I Saw Elvis In A Potato Chip Once 7 - The X-Files 1.07 - Ghost In The Machine

Yet another genre staple gets ticked off the list, as we enter the domain of dangerous artificial intelligence...

The X-Files 1.07 - Ghost In The Machine

Things aren't getting any better in season one. Is this really the show that gripped the world? We seem to be on a poor run of formulaic painting-by-numbers episodes, where you can see the plot beats coming a mile off and the only intriguing things are what's going on around the edges. Take this weeks dull story for example. The bits and pieces about Mulder's history with his old partner are far more interesting than a dodgy old PC with delusions of grandeur. It's a shame that Jerry turns out to be a bit of a tosser, but it at least clues us in on why Mulder (originally) decided that he worked best alone. It's not even as if there was any mystery about who was responsible for the murders - the viewer is in on it from the beginning so there is no suspense.

Elsewhere Deep Throat pops up again from the first time since episode two for...well I'm not entirely sure why he was there. His role could have been filled by anybody. He makes some vague statements about the "shadow government" controlling things but it's all a bit pointless in terms of this actual storyline, almost as if the creative team felt they had to shoehorn him in somewhere. The twisted machine just isn't very scary or threatening and the only real sense of peril is when Scully is blown down the conveniently large air ducts and there is a bit of tension with the whirling fan - when she also manages to pull off looking very attractive while having a huge wind machine blown in her face. No small feat.

The Central Operating System (C.O.S.) is an obvious analogy to HAL 9000 from "2001 - A Space Odyssey" (it even asks "What are you doing, Brad?" when he inserts the floppy disk that causes it's meltdown). That idea of an artificial intelligence having a violent will of it's own has been seen in countless TV shows and films both before and since 1968. everything from "The Invisible Boy", "Colossus: The Forbin Project", "Dark Star", "Demon Seed" and "I, Robot" to episodes of "The Bionic Woman", all the various incarnations of Star Trek" and of course "Doctor Who". Even comics have got in on the act, especially those in the UK. 2000 AD's short-lived stablemate "Starlord" even featured a story in issue 11 (brilliantly drawn by Casanovas) where a computer controlling ever aspect of a house fell in love with it's owner and refused to ever let him leave.

The most famous computer in British comics though is Max, from the long running story "The Thirteenth Floor" which started off in "Scream" before moving to the revival of "Eagle". Custodian of the "Maxwell Tower" housing block, Max had the ability to create an artificial floor where he could punish, torture or even kill those who threatened his tenants. Jose Ortiz, always one of my favourite European artists, drew almost all the episodes through the many years the strip ran for.

Can you tell I was more interested in thinking about Max than the C.O.S. ? That's how memorable this episode was.

Other thoughts and facts:

• Who has a telephone (not to mention electronic door locks) in their bathroom? Time is money I guess. Plus - why do you need ID to get *out* ?
• The FBI still has a lunch trolley? Is this the 1970s?
• I may be wrong, but I think this episode gives us the first chalk outline of the series.
• Ah, that now so old fashioned dial up modem sound. Youngsters today don't know how lucky they are with their super-fast broadband. I remember having to connect to the internet, go off and make a cup of tea and come back and maybe, just maybe, the page I wanted would have come up...
• If the FBI doesn't have wipe-clean monitors, those pen marks Scully draws all over her screen will be hell to wash off. 
• I don't think even Brad's description of a "scruffy mind" would place a PC and associated electronic equipment so close to a large about of water as he seems to do in his apartment. It does look cool though.
• How did the electronic features of the building (lights, lifts, etc) still work after the computer controlling it all was destroyed?

Oh and that "twist" at the end? I would have been more surprised if they *hadn't* gone down the obvious route.

Fingers crossed that the homicidal toaster is never seen again.

Random Ravings 8 - Baby Grobags

Just time for a look at a few movies I've seen recently...

Arrival
An intelligent, thoughtful, mysterious, epic yet inmate and wonderfully acted piece of science fiction cinema. It's Amy Adams's film throughout and she doesn't disappoint. It reminded me a little of "Contact", but only in the best possible ways. My wife was less enamoured but still enjoyed it and was the first of us to figure out one of the film's big twists (I worked out the other). Sadly the deception of how nations, governments and the military would respond to an alien visitation is entirely accurate.

Passengers
The trailers seemed to promise an action-packed space movie, but this is so much more than that.  Both Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt are on fine form and have a real chemistry - essential as they are basically on their own for 90% of the running time. I really don't understand why it has been so critically mauled  The production design is also just incredible.

Fifty Shades Darker
Look I had to take one for the team and go with my wife okay? All I can say is that it was better than the first one - but that's like saying botulism is better than tuberculosis.

John Wick Chapter 2
I thought the first film was one of the best action movies of the last decade and this sequel is just as much violent, bloody fun. It's rare that an actor gets more than one iconic role is their career, but Keanu Reeves now has two - Neo and Mr John Wick. The film manages to keep up the pace of it's predecessor, while expanding the world of the assassins. I also have to praise the cinematographer as the use of light and colour throughout is exceptional. This film looks amazing. Roll on Chapter 3...

The 9th Life of Louis Drax
Now this is an odd one. A mystery which is one part supernatural, one part domestic drama and two parts is this all in someones head. I couldn't quite work out what it was trying to be and although the final revelation is shocking the parts don't really add up to the whole. It just all felt a bit uneven. However twelve year old Aiden Longworth is uniformly excellent as the "accident prone" boy who ends up in a coma. He's going to be someone to watch.

Golden Sunsets - 50 Years of Memories - Part 8 - 1974

This selection may seem like a safe and obvious choice. It's not because this year is particularly lacking in books, films, music, TV shows or toys that made a lasting impression on me - just look at the "honourable mentions" section below - but more that there was one clear thing that stood head and shoulders above everything else...

1974:

The trivia:

• While suave actor David Niven was speaking at the Oscars ceremony, a naked man ran past, fully visible on live television. David famously quipped "Isn't it fascinating to think that the only laugh that man will ever get is for stripping and showing his shortcomings?"
• The first ever interstellar radio message is sent from the Arecibo telescope towards the Messier 41 cluster in the Canis Major constellation, 25,000 light years from Earth.
• Tom Baker makes his first appearance as Doctor Who in the closing moments of "Planet of the Spiders"
• Lord Lucan vanishes after his children's nanny was beaten to death in the basement of the family home. No sign of him is ever found again, but he is not formally listed as dead until 2016.

The memory:

Bagpuss

It's probably fair to say that the character of Bagpuss is a true icon of British kids TV - one that has gone beyond popular culture and entered the collective consciousnesses in the same way as say, Doctor Who. Anyone who has ever watched an episode can remember the series of Victorian sepia tinged photographs at the start. The shop Emily owned that did not sell anything but was full of lost property The mice on the Marvellous Mechanical Mouse organ. Gabrielle the toad. Madeleine the rag doll that never moved from her chair. Professor Yaffle the acerbic and haughty carved wooden bookend in the shape of a woodpecker. Plus of course the most important...the most beautiful...the most magical...saggy old cloth cat in the whole wide world (even if he was baggy and a bit loose at the seams).

The shows simple storylines, timeless animation and lovable characters have entranced multiple generations of British children  - who can all recite the rhyme that woke the pink and white cat and his friends from their slumber:

Bagpuss, dear Bagpuss

Old Fat Furry Catpuss

Wake up and look at this thing that I bring

Wake up, be bright, be golden and light

Bagpuss, oh hear what I sing.

Each episode Emily would place a recovered broken item in front of her cat and sing the familiar song. As the pictures turned from sepia to full colour, Bagpuss would wake up with a huge yawn and so would all all his friends in the shop window.

The toys would discuss the new object and usually tell a story or sing a song that would be illustrated by simple animation that appeared in a thought bubble above Bagpuss's head. These tales were often taken from local Celtic folklore but would help uncover the true nature and purpose of the thing in front of them. Then the hard-working but mischievous mice would squeak a variation on their "we will fix it" song and mend the broken item, placing it in the shop window in case whoever had lost it happened to walk past. Their task complete, Bagpuss would yawn again and as he fell asleep the others would also turn back into immobile toys.

"Bagpuss" was developed by stop-motion animation legends Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin and originally transmitted between February and May 1974 across a mere thirteen episodes. A short run you might think, but what cemented the programme in the minds of children countrywide was the fact that it was repeated twice a year, every year until 1987 ! In the days before VHS, this exposure and the fact that the opening and closing minutes were always the same meant that, much like repeating multiplication tables parrot-fashion, the familiar words and pictures just sunk into your brain.

Some episodes are obviously better than others. Who can forget the classic "The Mouse Mill" where the six rodents try to convince the pompous Professor Yaffle that a wooden toy mill can make chocolate biscuits out of beans and breadcrumbs - or "Uncle Feedle" with it's charming tale of a cloth man with an inside out house. But others had subtle elements of the real world woven into their fabric. "The Ballet Shoe" even has the mice threatening going on strike unless they are allowed to sing. Even stranger is "Ship In a Bottle" where Bagpuss reveals that he once met a topless mermaid in a bar who sat on his lap, while "The Fiddle" has dream-like layers as Bagpuss tells the story of how he met a a leprechaun  - who then proceeds to ask for his own story. This is also the one where Gabriel the toad starts to question the very nature of existence - after Yaffle extorts that leprechauns are not real, Gabriel simply states "Well perhaps we aren't real either".

Such has been the overwhelming popularity of the show that it was once voted the favourite kids TV programme of all time. Much has been written about the underlying themes of kindness and working together - and there is even critical analysis which cast the disparate characters as somewhat mythic versions of the important people in a child's life - Madeleine and Gabriel as mother and father, the mice as siblings, Professor Yaffle as the teacher and Bagpuss himself as the grandfather figure. It's an interesting hypothesis.

What is certain is that it is extraordinary how much life Firmin and Postgate manage to imbue into these characters made of wood and cloth. The stop-motion process still allows for amazing nuance in their movements and interactions with each other..The series presented a world about the power of storytelling where there were no limits to imagination. There were moments of education in some of the folktales and discussions about the discarded objects, but primarily it was fabulous entertainment for kids of all ages.

In the forty-plus years since, Bagpuss has received an honourary degree from the University of Kent, had a Romanian children's hospital wing names after him (funded entirely by royalties from the BBC), appeared on a Royal Mail postage stamp and even been part of a touring stage show featuring the songs from the show by original singers Sandra Kerr and John Faulkner.

For myself, I have always adored this little show and I bought it immediately it came out on DVD. My own children watched it. My younger nieces and nephews watch it. A small bean bag version of Bagpuss is looking down on my now as a write this and if he could wake up and talk I am sure he would be pleased that he bought such lasting joy to millions.

Honourable mentions:

• Hong Kong Phooey - In civilian life a mild mannered janitor, Penry Pooch jumps into a filing cabinet and emerges as a masked crime fighter and Kung-Fung master. Obviously an anthropomorphic spoof on the popular marital arts TV shows and film of the time, it's pleasant enough animated fare, but get's onto my list for the fantastic theme song. It's fann-riffic !

• The Four Musketeers - See 1973. 'Nuff said.

• The Man With The Golden Gun - The first Bond I ever saw at the cinema when I was taken by my much-loved late grandfather. It started a life-long love of the franchise and while by no means the best of the Roger Moore era (that's "Live and let Die" if anyone is keeping score). it still has the double whammy of Christopher Lee as Scaramanga and Herve Villechaize as Nick Nack. Let's not talk about Sheriff J.W. Pepper okay?

• Zardoz - John Boorman's science fiction oddity is well worth it even if it's just for the fabulous logo, the huge flying head and Sean Connery in a giant nappy....

Random Ravings 7 - Kung Fu Kapers

I was in the midst of writing a piece on a certain 40th birthday party I attended last weekend but, it's turned into a much bigger piece than expected, so that's to come later. I've not watched any new TV series or movies recently and I only part way through my latest novel. What to do?

Well strangely my 87 year old father came to the rescue. I popped in to visit him yesterday morning and he was in the midst of a clear out of the loft space - specifically disposing of a number of old suitcases that he felt he no longer needs. Having helped him bring the cases down from the loft, a couple didn't feel quite so empty as he expected. Opening them up, we discovered that one contained my brothers "Hornby" electric train set. Trains, carriages, tracks - everything was there. The other case contained these:

I took that picture on my phone today. That's the majority of my "Micronauts" action figures from the 1970s - which I thought had been thrown away decades ago !

So I'm kind of breaking my own rules here slightly as this is not going to be a review of something recent, but more about something I've *found* recently - and sharing the giddy excitement that a nearly 50 year old man can still get when he claps eyes on a lost piece of his childhood...

I've written here before about how the "Micronauts" comic was one of the first full colour titles I ever discovered and how that led to a lifetime's interest in US format comics. I keep promising myself that one day I'll do a detailed issue-by issue look back at those stories and try and put into words exactly what they mean to me.

But these simple plastic toys, I'll be honest - I seriously *loved* them. Out of all the games and playthings I had as a child, the "Interchangeable World of the Micronauts" has always been the one I remember with the most happiness. Part was the otherworldly look of them and part was that thanks to the universal connectors and "magno-action" function you could mix almost any combination of parts to design your own creations. Add to that a brothers favourite thing of firing rubber and plastic missiles at his sibling and you had one of the best toy series in the world. Just looking at the names of the various sets and figures sends waves of nostalgia through me. Microtron. Biotron. Time Traveller. Baron Karza. Force Commander. Giant Acroyear. Phobos. the Astro Station. All brilliant.

Many years ago when I left my parents home to make my own way in the world I had rescued the evil Baron Karza from the clutches of my brother before he claimed ownership - but he had no box and was missing many of his pieces including his hands (which fired from his wrists) and most of the other accessories. Now here in this rediscovered treasure trove are all the lost elements, along with Karza's nemesis, the white clad Force Commander:

Looking across the items  laid out on the table it's clear to see that the cardboard containers have seen far, far better days. These were toys that were lovingly played with - not kept pristine in a sealed box. A few small pieces are missing or glued together and Phobos seems to have lost his cow-like silver head (that's Acroyear's head on the black body on the right of the picture) and one hand. But a bit of internet detective work proved that 99% of Acroyear and the Astro Station is there and Biotron still has his Time Traveller sitting in his chest compartment. I'm not sure I have the guts to try and find batteries to fit the compartments and see if either of the giant robots can still walk or travel on the rubber tank tracks attached to their backs. Microtron also looks a little dusty and worse for wear but nothing a little TLC won't cure.
 

There were a couple of other Micronaut toys that I remember we had at some point - in particular two vehicles called Hydra and the Photon Sled which you could wind up and make shoot across the floor. There was no sign of them in that suitcase so I have to assume that they were broken and thrown away. Still there is always a chance that they are laying abandoned in some other dusty corner of the loft...

These were the only ones that we ever were bought. There were many more released in the UK - including a whole range of vehicles - Crater Cruncher, Hydro Copter, Betatron, Gammatron, Aquatron and the Ultronic Scooter are the few I can remember - plus the huge looking Battle Cruiser and Star Defender and a 14 inch tall "Mobile Exploration Lab" There were also amazing looking "horses" for Baron Karza and Force Commander - called Andromeda and Oberon - that you could combine to turn the two leaders into centaur-people.

But you'll notice that the logo on these boxes is "Airfix" and not "Mego". That's because Airfix licensed the toys for the UK market from the US company. The problem with that is that the leaflets that accompanied the toys were the original Mego ones, and that meant British kids saw pictures of a vast number of weird and wonderful Micronauts that they had no chance of ever getting because they were just not released in the UK. Some of the smaller pieces didn't matter so much but who didn't want the simply mega-tastic "Stratastation" or the exotic Terraphant, Pharoid or Hornetroid. I know I did!

A quick look on eBay shows that good condition copies of these vintage toys can sell for quite a lot of money - one of the reason that I abandoned trying to rebuild the collection a long, long time ago. Even spares and odd parts seem to be popular. I'm so happy that they have turned up now. Maybe I can persuade my wife to let me buy just a couple more...

Golden Sunsets - 50 Years Of Memories - Part 7 - 1973

My 100th post, so it's going to be a long one - and time for a look back at something which was an enjoyable TV series but due to it's influence on other media became so much more when I was very young...

1973:

The trivia:

• The worlds most isolated tree was in the Sahara Desert, hundreds of miles away from anything. It died when a drunk man driving a truck hit it.
• Future US president Jimmy Carter reported a UFO Sighting in 1973.
• A 10 foot tall emu was spotted walking the streets of New York after escaping from a circus. Five months later a by-law was passed stating all all emu's in New York must be on a leash.
• When legendary band The Who were playing in San Francisco, drummer Keith Moon passed out halfway through a song after taking PCP. Pete Townshend asked if anyone in the audience could play drums and 19-year old Scott Halpin climbed onto the stage and proceeded to play with the band for the rest of the gig.

The memory:

The Six Million Dollar Man

"...we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first bionic man..."

With those immortal words (or a version of them) from Oscar Goldman, actor Lee Majors became part-computerised astronaut Steve Austin - and star of ITV's top Saturday tea-time action show. I'm sure everyone over a certain age knows the basic premise, but let's quickly recap. Austin is critically injured in an experimental aircraft crash but is "rebuilt" in a pioneering operation costing - you guessed it - six million dollars. His right arm, both legs and left eye are replaced with "bionic" implants, enabling him to run at 60 mph, see twenty times further than normal and lift enormous weights - although his new limbs are vulnerable to sub-zero temperatures. Austin is soon reluctantly recruited to work as a secret agent for the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI).

After three "made for TV" movies, we then got a proper series. The 99 episodes featured a number of increasingly outlandish science fiction and paranormal concepts - ESP, robot doubles, a fellow astronaut who can communicate with dolphins (played by William Shatner no less), aliens crash-landing on Earth, several appearances by Bigfoot, a rogue mechanical Venus probe, and an invisible alien island! Plus there were of course the various other bionic enhanced characters peppered throughout the five seasons, most famously Jaime Sommers, the Bionic Woman.

The show became hugely popular and by around 1975 was visible everywhere. In the UK, schoolboys across the country took Steve Austin to their hearts and there were many playground scenarios where one or more children acted out bionic feats of strength (usually in slow-motion with appropriate doing-oing-oing" sound effects).

The thing is, as good as the programme was, what I really remember from that period are the toys and comic books.

The Six Million Dollar Man figure rivalled "Action Man" (the UK version of GI Joe) for popularity. Supposedly these were my younger brothers toys, but we both played with them equally and there were at least a couple of birthday and Christmas lists where we asked for the various play sets and add-ons.

Steve Austin himself was kitted out in a nifty bright red tracksuit. His left eye was a kind of telescope which your could peer through from the back of his head (in reality I seem to recall it just made everything  look odd). Beneath the tracksuit top the bionic arm was covered in a kind of rubber "skin", which you could roll back to reveal the circuitry underneath. The arm also came off and could be replaced with different "critical assignment arms" which had gadgets such as a laser, a karate chop / gun combination and an underwater mask and air supply.

Pride of place in our household through was given to the "Bionic Transport and Repair Station". When closed it sort of resembled a Saturn V rocket with Steve's head peering out through the plastic window. But opened up and disassembled, it became a medical and scientific station for our hero to rest, recuperate and to be examined by the microscope, X-ray unit and computer - all connected by black tubes. Various stickers and glow in the dark dials created a place of electronic wizardry.

It's amazing that something so simple gave us so much joy. My brother and I spent hours devising missions for the Bionic Man, upgrading his weaponry in the Repair Station and then sending him off into the stratosphere in the rocket.

There were apparently several other playsets, such as a "Mission Vehicle" (which looks like a modern day 'Dustbuster' handheld vacuum cleaner) or an OSI Headquarters room to put your Oscar Goldman action figure in, plus more accessories - Critical Mission legs to go with those arms, a back pack crystal radio that really worked, a "porta-communicator" so you could make the Austin figure talk with your own voice - there was even an inflatable Mission Control Centre. Sadly I never had any of these and can only remember seeing the crystal radio set in the shops.

No hero is complete without villains to fight and Steve Austin had several. There were action figures of Bigfoot (who strangely could project a square piece of plastic from his chest) and the Venus Space Probe with its rotating turret and missile launchers. I don't think those even made it to the UK and we were certainly never bought them by our parents. However we *did* get the greatest nemesis of them all...Maskatron.

This evil machine was a powerful robot who could disguise himself as Steve Austin or Oscar Goldman or adopt a bland normal human face to blend in with the population. His silver body was full of electronics and he could add two different weapon arms - a menacing grabber and a super suction arm (so he's essentially a Dalek in human form). The three faces could be stored inside a cavity in his chest. When fighting battles with your Bionic Man toy, if you hit Maskatron just on the right pressure points, his arms, legs and even head would fly off. Hours of fun!

Of course once Jaime Sommers came on the scene and got her own series as "The Bionic Woman", she also was released as an action figure, complete with "mission purse", realistic hair and a number of miniature accessories. She also got her own villain to fight in the form of the "Fembot" (basically Maskatron in drag). Oddly enough, we never asked for those toys...

The Six Million Dollar Man also went on to conquer the printed page as well. In the UK that meant a place in the popular kids TV tie-in magazine / comic "Look-In", which had been running since 1971. As well as pin-ups of TV stars and pop idols, interviews, crosswords and competitions, "Look-In"  also featured exciting picture strips of your favourite TV heroes and heroines. "Kung-Fu", "Space 1999", "Catweazle", "The Tomorrow People" and many more were lovely rendered in black and white and colour by a host of artists who are now very well known. The vast majority of the covers of "Look-In" were painted (many by John M. Burns) and Steve Austin featured on quite a few due to his immense success.

Impressively, over its lengthy run between June 1975 and March 1979, the tales of Steve Austin were written and drawn by the same creative team - Angus P. Allen and Martin Asbury. Asbury would also go on to be the artist on the Daily Mirror's decades-spanning SF / fantasy /adventure strip "Garth" (I'm hoping there will be a piece on *that* later this year - the fact that there is no complete collection of the "Garth" tales is a travesty).

In comparison to the TV series the comics featured even more outlandish plotlines, including Lazlo Cernatz, the "Toymaker" who wanted to use his collection of deadly toys to hypnotise the children of the world to do his bidding, mad magician The Great Mandini and a gothic castle encounter with a werewolf.  Later on "The Bionic Woman" got her own strip drawn by John M. Burns and John Bolton, but this was more straightforward and faithful to the tone of the television series.

In the US, Charlton Comics produced a 9-issue full colour series in 1978, and more recently Dynamite Entertainment have had some success with various titles featuring the character with some issues written by director Kevin Smith. However in my mind, I'll always prefer the five-year run in "Look-In".

No look at the comics history of "The Six Million Dollar Man" would be complete without mentioning the various homages, humour strips and blatant rip-off's. The first of these is "The 12 1/2p Buytonic Boy" which debuted in the first issue of "Krazy" comic in October 1976. Ordinary Steve Ford crashes his go-kart into a lamp post and buys a special tonic from Professor Nutz for the princely sum of twelve and a half pennies (the half penny still being legal tender until the mid-80s). Gaining special powers of speed, strength and agility, Steve is later hired by the 'Ever-so Secret Service' to defeat the nefarious plans of rival organisation the 'NME'.  The strip went through a number of name changes but ran for an amazing ten years across various titles and is still reprinted in "best of" collections to this day.

In 1977 along came what is without a doubt the most successful British comic of all time - 2000 AD. I have expressed my love for this title many times already and it's become one of the rare publications from the 1970s to still be released every single week. It recently reached 2,000 issues and it's 40th birthday and shows no signs of slowing down in it's mix of SF, fantasy and gritty action. Amazingly 2000 AD has had not one, not two, but *four* stories based around the concepts of the Bionic Man. I loved these early comics and have very strong memories of them, so as much as this post is about The Six Million Dollar Man, please excuse the lengthy recaps that follow...

The first character started out as a blatant rip-off of the adventures of Steve Austin but soon became more original. Created by industry icon Pat Mills and appearing in the very first issue (Prog 1), "M.A.C.H. 1" was British Secret Service agent John Probe, who was given augmented speed and strength by a futuristic version of acupuncture - regulated by a computer fused into his skull. This "Man Activated by Compu-puncture Hyperpower" then operated across the world on missions against terrorists, assassins and organised crime - plus investigating hidden Nazi gold, mad tyrants and protecting visiting dignitaries and military scientists. In these early days "M.A.C.H. 1" rivalled "Judge Dredd" as the comics most popular story.

The various tales of John Probe were drawn by a wide range of British and European artists including Enio, Ian Kennedy, Massimo Bellardinelli, John Cooper, Mike Dorey and Jesus Redondo. Initially they were just very violent versions of the kind of thing the Bionic Man covered, but as time went on the strip started to embrace more fantastical elements. Probe encountered Yeti in the Himalayas, an alien spacecraft disguised as a Mayan temple and even journeyed into space to uncover a plot involving astronaut doubles and an attempt to start World War III.

Increasingly Probe became disillusioned with his missions and the machinations of his boss Dennis Sharpe. Things start to come to a head when he discovered that Sharpe and his American counterparts covered up the shooting down of a UFO by the US Air Force and the subsequent retaliation by the aliens. Then in Progs 36 - 39, John met Tanya Maski, a East European woman who had been turned into M.A.C.H. Woman. Teaming up to defeat a lunatic who had turned children into Hyperpowered zombies (shades of the "Toymaker" perhaps...), Probe convinced her to defect to the West, but she died in the final battle to destroy the stolen secrets. It then turned out that Sharpe knew about her all along and Probe vowed to investigate his corrupt practices.

Digging through Sharpe's files John discovered the existence of M.A.C.H. Zero, the first experiment with the Compu-puncture technology. Lacking the controlling computer intelligence, the poor man had been reduced to little more than a child-like beast held in a secure facility. Zero broke out of his prison and he and Probe ended up fighting, but eventually Zero was convinced to turn himself in and Sharpe promised to find a cure for his condition. Of course it's was a double-cross and Zero was seemingly killed in an explosion.

Totally disillusioned with things, Probe disappeared for months until Sharpe's men found him and hauled him before the man in charge. It was revealed that if he didn't get regular top-ups of Compu-puncture, Probe would burn out and die. After being forced to go on another mission, he also realised that he had no memory from before the experiments that gave him his powers and officially he did not exist! Confronting his controller, Probe learned that Sharpe had been manipulating events from the beginning and now intended to roll out his next version of the technology - the fully android M.A.C.H. 2.

The final adventure was told in flashback at an inquiry. As first direct contact was made with the a race of benevolent aliens, Sharpe became power-mad and attempted to wipe them all out to steal their technology - a kind of militarised version of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".  Probe elected to save the alien ambassador (nick-named "Fred") at the cost of his own life and died in a hail of bullets as Fred's rescuers escaped in peace to the stars. Thankfully Sharpe is caught in the cross-fire and the inquiry concludes that he had gone rogue and that Probe had died a hero. The case-file on M.A.C.H. 1 was closed and we never learned who John Probe really was or how he was conscripted in the first place. It's an abrupt end to an exciting but ultimately sad tale.

At the time I was quite upset by the death of M.A.C.H. 1. Sure we had seen various cowboys eaten by rampaging dinosaurs and Dredd killing perps committing a crime, but this was the first time a genuine hero had died.

The story is not quite over though as in Prog 65 M.A.C.H. Zero returned in his own series, having survived the explosion and been left wandering aimlessly ever since. A tragic yet innocent anti-hero more in the mold of Frankenstein's monster, Zero had a number of fairly unremarkable adventures against unscrupulous entertainers and the like, but also befriended a tribe of sewer-dwelling down-and-outs before deciding to embark on his own quest to find his lost son Tommy. However when he became mixed up in an attempt to steal an experimental battle suit, Zero is almost recaptured by the authorities. Nothing was heard from him for quite a while and meanwhile in Prog 95 another new series started which had a sideways connection to "The Six Million Dollar Man".

Written by Chris Stevens with art by Carlos Pino and lasting just five episodes, "Angel" was the story of Scorpion F-20 pilot Harry Angel who was involved in a near fatal crash and found his aircraft's computer bonded to the nerves in his right arm and shoulder. The artificial intelligence believed that the man *was* the plane and it gave Harry a host of abilities including enhanced reflexes, muscle control and an almost superhuman ability to sense danger. Sound familiar? All sorts of exciting adventures ensued. Actually they didn't. It's a wholly unremarkable fill-in story and I only mention it here because the plot bears some similarities to "Cyborg IV" by Martin Caidin. The original "Cyborg" novel was of course the first tale of Steve Austin and the direct inspiration for the TV series.

M.A.C.H. Zero returned for one last adventure in Progs 162 - 165. Dying from the effect of the  Hyperpower experiments, he had one final chance to rescue his son Tommy from an abusive foster-father before dying on Dartmoor after a battle with the army. With that final appearance it seemed that the Compu-puncture project was dead - and that was true until the spring of 1997...

Having won a landslide victory in the British General Election, Tony Blair realised that to make Britain great again he must perform the ultimate sacrifice and change forever. A sequence of Compu-puncture operations transform the Prime Minister and connect him to a computer intelligence known as Doctor Spin -  turning him into the first man to have Bio-Enhancement Link-Up via Artificial Intelligence Relays - he had became B.L.A.I.R. 1!

Yes it's a crude satire strip. Originally appearing as a one-off humourous update to M.A.C.H. 1 in the future-looking "3000 AD" supplement that accompanied the comics 20th birthday, it returned as a short series a few months later. As you can imagine it was somewhat controversial and attracted a lot of attention from the tabloid press. It was scripted by veteran Alan Grant and featured excellent fully painted artwork from rising star Simon Davis - and to be honest that's probably the best thing about it. It was a bit of a low point for 2000 AD. Thankfully B.L.A.I.R. 1 was killed off by 'reader demand' just sixty-odd issues later in June 1998, having endured just four short adventures. Rumours of a Donald Trump starring reboot are just fake news...

There are many other examples of the influence "The Six Million Dollar Man" has had on popular culture, but these are the ones that meant the most to me. Time for a another battle with Maskatron I think...

Honourable mentions:

• The Three Musketeers - How can you not love this film? Not only is it a worthy adaptation of the classic swashbuckling tale by Alexander Dumas, just look at that cast - Michael York. Oliver Reed. Frank Finlay. Richard Chamberlain. Charlton Heston. Faye Dunaway. Christopher Lee. Raquel Welch. Roy Kinnear. Just fabulous. No other version (except the sequel of course) has even come close.

• Pipkins - The fondly remembered children's TV show featuring animal puppets with regional accents. My memories are of sometimes coming home for lunch from my village school and watching this while I ate my sandwiches. Nowadays it seems fashionable to only talk about how moth-eaten, scary and deformed looking Hartley Hare, Pig and Topov the monkey were, but at the time I just loved the stories and the characters. This is from an era where kids shows could actually teach you things.

• Star Trek - The Animated Series - Yes it *is* canon and it's worthwhile for a whole host of reasons but particularly for alien crew members Arex and M'ress.

I Saw Elvis In A Potato Chip Once 6 - The X-Files 1.06 - Shadows

It's back to the adventures of Mulder and Scully and things that go bump in the night...

Episode 1.06 - "Shadows"

It's almost as if the makers of "The X-Files" have been thumbing through a battered copy of "The Junior Guide to the Paranormal" and thinking "...right, we've done UFOs and alien abductions and Bigfoot - what's next - ooohhh poltergeists!...". So what we get in episode six is a perfectly serviceable but incredibly generic "ghost" story that would only just have passed muster in an early 80s episode of "Tales of the Unexpected".

In fact it's so generic that within a few seconds of the start of the cold open when the glass paper weight moved, I immediately thought "Okay, so this is going to be either a ghost or telekinesis". Admittedly I did then think the writers had wrong-footed me when our hapless heroine was jumped by thugs at the cashpoint and then *they* wound up dead in a dumpster - but that quick twist is probably the only time the episode surprised me.

The real weirdness lies in the acting of all the supporting cast. I mean seriously - why is *everyone* behaving so oddly? If it was meant to heighten the atmosphere and the spookiness, then it failed, because all I kept seeing were strange affected performances. Firstly there's mysterious black guy in the morgue with his mono-syllabic delivery and dead-behind-the eyes stare. Then we get the matronly secretary and her passive-aggressive treatment of poor Lauren and to top it all off her deceased boss's partner goes from concerned colleague to serial killer in ten seconds flat (okay so he is the eventual bad guy, but it's bloody strange). That's without mentioning the old guy at the graveyard who looks a bit like the Cryptkeeper on a good day and Lauren's new boss at the very end being extremely forceful (way to inspire your new staff). It's all very peculiar.

The one bright spark is medical examiner Ellen Bledsoe, played by the late Lorena Gale (who I recall from "The Chronicles of Riddick". She's delightfully deadpan and sarcastic and definitely not in the mood to take any kind of crap from two wet behind the ears FBI agents who want to prove a dead guy still walks the Earth.

Things move along at a leisurely pace until we get to the confrontation between Lauren, the villains sent to do her in and whatever it is that's protecting her. The flashing lamps, thunder and lightning, fake blood and destruction of the living room are all a bit 1970s Hammer Horror and over the top, but it's worth it for Mulder's jaw-hitting-the-floor reaction when he bursts through the door to see the bad guy suspended in mid-air. Of course Scully doesn't arrive in time to see a damn thing.

To be fair there are some mildly interesting things going on, even after the denouement of the levitating knife trick and the reveal of the hidden floppy disk (which Scully misses once again because of a conveniently locked office door). We still don't get a definitive answer to the question of whether Howard Graves is really doing all this or if it's actually Lauren's latent mutant abilities coming to life because of all the stress she's under (I think I've read too many X-Men comics...). The problem is this is all surrounded by such a join-the-dots plot that you can predict exactly where its going to go next. Even Mulder and Scully's motivations seem to be on autopilot, as they take their default paranormal / rational positions - although for once Scully's insistence on Graves faking his own death and being in league with Lauren seem more far fetched than her colleagues wild theories.

Other thoughts and facts:

• Did people really still get  physical pay-checks in the 90s? I started work in 1984 and even then it was an electronic bank transfer.
• It's a clever trick Mulder pulls with his glasses and the finger print. Very smooth.
• I can't help but think that the other cases of "internal strangulation" that Mulder mentions would have been more interesting than this one. 
• How come the regular cops didn't think of looking at the camera footage from the cash machine? Shouldn't that have been the first thing they did? It's a lucky break that the thugs grabbed Lauren in full view.
• I'm not sure why Scully decides to tease Lauren with the whole "have you seen these men before?" routine. She also puts an awful lot of faith in a burry smudge that only *might* be another person in a photo. Sometimes she seems to wilfully ignore things right in front of her just so she can remain the paranormal sceptic.
• Being able to magically enhance a grainy surveillance image  - that's an X-file on its own.
• Lauren is a brave woman investigating the noise in her apartment. After all she's been through I'd have been a gibbering wreck.
• Elvis is alive ! I knew it. Apparently David Duchovny can't stand him.
• It's actually quite nice to see our pair doing some real FBI work with interrogations and statement taking, followed by a confrontation with those CIA-ish people conducting a bigger investigation into corporate espionage and  suspected terrorist arms shipments. It's almost an episode of NCIS: Los Angeles!

Overall all then this case was not particularly exciting, nor particularly frightening - and the real world terrorist elements seemed slightly shoe-horned in. It's a bit of a confused jigsaw. Maybe it would have been a bit more interesting if they'd gone down the route of the recipients of Howard Grave's organs being possessed, or Lauren turning out to be the reincarnation of his dead daughter. I'd consider it a bit of a step-up from "The Jersey Devil", but only just - and that's purely because there of the supposed paranormal elements.

Onwards...

The Doctor Who Show Reviews - Episode 13 (TARDIS Library 7)

Another whirlwind round of reviews from the weird and wonderful world of Doctor Who. Try say that three times fast! This is the text version of the podcast reviews I recorded for the "Doctor Who Show - TARDIS Library" episode released on 12th February 2017.

This time is going to be slightly different  - I'm playing catch-up with my Twelfth Doctor comic reviews, so I'll be covering issues 12 *and* 13 of the latest Year Two series. Don't worry, it will still be my usual in depth look, just two for the price of one. Plus I'm also branching out to take a listen to a series of audio stories concerning that secret organisation that's outside the government and beyond the police. Yes it's "Torchwood". But first - comics !

Twelfth Doctor  # 2.12

"Terror of the Cabinet Noir" Part 2. Writer Robbie Morrison. Artist: Mariano Laclaustra

We ended part one with the Doctor in 1695 in the company of the gutsy Julie D'Aubigny and narrowly escaping the grip of the sadistic Captain Verlock, who seemingly cannot die and appears to have some kind of moving blackness leaking from his eye sockets. Verlock is in turn employed by his eminence Cardinal Richelieu - whom the web of time says should have died 50 years ago. It's clear when Verlock reluctantly reports the Doctors escape back to the Cardinal that both men know far more than they should, since they talk of extraterrestrial technology, teleporters and DNA traces. Furious, the Cardinal sets his tame gargoyle creatures off to track down the pair of fugitives.

Meanwhile in the TARDIS, the Doctor analyses the black liquid left on Julie's sword from when she stabbed Verlock and identifies it as sentient dark matter fused with human genetic material. Wanting to find out more, he materialises the ship inside the 'Bibliotheque Mazarine' - Paris's foremost library. Confronted by the curator, who brandishes a large gun, the Doctor uses the psychic paper to convince him that they are really an angelic visitation from God and the frightened man begins to spill all he knows about the rise of Richelieu.

Via another flashback in the same scratchy sepia style as we had last issue, the Doctor and the reader learns that the zealous Cardinal created an infallible intelligence network - the Cabinet Noir - to intercept any correspondence that he deemed suspicious. All alchemical documents were housed in a secret "Black Library", never to be used - that is, until Richelieu decided to forestall his own imminent death and began to experiment with "necromancy". Opening a portal to a hellish dimension, he welcomed it's occupants into our world and since then has secretly ruled Paris with a cruel hand while not ageing a day, all the while waiting for his ultimate victory.

Just as he hands the Doctor the keys to the Black Library, the curator is killed by the arriving gargoyles. Julie D'Aubigny's  taunts goad them to attack and a frantic battle ensues. It is only when Julie uses the curators gun to blast the head off one of the monsters that they are revealed as robotic automatons. Automatons that can breath fire !

Dodging the bolts of flame, the Doctor discovers the door to the Black Library and drags Julie inside. Searching through astrological charts, he finds something important, but suddenly the gargoyles are back in force. In retaliation he uses the power of the sonic screwdriver to augment Julie's powerful opera singing voice, and the resulting shockwave shatters the creatures into pieces. As the Bibliotheque Mazarine is engulfed in flames, the pair escape back to the TARDIS. Those charts revealed that in two days time there will be a solar eclipse, plunging everything into shadow. That's when The Darkness will ,ale its move.

We then cut to the Palace of Versailles, where King Louis XIV is busy playing outdoor chess. Bursting in, the Doctor and Julie try to warn him that Richelieu is an "agent of a foreign power" with plans to seize control of France. The imminent 'Celebration of the Sun King' needs to be cancelled. Suddenly the King's eyes start to bleed blackness and a portal opens behind him containing Verlock, Richelieu and a host of tentacled, bug-eyed monstrosities. The Darkness has anticipated everything...

An action packed and revelatory issue then, with a cliffhanger that would have been difficult to predict. Time is seriously out of joint and although (I assume) there is going to have to be a kind of reset in the final part, I hope it's not at the expense of the storyline. We had quite enough of that with "Supremacy of the Cybermen".

I have to say I really enjoyed how the story flowed from scene to scene and the way the flashback was integrated. Robbie Morrison has written enough comics by now to know how to pace these things properly. Good Doctor Who also takes real history and tweaks it slightly and this is no exception. There really was a 'Cabinet Noir' where the letters of suspected persons were opened by officials before being sent on to their final destination - although it was not until Louis XIV successor that a separate office was created. Even Napoleon used it on occasions.

For once there was actually a decent use of the screwdriver as a sonic device. Far better to have it as an amplifier of sound rather than a magic wand that can do almost anything the user can imagine. I also liked the growing interplay between the Doctor and Julie D'Aubigny. He likes her far more that he lets on.  If I have one small niggle with this issue, it's that it was a shame the 'gargoyles' turned out to by robots. It would have been more in keeping with the Cthulhu 'monsters from another dimension'  feel if they had been...shape-changers for example.

Art and colour-wise it's more of the quality we've come to expect from Mariano and his team. I particularly liked the blank squiggles around the panel borders of the flashback to signify the presence of the darkness and how it's influence grew. The one odd illustration was a full page near the end as the Doctor and Julie race for the TARDIS through the burning library. The drawings are fine - it's the colours which seem totally different from the rest of the book. Normally there is this soft, almost translucent quality, but for this page the brightness seems to have been turned right up. I'm not sure if it is a printing error or the result of tight deadlines, but it does look somewhat out of place.

All in all, everything is set for an exciting conclusion in part three - which I'll take a look at in just a moment. But first, it's time for "Torchwood".

Last year the good folk at BBC Audio released a whole plethora of new audio material. There were also compilations of previously published stuff under the "Tales" banner. Alongside box sets for the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors, we also have "Torchwood Tales" - a collection of all the audio-exclusive dramas that came out between 2008 and 2012 (before Big Finish got the licence).  It's ten separate stories across multiple CD's - over eighteen hours of adventures featuring the vocal talents of the stars of the BBC television series.

I was lucky enough to get a review copy of this box set as an early Christmas present from BBC Audio, and over the next few months I hope to listen to all of the CD''s and give you my thoughts on how they turn out. Although I'm familiar with and have enjoyed many of the the "Doctor Who" audio-only stories from Big Finish and others, I've not heard any "Torchwood" ones before - so it will be an interesting to see how they compare.

I'll be honest, I watched the first series of "Torchwood" on television out of a sense of loyalty to the parent show and because I had originally enjoyed the character of Captain Jack Harkness. However after the initial excitement of  having a brand new spin-off of Doctor Who wore off, like many people  I struggled with the immensely smug and unlikeable characters, the at times appalling dialogue, the incompetent acting,  the mis-judged plots -  I could go on. Oh there were brighter points amongst the mediocre shlock of those first twelve episodes  -"Countrycide" was disturbingly nasty and "Random Shoes" was gentle and heartfelt. But beware Mr Chibnall - no matter how good you turn out to be as a show-runner on "Doctor Who", fandom will *never* forgive you for "Cyberwoman"!

Of course "Torchwood" did pick up slightly with season two and then amazingly turned into must-see TV for "Children of Earth", before taking the quickest nosedive in history with the overlong and frankly dull "Miracle Day". So I'll be honest, it was with some trepidation that I cracked open the case of "Torchwood Tales" and took out the first CD. Were these stories going to be season one bad or season three brilliant? Let's find out...

Torchwood - Hidden. Written by Steven Saville. Read by Naoko Mori

I've only come across Steven Saville's name before in connection with a couple of novels about the 2000 AD character 'Slaine', but looking at his bio he has written quite a lot - including books in the 'Warhammer' universe and various TV tie in stories.

The first thing to say is that this is not an audio play, it's an audio novel - a reading of a short story, complete with chapter breaks. After listening to so many Big Finish full-cast drama's, it took a bit of adjustment, as I don't really listen to audio versions of books, preferring the personal experience of hearing and imagining the characters in my own mind.

So anyway, what's the plot? Well the apparent murder of a mysterious scientist and philanthropist leads to Captain Jack Harkness being arrested and facing a plethora of difficult questions. The rest of the team are on their own trying to work out where he is and why a number of other seemingly unconnected people are also being killed. Plus how does this all tie to a fertility clinic, a seventeenth century alchemist looking for the secret of eternal life and a Templar-like secret society looking to silence anyone who gets in their way?

If at this point you are thinking "that sounds more 'Da Vinci Code' than Torchwood'" - you'd be right - and much like Dan Brown's novels, this story features small bursts of action interspersed between huge amounts of leaden historical exposition. The only real action highlights (and I use that term loosely) are a car chase sequence in which Ianto drives like a maniac and gets himself seriously injured and a "tense" scene in the clinic as Gwen and Owen try to avoid a couple of gun-wielding assassins.

Captain Jack is absent for most of the action as we cut back and forth to him in the police interrogation room and he makes a few quips before vanishing off stage again. The rest of the time it's business as usual with the rest of the season one team - with Owen being particularly unpleasant as usual. Ianto is the one that probably comes off best out of this.

The problem is that it's all so...flat. It meanders along, never really rising above mediocre. The team runs around a bit, look into a few things (the details of which I can't even remember) and then it all just gets muddled and fizzles out at the end. Had I dozed off? I found myself skipping back a couple of tracks just in case I'd missed an important climactic revelation. Nope. That's all there is. There's not even a real central villain - or I didn't notice one. The secret society guys are little more than hired thugs. Even Dan Brown had a few interesting characters.

It's not helped by an equally pedestrian reading from Naoko Mori. She does her best with a dodgy American accent for Jack and tries gamely to inject a modicum of excitement into the few action sequences but generally she sounds about as excited with the story as if she was reading a dictionary. I'm not surprised really when it's all either historically dry or modern day dull.

Not a great start then. But hope prevails, so...let's do another one.

Torchwood - Everyone Says Hello. Written by Dan Abnett. Read by Burn Gorman

Abnett I'm very familiar with from his vast body of work for 2000 AD, where he created "Sinister Dexter", from DC where he did an excellent run on the "Legion of Superheroes" with co-writer Andy Lanning (and is now winning a lot of plaudits for the 'Rebirth' series of "Aquaman") and from Marvel where the writing pair revitalised the cosmic side of that universe in a way that I don't think has been equalled since. He's also a prolific novelist, particularly in the 'Warhammer 40K' sandbox. I'm not a real lover of those books but I have read a few, and I do have to say that "Necropolis" in his 'Gaunt's Ghosts' series is one of the most intense and enjoyable future war novels I have ever read.

The title of the story gives you the core idea. One morning random people start saying "Hello" to complete strangers -  including Owen Harper - and revealing lots of personal details about their lives - likes, dislikes, secrets, private desires -  you get the idea. At the same time the team in the Torchwood Hub detect a powerful psychokinetic energy field that came through the Cardiff rift. As more and more people just stand around saying "Hello" and divulging their darkest secrets, normal life grinds to a halt. Fires break out. Cars crash. Those few that are unaffected by the phenomena start to be attacked by the rest - who become known as "greeters"  - and the city descends into mayhem.

Inside a garage on a disused lot, a strange light is pulsing and summoning some of the "greeters" into it's presence. They are to be 'Heralds' who will act as knowledge conduits between the light and mankind. But first. Torchwood must be disposed of...

So what did I think? Well I was right to trust Mr Abnett. This is more like it! Dan knows how to write interesting characters and much of the early running time is devoted to lots of little scenes with supposedly insignificant people. Little vignettes or slices of life that paint a lovely detailed portrait of the person as they are either affected by or confronted with this strange situation. As these scenes progress we start to meet a few of the major supporting characters, or come back to earlier ones that start to take on more significance. Take ex-convict Vic Royce for example. You start off thinking that he's just a random brutish taxi driver that is exposed to one of the "greeters", but then things take a left turn and he becomes very important to the plot.

The Torchwood main cast also come off really well under Abnett's pen...well apart from Tosh but then she's so bland I don't think even Alan Moore could turn her into a interesting character. Jack gets a lot more airtime in this one and we get inside his head a little too. As things progress, Jack is really at risk of being subsumed into the ranks of the "greeters" and there is a definite zombie-movie feel to things as the supposedly pleasant people turn nasty and start hounding our heroes with crude weapons. Never has such a simple single word sounded so frightening.

A big part of the success of this audio is the reading from Burn Gorman. Now I'm not one of his biggest fans, but with this he reveals that his portrayal of Owen Harper was probably hampered by poor choices by RTD and Chibnall when they created his character. Gorman really gets stuck into the story, adding dynamism and variety to all the various roles. His Welsh accents are excellent and it must be very difficult to come up with a hundred different ways to say "Hello", but he manages it and sounds like he is really enjoying telling the story.

Some might think that the ending comes a bit quick but I don't think it's out of step with the rest of the adventure. This is less about Torchwood and more about the little people that get caught up in the wake of big alien events - and I really liked that focus. I thoroughly enjoyed the two CDs and I'll make an effort to seek out any other Torchwood stories by Dan Abnett and hope that they are as good as this one.

More "Torchwood" next month hopefully. Now it's time to go back to our Doctor Who comics story in progress...

Twelfth Doctor  # 2.13

"Terror of the Cabinet Noir" Part 3. Writer Robbie Morrison. Artist: Mariano Laclaustra

Before the break we found out that King Louis XIV is in thrall to the other-dimensional menace known as "The Darkness" - hopefully nothing to do with the awful rock band from Suffolk. Let's see how the Doctor gets out of this one...

One point of note. Our colourist has changed for this issue to Hernan Cabrera. Is he Carlos's evil twin brother from an alternative dimension? Who knows.

So the Doctor taunts Richleau that all this 'darkness' and 'horror' stuff  doesn't frighten a Time Lord, but he just gloats about how the dark matter creatures have seen our light-infused universe and decided that we don't deserve it. When the dying Cardinal meddled with forces he didn't understand, he created a bridge that let them in, and now as the total eclipse of the sun begins, they will eradicate all life.

Seized by the black tendrils, the Doctor is thankfully saved by the blade of a certain swords-woman and he returns the favour with a repeat of the sonic amplifier trick which disorientates the possessed humans, enabling he and Julie to escape into the gardens of Versailles. Ducking musket shots, they dash into the King's maze where the TARDIS is hidden. Unfortunately they become separated and Julie is confronted by a cackling Captain Verlock, whisps of pitch black coiling from every orifice. The Doctor has vanished...

Sometime later in the Bastille Prison in Paris, we find Julie locked in a cell awaiting the call to be executed. The celebration of the 'Sun King' is in full swing and everyone is too busy having fun to pay attention to the actual orb in the sky. Led to the chopping block, Julie prepares to meet her fate, only to notice that the executioner is really the Doctor in disguise and he cuts her chains, just as the moon starts to cover the sun and Cardinal Richelieu appears wielding arcane energies like something out of a "Doctor Strange" comic.

Our favourite Timelord has a few tricks of his own up his sleeve though and he hands Julie an energy sword left on the TARDIS by a "swashbuckling captain I once knew" (I wonder who that could be ?).  As the total eclipse reaches its zenith, hideous Lovecraftian creatures erupt amongst the revelling crowds and begin to consume them.

Racing inside Notre Dame cathedral, the Doctor confronts his enemies in front of a swirling eddy, but the coils of dark matter knock the sonic screwdriver out of his grasp. Throwing her energy sword, Julie gives the Doctor just one chance to get the sonic back before she herself is captured by The Darkness.

It turns out the Doctor had been busy during her incarceration. The press of a control sets the TARDIS off through space and it creates a vortex, allowing the filtered light of the 'Saberhagen Quasar' - the brightest star in the universe - to shine down on Earth, counteracting the effects of the eclipse and dispelling the dark shadows.

Unable to resist the power of the light, The Darkness creatures dissolve. Verlock disintegrates and Cardinal Richelieu finds that time has at last caught up with him as he ages to death in an instant. Thankfully Julie and King Louis XIV were not transformed by The Darkness, only controlled, so they return to normal. It's over.

Julie decides that she will allow the Doctor to take her on a trip in the TARDIS, with him operating as her "butler", but he's really not sure. There's only one way to decide this - sword fight !!

So, in the end, to my surprise, time wasn't reversed (at least not in this story). Richelieu did live an extra fifty years and basically rule Paris. I guess the web of time has a way of absorbing these kind of minor anomalies and reasserting the proper flow of events afterwards. As to the Doctor's solution to the problem of the dark matter invasion, it might seem at first glance to be something he's pulled out of a hat, but he's a time-traveller - it could have taken days or even weeks for him to figure out what to do and then a quick hop back in the TARDIS brings him back just in time to replace the axe-man and save everyone. That's my theory anyway.

Criticisms? Well, It was a little disappointing to see the 'sonic screwdriver amplifying a singing voice' trick used twice is two consecutive issues. Also the scene where the Doctor and Julie are escaping from Versailles and end up looking for the TARDIS in the maze seemed a little odd. The Doctor appeared to have forgotten where he parked the old girl only a few minutes ago! Lastly, apart from allowing the Doctor to conduct a last minute rescue to further the plot, I'm not quite sure why Verlock put Julie in the Bastille instead of  immediately having her absorbed by The Darkness.

I really do like Julie D'Aubigny as a companion. She's kind of a 17th Century Leela crossed with Donna Noble - violent and feisty but with less Janus thorns and more boozing  - and a refreshing change from the simpering female companions that just think the Doctor is wonderful. I hope she sticks around.

The artwork for this final part is still generally excellent. Mariano's black tendrils wind across many pages, and he definitely draws nasty looking monsters from before the dawn of time. There are a few facial expression that are a little off, but I'm nit-picking. It's the change in colourist to Mirror Universe Cabrera where there is a noticeable difference. Maybe it is the same person and they have just changed their style or their software, but I just don't like the overall effect as much as previous issues by this team. It seems,...less three dimensional somehow.

These are all small points though in what has been a hugely enjoyable three issue romp. It's probably one of the best overall stories in this Year Two run.

Right - that's been far too much of me for one session. Time to go. I'll leave you with a quote from a the late great John Hurt who once said about his lack of belief in an afterlife: "I hope I shall have the courage to say, 'Vroom! Here we go! Let's become different molecules!" More next time.

Random Ravings 6 - Thank God it's Friday, Again

I'm trying to catch up on a number of other TV shows that I have unfortunately missed over the last year. Here's some quick thoughts on what I have seen so far.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D Season 3 (completed)
The biggest problem with this show is that there are too many episodes per season. If they cut down to say thirteen a year it would make the storylines more focused, the characters have more urgency and the padding less obvious. The Inhuman plot has been going on way too long and Grant Ward / Hive turned out to be a bit of a damp squib. Let's hope he's dead once and for all. I'll keep persevering though if only for Clark Gregg, who is entertaining no matter what he's doing.

Stranger Things Season 1 (four episodes in)
Yes I know I'm well past the zenith of the popularity and water-cooler chat for this show but I have to say - the hype was right. It's brilliantly acted, impeccably plotted, well paced and feels like I am mainlining every great 80s movie at once. I'm struggling to only watch one a week. The wife gave up when it started to become a bit scary (she's a real horror-phobe) but I'm loving every second.

Mr. Robot Season 1 (six episodes in)
This is a difficult one because for every great episode so far there has been one where is seemed to be going nowhere. The last one I saw with the shock twist regarding Shayla was excellent though. Thankfully Tyrell continues to be the oddest, most deviant corporate villain in recent memory, Christian Slater plays Christian Slater as if he's never been away but Eliot is at turns fantastically clever and frustratingly stupid. It does raise some interesting questions about big business and globalisation and I want to like the show but I'm not 'feeling it'' really. Still with only four episodes left of season one hopefully the pace will start to pick up.

Suits Season 6 (six episodes in)
I used to adore "Suits". After the end of "Boston Legal" it was the smartest, funniest legal drama on television and in Gabriel Macht they found a genuine star. The problem is, they wrote themselves into a corner with the plot about Mike being a fake lawyer, so they had to bite the bullet and get him found out and put in prison at the end of season five. It was a bold choice to start season six as an exact follow on from that moment rather than jumping forward in time, but I'm not convinced it was the right one.

Now the show has become even more insular with everything serving the attempt to get Mike out of jail quicker. It feels like all the characters do is argue with each other, Harvey Spector jumps through ever more elaborate hoops and seemingly can break the law whenever he feels like it and the once lovable Louis Litt has become a parody of himself to almost cartoon-like proportions. There is no way I am giving up on the show yet, but it's beginning to feel like it's best days are behind it.

Legends Of Tomorrow Season 2 (six episodes in)
It's cheesy. It's lightweight. It's characters are paper-thin. But ultimately it's just fun. This is super-heroics that harken back to more innocent, less cynical age. It was a shame they lost Wentworth Miller as Captain Cold, as his dry slow delivery of  every line was a highlight of season one and the lack of Arthur Darvill as Rip Hunter so far this year hasn't helped (although I know he'll be back at some point). I doubt I'll ever want watch it again, but it's harmless 'comfort food' television - and sometimes we all need that.

Daredevil Season 1 (five episodes in)
I'd really been looking forward to watching this and so far it hasn't let me down one bit. For me, Charlie Cox is perfect casting as Matt Murdoch and Vincent D'Onofrio makes a chillingly amoral Wilson Fisk. The fight scenes are extremely well choreographed and while there is a lot of violence (that 'head in the car door' sequence in episode four was brutal) it's not gone over the top. If I have one criticism it's that I'd like to actually see Matt use his 'powers'  more but maybe that will come with time. Thankfully they have not gone down the full Frank Miller route but seem to be combining the best of the various comic book runs across the decades. A straight tie with "Stranger Things" as my favourite of  this crop of shows.

Preacher Season 1 (five episodes in)
This is not the classic comic book. It may have the name. It may have the characters. It may even use some elements of the plots. But an awful lot has been changed. It's definitely only "inspired by the work of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon". Some of it is fine - I have no problem with Tulip as a black woman for example or the changing of the timeline of certain events, but other parts - I'm not so sure. Odin Quincannon should not appear this early, nor was he a resident of Anville. Where is Jesse Custer's tragic backstory relating to his hideous grandmother? (at the moment we seem to just have something about his dad also being a preacher). Oh and Joe Gilguin as Cassidy? He ruined "Misfits" for me and his hapless mugging is only just about tolerable here.

It's agonisingly slow in places. The Saint of Killers story in the Old West should be in every episode but only seems to pop up intermittently so you forget what happened previously. It feels like this is a six episode season stretched out to fill ten hours. Before you think it's all griping from me, there are positives. The scenery is stunning. There is a good mix of gore and weirdness and comedy. The fallout from Jesse telling Quincannon to serve God were brutally shocking. I have hopes that these first few episodes were all just scene-setting and the real story is going to start soon. Fingers crossed.