The 800 Day Project - Day 554 to 557 - Metamorphosis

Once upon a time, I decided to watch every episode of Doctor Who in order. One a day. Every day. All the way through from "An Unearthly Child" to "The Time of the Doctor" 800 episodes, including reconstructions. The "800 Day Project" was born...

Yes, this is still going. I've not missed a single day of viewing since I began on 1st January 2014. As I write this, I'm a mere handful of episodes from the finish line. Success is so close I can almost taste it. Sadly it's not been such a good story with the blog, but then the two were never meant to run in tandem - I just didn't expect to get quite so far behind.

So, I've abandoned any flailing attempts to catch up. Forget about covering seasons or eras - instead I'm going to tackle stories as and when the mood takes me in between all the other nonsense I like writing about. It might take me another 800 days to get there, but at least the time pressure is off, which was spoiling part of the fun of the whole thing. I'm also not going to repeat the work of countless others and do insightful critical reviews of a whole serial - just touch on a few points I liked and concentrate more on the memories and feelings I associate with the stories.

The last proper 800 Day Project post (here) was in August 2015 where I said farewell to "my" Doctor, Tom Baker. That means it's the turn of Peter Davison to go under the microscope. It's the beginning of a bold new era for the show, and Davison's tenure was concurrent with another significant moment in my personal history with Doctor Who. This was the first incarnation of the Time Lord where I had every single episode recorded onto videotape.

 I wrote quite a while back (here) about the first episodes I ever recorded on the mighty Philips Video 2000, but by the time the Fifth Doctor debuted, my dad had succumbed to market forces and plumped for a shiny new (albeit rented) VHS machine. Now I can't remember exactly which make it was but it was definitely a top loading, noisy, clunky thing that you had to treat with respect or your precious tapes would be gobbled up by the hungry innards. The first story that had pride of place in my video library was of course:

 Castrovalva

It's probably far to say that this was the most important regeneration since Hartnell into Troughton. It was the first time in over seven years that the show had featured someone other than Tom Baker in the lead. So indelibly had Baker stamped his mark on the role that he *was* the Doctor (and for some he still is). Not only did the story have to introduce a new face for the Time Lord to an entire generation, but it had to complete the loose "Master" trilogy begun with "Keeper of Traken", flesh out the companions that had only been introduced a few sort episodes ago *and* tell a good story into the bargain.

It also has to deal with the now obligatory regeneration crisis. Ever since the first few minutes of Pertwee falling out of the TARDIS in "Spearhead From Space", it has been established that the Doctor never has an easy time of it when he regenerates. Other Time Lords seen to be able to change easily, sometimes even on a whim - but for the Doctor it's always a stressful and dangerous time. Here that theme of confusion and instability is taken to extremes when it looks like the Doctor might not survive the process at all.

Some might complain that this leads to interminably dull scenes set within the TARDIS as the Doctor's personality seems to unravel as fast as his multi-coloured scarf. Personally - I absolutely bloody loved it. Davison is immediately likeable in the role, meandering through the corridors, impersonating his predecessors and referencing previous companions and adventures. Plus - who doesn't want to see more of the rooms in the TARDIS ? It's interiors had been possibly some of the most unexplored areas of Doctor Who lore. I remember at the time being fascinated by every roundel and white corridor. Not to mention the wardrobe and the Zero Room.

Much of the story continues the Christopher H Bidmead preference for featuring strong science-based concepts - charged vacuum embodiments, the laws of thermodynamics, recursion, the "hydrogen inrush", etc. It also has its fair share of  technobabble too - block transfer computation (although one could argue that maths is basically behind all of reality), a referential differencer, telebiogenesis - and ambient complexity allegedly being the cause of many regeneration failures. The thing is, hard science or made up nonsense, it didn't matter to me. I was a child who grew up in the twin worlds of science fiction and science fact -  equally at home with the hyper-reality of E.E. 'Doc" Smith or the physical wonders of the universe around us, as so beautifully espoused by the genius that was Carl Sagan (although some of Bidmead's stuff is more computer science than cosmology). It was all fantastic.

I also loved the worlds conjured up by my favourite fantasy authors and when we eventually get through the lush fern-covered undergrowth to Castrovalva itself, there is definitely a touch of the fairytale about the city. The production design is uniformly excellent, blending distinctive 18th century Dutch costumes with interweaving corridors, multiple levels and and weird angles to build something truly unique looking. Pervading everything is a sense of peace and tranquillity, edged with a tinge of the unreal. There are also the little touches that paint the idea of a living breathing society - the gossipy women in the square, the put upon Mergreve, the ever questioning Shardovan -  I was quite disappointed when it all turned out to be an illusory trap created by the Master. By the way, this is the one story where the Master's disguise genuinely works - I was actually shocked when the Portreeve revealed his true face, but then again the script had cleverly been trying to convince you that Shardovan was the bad guy.

Of course underpinning all this (and I guess the core of this post) is the work of graphic artist Maurits Cornelis Escher. I was 14 years old when this story was first transmitted and what little art appreciation faculties I had were primarily focussed on the SF work of Chris Foss and Jim Burns (although I'll leave you to figure out why his illustrations in Harry Harrison's huge format "Planet Story" had such an impact on my teenage years...there's an idea for a blog post in there somewhere...). But even at this young age, Escher fascinated me - the way he played with perspective and illusions of infinity and impossible locations - it was mesmerising. I'd seen an image of his "Ascending And Descending" lithograph somewhere (it may have been an SF magazine) and had investigated further by getting a book from my local library. It was like a window opened in my mind...

Escher was born in 1898 in Leeuwarden, Netherlands. He spent most of his formative years at a school in Arnhem, but was a very sickly child and did poorly at most academic subjects. However he excelled at drawing and at age 21 attend the Haarlem School of Architecture and Decorative Arts - also learning how to make woodcuts and studying decorative arts.

In his 20s and 30s he travelled extensively across Europe, living for several years in Rome with his wife Jetta and their first son. It was while visiting the Alhambra palace in Spain, and it's geometric decorative mosaics, that he became obsessively fascinated with mathematical tessellations and  his work began to take on the form that he is so widely recognised for today -  complex, interlocking, slowly mutating, designs that bleed off into infinity.

In the late 1950s this influence was melded with his interest in unusual perspectives and multiple points of view and he began to produce some of his most famous "geometries" - work featuring never ending staircases and unusual gravitational perspectives. He was also deeply interested in impossible objects like the "Penrose triangle" and the Mobius strip, which appeared frequently in things like his perpetual motion "Waterfall".

I poured over the book, absorbing every image - every twisting, distorting, mind-bending drawing. I loved how Escher played with levels of reality with his "Drawing Hands", and "Three Worlds" and I stared for what seemed like hours at the ever-changing tessellations of the "Metamorphosis" series of woodcuts. (Years later, a framed print of "Day And Night" would have pride of place on the living room wall of my first house).  Even today I still get a thrill when I see any of his many works on display. I think Escher's special way of thinking combined all of the things that my young mind was grasping towards - mathematical repetitions, duality, endless sets of things, obsessiveness (is that the 'collector' gene in me?), the idea that what we see as "reality" is possibly an illusion, the sheer power of art to depict the worlds of the fantastic (that's definitely comic books). His art led me onto surrealism - Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte and Max Ernst - and back in time to Hieronymous Bosch. I have a lot to thank him for.

Back in the tranquil world of the television version of Castrovalva, reality is breaking down and folding in on itself. You can see what the production team were aiming for - a televisual recreation of  "Ascending And Descending" - and they did their very best with the technology available. When I first saw this sequence I thought it was astonishing, but time has not been kind and it's far less impressive to my modern eyes. Still, at least they made the attempt and it's sold by the performances of the cast.

There's not a lot more I can say. Castrovalva is one of the best debuts for a Classic Doctor. Davison's "pleasant, open face" and more human-like attitude might be a significant change from the alien kookiness of Tom Baker, but he is still recognisable the Doctor, even at this early stage. I think a lot of my fondness for this story stems from the large number of times I watched it  after transmission, the feeling I had of being old enough to truly appreciate the start of something new and exciting and of course the fact that one of my favourite artists was represented so vividly.

Right, I'm off to stare at some transforming reptiles...

Collector's Dream 4 - Thriller

So much for a weekly posting schedule. Ah well, quality not quantity is better apparently. Anyway this week I'm delving back into my comic book archives to pull out a series that was short-lived but burned very brightly and left a lasting image. A series that climbed to stratospheric heights immediately yet crashed and burned just as swiftly. It's time for a :

Thriller

Back in the early 1980s, DC comics  was experimenting with series sold only through the "direct market" (read my post on "Mars" for some of the history of this initiative). We had already seen things such as "Camelot 3000", "The Omega Men" and the Frank Miller series "Ronin". But in November of 1983 DC took a real risk and released issue one of "Thriller" - created and written by DC staffer Robert Loren Fleming (his first published comics work) with art by Trevor Von Eeden (hot off of Batman and Green Arow).

Roughly fifty years in the future, Satellite News cameraman Daniel Grove and his correspondent twin brother Ken investigate a hostage situation masterminded by the masked terrorist Scabbard (so named because he keeps a huge sword in a grotesque sheath stitched into the skin of his back). When they are caught, Dan is forced to record his own brothers beheading. Slipping into depression and blaming himself for Ken's death, Dan decides to end his own life by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge....but is stopped when the image of a ghostly rainbow-haired woman appears in the sky above him. She is Angie Thriller. Able to see the future, she needs Daniel to become a member of her group of agents - the "Seven Seconds" - and save the world from unusual and unnatural menaces.

Directed to head for their headquarters in the 'Trinity Building', Dan encounters each of the other "Seven Seconds" -

Beaker Parish - a nine foot tall  life form created in a test tube who is also a priest with physic abilities.
Crackerjack - a young Honduran pickpocket.
Data - the son of the President of the USA, interfaced with with his computer system built into a limo which he can never leave.
Proxy - an actor who after suffering a disfiguring accident while freebasing drugs, created synthetic spray on skin for covert assignments.
Salvo - Angie Thriller's brother and a superhumanly expert marksman
White Satin - able to disrupt a persons physiological and mental state with just a touch.

- before meeting Angie's husband Edward Thriller. It turns out that he had been conducting genetic experiments and when it went wrong, became amalgamated with his wife, so that only one of them can manifest at a time - he in flesh and she in spirit. Despite losing her solid body, Angie gained the ability to become part of inanimate objects and see potential futures. She can also merge with her brother Tony (Salvo) due to their similar genetic structure - often appearing as in a face in his palm or helping him perform seemingly superhuman stunts.

(“Only flesh wounds! Only out-patients! I won’t kill a fly - so don’t ask me")

This was the pulp adventures of the Shadow or Doc Savage seen through the lens of science fiction and superheroes - without the day-glo colours or lurid costumes. But it was also a tale of family and loyalty and deep affection. The team had their own encounter with arch-villain Scabbard when he kidnapped the president -  allowing Dan some closure over his brother's death -  and then went on to meet what appeared to be multiple clones of Elvis.

Set outside DC continuity and with more sophisticated and mature storylines, it was an attempt at a series more akin to the Vertigo books that would come later than the colourful adventures of Superman and his pals. It was also way ahead of its time in both terms of storytelling and art.

The creators were trying to do something ambitious and innovative, and in the main they succeeded, creating a comic that could sit alongside the contemporary graphic storytelling of today. There were no easy answers, no spoon feeding of the plot. Significant events happened off panel or between issues. Readers had to figure things out for themselves or learn as the characters did. Von Eeden's art was a tour-de-force of unusual camera angles, twisting panel layouts, shifting perspectives and extreme close ups. This was mature storytelling before the "British Invasion" most famously embodied by the Alan Moore run on "Swamp Thing" or the arrival of "The Dark Knight Returns" and "Watchmen". It was chaotic and strange and cutting-edge and often very hard work. 1980s comics had never seen a series like Thriller and it's fair to say even if I didn't understand it all, I definitely loved it.

Sales were strong for those first couple of issues, but the problem was, Thriller's innovation and style was part of it's problem. Readers complained of being too confused. The creators passion for building something memorable on every page was perhaps stymied by their lack of experience. As writers elsewhere have noted, it became a paradox - at once both brilliant and exasperating. 

Behind the scenes, tensions were building. By issue four, Fleming and Von Eeden were increasingly dissatisfied and stressed and there were changes in inker and editor. An unpleasant and some would say abusive incident at DC's offices left Von Eeden feeling infuriated and emotionally betrayed, but he soldiered on even though he was depressed and his enthusiasm was waning. The quality of his art was suffering too - with some strange artistic decisions, such as issues drawn at the same size as the printed comic book pages. Things were starting to fall apart. 

With issue seven, after apparent artistic differences between himself and others who worked on the book, Fleming wrapped up his storyline (fairly satisfactorily) and it was announced that he was gone. Just as he was getting started, he walked away. This comic that was so much a product of it's creators was summarily handed over to Bill DuBay (ex Warren publishing) - a writer who had no connection to the series or it's characters. Nowadays when the writer who had the original vision wants to leave, the book is often cancelled (just look at "Sandman"), but back in the '80s this was still very much work for hire and all the rights belonged to DC. 

Sadly with issue eight the quality took an nosedive. All the things that made the comic so interesting - the slow pace, the oblique storytelling, the unusual art - were pretty much absent. DuBay was seen by editor Alan Gold at the time as a steadier pair of hands who could bring the book back from the brink - he had made no secret of his dislike for Fleming's unique style. Everything that Fleming had done, DuBay seemed to do the opposite. His version of "Thriller" was going to be as different as possible from what had come before. Trevor Von Eeden hung on for this first transitional issue but his heart wasn't it it and all the flair and boldness that was evident in issue one was now wiped away with something far more traditional. Then he too was gone.

The comic limped on for a further four months with art by Alex Nino, but as with DuBay, although it was beautiful to look at, he wasn't really suited to the subject matter. Oh it wasn't out and out terrible and DuBay played with some interesting ideas, such as the then prevalent fear of worldwide nuclear destruction. But it wasn't the "Thriller" I had initially fallen in love with. 

In more recent years Alan Gold has admitted in interviews that at the time he just didn't "get" what Fleming and Von Eeden  were doing and how different and ground breaking it truly was. He wishes he had listened to them.  Bizarrely, he also revealed that a certain Alan Moore had volunteered to take over as writer but Gold turned him down! It makes one wonder what Moore would have done with the property. It certainly would have been excellent but it still wouldn't have been the vision of it's creators. 

Commercially "Thriller" was seen as a failure, with just a dozen poorly selling issues to its name. But artistically it's legacy is far greater. It is still fondly remembered by a host of today's creators and cited as an influence on them. Those early issues were undoubtedly way ahead of their time and a trailblazer for some of the creator-owned comics to come from the "big two" publishers. Sure we had the like's of Dave Sim's "Cerebus" and Matt Wagner's "Mage" and Baron and Rude's "Nexus" published at around the same time, but Marvel and DC were slow to realise the changing tide. If it had been released just ten years later during the height of Vertigo comics, I could be telling a very different story. and far more people would have heard of Angie Thriller and her Seven Seconds

"Thriller" is one of those series that I can't bear to part with. Every so often I will get those scant few issues out of the box and marvel at them. I'd love to see Fleming and Von Eeden mount a revival in today's more forgiving environment but sadly it's unlikely to happen. 

If you can, pick up the back issues and try it out for yourself. 

The Idiot's Lantern 2 - The Secret Life Of Machines

It's been a good few months since the first of these TV-related posts, so I thought it was high time I did another. I wasn't going to cover this next programme for a while (there are so many other choices) but thinking about it, it does fit in nicely with the first piece about "Connections". It's also a series which despite being over 25 years old should be required viewing for almost everyone, since we take so may things for granted nowadays and have almost no idea how they actually work. Sure there have been other shows since that try to show you where modern objects come from ("How It's Made" being a prime example) and the rise of the Interweb means that if you want to find something out it's just a few clicks away. But back in the late 80s / early 90s there was nothing quite like this quintessentially British show and it's eccentric presenters.

The Secret Life Of Machines

The series was the brainchild of Tim Hunkin. Hunkin is an engineering graduate from Cambridge who is also a prolific cartoonist, having been published from the early 1970s onwards. He had a regular strip in The Observer newspaper called "The Rudiments of Wisdom" for an incredible 14 years from 1973 to 1987. Each intricately drawn cartoon was a wealth of obscure advice, odd facts and weird and wonderful information, as well as crazy tricks and practical experiments. How does hypnosis work? What is chocolate made of? What do crocodiles eat for lunch? Think of a question, and Tim had probably provided the answer at some point.

Spinning out of his cartoon series, Hunkin came up with the idea of a television version where he  could really get to grips with a variety of everyday machines, pull them apart and explain what made them tick. If James Burke's "Connections" traced the historical connectedness of scientific and technological discoveries, this series would revell in the sheer fun of explaining how things worked.

Tim's co-presenter was special effects guru Rex Garrod, who would later go on to create the radio controlled car that starred in the childrens TV series "Brum", and build several entrants for the early series of technological fight show "Robot Wars" (a series which has just been announced as coming back in 2016).

After touting the idea round a number of broadcasters, it was finally snapped up by Channel 4 and the first episode was broadcast on 15th November 1988. In each packed half-hour episode the pair would record the show from Tim's garden shed and using obsolete technology, giant working models, animation and (sometimes dangerous) experiments, explain the innovations behind the inner workings of the household gadgets we use everyday and that have come to define modern life.

(Rex on the left, Tim on the right)

It was a real labour of love for Tim and Rex, with none of the glossy sheen and slick editing of modern science shows. The topics covered were wide ranging and frequently went off at odd tangents to look at related technologies, with the pair attempting to create their own home-made versions of the device - sometimes with mixed results. If an experiment went wrong (and they often did), they showed it. At the end of many shows they built a giant sculpture / version of the machine under discussion (such as a huge mound of television screens , which they then set fire to).

Across three series and eighteen episodes the presenters looked at a wide array of everyday objects from vacuum cleaners, washing machines and televisions, to the internal combustion engine and the radio to the photocopier and the fax machine. The mixture of homemade Heath Robinson-esque creations, self deprecating humour and sheer infectious charm of the duo made these shows some of the best educational television - and possibly the best television full stop - of the late 80s / early 90s.

Of course a few of the items covered are now obsolete. It's particularly interesting to to see how far we have come with office equipment like word processors and photo copiers in the last 20+ years for example. I remember the days when graphical user interfaces and things like Windows were the stuff of science fairs. We didn't get our first office PC until 1986 and even then it was only a DOS-based green screen system with very little memory.

When I first discovered the show, I fell completely in love with it - but one episode in particular resonated hugely and even when I had recorded over my copies of everything else, this one remained in my collection for many years. It was of course the story of the machine that has made the most impact in my life -  "The Secret Life of the Video Recorder". My favourite part was, when discussing the importance of audio tape which led to the invention of video tape, Tim and Rex showed how they could create their own audio recording out of nothing more than sticky tape and powdered rust. I was astonished at what they had accomplished and how good the quality was.We could all be inventors!

Even now, more than twenty years later there is still an interest in the show, as it is so fondly remembered by so many people. Usually with this kind of niche programme, copies only exist in individuals private off-air collections and VHS or DVD copies would command premium prices on eBay. But Tim Hunkin is a real visionary and encourages people to share everything across the internet. After all, he did this in the first place for the love of science, not for financial gain. Thanks to p2p sharing and some excellent websites by Tim and others, there are are a number of places which have archived lots of information about the show, it's background and the episodes themselves - far more than I could describe in one small blog post. Plus the series is available in it's entirety on YouTube. It's also why I can happily embed my favourite episode right here:

If you want to see more (and I really, really encourage you to do so - it's fascinating stuff) then here are the links you need:

Your first port of call should of course be Tim Hunkin's own website, which has tons of stuff about his work, the machines he has built (and where you can find them) - plus the TV series itself. Tim also has dedicated sites for his "Rudiments of Wisdom" strips and his "Experiments" book. The latter is a lot of fun for kids and adults alike.

The "Secret Life of Machines" website gives even more information plus a list of places you can stream or download the series from, although it hasn't been updated in a while so a few of the links are dead now.

By far the best place I've found for viewing all 18  episodes is www.secretlifeofmachines.net

If you have not seen any of these shows then do have a look for them. You'll be so glad you did.

The Book Tower 6 - Winterhill Series 4 - The Rise of the Fall by Iain Martin

When you are four books in to a continuing series, it could be easy to get into a familiar pattern and rest on your laurels with more of the same. So how do you keep things fresh? If you are Iain Martin, you do it by completely shaking up your status quo and pulling out the proverbial rug from underneath the feet of both your lead character and your readers...

A quick recap for those who can't remember my review of book three - "Bad Company" - back in September 2015. Oh and a spoiler warning for the next few sentences. When we last left the adventures of the enigmatic but resourceful Professor Rebecca Winterhill, we were faced with three separate 'cliff-hangers'. Maddy Taliferos has for some reason attempted to pull of the diamond theft of the century, been caught in the act and now awaits to hear if she will spend ten years in the notorious Bloodgate prison. Tareku has been revealed as an imposter sent to spy on Winterhill and keep her alive for an unknown master (although the reader knows it's the Tick-Tock Man). After the ensuing fight he was left drifting in the vacuum of space. As for Rebecca herself - she's lost the time/space machine called the Slider and is set for destinations unknown with the help of her friend The General.

What's quite clear from the start of book four is that we are not going to get a swift reset back to the familiar settings of the previous volumes - in fact the opening scene makes you wonder if you are in the right book series at all. The Slider is still missing and Winterhill is no closer to finding it, even with the loan of a sleek ship from The General and a purchase of a powerful AI wrapped in the skin of an orange that has constant - and vocal -  lustful thoughts about her naked body.

Let's take a look at each of the episodes in turn:

The first story "The Song of the Shriek" reunites Rebecca with an old government friend and an even older enemy. There is a distinct 'Alien" vibe as they creep around the innards of an apparently abandoned artefact drifting in space, just waiting for something horrible and dead and rotting to leap out of the dark. If the Arachana are Winterhill's Daleks, then The Shriek are definitely her Cybermen, with one scene echoing the appearance of the silver monsters in "Tomb of the Cybermen" (although some of you might also be reminded of "Genesis of the Daleks" at another point in the story.).

What's also enjoyable is that with each new appearance of his two key monsters, Iain is drip feeding a little more about their origins and motivations. This time we find out that The Shriek may be much more that just grisly animated cadavers and that the reason for their attacks could be of humanity's own making - we poked them first. I'm sincerely hoping that at some point in future novels we get to visit the home world of The Shriek, as there is a lot more to explore with these creatures. I also appreciated the commentary on needless bureaucracy - the whole universe may be at risk but it still needs to trickle up via line managers. The more the future changes, the more it stays the same.

"The (Second) Clock of the Long Now" is described by Iain on his website as a good old-fashioned heist story - and he's not wrong. It has more twists and double-crosses than "Ocean's Eleven", so I can't reveal much without spoiling the surprises. It also has no Winterhill in it for long stretches, instead focussing on the exploits of slightly ineffectual criminal Jonni Blaid and his lovely but deadly wife Savannah. It's almost a "what if" story, where my favourite literary master criminal, 'Slippery' Jim Di Griz, the Stainless Steel Rat, is instead a hen-pecked bounty hunter completely in thrall to his domineering spouse. You do feel sorry for the little guy as he fumbles his way through the story, narrowly avoiding his own demise.

Talking of master criminals, it's great to see an extended cameo from the deliciously urbane Maxymylyan DeVere - I can't be the only one who wants to read about the Infinity Spoon caper. I'm not sure I'd want to visit Elphick's World though, when it's only positive traits seem to be that it's a good place to take a dump and has genuine ham-fisted bun vendor's.

The most amazing thing about this story (and this is totally down to my own ignorance) is that the "Clock of the Long Now" is a real thing.  I just thought Iain had come up with a really cool SF idea. I'd heard of the concept of "Deep Time" and the building of incredibly accurate atomic clocks, but this project to build a mechanical clock that will last 10,000 years had passed me by.

There are apparently four prototype clocks in existence - three smaller ones in the Science Museum in London and the Long Now centre in San Francisco and a full scale clock in Texas - funded (as Iain says in his novel) by Jeff Bozos, founder of Amazon. Producer and  ambient music innovator Brian Eno was the one who came up with the name. Fantastic stuff!

"There Is Nothing You Could Ever Say To Me Now That I Could Ever Believe" not only wins the prize for longest title in the series so far, but also for completely wrong-footing me. I thought going in that it would be a final conversation between Maddy and her turncoat lover Tareku (of course I assumed he would survive that cliff-hanger) - an emotional character piece that revealed just much the youngest daughter of Old Man Talifero had been affected by things.

While the story does give us another welcome visit to the Taliferos clan, it certainly didn't go in the direction I expected. It's the wedding of the year and the culmination of a lot of the family's simmering plotlines. It feels like a Talifero series finale in it's own right in some ways. In fact, I think Iain had memories of a September 2003 episode of the UK's most famous London based soap opera in his mind when a certain character turns up:

"He had thinning brown hair and eyes that shone with anger, power and controlled ferocity. The skin beneath them was loose, puffy, beginning to sag. He wore a crisp black leather jacket over a grey shirt and dark trousers. 'Hello Princess' he said."

Who does that sound like to you?

"Echelon Red and the River in Space" is the next episode. Despite sounding like a late 90s Marvel superhero (all glowing eyes, spiked shoulder pads and pockets everywhere) it's actually concerned with what appears to be the opening salvo from a secret alien terrorist organisation. It's a new strand to the ongoing saga and much like the very best TV series, Iain seems to be opening different and interesting doors even as he closes off old ones.  Of course the story also features hideous slug creatures, a couple of new alien species and the inevitable meeting of the two current men in Winterhill's life - which doesn't go well. Oh, and a river. In Space.

By the way, "ECHELON" is allegedly a code name for a multi-country global surveillance system for the interception of private and commercial communications. Scary stuff.

As much as the action propels the story forward, it's the dialogue which really sparkles here. There's a playful sarkiness between the three main human characters that I really liked. and as always there are a few Doctor Who quotes thrown in for good measure, including ones from the 10th anniversary story and the first episode of the 2005 revival. If I have any criticism, it's that the way to defeat the bad guy is telegraphed a little to obviously which means there was no real sense of surprise when it is used. Finally, I have to ask - exactly what colour is electric fudge?...

In "The Last of The First" it's a welcome return for Winterhill's nemesis, the machiavellian Qalqavekkian and this time he really is utterly nuts. Leaving her two male companions to continue their bickering (that missing Empress plot line is going to come to the fore sometime soon isn't it Iain?) Rebecca makes a deal with another kind of devil in her continuing hunt for the Slider craft. Structurally this story really feels like it's the big epic scale season finale. There are new vista's, multiple locations, sudden twists and giant versions of returning monsters. Long-hinted-at backstory is finally revealed and there are losses on all sides. I can't but help continue the Doctor Who analogies and if Qalqavekkian  is the Master, then The First are the Timelords - and we all know what happened when *they* came back.

It's also the longest (and best) story in the book, helped perhaps by the fact that it's broken into numbered parts. I could really imagine a rising crescendo of music and the screen fading to black at the end of each one with a "to be continued next week" flashing up on the screen. Events build towards an exciting climax from which there is no coming back. Things really have changed forever - and I for one am glad to see it, as it can only mean very interesting times are ahead for our heroine.

But there is still one more story to go. It's called "Ngeretha" (which is a Kikuyu word) and I'm going to tell you... absolutely nothing about it - apart from the fact that it's told mostly from a first-person perspective and that it sees Winterhill in a very strange situation and completely out of her depth. I may have figured out what the word means but I've only hesitant guesses as to why. There *are* ties to the other major themes of this fourth series but not in the way you might think. It's a bold experiment and it all ends with... No. I'm not going to say. This story is best experienced completely cold. I've no idea where things will go from here.

In conclusion, it's another rousing set of adventures for our favourite amnesiac. I think Iain has really progressed as a writer with this latest volume, but to be honest I feel that the longer stories work better than the shorter ones. I was just getting into the episode about The Shriek for example, when it stopped. P.T. Barnum may have said, "Always leave them wanting more" and I wanted more, goddammit ! I actually think that Iain should break out of the "episode" format and go for it and write a full length novel next time. There is every indication here that it would be a extremely successful. Let's hope it's not too long before we find out.

Iain Martin is on Twitter @theIainMartin and the Winterhill series website is here. Iain's fantastic podcast (now with added Tudor Beamage) , Five Minute Fiction is here.

Collector's Dream 3 - Mars

This week I am going to look back at a perhaps lesser known 1980s comic book classic, but as always with these things I think it's good to provide a little background information and personal historical context...

I think I first discovered colour US comics while on annual family holidays in the UK in around 1978 / 1979. These were the days when newsagents and mini-supermarkets and those shops selling holiday souvenirs all had a rack of comics tucked away at the back (usually at ground level). It was predominately Marvel - titles such as "Power Man and Iron Fist", "Marvel Two-In-One", "Shogun Warriors", "Machine Man", "Spider-Woman" - all selling for something like 20p each, or sometimes bundles of ten for a pound. Pocket money prices. To eleven year old me this was pure gold. Of course I was aware of many of the characters from the black and white reprints in Marvel UK titles such as the justly famous "Captain Britain" and "Star Wars" weeklies, but this was in colour, and not cut into five page chunks.

Those reprints included some of my favourite strips - "Rom:Spaceknight" and "Micronauts"  - but now I could get the original comics (I still have all my copies in a box in the loft, although I had to go back and fill in the first few issues).  I scooped up everything I could find and rooted out local newsagents closer to home who also stocked US titles. My collection started to grow.

Then two things happened that changed everything - the growth of the  "Direct Market" and the rise of "independent" comic book publishers. The Direct Market basically meant that retailers could bypass existing book shop and newsagent distributors to make purchases direct from the publishers. However the trade-off for more favourable ordering terms was that the stock was non-returnable. Retailers had to make a gamble with their predictions for customer demand, although surplus stock could be held for future potential sale. The Direct Market led to a big rise in speciality shops where readers could get a wider range of comics quicker and in better condition. If you missed a month you would likely be able to find it amongst the extensive back issues.

The emergence of this business model and the larger number of comic shops also meant that publishers could target their retail audience, rather than relying on the somewhat scattershot approach of a newsagent who didn't understand the product, just shoved it out of the way and sent it back for a refund the next month. In the very early 1980s, Marvel saw the potential of the Direct Market and starting putting out a number of titles aimed specifically to capitalise on it. They could print fewer copies, put them only in comic shops and sell out of everything, rather than having tons of returns. "Dazzler" was one of the first and I clearly remember when "Micronauts", "Ka-Zar The Savage" and "Moon Knight" switched to being direct only in 1982. Yes there was a small price rise but you also got more pages and the stories just seemed to become more complicated and grown up. The fact that I was heading towards being fifteen years old at this time might have had something to do with it too. Those old titles are still some of my favourites.

The ability to have a smaller print run and target it at a fan audience also meant that others could get into the comic book game other than just the "big Two" of Marvel and DC. There had always been alternative publishers in the market place - the likes of Charlton, Fawcett, EC and Archie - but now things exploded. Anyone could start their own comic book company and in a couple of years there would be dozens of publishers and hundreds of titles. Pacific Comics were one of the first Direct Market publishers  - releasing titles in such as Jack Kirby's "Captain Victory and the Galaxy Rangers" and the initial issues of Mike Grell's "Starslayer" in 1981 / 1982. There were many others like Capital and Eclipse and Renegade, but I want to deal with a publisher who took things to a different level (for me anyway)  - First Comics.

First Comics was the brainchild of Ken Levin and Mike Gold. Based in Evanston, Illinois they launched in 1983 with "Warp" - an adaptation (and continuation) of the 1970s SF stage play - written by Peter B Gillis and drawn by Frank Brunner. It told the tale of bank clerk David Carson, who is transported to the mystical realm of Fen-Ra where he is tasked by the sage Lugulbanda to battle alongside leather-clad Amazon warrior Sargon against the evil Prince Chaos. So far, so superheroes in a fantasy setting. It was okay as an alternative to Marvel. But far, far better was to come.

In quick succession, First Comics released a range of innovative, unusual and above all successful titles. Characters which are still fondly remembered to this day - Howard Chaykin's "American Flagg", Mike Grell's "Jon Sable, Freelance", John Ostrander and Tim Truman on "Grimjack" (god how I love that series), "E-Man" drawn by Joe Staton. The list of hits goes on and on. They took over publishing "Dreadstar" by Jim Starlin, "Nexus"  by Mike Baron and Steve Rude and that writers other series, "Badger". I'm sure I'll be coming back to some of these titles in later posts.

First Comics became *my* comic book company. I bought everything they released. I recall so vividly leafing through the racks of the local book /comic shop in Southend-on-Sea (called "The New Bookshop" if anyone else remembers) and discovering those first few issues. Then the old gentleman who owned the shop started putting comics aside for his regular customers. He had a comic storage box of brown paper bags with names on. Every week I would visit the shop and pick the latest releases. I was also making irregular trips to Forbidden Planet in London where I found even more titles for me to reserve. I think this is where I really discovered "mature" comics - concepts beyond basic superhero tales. I was sixteen - leaving school and venturing out into the big wide world. Even now writing these words I have a big grin on my face thinking about the enjoyment these comics brought and what they meant to me.

In 1984, in the middle of all this success and well-deserved industry recognition, First Comics released something even more different. As mature as "American Flagg" was, this series just blew my mind. It's title? One word. "Mars".

"Mars" is the story of one woman, Morgana Trace - a scientist crippled in a horrible attack which took the life of her father, Resolving to continue his work, Morgana moves to the lighter gravity of the Moon, where she can still use her legs, and develops the technology to allow human minds to control robotic bodies.  The chance then arises for her to be part of the eleventh mission to Mars - a mission to terra-form the surface for human habitation.

Arriving at the red planet, the explorers and engineers set to work using their metal avatars, laying the groundwork for the centuries it will take to transform the world into an earth-like paradise. When suddenly all contact is lost with the Earth and Moon, the team believe that their only option is to go into suspended animation and wait out the 10,000 years for Mars to become habitable.

10,001 years later, Morgana is woken by the computer, only to find that she is totally alone and the ship has been stripped of everything to sustain life. Her only hope is to take her robot and fly down to the surface of the newly lush planet and find what happened to her missing crew mates, and why they left her behind. But it turns out Mars is also home to something far more powerful, terrifying and just possibly impossible to understand.

Sounds fairly simple doesn't it? Don't be fooled. As much as the story might be about exploring a weird and wacky landscape, it's also about, artificial intelligence, memory, what makes us alive, faith, life after death, the nature of god(s) and the corrupting influence of power. Oh and lots of lots of very strange alien creatures.

"Mars" was the creation of Mark Wheatley and Marc Hempel. Nowadays these two men are separately and together synonymous with unique and innovative comics work - things such as "Breathtaker", "Hammer of the Gods", "Gregory" and of course "Sandman". But back in 1984 no one had really heard of them beyond a couple of issues of "Heavy Metal " and the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book series "Be An Interplanetary Spy". This was their first major comics work - and they put everything into it. At the time they deliberately took a single by-line on it, blurring the lines over who did what. This was a real joint labour of love.

I think what threw me most was how different it was to the other comics I was reading. . Okay so I was no stranger to more "cartoony-looking" comic books - having worked my way through the local libraries entire stock of "Tintin" and "Asterix" several years previously - plus I was already reading "E-Man" which was far more of a humour book. Not everything had to look like it was drawn by Gil Kane or Jack Kirby or George Perez or Sal Buscema or John Romita or be about superheroes. Most of First Comics' output was about as far from that was you could get. But "Mars" was....less straightforward. Stranger. More philosophical. There were almost no thought balloons or captions. The art was almost minimalist at times. What was with all the dead artists? The talking dinosaurs? The hallucinations? I wasn't prepared for the jumps between the real and the metaphysical, the changes in style. The non-linear storytelling. I'll admit, it confused me.

And then around six issues in, something just clicked. Maybe I just got with the flow of what Hempel and Wheatley were doing, but suddenly "Mars" became my favourite book and went to the top of my reading list each month (well, after "American Flagg" to be perfectly honest). I couldn't wait to see where this SF psychological drama would take me next.

It's also worth mentioning the back-up strips at this point. As well as 18-20 pages of the main story, there were two supporting stories that were completely different in tone and style. The first started in issue two. "The Black Flame" by Peter B Gillis, with lurid over the top art from Tom Sutton / Don Lomax, was a kind of supernatural super-hero with a black staff and a motorcycle. fighting demons.

A member of the Nightmare Legions, he rebelled against his masters to protect the souls of the innocent - a kind of cross between Doctor Strange and Ghost Rider. That lasted until issue 8, when it transferred to the "Starslayer" title (and ended taking over a whole issue of that book at one point).

The second backup starting in issue 10 was "Dynamo Joe", by writer /artist Doug Rice. It was an anime & manga influenced story about a giant robotic battle suit - piloted by Imperum soldier Elanian Daro and humanoid feline Pomru Purrwakkawakka - fighting the lethal alien Mellanares. Again the strip continued elsewhere in other series and eventually spin off into it's own comic.

Both were good fun and definite counterpoints to the weirdness that was going on in the main feature.

But, all too soon, flagging sales meant that "Mars" came to an end. Issue twelve proved to be the last. Hempel and Wheatley managed to wrap up their initial storyline (cramming 80 pages worth of story into half that) while leaving things open enough for future adventures, but these never materialised. Well not quite....

When the complete story was reprinted with new colouring by IDW in 2005, Mark Wheately revealed that his 1994 series "Radical Dreamer" was set in the same universe - filling in some of the gaps of what was happening on Earth during those 10,000 years Morgana was in suspended animation. His intention is that one day he'll link everything together into one cohesive tale, but ten years have gone by since then and nothing has been released.

 I think in reality "Mars" was probably ahead of it's time. A unique art style. Blurred lines between hero and villains. An ever-evolving storyline with only minimal indication of resolution. It was a kind of storytelling years before that became a popular thing to do. The market wasn't ready for it back in 1984.

It's fairly easy to pick up the back issues of the series (the trade is somewhat more difficult which is odd considering it's twenty years younger). Give it a chance. It deserves a wider audience.

View From The Fifth Row 8 - Predestination

So at last we've come to the third of my twisty, puzzle box movie picks. This time we have a head-scratchingly strange low-budget time-travel saga from Australian writer / directors Michael and Peter Spierig - "Predestination".

Based on a 1959 SF short story by Robert Heinlein titled "All You Zombies", the film introduces us to an alternate world and a government agent attempting to stop an infamous terrorist dubbed the "Fizzle Bomber" (due to the slow fuses he uses) from detonating a bomb. In the struggle the agent is seriously injured but manages to escape thanks to the help of an unseen third person - and vanishes. Awakening in hospital in 1992, the agent (Ethan Hawke) discovers that he had to undergo reconstructive surgery to save his face and throat. We also learn that he works for the top-secret Temporal Bureau, which uses time travel to prevent brutal crimes. Once healed, the agent is given one final mission - stop the Fizzle Bomber once and for all and thwart his greatest crime, the massive explosion in New York in 1975 which killed over 11,000 innocent people.

Using his 'coordinate transformer field kit' (a fancy name for a time machine) the agent travels back to 1970 and starts working undercover as a bartender in New York. He strikes up a conversation with a slightly androgynous looking customer who reveals that he writes 'true confession' articles for magazines under the pseudonym "The Unmarried Mother". The writer (Sarah Snook) bets the agent a bottle of alcohol that his life story will completely shock him - a story that begins in 1945, when *she*  was left on the steps or an orphanage.

And that's just the beginning...

The problem is, this is a plot so full of head-spinning twists and unexpected developments that yet again I can't go any further into the details without wandering into huge spoiler territory - although with a title like "Predestination" you can probably guess that it's not going to be straightforward. While it's true that this is a film about time travel and all its complications, it's also a story of love, loss, gender, acceptance and intertwining destinies with doses of black humour. Trust me, the less you know when you settle down to watch, the better. It's the kind of movie where you have to concentrate all the way through  - not because it's confusing  - but because every seemingly throwaway detail is important and will reward your attention. When I wrote about "Frequencies" a while back, I mentioned how certain points in the film will make you reassess what has gone before, and it's a similar thing here. The ending in particular. You'll want to figure out where is it going and will be inspired to go back and watch it again to catch all the things you missed the first time.

At its core, "Predestination" utterly depends on the convincing central performances of Ethan Hawke and Sarah Snook. She in particularly has to do much of the heavy lifting and pulls off a fantastic subtle performance in a role that might make other actors think twice about accepting. Stylistically it's not a big showy effects laden film, despite the complicated concepts. We jump backwards and forwards across the decades and intelligent costume and production design helps evoke the feel of the various eras. The time travel machine is brilliant in its simplicity – a violin case where the movement of the numbers and letters of the locks determines the date to which one will travel. It's a mechanism to advance the plot, not the McGuffin around which everything revolves.

I'd never read the Heinlein short story, so had no preconceptions going in about the films success or failure as a faithful adaptation. In fact I think I'd only read one less-than-glowing review. But the premise piqued my interest enough to seek out a copy - and I am definitely glad I made the effort. Yes there may be one too many twists  - and yes if you have any knowledge of time travel stories you may see some of them coming, but if you are a fan of intelligent SF movies then you will not be disappointed.

Next time, I'm going to pick a film I can talk properly about !

Timelord Thoughts13 - The Husbands of River Song

Goodness me this is late. I blame visiting relatives. Or too much trifle. Or hours spent playing as the Doctor in 'LEGO Dimensions'. Anyway let's go back ten days to Christmas 2015 and what may well be (if the rumours are to be believed) the last new Doctor Who we will see for some time. It's also the last of these "bullet-point" reviews, so what did I make of:

The Husbands Of River Song

• It's an impressive start. A filmic zoom across a snowy tree-filled landscape. Stirring music swelling as we cross a wintry moonlit wonderland (was I the only one who momentarily thought of the "Dambusters" theme?). 
• A bright red flying saucer. It's a wonderfully retro 1950s design, reminiscent of "The Day The Earth Stood Still" or "Mars Attacks". It also reminds me of the family story that used to get trotted out every Christmas - of how my brother was given a battery powered flying saucer as a present, complete with 'pilot'. It used to wander randomly over the floor making alien burbling noises with the occasional laser blast to ward off attackers. My young sibling (he must only have been around six years old) decided that he wanted to find out what made it tick, so proceeded to prise the alien out of his plastic dome and lever apart the two halves of the saucer (he must have found a tool from somewhere - this was the 1970s okay?). Come Boxing Day we discovered him happily sitting on the living room floor with the pieces strewn around him. Needless to say despite my dad's best efforts the saucer never wandered or burbled again. 
• So Mendorax Dellora seems to be a colony that's has based itself on Dickensian whimsy crossed with twenty-first century bad taste (not to mention a certain "Trap Street" in modern day London, but we'll let that budgetary necessity slide since it does look so Christmassy). Those roof lights are just horrible tacky. Nice to see that classic carols have survived into 5343 though.
•  "Carol singers will be criticised". That sounds like the Twelfth Doctor.
• Mathiesa Boutique. A reference to writer Jamie Mathieson surely.
• Matt Lucas bumbles along accompanied by some cheerful yet irritating noodlings from Murray Gold. I hope this is not a sign of things to come.
• I do like the idea that the TARDIS thinks that the Doctor needs cheering up (goodness knows after all he's been through lately he certainly deserves it) so gives him some red antlers and takes him to a planet where it's Christmas. After all the Eleventh Doctor spent 900 years protecting the town of Christmas on Trenzalore.
• The Doctor obviously does want to be distracted though - he's very quick to allow a case of mistaken identity pull him into events. Then again according to the Second Doctor he does have a medical degree from Glasgow in 1888.
• Maybe the Doctor has been to a planet where David Icke's theories are true and the ruling elite are all disguised lizards. Or he could just have been watching too much "V"...
• The piano on the head is a classic comedy trope, dating back to Laurel and Hardy shorts and innumerable cartoons (extra points if the character rises from the wreckage with a mouthful of piano keys for teeth which start playing by themselves). The Doctor even used a cricket ball to avert a piano drop in "Human Nature".
• "Nardole what have you brought to my doorstep?" - "I've had a haircut. This is my best suit". Now where have we heard words similar to that before? Way back in 2008...
• It's just a fantastic huge grin from Capaldi as the Doctor realises who the cowled figure really is.

• "People usually need a flowchart". He not wrong. There's a good one here.
• I know that this is meant to be a River who doesn't know this version of the Doctor and this is what she gets up to when she is not seeing him, but the dialogue here just seems a bit "off" and her character comes across as very cold and rather unpleasant.
• "I think I'm going to need a bigger flowchart". A "Jaws" reference always makes me happy. 
• It's a full-on Yuletide makeover for the opening sequence complete with baubles and snowflakes. I particularly like the way the titles dissolve. The addition of bells does nothing to redeem the theme music however.
• Okay so maybe River is being arch because she knows she is being watched by four billion people. Either that or she thinks she's in a pantomime - Greg Davies certainly does.
• Hydroflax is a great name for a villain. Or a cat.
• The Doctor looks so disappointed that River is married to someone else and doesn't recognise him. Or is that cross? The repeated arm folding gives out mixed messages.
• Cross arms to go with his attack eyebrows? He's building a real arsenal of bodily weaponry.
• I'm really hoping it's not going to be an hour of the overplayed theatrics. We're only five minutes in and it's already starting to grate.
• "...keep it together. Don't make puddles". That raised a slight smile.
• So the Twelfth Doctor is apparently an anti-monarchist. Well, they do have form in trying to kill him or creating secret organisations to oppose him.
• Okaaay...so this *is* being played as farce. The face massage and the gurning from Davies seal it. It's a very very broad SF comedy. I suppose that's okay.
• Nope. I'm sorry but if a man behaving strangely says "I'm the Doctor" to River, she wouldn't just dismiss it out of hand - even if he doesn't match the pictures in her diary. At the very least she would interrogate him to find out why he was impersonating her husband. There might be a plethora of hidden cameras watching her every move but she would give some indication that his name meant something to her.
• I really thought we'd seen the last of the sonic shades once the Doctor got a new screwdriver. At least this time they are actually being used to look at something.
• The Halassi Androvar diamond. Halassi could be taken from the town Halasi in India which is rich in historical temples and monuments. Androvar seems to be the name of an anabolic muscle supplement. Then again they could just be two words that together sound a bit "alien"...
• River's moral compass has always been a bit "flexible", but marrying someone just so she can remove his head to get at a priceless diamond seems a bit more mercenary for hire than archaeologist. Maybe when the Doctor is not around her programming by Madame Kovarian reasserts itself in some way. At least the Doctor does pull her up on it.
• Hydroflax really doesn't sound like a nice guy. I have a slight hesitation about having a villain who eats his victims in a show transmitted just after the majority of people have gorged themselves on their Christmas dinner, but maybe that's the point.
• "Are you...thinking? Stop it you're a man, it looks weird". The male segment of the audience with female partners just turned to their other halves and went "What?". 
• Alex Kingston is still delivering all her lines as if she is in her first day at RADA.
• I did like how the Doctor mimed his former appearance as Eleven. Jimmy Hill indeed.
• River had a *second* wife? A hundred Big Finish audio box sets just sprung into existence.
• Greg Davies does his "quizzically angry" face. There is some pointless cross-cutting of swords being drawn (which look more medieval than sentient) Murray Gold parps loudly that this is a shocking situation. It's not.
• The surprise that Hydroflax's head comes off might have been more astonishing if they hadn't revealed it in the bloody trailer !
•  Hmmm. Maybe, just maybe we are about to turn away from "Whoops! There Go My Bloomers" territory. River sounded almost sincere there.
• As a marketing opportunity I doubt a sonic trowel is up there with the screwdriver and the glasses. It won't stop someone producing one though. Let this be the last thing though, please
• "Get ready to say wheee". Okay I'll stop being a grumpy guts. That was quite funny.

• "Recommendation: chill". And that wasn't.
• Yes Steven Moffat, why *does* everything have to be "sexy"? It started in "The Eleventh Hour" and continued right the way through Matt Smith's tenure. The Twelfth Doctor called the T-Rex in "Deep Breath"a "big sexy woman" and River clearly likes a big red robot body. It even cropped up in the recent Sherlock special. Time for a new adjective.
• Any young kids watching (which thankfully there would have been this time when it was transmitted at 5.15 pm) would find the idea of a shouty head in a bag hilarious.
• It's so nice to see Capaldi's Doctor laughing at the absurdity of it all while he makes a snow angel on the ground. It's infectious.
• Yet again we are meant to believe that River is too thick to get the Doctor hints about his identity. It's so out of character. Maybe she doesn't want to think that that there is a version of him that she knows nothing about. Or maybe Moffat is just twisting common sense a bit too much for dramatic effect.
• If River wipes peoples memories when they get too annoying, just how many husbands (or wives) has she got out there in the universe? Has she ever done it to the Doctor?
• It's a nice touch that the pictures River has of the Doctor are all taken from existing episodes, not simply publicity shots. 
• I'm starting to think that River has created her own legend about the Doctor - one in which she has enlarged her part in things and how he always needs her help - hence the "Damsel in Distress" codename. I guess name-dropping that she is the Doctor's rescuer is good for opening a few doors. Then again she could be referencing the charity record "Doctor In Distress", but I don't think *anyone* wants to remember that !
• Matt Lucas is really just playing an amalgamation of his Little Britain characters isn't he? I keep expecting Tom Baker's voice to intone "There's a small town in Southern Ireland called Muff..."
• We have to address the look of Hydroflax's robot body. Someone has clearly been watching a lot of Japanese mecha anime (or the US equivalents) - Robotech Macross or Gundam or Neon Genesis Evangelion, Maybe even some Voltron or the X-Bomber from "Star Fleet". Of course there's also some Baymax from the "Big Hero Six" movie thrown in there too. Personally I'd have hoped for some "Shogun Warriors", but then I loved the Marvel comic back in 1979.
• Giant robot fish from the ninth dimension.That sounds like a story that could only be realised in comic strip form. Preferably featuring the Sixth Doctor and Frobisher and illustrated by John Ridgway.
• With one scene Moffat has created yet another alternative set of stories where River Song steals the TARDIS and has her own adventures  - almost as if she was a female Doctor. I'd rather have that than the Clara / Me space diner solution we got at the end of "Hell Bent".
• There's a lovely disgusted look to camera by the Doctor as River says her fond farewells to Ramone.

• "Finally. It's my go". Capaldi milks it for all it's worth and it's hilarious. For once, over the top was the only way to go. Not sure how you can snog three-dimensional Euclidian geometry but who cares. I can imagine that Peter has been waiting his whole life for that scene.
• It's also great that River has a secret brandy stash hidden in one of the new roundels that the Doctor knows nothing about and once again she apparently knows stuff about the TARDIS controls that he doesn't. This is more like the River from prior episodes.
• Oh come on, River - figure it out. Please. He's clever, he knows too much about future technology for a mere surgeon. Join the dots. This is absurd. Three idiot moments is enough for one lifetime (or one episode).
• That's a pretty good Greg Davies mask on that prop. Even the Mission Impossible team would be fooled by that one.
• "Does sarcasm help?" "Wouldn't it be a great universe if it did?". Oh yes. My life would be so much easier.
• It like all technology, the more it's developed the smaller it gets. So the Type 40 TARDIS needs a whole gigantic room to contain it's stabilised black hole, yet Hydroflax can put one inside his cybernetic body. He's probably got a USB slot and bluetooth too.
•  Oh and he's a total nutter as well - willing to blow up his subjects because he's a bit cross. My big problem with Hydroflax is that I can't take the Greg Davies (or the Mr. Gilbert) out of the king. It would have worked so much better with a less famous actor - or at least one not known for playing angry characters. Greg can act - I've seen it - but here he's just being used for his stereotype personna.
• Lot's of loud music and shouting and quick cutting to cover the fact that nothing is really happening once the robot body is inside the TARDIS.
• At times the Doctor almost seems to have reverted to his series 8 persona - not liking hand holding or being told to hush.
• It's a big jump from the twee shops and snow of Mendorax Dellora to the luxury of the starliner Harmony & Redemption, but it works.The production team seem to have made the effort to create some new alien races (even if they are a little Star Trek "humans with bits stuck the their faces"). The external FX are impressive too.
• In another Star Trek moment, the ship is travelling at Warp Factor 12. Depending on which series you favour, Classic or Next Generation, that's either very, very fast or...impossible. In any case the liner would have to be hurtling along to cruise between seven different galaxies.
• Gamma Eridani is a real star in the constellation Eridanus. It's traditional name is Zaurak ("the boat"). It's currently a red giant.
• Flemming the Maitre D' is a lovely creation with his facial protuberances giving a hint of a pencil moustache. I'm guessing that he's some sort of arachnid based lifeform, what with the mother-eating baby ceremony and all. It's known as Matriphagy and is found in some species of insects, scorpions, nematode worms and spiders. Crab spiderlings are provided with unfertilised eggs to munch on, but they also eat their mother until she can't move and then they consume her entirely. Still apparently they have higher survival rates than young who don't eat mum. He could also be related to the Malmooth, last seen in "Utopia"
• Another use of a deadlock seal. "Even the sonic screwdriver won't get me out of this one".(sorry too much LEGO Dimensions...)
• Some pointless padding with the Hydroflax in a bag / stomach gags.
• Yes River, that is a nice dress. Yes you do look good for 200. Hang on I think I need to consult that flowchart again...
• There are many examples of secret societies and cults allegedly containing mass murderers: The Thugee's, the Triad's, the Illuminati, the Thule's. It's debatable whether the idea of a dining club for genocidal murderers is appropriate Christmas Day subject matter....
• Did anyone notice that Flemming's sycophantic smile dropped immediately to a grimace of disgust once his 'guests' were out of line of sight?
• "It's the easiest lie you can tell a man. They'll automatically believe any story they're the hero of". Ouch. The Doctor looks visibly hurt by that one. The thing is, I'm getting the feeling that River is this cynical towards all men *except* the Doctor. No one else can live up to him in her eyes, so she treats all other males as inferior. The problem right now is that the Doctor doesn't know that. He's never been around a River who doesn't recognise him before.
• If River's diary is almost full them we must be heading for The Library in the 51st century soon. The Eleventh Doctor would have known how much longer she had to live when he gave her the book.
• She's lying clearly. Her expression speaks volumes. The Doctor is *definitely* very special to River, but she's not about to reveal that kind of intimate detail to a man she hardly knows.
• Scratch sounds like he has been smoking tons of extra strong cigarettes a day for the last 40 years. 
• The Shoal of the Winter Harmony is a very Russell T Davies type name. More random words shoved together. It's a bit unfortunate to have this race and the space cruiser have "Harmony" in their names though - unless there is some unrevealed connection.
• That's just horrible - Scratch pulling his head apart like that. The Doctor's right, he shouldn't do it in a place where food is eaten. It's put my right off my sprouts. The effect is very well done though.

• The sudden realisation that the restaurant has been block booked by the "Shoal" is very reminiscent of "Deep Breath", where the Doctor and Clara suddenly found they were the only living beings in a restaurant full of clockwork robots.
• I'm not quite sure why they start hissing - unless is a sign of pleasure or happiness...
• A device that accesses all the banks in the galaxy? That's just waiting to be hacked isn't it?
• Uh-oh. I think River's plan just went a little awry. You would have thought that she had done her research before starting the con, and not tried to sell Hydroflax's head to a bunch of his own conquered zealots who have a penchant for using their own brain cavities as extra luggage space. The Doctor's face says it all. Awkward.
• Awkward is also how I feel about the whole scene where the Doctor tries to delay giving the bag to Scratch and then changes tack to reveal the head of their "dead" ruler. It's another case of where (as has happened many times this episode) the tone veers wildly from moment to moment. We are back to farce again and it's not Capaldi's strong point.
• It's no better as River and the Doctor try to start a fake bidding war amongst the Shoal. Look! - says Murray Gold though his music - this is funny. Go on. Laugh! But it's not funny. Not even mildly. 
• At least there is some sense of justice when the Baymax body decides that "Hydroflax" can only survive by destroying his own head. I'm pretty glad to see the end of his Royal Shoutiness. Sorry Greg, I think you were wasted in this role.
• We could have done without the comedic "boing" as the diamond falls into the ash however.
• Flemming's reading of River's diary is a potted history of her adventures with the Doctor. Even the ones we haven't seen, like Jim the Fish (who got a mention in "The Impossible Astronaut" I think). Actually there is a whole diary entry in the video game "The Eternity Clock" that talk about Jim, the Doctor and a night of karaoke in a bar run by the Brotherhood of Maldovar. Of course that's not canon. Unless you want it to be.
• If River has just been to Manhattan then she's recently seen the Eleventh Doctor and said goodbye forever to her parents. Maybe that explains her colder and mercenary traits coming to the fore - it's a coping mechanism.
• See what I mean about tone? It sounds serious when we get some threats from River, assertion that the Doctor is a "legendary being of remarkable power" and that most of the passengers of the "Harmony & Redemption" would love to see him dead - but it's followed by some 'comedic' jowl wobbling from Matt Lucas and talk of things being a bit whiffy. It's all over the place.
• Then in one single scene Moffat pulls things back. Rivers speech about how she loves the Doctor but never expected him to love her is just glorious. "When you love the Doctor it's like loving the stars themselves. You don't expect a sunset to admire you back". It's wonderful and moving and it's a shame it's taken us 40 minutes to get here. This is the River Song we all know. 
• You can see the comprehension on the Doctor's face as he realises just what River really thinks of him - and then it's her turn. She just looks at him and the light dawns. It's beautifully played by both actors as the Doctor just whispers those two familiar words: "Hello, sweetie".
• For once it's the Doctor in charge of the relationship and I love the way he revels in playfully teasing River about her declarations of love. He's enjoying this.

• And they're off. Even though they have not worked together on the show before, Peter Capaldi and Alex Kingston mesh really well once the secrets are out of the way. All the stuff about the meteor strike and an exploding restaurant guide and his new body is great - it's like Alex has remembered how to play River again. I know the apparent inconsistencies in her personality were more than likely deliberate on the part of writer and director but it's just nice to have the 'proper' River back. The banter is like old times.
• A shame the dialogue gets lost because the music is just SO loud. Look, I know I'm not the only one who finds it annoying and I know it's been a bit of an issue all the way back to 2005 but lately it seems to have got worse. I have a friend who has theorised that the BBC just have a hard drive with all of Murray's old music on it and now they simply think "Alien attack - select Track 32" or "the Doctor runs down a corridor, we need Track 78". Maybe it's enforced cost-cutting and they can only afford so many hours of his time per series. It's not as if he is not producing new work - the score for "Heaven Sent" was just sublime - but it's entirely possible that one episode used up all the budget so they have to rely on "stock" music, Whatever the reason it's causing any subtleties in dialogue performance to be lost through inappropriate music. We don't *have* to have dramatic sound for absolutely everything. The volume contrrol issues however - those I lay fully at the BBC's door. 
• At least when the resolution to the threat of the headless robot is resolved by using that handy dandy banking globe, it's not in the way I was expecting. No hacking, just excellent internet security.
• I wish you hadn't made that crap joke either Doctor, or brought attention to how terrible it really was.
• Who's keeping score here? By my reckoning during the back and forth River has been married at least six times - Two wives, the Doctor, Hydroflax, Ramone and of course Stephen Fry (that must have involved a memory wipe). The Doctor meanwhile has been married only four (Elizabeth I, Cleopatra, River Song and Marilyn Monroe (although one was in an alternative timeline and one may have only been an engagement). Of course they could both be lying. Also how is marrying Stephen Fry the same thing as marrying Cleopatra?...
• River mentions that a visit to the Singing Towers of Darillium is meant to signify her and the Doctor's final night together. The fact that she says the Doctor always cancels at the last minute neatly sidesteps the events of "Last Night" - one of the shorts produced for the complete series six boxset - when it was meant to be the Eleventh Doctor that was taking her there. Except that's not canon. Except it is. Oh you decide.
• If it wasn't certain before, the appearance of the new sonic screwdriver confirms that this adventure takes place after the events of "Hell Bent".
• "Crashing spaceships, that's my job". Actually Doctor, sometimes your companions are better at it than you...
• Yes, River definitely said "You b*****d" as she teleported away didn't she?
• I just want to pause for a minute and praise the lighting in these scenes. Douglas Mackinnon, his assistant directors and the whole camera and lighting team have really worked wonders. The variation of orange colours from the planet below, the lights of the TARDIS, it's all beautiful. In fact the lighting in the majority of the episodes of this series (especially the incredible "Heaven Sent") has just been wonderful. Look how far we have come in ten years.
• Back to the story and even in the midst of extreme danger the Doctor and River can't help but show how important they have become to each other. Forty-ish minutes ago I was worried that Capaldi and Kingston wouldn't work together, but now the sparks are really flying and this is two actors showing a real rapport and an understanding of the characters and their relationship. I worried needlessly.
• That's one hell of a crash. Well done stunt doubles. Disposed of a few mass murders in the process too.
• Such a simple use of time travel to skip forward a few hours to when the crash site flames have died down. It's a wonder that this kind of thing has not been shown more often. The Twelfth Doctor has a much easier way of steering the TARDIS too - just one big lever. The days of hammers and bells and feet on consoles are long gone.
• For such a large spaceship there doesn't seem to be much of it left. The crash site set reminds me of that first episode of "Lost".
• Maybe the Doctor is becoming more empathic towards the pudding brains. That was quite a nice thing he said to the gent in the hard hat.
• It's becoming clear that Moffat is putting all the pieces together. No restaurant on Darillium? Just arrange for one to be built. No table available for four years? No problem when you have a time machine. It's almost as if the Doctor knew that this was going to happen. But he couldn't have...could he?
• Hey River  - you were so caught up in arriving at the restaurant and changing into another nice dress that you left the bloody TARDIS door open!!
• If Ramone is still alive working in the restaurant does that mean he and River are still married? Or did that dissolve when his head was removed from his body? 
• It should come as no surprise that River takes a shine to Ramone's metal body. After all she apparently spent "many nights of passion" with Hydroflax.
• Click goes another piece when the Doctor gives River the screwdriver (and in a new suit too). It looks exactly like the one she has in "Silence in the Library". She never said it was a Christmas present.
• I do like the fact that the Doctor makes an effort to tell River how good she looks, even if he has no real idea what he is talking about. This was very prevalent with the Eleventh Doctor, who really struggled with the notion of attractiveness in humans. Of course the Fourth Doctor once told Countess Scarlioni "You're a beautiful woman, probably".
• It's a beautiful shot of the Singing Towers accompanied, for once, by some lovely music from Murray Gold. Maybe there was a bit of the budget left after all. Perhaps they should consider employing him only for the quiet pieces and get someone new for the action scenes.
• The idea of singing rock formations probably comes from the stories around the Collossi of Memnon near Luxor in Egypt. The statues of Pharaoh Amenhotep III are around 3.400 years old and are bloody huge. Around 2,000 years ago a large earthquake reportedly shattered the northern colossus, collapsing the top half and cracking the lower. Following this the lower part was then reputed to "sing" on various occasions, usually at dawn.
• In "Forest of the Dead", as she is about to die and be uploaded to the Library mainframe, River told the Tenth Doctor "Funny thing is, this means you've always known how I was going to die. All the time we've been together, you knew I was coming here. The last time I saw you, the real you, the future you, I mean, you turned up on my doorstep, with a new haircut and a suit. You took me to Darillium to see the Singing Towers. What a night that was. The Towers sang, and you cried". I never expected Moffat to tie up all those loose ends. He always leaves so much open to interpretation or imagination or just fan argument. But just this once I'm so glad that he decided to fill in those blanks.
• And with the Doctor saying "Spoilers" the wheel turns full circle and the roles are reversed. The Doctor has finally caught up with River's timeline. He knows where River is going and she doesn't. I'll fully admit that I'm one of those few (and I know there are not many of us) who have loved River Song's appearances in the series. I thought she had a perfect poignant farewell in "The Name of the Doctor" and for a long time it looked like this episode was going to tarnish that. But this - right at the end - has redeemed things.
• Again River talks about the events of "Last Night" (when there were two Eleventh Doctors). Moffat will keep referring to these things until you accept them, you know.
• "Every Christmas is the last Christmas". Echoes of last year's special. A shame that the Doctor won't remember Clara's part in that adventure.
• He won't say it. The Doctor never says it. But his story about the towers is the story of him and River. A love story across all of time and space. "...but always...when you need it the most...there is a song". I think I have something in my eye...
• They can have 24 years together. That's enough time...to be happy. Let this be the end. Let River Song pass into memory as one of Doctor Who's great characters. She might be back in various Big Finish stories but we can ignore those (if we so choose). This is the perfect full stop.

Conclusion:

Well that was definitely a very mixed bag. Forty-five minutes of over the top RTD flim-flam only saved by the last fifteen. Peter and Alex were the best things in it by a country mile but even they struggled with some of it. Greg Davies was just Mr Shouty and....what was the point of Matt Lucas again?

Alright maybe that's a bit harsh. The Christmas episodes have to be more "broad" to allow for the post-lunch-engorged-with-food crowd - nothing too complex, serious or thought provoking - and it's true that this did have a lot of easily digestible elements. It was a rollicking romp with robots, revenge, romance, reconciliations and a man in a bobble hat. Given how serious and "dark" series nine was at times I guess we needed a little light relief.

The thing is I think you can have all those things and tell a great story, but for me the majority was pretty forgettable - a lot of larking about with no real substance (you could have cut 15 minutes without any real noticeable effect). Thankfully the scenes with River and the Doctor made up for things. The two co-stars had real chemistry and I was very happy with how the relationship turned out. I'm also glad that she was the one who was able to make him laugh after the pain and loss he has gone through recently.

Let's hope this really is the end of River's story so that she goes out smiling too.