The Cutprice Guignol

The Ninth Year: The Haunting of Swill House
June 28, 2013

Charlie and the Chopped-Up Factory

In short, it’s been a rough week. I’ve been writing (yes, writing is my actual job, living the dream, sell-out, whatever you want to shout at me) enough to castrate my sleep pattern, my body has been going so mental I half-expect to wake up tomorrow with my thumbs on fire or something, and I had to get up at seven this morning. SEVEN! I’m a student AND freelance writer! I shouldn’t even know the morning exists!

So the week’s been a blur. But one thing that stands out loud and clear is watching Bates Motel back-to-back. I may have casually dropped into this blog perhaps once or twice that I don’t really mind a bit of horror here and there, so I decided to get down on the prequel of Psycho, starring Freddie Highmore (welcome to a world of painful Charlie and the Chopped-Up Factory jokes, darling) as a teenage Norman Bates, Vera Farmiga as the eponymous Mother, and Max Thieriot (whose name I swear I read as Max The Riot for seven episodes) as half-brother his name escapes me. I’ll go out on a limb and guess the surname’s Bates.

Now, I wasn’t sure about this series from the start. I put off watching it so long because the basic premise-a Psycho prequel set in the present day-seemed so thunderingly pointless. Origin stories are almost inevitably disappointing, as we almost need no more than an implication of background for a character as iconic as Norman Bates. I just need to know what they are now (or, confusingly, 1960 in this case). But hey: I’ll give everything a go once. That’s why my nose is squint.

The show, I soon discovered, has several wonderful points. Max Thieriot, for example, took the kind of shitty role he was given and ran with it, becoming a vain, snippy voice of reason against the increasing tidal wave of absurdity. I couldn’t tell you specifically why he was my favourite-maybe because I came to the series with no preconceptions about his character-but I loved Thieriot and he’ll be delighted to hear I shall be following his career with interest after Bates Motel. And there were some really fantastic touches-the recreation of the motel and house on the hill was grand-as well as a couple of seriously unsettling Oedipal moments between Norman and Norma (there’s a scene when she’s sitting on his bed, just chatting, and touches his leg as she leaves, and the barely-perceptible leg shuffle Highmore does afterwards made me cringe). I like the few nods to Hitchcock’s Psycho, too-there’s a spot-on recreation of a shot of Norman from above that made the pretentious part of me put down it’s Merlot and raise an eyebrow.

But there are many, many things wrong with the show. It makes Norma into a constant victim, then villain, then victim, then villain, then…and so on. I like moral ambiguity in a show-Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad, anyone?- but there’s no grey area here. There’s just black and white very, very quickly; it’s like driving past a field of zebras on a segway. Then there’s the problem of Freddie Highmore. No, that’s wrong- I don’t know if he’s good or not. Norman Bates is a jackpot of a role for someone trying to break into the real acting industry after being a pretty well-known movie baby- you’ve got one of the most iconic performances ever to work off of and some sterling source material in the form of the film and the book. But I’m torn. Sometimes I think he’s giving an astoundingly perceptive performance of an emotionless psychopath and sometimes I think he just can’t act. Either way-he’s not Norman.

And therein lies the rub. The show, while occasionally showing flashes of being interesting and quite dark, isn’t and shouldn’t have tried to align itself with Psycho. Tap into small-town politics, have a creepy mother-son relationship, make it wierd and unsettling-but let’s face it, lads, the minute you gave Norman an iPhone I disassociated Bates Motel from Psycho in my head. The show is pointless. Interesting, but pointless. We don’t need Psycho: College Years. The show itself seems to realize this early on and gives up making Norman into NORMAN BATES; aside from a few cursory “LOL HE’Z A NUTTER” moments, Bates Motel is going to be looked back on as another hanger-on, a vaguely interesting premise that threw out it’s source material by episode four. That said, it’s been renewed for a second season, and I will be watching, to see if anyone can taxidermy up this joint. Somebody hand me a segway.

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June 23, 2013

Death: XXX

I’ve expressed countless times, both on this blog and in endless pub arguments, that violence in entertainment is not just justifiable but traditional; for years, we’ve been entertained by every genre of generalized human suffering. Something I don’t think I’ve expressed as fully is my aversion to sexualised violence. I’m not sure why, but the addition of a sexual element to torture or murder or what have you makes me a little…uncomfortable. It could be my horribly old-fashioned view of sex as being best when shared with someone you love and care about, and when you start adding in, I don’t know, a naked woman frolicking in the blood of a beautiful, scythed young nymphet (yes, I fucking hate Hostel), it gets a bit rough. Nothing against the BDSM community, mind- Safe, Sane and Consensual is the general rule there. Three words, ironically that do not apply to 1000 Ways To Die.

1000 ways to die is your usual dumping ground for terrible actors, spurious experts and boundless “true stories”. Basically, it features dramatized versions of various horrible and unlikely ways people have met their maker. It’s hilarious viewing for the first episode or two-a sort of less-funny, poorly animated version of The Darwin Awards, accompanied by a hi-larious voice over which would be infinitely if it were just me with a swanny whistle and a whoopee cushion. By episode three, you’re feeling a bit grubby. By episode six or so, you’re weeping in a corner in a mixture of fear, disgust and heartbreaking self-loathing. I counted up, and, of the thirty-seven episodes of the first three seasons, there are forty-one stories involving sex in some way or another. And this isn’t all jolly larks, like a woman masturbating with a carrot (HAS SHE NOT HEARD OF YEAST INFECTIONS?!) and sending a deadly air bubble to her heart. This is someone mistaking a grizzly bear for a member of a furry group and having his intestines torn out. This is someone trying to seduce a builder and being bisected by a buzz saw. This is someone choking to death on a ball gag after his dominatrix mistakes his protests at his hitherto-unknown deadly latex allergy for moans of pleasure. This is Death: XXX.

And this is all rated TV-14. Right, I’m not getting into the ratings debate (again) but seems to me like this is cheating a little bit. Just because the show doesn’t people getting their guts ripped out or their genitals electrocuted or a frankly questionable amount of stuff to do with violent death and farts doesn’t mean it doesn’t put that idea in someone’s head. Now, I was a particularly neurotic and easily frightened child (I used to get terrified by the descriptions of CSI in the Radio Times), but even by age fourteen I don’t think putting the concept of pretty intense BDSM death or violent brain hemorrhage in MY violent brain hemorrhage would have been something I could cope with. Something like Saw incorporates hideous death into a story (or at least a semblance of one), but this show simply presents money shot after money shot as entertainment with no sense of moral or character or depth. It’s exhaustingly pointless-less compassion fatigue than sheer acceptance of your own limits as a human. Why is this harmless entertainment? Why is this acceptable because of a slightly sarcastic voiceover? If I make pithy comments over House of 1000 Corpses will it be required viewing in primary schools? Why isn’t anyone making me dinner? Where’s my wine? What was I… oh, forget it. I’ll keep fighting the good fight.

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June 15, 2013

Hannibal: Aye, Alright.

Well, hello, you elusive readers, you. I’d apologise for my lack of posting but I’d feel far too much like a lecturer breezing in late for a class everyone was hoping they’d forget to turn up to so I won’t do that. Essentially: I’m back.

Recently, I was forcibly coerced (ish) by my-well, now we’ve hit the boyfriend/partner barrier. I dislike the term “boyfriend” but “partner” feels wrong for an eighteen-year-old ah-tiste and a twentysomething version of Frasier Crane sitting around drinking wine and talking shite about litrechoor. Partner is someone you’re in the crucial stage of living with but not quite started to find physically repulsive. From now on, I shall simply refer to him as….my consort. Right, so, I was coerced by my consort (ah, so much better) into watching the TV redo of Hannibal, starring Mads Mikklesen as the eponymous Lecter and Hugh Dancy as Will Graham, yer usual brilliant-but-damaged investigator.

There were several factors riding against my enjoyment of the series; firstly, and most importantly, I hate the character of Hannibal Lecter. Silence of the Lames is, simply and purely, one of the most overrated films I’ve ever seen-I admire Anthony Hopkins as an actor, and Jodie Foster put in a very good performance, but I find Lecter himself to be an intrinsically silly character precisely because they don’t embrace the silliness of the role. All horror and horror-related roles have to accept that, at their heart, it’s all a bit daft. Hannibal was presented with such po-faced sincerity I instantly hated him. He can stick his head up his qiante.

In addition to this, Laurry Fishburne was in it. By which I mean, LAURENCE FISHBURNE: ACTOR. He was Larry Fishburne and wonderful in Apocalypse Now, then he was LAURENCE FISHBURNE: ACTOR and terrible in The Matrix (which is one of the most Godawfully humourless films I’ve ever seen, but I digress). And here he was doing some PROPER ACTING. Fuck.

However, I was actually pleasantly surprised by the debut episode as a whole. Hugh Dancy was excellent as the real crux of the show, helped along with a liberal sprinkling of clever visuals and sharp plotting. I liked that the show shifted focus from LOOK HE’S A CANNIBAL! BUT HE’S ALL CHARMING! OOH HE’S EATING LUNGS! LOOK AT HIM THERE, EATING THOSE LUNGS! to Lecter as a very intelligent bloke who happened to have a taste for human flesh. Mads does a grand job of somehow bringing a wry self-awareness to the role, and much credit has to be given to the beautiful cinematography; the first time we see Lecter, lit to look like a skull, the camera casually deepening the focus of the shot till we finally set eyes on his taut stare, is simply perfect. You should have heard the noises I was making, close as I was to televisual ecstasy. And because the show isn’t all about him, Larry (I said it) reverts back to being a very strong supporting actor, a vein shot through with rationality against the slightly supernatural Dancy. It wasn’t perfect- my consort pointed out rightly that two characters were just stapled to the plot in order to chug out some useful exposition, and it didn’t do much in the way of tension building.

But hey: this is the first episode of a television reboot of an iconic franchise that’s been mostly film-based up till now. There are going to be kinks to be ironed out, and I trust Dancy, Mads and-dare I say it- Larry to do what they can. I’m interested to see the rest of it, and that’s really not too bad an opener.

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May 28, 2013

A Wanker’s Literary Reaction: The Voice UK

So, The Voice UK. You knew it was coming; I, as a purveyor of taste for people who never asked in the first place, and the biggest new talent show to hit Britian since oh Fuck I don’t care I really don’t were destined to meet in a corridor of our mutual mediocrity and matching sense of futility and lack of tangible future in our chosen fields.

The judges in this are hilariously annoying. Tom Jones, who I love and (this is a FACT) who’s voice could literally turn any woman’s insides to cottage cheese with first eight lines of “It’s Not Unusual”, for no real reason other than why not, has cropped up crying and nodding in a big chair. Luckily, he just falls under bland, and therefore the least objectionable of all the judges, because he is Welsh and we’re all secretly reminded of Rob Brydon whenever we hear a Welsh accent and thus cannot feel hate. Then there’s Jessie J, who I used to quite like, who now I do not. She’s quite simply outstandingly irritating, powerfully dull, and utterly vapid, though, in her defence, her hair is really shiny. So distracting is her hair that I sit there, hypnotised, as she makes some other odd rising-inflection comment about how someone moved her with their pelvic-thrusting or something. Next, with have will.i.am, who I hate, and I hate some more. I loathe him so badly, that every time he opens his mouth to release another nasal, whispery shriek or does this bizzare head-nod thing whenever he likes the music, I feel a tumour appear and grow in my brain. It’s about the size of a Terry’s Chocolate Orange just now.

I refuse to even type the name of the total wanking cuntbucket of the fourth judge. Ooh. No, no words, no tags, no mentions, no whispers. He can fuck off back to The Scriptures or whatever. Off my television please.

The competitors are never the problem with these shows; they are simply blank blobs for the TV demographic people to sketch their own faces and personalities on to in order to attract whoever they want to attract. I mean, some of The Voice competitors are outstandingly bland; I refuse to watch an entire series because did you ever honestly expect me to, but even just the episodes I’ve watched, there have been practically nil discernable personalities on show. There’s a little blonde puff of air called Emma-Jay (Jade? Jane?) who constantly looks like a semi-finalist for Miss Margate, and some bloke with very long blonde hair who I instantly took a liking too because he looked like he’d crawled out of the most middle-class mosh pit on earth. But most of them are cut-and-dried from the usual crop of gameshow contestants: the larger lady with a great voice, the ugly one, the hipster-girl crush in skinny chinos, the “alternative” one, the handful of girl-band rejects, the arrogant one, the one from Landan. Yeah, they can all sing, but why do we continue to put so much importance on just singing as a talent? We’ve proved with scores and scores of gameshows from all over the world that plenty of people can sing. Fuck, turn up at karaoke down the union on a Tuesday night and I promise you’ll find a handful of people with decent voices. It’s about having the drive, the charisma, the sheer musicality to carry that through to a career without having to go in front of Jessie J in a big chair. Yes, that’s incredibly unfair and bitter, but we’re still seeing people get to the top on their talent alone. It IS possible. This is not about singing. It’s about, as it always is, emotional arcs and the forced creation of a narrative (I’m picking on The Voice here, but almost all shows of this type do it). But you know what: if i makes you happy and entertains you, I’m no Tom Jones on a big chair. Who am I to judge?

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May 26, 2013

Micheal Winterbottom, Pistolwhipping and the BBFC: Sex and Violence in Movies

On a very brief side note, this is a moderatley wordy and fact-heavy bitchfest from a dedicated horror film fan, so back off now if you were only ever here for the puns about boobs.

When we started out trying to entertain ourselves with plays and what have you, sex was pretty much off the table. Well, you know, we could deal with hearing about it and could just about stomach a few raunchy puns (take the grand dame of all innuendos from the dour classic Hamlet, “Did you think I meant count-ry matters?”) , but generally violence was a lot more accepted than sex was. Take Titus Andronicus, one of Shakespeare’s most wildly excessive plays, which features on-stage cannibalism, triple murder, and various other acts of mutilation and violence. It decided that the rape scene would have to happen off-stage. Similarly, right back from the plays of the fifteenth and sixteenth century, exceptionally violent dramas were astoundingly popular, essentially creating the outline for rape-and-revenge movies in decades to come (if I can’t manufacture a link between Titus Andronicus and I Spit on Your Grave, I don’t know what to believe). But what I’m trying to stress here is that the violence was not only accepted, but actively sought out; sex was still kept to the odd nod-and-a-wink for decades to come.

This remained the case for many, many years- if you look at a list of movies banned worldwide in the first half of the twentieth century, a big chunk of them were disallowed due to sexual content- from the now-classic Brief Encounter to The Big Sleep– a trend which completely turned around post-1970 or so. Most films being banned were done so because of violent content-Cannibal Holocaust was banned pretty much everywhere, while other films like The Evil Dead, Resevoir Dogs and The Human Centipede faced sporadic bans acorss various nations due to “extreme violence”. Now, I’m not here to dictate what violence is and isn’t acceptable in whatever movie, but it seems, from this data alone, that violence has replaced sex in entertainment as the social nightmare of choice.

This could be put down to a whole heap of things. For example, the rise in internet pornography means that some 70% of men and 31% of women watch regular, unsimulated sex on the internet or wherever else you might get it (but then, where else would you get it?). Logically, this means that at least that number of people will be walking into a movie theatre with a pretty solid idea of what goes on behind the cheesecloth, not even touching upon those lucky few (excuse the pun) who actually do it themselves. There is also some argument that sex is more natural; that sex has a place in most people’s day-to-day lives whereas a pistol-whipping does not. Surely, then, that’s an argument for not having sex in movies- unless something particularly hilarious and plot-worthy happens during the actual rumpy-pumpy, we don’t need to see anything more than an implication. I, personally, have no idea what it looks like when someone gets shot in the back of the head, so logically that should be visually explained to me. Sex, though? I get the gist. Violence in movies, however, has constantly come under fire with a huge number of horrors films and various violent movies being linked with real-life crimes and murders. Enjoying violent movies is somewhat maligned in polite company, as it’s seen as the domain of psychos with stuffed bird collections and a suspicious number of hand-held wood carving instruments.

But why? Sex in movies hasn’t become less excessive-quite the contrary. Take the Michael Winterbottom sneering snoozefest 9 Songs as an example; showcased at Cannes, it features full-on unsimulated vaginal, oral and manual sex (y’know, screwing, blowjobs and handjobs), and received an 18 certificate, uncut, from the BBFC in 2004. And it’s a fucking terrible movie; there is something incredibly banal about sex presented, not for titillation, but simply as two marginally attractive people going at it for a few minutes onscreen. The story was completely uncompelling, and the modern-love-story angle virtually suicidal. Now, The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence )is an equally terrible film, using explicit, horrible violence in a banal and tacked-on plot. If I had to find some logical match for explicitness of sex and explicitness of violence 9 Songs and The Human Centipede 2 would probably be it. But Human Centipede was, as I’m sure you all know, banned in Britain before being released under an 18 certificate, after over 30 cuts were made to the original footage. It’s interesting to note the big furore in Britain over the “video nasties” trend of the 1970s and 80s, leading to the introduction of the Video Recordings Act 1984, which allowed the Government to actively outlaw certain blacklisted extreme slasher films (these included Mario Bava classic Twitch of the Death Nerve). The only other type of entertainment specifically banned from distribution in the UK? Hardcore pornography.

Well, with my rant over, I’m going off to watch some Saw movies then, obivously, kill everyone I know in increasingly ingenious and outlandish fashions. You can stick your 9 Songs and your Human Centipede; if a film is a good film, then it doesn’t matter how violent or awful it may seem. It’s still going to be a worthwhile bit of entertainment.

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May 25, 2013

Dark Matters: Terrible But “True”

It’s been a very, very busy few days. On Wednesday I finished my first year at university, moved into my beautiful, beautiful flat which everyone I know is absoloutley sick of hearing about or being dragged to so I can give them tea on the lawn, and generally done a lot of running back and forth and being a little nervous that my new roomate has an ice axe. I’ll just be doing the dishes then, will I? Yes. Thought so.

But you’ll be glad to hear that all these wonderful things have not gotten in the way of my overriding cynicism and general loathing for the world (although I imagine I’m the one at the centre of most powerful loath-storms in history, having selected the computer with the most clattery keys in the library and merrily tapping away as though there’s not eight people considering throwing me through a bookcase), so I’m here today to discuss the glorious magnificence that is Dark Matters: Twisted But True.

I actually watched this show back-to-back while studying for my exams, stunned into blogular silence by the sheer, crushing enormousness of everything that was wrong with the show, yet curiously unable to articulate it or curb my enthusiastic enjoyment of the absurdity. It’s a sublimely awful bit of television; narrated by the sonorous thesp John Noble, it tells ridiculous tales of scientific experiments gone wrong and the like. Think The Men Who Stare At Goats as realised by Hammer Horror.

Either Noble has completely given up on his career altogether or he understands how fucking insane most of what this show dredges up is. Some of it, I happen to know, being a conspiracy theory nut, comes with an element of moderate scientific background to it, while most of the stories are hilariously crass reconstructions of events that barely happened in the first place. Take thier representation of what happened in the French town of Point-Saint-Espirit (Noble getting his mouth around the French pronounciation is a delight, by the way), where a batch of bad bread, presumed now to have been contaminated with the hallucinogenic fungus Argot, poisoned 250 people and caused mass hallucinations all over town. But no: according to Dark Matters, it was for certain a CIA field experiment gone wrong, and here are the reconstructions to prove it: a woman being chased by poorly designed CGI wasps, a man screaming in weakly articulated horror as his hands appear to catch fire, the entire village overrun with terrifying visions of the Rapture. The Rapture, featuring confused actors doing crap French accents.

But I love it. I do. It’s completely silly and over-the-top, but it has managed to crawl into my head and peel back that disturbingly large part of me that secretly loves conspiracy theories and would happily spend several days gurgling with pleasure while an ex-Lord of the Rings actor told me about them. It’s a terrible, terrible, womderful programme; I’m more conflicted about it than I was about illustrating it by using a metaphor about losing my virginity. But that’s fine. Because it struck me watching the last few episodes that the whole thing probably only exists in my own head and therefore I’ve become a conspiracy theory myself, thus bringing he experiment to an end. Have to dash now as I’m getting some sideways glances from a suspicious-looking man sitting opposite me and I really don’t fancy my cha

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May 20, 2013

Doctor Who: Tenacity, Alcohol, Rollicks: In Summary

So, two days ago, Doctor Who came to an end (till FUCKING NOVEMBER ), with a stonker of an episode from the Machiavellian mind of Moffat. It’s difficult to sum up the episode in a few sentences (although I will admit that the first thing I remember from the episode was the title and the writers credit coming up and exclaiming, horrified, “JESUS, I’VE BEEN SPELLING HIS NAME WRONG ALL THIS TIME!”), because it so satisfyingly brought the first Clara arc to an end, let us spend some more time in the presence of the imitable Richard E. Grant, and delight in the lesbians-and-potato men sidekicks which shouldn’t work but do.

I will spoil nothing for no man, but here are the best things about The Name of The Doctor in ascending order: the increasingly hilarious Strax (“Surrender your women and intellectuals!”), the almost total absence of the kids from last week, the classic Moffat mind-bending plot, Matt Smith writing a formal and very convincing letter to the BAFTA committee to split the awards between him and SteVen next year, Jenna Louise-Coleman proving she’s the best choice of assistant since Sarah-Jane, a beautiful, truly touching and almost redeeming apparition of River Song, Vastra and Jenny having more girl-on-girl eroticism than me and half an hour with my Special Drawer, an appearance by a very lovely British veteran that had me almost spewing with glee, and an ending so superb you’ll want to watch it twelve times in a row with your eyes pressed to the screen till every frame is seared onto your brain forever.

It’s tempting to go for a big, wanky summary looking back over the last couple of months of episode, but I’ve had a better idea. Hop on iPlayer, get all the episodes set up, get some sort of vaguely classy spirits on the go, and get prepared to get pissed with my patented Doctor Who Drinking Game (I was going to try for a pun on Tardis, but I’ve done NOTHING BUT GIVE to you people on that front for weeks and I’m tired. I have a headache, alright? Stop jabbing it into the small of my back.),

1. Take one shot for every time the Tardis is shown in flight, crash-landing, or not liking one of the Doctors lady friends because she’s a Jeremy-Kyle level possessive bitch.

2. Take a drink every time Matt Smith delivers a line with reaLLY WIErd emPHASIS.

3. Take a drink every time a British institution appears onscreen.

4. Take a drink for every episode Clara is wearing a very short skirt of some description.

5. Take a drink for every secondary character actor you’ve seen in another British television show.

6. Take a drink for every time the Doctor is really touchy with someone he probably hasn’t even shagged yet.

7. Take a drink for every time the villain/alien is revealed for the first time in an episode.

8. Take  a drink for every time Matt Smith thinks he’s David Tennant.

9. Take a drink for every time the adventure music starts playing.

10. Drink continually till November 23rd when we get the blessed show back.

 

So now you’ve turned my brain inside out, fustrated me, delighted me, and ruined my liver. I’ll have you yet, Moffat.

2.

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May 16, 2013

The New Doctor

Well, it’s time. Me. I’ve decided to bloody sort out Stephen Moffat. Not in an Robert de Niro way, you understand; no, I’m going to help the wonderful bastard. Yes, I’m going to give you my well-considered and positively not a result of drinking seminal ideas about who should take on the mantle of Doctor Who.

1. Sue Perkins

Everyone’s favourite lesbian. It’s Doctor Who, not Doctor Him, and this eccentrically coiffed and comedically bespectacled British institution would be delightful at the helm of the Tardis. She’s got the manic energy of Matt Smith, and I reckon she could pull out the dark side if we needed-just really watch her make another somehow classy innuendo on The Great British Bake Off. You can see the thesp within. In this scenario, Sandi Toksvig would be the assistant, because I want to see them in an enclosed space  together for a long time. It’s the closest thing Radio 4 will ever come to hardcore lesbian pornography.

2. Will Smith

Throw him a bone. He’s a solid actor, and something Doctor Who has been missing of late is the genuine cool factor-yes, Matt Smith gave us bumbling charm, David Tennant gave us goggle-eyed presence, Christopher Ecclestone gave us glowering angst-but genuine, all-out cool? Will Smith could pull that off. Go on. Give him some gravitas. You’d just have to keep reminding him the sonic screwdriver wasn’t his mind-wiping gadget from MIB.

3. Barry Lydon

He’s sarcastic, he’s horrifyingly intelligent, desperately funny and he’d bring something very, very new to the show. Have an old, tired, pissed-off Doctor, sick of the endless rotation of foreign planets and cheap whores (Catherine Tate excepted, because she’d probably gank me). I’d really love to see this happen, purely because it’s a pet theory and I’ve grown up with his brandy-swilling brand of warm cynicism for as long as I can remember. Do it.

4.  Alan Davies

He can do the adorable puppy thing beautifully, but in Johnathan Creek he pulled out a very nice brand of thin-lipped humour which would make a perfect Doctor, but a new one. He’d could bring the bouncing-off-the-walls thing and the bang-on comic timing with ease, then go all Black Ops on their asses just as convincingly. And he’s fascinatingly, terrifyingly, somehow unfairly ageless. Clearly in this scenario, it’s a toss-up between Caroline Quentin and Stephen Fry as the assistant.

5. Stephen Moffat

Because anyone who gets involved in Doctor Who on any level secretly wants to be the Doctor. You’re fooling no-one, Moffat.

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May 12, 2013

Doctor Who: Tin Aliens Rile Davis In Space

I was not looking forward to this weeks episode of Doctor Who. Firstly, there were children, who would undoubtedly stink up the Tardis with childish glee and the smell of yoghurt (all children smell like yoghurt. They do). And then there were cybermen. Stephen. Now, Stephen. Didn’t we discuss this? I SPECIFICALLY VETOED  recycling of villains before the series began, and yet you continue to defy me. And while I’m on the subject, why the cybermen? Big, mechanised dullards with the face of a very specific fetish doll. Boo. BOO.

But. BUT. This episode? Actually, it wasn’t too bad. At all. Neil Gaiman was at the helm of the story, patently wazzed off his spunk on something I’d like to get my hands on, and rolling about in Matt Smith’s acting talent like a pig in space-shit. The cybermen were gratifyingly played with a little, with the episode splitting itself between Clara leading the traditional Who misfit soldiers (including the adorable Will Merrick, who played Alo in Skins) against an army of the metal monsters and the Doctor playing a high-stakes game of chess. The prize? HIS OWN MIND. The kids were annoying- Christ, and how- to the point of eliciting an enthusiastic middle finger from my viewing companion every time that bratty little girl one rolled her eyes like a fucking pinball machine. But, to the credit of the episode, they were essentially muted by some sort of cyberman brain slug thing at the end of the first act. Good shout, Gaiman.

Matt Smith simply went mad with this episode; playing both the normal Doctor and the part of him that was being taken over by some sort of Cyberman ubermensch. Most of this psychological battle took place in a floating low-res galaxy, which was pointless but very fun, and seeing the good Doctor playing against the more nasty Doctor in one episode was so very wrong that it became completely excellent. Seeing Clara being a bit ballsy and Doctor-free was a nice change, but Jenna-Louise, honey? That chemistry is a massive, nationwide cock tease. Somebody fuck somebody. On another note, Warwick Davis cropped up to bring some class to the episode, even in a comedy aviator hat (his performance very nearly wiped the taste of Life is Short out of my mind’s mouth), and, like every guest star, looked delighted just to be anywhere near a Tardis.

To be honest, the reason I enjoyed this episode so much was because my standards were so low. But Nightmare in Silver went somewhere I didn’t expect it to go, and with the balls-to-the-wall silliness and Gaiman’s glorious verbosity, it went to the right place. But was that River Song’s name I spotted in the promo for next week? I’ll have you yet, Moffat.

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May 5, 2013

Doctor Who: Terror and Rather Delightful Inherent Sapphicity

So, last week, I was printing out some tosh or other (actually, it was a Betjeman poem that I wanted in hard copy to put on my wall, but that stays between us) when I idly pulled back the curtains of the print room to look at the mossy bank beyond. There, barely a foot from me, was a mother duck scrambling about with about twelve, teeny, fluffy, snuggly ducklings. I mean, glee doesn’t cover my reaction. I was standing there with a lopsided, beatific grin that looked like I’d found out I’d been cast in the Saw reboot. I was happy happy. But even tiny avian womb-hummers didn’t come close to making me as smack-facedly joyful as Doctor Who this Saturday. This weeks episode, The Crimson Horror, comes to us from The North (requiring Matt Smith to do a frankly erogenous Yorkshire accent), following the tale of the creepy Winifred Gilliflower and the strange goings-on in her institute. 

Now, I really, really dug this episode. It was the 100th episode broadcast since the revival in 2005, and it saw the centenary in with style; it was a proper rollick, allowing us another three-quarters of an hour with the lesbian lizard, her girlfriend, and the potato-head war machine from the Christmas special. The story was a prime example of how tight the writing can be on DW- oneliner after oneliner (“Oh, God, attack of the supermodels…”) and ridiculous throwaway sequences wrapped around what was, at it’s heart, a creepy and compelling story. The chemistry of the extracurricular trio with Clara and the Doctor was superb, as ever, because the writers haven’t quite cottoned on to it yet; as soon as they do they’ll be overused to hell and I want them to be a highlight instead of a third (, fourth and fifth) wheel. 

It was another good episode for a very smoochy Matt Smith, playing the fun Doctor for the first time in your ages, smashing things with chairs and getting a very nicely pitched scene with Rachael Stirling towards the end of the episode that provided emotional closure without souring the mood at all. Diana Rigg, who awoke every pubescent sexuality in the country, was great as the kind of demure psycho bitch Doctor Who specializes in, reveling in the grandeur of the setting and getting to do a funny accent on top of it. But this wasn’t an episode of performances, or monsters, or special effects; it was an episode of attitude, that attitude being “fuck it, let’s have fun”. More, please.

Not so good, though? Both the promise of the Cybermen AND child actors next week. I’ll have you yet, Moffat.

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