Looking back at 2016

You'd be hard pressed to find many good things that happened in 2016. It's been a turbulent time both personally and globally. Once again I have listed a few things I've seen or heard in the year that I liked. Not all of them actually came out this year but are part of my overall experience of this year.

Film: Ran (1985)

One of the later Kurosawa films which proved the director was still good. A re-telling of 'King Lear' in which the ruler hands over his kingdom to his two of his three sons while the other is disgraced. The theme of events spiraling out of control was quite fitting for this year actually.

TV Show: War & Peace (BBC, 2016)

When critics spoke of the BBC adaption of Leo Tolstoy's War & Peace, they tended to focus on the romance and brief nudity scenes, ignoring the fact that this was a genuinly good piece of drama regardless of those elements. Paul Dane is great as Pierre Bezukhov while Lily James is great as Natasha Rostova and there are lots of good guest actors such as Jim Broadbent and Brian Cox. I would definately recommend this to others.

Videogame: Fran Bow (2015)

A psychological horror game about a little girl named Fran who has been placed in a mental institution following the murder of her parents. The cutesy images behind the more horrific elements which include human experimentation, the sexual exploitation of children and madness.

Album: Super (Pet Shop Boys, 2016)
The return of the Pet Shop Boys was decent enough and included some good songs such as 'Pop Kids' and 'Inner Sanctum'.

Personal Event: Completing Higher Education
Getting to the end of higher education which was a long hard slog but paid off in the end.

Other Event: Star Trek's 50th anniversary

The 50th anniversary of Star Trek was a fairly quiet affair in the UK but there was at least the slow and steady development of Discovery to keep an eye on. I'm not the biggest Star Trek fan but I do quite like the Movies and  Deep Space Nine is my favourite series. If Discovery is anything like those movies they will be good. The world could certainly do with the Federation's utopian values these days.

Doctor Who 10x00: The Return of Dr Mysterio

The 2016 hiatus is over at last. The companion introduction was nice, as was the Doctor’s cameo appearance in Class, but there’s nothing like a full episode of Doctor Who to satiate the viewing appetite. The Return of Dr Mysterio is a fairly lightweight episode by Steven Moffat's standards, but even his average scripts can still be more vibrant and entertaining than those middle episodes of Class.

Doctor Who has tackled many genres over the years, from horror to romance, but a superhero story has never really been done properly. The Second Doctor met a superhero called the Karkus in the Mind Robber, but that was very brief. The Doctor himself has had superpowers on occasions over the years, but a costumed hero has never been the focus of the story. Nowadays people can’t seem to get enough of superheroes, what with all the TV shows and films being churned out by Marvel and DC so it makes sense to do this story now more than ever.

The superhero of this story is the Ghost and the pre-titles sequence gives us his origin story.
On Christmas Eve in the 1980s, a young comic book fan Grant meets the Doctor and swallows a gemstone which he mistook for medicine. The gem bonds with Grant, giving the power of  flight and super strength. Twenty or so years later, Grant is grown up. By day he works as a nanny for journalist Lucy Lombard. By night, he is the Ghost, a superhero with a costume similar to Superman’s and with the voice similar to Batman’s. He and the Doctor meet again when the Doctor, Nardole and Lucy are investigating an organisation called Harmony Shoal.  The Ghost rescues Lucy. What follows is a farce between Grant and Lucy while the Doctor and Nardole continue to investigate Harmony Shoal.

The Ghost and Lucy relationship is clearly inspired by the Superman and Lois Lane relationship from the Christopher Reeve/Richard Donner movies.This is a wise move as they are better as family friendly movies than some of the modern darker fare. The dinner scene witht he Ghost and Lucy is similar to the scene in Superman. There's also a nice namedrop of Shuster and Siegel, Superman’s creators. Sadly the budget does not seem to stretch to a flying scene for Lucy and Grant. Justin Chatwin is likeable enough as Grant Gordon or the Ghost. The Ghost is Superman with the voice of Batman. Grant himself is a bit of Rory as the guy who waited. As in some of the best comic books, the hero underneath the mask is more interesting than the hero. Lucy Fletcher nee Lombard was a good enough character if an obvious riff on Lois Lane. At least this is a reporter who is also a single parent, a nice riposte at the comic book creators of the 90s who seemed to think that their heroes couldn’t have families.

While Grant and Lucy are busy, the Doctor and Nardole uncover Harmony Shoal’s plan.
This is to explode their spaceship, forcing the world leaders to flee for refuge in their laboratory where they can swap brains Given the state of current political events, it would hardly be surprising if this had really happened. It's somewhat similar to Aliens of London, with aliens disguised as humans orchestrating a spaceship crash, although the tone works better than the other, slightly wonky, story. This plot also feels slightly disconnected to the superhero plot.  Perhaps a comic book style super-villain would have been more appropriate for this story.

The two plots do eventually come together at the end as Harmony Shoal attempt to gain the Ghost’s body. It all ends on a bit of wish fulfilment as Grant reveals his true identity to Lucy before he and Lucy dispose of the falling space ship. The Doctor dismisses Harmony Shoal rather too easily, although they promise to be back. We’ll see if future episodes end up showing this.

Peter Capaldi is as great as ever as the Doctor. He is much more of a fun figure this time around, which makes sense for a Christmas episode, but I still miss the rebel Time Lord of Series 8. At this point in his timeline the Doctor is still mourning the departure of River Song. It is odd that Clara’s departure is not mentioned through.

Nardole turned out to be a lot better than I as expecting.  The character has undergone a bit of revision and time around he has some insight into how the Doctor thinks. He gets to be the one who tells Grant and Lucy about River Song. It is arguable that he was not entirely needed in the episode as anyone could have been there for

The monsters of the story, Harmony Shoal, were a creepy idea, though their representatives, Dr Sin and Mr Brock, had very little personality. It seems they are related to the Shoal of Winter Harmony from The Husbands of River Song. It seems like an odd connection, unless Moffat is planning an ongoing thread through his Christmas specials from now on.

The best moment came from the idea of superheroes going through puberty. I don't know if Smallville ever did the X-Ray eye gag but it should have done.  The little visual gag about teeenage Grant 'rising' when he sees teenage Lucy was a nice touch

Overall this was a good Christmas special. Nothing extraoordinary. nothing terrible but plainly in the middle. It reminded me very much of Planet of the Dead. A lone event which had to fill up the show until later.

8/10

Class: The Lost

After last week's arguments split our characters apart, something big was needed to bring them all back together again this episode certainly goes for big. As if the murder of Ram's father and Tanya's mother by the Shadow Kin in pre-titles sequence wasn't enough, we find out that Miss Quill has become pregnant. It's a shocking opening, though I am slightly disappointing that we won't be seeing any more of Ram's father. I quite liked him.

To deal with the impending threat, our characters are forced into different roles. April must look after Ram and her own mother. It's interesting that April and Charlie's decision to ignore violent solutions has lead to a drastic situation.

Tanya learns to cope with her grief by learning self-defence from Miss Quill. It's a good development for a character that has been on the sidelines.

The story concludes when Charlie finally uses the weapon to destroy all of the Shadow Kin. The point perhaps that although he has lost his people he still has his friends. April  sacrifices herself to stop Corikanus. However she ends up in the body of a Shadow Kin. What will she do?

Could this really be the end of the Shadow Kin as antagonists? They've not exactly been the most exciting of villains. If this show does come back for a second series, the one thing it can definately do better is to better recurring villains.

The episode ends on a positive and negative. We finally learn a bit more about the Governors  who are allied with the Weeping Angels. It's sad that Dorothea Ames had to die since this was another character that could have stuck around.

The series has been alright. Not terrible not fantastic but alright. It has taken elements of Buffy but not quite been as astounding as that show. Hopefully, the show will get a second series so it gets the chance to enhance itself.

8/10

Class: The Metaphysical Engine, Or What Quill Did Next

Miss Quill has been one of the more interesting characters in the series, and we have finally reached an episode that is devoted to her. It's a particularly important turning point for her, as she is about to release the Arn, with a bit of help from Dorothea, a shape-shifting surgeon called Balon, and a device known as the metaphysical engine. What should be a fairly straightforward surgical procedure made more dramatic through the metaphysical imagery.

Compared to the previous episode, the visual scope was certainly greater. The Metaphysical Engine allows Quill, Dorothea and Balon, to visit a vast number of terrains, including a pink leafed forest of 'Arn heaven' and the cave of Lore hell, while culminating in a desert manifestation of the Cabinet of Souls. We also get a decent monster this week in the manifestation of the Quill Goddess.

Despite the greater number of locations, this was once again an episode which focused on a small group of characters, albeit less familiar ones. Quill, Dorothea and Balon all get some development here. With Quill, we learn about the death of her mother, see her come face to face with the Quill Goddess, become closer to Balon and then forced to watch him kill himself. We see how she has become a fighter to cope with the things taken from her.

We also get to see the more vulnerable side to Dorothea Ames as she is thrown into an unfamiliar situation. It makes the character surprisingly more likeable. Her words suggest that she is genuinly interested in Quill's well-being, unlike the rest of the Governors.

The newest character, Balon, Miss Quill's surgeon, is suitably played. There's not much of a personality, a gim guy who turns out to be likeable but he is okay. Ultimately we come to pity both him and Miss just at the point where they kill each other. The alternation between them chatting and them killing each other is nicely done.

A few nice Doctor Who references thrown in what with UNIT and Zygons. It would be nice if more actual elements from the parent series would appear in this show, but what we got here was okay.

It ends as last week's episode ended with the promise for more to come, but this time we see what happened next. Quill collapses. How her students cope with her now remains to be seen.

7/10

Class: Detained

Every TV show has a bottle episode at some point and this is the one for Class. The episode is set mainly inside a classroom with Miss Quill locking everyone inside for detention. Inside the classroom is a rock containing an alien entity which forces confessions out of the main cast. This acts as a means for them to work through some of their issues.

Some of those personal issues are ones that we, the audience, were already aware of. We already knew to some extent that Matteusz felt scared of Charlie's alien nature. We have also known that Tanya feels like the others were treating her differently. It was a nice change though for the sports jock to b the one who wanted a committed relationship and felt unsure that the nice girl felt the same way. It's usually the other way around.

The episode ends on a fascinating note with a longer haired Miss Quill free after having the arn in her head removed. This plot thread has certainly escalated more quickly than I was expecting. By the time that Spike had the chip taken out of his head in Buffy, he had already changed enough that he no longer wanted to kill humans. This is still only the first series of Class and it's hard to see how Quill can be anything but a villain at this stage.  Perhaos the next episode will shed some more light on her nature. With all of the cast split apart by their arguments how will things change?

This is a decent enough episode, although not as exciting as the plot developments it promises for later episodes. It has done a good job of making viewers intrigued for what happens next.

6/10

Class: Brave-ish Heart

We're halfway through the series now and things are heating up in the world of Class. When we last left off April had gone to the planet of the Shadow Kin  to kill Corikanus and reclaim her heart. More allusions to Buffy are abound this week as April gets to wield blades and face the Corikanus in one-on-one combat. The whole fight is good but the ending is a bit predictable. The whole thing of killing an alien to become ruler of their species was done better and more fun in The Tenth Doctor's debut, The Christmas Invasion.

Ram gets to support April throughout this episode. It is more of a sidekick role but since Ram has already proven himelf in The Coach with the Dragon Tattoo, this is acceptable. His best moment comes when he and April have an interesting conversation about the nature of faith. Ram puts forward a more positive slant than is usually shown in sci-fi shows. It's a welcome change from the old cliches.

Back on Earth, Miss Quill, Charlie and Matteusz are faced with their own problem. the Governors, who want Charlie to use the Cabinet of Souls as a weapon against the petals. If Charlie tries to use the Cabinet then it will destroy the Rhodian souls and everyone on Earth. The bit where Miss Quill punches Charlie is very reminiscent of the time Spike let his chip fire off in Buffy.

Tanya spends more time on the sidelines. This time she is forced to mediate between Ram and April's parents. So far she is still a character who is less interesting in herself than in the way she relates to the world around her. The parents themselves get a bit of development, having to adapt to their children's views in the new world. April's father finally gets a moment to pull April back from the brink.

The  Shadow Kin's planet, the Underneath, was fairly well realised, with its rocky surfaces and blue sun. The effect of the petals eating humans was also pulled off well. The scene of a man slamming into glass, bleeding from the petals, was very effective and chilling.

With the plot about April;s heart resolved, and the intervention of the Governors, it feels like we're entering a new period of the show.

7/10

Class: Co-Owner of a Lonely Heart

We've had an episode for Ram, then an episode for Tanya, now it's time for April to get her own episode.  April's link with Corikanus' heart, is strengthening and the situation is made more complicated by the fact that her father has recently been released from prison and is trying to see her, against her own wishes.

Sophie Hopkins gets a lot of good material this week as April, and the actor does a good job alternating between April's regular, sweet, personality and the angry and violent outbursts when the with Corikanus strengthens.

The Shadow Kin are also given greater depth by this story. Corikanus, the King, shows a more indecisive size, struggling with his vanishing heart. It is nice to see his world in its CGI glory, as well as getting to meet other members of his Kin. He even gets a monster sex-scene, which is pretty unusual for a creature in an all prosthetic suit. It's a disappointing that his voice has a generic deep and rumbly sound, but otherwise he is becoming interesting.

Charlie also gets some character development. His superior attitude towards Miss Quill, and thoughts of using the Cabinet as a weapon, is starting to alienate Matteusz and Tanya. It often seems to be the case that Tanya is less an interesting character in herself than the way she forces the others to think about themselves. She acts as a conscious to the increasingly arrogant Prince.

Miss Quill is becoming less and less happy with being Charlie's protector and this leads into her new deal with Miss Dawes, the new head teacher, who speaks for the Governors. Miss Dawes is amusingly camp and vicious. The progressing petal problem absorbing the blood of its victims is quite a creepy concept.

This episode is far more successful than Nightvisiting at developing the character it is focused on. Hopefully next week's episode will make the story better. The theme of not having to apologise to a parent is a good one, although the disabled parent being able to walk again felt false.

8/10