Review: Wolfblood: Episodes 3, 4, 5 and especially 6.

So, Wolfblood. When we last checked in with the inhabitants of Stoneybridge, I gave a glowing review of the first two episodes, but pointed out several key areas for improvement, including the generic bullies, the underdeveloped secondary characters, and the underused locations.

Well, I’m over the moon to announce that episodes 3, 4 and 5, titled Family Ties, Cry Wolf and Occam’s Razor, do a bang- up job not only of fixing those problems, but of improving on the show’s existing strengths almost to perfection. Family Ties in particular has a massive amount of character development not only for Tom, but also for school bully Jimmy. Cry Wolf and Occam’s Razor focus on the build- up to Maddy’s first transformation (quite a surprise after Young Dracula, where we had to wait until midway through season 2 before Ingrid first became a full vampire), expanding on the show’s mythos, and elevating former wild card Rhydian to the status of ‘the sensible one’ as Maddy becomes increasingly irrational and Shannon begins to suspect all is not as it seems.

Also, the teacher has gone from being a total tyrant in the first two episodes, to being the reasonable voice of authority in later installments. I still don't trust him.

One question, though: Cry Wolf has the characters sitting their GCSE exams. Occam’s Razor, set just days afterwards, features everyone merrily going on a school trip to Lindisfarne. That’s… that’s not how school works these days, is it? And what subject is this school trip supposed to be? It’s implied to be History, but surely every single named character wouldn’t be doing History, would they?

Review: Doctor Who: A Town Called Mercy (Or: 'The Doctor actually acts like the Doctor, and is criticised for it.')

Reasons I haven’t updated the blog in a while Uni has restarted, I’ve been insanely busy with work and Fresher’s Week stuff, and I’m also very naturally lazy. So, having finally reached a moment of free time when I don’t just want to lie down and sleep for a month, let’s see how much of the last two weeks’ worth of Doctor Who and Wolfblood I can rattle through tonight.

First up: Doctor Who: A Town Called Mercy.

The First Thing That Struck Me
ATCM is, essentially, a story that feels like it’s being told in the wrong order. At least, that’s the impression I got when watching it, suddenly and violently jarred as I was by the transition from “The Doctor wants to ruthlessly kill whatsisface from Upstairs, Downstairs, but everyone else thinks he’s great” in the first half of the episode, to “the town now suddenly wants to lynch the guy, but the Doctor now wants to save him, despite the fact that it will clearly be putting everyone’s lives in danger.” I mean, the Doctor being the only person to stand up for just principles and liberal morality in the face of public violence smacks of being a very traditional set-up for an episode- hence why the second half of ATCM would actually have a very good tone to it, were the whole cast not abruptly acting contrary to their established behaviour.

I’m just saying that the narrative would probably have made much more sense if the Doctor had gradually ended up coming around to the townsfolk’s way of thinking, and then Amy had stepped in and reminded the Doctor of his principles, rather than, as we actually got, yet another cringeworthy ‘empowering’ scene in which Amy almost shoots the Doctor in the face, which just leaves the audience confused over which protagonist we’re supposed to be siding with.

Review: Wolfblood: Episodes 1-2 (Or: Maybe it's time to be a little less cynical)

Although, as I’ve already said time and again, I never go into a TV show wanting to hate it, there are definitely a heck of a lot of shows I go into where I’m expecting to hate it. Case in point: Wolfblood.

 

Because it’d be pretty hard to deny that, based on the preview material, Wolfblood looked atrocious. Let’s face it, CBBC needed some new dramas, what with the stars of Sarah Jane Adventures and Tracy Beaker Returns respectively dead and on Strictly Come Dancing, The Sparticle Mystery unlikely to be recomissioned on the grounds of being utterly wretched, and M.I.High finally consigned back to the deepest level of hell from whence it came. But, to kick off the brand new season of programming… this? This cynical kid’s-show-by-the-numbers, coming off as a desperate attempt to cash in on the success of Young Dracula, with its two leads blatantly cast for their vague resemblance to Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart circa the first Twilight movie, complete with vacuous stares into camera for the promotional shots… well, it didn’t look good. And the case certainly wasn’t helped by the promo material that advertised the show as focusing on:

“A mysterious race who have lived among humans for centuries by disguising their abilities and blending in. Wolfbloods have razor sharp senses with an amazing sense of smell, are incredibly fast and super strong. They also change into wolves every full moon…”

Can you spot what’s missing from that synopsis? Well, how about the word werewolves?! I’m telling you, as soon as I cottoned on to the deliberate, almost desperate attempt to avoid actually calling their werewolves… erm, werewolves, alarm bells started ringing in my head. Yes, in every piece of promotional material, this species is specifically referred to as ‘Wolfbloods.’ I mean, what exactly were they trying to do here? Were they seriously trying to convince us that werewolves were their own personal creation? Because I’ve got to tell you… people know about werewolves. They’re not exactly an obscure part of mythology.

Review: Doctor Who: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship (Or: Conclusive proof that Doctor Who is not even as good as Primeval)

Introduction

A short word before we dive into Dinosaurs on a Spaceship. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve said this, but: I do not want to hate Doctor Who. My intense love for the Classic series, and for the Science Fiction genre in general, means I feel compelled to give each and every episode a genuine chance. In fact, I have only given up on Doctor Who once since 2005: at the start of the 2008 season, when I realised that a series that was phenomenally popular, and yet would cast Catherine Tate as the female lead, and feature as the alien menace in episode one the Adipose, a race solely designed to be sold in Toys’R’Us next to the Cabbage Patch Kids, was so pathetically desperate for commercial attention that it could no longer even properly defined as a television show.
As it is, my self-imposed Who exile only lasted a few weeks, tempted back as I was by a) the desire to see how stupid this shite could get (the answer is very: the climax to the entire season is Catherine Tate spinning a wheel) and b) Bernard Cribbins.
The point is, aside from this minor blip four years ago for the sake of my own mental health, I have never gone into an episode wanting to hate it, because I know how good the show can be. And I’m not just talking about the Classic stuff: remember, this is the same team that brought us Amy’s Choice and Night Terrors. Which is why it hurts when the show consistently turns up episodes like this one.
Already this year’s theme is becoming evident: Spectacle Over Substance. Or logic. Or common sense. Or characters that you don’t want to punch in the face every time they open their mouths and spew the inane infantile dialogue that makes you wish you were deaf. It’s pretty obvious that just as last week’s Asylum of the Daleks began life as an image in Moffat’s head of a million Daleks sitting around not doing anything except chant “Save us” when they don’t actually need saving, this week’s episode, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, was very obviously an episode purely written to fit the asinine title someone thought up after falling asleep watching Snakes on a Plane.
Why on Earth would anyone want to write a homage to Snakes on a Plane, anyway? What, you couldn’t think of a witty enough way to riff off of The Room?
Maybe the answers lie within the episode. (Spoilers: they don’t.)

Review: Doctor Who: Asylum of the Daleks

(A/N: this post, and the review of the following episode, actually attracted scathing criticism on Facebook. I'm not sure what amuses me more; the fact that people actually read this, or the fact that people can become genuinely angered by my random thoughts. I guess I never really bothered to make this clear, since I said it so many times on Livejournal: I don't expect people to agree with me. Doctor Who is a hugely popular show, and I love the fact that people have differing opinions on it. In which case, comment below, and we can have a reasoned discussion about it, rather than people just whingeing on an entirely seperate site. However: one phrase which was particularly objected to was the sentence: "I missed telling people why I was right and they were wrong." This is one of those occasions that proves sarcasm doesn't work over the internet, and I sincerely hope that no one who knows me in real life would ever think that I would say that with a straight face. Nevertheless, I don't like to offend (no, honestly), and so that sentence has been removed. Apologies.
The other specific complaint was that I am 'too smug.' Ain't nothing I can do about that, chaps.)

I’ve repeatedly said for the past year that I would return to blogging once Doctor Who came back. However, now I’m here…

*sigh*

well, what is there to really say about Asylum of the Daleks? It’s no better or worse than the average Moffat-Who story, when you get down to it, it’s just that this one happens to have things that look like Daleks (but sure as hell don’t act like Daleks) in it. I mean, the episode’s bad, don’t get me wrong. It’s illogical, badly acted, and totally unable to stand on its own feet as a piece of drama. Asylum of the Daleks is bollocks. The problem is that I knew it would be bollocks, and precisely this level of bollocks. This episode is totally unsurprising in its bollockness.

The reason I abandoned my previous blog, over on LiveJournal (http://temporal-cynic.livejournal.com/), was… well, it was because everyone had left to go to Tumblr and no-one was reading it anymore. But the other reason was because of how utterly drained my regular Who reviews were leaving me feeling. For reasons I went into in great detail over there, I just had no strong feelings left about the show. The intense dislike I had heaped upon it in the Russell T Davies era had gone, leaving me with a simple hollow feeling inside that the show had had a chance to become so much more… and had ignored it. Under Steven Moffat, the story arcs changed from unnecessary distractions to horrendously laboured sequences of contrivances that took over the whole show, while the episodes themselves changed from boring hackneyed lather-rinse-and-repeat invasion of Earth stories to bizarre disconnected nonsense with no narrative structure that Moffat falsely promised us would make sense at the end of the season. Even the main characters became such vacuous ciphers that I could even muster up the hatred I’d had for chav-bitch Rose, shouty cartoon character Donna, or the pretentious emo that was David Tennant’s horrendous portrayal of the main character.

Nevertheless, I missed blogging. In the more... passionate area of my mind, I kind of need this outlet to let off steam so that I can think about TV shows more logically (I often look back much more kindly on episodes of Who in hindsight after the blogging process)- think of this site as a release valve. But also, as a student taking a Creative Writing degree, I missed having something I wasn’t too chronically lazy to write about. So, here I am, blogging again.

The Plot
I use the term ‘plot’ in the loosest sense of the word, but as far as I could discern, this one is about the Daleks calling on the Doctor for help in doing something that, on the face of it, a well-armed military team could do much better. See, the Daleks have an entire planet, which they call their asylum, which is either supposed to be ironic or shows that Moffat doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘asylum,’ since it is anything but.
The ‘asylum’ is a place where the Daleks stick those members of their race who they find so beautiful, and so awesome, that they have no choice but to abandon them on a random planet, instead of send them off to fight on the front line. Or something.
Even though the Daleks now have the ability to control human drones with no free will who they could send down to the planet, their first instinct is to capture the Doctor, the one guy most likely to foil their plans, and make his involvement an integral part of their strategy. They want the Doctor, and his personality-less companions Amy and Rory, the one couple in the universe who even several years into their marriage still have no idea what their own sodding surname is, to go down to the planet’s surface and turn off the forcefield, which is controlled from within the asylum. Ah, yes. Because only the best prisons lock the key inside the cell.
Once the forcefield is deactivated, the Daleks plan to blow up the asylum, even though the fact that destroying the Daleks on the planet is completely anathema to their way of thinking is the whole reason the place exists in the first place. The reason they are doing this is because there is opera playing from the planet’s surface, and they are worried that someone has got in. There’s no evidence for this, of course, as the person playing the music doesn’t make herself known until the Doctor shows up, so for all the Daleks know, it’s just an elaborate S.O.S.
So the Doctor, Amy and Rory travel down to the planet, and one would expect the rest of the episode to be about their quest to find the controls that turn of the forcefield.
Well, it isn’t. For the rest of the episode, they all just bumble about uselessly until the Doctor finds a friendly Dalek who turns it off for them. Yes, it turns out that the woman playing loud opera was a Dalek all along who had gone insane and believed she was still human. It’s never made clear if it was the Daleks on the planet or the Daleks in the ship who turned her into a Dalek, as neither makes any sense at all, but the more pressing point is that the Daleks in the ship would know who it was! They would surely be able to pinpoint where the music was coming from, and say “Oh, wait, it’s coming from that big white room we set aside for that woman from Waterloo Road who’s been turned into a Dalek.” But more on her later. The crux of the climax is that the opera-woman manages to erase every Dalek everywhere’s memories of the Doctor before she gets blown up, meaning that no Dalek has a clue who the Doctor is.
Upon which the Daleks realise that nothing about their history makes any sense anymore, and their tiny little minds explode with confusion. The End.

"In hindsight, that whole Time War thing suddenly seems like a really stupid idea, and I don't know why."

Soufflé Girl
Let’s get the obvious out of the way first. I don’t give two hoots of the O RLY owl that Oswald Mosley, or whatever her name was, is played by the same actress who’ll be playing the next companion. I do not care. It’s an irrelevance. What isn’t an irrelevance, however, is the pressing questions of how a Dalek could sound like a human when she spoke to the Doctor, Amy, Rory and the Dalek Parliament, and how she could play them Carmen. These questions have been raised by pretty much every review I’ve read of this episode, so I won’t bother to repeat them in detail here. The central idea behind Oswin isn’t actually a bad one: someone who has suffered a trauma so utterly horrific that she has retreated into her own mind, building herself a mental safe place. Done well, that could actually be the basis of another, far better, episode.

So, which Doctor Who companion would YOU like to see hosting their own cookery show? Personally, I think there's a whole spin off to be made from the 'Susan burns the fish' scene from The Dalek Invasion of Earth...

By now, however, it should be clear that “done well” is not going to be a phrase easy to attribute to modern Who. Imagine how good it could have been if, as Oswin lost her tenuous grip on her sanity, with each shot back to her, her home was in an increasingly deteriorated state, her compputers falling apart, the walls growing filthier, her clothes becoming more drab and ragged. Maybe she could even, in the eyes of the audience, slowly turn into a Dalek mutant, each shot adding more Dalek make-up to her.

But no. Heaven forbid an attractive actress should have her beauty tarnished in any way, so we’re left with Oswin essentially going “Oh no, I’m a Dalek. Huh. Ah, well, I suppose I’d better conveniently die now.” No character depth, no conflict, no drama.

Amy and Rory- the couple with no name
I’m fed up with the whole Pond/Williams thing- I’ve been making fun of it for two years now, and it’s still going on. Suffice to say, most married couples don’t tend to alternate between using the husband’s surname and the wife’s maiden name. Amy and Rory had the potential to be the greatest TV companions since 1989, but because Moffat thinks ending every season with a big ‘rewriting time’ scene makes him look intelligent, the personal histories of both characters have been erased and rewritten so many times that none of the other writers on the show seem to have any idea who these people are supposed to be any more and, especially evident in the last half of the previous season, just prefer to write them out of the main action.

Anyway, Amy and Rory’s shtick this week is that Amy’s incredibly progressive career arc has taken her from strippergram to pouty glamour model, but that her marriage is almost over. This isn’t, as you might expect, because Rory has realised his wife is a vacuous bimbo (although only when Moffat’s writing her, to be fair), but because he wants children, and Amy can’t have them, either because she’s physically scarred from last season’s events, or because her last child turned out to be arch- cow and conclusive proof against the existence of a loving God, River Song. Maybe Amy’s scared her next child will turn out to be Davros, or something.

Adoption, by the way, is just one of those things we’re supposed to assume doesn’t exist in Moffat’s universe, like logic and women’s rights.
Anyway, this whole thing is resolved so fast it’s almost as if Moffat needed an isolated subplot to fill a few minutes of screentime, as it turns out that if Amy and Rory had actually bothered to talk about their problems, they would never have split up. Riiiight…

Watching AotD as a fan
Much as I like to hold up Classic Who as the ideal to which New Who should live up to, in general, I tend not to care too much about the likes of continuity gaffes or ignoring established parts of the show’s mythos in the name of telling a damn good story. Each episode should stand on its own; the viewer shouldn’t have to do homework on the past forty-nine years of television history to understand what’s happening on the screen. After all, Doctor Who is by nature an anthology show. However, for some reason, both the production team and the media decided to hype up this episode as much as possible months in advance as being a treat for fans and continuity buffs, a cavalcade of Daleks from every era of the show to kick off the countdown towards the half-century anniversary. This episode, it seems, we are actively being encouraged to watch the show as an anal retentive fanboy… which I am. So, does it satisfy through the prism of an encyclopaedic knowledge of all things Who?
Pfft.

The Radio Times is this week giving away a ‘free Dalek Wallchart.’ Like all things associated with that particular publication, it’s crap. It’s a paper double page spread on the inside of the front cover that disintegrates the second you detach it from the main magazine. On it is a very vague and inaccurate history of the Daleks throughout the show, with appropriate images of the different styles of Daleks which have appeared in various stories over the years. Well, as it turns out, the Radio Times might as well have saved their money, as the supposed collection of every single type of Dalek amounted to… a handful of the Power Ranger Daleks introduced in Victory of the Daleks a year and a half ago, and several million of the bronze Daleks we’ve seen since 2005. In itself, this makes no sense, since the Power Ranger Daleks have been shown to destroy bronze Daleks on sight, but it’s also an incredible cop- out. Where was the treat for Classic series fans we were promised? The Special Weapons Dalek from 1988’s Remembrance of the Daleks in the very distance of the shot? I’m sorry, I forgot to bring my microscope to the episode.
It reaches its nadir in the ‘inner sanctum’ scene, where the Doctor is pitted against Daleks that have faced him before, on planets such as Kembel, Vulcan and Spiridon. Brilliant! Just what I need to survive this story, being reminded of classic Dalek stories from the ‘60s and ‘70s, among the best the show has ever produced!

"Take me back to Kembel! Please take me back to Kembel!" Hey, it wouldn't be me if it didn't include a completely obscure Classic Who quote.

…And it’s just another load of bronze Daleks, who don’t even have anything interesting to say for themselves.
And it’s not as if I particularly wanted to see old-school Daleks; I’m all for looking forward to the future. But when we were expressly promised a continuity- heavy episode, and just get more crimes against common sense… well, what was the point?
Like everything in this episode, I hadn’t got my hopes up enough to be disappointed, but when one looks at that episode poster where the Doctor is surrounded by types of Daleks that didn’t even appear in the episode… well, we’ve been lied to again.

I was also rather disappointed that they didn't actually set Matt Smith on fire.

Thoughts on the Ongoing ‘Doctor… Who?’ story arc:
Sod off.

What I’ve Been Watching:
The scintillating, the sublime, the stupid: what else has been catching my eye on the box over the past few days?

·         Paralympics 2012: I can’t help but feel terribly guilty for being so engrossed in the Paralympic Games, after totally ignoring the Olympics a few weeks ago. It’s almost like I’m patronising them for doing such a jolly good show even though they can’t do all the things normal people do. But I honestly think it’s more than that. There’s a warmer, more good- natured feel to the Paralympics that I can’t quite put my finger on, a stronger camaraderie between the athletes a million miles away from the tedious posturing of the Olympics that’s hooked me right in. Even if I don’t understand the bits with the horses.

·         New Tricks: Last of the Summer Wine but with corpses plods on, a good six years or so after it began to run out of steam. In all honesty, I can’t bring myself to dislike New Tricks, with its mad mix of twee comedy and sinister murderers. If anything, there’s a potentially lethal drinking game to be had from all the many times someone displays an incredible feat of memory, being able to instantly tell our creaky quartet their exactly movements a decade before with no hesitation whatsoever. Last week’s season opener took the show to its logical extremes for better and for worse; the repartee between the regular cast was second to none, merging with a murder mystery so preposterous it has to be seen to be believed to create the show’s unique brand of silliness. There’s barely any substance to it, but it’s fun viewing.

·         James May’s Things You Need To Know: The tolerable one off of Top Gear presents his second series of this bonkers quick look at science, imparting useful information via seemingly surreal questions such as “Why are Zombies Scary” or “How did Einstein become a celebrity pin-up?” He is aided by a bewildering sequence of quick- cut 2D animations that make it feel like a kids’ show at times (by no means whatsoever a bad thing) but might leave you learning more than you thought you would.

·         Our War: This fascinating documentary series, the best thing to come out of BBC3 since… erm… pass, takes the viewer directly to the front line in Afghanistan via video cameras on the heads of soldiers. These bravest of men are laid bare before the viewer, as are the facts of what Britain is doing in this war, and just how much good is being done. Worth a look for anyone with strong feelings on the war, or who knows someone out there personally.

·         A Mother’s Son: Like most ITV drama miniseries a fairly pedestrian effort (I gave up on Last Weekend after one episode), a by the numbers story that, so far (as of the first episode of two) unfolds pretty much as one would expect it to, although it mostly seems to be setting things up for the second half. It’s lifted by a superb cast, including ex-Spooks Hermione Norris and Nicola Walker, Martin Clunes, excelling in a rare serious role, and the Eighth Doctor himself, Paul McGann. It’s keeping all the cards of its central mystery close to its chest at the moment, and that’s also to its advantage. I look forward to the conclusion.

What I’ve Been Listening To:

·         Just A Minute: It’s Just A Minute. It goes without saying I’ll be listening to it. And it’s as brilliant as ever.

·         The Scarifyers: The Scarifyers has never excelled at fantastic storytelling, relying more on its use of aging Doctor Who alumni to pull in interest (this story’s even got BRIAN BLESSED in it), but it’s hard not to admire the sheer cheek of the plots it pulls off, although it has proved in the past that it can create genuine chilling drama.