Not 'just another' Claymore

Convention off the starboard bow
August is waiting at the door and so Claymore is manoeuvring itself into position again on the local convention calendar.

My plans aren't in place yet but my intention is to attend as ever. The success of last year's new venue means that I await 2010's Claymore with anticipation tangible enough to feel quite novel.

Zombies and Daleks, oh my!
This year's programme of participation games looks interesting all round. I can honestly say that I'd be happy to play in any of the games in this year's programme. Needs as needs must though, so here is my shortlist of 3 games for the day:

• City of Prosperity: 15mm Zombies.
• Dumfries Wargames Club: British Civil War 1938, 28mm.
• Edinburgh League of Wargamers: 28mm Daleks.

Daleks, zombies and an alt-history British civil war? Truly messieurs convention organisers, you are spoiling us.

What to choose, what to choose? I think I'll have to put the British Civil War game at the top of my list. I imagine this will be based on the 1938 A Very British Civil War series published by Solway Crafts and Miniatures. My old pal Jim told me some interesting tales about this game when I visited him in Edinburgh after my Conflict of Heroes demo sessions last month. Jim gave me the impression that this game is something of a hit. It deserves to be, given its intriguing premise: that Edward VIII didn't abdicate in 1936, with the result that civil war breaks out in Britain in 1938.

After that I'd probably want to have a go with the Daleks. Zombies are fun I know, but I've never played a wargame with Daleks, which makes the opportunity just a bit too much to resist. So here's hoping for a dose of "Bally spiffing old bean," topped up with a dash of "Exterminate! Exterminate!" a week today. ;)

Rain starts play

Get down, deeper and down!
Tuesday's visit to G3 was just the icing on the cake of what had been a bumper few days gaming for yours truly. Such a big night took priority over the weekend's gaming here at RD/KA!, which- thanks to my trip to Edinburgh and the recent good weather, saw our first Sunday session in a month. Donald, Gav and I made three on the day. First choice was down to Donald, which put him in the Overlord's Seat of Power for a long-awaited return to Descent, my favourite dungeonbash boardgame.

A dynamic duo?
With only 2 heroes a solid tank was a priority. Gav chose that role and quickly settled on Mordrog. I decided to run a rogue , choosing Kirga for his ability to keep the spawning monsters at bay. And so we had a pair of scurvy greenskin 'heroes' we hoped would be fit to tackle the best that the Overlord could throw at us.

Already tickled by our characterful choice of heroes, we were well satisfied by our skills draws. Mordrog's Brawler, Relentless and Tough were going to make him a killing machine who'd excel at getting in the thick of things, and whom the Overlord would have a hard time stopping. Kirga's Born to the Bow, Eagle Eye and Marksman- giving him aimed Pierce 3 bow attacks at +4 range, meant that we had- for the first time ever in our games of Descent, a genuine master of the bow.

What went down
Minor inconveniences?
We were playing Quest #4: Spoiled Brat, which led to the first of a couple of what we hoped would be minor inconveniences: an unconsciousness princess. One of us would have to carry her and she'd count as 1 of that hero's 2 'other' items as well as reducing his Speed by 1. Gav and I easily discounted the notion of reducing Mordrog's Speed to 2 so yours truly was duly lumbered with this encumbrance.

Kinga and Mordrog made short work of the dungeon denizens in the first room, although Donald was able to delay us with some spawned monsters. Still, our treasure from the 2 copper chests netted me Backbiter, a cursed magic bow. Cursed items are powerful treasures which come with a sting in the tail: you can only get rid of them when you die, and your hero becomes worth an extra Conquest point if you equip the item to use it (losing all your Conquest points- when heroes are killed or when the Overlord exhausts his Overlorld deck, is how hero players lose the game). Backbiter's amazing abilities were enough to convince Gav and I that the risk of the Curse was well worth running.

Inconveniences become complications
Opening the door into the second area revealed quite a lot of monsters; entering the area revealed a spiked pit trap, into which Mordrog promptly fell. The monsters in this area weren't too worrying individually, en masse in such a tight corner was another matter. Gav and I were slow in fighting our way through, our caution in advancing encouraged by Donald's spawing more skeletons then a blood ape to join in the beastmen attack from the rear.

Both one-shot killers by this point, Kirga and Mordrog wreaked terrible carnage as they worked their way slowly forwards. Unfortunately the Overlord's monsters were wearing us down too, Kirga especially because Donald was cleverly concentrating his attacks on the weaker of our two heroes. Weak though they were those skeleton archers were able to pick away at Kirga with their piercing arrows. Eventually Kirga was so wounded that I realised that it'd be a waste of a good potion to heal him only for him to die in a couple more turns: it was time for him to die and to respawn.

This gave rise to another minor inconvenience: the princess was left lying where Kirga had died so that I had to go back to pick her up again. Fortunately this was easily done so I thought that this had been a good death.

The Overlord's spawnage continued, this time a couple of dark priests. Dangerous enough in their own right, the master dark priest had the added complication of Cursing the hero who killed him. And so it was that Mordrog joined Kirga- who'd kept Backbiter when he'd respawned, in being worth that extra Conquest point for the Overlord.

Complications have consequences
Gav and I were starting to feel the pressure as we headed for the door to the third area: all Donald had to do was exhaust his Overlord deck or kill just one of us and he'd win. So the monsters awaiting us in that room were a grim sight to behold. We had to act fast.

Mordrog charged in to open the Silver treasure chest. Then I made a fatal miscalculation, moving a square too far forward when I moved in to finish off the naga. This allowed an ogre to get in to attack and use its Pushback to shove Kirga back down the corridor, where he was promptly surrounded by a mob of fast-moving razorwings. This proved to be very bad indeed because the 2 master razorwings had the Stun ability; each hit places a Stun token; each Stun token loses a model 1 of its 2 actions for each turn. Soon enough Kirga was reeling around unable to do anything at all except wait to die for the second time, and worth an extra Conquest point for that second time.

Gav was able to save the game by activating a Glyph of Transport (you gain Conquest points for doing that), but there was nothing he could do to stop a master razorwing picking up the princess. This beastie has a move of 8- more than either Kirga or Mordrog could manage at full tilt, so the only way we could kill it and get the princess back was to attack from both sides. And we had to get the princess back because Donald was drawing 2 extra Overlord cards each turn while he held the princess, which amounted to going through his Overlord deck at twice the normal rate (exhausting the Overlord deck costs the heroes players Conquest points remember).

We almost pulled it off. Mordrog appeared behind the monsters and hacked his way through almost half of them. Then I appeared in front of them and opened fire with my bow. All I had to do was kill the master skeleton then the master razorwing would be next. The skeleton was duly despatched, only to pick itself up again because of its damned Undying ability. Gah! The pesky skeleton even survived a second time.

At this point Donald's Overlord deck was about to run out, so Kirga and Mordrog decided that discretion was the better part of valour and headed back into town leaving the princess to her fate.

Score
Newly qualified Evil Overlord 1
Ill-fated- but surviving, would-be heroes 0
:-/

Afterthoughts
A fantastic game! Donald played like a real pro, putting in his best ever performance as the Overlord (and it's not as if he hasn't won in the past). In particular he was ruthless in picking on the weaker of Gav's and my heroes- Kirga unfortunately, something which he'd failed to do in the past. Donald's clearly got to grips with the role and I'm looking forward to our next attempt to take him down a peg or two.

As for Gav and I? Well I have to say that perhaps Kirga wasn't the best choice of second hero. What he was good at was fine, but he was poor in two key areas:

• Fatigue points: these are what enable heroes' fancy footwork; 3 might just not've been enough.
• Speed: having a hero who can outrun monsters and generally get about a bit is important; Kirga's speed 4 was fine; reduced to 3 by that damned princess it was definitely too low (I couldn't've known about the princess before we started but maybe the lesson is that every party needs a hero with speed 5?).
  

Even with that we were hampered more in the end by poor tactics. We did two crucial things wrong:

• We spent too long clearing rooms because we were concerned about the monsters who'd be following us; we should've pushed on faster leaving Donald to use his own turns to keep the monsters on our tails; all the more so in situations in which narrow corridors would've limited the number of monsters who could actually get in to attack.
• We were too distracted by treasure and other baubles, which are there for the express purpose of enticing hero players into wasting time.

It's frustrating to have fallen into these bad old ways because I was already aware of the dangers they present to parties of heroes. Ah well, there's always another day.

Tactics aside, hindsight means I have to question the wisdom of accepting that Curse on Kirga. If Gav and I hadn't lost those extra 2 Conquest points because of Kirga's Curse, then we wouldn't've lost the game when we did. One point Gav and I never considered when we pondered what to do with Backbiter was how easy is it to kill the hero carrying the cursed item? If they're one of the lightly armoured heroes any half-decent Overlord will be picking on for easy kills, then perhaps it's better to ignore the lure of power and just keep the item in your pack until you can discard it when you die.

Bad choices and massive screwage
With time for another game after 5 hours of Descent we quickly decided on our old favourite, Settlers of Catan. Going first I had little difficulty in choosing a location giving me brick, lumber and sheep with what I hoped would be quick access to a brick port. Waiting for my second pick I was worried about my access to grain and/or ore. Sure enough, I was left a choice. In the end I plumped for a location which gave me a run to a lumber port with decent lumber regions- 6 and 10 for a total of 8 pips; good enough if I got it.

What went down
I got off to what looked like a good start, quickly building a city and grabbing the Longest Road quite by accident as I built what turned out to be a superfluous road in my efforts to prevent Gav from confounding my plans to get my grain along with some nice extra lumber. Then came the massive screwage by Gav:

• He bought a Development card and his gloat was enough to worry me immediately; sure enough, on his next turn he revealed Year of Plenty and built 2 roads, so cutting off my access to the lumber port I'd had my eye on.
• He built a settlement on the grain region I'd tried to shut him out of, so denying me grain for the rest of the game.

With my resource base thus crippled and Donald's being even worse than that because he'd started without any lumber, there was little that either of us could do to stop Gav's relentless advance to victory. That didn't stop me trying, naturally enough, but with no grain coming in I couldn't buy the Development cards which would normally have provided the Soldiers I'd've used to deny Gav his strategic resources.

Score
Evil Overlord 1
Just plain evil 1
D'oh! 0
:(

Afterthoughts
Gav's massive screwage was the decisive turn in my fortunes and I completely lost my focus after it, compounding a bad situation with dumb moves. Truth to tell though I had already showed poor focus in my setup. My second choice of starting settlement was invidious:

• If I took the grain I'd almost certainly never've got any ore, so I'd've had no chance anyway.
• Taking the ore put me into a potential conflict with Gav for my grain, which I might lose because I had no grain and therefore might not get my settlement down in time.

I made two crucial errors in this situation:

• I should've gone for maximum ore once I'd decided to choose ore at that point: going for the lumber port was a third layer to the road/settlement strategy to which I was already committed by virtue of seeking my grain and that brick port; this was just a bad call.
• Even before that, my first road should've been pointed at the grain I wanted instead of at the brick port: I knew that grain was going to be difficult simply because of the board layout; I should've redirected that road to minimise the resources I'd've needed to grab the resource vital to my game.

Ah well, c'est la vie. Here's hoping I've learned lessons for the future. ;)

A big night out

Small beginnings?
In part 1 of my 2010 gaming wishlist last December, I wrote of how I needed to find new opponents to maintain my regular fix of WW2 tacsim gaming. I finally took steps towards this end last month when I posted an 'Opponents wanted' thread on BGG. The thread resulted in one reply which I confess wasn't encouraging, but it was enough.

And so it was that last night saw me lugging a big bag full of Memoir'44 down to a local municipal hall- conveniently located a few minutes away, there to attend the very same Glasgow Games Group (G3) which had been my old stomping ground in the years before I started blogging, and whose 10th anniversary celebrations I had attended back in June 2008.

As you can imagine dear readers, returning to an old haunt like this involved meeting with a few familiar faces. The first was Barry, whom I'd introduced to Memoir'44 when it was still new back in the days before I took my break from the club. What a pleasant surprise that was. This led to another entertaining little moment when, chatting to Barry about what had brought me back to G3, I mentioned the person I was to meet that night. He was lurking nearby earwigging, naturally enough, and so I was introduced to Gregor.

In at the deep end!
Gregor and I settled in for our game, before which I just had to show off the new Breakthrough boards and scenario pack which I had recently bought, naturally enough. Gregor was suitably impressed which was nice, because that meant I can be confident that this new expansion will be hitting the table sooner rather than later.

Distractions done, we chose our scenario. Gregor was keen to try the Eastern Front expansion because he'd never played it before. I'd been thinking about introducing Gregor to the new air rules via a familiar scenario but I needed no second bidding. Eastern Front is a great expansion and there's one scenario in particular I've never played that I've long been keen to try: Red Barricades, featuring a German assault on the legendary tractor factory.

What went down
Random selection gave Gregor the Russians, which suited him because he was interested in finding out how the Commissar rules worked. We set up and set to.

A strong German force ready to advance across the frozen wastes into the teeth of the Russian defences

With 4VP available to myself and the Russians for holding the Red Barricades factory complex and other objectives, and expecting to suffer serious losses as I closed, my basic plan just had to involve going for the Red Barricades on my right flank. This did and didn't start well:

• Did: I got a couple of order cards for that flank which enabled me to advance, opening fire with my sniper for a kill; the first ever sniper shot in my Memoir experience and success was mine!
• Didn't: Gregor launched a local counter attack, killing my sniper; my own advance on the right stalled for some time thereafter.

My next manoeuvre involved a bit of adjustment on my left followed by an Infantry Assault in the centre. The result was a bastion of 5 infantry units based on that town and ruins on my centre/left, complete with the clearance of the adjacent minefield and 2 wires: a strong anchor for my left to swing up the flank I hoped. Gregor had other ideas naturally enough, hitting my units turn after turn with everything he had before I could exploit my opening. Artillery, infantry, snipers (those pesky snipers- a permanent thorn in my side!) and tanks made short work of my exposed units so that shockingly quickly I was left with just 2 units holding in cover.

Gregor & I: battle is joined in Stalingrad

I was feeling the heat by now and knew I'd have to do something soon to turn the situation in my favour. I brought my artillery forward to improve their range and sent in the tanks. They didn't get off scot free but they achieved their crucial aim when they disposed of Gregor's own tanks, so opening up my own freedom of manoevure. Some of Gregor's infantry were stubbornly holding on in the buildings and ruins but others were caught by my tanks in the open deep in the Russian lines on my left: perfect conditions for armoured overruns, of which I was able to take full advantage. Meanwhile I had gained enough of a local advantage on my right finally to threaten the Red Barricades factory complex.

His forces crumbling and under pressure on two flanks, the jig was up for Gregor. The end came when a unit of Engineers cleared the factory objective on my left, advancing to occupy it for the final VP and a result of 10-5.

Score
Veterans of the 6th 1
Stubborn but outgunned 0
:)

Afterthoughts
A gripping and brutal game, the latter being down to the 10VP victory requirement which is uniquely high in standard Memoir AFAIK. Gregor's early success showed that this scenario is well winnable by the Russians. What went wrong? Well Gregor did comment before we played that he's more prone to rash attacks than he is to tactics, and I think our first game together proved his point.

With as many as 4VP available from objectives, the Russian strategy just has to involve holding on to those and punishing the Germans while they advance to sieze them. This suggests to me that the Russians have to create 2 defensive positions:

• The Red Barricades factory complex.
• The factory and ruins on their centre/right.

They also have to be prepared to fall back:

• The 4 infantry units in the advance guard should tighten the defensive perimeter when the German advance is in a position to overwhelm them.
• Everything should fall back on the Red Barricades for a last ditch defence because the Germans have to capture 3 of those 4 hexes to gain the 2VP.

These manoeuvres can be covered with harassing fire from the artillery, tanks and snipers. No plan ever survives contact with the enemy of course but I think that this strategy presents the Russians with their best chance.

By the way, although I won a fairly decisive victory the overall result was actually quite close to the historical outcome: the Russian line broke but I only ended up occupying a corner of the Red Barricades. Neat, I thought.

Hanging out
There was plenty going on at G3 last night: roleplaying- an ongoing D&D campaign in which Donald's been playing for ages; 40K- a 5-player megagame; Warmachine- 2 or 3 different games of this, which is apparently quite big in Glasgow; Infinity- an SF miniatures game which Andy was playing on some very nice urban terrain; and a game of Descent. Regular readers will know that this offers me plenty to get my teeth into in the future.

All of that will come after I've got the regular WW2 gaming rolling. All of which leads to my final pleasant surprise of the night, another club-goer called John. He was Gregor's other recent Memoir opponent; in fact he owns the campaign bag which is the only accessory I haven't bought for this favourite game. It turned out that John is a keen WW2 tactical gamer whose collection includes ASL and Combat Commander and he is a big fan of card-driven command and control systems.

We had a long and interesting chat after which I also found out that John is interested in RPGs like BoxNinja's SF bughunter 3:16 Carnage Amongst The Stars- which regular readers might remember I bought at Conpulsion back in March; and in Contested Ground Studios' game of Cold War paranoia, weird science and monster hunting, Cold City- which I picked up at UK Games Expo'10 just last month. I'd been wondering when I might get a chance to play these new RPGs and now it looks like that chance might come a lot sooner than I'd imagined.

Two new wargaming opponents and someone who shares my interest in alternative RPGs? Talk about coming up trumps. You can be sure, dear readers, that John and I will be meeting each other across the gaming table at the earliest opportunity. I suspect Gregor might want first dibs on his revenge though. ;)

"Trapped in the netherspace, the void between the worlds"

WARNING!

- MAJOR Doctor Who season 5 spoilers ahead -
WARNING!

Oh. My. Goodness!
I may only have written about Doctor Who once before here at RD/KA!- at the end of David Tennant's first season back in 2007, but everyone who knows me knows only too well that I am a devoted fan of the show, albeit not a Whovian geek as such. As I set to writing this I've just come from watching for the 3rd time the 2-part finale to Matt Smith's first season as the inimitable Doctor, to refresh in my mind what made this season so striking as to prompt me to give vent to my enthusiasm for what has been 13 weeks of truly matchless television.

Brace yourselves dear readers!
In light of what I said last Sunday about the pointless sound and fury so often aroused in geek culture by clashes of tastes driven by blind partisanship, I want to begin with a warning and a clarification. If you don't like Doctor Who, or you do but don't share my high appreciation of the merits of this season: that's all well and good, but I don't care. Mule headed blind partisanship? No. I simply can't. This is just the blunt end of my critique of what I was hinting at last Sunday when I referred to how "personal tastes are justified against other people's by being raised to the level of intellectual generalisations".

What I'm getting at here is the all too widespread tendency for people to express their own tastes in absolute qualitative terms, so that different tastes are seen as inferior: if I like it it must be good; if I don't it must be bad; other people's tastes are then refracted through this egoistic prism. I believe that this is in part a legacy of the obsolescent division between high and low culture, art and entertainment- on the one hand; and the concomitant creation of the 'canon'- on the other.

I also think that this close-minded blind partisanship derives from the very conditions which have driven the obsolesence of the old high art aesthetic. These conditions are: the emergence of new media- based on technology (eg. digital media) or otherwise (eg. tabletop RPGs), which have transformed the cultural landscape so radically that they represent a veritable revolution; and the overwhelming profileration of expression in all these media. This historically unprecedented cultural richness has exploded the credibility of the notion of the canon because there are now literally too many products across too many media for even the most eclectic cultural afficionado to experience a representative sample of this new universe of creativity. And if even sampling everything is impossible then plainly liking everything is unimaginable.

Big little people and small big people
That's all very well you might say, but what's it got to do with geek rage? Compared to the old, this new culture is simultaneously more intensely personal- because of the necessary selection from the vast new menu; and more participatory- because of the new media among other things. We are therefore talking about something which more actively expresses and affirms individuality than could the old culture, so that it is the basis of the richest expression of personality that we common people have ever enjoyed. It makes us bigger people in other words.

Yet these wonders, or more precisely perhaps: our understanding of what they are, represent and so might become; these still labour under the burden of the dead hand of 'mainstream high culture', whose aesthetic is still only obsolescent after all. This survival is thanks largely to state and corporate patronage, the attendant awards circuit with its coterie of celebrity hangers-on, and the conspicuous consumption of the wealthy and well-to-do.

Now don't get me wrong here: I'm not saying that this stuff is all crap; that's not the point of this polemic, and it's a matter of taste after all. What I'm saying is that the overweening sense of self-importance enjoyed by these ivory tower denizens- a mere trickle in our cultural floodtide after all; this serves to deny to geekery fair recognition of its true novelty and profound human value. Hence, I suggest, the defensiveness of those who internalise and project outwards the old order's negation of their newfound sense of cultural identity by adopting the obsolescent aesthetic equating taste with absolute quality.

And the point of all this? Paradoxically perhaps, it's about quality in the end. Critical appreciation of objects and matters of interest is essential to the exchange of ideas without which no human activity can aspire to become better than it is. The blind partisanship of tastes defined through the denigration of others' is a barrier impeding the necessarily comparative nature of this vital discourse. The effects of this are all the more baleful in geek culture because of what it is: a mulitmedia participatory culture of confluence and sythesis; ie. an open, exploratory culture. The tragedy of geek rage then is that it insists on slamming doors shut and turning back from the unknown.

PROCEED WITH CAUTION
- Total Doctor Who season 5 spoilage follows -
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

"Geronimo!"

Class act: Amy Pond and the 11th Doctor

A möbius strip tied in a Gordian knot?

What do you get if you take Steven Moffat- writer of season 3's intricately plotted time-travel episode Blink, and give him an entire season of Doctor Who to play with? Let me tell you. You get the Doctor- existence unravelling because he's just rebooted the universe by staging Big Bang 2 at the heart of an exploding TARDIS, returning to from where he set forth, there to vanish; then being rescued by Amy Pond (new assistant) thanks to the seed he'd planted in her mind (in what was hitherto widely regarded to be a continuity error no less!) while that unravelling drew him back through an adventure in which the Doctor- the one going forward this time, had found out that these cracks in the universe were a growing threat on a cosmic scale; a threat which turned out to have been caused by his very own exploding TARDIS. Until, that is, the Doctor- in an alternate Earth, figured out how to intervene so that the explosion saved the day it had already created.

If your heads're already spinning dear readers, I'm afraid there's more. Twelve years elapsed between the 7-year old Amy's first meeting with the Doctor- at his point of departure and return (her house, where the Doctor also first encountered one of those cracks in the universe) and his reappearance for their first adventure together: saving the world, naturally enough. Two more years passed before the Doctor came back to take Amy on her first trip in the TARDIS, on the night before her wedding. The Doctor manages to turn up at Amy's wedding thanks to her remembrance: late- but in time for the dancing, and none the worse for having been erased from existence while Amy slept that night on which it turned out he hadn't invited her for that first trip in the TARDIS after all. So the whole series- spanning the length and breadth of time and space as ever, actually took place in a mere 24 hours.

And to cap it all: the universe might've been saved, but what caused the TARDIS to explode in the first place remains a mystery.

Ingredients essential to a new recipie
Three ingredients were essential to this heady brew: an absence, and two presences direct consequences thereof. The absence? That of Russell T. Davies, whose scripting had been the object of fans' complaints for some time. It was thanks to The Time of Angels and Flesh and Stone 2-parter that I finally grokked what people were on about: there had been a subtle but significant change to the whole tenor of the storytelling. By the end of The Time of Angels I was aware of the significance of this absence and of the other two ingredients.

The masterly pre-credits sequence reintroducing River Song at the start of The Time of Angels- 5 minutes which for sheer wit, pace and concise storytelling outdid any James Bond movie opening I can remember; this showed us the second ingredient: superlative use of time travel, of its possibilities and its paradoxes. In Moffat's hands this is doubly dramatic because it's not just a 'black box' MacGuffin enabling plot twists, it's a tool the characters use to solve their problems. This has the added effect of deepening the characterisation because time travel becomes part of who they are- of how they relate to each other and so on, instead of just something they do.

This same dramatic intelligence was brought to bear on the third ingredient: characterisation. With Amy and River in particular we had two female characters who were strong protagonists in their own right in a way that was novel despite all the good work in this regard that had gone before. The Doctor was improved as a character by this peculiar loss of his familiar absolute authority. Why? Simply: he became stronger- as a dramatic character, because he was reacting to and relating with stronger characters. The result was again doubly improved drama: better dialogue on the one hand; on the other, supporting characters who became less than merely supporting because who they were and what they did played a bigger part in the plot, not to mention having a greater effect on the Doctor himself.

Rory's erasure from existence itself at the end of In Cold Blood is a case in point. By this time, the episode Amy's Choice had already seen Rory saved from his earlier role of comedy-relief pratt. This came when Amy realised that Rory was more important to her than a life with the Doctor which, however excting, could only ever be platonic and therefore ultimately unsatisfying. Rory's tragic fate a mere 2 episodes later was thus all the more moving, and especially poignant when its nature meant that Amy forgot him. So not only had Rory grown as a character because of how he was reflected in his relationship with Amy; but the feelings at the core of that relationship, and the Doctor's guilt about his role in Rory's erasure: both of these were to have decisive consequences- for good and ill, in the season finale.

Now get out of that!
This intricate web of action and reaction, event and consequence, in the realms of thought, feeling and derring-do brought us to River Song at the start of The Pandorica Opens, once again using her own skills as a time-hopping super agent and her knowledge of the Doctor to bring the Doctor to her to deliver to him a clue which itself had travelled centuries up the timestream before she took it centuries back downsteam. And what did we find? That it was all a fiendish trap into which the Doctor was lured by being hoist on the petard of his own insatiable curiosity before finally being snared by the sin of hubris.

Plot twists piling on emotional reversals spilled forth helter skelter until we were left with the ultimate irony: the Doctor pleading for freedom with all of his most dangerous enemies- who'd united in an impossible alliance, because only he could save the universe from his own exploding TARDIS. They didn't listen, of course (he was the villain of the piece in their eyes), and so the Doctor was sealed in the Pandorica, simultaneoulsy sealing the fate of the universe.

Oh, alright then
A little girl- from an alternate Earth, who believes in stars which never existed follows a string of mysterious messages to open the Pandorica from which the Doctor has already been rescued because those messages are sent by himself on that alternate Earth; from where he returns to the original Earth at the centre of the dying universe to organise his own release; from where he travels to the alternate Earth, there to encounter the little girl (who has by now met her alternate older self, Amy, naturally enough); from whom he learns which messages to deliver and where.

The Doctor, Amy and Amy reunited, the piece's sole villain appears- a clapped-out Dalek; as do: Rory (again!); a dying Doctor- who gives himself some fateful advice with his dying breath; and River Song- rescued from the still-exploding TARDIS. Then the Dalek does for the Doctor, who promptly does the disappearing act which is the other end of his earlier mysterious appearance, and which leads to a second disappearance as it turns out the Doctor hadn't been dead after all. He'd been hard at work preparing to make the ultimate sacrifice, launching the Pandorica into the heart of his exploding TARDIS to spark Big Bang 2; only then to discover- as his time stream unravels towards his own erasure from existence, that he himself has one last chance: Amy's dreams of days that never were.

SPOILERS OVER
- Safe reading ahead -
SPOILERS OVER

This geek and his delights
So, dear readers, if you've followed me this far I'm hoping that there's one thing that we'll all have to agree upon: whether or not you like the 11th Doctor and/or Amy, Rory and River- and I know that some or all of the new characters have sharply polarised the show's fanbase; like them or not, they were part of a season which saw an already excellent TV show rise to new heights of sophistication. I'd argue that this is there in the structure of the stories and of the entire season, as I have tried to show above.

My point here is not to tell you that you have to decide to like what you didn't like (although that'd be nice, naturally enough). Rather I'm trying to demonstrate what I was getting at in the preceding polemic with my references to "critical appreciation" and "comparative... discourse". The structural features of cultural artefacts- texts, tunes, rules of the game, and so on; these have a qualitative objectivity of their own: their novelty; their authenticity or truthfulness; whether or not they actually work to deliver their creators' intentions, and so on. These aren't necessarily absolutes to be sure but you don't have to like something to be able to recognise and assess these qualities.

My private trip in the TARDIS
My love of Doctor Who is a case in point here. Forty-odd years ago I was a little kid who used to watch the show from behind my splayed fingers when I wasn't hiding behind the sofa. Doctor Who was therefore my personal introduction to stark staring terror, to the extent that I've sometimes wondered if my parents would've let me watch the show if they'd known the effect it had on me. I grew up with the Doctor for some twelve years before leaving the family home at around the time Tom Baker regenerated into Peter Davison.

Losing touch with the Doctor thereafter, I'd become so jaded by today's culture of movie blockbusters, franchises and remakes that I had no faith whatsoever in Doctor Who's planned revival in 2005; so much so that I wouldn't've watched Eccleston's first episode unless Gav had called to remind me that it was on. I loved it, naturally enough, but the crucial moment came right at the end. Rose was walking away from the TARDIS when the Doctor popped out to quip, "Did I also tell you it travels in time?"

"Yes, yes! It does!" I was shouting at the TV at this moment, because that was what the show had done for me: it had taken back me in time to that little kid. My immediate realisation thereafter was that the production team had succeeded with Doctor Who where George Lucas had failed with the Star Wars prequels: they had managed to exploit the generation gap in their audience to create a unique artistic experience, one in which young and old members of the audience are united in their enjoyment of a show which each generation watches as if through different ends of a telescope, if you will.

It wasn't until the season just passed that I realised how profound this achievement is. Why? Firstly because Moffat had put time travel front and centre, as well as at the heart of his jaw-dropping megaplot. Also, the way that Amy had been introduced took the personal dimension to which I referred above- the play on childnood memories and adult perspective in this viewer, and made it too both part of a great character and a crucial feature of the stunning finale. Along the way there were reflections on love, dreams and mortality which struck deep chords in me. In other words: a show about time travel already giving me a metaphoric sense of time travel in the way that it awakens my inner child started to orchestrate emotional symphonies of a whole new complexity because of the multi-layered mind games the stories were playing.

All of which brings us back to "personal taste" and "intellectual generalisations". Doctor Who is a singular pleasure for me because of the show's role in my life; not just when I was that kid who just couldn't resist the source of his terror, but also for what it represented when it was revived. This is the "intensely personal" dimension of the new culture to which I referred above and it is why challenging my taste here is pointless: this passion just runs too deep. It is obvious that it is simply impossible for many of Doctor Who's other fans to have the same relationship with the show, making it similarly futile to challenge the tastes of those who don't share my high opinion of the show.

My depth versus your superficiality? No! No! No!
It's the untrammelled delight Doctor Who brings me which drives me to analyse it in such detail, to understand how and why it thrills me so. This kind of passion is a natural consequence of how people choose from among the range of products of the new media, as I've tried to explain. Its lack of reciprocation likewise, because people are making personal choices every bit as deeply felt as my own response to Doctor Who. This is essential fuel for the geek rage which can make arguments about differing tastes so explosive. Because, as I've also tried to explain: the 'my tastes good, your tastes bad' line of argument adds a direct attack from your 'flanks and rear'- ie. from your fellow geeks whose tastes differ, to the indirect one from on high.

And that's where I came in: making no apologies for not giving a jot if you don't believe that this season of Doctor Who was the best yet of what was already the best TV show of its kind on the face of the planet. All I could say to that is: why not? Meanwhile, how ever will I survive until its return next year? ;)

Related@RD/KA!
- It's art Jim, but not as we know it!
- A parcel of rogues...