Pantechnicon is just out, and features a story by me. For the time being at least, you can read "The Bounty Hunters" online and for free.

Writing continues. Was meant to interview someone this lunchtime, but they're caught up in writing of their own. So I've had a chance to get up slowly, drink tea and read Droo's magazine.

It's an especially corking issue, and I'm very pleased with page 63.

"Delivering on its ambitious promises, Time Signature is an exceptionally strong anthology, containing some honest-to-goodness mini-masterworks ... It's the best Short Trips collection since The Muses, and, in its delicate balance between standalone entries and arching plots, a fabulous example of having your cake and eating it."

Matt Michael, "Off the Shelf",
Dr Who Magazine # 380 (28 March 2007), p. 63.

Matt's equally nice about my efforts on "Dalek Empire", calling it,

"...as good a Dalek-themed anthology as you're likely to get",

and describing one of my two stories, "The Eighth Wonder of the World", as,

"a good, well-paced yarn".

To his right, Vanessa Bishop has nice things to say about "Collected Works". Which is all Nick Wallace's work, but I shall take credit what with being the boss. Now off to have lunch in the sunshine. Tra la la.

Cornell writing the news

"Church reveals she is pregnant" says the BBC. How very New Adventures.

Danger, Will Robinson

This was on the wall of our hotel in LA, just down the corridor from our room.

Carrot juice, carrot juice, carrot juice

... is like drinking the dirty water left over from washing up.

Ick.

Mile-high film club

Marie Antoinette is a colossal exercise in missing the whole ruddy point.

It looks nice and is stylishly played, but the emphasis of the script is all in the wrong place. We watch Marie leave one sumptuous court for another. She learns posh gossip and how to excite her husband. She dances about in the gardens and goes to some very good parties. And then some yokels turn up and she’s very brave and won't run away.

Since she’s a bit of a free spirit (no, she will go to the party!), there’s a lot of punk music and typeface. This juxtaposition of the contemporary and historical would be pretty revolutionary, if we’d not seen the same thing before. It’s Casanova, it’s A Knight’s Tale, it’s Britney in the End of the World.

But it’s also pretty dim. You have to fundamentally misconstrue history to see Marie Antoinette as a punk. Rather it’s the mob who tear down her glam lifestyle – and we hardly see them at all in the film.

The film entirely fails to deal with why the mob might have grievances. The nearest it gets is to have Marie protest that she never said, “Let them eat cake!” But this is an age of public flayings and the guillotine. The general violence offended both Casanova and de Sade.

By not dealing with that – by consciously not showing it – the film is more perverse than anything those two got up to. The French court was not merely a fatuous bubble of champagne parties: in context it was clearly offensive.

Flushed Away was fun (though not helped by DWM pointing out how the lead rat looks like David Tennant). It lacks the charm of Wallace and Gromit, and that’s not merely for being set down the toilet.

It’s fast-moving and full-of-gags enough to hide a pretty ropey plot about a posh boy falling for a working class girl. Like the singing mice in “Babe”, there are singing slugs to raise a smile whenever things get a bit unfunny. And, as S. said, it’s telling how often the slugs feature. I laughed a lot, but it’s not one to watch again.

The Prestige was probably the best of the lot, about the rivalry between two Victorian stage magicians. Leads Batman and Wolverine were as manly-tough as you’d expect. Bowie had a nice turn as Tesla, and Michael Caine was as effortless as always.

Unfortunately I sussed the various elements of the ending before we were mid-way through. This may have been due to discussing The Time Travellers all weekend, which turns a few of the same tricks. (Well, it does if you can make the cognitive leap that Hugh Jackman is playing Scott Andrews).

It’s clever and deft from the start, with all kinds of nice palming of plot device. But the real trick of magic is not merely the mechanics of the con, but of managing to disguise them. The audience has to be left mystified.

Lag

Dr Who’s companions never seem to suffer from jet lag.

I assume this is because the TARDIS monkeys with their brains at the same time it learns them Swahili. It stops the whole pink-eyed, dazed and a little all over the place thing. Which wouldn’t help in the stopping of monsters.

Have spent since Thursday in a wonky sort of daydream. LA is the furthest I’ve ever been from home and already feels like a film set. It is much harder travelling back east. Everything feels a bit unreal and two-dimensional when you’re very, very tired and yet unable to sleep.

Gallifrey was everything everybody had enthused to me – generous and friendly and funny. Highlights were Eric Roberts leaping from his chair to come over and shake my hand. “Hey,” he said, “You must be Simon!”

After a moment of open-mouthed gibbering I remembered I had on my name badge.

Was incredibly well looked after, and met some very splendid people. So much keen interest – and even from pretty girls.

My many charms didn’t work on Paul Cornell, who fell asleep in the midst of my hilariosity on forthcoming Muppet movies. Am particularly pleased with Muppet Deliverance (the Electric Mayhem on banjos and the line, “Squeal, Piggy, Squeal”). He missed the Muppet Exorcist and Muppet Blue Lagoon.

(See previously the Muppet Show of Weng-Chiang.)

On the basis that I became a writer so I wouldn’t have to stand up and speak in front of people, my own panels went pretty well. Just talked a lot and quickly until the moderators said time was up.

Our behind-the-scenes-on-Benny film seemed to ignite interest and shift the required stock. Yes, it’ll be on a CD sometime. So everyone can see my sticky-uppy hair.

Pack it in

Am off to LA tomorrow morning for a weekend at the Gallifrey convention. Bought a few new clothes for the occasion, including a stripy hoody top that the Dr really hates. And she never wears anything weird.

(I'm only envious that she got twice as many Valentine's cards as me. One of them was filled with cat fluff.)

I'm doing a number of panels, most notably one with my friends Paul Cornell, Jason Haigh-Ellery, Steve Moffat, Gary Russell and Mike Tucker to celebrate Benny being 15. Have got something exciting to show everyone. And no, not what Minko had.

Also seem to be moderating one about Torchwood, unless I'm reading my instructions all wrong.

Have two scripts to work on while I'm over there, and have been doing my prep on these today. Agreed stuff with some other authors, and now just need to get writing. Hope the in-flight movies are a bit rubbish so I won't be distracted.

Got to go. Beautiful, fearsome wummun is hounding me off the machine.

Doctor Who and the Computers

Hello. There used to be a great, long 5,000-word post sat here but someone has asked if they can publish it, and I get money if I take it down from the Internet. This is ironic considering what the thing is about. But I have done so while it all gets negotiated. If the publishing happens I'll post a link here, if it doesn't I'll put the post back as it was.

Simon, 8 December 2008.

Lemmings

Am a little behind on my American telly. Have seen up to the end of Season 4 of 24, up to the end of Season 2 of Lost, and nothing at all of New Battlestar Galactica – not even the acclaimed mini-series. I blame Scott Andrews, who so spoiled me with lendings of Buffy.

I am keeping up with Heroes (****** is ******’s ***!) and have just finished the sixth season of West Wing.

Like Will, I found Season 5 something of a slog. West Wing could do daft and not-brilliant stories before (like CJ visiting her dad), but the whole fifth year seemed out of whack, predictable, derivative and boring.

In Season Six, Toby is given a bit of advice about how to win over the media. He’s not pretty, so he needs to be smart and funny. It’s this that the show had forgotten.

Season 6 is definitely an improvement, though it’s still much too often Bad Star Trek.

Riker: “The whole universe if going to blow up, and there’s just four minutes left of the episode!”

Geordi: “How about I invent something technobabbly magic?”

Riker: “What, pull a deus ex machina out of your bottom right at the very last minute?”

Geordi: “If I explain it in long words while talking quite quickly, people won’t notice it’s bollocks. I’ll say ‘diagnostic’ a lot.”

Riker: “And whatever made-up old nonsense it is, we’ll say that from now on it’ll be known as the ‘Geordi manoeuvre’.”

While Season Six West Wing can be odd, hilarious and even rather insightful, it still manages to solve issues in Palestine, China and Cuba all in the 40th minute. The implication is that there are quick and easy fixes to foreign policy, if only the US mucks in. This strikes me as a little dangerous.

It would help if it could be less abusive of foreigners. The opening episodes struggle to accommodate all sides on the issue of Israel, and generally avoids giving offence. But a couple of weeks later there’s concern about Turkey, when an adulteress is stoned to death.

Um. No. Turkey is a secular state and doesn’t behave quite like that. Perhaps they were thinking of (or chickening out of) some other Middle Eastern country. Having decided to give up the made-up state of Kumar and instead discuss issues in the real world, you’d think they would be a little less fundamentally ignorant.

Was similarly annoyed by the crudely realised Thatcher-avatar ruling as Britain’s PM. If they’re making a point about British politics, it’s one quarter of a century out of date. And, where previously the eccentric British ambassador had also been brilliant and wise, in this episode he’s an idiot and liability.

Likewise, Bartlett’s Japanese counterpart (played by Mako!) is a rude and mean buffoon. Bartlett can have a serious conversation with him – and heed his warnings about the US economy – but only when Mako has made a fool of himself cavorting too hard on the dance floor.

I suspect this would bother me fewer were the real US administration not so eager to bomb Iran. They say this will make things better and safer for American people. What about the rest of us?

Democratically elected representatives are answerable to their constituencies, and any politician will serve their country’s interests first. But the West Wing attempts such a liberal ideal, I find the self-centred attitude to policy difficult.

When not laughing at Johnny Foreigner, it’s got much better with dissenting viewpoints. It’s perhaps good for the ratings to be more overtly bi-partisan, but it also leads us into some really interesting areas.

These questions are usually asked in high-calibre performances from some brilliant cameos. Penn and Teller burn an American flag as part of a show inside the White House, and so question what freedom is. Christopher Lloyd and Brian Dennehy both play roles that ask what America’s role is in promoting democracy elsewhere. A Sam Cooke song sung by James Taylor is in retrospect all about the Bartlett administration.

It also seems happier to acknowledge that Bartlett’s lot aren’t above doing “necessary” things. Season 3 ended on the cliffhanger that sometimes a President might agree to Black Ops. Here it’s rather taken for granted that the US have spies everywhere. Some stupendous wigs rather a spoil a flashback to Kate and Leo’s first meeting, when neither of them should have been involved in Cuba.

Making leading Republican Arnie Vinick (Alan Alda) so appealing helps to raise the political stakes. He’s wise and funny and middle-of-the-road, and we can see why people would vote for him. There’s a nice scene late on of Bartlett and CJ silently wowed by his speech.

Yes, because Season 6 also sees the start of the run-up the next presidential election. Things are changing for the regular cast, and though it’s nice to see some character development, some of it feels a bit forced. Donna and Josh both leaving the White House does work very effectively. But CJ and Charlie’s promotions feel more plot-convenient than real.

They try really hard to convince us that CJ’s elevation is somehow credible – by showing how difficult she finds it. Yet I still can’t help feeling it’s how you reward a cast member of a long-running TV show does for its, not how a White House administration would work.

Much is made of different characters being asked to step off cliffs. For a show that so loves rational debate, presidency is a matter of faith. Characters choose their jobs and their politics by which contender for office they believe in.

Princess Leia’s adopted dad gets to be another put-upon good guy. Matt Santos is the underdog hero, a man who fights fair and speaks from the heart, and won’t exploit the colour of his skin to win points. Not having MS to lie about, he’s even squeakier clean than Bartlett.

Watching him struggle to get himself noticed is probably the best element of the whole show. It says a lot that by the end of the year, I was disappointed when the episodes were set squarely back in the White House.

Santos being offered the Vice Presidency is a nice moral dilemma. It also, I guess, owes a lot to the 2000 election and the position of Ralph Nader. They certainly pile on the odds, and his winning California really comes as a surprise.

Yet this is also comfort-telly, with everything coming out okay. And by the end of the run we know Santos is going to make it (don’t we?). These obstacles are just about making him more dazzling and perfect. When I get round to borrowing Season 7 off Nimbos, I’m hoping to see Santos fall on his arse.

Weirdos of Oz

J. and H. leant us The Muppets Wizard of Oz, which we'd been sort of avoiding seeing. Had been pretty unimpressed with most recent Muppet efforts for being too twee and safe, and for focusing too much on the guest stars and not enough on the funny stuff.

So am glad to report this is really quite good - though it's got its share of twee moments.

Ashanti is Dorothy and wants to be a singer. But Auntie Em (Queen Latifah) thinks she should stay at work in the family diner in the middle of Nowhere, Kansas. Ashanti misses an audition with Kermit and Miss Piggy who are - er - on a talent-spotting tour through the area. But she hands over an audition tape they seem unlikely to hear.

So far so zzzz. And then there's a storm and Ashanti wakes up to find her prawn is now played by Pepe. And he's nekkid and unashamed. Suddenly things start to brighten up.

Soon they're on an adventure. The songs are a bit rubbish and schmaltzy, especially when compared to the Judy Garland film, and there's too much effort to explain what we're learning as we make our way.

Yet Kermit is fun as the Scarecrow, and Pepe tweaks Gonzo the Tin Man's nipples. There's also something Very Odd about Gonzo's physical love for a particularly good looking chicken.

The Muppets is always at its best when doing stuff no other kids' show could. Such as having everyone getting stoned in a poppy-smoking nightclub to tunes by the Electric Mayhem. Or having a fight scene choreographed by Quentin Tarantino. Or seeing two of the heroes torn limb from limb. Or disintegrating Beaker's head.

It's also interesting that Dorothy's black, considering L Frank Baum's supposed white supermacist thinkings. (Though be careful what you google for: there's a lot of angry people on both sides of the debate.) Whatever the case, it's a fun thing to do with the adaptation.

The confrontation with the wizard involves some really ropey CGI. That's possibly part of the point, but I couldn't help thinking that this must have had a bigger budget than anything the Mill gets on Droo. It's also the same lame gag stretched out for too long, that nobody gets what they wish for. It felt a lot like an advert for the non-physical effects that were so singly unimpressive.

It's not Muppet's Christmas Carol, but it's better than most of the others.

Mashed bandage

Yesterday was good but long, and I got home in time to fall asleep over pizza. Mmm.

Finished off some things today which is rather satisfying, but have lots that still requires attendance. Also had a message from someone lovely I used to work with, who may have some more stuff to throw me.

And while all this goes on, the backside of my mind crashes pop bands together for hilario-comedic effect:

Ned's Atomic Kitten
Beastie Boyzone
Marvin Gaye Dad
The Chemical Brotherhood of Man
The Barry White Stripes

Favouring curry

There are 1,073 stories in from our writing competition - about 10 times as many as we'd been expecting. Have made a start on reading half of them, and already got two maybes.

I have also: locked Dave Stone's "The End of the World" (with its myriad Big Reveals); got everything together for recording "The Judas Gift" tomorrow; written my first scene for "The Wake" (not Scene 1., but a later one that we need well in advance); got lots of research done for some encyclopedic scribbling; tidied up the office; made a party invite for the Dr; chased a few things till they won't be chased no more.

I have pitched some things, discussed the limits of content management in detail, and been sickly green with envy about m'colleague Scott Andrews's news. And in between all that, I've seen "The Muppets' Wizard of Oz" (which I might blog about sometime) and the first episode of West Wing's Season 6. And fixed the broken sofa.

Seriously. That's me doing something remotely practical, and not getting it wholly wrong. Surely an omen of the End of Days.

This and a three-and-a-half-hour journey home from the pub on Thursday (don't ask) mean I am a smidgeon sleepy. So I shall now be throwing together a curry for a couple of chums. One of 'em is a proper qualified chef (and today made Dr Who's lunch), and has never previously dared my cooking.

So no pressure.

To introduce the guest star

Popped round to see Nimbos last night and many shiny treats. As well as the long-awaited Heroes #12 (Eccles!), he showed off the first two episodes of Studio 60.

A long-running, live Friday day comedy TV show hits a bit of a snag. The well-respected front man turns to camera and declares it's all baloney. The network won't dare to be funny for fear of alienating sponsors or bigots, he says, and people should not bother watching.

The network panics, but the sassy new president has an outrageous idea. They admit maybe the old bloke is right, and confront this thing head on. She's offers running the programme to two writers (Bradley Whitford and Matthew Perry) that they sacked years ago.

And these two coked-up, wild-eyed, fast-talking players are unable to resist.

The show is fast and funny, with the same dizzying chase around the sets and one-liners that styled The West Wing. Yet I can also see why Aaron Sorkin's new show has been seen as smug and self-indulgent.

The West Wing was about how the President struggled to see through policy, and issues that affect the whole world. Studio 60 treats with the same gravitas the politics of a comedy sketch show. It really doesn't matter as much.

They ladle on some of the issues, like a lead actress with unshakeable faith. But it's sparky and witty and richly written. It's of great interest to me as a professional writer, but surely it needs broader appeal?

Perhaps they should use their guest stars more interestingly. The woman from Desperate Housewives (and apparently, later Sting) should be seen to play against type. Like the stars in Extras, they'd be the hook for each episode, doing things we've never seen before.

Sting doesn't sing sappy songs about the environment, he insists on having fish and chips flown over from England. That kind of thing.

Though I realise what I've just pitched is a revival of Muppets Tonight. This is not a bad thing.

Scooby swears

Got talking about acceptable swearwords (again) and the origins of words like "bloke".

Scooby Doo's (or rather Shaggy's) "Zounds" is of course a contraction of the blasphemous "God's wounds". In performances of the work of that old potty-mouth Shakespeare, they don't pronounce it to rhyme with "sounds".

So go on then, what's "Zoinks" short for? Bonus points if you are funny.

Grey alerts

After a long day forging sense from the senseless yesterday, I had a chilly wait for the homeward-bound train. Freelancing for such disparate and worthy places, my brain tends to wander off anyway. Was thinking of devious forthcoming Benny things when a bored voice interrupted:

“Customers are reminded not to leave items of unattended baggage anywhere on the station concourse or on trains. Items of unattended baggage may be removed without warning and could be destroyed. If you notice items of unattended baggage at Victoria, please alert the nearest member of staff or British Transport Police.”

I’ve heard this on occasional loop forever, but this time it manages to register. Ooh, says my brain, that’s a bit careless. The same awkward phrase used three times in three sentences.

And what a mouthful it is. You need a punchy, distinct bit of imagery if you want people thinking, “IS THAT RUCKSACK A BOMB?!?”

“Bags” and “packages” are easily imagined. The word “suspect” would add some good jective.

But if you really want us to take notice, how about the one from old 2000AD?

“Be pure! Be vigilant! Behave!”

I realise they don’t want to alarm anyone with something phrased too distinctly. The Evening Standard is more than enough to fill our journeys home with MAD PANIC. But still, it’s not really much of an imperative.

Perhaps sounding a bit bored and management-jargony make us heed the warning subconsciously. Like times tables, it goes in because it’s repeated and not because we have to take any notice.

In balancing the “watch out” with the “don’t start a stampede” it’s a lot like “Inspector Sands”. This openly secret code-word alerts staff when things are kicking off. “Fire!” would start everyone screaming at the prospect of being vividly barbecued. But Sands gets a mention we stay meekly where we are, at most thinking, “Oh, just get on with it.”

There was an Inspector Sands incident at Victoria earlier this week, too. I watched an entire busy platform of subterranean passengers wearily roll their eyes.

Court out

Hello from amid a giddy whirlwind of activity. A festive bout of man-flu suggests that perhaps I should have some sleep, while deadlines and commitments wave cheerily from my peripheral vision.

Got a couple of things I really need finished by this time next week. Especially because it looks like I shall be spending the rest of the year marking competition entries. Oh lor.

Had a nice time in the pub last night, hearing Paul Cornell rabbit on about life. Met some people I've not seen in ages and made several splendid new chums. Judging from the Chiswick-addled scrawl I've just found in my notebook, I've also got press-ganged into joining the British Science Fiction Association.

Declined the offer of clubbing and pottered off for the last train home. Where an interesting letter awaited me. A court summons due to unpaid council tax on somewhere I don't live.

Last night my thoughts were, "You could have written to me before it got this far." This morning it's a slightly less cheery, "Why are you even writing to me at all?"

Ho hum. More of life's litter tray to be double-bagged.

Mike and the mechanics

Am re-watching Michael Palin’s adventure Round the World in 80 Days. It’s, ahem, research for a current writing project, which means seeing things I never before thought of about how these things get made.

Like Verne’s Phileas Fogg 116 years before him (though not actually in real life), Michael has to get round the globe in just 11.4 weeks or forfeit £20. He’s not allowed to travel by plane, and he’s got to make something watchable as telly in the process.

It’s a bit strange to realise he’s now been doing these travelogues 20 years. And it’s also odd to see him not yet the established traveller, taking tips from Alan Whicker on how the job is done.

(Whicker’s advice: only ever speak English, and make sure you’re always comfortable.)

The authoritative baton of BBC adventurer is passed on to the uncertain Palin. I’m not sure whether it’s his doing or just a fact of the times that what follows is a completely different style of documentary. Where telly travel used to be classy and exotic, now it’s a celebration of the primitive and “real”.

We see the hardships and misunderstandings and – famously – the diarrhoea. Crucially, it’s at its best as telly when things are most going up tits.

It’s part of the special character of the piece that Michael must also plot his own course, struggling to find transport that will keep him on schedule. Spurning air travel means how he gets there is as much of the story as what he sees along the way.

The world in 1988 seems a very alien place, at once unsophisticated and innocent. Communications are by chunky, squawky phones and its tapes of Bruce Springsteen on a fat old Walkman that show Michael to be the technophile Westerner. There’s a passing reference to war in Iraq, and they don’t even yet mean Gulf War One.

Palin offers an insightful and generous perspective on the world and we’re with him every step of the way. But the makers seem uncertain of him on this first venture. There’s some oddly judged gags worked into the editing. A sound effect added to the scenes in Venice suggest he’s fallen off the quayside just out of shot.

It’s not needed – there’s plenty of laughs from Palin’s onscreen antics, the unfolding story and all the odd things they really see. The Dr was delighted to see her precious Venetian lions being used by a tramp for a bed.

As I said, a current bit of work means I’m all eagle-eyed for detail about the mechanics of how it got filmed.

For example, at Bombay Michael leaves a dhow (though only old colonials call these little boats that). He’s taken off in a little launch, and we watch him from the dhow he’s just left.

What happened to the cameraman who shot that sequence? Presumably he got a later launch and had to catch up. Or did Michael’s launch come back for him, after they’d filmed that bit?

Often the camera is ahead of Michael. We’re watching from across a busy office as Michael first steps inside. Did they all negotiate to set up the camera, then get Michael to duck back outside the door, telling the workers to pretend they’ve not seen him before?

When buying train tickets in Bombay, we see Michael struggling to find the right queue, and then getting to the window to buy his single ticket. This is a conceit because we already know he’s travelling with his own "Passpartout" – a cameraman, a soundman and their director.

What’s more, we watch him buy his ticket from the other side of the ticket kiosk, looking over the shoulder of the seller and at Michael’s face peering in at the plexiglass.

Presumably the filmmakers have negotiated to get inside the ticket office, and so they must have explained what they were up to, where they were going and sorted out tickets for the four of them.

Because of that trickery, you start questioning other things. They say they’ve not got reservations on the train they want, but are merely on a waiting list. And Michael later tells us that someone’s claimed his seat.

But there’s no footage to corroborate any of that, and when we do get to see him, he’s rather comfy in first class.

It's all a tissue of lies!

Yes, of course I can see how it makes for a more engaging picture. But I’d kind of assumed that documentaries were about veracity. In fiction, you can’t get away with such cheats in your storytelling.

Like Chinese Girls in YOLT

Full of cold and feeling stupid, so here’s one I started elsewhere.

“Full of challenging ideas you want to argue with,” is how Joan Bakewell described “Straw Dogs”, which J. leant me over the festive period.

John Gray’s book collects together various writings about mankind, our position on the planet and our future, and it’s not exactly comfort reading. Gray pulls down authority after authority, concluding that we’re frankly a bit rubbish.

He talks, for example, about how machines and computers are obviating humans in industry, so that,

“we are approaching a time when ... almost all humans work to amuse other humans.”

John Gray, “Straw Dogs: thoughts on humans and other animals”, p. 160.

He continues:

“Contemporary capitalism is prodigiously productive, but the imperative that drives it is not productivity. It is to keep boredom at bay. Where affluence is the rule the chief threat is the loss of desire. With wants so quickly sated, the economy soon comes to depend on the manufacture of ever more exotic needs.

What is new is not that prosperity depends on stimulating demand. It is that it cannot continue without inventing new vices. The economy is driven by an imperative of perpetual novelty, and its health has come to depend on the manufacture of transgression. The spectre that haunts it is glut – not of physical goods only, but of experiences that have palled. New experiences become obsolete even more quickly than do physical commodities.”

Ibid., p. 163.

(The Granta website also lets you read the chapter, “Science versus humanism”.)

I suspect the book is meant to be contentious and provocative, especially given its habit of generalising that “Everyone thought…” or “Christians are…”. Some of it certainly made me cross (though not as mouth-foamy as it got Terry Eagleton in the Guardian).

I found myself often disagreeing with Gray, but in doing so articulating ideas I’d not been conscious of believing. Humans are different from animals because of the footprint we leave behind us. As Dr Bronowski says in the opening episode of “The Ascent of Man”, other species leave behind fossils of themselves, we leave behind things we have made.

That doesn’t make us better, though. Just different. And with a moral imperative to do better. That we know ourselves to be the most aggressively destructive species on the planet is really not enough.

It also raises the old chestnut that atheism and science are to blame for Nazism and the Holocaust – which I shall address another time, when I’m not feeling so bleurgh.