Tom Salinsky

Another day, another first part of a two parter for me to be all indecisive about. Screw that. Here are some cold, hard opinions for you.

Firstly, although I did enjoy this episode, it’s not exactly original, is it? Here’s a short list of prior works which Matthew Graham could be said to be borrowing from: Frankenstein, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing, Blade Runner (and pretty much all of Philip K Dick’s output), Moon, Mirror Mirror, AI (and therefore Supertoys Last All Summer Long), Odo from Deep Space Nine, Data and especially The Doctor from Next Generation and Voyager and from within Doctor Who itself Meglos, Inferno, Terror of the Autons, Journey’s End, and very recently The Waters of Mars which has not only basically the same set-up but also the same make-up job. It’s also a base-under-siege story so add three-quarters of the Patrick Troughton stories to this list.

Despite (or just maybe because) of this, it manages to feel surprisingly fresh and lively. Little hints dropped early on that the visit by the TARDIS crew to this island at this time might not be wholly coincidental, some witty dialogue and some splendid location work from director Julian Simpson all make the mix feel both playful and sinister in a way that’s very Doctor Who.

It isn’t perfect though. The opening fall-into-the-acid scene is painfully obviously just for our benefit. With all the emphasis that’s later placed on those suits and their scarcity (presumably the Flesh can’t copy them as well as ordinary overalls and bowties?) it’s inconceivable that they’d be horsing around like that and just shrug off the cost of the suit. Then there’s the slight awkwardness introduced by the fact that the narrative demands two separate crucibles of goo, one full of acid and one full of Flesh, which the design department has done little to differentiate. And speaking of differentiation, by far the biggest weakness of the script is how bland the workers are. Compare this bunch of Fleshfodder to the vibrant human beings, all with strong relationships to each other, who populated Bowie Base One. Raquel Cassidy as the leader stands out easily enough as does Sarah Smart, but the rest – which the script insists all dress identically – blur together. This is an especial problem when being presented with your double is supposed to be such a big deal. As far as I was concerned, they were all anonymous clones of each other anyway.

But in the fan community, whether or not you liked this episode seems to depend on whether or not you saw the cliffhanger coming. Many complain that it was “obvious” but that word implies “flowing naturally from events which had gone before” as well as “boringly predictable”. I didn’t see it coming and love the way that the debate about what it means to be alive suddenly seemed so much more startlingly immediate as a result. I’m not even going to comment on the possibility that the Doctor who seemingly met his death on the beach was this FleshDoctor. Moffat’s surely better than that.

Part of the problem with the cliffhanger is that the script is basically vamping from the discovery that the Gangers are sentient following the storm to the discovery that the FleshDoctor exists. Too much time to think, not enough incident and we start writing our own faster-moving version of the story. Some of the cliffhangers in the old series were a bit arbitrary and pointless but having to put the Doctor and/or his friends in a life-or-death situation every 20-25 minutes sometimes seems like a useful discipline.

So, what does that leave? Rory is well-serviced this week, with a strong plotline of his own and a more wilful characterisation than normal. The effects work is well up to snuff with some nifty body-morphing and the TARDIS caught up in a spectacular solar tsunami.

It all promises well for part two – with any luck a neat combination of run-for-your-life scares, some rumination on what it means to be alive and (let’s hope) a faster pace and a few extra twists and turns. For now, a generous four stars.

Oh, and I’ve done another one of these, if you feel like entering.

Who’s this Neil Gaiman character then? First rising to fame when he remodelled obscure DC Comics superhero Sandman in his own shaggy-haired, heavy-lidded, pale skinned, dark clothed image as prince of dreams, he wrote all 75 issues over seven years. Dream and his various siblings including Destiny, Delirum and of course, cheeky apparently teenaged Death, struck a deep chord with emo comic fans everywhere, but spoke to a much wider audience as well, including riffs on Shakespeare, Dante, the Brothers Grimm, Tom Brown’s Schooldays and much else besides. Off the back of Sandman, he wrote novels, television plays, and recently has had several high profile movie adaptations including Coraline and Stardust. His lyrical, whimsical style is a perfect match for twenty-first century Doctor Who and he’s approached the task with daring, grace and a tremendous amount of wit and style.

If it isn’t obvious yet, I adored, The Doctor’s Wife, easily my favourite of the series so far. From the opening grimly exchanges between Auntie, Uncle and Idris to the final heartbreaking “hello” from the ghost out of the time machine, this was classy, elegant, exciting, thrilling stuff. Director Richard Clark’s location work is absolutely gorgeous, with amazing set dressing and wonderfully weird lighting and the central idea is nothing short of astonishing. After a first viewing, I wondered if the details of the plot all quite worked. I probably wouldn’t have minded if they haven’t. It’s the TARDIS, in the body of a woman (“did you wish really hard?”). That’s probably enough for me. But a second viewing proves that – although whipping past at a dizzying rate – all the requisite explanations are there. Every i has been dotted and every t crossed, it’s just that Gaiman didn’t want to labour the point. And quite right too.

But this isn’t just about a meeting between a thief and the box he stole, there’s proper jeopardy too as House heads off back to our universe to wreak havoc and may be find an entertaining way of bumping Amy and Rory off too if he gets sufficiently bored. So we get a proper exploration of the TARDIS, with proper corridor sets and everything (no CGI refit of the console room for one or two quick shots) for the first time since Time and the Rani. And these bewildering scenes are almost the best that the show has to offer, plunging our young couple into a weird nightmare world. As he is contractually required to do in, I assume, every story this season, Rory dies, but is brought back to life swiftly enough that it’s a mere bump in the road, scarcely enough to derail the narrative.

But the very best part of the episode is happening back on the planet, where in a dementedly brilliant scheme, the Doctor and his personified TARDIS manage to build a new TARDIS out of TARDIS scrap. As I’ve documented elsewhere, a potential problem with 45 minute self-contained stories is that 40 minutes is spent gleefully ratcheting up the tension and then the solution is crammed into a few minutes and feels insufficient, ill-thought-out or just unduly brief. Big, complicated problems require difficult and costly solutions. What’s brilliant about The Doctor’s Wife is that the solution is begun early and is just as much fun as the problem. Elsewhere, Gaiman is ruthlessly efficient. There are only seven characters in total, one basically mute and one only a voice. Two character simply drop down dead when they have fulfilled their narrative purpose. But this speed feels like energy not like hurry. And it’s useful when you’re daring to illuminate a character’s history, one who is much more interesting while still mysterious, to not be tempted to stop and smell the flowers, to give us a couple of quick glimpses and then to slam the door shut and lock it securely.

No account of The Doctor’s Wife would be complete without a run-down of some of the outstanding one-liners. Here are some of my favourites (from memory, so apologies for any paraphrasing).

• “You’ve never been very reliable”
• “I love biting. It’s like kissing only there’s a winner.”
• “I’ve got mail!”
• “Bunk beds”
• “Actually I feel fine.”

And we must pause to doff a fez to the spectacular Matt Smith, whose cold “finish him”, 12 year old lip-quivering and universe-weary regathering, all in the space of about ninety seconds, is an acting masterclass of the highest order. Uniquely the Eleventh Doctor, while entirely Doctor Who, it was utterly unique, entirely novel, perfectly appropriate and basically unimprovable.

Was there anything I didn’t like? Apart from the nonsense of Rory’s repeated death and resurrection in story after story, I didn’t really understand why an Ood had been stuck in at random. Another mordantly witty servant of House in the style of Auntie and Uncle would have been fine. And I don’t like the title. Twenty-first century Doctor Who stories general have rather good and evocative titles – not something which the series had previously been known for. Sixties stories, once they got proper titles, tended to be boringly along the lines of “The Zygotrons”. Seventies stories go for pulp melodrama, with things like “The Curse of Evil”. In the eighties there was a weird tradition of one-word/two-word titles like “MatterPlanet”. But more recently we’ve had lovely titles like “Silence in the Library”, “The Parting of the Ways” and “Turn Left”.

I understand Steven Moffat’s desire to give Gaiman’s beautiful tale a “slutty title” four episodes in to the run, and I don’t particularly like the bland “House of Nothing” which was its working title for a while, but I understand that “Bigger on the Inside” was considered for a while, and that would have been far more fitting.

An absolute classic, then, which distracted me entirely from the Sudoku of the season plot, and which left me very, very happy indeed. Five stars.

This review is late again, partly because I’ve been ill but partly because I just couldn’t get excited about this episode. It’s perfectly fine and entertaining stuff, it isn’t a horrible failure. But nor is it a cast-iron copper-bottomed classic. And that makes it hard to write about, especially because I was left with a vague feeling of disappointment when it was over, despite the fact that it hardly put a piratical boot wrong.

This, of course, is part of the problem with establishing a very strong season arc but (wisely) not committing to fully-serialised storytelling. The “non-arc” episodes automatically have less heft to them than the “arc” episode which means they have to be better than usual in order to compete. But even this really isn’t quite as new as perhaps it seems. Like any non-fully-serialised and long-running series, Doctor Who works because the premise generates any number of stories. Like a medical show in which life-and-death stories can walk in the door every week, the TARDIS can deliver the TARDIS crew to literally any situation imaginable. We don’t need The Death of the Doctor, The Return of the Time Lords, or The Secret of the Eye of Harmony every fucking week. We just want a good story.

But episode two left so many plot threads so ostentatiously dangling that to basically ignore all of them – certainly to develop none of them – and have the Doctor, Amy and Rory seemingly lose all interest is jarring to say the least. It’s rather like watching Jack Bauer surrounded by terrorists armed with automatic weapons, claymores and rabid dogs at 4:59 and then tuning back in for 5:01 to watch them all cheerfully playing softball together. For an hour.

So, maybe the problem – if there really is one – is just in the running order. Black Spot might have played much more strongly if it had come first in the season. We’d have seen the new TARDIS crew functioning as a unit for the first time, without any time-travelling archaeologists obscuring the chemistry. We would be perfectly happy for a carefree pseudo-historical romp, with no strong expectations that the half-remembered plot threads from the end of the last series were going to be urgently addressed. Then you chuck in River Song at the end to set up the arc and you’re off and running. It’s what Davies would have done, I suspect.

Anyway. Taken on its own terms this is basically fine. Some good jokes, especially the captain-on-captain banter between Matt Smith and a very sturdy Hugh Bonneville. Decent pirates – hey look it’s Lee Ross off of Press Gang. A pretty strong central mystery / threat, with the repeated motif of the Doctor proclaiming “ignore all my previous theories” a nice way of keeping the tension up. Some of the details are a little foggy. I think I understand why even moppety Toby can wander the spaceship, free of tubes and wires but will drop dead as soon as he leaves it, but I’m not sure I’d want to explain it to a nine year old. Also, protecting Rory from the “demon” seems to be simply a matter of holding him back (even spindly Amy can do it) so it’s a little peculiar that none of the pirates even try to save their shipmates. And the whole business of her jumping out of reflections is just magic as far as I can tell. Still, so’s the TARDIS being bigger on this inside.

Okay, proper complaints. I have two. Firstly, a series which is really committing to the idea that we have seen the Doctor die, actually die, for realz, Matt Smith is the last incarnation, and he’s only got 200 years to live, a series like that really, really, really needs to stop killing and resurrecting Rory who is rapidly becoming the Kenny of Doctor Who. Following non-fatal terminations in Amy’s Choice, Cold Blood, The Big Bang (sort of) and Day of the Moon (in other words, last week’s episode!) to have him seemingly snuff it only to pop back up again like a novelty birthday candle is a little ridiculous. And, it’s been a while since I did my St John’s Ambulance but Amy’s CPR looked all-sorts-of-wrong to me.

Secondly, I’ve moaned before that Moffat doesn’t write proper villains, so it’s particularly disappointing here that the striking Lily Cole turns out not be a vicious alien beast in urgent need of termination, but yet another automatic system gone awry. Since the series returned in 2005, this has been the solution to the central mystery in a total of four stories – The Empty Child (nanogenes), The Girl in the Fireplace (clockwork androids), Silence in the Library (CAL computer) and The Lodger (emergency holographic program). Depending on your definition of “automatic” and “system” you could also add Fear Her, Smith and Jones, The Eleventh Hour and even Amy’s Choice, although at least there the psycho-pollen was given a charismatically malevolent face by Toby Jones. Examples from the previous 26 seasons are vanishingly rare – The Edge of Destruction, Ghost Light (sort-of), um, er…

Why should this be? Well, firstly, not because no-one had ever thought of it before. It had been a staple of Star Trek for years. Not just implacable computerised killers like The Doomsday Machine, VGER and its TV predecessor Nomad but also in its revelation that horrible monsters have feelings too – the Farpoint creature in the Next Gen pilot, and its original series predecessor the Horta. The appeal of this kind of ending is twofold. Firstly, if your series is identified by its championing of rationality, understanding and humanity instead of featuring heroes who solve problems with fists, guns and explosives, then an heroic epiphany which transforms the threat into an empathetic character is a neat variation from the normal kill-or-be-killed approach. But it’s only a neat variation if you don’t do it all the bloody time.

Secondly, it’s faster. If you have to determine your foe’s weakness, devise a plan, put that plan into action and then confirm it succeeded, then you’d better not be too close to the end of the story when you start that process. On the other hand, it hardly takes any time to at all to say “Wait! It’s just a robot / protecting its young / nanogenes – let’s not kill it.” In the old days, after forty minutes of running-around-being-captured-escaping-and-running-around-again during episodes two and three, it was quite a relief when the plan to kill the bad guy or wipe out the monsters reared its head fairly early in part four. Often, the murdering was all done with five minutes to go and we had plenty of time for smiles, handshakes, goodbyes, tag-lines and “But Doctor, there’s just one thing I still don’t understand”. Nowadays, we can’t hang around. We’ve got 45 minutes and that’s it, including titles, throw-forward and incongruous “arc” moments, to tell a complete non-arc story. We can’t hang about.

But it’s just less satisfying for the solution to be “I know! Let’s do nothing! Everything is in fact okay, despite seeming disastrous mere moments before,” rather than “I’ve got you now” (or even “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry”) followed by “I’ll get you for this, Doctor, I’ll… aaarrrghhh!” Where would The Seeds of Doom be without Harrison Chase, or The Invasion without Tobias Vaughan? Even Voyage of the Damned, flawed in all sorts of ways, sputters into demented life whenever Max Capricorn is on-screen. He may not be the best and most layered antagonist the Doctor has ever faced, but when so much else seems so out-of-kilter, it’s reassuring to be in the presence of a genuinely pop-eyed megalomaniac in a funny wheelchair, hurling hubristic insults at the Doctor – before being dumped into nuclear storm drive. By Kylie Minogue. Driving a fork-lift.

Three stars.

Last week I wrote that it’s hard to judge a two parter on the basis of the first episode, and so I declined to give it a score. This week, I’m feeling as if it’s hard to judge a whole series on the basis of the first story, such is Steven Moffat’s new-found commitment to serialised TV.

But before we get on to that, let’s look at the story itself. I find myself pulled in two different directions almost throughout. The nitpicky adult in me sees flaw after flaw, but the wide-eyed child is so enraptured by the dash and wit and spectacle of it all that the adult feels curmudgeonly even existing. Declining at first to properly resolve its main cliffhanger (we finally get an answer in a throw-away line deep into the episode), the story springs giddily months into the future and through a series of improbable events reunites the TARDIS crew for some important exposition.

The adult me is rather suspicious of these elaborate charades during which characters decline to share information with other characters who might benefit from knowing it simply in order to surprise the audience. I adore Star Trek II but not all of the plotting stands up to repeated viewings. In particular, when Kirk et al are apparently trapped forever in the Genesis Cave, how does it help anyone for Kirk to continue to let them imagine that they are going to slowly and horribly starve to death when he has already arranged secretly with Spock for them to be rescued?

Likewise, why does Canton produce a bodybag to shit Amy up when his only goal is to reunite her with The Doctor? As lovely a reveal as it is when the even-more-than-usually-raggedy Doctor slouches against the cloaked TARDIS, it’s all for our benefit as viewers. In a story which begins with the supposed death of your main character, this is a dangerous, dangerous game to play.

And so it continues with the resolution of the main threat. The recording of the Silent signing its own death-warrant is a mite convenient, but inserting the footage into the Apollo moon landing footage is a brilliant device and along the way we get some marvellous set-pieces, notably the superbly-handled haunted house with veteran character actor Kerry Shale giving it everything he’s got as twitchy Dr Renfrew. Amy’s kidnap provides a nice moment of tension between Rory and the Doctor too, and the final showdown is spectacular without being gratuitous.

So far so good. But, on reflection, some niggles start to appear. Okay, in gun-toting America despatching a Silent is fairly easy (and most of the Silents are in America), but just what will happen when residents of Calcutta or Nairobi or Copenhagen hear these instructions and see a Silent? Will they get Joy-splattered? How many human death warrants has the Doctor just signed? And even if the Silents are pretty easy to kill, what happens to all the bodies? Surely some people are going to get as Silent-aware as the Doctor and his friends? And just how did they manage that anyway? Are we sure that the Silents deserve this kind of treatment? Apart from killing Joy in that bathroom, we’ve never seen them doing anything malevolent. And if they’ve been guiding human technological development since the invention of the wheel (side-by-side with the Jagaroth I assume) then isn’t humanity better off with them than without them? In fact, if they’ve made this planet and this species what it is then doesn’t that give them any kind of rights?

But the episode is basically far too enjoyable to spend too much time on these kind of musings. The counter to all these whines is basically – the Doctor says this will work and the Doctor says they’re bad and we should take the Doctor’s word for it, because he’s the Doctor (only a fool argues with his Doctor). Apart from anything else if they were really so fucking benevolent, why go to all that trouble to make sure nobody knows they’re there? And besides, they have weird shaped faces and wear dark suits so that proves they’re up to no good and therefore can be slaughtered on sight without the least hint of moral twinge.

But this episode also makes it very plain that Steven Moffat’s vision of Doctor Who is more serialised than ever before. This is not a new trend in TV. Back in the eighties, mainstream American shows like LA Law would frequently include season-long arcs which ran alongside various one-off case-of-the week storylines. In the nineties, shows like Murder One and Babylon 5 put most of their emphasis on season-long stories, or in the case of Babylon 5 series-long stories. For its first two years, Babylon 5 included a mere handful of “arc-episodes” per year which drove the series-long story, while most episodes were self-contained narratives. In its third and fourth years, the need to accelerate the storytelling lead to every episode simply driving the main plot. Creator J. Michael Straczynski described it as a television novel.

This approach was picked up by some sit-coms, notably Friends, which for a while became almost a soap opera with a laugh track as many episodes included almost no new story elements, simply picking up threads from the previous instalment and leaving them still dangling waiting for the next one. Now it’s a mark of prestige. Shows like The Sopranos, Lost and The Wire get the critical acclaim that they do precisely because they tell complex stories over tens of hours, rather than simple yarns in forty minutes. The advantage of this approach is that regular viewers can’t wait for the next new show. The drawback is that it’s hard to join the party late, so new viewers may be left stranded.

But it’s almost impossible now to imagine a long-running series which doesn’t do this to some extent, and so when retooling Doctor Who for the twenty-first century, Russell T Davies, while still basically thinking of ten discrete stories told over 13 episodes, nevertheless included a little device which could crop up in more than one story early in the run and which would pay off only in the season finale. Bad Wolf in 2005 was followed by Torchwood in 2006 and then by Mister Saxon in 2007. But in all these cases, the emphasis was still on stand-alone stories. Remove or ignore the “arc” material and you lose nothing.

But that’s not the game that Moffat is playing. A lot of the material we’ve seen so far is almost meaningless except in the context of a storyline that has yet to fully reveal itself, which leads to a slightly “bumpy” viewing experience. In this one episode, all the material about the Silents harks back to the beginning of last year, and we still don’t know the meaning of “Silence will fall” (or is it “Silents will fall”?). The plotline about the Doctor’s death in 200 years is still unresolved at the end of this episode and we are still no wiser about who the little girl is and why she’s in that space suit. What we do know is that she has the ability to regenerate and all this presumably has something to do with Amy’s Shroedinger’s foetus, but it’s impossible to say what at this stage. Then there’s the startling appearance of Frances Barber with what looks like a cyber eyepatch popping up from a later episode and all this is without mentioning River Song, the mystery of whose identity was first posed in 2008’s Silence (Silents?) in the Library. It’s a bit much for the casual viewer, isn’t it? And even for the devoted fan, is it asking too much to include material only when it’s actually relevant, instead of making much of the episode feel like those “next week on Doctor Who” throw-forwards?

So, finally let’s talk about River Song. As anyone will know who’s read or seen any of his work before, Steven Moffat loves language and loves exploiting ambiguity in language. The utter absurdity of the rebooting-the-universe plotline (“just turn it off and on again”) from the end of last year was redeemed for me in its entirety by the sheer breathtaking brilliance and heartstopping power of the TARDIS being described as “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue”. He’s been teasing us for four years with who River Song might be. Let’s look at some of the evidence.

• She whispers the Doctor’s real name to him, and he says that there’s only one person to whom he ever could or would reveal that.
• She calls him “sweetie”
• She refers to him (or at least to someone) as her “old fella” who she says wouldn’t like her gunplay
• She has a deep affection and regard for him
• She can fly the TARDIS (better than him)
• A little girl is walking around planet Earth in the late 1960s who has the Time Lord power to regenerate
• A forthcoming episode is called The Doctor’s Wife (a title once used by producer John Nathan-Turner as a ruse to discover if there was a mole in the Doctor Who office)

So, it seems almost inevitable that she is just that – The Doctor’s Wife. But after four years of waiting and teasing, the answer has to be less obvious than that doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?

Anyway, it seems as if tonight – to try and lure back the casual viewer – the Doctor will uncharacteristically disregard his usually insatiable curiosity and simply go on a random adventure instead. Good. I think…

Four stars for the two-parter, but I reserve the right to reassess at the end of the series in July. Or November.

PS: Welcome friend of the blog Henry Dyer, whose own blog is here. http://direthought.blogspot.com/

The last series kicked off with the biggest discontinuity since the 2005 restart which itself was without equal since the series started back 1963. In spring 2010 we got a new Doctor, a new companion, a new producer and a complete new roster of directors. Even in 1970 when Jon Pertwee and colour exploded on to our screen, and when the whole format of the show was changed, we had the return of Lethbridge-Stewart, familiar names credited as writer and script-editor and (for one story only) the same producer as at the end of the previous series.

This time, for the first time since the programme returned in 2005, we have total continuity from series-to-series. The same TARDIS crew as at the end of the previous series and the same key personnel behind-the-scenes. It’s time for a change.

Doctor Who is now so firmly embedded in the BBC that the problem is not how will we cope when the programme is only on for one quarter of the year, it’s how to avoid over-saturation. With various spin-offs, specials (Christmas and charity) and huge media coverage leading up to each new series, canny producers now look for ways to ration the supply so that withdrawal kicks in and we are clamouring for our next fix. Russell created the 2009 “Gap Year” for this purpose and now Moffat gives us the 2011 “Divided Season”. Instead of this “hit” lasting us all the way to July, it’s going to abruptly terminate in early June and leave us dangling until the autumn, when if we’re not very lucky it’s going to be up against X Factor.

So, one paper-thin but hugely enjoyable Christmas Special and one tissue-paper thin and instantly forgettable (hah!) Comic Relief skit later, and Series Six is finally here. Is it any good?

Oh, how I hate to prejudge two-parters. Um. Much of it is very good indeed, but I have concerns to say the least about the Moffat method. The good first of all…

The regular cast are on sparkling form. Rory the Roman, now with Arthur Darvill’s name firmly embedded in the new bejazzled titles, manfully shoulders the burden of carrying the exposition – not so much for we viewers as for guest star Mark Sheppard aka Canton Everett Delaware III aka Romo Lampkin off of Battlestar Galactica. Alex Kingston is still having a marvellous time as Dr River Song, setting out the rules which Rory will no doubt obediently follow and which Amy will no doubt break as soon as possible. Karen Gillan brings both joy and pain as well as gravitas when she brilliantly swears an oath of fealty to the Doctor, invoking fish custard to prove her worth. And Matt Smith continues to find hidden avenues to explore as he switches from ebullient foolishness to heart-stopping severity without apparently changing gears. His casting was an absolute masterstroke.

And there’s some fun stuff in the White House, with Stuart Milligan, so irritatingly unfunny in the otherwise splendid Jonathan Creek, making a decent fist of Nixon – not quite an uncanny portrayal but more convincing than Ian MacNeice as Churchill last year, not that that’s saying much. And I love, love, love the Forget-Me-Trons, a brilliant spin on Moffat’s greatest triumph, the Weeping Angels, but in their own way far creepier, and in their execution of Joy, far more sinister killers.

But Toby Haynes who did so well with last year’s two-part finale seemed to be off his game once or twice. The American location are gorgeous, but he fumbles the hugely important death of the Doctor scene, keeping the spaceman out of shot too long as the Doctor’s friends huddle around his body, and – until the moment of execution – just has Amy and The Silent stare pointlessly at each other in the bathroom, as the tension ebbs away.

Now let’s talk about plotting.

Steven Moffat is a very clever man, of that there is no doubt at all. And he and Doctor Who are a perfect fit. Not only is he a devoted fan, he is a perfect choice to build on that fannish body of knowledge with the kind of more sophisticated storytelling which Russell primed us to expect. However, I worry that his love of puzzles and his love of time-travel are slowly starting to steer him away from where Doctor Who’s best stories are actually to be found.

Time paradoxes, a long-time staple of science fiction of all kinds, have only rarely featured in Doctor Who. In the vast majority of classic stories, travel in time simply delivers the Doctor to the start of the adventure and then takes him to the next one at the end. Only in Day of the Daleks and Mawdryn Undead is any kind of time travel central to the plot. Even when multiple Doctors meet up, any notion that the Second Doctor might remember the events from the point of view of the First Doctor is cheerfully ignored. (The Five Doctors in particular only really makes sense if one views the role of Doctor as a post from which one retires and which is then taken over by another.)

In the new series, time travel was used a little more. The moment when I fell in love with nu-Who was the moment when Rose was returned to The Powell Estate a year too late. Stories like Father’s Day, School Reunion and – of course – Silence in the Library all use time travel a little more, but all stop short of using it as an intellectual sonic screwdriver: pop back in time and fix it. This problem with giving an impossibly benevolent wizard complete power over time and space is exactly what Moffat himself was spoofing in 1999’s Comic Relief skit The Curse of Fatal Death with the Doctor and the Master stuck in an endless recursive bribing-the-architect loop.

But what made Curse of Fatal Death so effective was precisely that it was a loving parody. In many ways, it was the episode Moffat thought he’d never get to write – but the episode he pretty much did write at the end of the last series when Matt Smith appeared with that fez and that mop. And again when he started talk to Sardick from within his own home movie.

This is just how Steven Moffat’s mind works. And it always has. Playing these kind of formal games with time has always been one of the attractions. But when in Press Gang, we open with a funeral and are told that one of the Junior Gazette journalists has been murdered, and then flash back to the office where the regulars are being held at gun point, then the tension is unbearable, but also the storytelling device is novel. When in Coupling, we play two-points of view simultaneously, the opportunities for comic juxtaposition and irony are tremendous, but also the storytelling device is novel. However, when your lead character is defined by his ability to travel in time, then you don’t get bonus novelty points for playing around with time. In fact, if you’re not careful, you’ll blow up the whole format.

So, when the Doctor sends himself a message from two hundred years in the future, ensuring that his younger self will be present on the day of his death, it doesn’t feel shockingly game-changing and like “anything can happen”. It feels familiar, reheated and tired. Worse than that, when the central point of the episode is presented like a puzzle, then as an audience we sit here trying to figure it out. But we don’t watch Doctor Who instead of solving sudokus. We watch Doctor Who for the adventure of it.

As I say, this is part one of two, so I will withhold judgement for now. But so far, although there is much, much, much to enjoy here, I worry that Moffat is now working a bit too hard to be a bit too clever and is forgetting that Doctor Who doesn’t have to be complicated to be fun and that it can be complicated in lots of different ways instead of always in the same way.

PS: Farewell Elisabeth Sladen. You will be missed.

This blog having been sadly neglected, I’m going to put up a few quick posts tying up loose ends. First is the Oscars. My quest to see all ten Best Picture nominees having met with success, all that was left was to watch the ceremony and test the quality of my powers of prognostication.

The ceremony itself was certainly marred by the choice of host. Anne Hathaway is a perfectly charming presence, but was rarely given anything funny to say. James Franco, such a charismatic and fearless actor seemed to be playing the part of stiff and gauche neophyte out-of-his-depth and made me feel rather uneasy watching him moreorless throughout.

On the upside, some of the dopier decisions of ceremonies past had been quietly reversed. Gone was the shepherding of multiple technical award winners on to the stage simultaneously. Gone were the ponderous personal valedictions from five presenters to five acting nominees. Back were the individual musical numbers for Best Song (sort-of).

The awards themselves were fairly predictable. In the technical categories, both Inception and The Social Network did slightly better than some had predicted, raising a question mark over The King’s Speech‘s chances at the top prizes. But stuttering Bertie eventually scooped up Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay as it was always bound to. Apparently, my choice of Tom Hooper was anti-consensus, but honestly I only picked him because of the momentum of the movie itself.

Truth be told, it almost certainly wasn’t the best-directed movie of the year – certainly 127 Hours and The Social Network both have stronger claims. Yet, I don’t think it’s fair to right off Tom Hooper’s contribution entirely. Hooper does use the camera and the sound design in interesting and compelling ways. The movie neither looks nor sounds like a TV movie (as An Education did last year, for example) and if, as is generally agreed, Colin Firth pulled off the performance of his career, then surely some of the credit for that can be given to the director?

My only other anti-consensus call was picking Hailee Steinfeld for best supporting actor, which I had serious cause to doubt after watching Melissa Leo in The Fighter but if you make an out-there prediction, and you stick to it, and you’re right – then you’re a genius. Whereas if you dither about and pile up caveats and codicils, then who cares? Of course, Steinfeld did not prevail and Melissa Leo fucking did, not undeservedly.

That’s it till next year. If this blog is still here, we’ll do it all again then.

It’s Oscar time again, which means that I’ve been moreorless keeping up this blog for a whole year. Well done to me.

It also means that I intend to duplicate my 2010 efforts and see all ten (why ten!?) Best Picture nominees before the ceremony on 27 February (and I’m away next week). In fact, I never did get around to seeing the very dreary-looking Sandra Bullock, Friday Night Lights-inspired The Blind Side (it’s still on my hard drive, courtesy of iTunes). However, it’s not so bad. I’ve already seen four out of ten in the ordinary course of things, so I’ll put my capsule reviews of those four up here, and a quick rundown of what I consider to be the favourites in the various categories.

First of all, here are the Best Picture nominees I’ve seen.

The King’s Speech
Big favourite this year, not just for Best Picture, but Best Actor and Best Director too. The King’s Speech is the most-nominated film this year, which generally bodes well and it’s easy to see why – it has Oscar glory stamped all over it. Apart possibly from Toy Story 3, it’s the most purely entertaining film on the list, has done well at the box office (although all the naughty swearing means an R rating which has hurt it a little in the States) and manages the ideal Oscar trick of being genuinely about something (duty, family, friendship, articulacy, communication, status) whilst at the same time, absolutely not daring to challenge its audience’s preconceptions in any way. Cosy enough to turn nobody away, yet meaty enough not to feel insubstantial, and blessed with two exceptional performances from Firth and Rush, this may not go down in history as a cast-iron classic, but it’s certainly in the right place at the right time (stealing momentum away from The Social Network).

Inception
Another film which tries to have its cake and eat it too, Inception, is a remarkable achievement from a remarkable director, and was a hugely fun night out when I went to see it on a nice big screen, but it doesn’t have a prayer in the Best Picture stakes. Whereas The King’s Speech is an entertaining drama which asks its audience to ponder weighty themes without asking any really awkward questions, Inception is a cerebral thriller, playing with levels of reality with huge daring and imagination, but with a popcorn heart. This is Nolan’s achievement – designing an intellectual framework within which he can pull off heart-stopping action sequences and eye-bending images, and then creating an emotional McGuffin to tie it all together. I loved it, despite Leonardo di Caprio’s characteristically bland central performance, despite Ellen Page’s dual role as naïf and sage, and despite the occasional plot hole. But its dry intellectual heft is no match for The King’s Speech double-whammy of historical weight and emotional drama. Worthy beats fun every time for Oscar, and so Chris Nolan will go home empty-handed, apart possibly from some technical awards.

The Social Network
Another film I thoroughly enjoyed, right up until the last ten minutes which attempted to tie a too-neat bow around what had been a compelling narrative thus far. Aaron Sorkin’s masterful and archly witty screenplay gracefully solves the problem of why we should care about what the geeks who invented Facebook ate for lunch between coding by the elegant device of the double-litigation flashback structure. As well as the wholly-unrealistic (but hugely satisfying)– whipcrack dialogue, the film showcases a pair of outstanding performances from Jesse Eisenberg and Spiderman-to-be Andrew Garfield and an invisible special effect – as they generally should be – to turn one actor into a pair of identical twins. What will hurt its chances at the Oscars are that it peaked too late, that David Fincher’s chilly direction will have put some people off what’s potentially a dry-seeming screenplay in the first place – and that Fincher himself was extravagantly praised for the lumpen Benjamin Button at the 2009 Oscars.

Toy Story 3
Will clearly win the Best Animated Feature award, but hasn’t a chance in hell of winning Best Picture, despite the fact that it apparently has a lot of the same things going for it as The King’s Speech – excellent box office, high quality entertainment, important themes which give it weight without dragging it down, technical standards dazzlingly high – but let’s be clear, no animated sequel ever has or ever will win Best Picture. Which is a shame, as it’s an exceptional piece of work even by Pixar’s high standards. Up was lovely, but the structure was a little clunky (and it was criticised in some quarters for double mumbo-jumbo), WALL-E was magnificent until they got on board the ship, after which I found the satire a little heavy-handed, Ratatouille had marvellous moments but lost energy in the middle third. Toy Story 3 reminds us where it all started for Pixar and also how far we’ve come. Resisting the urge to snazz-up Woody and Buzz, they’re just the same simple, yet appealing figures they were in 1995, the filmmakers flex their muscles with much more convincing humans and stunning simulation work of various kinds. The supporting cast is trimmed down where necessary (no Bo Peep, RC, Wheezy, Etch for example) and expanded on brilliantly (Michael Keaton as Ken, Timothy Dalton as Mr Pricklepants and Ned Beatty as Lots-O’-Huggin’ Bear are wonderful additions). The tension is almost unbearable during the incinerator scene, which is brilliantly resolved, and when Andy – still voiced by John Morris – plays with Woody and Buzz one last time, there isn’t a dry eye in the house.

So four down, six to go. And they are Black Swan (The Red Shoes meets Shutter Island), The Fighter (Rocky with Mark Wahlberg), The Kids are All Right (lesbians are mainstream now, cool), 127 Hours (I have to watch while you do what!?), True Grit (we’re not remaking the John Wayne film, we’re just adapting the same novel) and Winter’s Bone (which completely passed me by until it suddenly started popping up on American critics best of 2010 lists).

I’ll put reviews up here as I see the films, and I’ll attempt a little bit of crowd-sourcing to predict the results in the major categories. In the meantime, here are some gut reactions to the high profile nominations.

Best Picture – The King’s Speech pretty much has this sewn up I think, which means good news for Tom Hooper, since it’s rare for the director of the Best Picture to be overlooked.

Best Actor – will likely go to Colin Firth, who following his nomination last year for A Single Man, has demonstrated his Oscar-friendliness. But this is a strong category and it’s hard to right-off Javier Bardem, or – Oscar host! – James Franco.

Best Actress – is even harder to call, with all five women having a reasonable claim. My guess is that Natalie Portman has been made to suffer enough and hasn’t been smiled on yet by the Academy. The others are either too indie-obscure or too familiar with Oscar already, but any of them could do it, really.

Best Supporting Actor – is probably between Christian Bale, overlooked for The Dark Knight last year, and Geoffrey Rush, who may be swept along with The King’s Speech’s overall good fortune.

Best Supporting Actress – I have a strong hunch will go to Hailee Steinfeld who played the 14-year-old Mattie Ross in True Grit, at the remarkable age of, wow, 14. Best Supporting slots are good ways to reward newcomers, and otherwise overlooked films. Since I don’t believe True Grit will do well (a violent remake, which outweighs any nostalgia for westerns), this will be a place to recognise it. Steinfled could well follow in the footsteps of ten-year-old Tatum O’Neil and 11-year-old Anna Paquin.

The writing categories throw up a couple of oddities. The script for Toy Story 3, in which every twist and turn of the story is an original invention, is nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, since some of the characters were created for a prior movie. On the other hand, the script for The King’s Speech, which documents actual historical events, is nominated for Best Original Screenplay, since it does not acknowledge any particular prior work. This aside, The King’s Speech will probably take this category too, while in the Adapted camp, it’s a straight fight between 127 Hours and The Social Network, both of which turned uncinematic true events into gripping narrative. Winter’s Bone is probably in with a slim chance too.

That will do for now. In short, The King’s Speech will do well, True Grit won’t do as well as its ten nominations suggest. The Social Network, Black Swan and Winter’s Bone all have possibilities. Inception will be almost entirely overlooked.

Given my track-record with this kind of prediction, that should be enough for you to put an enormous bet down on Inception right now, but we’ll see in a few weeks’ time.

Even by my standards, this review is heartily on the late side, so I will be brief. Basically, it’s marvellous. And it could so easily not have been. The last time Doctor Who took on Dickens’ venerable short novel, the results were disastrous for programme and leading man alike. Here, thanks in large part to a towering performance from Sir Michael Gambon, it works magnificently. In fact, this may have been the most completely successful Christmas special so far (read on).

The dilemma is a little contrived, but serves its purpose and is sketched in with admirable economy and finesse, including some cheeky visual nods to the recent Star Trek movie along the way. The key moment of “you didn’t hit the boy” is strong and simple and resonant, and the Doctor’s solution is a lovely Moffat-y mix of timebending paradoxes, jawdropping gags and just enough heartfelt emotion to paper over the cracks.

If you’ve ever wondered at the decorous ways in which leading ladies die gently and nobly of attractive diseases in movies-of-the-week (or even more highbrow fare such as Shadowlands), then you’ll be staggered at the way in which Katherine Jenkins faces imminent death with absolutely nothing in the way of debilitating symptoms beyond a very retro-looking countdown.

My only quibbles, disquiets or pauses are that Moffat Time Paradox stuff is threatening to become an over-used device – a sort of incorporeal sonic screwdriver. Next thing you know, they’ll be bribing the architect. Secondly, for the first time in ages, we were treated to some genuinely dodgy effects work during the shark-driven sleigh rides. It’s not even appropriately nostalgic, because it’s not fuzzy-edged CSO with parts of Matt Smith’s legs disappearing, it’s 1978 Superman The Movie-style visible matte lines, and actors happily lurching around, just not quite in tune with the changing angles of the background plate.

It’s also true that Amy and Rory don’t get much of a look-in, but to be honest that made sense. After the Doctor handling Sardick’s past, I had a horrible feeling that Amy would be handling the present at equal length followed by Rory somehow handling the future. In fact, the treatment of future was where all the timewimey stuff, the actual plot and the emotions of the story came together beautifully, and I’m sure Arthur Darvill will have more to do in the spring.

In short, what’s not to like? It’s complicated enough for the grown-ups, simple enough for the kids, it’s got a flying shark, the Singing Detective, an amazing acting debut from Katherine Jenkins, Matt Smith owns the part by now and it’s Doctor Who at Christmas. Five out of five. Easily.

Before I go, here’s a quick run-down of Christmas specials past. This is a short list since the only twentieth century episode which remotely counts is the bizarre The Feast of Steven also known as part 7 of the twelve part Hartnell leviathan The Daleks’ Masterplan. This demented entry, broadcast on Christmas Day 1965 features appearances from the Keystone Cops and Z Cars and ends with Hartnell wishing the viewers at home a happy Christmas. It no longer exists in the BBC archives.

However, following its triumphant return in 2005, a Christmas special was rapidly commissioned and almost instantly became a festive fixture.

The Christmas Invasion set the template while simultaneously introducing us to the definitive Davies Doctor. Absurdly Christmassey, or so it seemed at the time, it emphasised the audience’s existing relationship with Rose, Jackie and Mickey, deliberately keeping the new Doctor in the background until ready to give him a big entrance. And although David Tennant makes a huge impact in the last 15 minutes, the story is a bit ho-hum and the supposedly climactic sword fight is problematic firstly as a very physical bit of problem-solving for such an intellectual hero and secondly for some profoundly dodgy process work. The Doctor’s severed hand turns out to be the Christmas gift that just keeps giving however and the line “Don’t you think she looks tired” is just great – in fact the whole Harriet Jones goes all Brigadier on the Sycorax’s ass is a welcome shot of vinegar among all the sickly yuletide.

The Runaway Bride is absolutely amazing for the first twenty minutes or so (and I’m firmly in the pro-Donna camp). The motorway chase is one of the finest, most sustained pieces of dramatic, comedic and kinetic material that the series has ever offered. Through the middle, the puzzle of Donna’s boyfriend strains my interest and the revelation of the Racnoss is rather poor, thanks to the inexplicable decision to place poor Sarah Parish in a basically immobile spider suit and spray-paint her red.

Voyage of the Damned is the first of what became a cycle of temporary companion specials. Kylie is fine, but the concept of Doctor Who disaster movie feels wrong, and the whole is overblown and lacks focus.

The Next Doctor is two stories in one, neither wholly successful. The David Morrissey strand is nothing more than a slightly cynical headline-grabber from Davies. Next Doctor, my nutsack. This red herring is disposed of as quickly as is seemly, and we move on to Cyberman In The Snow which adds very little to the corpus. As with most of the David Tennant stories, it’s fun while it’s on, but it’s very short of the greatest that the series has to offer.

The Waters of Mars might have pipped A Christmas Carol if it had gone out at Christmas as originally-planned. It’s pretty-much perfect, but instead we got The End of Time Part One which if anything is even less coherent than the incredibly overblown second part.

As usual, the new series trailer had me salivating, so I’ll see you back here in the spring.

Part three is here

GoldenEye (1995)

w. Jeffrey Caine, Bruce Fierstein; d. Martin Campbell
The one with: him out of Remmington Steele, him out of Sharpe, him out of The Comic Strip Presents, the wonky music, the tank chase
Overview: the radical reinvention which we were promised in 1987 finally materialises. A new Bond, a new M, a new Moneypenny, gorgeous CGI titles, a crackerjack theme song – things are off to a good start. The contrast between this and Licence to Kill couldn’t be greater. The glamour, the fun, the charm are all back in full force, but this film knows how to ring the changes too. Whereas Licence attempted to give us Bond as a rogue agent and fudged it, this film gives us a real turncoat in the form of 006 turned meglomaniacal villain. I still can’t believe that in all the prelease press and TV coverage I saw, in all the interviews and previews, I entirely failed to notice that we hadn’t had the villain introduced to us! The excellent tank chase also kicks off what will prove to be a quite rewarding trend, as for the next half-a-dozen movies, the stunt team attempts to find more and different vehicles in which to stage chases. With a magnificent debut from Judi Dench as M, top-drawer stunts and effects work, an astonishingly assured debut from Irishman Brosnan, and a clutch of bright supporting cast members including Robbie Coltrane, Joe Don Baker, Alan Cumming, Samantha Bond’s spunky take on Miss Moneypenny and Famke Janssen quite beguiling as thigh-crushing Xenia Onatopp, this teeters on the brink of parody more than once, but never quite stumbles over it. Niggles? Brosnan’s hair is too long, and the five o’clock shadow isn’t a good look for him – it was abandoned after this film; Trevelyan’s evil plan makes no sense whatsoever; and the music is horrible, except for the already-mentioned theme song and the tank chase sequence. In general though, this is very assured and entertaining stuff, with a swagger and style which completely eluded the previous movie. As with Living Daylights, a few scenes provide a veneer of emotion which hints at just a little more depth to the character – and that’s all I really need. Takes its title from Ian Fleming’s house in Jamaica (really!).
Best for: pre-titles sequence – and that’s really saying something. Despite very stiff competition, this really is the last word in these sequences. The bungee jump off the dam is amazing; the gun battle in the weapons facility is brilliantly shot and combines action, humour and suspense with total control; the final stunt – freefalling after the crashing plane – is totally ludicrous, yet completely convincing; and the sequence sets up the big reveal which, when it comes, re-energises the middle of the film but which here manages not to be too clearly signposted. What a return to form! Hurrah!

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

w. Bruce Fierstein; d. Roger Spottiswode
The one with: all the Asian chopsocky (no, the other one), the climax on the enormous tanker (no, the other one), the remote control car, her out of Desperate Housewives
Overview: By now, the action movie had become a genre and it was films like Lethal Weapon, Robocop, Die Hard, Raiders and their various sequels that the Bond films were being compared to. The problem is that Bond really comes from a different tradition, in theory appealing to a much wider audience, but the crossover with action movies is clear to see. Where the best Bond films differ is that they have a little more plot, a bit more style, a bit more class than the average action movie. In his second outing, Brosnan is even more self-assured and makes the most of his brief appearances in the pretitles sequence (Brosnan himself never visited the location) and manages to carve out a recognisable figure amongst the mayhem, but Spottiswode is determined never to let the pace up for a second – even the briefing from M is delivered in the back of car, screeching through London. The one pause for breath is probably the highlight of the film – Bond, knocking back vodka, waiting for Paris Carver. This is followed by the excellent showdown with Vincent Schiavelli’s eerie Dr Kaufman and the preposterous, but fun remote control car chase. In Saigon, things take a turn for the noisier, and the wall-to-wall gunfire makes it hard to pick out the moments of sly humour, character beats and grace notes, which may or may not be there. What ultimately sinks the film is the terribly shaky performance by Jonathan Pryce, hopelessly miscast as Elliot Carver and with no clue how to combine comic book villainy with any hint of gravitas at all. For sheer excitement and adrenalin, it does pretty much work while it’s on, but as soon as it’s over, there’s nothing left. What is welcome is the arrival of David Arnold, who from now on becomes the Bond composer-in-residence, continuing John Barry’s legacy and unafraid of a drum machine if it’ll help. If only they’d used k d lang’s superb “Surrender” as the theme song instead of Sheryl Crow’s rather anonymous effort. Its title has nothing to do with Fleming or anything else.
Best for: pace. It will likely leave you out of breath, but if you’re in the mood you’ll probably enjoy the ride.

The World is Not Enough (1999)

w. Neil Purvis, Robert Wade, Bruce Fierstein; d. Michael Apted
The one with: the world’s least convincing nuclear physicist, yet more skiing, the boat chase down the Thames, Basil Fawlty
Overview: A polar opposite of its predecessor, strong where Tomorrow Never Dies was weak, yet it lacks the coherence, urgency and drive of that particularly kinetic entry. Handing the megaphone to a “proper” director in the shape of Michael Apted, means in turn that he lets the excellent second unit, commanded by Vic Armstrong, take care of the action. More than usual, then, this feels like a faintly uninteresting family/spy drama intercut with an unrelated but highly competent action movie. Another crackerjack pretitles sequence – the boat chase from MI6 to the under-construction Millennium Dome – gets the film off to a good start and Bond’s busted shoulder is an interesting wrinkle, but try as I might I can’t bring myself to really care about Elektra King, Renard and whatever it is they’re trying to do. Even the kidnapping of M seems low-key, perfunctory and without any real resonance or impact. I admire the way The World Is Not Enough tries to take the espionage storylines of From Russia With Love or On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and bring them up to date; I think it’s a good idea to try and create a Bond girl with more depth who can actually hurt our hero emotionally (Elektra, of course, not Christmas Jones); I think Bond is at home in these exotic European locations – I just remember how underwhelmed I was by it when I first saw it. Even Robbie Coltrane’s Zukovsky is markedly less fun second time around. Its title is Bond’s family motto, according to On Her Maj.
Best for: goodbyes. Q’s farewell is genuinely touching. Who could have known that Desmond Llewellyn would be killed in a car crash months later?

Die Another Day (2002)

w. Neil Purvis and Robert Wade; d. Lee Tamahori
The one with: the hovercraft, Bond goes rogue (no, the other one), Halle Berry, invisible car
Overview: Oh god, where to start? This was the twentieth “official” Bond movie, released in the fortieth anniversary year of the first movie and the fiftieth anniversary year of the first book, and was intended to be a celebration of the entire franchise, with nods and winks to most if not all of the preceding movies. But whereas the previous three films, for better or worse, each had a strong sense of identity, a clear mission statement (make Bond fun, make Bond energetic, make Bond work as drama) this one fires off wildly in every direction it can find. Like Octopussy, it never finds a coherent style or tone, and like Octopussy, some very good sequences don’t make up for some truly appalling ones. Unlike Octopussy, though, which shuffles up its various styles and plots, Die Another Day splits neatly down the middle. The hovercraft chase in the pretitles, while not in the same league as the TWINE boat chase or GoldenEye’s attack on the weapons complex, is fun, novel and shot with Vic Armstrong’s customary wit and verve. Bond’s capture, torture and escape is genuinely shocking and demonstrates both our hero’s vulnerability and his prowess far more effectively and cinematically than that dodgy shoulder in TWINE. Most of what happens in Cuba is fine and the partnership with Jinx is fun. The MI6 scenes are brilliantly nostalgic and effective and John Cleese makes the Quartermaster’s role his own – such a shame he didn’t return. And then Bond leaves for Iceland and the whole film falls to bits in spectacular style. Graves’ dual identity is stupid, the battle of computerised cars is boring and stupid, the CGI ice-surfing scene is unconvincing and stupid, the fight on the plane is confusing and stupid and the invisible car is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. Toby Stephens, if anything, is more ill-at-ease than even Jonathan Pryce, Rosamund Pike is a total blank and Madonna’s presence only serves to irritate. Michael Madsen is clearly being set-up as a new returning character, but it was not to be. Once again, time for a rethink.
Best for: fight (found weapons). That fencing scene might be the best fight since the elevator in Diamonds.

Casino Royale (2006)

w. Neil Purvis, Robert Wade, Paul Haggis; d. Martin Campbell
The one with: the black-and-white opening, the poker game, black Felix Leiter (no, the other one), Bond’s balls, the unresolved storyline
Overview: As with Timothy Dalton taking over from Roger Moore, most of the creative team remains in place, but the presence of a new leading man reinvigorates everyone. Artfully expanding Fleming’s slender 1952 novel with a new opening sequence setting up the conflict and a new coda which adds additional layers of complexity and emotion, Purvis and Wade create a magnificent debut for this “reimagined” James Bond, with a little bit of a dialogue polish from “proper” screenwriter Haggis, and with the blessed Sir Martin Campbell calling all the shots, not just shooting the dialogue scenes and then going home for an early night while the second unit films the fights and explosions, this is the most complete and coherent Bond film since – well, GoldenEye actually. Michael G Wilson had pitched “young Bond” to stepdad Broccoli many times in the past, but the older producer had always vetoed this on the basis that audiences wanted to see an experienced and capable Bond. But, by joining Bond’s story at precisely the point where he is transitioning from rookie to veteran, Casino Royale manages to have its beefcake and eat it too, with a simply stunning performance from Englishman Craig anchoring the whole thing. On first (and indeed subsequent) viewings Craig make me believe totally that this guy could seriously fuck people up, while actually making me care about his emotional problems. It’s a remarkable accomplishment. The monochrome opening, bereft of over-the-top stunts, is an apparently low-key way to begin, but as a statement of intent it’s compellingly clear. And when the film does explode into action, standards are as high as ever, but tellingly, it’s some of the non-whizz-bang-crash scenes which linger longest in the mind – Bond and Vesper on the train, Le Chiffre “scratching Bond’s balls”, the meeting with Mathis. If I have a quibble, it’s that the constant double-crossing and rug-pulling in the final third pulls me away from the emotional story, which does get a little soapy at times. But really, it’s only in Venice that the three demands of action, plot and emotion get in each other’s way. The rest of the time, it’s to its enduring credit that all three mesh perfectly.
Best for: chase (on foot). The parkour chase is not only hugely exciting, it’s not only fresh and new, it simultaneously defines Daniel Craig as the Bond we know and love and also very much as a new and individual take on the character. Again and again Sébastien Foucan leaps nimbly over some wall or other obstacle, which Bond simply barrels straight through. Rarely before has the character been given such singularity of purpose. At once, instantly Bondian, yet you can’t imagine any of his predecessors doing it in quite the same way.

Quantum of Solace (2008)

w. Neil Purvis, Robert Wade, Paul Haggis; d. Marc Forster
The one with: all that oil (no, the other one), Bond goes rogue (yet again), fights in the new Jason Bourne confus-o-cam style, the unresolved storyline (again)
Overview: For the third time running, a new Bond’s stunning debut has been almost completely ruined by trying to turn the second film into an amped-up, all-action sequel in a different genre entirely. This time, not only are we propelled from demented action sequence to demented action sequence as quickly as plot demands allow, but the action sequences themselves are shot so wildly and cut so quickly that it’s rarely possible to decipher what is actually going on. I suspect that some splendid stunts are being performed in the opening car chase and in the scaffolding gun-fight which follows, but it’s hard to say for certain. When it does quieten down, during the opera for example, it’s still more confusing than compelling. Apparently functioning as the middle of a trilogy, this retrofits much of the actions of Casino Royale’s villains as the work of a larger and more sinister organisation, but by the end of the film these plot strands remain unresolved, and with the Bond rights once again in limbo at the time of writing, it seems they will stay unresolved for a while longer. Also of note is the rather distasteful repeated motif of Bond executing people whom M wished to question, consistently written and played almost as if Bond is a character in a fifties sit-com who has eaten his boss’s sandwich. I half-expect Judi Dench to start saying “Why I oughta…” Is it too much to hope for the taking of human life to be given a little more significance? Are we supposed to know who “Yusef” is from Casino Royale and be impressed when Bond doesn’t kill him at the end? I couldn’t care less. It is at least short – at 106 minutes it’s the shortest ever, curiously immediately following the longest ever. The title comes from one of the short stories in For Your Eyes Only.
Best for: sacrificial lambs. The death of Mathis is genuinely affecting, especially when recalling his conflicted loyalties from the previous movie (and I do remember that).

Part two is here

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

w. Richard Maibaum, Michael G Wilson; d. John Glen
The one with: Dr Zarkov out of Flash Gordon, Scaroth out of Doctor Who, crossbow assassinations, the 2CV, lots more skiing, lots more scuba.
Overview: Recognising that, as successful as Moonraker had been at the box office, further developments in that direction would lead to madness, Broccoli reigned the excesses back in and brought Bond back to earth. Taking up near-permanent residency in the director’s chair was stalwart editor and second-unit director John Glen, whose association with the series went back to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Similarly moving into the typewriter next to Richard Maibaum was Michael G Wilson, Broccoli’s stepson, who had been hanging around Bond sets most of his life and who would go on to run the franchise with Broccoli’s daughter Barbara. The film begins with the revenge on Blofeld (in all but name) which Diamonds denied us. The scene at Tracy’s grave is the last time the series explicitly maintains the conceit that the chap on the screen is the same as the one who blew up Doctor No’s base in Jamaica in 1962. Following this is a cold war thriller, with occasional flashes of glamour and humour, not all of which work. The 2CV chase freshens up what could have been a lot of repetitive screeching and crashing, but the appearance of Janet Brown as Thatcher at the end is a step too far. Also adding to the sense of a movie drifting away from its origins, this is the first in the series not to feature Bernard Lee as M (he died during preproduction); James Villiers stands in as Bill Tanner. And John Barry’s still not back from his tax exile, so Bill Conti takes over on the music front. Some solid sequences, and never less than entertaining while it’s on, this doesn’t have the guts to give us a really hard-edged thriller, but nor does it sparkle the way that Spy did. Roger Moore’s advancing years now require him to take a paternalistic attitude to an apparently teenage girl who obediently jumps into his bed for a little après-ski, and he doesn’t even get to have it off with Carole Bouquet (thirty years his junior) until the credits are rolling. Insurance wouldn’t even allow him to go underwater, so all of his sub-aqua closeups are shot “dry-for-wet” on a soundstage. Really time to go now, surely? Takes its title (but nothing else) from a collection of short stories, the Fleming novels now having been exhausted, save for the first – Casino Royale – for which Broccoli and co did not control the rights.
Best for: suspense. The ascent up St Cyril’s is genuinely tense and brilliantly staged.

Octopussy (1983)

w. Richard Maibaum, Michael G Wilson, George MacDonald Fraser; d. John Glen
The one with: the trip to India, Q in a hot air balloon, Steven Berkoff, the circus, Fabergé eggs.
Overview: most of the Roger Moore films have a certain tension between wanting to take themselves seriously as spy thrillers (which runs the risk of making them indistinguishable from other spy thrillers) and wanting to give the audience a good time (which runs the risk of double-taking pigeons and the like). However, there is no Bond movie, possibly no movie, more disjointedly lacking in identity than this one. We open with a quite splendid stunt sequence in which Bond cheerfully blows up an airbase somewhere in Latin America. While it is commonly assumed that Bond films open with mini-movies, unconnected with the main feature, only this one and Goldfinger’s genuinely have no connection at all to the main plot. What follows initially is a slab of espionage intrigue surrounding a forged Fabergé egg which is more confusing than interesting. Once we move to India, courtesy of “Flashman” writer George MacDonald Fraser, things take a drastic turn for the worse, with Moore’s smug self-satisfaction now manifesting as patronising parochialism, idiotic jokes like requesting that a ravenous tiger should “si-it” in the manner of TV’s Barbara Woodhouse (she didn’t even train cats for fuck’s sake), or the flute player trilling Monty Norman’s James Bond theme. Then, miraculously, the main threat – driven by Berkoff’s pleasingly unhinged Soviet general – takes hold and we get a really good chase and suspense sequence in an East German circus tent. Although Roger Moore in clown make-up is pretty good shorthand for “Bond films don’t take themselves seriously anymore,” the bomb-at-the-circus scene is played with the kind of deadly earnest that might have benefited other parts of the picture. An attempt has been made to give Moore a leading lady who doesn’t make him look quite so much like a dirty old man – by which I mean she’s 18 years younger than him instead of thirty. Robert Brown takes over as M for this and the next three pictures, and while never doing anything wrong, only makes me miss comfortingly crusty Bernard Lee. That’s this film all over – not much that’s horribly wrong, does feel like a Bond film for the most part, but has been apparently assembled from unconnected bits and pieces left over from previous efforts. That some of these bits are actually quite good doesn’t make the less good ones any more satisfying, of course. More damaging is the general feeling that no-one’s heart is quite in this, and no-one really knows what direction to take the series in now. Time for some fresh blood?
Best for: plot convolutions. Wait, which fucking Fabergé egg is that now?

A View To A Kill (1985)

w. Richard Maibaum, Michael G Wilson; d. John Glen
The one with: The Golden Gate Bridge, Steed out of The Avengers, Christopher Walken, horses
Overview: the same weary team, in front of and behind the camera, staggers out for another miserable canter around a thoroughly well-worn course. From the instant that the moderately impressive snowboard sequence is underscored with the Beach Boys’ “California Girls” you can tell that this is straining for effect rather than effortlessly soaring; thrashing around rather than closing in on its target. The Paris sequences are flat, the horse-doping plotline confusing and boring, Patrick MacNee is wasted, and the San Francisco chase indistinguishable from dozens of similar efforts in contemporary movies and TV shows. Bond himself is reduced to smirking close-ups, stunt men in chunky sweaters, and a cookery demonstration. The final fight on the Golden Gate Bridge is all right, I suppose, but honestly how am I meant to care by this stage? It’s not even the real Beach Boys. Should have been shot in the paddock.
Best for: genuinely nothing. Very much of it is thoroughly poor and while some bits can spastically clamber up to the level of “good” – Grace Jones’s jump off the Eiffel Tower, Christopher Walken’s performance as Zorin, Moore’s partnership with MacNee, each of these is bested earlier in the series (by the ski jump from Spy; Gert Frobe, Donald Pleasance or Michael Lonsdale at least; and Pedro Armendáriz as Kerim Bey, respectively). Many people like the theme song, but it can hardly be called the series’ best. Even the film’s big climax, blowing up the mine, would have been greeted by fans of what were by now being called “action movies” not with happy astonishment but by bored familiarity provided they’d seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom which did the same scene far better twelve months earlier.

The Living Daylights (1987)

w. Richard Maibaum, Michael G Wilson; d. John Glen
The one with: the Ferris wheel, the cello case, the Mujahideen as good guys
Overview: Despite one major change in front of the camera, the same writer, producer, director and key supporting cast remain from the previous entries. Lois Maxwell, whose Miss Moneypenny had graced every previous film, is the only casualty other than Roger Moore; she was replaced by the instantly forgettable Caroline Bliss. In comes saturnine Welshman Timothy Dalton, who had reportedly turned the part down in 1969 on the grounds that he was too young (probably rightly, he was 23). This time around, the role had been offered to Pierce Brosnan, but a conflict with the TV series Remmington Steele meant that he was unable to accept it. Dalton signed on the dotted line almost immediately prior to shooting, so Maibaum and Wilson found themselves writing for a generic anybond and not trying to tailor the script to any particular actor’s strengths. Rather remarkably, this approach pays off. It doesn’t hurt that the glamour and globetrotting sophistication has been ramped up, so we are taken to Bratislava, Afghanistan and Tangier, rather than some of the more familiar locales we’ve seen lately. But this movie also balances the tension and wit perfectly. There’s a veneer of emotion in Bond’s attitude to his mission, the girl and his colleagues – enough to give it depth, not enough to be a distraction – the double-crossing plot feels complex enough to be more than an excuse to stitch together a bunch of action sequences, and there’s a comforting nostalgia triggered by things like the return of the Aston Martin, but combined with a freshness and energy that’s been sorely lacking since Moonraker. Good jokes too – as Bond and Kara slide by a snowy border control on a cello-case-cum-sled, waving their passports, Dalton cheerfully brays “we’ve nothing to declare” to the dumb-struck guard. A few niggles – the Pushkin role taken by John Rhys-Davies was intended for Walter Gotell’s General Gogol, part of the Bond “family” since Spy. Bringing in a new character makes it hard to identify with how conflicted Bond feels when told his friend is a traitor. More seriously, there is no properly hissable villain. Joe Don Baker’s Whitaker is introduced too late and has none of the grandiose ambitions of a real Bond villain, and Necros and Koskov are just doing his bidding. A shame, but hardly a major flaw in this, probably the most completely entertaining of all the eighties Bonds. To add to the fun, John Barry returns for a final turn holding the baton and contributes one of his best scores of the series.
Best for: fight scene (aerial). The cargo net fight – a combination of genuine aerial photography, faultlessly matched with a studio set shot with big fans over a painted desert floor – is absolutely fantastic.

Licence to Kill (1989)

w. Michael G Wilson, Richard Maibaum; d. John Glen
The one with: the same Felix Leiter as Live and Let Die, Bond goes rogue, cocaine dissolved in gasoline, Benicio del Toro looking amazingly thin and lithe and young.
Overview: So, the producers think they’ve found a new direction to head in – Timothy Dalton wants to do acting and has a nice line in glowering, and the fans still haven’t shut up about the double-taking pigeon, so we’ll strip back the humour, ramp up the violence and really go for broke. But aren’t Bond movies meant to be fun? Borrowing unfilmed pages from Fleming’s novel Live and Let Die (not for the first time), Bond’s motivation in this movie is having had his best friend Felix fed to a shark while Felix’s new young wife was being raped and killed. Operating outside the purview of MI6, his moral compass seems a little off. The jokey sadism of earlier films has been replaced by a disturbingly psychotic bloodlust, which given the chief villain’s overall scheme seems a little over-the-top to say the least. By this time, the stunt, chase and fight teams have complete mastery over their domains and can make any of these sequences work – so the fight in the bar, Sanchez’s escape and especially the final truck chase are brilliantly executed, and it’s true that the film lacks the disjointed, multiple-personality feel of some of its predecessors. On its own terms, as a one-off story about a slightly unhinged British agent who takes the law into his own hands, it does kind of work. Only the more than usually sustained presence of Desmond Llewellyn’s cuddly Q and the fact that Bond pays no price for his morally questionable actions mars this reading, On the other hand, as a continuation of the story begun in Doctor No, this is unpalatably brutal, lacking in wit and style, with muddy cinematography and it just feels wrong. Possibly the legal troubles, which stalled the franchise for six years following this outing, were a blessing. The first movie not to take its title from a Fleming work, although the phrase had been long associated with Bond.
Best for: chase (vehicular). As mentioned, the truck chase is totally brilliant all the way through.

Next time – the modern era!