Timelord Thoughts 2 - The Witch's Familiar

On to part two of the season opener - and what an episode it was. Just a reminder that these are my observations having watched the episode just twice - once completely cold and then once to write this post. I've stayed away from as many spoilers as possible (I didn't know about the Davros reveal last week for example) and since transmission I've not read any reviews.

The Witch's Familiar

• Come on  - we *knew* that Clara and Missy weren't dead, but it's still a great way to start.
• Fourth Doctor ! First Doctor ! Looks nothing like Tom Baker but who cares. I love that Missy refers to Twelve as "The Eyebrows".
• The pointy stick. "Why am I tied up?". "In case there's nothing to hunt". Huge wink. Oh I love Missy I really do.
• Missy loves to show off. Look how clever I am - I'm as brilliant as the Doctor. But I also think that she is testing Clara and could almost be said to be as obsessed with her as she is with her fellow Timelord.
• A nest of vampire monkeys. Now *that's* an adventure I'd like to see! I also love the green glow from the sonic with just the eyes all around the Doctor.
• Those soaring shots of the Dalek city are just fantastic.
• Missy selected Clara for the Doctor (she was the woman in the shop). She keeps saving her from death. I wonder why?
• So Davros has figured out that it was the Doctor there at the beginning in the field of hand mines. We still don't know if the Doctor saved him though...
• The Special Weapons Dalek speaks at last!
• A very brief shot of the body of Davros lying on the floor. His chair enters the control room and....
• Oh that's just brilliant! "Admit it. You've all had this exact nightmare". "So, anyone for dodgems?" I was laughing out loud by this point.

• The sight of  Davros squirming on the ground is almost as creepy as when he is in his chair.

• Clara really is just a plaything for Missy. Like a cat toying with a mouse until it dies...
• Well I guess Davros could have a tea-making machine in his chair. He would need something to drink while whiling away the hours watching all those videos of his past encounters with the Doctor.
• A personal force field does explain how Davros survived all those attempts to kill him.
• Looks like the genius scientist has a plan though. Did he expect the Doctor to escape the way he did? 
• Okay so a miner with a canary then. I love the way Missy just looks bored when she turns her back on Clara.
• The sewers are a nice link back to the first ever Dalek story. I guess these are all that remains of the ones which didn't pass the entrance exams to get a nice shiny battle tank casing.
• Hang on - if Daleks can't die, then doesn't that mean that there are thousands of decaying Daleks clogging up sewers around the universe? What about the millions killed in the Time War? It's a gruesome image. Actually, thinking some more, I personally believe that a Dalek creature *can* die if it's vapourised or it explodes or any of the myriad ways we have seen them killed before. A Dalek just can't die of "natural causes" like old age. Perhaps the dialogue could have made that clearer.
• Dark star alloy - we've heard of dwarf star alloy before. I guess this is it's sharper cousin. If it can cut "like a knife through people" then that must exclude Timelords.
• "The Doctor gave it to me when my daughter...". Oh Moffat, you're poking that cattle prod through the bars of the fan cage again aren't you? A thousand stories just popped into existence.
• Yuk. The squelchy Dalek remains want mobility again. Not sure how they are going to operate the casing though - not having any limbs / tentacles / appendages / things.
• The only other chair on Skaro. Just wonderful. Another laugh out loud moment.
• "You keep not dying. Can you give it some welly".  The dialogue is really zinging this week.
• Not quite sure why the Doctor went all cockney there. It sounded a bit Harry H Corbett in "Carry On Screaming". Which is not a bad thing.
• Daleks are afflicted with a genetic defect of respect and mercy for their father? Apart from the ones in the classic series that weren't then? It does explain why they never managed to kill him though. Lock him away in a dank dungeon maybe but never destroy him.
• Ah, and now Davros paraphrases his own speech from "Genesis of the Daleks". As the Fourth Doctor once tempted him, so Davros now does the reverse, dangling the chance to destroy all the Daleks on Skaro. This incarnation doubts himself already.
• The look on Missy's face as she seals Clara up in the Dalek...
• So Daleks channel their emotions through their guns and shout "Exterminate" to reload - yeah I can buy that. Moffat loves filling in little bits of Who lore. Having said that, we know that Missy lies so it could all be bobbins. Still, being trapped in that casing unable to express yourself properly *would* make you very angry.
• It's obvious that the Doctor's confession is going to be a big part of this season's arc. Nice misdirection there when he chooses the sunglasses though.
• "I fought him once on the slopes of the Nevervault". More food for fan fiction lovers out there. Of course RTD was doing this years ago with all that stuff about the Time War.
• These scenes between Davros and the Doctor are just electric. I can't take my eyes off the screen.
• Having dealt with the return of Gallifrey and the name of the Doctor, the next thing seems to be - why did he really leave. It's a reasonable question. I doubt the answer is going to be as simple as we think though. That "...safe...from both of us" line is ominous.
• Is Davros *really* pleased for the Doctor? Has he changed? This is unexpected.
• Holy f***k. Davros just opened his eyes! Well just because he never did it before doesn't mean he can't. Unless this is a change due to the Doctor being there when he was a little boy. Just when you think there are no surprises left... 

• And now Davros plays his trump card. Turning the Doctor's own "Am I a good man ?" question around into one about himself. This is just riveting.
• In the end you have two immortal enemies, both dying or expecting to die and laughing together at a simple joke. Has Moffat been reading Alan Moore's Batman: The Killing Joke?
• What does Missy want from the Daleks / Davros if she is willing to give them the Doctor  / Clara?
• I doubt the Daleks recreated Skaro to include the creatures in the sewers. More likely they plucked it or copied it from a point in time before the Seventh Doctor destroyed it with the Hand of Omega. If that still happened.
• Could we really be about to see the final end of Davros as the sun rises over a reborn Skaro?
• Okay let's pause for a second and consider the Doctor flicking his wrist and calling up regeneration energy. Personally I don't like it, but it's not as if it's without precedent. They've been doing it throughout the series since it came back in 2005. First with that hand regeneration in "The Christmas Invasion", then River Song gave the Eleventh Doctor all her remaining regenerations in "Let's Kill Hitler" and don't forget he fixed her wrist in "The Angels Take Manhattan". Add to that the fact that although in the Classic series the Doctor only regenerated at times of great personal injury, Romana changed her form several times on a whim and Borusa seemed to be able to regenerate at will (although always into an old man for some reason). Like I said, I'm not overly keen on it being used in such an off-hand way but it's a method of getting us to the next point in the story...
• And the lights go on, both metaphorically and literally (in the case of Davros' third eye). Of course it's a trap. Compassion will kill you in the end, Doctor. Everything Davros said was a lie. I bet those human looking eyes were fake too. What's even more brilliant about this is that Moffat took his "hiding things in plain sight" trope to it's ultimate end. Davros said that he was going to trap a Timelord. We could all see the snake markings of Colony Sarff on the cables. Yet I got so caught up and distracted by the conversation between these two great opponents (and that's thanks to the mesmerising performances by Capaldi and Bleach) that it's still a shock when the trap closes.
• A second pause. So another prophecy. This time about the coming of a Dalek / Timelord hybrid and the Doctor's (possible) part in it's creation. Now Moffat isn't the first to add to or change existing Doctor Who mythology. Robert Holmes put the cat amongst the pigeons by adding the twelve regeneration limit. Successive writers had Rassilon or Omega create almost everything single handedly. Plus don't forget the Cartmel Masterplan where the Doctor was going to be revealed as "more than just a Timelord". I've no problem with prophecies or shaking things up and revealing previously hidden or unknown facts (I read comics for goodness sake, it's practically the raison d'etre of most superhero books). A "hybrid" sounds like an interesting concept. I just don't think you can link it to the reason for the Doctor leaving Gallifrey in the first place. It's a step too far, when he had never even heard of the Daleks until his second televised adventure. Now maybe as we learn more about this throughout the season it will turn out that the Doctor didn't know that the other "great warrior race" was the Daleks until *after* he left, but right now this revelation just doesn't sit right with me.
• A double bluff from the Doctor? So he knew Davros was lying. Knew he would try and steal the regeneration energy. Knew Missy was still alive and would save him? That's a hell of a lot of forward planning (well he did have three weeks thinking time during his 'farewell party'). I'm not entirely sold though. I suppose it could be a plan worthy of the Seventh Doctor to defeat the new Skaro Daleks before they start expanding their empire - by realising what Davros needed and roping Missy in to help (a threat bigger than both of them) but it's a huge stretch. Missy is just too unreliable. I think that it's just a bit of bravado for Davros' sake. The Doctor lies remember. The only part he figured out was that Davros had given the energy to creatures he had probably dismissed as irrelevant. 
• Speaking of which - regeneration energy went to all the sewer Daleks too? Just how? Oh *I* can explain it away by saying that the cables just distributed the energy across all parts of the city in a wave that touched everything in it's path, but I would have preferred a line of dialogue to do it for me.
• And now Missy's true colours are revealed. Last year she turned the dead into Cybermen to see what the Doctor would do with an army. Now she wants to use his hatred of the Daleks to get him to kill his own companion. It's chillingly unpredictable and manipulative. Especially as she takes the Doctor's hand and helps him raise the Dalek gun...
• That protoplasmic aeons old Dalek gunk spewing out of their casings is pretty horrible isn't it? I still would have liked a more "elegant" solution but that's what you get when every encounter is with millions of Daleks. 
• "Your sewers are revolting". Sigh.
• So it's a Hostile Action Dispersal System now is it? The TARDIS is in twinkly little bits but still has a force field? Why couldn't it just have made itself invisible or a second out of phase with time or something? Bizarrely that would have made it more believable.
• Sonic sunglasses? Ye gods NO! I'm all for getting rid of the handy dandy Screwdriver with it's infinite settings and the ability to fix anything with a quick wave in the air but this is far, far worse. Yes I get that it's a "Google Glass" kind of thing and it means that anyone can pretend to be the Doctor without the need for an expensive prop, but please - let this be a one off trick.
• The Master didn't have a very good time when he tried teaming up with the Daleks previously. I have a feeling that Missy's "very good idea" is going to be much more dangerous...
• The Doctor figures out where Dalek "mercy" came from and we return to the beginning in every sense. It's a neat trick, leaving the resolution of the cliffhanger to the very end of the episode. It ends as we always knew it would.

Conclusion:

Another excellent episode - mostly. Towering performances from Peter Capaldi and Julian Bleach are at the heart, but things were let down by some retconning which just might be one step too far and a slightly lazy denouement. I'm still not entirely sure what Missy's involvement was for (much as I love her) beyond psychologically manipulating the Doctor. Time (and ten more episodes) will tell. Oh and don't mention the HADS and the sunglasses. Please. Just don't. 

Timelord Thoughts 1 - The Magician's Apprentice

So a new run of Doctor Who episodes and although I originally wasn't going to write anything about series nine, I've changed my mind and decided...not to write a set of reviews. Everyone else is doing that and the list of draft posts for the blog is long enough as it is. Instead what follows are my thoughts and observations (more or less) as I watched the episodes for the first time (well okay I did watch it a second time just to make sure I caught everything). I've not read any other reviews yet so this is a set of bullet point views into my brain if you will. Mostly unedited. Definitely ill-considered. We'll see if this works for the next twelve weeks...

The Magician's Apprentice

• Bi-planes with lasers and bows and arrows? It's definitely not World War I then.
• Clam drones. That sounds familiar...
• "Even seen a hand mine before?" Boy points to the soldiers foot. Fantastic.
• Less than three minutes in and we have our first shock death.
• The hand mines are brilliantly horrible and fantastically realised. Squelching and oozing out of the ground. Shade's of the Pale Man from "Pan's Labyrinth" too (one of my favourite films).
• Great first appearance of the Doctor, hidden by tendrils of mist.
• "My name is Davros". Bloody hell. If ever the Doctor could be said to have a look of "Oh F*****k", it's right here, right now.
• I love the titles (even though it takes ages to get to the name of the show) but I'm still not sold on that theme music arrangement. Too shrill.
• Colony Sarff is lovely and spooky, especially the way he moves. Not sure why the Ood has it's second brain in the sphere though.

• "DOK-TOR". David Walliams would be proud.
• Shadow Proclamation! And the hairstyles from Bride of Frankenstein. What the hell is a "suicide moon? I can't imagine that's been mentioned for no reason.
• So Davros is still alive. How did he escape The Crucible after "Journey's End"? You know what, I don't care. It doesn't matter. We always knew he would so it doesn't need an explanation.
• Karn now. A real whistle stop tour of the galaxy. Moffat loves doing this. What would the Sisterhood do with Sarff's skin?  A container for the elixir (Sacred fire...sacred flame)? A new handbag?
• I'm guessing that the "prologue" released earlier comes after this scene then.
• Davros is Dark Lord now? Voldemort or Sauron (or even Darth Vader) might have prior claim to that title.
• So child Davros kept the sonic. Doesn't that mean that the 12th Doctor has rewritten his own timeline? Again.
• Planes frozen in the sky is a nice simple threat, but they do all seem a bit low.
• Sorry but Kate Stewart isn't this stupid.  She didn't get where she is today without knowing the full effects of an unexplained event when she sees one. She certainly shouldn't need Clara to tell her stuff.
• The Doctor Channel? A bit convenient.
• Ha ! Love the 3D Missy head but could do without the comedy "sproinggg" noise. Super reference to "Playschool" too. We know how much he/she enjoys pre school kids television.

• "Not Dead. Back. Big surprise. Never Mind" Yes! Missy always escapes and we never find out how.
• Her opening speech reminds me how much I love Michele Gomez in this role.
• Men in dark suits and shades instead of UNIT soldiers? Shame. Then again maybe its not UNIT.
• The Confession Dial reminds me of the Chameleon Arch fob watch. Bound to come up again later in the series.
• "You're the puppy". Ouch that must hurt.
• Moffat's is fan-baiting again. The "Cloister Wars". The moon and the President's wife. Ever since he was a little girl? He must be cackling with glee that some fans will be frothing at the mouth by now.
• I do like this reclassification (or should that be reclarification) of the Doctor  / Master / Missy relationship. It harks back to the Petwee era.
• Still a raving psycho killer then. I wouldn't have it any other way.
• "Blue Box. Doctor". Calling back all the way to "Rose".
• Three version of Atlantis. So thats "Underwater Menace", "Time Monster" and..."The Daemons" ?
• UNIT can detect crisis points across time? Did the Doctor give them that technology?
• The Doctor playing an electric guitar solo riding in on a tank. Oh why the hell not !
• Urrgh. Could have done without the crap "jokes". It spoilt what was otherwise a grand entrance.
• Hugging. He does hugging now.
• If Four is "Scarf" and Eleven is "Bowtie", is Twelve "Hoodie"?
• Okay so I wasn't expecting that from Colony Scarff. Fantastic effect as his face twisted away.
• Thank god it's not the Mara
• "Hang on so Davros is your arch-enemy now? I'll scratch his eye out". Brilliant.
• Damn. After "The Doctor's Meditation" I was thinking Bors was going to be much more important. Was he the Magician's Apprentice? Typical Moffat to twist the knife after making you like a character.
• If they saw Missy die on Earth "ages ago", how much time has passed since "Death in Heaven"?
• The season 8 theme of lying is back but dealt with in a flash. It shows how the Doctor / Clara relationship has changed (due to the events of the Christmas Special I guess).
• I'd love to know how gravity can be sexy.
• Who frowned him a face that looks like Davros? I'd want a refund.
• Baker! Davison! McCoy! Unlimited rice pudding! Just wonderful.
• I get the feeling that Moffat has been waiting forty years to follow up on that line from the Fourth Doctor. 
• "It ended in the Time War". So does that confirm that "Genesis" was the first salvo in the Last Great Time War? 
• The reveal of the Dalek city and Skaro is just perfect. And for once Murray's music fits.

• How do you recreate a whole planet? Never mind. Skaro should never have been destroyed by the Seventh Doctor in the first place.
• Oooo Missy, tickle those Etheric Beam Locators (love the way the Dalek's gun rose into the air)
• Missy tries to betray the Doctor and gets exterminated. Another curve ball in an episode full of them (not that I think for one nano-second that she's dead).
• Davros twists the knife one last time as the Daleks twitch in anticipation. I'm so glad Julian Bleach is back. No Clara's not dead either but it's certainly surprising.
• Wow. We've gone from "You would make a good Dalek" to "Exterminate" in ten years. It just shows how a cliffhanger doesn't have to be about the Doctor being in jeopardy.

Conclusion:

A fantastic start to the season and Moffat's most confident opener since series 6. 

Who needs a Doctor Who movie when you have something as epic as this?

View From the Fifth Row 6 - Coherence

A trio of films with a theme are coming up in the next few "View From The Fifth Row" posts - and all of them pretty recent. I've picked these movies because I really enjoy films where you have to think about what is going on and try to figure out the twist or the plot before it is revealed. There is nothing better than having that "A-ha!" moment when everything slots together and the seemingly disparate pieces all make sense like in a giant cosmic jigsaw. So this week we have:

Coherence

Debuting in September 2013 and directed by newcomer James Ward Byrkit (who I had heard of as the writer of one of my favourite animated movies of recent years - 2011s "Rango" - but he was also the storyboard artist on the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series), it stars an ensemble cast of eight actors, none of whom are big names. The most familiar to SF genre fans would be Nicholas Brendon, famous for playing Xander in "Buffy The Vampire Slayer".

The film has a very Twilight Zone feel - the kind of fractured reality that you see just out of the corner of your eye where an unnatural event intrudes on the ordinary world. In this case, eight friends gather for a dinner party. As they eat by candlelight and chat about their mundane existences it is revealed that several of the characters have complex interpersonal relationships or concerns, regrets or petty hang-ups. For example Em is worried about the presence of her boyfriends ex, Beth is obsessed with feng shui and Mike (Nicholas Brendon)  is unhappy that despite being a fan of the TV show he starred in, another guest fails to recognize him (all very meta there). Conversation also turns to the fact that a irregular comet is about to pass over the Earth, but spooky tales about previous comets, shattered phone screens and the Tunguska Event are all laughed off. So far, so normal.

Suddenly all the power goes out - apart from one light about two blocks away. With all their phones now not working, two of the friends, Hugo and Amir, venture out into the dark to this neighbour that still seems to have electricity, but they come back very spooked - they have found that the other house looks exactly like the one they just left. The group are convinced that the duo somehow just accidentally walked in a circle, until Mike opens a small metal box Amir took from the other house. Inside they find a Table Tennis (Ping-Pong) bat and an envelope which contains photos of all of them, each with a number written on the back in what seems to be Em’s handwriting - and the one of Amir shows him wearing a jumper he’d just bought that day, even though no photograph has been taken...

I won't say too much more for fear of spoiling the plot, but what follows is a brain-teasing, mind-bending, nerve twisting puzzle where a group of people become confused and fearful as they struggle to make sense of what seems like a set of impossible situations. The film is shot in a handheld style and much of the dialogue improvised to add a layer of realism (the cast were only given limited information in advance). People talk over and interrupt each other and it's all a bit like a fly-on-the-wall documentary or even a stage play. The nature of the story also means that the action is confined mostly to the one set, highlighting the theatrical aspect and creating a claustrophobic atmosphere full of tension as the friends become increasingly unsettled and start to turn on each other. Taking in quantum physics concepts postulated by Stephen Hawking and others it requires patience and concentration - the viewer has to pay close attention to the dialogue or to briefly glimpsed objects to piece together what is really happening and to whom. What is the significance of a box of different coloured glowsticks and who exactly did smash the windscreen of the car outside? Who is out there, who can you trust and how far would you go to change the mistakes of the past?

Coherence is not for everybody. It's very talky, occasionally clunky with it's exposition and contrivances and if you have any knowledge of SF you will probably figure out what is going on quite quickly (and if not the film does explain it clearly). But it's the way the story unfolds and how the characters each interact and react differently to the crisis that grabbed me. You don't need flashy visual pyrotechnics to tell an intelligent and refreshing SF tale and I thoroughly enjoyed this one from start to finish. Rod Serling would have been very happy.

Next up - a film about luck, love, a lack of feelings and The Manual...

The Book Tower 5 - Winterhill Series 3: Bad Company by Iain Martin

And so after a necessary wait while I devoured "The Republic Of Thieves" by Scott Lynch (along with Joe Abercrombie, probably my favorite author of the last 10 years) we come to the last of my holiday book reviews, and wouldn't you know it, it's volume three of "Winterhill".

It has always been my intention to read (and review) all three books during my two week stay in the Greek sunshine. This is not because of any tie to Iain Martin (we only vaguely know each other through Twitter and that only really came about via a mutual friend) and I'm certainly not getting any recompense for these reviews, nor would I expect any. No, the important thing is that I genuinely feel that independent authors need and deserve all the exposure that can get, and I want to help in whatever small way I can. If I was to write a review of the latest Stephen King tome, it might be a nice positive review and it might get a couple of people to buy the book, but in the scheme of King's sales figures it would be a teardrop in the Atlantic Ocean. However, spreading the word about an independent new author may help raise their profile and any sales they make will hopefully be of benefit. Now I'm not saying that I consider this blog to be influential enough to turn Iain Martin into a worldwide publishing phenomenon (much as that would please everyone I'm sure) but word of mouth counts for a lot more in the 21st century Internet world -  and if YOU think "You know what, it's only 99p for the first book and it sounds like fun, I'll give it a go" and you enjoy it and you tell your friends and they enjoy it and - well you get the picture. As a certain supermarket chain in the UK keeps telling us, "Every little helps"...

Anyway, enough of that and onto the book itself, and it's the longest of the three so far, with seven rather than the usual six adventures (although the finale is actually split across two parts, so technically it's still six). The stories are even more intertwined than before, with the first being pretty much a scene setting prequel or extended pre-credits sequence, reminding us of the primary players and their situation (there is no "Previously..." page this time round), setting up a new quest and an amoral new bad guy. It's all told in the first person point of view, rotating through the four leads, so we also get a nice window into their heads.

One thing I noticed immediately with this third book is that there seems to be a slightly more adult tone - with quite a bit more swearing and violence and even a mild sex scene. Now I am certainly not being critical of this and these things are always in context within the novel as the characters interact and move through their trials and tribulations - it just surprised me. You might just want to be aware for the younger reader. However, I'm less content with the instance where nurse Kati describes a supporting character as "well gorge". I get that she is meant to be young and attracted to this man but it just seemed less like one of Iain's well written and we'll rounded female protagonists and more like something out of one of those terrible "scripted reality" shows. It's a small quibble though, so maybe I'm just getting old...

If the nature of the stories, their content and their connectivity have evolved, then so have the episode names. I'll admit that I've not always been able to fully work out the meaning of some of the story titles and their relevance to the adventures themselves. Take "The Ethers Tragic" from book one for example. Research revealed to me that it is name of an instrumental version of a Smashing Pumpkins song called "The End Is The Beginning Is The End", which comes from the soundtrack to the fondly-remembered-by-nobody-including-George-Clooney 1997 movie "Batman & Robin". What that has to do with a story of being space shipwrecked on a tropical island, featuring a thinly disguised Tori Amos I'm not entirely sure - although it's true that the tale does start at the end and fills in the blanks as we go along, so maybe it's no more than that. In the same vein, I don't think that "The Quantum Of Justice" in book two in any way relates to the recent foreclosure crisis in America, even though there is a documentary with that name. It could be just that it sounds cool. My point is that I'm a sucker for an odd sounding title. Give me a "Castrovalva" over "Revenge of the Cybermen" or a "Blink" over " Daleks In Manhattan" any day. Something to spark the imagination and keep the mystery of what the story is really about hidden until you actually watch/read it, not lay out all your cards on the contents page. This kind of thing is certainly going on more in book three than in the previous volumes and I'm all for it. Who can fail to be intrigued by titles such as "Elvis Presley and the Monsters of Soul" or "Serum3:Evolution5"? More of this please Mr. Martin.

Elsewhere we have our regular battle with the hideous Arachana (swiftly becoming the Winterhill version of the Daleks, so how long before we meet their Davros? After all, someone or something must be providing them with those cybernetic upgrades...) and a return visit to the home of the Talifero crime syndicate - the latter story importantly moving forward the sub-plots concerning Maddy's family and associates and hinting at the finale to come. The Professor and Blackjack and LadyJane are now interesting characters in their own right and are certainly more shades of grey than out and out black hats (another link back to those beloved 'Stainless Steel Rat' novels I mentioned in my review of book one). What also seems evident from the third story, "The Human Invasion of Earth" (with its sadly familiar human dictator) is that Iain knows his way round Cairo. The descriptions of the locales used seem too accurate to be just from research. Oh, and the final paragraph gives a small nugget of information in the underlying mystery of 'Professor' Winterhill. Once again what seem like incidental characters come to have greater significance down the line and in the name-spotting game we have a comic strip writer, a Superman actor (maybe) and a 1980s Doctor Who script editor. Plus a very clear mention of the 'Battle of Reykjavik.

Significantly, as we are now three books (or nineteen episodes) into the Winterhill series, there are an increasing number of sub-plots being juggled - the Earth Bureau of Investigation work against the Talifero family (plus one of its number on a private revenge mission), the ever-expanding evil influence of UbiCorp (with possibly some employees running their own secret agenda), the unresolved questions around Qalqavekkian and The First, plus not forgetting the Tick-Tock Man and who is exactly working for (or controlling) whom. Can you trust your friends and family -  and what exactly is Bloodgate?

The double-sided finale is kind of a heist movie crossed with 'Die Hard' with a *great* twist and the (at least partial) resolution to one of the oldest simmering storylines. It also has not one, not two, but three excellent cliffhangers, which leave things in a interesting state for the next installment.  I do wonder though that as much as I praised the use of original episode titles above, how hard it must have been not to call this caper "Rebecca Winterhill and the xxxxx of Death" (it'll make sense when you read it).

If you enjoyed books one and two, then this is more of the same quality fun and adventure. Volume four is due imminently and I'll be getting that as soon as it comes out. I'm also hoping to be able to conduct a Q&A session with Iain Martin for the blog around the time of the book release, which should be something to really look forward to.

A quick reminder that Iain Martin is on Twitter @theIainMartin and the Winterhill series website is here. Iain's lovely podcast, Five Minute Fiction is here.

Time for some Greek mezze and a beer I think...

The Book Tower 4 - Winterhill Series 2: Ghost Requiem by Iain Martin

So after the delights of book one in the SF adventures of Rebecca Winterhill and her friends Madagascar Taliferos and Tareku (the man with no last name), I've dived straight into the second volume. Hey, I'm on holiday - why not live dangerously?...

Continuing the concept of the books being like TV series or seasons, Ghost Requiem opens with a "Previously..." page which quickly brings the reader up to speed on the salient points from series one. However, what's different this time is that although we still get six "episodes", they are far more interlinked and dependant on each other - more a series of events that flow to create a cohesive whole storyline rather than distinct individual adventures with seeding of the arc plot as in book one. It's a nice change and shows that the author is not afraid to vary his storytelling techniques. What's also apparent is that as both author and reader are now comfortable with the major characters, it's time to shake things up a bit and delve deeper into their psyche and motivations. So along with more exciting action, adventure and violence we also get more depth. The dynamic of the Talifero family gets some welcome fleshing out too, with a couple of new players who may start out as background dressing but soon become intrinsic to the series ' finale'.

The crew of the appropriated "Slider" ship that Rebecca and Co use to flit around the galaxy in is also filling out nicely (it's a bit like early episodes of 'Blake's 7', only with less room and no Brian Blessed) Their vessel really could do with a proper name though. Like last time there is more fun to be had spotting the names and places that reference the authors favourite TV shows and interests. I'm sure there was a baroque painter in there too. For me, one of the highlights of these books is the way that Mr Martin is able to really create visualisations of his characters and their foes for the reader with just a few short economical lines of descriptive prose. Just read this excerpt from 'A Cold Day In Hell':

"Dressed in black clothes. Black gauze. Including a smooth black balaclava-like head covering and gloves. The uniform was not clean, or new, but rather durable  - as if the owner had just that set of clothes for life. On his chest winked lights and neons from a small metal box - red, green, blues. Stains and streaks and smears besmirched the outfit. It looked quite damp. Human eyes gazed out from the eye-holes. Dead, lifeless eyes which rolled in their sockets and wobbled like under-cooked eggs".

See what I mean? If I was a designer for a TV programme, those few sentences would be all I needed to get the creative juices flowing. It's the same for the reader (well this one anyway). I can *see* these creatures - they're called The Shriek - in my mind very clearly. It's an important skill for a writer and Iain has certainly got to grips with it (maybe all those years of reading Terrance Dicks has helped).

The various escapades in this volume range from battling gigantic sea creatures, 'zombies' in a mountain top castle (with two supporting characters who could have stepped out of a "Fast Show" sketch - although come to think of it maybe looking behind the scenes on a certain well known British SF show might lead to a different comparison...), the return of a vanquished villain and more about his race, and a trip to a eerily familiar lugubrious, boggly-eyed psychotherapist. Add in a couple of shocking deaths (no I'm not telling you who) and more twists and turns you don't see coming - plus an answer to the title of book one - and it's another recipe for success.

The central premise of Winterhill's amnesia and the mystery of the Tick Tock Man might not be resolved yet but there are clues along the way and to be honest it's too soon to reveal all. It took Earl Dumarest almost thirty novels to find Earth in the series by E.C. Tubb and ten books for the conspiracy to be truly revealed in the 'Family D'Alembert' saga from E.E. Doc Smith & Stephen Goldin. Just as long as it doesn't turn out like 'Lost'. I'm confident it won't.

All in all it's resounding thumbs up for this second set of six adventures. The stories are going from strength to strength and  it will be very interesting to see where Iain Martin takes things next. When it only costs £2.00 it's definitely worth your time and money.

Time for a quick dip in the pool and a siesta. Then it's a short break while I read another anticipated novel saved for my holiday, before moving onto book three!*







*Sorry Mr Martin, Scott Lynch and The Gentleman Bastards are calling me...

The Book Tower 3 - Winterhill Series 1: The Wreath Of Dreams by Iain Martin

So sitting here by the pool on my Greek holiday seems like the ideal opportunity to read and review the "Winterhill" ebook novels by columnist, publishing regional manager and genial host of the 'Five Minute Fiction' podcast, Iain Martin. I also have a very tenuous connection to the books, because good friend and fellow blogger  Al No drew the covers to all three volumes (so far) in the series.

Rebecca Winterhill's life is a mystery - especially to herself, since she woke up in a crate in the cargo hold of a space cruise liner with no memory of who she is or how she got there. Before you can say "Fecky doo-dah" she is thrust into a battle against numerous monsters, psychotic madmen and denizens of the criminal underworld,  alongside party girl, galaxy-class data pirate, information hacker and holder of a degree in Leisure &  Tourism, Madagascar Taliferos. And Maddy has some secrets of her own...

The book is structured like the episodes of a TV series, with six complete adventures told in short bursts, plus prologues/epilogues to fill in some of the history of this universe that Mr. Martin has created and offer glimpses of things to come. The initial few tales might have simple and well trodden ideas at their core (undead space vampires, giant augmented spiders, a long lost jewel in a booby trapped temple) but they rattle along with nary a pause for breath and each one adds a nugget to the underlying narrative. Rebecca seems to have retained some important tactical skills deep in her memory (useful when you are trying to get away from a horde of rampaging Cyber Spiders)  but nothing to give her a clue about where she comes from or why she can do what she can do.

Iain obviously knows his SF stuff. There are elements of some classic genre TV shows woven into the DNA of his stories - especially (as you would expect from a self- confessed fan) Doctor Who.   The character names are also a treat, with several coming from SF film and television and novels. There may be some non genre literary ones in there too, but I'm nowhere near enough well read. Plus there are some nice Easter eggs to pick up on: certain crab-like creatures in an aquarium, an alternative name for a forest world, references to Polar bears and ghosts on a tropical island - it all adds to the fun. I did spot that absolute rotter Maxymylyan DeVere bears more than a passing resemblance to Judge Dredd character Devlin Waugh - although admittedly he himself is based on comedy film legend Terry Thomas so I could be seeing connections that aren't there. Although that bad guy with the goatee and the cylindrical spaceship?......Nah.

The background arc plot seeding throughout the stories is reminiscent of modern Doctor Who or perhaps Babylon 5. Indeed one could also say that there is a soupçon of River Song (or perhaps Lara Croft?) beneath the skins of Professor Rebecca Winterhill and the redoubtable Maddy - ready with a cunning plan or a suggestive quip whatever the situation. But you know what, when the stories are this much fun and the dialogue sparkles like Douglas Adams on a good day, any similarities, deliberate or unintentional are more that allowable. I'm inclined to think that Iain is similar in age to myself (I know we are from the same English county) thanks to some nice references to UK kids TV shows and some vintage school playground banter, especially the classic of "Chinny reckon...Jimmy Hill" to indicate that someone might be telling porkies. That takes me back.

What the adventures of Ms Winterhill and her friends actually remind me of most - and this is a very good thing - is the tales of Slippery Jim DiGriz, the Stainless Steel Rat - who scampered his way through eleven novels from the pen of SF master Harry Harrison between 1961 and 2010. The first four novels are generally considered to be the best (well by me anyway) and Winterhill reads like those - full of capers, mis-haps, miraculous escapes from sudden death and suitably evil and esoteric alien menaces.

The book also doesn't outstay it's welcome - I managed to demolish the whole thing in under two days. It's bright, breezy and a great read. I don't want to say much more about the plot as it's far more enjoyable if you don't know what's coming. Crucially though this first set of Winterhill adventures doesn't resolve all the plot lines. Some important plates are left spinning and there is a humdinger of a cliffhanger to end on. Just who is the Tick Tock Man and what is his role in Rebecca's memory loss? I guess I'll find out (maybe) in book two...