Zoom And Enhance

For many years now, fans of TV crime drama and sometimes science fiction have been taking the piss out of episodes featuring image enhancement. You know the trope: "stop, that frame, now zoom in, can you enhance that?" and four pixels are sharpened into a UHD quality portrait. Supposedly there are algorithms that can do this, and by coincidence this is something the geekiest member of the CSI:Your Town Here crew has been working on in their spare time. A selection of particularly amusing examples has been compiled by Duncan Robson in the YouTube video above.

However the game has changed. Until recently we could simply laugh and say that no such algorithm exists. Now we know what the algorithm is - it's Stable Diffusion, the principle used by Midjourney, Dall-E and other generative art AIs. And it's no longer impossible - instead it's dangerous. AIs are prone to bursts of creativity and "hallucinations" (the term used by AI scientists to mean "lying"). When an AI enhances an image, the face that is digitally pencilled in doesn't have to be the actual face of the suspect seen on CCTV, it just has to be a plausible image. It could be anyone's face. It could be your face.

So here's my question: how many innocent fictional people in episodes of CSI have been wrongly convicted of the most heinous crimes on the basis of an AI-enhanced image?

JUSTICE FOR FICTIONAL IMAGE ENHANCEMENT VICTIMS NOW

U Can't Skek Sis [review: Dark Crystal episode 2]

Episode 2 of The Dark Crystal: Age Of Resistance has many pleasures. Deet has found her way to the surface, and despite being unused to the glare of the three suns has met her first podling and her first fizzgig who may prove to be a bit of a scene-stealer. The Skeksis are as treacherous as ever - not least to each other, and Rian and Brea are both in so much trouble for different reasons.

With some movies or shows there is a drive towards realism, whether through special or visual effects, with the ultimate goal of making the audience forget they are watching a created fantasy. Here the effect is different. It's never in doubt that you are watching puppets - Muppets, even, but the artistry is so good that you still accept them as real characters and care about their struggles.

I have taken a decision not to binge-watch The Dark Crystal. It's too good - I want to take a bit more time and enjoy each episode. Also, at this point two episodes in I feel a need to go back and watch the 1982 movie, strictly for research purposes.

Fantastic Beasts And Thra To Find Them [Review: Dark Crystal episode 1]

The world of Thra is changing. The Skeksis, alien vulture-like creatures who have ruled over the native Gelflings for hundreds of years, have plundered the power of the Crystal to sustain themselves, and this is beginning to influence Thraian lifeforms in sinister ways. Most of the Gelflings are extremely gullible and view the obviously evil Skeksis as benevolent lords, but one or two are beginning to smell a rat. Junior guards Rian (Taron Egerton and Neil Sterenberg) and Mira (Alicia Vikander and Helena Smee) are searching the Skeksis castle for an escaped Spitter when they have an unfortunate encounter with the Skeksis chief scientist; meanwhile Gelfling princess Brea (Anya Taylor-Joy and Alice Dinnean) becomes suspicious of the tributes offered to the Skeksis lords during the annual tithing ceremony, and underground-dwelling Deet (Nathalie Emmanuel and Beccy Henderson) discovers that her favourite baby nurloc has become a little irritable. Something isn't quite right.

Set before the events of the 1982 movie, The Dark Crystal is a new TV series produced by the Jim Henson company and available on Netflix. Like the movie, it's an ambitious attempt to tell an epic science fiction story through puppetry - the cast, and the many forms of wildlife on Thra, are all portrayed by puppets. However this is not an anti-CGI campaign but a pairing of visual and special effects, with live-action puppetry transported to a computer generated landscape.

Thra is a planet rich in fantastic beasts, and they have been created with imagination and humour - this is one of the most enjoyable aspects of the episode. Imagine Avatar re-created by the Muppets. In fact there are plenty of similarities between Pandora and Thra. Both ecosystems have been imagined in great detail, and there does seem to be a lot of bioluminescence about on both planets.

The first episode has to introduce the planet's backstory through a brief history lesson, introduce the many Gelfling factions, and begin the stories of the Gelflings and Skeksis central to the plot - as a result the action switches from region to region rather like an episode of Game of Thrones. And without providing too many spoilers, as with Game of Thrones maybe you shouldn't get too fond of any particular characters.

Speaking of characters, each major role in Dark Crystal is credited to two people - a voice actor and a puppeteer. The voice cast is stellar - see examples above, but the list also includes Mark Hamill, Simon Pegg, Sigourney Weaver, Helena Bonham-Carter, Killjoys' Hannah John-Kamen and a few Game of Throners for good measure. Look at the full cast list on IMDb here and weep. I haven't heard of any of the puppeteer cast but I now wish I had - they are incredibly talented.

Conclusion: a strong first episode that provides exposition, starts off several plots, introduces characters and gives some idea of just how epic this series could be. The rest of the series has much to live up to.

Eerie, Indiana [Review: Stranger Things 3]

Stranger Things season 1 celebrated the Eighties. Stranger Things 2 started to get a bit creepy around the Eighties if we're being honest. Stranger Things 3 has been stalking the Eighties in violation of its court order for months, and now the Eighties hasn't been seen for several days  - we suspect that Stranger Things 3 has kidnapped the Eighties and is holding it hostage in some kind of fortified basement dungeon, possibly in preparation for some kind of nightmarish ritual.

Stranger Things 3 is set in a strangely exaggerated 1985. I'll try to avoid major spoilers for those of you who haven't yet binge-watched the whole of season 3. This is just to report that Stranger Things 3 is definitely worth watching, it's up to the same standards of insanity, creepiness and Eightiesism as the other two series. Your favourite characters are back (whoever they happened to be). Some minor characters from previous series come out of the shadows - it happens quite late in the current series but when given a chance Erica (Priah Ferguson) really comes into her own.

There are baddies trying to re-open the breach to the Upside Down (this is only a minor spoiler for the first scene of the first episode), and these particular baddies are absolutely consistent with the global political situation in 1985. My only minor criticism is that we don't get any sense of what motivates them, or exactly they want from the Upside Down. It's not exactly prime construction land.

On the other hand, the mysterious forces from the Upside Down set into motion during series 2 are also up to something nefarious of their own, and they certainly do have a real motivation - this aspect of the plot is a slow burner but it's beautifully thought out, with everything falling into place and making sense about two thirds of the way through. The new big bad is a clever development of ideas from season 2, and also gives the Duffer Brothers plenty of opportunities to reference iconic movies such as The Blob or Terminator 2.

It's also really satisfying seeing that all of the main characters, without exception, have grown and changed since season 2. It would be interesting to see this in other movies from the 80s - there was no sequel for ET (I'm not counting the Atari game) so we never really get to see how Elliot and Gertie were affected by their rather strange childhood.

Here there's a lot going on for the younger generation about the transition from childhood to adolescence - and particularly about what happens when Mike, Lucas and Max are going full steam ahead with this while Will is in a different place and Dustin... well, just watch. Different life challenges await for the young adults, particularly Nancy and Jonathan who are working in literally the worst local newspaper ever, and for the adult adults - you might have thought that Joyce and Hopper had suffered enough over the past two seasons, but no. The challenge for the writers is to keep all these stories going in parallel, and this is achieved in an interesting way through synchronicity - in each episode, all the groups are doing something in common, whether that's searching for someone who can help solve a puzzle or dealing with a romantic break-up.

Stranger Things in general, and this series in particular, has really impressed me. It stands head, shoulders and very long legs above most other Netflix content, as well as other eighties nostalgia pieces such as Super 8 or Ready Player One. Now the visual style has become so well defined I'm really interested to see where it goes next - perhaps the Nineties?

Your Town [Review: The City And The City]

We are living in a golden age of TV adaptations of science fiction and fantasy books. Hot on the heels of The Expanse, Altered Carbon, Man In The High Castle and American Gods comes a new series based on Good Omens, a new version of War of the Worlds set in the era of WW1, and more. Right now I'm enjoying the BBC's miniseries based on The City and The City, possibly my favourite China Mieville novel.

I regret never posting a review of this novel, I may need to re-read it after watching the series and may write some more about it. I did write this blog back in 2010 about C.J. Cherryh's novel Wave Without A Shore which features a similar conceit - societies that choose to live as if they cannot see each other.

The City and The City is a traditional detective story, set in two interlinked cities, Besźel and Ul Qoma. The Besźel tourist orientation video above sets out the scenario nicely - and you should watch it, it could save your life. The plot reminded me of The Bridge - the body of a murder victim is found across a border, under circumstances that bring together the police forces of both cities and leads to conspiracies within conspiracies. The series stars David Morrissey as Besź detective Borlu, and relies heavily on deep colour grading and depth of field to differentiate between the two cities - one is always out of focus.

This is also a great example of a fantasy concept that refers to many situations in real life. One of the things I love most about London for example is that it contains many more cities than just Besźel and Ul Qoma - hundreds of nationalities, communities and active subcultures some visible, some just out of focus; also without taking this post too far into political waters Besźel and Ul Qoma bear similarities to post-Good Friday Northern Ireland and to other conflicted or disputed lands around the globe.

Shine On [Review: Crazy Diamond]

Crazy Diamond, the fourth Electric Dream, takes us to a near-future of rising sea-levels, eco-homes perched on precarious, crumbling cliffs, and Jacks and Jills - synthetic humans grown from human and pig DNA and implanted with a QC - a quantum consciousness. Ed (Steve Buscemi) works in a facility that makes the QCs, but dreams of leaving his limited life behind and sailing away on a voyage of discovery, taking his wife Sally with him. He meets a Jill (Sidse Babett) who has a failing QC and a plan for something that could change both their lives, but is quite illegal.

Ed is the archetype PKD everyman - didn't I tell you to get used to this? - living day to day, holding down a job, dreaming of a voyage into the unknown but only half-believing that it's possible. He's capable of overlooking small illegalities such as the seeds home-grown by Sally (Julia Davis), but larger crimes as proposed by the Jill throw him into conflict between his dreams and his wish to do the right thing.

Some of the back story for this episode can be deduced from the setting - the eco-homes, wind turbines and electric Beetles all point to a post-oil world, with rising sea levels causing coastal erosion and destroying homes. However there are some gaps. It's not clear why food is decaying more quickly, or why the sell-by date is enforced so enthusiastically by the refuse collector. There's a sheet of metal under the ground to prevent people growing their own, apparently to protect the local economy - but why does this make sense?

More significantly, it's not clear why the synthetic humans and their QCs were created, or why they are needed in this society. They're not servants like the synths of Humans or indeed the replicants of Blade Runner. Or at least they're not all servants - the tour guide showing a group of visitors around the QC facility tells them that Jacks and Jills are living amongst us all, then reveals his own status as a Jack. It's possible that they are needed as a result of decreasing fertility hinted at by Ed and Sally's failure to conceive - and taking this along with the food issues I wonder if the writers aren't just thinking of a world that has run out of oil but one that has also been poisoned by pollution.

It's also unclear exactly what the synthetics are - more or less capable than humans? More or less intelligent? Do they actually share human emotions or are they something different? Jill turns out to be capable of some shocking acts, apparently driven by desperation due to her own short shelf-life.

Sally confides in a woman with a pig's head and trotters, Sue, who works as a security guard at the facility, but it isn't clear why this is - the other Jills all look human. She might be an earlier model Jill, or a different type of Jill created specifically for the work, or maybe a Jill from another facility. Sally and Sue's chats do reveal some anti-Jack and Jill snobbery and patronizing attitudes - in one scene Sally is overcome by some form of middle-class guilt while Sue's parting comment is "I'm bred not to take offense."

This episode owes a great debt to Blade Runner - in particular the central character who is a synthetic femme fatale reminds me a little of Rachel from the original film. However there are other influences here too, not least the air ducts and waste pipes in the eco-homes straight out of Terry Gilliam's Brazil.

This was another good episode, mainly down to excellent casting. The Electric Dreams series seems to have attracted some of the best actors, and the three leads here are no exception. However while there's some good worldbuilding, and it's OK to leave some mysteries for the viewer to think about, this time I feel the episode didn't quite provide enough hints.

Last Train To Transcentral [Review: The Commuter]

This review may contain some spoilers: please ensure your swibbles are fully functional.

The third Electric Dream is a slice of coffee-and-walnut flavoured insanity served with hot chocolate and marshmallows. Ed (Timothy Spall) is a station manager living and working in drab and dreary Woking. An encounter with a passenger (Tuppence Middleton) trying to buy a ticket to a station that doesn't exist leads Ed on a journey to a town unlike any other. Heaven? A quantum leap into an alternate reality, or back in time? An escapist fantasy?

I am enjoying the strong sense of location in these adaptations - not least the fact that of the first three, two have been set in the UK. Superficially Electric Dreams is an anthology of stand-alone stories. However three episodes in I'm starting to think about the connections and trends in this series.

Thoughts so far: There's a trend of increasing dreams and visions. The Hood Maker has Ross's vision of the river, The Impossible Planet has the visions of the bicycle and the lake that run through the story and foreshadow the ending, and The Commuter is full of dream-like events. The Commuter also has a further layer of unreality - from both Macon Heights and the reality of his own attic, Ed finds his way into a strange, light-filled dimension that seems to lie beneath both realities.

Along with the increasing visions, there's a trend of decreasing logic. The Hood Maker has a story that makes pretty sound logical sense if you start from the existence of the telepaths. This first episode may however be an exception. The Impossible Planet makes sense to start with, but the visions and ultimately the ending defy logic. Macon Heights is a place of dream-logic - repeated events, idealized people, sudden transitions and so on. It also leaves too many questions if you try to think about it logically - for example, why does the passenger ask Ed for a ticket in the first place? And who are the people who help the returning commuters get back on the train in the evening?

The Impossible Planet and The Commuter both pose the Matrix dilemma in different ways. Which would you prefer to live in - an unsatisfactory real world, or a better fantasy?

In another respect, though, The Commuter is the most real of the three. It's set in the present day, more or less, and in a recognizable, everyday world at least for those of us who live in the UK and use the rail network. There's a family struggling with mental illness, and later with sadness and loss.

All three episodes so far have been of outstanding quality, and I'm particularly impressed by the visuals which once again are stylish and unique - due to the uniqueness it's hard to put any of these episodes into context, but the sense of a perfect, fantasy town that's just a little sinister is right out of The Truman Show.

Overall: yes. I think definitely yes.

We're Putting The Band Back Together [The X-Files]

I'd rather be liberated
I find myself captivated
[Catatonia, "Mulder and Scully"]

Watching the first episode on Channel 5 - impressively, in this day and age, this is not a reboot, a re-make, a re-imagining, a spin-off or a prequel. It's just a new series of The X-Files. Mulder and Scully have developed, as both characters carry the weight of their past experiences, but this is essentially the same recipe as ever - show something unbelievable, make it appear beyond doubt, then create doubt.

As this is a new series, and some of today's hybrid aliens may have been cloned too recently to have been exposed to the original, there is a need to introduce the characters and set out the stall. Thus Mulder spells out his own optimist-skeptic philosophy ("I want to believe" rather than "I believe") before being ignited by the latest conspiracy theory while Scully checks, double checks and triple checks her facts but is prepared to trust the results. The opening pitch for the new series, meanwhile, is the revelation that conspiracy theories are themselves part of a conspiracy to cover up an even greater conspiracy - or possibly they're not. Nice one.


What really makes this show is the return of Anderson and Duchovny - both superb actors, easily good enough to take this show into orbit. The original series drew heavily on the electrifying chemistry between the two at every level, from the will-they-won't-they sexual tension to the sharp intellectual battles. Now, later in life, they've moved on from that relationship that was too intense to have lasted, but are still bound together - and it's still electrifying.

Can all this be maintained? The original series wrote the book on slow-burning story arcs. Let's give it some time.

Living Doll [Humans]

The end is in sight for Humans - possibly in more ways than one, as the final episode approaches tonight. My thoughts: The quality of the drama in this series has been superb throughout - acting, script, characterisation - and I've really been drawn into the story.

Ruth Bradley as DI Karen Voss

The focus has been on the human drama rather than the technology, and the themes of slavery and individuality have continued. I was worried at the beginning that Humans was just a mash-up of other android movies or TV series but this has just been the background allowing a particular story to be told.

There have been plenty of plot twists and revelations, some predictable but some unexpected. I look forward to the ending even though I suspect it will not be a happy one, and once it's over I will be looking for the original Swedish series Real Humans to compare while I wait for series 2.

Shiny Unhappy People [Review: Humans episode 1]

Synths - synthetic humans - are the new iPhones. They're cheaper than a car (with the discount), anyone can buy one, and they can do more or less anything. They're the perfect addition to your family. Watch the advert here - they're not creepy at all, are they?


Channel 4's new drama Humans is based on the Swedish drama Real Humans. The first episode revolves around Joe Hawkins and his family. Laura, his wife, is a lawyer and spends too much time away from home, so Joe buys a synth, Anita, to tidy up at home and help him look after the children. The fun begins when Laura gets home... but meanwhile, sinister events are occurring elsewhere, and Anita may not be quite the first-hand, new model she appears to be.

Humans is well written, produced and acted. The synths are brilliantly almost-human with perfect skin, shiny eyes and expressions that are slightly too slow and controlled. Watching synth Anita (Gemma Chan) freak out Laura (Katherine Parkinson) is compelling. Predictably the plot revolves around whether the synths are machines or sentient slaves, and Channel 4 does take some risks here - one scene, where a synth is challenged by a sinister investigator and runs away from his position in a poly tunnel farm only to be shot and recaptured, evokes very strong imagery of the plantations, including the racial appearance of the runaway.

However, the "reveal" of the first episode is pretty tame, and so far in plot terms there is nothing we haven't seen in AI, Blade Runner or I,Robot. I'll continue watching for the drama but I'm hoping that conceptually there is a lot more to come during the series.

We Wish You A Mirror Christmas [Review: Black Mirror]

Two men sit in an isolated cabin exchanging stories about their past. Their past is our future, a post-Google Glass world where mobile technology is implanted directly into the optic nerve so, for example, it becomes possible to "block" other people, preventing communication in real life as well as online. Black Mirror is back for this one-off Christmas spec-fi drama.

For the unitiated, Channel 4's Black Mirror is a series of speculative fiction TV dramas created by Charlie Brooker, a twenty-first century Twilight Zone with stand-alone dramas inspired by the rise of digital media tech. Brooker has always been the ultimate hatchet-wielding reviewer - for this episode, satirical targets include friend-blocking, online pick-up gurus, and personal assistants such as Siri or Cortana.

As with previous mini-series, the acting in this episode is super: great performances particularly from a creepy Jon Hamm. The combination of the three subplots is OK but personally I think the ideas would have been better suited for three full episodes.

However all the sci-fi concepts and subplots are a diversionary tactic. Brooker has used this episode to declare war on one primary target, and by the end of the episode you will hate it as much as he does. It is of course the soundtrack - Wizzard's "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day."

Doctorin' The Tardis [Review: The Name Of The Doctor]

My money was on the Doctor being Kandy Man all along... damn.

Madame Vastra hears a cryptic message about the Doctor from a murderer and with Jenny's assistance she brings together Strax, Clara and the deceased River Song via a trance. When the Doctor eventually hears the message himself, he and Clara set out on a voyage to the one place a time traveller should never go - the location of his own grave.

The Name Of The Doctor leads to an extremely clever reveal and central concept, and it does at least look as if the whole Clara story arc has been building to this point. It's also got a lot of heart - some nice scenes with the Doctor and River Song, as well as the relationships between other characters, and for the long-suffering Doctor Who fan there are glimpses of the Doctor's earlier reincarnations, digitally remastered and worked into the plot.

However before you get to the really good stuff, you do have to swallow two bitter pills: the fact that "time travel has always been possible in dreams" (no it hasn't, sorry) and the appearance of the laziest Doctor Who creatures ever, the White-Stocking-Over-A-Plastic-Skull-Maskodonians.

Government cutbacks have gone too far. Even the Romanian entry in this year's Eurovision Song Contest made more of an effort to look sci-fi.

[It's My Life - Cezar]

Some plot elements remain vague and mysterious - it's hinted but not fully explained that the cheap monsters are just information, as is River Song, and this is connected in some way to the Library where her personality was stored after her death. Also, the Doctor and Clara have to Tardis it to the supposed graveyard with great difficulty - but the Cheapikons can get there, bringing Vastra and the others, using only background music and a couple of focus pulls. The last few seconds make no sense, but not to worry - Moffat and friends have until November to come up with a plausible explanation. Once again an episode promoted as something incredible turns out just to be a regular one but still enjoyable.

Why Black Mirror Is Awesome And Will Fail [Reviews: Be Right Back and White Bear]

A grieving widow subscribes to a website that promises to re-animate her dead husband's personality by analysing his tweets. Another woman wakes up with no memory, to find she is on the run from sadistic masked killers, while the rest of the world looks on in silence and films her on their mobile phones. Black Mirror is back and it's just as twisted as before.

These Twilight Zone-like stand alone stories work for several reasons. They have a clear focus - creator Charlie Brooker is at heart a TV critic and each story extrapolates from existing websites and technology trends, even if they occasionally stray into fridge-nuking territory. The cast are particularly strong - this is important as it's the Job-like suffering of the main characters that forces us viewers to take sides in the scenario, before a reveal or plot twist brings us face to face with the consequences of that choice. There's incredible attention to background detail, particularly the hardware and software McGuffins that drive each story, and a willingness to face unpleasant questions and go beyond the bounds of taste in answering them. And while some plot strands are similar to other sci-fi scenarios there's often an intelligent alteration. For example, Stephen King's novel Cell and the White Bear episode both feature a rogue, mind-altering mobile phone signal, the White Bear doesn't turn us into zombie killers but zombie onlookers, leaving the very human killers free to do their work.

Lenora Crichlow and Tuppence Middleton in White Bear

So will this novel awaken the consciences of the many, and make us more thoughtful about where our technology is taking us? Not a chance. Charlie Brooker should know that satire doesn't work - this was addressed in the last series episode Fifteen Million Merits, where a character staging a protest against the dystopia game show scenario is simply given his own TV channel as the moguls know he will be popular but won't actually change anything. Based on Twitter trends during the first two episodes, clearly people would welcome the personality substitutes of Be Right Back and the Justice Parks of White Bear. Memetics predicts that ideas will spread by any means, and the sheer quality of these TV dramas means these ideas will spread like wildfire until their time really comes.

I Have Had It With These Motherf****** Dinosaurs On This Motherf****** Spaceship! [Review: Dinosaurs On A Spaceship]

Thpoiler Alert.

This week the Doctor rounds up a posse made up of Queen Nefertiti, Amy and Rory, Rory's Dad and an Edwardian game hunter, brings them aboard a spaceship populated by dinosaurs and heading straight for Earth, hoping to divert it before the Indian Space Agency blows it sky high and makes dinosaurs extinct.

Riann Steele as Queen Nefertiti

This episode is light and frothy: I'd go further and say the comedy seems to be the main point, since the plot is so simple. There's Matt Smith's clowning, Rory's Dad who turns out to be a little eccentric, plus some very funny moments with the two throwaway historical figures (surely spin-off material?) a tame stegosaurus, Robert Webb and David Mitchell in fine form as two bickering robots, and a blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to Iron Sky. It's all very entertaining - perhaps a bit too entertaining, almost like watching Red Dwarf or a sketch show rather than a drama. There's not much substance, and I feel I'm still waiting for the Moffatt scriptwriting genius of yore to kick in.

The Doctor Is In [Review: Asylum Of The Daleks]

It turns out the Daleks have socialised medicine and a surprisingly progressive attitude towards mental health issues. Who knew? However "Asylum Of The Daleks" the Doctor Who series opener never makes it quite clear whether their secret Asylum is a state-run NHS or a Medicaid-style insurance programme. Perhaps there's hope for them yet.

Thpoilerth follow.

The Doctor, Rory and Amy are captured and delivered to a Dalek spaceship where the Dalek "Prime Minister" sends them on a mission to an entire planet of captive, insane Daleks. Insanity is best viewed as a relative term in Doctor Who.

This episode promised to bring together all the Dalek designs from all the different Doctor Who eras. However the show is a victim of it's own super-high production values. Thanks to the brilliant atmospheric lighting, and the equally brilliant set and model work, the decaying and malfunctioning Daleks in the Asylum are as menacing as ever but you never get a clear view. Also these daleks did not appear at all.

I did spot a Special Weapons Dalek at 24m 58s though, which is some small consolation.

More interesting was the nanofield - a new way for Daleks to control or enslave humans, which also creates a crisis for the trio when their protection against the field is lost. There's a twist in the tale which I won't thpoil for you but I guessed fairly quickly as it reminded me of a situation in a Duncan Jones movie.

This episode is good but not earth-shatteringly brilliant. It doesn't need to be. It's the series opener written by Steven Moffatt and no doubt it's real purpose is to set up plot arcs, surprises and themes for the episodes to come. I would be very surprised if the nanofield doesn't re-emerge at some point, it's a fantastic plot device. The episode introduced some interesting characters, including the Dalek Prime Minister O_o and a character played by Jenna-Louise Coleman, who will be joining the series to play the Doctor's travelling companion in a few months.

Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown? [Review: The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe]

You can tell so much about a man from his intertextual references. The 2011 Doctor Who Christmas Special is peppered with the blasted things, many of which are more or less throwaway – the opening, which lumps together Star Wars and The Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, is both brilliant and utterly irrelevent, while the links to C.S. Lewis are fun but superficial only – World War II setting, evacuee children, the portal to a forest world, trees that talk to each other – rather than exploring the deeper themes of the Narnia novels.

What this episode is really about is trees. Doctor Who and trees have history: the Doctor’s (other) nemesis the Rani used landmines that turned people into trees (Mark Of The Rani, 1985.) Also, when taking Rose to see the destruction of the Earth, which you have to admit is a fairly impressive first date, the pair encounter Jabe, a sentient tree from the Forest of Cheem (The End Of The World, 2005.) Jabe gets an indirect mention in this episode too. Christmas trees on the other hand are to be feared: particularly deadly variants have appeared in previous Christmas Specials. These trees are sinister in a different way, but they’ve also attracted the attention of some unscrupulous humans from Androzani Major (a clever reference to The Caves Of Androzani, 1984, which was once voted best episode of all time.)

The plot is unusually weak for Doctor Who, with an ending that is both unsatisfying and hole-ful. A fundamental attack on sentient life goes unpunished, and while the victims are technically saved, they are only saved in a metaphysical, insubstantial way. Meanwhile the human tragedy, which is really moving throughout the episode, is resolved far too easily.

If, however, you can put the ending to one side, what you are left with is a box of delights. Matt Smith’s Doctor is on good comic form in his misguided attempts to become “the Caretaker,” and once again his clowning is offset by unexpected moments of empathy. A confrontation between Madge, played by Claire Skinner, and three Androzani troopers led by comedian Bill Bailey, is funnier still. There’s great dialogue, setting, atmosphere, characters and acting throughout, and the right mix of comedy and tragedy.

Of course, you don’t need the Doctor to tell you never to cross a Christmas tree:

Let's hope we don't have to run! [Reviews: Let's Kill Hitler and Night Terrors]

Some thoughts about Doctor Who: the second half of the season opened with two episodes written by past masters: Steven Moffat's "Let's Kill Hitler" and Mark Gatiss' "Night Terrors." The tones of the episodes are poles apart: comic sci-fi and psychological horror, but there are some interesting common themes: both feature eyeballs, and both are about miniaturization.

LKH features a humanoid robot time-ship, the Tesselator, crewed by tiny time-policemen and jellyfish robots. The concept reminded me of Woody Allen's "Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex" where a similar miniature crew pilot a man through a dinner date in what might be the most original Star Trek spoof ever. I'm told Eddie Murphy also based a film around this idea, to which I believe the correct response is "Eddie who?"

Night Terrors also involves miniaturization but it's a clever twist - to say more would be [breathy Alex Kingston voice] "Thpoilerth...." There's no sci-fi here although the backstory is borrowed from John Wyndham, instead everything is explained in terms of an unusually powerful mind, which is not really any explanation at all. This episode may also be the prequel to one of the Silence encounters earlier this year.

The original concept for Doctor Who included scope for the TARDIS to bring the Doctor and his companions into macroscopic or microscopic environments as well as travelling in space and time, allowing potential for some great sci-fi and educational storylines. This capacity was almost never used - a rare exception is the excellent William Hartnell story Planet Of Giants - so it's great to see the series having some more fun with miniaturization.

Infinite Number Of Monkees Part II: Moon Child

There is one reason I am willing to forgive Micky Dolenz for his creation of Metal Mickey and it is this.



Luna, first broadcast in 1983 is one of the strangest sci-fi series ever to be fired from a CRT gun towards a phosphate glass screen.

Where to start? The date is 2040. In the Efficicentre, possibly the last human city after some pollution apocalypse, cloned humans live together in randomly allocated family units. You will be "obliviated" if you lose your e-passport and Luna comes dangerously close to this fate in the first episode. "Technotalk" is spoken, a language not unlike Orwell's Newspeak but designed to be easier for computers to digest. And teapots are outlawed. It's a dark, dystopic, brightly coloured, child-friendly sitcom: the bureaucracy of Brazil and the sinister social control of 1984 meet The Wonder Years.

This show was one of the defining memories of my diminibeing years, yet for a long time I thought I'd dreamed it. While the series apparently still exists in archive, it's never been repeated or released.

Where can you watch it? You can't. Certainly not here.

I was extremely happy to see Luna again. Not everything has aged well - the wobbly old-school Doctor Who-style set for one, and some of the gags are equally wobbly. But I think you'll agree that Luna is still very watchable, and the tone, the essential weirdness and 72 Batch 19Y's indomitable spirit all shine through. With thanks to the Lunaviron fansite.

Infinite Number Of Monkees Part I: Pedal To The Metal

If you had an infinite number of Monkees, and an infinite number of typewriters, then, given paper, ink ribbons, lots of WD-40 and sufficient time, would they eventually come up with some truly classic sci-fi television?

I was recently reminded by a fellow blogger of the many talents of Mickey Dolenz, the voicebox of The Monkees and the man responsible for:

"The four kings of EMI are sitting stately on the floor
there are birds out on the sidewalk and a valet at the door
he reminds me of a penguin, with few and plastered hair
there's talcum powder on the letter, and the birthday boy is there."

You may also have noticed Mr. Dolenz' recent cameo in Mega Python Vs Gatoroid. More importantly from a cultural perspective, he was the creator of this.



Metal Mickey is a progamme I remember from my childhood as being embarrassingly bad. Of course I was probably too young to pick up on the subtext, or to appreciate the subtle nuances of irony. However I have to acknowledge the iconic status of Mr. Mickey (the metal one.)



Mickey's quest to understand human emotion is a crucial sci-fi narrative that has perplexed Johnny Five, Marvin, the Terminator, DATA, O11iver and other great fictional robots. Mickey's LED heart is also echoed by GERTY's emoticon screen - could they be related?

Bad Girls Go Everywhere [Review: A Good Man Goes To War]

The Doctor's finest hour? Or his greatest fall?

The Doctor, backed by a rag-tag crew of companions and allies, takes on a powerful military-religious establishment to rescue Amy and baby Melody. Naturally the entire set-up is a trap ready to spring shut, and the evil Madame Kovarian is a serious threat. The Doctor is on the warpath, more violent than ever, at one point destroying a Cyberman fleet just to persuade their leader to cooperate with Rory. However the main story is the cat-and-mouse interplay between the Doctor and Kovarian.

This episode provides a lot of answers, not just limited to the story arc - in fact these are the least surprising twists. The Doctor's full name is finally revealed, at least for those of us who read Gallifreyan. I have been waiting for this since 1963 which is in itself an achievement since I wasn't born until the following decade.

The script is also full of red herrings and misdirections - is it wrong of me to say that I was disappointed to learn that Professor River Song is not a later incarnation of the Doctor? (This would have implied that relationships of this type are quite OK for Time Lords.) Madame Vastra and Jenny are a joy to watch and definitely spin-off material, and there are some truly memorable, utterly bonkers moments.

Rory (to Sontaran Commander Strax): "You're a warrior!"
Commander Strax (dying words, to Rory): "I'm a nurse."

In addition, it's clearer than ever that Moffat is bringing a much darker tone to Doctor Who: non-human deaths are emphasised, characters are given fake deaths over and over again, and interrogation, torture, humiliation, and slavery are constant companions. The new monsters are extremely sinister and the so-called Headless Monks are no exception.

Amy's treatment in this episode and, it turns out, the whole series, has been particularly cruel and there's an ongoing discussion about treatment of women in Doctor Who over at io9. OK. It could be worse - at least these days they don't get asked to do this [1:45]


[The Time Warriors, Sarah Jane Smith's first appearance.]

As a whole, A Good Man Goes To War was a daring and horrific episode, a real classic Doctor Who moment. But I don't buy the statement that this battle is the Doctor's finest hour, or his greatest fall - for all the climactic music it's still just another verse in the legendary ballad.