We're All Stories In The End 24 - Dominion

No villain. No TARDIS. No problem...

Dominion by Nick Walters

Eighth Doctor Adventures number: 22

Originally published: May 1999

Companions: Sam, Fitz

When the Doctor loses both Sam and the TARDIS after an encounter with a mysterious dimensional anomaly, he finds himself affected in a very fundamental way, doubting his own powers and making crucial errors of judgment.

Stranded amongst the forests and lakes of southern Sweden in the summer of 1999, it quickly becomes clear to the Doctor and Fitz that something unusual — and dangerous — is afoot. Fitz finds himself acting the hero as the search for Sam gets them involved with investigations into strange disappearances — and manifestations of even stranger creatures.

Events quickly spiral out of control as the Doctor and Fitz become entangled with a secret deep beneath the forest, a secret which could save Sam and an entire doomed alien race — but destroy the Earth in the process.

 

One thing that a Doctor Who novel needs to do is hook you in from the start - present the reader with an intriguing situation or mystery that makes you want to find out what happens next. Within the first two chapters of "Dominion", Nick Walters manages to do just that.

Young Kerstin is relaxing with her boyfriend at a remote cabin, until something extraordinary quite literally rips the landscape and her lover away. Meanwhile, old Bjorn finds that a creature not of Earth has torn his animals to pieces.

It's dramatic, it's chilling, and it's the sort of cold open that the modern series has done many times. It's really nice to see it used in a novel so effectively.

The other thing that a good novel Doctor Who needs to do is give you a sense of place, and in this regard "Dominion" succeeds on two fronts:

Firstly, after we've lost Sam down a wormhole, there's the Swedish locale that Fitz and the Doctor find themselves in. Too often visits to Earth are always London or the Home Counties, so setting this part of the story in Sweden is a refreshing change. And with the loss of the TARDIS in the middle of a forest, a mystery to solve, and the introduction of pragmatic detective inspector Nordenstam, Walters really does a lot to make the early part of the book feel like a modern Scandinavian crime drama. Kirsten, Bjorn and Nordenstam also benefit from care being paid to their motivations and emotional state. Their personal losses felt honest and real.

Secondly there's the bizarre world of the Dominion itself. It's hard to come up with something that feels truly alien. It's even harder to describe that alien-ness in detail on the page without going so "weird" that it loses the reader. Personally I thought that Nick Walters managed this balancing act extremely well.

The intelligent inhabitants possess unusual biological technology and a fascinating reproductive cycle. The ravenous monsters are suitable gruesome - all teeth and claws and bodies straight out of nightmares. And the endless sea-sky cavern nature of the Dominion was vividly described.

Perhaps my only quibble is that after coming up with T'hiili and T'vorha for the science / warrior castes, Walters settles on the boringly mundane "Ruin" and "Bane" for the monsters and "Blight" for the black wall that threatens to engulf everything Sure, they are to the point, but I would have preferred something a bit more...exotic.

Plus I really wanted to see where the T'hiili and T'vorha ended up - and what happened with the Queen and her offspring after the Dominion was destroyed - but sadly it was not to be. It's a thread that just could have used a couple more pages to round things off nicely. 

Another pleasant surprise was that Sam - a character who I've come to find incredibly annoying - is actually pretty good here. No constant moaning and pining for the Doctor (well a bit but it was tolerable given the situation) and no moralising. Just some mild peril while building alien relations and figuring things out. This was much more like it!

That said, I would still have preferred her to have been dumped and Kirsten to have taken her place. And I definitely would have liked a better explanation as to why the Doctor was so adamant Kirsten could not go travelling in the TARDIS. Maybe that will play out in another novel.

As for the other characters, well Fitz is Fitz in all his randy, well-meaning, cigarette-obsessed glory. This is early in his TARDIS journey I think, but I'm interested in finding out what happened in "Revolution Man" and on Om-Tsor, whenever I get to those books. 

Major Wolstencroft is your stereotypical blustering, by the book UNIT man, but it was an interesting twist that despite his obstructions, he didn’t turn into an out and out bad guy. More that he was just trying to do his job to the best of his ability

Professor Nagle was equally single minded but her actions were far less forgivable, and I really didn’t care when her recklessness and selfishness led to her demise. 

In the end, I think what intrigued me the most about this novel was the fact there really isn't a true villain.

The Blight was just our universe obeying the laws of entropy. The Professor created the wormhole problem, but it was out of scientific zeal, not world conquering ambitions. Even the Bane and the Ruin were just doing what came naturally.

Sometimes you don't need a moustache twirling maniac or a creature from the dawn of time to generate an interesting and threatening scenario.

Or to end up with a pretty damn fine book.

Golden Sunsets Redux - 60 Years of Memories - Part 32 - 1998

Another really important year for me now, as my second daughter Mollie was born in November, after my wife suffered another difficult pregnancy. She's an amazing young woman - very different to her sister, but just as talented in an artistic rather than literary sense. As I write this she is just completing her third year of being an IT teacher at a large secondary school. It's hard work, but she loves it, and it appears the pupils love her too. I'm one very proud dad.

This memory however, is about my first daughter...

1998:

The trivia:

• On 1st April 1998, Burger King took out a full-page advert in the USA Today newspaper touting the introduction  of a  new "Whopper" burger especially designed for left -handed people. The new bun would contain the same ingredients as the original sandwich, but rotated 180° to redistribute the weight and making in easier for lefties to hold without everything falling out. Thousands of customers swarmed BK restaurants requesting this new innovative burger - along with many others demanding their own "right-handed" version...

• As part of a marketing campaign for their new "Beats" watches, Swiss company Swatch tried to introduce a new decimal method of measuring time. Each day was split into 1,000 ".beats", equivalent to 86.4 seconds, with times noted as a three digit number. So the notation "@248" was 248 .beats after midnight or 5.57 am. At the same time Swatch announced that this new metric measurement had become the official time system for "Nation1", an online country apparently created and run by children. Strangely, it never caught on.

• "Galaxy 4" was part of a group of commercial communications satellites launched throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s. They carried television feeds, radio networks, credit‑card verification systems, and - crucially - the nationwide US pager network. By the late ’90s, pagers were everywhere. More than 45 million of them depended on Galaxy 4’s steady signal. On 19th May, the satellite’s attitude control system failed and it lost its ability to stay pointed correctly at Earth. Within hours the pager networks went dark. Doctors couldn’t be reached, delivery companies couldn’t coordinate and emergency responders had to fall back on landlines and radio. It was one of the first moments when people realised how much we depend on these fragile devices floating above our heads.

The memory:

A Bug's Life

The second ever Pixar feature film has a special place in my heart. Not because of it's fun story, excellent Randy Newman soundtrack or ground-breaking CGI animation - although those are all great reasons for it being on anyone's list. No, more importantly, this was the first film that I properly *shared* with my eldest daughter Hannah. I'm cheating with my timelines a little here, but it's a story that's too important to me not to tell...

"A Bug's Life" was very loosely inspired by Aesop's fable "The Ant and the Grasshopper", with elements of the classic Japanese epic "The Seven Samurai" - all mixed with that special Pixar sauce. The movie tells the story of an outcast inventor ant named Flik. When one of his faulty inventions results in the loss of the annual harvest that is always given to a bunch of bullying grasshoppers - and he then causes the tithe to be doubled after standing up to their leader - Flik suggests that he try to recruit some "warrior bugs" to fight the grasshoppers. The ant royal council agree, but really only to keep him out of the way...

Travelling to the insect "city" (in reality a huge pile of rubbish), Flik encounters a group of incompetent circus bugs, whose actions in trying to avoid paying a bill cause him to mistake them for the warriors he needs. He persuades them to return with him to the ant colony - mainly because they think he is a talent agent - but once they arrive and are greeted as saviour heroes, both Flik and the troupe realise their mistake. However, after they band together to save Princess Atta's baby sister Dot from a ravenous bird, they come up with an audacious plan.

Hannah was heading towards three years old when "A Bug's Life" came out at the tail end of 1998. I'm not sure my wife and I took her to the cinema to see it, as it was around about then that Mollie arrived, five weeks early. What I do know is that I bought the VHS tape when it was released a few months later, and by then Hannah had definitely been exposed to the large amounts of  merchandise for the film, through visits to the Disney Store and presents from relatives. She had a Princess Atta soft toy and her sister had a baby Dot, both of which went everywhere with them.

The thing is, early 1999 was also around the time when my wife and I finally split up after a difficult few years. It was a deeply upsetting time, but by then I wasn't living with the rest of the family full time anyway (due to other circumstances too complicated to go into here), so my weekend trips from London back to the family home 180 miles way just became more formalised.  Hannah and I had always been close, so in those early months of the separation my two day visits became even more special.

Hannah was not a physically active child, due to the effects of the cerebral palsy she was born with, so she and I tended to gravitate towards more...stationary pursuits. We watched the video of  "A Bug's Life" together over and over and over again. Every scene became ingrained in my memory - it became our go-to film.

She particularly responded to the character of Dot. Perhaps she saw a little of herself in the tiny ant girl who wished she could do more. At the start, when Dot feels that she is never going to make a difference in the colony, Flik shows her a seed, using the analogy that even mighty oak trees come from small beginnings, and Dot has to give it time - she is still just a seed. As the film progresses and the battle against the grasshoppers takes a darker turn, Flik is ashamed of all the troubles he has caused and does not want to go back to the colony. Dot then picks up a stone and shows it to Flik, reciting the exact words he told her at the start - "pretend this is a seed" - gradually turning his depression into determination. Out of all the love my daughter had for the film, these two scenes seemed to stay with her.

As the year wore on, Hannah, her mum and new baby sister moved from the rented house we had all shared to a new-build house closer to my soon to be ex-mother-in-law. It made sense, and it was a nice sized place close to other family members and amenities. My wife and I still spent some time together for the kids sake, plus since I'd had to travel three hours each way to visit them, it was easier to be based at her house then have to be out all the time. But that proximity meant we still fought over a lot of the same old issues....

During one weekend visit, I think I was feeling particularly low - probably due to another protracted disagreement. I was just getting the kids out of the car as it was parked on the driveway of their new house. As was typical of new developments at the time, the driveway that led down the side to the garage was concrete with a centre section covered with small pale stones - probably a form of  limestone gravel known as Cotswold Chippings. As I lifted Hannah out of the car seat onto the driveway, she suddenly bent down and picked up one of the stones. She turned to me with a big smile on her young face. "Pretend it's a seed, Daddy" she said, handing it to me.

Immediately my mood lifted and blinking away some tears, I grinned and hugged her tightly. "I will" I promised, putting it carefully in my pocket. "I will". We carried on into the house and after a couple of hours I drove away for my long journey home. The weight of everything else still hadn’t gone away, but for a while it felt a little lighter. Later that night as I emptied my pockets, I found the stone again. I held it for a moment, thinking of Hannah, then smiled and placed it on a bookshelf before going to bed.

Almost thirty years later, I still have that "seed":    

I'm never going to part with it. It's moved house with me, been knocked off the shelf by cats and even once fell into a glass of Coke, but it's endured all of those ups and downs -  just like me and just like my relationship with Hannah - which despite a few rocky patches (pardon the pun), is now better than it's ever been. That simple little stone is a lovely reminder of how wonderful my daughter can be, and how we shared something special. Every oak starts from an acorn...

Honourable mentions:

• Age of Bronze by Eric Shanower - This brilliant artist / writer came to prominence through his series of "Oz" graphic novels, published by First Comics in the mid 1980's. His clean, almost glowing, artwork was just beautiful, and his stories had a timeless quality, which took me back to a time when I read the original stories by L. Frank Baum as a kid. Shanower did a wide range of work for other publishers over the following years, but in 1998 he began what has became his most ambitious project. "Age of Bronze" was intended to tell the entire story of the Trojan War in comic form, in as much authentic historical detail as possible (omitting appearances from gods, centaurs, nymphs, etc.). It's a dense read - but Shanower's painstaking eye for period detail brings the characters and settings to life. I love it intensely, but it's not going to be for everyone. If you want an action packed condensed movie-style adaptation you are going to struggle. Frustratingly, nearly thirty years have passed but the story is still unfinished. After 33 issues it went on a lengthy hiatus until 2019, with a switch to full colour and digital single issues (with physical collections to follow). Shanower had plans to publish two issues a year, but sadly nothing more has been forthcoming - and he seems to have moved onto other things - particularly additional stories of Oz. I fear we may never see the completion of this epic tale.

• Gods and Monsters - English film director James Whale is most famously known for his work on several all-time classic horror movies - 1931s "Frankenstein" (with Boris Karloff as the creature), 1933s "The Invisible Man (Claude Rains) and 1935s "Bride of Frankenstein". What is possibly less well known is that he was openly gay - something which was very unusual for the time period. I discovered this early film from Bill Condon by chance on TV, but its sensitive and warm account of Whale's last few days - and the *possible* bittersweet relationship he may have had with his gardener (Brendan Fraser) - has stayed with me. The always watchable Sir Ian McKellen excels as the filmmaker. His best years are behind him and he is living alone, still haunted by the voices of his past. Fraser equally holds his own as former Marine Clayton Boone. His gentle demeanor and flat-top haircut recalling the unmistakable images of Mary Shelley's most famous creation. There are several flashbacks: to the making of Whales classic movies, the extravagant pool parties and his experiences during the First World War - all of which enhance a wonderful character piece. The gentle pace may not be for everyone, but I learnt a lot about a man that previously I knew in name only.

• City of Golden Shadow (Otherland Book 1) by Tad Williams -  Okay I'm cheating again, because 1998 was the year that this first book in the "Otherland" series came out in paperback in the UK, rather than it's original publication date. I was handed the book by a friend who really struggled with it, but he knew I loved Williams's "Memory, Sorrow & Thorn" series, so thought I would appreciate it more - and he was dead right. Rather than high fantasy, the four huge novels are set in the near future where total immersion virtual reality has become the norm and anyone can access a vast array of imagined worlds. A diverse set of ordinary people from across the globe find themselves drawn into the 'Otherland' network, assisted by a mysterious benefactor. They not only have to contend with battling bizarre creatures controlled by the all-powerful 'Grail Brotherhood', but also realise they are unable to log off - they are trapped in the network and - you guessed it -  if they die virtually, they also die in the real world. Williams manages to have his cake *and* eat it, as the virtual reality setting allows him to create myriad plot threads across every genre, from ancient Egypt to the Wizard of Oz. From the Battle of Troy to a gigantic house with no "outside". All these years on - and especially in the wake of successes like "Ready Player One" - this idea may sound old hat, but at the time this was territory that that had not been explored before - and certainly not in such depth. I found myself eagerly awaiting each new instalment, desperate to discover the reason for the world-wide conspiracy and the core mystery of "The Other" at it's heart. Still well worth a read.

• The Young Persons Guide to Becoming a Rockstar - Another of those odd little Channel 4  programmes which  promptly vanished into obscurity after it's six episode run. I'm sure I'm one of only a few people to even remember it. The series is a humorous take on the UK music industry, focusing on the improbably named Glaswegian band "Jocks Wa Hey", led by the personable Jez MacAllister (played by Ciarán McMenamin). Helped or hindered by a motley group of misfits and nutcases, the band stumble through life, somehow managing to get signed, make a ridiculously expensive album *and* get into the charts. Along the way there are a swathe of celebrity cameos (even a very young Gerard Butler) and gentle piss-takes of certain bands of the decade - such as "Bonk, Bonk, Bonk", who bear a more than passing resemblance to a certain Clydebank pop/soul group -  complete with a spiky haired frontman who just won't stop singing. It's hardly savage biting satire, but the cast all appear to be having a great time, and the mostly original music was melodic enough to make me buy the soundtrack album. 

• Pleasantville -  If there was any justice, this wonderful film would be lauded alongside "The Truman Show" as one of the best high-concept-with-emotional-depth movies of the decade. Instead it's seems to be under-appreciated. The basic idea of two modern day kids transported into the black and white world of a 1950s TV sitcom is a good one - allowing for all the fish out of water / culture clash motif's you would expect - but it's the execution where it really shines. David (Tobey Maguire) and Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon) find that their very presence is changing the town, stripping away the bland innocence. Not only that, but as both people and places start to burst into colour and characters step outside their defined roles, it allows for an examination of how some embrace change, and the lengths others will go to preserve what's considered "normal". The colour effects are uniformly excellent and are used to great effect, such as a tree on fire, "Bud" covering his mother's colour face with B&W makeup, and shop owner Bill Johnson's paintings (a lovely performance from Jeff Daniels). Yes, some of the outrage about "coloureds" is a bit too on the nose, but it's forgivable when a film is as warm, inventive and enjoyable as this one. 

• Wold's Wildest Police Videos - This reality clip show of car chases, smashes and arrests -  presented by the gravelly voiced John Bunnell  - might seem like an odd choice, and it's not here because I particularly *loved* the programme. It earns a place just due to it's sheer ubiquitousness, as it seemed to be on television all the damn time ! If I flicked through the growing number of satellite channels available to me, no matter the hour of day or night - there was ex-Sheriff Burnell with his over-dramatic commentary on yet another law enforcement pursuit. "World's Wildest" became such a guilty pleasure in my family that we played a game each night to try and find it. Was it an episode that we had seen before? Was John going to wax lyrically over the sound of car horns and screeching tyres on the perils of being a criminal, and then make some awful pun at their eventual capture? You bet he was!

• Dark City - If it wasn't  for the emotional connection to "A Bug's Life",  I think this dark SF mystery from Alex Proyas would have made the top spot. Despite its obvious influences, it still offers a unique vision, asks some deep questions - and has a love for science fiction past and present running all the way through. As the film opens, our protagonist, played by Rufus Sewell, wakes up in a hotel bath tub, seemingly with no memory of who he is or his past life. Just as he discovers the body of a murdered woman and a bloody knife, the phone rings, and a mysterious voice urges him to get out quickly - "The Strangers" are coming. Fleeing the scene through a city of perpetual night, he avoids encountering the sinister Strangers - pale, bald people in black coats and wide-brimmed hats. Tracking down his estranged wife Emma (Jennifer Connelly) he discovers that his name is John Murdoch, and he is wanted for a series of grisly murders - crimes which he cannot remember committing.... What follows is a desperate chase through a strange cityscape - one which keeps changing at midnight while the inhabitants sleep, as The Strangers use their powers to alter people's identities, twist the shapes of buildings and "tune" their unknowable experiment into new configurations. There is no way I am going to reveal all the twists and turns of this noir-tinged story, as unravelling the layers is one of the best parts of the experience - along with the fantastic production design. Suffice it to say that I found "Dark City" incredibly original and deeply satisfying, even on multiple viewings. There's a really good cast too, including Keifer Sutherland, Ian Richardson, David Wenham and William Hurt. It's especially good fun as "Mr. Hand" (one of The Strangers tasked with capturing John Murdoch) is played by the one-and-only Richard O'Brien of "Rocky Horror" and "Crystal Maze" fame. Never was a creepy bald man cast so well !

Golden Sunsets Redux - 60 Years of Memories - Part 31 - 1997

 A reminder that science fiction still knows how to go big. Really big...

1997:

The trivia:

• Reverend Robert Shields from Dayton in the USA developed an extraordinary compulsion to document *everything* about his life. Between 1972 and 1997 he kept a diary of every five minutes, including recording his body temperature, blood pressure,  when he changed the light bulbs and even his bowel movements. Nothing was too trivial. By the time he stopped due to ill health, the diary amounted to 37.5 million words and filled 94 boxes. After his death in 2007, the full archive was donated to Washington State University. But Shields himself insisted that the material should not be opened until 50 years after, meaning the diaries will remain sealed until 2057.

• As part of his High School science class, 14-year old Nathan Zoner convinced 43 out of 50 classmates to vote to ban the chemical "Dihydrogen Monoxide", citing its many negative effects on the environment.  He presented real facts - that it erodes rock, causes severe burns in its gaseous state, is found in cancerous tumours, and kills thousands of people every year. Many people panicked. He won first prize at the Greater Idaho Science Fair for his project, because it proved that the use of true facts can sometimes lead the public to a false conclusion. Because "Dihydrogen monoxide" is of course...water.

• In April of 1997 the Hale-Bopp comet was at its brightest as it passed close to the Sun, and it continued to be visible in the night sky until December. This lengthy visibility and the extensive coverage in the media and on the internet made it the most observed comet in human history. But it also became infamous when 39 members of the "Heaven's Gate" religious cult committed mass suicide - all in in order to reach what they believed was an extra-terrestrial spacecraft hiding in the comets trail.

The memory:

The Night's Dawn Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton

 If the "Lensmen" sequence of novels by E.E. 'Doc' Smith had instilled in me a love of grandiose space opera as a youngster, then this massive series (in both page count and scope) proved that the SF sub-genre was still alive and kicking and in *very* good hands.

It's worth admitting here that I'm breaking my own internal rules slightly, because the first volume in the trilogy - "The Reality Dysfunction" - came out in 1996, but I didn't discover Mr. Hamilton's work until book two - "The Neutronium Alchemist" was released in 1997. I really wanted the saga to have the top spot somewhere, but since 1996 and 1999 (when final volume "The Naked God" came out) are already allocated, it seemed to fit best here. Anyway, let's dive in...

In the 27th Century, mankind can travel to the stars and has colonised over 900 worlds, plus numerous asteroids and space stations. However, although humanity is united under the auspices of the 'Confederation' (which includes two alien species - the Tyrathca and the Kiint), it has split into two distinct factions - the religious "Adamists", who use machine based nanotechnology and see themselves as "true humans", and the progressive, genetically modified "Edenists" - who have embraced biotechnology (bitek) and can telepathically communicate with their living wormhole-creating vessels (known as Voidhawks). The "Edenists" can also avoid death, by transferring their consciousness into their sentient giant habitats. Plus they dominate the economy, because they harvest 'Helium 3' from gas giant planets - and this is the primary fuel source for all "Adamist" starships.

Against this backdrop we are introduced to a vast array of characters, amongst them: The imprisoned terrorist scientist Dr. Alkad Mzu, designer of the outlawed antimatter super weapon "The Alchemist". Space trader Joshua Calvert, who made his fortune from the sudden discovery of artefacts from an extinct alien species. The fiery "Edenist" Syrinx, who forms a telepathic bond with the bitek starship 'Oeone' and now competes against Joshua in the lucrative shipping industry between worlds. And lastly, the charismatic but sadistic Satanist, Quinn Dexter, leader of a group of revolting convicts on the tropical settlement planet Lalonde.

It's on Lalonde where the main plot really kicks in. While Quinn Dexter is engaged in torturing a local law enforcer, an ancient alien known as the Ly-cilph, which is observing the conflict, notices the dying policeman's energy signature leave his body. It  follows this energy to another dimension (later named 'the Beyond'), which contains the "souls" of human-kind's long dead - billions of them. Unfortunately this brief contact ruptures the barrier between 'the Beyond' and our dimension, allowing the souls to begin to escape and posses the bodies of the living. Many have been driven insane after centuries of imprisonment, as they could sense the "real" world but not touch it. It seems Dexter is just the first possessed of millions to come...

The 'reincarnated dead' find that they can allow more trapped souls through *and* they can harness energy based powers, both as an offensive weapon and to reshape local reality. However, this prevents them from using use any form of advanced electronics. Consequently, Lalonde is quickly over-run and many of the possessed (including Quinn, who has regained control of his body, but kept the powers) leave in spaceships to spread to the wider Confederation.

If  this all sounds a bit like the beginnings of a zombie outbreak in space, well that's true, in a very limited sense - but the trilogy is so much more than that. As possession spreads throughout the Confederation like a virus, the viewpoint continues to switch, so that we see the unfolding chaos across the known galaxy. Individuals battle for survival. Governments and even planets fall. There are massive space battles and exploding stars - and across it all Quinn Dexter prepares to unleash his final apocalypse on Earth. It's exhilarating stuff. Even something that might sound hoary - like bringing in Al Capone and Fletcher Christian as two of the possessing souls - works, because Hamilton's characters have weight and history and depth. They act like real people, not movie cliché cut-outs, and we care about their fates. Key plot reveals also feel earned, because characters discover them by detective work and sheer bloody survival.

The horror elements (and the books don't shy away from graphic violence) blend seamlessly with the more serious military science fiction and space opera themes, and events have real consequence. Plus Hamilton takes the time to examine the philosophical and metaphysical sides of the conflict. For example, how does the existence of "the Beyond" change humanity's views on religion and the afterlife? Yes, there are a vast array of multi-layered subplots, which can be challenging to keep up with - this is certainly not a story that you can skim - but Hamilton is a master juggler, and knows exactly how to keep all the planets in the air, when to ratchet up the suspense, and when to pull back the curtain.

This huge trilogy is also where a lot of Hamilton's core ideas - which he returns to in slightly different forms in subsequent novels - are first brought into the light. Humans enhanced by integrated technology. Vast man-made habitats. Innovative ways of crossing huge galactic distances. Aliens that are truly nothing like us (no bumpy foreheaded bipeds here). The fact that no matter how far out into the universe we go, we just take our prejudices and limited ways of thinking with us.

If I have one criticism, it's that the ending of the whole saga slightly falls short of the immense build-up. It's innovative, and there's a logic to it - and it all fits together in a massively complicated tapestry - but after three enormous volumes of escalating scope and imagination, I was perhaps hoping for something just a little...more. But that's nit-picking.

It’s not just the scale of his fiction that sets Hamilton apart, but the confidence with which he handles it - the ability to weave together dozens of plotlines, hundreds of characters, and entire worlds, and still deliver a story that feels coherent and compelling. The "Night’s Dawn" trilogy remains one of the best examples of what he can do - a work that is as imaginative as it is ambitious, and as entertaining as it is thought-provoking. It’s not perfect, but it’s exactly the kind of imperfect that comes from trying to do something genuinely enormous. And for me, that’s what makes it so rewarding. 

To my mind, after reading this series, there's space opera, there's epic space opera, and then there's Peter F. Hamilton - and no one else even comes close.

Honourable mentions:

• Contact - Starring the always excellent Jodie Foster, this is one of those rare things - an intelligent, thoughtful science fiction film that dares to ask big questions about science, the universe and faith (in all senses of the word). When radio astronomer Ellie Arroway discovers radio transmissions coming from Vega, it leads to the building of a gigantic machine - one that may just take mankind to it's first extraterrestrial encounter. What will the occupant find at the other end of their journey? Is it real? Is it the biggest hoax ever perpetrated? The film doesn't give all the answers, and it's all the better for it.  It should come as no surprise that I love the film so much when you learn that is was written by one of my personal heroes - scientist Carl Sagan - and was directed by Robert Zemeckis, responsible for the almost perfect "Back To The Future Trilogy". A seemingly forgotten classic, 

• Buffy The Vampire Slayer - It's difficult looking back now to really appreciate how much a ground-breaking impact "Buffy" had on genre television. The show had a powerful female heroine, witty and intelligent scripts - that combined fantastical elements will the real world trials of the average teenager (or twenty-something) - and a cast of interesting and relatable characters (even the evil ones).  It really brought fantasy television to the attention of the masses. Although it wasn't the first show to use season long plot arcs, it certainly re-popularised the idea - and phrases such as "Big Bad" to refer to the ultimate season villain, have become part of modern TV language. I first discovered it in the familiar BBC2 evening slot (where some episodes were cut), but my fascination really took off when I started buying the VHS video releases. It was also one of the first programmes you could buy in "box set" collections (albeit each season was split into two releases of three cassettes each). I bought them all, before upgrading to the DVD complete collection. It's a few years since I've watched any, but any show that can consistently produce excellent episodes week in week out for seven years  - and also deliver stories as emotionally rich and diverse as "The Body", "Hush" and "Once More With Feeling" will always get my vote. 

• Star Trek: New Frontier -  I love "Star Trek" in all its various TV and film incarnations, but I've never really been one for diving into the novelised adventures of Kirk, Picard, Sisko et al. Although Pocket Books started releasing new stories in the early 80s, they didn't make their way to UK shores until around 1987, when I started seeing them in places like Forbidden Planet - but they were nothing more than a curiosity. Then in 1997 along came comics writer Peter David, who began to develop his own little corner of the "Trek" universe, using a combination of new characters and minor background players from the various TV series. "New Frontier" concerned the adventures of the reckless Captain Mackenzie Calhoun and the oddball crew of the Federation Starship 'Excalibur', as it explores Sector 221-G, home of the recently fallen Thallonian Empire. Intrigued by the concept, plus being aware of the quality of David's extensive comics work, I decided to take a chance and picked up the first couple of books - and that was it - I was hooked. Apart from the interactions of the unique crew and their adventures, my primary reason for enjoying the books so much was that you genuinely never knew what direction things could go in. Unlike Kirk and Picard, who (of course) would always survive, David might kill off a prominent character, or jump forward in time or just throw in a real plot curve ball - it was that unpredictable. Between 1997 and 2006 David wrote sixteen full novels plus the "New Frontier" crew made appearances in a number of  other book mini-series, anthologies, and even their own comics. Things then tailed off and there were only two new books in the next six years, before a final trilogy of e-novellas in 2015. I bought them all, and to my mind they are some of the very best tie-in books to come out of the mega franchise. Well worth a read even if you are only a casual fan.

• The Fifth Element - It's wild, it's wacky, I'm sure certain parts don't make a whole lot of sense - but I just can't help but love Luc Besson's 23rd century science fiction action extravaganza. Even if it is clearly influenced by the French SF graphic novel series "Valerian & Laureline", you have to admire it's sheer imagination and ambition. Amongst the special effects, and a story of a once-every-5,000-years cosmic alignment, Besson weaves an all-star cast. Bruce Willis as world weary and cynical cab driver, Korben Dallas. Ian Holm as a nervous priest who knows the truth behind the elements. And Gary Oldman chewing the scenery with absolute gusto as Jean -Baptiste Emanuel Zorg - the villain of the piece, with his half shaved head, bizarre Southern accent and dog-faced henchmen. Plus of course Milla Jovovich as the strange, ethereal Leeloo. Less successful is Chris Tucker as the garish DJ Ruby Rhod - his high pitched fast-talking schtick wears thin very quickly. But that's the one small fly in the ointment of of an otherwise riot of a film.

• Teletubbies - The brightly coloured forms of Tinky Winky, Laa-Laa, Dipsy and Po were *everywhere* in 1997, as what was conceived as a fun, educational series for pre-school children caught the imagination of the general population of Great Britain.  It even resulted in four characters who only communicate in gibberish having a number one hit single! For me as the father of a one-year old daughter who loved the show, I became very familiar with the repetitive surreal world, and bizarre things like the Noo-noo and the Voice Trumpets. My wife even turned my daughters room into Teletubbyland, complete with rolling green hills, a grass carpet, paper sunflowers on the walls  and the rays of the Sun Baby shining out from the corner. Goodness knows what the people who lived there after us thought of it !

• Hanson - Mmmbop - Okay, so this one is a real guilty / secret  pleasure. The three young Hanson brothers from Tulsa, Oklahoma had been making music since the early 90s, but exploded on the music scene with the release of this single, which reached number one in 27 countries  - and went on to sell over 700,000 copies in the UK alone. Even those who said that they hated it couldn't help secretly singing along to the infectious albeit nonsensical chorus. Sure it's bubblegum pop aimed at a teenage market  - and I was certainly outside that demographic - but what can I say, I like good pop music no matter my age and even when it's not "cool" to do so. Subsequent single releases hit the top ten too (even though people seem to remember Hanson as a one-hit wonder), and piqued my interest enough to shell out for the whole album, "Middle of Nowhere", when I saw it at a bargain price. Despite a few cheesy ballads, it's a selection of cheerful, supremely catchy melodies mixed with modern slick production values. People seem to remember 1997 as the year of Oasis, Radiohead and The Verve, but at a time when my personal life was going through a series of enormous highs and lows, I just remember the music that made me smile...

• The Game - This is probably the film directed by David Fincher that very few people have heard of, let alone seen - yet strangely for me it's one of the most rewarding. Michael Douglas is wealthy investment baker Nicholas Van Orton who is given an usual present for his birthday from his brother: a ticket for a "game" that he promises will change his life. I can't say too much more for fear of spoiling the enjoyment, as your work your way through the labyrinthine plot and its unexpected twists and turns - but hell is the payoff worth it. I love twisty-turny films like this, and the first time I saw "The Game" I sat with my mouth open as Fincher slowly opened up his puzzle box. To be honest it's a trick that probably only works on that initial viewing, but boy, is it worth it.

• Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone - Who? Never heard of him...

Golden Sunsets Redux - 60 Years of Memories - Part 30 - 1996

So 1996 was pretty important for me, as my first daughter was born in March of this year. It's hard to believe that as I sit here writing now, she is 30 years old, has just obtained a PHD in early modern theatre and has just become a published author. She obviously doesn't get that intelligence from me! There have been lots of highs and lows in our relationship over the last three decades, especially after her mum and I got divorced and we both married other people, but I think we have come out of it okay. I'm immensely proud of all she has accomplished. So this post is dedicated to Hannah, with love.

1996:

The trivia:

• A 21-year old man walked into radio station Star FM in Wanganui, New Zealand and proceeded to take the station manager hostage with what was believed to be an explosive device. His one and only demand was that the station play "Rainbow Connection" from "The Muppet Movie" on repeat for the next twelve hours. Before the song could be played for the first time, local police retook the station and arrested the poor guy.

• When the movie "The Rock" (of which more later) had it's glitzy star-studded premiere, it was held at the former prison on the island of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay. In true James Bond style, windsurfer Jeff Bunch sailed to the island wearing a wing-collar tuxedo and bow tie under his wetsuit.  He landed on the north east side of the island, climbed over the edge and snuck into the celebrity party. He later claimed to have already had a cocktail with star Sean Connery before being captured by park rangers and escorted off the premises.

• An experienced model enthusiast was flying his self built remote controlled plane at the registered site in Phoenix Park, Dublin, Ireland. After a few successful short flights, he suddenly lost all control and the plane flew off into the distance in a north east direction, supposedly to crash. However after five miles, the model aircraft ran out of fuel and glided to a safe stop - on the taxi-way of runway 28 at Dublin International Airport.               

The memory:

Quake

So it's no secret that I've always liked video games. I have vague memories of playing a version of the classic text game "Colossal Cave"  on a massive office machine sometimes in the late 1970s (how or why I got to see this is lost to my fading brain cells), so I guess my love for the form grew from there. Whether it's the simplicity of "Pong", the 48K wonder of "Knight Lore" on the ZX Spectrum, the rip-off platform fun of "Great Giana Sisters" on the Commodore 64 or the fast paced spinball of "Sonic The Hedgehog" on the Sega Megadrive - I've played hundreds of action, puzzle, driving, shooting, platform and adventure games in my life - although I've managed to fully complete only a mere few of those (I said I enjoyed the games, not that I was any good at them!).

All of those games were on simple "home computers" (which you could program as well), or early games consoles. When I first started work after leaving school, business machines were huge things that look up a whole room, and "PC's" were standalone boxes that ran MS-DOS. Some people still can't believe that I actually wrote the menu screen for our first office PC in BASIC. We didn't get Windows until 1992.

But it was 1995 before prices dropped enough that I could afford to get a home PC - running the brand new Windows 95 operating system with it's (for then) flashy interface. I started buying "PC Zone" magazine for the reviews of new games and the cover-mounted CD-ROM full of demos and previews. Some of the first games I bought for the new machine that sat proudly in the spare bedroom were "Titanic: Adventure Out Of Time" and "Star Trek: A Final Unity" - more cerebral, thinking games than fast-paced action. I was aware of the burgeoning genre of first-person shooters pioneered by Wolfenstein 3D" and "Doom" (although I didn't get to play those two until much later). But then came "Duke Nukem 3D" and the demo I installed made me go out and buy the full game almost straight away - and I completed it too, after much effort (and maybe a little use of the "god" mode to figure out difficult areas first...).

So by the time iD Software's highly anticipated "Quake" arrived, I thought I was pretty up to speed with how these shooting games worked. What I didn't anticipate was just how damn addictive they could be...

The core conceit of "Quake" main storyline seems fairly basic by today's' standards, but back then the combination of  Lovecraftian / Satanic imagery, plus futuristic technology in a gothic / medieval setting was a heady one. It built on the successes of "Doom" but with a far stronger sense of dread  and lurking horror. The single-player campaign consists of 30 separate levels (several of which are secret) across four 'episodes' - which are accessed through a teleporter known as a "Slipgate". Exploring the labyrinthine passages and hidden rooms requires accessing particular switches or keys - and various other portals are also discoverable over the course of the game. The aim is to fight through each of the levels, killing or avoiding the various enemies, and collect four magic runes. These give the player access to the final level and the chance to defeat the demonic presence known as Shib-Niggurath.

The antagonists in "Quake" range from the merely deadly to the truly horrific. Grunts, Zombies, Knights, Enforcers and Ogres are recognisably almost-human, but a Fiend is a mass of teeth and razor-sharp claws, while a Vore is a spider-esque hybrid monstrosity. Then there is the Shambler, with it's blood-stained fur, ripping fangs and the ability to fling bolts of electricity. Any one of these creatures appearing suddenly around a dark corner was guaranteed to make a little bit of wee come out (especially if, like me you played with the lights really low). 

Sure, it's true that the levels are almost always the same twenty shades of dirty brown, and at times it could be incredibly frustrating to have to restart yet again when a stray claw took your last nugget of life energy - but the excellent level design and the sheer "oh-go-on-then-I know-it's-2am-but-just-one-more-go" playability of  it meant that I spent *way* too many hours trying to uncover every secret and defeat every enemy. I hadn't been this addicted to a game since the days of the ZX Spectrum.

But I have to make an admission here. Most of my time spent on "Quake" was not when it first came out. Oh sure, I played the demo and liked what I saw an awful lot - and I picked up a full copy when the price dropped somewhat, but in 1996 I was far too busy with firstly moving house, and then coming to terms with the arrival of my first daughter eleven weeks earlier than expected (along with the special care that entailed). After that there were a series of personal circumstances which put a huge strain on the increasingly difficult relationship with my wife. I won't bore you with those problems here, but suffice it to say that despite the joy of my second daughter being born in late 1998, my wife and I ended up separating for good in February of 1999.

So with my job still in London, I found myself living on the outskirts, with my daughters 180 miles away and mostly only able to see them at weekends. I had almost no free cash and I was on my own most of the time during the week, so I turned to films and television and video games for entertainment. I pulled out that CD of "Quake" and booted up the PC. Sadly I couldn't enjoy any of the innovative multiplayer aspects of the game - my prehistoric dial-up internet connection was not capable of anything like that - so I just satisfied myself with trying to defeat the game on every difficult setting (yes even "Nightmare", which was frankly, impossible). And then I discovered "mods"...

The gameplay of "Quake" could be changed by altering the graphics and audio, using the "QuakeC" programming language. At the start this meant just small fixes and patches and the odd new enemy, but soon fans were creating whole new versions of the game that were very different from the original. The first major mods I read about in the PC magazines was "Team Fortress", but being as it was multiplayer, it was off limits to me. Of far more interest were the multitude of single player levels that sprung up. The small size of these files meant that I could log on, download it (relatively) quickly and then log off. I seem to recall that some mods were also given away on cover mounted CDs. For me this took the game to a whole other level, as I was no longer restricted to the 30 maps that came with the installation disc (yes I know there were a couple of "expansion packs" added later, but for some reason lost to the mists of time I never got round to them).

As internet speeds became cheaper, faster and more reliable, my "Quake" mod interest kept growing. I must have played or tried out dozens upon dozens of new levels. Someone invented "AirQuake" where you were now flying around the skies of QuakeWorld engaged in bombing runs. or driving a tank to take down your enemies in the air. Then there was "QuakeRally" which turned things into a medieval version of a car race. "AlienQuake" had me stalking the corridors of the Nostromo facing off against Facehuggers and Xenomorphs. "FantasyQuake" replaced guns and bullets with swords and bows and arrows."Horrorshow" added Jason Voorhees and the ability to inhabit the body of Leatherface. The sky was truly the limit.

Between games of "Quake" and sessions on my beloved Nintendo 64, I whiled away the somewhat lonely evenings after work (including through that first cold winter when the central heating broke down and I couldn't afford to repair it). I persevered with getting my life back in order and clearing my debts. I made new friends and built new relationships, but I kept returning to that first version of  "Quake" to see each new modification. Like the expansion packs I mentioned earlier, I never did progress to "Quake II" or "Quake III Arena", but that was okay. Eventually things improved and in 2001 I met the wonderful woman that would become my second (and hopefully final!) wife, and my nights of gaming gradually slowed to a crawl.

As part of writing this piece, I dug out my dusty copy of the game from storage in the loft and after a *lot* of fiddling around with installers and "Source Ports", I pressed "Single Player" on my first game of "Quake" in decades. As I moved around that first level, the sound of collecting the backpacks and bullets dropped by the enemies, and the grunt of the main character brought all the memories flooding back. Compared to today's standards, it's slow and clunky and incredibly linear but there's still a huge amount of playability, and before I knew it a couple of hours had gone past.  It's a great game and while I'd quite like to forget certain other aspects of my life in the mid to late 90s, this is one that I'm quite happy to recall. Even if I'm now going to dream about running through dank corridors being snarled at by a rabid Shambler...

Honourable mentions:

• Kingdom Come - I mentioned this landmark comic mini series in my post for 1995, but it's first publication here is worth a more detailed look. Mark Waid and co-writer / artist Alex Ross envisioned the future of the DC universe where the heroes of the present day have abandoned their roles after the rise and popularity of  second and third generation meta-humans who fight more for the fun of it than to protect the innocent, and who care nothing for the effects of their destructive behaviour. Worst of these is Magog who murders the Joker and manages to turn the American Midwest into a radioactive wasteland, killing millions while in pursuit of the villain The Parasite. Coaxed back into action by Wonder Woman, Superman reforms the Justice League, but finds himself and his allies caught in the midst of a war between Batman and his team of "Outsiders", Lex Luthor and his Mankind Liberation Front and the threat of nuclear destruction. Not to mention having to contend with a brainwashed Captain Marvel. The artwork from Alex Ross is simply stunning, painted in such a lush hyper-realistic style that it's almost like looking at excerpts from a film, but still with the comic book sensibilities that make it flow naturally from panel to panel. It's well known that he uses real life models, but this is no tracing of photos, just a way of helping him get the right angle or pose or expression - and hell does it pay off. Every frame is packed with detail and some of the seemingly throwaway character designs have been used in subsequent years as templates for the current DC universe. In fact "Kingdom Come" itself has been referenced or used significantly in many other stories in the years since. Next to the original "Crisis", it's probably the most important "event" book DC has ever published.
  

• The Cable Guy - Made when Jim Carrey was at the height of his first wave of popularity this psychological comedy thriller showed that the actor could also do dark and twisted characters. Matthew Broderick plays straight man as Steven, recently split with his girl friend and on his own in a new apartment. When he slips the cable installer an extra $50 for free premium channels, what he doesn't expect is to be followed around by a guy who at first appears to just be a social misfit, but then turns out to be genuinely crazy. I love "Ace Ventura", but if you asked me to choose one Carrey comedy, this would be at the top of the list. Highlights are the karaoke performance of "Somebody to Love" and of course the fight at the 'Medieval Times' theme restaurant that turns into a full on recreation of the classic Kirk / Spock battle from Star Trek's "Amok Time", complete with episode specific weapons and music. This really is an overlooked gem.

• Duke Nukem 3D - "Quake" might have been the first-person shooter I played the most, but "Duke" was the one I played first. There's some storyline about Earth being invaded in the 21st Century, but that doesn't really matter. What's important is running through a variety of environments collecting objects and weaponry while blasting as many of the hideous alien scum as possible - all while Duke himself gives a string of cheesy one liners in a deep gruff voice worthy of Arnie himself. The degree of interactivity with the areas you stalk through, along with the clever level design and the satire of pop culture makes it enormous fun to play. I'm getting flashbacks to the movie theatre level right now. It's fair to say that this was one of the most important video games of all time and all the FPS games since owe a debt to The Duke. Hail to the King, baby !

• Hamlet - I like a good "Hamlet". I must have seen a dozen or more different versions in my life, either on stage or screen. Some were amateur productions with minimal sets. Some had big name stars such as Benedict Cumberbatch, David Tennant or Mel Gibson. Sometimes the main story is only a side-line, such as in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead". I've even seen a half-hour long animation. But there is only one film version which contains every single word of Shakespeare's original text - and that's the one written, directed and starring the marvellous Kenneth Branagh. I'd been a fan of Ken ever since his 1989 version of "Henry V" and really rated him as someone who wanted to bring Shakespeare back to a mass audience. Here he updates the setting of the play to the 19th Century, adds flashbacks, and imbues the whole production with an epic style. He does this by filming it in 70mm (the last to do so until 2012) and using lots of long single takes  for numerous scenes. It's helped by a wealth of famous actors in small and large roles - Derek Jacobi (whose own BBC version is almost as long), Julie Christie, Richard Briers, Kate Winslet, Robin Williams, Gerard Depardieu, Jack Lemmon, Billy Crystal, Charlton Heston, John Gielgud, Judi Dench - the list goes on and on. It's sumptuous, layered and incredibly powerful. I adore it.

• Fun Song Factory - No don't click away from the page. There is a good reason for this 90s children's program being here - and you have probably already guessed that it's to do with daughter number one. I can't remember where it came from, but somehow we ended up with a double VHS cassette pack of the first two "Fun Song Factory" shows - the second of which was recorded in 1996. Performed in front of a live audience of kids, mums and dads by Iain Lauchlan, Sarah Davison, Michelle Durler and kids favourite, the unbelievable cheerful Dave Benson Philips, the shows were full of pre-school favourite songs and nursery rhymes such as "The Wheels on the Bus" and "The Grand Old Duke of York" - plus inexplicably, The Beatles "Yellow Submarine". To say that Hannah loved these shows as a toddler was an understatement, and they became a permanent accompaniment to our lives in those first few years. Even now I just have to hear "I am the Music Man" and I can picture her sitting in the living room totally captivated by the screen. Now before you think badly of us, we didn't use the show as a surrogate babysitter (well, maybe only a couple of times when we needed to urgently get things done) - this was a shared experience and it's one of my fondest memories of those years with my daughter, even if other things in my life were...extremely challenging.

• The Frighteners - It may have been somewhat forgotten now in the wake of the massive success of the "Lord of the Rings" and "Hobbit" movie trilogies, but this horror comedy from Peter Jackson and starring Michael J Fox, in his last leading film role, is still a favourite in my house. Fox is Frank Bannister, an architect who is able to see and hear the ghosts around him. Initially he uses this ability to make some supernatural friends and set up a flourishing exorcism scam, but when the spirit of a mass murderer starts attacking both the living and the dead, Frank gets pulled into the investigation. Of course it's a film chock full of visual effects (more so than pretty much any other film of the time) and proved that Jackson could handle the demands of that kind of  shoot, but it's the real performances that stand out. Fox is fun to watch in pretty much everything he's done, but here he manages to play against type and  imbue his character with a bit of a world-weary attitude. There is also a nice turn from R. Lee Ermey who basically reprises his role as the screaming sergeant from "Full Metal Jacket". But it's Jeffrey Combs who steals ever scene he is in as the disturbed (and disturbing) FBI agent Milton Dammers. 

• DC versus Marvel - Fans had been looking for a meeting between the heroes and villains of the rival comic publishers for decades, and after a lot of wrangling we got this four issue mini series by Peter David, Ron Marz, Dan Jurgens and Claudio Castellini. There's some nonsense about cosmic embodiments of the two universes setting up a contest, but it was really an excuse for a series of smack-downs between various characters, with a fan vote deciding the outcome of each bout (I still can't believe Storm defeated Wonder Woman though). It's fun stuff, particularly when the intervention of new character Access resulted in the two universes being merged - and we get the 12 issue "Amalgam" imprint with odd fusions such as Dark Claw (Batman & Wolverine), the Green Skull (Lex Luthor & Red Skull), Moonwing (Nightwing & Moon Knight) and Doctor Strangefate (you get the idea...). There was even the Two-Faced Goblin and an amalgamation of Green Arrow and Hawkeye called...er....Hawkeye. In terms of sheer comics geekery it was pretty hard to beat - until 2003 anyway...

• Mars Attacks! - I wasn't even born when the original "Mars Attacks" trading cards were released, but I was soon aware of them once I started to seriously become interested in all things science fiction (plus, don't forget Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds from 1978...). Who couldn't fail to enjoy the lurid, sometimes blood-soaked paintings by Wally Wood and Norman Saunders depicting the Martians with their skull-like faces and pulsating brains? The cards soon became huge collector's items and think I didn't get to see a full set of images until the rise of the internet. As for Tim Burton's live action satire / comedy / thriller adaptation - it's as mad as a box of frogs. Where else would you get to see Jack Nicholson hamming it up to eleven in two roles. Or Pierce Brosnan as a disembodied head smoking a pipe. Or Tom Jones playing himself as an action hero! Or the Martians heads exploding when they listen to Slim Whitman? It's all over the place and I love it more because of that. Plus the aliens themselves are a triumph of 90s CGI. "Ack Ack Ack Ack !"

• The Rock - Before Michael Bay became the king of over the top mindless action, he made this smart thriller starring the legendary Sean Connery and personal favourite Nicholas Cage. A bunch of rogue US Marines take over Alcatraz Prison, hold all the tourists hostage and threaten to release nerve gas over San Francisco unless they get $100 million for the families of Recon Marines who died on covert operations. Cage plays the FBI's top chemical weapons expert, the wonderfully name Stanley Goodspeed, who is paired up with former British SAS Captain John Mason (Connery) - a man who has been mysteriously locked up without charge for thirty years and is the only person to ever escape Alcatraz. What follows is a wonderful action film, made all the better by the chemistry between the two leads. Connery is clearly enjoying himself as the secretive Mason (was he a disguised James Bond?...) and Cage is on a career roll. It's also worth mentioning Ed Harris as the Brigadier General in charge of the bad guys, who makes his character quite sympathetic at times. It's one of those movies which, when it comes on TV, I stop changing channels and end up watching all the way through - no matter how many times I've seen it before. There's nothing guilty about this pleasure.