Doctor Who: Spyfall Part 1

It feels like longer than twelve months since Doctor Who appeared on our screens. While the long gap may have caused viewer interest to wane, the production team appear to used the time well in making a pretty good opening episode.

Doctor Who has done riffs on things before and this time around, it's the spy genre.  Agents are being killed off and the Doctor and company are being recruited by C to find things. We get the usual thing of car chases, assassinations and casino scenes. The Doctor and her friends infiltrate a party in tuxes, It's quite good.

Last year's stories had a lot of long talky sequences interspersed with occasional action. This time things were more evenly paced. The car chase stunt is good, though a little reminiscent of the Atmos incident. The bike sequence is slightly less so.

The aliens of this episode are effective energy beings though the voices are slightly generic. They are in the story more frequently than aliens of last year.

The aliens are in leagye with Daniel, head of VOR, played by Lenny Henry. He was good in Broadchurch so there was no question that he would be good here.

Another feature of this episode is the return of the Master, now played by Sacha Darwhan, who spends most of the episode pretending to be the British agent, 'O'. Previous reveals have set up something odd about the character, Professor Yana or Missy, but this comes almost entirely out of the blue. Sacha Darwhan plays the switch well and I look forward to seeing more of him as the character.

Segun Akinola's music is once again a good Bond riff, with the action theme he delivered for Resolution proving well.

Overall, Spyfall Part 1 is a good start to the series. Let's hope Part 2 can build on that well.

8/10

Best F(r)iends Volume I (2018)

Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero are known best for The Room, the 2003 film which became known as one of the worst movies of all time. This time Greg Sestero was in the driving seat, producing and playing the main character in the film. 

The story follows John, played by Sestero, a mute, homeless person whose only belonging is a torn photograph of his mother. He ends up befriending Harvey, an eccentric mortician played by Wiseau. They work together in the mortuary where Harvey reveals he has been stockpiling golden teeth. As John recovers his voice and his health, he realises that there is money to be made in selling the gold teeth so he lets Harvey in on the scheme. John starts going out with a girl and the trust between the two friends starts to unravel. The plot is not totally unsurprising, but unlike with The Room everything ties together and there are no pointless sub-plots. There are some similarities between this and The Room. You have two men whose friendship is being torn apart by a woman. This time around there is an intentionally more creepy atmosphere and you feel you cannot trust either friend. 

Greg Sestero is decent enough in the role of John. It is difficult to tell whether the lack of emotion is an intentional nod to John's mysterious nature or whether Greg Sestero is not the best actor. Either way he is decent enough.

Tommy Wiseau is effective in the role of Harvey. At least this time around, there is no pretending that Tommy Wiseau's character is ordinary. He seems kind to John but his collecting of the golden teeth and unusual money deals keep him as an unusual character. It is a much more natural role for him. Greg Sestero is effective as John. It feels as though they only did one take per scene and there may have been improvisation. Nonetheless this is interesting.

John's girlfriend is probably the best played character in the whole thing. Her reactions to Harvey are amusing.

Greg Sestero wisely leaves the direction to someone else. The sets are all exterior. There are no studio sets masquerading as exteriors.

The soundtrack is strange, ethereal and electronic. Perfect.

Overall, Volume 1 of Best Friends is a fairly decent movie. Nothing exceptional but certainly not bad.

Score: 8/10

Joker (2019)

Joker is a Taxi Driver inspired story of a nobody, Arthur Fleck, getting more deranged until he snaps and becomes the Joker. He struggles with his job, deals with family issues against Thomas Wayne.

The idea that Arthur Fleck and Thomas Wayne may be related is an interesting one but I prefer that they didn't. It would have made Thomas Wayne too much of a boogeyman. For him to hate the poor AND be a bad father to be too OTT.

The film is well-directed by Todd Phillips. The late 70s/early 80s look of the film recalls films of Martin Scorsese. Lots of narrow corridors, cracked paint and seedy, grubby looking locations. There is a moment borrowed from King of Comedy where Arthur Fleck gets beloved. The camera never moves beyond Fleck's viewpoint. The music is excellent, melanchony, sinister.

Joachim Phoenix is excellent as Fleck and the way that he gradually becoming more assertive as the Joker. His final costume is nicely reminiscent of Caesar Romero's suit. Definitely one of the best interpretations of the character.

This is a pretty decent supervillain origin story movie. A film that occasionally thinks it's more intelligent than it actually is. Some might call it violent but the origin of a supervillain is hardly going to be sunshine and roses.

The film borrows from The Killing Joke and The Dark Knight Returns. The Joker's appearance on the talk show mirrors that of his appearance on the David Endochrine show in the Dark KNight Returns.

The film concludes with Joker escaping from Arkham and Bruce Wayne having seen his parents die and be on the way to becoming Batman. Joachim Phoenix is so good that I wish we could see his version of the Joker tackle Robert Pattinson's Batman. It's possible that this film will get a sequel but I'm hoping that it does not. The film deserves to exist as its own little oddity.

7.5/10

Doctor Who: The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos

These days, we've used to the idea of every single series of Doctor Who ending with a big finale. There's usually some game changing event like a companion departure, a new Doctor's debut or the return of an old villain. It wasn't always the case though. In the 1963-1989  run of the series, it was more common for a final story to simply be a stop. The Battle of Ransokoor Av Kolos falls into the latter category. The Tardis team is pretty much the same as the end of the adventure as thy were at the beginning.Only a couple of beats make this seem significant.

One way this does resemble more recent finales is the return of an old villain. This time it's Tim Shaw, the Stenza warrior from The Woman Who Fell to Earth. Since we last saw him, he teleported to the planet of two psychic aliens know as the Uks.  With the help of the Uks, Tim Shaw has constructed an edifice which he plans to use as a super weapon. Using parts of five different planets he plans to destroy the Earth as a revenge fr the Doctor. The scheme is somewhat derivative of The Pirate Planet.

The Doctor and company get involved when they answer the distress signal and meet a man called Paltraki. Although he does not remember it straightaway he has stolen one of the planet components that Tim Shaw needs.

They are ultimately able to resolve the manner by sending the planets back to the same place. Event he Doctor refers to it as being derivative of Journey's End. 

Upon finding out about Tim Shaw, Graham decides he wants revenge. This is where the lack of game changing quality brings the episode down. The rules of genre would dictate Graham does not kill Tim Shaw. Instead he shoots him in the foot. A fan seculated it might have been more interesting if Graham had actually killed Tm Shaw and he and Ryan had tried to cover it up. As it is, the ending of this arc is a little too predictable to be interesting.

The Doctor's ethics are challenged this week but not too deeply. Graham is challenging her rules on guns, but she hands out bombs without concern. There is also the interesting idea that she has inadvertently led to Tim Shaw being the creator, but it is glossed over. Jodie is great as the Doctor, and I know from Broadchurch that she can do serious. This is one episode whee a more serious Doctor was needed to make the gravity of the situation seem real.

Tim Shaw himself is alright. Having him be weakened on a life support system was interesting. Unfortunately he didn't really do anything except to exposit and walk around a lot. I had hoped that the episode would flesh out the character but it doesn't really. He is put in stasis by Graham and Ryan at the end of the episode, but it is possible he may come back in the future. If he does then they should take his character in a new direction.

The Uks are an interesting idea. Psychic aliens who have the power to manipulate matter. It's unclear why such a powerful race would think that the injured Tim Shaw was any kind of creator. They are more creators than he is.

Ryan and Yasmin get very little to do this week. Ryan is mostly there to act as Graham's conscience and reminds Graham that they and the Tardis team are a family. Yasmin gets even less, acting as a sounding board to the Doctor but not given much else.

The setting of this episode is a disappointing quarry planet. The scenes where the Uks are speaking in portentous dialogue gave some fans flashbacks to Time and the Rani. There is speculation that it will drive people mad, but when the Doctor and Yasmin remove their implants they only get slight headaches.

One thing I like is that this episode only refers to the current series. There are some callbacks to The Ghost Monument, as in the Sniperbots, who are still as useless as they were in that episode and the reference to Stenza technology.

The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos is an episode that poses a lot of interesting ideas but does not give them the depth or exploration they deserved. There are a few peppered moments. The jokes are funny. The Die Hard reference is amusing and the notion of the time travellers as family is great. It's not terrible but not the best.

Rating = 6/10

Doctor Who: It Takes You Away

In almost every series of the revived Doctor Who, the penultimate episode has been an experimental one, trying new or offbeat ideas for the show. Sometimes it pays off and you get something wonderful like Heaven Sent. Other times you get something that's a bit of a mess, like Fear Her or Nightmare in Silver.  This time around,  It Takes You Away felt somewhere between the two. Some good ideas but not executed as well as it could have been

The episode started out well, with our intrepid group of time travelers arriving at a Norwegian Fjord and investigating a boarded up house. There's a bit of a horror theme going on with these segments, with a creepy house, and figure in the shadows moving around. Segun Akinola's music aids in building the haunting atmosphere.

It turns out that the shadowy figure is a blind girl. Her father has gone missing and there seems to be a monster outside. As our explorers investigate it turns out that the father did not dissapear from outside the house but inside. A mirror in the house is a gateway to a dark realm known as the anti-zone. After dealing with the horrors of the anti-zone our heroes each the gateway to a sentient universe known as the Solitract. This is where the episode loses the horror theme and becomes an emotional story. The girl's father is alive but has been tempted here by a recreation of his dead wife. Graham soon meets a copy of Grace.

It is in the final moments that the episode slightly falls apart. The Frog was a weird element in the episode. Treated seriously. Like Buddweiser Frog.

The father, Ed, was not dealt with as harshly as perhaps he should have been. This is a an who left his disabled daughter alone in a boarded up house in the middle of nowhere with no food and no clear way back to civilization. It's not clear whether the solitract was influencing his decision or whether he is generally a terrible parent. The lack of clarity on this issue hurts the episode.

Nonetheless, the episode still had an interesting theme about moving on. The Man from his dead wife and Graham from Grace. Both have a responsibility to the living.

Graham had a lot of development coming close to his dead wife. He has the strength to pull away from it. He also gets the comedy scene of carrying food around.

Ryan was good as the helper to the girl. His proecting father issues was good.

Yasmin a little less well served as she was mostly there for the Doctor to explain things to. Liked her calming the victim.

Hopefully this episode is the calm moment before things get interesting. Next episode. with a familiar voice in the trailer, the result should be interesting.

Score = 7/10

Doctor Who: The Witchfinders

The Witch Hunts are a period not explored in televised Doctor Who before. In Bilehurst Cragg, a woman called Mistress Savage is having witches burnt. Although the Doctor stipulates non-interference she can't help but get involved and try to save a life, even if she doesn't save it. The only way out of the situation is to pretend to be a witch-finder.

They are soon joined by King James I. He is well played by Alan Cumming. Theatrical, flirtatious with Ryan, sexist towards the Doctor, and still managing to be dark  when he threatens to burn the witches. The character is definitely an interesting one to watch.

The true source of threat is revealled to be the Morax, alien war criminals that have been imprisoned on Pendel Hill. They were a well conceived alien threat. Muddy zombies. The only thing I didn't like about them were the voices which reminded me a bit of the Pyrovile Priestess from The Fires of Pompeii and the Eknodines from Amy's Choice.

The Mistress Savage was a well played villain, alternating between coldly harsh, sympathetic and evil. The girl convinced as the victim.

Jodie Whittaker was good this week. The moment she tells the others not to interfere in history and then can't help but halt the witch trial was typically Doctorish behaviour. She was also effective in the scene later on where she pleaded with King James for her life was good. It was also good to see her Doctor confronting the Morlax. She is becoming a fully rounded Doctor.

Graham was amusing when he was posing as the Witchfinder General. Although he got a serious moment to question Mistress Savage about her goodness, his funny hat meant that he always seemed comical.

Ryan didn't contribute much to the story but had comedy moments as he was hit on by King James I.

Yaz got a bit less to do this week. She did get to talk about the importance of standing up to bullying.

The episode has a very bleached out look which suited the grim subject matter. It gets a bit more colourful at the end, with lurid green trees when the Doctor stops the Morax. It is as though the Doctor fighting monsters restores the shape of the show. The music by Segun Akinola continues to be good.

While I may have preferred the previous episode, The Witchfinders is still a very decent episode of Doctor Who. It would have actually been a better Halloween Special than Arachnids in the U.K. was.

8/10

Doctor Who: Kerblam!

A gift for the Doctor contains a message for help. so she goes to Kerblam! central to investigate.
From here they could have told a story about evil business, with the two heads covering something up. Fortunately, writer Pete McTighe avoided the obvious cliches. Instead it is the worker who is attacking the system and plans to send parcels of death.

This episode was good, solid fun. Like the Tsuranga Conundrum, Kerblam is a light episode, but where the former felt unsure of itself, the latter is much moe aware of the tone, skirting between humour and seriousness.

Jodie was great this week and her Doctor was a highlight of the episode. Her giddy excitement at seeing the Keblam Man's arrival was hilarious and I loved watching her facial reactions and seeing her try on the Fez. She also got a great scene where she railed against the bosses only to say 'laters'

Ryan's background as a warehouse worker was referred to this week.He

Yaz got to use her police training against the villain for once.

Graham was fun as the janitor. It was a more comedic role but it sufficed.

The robots were good. They were more funny when they were being passive aggressive.

The supporting cast were all good. It was nice to see Julie Hesmondhalgh in the Doctor Who at last.

The music was less noticeable than last week but hte Kerblam delivery jingle was catchy

There were a lot of nods to old Doctor Who what with the Fez, the reference to The Unicorn and the Wasp as well as the Venusian Aikido.