Doctor Who: Smile

"Who needs loos? There's probably an app for that.

After the somewhat cheaply made In The Forest of the Night we get another script from the well-respected Frank Cottrell-Boyce and it's an excellent one, as well as the sort of intelligent and lightly satirical (Black Mirror satirical) script that feels as though it's written by someone who doesn't often get to write science fiction and is jumping at the chance. Wee also get more very good banter between the Doctor and Bill with a fantastic dynamic already evident between them. And it seems that Moffat is wisely following the RTD template of showing a new companion an example of both the future and the past as their travels begin.

Yes, the conceit- be happy or die- recalls The Happiness Patrol, but this time it's just machines gone wrong who, in the big reveal, are just AI that are learning and trying to be helpful. They want you to be happy, grief makes you unhappy, so why not put the grieving out of their misery? It is, as the Doctor says, grief as plague, and it's both a splendid concept and a nice little riff on both our over-dependence on technology (very much described in contemporary terms) and the forthcoming Singularity. I love the emojis.

Actually, this whole concept of what is called the "early days" of human space exploration reminds me of the Spacers on Isaac Asimov's robot novels. Except... I think this is supposed to be the same time period as The Ark in Space, which is set in the much further future?

We begin though, with more exposition about the mysterious "Vault" on present day Earth that the Doctor is supposed to be guarding- clearly a big season arc thing. Nardole seems to be mainly concerned with that- he doesn't come along traveling with the Doctor and Bill. And it's nice to see a Hartnell-style cliffhanger before the next episode. This is splendid stuff,

Great to see Ralf Little in Doctor Who, but Mina Anwar gets an oddly small role...

Doctor Who: In the Forest of the Night

"It would be slightly awkward if the world were destroyed at this point..."

I'm glad I delayed blogging this episode (I sprained my ankle rather badly last night in the Pets at Home car park and have spent a surreal couple of hours, in a wheelchair, in A&E- it's a long story), as it only occurred to me this morning that the whole episode, superficially a bit like Kill the Moon in its use of a big natural phenomenon as an apparent but not actual threat, is in fact entirely about William Blake's The Tyger. 

Not only is there the episode title, and the appearance of a single tiger, but we have innocence (the children, sort of, but at least Maebh), and different kinds of life experience (the Doctor, Danny, and Clara in-between. I'm nowhere near enough of a Blake scholar to prove much further; for that, I suspect you may wish to look up the excellent Phlip Sandifer's blog review as he is very well versed in Blake indeed, and there's no way I'm looking at his review until mine is done.

This is an excellent script from Frank Cottrell Boyce, whom I mainly know from 24 Hour Party People. The scenario is weird enough to give us a vivid pre-titles spectacle of London landmarks among bagsy a great forest, mysterious, and perfect as a way to bring Clara, the Doctor, and Danny together. The Gaia-like conclusion, that the sudden appearance of trees is nature's way of protecting the planet from asteroid impacts, is ingenious (what about the impact at the end of the Cretaceous, though?), and the way that "Class project- save the Earth" involves the kids is cute but just manages to avoid being too trite. This is a script that manages to be both intelligent and kid-friendly, however, and this is a very good thing. Long live quality children's telly.

I note that, once again, the Doctor explains to Clara that, although they may have seen many parts of the future, they still may never come to pass. This, again, echoes Kill the Moon and, again, uses much more evocative and poetic language than simply referring to "fixed points in time". I'm impressed.

This is also a great episode for the characters, and I don't just mean the Doctor's splendid declaration that "Even my incredibly long life is too short for Les Miserables". Yes, Danny finds out that Clara has been continuing to travel with the Doctor, butchers philosophical about it; all he wants is the truth. And Danny is very heroic here, his first thoughts being for the children even in the face of certain death. And, in declining the chance to see the solar flare, he explains that "I don't want to see more things. I want to see the things in front of me more clearly." He's a wise, damaged man who has seen and done terrible things in war, and who has had enough of excitement. He just wants to cherish the world he knows and to love Clara. It's a touching viewpoint, and a powerful critique to the ideology of the Doctor and, indeed, the programme.

The trailer for next week looks a bit spoilerific but I, for one, can't wait for what looks like a truly epic finale, a two parter as in days of old.

24 Hour Party People (2002)

"It's a shame that you didn't sign the Smiths, but you were right about Mick Hucknall. His music's rubbish, and he's a ginger."

I haven't really touched on music that much in this blog which is odd, as I'm rather obsessed by it and have been ever since I first heard Nevermind. I was a late starter; I didn't really bother with music at all until I was sixteen, but Nirvana and the whole Grunge thing meant a whole lot to me as a teenager. That sort of naturally led to Metal bands like Metallica, Pantera and Sepultura, American indie bands such as Sonic Youth, the Butthole Surfers and the Pixies, classic rock, '70s punk, post-punk, and eventually '70s reggae, blues and 20^th century composers like Penderecki, Glass and Xenakis. Basically, I likes me music. I'm sort of centred on the point where rock meets indie, and I'm a long-haired man who wears band t-shirts, but I'm more omnivorous than that might imply, although I'm not one for the late '80s baggy scene, and I've never been to a rave although I've dabbled in a bit of hardcore and gabber.

So I find myself identifying more with the first half of this film musically than the second. Joy Division and New Order are right up my street but I never really much bothered with the whole Madchester thing. I own both albums by the Stone Roses, and they're very good, but I don't know the Happy Mondays beyond the singles. But the whole story is such a fantastic ride, as rock n' roll always is. We see the great times, the sex and the drugs, but also the darkness as Ian Curtis quietly hangs himself after watching a Werner Herzog film. And hanging yourself is a painful, lingering, horrible way to die. The film also doesn't flinch from the awkward fact that the Hacienda, being awash with ecstasy, was funding gangs and guns and death, and Tony Wilson's flippant attitude to this (from real life, I assume, as his cameo appearance seems to imply a level of creative approval) doesn't exactly paint him in a good light. That's precisely why I don't take illegal drugs. Prohibition may be bloody stupid, but that doesn't mean that bootlegging is ok.

That aside, though, and noting his confessed neglect of his second family, the man is pure punk rock. The whole ethos of Factory Records- of total creative freedom for the bands- is wonderful, and economic reality can go to Hell. I'm just about old enough to remember when selling out was something that simply wasn't done, and signing to a major label was always something to be sheepishly apologised for although, in hindsight, that world came to an end when Sonic Youth signed to Geffen. Also wonderful is the way that he talks, and his unashamed refusal to downplay his education. As a fellow English graduate (although Nottingham, not Cambridge!) I love the speech about the "free play of signs and signifiers" in response to Rob Brydon's journalist accusing him (not unreasonably) of fascism because of Joy Division's rather dodgy name. The point here, of course, is that actually he does need to point out the irony of the Durutti Column's name, because these cultural references zoom straight over most people's heads. We see this sort of thing throughout the film; Ian Curtis doesn't even get the W.B. Yeats reference. I like this, though. There's too much inverted snobbery about. Why shouldn't we live in a world where tramps and game show hosts can quote Boethius if they want to?

There are so many stand-out performances here (I'll come to Steve Coogan in a bit), but Andy Serkis was particularly great as Martin Hannett. This is more or less a who's who of British comedy and drama performers, though, from Peter Kay to Simon Pegg. And the cameos, from Mark E. Smith (I spotted him!) to Howard Devoto (if you haven't heard Magazine's Real Life, get the album now) are a nice little extra bit of metatextual fun in a film where there's rather a lot of it, courtesy of screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce.

Rob Brydon has only a minor role but this is, I suppose, pretty much one of those Michael Winterbottom films with him and Coogan, all of which are rather good. The style is certainly very much in line with The Trip et al, with a lot of damage being done to the Fourth Wall. It's so very fitting that Coogan as Tony Wilson not only addresses the camera but does so as an unreliable narrator. Coogan has not only the talent but also the charisma to do this superbly. He also plays the moments of real feeling behind the façade; the scene where he's alone with Ian Curtis' laid-out corpse is genuinely moving.

The moment of nemesis is a magnificent conclusion as the Hacienda finally closes and Tony Wilson invites the punters to loot the place. The place certainly had its dark side, very much so, but this film is a joyous celebration of what now seem to be old-fashioned values of independent record labels, creative freedom and vibrant, changing music, unlike the stagnant scene of today with its landfill indie and chart music strangled by the dead hand of svengalis and talent shows. Er, said the old fart. But I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that the bad old days of svengalis and staid musical conservatism, which came to an end when the Beatles came up with the radical practice of writing their own songs, thereby slaying that dragon. But it never really went away. I've always thought that the rock n' roll revolution of the '50s and '60s was a one-off, an injection of African rhythms into the mainstream of Western popular music, which had already been heralded by jazz and blues which now took over completely and gave rise to so much that was new and alive and wonderful. There will always be new music worth listening to, but those days now seem to be more or less over as a dominant part of mainstream culture. Musically, it's 1955 again. This film is a reminder of better times.