Flashpoint (Big Finish Audio Short Trips).

Audio These Short Trips and the Companion Chronicles have often wrestled with how to justify their subject being the narrator. Often the companion in question is making an audio recording or relating the tale to a listener, sometimes unseen depending on the casting budget. But on the odd occasion we're simply meant to assume either of those is the case without an in story reason. A diary is being updated or it's a lecture. That's the case with Andrew Smith's Flashpoint. No reason is given for Lucie Miller to be relating this tale which makes it all the more intimate because we feels as though it's being tailored for us. Smith offers what amounts to the companion side of an adventure with Eighth's contribution purposefully a mystery, as Lucie finds herself stranded on an inhospitable planet, protecting a youngster from gangsters who mean to capture him. Quickly events take a turn for The Snows of Terror (The Keys of Marinus episode 4 in decimal currency) but the results are far more exciting and a greater level of decency.  Towards the end there's a risky piece of character business which if it had been included in the original run of stories would certainly have had ongoing consequences.  But what really lifts the material is Sheridan's performance, and it is a performance as every beat sounds like its being spontaneously related by Lucie who turns master storyteller, spinning as much tension as possible out of the tale, her whole arsenal of emotion on display.  Wow.  Placement:  With the other Short Trips in the early seasons.

The Time War 1.

Audio Much like the Clone Wars in Star Wars, the Time War arguably works best as an abstract concept. When the nuWho Doctors list some of the incidentsx, the nightmare child and whatnot, our imaginations are sparked as to what that might mean. But inevitably human curiosity with an appetite for licensed material forces somebody to decide what a Time War might actually look like and somewhat inevitably similar to the Clone Wars, it's like any other war albeit with much larger stakes, the whole of history rather than some nation states and portions of land.

Same elements too.  Battle Tardises for Tanks.  Massive weapons designed to speed up the natural evolution of a corner of space with devastating consequences instead of H-bombs or something even worse.  Morally ambiguous decisions which cause a people to become just a shade different from their enemy with civilians caught in the crossfire.  Narratively the ability to tell war stories within the Doctor Who universe which have consequences and can't simply be forgotten once the TARDIS doors are closed.  The Doctor can't leave this mess behind.  It's his people.  However much he wants to avoid becoming entangled, it's impossible.

Up until the anniversary special, most of us guessed the Eighth Doctor had a pivotal role in ending the Time War, that the destruction of Gallifrey was once again at his hand, having already previous done something similar in the BBC Books.  RTD assumed as much and noted how unfortunate it was that having destroyed his home planet once, having worked to hard to resurrect it, he would be forced to destroy it again.  Lance Parkin's AHistory even speculated that they were the same event from a different point of view and even included the same description of the explosion from The Ancestor Cell in his Tenth Doctor novel The Eyeless.

Now we know that he's more of a conscientious objector, keeping to the fringes of events as much as possible, helping out were he can, trying not to become directly involved, ultimately having to regenerate into a figure with a more flexible moral code in order to justify taking part.  That allows for acres of flexibility, so that as we've seen in the short prose, comics and one off stories, we're able to enjoy the kinds of Doctor Who stories we're generally used to, albeit with the slightly melancholy undercurrent that we're seeing and hearing the Eighth Doctor's final battles.  Although they're unlikely to ever tie-in directly with Night of the Doctor, these are still the last of his days.

Although this boxed set was originally going to stand alone, we now know it's to be one for four in the standard formation, with annual releases, which means this story won't be finished until 2019.  I'll be in my mid-forties by the time this is over.  Big Finish are now pushing hard on these Time War releases with a Master and Gallifrey boxed sets coming soon.  Hopefully they won't all be tied together directly -- there's only so much money in the world.  Given The Doom Coalition ended on a cliffhanger, we have to assume that there'll be some other story set in that era which will run concurrently, although that hasn't been confirmed.  Yet.

Placement:  In the "behind the scenes" material, the producers suggest all of this is happening near the start of the Time War but for various reasons it feels more bedded in and even though they're also clear that it won't be tying in directly with the regeneration episode, I'm bunging it before - unless something in a later story suggests otherwise.  Once this era is really brimming with adventures, hopefully a clearer structure will reveal itself.

The Starship of Theseus

The set opens incredibly strongly with this clever evocation of what the Time War means for the fabric of reality.  McGann's in effervescent mood, with a tiggerish performance we haven't heard from him in nearly a decade, bouncing brilliantly off new companion Emma whose deliberately in the Sam, Izzy or Lucie mould.  But those listening carefully will be unnerved and after numerous shocking twists we're plunged straight into the war.  There's not a single predictable element in Dorney's script, the listener wrong footed throughout.  One for the ages, as good as the Eighth Doctor audios have ever been.

Echoes of War

A welcome addition to the I, Dalek genre of story (see also Dalek, Jubilee, Into The Dalek and Asylum of the Daleks), this asks whether an individual is inherently evil or if its their memories and experiences which cause them to be that way.  Nick Briggs relishes to chance to give his favourite monster some individuality and you genuinely care about its fate by the end.  Matt Fitton's descriptions of time shifts around his protagonists recalls Justin Richards's short story Natural Regression, as well as the imagery from George Pal's film adaptation of The Time Machine (or Besson's Lucy if you'd like a contemporary reference).  Why do I feel like I've said some of these things before?

The Conscript

From Lord High President of Gallifrey to grunt.  It's startling to find this Doctor discarded into a lowly position in contrast to how he's treated in the other boxed sets but Fitton makes full use of the opportunity to show how the Time Lord copes with trying to exist within a rules based hierarchy.  Not very well.  There are plenty of laugh out loud moments as the Doctor is forced to navigate a Full Metal Jacket scenario, recalling military anti-heroes like Hawkeye or Yossarian.  As a whole the boxed set manages to feel like a unified story with four discrete parts more successfully than some installments of either Dark Eyes or Doom Coalition.

One Life

Rather like Moffat's tv work, at just the moment when we might be expecting an epic battle, instead we're given a much smaller, more intimate story.  Not for the first time, Who recycles one of its more emotional television moments in audio form but more ambitiously than might have been possible on screen.  As with his award winning Absent Friends, Dorney transplants the realistic tone of a Radio 4 drama into a science fiction scenario, on this occasion utilising a flashback structure to increase the poignancy.  A really strong conclusion to one of the best Eighth Doctor boxed sets in years and a great continuation of this new epoch for the character.

Producing Women.

Film Film historian Kirsten Thompson reveals how by not including exactly who the producers are when awards shows list the Best Picture category, they're hiding the contribution of women within the filmmaking process:

"Another, perhaps less important reason why producers draw less attention is that because a film often has several producers. It’s more complicated to assign responsibility for who did what. Most people have a general idea of what directors do. They’re on set, they make decisions, and they supervise other artists. A female producer, like a male one, may have been included for many reasons. She might have done most of the work in assembling the main cast or crew members or she might have concentrated on gaining financial support. She might instead be termed a producer as a reward for crucial support at one juncture. We can’t know, and that perhaps makes it difficult for the public to get enthusiastic about producers. Of course, if journalists covered them more in the entertainment press, the public might gain more of a sense of what producers do."

Thompson then offers some important work by listing exactly who the women are that have been nominated in the best picture category at Oscars over the years, noting when history was made even if it wasn't recorded or highlighted at the time. Not until 1982 did a female producer receive an Academy Award nomination, which was Kathleen Kennedy.

Osiris.

Shakespeare The Guardian's obituary for actress Jane Freeman, best known as Ivy the cafe owner in Last of the Summer Wine has this rather wonderful nugget. Her path into television began when she was asked to join the Osiris players, an all woman touring theatre group:

"Travelling in two Rolls-Royces with set, costumes and lights, the company toured schools, church halls and other spaces in England, Scotland and Wales, performing a repertoire that consisted mainly of Shakespeare. Paid 10 shillings a week, plus half a crown to watch other actors at work, each member of the company was involved in the stage management of the two or three performances given on most days; those with licences drove the cars towing the caravans in which the company slept. Two or more of the minor roles could be played as one, and there was doubling: Jane’s Portia in The Merchant of Venice was also Old Gobbo and as much of Lorenzo as remained in a truncated Act Five."

Back in 2004, a play was written about the theatre group which apparently helped inspire Judi Dench into acting. The Independent published a piece about the founder in 1995. The V&A retains their archive of papers.

The World Beyond The Trees (Big Finish Short Trips Audio).

Audio Sometimes an audio book is simply lifted by a performance. Nicola Walker's level of commitment and performance makes this essential in and of itself. Often, even the first person pieces can sound like exactly what they are, someone reading from a script. But now and then, as here, we're gifted a proper character piece, properly played, with a thought process and the sense of something being told by the character, in character, the only way that character could tell it, like a Doctor Who version of a Talking Heads monologue.  Liv Chenka is writing a letter to her late father, about a mini-adventure she's experienced as 1970s London falls prey to weaponised listlessness (ahem).  Unlike some writers, Jonathan Barnes is able to completely orientate the listener in the action without having Liv describe details she wouldn't otherwise mention.  Nothing is here just for pure expositional benefit, everything has emotional intent (if you see what I mean).  The lethargic London is perfectly evoked, the sense of silence, peacefulness, but with a growing sense of dread.  Placement:  The first missing adventure set during the "Dark Eyes era" it should probably take place during Eyes of the Master, but I've put it just before.  Just in case.

A Heart on Both Sides (Big Finish Audio Short Trips)

Audio Another pre-cursor to the upcoming Time War boxed set, Nyssa's involvement is revealed in a Short Trip seemingly set between Terminus and when she arrives in the Fifth Doctor audios I haven't yet had a chance to listen to properly. She's the controller of a medical ship The Trakken, scooting about the galaxy offering help where needed. Pitching up on a neutral planet within spitting distance of Gallifrey she becomes embroiled in some local trouble involving the Time Lords' territorial claim. It's another story designed to show how a usually bureaucratic people became the race featured in The End of Time and later a source of such paranoia in Night of the Doctor.  Eighth's intervention is a welcome twist on River Song's participation with his earlier incarnations and that's all I'm going to say about that.  Rob Nisbet's script and Sarah Sutton's reading capture perfectly Nyssa's mix of magnetic intellect and frequent uncertainty.  But there is some narration-based oddness - although largely written in the first person, there are a couple of scenes from the Doctor's POV containing information his companion couldn't and shouldn't be privy to and on audio, it's not initially clear when we're shift from first to third person.  The highlight:  Nisbet employs an extrapolation I've long assumed about so-called "fixed points in time", that essentially if the Doctor knows about something in history as a fact it can't be changed.  If he's unsure, it's all up for grabs.  In this story, he consciously decides not to research a historical event so that he's then able to go back and participate.  Genius.  Placement:  I'm inclined to put this later in the Time War, so just after the Titan Comics.

"We're trying to defeat the Daleks, not start a jumble sale!"

TV Just as I was finishing off another half hearted review of a Big Finish Short Trip with a view to going to bed, the BBC do their usual and drop some big news late on a Sunday night. Companions! TX details!

Companions!

The rumours were true, Bradley Walsh is a companion, but he's not the only one. Joining his character Graham (and I know at least one person who'll be pleased with that choice) are Tosin Cole and Mandip Gill as Ryan and Yasmin. It's going to be a busy old TARDIS.

Tosin's longest stretch on television so far is as someone called Neil on Hollyoaks, but he was also in Star Wars The Force Awakens as Bastian, who flew with Red Squadron in the final battle so he can be added to the list of actors who have characters listed in the TARDIS Datacore and the Wookiepedia.

Mandip's another Hollyoaks alum who may have been contemporaneous with Tosin.  Outside of that it's mainly regional theatre in bit parts in medical dramas, which I love.   We don't know anything about her which provides a counterweight to Bradley of whom we know quite a lot. She's on Twitter, god help her.

Sharon D Clarke will also appear in a "returning role".  Does that means she's playing a character from the past or a new character who'll return now and then.  Is it the Rani?  Clarke is best known from Holby, but she appeared in a couple of episodes of Paul Abbot and Kay Mellor's Children's Ward for which Russell T Davies was also a script writer. Oh and Song for Europe in 2000 with this thematically suitable song [via]:



They placed second incidentally, losing out to Nicki French.

TX details!

Hello darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk with you again.

Amid all the excitement, we also discover that the episode count has been cut again, from 12 and a special to 10 and a special and that it's not arriving until Autumn 2018 which means that like 2015 season, it'll be at the mercy of Strictly's scheduling again as the dance competition episodes decrease in length over time.

Cue discussions about money and time.  The press release indicates: "Doctor Who is a BBC Studios production for BBC One and a BBC America co-production. BBC Worldwide are the international distributors for Doctor Who."  So the most recent funding model is still in place.

So why do less episodes?  Is it that production costs are so high in relative terms now that in order to keep making the show to a certain standard they've had to cut the number of episodes?  Some of the recent installments have seems a bit interior heavy so it's possible they're trimming the duration in order to improve whats there.

Time: having at least two of these cast members working on the show for the old production period of ten months is a stretch so could it be Jodie and especially Bradley's schedule which has led to this?

Or is it simply that Chibbers wants to turn out ten quality episodes in writing terms rather than forcing through twelve with some ropey ones in the middle as has been the case since the show came back.

Anyway, here's the full press release with the usual quotes about how happy everyone is to be there.

Squee etc.

The Young Lions (Short Trips Rarities)

Audio Another wide release for Big Finish's old subscriber exclusive, or as they're officially called "Short Trips Rarities" and we're back in the middle of the With Lucie years although tonally this could just as easily have featured any of the Doctors, especially Pertwee or Davison. That's not a criticism; with so many of Eighth's stories now tied to ferreting out some new or old bit of continuity, it's nice to have a stand alone story however slight. Soldiers at barracks in Little Morton are far healthier than they should be, especially after having been injured and since this is a Doctor Who story, there can be only one catalyst but it's up to the Doctor and Lucie to uncover which one it is.  Writer Alice Cavendar's later The Curse of the Fugue was marked by how well she captured Lucie's voice and you can see why she received that commission here.  Even with the very male Stephen Critchlow reading in, Sheridan's performance is echoed throughout although her Eighth is also brilliantly rendered, especially in a key moment of TARDIS business.  Placement: Just before The Curse of the Fugue, I suppose.

Men, again.

Film Elizabeth Wurtzel on Weinstein. Blistering:

"Men who do this sort of thing think they are just being friendly. They are just asking the girl out who — so what? — happens to work for them.

Asking again and again and again.

Cornering her.

Pushing her against the wall.

Threatening her — of course not meaning it, because that would be totally wrong.

Over and over again. But, no, not seriously, of course.

We’re all grown-ups.

But asking again and again. And again.

Until it is unbearable and someone has to leave, usually her. No: always her.

She has to go."

Miramax, of course, distributed the Wurtzel disavowed adaptation of Prozac Nation, which I can barely bring myself to watch. Maybe some day.

Although that's not mentioned, Richard Brody has piece about how Weinstein was bad for films too especially his treatment of auteurs.

Molly Ringwald also mentions the treatment a British film which she was appearing in received, in a longer column about her treatment at the hands of various men on set:

"Thankfully, I wasn’t cajoled into a taxi, nor did I have to turn down giving or getting a massage. I was lucky. Or perhaps it was because, at that moment in time, I was the one with more power. “The English Patient,” Weinstein’s first Best Picture winner, was still a few years away. The worst I had to contend with was performing new pages that Harvey had someone else write, which were not in the script; my co-star, Robert Lindsay, and I had signed off to do a film adapted and directed by one person, and then were essentially asked to turn our backs on him and film scenes that were not what we had agreed to. We hadn’t even finished filming, and the movie was already being taken away from the director."

Scene Unseen: Pizza Pizza - Ein Stück vom Himmel.

Film Mystic Pizza is one my favourite films from the 80s, the kind of diaspora based romantic drama which simply isn't being made or distributed by major studios now unless it has the words big, fat, Greek or wedding in the title. 

But for years I watched the dvd of the film entirely unaware of the secret hidden on the German audio track until I fumbled onto the wrong button on the remote one night and realised that the music underneath was completely different to what I was used to.

The mix of standards and folksy guitar music, has been replaced with a range of fairly anonymous soft rock and a new title track by Hot Chocolate.  Exactly why this is I haven't been able to uncover.  Either the songs couldn't be licensed in Germany or the local distributor decided to turn out their own soundtrack cd which would necessitate messing about the music in the film.

International versions of soundtrack cds aren't unknown.  Spider-Man 2 had numerous local versions and the English language dub of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon even has the theme song rerecorded to match.  Perhaps there are more German Hollywood releases from the 80s which have had this done to.  I'll keep an eye out.

In the mean time, let's look at the differences between the two.  I'll offer this in the form of a rough synopsis of the film, scene by scene, not too much detail.  Plus I'm focusing on the musical changes.  I'll only point out the alternative foley work if it's especially notable.

Opening Titles

English track: opens with what must be some of composer David McHugh score, a flute over guitar in a mediterranean setting the audience up for the cultural diaspora in which the film is set, across family and childhood shots of the three sisters (some more convincing than others).

German track: the soft rock has already begun across the Samuel Goldwyn logo. It's Julian Steinberg's Never Give Your Love Away.  Steinberg has had a few of his tracks uploaded to YouTube, but it's not a uncommon enough name to actually find any biographical details for him.



Frankly I have no idea what this is supposed to achieve. Whoever created this soundtrack has just thrown on some generic rock, and not very well since unlike the English track which ends just in time for the wedding march, this crashes right into it and the ensuing opera singer, who is singing in Italian here with his own voice.

Church ceremony

The opera singer and wedding march are identical. The echo on the German dub, voices and foley work are recreations.

Pizza Parlour

English track: Perry Como's Don't Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes fills the restaurant



German track: What About You by Hot Chocolate which is key enough as a track that it's mentioned on the cover of the German soundtrack album. It doesn't seem to be on YouTube, but it is on Amazon Music (incorrectly listed as "various artists"

Street

English track: While Jojo and Bill hash out their differences on the there's nothing until McHugh's guitar plays in again.

German track: Hot Chocolate can still be heard underneath right up until the end of the scene. Oh and there's a ludicrous amount of traffic which really doesn't match the kind of street they're on.

Pizza Parlour

English track: Saxophone musak

German track: Disco musak which sounds a bit like Human League. Perhaps one of the ungooglable tracks from the album?

Street to docks to babysitting job

English track: Kat's moped pulls away to some orchestral spot music

German track: Haven't a clue. Begins acapella, man singing in a Jamaican accent, something about "smells so good" and "international neighbourhood" Gives way in time for the dialogue. The song begins again while Kat rides off to her babysitting job. Although oddly the folk music and score from the English track appears briefly before being submerged in whatever this song is. The song disappears abruptly when Kat reaches the door. It's a mess.

Bar #1

English track: The English subtitle has a fit of the production notes and tells us its Steve Tyrell's Serious on the jukebox.

German track: Sideway Look's Taming The Blade. Replacing some rock music with even less appropriate rock music which apart from anything else works against the scene which looks to have been edited against the Tyrell track.



Eclectically, Sideway Look is a British indie rock band from Edinburgh, but they seem to have had their greatest following in Germany.  They don't seem to have an English Wikipedia entry but the German counterpart is fulsome.

Bar #2

English track: The subtitles helpfully tell us the next track is Is It Hot in Here by Rene Geyer with its big sax moves.

German track: Melanie's Racing Heart which is another inferior replacement. No one in the Mystic's bar would put this on the jukebox.  Ruby Tuesday or Beautiful People, perhaps but not this.



Plus the scene is edited and punctuates Geyer's lyrics as Daisy draws Charlie into her pool playing.

Restoration house

English track: Spot music, synthesiser piano over Kat falling for her employer.

German track: The same. The original soundtrack emerges for the first time. I'm shook.

Dockside walk

English track: Piano theme

German track: The same. Again. So whoever prepared this did have access to the original audio (I was wondering) but has chosen not to use it.

Daisey's date

English track: Big sax across synthesiser rhythms.

German track: What About You by Hot Chocolate reprises (they're really getting their money's worth) and it's not entirely incongruous, rhythmically the two are quite similar, although because it's been dropped in it clashes into McHugh's score once they're in the restaurant.

Babysitting

No change between the two tracks. Same classical music.

There's then a long stretch without music until Kat's back in work.

Restaurant

English track: Louis Prima's Ain't Got Nobody which is peerless.



German track: Lian Ross's Feel So Good which is just sad and again doesn't fit the scene at all. Sub-S/A/W noodling.



Lian Ross looks to have had a long career across Europe.  Feels so Good was released as a single in 1989.

Daisy's date

English track: Jazz piano.

German track: Something which sounds like Hans Zimmer circa Green Card or some kind of erotic thriller. Which then has to fade out abruptly in time for the bed scene.

Kat and the telescope

English track: String quartet

German track: Spanish guitar which sounds plausibly like it could be on the English track apart from being an utter cliche in relation to this scene.

No music for the ensuing JoJo and Bill falling out scenes then...

Bar

English track: Something rock which doesn't seem to be listed on the soundtrack.

German track: Your Love Is A Punch by Jacqui (which is about the only audible lyric since most of the song happens inside the bar.

Car Scene

English track: Aretha Franklin's Respect. Of course. Notice Annabeth Gish in the scene - entirely in character she's keeping her eye on the road more than singing along.



German track: Aretha Franklin's Respect. Boxed into a corner, the German producers have to include a song from the English track. Not only that they use the voices of the original actors, though full marks for continuing Franklin underneath the ensuing German dub without missing a beat.

JoJo and Bill again

English track: A reprise of the lovely flute themes from earlier in the film.

German track: A reprise of Julian Steinberg's Never Give Your Love Away from the beginning of the film which fades out when JoJo reaches the jetty.

Pizza Parlour

The German audience finally hears a snatch of the guitar piece from the opening credits on the English track, which plays on both.

Kat and her employer

English track: No music.

German track: The cliche Spanish guitar music from the telescope scene.

Pizza Parlour

English track: Accordion musak.

German track: Something sub-Madonna which doesn't seem to be on this list. Plays while Daisy's outside the parlour with Charlie.

Kat and her employer

The same Mozart string quartet across both.

Pizza Parlour

English track: While Kat and Daisy are in a fight, something like Cole Porter in the background.

German track: Jill Colucci's These Are The Times To Remember which will eventually play over the credits. Given the temperature between the sisters, these are definitely not the times to remember. At all.



JoJo babysitting.

German track has Lili Taylor singing. It's beautiful.

Kat's date with her employer.

English track: Nothing until it gives way to some romantic score music in a minor key.

German track: The usual Spanish guitarist who seems to follow them around and considering how this storyline plays out feels really inappropriate.

Then the score music is the same across tracks.

Pizza Parlour.

English track:  Frank Sinatra's I Got You Under My Skin.



German track:  Frank Sinatra's I Got You Under My Skin.  Because you can't replace Frank.

Daisy's dinner with Charlie's family.

Same dinner party musak across both.  Oh look, it's teenaged Matt Damon in his first screen role.



Pizza Parlour.

Some of the big sax from earlier across both tracks.  Until the sodding Spanish guitar appears for a final time on the German track replacing the film's piano theme on the English track.  Which then cuts out with a bit of uncertainty when the review of the restaurant emerges on the television.

Wedding Scene.

The wedding music is identical across both.

Final scene & Credits.

English track:  Soundtrack music giving way to Jill Colucci's These Are The Times To Remember.

German track:  What About You by Hot Chocolate crashes in just as JoJo puts her champagne bottle down completely ruining the mood.  The credits then include a listing of all the songs on the English track few of which the German audience have actually heard if they've been listening to the dubbed version.

Conclusion.

I'm not sure what you can draw from this other than that the filmmakers original intent should always have paramount.  Although it's fair to say that even while watching the German dub with subtitles and the wrong music, I found myself becoming involved in the story.  I'll let you know if I see any others.

The Horn.

Nature This Guardian piece about the appeal of unicorns somehow manages to reach the end without mentioning Blade Runner in how the beast has become central to modern mythologies. That what could be an artificial lifeform, the arguable pinnacle of human scientific and technological achievement could dream of something that exists purely in fantasy and magic is an extremely potent concept:

"“The unicorn has been popular at various points for at least 3,000 years,” says Dr Miles Leeson, director of the Iris Murdoch Research Centre and a lecturer in English literature. “They were considered as real in the ancient world by the Greeks – they appear in books of natural history, not books about the gods. The Old Testament contains possible mentions of unicorns, and from there they have been incorporated into Western art and culture, surfacing at various times, including the Medieval period and the Renaissance. The unicorn also has a role to play in Chinese mythology.”"

I've always thought the unicorn's appeal is that it feels like it could have existed. As the piece reminds us, the narwhal, a creature with just such a horn does exist, albeit in dwindling numbers, so it's not unimaginable that at some point there was a breed of horse with a similar piece of headgear but later became exist. At least it makes better sense than a pegasus. A horse with wings is just silly.

Perfectly Rice.

Food Here's Tasty explaining how to cook perfect rice. In the past year we've stopped using frozen or vacuum packed in favour of dried rice in a steamer and it's been extraordinarily, at least when I haven't over or undercooked it. I'll be trying these instructions next time.

"Beat you, cock!"

TV Having been in bed with manflu for a couple of days, I haven't had a chance to comment on the news that Shada has indeed been animated and will be released on shiny-disc at the beginning of next month.

Here's the press release.

Reaction on social media has been pretty mixed, mostly because for a story which wasn't completed first time around, between the various releases since, including Douglas including a version in the Dirk Gentley novels, it doesn't feel like we're completely missing a new version. That the resources could have been more handily spent animating a few more of the missing episodes.

Which I do have sympathy with, I do.  Like everyone else I have fond memories of the Baker narrated VHS release, put out in dvd not that long ago even if it becomes entirely futile as the stories goes on and the story simply runs out of shot material and its most Tom explaining what happened.  Plus the McGann audio version is superb as is the novel by Gareth Roberts (for the most part).

But for all that, I'm really excited about this project because it's a chance to sit and watch the story in full, with the scripted elements in place read mostly by the original cast and on blu-ray with the original film sequences, all of those lovely shots of Cambridge, in high definition.  Plus they're editing from scratch not simply inserting the new material into the old VHS version.

This will also be the fifth version featuring Lalla Ward.

(1)  The unfinished TV version
(2)  Big Finish
(3)  Audiobook version
(4)  Whatever it was Ian Levine was trying to do
(5)  The new thing

I can't wait to hear what she's done with it this time.

Plus now that Tom Baker's been working on the audios for a while across various companies, he's really found the Fourth Doctor's voice again, so his contribution will have an authenticity it might not a few years ago.  He's so obviously enjoying playing the part again - although it'll be interesting to see how much he's stuck to the script or made his usual suggestions.

Motion Flow is the new Panned and Scanned.

Film Director James Gunn and allies are banding together to start a campaign to ask tv manufactures not to put motion flow on by default. From Gizmodo:

"If you’re not entirely sure what these folks are going on about, motion smoothing is a feature on most modern TVs that intended to correct hi-def screens’ tendency to make objects in motion appear to be blurry. In order to do this, the TV processes one frame, then the next, and makes a guess on what a new frame that goes between them should look like. This can be very helpful if you’re watching a football game, for example, and you’re attempting to keep track of the ball in a wide landscape shot. It gives everything a crisp edge. The feature can also be good for upping video game frame rates, but it’ll get you killed because it introduces extra lag."

After reading this article years ago on how TV ruins movies. I turned the setting on my screen to cinema mode and then turned everything else off. Motion Flow, auto blackness setting, natural colour, noise correction everything. After all that, the picture now tends to look fantastic. 

Films will never look the same as they did in theatres on television, but have to do all we can to help them along.  Although even in theatres, they're not always projected in the way the filmmakers, too dimly perhaps due to the cinema not switching out the 3D projector lense during 2D showings.

All Hands On Deck (Big Finish Audio Short Trips)

Audio One of two Short Trips dealing with how the Eighth Doctor interacted with some of his old companions during the Time War, this examines how it affected his granddaughter.  Set just after To The Death, we discover how Susan rebuilt her life in the wake of all that tragedy and like so many of the former time travellers she's become involved and a valuable asset to the local populace, defending the Earth were needed.  Which is lucky because numerous befuddlements, pitched in the region of the kinds of things which might have menaced the Attic team in The Sarah Jane Adventures are causing a certain amount of worry, some mayhem.  But I think I'll stop the synopsis here because with its slender listening time, its best heard with the surprises intact, especially the unforgettable barnstormer of a conclusion.  Needless to say it's another Eddie Robson story which balances the epic with the personal and Eighth's participation is perfectly judged and entirely in character if you know the history of the character.  Thanks to the post-2005 subliminal references to Susan's fate, a melancholy hangs over this story which Robson takes full advantage of.  Told in the first person, Carole Ann Ford  captures this mature Susan thoughtfully as she poignantly reflects back on her youth and where her loyalties lie and how that informs her choices going forward.  Placement: Pretty early in the Time War for reasons.

Drunk in Charge of an Autonomous Vehicle.

Technology Ars Technica asks, "Should drunk drivers be charged with DUI in fully autonomous cars?"

"Though it may seem obvious that a drunk person should be allowed to be taxied home by a fully autonomous car, the question is less clear if you have to determine just how autonomous an autonomous vehicle needs to be for a drunk person to operate it. The government should want drunk people to engage a high-level autonomous driving system if the alternative is driving themselves home, but if they’ll be penalized for being drunk while they’re “in control” of an autonomous vehicle, uptake of self-driving systems may be slow."

The answer within the article suggests that a felony is only committed when a drunk person manually takes the wheel of the automated car and therefore driving it.  But as someone who doesn't trust technology to break down, because technology always breaks down, I think that it's imperative that law doesn't change on drink driving whether someone is in an autocar or not.

I'd argue that someone who's been drinking still shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the vehicle in case it malfunctions in a dangerous situation and they're forced to take control.  I'd be afraid to let someone without a driving license, like me, to have an automated car or be able to travel in an automated car for this reason.  The idea of driverless taxis also scare the bejesus out of me.

The Clone Wars Continue.

Film Forces of Destiny, the Star Wars series of animated webisodes returns with a couple more stories set during The Clones Wars featuring the original cast. Neither of them really break canon but they're fun nonetheless:





With Rebels ending next year, can Disney please go back and complete The Clone Wars?

Lear Here.

TV The BBC has announced a King Lear for broadcast in 2018 starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson directed by Richard Eyre. Here are some of the other casting highlights:

"Emmy Award nominated Jim Carter (Downton Abbey, Cranford) takes the role of the Earl of Kent, Emmy Award winner Christopher Eccleston (The Leftovers, Thor: The Dark World) as Oswald, and Golden Globe nominee Tobias Menzies (Outlander, The Terror), plays the Duke of Cornwall. Anthony Calf (New Tricks, Riviera) plays the Duke of Albany and Karl Johnson (Wittgenstein, Rome) is set to play Lear’s loyal jester the Fool."

Interesting the BBC's own press release fails to notice this features a Doctor Who but hey ho. So that's Lear and Hamlet next year. Not to sound churlish (perish the thought) because both projects sound extraordinary and a few years ago under you know who the idea of having any classical drama on television was zero, but the variety of productions has dwindled again hasn't it?  Are the Roman plays ala The Hollow Crown still on the books?  No chance of an As You Like It soon?

Love Actually is £39.50, £49.50 or £65.

Film Angie Sammons on the new look Liverpool Confidential website notices that Love Actually will be playing at the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool this Christmas (11th December) with a live orchestra, so you can hear the theme from Shakespeare in Love again in the same room which would be an attractive prospect if it was actually Shakespeare in Love. Lord is it expensive:

"With the best tickets in the house going for £65 a pop, you might want to consider taking your own flask of mulled wine and secreting a mince pie or two in your underparts to offset the cost. Or just wheel a trolley around the Aintree Asda any time after October 31 to hear Mariah Carey warble All I Want For Christmas, while reminding yourself never to attempt it's difficult vocal in any public place, especially on gin."

For £65 you could go and see six decent films at FACT. Or buy the whole of FRIENDS on blu-ray. Or a return ticket to practically anywhere in the country and visit the Christmas market.  Ironically, I'll be spending eight hours in London doing exactly that on the same day as the concert.  Shame.

Yes, you'll have also noticed that I'm mentioned in that article because of my enmity for this piteous two hours.  As ever. it's a bit weird seeing my surname used that newsy way which reminds me of school, where everyone was known by their family name.  But it's nice of Sammons to spread the word, try to save as many people as possible.

Ghost Train Station.

Travel For years the railway station at Canfranc on the French-Spanish border was considered a white elephant, a folly, despite its grand architecture and aims. The BBC offers a history of the curiosity and a change in its fortunes:

"It was one of the world's most opulent railway stations, sitting imposingly on the French-Spanish border - but then it fell into disrepair. Now, writes Chris Bockman, the building is showing new signs of life.

When they built the station at Canfranc, it was on a grand scale and with no expense spared. It had to be bold and modern - an architect's dream come true, built in iron and glass, complete with a hospital, restaurant and living quarters for customs officers from both France and Spain.

At the time it was nicknamed the "Titanic of the Mountains"."

I've often wondered what Exchange Station in Liverpool must have been like in its heyday. With Lime Street closing for nearly a month for refurbishment, it's a reminder that it's not always a good idea to have one mainline station in a city and what was lost when Exchange closed. Manchester has two.