Plus corridors, corridors, corridors.

TV Earlier this evening, at about tea time, I visited our usual Fish and a Chip emporium. After ordering, I nipped out to the pillar box to post a dvd back to Lovefilm (Maaasshhhette!) and when I returned I leaned against the counter and must have looked a bit bedraggled. I’ve been growing my hair long again and it hasn’t quite reached the stage of sitting properly so the fringe sometimes falls forward across my face. The lady behind the counter asked what was wrong, and smelling the salt and vinegar and curry sauce in the air, I simply said “I’m just hungry.” I may have sounded like The Wire.

The lady stepped forward, pulled out of the foil trays in which their pies are usually served in, steps over to the chip warmer and shovels some into the tray. I’m embarrassed of course and tell she doesn’t have to, but all she says asks is “Salt and vinegar?” I reply in the affirmative, politely, and after shaking and spraying it with condiments, places the tray at my eye level, finally reaching for and skewering a small plastic fork vertically into the top. I thank her again and then begin munching and as is always the case with chips from this chip emporium they’re gorgeous.

Right now, that’s exactly the experience of watching Doctor Who each Saturday night with Moffat et al as the woman in the Chip shop, offering before us an always unexpected special treat. Never mind last week’s astonishing episode, here’s another one. By turns funny, creepy and exciting, Toby Whithouse’s The God Complex is the final instalment of what we can now see as a trilogy of surrealist fantasies of the kind which you can’t imagine any other broadcaster offering up on a Saturday night in this timeslot. #ilovethebbc

As with both of the previous episodes, it's possible to list the story’s influences. Whithouse himself has presented a hotel filled with nightmares in his own Being Human and having those nightmares feeding back into the consciousness is almost a running joke on Buffy The Vampire Slayer (like everything else). As was unexpectedly noted in closing dialogue of explanation they’re chased by Nimon redux (squee), sapping of belief was almost the reverse of the main central chapter in the “Repelling the curse of Fenric for Dummies” and the effects of the bliss pure Star Trek V.

Plus corridors, corridors, corridors. Shifting corridors.  And stairs.  Though not to the point of recursive occlusion. Whithouse is also tapping into our own fears of disorientation, of not being able to control our space or at least the spaces we’re existing in. Anyone who’s experienced Liverpool’s unending road improvement schedule with its ever changing traffic management can seriously relate. The hotel is clearly supposed to evoke the film version of The Shining, especially when said bliss envelops the victims and they find themselves in the spiral of repetition.

Whithouse’s script respects those sources but makes some significant choices which break away from potential cliché. For a start, the nightmares aren’t milked. They’re rarely scary in similar efforts, which is why the Elm Street film series so quickly turned to satire and King so often chooses universally creepy figures like clowns. So Whithouse largely uses them as a trigger for the horror of the “rapture”. Joe's is already in situ and the rest are barely glimpsed and deliberately chosen to only be significant to the victim and mostly stereotypical.

The master-stroke is not giving us the nightmare which most other series would be so pornographically desperate to show us they’d put it in the trailer. Quite rightly, the Doctor’s apparently unaffected by the brainwashing and opens the door just out of curiosity. The sound of the cloister bell, a sigh of resignation, then closed again. What did he see? What can scare a man who’s barbecued his own race in order to destroy something even scarier, who’s cheated death, so, so many times. My guess? Himself. But the contents of that room have to be returned to.

What does the Doctor believe in? When he’s asked directly by Ida whilst dangling in The Satan Pit he doesn’t answer the question, says that he hasn’t seen everything, that he doesn’t know, before plunging into the black. You may remember other examples. If he has any kind of faith, it’s probably in the humanoid spirit, which was what made Midnight a tragedy because he was only able to bring out the worst in those units. Perhaps the real answer is obscured like so much else by the question inherent in the title of the series.

Unless it’s faith in his subjects. In Fenric it was his companions, his list from Susan upwards warding them off. That seems simplistic, but the scene in which he shook Amy’s faith in him underscores of late the near religious fervour he can engender, never mind a lonely God, he’s David Koresh in a box, as Davros suggested his disciples willing to die for him. The intercutting between Karen and Caitlin underscores how he views Amy, that she’s still the little girl he met when he was still cooking and what we saw was her understand that was the still care.

Was it thematically critical of faith in general, that faith will get you killed if you're not careful?  Not unless you modify that to faith will get you killed if you're trapped in a mad hotel etc.   When Rita confirms to the Doctor that she's a Muslim he's genuinely excited by the prospect.  As Gridlock and Last of the Time Lords demonstrate, this is a show that positively adores faith even if its just a machine for binding people together to create hope.  Amy tells Gibbis that the Doctor will get him out alive.  Despite the alien's ambiguous morals, he does.  End of.

Perhaps the most shocking moment in the episode is the rawness of Rory's joke about wondering if when the Doctor talks to someone, he should advise the next of kin.  Perhaps an indication of the slight fracture in their relationship after The Girl Who Waited, it references back to a similar moment in Whithouse's The Vampires of Venice.  The process is to underscore Rory's disturbing lack of faith, the thing which is keeping him alive, but it tempers the resonances noted above.

If you want my real guess for how his story this season will resolve itself, never mind Miracle Day, the Doctor will somehow make the universe forget him. Moffat’s already hinted towards a shift away from his god-like status, if the Silence don’t know who he is, why would they attack him so how could he die? Unless that’s how “silence will fall”. Everyone he knows, all the lives he’s touched in his history will forget the name Doctor and he’ll be really all alone without his reputation to assist him, a stranger to River, to UNIT, to all his friends.  QED.

The script is also a textbook demonstration of how to create characters we care about and more significantly that we care about when they die (downwards glance). If Howie is bit too Whizz Kid for my tastes, Rita is beautifully realised clearly meant to evoke all of the nuWho Doctor’s previous companions with her sharp wit and willingness to speak to the Doctor as an equal. The tea references make me chuckle now that I'm researching this paragraph because Amara Karan is I think the first actor in the Whoniverse to have worked with Wes Anderson. In The Darjeeling Limited. Playing a character called Rita.

Making his third appearance in the Whoniverse, after turning up in Mark Gattis’s audio Phantasmagoria and the Doctor Who Night skits also with Mark Gattis is David Walliams, almost unrecognisable as Mark Gattis, sorry Gibbis, making the most of a character which could just as well have been created by Douglas Adams. An alien who wants to be oppressed is just the sort of twisted logic he would have loved (see the Dish of the Day) my favourite line being the row of trees being put in so that the invading army can keep in the shade as they’re marching to the capital.

And again, another beautifully directed episode. Nick Hurran’s had an interesting career. According to the imdb, his first work was on Telly Addicts, before moving into sitcom with a dozen episodes of Never The Twain, then Big Break, Boon before oscillating between tv drama and film, the auteur behind some of my guilty pleasures like Virtual Sexuality. He was last on The Prisoner mini-series and now here he is creating visually stunning Doctor Who that as it transpires was the source for much of the preview trailer for this half of the series.

The most striking element is that he and the DP aren’t afraid to rest on close-ups. That was a feature last week too, even in action sequences we’re right up in actor’s faces, risking a lack of narrative clarity in favour of seeking a character's thought processes. The shots of the Doctor in particular seem like some of the closest, his strange congregation of features both enigmatic and reassuring, demonstrating how carefully thought through Matt’s performance actually is, now and then revealing the flashes of fear which provide the Time Lord’s motivation.

But as the night continues and the episode recedes into my memory (until the blu-ray release) we can’t complete our acquaintance without reference to the conclusion. Imagine for a moment if this was Amy and Rory’s final moment in the series. External forces like interviewers with microphones at conventions and twitter chatter have put paid to that, but how beautiful would it be if, just once, the Doctor chose to leave his companions behind. Not out of failure, not like Adam.  Or obligation like Sarah Jane.  But because he knows that eventually something will happen to them and he can’t stand by and let it.

To an extent it is an empty gesture because we know Amy and Rory will be back, they’re just taking a week off because of the Cardiff double banking quandary. Plus the Doctor’s faced worse things than the hotel of doom with its horny Minatour and not thought it prudent to drop his plus ones and twos off just in case, y’know. However well written and acted this scene, this can’t be the end for them unless the referencing of the 60s episode drifts backwards from The Mind Robber to Dodo’s exit in The War Machines.

The ambiguity is what’s compelling here. The words not spoken. Like the best drama, we’re asked to fill in the gaps. He knows now that he’ll be travelling to his death and somehow that these versions of his friends won’t be there. Amy understands that she’s already met this future Doctor; she knows that at some point he’s going to have some wild adventures with her daughter, perhaps with everyone finally on the same page. Worse episodes, worse series would have barrelled towards melodrama. But he doesn’t mention it to her, she to him or indeed she to Rory.

Now we’re in the end game, a cyber-Cordon episode representing part of the two hundred years traffic, the old creature trapped in the maze of the universe and time, with a thousand pieces of spin-off fiction to fill in the rest of the gaps. Then presumably a return to the beach in Utah and the final showdown with the Silence. Treat, after treat, after treat. Generally unexpected, always welcome and in a week when another corner of the Whoniverse made some us feel very tired and a bit tetchy, a reminder that there is still a reason to keep the faith and praise him like we should.

Doing Shakespeare by Simon Palfrey.

Above my desk is a postcard which reads: “A library may be very large; but if it is in disorder, it is not so useful as one that is small but well arranged.” It’s from Schopenhauer in an essay on thinking for onesself. He continues: “In the same way, a man may have a great mass of knowledge, but if he has not worked it up by thinking it over for himself, it has much less value than a far smaller amount which he has thoroughly pondered.” The Eggheads might have a thing or two to say in contradiction to that, but it’s quite possible to think of Shakespeare’s writing in those terms.

As well as a collection of forty-something dramas, these are also texts filled with poetry and a depth of meaning few brains can totally comprehend. The work of critics and historians mirrors that of archivists and librarians attempting to apply some order to the chaos through interpretation. Like the man in the second quote most of them can only become experts in one small part, but collectively they have managed to create a certain agreement as to how the texts were assembled, from word to word, verse to verse, character to character, story to story. Which makes Simon Palfrey’s Doing Shakespeare, the literary criticism equivalent of a classification system.

Generally ignoring an appreciation of the plays in performance, Palfrey seeks to strip the text down to its essentials and confront, oscillating between simple explanations and deep investigation, the various elements of Shakespeare’s writing, answering a series of why questions. Why metaphors? Why hendiadys? Repetition? “High style”? Rhyme? Prose? Puns? Characters? Soliloquies? This the academic equivalent of Arden’s other far lighter Miscellany with far less interest in trivia and focusing on the construction of the writing, grasping towards the reason why the plays went from the playhouse to the printed book.

As Palfrey explains in his introduction, the book's structure demands a reader dips in and out, reads the chapters in any order. Doing Shakespeare can’t be usefully ploughed through from cover to cover. Each chapter is set out in a very particular way, with a basic introduction to the topic, an explanation, then contextual discussion, a dense ransacking of often just a few words, revealed to be packed with meaning. Through this method, the author hopes that we’ll then be able to look at similar usages elsewhere in the canon and have a greater understanding of what Shakespeare is trying to achieve.

Of the chapters I have had a chance to dip into, the overall message is that there are few words or speeches in Shakespeare that haven’t been carefully thought through and which don’t have some implication for our understand of not just the story but the speaker. Even during his lifetime, Shakespeare was criticised for overwriting, in some cases offering pages of lines when a few world communicate the same information. What Palfrey demonstrates is if a character like Canterbury in Henry V does offer what looks like great oratory over a relatively small matter, it’s Shakespeare very specifically giving that character that mode of speech.

If you’re prepared to attack it with a fresh brain, the book can be highly rewarding. Palfrey dedicates four pages to Macbeth’s oft quoted and usually in the wrong context “If it were done, when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well / It were done quickly.” As he indicates there are two ways to interpret the central clause. This could be Macbeth stuttering over his words, replacing the inherent element of doubt within “if” with “when”. But this could also be Macbeth simply repeating the same phrase for emphasis. Indeed the phrase is pregnant with the predestination at the centre of the play, that when Macbeth meets the witches nothing he could do would change matters. He is a broken human the instant they hail him.

As you would expect, Hamlet is covered in some detail, the best section considering Ophelia’s sexuality. As Jonathan Bate describes in The Genius of Shakespeare, the genius of Shakespeare is the apparently deliberate ambiguity within the text and characters but within very specific options. In this case, have they or haven’t they? This is one of the few occasions when Palfrey holds his hands up and suggests that it is something which can’t be developed from the text, that the answer hovers somewhere between the page, interpretation and performance. Even in a library, it’s impossible to satisfactorily classify every book. All the cataloguer can do is make an educated guess.

T’Sar Wars, the opening chapter of Paul Magrs’s new fourth Doctor opus Serpent’s Crest

Books Something I’ve always loved about Doctor Who is its capacity to make me chuckle about the tiniest of things. Listening to T’Sar Wars, the opening chapter of Paul Magrs’s new fourth Doctor opus Serpent Crest, that chuckle happened at about the thirtieth minute. After being grabbed from Nest Cottage in the company of Mrs Wibbsey by servo robots and deposited in the far future, the Doctor finds himself mistaken for Father Gregory, an old ally of their hosts the Tsar and Tarina of the Robotov Empire. If the cover is anything to go by (a pastiche of this old Geoff Love vinyl), we know that the real man is soon to appear and Tom Baker is once again given the opportunity to play a double but thankfully without the need to wear the comedy beard.

So we’re primed for the moment when Gregory appears and we hear what Tom’s done about the accent. This isn’t the first time he’s been called upon to utilise a Russian lilt – the character is a riff on his Rasputin in Nicholas and Alexandra after all. But there’s something quite extraordinary about hearing one of the most recognisable voices in British acting relishing the opportunity to extend his consonants even further and play a character who’s even more bonkers than his signature role, which based on the interpretation that’s appeared in the previous two AudioGo series, is really saying something. Like I said, I chucked. Then I realised quite how much menace was implicit behind the performance.

The first of these adventures to dispense entirely with narration, T’Sar Wars is thick with Hinchcliffian atmosphere with its enmeshing of historical drama with futuristic tropes, though to say much more would spoil some of the play’s best surprises. I’m probably safe in mentioning that amid the action and adventure is a useful discussion about the nature of humanity with a nice inference that it’s not what a person is made of but their attitude which makes them worthy of the Doctor’s heroism. Magrs has investigated similar themes before, not least in the heartbreaking The Zygon Who Fell To Earth, although it’s worth underscoring that T’Sar Wars is very much a romp rather than an emotional rollercoaster.

As the Doctor, Baker is the slightly more understated, brooding sometimes terse figure of that period, only now and then breaking out his teeth and curls when he’s trying to bluff his way through the situation. This is presumably to contrast with his Gregory persona, but there’s less of a sense of the dialogue being “read” as was the case early on and worried fans when that first little clip from The Stuff of Nightmares was released. There’s less of a sense of Tom just playing Tom, that he’s remembered who the character is and that bodes well for the Big Finish releases (for which this has the spirit of coming attractions) as well as the rest of this series.

The main link to the whimsy of those first two series is Susan Jameson as Mrs Wibbsey, his landlady and still the most eccentric of choices for a companion. She still retains that element of dottiness, but removed from the influence of the Hornets (finally) she’s slightly less of a Mrs Hudson figure and their good-natured bickering isn’t too far from the relationship he had with Sarah Jane, though with slightly less inquisitiveness and Wibbs also has an ability, similar to Donna Noble, for saying the wrong thing at the right time for plot. Nothing wrong with that if you’re trying to drive an hour’s worth of drama forward and there’s a reality to Jameson’s performance which is rare in Doctor Who in any medium.

Although, of course, Tom could play all of the parts himself, T’Sar Wars has attracted a good cast, not least the Valeyard himself, Michael Jayston as the Tsar (himself) who’s mainly called upon to act suspicious which he does very well indeed. Suzy Aitchison also catches the tone of a Tsarina steeped in secrets. It goes without saying (though I’m saying it anyway) that the story could do with being the length of the old stories simply so we can hear them doing more acting. Which is about the only criticism of Magrs script – it’s not long enough. With this many ideas it would have made a perfect six parter in the old days though given this is another series of five linked stories, perhaps this won’t be the last we’ve heard from any of them.

Doctor Who: Serpent Crest - Tsar Wars by Paul Magrs is out now from AudioGo. Review copy supplied.

the cadences are the same.

TV A-list Doctor Who fan Ian Levine has created a version of lost Douglas Adams story Shada, filling in the gaps left in the recording (which was finished due to industrial action) with animation, voiced by Lalla Ward and various mimics. Starburst Magazine website offers a review:

"First, I must state that the timbre of Paul Jones’ voice is different to that of Tom Baker’s, and so there’s never any question of the fact that you’re listening to a different man. Having said that, there were occasions, particularly towards the end of the story (during sequences in which the ‘original Tom’ hadn’t been on screen for a fair amount of time), when it was very easy to forget that you weren’t listening to (or watching, even) the authentic fourth Doctor after all. The timbre of the voice might be different, but the cadences are the same. There are moments that are scarily familiar, even. The performance is set to fourth Doctor ‘maxed up’ a little, but if anything, that’s probably because attempting a subtle Tom Baker would have been incredibly difficult, and as the story progresses, Jones is comfortable enough to tone it down."

2Entertain apparently have their own idea on how to prepare the story for dvd release, but if they fall through this sounds like it could be a useful back-up [via].

Anthony Coburn's legacy.

TV Regular readers will know that I tend to be quite circumspect when it comes to posting photographs of myself on this blog. I’m not the most photogenic of people and really I wouldn’t want to inflict my mug on you unless it’s really necessary to the narrative. But after watching the final episode of Torchwood’s Miracle Day and inspired by the previous post about the review process at Zzap! 64, I realised that, since my write-up of episode eight probably textually captures my enmity for the series, a partial visual record of my reaction would be required for week ten.



I only had a shave yesterday. Now look at it. God, I look old. A programme about people who can’t die has physically aged me. Ten weeks ago I looked at least ten years younger. Such narcissism only goes to show that I’m pretty well over this. As a wise man once said, “I went in with low-expectations, and they were met”. If at any other time a writing credit had said “Russell T Davies and Jane Espenson” I’d think a miracle really had happened. But reputationally that’s really rather gone to seed.  Rather like my hairline.

The process of watching this series of Torchwood has been rather like meeting an old classmate on Facebook, rekindling that acquaintance even though you weren't really friends at school apart from one amazing week, but enjoying the glimpses of nostalgia for a more innocent time.  At a certain point you realise that you're still not friends, that it’ll always be a little bit rubbish but since you also still fancy their sibling, who’s amazing and far cleverer than this bozo ever will be, you can’t help hanging around.

Because really if this hadn’t been Doctor Who related, I would have left weeks ago. Some have. Proper fans I know bailed just after Rendition. The BBC’s been brave in sticking with it, despite the fact the critical reactions been even worse than the last like for like Outcasts and the ratings just as much of disaster. If this hadn’t been a Who spin-off, would it have been shunted to the late night Sunday as well perhaps with double episodes so that it ran out quicker? Imagine the headlines. Instead, there it’s sat on Thursday night sapping our goodwill.

What do you want me to say that I haven’t said already in these past nine weeks? The Blood Line only confirmed that there was barely enough story in Miracle Day to fill two cds of a Big Finish audio, with a resolution which would have been thrown out if it had been proposed for an 80s 6th Doctor story featuring characters with ultimately less depth and purpose than a citizen of Terry Nation’s Dalek Annual. They could have put last week’s “Two months later” caption up after any one of the previous episodes and with some token rewriting, absolutely nothing would have been lost.

It's usually at this point in a Who review that I'd investigate the story seeking other resonances.  Well here's one.  We've seen The Doctor Dances already.  We've seen a big dumb object rewriting the dna of the human race to be kind only to be thwarted at the end by the main character's constitutional make-up.  We've seen morphic fields in action too in The End of Time.  Putting the two together does not an exciting new story make.  Even the irony that just this once everyone dies, doesn't work, because they always do.  On Torchwood.  And in this episode at their hands.



Bitter? You betcha. But there’s nothing worse than something that’s predictably bad and in which you’re able to predict where that badness will be. Anyone else think Oswald Danes would be much more than a Courier New 12pt honey trap to get an actor like Bill Pullman involved so that he’ll look good in the trailers? So what if his story arc makes no sense, if he initially flirts with being vitally important but ultimately exists to provide some not needed philosophical underpinning to the finale, someone else for Gwen to Welsh at, a walking, talking red herring.

Similarly Jilly Kitzinger, who initially seemed like a most alien, most seductive character also turned out to be included simply to be a satire on what? Right wing politics? I thought their whole bag was the sanctity of life not the choosing of who should die. It’s Sarah Palin after all, who wrongly informed the American people that Obama’s health care bill included a provision for death panels. If this lady in red is a metaphor for anything, it’s what can happen when a writer isn’t sure of the message s/he’s trying to convey.  This can't be Anthony Coburn's legacy, can it?

Of course we’re not even offered a valid reason for the existence of The Blessing. We’ve barely been offered a valid reason for the existence of the rest of the series beyond some co-production money. At least Davies has the decency to reference everything that’s been commented about online in the past week in relation to the Silurians, the Rachnoss and whatever else lies beneath though it's symptomatic of this show’s parasitic existence that it can’t reach a climax without mentioning the Doctor again as if to remind us that despite other evidence it’s still supposed to be set in the same Whoniverse.

But those glimpses, oh those glimpses. The warmth between Gwen and the restaurant owner. The decency of her mother in realising it was time for her husband to die. Sergeant Andy’s kindness to a total stranger. Rhys’s tears. As has so often been the case, when Davies returns to the domestic he has the potential to break our hearts. The opening monologue he gives Gwen is one of the most emotive pieces he’s ever written though I don’t know how many of us ever do end up being spoken to as adults by our parents. No coat is ever warm enough.

Did I gasp when Esther was shot? Yes.  Mostly because of the brutality. Did I shout, “No …” many times like a demented Vader when it was revealed she’d really died at the end and that we weren’t attending Gwen’s father’s funeral? Again, yes, but for no other reason than because hers was the most expected death. Rex’s shooting was a surprise, as was his resurrection but like the whole “plan B” it quickly turned sour because it meant that there would be another series. Like these two immortals, this is a show which can’t die.

Except, and this is interesting, the British broadcast lacked the final caption that appeared on Starz (and in Australia) indicating that Jack would be back in January 2012. In fact, there was a stuttery edit at the end of the credits before the co-production monstrosity card appeared. Was that just heralding a repeat of the first few series in North America or a genuine new series over there which the BBC haven’t decided when they’re going to show here? Why do I care? Never mind Facebook, this is Brokeback Mountain. “You know friend, this is a god damn bitch of an unsatisfactory situation. ”  Yes, that’s the quote.

the magazine of my youth

Games Well, this is quite something. Archive.org have an evolving programme of digitising out of print computer magazines which includes all of those 8-bit review titles from the UK in the 80s and 90s.  Jason Scott has posted a list to his blog and just even the names bring back memories especially of the groundbreaking Newsfield titles: Crash, Games Machine, Amtix and the magazine of my youth Zzap! 64.

What made these magazines different wasn't just the humour, but that each review contained a range of opinions with small caricatures of the journo giving a thumbs up or a whithered look which, along with a percentage rating and sometimes the screenshots gave a quick indication of whether this particular film tie-in or coin-op conversion was worth the ten pounds.  Usually not.

Of course such things should be obsolete, but in these days of emulation such magazines become invaluable again as a reminder of those games forgotten or for those of us couldn't afford such massive sums from our pocket money, games that were once out of our reach.  Most would probably consider passe but as Zzap etc frequently reminded us, sometimes gameplay more than makes up for deficiencies in other areas.

Hopefully future uploads will include Acorn User, Electron User and Input.  OCR should make the process of turning those pages of machine code into working programmes far.  Hours spent typing "00 ... AE ... 8A ... 0E ... E4 ..." only to discover the checksum portion was incorrect anyway.  I have theory that the reason kids have no patience these days is because they've never had to spend ten minutes waiting for game to load from cassette.

Conching.

The Princess Royal visits Thorntons, a photo by The British Monarchy on Flickr.

Costume Drama: Fashion from 1790 to 1850, the latest exhibition at Sudley House

Fashion Forrest Gump’s mamma always said, “you can tell a lot about a person by their shoes, where the go, where they've been” but as I discovered today at Costume Drama: Fashion from 1790 to 1850, the latest exhibition at Sudley House, it also helps if you can see the cut of the rest of their jib. When I arrive, exhibition curator Pauline Rushton is giving a talk during which she notes that when a lot of these fashions were acquired in the 1950s, retaining the details of the owner wasn’t of primary concern. Now we live in times were social history is just as important as design, such lost details have gained a new importance.

But all is not lost. The one male costume in the first room, a smart suit and britches seems from an initial glance to be the attire of someone very well to do. As the curator says, the usual reaction from visitors is “Oh, Mr Darcy.” Except if you look closer, you realise that the jacket and waist coat are made from a cotton derived fabric of a kind which would never be utilised by a member of the upper classes in this configuration and which is strong enough that it can be worn in most weathers and still keep its integrity. The trousers are corduroy, again not a fabric usually associated with the landed gentry.

So it’s possible to surmise that this is a working man’s suit. Except that it’s not designed for manual labour, the owner couldn’t lift a spade with it, so it has to be for someone who manages the workers, or collects land tax. Pauline said that it’s her favourite piece in the room and by the time she’d finished it was mine too, simply because it was such an expressive example of deductive reasoning and a demonstration that even the fashions which might not be the most aesthetically pleasing at first glance, certainly in comparison to some of the frocks on display, like some people, have hidden depths.

Across its three rooms, Costume Drama can’t and doesn’t seek to offer a complete picture of fashions in this period. As the title suggests, this is an opportunity for fans of Austen and her many adaptations to see the real deal up close, and gain some measure in seeing the accuracy with which the BBC costume department et al have created the period settings across these years. All of the dresses look like they could have the beating heart of Jennifer Ehle, Kate Winslet or Ruth Wilson beneath them but unlike some modern fashions still work as beautiful display objects in and of themselves.

The vibrant blue brocade day dress pictured above is probably my favourite simply because the colour is such a statement much needed for this frock's probably function in the early 1840s as the "going away dress" for a bride after a wedding, presumably something of a contrast from the white of the wedding dress. In this period, white was the predominant colour and seen as a sign of "purity and innocence" and most were designed to resemble to Greek marble statues which were being excavated at the time.

The most expensive dress costumes contain elaborate embroidery but it wasn’t until the advent of more complex printing processes, from hand printing to the placing of the pattern on a roll that the fabric in every day clothes became more complex. For a period, it was fashionable for the sleeves to have a “mutton leg” a kind of ball shaped bunching which began at the shoulder then across the years moved down the arm until the Victorian era when they were removed altogether.

Partly that was to do with fashion but mostly it was to do with a change in values. As the middle class ascended, we descended into what are now described as Victorian values, and fashions reflecting that with slimmer sleeves and the loss of low necklines. We loosened up again eventually, but clothes do still make the person.  Perhaps we'll never reach a point where they stop being about projecting a set of moral choices or the connection to a sub-culture and simply become something to keep us warm.

Until 7 May 2012.  Details here.

“one day you’ll be cool”

Film This New York Magazine profile of Zooey Deschanel brings a casting nugget about one of her earliest films:

"During Deschanel’s first year at Northwestern, she says, Sarah Polley dropped out of the role of Penny Lane in Almost Famous, and Kate Hudson took over for her, leaving an opening for Hudson’s original part, the older sister who assures the “Cameron Crowe” character that “one day you’ll be cool” as she runs away from home with her boyfriend but leaves all her records behind. The casting director remembered Deschanel from an earlier audition. “It was a divine stroke of luck,” Deschanel says, enough for her to quit school and move back to L.A. She didn’t want to find herself in the same position Emily had: having to compete with 17-year-olds at age 22."

Both Hudson and Deschanel are so perfectly cast with their era defining faces, it's impossible to imagine anyone else in either role.  It's a good interview and includes one of Zooey's mix cds towards the end, even if the topic, her new tv show, seems like a risk. 

But then there's bad blood between me and Fox.  They're always cancelling my favourite programmes.  And they're owned by Newscorp.  But since I bought the Star Wars blu-rays this week, I think the boycott ship's rather sailed.

Artifacts: The Beautiful South

Music It's 1996 and kids, The Beautiful South one of the biggest bands in the country, their filthy lyrics to a lyrical hum having slowly pierced the national consciousness over four albums. Their fifth, Blue Is The Colour is imminent and to accentuate their image as a working class drinksy operation, their advertising agency decide to re-brand a range of pubs throughout the country as The Beautiful South.

I'm 22 years old, something of a fan and I have the presence of mind to take some photographs:



This is, The Grapes in Mathew Street (as you can see from the windows), presumably chosen because of the existing geographic musical connection. This washed out photo doesn't really do justice to the blueness of the sign and connected stationary. The pub sign was replaced/covered with the album cover which included that child's face.



The album reached number one on 2 November that year with most of the singles charting pretty highly. The main track, Don't Marry Her had to be substantially changed for radio. The lyric "Don't marry her, fuck me" became "Don't marry her, have me" but I didn't notice until I just saw it on the primary source of all our knowledge that "sweaty bollocks" became "Sandra Bullocks".

"the BAFTAs have real kudos"

Film Stephen Fry returns to host British Academy Film Awards. Anyone who saw his documentary about depression will know how difficult a decision this must have been for him which makes me feel even guiltier to be pleased that he's back:

"I had a marvellous time presenting the Film Awards for the first six years of the century. Hard as it may be for some characteristically sceptical Britons to believe, the BAFTAs have real kudos, reputation and cachet all over the world of film-making and I, old as I am, never cease to be shamelessly glamorised by the sight of so many legendary names who come every year as nominees and presenters."

I wonder what really led him back.

"the book itself was arrested"

Radio Life and Fate is BBC Radio 4's new drama experiment spread across all of the drama slots which aren't The Archers next week, and unexpectedly they're releasing the whole thing as a podcast to make it easier to keep up with. Subscription details are here. Synopsis:

"Kenneth Branagh and David Tennant star in an eight-hour dramatisation of Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman. Thirteen episodes will be broadcast from 18 to 25 September on Radio 4. This epic masterpiece, centred around the bloody battle of Stalingrad, charts the fate of both a nation and a family in the turmoil of war. Completed in 1960, the novel was deemed so dangerous by the KGB that the book itself was arrested."

The wikipedia has this useful history of the manuscript:

"Life and Fate, the sequel to For a Just Cause that completely overshadows its predecessor,[3] was written in the aftermath of Stalin’s death. Grossman submitted it around October 1960 for potential publication to the Znamya magazine. At this point, the KGB raided his apartment. The manuscripts, carbon copies and notebooks, as well as the typists' copies and even the typewriter ribbons were seized.

"On July 23, 1962, the Politburo ideology chief Mikhail Suslov told the author that, if published, his book could inflict even greater harm to the Soviet Union than Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. Suslov told Grossman that his novel could not be published for two or three hundred years.  Suslov's comment reveals both the presumption of the censor and recognition of the work's lasting literary value. Grossman tried to appeal against this verdict to Khrushchev personally."

Finally, this week's Start The Week offered a background discussion and that's also downloadable here. I think you can tell I'm excited.

Meticulous detail?

About From SFX Magazine blog's Spurious Awards Of The Week column:



Some notes:

(a) A? Me only.

(b) Spent ages? A couple of hours at most. Which I suppose could look like ages from a certain point of view. Especially if you read the comments section on the original post.

(c) Meticulous detail? No. This is meticulous detail.

(d)  What's in that paragraph entirely runs counter to the content of the post which seems to have been swallowed up by implications of the title.  Which goes to demonstrate how important it is to choose the right title because that's what everyone will fixate on.

(d)  Well, hum.

a word repeated over and over

That Day I originally posted the following six months after 9/11 and even after another nine and a half years, I'm not sure I could capture with any greater clarity how I felt (a word repeated over and over) on the day and since.

It's honest if self-indulgent but anything else I'd attempt to write now would just increase the noise which surrounds such days. 

Some of the sentiments have changed, I'm older.  But I still mean the final words.

At this point I was still at the Royal Bank of Scotland credit card customer contact centre in Manchester, still commuting to the other city for work each day.

Stuart Ian Burns is a twenty-seven year old call centre advisor living in Liverpool, England.

September 11th was the first day off sick I'd had in months, getting over a cold. I'd spent the morning in bed watching the video of 'Bullett' and had moved to the couch for 'Ever After' which I turned off for a bathroom break as the second plane hit the building. I remember swearing loudly and like everyone else who saw it I suppose just kept watching as the footage was played over and over.

I was divorced from what was happening. I wasn't really thinking about the human cost -- all I kept thinking and saying was that the buildings couldn't continue to stand. I suppose the part of me which cared was shut off somehow, like it didn't want to think about the people inside, what was happening in the building. But I clung onto the speculation. 5000 dead. 6000 dead. 7000 dead.

It was only the next day, on my train into work as I sat reading my newspaper, the tableau photography of the site of the disaster that it began to sink in. As the train passed through Warrington Central I began to weep. I began to think of the people, how I would have felt if I'd been them.

I worry about the future a lot, how I'll feel when the people I know are no longer there, and these thoughts overwhelmed me.

These people I need to talk to sometimes when it hurts. What happens when they are gone. And self-indulgently I suppose I thought about how I had reacted whilst it was happening.

Why was I crying now, the next day? For the first time in a long while I felt like an ugly person.

So, even though I wasn't there, I was so far away from what happened I felt the pain.

Like everyone I just felt numb, unable to talk about much else. I'd see people I hadn't seen for a while and I'd still feel the need to talk about it even though they hadn't brought it up.

Where where you when? What happened? How did you feel? And I knew it brought down the conversation and that it ruined the night (or day) but it felt like it had to be talked about.

Have I changed? I think so. I saw the end of 'Ever After'.

I'm more tollerant with people than before, expecially strangers. But I was always a reasonably calm person before -- I already felt the urge to see beauty in everything. I think the most significant thing is how I am with people in general. I try and make the most of the time I spend with them, and feel bad when I don't spend as many moments as I could. I get annoyed with others who I know should and could be more giving, but their personal survival instinct stops them.

And there is one other thing. Before I never said goodbye to people. I would be acquanted with someone and I knew I might never see them again when they left the country or left my company. And I would always say 'until next time' or 'I'll see you soon...' Now I just say two words, but they are always heartfelt, and I always mean them, even if they seem a bit false sometimes.

Take care.

[previously posted in this thread at Metafilter; here is the article of inspiration]

a warm glow on a cold September Saturday night

TV One of the problems with the BBC’s new policy of seemingly sending Doctor Who preview discs (or passwords) out to anyone with a keyboard is that those of us who haven’t had the giant golden finger of their publicity department pointed at our letterbox (email in-box) have to endure a week of chatter across blogs and the social networks related to an episode before its been broadcast, never mind the Pick of the Day paragraphs which appear in newspapers. The buzz ahead of Tom MacRae’s The Girl Who Waited across twitter was strong bordering on ecstatic and this morning The Guardian called it “world class television” and “outstanding”.

That shouldn’t be seen as a burst of jealousy from this keyboard. I like watching it with everyone else, well half of everyone else, when it's broadcast on a Saturday night. It gives me something to look forward to in a world were there are increasingly fewer things to look forward to. But the knock on effect of the chosen ones chattering is that it can, if they’re not too careful create expectations of what’s about to appear, and in the case of this week’s episode, expectations so high that the episode that followed could never quite fulfil them. If someone else had implied that it the new Blink, I would have unfollowed them with extreme prejudice.

Luckily, and I’m going to savour these paragraphs because it’s not often I’ve been able to write this lately, The Girl Who Waited lived up to the hype. More than lived up to it. As with Blink, it’ll take some thought, a few polls and perhaps a Hugo before it can be heralded in as one of the great classics of the series, but sitting here with a warm glow on a cold September Saturday night, I’ve been reminded of why I love this franchise, why along with Shakespeare and films it’s the closest thing I have to a religion, and how as ever it doesn’t matter how many Daleks you have in your season finale, it’s the smaller stories about human choices that are the best.

For much of its run, apart from the early dalliances with pure historicals, it's been generally agreed that Doctor Who has two plots, alien invasions and bases under siege and sometimes at the same time. But really, there’s always been the third thread of time paradoxes. They appeared as early as The Space Museum, but because every other episode of The Space Museum was rubbish (no matter the political thematic aspirations of the writers) it went unacknowledged for years. But there were others, notably Mawdryn Undead (with which this also has superficial similarities) but only recently has the tv version really begun experimenting with the concept, and in nuWho it’s become, as Moffat said recently, an extra character.

The central premise of two different time streams touching has been done a few times in the past few years then, most recently in Time/Space, the Children in Need special, in which like The Girl Who Waited, there were two Amys and in that case two Rory’s chatting, passing information along. Then there’s the Doctor himself in The Big Bang and well, I’m just saying everything which went through your head tonight. Two Amys? We’ve already had two Doctors this series, that sort of thing. It’s Kazran in A Christmas Carol again isn’t it? The Girl in the Fireplace with a giant spyglass replacing the many mirrors and curtains and the fireplace. Well, yes, but like alien invasions and bases under siege the most important thing is what you do with it.

If The Girl Who Waited transcended its premise, became a truly great episode of Doctor Who, it’s primarily because of two things. Firstly, like I said, the simplicity. Shot in just a few functional but tasteful white box Evan Hercules inspired sets, Wales Millenium Centre and someone’s beautiful garden this is a story unencumbered by an over-elaborate setting, and definite contrast to MacRae's previous entry, the reintroduction of the Cybermen from series two. The scenario, a kind of nursing home for people with only a day to live, with medical robots that can kill again has all of the elements of complexity but in reality are just there to serve the dilemma at the heart of the story. Even the information computer was just a beam of light and Imelda Staunton’s voice.

That meant that for once in this era, plot could take a back seat to character and allow Smith, Darvill and especially Gillan, not just to act, but offer some of their best ever performances (quite something for a group which have already been consistently excellent). Karen in particular has always had something of a question mark over her for some people, partly because neither she or Amy have been as instantly likeable as Billie or Rose. I’ve never had that problem, I’ve always adored both of them but I have at least been able to understand why her slightly nervy approach could irritate the less tolerant viewers, especially during Confidential. Who was Karen Gillan and as Amy Pond was she just playing a version of herself?

If The Girl Who Waited proved anything, it’s that Karen is a proper actress, that Amy as a role has been carefully thought through and when presented with the challenge of playing an older, wiser, kick-ass version, the actress is entirely capable of tweaking her performance to suit. Aided by sympathetic make-up, she is able to bring to the fore the weariness of a person who’s not seen a living soul for decades and suddenly presented with what might as well be a hallucination, on the other side of the moment in the TARDIS corridors during The Doctor’s Wife when she sees an older version of her husband. Like Rory, she’s grown to hate the man who’d put her in that position, in this case the Doctor, and to some degree become him.

Which as Rory says in the climactic scene was what the episode was about, putting the Ponds in the position of becoming the Doctor, she to survive, he to face up to the moral dilemma the Time Lord has to face whenever he opens that door. Who to save? Sometimes its easy, largely because the Whoniverse is filled with enough morally ambiguous potential Darwin Award nominees so all he has to do is hang around for a few episodes and see who’s left standing. But sometimes he finds people he can genuinely care about and then it’s all about who to leave behind, who to sacrifice and who’ll be willing to sacrifice themselves for him. Cue the Davros montage from Journey’s End.

This is one of those occasions when it looks as though the friendship between the Doctor and Rory is finally going to fracture or at least return to the cynicism in evidence during Vampires in Venice. Rule One. The Doctor lies, and he does again, putting Rory in the very worst decision, the anxiety lacerating Darvill’s face. Those of us lapsed-Trekkers would have recognised is a similar impasse in the Deep Space 9 episode Children of Time, in which the crew had to decide whether to crash and allow the descendents they’d met to live or fly away and save themselves from years of suffering building a colony.

Like them, having made the difficult choice, arguably Rory is saved from himself by the older Amy’s sacrifice. The braver move for the series would perhaps have been to continued with the older Amy and damn the merchandising implications, but what sells this solution is the emotional poetry of the dialogue (“Tell Amy, your Amy, I’m giving her the days, the days with you, the days to come, the days I can’t have…”), Arthur’s tears and Nick Hurran's direction which brought the two of them together in the frame despite the obvious gap between shooting the exterior and interior of the TARDIS, confirming again the benefits of making those doors a very real threshold.

Was this as The Guardian Guide’s preview suggests “to all intents and purposes a perfect Doctor Who” episode? Like I said, it is early hours and we did witness the destruction of what has to be a copy of the Mona Lisa since it looked far more convincing than the version in my favourite Doctor Who story and this admittedly had no Louis Kearns scene. But a few minutes ago, I went back in to find and transcribe the quote in the previous paragraph and found myself being captivated again and crying, just as I did the first time. If our expectations of what constitutes perfection have changed, that’s as close as we’ll ever get.  Amazing.

'Bad Night' & 'Good Night'

TV Doctor Who Online has news of the complete series six boxset coming this November, which includes ...

"Meanwhile in the Tardis feature – Five newly filmed scenes for episodes 1, 3, 7, 8 & 13, telling what happens between the episodes. (Two of which, 'Bad Night' & 'Good Night' are directed by Richard Senior, as confirmed on his agencies website).  Also included are the 'Space' & 'Time' mini episodes which formed part of Comic Relief 2011."

Five new chunks of people talking in the TARDIS which are always my favourite bits. Assuming they happen after the actual episodes, perhaps 3 will explain what happened with the disappearing pirate in the middle of the Curse of the Black Spot. He was there at the end. How did he get there?

puncturing the god-like qualities

Comics Or rather some news from the comics coal face.

Wandering through my local comics emporium earlier checking if the first of the new series of Buffy is out (next week), I just randomly, snearily asked the comics man if the new DC Comics were selling, still under the impression it was the worst move the company could have made in this financial environment and another blip in the dwindling fortunes of the big two.

Much to my surprised, he grinned. "Well ..." he said and then entered one of the bubbliest, most ebullient monologues about the power of comics I've ever heard.

He reminded me that the shop usually receives its deliveries on a Wednesday and that within a day and half they'd sold almost all the stock. He showed me the racks which were filled with small fliers apologising for various titles being sold out.

Even titles which under the old regime weren't the most popular in the range, Animal Man or Swamp Thing had flown off the shelves and that within the space of a few weeks Marvel have started to look very old fashioned.

The reason he gave, and I'd be interested to hear if anyone agrees, is that its because the quality of the books has been so high. He said it was as though the various creative teams have been told to let rip and just do what they want without many restrictions.

The writing was sharp, the art spectacular (I'm paraphrasing that bit) (well OK I'm paraphrasing all of this but the sense is right) and that each title has a substance to it which wasn't previously there.

It feels like there's four issues worth of narrative per book. And complex, underscoring the fallibility of superheroes, puncturing the god-like qualities which made them seem rather stale before.

Whilst we stood chatting two customers passed through enquiring about DC Comics. One had become tired with the dozens of Wolverine titles and wanted to get in on the new Batman titles from the first issue and the other took the handy order card with all fifty-two titles listed and said he'd be back.

They're both representative of the kinds of customer they've been getting through this week, people who they'd never visited the shop before and who's interested had been tweaked by the publicity and liked the idea of getting in on this new universe from the start.

In other words, from this anecdotal evidence, the biggest gamble in DC Comics history has paid off.

Well, good.

Not really reading anything without Joss Whedon's name on it, I was never really in a position to properly criticise the decision other than that they'd be throwing out all of those decades of continuous mythology, a multi-faceted monument to narrative for the sake of selling some comic books.

My first reaction had been utter horror and that it was the comics equivalent of demolishing an Georgian building in order to build a mock-Georgian building with new plumbing. It might have better running water, but what good was that with all the history that had been lost?

But amazingly, from this store visit and watching the blogs, DC have managed to do two things:

(a) Not cheese off old fans by making the new material compelling enough that they can adjust and even be curious about what's happened to their favourite characters and the changed status quo.

(b) Simplify the whole process of buying their titles to such an extent that people who haven't bought comics in years are actively seeking them out.

One of the reasons I haven't gone past Whedon is because these comics sections are intimidating. With so many titles and so many books about the same character, it's difficult to know where to begin, and there are few jumping on points.

I'm DC's perfect audience. Multiple jumping on points and a whole new universe to watch develop.

And I'm tempted. I can't quite afford to at the moment (George Lucas has seen to that), but I'll be keeping an eye out for the inevitable graphic novels.

The question is, how can Marvel compete?

Our guess in the shop today was that they'd watch the DC situation for a bit to see if it can sustain the sales beyond the initial curiosity stage and if creativity can be maintained -- not to mention the publication schedule.

If they do, and if it actually hurts Marvel's sales, here's what I'd suggest:

Don't do a total reboot, run Brand New Day across the whole line essentially copying DC. Because it's been done. People will just think they're copying DC.

Plus that was the point of the Ultimates universe and that's apparently run out of steam and been rebooted itself.

But they can simplify things.

One of the problems from a customer perspective is that there are too many universes, so many in fact that it's not entirely clear which is the "main" one. The original, and which titles fit that universe.

Assuming the Ultimate universe doesn't take off and despite murdering their version of Peter Parker, it doesn't look like it has yet from what I've read, I'd simply wind it down.

Indeed, I'd wind down every universe that isn't the "main" one. I'd attempt to absorb anything that is working into the main run if possible but ultimately I'd make it so that if a newby enters the comics store and they pick up a Spiderman comic they know what they're buying.

Next, I'd reduce the number of titles a given character appears in. As I said, the main complaint from the new Batman reader was that he was tired with having to follow a half dozen titles so that he can keep track of one character knowing full well there was half a dozen more.

Be radical. Streamline. Just have Wolverine in an X-Men title and perhaps his own book. Same Spider-man and the rest. One comic to themselves and an appearance in a super-team.

Its worked (just about though its early days) for the Avengers film series. Could be replicated in the actual comics.

I happened to flick through an issue of X-Men and Ben Grimm featured and looked like a regular character. How did we get to this?

With luck readers will still want to read the same number of titles, it's just that they'll be able to read a greater variety of titles. Though I'm aware this could backfire and they'll simply buy less because they can, but these things are always risks.

And stop with the annual events. Everyone I've spoken to hates them. They feel like they're being fleeced and they disrupt the ongoing to story of their favourite characters too much.

Either way, I'm genuinely delighted that so far DC have had a resurgence. Anything which increases the audience for comics has to be good thing for the industry and culture in general.

"I realize that when I met you at the turkey curry buffet, I was unforgivably rude, and wearing a reindeer jumper."

The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall attend the launch of Wool Modern, originally uploaded by The British Monarchy.

Paul Erickson’s stock in trade

TV A crack? Another crack? Nine weeks and The Blessing is a crack? As well as quoting from The Eleventh Hour, Torchwood’s Miracle Day actually has the temerity to borrow its macguffin as well? In the admittedly apprehensive few seconds before Kitzinger was introduced to this gaping maw I did consider a few other options, an Ood brain, the meat monster from Meat, son of the Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe and as usual Davros. But somehow given the aimless wanderings in search of a plot that have exemplified the rest of the series, a crack running through the Earth is about what we should have expected rather than something as imaginative as any of those three.

John Fay’s The Gathering exemplifies the twin frustrations of the series. On the one hand the concept is sound and given room to breath is capable of producing some tense moments, in this case the capture and carting off of Gwen’s Dad, which, because it is happening to a character we’ve been with for longer than a few episodes is genuinely moving.  The inadvertent benevolent looting seems ill advised given recent events but as ever when the show returns to its geographic roots it regains a sense of unity. The retcon moment with the obligatory spy of no fixed employment opposite the house is entertaining and the sudden appearance of Danes in the domesticity of Gwen’s house holding the baby very creepy indeed (if given an explanation weaker than offered by the Master on a monthly basis).

Some of the US elements coalesce too. Alexa Havins finally looks like she understands how to underpin Esther’s inexperience. Lauren Ambrose has never been more radiant and funny and her visit to Shanghai beautifully photographed wherever it was really filmed. The scenes at the CIA, Rex’s literary investigation reminds us of the Torchwood of old and similar scenes with Owen.  They're still no substitute for the boardroom scenes and slow burn moral ambiguity from CofE, but at least we're finally seeing some justification for eavesdropping inside he walls of power.  Even the most liberal  governments of the world, when faced with catastrophe, have become faceless totalitarian regimes.

But on the other hand, we’re presented with a “two months” later caption card and the impression that if the series had been five or six episode rather than the ten required by Starz this would have been a pretty good penultimate episode. Instead we’ve had to sit through wadded episodes full of wildly irrelevant exposition, lessening its impact.  The same problems which have dogged the rest of the series still exist, and I know I’m repeating myself, again, the logic disconnects and just plain squiffy storytelling that might have been Paul Erickson’s stock in trade but you just can’t expect from what’s purporting to the adult television, blasting a hole in our sense of disbelief.

How are we meant to take the moment when Rex, having researched and found this long lost evidence, doesn't go straight down to the archive to retrieve it himself?  When he says he’s undercover but that he had to book the case in through the embassy and that they should be ok if no one checks the list and in the next scene the anonymous blonde is doing just that then phoning the Channel 4 triangle so that they tell them where the gripping action sequence in episode ten is going to happen?  We're back to wilful obliviousness and a disinterest in upturning the audience's expectations.  Unless anonymous blonde is revealed to be a double agent.  But let's face it, that's unlikely.

Similarly Rhys is now reduced to the bog-headed Welsh stereotype that the writers have previously fought against him becoming, spending much of the episode doing his best impression of Ianto’s brother-in-law until called upon to point out the bleeding obvious with a handy inflatable globe of the kind everyone has in their living room and threatening to kill Oswald, forcing the team to bring him along for no other reason than that he’ll most likely absolve his sins by throwing himself into the crack next episode. Sometimes this feels like we’re in the film Pleasantville, rolling our eyes at the antics of Rex and Rhys like they're characters in some 50s sitcom, until the television claims us for its own.

Yet, and yet, for the first time, I do want to know what happens next week. This is presumably a side effect of the fact that there is no more after next week and we’re finally being handed some kind of closure. Perhaps we’ll discover just why we’ve been watching such an oddball collection of characters and we’ll discover that the episodes with more padding around them than a print cartridge from Amazon were in fact entirely integral making the upcoming blu-ray release more enticing than it currently is. But based on previous form The Blessing will be a giant time-based reset switch the size of the Earth’s core powered by the Empress of the Racnoss' ship.  Unless, of course, it’s simply that Torchwood’s Miracle Day is finally coming to an end.

Elsewhere I've read and reviewed my second novelisation of Hamlet from Ophelia's POV of the week.