Cromwell (1970)

"An England without a king is unthinkable!"

I watched this film principally because I wanted to see two great actors- Richard Harris and Alec Guinness- play two iconic roles from history; Oliver Cromwell and Charles I. And they are, indeed, magnificent. Their performances- Harris as a principled sociopath slowly descending into a dictatorial sociopath and Guinness as a politely arrogant congenital liar- are superlative and alone enough to make the film worth watching. The film succeeds brilliantly if seen as a character piece based on its broadly valid idea of Cromwell- a man who can honestly give everything for the supremacy of Parliament and then simply dismiss it when it does not live up to his expectations. For this reason the film succeeds as drama in spite of being so incredibly rush and in spite of its ending so suddenly.

And yet... no film set in the past can be historically accurate in full. I accept this. Events must be compressed into a shorter period of time and simplified to fit the medium of cinema. And yet... here we have Cromwell as one of those MPs whom Charles tries to arrest in January 1642. We have Cromwell present at Edgehill. We have the Earls of Essex and Manchester making speeches in the Commons. We even have arch-republican Henry Ireton (a shockingly young Michael Jayson) trying to persuade Cromwell to take the crown, in spite of having died during the (glossed over) Irish campaign in 1651. All this is a little much to swallow; these are not small things.

I'm also uncertain about the dialogue; a film set in the mid-seventeenth century should either use modern dialogue or contrive to use contemporary speech but contrive to favour those sentence constructions and that vocabulary that would be understood today, preferably the second. Instead we get a bizarre mish-mash of speech which mixes archaisms such as "withal" with modern coinings such as "international". The effect is clumsy and distracting.

Still, it all looks magnificent and, in the final analysis, it's all about the acting. And, judged by this criterion, the film is superb.

Licence to Kill (1989)

"There's more to this than just your personal vendetta!"

Meh. After a good Bond film we get a very late '80s action thriller, all very War On Drugs and macho, very Arnie or Sly or Bruce but not awful, if pretty average for its type- and then James Bond is crowbarred into this genre he doesn't suit, and it all gets rather awkward.

Essentially, Bond is the best man at Felix Leiter's wedding, a drug lord has Leiter's bride murdered and leaves Leiter for dead, and Bond spends the film out for revenge, in spite of the official disapproval but unofficial help from Q, and even an unofficial "good luck" from M. The whole thing feels utterly out of character, which is a shame because Timothy Dalton is outstanding here. But the whole thing stinks of '80s antihero vigilantism and the sort of depressingly uncritical view of the WR on Drugs that you would expect from 1989. Still, Robert Davi is superbly menacing as Sanchez.

This isn't a bad film, per se; as a film of its type it's perfectly decent if not great. But as a Bond film it adds nothing to the character or the franchise. Vigilantism bad; law and order good. That goes right back to Aeschylus and Bond really should know better.

The Living Daylights (1987)

"We've nothing to declare!"

Before I go on to praise this splendid film... I may get one last blog post out tomorrow on the train- we will see- but after that there won't be anything more until after my big exam on Tuesday 3rd May. It's a week of hardcore revision for me to look forward to. Still, expect a flurry of new blog posts in the couple of days after the exam, probably.

Anyway, I loved The Living Daylights even if it didn't feel much like a Bond film when watched in context. It's a strange thing to say for a series of spy films, but Bond hadn't done a proper Cold War thriller before and only now, in 1987, the very last opportunity there would ever be, do we get one. And yes, I know we have an American chief baddie as a fig leaf so they can deny that this is a straight ahead Cold War spy film with the Russians as the baddies so as not to offend the real world USSR but, well, they're fooling nobody.

And so we have a tale of defections, crappy police cars, secret police arresting pretty girls in the exotic surroundings of, er, Bratislava, and that classically Cold War locale that is Vienna and a Ferris Wheel that immediately evokes The Third Man. Mind you, nothing has dated quite as much as showing the Afghan Mujahideen as the good guys. I'm no useful idiot, far from it, but Najibullah (not a nice man but no one deserves to die like that) was much better for Afghanistan than what came after.

Timothy Dalton... let's actually mention him, shall we? He's obviously a fine actor, easily the best so far, far more technically competent and nuanced in his portrayal than Connery or Moore. I like him. And yet... he's genuinely charismatic, yes, but less so than either of the two aforementioned, both of whom oozed it, and for me he doesn't quite convince as a ladies' man- well, womaniser. He's too sensitive. Still, a promising debut. 

Maryam d'Abo makes a good, and refreshing Bon-bimboesque, Bond girl, and we get good performances from John Rhys-Davies, Art Malik and the ever-reliable Desmond Llewelyn, in a good film for the gadgets.

This is the best film of the '80s so far, let down only by a mildly disappointing theme song from a-Ha, even if it isn't as awful as Shirley Manson of Garbage notoriously said it is. After the problems of A View to a Kill we now have a younger Bond and a witty script, and as a result there's not a lot wrong.

Penny Dreadful: Verbis Diablo

"Is this what it's like to go mad? Your darkest fears made manifest before your eyes?"

More of the same superbly stylish horror-tinged Victoriana, then, as the focus shifts away from Mrs Poole and her witch underlings' psychic war against Vanessa to the careful simmering of other incipient plotlines.

First we have Caliban and his bride, named Lily by Frankenstein, as her creator shows her how to use language. Yet there are hints that she is becoming much closer to her creator than to her "betrothed". A surprising emphasis is placed on Sir Malcolm introducing Vanessa to the experience of charity work he performs to soothe his soul, but the main function of this scene is probably to engineer a meeting, and an interesting philosophical chat, between Caliban and Vanessa. The two do not agree on religion, but they seem to find a mutual affection and understanding.

Dorian Gray still pines for Vanessa, but is accosted by a prostitute, Veronique, who is bold enough to tell him that she fancies the pants off him, or Victorian words to that effect. Upon visiting her at her brother (she needs a firm hand, apparently!), of course, he is both unsurprised and unbothered to see that she is transgender, as the Victorians would certainly not have said, and genitally male.

There is also an erotic frisson between Sir Malcolm and Mrs Poole, mich though he may insist that, although separated, he is married and thus unavailable: the principled Victorian gentleman.

Mrs Poole is, of course, extremely nasty, calling Vanessa the c word and blackmailing poor Mr Lyle, who has the misfortune of being born at a bad time to be gay. Mr Lyke is extremely likeable, both for his endearing mannerisms in flirting with Ethan  ("American! I am undone!") and for his knowledge of the eponymous Verbis Diablo, a demonic and little-known tongue which Vanessa has been speaking. But the history is ominous; the writer of the sole extant text was burned at the stake.

We end with some quite disturbing scenes as Mrs Poole, surrounded by some extremely freaky dolls, proceeds to vivisect a recently-kidnapped baby, which isn't very nice but is a triumph of direction on the part of James Hawes. This is a most effectively freaky scene.

And Mrs Poole has a freaky dummy of Vanessa...

Penny Dreadful: Fresh Hell

"What would Dr Frankenstein be without his creature?"

So, at last the second season starts on Sky Atlantic. It looks as though last season's big bad is going to be witches, but in the meantime we have character arcs to set up for the new season, lushly and beautifully shot by James Hawes as always.

We add to the feminine theme of witches with a riff on Bride of Frankenstein as Billie Piper returns to play said monster, while her prospective mate finds another grimly Victorian job with poor conditions, this time working in a waxworks exhibit, a la Madame Tussaud's, except much more influence by lurid crimes and, well, penny dreadfuls. His boss, I'm pleased to see, is played by the excellent David Haig. 

Elsewhere, Ethan dithers about whether or not to return to Anerica while Vanessa remains her delightfully weird, brooding self. He tells her of his blackouts, after which he wakes to much blood. Much will come of this, especially as an inspector from the Yard is investigating the deaths of his pursuers from the end of last season.

Meanwhile, it's made clear to Sir Malcolm by his poor, bereaved wife that, after presiding over the deaths of two children, their marriage is henceforth to be eked out as a cold, artificial she'll with the two of them living apart. His surrogate daughter, Vanessa, is now his only family. No wonder she runs into his arms, able to confide in no one else. The witches, it seems, led by the mysterious Mistress Kali, are after her soul...

A very promising opening, if not quite up to the heights of last season's opener. I'm looking forward to the rest of the season.

Penny Dreadful: Season One, Episode 8 (Grand Guignol)

"Why do you think I want to be saved?"

Well, that was eventful. Quite the season finale, with many threads coming to an end, but it's pleasing to see that the episode opens as many doors as it closes. We end with the prospect of Frankenstein using Brona's body to make a bride for Caliban (that'll go well), with Ethan shown to be some sort of werewolf, able to rip his pursuers to shreds (is this why he left America, leaving tears and "a whole mess of blood"?), and with Vanessa contemplating the long, hard road of exorcism. There's plenty to fuel a second series.

In the meantime, though, there's a first season to wrap up. Obviously, there's the climactic hunt for Mina, ending in the revelation that Mina is loyal towards "the master" and the shock of Sir Malcolm shooting his daughter. Still, the hints continue that he sees Vanessa as his daughter.

It's fun to see Vanessa dumping Dorian in the same arbour where he first properly seduced her. And yet, symbolically, the flower is no longer in bloom. We, like Vanessa, are amused Dorian Gray is made to feel rejection for the first time.

Brona's death is heartbreaking, although Frankenstein's smothering her is somewhat unexpected. He's complex; on the side of the goodies yet capable of being so callous. And yet this callousness is done out of a paternal affection for Caliban.

Calibans tale is the most tragic; once menacing, he is reduced to a pathetic figure. He misinterprets Maud's kindness in making up his face and visiting her room, and is stunned by her rejection, forcibly kissing her and burning his bridges with the theatre. Maud may have sympathised with him, but she also looked down on him. He can never be attractive to a woman... except perhaps one like himself?

This is a superb finale, but it's fantastic to see how much time is spent setting up the next season.

Penny Dreadful: Season One, Episode 7 (Possession)

"Do you value cleanliness?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

"That's why you're a virgin!"

This is a very claustrophobic episode, set entirely in Sir Malcolm's house as he, Victor and Ethan debate what to do with Vanessa's increasingly horrible possession. Above all, though, it's a tour de force of acting from Eva Green, who out-Exorcists The Exorcist. It seem that the Earth did indeed move for her after last episode.

This causes friction amongst the gang; Vanessa wants to die, but should they let her live? For Sir Malcolm there is but one answer; he needs her alive to find Mina, and that is all that matters. This claustrophobic episode is talky yet gripping, depending entirely on its subtle and brilliantly crafted characterisation.

Ethan is himself briefly possessed but, in being the one who quietly cures Vanesda in the end, he hints at yet more hidden depths. There's quite a cliffhanger too, pointing towards the imminent finale, from the cured Vanessa: "I know where Mina is..."

Penny Dreadful: Season One, Episode 6 (What Death Can Join Together)

"You must risk rejection!"

This one is a far more typical episode, albeit with Vanessa now a lot less mysterious. It's one of the less eventful episodes on the whole, with the exception of Van Helsing being casually killed by Caliban after telling Victor all about vampires. It's a shame; we won't be seeing David Warner any more. It's interesting to see him point to a penny dreadful featuring Varney the Vampire!

Aside from that, well... Brona is still dying and Vanessa is still doing that thing with Tarot cards. Caliban takes a fancy to a girl. Ethan tells Sir Malcolm about Brona, and Sir Malcolm sympathies. And then they fight some vampires (which look rather like Count Orlok from Nosferatu) and actually see and speak to Mina, but to no avail. 

But the episode is mainly about a rather hot date between Vanessa and Dorian Gray. They discuss religion and philosophy, have that sort of erotically witty conversation that never happens in real life and end up having some extraordinarily kinky sex, with Vanessa scratching Dorian to the point of GBH. All he has to do, of course, is use the portrait in his attic which we all know about from our old friend dramatic irony.

Sir Malcolm returns home, empty-handed, to find Vanessa once again possessed, and levitating...

Penny Dreadful: Season One, Episode 5 (Closer Than Sisters)

"I tried to pray that night. God wouldn't answer- but another did..."

Well, this is unexpected; an episode, told entirely in flashback and with many regular characters absent, filling in the backstory for Vanessa and explaining so many things about her. It's also interesting to get an impression of Mina, who appears in a scene which, I think, takes place during Dracula. Jonathan Harker even gets a mention.

She and Mina were, ahem, "closer than sisters" as children, until Vanessa became possessed by a malevolent entity and betrayed her friend by sleeping with her fiancé on the night before her wedding, as you do. Cue loads of scenes of straitjackets and Victorian mental health treatments.

Things are fleshed out; Mina is a Catholic in an Anglican world, presumably an old recusant rather than Irish, interesting in a Victorian context. Much of the second half of the episode strongly echoes The Exorcist. Except her treatment is horrifying; a shaven head, being shackled and hosed down, even trepanning. Her low point surely comes when her mother dies of shock, seeing her possessed and levitating daughter being raped by some kind of demon. This episode is very, very dark, and Eva Green is very, very good.

We end with her reconciliation with Sir Malcolm and the revelation that, every day, this devout, damned, guilt-ridden Catholic writes a letter to Mina and files it away with the others. She loves her childhood friend very much, "enough to kill" her...

Penny Dreadful: Season One, Episode 4 (Demi-Monde)

"Is it poisonous?"

"Like all beautiful things, I hope so."

We begin with a mise-en-scene, Grand Guignol style, with Dorian Gray surrounded by naked beauties of both sexes. Yep; he's decadent, decidedly an aesthetic and portrayed as a combination of both his literary self and Oscar Wilde.

Vanessa, however, is infatuated with him, as a very flirty sequence illustrates; it seems the mysterious ice maiden is capable of melting. Victor is more interested in his scientific mentor, however; Abraham Van Helsing is portrayed with typical brilliance by David Warner, and seems to know a lot about the foe they face, considerably more than Sir Malcolm. 

Our tour of characters takes us next to Caliban, who seems quite the social Darwinian; like Herbert Spencer he believes in survival of the fittest, and sees himself as the first of a new master race. Hence the desire for a bride...

The wolf boy is still in Sir Malcolm's basement, needing blood; he seems to be something of a Renfield character. Next, Ethan takes Brona to see the Grand Guignol, with Dorian and Vanessa also watching and Caliban working backstage. It looks as though there's a real death on stage, but no one realises.

Our two couples meet, and Brona learns from Vanessa that Ethan lied to her about his job. She's upset, and dumps him- she's dying, in any case. We end up with a contrast between Brona, dying and now looking very ill, and Ethan, morose, being seduced by Dorian after an unpleasant afternoon's blood sports. We end on their kiss...

Penny Dreadful: Season One, Episode 3 (Resurrection)

"You have not known horror unless I show it to you."

So it turns out that Proteus wasn't the first life created by young Mr. Frankenstein, and that Rory Kinnear is in fact joining the likes of Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee in the pantheon of those who have played the monster. He even wants a bride! This time, though, he is called not Adam but Caliban, the name I predicted for his late brother.

It is Frankenstein and his monster who are foregrounded here, but the transplantation of the tale to late Victorian London gives us the wonderful spectre of Caliban working behind stage in the Grand Guignol, an institution which I suspect is intended as a kind of microcosm for the series itself.

Interesting, though, that Frankenstein's love of Romantic poetry, with its rejection of industrial sprawl, is contrasted starkly with Caliban's love of the dark Satanic mills of "an age of steam and turbines". Frankenstein is, of course, motivated by guilt. He is fulfilling the narrative role of a tragic hero; I fully expect him to eventually suffer a death to suit.

It turns out that Brona is a Victorian prostitute; I'm reminded of The Crimson Petal and the White, which I read a couple of years ago. I'm also reminded of Secret Diary of a Call Girl, mainly because of Billie Piper. Sadly, however, this prostitute is dying of consumption, in desperate poverty to boot. It's a reminder of the extremes of wealth and poverty that existed in the Victorian age, extremes that we are slowly sleepwalking back towards as the slow, cruel dismemberment of the NHS and the Welfare State continues apace.

Ethan Chandler finally decides to accept Eva's offer and begin working for her and Sir Malcolm. Again they go hunting for baddies, and capture a werewolf. Ethan is shocked by the cruel treatment it is subjected to by his employers, evil though it is; no one is truly good in Penny Dreadful, just various hues of grey.

Their new prisoner longs for "all life to end and the world to live in darkness." Sadly, for Brona, this seems to be her immediate future...

Penny Dreadful: Season One, Episode 2 (Seance)

"Your first-born has returned, father!"

Nice cliffhanger. The monster we saw Frankenstein creating last episode, a nice chap, was in fact the second attempt, and we see him being brutally and casually killed by his older brother, presumably the Frankenstein's monster of legend. Nice.

Interesting that Frankenstein is, against type, a cultured man, fond of the Romantic poets and choosing a name for his "son" from the secular Bible that is the complete works of Shakespeare. Proteus is nicely chosen, and close to Prometheus, which fits. I was half expecting Cailban.

So much else happens in this episode, though. We meet Brona Croft, a poor and dying prostitute played in an incomprehensible accent (I think it's supposed to be Ulster?) by the usually reliable Billie Piper. This is probably as good a point as any to whinge about the lack of subtitles from Sky on the watch again version; not good enough.

There's a murder, which the police and public are comparing to the Ripper murders (although "he only did whores!)"); is this the work of the ultimate baddie or of a odd only body-snatching Frankenstein?

Brona gets to meet, and get fucked by, Dorian Gray, quite the aesthete and fascinated by mod cons, even owning an Edison cylinder. He, Vanessa and Sir Malcolm are invited, this being the 1890s, to a seance, where he and the usually frigid Vanessa seem to hit it off. The highlight of the episode, though, is the seance itself, with Vanessa seemingly possessed by Mina's spirit and going full-on The Exorcist. This is superbly done, and Eva Green is amazing. This is also probably the finest sustained bit of swearing I've ever seen on television.

Ethan seems to start a relationship with Brona at the CGI docks (with a nicely half-finished Tower Bridge), but it's hard to tell, as I can't understand a word she's saying and there are no sodding subtitles. Meanwhile, Sir Malcolm meets eccentric Egyptologist Ferdinand Lyle, who has translated the Hierogyphs found under the vampires' skin. It seems to foretell "the annihilation of man and the coming of the beast..."

I'm still loving this. Why has it taken is so long to get round to watching it?

Penny Dreadful: Season One, Episode 1 (Night Work)

"That is my mountain. There I will ant my flag."

Yes, I know, I'm late to the party. But I'm rather enjoying Sky and Showtime's answer to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen so far. I don't yet know where this is going, but the plot is gripping, the characters absorbing, the actors magnificent and the whole Victorian world looks superb. It's beautifully shot too.

Josh Hartnett is Ethan Chandler, our American character with whom the mainly Ametican viewers can identify, and a man with a mysterious past and a gloriously contemporary present as a performer in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Through his eyes we are introduced to the mysterious, confident and deeply religious Vanessa, who reads him like Sherlock Holmes would, and the obsessed explorer Sir Malcolm, who seeks to rescue his daughter from vampires. Vanessa resembles Mina Harker from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but Mina is in fact Sir Malcolm's daughter, snatched from the bog while having a crap. Nice.

Oh, and a young Victor Frankenstein is in the England of 1891 for some reason, rather than the Mitteleuropa of the late 18th century as per Mary Shelley. Our cliffhanger, nearly enough, is provided by his creating a son from various bits of flesh. I like the design of the monster.

I like Vanessa's speech to Chandler about a "demi-monde", a world in the shadows of London a la Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. And I like everything so far about Penny Dreadful and it's serious, realistic tone contrasted with a playful take on the tropes and themes of late Victoriana.

Hot Fuzz (2007)

“Well, I see you’ve arrested the whole village.”

Obviously I love this film. That won’t surprise you; I’m exactly the sort of person who would. I’m a huge fan of Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright, I loved Spaced, and I’ve seen enough action films to get the metatextual nods. Plus, more generally, I’m a geek.

I’ve been in more than my share of sleepy English villages like the one in this film- pretty, genuinely nice, but also rather stultifyingly conservative (and, indeed, generally Conservative) and not good for one’s privacy what with all the gossip. Still, I may prefer cities these days (though I actually live in a village at the mo, albeit not one like this), but I remember the relaxed attitude to underage drinking back when I was a lad. Halcyon days. Still, I can’t really quibble with the film’s broad suggestion that there’s something potentially rather dark lying beneath the close-knit conformity of village life. And this is a perfect depiction of this sort of village, so much so that I can even forgive the use of The Kinks’ The Village Green Preservation Society.

The main thing is, though, that this is a brilliant comedy, and Simon Pegg puts in a typically superb performance as Nick Angel, the perfect cop who annoys everyone with his smartass ways but slowly and gradually lightens up a bit. It’s very noticeable that this isn’t the sort of part you’d usually associate with Pegg; he’s a much more versatile actor than one might assume.

Pegg aside, Nick Frost is also excellent, albeit in the sort of role he usually plays; Timothy Dalton twirls his moustache gleefully while also attempting a West Country accent, and there are roles for such British comedy luminaries as (deep breath) Steve Coogan, Bill Nighy, Bill Bailey (whose character is at one point seen reading Iain Banks’ excellently weird and suitably dark and rural The Wasp Factory!!!), Jim Broadbent, etc. For a geeky actor spotter like me this is Heaven indeed.

The conceit of this film is, of course, to take the tropes of the Hollywood buddy buddy cop movie and transplant them to a leafy little village in the West Country, which cannot fail to be funny. The climax to the film absolutely delivers on this score, and throws in a weird cowled cult into the bargain. We get a very, very funny angle on the cliché that is the montage (see the next blog post!!!) and scenes that look uncannily like Operation Wolf (late ‘80s shoot ‘em up game, for all you non-thirtysomethings out there).

See Hot Fuzz. It’s well good.

Flash Gordon (1980)

“And use your fingers too, this time. Careful, darling! It’s very sensitive.”

I can’t believe I managed to get to the age of 34 without seeing this film. It’s… unique. The whole look and style is basically the 1960’s TV Batman ethos as applied to pulp magazine / 1930’s movie serial sci-fi (Lorenzo Semple Jr even does the scripting duties!), but this is a film which definitely feels as though it was made just post-Star Wars.

I don’t know much about Flash Gordon, really, aside from a half-remembered cartoon I saw as a very young kid and, of course Defenders of the Earth. But I understand this is a very faithful adaptation of the original comic strip, in all but tone. Certainly, it has a very 1930’s serial feel, with constant peril and non-stop action. I suspect the heavy erotic element may be new, though; about half the cast list at the end of the film is for scantily clad concubines of one kind or another, and there’s quite a lot of scenes in the movie which are pretty much soft porn. These are generally the scenes featuring Aura, who is constantly kissing, carousing, being whipped (and enjoying it, according to Klytus!) and coming out with some delightful double entendres. I’m not good with heights myself, but she can teach me to fly any time.

Sam J. Jones is perfect as Flash, in an Adam West sort of way. There’s a touch of plywood to his performance, of course, but this is deliberate and appropriate. The whole thing looks and feels very garish, glittery, camp and over the top, and the excellent soundtrack from Queen, the campest band in all of rock n’ roll, is just the icing on the cake. The alien landscapes and spacescapes are very stylised, and in no way realistic, but the sense of scale is definitely cinematic.

There’s one thing that makes me feel just a little uncomfortable, though. There’s some rather dodgy orientalism going on; the baddies are effeminate, sensuous and despotic, thus embodying all the tropes of the East as seen by the West. I suspect this may not have been Edward Said’s favourite film. And as for Ming the Merciless himself- well, he’s a great moustache-twirling villain, and delightfully played by Max Von Sydow, but, well, he’s a rather arse-clenchingly embarrassing Chinese stereotype, isn’t he? The clothes, the moustache, even the make-up imply a sort of Fu Manchu in space. And all of this stuff is too prominent and foregrounded to be dismissed. It’s a genuine problem. I mean, the very name “Mongo” has certain ethnic connotations.

Still, Max Von Sydow is fantastic, as are many in the cast. Although (yes, I know where this was filmed), I couldn’t help noticing how many of them are British. I say this as a Brit, but do Americans not mind when so many films based on characters from their popular culture are stuffed to the gunwales with British actors? The recent Batman films by Christopher Nolan show the very same syndrome.

Oh, and there’s one of these British actors who most definitely deserves a paragraph to himself: Brian Blessed, of course. I recall reviewing his appearance in Blake’s 7, which seemed to be a sort of transitional phase from Brian Blessed, the versatile actor to BRIAN BLESSED THE BARBARIAN KING, WHO GOES “RAAAAARGH!!!” Although I was surprised that “Gordon’s alive?” doesn’t even make it into his top twenty shoutiest lines in the film. It’s a good performance, which is a very good thing as he’ll be using it non-stop for the next thirty years…

The plot is pretty relentless, and works on the same two levels as the 1960’s Batman TV series. Personally, I found it hilarious that weddings on Mongo use the same Wedding March as we do on Earth. Perhaps Richard Wagner was from Mongo?

The last scene, though, with a gloved hand taking Ming’s ring from his charred finger… Russell T. Davies has seen this film, hasn’t he?

Doctor Who: The End of Time

Part One

“Some new man goes sauntering away. And I’m dead.”

Oh my God. I took five pages of notes. This is going to take aaages to write. Best get started.

Crikey, it’s the end. You can tell this story’s important because it’s the only two-parter of the RTD era not to have individual episode titles. It’s also notable that a large proportion of the dialogue is in rather more heightened and literary language than usual, with large chunks of it having a metrical rhythm. This is partly due to the presence of a narrator (and, with the Elder Ood, a narrator within the narration!), but only partly. The language, and the fast-paced, highly structured narrative which takes place in more different regions of time and space than usual, gives this whole story a very rich, epic feel.

We’re bombarded from the start with a lot of evocative figures and themes- Wilf, the Master, bad dreams, the Master, a cathedral at Christmas Eve with the TARDIS as part of a stained-glass window. And the first of many appearances of a mysterious woman whose identity is never quite revealed. The presence of so many meaningful signs and portents in the pre-credits teaser leads us to expect something big. And this intensifies once the Doctor lands on the Ood-Sphere. Although there’s been a gap between stories, his behaviour follows on directly from The Waters of Mars. He’s been procrastinating, unable to accept what he knows to be his fate. He’s married and shagged Queen Elizabeth I purely to avoid being here. He knows he’s been naughty for dragging his heels, and he’s sheepish. You can tell from the gabbling. And Ood Sigma gives him a right telling off: “You should not have delayed!”

Called to the headmaster’s office, the Doctor is punished by being forced to share in a very, very bad dream: the Master is not completely dead and, in another appearance from the ultimate RTD meme, “Something vast is stirring in the dark.”

It’s glossed over a little, but the extrajudicial jailing of Lucy Saxon suggests something extremely sinister about the UK of the Whoniverse, even by comparison with the real contemporary UK, with its 42 day detention and threatened identity cards. Along with the sinister nature of UNIT, this is something which will probably come to date the RTD era. Under the Moff and the Coalition, this sort of thing seems to have gone out of fashion.

I know I’m always going on about RTD’s brilliant economy of storytelling, but the way he manages to give us so much exposition so quickly yet clearly is brilliant. The whole story behind the Master’s resurrection is explained very quickly, and the story doesn’t slow down one bit.

The Doctor runs, but events are already underway. He’s too late. Interesting (particularly as I’m currently halfway through Timelink) that his timeline and the timeline of the narrated events proceed at the same rate, and the Doctor can’t arrive at a point before the prison has exploded.

John Simm is fantastic from his very first scene, as bonkers as ever but so, so dangerous. Lucy sabotages his rebirth, but then we switch to some other chess pieces: Joshua Naismith and his daughter are themselves admirable examples of RTD’s storytelling economy. Their role in the story (the Tobias Vaughn role, as it were) is simple and functional, but they’re allowed enough personality to feel as though they’re more than that. We also have Wilf and the “Silver Cloak”, including the fantastic June Whitfield. Oh, and President Obama is about to broadcast to the world his plan for magically ending the recession. Er, how would one do that, then? Possibly the most far-fetched element in the entire story, this.

Meanwhile, the Master is homeless, in a hoodie, dying, stuck looking like the ex-prime minister, very, very hungry, mad as a biscuit, and very, very scary. And he bangs a drum. Four times. Just as inside his head. Interestingly, though, he’s not the one in control of events at this point. Neither is the Doctor, who is distracted at this point by Wilf and his mates.

The Doctor’s chat with Wilf, fantastically acted by both Tennant and Bernard Cribbins, is a big moment. There’s something about Wilf; he attracts coincidences. The Doctor confides his feelings to Wilf, and admits for the first time that regeneration “still feels like dying”. We see Donna, too, and her heartbreakingly humble life: “She’s making do.” And he even admits the things he’s been driven to do of late, with no Donna to stop him. “I thought it would be better alone. But I did some things that went wrong. I need…”

The ensuing chat between the Doctor and the much-diminished Master is most interesting, too. “I had estates,” says the Master, shortly before he’s kidnapped. “Do you remember my father’s land back home? Pastures of red grass stretching far across the slopes of Mount Perdition.” RTD is so good at this sort of poetic, throwaway texture. The drums are getting louder… and the Doctor can hear them. The drums are real. We know this will be significant.

Wilf sees the mysterious woman again, on the television, where only he can see her. “Only you stand at the heart of coincidence”, he’s told. He’s also told to take a gun, a highly charged item as discussed in relation to this programme! Inevitably, the Doctor is soon along to collect him, officially the oldest ever companion at 80. I love his reaction to the TARDIS.

It seems Naismith acquired the “Immortality Gate” from Torchwood after its recent fall. It seems to be some kind of medical device. He wants to use it to make his daughter immortal, never a good idea in Doctor Who. But along his underlings are a couple of Vinvocci spies, who are particularly fun characters. I love Addams and her constant exasperation.

The cliffhanger is great, as everything is reversed. From a position of powerlessness, suddenly the Master is everyone on the planet. And our narrator is revealed. It’s Timothy Dalton! He’s the Lord President of the High Council! The Time Lords are back!


Part Two

“There’s an old Earth saying, Captain. A phrase of great power and wisdom, and consolation to the soul in times of need.”

“What’s that, then?”

“Allons-y!”

We begin with a flashback to Gallifrey, and a nice CGI shot of the Citadel, the orange skies, and the mountains. Fanwank heaven! These are recognisably Time Lords, although updated, with CGI and everything. The shot of the High Council from the end of last episode reminds me very much of the Imperial Senate from the Star Wars prequels, which I must apologise for mentioning. They are, I’m sure we all agree, abominations, and I shall not mention them again.

Gallifrey is a lot more bad-ass than it used to be. Timothy Dalton’s Lord President is prone to zapping people for disagreeing with him, and there’s a rather cool prophetess, possibly inspired by the Pythia from the New Adventures, although of course she looks very much like one of the Sisterhood of Karn.

After a bit of a worry over Donna, we get another flashback of the Master as a child, technically a flashback to another flashback from The Sound of Drums. It’s recursive occlusion from Castrovalva all over again.

The Master realises; with six billion of him, he can finally triangulate the source of the drums. And we return to Gallifrey, where we get some highly satisfying answers. Oh, and in our last chance for some slapstick we get the “worst rescue ever”. I like these Vinvocci. The Doctor and Wilf are aboard their ship, and Wilf gets to gaze out of its window upon the Earth, something he’s always wanted. That’s the thing about RTD; he can do exciting, fast-paced, big stories such as this one, and yet still have time for genuinely affecting character moments. The conversation between the Doctor and Wilf is deep and insightful, with the brilliance lying in what remains unsaid. The Doctor opens himself more with Wilf than we’ve ever seen him do before. He sees the absurdity of his rejection of Wilf’s proffered gun, accepting that he’s taken lives and, which weighs heavily on his conscience at the moment, manipulated others into taking their own. And yet the symbolism of not carrying a gun has become important to him. Much as I would argue that this has only been the case since the 1980s, this knowingly hypocritical semi-pacifism has become an interesting and ambiguous side of his character.

But… the Master reveals that the source of the drums is a White Point Star. The Doctor knows this means the Time Lords are back. All the above goes out of the window and the Doctor just takes the gun. Things are clearly very, very serious. But before the seriousness starts we get a rather cool scene in which Wilf gets to fire lasers from a spaceship.

There’s another cool RTD moment; only two Time Lords vote against their plan, and they “will now stand as witness to their shame, like the Weeping Angels of old.” Like so much of the dialogue in this story, this is wonderfully poetic. Unfortunately, there’s another moment which is considerably less cool; the Doctor jumps several hundred feet, lands hard, and is only slightly hurt. WHAT? I just had my head in my hands at this point. We know the Doctor is vulnerable to gravity; that was the whole point of his regeneration in Logopolis! This is just silly. How can such a good writer as RTD, in such an otherwise excellent script, possibly commit such a howler? Perhaps he needs someone to stop him. This is a crying shame. It wouldn’t be so bad if everything else (except perhaps the end, which we’ll come to) wasn’t so perfect.

But the pieces are in place; the Doctor, the Master, and a Lord President who only now, oddly, is revealed to be Rassilon himself. And with a wave of his staff he casually undoes the Master’s takeover of the people of the Earth. The Doctor makes clear the scale of the horrors to come; Gallifrey is fading back intro existence, a fiery orange world which dwarfs the Earth. And we face horrors such as “the Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Tragedies, the Nightmare Child, the Could-Have-Been-King with his army of Meanwhiles and Never-Weres”. Again, so wonderfully poetic. And deadly; the Time Lords intend to destroy time, and exist on a higher plane as beings of pure thought. This is how they planned to end the Time War, and why the Doctor had to destroy them.

The Doctor is unsure, pointing the gun first at the Master, then at Rassilon. The Master’s “You never would, you coward!” seems to be a deliberate echo of the last regeneration- a very nice touch. Then the Doctor sees the mysterious woman, reacts, reflects, and simply shoots the machine which links this room to Gallifrey. And the Master, angry at what Rassilon has done to his life, seems to sacrifice himself to gain his revenge. It’s a dramatic ending. And suddenly the Doctor is alive, and fine, and can’t believe it.

And then there are four knocks. And silence. And another four knocks. Wilf is still inside the booth, waiting to be flooded with radiation. His only hope of survival means the Doctor’s death. It’s the perfect storm, and very cruel. The Doctor immediately realises the bitter irony, and reacts with rage. I’m reminded of what Lady Shelley said in her review of The Waters of Mars about the Doctor going through the seven stages of grief; is this where he finds acceptance? It’s certainly a brave speech. The Doctor is allowed to be very self-centred here, and even unlikeable. We even get a “Well, it’s not fair.”

The Doctor is dying, and we get an extended series of visits to his mates. Yes, this is self-indulgent, and yes, it was an idea that should have been nipped in the bud but, as so often with RTD, the execution is so brilliant that it sort of works. So we get to see Mickey and Martha, now married (what?!!) looking at the Doctor at a distance, as though he were the Watcher. There’s a brief moment with Sarah Jane. And even Captain Jack, with Alonso, in a Mos Eisley-style cantina filled with monsters of the RTD era. We even, oddly, get Jessica Hynes as “Verity Newman”. And Donna’s fate actually kind of works; the winning lottery ticket, bought with a pound “borrowed” from the late Geoffrey Noble. Appropriately, given Tennant's recent role as Hamlet, Ood Sigma sings him to his sleep: “This song is ending, but the story never ends.” One last poetic flourish from RTD. And it’s over. I think the Doctor’s last line is misjudged, and it’s a shame that the regeneration is the same as last time, but what a send-off. Although why the TARDIS should be set on fire I have no idea.

This is, for the most part, sublime. It’s only the falling scene and the self-indulgence of the final scenes, something almost redeemed in the execution, that disappoints. But this still manages a 5/5, if not a particularly high one. “Event” stories often disappoint, but if we take out the negatives, everything else is truly magnificent here.