DOCTOR WHO: Series 7 Trailer!

Looks great. BUT WHERE ARE MY MULTIPLE DOCTORS?

TV Review: TORCHWOOD: MIRACLE DAY – Episode 3 (Dead of Night)

The original incarnation of TORCHWOOD is a strange hybrid. As a spin-off for of DOCTOR WHO for mature viewers the show wore its American television influences with pride. Grown up themes, unflinching plot lines and plenty of explosions and gunplay gave TORCHWOOD the feel of a heavy drama masquerading as an action film. Perhaps that’s why the first two series produced such middling results. TORCHWOOD always felt like a show that knew where it wanted to end up, it just didn’t quite understand how to follow the path to get there. It wasn’t until the third series, TORCHWOOD: CHILDREN OF EARTH, that the creators discovered the right balance for the show, choosing to forgo the weaknesses of episodic television to focus on a single plotline.

In order to bring a fourth series the air the creators have collaborated with the American station Starz, hypothetically returning the show to its American inspirations.

Unfortunately the results to date have been uneven. The first episode floundered until it arrived at its big budget climax, while the second ep recovered brilliantly with a prototypical ‘locked room’ storyline that was suspenseful with a healthy dollop of black humour (the vein of storytelling that serves TORCHWOOD best).

And sadly the American additions to the cast have been underwhelming as well. Mekhi Phifer, as CIA agent Rex Matheson, has been reduced to a hyper-masculine American stereotype, snapping and snarling his lines out with a perpetual grimace on his face. I’ve seen more from Phifer during his time on ER so it’s disappointing to see his character so badly underwritten.

Even worse is Alexa Havins as the intelligence analyst Esther Drummond. For three episodes now she’s been tottering around on four inch stilettos and generally dressing like a 13 year old’s vision of a naughty librarian. Nestled amongst more gifted actors Havins’ bland performances stick out like a sore thumb, especially when compared to original TORCHWOOD-er Eve Myles, who manages to portray a tough, nuanced character without ever sacrificing her femininity in the process.

The only bright light among the new cast members has been Arlene Tur who plays an emergency doctor trying to cope with the challenges of Miracle Day. Although Tur is used primarily as an expositional plot device, observing how the MD changes affect those on the front line, she makes the most from her limited screen time.

Dead of Night, the third entry in this season, is as rocky as the season opener was.

When it comes to light that painkillers and other drugs will soon be made available to the public without a subscription the team begins to investigate PhiCorp, a major pharmaceutical company that seemingly began to stockpile drugs in preparation for Miracle Day.

Jack also begins to take an interest in convicted pedophile Oswald Danes after his many television appearances begin to earn him a sympathetic following from viewers and a mysterious meeting with PhiCorp.

There's a bit of running around, a well worn break and enter cliche is used (OMG, THEY'RE HIDING RIGHT BEHIND THE BOOKCASE) and nothing of substance really seems to happen.

This ep just dragged. Davies et al are clearly setting the table for bigger goings on in later episodes. In the meantime, that means force feeding the audience a bunch of background information on PhiCorp and shuffling the characters around like chess pieces in order to put everyone in the right place at the right time.

There was also one particularly painful scene where two characters nattered back and forth about how Britain and the U.S. use different words to describe the same thing. Once is funny, (a misunderstanding regarding pants and panties), but half a dozen times is overkill and just sucks all the momentum out of the scene.

(Is this still a thing, btw? Are people still so ignorant of the rest of the world that they need a translator to tell them that gas is called petrol in other places? Or are we just to assume that the writers think all North American are idiots?)

The few moments where the ep excelled was in the smaller character pieces, Jack exploring his mortality and reliving his failures, Gwen reconnecting with her husband and son and Rex and Vera struggling to find a romantic connection with each other despite their own self sabotage. When TORCHWOOD pauses long enough from its seemingly endless info dump and uses its characters to explore the changing nature of the world around it, the show becomes legitimately interesting.

If it really wants make a splash across the pond then TORCHWOOD needs to bring it’s A-game right now. After shedding 30 per cent of its viewing audience between the first and second ep it can’t afford to fart around and hope people keep watching. The show’s premise and its characters are clearly established and its fan base eager and ready. Its time to give them what they want.

TV Review: Game Of Thrones Episode 8 (The Pointy End)

 

“What do we say to the god of death?” ~Syrio Forel

“Not today.” ~Arya Stark

What is there to say about the 8^th episode of HBO’s GAME OF THRONES titled THE POINTY END? Wow, where to start. This episode is amazing top to bottom. I suppose it helps that this one was written by the author himself George R. R. Martin who knows what to put in and what to leave out. Except it seemed like he covered an excessive amount of ground in this one!

Let’s begin with what we got to see.

-Syrio Forel’s defense of Arya and fight against the Lannister guardsmen, and his “last stand” against the nasty Ser Meryn Trant.

-Arya’s escape from Kings Landing after grabbing Needle and running a dirty stable boy through.

-Robb calls the Stark Bannermen with the intent on marching south, cutting through Jaime Lannister’s host in the hpes to reach Kings Landing and freeing his father.

-Catelyn, having lost Tyrion, received a letter from Sansa who says to come south and bend the knee to Joffrey, and her insane sister Lysa Arryn who won’t budge troops from the Eyrie, heads north instead to meet up with Robb on his way south.

-GreyWind (Robb’s Direwolf) takes two of GreatJon Umber’s fingers and he LAUGHS IT OFF!

-Varys visits Ned in the dungeon twice and talks to him about various things.

-Sansa is convinced by Cersei to write to Robb and ask him to come to Kings Landing and bend the knee to Joffrey.

-Tyrion and Bronn meet the men from the mountain clans, Shagga son of Dolf, Timmett son of Timmett, and Chella (ugly as sin Chella), brings them to his fathers host, where Tywin says if they fight for him they will get everything they desire and more.

-At the Wall two dead Ranger’s who died north of the Wall are brought into Castle Black for eventual burial.

-Jon Snow, while having been confined to his quarters by the Lord Commander for attacking drill sergeant Alliser Thorne, ends up on the receiving end of an attack by one of the dead Ranger’s who has risen zombie-like with blue eyes intent on killing the Lord Commander and Jon. Jon draws his sword but the blade has no effect, so instead he grabs a lantern burns the cursed thing.

-Daenerys going against Dothraki custom tells the Khal’s horde that they can no longer rape women of the enemy after a victory. The Khal backs her up and ends up in a fight with a raider who he quickly dispatched and takes a wound on the chest.

-Lastly, King Joffrey tells commander of the Kingsguard Ser Barristan Selmy that he is to retire (for not having defended his father well enough) and Barristan begrudgingly does so but not till after he’s pulled his steel and told the rest of the men that he could cut through them like cake. After that Sansa comes forward and pleads that Joffrey show mercy to her father, to which he agrees provided Ned bend the knee and proclaim him the rightful king.

Phew. That is A LOT for one episode, and I don’t know about you but for me it literally FLEW by. Everything fit here. There were no jarring moments or anything to take me out of the narrative. In fact the flow of how the scenes happened was quite deftly handled.

The acting of course was once again pretty much amazing across the board. I think this episode let’s Syrio Forel (Miltos Yorelemou) really shine. I mean this is one of his best scenes in the book and Yorelemou plays it absolutely gracefully. Loved every drop of that scene and since it was one of my top five scenes in the book it certainly is here as well. I also think that Richard Madden who plays Robb Stark really got to shine here as he totally takes command of the Banners and proves that he can lead them. Newcomer to the show Clive Mantel who plays The GreatJon Umber absolutely nails the role as to how I saw him in the books. Lastly I once again am mesmerized by Charles Dance (Tywin Lannister) as he brings such a depth of evil mastery to the role, even when he is one upped by scene-stealer Jerome Flynn (Bronn) “You wouldn’t know it.”.

All in all, it really was an amazingly progressive episode and the pieces are fast moving into place for the last two episodes of the season, and the culmination of the story from the first book. What more can I say? Everything in this episode was great. The acting, the dialogue, the sets, the tension. I have zero complaints in fact.

Oh and if you didn’t melt with emotion when Arya was running down the stairs with her wooden sword repeating “Not today. Not today. Not today.” As she had to leave Syrio to his fate, then you are cold and dead inside.

I think it’s going to be really great to get to see the battle of Whispering Wood in the next episode, and some of the other things that transpire of course.  I think the main thing I will have to worry about now is that I know how the 1^st book ends and I KNOW my gf is going to really want to know what happens next, but she’ll have to wait till 2012 to find out…unless I can convince her to read the second book.

TV Review: HBO's Game Of Thrones Episode 4 (Cripples, Bastards & Broken Things)

 

Ah, now things are settling into a nice rhythm and groove. It’s not as if the actors playing the various parts haven’t been good till now, but having been a fan of these books for like fifteen years, I needed them to settle into their parts completely. I think Daenerys and Catelyn especially take their roles to new levels in this episode.

Titled “Cripples, Bastards and Broken Things”, the 4^th episode of HBO’s GAME OF THRONES starts to set the bigger machinations of the first book into play, and it’s nice to see that at only episode 4 of 10,  things seem ready to ramp up to level ten as of episode 5. 

The production is again, gorgeous across the board. With the series still staying fairly close to the book, the writing is well done and everything that needs to be represented is. 

Bran. Here we start to see one of the larger plot arcs, and that would be Bran's dreams and most especially the 3-eyed crow, show up...those who haven't read the books, this will make more sense down the line, trust me. Bran being a fave character in the books, it's nice to see this attention to his character being paid early on. Also, Hodor! Hodor, Bran's large stablehand friend (and /transport/carrier) who is simple (and only ever says "Hodor" to varying degrees) shows up in a part that I am sure is hard to play, and it is done justice to the books.

Dany starts to show her true character arc, one in which she is NOT to be messed with, and with the collected might of Khal Drogo’s Bloodriders (his bodyguards, and therefore hers as well) and that of Ser Jorah Mormont, her nasty brother Viserys finally starts to see that he is Dragon of nothing.

Meanwhile at the Wall, Jon Snow meets one of my favourite characters from the books, namely one Samwell Tarly. John Bradley-West plays the character of fat craven Sam with such an amazing sense of depth that I was rather stunned by his performance and I think he stole the show. His beatings at the hands of the crueler recruits of the Night’s Watch and then Jon, Pip, and Grenn’s later defense of him (including our first look at Jon’s now bigger albino direwolf Ghost) is spot on perfect. The piece that totally steals the show is his response to Jon asking him about being a craven and why he would take the Black in such a case. There is a raw, thick emotion to his voice as he relates the story of his father’s (Randyll, Lord of House Tarly in the South) threat that he go to the wall and join the Night's Watch or Randyll would have him killed in an “accident”…as according to his father he is not FIT to inherit the Tarly lands. That scene is so well done on Bradley-West’s part that I was sold on him as Samwell completely. Sam is such an amazingly realistic character, and one that as the general public we can immediately identify...simply because he's not special, he can't do anything to become special, and in the end he is as everyday as it gets. To me this is why he hits home with us.

Tyrion, on his way south from the Wall stops in Winterfell and gets a cold welcome from Robb (Lord Stark while his father is away), but he then proceeds to help Bran cope with being a cripple by giving him a saddle design that will allow him to ride a horse. This is so key, because up till this point Catelyn and others have made him suspect (especially last week when Littlefinger mentioned he lost the dagger that nearly took Bran’s life to the imp in a wager) in the attempted assassination on Bran. This starts to show that while Tyrion is as ruthless as his brother and sister, there is something in him that causes him to be honorable as well. It was nice to see that show up, and once again Dinklage owns every scene he is in. This point is even more illustrated later on in the episode when Catelyn and Rodrick Cassel are at the inn and she calls the bannermen of her father’s house to her aid in accusing Tyrion of organizing the assassination attempt and taking him prisoner. I like that because it’s one of those things that really shows Catelyn for what she is, a mother who will do anything at her wits end. Tyrion is clearly innocent of the charge since he is the smartest of the Lannister brood and would never do something so plainly stupid as hire a common thug for the job. If he had organized it, he’d have hired a Faceless Man of Braavos (assassin culture across the narrow sea) and Bran would be dead. No, he didn’t do it, and finally we start to see that to be the case. Tyrion also has a quick scene with Theon Greyjoy, ward of Ned Stark. It’s a nice little scene that explains the backstory of Balon Greyjoy’s  (Theon’s father) rebellion when Robert was first on the throne, how that rebellion was subsequently put down and Theon taken as a ward/captive for Balon’s good behavior. Since the Greyjoys take a much bigger role in the story down the road, this was a nice little preliminary setup piece that I quite liked.

The Tourney. Ah, this is great scene. Why? Because it is paid little attention to. Ned doesn’t want the Tourney to happen at all, and so the first part of it (the rest will show in the next episode) is treated almost as an afterthought. I liked that. Here we have the last remnant of Jon Arryn’s time as Hand (in the form of his squire-turned-knight Ser Hugh) taken out. Thus do we get our first look at Gregor Clegane (the Hound’s brother), otherwise called the Mountain That Rides and he is absolutely huge and quite menacing. We get our first real death, and it’s a gory one (kudos to HBO for not skimping on the gore).  Then there's King Robert (who in the books I actually had more respect for) who continues to prove that in his old age he is a fat, drunk, whoring, piss poor king making bad judgments. It clearly illustrates that Robert’s best time is in the past when he was a young warrior and he stood for something righteous and just. It continues to reveal that he is not even a shadow of that person anymore and Ned clearly sees it.  Robert has literally beggared the realm to Lord Tywin Lannister (Cersei, Jamie and Tyrion’s father) paying for excesses.

It should be noted that there are a number of scene’s that aren’t in the book within this episode. They are small scenes, and I don’t feel like they detract from the story at all. One with Arya speaking with Ned about her future is actually very poignant and simply adds to her character plotline. There is one between Jaime and Jory Cassel that is excellent at demonstrating not only Roberts’ treatment of his Queen (whether it is deserved or not), but also shows how when talking about war, battles and glory Jamie is jovial and forthcoming, but the minute he is not speaking of such things he goes right back to being the arrogant, incestuous Kingslayer. Nice character building for Jaime there.

The last scene I should talk about is Littlefinger’s story about brothers The Hound and The Mountain (Sandor and Gregor Clegane) and their loathing of each other, including the revelation that Gregor is actually responsible for the Hound’s face being burned and melted. Now, in the books The Hound himself tells Sansa this story, but I can understand why they chose to let Littlefinger tell it (you'll see) and I’m not bothered by him doing so at all. My issue is that after Ser Hugh & Gregor’s joust ends, the crowd just kind of sits there in hushed whispers not really talking…giving Littlefinger five minutes of utter quiet in which to tell his story. It comes off as odd to be honest. I’d much rather if the silence was for us the audience alone, like it muffles as he tells Sansa the story, and then un-muffles and you hear the crowd again after he finishes. It would have made more sense really. The way it was done makes the scene stand out like a sore thumb sadly. That said, it is a great piece of exposition so i am not that upset.

Overall another great episode and it really sets the stage for the 5^th episode, which is where all the action starts to go down and the pieces that have been laid out thus far begin to really move. I really think the best scene in the whole of episode 4 is the one between Jon Snow and Samwell on the Wall though.

In the next episode: Look for the Tourney to continue and The Mountain That Rides will take on Knight of the Flowers, Loras Tyrell...who is an interesting character in his own right.