Retro Review: Eccleston's Dr Who

On a whim, I decided to watch the return of Dr Who, which was 15 years ago now and likely to be distant in my memory, especially as I only ever watched these when they were first shown. I felt, with the new lockdown, that perhaps I should revisit the series from the start, with fresher eyes...

Here's my episode-by-episode breakdown:

Rose: With hindsight, not the most auspicious of debuts and in many ways the shadow of wobbly sets and dodgy FX is cast on this immediately. The Autons - living plastic creatures - were never the most terrifying or even plausible villains, so I'm not sure if this first episode was more in homage to the past than scene-setter for the future, especially if memory serves me correctly Jon Pertwee's first adventure was also against the Autons.

However, as an intro for the new Doctor and for companion, Rose Tyler, it's a perfect way to become acquainted. In many ways it's a dreadful episode full of poor slapstick, unrealistic actions and a genuine lack of suspense. Plus the first of many implausible 'escapes' for major characters with no explanation as to why or how. What it also does is hint at a much darker Doctor - a man who seems to be sailing a little too close to deranged. There is also a lot of death wrapped up in an almost CBBC towel and it continued a theme that [ahem] runs through the series - that of lots of running around.

The End of the World: The main problem with the second episode is the lack of logic employed throughout it - from the reasons behind the villain's actions to the ridiculous Super Mario level to simply be able to turn the space station off. It's full of what would be token digs at consumerism, capitalism and selfishness throughout the series and also introduces the Face of Boe. It's a mystery set 6 billion years in the future at the end of the Earth's life; it's a uninspired idea marred by '21st century' thinking. At this point, even with excellent enigmatic acting from Christopher Eccleston, you could have started to wonder if this comeback was going to be a one-off series.

The Unquiet Dead: There is much to like about this episode, despite the fact that it seems so contrived. It is genuinely creepy at times and has an unsettling ending. It's also the first real indication of the 'Bad Wolf', the recurring mystery motif throughout the rest of the series. What seems to be a strange ghost/zombie story, with no obvious links to Charles Dickens - who plays a large part in this without really doing a lot - ends up being an alien invasion story about a rift under Cardiff (with Gwen from Torchwood playing a different role). The things we learn from this episode include the fact this doctor doesn't seem to object to collateral damage; while there's a darkness that is hinted at which seems like it could be blacker than we could imagine.

Aliens of London & World War Three: By the time I got to this first two-parter, my patience was wearing a bit thin. The Slitheen are grotesque and grossly unappealing; there is something that is neither menacing or scary about them (outside of the slightly better than poor special effects) and the added farting is just another concession to the FACT that Dr Who is essentially a family show. Again normal logic seems to have been thrown out of the window in favour of a mix of slapstick and altering facts to suit the story. 

Aliens who want to do nothing more than reduce the planet to a heap of ashes for future sale deserve no mercy and get none. Yet again we see a Doctor more prepared to blow up the enemy than negotiate a peace deal; the problem by now is the frivolous Dr Who stories were getting in the way of his character development and the way Rose was being developed into a liability rather than an asset. 

Dalek: And then something happened...

Forget the cod am-dram acting by supporting characters in this (and all the previous episodes), you realise that this isn't about the incidental music, it's about the rhythm section. For what seemed like the 5th time in six episodes, Rose was responsible, indirectly, for the deaths of hundreds of people, while flirting and giving middle aged dads hard-ons, and the Doctor is angry, alone and slightly mad. It has some excellent acting in it and with this episode you start to wish that Eccleston could have been persuaded to do a second series, because he becomes The Doctor with this - full of bitterness, grief and wrath. 

The denouement is both weak and important. It ends up being just another 'episode' of nothing really changes, except we now know more of the back story that won't be really shared for a number of years. It is the stand out of the series.

The Long Game: After the darkness, comes the light... Or in real terms, more of the same frivolous something wants to control the Earth and the Doctor comes along and saves the day (or does he?). Set on board (another) space station channelling news 24/7 to the world below, all carefully chosen information designed to keep the population below in a constant state of fear. Again, the themes are about becoming something better while the past catches up with you. There is, obviously something wrong here, otherwise DW and Rose wouldn't be there.

At the time, this seemed like just another 'filler' episode and did nothing to forewarn us of the part this episode would play in the coming episodes. The title, in many ways, doesn't appear to have much to do with the events, except that maybe the title 'The Long Game' was signifying something else...

Father's Day: And back we go to something dark and nasty. Has Rose been planning something like this from the moment she met the Doctor? Was her intention to get him to take her back to the day her father died to save his life? It certainly seems that way as yet again Rose Tyler unleashes a deadly force on the planet that will result in everyone dying. It also walks that fine line between what the Doctor is allowed to interfere with and why some things he doesn't get involved with.

What this episode does highlight is why the Doctor taking human companions is often fraught with danger because humans inherently do the wrong thing. It also cements the relationship between Rose and the Doctor. If you took the two of them out of the context of the rest of the show, this is about a young woman infatuated with an older man, who in turn is infatuated with her. Not since the flirtatious days of Pertwee and Jo Grant (Katy Manning) has there been a dynamic between the Time Lord and his companion so charged with sexual tension and attraction. This is a love affair without the trappings of sex.

The Empty Child & The Doctor Dances: The second two-parter and the introduction of two vitally important things - Captain Jack Harkness and a level of seriousness that was lacking in all but a couple of the previous shows. Set during the blitz, it's a simple story of alien nanotechnology attempting to save a dead child but failing to recognise the species and causing humans to gradually be taken over by gene-rewriting technology condemning the race to a kind of zombie existence behind a humanised gas mask.

This in many ways is classic Who. A race to save the planet from a villain who is neither a foe or malicious entity. The underlying theme is honesty and not being true to oneself and like in Father's Day a sacrifice needs to be made, except this time round everyone lives. A happy ending, of sorts. 

Boomtown: This is what would be called a 'filler' in old Star Trek parlance; a wordy, almost talking heads episode that explains much and gives away little. The last surviving Slitheen is attempting to destroy the planet to help her get home, except she might not be, because it's difficult to tell what this Slitheen really wants. Mind games abound between the Doctor and his prisoner; between Rose and estranged boyfriend Mickey, while Jack ensconces himself into the team without a hitch. The dialogue is suddenly more zippy; there's a sense of purpose that was lacking and even though this specific segment does little to move the story on, it does have major issues in it that suddenly seems to tie all the previous 10 episodes together.

Bad Wolf & The Parting of the Ways: There's a real sense that the first 30 minutes of the first part of this final double header is just a bit self-indulgent. We return to Satellite 5, the headquarters of what was the news streaming satellite that is now a 24/7 games station, with 'games' that seem to provide little but death to the contestants. Featured 'reality' TV shows from 200,000 years earlier are still popular but now with a charnel twist. 100 years earlier the Doctor saved the planet from one threat to leave it wide open to another, far more serious, unknown threat. Something he has no idea about, but believes it to be connected to the recurring Bad Wolf motif that has been following him throughout time.

The Earth circa 200,100AD lives on a diet of rubbish in industrialised cities and all the time being secretly manipulated by the Doctor's sworn enemies The Daleks, who, apart from the one long survivor in an earlier episode, were believed to have been wiped out in the much hinted at Time War between Time Lords and their mates in metal boxes. When this is finally realised, the Doctor, Jack and Rose help the remaining people on Satellite 5 make a last stand against a half a million Daleks and their new fleet. 

Having promised Rose's mum that he would look after her daughter, the Doctor tricks Rose into returning home in the Tardis, with instruction to bury the box to allow it to die without him. However, we've recently learned the Tardis is a living being, considerably more powerful than anyone ever imagined and Rose uses this knowledge to override the Doctor's instruction and return to the space station to save him. The thing is to do this Rose has to look into the soul of the Tardis and in so doing she literally becomes it's human interface. The Daleks' are wiped from existence before the Doctor kisses Rose to steal the last of the Tardis energy from her to save her life. Rose was the instigator of Bad Wolf all the time; she is a paradox.

By saving her life, the Doctor triggers his own transformation and we say goodbye to Eccleston and hello to David Tennant - a real jolt to the system in many ways.

The Christmas Invasion: Is not strictly season 1 or 2, it's the bridging point and, in many ways, is more satisfying even if it's all a wee bit contrived. Earth is invaded while the Doctor recovers from his change; it's down to Rose, Mickey and Rose's mum to try and save the day, with the help of the PM - an old friend from the first Slitheen encounter. The Doctor recovers to save the day, yet again, but this time there are consequences and old friends are now no longer considered friendly.

One thing that does appear to be carried over is the sexual frisson between Rose and the Doctor and the growing raging jealousy that old beau Mickey seems to be harbouring.

Overall: I actually think the first series is one of the best; it treads a fine line between comedy and drama; it allowed a bit of camp humour the Doctor was always renowned for and it had a dark undertone that was used to its full effect. Ecclestone was the real shining light; an unorthodox DW, one we've never really seen before, one with more grey areas than you could imagine and definitely not the benign benefactor he becomes the longer the series goes on. This Doctor killed without any problems; with no conscience, little grief. He is portrayed as a lonely man, craving the attention of a young gorgeous girl and unaware of the genuine problems he causes wherever he goes. An ambiguous hero with as much darkness as light.

Billie Piper will have surprised many with her acting and range; she struggled to start with but as the series grew so did she. Her 'companion' has never been equalled - although one later came close (ruined by bad writing rather than anything else) and there was always the sense she wasn't so much picked to be a companion as maybe paradoxically manipulated it to ensure the events of the first series played out the way they did. If you read into the underlying story, you realise that it's actually cleverly written even if the episodes themselves all struggled to find that authentic Sci-Fi series vibe that US shows excel in.

It was incredibly ambitious without overstretching itself and compared to the current incarnation's adventures, it was brimming with ideas and genuine shocks. There are absolutely bang on parts in this; real lump in the throat, watching from behind your open fingers moments and as I said before managed to stay faithful while updating it to the 21st century. I don't think Russell T Davies probably got the recognition he deserved, especially as his replacements have all struggled to match the heights he managed.

As the years rolled by, the series became more frivolous, in many ways more complicated and there were very few standalone episodes that compared to some of the first series. I may venture through the Tennant and Smith years, because, as I stated, I've only ever watched the series once, I'm not a huge fan, I haven't watched shows I adore more than once. 

In comparison to today's incarnation, of which I have no real issues with other than poor scripts and crap companions, this is high quality stuff and we might need DW cancelled and rejigged in ten years time to appreciate what a unique character he is.

Apocalyptic: A Review of 2020

This is a true story

It was a chilly Tuesday, January 21st and the fire was roaring in the Craft Hotel. The pub was busier than expected on a midwinter night, but a lot of that might have been down to me. Two years earlier, in discussion with Sharon, the landlady, she had suggested she might shut on a Tuesday until the spring because of the lack of business. Tuesdays has for a few years been my night out - not exclusively, but it breaks the week up nicely and I only ever have up to 3 pints. I came up with this poster (below) and got my mate Patrick to print a couple off; it also featured on the Facebook and Twitter pages of various places and while Tuesdays were never like a busy night, for the next few months it was worthwhile staying open.

The weird thing is that Tuesdays are now always steady as a result, but this Tuesday, the hotel had three guests - an American lady and a young Chinese couple, who were actually on their honeymoon (Scotland at the end of January for a honeymoon?!?). Also in the pub was the landlady's estranged husband, Andy the local labourer and his mum Rose. Fearn was there, she'd just come off her shift, having been replaced by Louise, who pulled George and my pints. There were also two tables with familiar but not known people having meals and incomer Dave, from the North-east, who seems to only know you when he's trying to hawk a pint. And Sharon was in the kitchen with Zoe.

It was busy enough to make a comment about. However, the real conversation was this growing threat of a pandemic. It was now becoming more than a third story on the news and, of course, it started in China. The thing was, this was still January and while some people might have been panicking about the coming months, most of us were getting over last Christmas and looking forward to that happy new year we all strive for. So when the young Chinese lad - who was actually 35 but looked about 17 - asked Louise behind the bar what beer would she recommend, she turned to me and George for our expert advice.

"Try this." Says I, offering my pint to the young man. He did and ordered a pint. We got chatting, but he had no more info about what was going on than us and his English was weak. When they left for their room, Louise turned to me and said, "That was a hell o'a risk yus took. They're Chinese!" I made light of it and frankly while I did remain a bit worried over the coming week, it didn't really register that much until I sat down to write this review of the year. With hindsight, it was a pretty stupid thing to do even if it was with nothing but good intentions. That seems to be the best way to sum of 2020 as well in many ways...

Brown Liquid

In what has been a reasonable year for me, the first lockdown was good for me and the fine weather meant I entered the autumn in fine fettle. My one real scare was towards the end of the summer when literally overnight I started to feel generally unwell, bilious and like I'd been given a dose of IBS just to catch up with the years I've not suffered from it. There was something of a panic. Milk was cut out of my diet and replaced with oat milk - no change. I avoided wheat for three days, no change. We were narrowing down the list of culprits or I was suffering from something else...

The solution has been both one of the easiest things I've done and with terrible consequences. The next thing on my list to avoid was caffeine - I did, after all I drink about 20 mugs of strong coffee a day. Within 48 hours all the ill feelings had dispersed and only returned once, when, after a week of abstinence, I had a cup of coffee and suffered for the next four hours plus. Apart from the god-awful headaches during the first 9 or 10 days, the most difficult part of cutting caffeine out of your diet is what to replace it with. I like coffee, but proper diesel standard coffee. The stronger the better. I now drink about 6 alternative brown beverages a day now. I haven't had a cup of tea since 2001 and have never really fancied going back to it, especially now my sugar intake has halved, so I was faced with doing something I had NEVER done in my entire existence - and I can think of friends who would be horrified at what I'm about to tell you. I started on decaf (which is how I spell it but it has an erroneous F at the end on jars). Jesus on wheels, how do people seriously drink this? It doesn't smell like coffee. It doesn't taste like coffee. It isn't really coffee; you'd probably get as much out of drinking a spoonful of Original Bisto powder, with 1½ sugars and milk. 

Decaf is simply a piss take. It's an affront to the Trades Descriptions Act. Do you know what my wife thought it smelled of when one was thrust under her nose? Watered down warm milk. I can think of many things worse to drink, but it should be called Hot Brown Beverage and not coffee. Maybe 'cophey' would be more appropriate - this product aspires to be something it can't be and is thus just allowed to be a homophone. 

Procrastinate Now!

Seems to have been the motto inside my head, especially since the middle of October when winter started looming on the horizon. To be fair, I haven't been productive at all this year; it has given me license to be a lazy fucker, but my get up and go got up and went at the prospect of a restricted winter and the last couple of months have been something of a blur of time and stuff. I moan a lot again, more than I have for a few years, but I think that's because everybody you're fortunate enough to meet - safely - since March has had one thing or another to moan about. I try to keep mine to the things I'm personally bewildered about rather than any old prospective outrage. I try to rage against our press as much as I can, despite my knowledge of tilting at windmills and in many ways my procrastination from general life has allowed me to burn out my rage at my fellow human beings who either can't, won't or refuse to look at arguments from another perspective.

This largely deals with politics, but the intransigence of people's beliefs has now made the internet it's most nasty since its creation. It seems hate and opposition are the two driving forces behind it; almost like it's been steered into that direction by people with agendas we know not of... I'm addicted to it like most others, but I am growing tired of being asked for my information before I can operate around it like I once did, or worse, to pay for something I once had for free, because someone somewhere managed to think of a way to monetarise something that was initially intended to be one world wide free communications system. People with money don't like free things, especially when they can make money from them. Plus, the internet gives you an excuse to be bored and unproductive.

One of the sidebars of my procrastination has been I've taken up playing on-line golf, mainly because the only games I really enjoyed in the early years of computers were golf simulations. You can just about enjoy it without spending any money and it's replaced the fact that even though I have a golf course within easy walking distance of my front door, I'm unlikely to play a round again - what with my shoulder and back and my popeye arm - it would be a recipe for injury. The game's quite accurate in that if you want to really get good you have to spend shit loads of money on 'virtual' equipment (or in a more accurate term: the more money you spend the less unpredictable the game becomes). 

Home Improvements

Best part of the year has been a clutter thanks to the wife's insistence that she is a reincarnated builder. As a result, one of the rooms had its contents distributed throughout the house, while she and my mate George turned it from a brick outhouse with negligible insulation into a proper bona fide room. In fact, she did such a great job it's arguably the best room in the house now.

The garden still floods. We're torn between growing rice or declaring it Scotland's 30,001st loch. 

I re-felted the shed roof (with help from George). Actually, it was half of the shed roof, but... you know... something.

Music, ennit?

Kairon: IRSE's album Polysomn was rated as the 8th best album in Finland in 2020 (giving rise to the question - what were the top 7 Finnish albums like?). It would have been my favourite album of the year, had it not been for an album released two weeks before Christmas by a Scottish folk band...

Yes, you did indeed read that correctly. Mr Eclectic - man of world music's hidden secrets - has rediscovered folk music and so much so that I listen to it far more than is obviously healthy.

The Laggenberry Man by Beluga Lagoon is an ace album. Beluga Lagoon Films has been an excellent source of celluloid entertainment and Andrew O'Donnell (and his two associates Mark Taylor and Blaine Abercrombie) are extremely talented musicians, travel guides, film makers and really seem like thoroughly decent guys. The stand out track on the new album is 'Sunrise', but 'Sunset' is a close second.

It's Beginning to NOT Look a Lot Like Christmas...

I know a lot of people who 'do' Christmas, the majority of the rest just appreciate it for what it has become, either by taking advantage of the days off or simply to practice their descent into alcoholism, but it seems that in the year of COVID, the shine has gone off of it even before Boris decided to shut the country down again from Boxing Day.

One of the crazy beautiful things about living in Wigtown (the size of a village in the South of England) is how compact and all-encompassing it feels, especially at Christmas. This was our fourth one here and the least Christmassy I can remember it ever being; in fact, with the exception of one or two houses, this was about the most low-key festive period I've ever witnessed. 

Our living room is very festive, but the rest of the house? It could be June if it wasn't so cold.

I've had less contact with people this year than since the late 1990s and those I have interacted with have been singing the same disdainful, angry and frustrated song - it goes something like, 'Isn't 2020 a load of shit and why doesn't anything make sense any more?' I think I wished my first 'Happy Christmas' about a week ago and whenever the subject has been brought up, most people have been moaning about how shit it's going to be unable to share vast quantities of largesse with people they don't communicate with 363 days a year. 

After four and a half years...

Brexit finally appears to be happening. It appears we won't be better off and we've learned that going it alone in a global world makes about as much common sense as running for parliament on a Flat Earth ticket. Oh and let's not talk about sovereignty, eh? The sad thing about it is it's unlikely to trigger mass 'I never voted for this' statements from the great unwashed, therefore the sense of schadenfreude that all us Remoaners have been anticipating isn't likely to happen and for the next few years we'll not see an awful lot different for the vast majority and isolated cases will be dismissed as 'bad losers' first and foremost, even if their story is pertinent.

I expect we'll return to the EU in about 15 years and it will probably be in a deal as close as the one we had when we left. I also expect the EU will have changed considerably by then and will focus on the essentials required for countries to work together. It will spark a rise in UKIP styled movements, but most of the hardened Leavers will be dead or too old or frail to do much but rail against the school leaver charged with wiping their arses.

Obviously the future is one big uncertain blob at the moment, COVID has changed everything, whether we like it or not. Most people don't like change too much, they prefer their dull boring existences because nothing too bad ever happens and we'd like to keep it that way. I just hope that it makes people more thankful for what they have always had and who to blame when they haven't any more.

Snippets

* I successfully grew runner beans this year. After over 20 years of trying, I knocked it out of the park this year!

* However, flooding destroyed 75% of my potato crop; stunted my beetroot, rotted my tomatoes on the vine and the short growing season made our attempts at growing squashes a wee bit fruitless. It's been a fantastic summer for growing, but we started too late.

* I discovered an on-line spice company called Red Rickshaw (well, Jones did, but I've used them now, so...) and they have relieved me of one of my main worries about living in a remote part of Scotland where the words 'curry leaves' are greeted with bemusement.

* If it was possible for us lowly folk to be able to nominate people for some kind of special award (and I'm sure it is), then our friends George and Julie should be given peerages. Talk about pillars of society during this fucked-up year. They have shopped for the vulnerable, run errands, fixed domestic appliances or sorted out problems. They have stepped in to help when others let people down, Julie has worked tirelessly, despite being retired, and simply doesn't know how to say no. George has been up on roofs, inside chimneys, been up to ears in shit just to ensure that his friends and their neighbours have had it easier and cheaper than if they relied on our unreliable handymen. Whenever they've been able they've gone back down south to sort out family problems, all the while ensuring they keep well socially distanced because of their 'home' duties. They are also fantastic friends and we're lucky to live near them.

* Most people I know have lost someone this year, even if it was only by association and not necessarily because of the virus. The problem with this year has it has allowed people to disassociate themselves from people not close by. I knew when I moved here that there would be people who have been constants in my life who I'd never see again and without wishing to sound cold and callous, this year has made it easier to forget some people. For all of its plus points, Facebook, specifically, has allowed us to be distant with people we used to be central. Someone disappears off social media for a few weeks and before you know it they've pretty much disappeared from your immediate life - it's like without a Facebook presence you don't really exist. This happened to a friend of mine, who simply decided that he needed to return to the real world by not going into the virtual one and nearly six months down the line he's happier than he has been for a while and as he said, 'People like you care enough to drop me a line and fortunately I have plenty of friends who do that.' 

This year has brought back that old idea of 'community' and I'm sure that will be monetarised as soon as someone works out how. Wanna help your neighbour? £25. Having an afternoon chat and a cuppa? £5 per hour. Crazy I know, but you'd never have guessed in a million years that our government would have spaffed so much money on giving their mates contracts for materials they had no experience with, so anything is possible. As some people keep saying, 'We're going to end up paying for all of this, one way or another!'

* So on that happy and optimistic note, I really do hope 2021 brings a few things: people starting to believe experts again without thinking everyone has an agenda. Maybe a world where people with agendas stop thinking everyone else has one would be start - altruism does exist, honest. I'd like people to stay safe and remember, everyone everywhere is in the same state as us, economies will always rebuild themselves if there are people to create them. When the world returns to normal, people will still want the things that are no longer there, so they will create them. Yes, it's unfair to all of those people who will lose everything because of this, but shit happens - you've known it all your lives. It's a fact of life - one of the ones that is often neglected to be taught in schools.

Have a better 2021 than you can hope for!

Observations and Musings

 Lots of things cross my mind from time to time...

* I often puzzle over spam (the junk mail not the meat-based item), it is a strange, slightly disconnected, almost dreamlike state of the internet, especially for those that still use email. It's like it's become the subconscious of the dark side of humanity mixed with those weird anxiety dreams you have where you're stuck in a house full of rooms. Most of it makes absolutely no sense, some of it is so persistent in its constant hammering you sometimes feel like wishing there was a way to stop this shit from even coming to your spam box - which has got to be a euphemism of some nature.

The treat very occasionally thrown up in your spam folder sometimes makes spam worthwhile, a necessary evil, something that will still be churned out by computers long after the last cockroaches have left for Uranus. Once in a blue moon, there's a diamond twinkling in the acres of muck; something that literally has you going 'WTF?' About three weeks ago, I noticed there was far too much spam in my email in one of my slightly 1990s ish computer OCD things, so I opened it up to empty it and something leapt out at me.

Now, my email is essentially Sender/tiny bit of message/date and some other bollocks wot my gmail account forces me to live with. This WTF email said: Royal Canadian Mounted Police ...your application has been accept... Apparently my application to the RCMPs had been accepted and had ended up in my spam folder. Who would have thought it, eh? 

Today, I received my fourth email from the RCMP, this time offering me a $10 voucher if I respond to their previous emails. A $10 dollar voucher! 

Why? I mean, how does any of that make any sense to anyone? Maybe a scam JOIN the RCMP email, but to suggest someone has applied on-line and completely forgotten about it, or now suspects they might be going mad so would be a perfect candidate for the RCMP... Just WHY?

I fly out to Vancouver tomorrow.

* Forced application changes are another fact of life now. It's the internet equivalent of changing the shelves in the supermarket. Yes, it might piss you off but you might also see something you've neglected to notice before and spend money. 

The problem with free things like social media platforms, you have to accept their changes - that's life. It's shit. I rebel against it all the time. I use as many 'revert [this site] to how it was because those cunts changed it' extensions as possible and will continue to do so until I'm crushed under the wheels of 'progression' and my PC is a relic of the past.

The thing is it's a form of revenge. These youngsters designing social media platforms or redesigning them are getting their revenge on the predominantly older people who use computers rather than phones and tablets. It's a massive fuck you and frankly who can blame them?

* We watched a HBO series called Raised by Wolves - not the British thing from a few years ago, but a decidedly odd science fiction 10-part series co-created by Ridley Scott, of Alien fame. As briefly as I can, it is about: the destruction of earth, a massive ship containing survivors going to Keplar 22b, which is massive and pretty inhospitable and a bit weird. There was a war on Earth between the religious Mithrac and the atheists; near the end, an atheist scientist sends two reprogrammed androids to Keplar 22b with 12 human embryos which the female droid would rear to birth and beyond. They can travel at the speed of light because they aren't human and reach it 10 years before the first arc.

Two atheists steal the identities of two high ranking Mithraic soldiers and get on the religious arc and then spend 12 years in suspended while the ship does its journey. Barely anything happens in the following years, apart from the fact the children slowly die off, one by one, either by radiation poisoning or by some disease, leaving just one. The 'mother' android is also a reprogrammed Necromancer, an android built to wipe out humans, specifically atheists, by some extremely powerful force, so when the Mithrac arrive and the planet starts going apeshit, she's on hand to sort things out.

It has a weird tone already, but then it just goes full blown bonkers and continues to get weirder without explanation until one of the androids does something quite unbelievable and the series ends... until next time. The only fair assessment I can give it is: compulsive rubbish and instead of becoming clearer, it just gets murkier - ghosts, giant snakedroids, alien AI, stone structures, mystic nonsense, indigenous creatures who just turn up after years of silence, big holes and flying exterminator droids with special eyes. There is a huge amount going on and I've kind of got a theory that I understand why some things are happening, but not some of the other bizarre madness, but I'm going to have to watch series two on my own because the wife thought it was a load of shit.

* Is it me or is the current crisis going to be the death of television and films as we know it? With Cineworld shutting its doors until after Christmas and the industry facing a massive problem - where can we show our blockbusters, missus? - and TV, especially live TV, looking all a bit kind of 'awkward phone call' ish I wonder if we'll ever get a return to a time we all vividly remember?

In many respects, despite some great attempts by what will soon be seen as 'cottage industry men', the arts, as we know it is kind of on hiatus, return unknown. 

This year's Wigtown Book Festival has been and gone - on line - and I'm sure it was well patronised, but I wonder if anything will be much different when they have to start - properly - planning for next year? The sad thing is I don't think there would be many in the town now who'd miss it, but many of those that would could not be as accommodating - in all ways - if it didn't.

Even writing now is either COVID-based or it has to form some kind of backdrop or explanation and Dystopian fiction writers are probably having all kinds of problems now they're actually living in one of the ideas they dismissed as 'not being exciting enough'. Even this blog isn't exempt; at the moment it's bigger than Jesus.

*  Internet advertising is something I like to inwardly rage about. Despite having every pop-up, ad and scam blocker available some things just have ads and you can't escape them. Do you know what having to suffer advertising does? It makes me hate the advertisers and never want to buy or use their product EVER. I appreciate that the internet has to pay people in some way and many possibly make some kind of a living from twats who click on adverts or download dodgy games, but if the other side of the coin is the alienation factor maybe they should explore new ways of advertising that doesn't feel so intrusive.

* As I write this I learn that I've just been given a 24 hour ban on Facebook for breaching their community standards. I got banned for suggesting that possibly the only way to stop right wing newspapers inciting hate and violence would be to burn them down. I mean, I totally get they don't want some old bloke on a thread read by three people to possibly propagate hate, but they'll let any Tom, Dick and Harry post any old shit up if it comes from one of those papers that incites hatred and violence. That is the kind of world we live in, folks.

* I heard a rumour. It was probably bollocks but if five people believe it, it'll be a fact by the morning. 

* And that's about it. Back in the day, I'd scribble notes down and extrapolate from them, but most of my notes now either have lists of names - for the picture rounds I do for my mate Phil's on-line quiz - and other lists none of which are related to whatever I end up writing. I'm thinking - probably wrongly - that blogs might make a comeback when people get fed up of watching re-runs of River Monsters - a programme I've always wanted to be more than just a fishing show. Writing is an old art and something that doesn't need to be performed, as such. It could make a comeback. It could.

The Unending Shit of Everything

 I haven't written a blog in ages...

That's got a lot to do with the fact that Blogger, which I have used for best part of the last 20 years has become unbelievably shit and extremely difficult to use. It's like Google decided that blogs were redundant so they were going to make Blogger as un-user-friendly as possible and offer absolutely no support at all.

I decided to look for an alternative. I'm not really sure why; I sometimes think I use blogs as a practice medium to prove I still know how to type and after searching through the internet for a viable alternative I realised that they were all pretty much NOT FREE. Anyone who knows me will know I like free things; with the exception of drugs, alcohol and food I really don't like spending any money at all...

So, despite the fact the 'new-look' Blogger barely works and has all the features Notepad has on your PC and less; I've decided that as my audience has dwindled from thousands to half a dozen, what is the fucking point?

I have, at the moment, 11 draft blogs. I'm toying with the idea of just scheduling them to be published in April 2062, to celebrate my 100th birthday and surprise anyone who is still alive that I've just reappeared in their social media feeds despite having been dead for yonks... Oddly enough, at least three of those drafts are about my penchant for procrastination! Imagine that?

This year, COVID aside, we've seen Twitter fuck itself up with a layout change that is just awful. Google (of which Blogger is a part of) has revamped everything in what can only be described as a massive 'fuck you' to anyone who has ever used any of their apps before and there's Facebook, which has stayed relatively the same for the last 8 years, but decided to revamp everything and redesign its look in what must have been devised by Mark Zuckerberg's anus - which, I've been told, has more personality than the world's richest autistic wanker.

Remember that old adage: if it aint broke don't fix it? That appears to have been condemned to the bin along with common sense and general human respect. I could bang on about the pandemic, but what's the point? I can't do anything about it apart from 'my bit', which, for some people [read: cockwombles], doing their 'bit' is tantamount to be asked to anally rape their own children. 

It's why I'm now publicly advocating an end to social media. The world is considerably more fucking horrible than it was 20 years ago and even then the first signs of the rise of the cunt had started. It was in 2000 that someone should have said, 'This is going to make the world a horrible, divided place, worse than any world war' and switched the fucker off. 

So everything is fucked and the pubs have to close at 10pm. Our government is making shit up as they go along and I expect the USA is going to burn, probably before we get a deal to eat their chlorinated chicken. I'm worrying about the mental health of many of my friends, even some I hardly know. It's funny that...

Turnips! It's the way forward, I tells you. 

But you've always hankered to be a misanthropic old git, what's the problem? - says my subconscious in an attempt to make sense of everything. Yes, but have I? I might have been deliberately trying to confuse myself.

The world has to carry on, even if billionaires lose all their money and have to eat discarded shellfish. Jeff Bezos losing a hundred billion of his hundreds of billions of quids is not going to bring about the fall of humanity - we're doing that without the help of selfish cuntish billionaires. 

You've got a few options: kill everyone; don't kill everyone; kill yourself; respect people even if they're massive arseholes. Do you know the best way to deal with massive arseholes? Ignore the fuck out of them. 

Or maybe you ridicule them in non-sequiturial ways. If someone says COVID is a lie or a conspiracy, reply by saying you saw their cat buying porn from Ethiopians; or that you're convinced it was that person offering to show schoolgirls their tiny penis in exchange for Smarties. Treat arseholes with the surreality they deserve. Invent words and blame them for it. Make up the most extravagant lies you can imagine and then tell people it was the cockwomble's idea, you saw them post it on a 'I love to fuck goats' Facebook page. Treat them with the disdain and stupid humour they deserve, because you're not going to win, so ridicule the fuck out of these worthless cum stains.

It might be the only way to make the unending shit of everything more tolerable. Or it won't. Who cares any more? Just don't have a wank in the street. 

Pop Culture as Self-Indulgent Fantasy

I once wrote an extremely popular/useful comics gossip and speculation column for over a decade. I was also the news editor of the same magazine the gossip column was in. I prided myself on my, sometimes, uncanny ability to forecast the future. In reality, what I was doing was not a lot different than people who gamble on the stock market; experience is usually better than intuition, but the more experience you have makes it feel like intuition, especially if you read the tea leaves in the right way. It's a bit like insider trading without actually making any money.

The only reason I'm telling you this is because what follows is essentially a form of the thinking that went behind my Movers & Shakers column, that mixed with something I'd call 'logical wishful thinking' - not on my part, but, logically, on the part of the people this bit of whimsical fantasy is about.

Logical wishful thinking is one of the routes to experience and intuition, grasshopper.

I sat and watched Avengers: Endgame again, a few weeks back, and while I enjoyed it more this time around, I still picked more holes in it than I can remember, but this isn't about that, at least not entirely. It did make me think about how I used to foresee events in the comics' universes and how that 'insider knowledge' once allowed me to be more than accurate about the future...

Spoiler warning if you still haven't seen this film and know nothing about it then this will ruin it for you.

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The Marvel Cinematic Universe was held together with a glue called The Avengers; the three main players are no longer in the game. The other half of the original sextet that remain are - in the MCU version of things - not really suitable to lead the Avengers (or a box-office charge), even if they appear in them.

With Iron Man, Captain America and the Black Widow now all gone, what remains doesn't feel as 'box office' as you would expect from the franchise - like a top football team without three of their star players. Naturally there's the scheduled anachronistic flashback movie - Black Widow but that almost seems like an afterthought (a thank you, perhaps), unless something happens in it that has a bearing on what's to come

Looking at who's left of the major players in Earth's Mightiest Heroes; Captain Marvel is okay but far too new, wooden and arguably dis-likeable (and powerful) to become leader of a new Avengers and of the remaining 'original' team of Avengers, we're set to have a new Thor (Jane Foster) while the old one swans off across the galaxy with those pesky Guardians; there is no actual Hulk film planned and Hawkeye is going to be a TV series rather than a film - pretty much cementing his place as a non-box-office draw. Outside of the remaining Avengers 'mainstays' there's Spider-Man (after a fashion), Doctor Strange (both had never actually been Avengers in my day), Ant-Man and the Black Panther - otherwise, Marvel's Cinematic Universe'd future is all down to new (to film) characters...

What I'm trying to say is while there are no definite Avengers movies even planned at the moment, the franchise is far from dead - it makes too much money for starters - and more importantly Marvel now has just about all its own toys back in the same pram. We now have a Fantastic Four and an entire X-continuity to put (back) in to the MCU.

However, the problem is the MCU probably needs replacements for Steve Rogers, Tony Stark and Natasha Romanov (who, as we all know, should be Romanova); maybe there's new characters, like the Thing, Human Torch and Wolverine who can captivate the audiences or lead the Avengers like their predecessors? 

Nah. The new additions will just add to (and complicate) the already rich tapestry of the MCU; they won't replace.

Looking at the proposed MCU schedule - after Black Widow there's The Eternals - which seems to be shrouded in mystery at present. It also, in my humble opinion, risks a lot with what has pretty much always been a marginal bunch of poorly thought-out characters (essentially a poor imitation of The Inhumans, which itself is already a failed MCU project) - that said, the Guardians of the Galaxy wasn't exactly iconic and look how that did. There's a Shang-Chi film (possibly set outside what we currently think of as 'our' MCU, but also might supply a hint of what's to come), another Spider-Man with Sony (which will concentrate mainly on the Marvel/Sony continuity), the fourth Thor film (with a female Thor) and then the film I believe could be pivotal to the future of a franchise - Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Then there's Black Panther II and Captain Marvel II both, I expect will steer the new major story arc along further.

Disney now has at least 10 more years planned of milking this cash cow, if they do it right - post coronavirus, maybe more. I believe 'doing it right' pretty much requires including (or re-introducing) the three most prominent and important characters to the franchise so far. The main problem here is Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr and Ms Johansson are all getting on a bit, even with the aid of stunt doubles. The thing is, Evans said he's open to do cameos, Downey Jr has not written off coming back (and may well be in a future movie if his cryptic comments are anything to go by) and Scarlett probably wants out, because I haven't heard anything to the contrary. They all now have limited shelf-lives regardless of what they do; as do many of the other, more middle-aged, actors like Paul Rudd, Don Cheadle, Jeremy Renner and Mark Ruffalo. The coronavirus, other jobs, scheduling and life means we might not see another big 'Avengers' finale for 15 years, by which time Tom Holland will be a 40-year-old Spidey, Scarlett will be 50 and RDJr will be 70. Superhero films with geriatrics or incredibly old teenagers doesn't sound to me like a great ongoing idea for the MCU.

Now, entering into pure speculation (the above was based on common sense): the reason I believe the next Dr Strange film will be so pivotal is because I believe the title possibly gives away a lot of clues, the main one being the admittance of a multiverse - different universes that look similar to our own but are not. I believe The Eternals will sow a seed that will grow into the main plot for the second Strange film (which I've heard also has Scarlet Witch in it and possibly Bruce Banner, which would make sense given what I think they should do). That seed, I believe will be either what part the Celestials - godlike creatures and adversaries of the Eternals (who have been seen/mentioned in the Guardians film) - will play in it and what will we learn about what they can do or where they come from.

As things stand, mutants don't exist in the MCU, neither do the Fantastic Four or supporting characters. The films made by Fox might as well be tales from any number of multiverse realities or simply something to be forgotten about. If Marvel and Disney are able to wait at least another two years before even dropping hints on us about 'newcomers', I expect in the next Doc Strange film we'll be introduced to several new faces and maybe some old ones or probably some old ones with new faces...

Imagine a MCU with the myriad characters introduced in the FF? New heroes and a host of villains. Equally, imagine the MCU with Wolverine - because he's the kind of character who actually does (and has) transfer(ed) well to the screen. Personally, I don't think The X-Men will work as well, not because they're not great characters, but because visually they lack the visual 'brilliance' many of the heroes of the MCU have already got. They'd need to be done either as they were in the comics or re-imagined completely and we all know what happens when re-imaginings take place?

The most logical wishful thinking of Kevin Feige, the man behind the MCU, would be to be able to have Captain America, Iron Man and Black Widow back, either in their own films or as co-stars in others. It makes sense, Iron Man kickstarted the MCU; Cap was the lynchpin and Natasha was the most present without her own film; she became as heroic as her two more elderly team mates and died helping save the universe. The future wouldn't be the same without them.

The thing is the MCU hasn't really been complete without the Fantastic Four; readers of the comics for many years would tell you the FF are pretty much one of the most important cogs in the Marvel universe wheel. I like to think Feige knows this and without three of his big hitters, he can replace them with four, except, he can do much better than that...

Imagine (in his next film) Doc Strange with Wanda (and the Hulk) manage to discover a way to jump between different multiverses, perhaps attempting to track something. On their way they bump into many familiar characters (and some not so). In world's where Wanda is believed to be a mutant; the Hulk is a menace in most places and Stephen Strange sometimes doesn't even exist or is completely different to how he actually is? Maybe their multi-universal adventures have them meet an FF, a bunch of mutants and maybe new threats that don't exist in the current MCU continuity?

Obviously, 'Our' heroes will win out and the day will be saved, except maybe in one of the credits sequences, we'll return to the world of the FF and something is wrong there. Then in the second credits sequence we'll return to one of the other worlds and they also have a problem - the multiverses are crumbling or maybe even merging...

Maybe something will happen in the 2nd Black Panther film; he could be leading the Avengers by then, so his next solo effort might be like Cap's 'solo' efforts, or maybe they might skip a film and the next Captain Marvel film will pick of the gauntlet - so to speak - of discovering why the multiverse is merging together?

Eventually, all the heroes unite to defeat whatever the new bad guy is - maybe the Beyonder, a god from another dimension (created in the crossover Marvel comic series Secret Wars) released by the same accident that started merging the universes. Yes, it's a bit Crisis on Infinite Earths (a DC reunification project and the first of its kind), but Avengers: Endgame was essentially Lord of the Rings, so why not?

Eventually, in what could be the next big 'Endgame' finale, the remaining universes merge together and all the heroes, whether played by the same or new actors, are in one reality again, allowing, if they want, for new Captain America, Black Widow, Iron Man films as well as all the others to keep them going until 2035. Even if it sounds like fan fiction, it makes perfect (financial) sense; what better marketing tool than introducing the new/old new/same but different Captain America! Played by whichever one of the de rigueur mid-20s actors currently floating around who can safely take the mantle on for another 15 years; ditto Iron Man and Black Widow, maybe the Hulk, Hawkeye, possibly they're already starting with Thor - Marvel/Disney can do whatever they want to reflect whatever era they want to pilfer from Marvel's comicbook history?

Maybe the next big culmination will see the 'original' Avengers together (again), but with different actors playing the parts. You see, in the Marvel Comics Universe - nobody dies forever. It's not like we don't already have at least 3 different Spider-Mans existing in films from the last 20 years; obviously not in the same way, but that was before they could play with all their own toys. It's not like Marvel/Disney and Feige are just going to forget about these iconic characters; that would make any accountant baulk at the idea of discarding cash cows in the hope other characters will take their mantle.

In conclusion; the powers that be will want to milk as much from this franchise as they can until superhero movies no longer command the returns they currently enjoy. With the face of cinema changing because of the pandemic, the time scale might be even longer and the longer it goes on the ravages of time will affect the actors currently inhabiting the roles. If I was a betting man, I'd expect the clock to be reset, allowing a kickstart within an already successful franchise; they never have to just re-start it, because they can tinker, change and fiddle as much as they like while keeping everything on an apparent linear track.

It could be, for some, that Avengers: Endgame might be a great jumping off point, especially for people who really don't think they'll be alive (or compos mentis) by the time the next great conclusion is arrived at. One thing is for certain - while Marvel/Disney rule the cinematic box office, they're not going to lose their main characters for the sake of common sense, especially not in a 'universe' where anything is possible.

A Book Review

The lengths that I appear to have gone to extricate myself from comics meant I wasn't even aware this book existed until it arrived on my doorstep - a present from my brother-in-law. This biography is eight years old.

I actually put down another book I was a third of the way through to read this and yet it left me feeling even more negative about an industry that I'd grown up with and worked in for many years...

As a (former) fan and 'blessed' with having earned a reasonable living from comics - some of it from Marvel - I approached this book pretty much knowing the bulk of it. What I wasn't aware of was some of the anecdotal stories passing back and forth about creators, nor the specifics of Marvel Comics as a publishing entity.

Generally though, despite its brevity it is something of an interminably boring study. Once the main protagonists had been reduced to bit part players (Lee, Kirby & Ditko), it was simply a cycle of wash, rinse, repeat over and over again. One thing overrides everything else in this account, there were very few periods in the company's history where it was anything like the pictures vividly described by Stan Lee in his soapboxes or in letter columns.

The book also sits squarely on the fence about copyright and ownership rights issues - returning to it regularly but treating it like magnolia paint. Yet Howe had two of the three chief protagonists still alive when he wrote this; maybe he asked them, maybe he didn't bother? Now, if someone wanted to approach this subject again, they'd probably end up with the same largely dull story with no one really able to add any insight - with Lee's death last year, there are only a few people left - all from the periphery - to consult and, of course, those consultations would be only anecdotal and difficult to verify.

What the book does do is show Marvel as an Arsehole Magnet and not just any common or garden arseholes, but extremely rich, powerful arseholes, who are painted in such a way as to confuse the reader into wondering how these massive vile human sphincters ever managed to make fortunes in the first place. Marvel has been owned, since Martin Goodman sold it off, by a list of people you wouldn't piss on if they were on fire and rarely was it run by the right people.

It also brings into clarity periods of Marvel's history that were often rumoured about, especially when I was writing my comics gossip column throughout the 1990s, and confirmed some stories that my former employer cut because he didn't want to upset an already precarious apple cart. In fact, Howe's exploration of the 1990s left me wondering why Comics International (the magazine I had been news editor of for nearly a decade) never did anything more than product promotion, especially given the ignorant treatment we got from Marvel (after Lou Bank left). I know the magazine's 'brief' was for brevity, lack of controversy and to act as a promotional tool for the comics industry (which, incidentally never afforded the magazine much more than a cursory nod, let alone buying adverts or offering anything to repay us for essentially doing their respective PR department's job for 10 years+), but it was ignoring real comics news to promote spandex.

Probably the most interesting section of the book was during Jim Shooter's reign, because it was essentially one of the few times when the Editor-in-Chief of Marvel was more of an arsehole than the executives holding the purse strings. That's not to say the owners of Marvel at the time weren't cut from the same cloth as those who preceded or succeeded them, but Shooter went from child prodigy who everyone looked up to into some horrible monster with scant regard for those who were under him. Perhaps he felt he needed to be as much of a cunt as his bosses, or perhaps with great power comes greater capacity to be a twat? Who can say? I met Shooter in 1993; he was offensive, aloof and very much a pompous arsehole - history taught him nothing.

The biggest problem with the book is that it's simply just a tad repetitive, a little like the medium it's covering. However, while Howe doesn't exactly write with any dynamism, it might be because his subject material followed similar cycles throughout its existence. He could possibly have avoided falling into this trap with some more interesting asides, maybe some editorialising in the margins, or perhaps covering the entire story rather than just the bits he relished in repeating. This book has the briefest of brief mentions to Marvel UK (or any of the other countries that took Marvel Comics on for their own markets). Marvel UK from Stan Lee's infamous appearance on Pebble Mill @ One through its Pet Shop Boys connection, my former employer's period there, how it spawned a number of big stars and then how it boomed in the wake of the comics boom of the 1990s - all completely overlooked and I kind of find that unforgivable...

Or its failure to mention the many dodgy business practices employed by (both) Marvel (and DC) throughout the '80s and '90s, nor how Marvel essentially spent their time, once the Direct Market was established, treating retailers like they were there to exploit, with scant regard to anyone's future. There was a brief mention from my old pal Lou Bank about Marvel's lack of support for the people paying their wages and then it was back to who's stabbing who in the back stories.

90% of the book covers up to the late 1990s; presumably it was written between 2010 and 2012 (for the cursory mentions of the Iron Man and Hulk films); the period after 1998 is almost breezed over - almost a decade and a half condensed into the last few fleeting chapters. It was like Howe avoided that period because he might write about people who still worked there or had aspirations to work there; the only people he concentrated on were former-employees many with grudges. No one with any - at the time - current connections (or gripes) were spoken to or made the final cut.

I always thought biographers, good ones, at least, were not frightened to burn some bridges to get the best story and I felt there were some good stories Howe simply didn't pursue. It might be because he's a biographer rather than someone who lived and worked in comics during that period; maybe it's because he's not a journalist and that was what was needed.

The whole thing needed to have a feel that the author was an expert about the subject he was writing about and that simply didn't come through at all. It was simply perfunctory. Comics is a weird and nuanced genre and doesn't conform to the real world of business in the same way as any other 'entertainment' industry, this probably needed to be reflected in the book, it wasn't.

While it has interesting moments and was an enjoyable read, it does feel like it was marketed as some wild and sexy expose of the company and yet reads like all the wild and sexy has been omitted.

Ultimately, it will leave comics historians, fans and those interested slightly empty and doesn't really offer enough to tempt non-comics fans from delving into its pages. There's too much Machiavellian shit in it and not enough informal general interest shit - it manages to take four colour brilliance and transform it into dull and boring monochrome.

Book Review

The Institute by Stephen King

At some point in about 2013, I simply stopped reading books. Shortly after reading Dr Sleep, the then latest Stephen King novel and sequel to his book, The Shining, I didn't read anything for four years.
Really. No books or novels, just newspapers and magazine articles.

I was busy writing my own novel - The Imagination Station - and that took all of my mental capacity at the time. About to face employment oblivion, I concentrated my efforts on writing and took a fledgling idea to its current final draft stage (a stage that has hovered uncontrollably after a frantic return to rewrite duties, last year). I also didn't want to read anything. We continued to buy books, the wife is an avid devourer of books and many times I'd pick one of her books up and think, 'maybe.' Yet, maybe never really came.

About six months before we moved, I reread the His Dark Materials books. The time was right and I wanted something I could enjoy that wouldn't challenge me too much. I had my book too deeply ingrained (I know what I mean by that, I can't be arsed to explain to those who don't). And that was it. We moved. I continued to not read books. The new Philip Pullman book came out - the new adventure of Lyra - and it took me almost fourteen months to start reading it after having it bought for me the previous Christmas. Even when I did read it, it didn't reignite my once bottomless thirst for fiction, but I did start reading again - selective stuff and mainly re-reading.

The second of Pullman's new Lyra trilogy came out last Christmas and it only took me four months to start to read it. Partly due to my interest being piqued by the recent BBC/HBO adaptation of His Dark Materials. I finished it and felt unfulfilled; don't get me wrong, it's a good book and an intriguing new story, but I felt the itch hadn't been scratched - both in this new Lyra adventure and my return to reading. The desire for something else that was new was growing and that was what brought me to The Institute...

Before we go there, we need to address the last King book I read. I saw Dr Sleep as a stepping off point, not just for reading in general, but to escape my decades old obsession with Stephen King (and his hardbacks). Unfortunately, the wife wasn't prepared to do that, so we've continued to buy them as they come out - with only one missing. That is why we have The Institute, that and because it was one of the Christmas presents I got her.

I can say that I'm already casting my eye across the bookshelves for the next book to consume, now that is finished. I don't know for sure if the old sparkle is back, but it certainly seems that way and the latest Stephen King novel has helped redevelop that...

First off. I feel King has been reusing old ideas in new ways for two decades. Cell is a cut price shorthand version of The Stand and much of what followed could be identified in earlier novels. If it ain't broke why fix it? If you want to revisit old ideas then make them better, not inferior. Pale imitations. Occasionally, there was something that excited; that felt different, but generally King felt like an aged rock and roller trying to recapture his glorious past.

The Institute is Firestarter, but with less pyrotechnics and more 21st century nous. The names change but the faces remain the same. It almost briefly wanders in Dead Zone territory and skirts around earlier King novels which featured The Shop or had characters with vastly superior brains. Yet, unlike those earlier books, this seems to follow a different timeline; is set in a slightly different part of King's multiverse. The Institute isn't The Shop and the two never met in these pages; the earlier incarnation of 'government' sanctioned human experimentation was not even given a recognising nod, even if there was a backhanded reference to the likes of good old Johnny Smith.

The story begins with Tim Jamieson, essentially drifting north after losing his job as a cop, quickly switches to Luke Ellis, bonafide child prodigy/genius and then after a typical King intro plunges straight into shock and awe. It really doesn't hang about. King has never had a problem shocking his Constant Reader with an unexpected death or a peculiar turn; it's almost like he enjoys it - it's one of the way he unsettles his readers - to borrow the advertising line from the first Peter Gabriel album - "Expect the Unexpected" and this is no exception and it's done with such power and almost incredulity that you're hooked from that point.

The Institute is an example of the evil that men (and women) can do if they believe what they're doing is for the benefit of mankind and that belief turns the staff at the Institute into modern day Mengeles and his Nazi scientists... Or does it? It's certainly tinged with a sadistic streak and as you read it you wonder how King could allow himself to go to these places (although he 'went there' far worse in It!); it touches areas that parents of any child would view as barbaric.

It's certainly a rollercoaster ride; many of his books in recent years have swapped exposition for pace; where the minor supporting cast of Dupre would have had almost a book in itself; however it is a fleeting glimpse of the township and its more colourful residents and then, like some hand is guiding the coincidences to reach a certain point, for best part of the rest of the story it is ignored; forgotten about. It never leaves you, the sensation, that at some point the world we're introduced to in the opening pages will collide with the faraway world that is meticulously described as 'hell'.

It does and the pieces placed, in this intricate chess game of a thriller, play their part.

The place in the title of the book is a top secret installation (above top secret) that experiments on children with slight powers of telekinesis or telepathy to enhance their abilities in ways that would have made Nazi scientists green with envy. The 'conscripts' into this program are treated no better than lab rats and the staff are all borderline psychopaths, sadists and outcasts who have found their true calling in the torture and abuse of children. The Institute exists above governmental control; the people there and the work they do is sponsored by a secret government, one that believes it is safeguarding the world by doing heinous things. The bombing of Coventry in WW2 resonates in the reasoning behind its existence, even if it never mentioned; to save the many, a few must be sacrificed. But in a such a cold, pernicious and nasty way?

Despite Luke being extremely clever, it isn't his functioning brain that interests the Institute, it's his latent and mild telekinetic powers and that is the first mistake this decades old 'thinktank' makes. Add to this mix Avery Dixon, an underdeveloped 10 year old who can read minds easier than anyone the Institute had seen for decades, who through his complicity with Luke to aid the latter's escape, is subjected to tests not designed for his level of ability. You give a low level telekinetic - can move an empty pizza box - a near death experience and it boosts their overall psychic abilities, especially when they join with the hive mind in the less attractive part of the Institute.

Luke's escape hinges not just on his unique brain and his ability to cut round corners, but also helps him befriend one of the people who should never have needed a friend. Luke helps this person and she enables him to escape, providing him with information that could bring the entire facility down on their heads. It obviously isn't as simple as that, but it is one of the more feasible of the long shots that King attempts to pull off. Coincidences and all that.

While Luke is engaged in his own carnage in South Carolina, meeting Tim in the process, back at the Institute Avery is setting in motion a chain of events that will leave another trail of dead people. He is also aware of Luke's idea - a gamble put in place designed to fail, because of a strategy underneath that only Luke and his now psychically linked friends know about. The tell tale line is when Tim, finally understanding what he's involved in, suggests to Luke that they're not returning to the Institute to save people and Luke replies, 'No, we're going to pick up the pieces.' The first time in years I got that crackle down my spine reading King's words.

Everything about the book is scarily possible, even in today's world and then just as you read and hope that the denouement will be as good as you hoped there is the one real cop-out. As well as channeling Firestarter, it also borrows themes from Philip K Dick's The Minority Report; the consequences of that idea wouldn't become clear until the epilogue.

Parts of the climax work exceptionally well, other parts feel like they've been ramped up to make a feature film sale more viable. To say the end of the Institute is far fetched is like suggesting the rest of the book isn't, but the plausibility of the book disappears in a conclusion that feels like it's going right back to Carrie but with the volume turned to 11 and that didn't work for me. I would have preferred less bangs and more buck - which might be why there's a long but ultimately unfulfilling epilogue. Everything could have been logical, even the set-up to cause the conclusion, but I feel it could have been handled in a way that cut out the disaster movie and still achieved a desirable conclusion.

It is, however, a cracking read. It has some excellent set-up lines, brilliant exchanges and King writes like he's remembered how to write likeable characters you give a fig about even if you've just seen a flash of their lives. He also channels his inner-villain to perfection with an array of baddies with cameos that make you realise almost always all hope is lost for anyone who enters this Godforsaken place. I can forgive some of the decisions made by the main cast for being caught up in the craziness, but others felt like they were done to reach a point where they may not have happened if it had played out in a real world setting. But that is what writing fiction is sometimes about; cliches exist because if they didn't there wouldn't be cliches.

I almost felt like it could have been a wee bit longer. Both Stackhouse and Sigsby - excellent villains, both instinctively evil in different, but effective, ways were almost superficial; ciphers for their general kind of person. Yet there was a sense that if King had told a little about their lives - more than a couple of almost afterthought lines - they might have been less unbelievable. The impression Ka was at work here was obvious, but carefully hidden; like King wanted us to know, for sure, this was not a story in a universe of dim follies.

I get the impression he's not done with this particular corner of his mind. I do feel we might see these characters again. It is incredibly good at using emotion as an excellent narrative.

It won't make any of my King top tens but it feels like he's actually revisited an old idea and probably done a better job. I'm giving this book a 7 out of 10

Harry in Lockdown

Sometimes people fall through the cracks. It isn't done on purpose, even if it can seem like it at times. Harry found this out, or didn't as the case was, when he told the woman - a local nurse - to get out of his house and never come back. He knew she had, several times, but he'd been out, or hiding in his garage. He didn't like being told what to do. He was 80 years old, for God's sake, old enough to know better than some kid in a uniform telling him what's best for him.

Harry's year had been the worst he could remember, except this was the root of all of his 'problems', his memory was not what it was and he was beginning to get yesterday mixed up with who knows when? The truth was by the time COVID-19 had shut down the British Isles, Harry had already been blighted by a run of bad luck he couldn't quite comprehend, when he was in a comprehending kind of mood.

Shortly after Christmas, his wife, Margaret? Was it Margaret? He wasn't as sure as he once was. Might it have been Mary? Anyhow, his wife had taken a nasty fall and what seemed likely to be a couple of days in the local hospital, turned into a nursing home. Quite why Harry couldn't look after her, he didn't quite understand. Something about 'his diagnosis', which made little or no sense to him. Whose diagnosis, he'd ask? That seemed to be one of the problems, apparently.

In truth, Harry had been suspected of having the early stages of senile dementia, but had managed to make the doctor think he wasn't at the stage where he needed to slow down or stop doing things. Harry was a fit man; he'd never smoked and while he liked a drink, he was never an alcoholic or even a heavy drinker. The problem - a word he seemed to hear far too often - was that shortly after Margaret had her fall - her name was indeed Margaret, but Harry had called her Maggie for the 54 years they had been married - and subsequent failing health, he was deemed unsuitable to care for his own wife and she, of complete sound mind, had forbidden her husband to drive to see her. In fact, Harry's driving licence had been taken away after a minor accident in January he had caused, so the only way he could go the 35 miles to see his wife was if someone took him.

There was also the dog. Harry loved his dog, but during the week he spent almost entirely at the hospital because of his wife's fall, he completely forgot about his 13-year-old dog. It was removed from his residence by the RSPCA and a letter was left explaining why. Harry picked up the letter placed it on the side table and promptly forgot it was there. The positive thing, you could say, was that within a few days, the dog became as distant a memory as his long-departed parents and when he did think of the dog, he invariably thought of ones they had had many years ago. Within a few weeks, his car, his dog and his wife had been taken away from him and he believed they now wanted to take away his freedom; but it might have been so much easier or better had it not been for the virus that Harry seemed determined to ignore.

Of course, by the time the coronavirus found its way into the mainstream of planetary life and the country was shut down, there was no one to drive Harry to see his wife and no one to care for him when he decided that he wasn't going to be told to stay indoors for 12 weeks. "There is no way I'm doing that," he shouted at the girl in the nurse's uniform and he told her to get out of his house and never come back. He knew he didn't feel bad about it, but as March turned into April and the sun came out, the last thing the old man wanted to do was be cooped up inside his bungalow, whatever advice the girl had given him, which he had ignored, and now no longer resided in his memory at all. He'd spent all of his life working outside, he was sure of it, so he was going to wander around the village and chat to all the people he hadn't been able to while his wife had been keeping him at home.

Harry began to interpret his inability to get to see his wife with the belief she didn't want to see him, which wasn't true, she just realised he was a danger to everyone if he drove. Harry now remembered it as her telling him she never wanted to see him again and the way his mind was now working, that meant he was going to go and do what he wanted; see the people he had spent all of his life with in the village and get to know the ones who were new.

Buried at the front of his now scattershot memory was that people were trying to make him stay in. It seemed to him there were a lot of people telling him, from a distance, that he needed to go home unless he was going to the shop. He did go to the shop, not always. It seemed to some of the locals that when they explained the risk to Harry, he simply seemed to drift away from the conversation or wandered off, like a child bored with something. The fact he was told repeatedly by different people made no difference to him; he simply avoided those people - the enemy - and went in search of new people to talk to. He loved talking to people, he didn't understand why they didn't want to talk to him.

Did Harry understand what a pandemic was? Probably not and even if he once understood the danger one posed, it was no longer something that inhabited his brain. It was something affecting the rest of the world and even cases of coronavirus in the village failed to make him comprehend the risk to himself and indirectly to others. If he caught it - and he was almost trying despite not knowing - he could prove to be fatal to those who he came into contact with. Except, that wouldn't happen, because he wouldn't get it.

Do you see the problem? He was in a place of denial but only because his brain no longer understood exactly what it was denying. This was no longer about others, apart from their intent to stop him from going about his business, which now as April slipped into May, was shuffling the streets, in the same clothes, looking more dishevelled and unhappier because the more he tried the more people consciously began avoiding him, crossing the road, locking their doors, closing their gates. There had been instances where he'd simply wandered onto people's property, because he thought someone who hadn't lived there for 40 years still did.

While the world twitched at their curtains and became like honorary members of the Stasi, reporting rule breakers, the kind who, if they were social isolating the way they were supposed to, would never enter their personal spheres, Harry was ignored. People felt sorry for him, but didn't want to help him. Except, they did, they just couldn't because the advice he received, the conversations he had, the shouted abuse from people he didn't know, just compounded his belief - his paranoia - that they were all out to get him. The rest of the world's problems were something he was not even aware of. So the neighbours and locals accepted the wandering old man, the way you might an unwanted tramp sleeping on your local park bench, but without acknowledging, condoning or condemning - it was as it was.

Harry's fate was now down to chance. Maybe he'd be lucky; maybe he wouldn't. The problems arise if he wasn't, but there was no obvious path; no way of knowing who or what he might come in contact with and short of having him committed or sent to a care home - Harry and Margaret had no children - he had fallen through those cracks in the system. Whatever outcome suited the rest of the village was going to be bad for Harry. Do you inform the police and even if you did, what chances of impressing on him the importance, to everyone else, that he stays inside and lets the local resilience group do his shopping, collect his medicine or simply drop by - at an appropriate distance - to talk and see if he's able to cope?

Locals have watched the old man deteriorate over the last few months and the underlying feeling rises in all of them; they are watching the last act of a defiant, but mentally-challenged old man, heading towards an inevitable death, either from the virus or his own diminished abilities. Harry had become a Dead Man Shuffling and people were afraid of him. This was something that would end badly, through no real fault of a system or a person. In the time of an unprecedented plague, responsibilities and duty of care are lost in the unrelenting face of a creeping death, picking off victims even if they never catch the disease...

Pop Culture is Dead to Me: Part 237

It's been a while. Eight months since I last did a proper TV thing.

I did a final (unrelated to this) blog on the old PC. It's still in draft stage. I procrastinate a lot. I wish I could get over it, but I procrastinate about getting over it as well.

We've been watching a lot of TV, but not a lot in the grand scheme of things. A lot, for us. We have a lot to catch up on. We gave up on some things and were pleasantly (or unpleasantly) surprised by some other things. This is life.

Let's get started; we have a lot to get through and it will be in no specific order...

The Witcher - what a load of shite. Sorry, but it is. We gave it two episodes and frankly neither of us wanted to go any further. I know that Henry Cavill wanted this part, but you'd have thought he would have done more than phone in a disinterested looking scowl. It might have got better, but frankly I don't care. I'm sure there will be more and people will be happy. Good for you.

Servant - Apparently all but a few outside scenes were shot in London. 90% of the cast are British. Rupert Grint was brilliantly horrendous as a vile wine drinking, pot smoking twat and it was the weirdest and probably creepiest thing I've seen on TV in years. I really hope they don't make a second series because while there are so many holes in it, it still worked for me. In a nutshell: a family of utter shits, a dead baby and all held together by the 'nanny'. Really tough watching but worth it in a nasty skin crawling way...

Lost in Space 2 - we said we wouldn't bother with season two and so far we haven't. we have it waiting for us, but it's about convincing the wife that it's worth giving it another go.

Shameless US - in the last proper one of these I did, I said it was time to call it a day. No more Fiona means no more glue. We've watched the opening episode of Season 10 and I don't know if I have the will to persevere with it. It should have stopped with season 9 because that was an excellent jumping off point.

Doctor Who - Now... where to start. If you look back to the last time I talked about DW you won't find anything remotely positive and that's almost how I feel about this series. It is pretty much a load of old wank and Chibnall did nothing at all to make me think he was anything other than a fraud with a pseudo-educational brief. The current series has been preachy, whiny (even with the return of the Master) and I don't really like any of the cast; not even Jodie Whittaker any more. It's just shit. However, just as I was about to actually call it a day and stop subjecting myself to an hour of grief and anger up popped 'Fugitive of the Judoon' and arguably the most excellent episode for a decade. It was one of those episodes where absolutely nothing happened, but everything happened. On the surface it just seemed as one-dimensional as every other Chibnall episode and then BAM and BAM and oh yeah BAM BAM BAM. Jack Harkness, an unknown black lady Doctor, lone Cyberman teasers, Galifreyans and the actual feeling you'd stumbled into an episode of Doctor Who. It was quite brilliant. And then we returned to shit the following week...

The Outsider - I've not read the book. After Dr Sleep I've struggled to be tempted by any Stephen King book, especially ones that are crime novels with a supernatural twist. I struggled with Mr Mercedes and didn't get past the opening chapter; never even bothered buying the sequels and was really tempted to read The Outsider until I discovered it had more links to the crime books than it does to any of King's 'proper' books. We're halfway through the HBO adaptation. Ben Mendelsohn is superb. Jason Bateman blew my mind. It is playing on a theme that Joe Hill's NOS4A2 touched on - what happens when weird meets the real world and specifically law enforcement and there's a sense of bewilderment running through it that reflects what the world would actually do if the bogeyman existed. I might read the book now.

Picard - two episodes in and it is how you would want to see the real Star Fleet; how it really is and how the earth isn't really a Utopia, it just pretends to be. It is glorious to look at; moves at a snail's pace and can carry on until Patrick Stewart is 200 for all I care.

The Expanse - I haven't watched Season 4 yet. It's on the 'to do' list.

Preacher - horrid. Just awful. After such an auspicious start it just descended into utter shite. I was glad when it was all over and you got the impression the cast felt the same way.

Nos4R2 - I touched on this when I last did one of these on TV. We'd just started to watch it and I said it felt abridged. It's been fucked about to the extent that I don't know if I'll watch the second (and hopefully concluding) season. Has as much menace as the One Show. I also don't think Zachary Quinto can act. Went on far too long and could have done the entire book in 13 episodes. Hopefully Joe Hill's Locke & Key will be much better, but after reading his book The Fireman, I think he's a one trick pony and hasn't got a tenth of his father's ability. If you get the chance to read The Fireman don't. Killing yourself would be more preferable - dreadful rubbish.

The Boys - is nothing like the comic (apparently). It was extremely enjoyable and in the worst possible taste. One of the few things I watched last year that I'm genuinely looking forward to a second series. Karl Urban didn't need to be English (is he English or an Aussie, it's hard to tell?) and his accent is the worst since Dick Van Dyke. Other than that foible, it made some other superhero series look very poor indeed.

Watchmen - Almost the best superhero series. Utterly compelling; hated the ending, felt that Damon Lindelof simply didn't understand Doc Manhattan. He almost got him, but failed. Other than that it twisted and turned all over the place; felt weird and otherworldly and I hope there's a second series, if only to piss off comic fans.

Undone - watch it. It's a strange mix of animation and Bob Odenkirk. It's a time travel story but it might be about madness. It was strangely fulfilling and there's likely to be a second series.

Russian Doll - there's also going to be a second series of this and that confounds me. If you like Groundhog Day (I did) then you should like this; but unless they use other characters I can't see how this is ever going to work. It was an enjoyable romp but ultimately you didn't really care about the characters you just wanted to find out why everything was rotting away.

Fleabag 2 - We finally watched this, like a film, the other night. Nothing beats the first episode which has more laughs in it than all the following five put together. I liked the juxtaposition where all of Fleabag's awful people just get more awful and she seems to find some kind of redemptive peace (oh and she shags a priest). Olivia Coleman's stepmother has to be the most vile and horrendous human being ever portrayed in a TV series; the weird thing is we know people like her...

Haunting of Hill House - I liked what they did. I didn't think it was scary. It was clever but also stupid. It felt a little like The Umbrella Academy while being nothing like it at all. The problem with ghost stories is that when you boil it down, ghosts are not real, even if they exist. They have no form, they can't hurt you; the entire thing about them is to scare you and if you know its a ghost and it can't really hurt you it stops scaring you. Apparently this is also going to be an American Horror Story anthology series... shame.

Stranger Things 3 - hated and loved it in equal measure. I've never really understood the hype around the series and I discovered 11 is English (and essentially plays herself in most things - such as the woeful Godzilla: King of Monsters). It just feels like it never wants to give you a proper money shot because once it does it won't be able to replicate or beat it. Prick tease television.

Castle Rock 2 - was in many ways a bit of a revelation. The first series was a struggle, while this one was more of a rollicking adventure featuring the 'origin' of Annie Wilkes. I can't say I ever liked the character but tying her in with the Marston House from Salem's Lot and suggesting that the old place had much more history than just a mad bastard and a vampire's residence was a master stroke. Tying it into the first series wasn't such a good idea.

Love, Death & Robots - something of a revelation in that almost every single short SF film was excellent. It was full of sex, robots and death, but also stories that were excellently done in such a short space of time. This was science fiction anthology at its most excellent. I hope season 2 lives up to the first.

Mindhunter - the second series of this semi-fictionalised account of the FBI's psychological profiling department focused on another true crime and managed to wrap a disturbing and alienating story around it. It's superb TV and feels like it should be twice as long. A real pleasure, even if we're dealing with serial killers, horrid deaths and serious mental health issues.

His Dark Materials - frankly, they could have made this with glove puppets and it would have been better than the abomination that was The Golden Compass. It was, however, slightly cold and calculated and doesn't have the soul the books had. It was still quite brilliant in places and the only real heartbreaking thing is The Northern Lights is by far the lightest and shortest of the trilogy, but they're wrapping the entire thing up in a second series. How they will deal with the entire Mulefa storyline, the death of God and the battle between everything and travelling to hell and back, I really don't know?

For All Mankind - let's save the best till last. If I had to stick my neck out and declare something as my favourite TV show of the last 12 months, this would win. This alternative history of the space race is quite superb. It starts with the Soviet Union beating the USA to the moon and then upping the ante by putting a woman on the moon next. Everything the Yanks want to do, the Russkies beat them to it, so as a result the space race never ended. It's essentially a kind of science fiction soap opera focusing on the astronauts (some real, some fictitious) and how the world changed - but didn't too much - as a result of the events in 1969. It was the first big show on Apple's streaming service and was probably worth the entry fee alone. It's full of edge of the seat action, tragedy, love and with a fantastic late 60s/early 70s feel; all done extremely well. If I had to recommend one TV show from this entire list it would be this one.

***

I mentioned Dr Sleep earlier. We watched the film the other night and it was 3 hours long. The first 2½ hours follows the book extremely well, but then becomes a sequel to Kubrick's The Shining, which the book really avoided. The great ending in the book was replaced by a sorry homage to a film I've never liked and ended up being truly disappointing as a result.

We have watched so few films this last 12 months, it's either an indictment to the lack of interesting films or we're just not seeing anything we like. My mate Andy always manages to list 50 films a year - minimum - he's seen; I think I can count on one hand the number of films I've seen that I want to remember. I don't think the medium is dead, but it's very much in a coma for me at the moment and I fail to understand why some films get so hyped up, especially when they leave me disappointed and feeling like I've just wasted valuable life time watching them.

***

Spider-Man: Far From Home... I might be done with Marvel films. Endgame was a really poor film but also a good jumping off point. I can't see what the point of Black Widow is, unless it's a gift to Scarlett Johansson for time served and the Spider-Man film simply left me with far too many questions that I get the feeling are going to be breezed over. Mysterio was a lame villain and I'm fed up to the back teeth with Spider-Man. I feel about as much of an interest in him as I do Batman and anyone who knows me will know I can't stand Batman and haven't really watched any since the first Bale film.

Which brings me nicely to Joker. Joachim was okay; better than the dead Aussie channeling Jeff Goldblum's Seth Brundle or that singist twat in Suicide Squad, but apart from a few oblique references to Batman it was just a film about mental health and right wing America. Not a nice film; maybe a necessary one. I wouldn't have minded not seeing it at all. At least it wasn't a multiplex cinematic blockbuster with more special effects than you can shake a stick at.

That's me done. If I missed anything it couldn't have made much of a mark on me.