Doctor Who: Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror

“I work for the future. And the future is mine."

Well, that was... perfectly decent. Here we have a celebrity historical which hews very close indeed to the now time-honoured blueprint first seen with The Unquiet Dead as the Doctor visits the Gilded Age New York of 1900. We have a celebrity genius in the vein of a Dickens, Shakespeare or Van Gogh in Nikola Tesla- and the fact he's an inventor rather than a genius of the artistic kind makes little difference to how familiar this feels.

And there's nothing wrong with that, of course: Mark Gatiss' original template is one that works, and there's space in each season for an episode or two that's "trad". It's just a shame that we have, in Nina Metivier, a new writer, and certainly a competent one, but we haven't really heard her voice.

It's an entertaining bit of fun nonetheless. Goran Visnjic is splendid as Tesla while Robert Glenister (thirty-six years after playing the young Salateen in The Caves of Androzani) gives quite a nuanced and interesting, although also larger than life, performance as the genius but morally dodgy Thomas Edison.

The plot is clever and entertaining as the parasitic Skithra, a race of hive mind giant scorpions who travel across the galaxy cannibalising other races' tech, want to kidnap Tesla to be their ship's chief engineer, which is splendidly bonkers. Even better is the fact that Rani herself- Anji Mohindra- is clearly having enormous fun behind all that make-up as the Skithra queen. Interestingly, the tech stolen includes stuff from "Venusians" and a Silurian gun- so presumably a group of Silurians awoke before 1900? But then, I suppose there's also the question of where Madame Vastra came from.

One might perhaps point to the lack of obvious racism shown towards Yaz and Ryan but this, I think, would be churlish: the programme can't just not hire regulars of certain ethnic backgrounds, nor can it restrict itself from setting episodes in huge swathes of history. There have been plenty of instances where the programme has referred to the racist attitudes of the past- not least in Rosa last season. I think that earns it the right to downplay the whole thing sometimes too. We still get good character moments- I like how Graham recognises Edison as a certain type of greedy boss.

So we have a very "trad" episode for modern Doctor Who- a textbook "celebrity historical". And, yet again, an episode that's, well, quite good. No more, no less.

Elektra (2005)

"They say Elektra whispers in your ear before she kills you."

Meh. Thing is, this isn't an awful script, not really. There are some nice directorial touches in places, although there are also moments of, well, meh. But the main reason why this is Marvel's notorious flop, a spin-off of the already underwhelming Daredevil, is that Jennifer Garner is just phoning it in and offers up no charisma whatsoever. She simply sucks the energy out of the film whenever she's on screen.

Not that there aren't some positive points- it's good to see Terence Stamp, General Zod himself, appearing in a Marvel film, even if he is woefully miscast as Stick. The main baddies are good acting-wise, although I'm not familiar with the Hand from the comics. And the opening sequence establishing Elektra as the assassin she isn't going to be for the rest of the film is well done.

But... Jennifer Garner. And the film, frankly, flags once you're an hour in, not a good thing for a film that isn't really all that long. There are lots of action sequences, many of them good. Tattoo is a cool character. It’s good to see Typhoid Mary on screen. But... Jennifer Garner.

This film really isn’t worth seeing except for us Marvel completists. Meaning, sadly, that Marvel has yet to release a decent film with a female star, in the Cinematic Universe or elsewhere. I hope they do so by the time my daughter is old enough.