The Very Belated 2023 Awards!

Ha! I bet you fuckers thought I’d forgotten about the End of Year Round-up from 2023. Nope! I was just lulling you into a false sense of security. As though I’d miss the opportunity to take a massive, steaming shit on an entire year’s worth of human culture. So, what can we say about 2023? It definitely fucking happened, we know that much. But was it good? Was it bad? Was it a little bit of both? We know from my previous blogs that it produced some real cinematic and televisual gems, but are these a sign of culture self-correcting after the wilderness years or just aberrations bobbing about in the usual sea of viscous dreck? Well, 2023 is dead now, so if we want to find out, the only way is to split open its bloated carcass and start rummaging around in a bleak parody of the autopsy process. As always, I’ll be handing out gongs to things, artefacts and events from 2023 itself, but also just to shit I discovered in the relevant year. Here we fucking goooooooo!

The Birthday Cake Full of Puppies Award for Loveliest Surprise… … Goes, jointly, to Wild Blue Yonder and The Giggle, the two Doctor Who specials that weren’t the fucking Star Beast. See, after The Star Beast, I was thoroughly disappointed. A virtue-signalling, nonsensical mess that, while briefly entertaining, failed miserably to reach the giddy heights of Russel T. Davies’ initial run on the show and desperately needed a strong editorial hand to stop characters repeating themselves or needlessly referencing the hot pile of garbage that was the Chibnall era. I wasn’t expecting great things from the two follow-ups and only really watched them because I thought RTD had earned himself more than one chance to impress me. And whaddaya know? We got two fucking perfect Who episodes- one a big, genuinely unsettling slice of cosmic horror and one a bombastic, energetic extravaganza that resurrected a lot of fan-favourite characters, introduced a new threat for the upcoming Gatwa-era and just generally fucking rocked. Yes, I know the Xmas Special that followed was a bit crap (nautical-punk Goblins in Doctor Who? Piss off.), but it’s not fair to judge any season of Who on its associated Xmas Special, so we’re just going to let that slide.

The Throwing Keanu Reeves Down a Lot of Stairs Award… … Goes to John Wick 4, which threw Keanu Reeves down a lot of stairs. And was also a very good movie. But mainly this award is about the stairs.

The Blind Archer Award for Missing the Cocking Point… … Goes to the whole bloody stupid debate around A.I., which is broadly divided into two equally slappable camps. In the Soulless Silicone Silver corner, we have a bunch of hooting tech bros who think that they’ve invented a tool that obviates the need for talent and spirit and artistic vision because it (technically) allows any yeehaw with an internet connection to vomit out ill-conceived content ordered up from a computer terminal like the intellectual equivalent of an underwhelming drive-thru burger. Meanwhile, in the drippy, wishy-washy grey no-colour corner, we have a swarm of whiny, for-profit ‘creatives’ (and I use that word with enough sarcasm to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool), terrified that their soulless, talentless content will be replaced by the equally soulless, talentless content of fucking Skynet, thereby doing them out of a revenue stream they don’t bloody deserve. Nobody seems to be talking about how the new technology can be leveraged to create actual, meaningful art, not just content. Case in point, I’ve always fancied creating a TV series or film, but I don’t know any actors and can’t afford to pay professionals, nor can I afford the filming equipment and green-screen studio rental I’d need to bring one of my sci-fi or fantasy concepts to life. AI allows for the creation of virtual environments and actors based on original ideas, sketches and descriptions plugged into machine-learning-guided rendering software. These can then be assembled using a human-provided script (mine, duh) to create footage which can be edited into something cogent and compelling. It’s a terrific amount of work involving a wildly steep learning curve, but it’s an example of how AI allows working class creators without the resources of our middle-class wanker peers a way into visual mediums that we simply haven’t been able to access or utilise. Incidentally, I hope to start uploading short films made using this method sometime in the next month or two. Pluuuuuuuug!

The Award for Special Services to Doom… … Goes to the impending collapse of AMOC (or Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation), which includes part of the Gulf Stream and several other important ocean currents. It’s due to cease functioning within the next 100 years due to man-made climate change, most probably by the year 2100, when many of us will still be alive (albeit old as balls). Once it goes, the northern hemisphere will become colder, making agriculture functionally impossible in parts of Europe; the ocean-level will rise up to a meter in some places, drowning many coastal cities; the wet and dry season of at least one rainforest will flip, with the result that said rainforest may die, unable to adapt quick enough, which would make climate change even more extreme. Basically, if you’re rooting for the collapse of civilisation in the not-too-distant future, you can start polishing your Mad Max cosplay outfits, because shit’s about to go doooooown, boi! I mean, unless governments actually listen to climate scientists for a change and somehow avert this looming catastrophe. Ha! Yeah. Dream on.

The Lex Luthor Award For Pure Fucking Evil... … Goes, once again, to the Tories, who are always evil, but seemed to make a special effort to ruin everything for everyone forever in 2023. Aside from engineering a decline in the NHS so severe that people with agonising mouth infections can’t access dentists at short notice, they also tried to pass a bill that would allow them to monitor the bank accounts of people on benefits as a matter of course and continued to allow the dumping of waste directly into the sea, turning the coast of Blackpool brown with human excrement (it was, of course, they who repealed the environmental protection laws that used to make this sort of thing illegal). You really couldn’t make these people up. It’s like someone drew the word ‘CUNT’ on a whiteboard and then got a whole room full of cunt-experts to make a mind-map around it. Then they loaded the results into ChatGPT and the result was the Tory Party of Great Britain.

The Confused Mountaineer Award for Picking the Wrong Hill to Die On… … Goes to Disney, which spent 2023 losing money hand over fist. Even when its films and telly shows technically made some money, they represented such a reduction in the value of the associated IP that the company might as well have time travelled into the future, stolen all its own shares, and flushed them down a giant toilet. Obviously, I hate Disney and I’ve always hated them- I didn’t just jump on the band-wagon when the Internet collectively realised they were a bunch of tossers. I’ve hated them steadily and continually for most of my life for the very simple reason that they use fucking slave-labour. Their merch is made in fucking sweat-shops! Which is why it’s particularly hilarious that their loss of relevance as a producer of culture owes so much to their flimsy pretence at wokeness (which manifested itself as a series of interchangeable, tedious girl-bosses photoshopped inexpertly into franchises like Star Wars and Marvel whose profitability largely came from grumpy nerds who were never going to fall for that shit). Shoulda stuck to making family films for people with very low expectations, Disno! It’s what you’re good at! And yes, this award does only exist so I can laugh at the slow death-by-a-thousand-cuts of some dipshits I dislike. It’s just so fucking dumb! Like, these are people who regard anyone from a developing nation as a disposable component in a big machine for making underwhelming crap- an interchangeable cog to be instrumentalised and dehumanised until death. And yet the hill they chose to fucking die on was pretending to give a shit about inclusivity. Yeah. Disney are real fucking inclusive… they want everyone to buy their ill-conceived swill, not just pasty, dick-owning Americans. Brilliantly, in their mad scrabble for new audiences, they seem to have lost the one they had… while utterly failing to convince anyone else to jump on board. Because, let’s be honest, if you want to watch a film about the black experience in the US or about smashing the patriarchy, you’re probably going to go to Jordan Peele or re-watch The Perfection (not just a great feminist film, by the way, but a fucking balls-to-the-wall brilliant film full stop). You’re probably not going to rely on a string of bland, cookie-cutter studios owned and operated by the arsewipes still desperately still trying to wring the last few pennies out of pissing Star Wars.

The Greatest Sentence I’ve Heard All Year Award… … Goes to my wife, who recently went to see that Barbie movie that people inexplicably decided to shove in the same bracket as Oppenheimer. I don’t really object to the existence of this flick in and of itself, because it’s not really taking anything away from me- it’s just not for me, and that’s fine. Obvs, I did think it was slightly icky that Matel were putting so much effort into re-framing their plastic Anorexia Generator as a feminist icon and it was super weird that the message it ultimately lands on is ‘sex-based oppression is fine if you gender-flip it’, but I don’t have to care so, for the most part, I don’t. I certainly didn’t have any problem with my missus taking her daughter from a previous relationship and her/our kinda-sorta adopted daughter to see it. Because I’m not a sack of shit who demands that other peoples tastes precisely match my own. However, I really didn’t like the hype around the movie. I don’t like brightly-coloured, disposable dreck that only exists to sell toys giving itself airs and graces, especially not when that means 1-for-1 comparisons to, say, a really important film about the invention of the nuclear bomb and the political scheming and manoeuvring that surrounded it. Which brings us to the Greatest Sentence I’ve Heard All Year. After returning home from her cinematic excursion, my wife had this to say about Barbie: “I don’t understand what all the fuss was about- it was a pile of shit, really.” Bonus points for the fact that she still quite enjoyed it and this wonderful piece of commentary was delivered, in musing tones, as an assessment of its objective merits rather than a statement of personal preference. I married the right woman.

The Circus Midget Genocide Award for Gratuitous Punching Down... … Goes to the song ‘What Have We Become’ by Paul Heaton, who I usually like. The Beautiful South are one of my favourite bands (despite the fact they no longer exist), but ‘What Have We Become’, one of Heaton’s subsequent solo efforts, makes me genuinely uncomfortable. In tackling the Americanisation of British culture (which I agree is a problem), Heaton seems to take aim as much at the ordinary folks on the receiving end of this neo-colonialism as at the phenomenon itself. I don’t think that whether or not something ‘punches down’ is a meaningful criticism relating to a cultural artefact’s artistic merit. Sometimes, it’s necessary to call out the bumbling normal on their slack-jawed bullshit. But this just feels mean-spirited and indiscriminate. Yeah, Heaton, people enjoy the convenience of US-style fast-food chains and, as a country, we’re probably a bit addicted to the cult of needless enthusiasm that started in the States, but I’ve never met anyone whose more of a miserable cunt for eating a takeout pizza while watching a happy-go-lucky comedy like My Name is Earl, so maybe get off your high horse for a minute. Your music’s great for the most part, but I think I can answer the question ‘What Have We Become?’ based purely on the song itself. A prick. You’ve become a prick.

The Pluggity McPlugface Aware for Most Exciting New Press… ... Goes to X Press, which is technically the new fiction imprint of Poetry Bus Press, I think. They’re still getting established and the name is subject to change, but I met the couple behind it at this year’s T.S. Elliot Prize and… er… okay, this is the bit where I have to admit I have a horse in this race. See, the reason I’m so excited by this new press getting off the ground is that I’m kinda the reason it exists. I pitched the publishers a sci-fi novel I had loaded and ready to fire off, not really expecting anything to come of it since they’ve only done poetry collections before. But hey, it’s not every day you meet someone in the publishing world while surrounded by gold-leafed rococo architecture and canapés, so I felt I had to go for it. Anyway, just a couple of months later, they’re putting together a whole new imprint and my novel, Warning: Infohazard is going to be first thing to roll out of it! So yeah… I’m chuffed about that. Stay tuned for further updates.

The Nick Clegg Award for Accomplishing the Square Root of Fuck All… … Goes to the AGA and WGA strikes that swept through Hollywood like a damp breeze this year. I’m usually on the side of striking workers, even when I’m being personally inconvenienced. Tell me the bus drivers are going on strike and, even if I need to catch a bus that day, I’ll pretty much root for them to win the battle- the poor fuckers are woefully underpaid for a tedious and demanding job. Teachers’ strike? Abso-fucking-lutely: these people work hard to ensure the next generation actually know things and deserve far more respect and accolades than they’re accorded (except the fuckers who worked at Marpool Primary during the 90s- those loathsome reptiles can choke on dick for all I care). NHS Doctors and nurses? Yup: they literally save lives and we, as a culture, still fail to give them their due. Dustbin men? Fuck yeah. Warehouse workers? Definitely (if anyone ever lets the poor fucks unionise). You get the idea. But I have my doubts about the Hollywood Writers and Actors Guilds mob. At the end of the day, even the working schlubs of Tinsel Town mostly deserve a thick ear more than a raise. We’re talking about people who drive past Skid Row (the most impoverished ghetto in the States, the lives of whose citizens they could actually improve) on their way to work, then get there and, as part of their social media management, tweet a load of shite about the Cause of the Week in order to look switched on and progressive. We’re talking about people who will do long-winded interviews about how important their casting or hiring is for the direction of our society while, two blocks away, a homeless dude overdoses on smack because it’s slightly quicker than starving to death.We’re talking about people who sold out their souls to a studio system that only wants and only seeks to produce derivative dreck when it was paying them well and only seem to have noticed it’s fucking them in the arse with a strap-on the size of the Empire State Building now that it’s no longer scattering coins in front of them. Of course, there are good, honest people working in La La Land who absolutely don’t deserve the fucking the studio system is giving them and who don’t walk around thinking they’re Zod’s Gift to the Enlightenment, and- for their sake- one slightly wants the strikes to succeed. The problem is that it’s very hard to spot them, obscured as they are by an ocean of absolute raging bell-ends. All of which is slightly by the by, because this award isn’t about whether the strikes deserve to succeed… it’s about the fact they made no appreciable difference to the media landscape of 2023 whatsoever. We still got Oppenheimer; we still got John Wick 4; we still got Luther: the Fallen Sun over on Netflix; we still got that unexpectedly fucking delightful Slumberland thing and a whole raft of really excellent, joyous family films; we still got some pretty ace telly. Basically, the only thing there seemed to be less of was absolute shit-swill, but it’d be a poor lookout for the strikers if that was their doing and not just a statistical anomaly. Imagine that on a placard: “We fucked off and culture improved by 150%!” So yeah: sorry WGA and AGA- as much as my socialist principles want any strike against a large, corrupt corporate system to succeed, you’re just not very sympathetic and you’ve done the square root of fuck all to help yourselves here.

The Special Award for Unbridled Excellence... … Goes to What We Do in the Shadows (the TV series- there was also a movie that was pretty good, but that came out ages ago). Technically, the telly series started in 2019, but it was still going in 2023 and that’s the year I finally got around to watching it, so I think I can justifiably slap it on this list. A mockumentary about three vampires, an energy vampire and a familiar flat-sharing on Staten Island, its one of the most hilarious, off-beat, filthy, brilliant things I’ve seen in years. It’s also surprisingly well-meaning and, mixed in with all the really, really funny jokes (which I’m not going to spoil), the violence and the gratuitous fucking, there are some genuinely sweet, heartfelt moments about found family, the bonds of love and friendship and the redemptive qualities that can sometimes surprise us in the darkest of people and places. I’m not saying it’s high art or anything like that- it’s as daft as a brush and any stab it takes at greater, more grandiose meaning is somewhat undercut by all the other shit that happens in it, but it is one of the most entertaining things on telly and deserves your attention. Just don’t tell the normals, they’ll only fucking ruin it like everything else. Let’s keep this one just for us freaks, okay?

The Smurf Viagra Award for Bluest Balls... … Goes to Dune: Part 2, which was supposed to come out in ‘23 and didn’t. Which is a shame because it the first part was a fucking banger. Maybe we could credit its delay to the writers’ and actors’ strike? I mean, that probably had nothing to do with it, but it’s important to boost the self-esteem of the simpler members of the international community. Great job, guys! You got one!

So that was 2023, then: a year of malice and incompetence just barely redeemed by a few shining cultural gems. Now we’re two months into 2024, and it’s time to look forward before we collide with a brick wall. Until next time, I’ve been Secret-Diary and you haven’t. Bye-bye.

Doctor Who: The Church on Ruby Road Review- A Nice Big Plate of WTF?

So… I have… questions? Many of them aren’t even things I can express in words- they’re just helpless looks of confusion happening in my head and a general, non-specific yearning for answers. I’m not saying I disliked The Church on Ruby Road. I’m not saying I liked it, either. I’m saying that it’s so bafflingly other that I’m not 100% sure how to process my feelings about it. Consequently, this is going to be quite a short review. I mean, when Wild Blue Yonder and The Giggle blew me away, I knew exactly what it was I was enjoying and why. When The Star Beast disappointed, I knew exactly why it disappointed me (it felt like a first draft). I don’t even know what emotions I experienced while watching The Church on Ruby Road or if those emotions even have names, so it’s kind of difficult to talk about.

Okay, let’s start with something easy. I like Ncuti Gatwa’s take on the Doctor. That’s something I’m certain about. He’s breezy and bright and- occasionally- a tiny bit bitchy. I think he’s going to be an interesting addition to the line-up. Also, I think it’s really cool and progressive that he’s the first Doctor… WITH A MOUSTACHE! So yeah, he’s a perfectly fine actor for the role. I could have done with a slightly stronger, more sure-footed introduction- something like Ecclestone’s “Run!” or David Tenant just straight up grabbing a Sycorax energy-whip by the business end and yanking it away… but I get that he’s meant to be the fun, easy-going Doctor and I accept that his intro has to suit the character, which means a gradual, laid-back sort of interweaving. So yes: nice work on establishing Fifteen, Ruby Road.

But then there’s the goblins in flying wooden boats. Doctor Who had goblins now, and that’s fine… but they’re never really explained. We’re told they can surf the waves of time, but we’re never told where they came from. Are they just on Earth all the time? Have they always been here? Are they from space? Another dimension? We’re just kind of asked to accept them and the fact that they regularly abduct and eat babies (yet this has somehow never come up before). I mean, I’m okay with goblins, but I’m not sure how I feel about inadequately-explained goblins in a sci-fi show. Doctor Who has every right to be extremely silly- it’s practically in the charter- but there’s a razor-thin line between ‘silly’ and ‘stupid’ and I’m not sure which side of the divide big-eyed mischievous goblins in flying boats fall on. Especially when they start singing.

Ah, yes. Maybe I should have led with that. The goblins sing. And I don’t mean unearthly, alien singing of the kind befitting their essentially inhuman nature, nor even the type of shanties that would match their outfits and flying, old-fashioned sailing ship. No, no. They sing a full-on, carefully-orchestrated and choreographed, extremely catchy pop song… about eating babies. It’s fucking mental. I mean, it’s obviously meant to be funny and it made me laugh… but I’m not sure I was laughing at the intended joke or if I was just having a breakdown in response to seeing something so fucking inexplicable. I mean, when the Celestial Toymaker interrupted The Giggle for a musical number, it made sense. The Toymaker was characterised in such a way that murdering people to music perfectly fitted his character- he’s bloody psychotic. But with the goblins it just comes completely out of left-field.

I thought the overarching themes of family being about more than blood and people forming intricate webs of connection that depend more on love than superficial genetic ties were pretty solid and universal. On the other hand, making new companion Ruby Sunday such an enmeshed part of an adopted family meant her personality didn’t get much chance to come through properly, despite her more-than-ample screen-time. She always felt like a part of something larger- particularly with the fairly extravagant and entertaining personalities of her other family members (one in particular).

I think what’s weird about this episode is that it’s meant to be the start of a soft-reboot with the potential to draw in new fans, yet if you’re not familiar with Doctor Who already, it presents a bit of misleading picture of what the show is. It centres mythic and magical creatures over the show’s more standard cosmic and alien fare or scientific-disaster-style stories, while previous events are referenced with little or no context. As a long-time Who fan (who even forced myself to watch the execrable Chibnall/Whitaker episodes necessary for an appreciation of the plot), I understood what was being alluded to and also knew to make allowances for this being a daft, knock-about Christmas episode that won’t be typical of the season to come. But new fans? They’re likely to be completely bloody lost.

All things considered, I quite liked The Church on Ruby Road- it’s a bit of fun and it’s a reasonably good palette cleanser after the heavier themes of the previous two specials. Plus, it’s just nice to see a new Doctor in action and know he’s going to be good in the role. Does it set out to do what it was meant to do, though (i.e. set out the stall for new Whovians and provide a real flavour of the show? Erm. No. And, however enjoyable it might be overall, its more confusing elements do make me worry about showrunner Russel T. Davies’ mental state. At least we only have to wait until spring to find out just how mad he’s gone.

The End of Year Movie Roundup You Didn't Know You Wanted (And Don't)

Crikey Mc Crikington IV! It’s been an interesting couple of years in the world of movies and TV, hasn’t it? Ever since 2016, it’s felt like good movies and TV shows are rare gems bobbing around in a sea of filth, never getting the attention they deserve and then disappearing back into the undifferentiated swill of garbage. It’s not that good stuff hasn’t been getting made- it’s just that it’s been struggling in a landscape dominated by absolute, reeking arse. But since, ooh, the latter part of 2022 to now, things feel a bit different, don’t they? It seems like the good stuff has been gaining ground; that- for a change- neither the alt-right, froth-mouthed dicks or the woke-washed virtue-signalling shitheads are winning the culture war. Instead, actual culture seems to be winning. Fancy fucking that. Of course, when I say ‘culture’, I don’t necessarily mean high culture. Nope. I’m talkin’ ‘bout that sweeeeet pop and pulp culture, y’all! Of course, there’s been a fair amount of blithering crap, too, but with the companies that push it (mainly Disney) haemorrhaging money like someone stabbed a bank, most of it feels increasingly irrelevant. So, I’m going to use this blog to deliver capsule reviews of the things that- to me- exemplify the best of last couple of years of pop culture, meaning some cack will make it into the mix. They’re not in chronological order or anything, by the way (though I have stuck the films ahead of the TV series). They’re just in the order that I felt like writing about them. Oh, boohoo, cry me a fucking river- it’s not like you pay for this shit.

John Wick Chapter 4 You’d think watching Keanu Reeves get thrown down stairs and off tall objects would eventually get old but, for some reason, it really, really doesn’t. The John Wick films are truly excellent pieces of cinema and have been from the start. Aside from being incredibly satisfying, violent, gritty revenge movies with fight choreography that would give Ghandi a hardon, they’re also beautiful, intricate exercises in subtle, intelligent world-building in which just a few key words or phrases- or a carefully-selected symbolic object- can pack an enormous amount of information into a few seconds. Oh, and they’re contemplations on the nature of honour and consequences that somehow transcend and act as a comment upon the genre of their birth without ever feeling like a trite condemnation or deconstruction of it. The fourth part does an excellent job of tying the series-thus-far together and providing a meaningful conclusion, which also happens to come loaded with some of the most brilliantly inventive action sequences of any movie from the past fifty years, a sound-track to die for and set-dressing to fucking drool over. No, it won’t be the last one of these- the films make too much money to just bury after four, despite the very final ending- but I appreciate that the movie treats itself as a finale and actually pays off and ties up all the storylines we’ve so far encountered. It’s nice to see a movie that acts like a movie rather than a mere episode of something; that has the panache to commit to the pretence of to its own myth-making. Easily one of my favourite flicks for a good, long time.

Smile Have I reviewed this before? I don’t remember or care: it’s so good, I’ll happily tell you how good it is a million times! In horror films, mental illness is very often the seasoning on a big plate of terrifying shizz, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it used as effectively as it is here, with the main character understanding from the get-go that the supernatural horror she’s experiencing mimicks a mental breakdown and tailoring her responses and survival strategies accordingly. Meanwhile, the unnamed entity manipulates perception and its victim’s psychopathology in a way that’s clearly designed to eat away at her sense of reality while also making other people think she’s crazy and alienating her from her support network. The result is a tense, terrifying cat-and-mouse game between an intelligent, adaptable protagonist with wits and an actual, physical body on their side and an unknowable, awful entity with absolute power over their perception of reality but no corporeal form with which to threaten them. The threat feels plausible and horrifying, but we- as viewers- never become inured to it, because it also seems surmountable: we don’t just switch off and accept the lead character’s fate (a problem with a lot of horror movies) because there is a chance of survival, and we feel that right from the off. The body-horror reveal of the monster’s true form (or, at least, the form it chooses to project during the final stages of its assault) is spectacular, gripping and shit-your-pants scary. Seriously, this film won’t just have made money for cinemas: it will have saved countless laundromats and dry-cleaners from going out of business. It’s trouser-ruiningly good. If you need to be scared out of your tiny mind at short notice, I can whole-heartedly recommend Smile.

Luther: The Fallen Sun Fuckin’ Nora, Idris, do you want some mash to go with this absolute banger of a movie? I found out after watching it that this flick got mediocre reviews and that really only serves to demonstrate that most film critics couldn’t find their arses with a state-of-the-art laser-guided arse-finding system. I suspect that the problem most critics had is that they went in expecting a police procedural and got a neo-noir thriller in which the method of investigation is less important than the spectacular nature of the crime, the heroism of the protagonist and the character of the setting. This is a slick, stylish little movie, polished until it slightly outshines most supernovas. It’s set predominantly in a version of London that feels less like the modern world and more like the city in the grip of the Crays- its like a parallel universe where the tropes and aesthetic preoccupations of the Diamond Geezer era never went away and instead evolved alongside technology. That was also the original Luther series, of course, so you’d think people would know what to expect, but it’s been awhile since that aired and modern critics and audiences apparently have the memory spans of fucking grasshoppers. Now, to return to the point: style, an interesting world, a compellingly psychotic villain and the presence of Idris Elba all make this a good film, but the reason it’s a great film is much more basic: it actually makes you feel things. It depresses me that the bar has sunk that low in recent years, since movies purport to be art and the whole point of art is to make you feel stuff, but very few modern movies have engaged me like Luther, which absolutely nails its pacing, scripting and acting to produce something that hits right in the soul. Without spoiling anything, there’s a bit involving a room filling with gasoline while a filament slowly heats up to ignition-temperature… and halfway through, I realised my heart was racing, my palms were starting to sweat and I was clenching my teeth, desperately hoping that the two characters trapped inside would make it out alright- even though I’d spent most of the movie wanting to slap one of them. I’ve seen movies with clashing armies and exploding planets that felt less epic. A truly well-crafted movie can do more with a single lit fuse than a standard-issue flick can achieve with an entire fireworks display. And that’s why you ought to see this movie.

If you’ll permit me to go a bit meta before we move on, this is also the thing I’ve been begging for since the BBC ruined Doctor Who and deprived me of a lead in the mainstream media I could relate to and root for. I mean, I know Doctor Who's good again now anyway, but I appreciate this too. We’ve got a British hero who thinks his way around problems and displays a laudable- even noble- version of masculinity that’s been missing from screens for a really long time (and he gets to be the hero right up until the end- there’s no fucking bait-and-switch bullshit here). We’ve got a world that’s sufficiently different from the real world to be worth exploring. We’ve got absolutely zero virtual-signalling impinging on the plot and characterisation. And that’s it. This is literally all I fucking wanted. Not so fucking hard, was it, mainstream media? Why the fuck did I have to wait so fucking long?

Oppenheimer And now, ladies and gentlemen, we come to a piece of cinema so glorious- so beautifully-crafted and intricate and meaningful- that I have absolutely no hesitation in calling it the best movie of the decade. I also have no hesitation in calling it ‘Boppenheimer’, because it is an absolute fucking bop and I’ll fight anyone who says different. Folks, if this movie is still playing at a cinema near you, go and see it. If it’s not, find some other way to see it. This isn’t just the height of Christopher Nolan’s movie-making career- the apotheosis of his talents and a showcase for the amazing actors he can attract- it’s also a true cultural moment: something that everyone should share in and appreciate together. It’s hard to describe what makes this film so fucking good, but you know what? I’m going to have a crack at it! Ostensibly, it’s a retelling of the invention of the atomic bomb and the aftermath of its first detonations in a theatre of war. But it’s so, so much more. It’s a character study reflecting on the motives, flaws and redemptive qualities of a Jewish man terrified that Nazi Germany would unlock the power of the atom before the allies. It’s a reappraisal of this man- who has oft been condemned for bringing such an evil invention into the world- recognising that he was a pawn of much darker forces doing what little he could do to spare the world yet greater evils. It’s an exposé of the way the US government of the time exploited and then tossed aside the nation’s brightest minds; using their insight and intellectual labour but refusing to listen to their dire warnings about the misuse of the power they were developing. It’s a study of the prejudices and flawed relations that characterised life in the 1940s and 50s. It’s a deep dive into the workings of the mid-20th Century scientific community. It is, quite simply, brilliant. From its visualisation of atomic physics to the ingenious ways it finds to show Oppenheimer’s doubt and guilt over the use of his weapon, Oppenheimer is a once-in-a-generation piece of media whose import and significance can’t and shouldn’t be denied. I thoroughly expect it to take its place in the western cinematic canon alongside Citizen Kane, Doctor Strangelove, The Seventh Seal, Alien, The Truman Show and other lightning-in-a-bottle one-offs whose existence could never have been conceived before they came screaming into existence with the swagger of inevitability and- appropriately in this case- the explosive roar of sheer newness.

Er… I really like this film.

Slumberland And now, a family film! A fucking excellent family film, in fact! Loosely based on the Little Nemo in Slumberland comic strips from the 1930s (and I do mean loosely), it’s a movie about a troubled young girl dealing with tragedy by escaping into a very literal world of dreams, which ultimately serves as the route and method by which she forges new, meaningful connections in the waking world. And if that sounds a little heavy, don’t panic: there’s also a scene in which we learn that the most popular dream in Canada involves riding a giant goose like a fucking dragon. I don’t want to spoil too much of this one, because every dream sequence and plot-point is delightfully inventive and unexpected and really deserves to be experienced fresh. It’s rare to stumble onto something so thoroughly and completely charming and it’s always refreshing when you do. Slumberland handles important themes with a lightness and dextrousness that makes them accessible and comprehensible to the younger members of its audience while keeping its world and plot vital and interesting for older viewers who might already have had their fill of such themes. Normally, I’d deduct points for gender-flipping the main character from the source material, but on this occasion it’s a bit of a non-issue. The Nemo of the comics was a bit of cipher and- if you really need him to be in it, it’s kind of heavily implied that this Nemo’s father was the original. Besides which, Jason Mamoa’s over-exuberant dream-dweller, ‘Flip’, provides a sympathetic masculine presence for any young lads in the audience and he gets nearly as much screen time as the ostensible POV character. So, having addressed the elephant in the room, all that remains to say is: THIS IS A VERY FUCKING GOOD FAMILY FILM. Though maybe not quite as good as…

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish Excuse me, but what fucking right does this film have to be as good as it is? I mean, it’s a spin-off of a minor character from the Shrek films about a talking cat going on a quest to find a magic star that grants wishes. Why the fuck is it one of the best things I’ve seen in years? I mean, on the surface, it’s just a really fun family flick. It’s funny; its set-pieces are creative; its characters are entertaining and larger than life; its animation style is fresh and frankly enchanting. But then it also decided that it wanted to be a meditation on confronting the ageing process and its implied threat of mortality. And it fucking nails it. It’s not prescriptive or lecturing: it sympathises with Puss’s fears as he realises he’s used up all but one of his nine lives… but it ultimately shows that his increasing age doesn’t have to define him. Add a few quiet, tender moments of the kind often missing from the hyperactive movies of the last few years, a wonderfully psychotic villain and a B-plot about the value of found families, bonded by love rather than blood, and what you have is a truly excellent slice of entertainment that wears its heart on its sleeve and, in a landscape littered with insincere corporate garbage, is remarkable for its sincerity.

A Haunting in Venice Okay, brutal honesty time: Kenneth Brannaugh (who I just misspelled) isn’t as good in the role of Poirot as David Suchet was. However, it feels unfair to judge him or his take on Agatha Christie’s classic mysteries by that metric, since Suchet’s Poirot was a spectacular, long-running, genre-defining figure who probably won’t be equalled in televised detection fiction any time this millennium. Judged on its own merits, A Haunting in Venice is a deliciously intricate, intelligently-realised film which succeeds in saying something new about its central character and doing something new with its genre. Loosely based on Christie’s The Halloween Party, A Haunting in Venice takes on the overtones of a horror story and pits Poirot against forces that may be genuinely supernatural in a setting and world that embraces gothic aesthetics and conceits as much as it does those of the detective-genre. I don’t want to give too much away, but I will see that A Haunting in Venice finds just the right balance between horror and rationality and toys with ambiguity in a way that a lot of modern movies- keen to over-explain things to an imagined audience of thickos- might miss. It also knows how to treat its subject matter with sobriety when it counts without sacrificing an overall sense of playfulness.

A final note: its predecessor, Death on the Nile, was probably the weakest of the Brannaugh trilogy (and Venice does feel like the final entry in a trilogy), despite the welcome presence of Dawn French as an eccentric communist lesbian. Death on the Nile made its Poirot a little too prickly and unforgiving and also had him reflect Christie’s real-life conservative-with-a-small-c politics, which (though confined to one or two lines) made for uncomfortable viewing at best. While I understand the intention was to contrast him against characters who today’s viewers would find more relatable, it served to rob the protagonist of some of his wisdom and mystery (Poirot needn’t be a paragon of progressivism- in fact, that would be just as bad- but he ought to be above such things; a rarefied figure concerned less with politics than his own moral imperatives). Luckily, Venice seems to have learned from these mistakes and eschews even minor forays into politics, preferring instead to focus on character drama and a battle between rationality and magical thinking to generate its various tensions. Yeah. Good choice.

Peacemaker That more or less does it for the films (well, the good films- the dreck will get their own blog at some point), but there’s still a couple of telly shows I want to talk about. Starting with this one! Peacemaker is one of the funniest, most over-the-top shows of the last ten years. Billed as a superhero program, it’s really more a comedy and ode to schlocky pop culture framed that uses a superhero story as a framing device. While it also has some important and timely things to say about the threat of climate crisis and ends on a bit of a downer (which I won’t spoil), the overall experience is one of hilarious, ludicrous, over-the-top scenes punctuated by some of the best heavy rock ever used in any show’s soundtrack and a lot of down-time devoted exclusively to really, really funny dialogue. If you liked Archer but felt it could benefit from more heavy metal interludes, the comedy here is very much in the same style: people talking at cross-purposes in a way that leverages their clashing belief systems, background and mental illnesses for comic effect. Ultimately, as with Archer, its acerbic tartness also serves as cover for a heart of gold. There’s no meanness of spirit or coldness to Peacemaker. If anything, I’d describe its approach to characterisation as joyously redemptive, while its overt inclusivity isn’t the clinical box-ticking of most Hollywood ‘diversity’, but rather seems to stem from an all-embracing, eclectic fascination with the way human beings are shaped by background and divergent life-experiences. It’s really, really good to see this done well for a change.

Oh, and there’s bits that are also a bit sexy.

One Piece I never got round to watching the original One Piece anime, despite my abiding affection for Japanese animation. That wasn’t a deliberate thing- there was just always something else to watch first. As it turns out, that was a stroke of luck, since I now get to watch the English-language, live-action adaptation fresh and it’s a fucking delight. It’s also so profoundly weird that I have no idea how to explain why it’s so good to a normal, sane reader. Between the violently revolutionary fish people, the murder-clowns with detachable body parts, the fruits that give you superpowers, the badass martial-arts chefs arguing over oregano, the sexy, plus-sized pirate queens, the sea-snails that act like living telephones and the high-ranking military leaders with very silly hats, it’s kind of hard to know where to start. What I can tell you is that the whole world of One Piece is absolutely fascinating: a nautical civilisation of a thousand islands whose technology seems to have evolved in such a way that sail-based ship-travel, gunpowder cannons and neon lights are all in use at the same time; where traditional aristocratic societies coexist with violent samurai clans; where piracy is less a crime than a lifestyle choice. I can tell you its characters are compelling and ridiculous… yet also compellingly, sincerely heroic in a way that western-origin protagonists are rarely allowed to be, lest the show-runners be accused of reinscribing toxic ideals. I can tell you that the fight scenes are epic and the special effects regard little things like physics with a magnificent degree of contempt. And, of course, I can tell you that it’s bloody good fun.

Doctor Who 2023 Specials After a shaky start with The Star Beast (which kinda felt like the first draft of a better script to me- see my full review) the Who specials shaped up to be some of the best telly in years- high concept sci-fi and cosmic horror seen through the lens of off-beat humour and silliness that my home country still does better than anywhere else. After the wilderness of the Chibnall/Whitaker years, the specials felt like getting Doctor Who back as an early Xmas present. I won’t go on and on here since I’ve written several full reviews for the individual episodes, but I feel it’s important to state again my delight that this exists.

And that’s probably enough to be getting on with, don’t you think? Well, guess what: you don’t get a vote! This is the end of the blog whether you like it or not. You can piss off now.

Doctor Who: Flux Review- Who Gives a Flux

You're not getting a spoiler warning, because you can't 'spoil' a turd sandwich by letting on what kind of bread they used.

So, I knew Doctor Who: Flux wasn’t going to be good. It’s written entirely by Chris Chibnall, the man who gave us red hot hits like Shilling for Space Amazon and Attack of the Large Onion. Clearly, I was not expecting great things, but the 60th Anniversary Specials kept referencing it like I was supposed to know and care what it was, so I gritted my teeth and dived in. I am an idiot. I only have so many hours of life, and I chose to spend six of them watching Flux. I feel like if I’m ever dragged up before some kind of cosmic review board and asked to justify ever second I spent on Earth, I’m going to be more embarrassed about the time I spent watching Flux than I am all the days I wasted trying to pick things up using only my feet (And thereby hangs a tale, but I don’t have time to tell it here). Anyway: Flux. Why?

I think the cruellest thing about Flux is that it starts off alright and then gradually deteriorates over time- so gradually in fact, that you don’t even notice until you reach the end and realise what you just saw. You might be familiar with that really sick experiment some very bored scientists once conducted, where they tried putting a frog in boiling water. Obviously, the frog jumped out. So then they put the frog in cool water and brought it to the boil over a long period of time. The frog didn’t realise what was happening and literally just sat there and died. Flux was the water. I was the frog.

The first episode, The Halloween Apocalypse is okay sci-fi. It even feels like a proper episode of Doctor Who in places. After some preliminary grumbling, the opening proper sees Whitaker’s 13th Doctor dangling over a sea of acid with not-really-her-love-interest Yaz, suspended from a hovering beam set up by a prospective villain. And our heroes spend most of the time arguing over whose fault it is that they got caught in the first place while their escape plan goes horribly wrong. We’re also introduced to our actual villains for the series, who claim to represent time itself while a big swirly space-storm that might or might not be related ravages the universe. It’s… pretty compelling actually. The ideas seem big and intriguing and I actually found myself- against my better judgement- wondering what the big twist was going be. There’s this recurring notion that time itself is evil and needs to be shackled, lest it run riot and overtake space, creating a world of infinite suffering. It’s a terrifying concept and therefore interesting. Meanwhile, Whitaker actually appears to be doing some acting, which makes a nice change from her early tenure. I mean, she still doesn’t feel like the Doctor- any Doctor- probably because she didn’t actually watch Who prior to acting in it, but she’s not so wooden as to be unwatchable this time round, so there’s that. In short, we’re set up for a solid season of TV.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long for the wheels to fall off. The second episode sees the Sontaran coopting the Crimean War to invade Earth, taking advantage of the chaos created by the Flux (which, in fairness, is a very Sontaran thing to do). Before long, the Doctor and co. (by now, there’s a team- I’m not getting into the why) bump into actual historic figure Mary Secole, whose accent alone should win some kind of award for overacting and an army general who’s trying to repel the Sontaran invasion. Obviously, the Doc takes issue and tries to tell him not fight the Sontarans, which on one level is fair enough. We know the Doctor’s not a fan of soldiers. But the poor bastard literally doesn’t have a choice. Not only is it his job, from his perspective, he’s the last line of defence stopping the Sontaran invasion from reaching Britain. He has to fight. Yet, like most of Chibnall’s disposable villains, he’s written with all the complexity of a tablespoon- he’s just a bluff, overbearing military-man (and a bit of a sexist, just in case we didn’t get we were meant to be rooting against him). He’s just there to get in the way and never exhibits enough personality to make him compelling or make us think about his motivations and the internal logic of his actions. I mean, I know Moffat was a bit annoying as showrunner, back in the day, but at least when he wrote characters like this you could see what they were thinking and why- you understood that they were wrong, but there were some pains taken to show that their conclusions made sense to them in context; there was some effort made to be at least vaguely sympathetic to the plight of the less-than-genre-savvy inhabiting the Whoniverse. But hey, it’s a minor gripe. I ploughed on, not realising that this was just the first in a series of cock-ups that would slowly heat up the frog-water of the season to awful, boiling temperatures. I should have known. We all should have known.

Of course, I can’t keep going episode by episode. For a one thing, they began to blur into one after awhile and, for another, I can only bare to write about Flux for so many paragraphs. After that point, my eyes will start to bleed, a ringing will start in my ears, and The Voices (TM) will start telling me to grab the power-drill and gaffer tape. Instead, lets talk about the villains. For there are many. Aside from the Sontarans and the time-entities (I just remembered their names are Swarm and Azure, though we’re given literally zero reason to care), there’s also a dude called The Grand Serpent who gets introduced as some kind of galactic dictator, but the next time we see him, he’s on Earth, plotting to make himself the oversight guy for UNIT. And, of course, there’s the head of Division- an organisation so corrupt it will happily kill the entire universe just to protect its secrets, then bugger off to the next universe and start interfering in its history. Individually, all these villains are… fine? I guess? I mean, the Grand Serpent has a genuine air of menace about him and he goes about his evil business with a remarkable degree of confidence and alacrity. The Sontarans are a reliable cautionary tale against military jingoism. The time-entities are both terrifying and interesting. The extent of Division, at least on paper, is awe-inspiring. The problem is that Chibnall can’t be bothered to develop any of them properly. He just keeps piling on douchebags and never giving any of them a chance to breathe.

First off, we never find out why Swarm and Azure want to unleash time, knowing full well it will destroy all creation. They’re time-entities themselves, but what does that mean? They still have physical bodies and appear to live, for all intents and purposes, in the spacial universe. What does it even mean for time to be evil? Why are they such snappy dressers? That last question is probably less important. The point is that we find out literally nothing important about them, even though they’re the primary antagonists of the series. The Grand Serpent, meanwhile, gets a motivation. He’s been deposed (we never see this happen) and he’s working with the Sontarans to secure a power-base for the future. Fine. I’ll go along with that… except why is he working with the Sontarans when he’s clearly perfectly capable of manipulating entire planets on his own? What’s the name of his species? Why is he the way he is? We get no answers (again) and his arc is resolved by shoving him through a magic door and leaving him a floating piece of space-debris. He doesn’t even look that bothered about it. The Sontarans… well, we all know what their deal is, but they don’t escape Chibnalling. Far from being an effective and serious foe, they end up reduced to blustering goons with an addiction to Earth-grown sugars and exactly one, easily-thwarted strategy. And then there’s Division. The scope of its reach should be horrifying; its ruthlessness chilling; its cold indifference to any one universe fearsome. But in the end, the whole thing just comes off as silly. It seems to have been started by the Time Lords (sort of), but it doesn’t have a Time Lord-y agenda. It’s willing to destroy a whole universe that it considers a failed experiment, but it’s never explained why it considers that the experiment failed. It controls the Flux itself, but that ends up leaving Swarm and Azure without anything particularly terrifying to wield. Also, the whole thing is run by the Doctor’s mum (sort of) and it’s revealed that the Doctor actually came from the other universe to which Division is heading. Which is idiotic. I mean, the whole Timeless Children thing was stupid the first time Chibnall trotted it out because it undermines the Doc’s whole deal of just being a normal Gallifreyan who stole a box and started doing some good in the universe. The point of the character is that its their choices that define them, not their superhero-style trademark Secret Origin. Thank fuck The Giggle went on to imply that this was just a load of nonsense cooked up by The Toymaker to mess with his old enemy.

The fact is that Chibnall just can’t help but ruin seemingly good ideas by cramming them together with bad ideas- and even other good ideas- so tightly that none of them feel meaningful or important. The villains du jour are the prime example, but they’re not the only offenders, not by a long stretch. There’s this little love story about two people separated by the Flux trying to find each other, which is actually pretty compelling sci-fi (though it doesn’t exactly feel like Doctor Who- it’s played way too straight and lacks the show’s signature light touch). Given a whole episode of its own to breathe, it might have been quite good, but it gets spread out across all six episodes of the series to make room for other stuff and it becomes impossible to give a shit after the third. This is also the segment, incidentally, that nerfs the Cybermen. Apparently, all the upgrade-based invincibility of Nightmare in Silver is gone now and any yoohoo with two lasers and a decent aim can take them down. Are these just earlier models, or did Chibnall just forget about NIS? I suspect option B.

There’s a race of talking dogs who are species-bonded to the human race and they’re theoretically instrumental in resolving the plot, but we only ever meet one of them and their species’ lore, background and beliefs are never fleshed out in any way.

There’s a temple where time is channelled and controlled (because it has to be; because time is evil, remember), but it just comes completely out of left-field. Is it a thing from classic-era Who? Because I’ve watched quite a bit of that over the years, and I don’t bloody remember this thing. It’s an interesting idea, but its never explained how it works or how it was built. I mean, you need time in which to create the structures that will control time, but if time is against you, how can you ever create anything within time? Buh? Ideas that should be important pillars of the show are treated as disposable; nothing significant is fleshed out and the whole thing feels like a waste of time.

But I’m not done! Oh no- we also get to see Chibnall’s ignorance of Who lore on full display. The Weeping Angels apparently only send people back in time the first time they touch them- the second time they turn them to stone and kill them. But we know that’s not how they work. The Angels Take Manhattan was at great pains to show the horror of the Angels battery farming humans by sending them back in time over and over and over again within a single building. Travelling to another universe is treated like a big deal, but David Tennant did it by accident way back in his first term as the Doctor, when he hopped to a parallel universe where Cybermen were being invented on Earth. The whole concept of a Who multiverse is treated like a big deal in fact, but it’s been around for ages- its just been treated with a lighter, more graceful touch to prevent the main universe of the show from feeling disposable. As previously discussed, the Cybermen are really the Cybermen; the Sontarans barely act like Sontarans (or rather, they all act like Strax, the joke Sontaran Eleven recruited as one of his little helpers that time). I could go on, but this is actually giving me a headache.

The point is that Flux is a mess- an unsatisfying melange of ingredients that would be fine on their own, but which don’t go together and are never developed into anything meaningful; a Doctor Who cosplay convention where half the participants don’t know who they’re meant to be what Doctor Who is; a right fucking shambles, in short.

At the end, I’m left with one question: Why did I do this to myself. And one answer: because I’m a fucking idiot.

Doctor Who: The Giggle Review- A Whole Glorious Hour of Literally Perfect Television

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

In my previous two Who reviews, I argued that- regardless of the increasing quality of the show- cancellation would still, ultimately, be a kindness. I said this as a fan, because I was aware that the world Doctor Who was built for and the world we presently have are so wildly different that, ultimately, the off-kilter, quintessentially British spirit of the show would have to be traded away to maintain long-term viability. In the wake of The Giggle, I find myself forced to reevaluate this opinion. You see, The Giggle isn’t just a really, really good piece of television- it’s also a blueprint for the series going forward. In this story, showrunner and script-writer Russel T. Davies seems to have hit on a new-but-familiar identity for Doctor Who that can continue to work in the modern world without sacrificing the elements that made it good to begin with.

It would be hard to overstate how fucking great this episode is. Let me see if I can put it into words. I was fourteen years old when Doctor Who came back from its decades-long hiatus and reappeared on the BBC, fronted by the inimitable Christopher Ecclestone. I used to watch those early episodes perched, very literally, on the edge of my seat, my legs trembling involuntarily, ready to run- as though if I sprinted fast enough, I could catch up to the Doctor and enter that world of wild, uncontrolled imagination; that infinity of time and space. That feeling continued throughout David Tennant’s first run as the Doctor, but eventually began to decay. I chalked this down to getting older. After all, nobody watches anything at 20 or 30 the way they watched it when they were 14. I just had to accept that the ageing process had robbed me of my ability to uncritically enjoy something that had meant so much to me in my formative years. And then The Giggle happened, and suddenly I’m 14 again, glued to my chair and grinning like an idiot.

It’s not that The Giggle turned off my critical and analytical faculties by appealing to the nostalgia centres of my brain. It’s too fresh and inventive to pull that cheap trick. Rather, it’s that it’s so joyous and energising that it taps directly into the same part of my psyche that the early episodes did in 2005 while also being so well thought-through and meticulously realised that my capacity for analysis and critique enhanced rather than marred my enjoyment. In my review for Wild Blue Yonder, I commented that it’s harder for TV episodes with a lot of superfluous ideas, characters and concepts to juggle them all successfully- almost like there’s only so much quality to go around and it gets spread too thin. This makes The Giggle particularly impressive. There’s a ton of stuff going on here, but it’s all handled with equal panache and genuine verve. The Giggle makes the juggling of elements feel completely effortless. Spoilers ahead, but I think it’s important to list, out of context, some of the things that happen in The Giggle that left me bewildered, gobsmacked and delighted all at once. And yes, I laughed out loud at many of these, braying like a complete fucking cretin from the sheer, infectious joie de vive of it.

You know, I could probably go on, but I won’t. I think that’s honestly enough to be getting on with, and this review does kinda need to end eventually. The point I’m trying to make is that there’s a tremendous amount of silliness and cleverness and inventiveness on display here and it all feels very Doctor Who-y.

Now, if I were a proper reviewer, I’d deal with the meat and potatoes of making a TV show. But honestly, what can I say that isn’t blindingly obvious? Of course David Tennant and Catherine Tate’s acting is spectacular- they’re good actors. Of course the rest of their cast pull their weight- most of them are old hands. Of course the script is well-crafted- I’ve already praised it. Of course the special effects are excellent- this isn’t the bloody Star Beast (hey! I think I just worked out where all that Disney money went!). Basically, everything is well-assembled and you could have figured that out for yourself because I wouldn’t be praising the episode at all otherwise. I will say that Neil Patrick Harris’ Celestial Toymaker is one of the most amazing performances I’ve ever seen. The dude’s having so much fun it’s infectious. I don’t mean to suggest he’s the best actor in the world or anything quite so grand- I just mean that he’s ideally fitted for the role and it’s a treat to see. Other than that, I think we can forgo the painfully obvious gushing over the acting.

It’s probably more relevant to discuss whether The Giggle does the job it sets out to do. And, frankly, it sets out to do a lot of jobs. Its a send-off for David Tennant’s take on the Doctor, an introduction to Ncuti Gatwa’s take, a long-overdue attempt to mend the bridges fucking Chibnall burned during his time as showrunner, a showcase for everything that’s good about Doctor Who, an attempt to expand the Whoniverse in lasting, meaningful ways and an attempt to establish a new identity for the programme that cleaves to the original without depending on it. I mean, that’s a fuck-load of stuff, so it would kind of be unfair to demand that it pulls it all off. Well, the good news is that I don’t have to demand shit, because it just does. Like, completely fucking unprompted. I didn’t have to yell or whack its knuckles with a ruler or anything.

As a send-off for Tenant, it works by… well, by not being a send-off. Russel T. Davies is a gay man whose formative years were the eighties, with the AIDs crisis running rampant and disproportionately effecting his community and demographic. In the early 2000s, when he had to write and manage Tenant’s first run, he still hadn’t entirely come to terms with that (or so the speculation goes), which is why the Doctor’s regeneration from Tenant to Matt Smith was so traumatic- to paraphrase a fellow fan on the issue, Russ just didn’t believe in happy endings. Tenant’s 10th Doctor ‘dies’ (for want of a better term) sad and desperate, clinging to an identity that’s about to be washed away. This time around, we get something called ‘Bi-Generation’, which allows the Doctor to split himself in two, so that his current and next identity can co-exist simultaneously. He gets to hand over the mantle and task of being the Doctor, without giving up who he is. In fact, he gets to go and live with Donna and her family and basically become everyone’s favourite uncle while Gatwa’s Doctor flies off to continue being the main character. And it’s perfect. It’s not a painful, wrenching goodbye, but a fond farewell- a reward for services rendered that doesn’t just keep a fan-favourite on hand for future shenanigans but allows the show to evolve without symbolically erasing a beloved part of its history. It’s made all the more lovely by the fact that it clearly signifies Russel T. Davies going through some kind of internal resolution and coming to terms with something we humble viewers can only guess at. He’s made room in his life for the possibility of happiness- or so it seems- and it’s reflected in his work. It’s nice when real people have arcs.

As an introduction to Gatwa’s 15th Doctor, The Giggle doesn’t do a bad job either. Instead of a few pitiful seconds of screen-time at the end of the episode (which is traditional for hot new Regenerations), Gatwa gets to act properly alongside his predecessor for a little bit and feel out the role. His delivery of the lines is mostly solid, barring a few moments of awkwardness, but- in fairness- he’s being asked to act against a fuckload of green-screen FX in no trousers for one of the most iconic programmes and roles on British telly. The fact he does as well as he does first time out is impressive. You can tell he has the talent to carry off the role (this isn’t another Whitaker situation, thank fuck)- it’s just going to take him a full episode or two to hit his stride, which is fine. But that’s the actor. The character of the 15th Doctor… well, let’s just say I feel like the TARDIS is in safe hands. Fifteen is over the top, bombastic, a tiny bit queer-coded (in a fun way, not a virtue-signalling way), refreshingly silly and absolutely full of heart. Yeah. I could get used to this guy. The fact that he’s the first black Doctor is also handled way, way better than Whitaker being the first female Doctor. With Whitaker, we got a fucking awful, unearned straight-to-camera speech about how change can be scary but how it’s also inevitable and important (or something- after a certain point, I couldn’t hear it over the sound of my own groaning). With Gatwa we get “Do you come in a range of colours?” “Yes.” and that’s it. The show doesn’t want to start a blasted controversy over it or have it be a big deal… so it accomplishes that by not making it a big deal. This kind of light touch, trust-the-audience-to-keep-up approach is refreshing to say the least. And yeah- it does help mend some of those Chibfail/Pisstaker-burned bridges I alluded to earlier.

Speaking of mending burned bridges, I think one of the most important things The Giggle does is low-key kick the shit out of Chibnall’s idiotic changes to canon. It’s accomplished with exactly one line of dialogue, and it’s open to interpretation, but it’s still an olive branch to fans who were flabbergasted by the flagrant disrespect of The Timeless Children and the whole ‘Division’ plot arc in Flux. See, aside from pushing against established canon in a way that insulted those invested therein, those storylines symbolically overrode William Hartnell’s definitive performance as the First Doctor from way back in the 60s, turning his character into just another link in the chain and erasing the in-universe legacy of much-cherished figure (a real person whose importance to the show cannot be overstated), just because he didn’t fit Chibfail’s personal, self-serving vision of who and what the Doctor should be. But, in The Giggle, we learn that the Toymaker “made a jigsaw puzzle” out of the Doctor’s history, low-key implying that, actually, none of this bullshit is canon- it was just a mad bastard with reality-bending powers messing with the Doc for shits and, er, giggles. No pun intended. Fine by me. I also quite liked the way The Giggle used the Toymaker to take aim at the Culture War and cancel culture- on both sides of the divide- because it seemed like a bit of an acknowledgement that the fans hadn’t really come first where creative decision on Who were concerned lately; that it was more about seeming to be on the right ‘side’. The implication here, of course, is that if the bloody Toymaker knows this is bullshit, so does the show and we’ll get episodes that appeal to all the fanbase as a whole rather than episodes that seek to draw battle-lines and divide them. I mean, the bridges Chibnall and Whitaker burned were big, huge, fucking massive bridges and they burned them very, very thoroughly. Doctor Who has a lot of work to do if it wants to bring them back up to code and win fan trust back, but it’s made enormous strides just with The Giggle.

As for serving as a showcase for everything good about Who- yeah: fucking nails it. We’ve got cosmic stakes, quintessentially British snark, loveable daftness, a great fucking bad guy, problems being solved with smarts and charisma rather than guns and violence, high concept sci-fi nonsense by the bucket load and even some creepy as fuck monsters to play with. Plus, with the single line “My legions are coming,” we know that we’re going to get more mileage out of the plot-line. What’s not to love?

So yes: The Giggle is worth every tiny scrap of hype that surrounds it. It really is the episode to revitalise Doctor Who. Yes, RTD and friends still have to stick the landing- they still have to keep up a consistent quality with upcoming episodes and not backslide to fucking Star Beast level- but, if they can do all that, the show should be good for awhile. Yes, it will still have to stop eventually, but that moment is no longer imminent. With the right management and succession of showrunners, we could get another decade out of this. Doctor Who could actually outlast the Culture Wars that make it so hard to do good sci-fi, regardless of which side of the political spectrum your story falls on. Wouldn’t that be nice? To know that, in the end, the winner of that tawdry fucking bum-fight wasn’t one side or the other, but a genuinely lovely and well-meaning little British sci-fi show. And all that, because one episode- one fucking episode- was able to undo years of crap. Not bad for a single hour of Saturday evening telly.

Doctor Who: Wild Blue Yonder Review

Quick question, Russel T. Davies: where the fuck did THIS come from? I only ask because this is a genuinely brilliant, exciting, well-written episode of Doctor Who that feels like the best of your original run, whereas- no offence- The Star Beast was a confused, underwhelming mess. Seriously, if I was a teacher who had to grade both pieces of work, I’d assume you’d gotten illegal help with one of them. I mean, seriously Russ: what did you do between writing Exhibit A (the mess) and Exhibit B (the fucking masterpiece)? Did you just neck a fuckload of hallucinogens? Did you finally get laid? Did you allow yourself to be beaten over the head with a big, rubber hammer? Whatever it was that made the difference, please, please keep doing it.

And now to address my actual readers: Wild Blue Yonder is very, very good and I recommend you watch it with a fucking colostomy bag in, because it is shit-yourself scary. The Doctor and Donna get stranded on a spaceship at the literal edge of the universe (she spilled some tea on the TARDIS console, because of course she fucking did) and there are things aboard from the darkness beyond that edge. Lacking shape or form or mass- being entities of pure, malignant consciousness in fact- they assume the forms of Donna and the Doctor and proceed, forthwith, to fuck with them in the most unsettling and horrific manner possible. It’s creepy as fuck to see the copied bodies of our leads distort and warp in horrendous, Kronenberg-ish ways as the entities from the dark beyond existence seek to elicit their fear, but the real-headfuck comes from their refusal to give up the pretence, remaining in-character even while waxing loquacious on their evil plans (which I won’t spoil). There’s an element of psychological warfare- even torture- at play here, as they gradually tease out bits of buried darkness and it’s deeply, deeply affecting. It’s strikes a delicate balance, being the kind of thing that you can get away with on prime-time TV without pulling its punches one fucking iota.

Of course, this being a Doctor Who episode, the horror is tempered with humour and quite a bit of silliness. There’s a line about how someone “Got a very old robot out of storage to walk, very slowly, down a very long corridor” that, in context is giggle-worthy (particularly with the additional knowledge that the Doctor has named the robot ‘Jimbo’) and a bit where the leads meet Isaac Newton and then discuss how hot was (with the Doctor being surprised to realise that recent experiences have turned him just a tiny bit gay).

The Doctor also gets to be the Doctor in this episode- running around, solving mysteries and finding ways to fight monsters. Not fucking victims of a ‘psychedelic sun’ or insect blokes who eventually turn out to be good guys: actual, no-holes-barred, proper Doctor Who monsters! I won’t spoil the solution he eventually hits on, but it’s bombastic and clever and entertaining in a way that literally nothing in The Star Beast was.

Oh, and no spoilers, but the final scene nearly made me cry. In a good way.

Obviously, I have gripes. Well, one gripe. Namely: Sir Isaac ‘Mr. Gravity’, Fuck You Newton was not a mixed-race individual and while colour-blind casting is fine (great, actually) for fictional characters, you can’t just race-swap actual people who actually lived and had identities of their own. The past isn’t just a big dustbin of fun characters and events to be pilfered for content: it’s a series of lives and experiences lived by real, sentient people who, if they had any say in the matter, would probably like to be accurately represented after their deaths. Even in an upbeat work of fiction, the past ought to be treated with a modicum of tact and delicacy; its tropes and ways of being preserved with all their flaws rather than suborned to suit modern audiences. Irreverence is fine: wild inaccuracy isn’t. I’d also like to point out that, if they wanted a non-white physicist in the episode, there are fucking loads of real ones who just aren’t taught in the Western scientific canon. This could have been a good time to introduce wider audiences to, say, Robert Bragg or Arthur B.C. Walker, Jr (who is the only reason we today can observe the sun’s corona accurately enough to get a sense of what it’s fucking doing, by the way). I mean, surely drawing attention to real non-white scientists is much more meaningful than pretending a dude with skin like fucking Savlon wasn’t Caucasian. It’s less attention-grabbing, of course, and it doesn’t virtue-signal as hard, but it’s more meaningfully progressive and actually serves to enlighten and inform viewers.

Okay, that’s out my system now. I would like to stress that I’ve only devoted so much time to that because it’s important to clarify where my objection comes from, lest some cretin completely miss the point and set up a chant of ‘bigot’ (probably misspelled as bigfoot because of the autocorrect on their cunting smartphone) right outside my blog. I often find that the people who object to these false representations publicly are just bigots because decent, progressive people are too bloody scared to point out the real flaws. It’s therefore important, as a progressive, anti-racist person, to raise objections that are actually sane, lest our entire cultural debate descend into a slap-fight between hateful, ill-read fascist micrococks and sanctimonious, reality-denying nutbars. All that being said, not-really-Isaac-Newton is only in Wild Blue Yonder for, like, three minutes, so in terms of the episode itself, it really is a teeny-tiny gripe and shouldn’t in any way ruin anyone’s enjoyment thereof. (EDIT: I actually considered deleting this whole bit, but that felt obscurely like cowardice, so I settled for a rewrite that shortened my original rant considerably).

A more immediately relevant discussion might be why Wild Blue Yonder worked where The Star Beast failed. And no, I don’t think it’s just that Our Russ got laid between script-writing sessions. Have you seen his face nowadays? He looks like a potato receiving an unexpected suppository. Nobody’s into that. No, I suspect the reason Wild Blue Yonder works is the tight focus and small scale. Essentially, its four characters- the protagonists plus two antagonists- on a spaceship, trying to out-think each other. There’s mystery, conflict and an interesting setting to provide context, and that’s all any story really needs. I often find that mistakes and poor writing creep into telly shows and films in proportion to the amount of superfluous shit they give themselves to juggle. I think there needs to be a term for that, so I’m going to coin one: ‘Concept Bloat’. The more extra characters and ideas and elements an individual episode of a TV show has, the more likely one of them is to go wrong, and when one thing goes wrong, a lot of other less-than-optimal stuff is allowed to slide by unchallenged because it looks fine next to the thing that actually went properly, fully wrong. The Star Beast is actually a perfect study of how this happens. The ‘Roth Warriors’ (I have no idea if I’m spelling that correctly, nor do I care) looked rubbish, but their rubbishness was less obvious than it should have been compared to the overall look of the episode’s fictitious London. Meanwhile, the plastic-y version of London probably seemed acceptable in the context of a plot where reversing a star-ship engine can magically heal streets. The magically-healing streets probably seemed fine because they were sharing plot-space with a wheelchair containing a hidden rocket-launcher (to clarify, I have no problem with a wheelchair that can shoot rockets- I just don’t think there’s any way you could make it look like a regular wheelchair). The sheer absurdity of this might well have gone unnoticed because, next to phrases like ‘Male Presenting Time Lord’, stupid tech probably seemed fine. And phrases like ‘Male Presenting Time Lord’ probably seemed acceptable when spoken two minutes after an encounter with a crappy-looking Roth Warrior, bringing us full circle. With a more streamlined set of ideas, it would have been easier to prune out the bad ones, or retool them until they worked. Each individual nugget of crap, however, allowed the crap on either side of it to pass unnoticed and what you ended up with was, well, The Star Beast. In contrast, Wild Blue Yonder is as tight as an XS rubber gimp suit and genuinely brilliant. It does more with less because there was time to hone and polish the less.

So what does this say about the future of the show? In my last review, I implied that the best thing that could happen to Who would be cancellation- a chance for the show to end on a satisfying note rather than change into something it was never designed to be. As much as I love Who, I’ve arrived at that the conclusion that quality alone isn’t the issue. Even if every episode of the next few series ends up being as good as Wild Blue Yonder, it still can’t go on indefinitely- not with any integrity. The best stories in the world are still only truly satisfying in the moment you close the book, having experienced the full, majestic sweep of the narrative and understood what it was saying creatively and philosophically. TV shows aren’t exactly the same, since they’re less singular efforts and don’t have a single story to tell, but even they eventually have to shit or get off the pot, which means actually ending at some point. So yes, I’m glad showrunner RTD has hit his stride with Wild Blue Yonder, but trying to bottle lightning is never going to work reliably and it doesn’t change the fact that, sooner or later, something is going to have to give. So yeah: I’m still at ‘Let Gatwa have his time and then call an end to it’. One good episode- one really fucking good episode- isn’t enough to fix the show’s underlying problem. I mean, it can be a hiatus rather than fullblown cancellation, but Who still needs some kind of break. Sorry.

Doctor Who: The Star Beast- A Reasonably Watchable Mess

You may have noticed that, despite desperately positive, brittle reviews in the mainstream media, the last few years of Doctor Who went down like a lead balloon with actual fans and ordinary viewers. Turns out that a patronising gender-flip that served no plot purpose followed by a series of episodes in which the Doctor shilled for Space Amazon, murdered innocent giant spiders and delivered completely unearned straight-to-camera speeches like a fucking after-school special weren’t popular moves. The show’s viewing figures plummetted (despite contrary claims from the BBC that turned out, very simply, to be lies) and its review score aggregate on Rotten Tomatoes plunged, at one point, to literally 0%. Hilariously, the review aggregate from the mainstream media was around 90% at the time, once again demonstrating that the average critic can be bought for less than I spend assuring the silence of my past victims (the joke is that all my past victims are dead and I don’t spend a fucking thing on their silence). The abject failure of the Whitaker/Chibnall era was inevitable and any normal person could have predicted it. The BBC, however, didn’t and had a bit of a panic when they realised just how fucked their ratings were. Not that they admitted that, of course, but the fact they brought back the dream-team of showrunner Russell ‘The’ Davies and David Tennant for the 60th Anniversary Specials instead of letting the current incumbents stick around until after the anniversary kinda speaks volumes. So, now we’re getting three Anniversary specials, starring Tennant and helmed by Davies. The first one’s out, and it falls on me to review it as fairly as possible. So… how is it?

Well, put it this way: it’s not terrible, but it’s not the confident, unapologetic return to form I was hoping for either. It concerns a minor villain from the old DW comics called Beep the Meep who poses as a cute, furry critter while secretly plotting the genocide of the entire universe, a reunion with Catherine Tate’s always-delightful Donna Noble and a resolution to the Human/Time Lord meta-crisis that nearly straight-up killed her last time she was on-screen. And, in fairness, the stuff that works works pretty well. The jokes are funny, Tennant and Tate are excellent in their respective roles, the Meep is gloriously fucking psychotic (though the voice actor does sound like they’re phoning it in a bit) and Yasmin Finney, playing Donna’s trans daughter, is a lot less insufferable than she would have been if Chibnall had written her lines. I actually thought the bit where Donna threatens to “descend” on some kids who dead-name her in the street was well-handled and pretty accurately captured the protective instincts of a parent with a trans daughter. Mainly, she’s just there for the representation, though, and does the square root of bugger all to advance the plot. That’s probably a mercy, since I suspect the show would have had a hard time disguising the fact that this fifteen year old kid is being played by a twenty year old woman (who seems to have borrowed David Bowie’s cheekbones) if her part was any more prominent. But yeah- it’s a fun, knockabout adventure that doesn’t overstay its welcome and doesn’t try to outdo the entire show up to that point just because its been a completely arbitrary 60 years since the first episode. It’s basically fun and basically fine. It’s destined to be lauded to ludicrous excess by a mainstream media who are terrified of offering a proper critique because it’s got a trans person in it, while simultaneously being shat upon by online reviewers who know they can win easy points with the fans by challenging the suffocating ubiquity of the Standard Approved Opinion. In truth, though, it’s neither great nor awful- it’s just an hour of television that’s worth watching once but only once. It contains some good stuff… and some shite stuff.

Ah yes, the shite. That’s what you came to read about, isn’t it? Nobody in their right mind shows up at my blog-step for kind words and understanding: you come here because you know I have the pithiest insults and pissiest hot-takes. And yes: there’s some real fucking garbage to dunk on here. First of all, the Human/Time Lord meta-crisis gets resolved in the dumbest fucking way possible. For those of you who don’t remember, the ending of Modern Season 4 of DW was one of the most heartbreaking things ever attempted in a show designed for family viewing. Donna took on the consciousness of a Time Lord in order to save the universe but nearly burnt out her synapses in the processes. The Doctor wiped her mind to save her life, and then had to leave, because if she ever remembered him or the adventures they’d shared together, the crisis would reassert itself and her brain would overload, killing her. And the way they get around this, initially, is alright. Because Donna had a child, part of the meta-crisis got passed onto her, allowing two minds to take a strain that would kill just one. It’s a sweet and perfectly acceptable way of sorting a complex problem and something that legitimately wouldn’t have occurred to the Doctor at the time, because he had to come up with a solution that would work in the moment, not something that would require a nine month gestation period. But then, for some stupid fucking reason, they took it one step further and had Donna and her daughter simply relinquish the power of the meta-crisis, handwaving the obvious bullshit-ness of this move by claiming it just wouldn’t have occurred to a male-presenting Time Lord. The Doctor’s not an idiot. If that was an option, it would have occurred to him. Fuck, it did occur to him that one time Rose Tyler absorbed the Time Vortex and he had her give it up, channelling it into him to save her life at the cost of forcing a regeneration. It’s simultaneously contrived and slap-dash- a hasty right-on girl-power moment that fails miserably to play by the rules and cheapens the original story of the meta-crisis retroactively. It also brings us, neatly, to the phrase ‘male-presenting Time Lord’.

There’s a line in the excellent It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia wherein Charlie describes himself as “a straight man who poops transgender”. The phrase ‘male-presenting Time Lord’ sounds weirdly similar to me. It’s too specific and technical, while also including a wildly silly element (‘Time Lord’ is a vaguely ethereal, grandiose title that doesn’t gel with earthly, human discussions of gender identity). People just don’t talk like that. Sometimes people write like that, seeking an economy of phrasing that looks good on the page… but nobody actually talks like that. I mean, the context in which it’s used is stupid, but the phrasing itself is stupider. It’s also emblematic of a problem with the script as a whole. It feels like a first draught.

What do I mean by that? Well, there’s just a lot of instances where conversations feel slightly stilted or opportunities are missed. Case in point, there’s a bit where Donna’s discussing her kid growing up with her own mum, and it feels like it was meant to be a poignant discussion of the trials and tribulations of raising a child and then realising that they’re not what you were expecting but their own, completely separate person. What we get is just a placeholder where a couple of jokes occur but nothing of import is really said. Similarly, there’s a line where the Doctor muses that he doesn’t know who he is any more, which feels like it was meant to be developed into a meditation on his sense of identity after so many regenerations, metatextually addressing the show’s loss of a coherent, inter-regenerational identity for its lead character. Absolutely fucking nothing comes of it. There’s even a bit where a UNIT scientific advisor in a wheelchair encounters a flight of stairs and the way it’s shot makes it feel like there should have been a joke there. Maybe there could have been a really slow lift that she has to use while her soldiers rush up the stairs, or maybe she could have made one of them carry her. I’d have taken a lazy, low-hanging quip like “stairs…. My old nemesis” to be honest. But all we get is “sorry about the stairs,” and that’s it. My point is that there’s a superficiality to a lot of the scenes and lines that yells ‘PLACEHOLDER’, and areas that desperately need polish.

Speaking of polish: London is once again too fucking clean. I wish TV shows would stop doing that- making London look like the MCU’s version of fucking New York- all glass skyscrapers and clean streets. The real London is a bizarre, dystopian mix of impersonal steel monuments to capital, crumbling baroque architecture from the middling-glorious past and slumping, poverty-stricken housing from a fucking Dickens novel. The city has a really specific, slightly nightmarish character that most telly shows and films fail miserably to capture. It’s inexcusable in this case, because Doctor Who actually used to do a pretty good job of showing London as it is. Which is mental, since it used to be filmed in Swansea in cocking Wales.

But I digress. My final major issue is that the message of the show’s text is wildly at odds with the metatextual message of the specials’ mere existence. The whole reason the BBC re-hired Tennant and Davies onto the show was to announce a return of the Who everyone loved; a tacit admission than the last few years of lazy virtue-signalling and shoddy script-work had been a mistake that they were keen to move on from. There is literally no other reason to take such an obvious backward step in the show’s development. Yet the episode The Star Beast keeps bringing up Whitaker’s tenure as the Doctor as though it’s something to be celebrated. We get lines like “The Doctor’s a man and a woman. And both. And neither. And more,” (again, nobody fucking talks like that) that feel like an attempt to fold the previous three years into the acceptable canon, when the whole reason the specials are happening is to renounce them and leave them in the cold. Then again, that’s the Beeb for you- it's amazing if the left hand knows what the left hand's doing. If someone's bothered to inform the right hand, it's so surprising as to be frankly suspicious. Add to that the extra layer of complexity that comes from getting Disney to part-fund the show and you’re bound to end up with a confused mess. Also, why did they bother getting Disney to part-fund this? The Special Effects look like something a fourteen year-old could whip up in his bedroom. Which is fine- I never mind the sets wobbling in Who: I just can’t figure out where all the fucking money went.

I think the root problem is two-fold. First, as much as I loved Russell T. Davies’ original time as showrunner, it’s really obvious he’s gotten old. It’s only been fifteen years since his time in charge ended, but sometimes, the ageing process kicks a guy’s arse really suddenly (ask me about waking up one day to discover I now have man-boobs sometime). There’s this interview he did recently about how Davros represents an offensive portrayal of wheelchair users, and it’s clearly just the ramblings of a confused old man. Nobody looks at Davros, creator of the Daleks, and thinks ‘yup- there goes a typical wheelchair user’. Part of the point of his character is that he’s kind of admirable on paper, overcoming age and sickness to achieve the impossible… but he perverts and subverts those expectations by doing something fucking appalling. It’s a nuanced, complex take on the way pain and suffering can make a person sympathetic without necessarily redeeming them. And Russel T. Davies, a once-talented writer who should understand this stuff, just doesn’t get it any more. He’s well-meaning, but he’s clearly just not up to the job any more. I mean, he still has talent- his renewed tenure will be better than Chibnall’s… but maybe it would have been a better idea to let the poor schmuck retire on a high note.

The other problem is deeper and more intractable. The world has changed since Doctor Who was the best thing on television, and it might be that it just can’t work any more. The modern era of Who was born from a place of hope yet, also, a place of marginalisation. It was 2005. The government of the day had dome some pretty fucked up things, but they were nowhere near as evil as the governments who were to succeed them. Sci-fi was still a niche thing allowing for experimentation and weirdness. There were definite good guys and bad guys on the world stage and in domestic politics: there were genuine victims on one side and hateful bigots on the other, and it seemed like it might actually be possible for the underdogs to win for a change. 2023 is a different world. We’ve seen the worst UK governments since Thatcher in the 80s (and people kept voting for them) and the worst US President in history (a Savaloy-orange freak with the hair of a sexually-confused Nazi). On the cultural level, the lines between victims and villains have blurred, with the arrival of the never-ending Oppression Olympics birthing a generation of dead-eyed bullies who hide behind nominal ‘oppressed’ status in order to tear down genuinely nice people (like that time a load of wankers piled onto a scientist who landed a probe on a moving comet FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HUMAN HISTORY because he did while wearing a T-shirt with a stylised naked lady on it). Identity has replaced solidarity as the go-to discussion in progressive (or allegedly progressive) circles. The sci-fi genre itself has become popular- meaning it’s infested with normies who don’t understand it but do want to own it. Doctor Who was never built for this world. The change in culture and society over the last just-under-twenty years is more significant, in some ways, than the changes that occurred between its original outing in the 60s and its reboot in 2005, and I don’t know if it can survive those changes. We inhabit a world where actual heroism and even basic decency seem less important than the performance of those qualities in ways that a mass audience can understand and where nuanced solutions, informed by kindness, are verboten because everyone’s supposed to pick a side. There’s no room for a genteel, British/Alien gadabout with two hearts and a silly sonic screwdriver in a world where the battle-lines are drawn and performative virtue has become a universal aspiration. In order to fit our tawdry world, Doctor Who would have to stop being Doctor Who. And, to be blunt, our culture doesn’t really deserve any form of Doctor Who at the moment.

So yes, The Star Beast is pretty good. It’s a nice slice of television that fails on many fronts, but still manages to entertain. But what next? Where can we possibly go from here? Personally, I intend to watch the specials and- if they’re okay- Ncuti Gatwa’s era after that. Then I think I’m done. By rights, the show should face cancellation while it’s still strong enough to bow out gracefully, but if that doesn’t happen, I’ll still have to pick a point to stop watching. Sooner or later, all good things must come to an end, and if the BBC isn’t big enough to admit that, at least I am. I suggest you pick somewhere to draw a line, too.

My Book, Small Infinities Still Exists

Just a quick reminder, I have a book out through the small, leftist press Culture Matters. It's a collection of socialist science fiction and weird fiction, sprinkled with largely apolitical horror story, metaphysical dream allegories and incredibly obtuse jokes about the nature of semiotic communication. Also fat chicks presented as the epitome of desirability because I didn't stop having a fetish just 'cause someone agreed to publish me. It's called Small Infinities You can download it for free HERE

The dowload link is waaaay at the bottom of the page, after the intro by internationally acclaimed poet Fran Lock, but it IS there. Happy hunting.

Small Infinities is Out and Free to Download!

Yo ho ho, fuckarinos! I've got a book out! I said it would be out later this year and none of you believed me (which is fair enough- I do talk a lot of shite). The point is that the non-profit left-wing press Culture Matters has seen fit to put out a collection of my short fiction, entitled Small Infinities as a free PDF download, which you can obtain HERE. It has an introduction by the internationally acclaimed poet and essayist Fran Lock (we're actually related, but shh- don't tell anyone).

I've got to say, it's a real pleasure to actually be putting some creative stuff out into the world, rather just moaning about how shit everything else is. Over the last few years (as my readers will know) I've become increasingly frustrated with a media landscape that has coopted the language and visual signifiers of progressivism in order to promote a shallow, middle-class rainbow capitalism that praises itself for its forward-thinking attitude while marginalising alienated groups who aren't #trending that week and doing bugger all to address real, systemic injustice. I've become doubly frustrated because, through cheap, show-offy gender-flips, straight-to-camera diatribes cribbed from the Twitter rants of well-meaning dingdongs and the slow transformation of diversity into a tedious box-ticking exercise, this media often taints or ruins the IP it's drawing on. And so, Small Infinities is an ACTUALLY left-wing, progressive book that amounts to me side-eyeing the fuck out of the rest of genre fiction then going "HOLD MY BEER!" (I don't drink beer. Spoiler alert: I just handed someone a jugful of urine sample).

But what is Small Infinities, besides me mooning the rest of western culture? Well, it's a fucking trip for a start! The opening story is called Enlightenment for All! (which CM published as a stand-alone awhile back) and its a multigenerational saga spanning 20,000 years that is both a quest to discover the meaning of life itself and an in-depth exploration of class dynamics as they relate to the physical geography of a divided world. Then, however, there are stories like What Atoms Really Want, in which the nature of infinity itself is confronted by people shrinking between microcosmic sub-universes and stories like The Cascade, in which street magicians and stage magicians are organised into warring guilds and do battle in the streets of London like old-timey Cockney crime firms. There are stories about living chess pieces solving neo-noir mysteries and stories about living guns being grown on bushes by corrupt arms-farmers. There are stories in which Victorian ghosts describe their sex lives and stories in which living cartoons spring into the real world and learn the power of drugs and sleaze! I could go on- really, this book is jam-packed with weird, out-there, head-fucky goodness.

Of course, if all of this sounds a bit abstract and hark-at-me-ish, it's also worth noting that there's plenty of visceral stuff for good, old-fashioned manly men (and manly women) to get behind. There's fight epic fight scenes between wizards and unspeakable magical horrors! There's fat chicks in skimpy outfits! There's terrifying alien species (though they might not be what they seem)! There's hauntings and daring escapes and guys getting their feet eaten off with acid! It's a riot!

If it sounds like your sort of riot, then- once again- you can download it for FREE FREE FREE, right HERE! The actual download link is at the bottom of the page, below the intro by Fran Lock. Enjoy!

A Long, Unnecessary Love Letter to Comic Books

I’ve gotten way the fuck into comics lately, ranging from weird titles from publishers I’m pretty sure are defunct (Solar, Man of the Atom follows the ongoing adventures of an energy being whose origin story includes accidentally destroying his own timeline) to unsettling little horror tales (Gaiman’s Likely Stories disturbed me to the point of feeling physically ill once or twice) to big, bombastic superhero fair (just give me anything with Batman). It’s particularly this last category that I want to focus on, because it was while reading the 2018-onwards run of Justice League that I realised why I’ve been getting so into comics at the moment. They’re currently filling the niche that film used to fill.

You see, folks, I have a little problem when I go and see most films nowadays. The problem is very simple. While I still enjoy movies, that enjoyment is somewhat marred by the fact that NINETY PERCENT OF THE TIME I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING TO HAPPEN! I’m a progressive chap- I’m a commie, a sometime-advocate for fat acceptance (obvs) and I’m viscerally disgusted every time I hear about some fresh injustice perpetrated against non-white ethnic groups by the racist-as-shit American legal system. I’d never call myself a feminist, but I accept that feminism has a point in terms of its broad complaints and aims (I part company from both rad and third wave on a fair number of specifics, but that’s probably just because of my nine foot musical penis). And yet, as most of you already know from my previous spates of bitching and moaning, media wokeness winds me up. It’s not just that it’s obviously insincere and designed to curry favour with an imaginary demographic of humourless wankers- it’s that it also hobbles any story’s ability to surprise or engage meaningfully with its own fictional universe. Give me a list of characters and tell me nothing about them besides skin colour, age and gender, and I’ll tell you who’s going to live, who’s going to die, who’ll be permitted a redemption arc, and who’ll turn out to be a ‘twist’ villain (and I use the term ‘twist’ with heavy-duty sarcasm marks). It’s cloying, constrictive and a death sentence for any kind of creativity. It’s gotten so bad that, whenever a movie does manage to pleasantly surprise me, I have to fight back tears of fucking gratitude. Progressive values are all well and good- I actively subscribe to them myself every time I go out and assassinate a member of the fucking Tory party- but modern movies and telly don’t operate from a place of deeply-held progressive values (or any values). The mainstream media’s ‘wokeness’ is just a tired list of boring tropes that cowardly, talentless screenwriters cling to lest creating something original engender cancellation.

And so, we come to comic books (and on comic books, if they have General Zod in them. Kneel before Zod? I certainly fucking will!). I was about type the words ‘even mainstream comic books are great’ but then I started laughing like the Joker watching a snuff movie, because that would have been an idiotic sentence. You see, while Superhero comics are ‘mainstream’ in the sense that they’re the thing people most associate with the medium, they still have a relatively tiny readership. In fact, I suspect that requiring their audience to know how to read is the main barrier to entry nowadays- it seems like something of a lost art.

The point is that I’ve been reading the ‘Justice/Doom War’ arc in Justice League and I’ve noticed something about it. It has a huge, diverse cast of characters from different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, different genders and different belief systems and walks of life… and not even one of them is an insufferable twat defined only by their relative privilege or oppression! To give you an example, Green Lantern John Stewart is a heroic space cop who happens to be black, but the plot never grinds to a halt so he can give us a lecture on race dynamics in modern America. He’s too busy using constructs of solid light to smash the ever-loving crap out of pan-dimensional cosmic monsters. When the plot does slow down to give him time to breathe, we learn more about his conflicted yet complementary history as both a soldier and an architect than we do about his skin colour. I mean, it’s not like it never comes up- the DC universe has some ties to reality and characters do occasionally find themselves on the receiving end of racism, but if it’s not relevant to what’s happening, the story doesn’t bend over backwards to include it. Conversely, Batman is a rich white dude, but the story never feels the need to ‘hold him accountable’. His main arc at the moment is about learning to be a good father figure to a sentient, telepathic starfish who wants to be the next Robin (yeah… the 2018 run is gloriously fucking weird). Hey! Here’s another example! On the surface, Hawkgirl is the epitome of the ‘strong female character’ beloved by modern media: a ferocious, take-no-shit warrior woman with countless lifetimes of carefully-honed experience. But she’s not some bloody sexless, characterless archetype designed as a flag for empowerment rather than a person: she’s a fully-developed character. She has complex internal motivations; she has romantic feelings for Martian Manhunter; she experiences grief and loss and is changed by them; she makes mistakes that she then has to triumph over. She doesn’t get to win just because she’s the first person on hand with a clitoris- she actually has to work and go through a character arc. Surprising and sometimes unpleasant things happen to her, making her a sympathetic and interesting character who I actually want to see triumph.

I could go on… and on… and on… and on… pretty much forever. I could probably write an entire essay just on how Lex Luthor uses his wealth for selfish ends even while purporting to represent a higher cause while Batman embodies an idealised version of how those with power and money should use it for the greater good. I could talk about how Superman is both effectively an immigrant and the most endearingly Rockwellian slice of walking Americana one can imagine. I could write fucking books on what the character of Perpetua says about the modern world’s complex relationship with faith and fanaticism and where the line is drawn.

But the real point is that I don’t know what’s going to happen next! Character who would never be allowed to triumph under their own power in movies succeed. Characters who would never be allowed to fail in movies get broken by horrible events and circumstances. Arcs are never what I expect them to be about, but always make sense when I look back and consider what I know about the character’s personality. It’s wonderfully refreshing in a way we just don’t get to see much nowadays… and I started to wonder why comics are so much better than everything else going on at the moment.

I was recently reading an Editorial in Metal Hurlant (basically the French 2000AD- a comic anthology of sci-fi and horror tales published on a monthly basis). The top brass were bemoaning the niche-ness of the comic book medium, asserting that comics should be promoted in bookstores and literary circles; that there should be a widespread push for them to reach a readership and audience that traditionally don’t engage with pulp culture (my term, not theirs). And what I realised is that this would be a terrible, terrible idea- because the main reason comics are so good is because they’re niche; their small; their disposable. Consider, if you will, the mainstream film industry. A big part of the reason that it mainly produces hot garbage is that it’s too big to take risks. Hollywood (for want of a better catch-all term) has spent its entire life-cycle pursuing larger and larger audiences so it can fund more and more epic blockbusters with bigger names and bigger, bolder FX. It’s a cycle of abuse in which each new generation of films has to outperform the generation before it. Meanwhile, because the audiences have to be so vast, the people making the flicks don’t think of those audiences as individual people with specific interests and ideas and a desire to be challenged and entertained. They think of them, instead, as demographic swathes; undifferentiated and united by broad, base commonalities that each project has to play to. But people aren’t demographics and the movie industry is currently getting a royal drubbing for its decades of ever-increasing contempt-of-the-viwer. Disney in particular is haemorrhaging money because it thought it would be a good idea to make Star Wars and Indiana Jones films and telly shows for a generic set of imagined demographics instead of people who actually like those franchises and are interested in the themes and ideas that go with them. As much as watching Disney fail gives me the warm fuzzies, I have to ask: who in their right mind would wish this fate on comics?

You see, folks, comics do sell plenty of copies- more than enough to justify the fairly modest expense of printing the darned things) but the overall audience for any one title is less than half the audience for any given major film release (I did some research and applied some maths that I won’t bore you with, but the absolute top selling comic books of recent years sold under a quarter million copies overall while an average film from any of the major studios sells around half a million cinema tickets in the US alone- and then there are the DVD and streaming sales on top of that. Notice how the latter number is more than double the former number. Regrettably, data on both films and comics is jealously guarded by vested interests, so I apologise for how ballpark those figures are, mind). Meanwhile the total audience of comics in general is much narrower in certain key respects. Perhaps the most obvious point is this: pretty much everyone who reads comic books is a comic book fan, whereas not everyone who goes to the cinema is a cinephile. But what does that actually mean? Well, for one, it means that comic book readers and writers are more of community- they tend to trust one another more; leaps can be taken that would be considered too chancy when dealing with ‘demographics’. At the same time, however, the writers’ connection to the fans means they have a better sense of when something is going to alienate large sections of their audience or piss people off (something film-makers have proved either bad at or wilfully blind to lately). The result is stories that know what bold ideas they can pursue while also knowing where to draw the line.

I think another reason comics are currently kicking the film industry’s pallid white buttocks in terms of creative merit is that they’re real cheap. Paper on ink is much easier to organise and send forth into the world than a vast audiovisual experience containing hundreds of actors, countless FX and goodness-knows-how-many extras, all put together by an enormous team of people who often never get to meet one another. If I wanted, I could probably write, draw and distribute a limited run of say, fifty comics, for the price of a Payday Loan. I wouldn’t, because it’s not where my talent lies, but the point I’m trying to make is this: companies and distributors are more willing to do interesting things when there’s only pocket change on the line compared to when there’s millions or billions of dollars. It’s why we get comics like Serial Artist (about a dude who claims his paintings are of his murder victims and becomes the centre of a vast government conspiracy) and W0rldtr33 (an ongoing slice of weirdness in which the internet comes to life and starts murdering people). It’s why something comparatively mainstream like Justice League can have an arc about Batman parenting a starfish and why the whole thing becomes Dark Nights: Metal and Death Metal for awhile (the Metal comics are end-of-the-world stuff inspired by- obvs- heavy metal albums… and they’re fucking great). It’s why stuff like Metal Hurlant and 2000AD is given a chance to find readers. So do comics need to be bigger and more widely accepted? Fuck no! The fringe is always where interesting stuff happens and aiming for mainstream acceptability is, it seems to me, a massive trap. The allure of more money and better social status is like one of the bug-zapper lights that draws in the moths and then fries their brains.

But what the fuck is the point of all this rambling? Comics are good- and thank goodness, since a lot of shit isn’t at the moment. There, I got it all down to once sentence, so what was the point of the rest? Well, I suppose there’s a lesson to be learned here. I’m a writer finally starting my career; finally putting work out into the public domain with a real publisher. No, I don’t do comics: I do sci-fi and fantasy books. But the lesson’s still applicable and it’s this: it’s a lot better to be good than popular and sometimes- just sometimes- you really do have to pick between the two.

You’re (Probably) Wrong About J.K. Rowling

So despite being a British person and writer with an adopted trans daughter (sort of), I never weighed in on the matter when British writer J.K. Rowling allegedly said a bunch of transphobic stuff. The reason I didn’t weigh in publicly was very simply this: I couldn’t find the tweet or statement that started it all- the root cause of people’s hatred. Everybody alluded to The Terrible Things J.K. said but nobody was super keen to say what those things actually were. Which naturally led me to suspect that the whole thing was storm-in-a-teacup bullshit- a notion that I also partially derived from the fact that Rowling is kind of a milquetoast who probably hasn’t had a strong opinion in her comfortably middle-class life. If somebody online claimed I’d said something offensive, I’d believe them, because I basically start a knife-fight every time I open my gob. But J.K.? Do me a favour. Of course, I didn’t look very hard to find out what J.K. said, because the other reason I didn’t comment was that I didn’t care all that much. I’m a grown man. My contact with the Harry Potter universe is nostalgically rewatching the films once in awhile and maybe, at some point, playing the new RPG that’s just come out, should I ever have videogame money again. It’s not like I’m super invested in that world on an emotional level, because I only have the normal number of fucks to give about wizard children and the people who chronicle their adventures. So, my plan was to just never mention any of this. And then I stumbled on the comment that started it all by pure fucking chance and it was… so dull and inoffensive that it actually amazed me to the point where I medically had to say something. Yeah. I am literally incapable of shutting my fucking mouth when someone does a stoopid, as it turns out.

“Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating sex is real?” (I think the implication of the question mark s ‘er, no thanks’, basically). And that’s it. Nothing even implying that trans women aren’t real women. Nothing suggesting that they shouldn’t be treated with respect. SEVERAL opening sentences reaffirming the rights of everyone to live how and AS WHO they like… and then a gentle reminder that physical sex is real and that some people have actually lost their jobs for saying so, which sucks, because you shouldn’t be fired for stating a biological fact (unless the biological fact is that you just shat yourself and you choose to share it, loudly, at an important shareholders meeting). That’s the whole thing. I mean, there are some follow up tweets about how physical sex-based oppression is a real thing and about how J.K. feels a bit hurt by the trans activist community for turning on women-born-women when they try to address that oppression in the employment sphere. But that’s it. Now, maybe she said worse things later down the line- but these are the tweets that got everybody to dogpile onto her and anything after that point has to be viewed in the context of a harassed writer getting increasingly fed up explaining herself to people who won’t shut the fuck up on the internet when she’d probably rather be doing literally anything else.

So yeah. That’s what everyone’s got their knickers in a twist about. And that’s really dumb. In a world full of genuinely hateful bigots, attacking someone for pointing out that biological sex is a real, separate issue to gender identity and that arseholes have gotten people fired over saying that seems… well, it seems like a waste of energy more than anything else. There are people out there who haven’t actually encountered the source of this lunacy and have just taken the word of Internet Peeps that J.K. is an awful person (‘cause getting to the bottom of shit is difficult and what’s a person to do? Not just parrot the last opinion they saw fart its way across social media?).

Look, folks, folkettes, moustachioed three-titted hermaphrodites and people who identify as attack helicopters (shout out to all my homies at the Rotary Blade Club), there’s a lesson here. And that lesson is that you shouldn’t believe someone’s good or bad because someone on the internet tells you they are. People on the internet are just people, and people almost never have the faintest fucking idea what they’re talking about. There’s also a really, worryingly high proportion of internet ‘personalities’ (so called because they don’t have any in real life) who like to stir shit for the sake of stirring shit. Sometimes these people are easy to spot, because they’re bugfuck-crazy right-wingers in tinfoil hats claiming that everything in the media is a plot to destroy traditional family values (the same ‘traditional family values’ that caused women in the ‘50s to overdose on amphetamines to get the cleaning done and fathers to try and beat the gay out of their children). However, sometimes, the shit-stirrers are just a teeny, tiny bit smarter and will use the genuine disenfranchisement of a group to which they technically belong to cynically elicit sympathy for views that would be obvious bullshit if the person spouting them couldn’t claim to be oppressed. Rule of thumb: beware of anyone who wants you to believe that they have it tougher than the slave who had to clean the poop out of Abraham Lincoln’s chamber-pot hat (Fun “fact”: that’s why Honest Abe’s hat was so tall: he used it as an emergency latrine while travelling and it had to accommodate the prodigious length of his turds). Even if the person is right and they really do have it that tough, the fact that they’re prefacing what they’re about to say by EXPLAINING THAT TO YOU REALLY SLOWLY AND EMPHATICALLY should really be a red flag- a sign that they’re attempting to obfuscate the flimsiness of the actual point they’re about to queef out their face-hole. That’s not always the case (duh) but it should put you on your guard.

I can, and will, go further: I have never had opal fruit on me! Oh, hang on, that’s a line from A Bit of Fry and Laurie. What I meant to say was, I can, and will, go further: you really shouldn’t care to begin with if a creator has iffy opinions that in no way impact their work. You shouldn’t even care too much if they’ve actually done terrible shit. Because at the end of the day, the only part of them that’s relevant to you is the work they’ve created. T.S. Elliot was one of the greatest poets to have ever lived… but he was also a raving fascist. Lawrence Olivier was one of the greatest actors of his generations… but also a barely-functional alcoholic who delighted in fucking with his old Cambridge university in ways too baroque and specific to detail here. Frank Miller: amazing graphic novelist; protest-hater and all-round tosser. Don’t even get me started on all the shit Thompson and Bukowski got up to (though not together… I’d love to see that buddy movie, but it wouldn’t accurately reflect reality). There isn’t a composer in the whole world of prestigious, important classical music who wasn’t, on some deep level, a really fucked up person. Francis Bacon rates as one of the greatest artists ever to have been spat out by an uncaring world, but he also systematically ruined the lives of everyone around him, including himself. My point is that you can’t demand your art and media comes exclusively from good people… unless, of course, you’re comfortable exposing yourself to a pitifully small sliver of culture and starving your brain into grey fucking wallpaper paste. Trust me, if you have to seriously consider your options on that one, it’s alarmingly close already. Allow the personal and private failings of creators to be personal and private- even if the creator’s an egotist who keeps bringing it up in public. Accept that, for you, the work is what matters because YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO MEET THIS PERSON OR HAVE ANY IMPACT WHATSOEVER ON THEIR LIVES AND THEY ARE NEVER GOING TO MEET YOU OR HAVE ANY IMPACT ON YOU OUTSIDE THEIR WORK.

This has been a PSA from the Foundation of Terrible Bastards Making Good Art. As both a terrible person and a great writer, I now give you my permission to fuck off.

ADDITIONAL: Okay, so having posted this, I decided I was curious enough to check out JK Rowling’s twitter feed properly. And, to my amazement, I might have jumped the gun when I called her a milquetoast. She actually has some pretty strong opinions,,, but none of them seem to be about trans people in general. She had a go at Nicola Sturgeon for putting a PENIS-OWNING RAPIST OF WOMEN IN A WOMEN’S PRISON PURELY BECAUSE HE CLAIMED TO BE A WOMAN, but that’s not transphobia, is it? That’s an issue of protecting prisoners without penises from being raped by prisoners with penises. The whole ‘is Prisoner A trans or not’ issue is just obfuscation being used BY A RAPIST to get into a situation where they will have the opportunity to rape more people. While JK’s phrasing might leave something to be desired (if you’re the kind of person who needs every phrase to be padded to sooth your ego), “don’t let physically strong penis-owning rapists near vulnerable vagina-owners in an environment specifically designed to make escape impossible” shouldn’t be a controversial thing to say- and has less to do with trans rights than it does with just... common sense, I guess. Look, I’m neither a TERF nor a trans rights activist, though I know people who are both vulnerable women and people who are trans. I am the fucking Neutral Zone between the Federation and the Romulans here, but could we please all agree that miminising the risk of rape in prisons shouldn’t be controversial?

The Return of Doctor Who Part 1: Rumour Patrol

TRIGGER WARNING: I still hate Chris Chibnall; unneccessary bukkake references; a tractor-crash described in punishing detail; the tragedy of being Wales (Britain’s Designated Punchline Province).

So, Doctor Who’s back- or is going to be later this year! And if you’re thinking “but it never went away…?” in a confused tone of thought, then congratulations on being completely fucking oblivious! The last few years have been… a car crash. But a not a fun car crash with lots of blood and guts to gawk at… more like one of those crap, country road car crashes where you pass a tractor upside down in a ditch with a farmer standing looking mournfully at it and wonder how something so slow and heavy failed to do the one thing it was trying to do so fucking miserably. That level of car-crash. So, when I say ‘Doctor Who’s back!’, what I mean is that Doctor Who is once more going to star talented actors and actresses and be written by experienced, skilled screen-writers who have paid their dues and actually have a handle on the genre their working in, as well as how to use themes, subtlety and subtext.

Now, to you or I or any sensible person, this just seems like straight-up good news. Russel T. Davies, who brought the show back to life in ‘05 is going to be showrunner, David Tennant is going to star, followed by Ncuti Gatwa (a BAFTA-winning actor, enthusiastic Who fan and all-round chocolate sex machine). For normal, mentally healthy people, this is a confluence of wonderful events that categorically does not invite shit-stirring. For certain parts of the media, however, it’s an excuse to invent dementedly racist straw-men from whole cloth, spread stupid-arse rumours about casting decisions in the hope of getting a rise, and just generally talk bollocks and pedal nonsense for clicks. So, because I can’t stand to see the discourse on something I love dominated by towering wankers with the media literacy of four year olds, I’ve decided to round up the rumours and op-eds, put them in a row, and subject them to the Firing Squad of Actual Facts. In other words, I’ve done the bare minimum of due diligence that the mainstream media didn’t bother to do and am now going to tell you which headlines are true and which are horseshit.

THE RUMOUR: ROSE TYLER IS NOW A DARK-SKINNED TRANS WOMAN THE REALITY: This is, of course, absolute bullshit. The Guardian (which used to be fairly reputable, before they started letting nutters with no journalistic training write for them) got hold of the name ‘Rose’ and the name of a trans actress attached to the upcoming Doctor Who special, put two and two together and somehow came up with seven. Trans actress Yasmin Finney will be playing Donna Noble’s trans daughter, Rose Temple-Noble, not Rose Tyler. Amazingly, it turns out two people can be named Rose- one probably after the other. The Guardian article is absolutely fucking hilarious, however, on a number of levels. For a start, it’s just factually wrong in the way that an article published in a proper newspaper shouldn’t be, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It takes the form of an imagined argument with a made-up racist transphobe so arch that it’s immediately obvious nobody on Earth has ever uttered their side of the fictional conversation. Additionally, the author seems to think that Rose Tyler is a Time Lord who can change her face like the Doctor (which is incorrect… although, if it turned out that absorbing the Time Vortex that one time rewrote her DNA, I’d totally be there for that. But that’s just me writing fanfic in my brain- not a real thing within the show). To put the icing on the cake, the article invites all those evil, bigoted fake fans to fuck off while (and I quote) “the rest of us have a blast.” Apparently, ‘the rest of us’ who will be enjoying Doctor Who once all the mean, bad people have left are people who, er, don’t watch Doctor Who or know how to research really basic casting decisions. Genius.

THE RUMOUR: AFORESAID YASMIN FINNEY WILL BE NCUTI GATWA’S DOCTOR’S COMPANION THE REALITY: This rumour is less stupid, in that it’s entirely possible she’ll have an important and ongoing role within the show once Gatwa takes over from David Tennant as the Doctor... but still no. She’s not the main, recurring companion for Gatwa’s Doctor. That honour goes to young up-and-comer Millie Gibson, who will be playing a character called Ruby Sunday. While we’re on the subject, I’d like to go on record and make a prediction right now, so we can check back and see if I was right in about, say, five years: while she doesn’t appeal to me personally (partly because I’m engaged and partly because she has less meat on her than ploughman’s sandwich), I predict Millie Gibson and her freakishly buoyant Jessica Rabbit chest-bongos will launch puberty early for an entire generation of Whovians. And now I’ve made that prediction… we play the waiting game. Preferably with our Bukkake-proof umbrellas raised and readied.

THE RUMOUR: NEIL PATRICK HARRIS WILL PLAY THE CELESTIAL TOYMAKER THE REALITY: This one is possible but, as far as I can tell, not confirmed at the time of writing. It seems that the Beeb has released a photo of Harris in costume… but not told us who he’s playing. The Celestial Toymaker seems like a reasonable guess, because he’s an entity with incredible, seemingly magical powers coupled to an eccentric demeanour and aesthetic, while Harris is a magician in real life (yet another reason to love the guy) whose general persona approximates the classic-era villain. The costume, of course, also fits the bill. I would be fucking delighted if this one turned out to be true, but let’s not get our knickers dripping with anticipation just yet. It’s still entirely possible he’s playing someone else. Maybe the Dream Lord from that one episode where the Doctor was basically torturing himself inside his own mind; maybe a classic antagonist so obscure even I don’t know who they are; maybe someone completely new, invented for the upcoming 60th Anniversary Special. We’ll just have to wait and see.

THE RUMOUR: GILLIAN ANDERSON MIGHT BE IN IT. THE REALITY: That would be great, because Gillian Anderson is basically the Second Lady of Sci-Fi after Sigourney Weaver (who’s kind of too American to fit comfortably into the quintessentially British Whoniverse, awesome though she is). However, at the moment, it’s sheer wishful thinking on behalf of the fans and on behalf of Gatwa, who’d apparently like to see her involved. Actually, since we’re occasionally going to be getting female regenerations from now, could we just cast her as the next Doctor after Gatwa? I mean, I know that gender-flipping is stupid because it erases an important part of a character’s identity (it’s a point I’ve made many times), but I also realise the toothpaste isn’t going back in the tube on this one, so we might as well just cast some really great actresses instead. So, yeah: Gillian Anderson for Doctor Who! Let’s start a petition before they accidentally hire a talent-free walking charisma-dampner instead! Don’t laugh- it’s happened once already. Twice if you include Collin, the crap one of the two Bakers.

And that’s pretty much it for the rumours. As it turns out, only one worth writing up was actively shit-stirry, while the others were… well, one was kinda dumb but understandable and a couple were just wild optimism. Honestly, that’s pretty cool. It’s nice not to have to spend hours of my life dismantling idiots for once- only mere minutes. Before I go, there are a couple of things that the media have been saying about the coming era of Doctor Who that aren’t rumours but which I feel I might as well address while we’re here.

1) Yasmin Finney said her casting and role in Doctor Who will “change the world”. To be clear, it definitely won’t. It might very slightly course-correct casting decision criteria in the BBC’s drama department, and it’ll be nice for trans people to see one of their own in an important role in a sci-fi drama, but ‘changing the world’ is definitely beyond the scope of a role in a piece of modestly-budgeted British genre fiction. That said, I’m not going to roll my eyes and tut too loudly- Finney’s young and excitable and you’re allowed to say stupid shit when you’re young and excitable. That’s what you’re teenage years and early twenties are for. That and substance abuse.

2) Loads of media outlets are going on about what a big deal it is that Gatwa is the first black Doctor in the show’s history. Again, I’m sure it’ll be lovely for non-white Brits to see one of their own in the lead role of the Beeb’s flagship sci-fi drama, but it’s not really a historic moment just because it happens to be a first. Britain isn’t America and, while we have our share of racist cretins, for the most part national and regional identity are much more prominent in our collective psyche than skin tone. Case in point, both black and white Irish people hate the English with equal intensity, everyone makes fun of the Welsh with no reference to colour, the Scottish are universally feared as hard-cases and Cornwall refers to the rest of us as ‘the mainland’ despite not being an island. Meanwhile, if the TV show Luther has taught us anything, it’s that we’re actually pretty good at judging a man by the contents of his character and not the colour of his skin. Provided a man’s an untidy megalomaniacal wreck with anger management issues and connections in the criminal underworld, most Brits will embrace him as truly One Of Our Own regardless of his ethnic heritage. I slightly suspect that the media is hoping the racists will come out of the woodwork over Gatwa’s casting so that it can go into smug preachy mode and score some Right Side of History points with thickos, but since this is the UK not the deep south of the US of A, that probably isn’t going to happen and they should stop embarrassing themselves. The gender-flip of the Chibnall/Whitaker era was capital-letters BAD and attracted backlash because, across every regeneration, certain aspects of the Doctor’s character were specifically male-coded or masculine, so the change was damaging to the character. The same just isn’t true of his skin colour- he’s culturally coded as British (despite being an alien) but not necessarily white or even class-conforming, so it just isn’t the same thing.

Right, glad we got all that sorted out. I’ve got a few more things to say about Doctor Who now that we’re heading into a period when it’ll be worth watching again, but those are definitely separate blogs. Expect to see those sometime this week. Until then, I never made the Doctor’s vow to never be cruel or cowardly, so if you’d like to fuck off before I get my shotgun, that’d be swell.

‘Progressive’ and ‘Perfomative Wokeness’ Aren’t the Same Thing (and, Apparently, I have to Explain this to Grown-Ups).

TRIGGER WARNING: Overexplaining; references to Marvel’s Eternals that can only serve to bring back bad memories; me going on and on about how great a movie Get Out was for bloody ages; Chris Chibnall (not just in the blog- I just thought I’d use this Trigger Warning to remind you that, sadly, he still exists).

Progressive media is great isn’t it? Good, solid lefty films and TV shows that actually have intelligent, well-thought political ideas woven into their plots in a way that makes you think and inspires an emotional reaction. They’re brilliant! I love ‘em, and we’ll be coming, by the by, to some of my favourite examples. But then there’s ‘woke’ media- media that usually has one very simple point to make- usually one it hasn’t thought about even slightly- and won’t fucking shut up about, bringing plots and even entire arcs grinding to a halt so that it can alternately insult and lecture its audience. That shit can fall down an endless staircase into a big pile of Lego that then gets melted into molten plastic by the that wildfire stuff from Game of Thrones. Today, boys and girls, we’re going to be talking about the difference. It’s a difference I’ve never articulated before, despite my well-documented political views and my equally well-documented views on the state of western culture. Largely because I didn’t think it required that much thought. To me, it’s an obvious difference- a difference that announces itself with a full blown song and dance routine and a fireworks display. But I’ve seen enough people using the terms ‘progressive’ and ‘woke’ interchangeably now to realise that I’m going to have to pull out my mortar board, rap the world’s knuckles with a ruler and do some fuckin’ ‘splainin’. Buckle in, dickwidgets, we’s gon’ get y’all some education. Yee fucking haw.

Let’s start with an example of one of my favourite truly progressive films of recent years- a film that takes one heck of a swing at modern racism and practically knocks its fucking head off. I speak, of course, of Jordan Peele’s debut flick Get Out, in which the protagonist finds himself victimised by a superficially forward-looking white family who make such a song and dance about not being racist that things seem a little off from the moment he first meets them. Ultimately (spoilers!) it turns out that they want to scoop out his brain and transfer one of their consciousnesses to his body because they’ve convinced themselves that, if they inhabit a black body, they’ll magically be ‘cool’ and ‘street’. It culminates with Chris (our hero) having to stage a violent escape/retribution-spree in order to save himself from his would-be bodysnatchers. It’s a brilliant film that works as both a piece of pure entertainment and a nuanced political argument. What does it do right? Well, aren’t you lucky? I brought a fucking list!

1) It tells an entertaining (and frankly bonkers) story that has never been done before, surprises on first viewing and intrigues on repeat viewings WITHOUT STOPPING THE ACTION TO OVEREXPLAIN THE MOTHERFUCKING SUBTEXT.

2) It allows its story and politics to feed on each other organically, with the politics lending context to the story and the story demonstrating the value of the politics. At no point does one twist wildly to accommodate the other or get in the way of the other.

3) It has a sense of humour about itself. There’s an entire comic relief character who (and this is important) is actually funny because their jokes aren’t aimed at continually reinforcing the political message or bullying certain viewers (as jokes in a lot of woke media often are) but are used to provide entertaining interludes that help to break up the main plot and enrich the tone, making the world of the film feel less one-note and more lived-in.

4) It clearly and fairly signposts its intentions. There’s no mystery box whose contents turn out to be a tedious lecture on race-hate; there’s no bait and switch; there’s no flipping of race or gender followed by an ‘ooh aren’t we clever and edgy’ moment from and for the benefit of the film-makers (and literally nobody else). No. You go in expecting a vehemently anti-racist film with a black lead who’s an original character created by the screen-writer and that’s exactly what you get. Bravo this film for not fucking me about.

The result of all this is that Get Out isn’t just fun to watch: it’s persuasive. It doesn’t just tell you ‘racism is bad, m’kay’, it focuses on specific behaviours and modes of thoughts, follows them to their logical conclusion and demonstrates what the problem is without insulting you, the viewer, in the process. It makes a compelling case without insisting that you’re the bad guy if you don’t agree with every single word- or just if you haven’t thought about it before. You can watch it as just a fun, quirky film, sure, but if you engage with it intellectually, you might find yourself thinking ‘Actually, that’s a fair point. I hadn’t given that much thought before.’

For the feminist equivalent, I’d invite you to consider The Perfection (one of only two films I’ve ever described as ‘transcendent’) which uses similar tools (but in a different way) to address the specific species of sexism that runs through the classical music world like a blue vein through cheese- a blue vein you think is just part of the cheese’s colour and flavour until this film dissect’s the cheese for you and exposes a rich seam of poisonous fucking lyrium. That metaphor may have gotten away from me a bit- but the point is that that’s another good film that’s actually progressive and makes its point in an intelligent way.

Of course, some films and telly shows are progressive incidentally- it’s just part of their DNA and their plots don’t depend on a specific leftist or liberal points. Case in point, one of my favourite films of all time, Annihilation, which just happens to have a predominantly female cast in a genre that, at the time it was made, was very male-dominated, but which doesn’t feel the need to make a big deal of it. It’s actually a film about humanity encountering a cosmic lifeform that blends and fractalises genetic structures in ways that are simultaneously beautiful and deadly. And its a love story that transcends species. And its a horror film that features bears with the voices of screaming humans. And its an art-piece that meditates on the beautiful yet unsettling character of perfect symmetry itself. And its a character study. And… you know what, just go fucking watch it. The big, obvious progressive element somehow seems infinitely less important once you’ve actually watched the bloody thing, because it’s really just a nice touch and is so far from being the main point that you just kind of stop noticing after the hand-wave that explains it in-universe.

See? These are all progressive pieces of media that I like because they’re good. And I could go on: there’s Snowpiercer (the film, not the series- the series lost me when it inexplicably decided it wanted to be a murder mystery), in which mankind’s final, world-destroying class war is staged entirely within the confines of a posh train. There’s that one episode of Peter Capaldi era Doctor Who when the Doctor helps put the final nail in capitalism’s coffin. There’s basically all the Alien films, which, aside from having an unconventional female lead way before it was cool, were also hypercritical of the military-industrial complex and the generalised exploitation of natural resources both on and off Earth. There’s Luther, which was mostly an apolitical crime drama, but which just happened to centre on a burly black cop whose race isn’t mentioned even once because it’s not the sodding point. Actually, at the time, I don’t think most viewers even thought about Luther being black- he just was. There was less need to dive into the subtext of every casting decision and line because the battle lines hadn’t yet been drawn in the idiotic culture war that every moron on the planet (on both sides of the political spectrum, by the way) simultaneously decided was happening. But that’s by the by. Frankly, we could be here all fucking day if I had a mind to list everything that’s either expressly left-leaning and liberal or contains a key liberal element and is also VERY GOOD. But time’s winged chariot and all that. I promised to explain the difference between progressive media and ‘woke’ media, so we should probably get on with that.

Well, there are actually quite a few differences, starting with whether the writers and actors have brains in their skulls or just an IOU and a couple of loose corks. However, one of the key points I’ve already talked about is that progressive media wants to persuade you. It gets you to invest in its characters and its world and, while it’s doing that, it weaves an argument that you can consider or not- and it credits you with the wit to do that for yourself and won’t make you feel like slime if you politely decline to engage on that level. Woke media, in contrast, has no interest whatsoever in persuading you. In fact, it will very often go out of its way to antagonise you. Then it’ll call you a racist or a sexist or a homophobe or a bigot for being antagonised. Then it’ll give itself a big, hearty pat on the back for striking a blow for INSERT HISTORICALLY MISTREATED GROUP HERE, even though what it’s actually done is create a wave of reactionary hate from people who were probably either undecided, indifferent or moderate regarding INSERT GROUP HERE until a pretentious bloody movie called them all cunts for no reason whatsoever.

My favourite example of the above phenomenon has got to be a film called ‘Bros’, which is a gay rom-com that’s very, very keen to let you know how down with da gayz it is. When I first saw it advertised, my initial reaction was ‘Oh, hey, that’s a neat, niche little thing. My trans gay friend S (real name deleted to protect the innocent) might get a kick out of that’. Then, when it didn’t perform as well as a typical, mainstream rom-com on opening weekend, the cast took to twitter to snidely imply that all the people who didn’t go see it were homophobes (apparently- I have to admit, this is second-hand because I haven’t been on Twitter in fucking years. I moved and now live near a Dunlop’s, so whenever I want to see a reeking tyre-fire, I just pop up there with a box of matches instead). Anyway, the point is that instead of persuading the audience it had and trying to recruit viewers through streaming platforms and DVD sales using, you know, advertising, Bros instead decided to brow-beat the audience it didn’t have (because, let’s be clear, the stars would have had their leashes yanked sharpish if those behind the film weren’t on-board with this bit of media drama). It was good publicity- it made it look like the film was taking a stand… but I don’t think it made one single person give a shit about LGBTQ rights. If anything, it will have put people off giving a shit.

But that’s a bit of a sketchy example, since the viewer-baiting took place outside of the film itself and was largely achieved through contrived social media furore. In fact, I’d go so far as to suggest it wasn’t part of the original plan but just a desperate (and very stupid) reaction to a box office ranking that any other niche title would have been overjoyed about. No, for a real, solid example of where woke media prefers to bully than persuade, we really need to look at a show where the bullying happens in the media artefact itself.

The example that occurs to me off the cuff is the fucking trainwreck that started all this shit in the first place: the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot. And yes, I know WB did eventually apologise for it and that their apology took the form of the lovely Ghostbusters: Afterlife, so I can’t really stay mad at them. But it is a great example. The antagonising of the fans started early with the casting, which involved a complete gender-flip of the main cast (despite the fact that the jokes only really work on a metatextual level if the heroes are paragons of failed masculinity- but let’s leave the analysis at the door: that ain’t what we’re here for). The film-makers then underscored that particular bit of fan-baiting by making the only male character in the main cast a witless, ineffectual moron so archly caricatured that he’d only have made sense in a below-par MAD Magazine issue… or on the Conservative back-benches. They then decided it wasn’t even in continuity- meaning it wasn’t just a badly-conceived continuation of the franchise but a symbolic replacement of it. And finally, just give the screw one final turn, they stripped out all the word-play and cleverness that defined the comedy of the original and replaced it with slapstick. Really. Bad. Slapstick. This film was tailor made to piss people off. I don’t think that was it’s main purpose- I think some idiot probably legitimately thought it would be box office gold- but between the symbolic erasure of the original heroes, the ooh-look-at-us-being-all-feminist-but-not-really bullshit of the gender-flip, the bad writing and the direct insult to any self-respecting viewer with a penis, the effect was a belittling, degrading film that was always going to alienate a significant percentage of the audience. And then, of course, call them sexist for complaining that they’d gone to see a Ghostbusters film and been given a big ol’ turd sandwich instead. And before someone with a  really short memory accuses me of the same, just a quick reminder that one of my favourite movies of all time is Annihilation. And no, taste in movies doesn’t necessarily equate to political stripe, but if you insist on using that metric, you can consult the list of examples of really very good progressive media at the start of this blog to gauge my opinions using ALL the data.

For a more up-to-date example, I’d invite you to consider The Rings of Power on Amazon, which grates cheerfully against fans’ nerves by disregarding all of Tolkien’s themes and stylistic flourishes in favour of modern American attitudes and ideas (for a show set in a medieval fantasy world ostensibly based on books written in the 60s by a British man living in Britain. Who wants to play ‘Spot the Dissonance’?). Or Marvel’s Eternals. Actually, no. I’m not getting into fucking Eternals here. Even my filleting knife would get blunt trying to pick the bones out of that fucking mess.

In fact, let’s move on altogether! I’m here to explain the difference between woke media and actually progressive media- not provide a small mountain of proof that one sucks and one rocks. I feel that if I need to demonstrate something that obvious paragraph by paragraph, I might as well go and explain to a flat-Earther why the laws of physics forbid him from living on a space pancake.

I wanted to address another key difference between woke media and progressive media. Progressive, left-wing media has a consistent political ethos (see the more explicitly political examples from the first half of this blog) whereas woke media just kinda makes the right noises. Very often, its real politics are completely at odds with the noises its making, in fact. Which means- joy of joys- it’s time to talk about Chibnall-era Doctor Who. Again. And yes, even I’m sick of me at this point, but it really is the best example. Okay, let’s get this over with.

Chibnall-era Who is definitely woke. It has the first female Doctor (pity she can’t act)! It’s TARDIS crew is the most diverse in the show’s history (even bravely including a grown man who needs his Grandad’s help to ride a fucking bike. Wait, I said ‘bravely’. I meant ‘unnecessarily’). It’s got that one episode where the Doctor stops a time-travelling racist from fucking up Rosa Park’s big moment and therefore saves the Civil Rights Movement (never mind that the Civil Rights Movement was a complex, long-form struggle and the erasure of a single, admittedly important and famous moment within it still wouldn’t actually have effected its overall course by that much- it’s not like this show about actual fucking time travel that aspired, during Chibnall’s tenure, to be educational, has a duty to accurately portray the way history works. It’s totally fine to suggest that something that cost countless people their lives in a tiring, soul-crushing battle against systemic oppression ultimately boiled down to a bus seat. But I digress). So yeah. Definitely woke. But it wasn’t liberal or left-wing or progressive in any meaningful way. There’s that episode where Whitaker’s Doctor finds herself in the middle of a struggle between an evil corporation that kills its own workers and the guy trying to blow it up… and then she sides with the evil mega-corp. There’s that episode where the Doctor locks a bunch of giant spiders in a room to starve to death rather than DO LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE, breaking with a long tradition of animal rights activism that goes way back to Pertwee’s Third Doctor. There’s that episode where she gives a lecture putting the blame for climate change on individuals and completely ignores the corporations and governments who are mainly to blame. Need I go on? I fucking hope not. The Ninth Doctor once exploded the entire top floor of a space station just for putting out programmes that kept the masses dumb and compliant. That was progressive. The Tenth Doctor had an entire arc about fighting corporate-made Cybermen. That was progressive. The Eleventh Doctor… okay, I don’t have any Eleven examples because he didn’t have the attention span to form a coherent political viewpoint, but the Twelfth Doctor once literally ended capitalism and punched a dude he was supposed to be interrogating for making a racist comment, even though it didn’t protect history or anything- he just really hated racism. All that was progressive. Chibnall’s Whitaker-Doctor was, in contrast, a walking catalogue of moral failures not worthy of the name ‘Doctor’… and that’s not progressive.

All of which leaves us with one question? Well, two if you count ‘when will this blog entry fucking end?’ But mainly, it leaves us asking ‘why?’ If woke media alienates the people who’d otherwise pay money to see it and the people making it don’t even believe the messages they’re mongering, what possible purpose could it serve? If it’s not profitable and it’s not heartfelt, what the fuck is it even for? The answer, of course, is ‘search me, mate’. I suspect that someone thought it might be profitable at one point. Fuck, for all I know, it actually is making money- the algorithms that define these things got divorced from our puny human version of logic yonks ago. All I can say for certain is that it’s a trend and, like all trends, will probably go away eventually. Unlike progressive media, which will continue being made because the people making it actually believe things and have interesting points to make. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go and cry over the squandered franchise potential of Annihilation- the film that deserved a billion sequels and got zero because western culture decided to shit itself instead. Fuckity bye.