Guilty pleasures and morbid imaginings

A guilty secret

The oft-mentioned mellowing effects of age are a true fact, well observed in the case of yours truly. A phenomenon which began with my increasing squeamishness in my mid-30s, the most extreme example of this effect is the case of one of the most hated figures in recent times here in Britain- the late Margaret Thatcher. I shared this hatred quite viscerally, to the extent that, back in the early/mid-80s I used break out into fits of apoplectic rage at the mere sight of her on the TV, and the sound of her in her prime still sends shivers down my spine. And yes, I went to the local party on the day of her death. I didn't sing, I didn't dance, but I'd promised myself I'd turn out and that was a promise I could not but keep, but that's another story.

"Who's got the last laugh
now you mad old bat?"

I blame ex-Chancellor and former Prime Minister Gordon Brown for spoiling my party (no, no, not the Labour Party- that had stopped being 'my' party 20 years before the moment in question). No, Brown spoiled my Thatcher's 'death-day' party when, on the occasion of becoming prime minister in 2007, he followed his predecessor Tony Blair's lead by inviting Thatcher for a photo opportunity on the steps of 10 Downing Street. The moment was truly pathetic, this one-time demented ranter cut down by senile dementia and rolled out for all the world like an old-time mummified Soviet Communist Party General Secretary to give her doddering seal of approval to the latest simpering heir to her so-called 'revolution'. And in that moment I couldn't help myself, I felt sorry for her.

"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".

Death becomes them all

Again with the old pals routine
My old pal Rob- whose job regularly takes him to Sweden for weeks at a time, was back in town last week so we decided a trip to the cinema was in order. We chose to go see Black Death, a film which has been on my 'would like to see' list ever since I noticed its release. Regular readers should have no difficulty in guessing why a film set in plague-ridden medieval England should appeal to me, but I'll come back to that later.

The critic's eye
There is a lengthy review on the IMDb Black Death page in which I think the reviewer is quite quite wrong. The IMDb page correctly tags Black Death with the horror and mystery genres. These features of the movie are nowhere addressed in that review; poor form and a shame, because these were the movie's strengths.

Once more the culture vulture

Springtime for Glaswegians
If it's March in Glasgow it must be Aye Write!- Glasgow's Book Festival, now in its fifth year. Aye Write! had made little impression on me in previous years, despite my seeing the ads and the programmes in my local library each time. This was frustrating, so- determined to do better in 2010, I grabbed a programme as soon as I saw one and started looking for events. The first one which did more than just catch my eye was:

NEW SCOTTISH SCIENCE FICTION
The Early Days of a Better Future?

Presiding: Andrew J. Wilson of Writers' Bloc, Edinburgh

As if the due appearance of SF luminaries Ken MacLeod and Richard Morgan wasn't enough, this event was an instant choice for yours truly because the panel included Hal Duncan and Mike Cobley. Mike and Hal are old pals of mine from the Glasgow SF Writers' Circle, which featured in the first series of posts here @RD/KA!. It was this circle which drew me to Glasgow back in 1989, when I nourished active dreams of being an SF writer myself.

An embarrassment of riches #3: Trick or treat?

Avatar: Szyslak or sizzlots?
The last Big Thing on this New Year holiday was an outing with Mark to see James Cameron's much anticipated, heavily hyped and ultimately hugely successful new blockbuster- Avatar, in glorious IMAX 3D. The hype hadn't completely passed me by, but only when I started reading the box-offices @ICv2 did I begin to feel the allure of the sheer scale of the success of a movie I knew to be a big-screen must-see, whether I liked it or not. :-\

The mixed feelings there implied ran deep:

• Heavily hyped Hollywood blockbusters have a very patchy track record in recent years.
• James Cameron is responsible for some most-loved movies- eg. The Terminator and Aliens; so a turkey on the gargantuan scale of Avatar was a prospect heartbreaking to imagine.
• The movie was completely CGI, echoing features which had put me off 2007's Beowulf on sight.
• I was going to see it in 3D, a technology I'd never used, in which I had no faith.
• And I'd picked up really bad word of mouth from typically reliable quarters.

A film I could easily have loved to hate then. =-O

Alas- a lack!

Small but vital correction
Footering @fB as you do, I just this afternoon remembered the film I'd left out of yesterday's list of screen gems from my 2009-10 new year's festivities: Slumlord Millionaire. This unfortunate error has been corrected.

The film is every bit as good as the hype would want you to imagine, believe me! Normal service resumed ASAP. ;)

Related@RD/KA!
- An embarrassment of riches #1: Boxes of tricks

An embarrassment of riches #1: Boxes of tricks

Home again...
...yesterday, from my New Year holiday: another Hogmany chez famille King in Prague; topped off with a long weekend in Cambridge visiting my old buddy Mark Dalgarno.

Time then to get 2010 off to a start here @RD/KA!. Are you sitting comfortably? :0)

Games glut guzzled!
With Badger- over xmas; Donald, Liam and 'Uncle' Martin- in the festive interregnum; and Radka, Bill and Daniel in Prague: a grand total of 54 games in 10 sessions over 14 days made my 2009-10 festive season the gamingest ever! The games I enjoyed are below:

• Combat Commander: Pacific x2.
• Ivanhoe x12.
• Fluxx x4.
• Settlers of Catan x6.
• Battlestar Galactica.
• Snow Tails x5.
• Settlers of Catan cardgame x2.
• Pandemic x3.
• Starship Catan x3.
• Backgammon x15.
• Chaos Marauders.

CC:P, Settlers cards, and Starship Catan gave me my own most satisfying victories of the festive megasession; but 2009-10's Festive Big-Win No-Prize goes to Daniel, for equalling Gav's record game-winning 5VP turn at Settlers of Catan.

Resistance is futile!

My last words after reporting a few weeks ago on the games of Ivanhoe I'd played with Badger and my neighbour Liam were, "He'll be back!" This prediction was proved correct when Liam joined Donald, Gav, Tony and myself for our recent Sunday session. Liam being new to that table first choice went to him, which left us playing Risk, a game Liam knows.

In my innocence I thought we'd get the game finished in 2-3 hours but we were still playing 4 hours later, when the game had to be put away unfinished so that we could eat in time to settle down for the latest Doctor Who special, The Waters of Mars. Still, the game was great fun and Liam is keen for more. I guess I'd call that a result.

Stuff and... nonsense?

He is The Law!
Passing through Borders bookshop the other day in search of a classic 20th century novel and that search proving futile, I made a beeline for the graphic novels there to surrender gleefully to the impulse I'd carried over from my last visit to those same shelves, picking up what I know will only be the first of many more: Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files 01 (59 progs' worth of strips in 320 pages for £13.99?-: a real bargain!).

Moments when a cultural encounter profoundly define a person are relatively few and far between I reckon and become rarer as the years go by, for simple reasons I would suggest:

• There is naturally some kind of limit to people's self-definition through cultural consumption; a limit determined both by the dynamics of human growth and maturation on the one hand, and by the available cultural wealth on the other.
• I would aver that there is too a limit to people's capacity for reinvention; a limit imposed ultimately by age.

Perhaps rarer still even in our increasingly rich and diverse culture are those moments when you can get in right at the very beginning of something that proves to be a genuine phenomenon.

UK Games Expo'09 #1: Time to kill

UK Games Expo'09 has been and gone, and our inaugural Combat Commander tournament is done and dusted. I am pleased to be able to report that the Expo was hugely enjoyable, and that the CC tournament was a great success. But all of that is to get ahead of myself a bit.


To begin at the beginning

A giant cyborg sadly
couldn't kill the turkey
hiding behind this movie

Arriving in Birmingham in that teatime twixt afternoon and evening, Andy and I had no difficulty finding our destination thanks to the wonders of modern technology, AKA the Tom Tom satnav. Duly installed in our hotel and with an evening to kill, we sought out a cinema there to watch the newly released installment of a movie franchise which has never quite lived up to its point of origin, by which I mean Terminator: Salvation.

At first sight the trailer had given me real hopes for this movie, but subsequent reflection and one really bad review had brought me back to more realistic low expectations. Which was just as well: the best thing that Andy and I could find to say about the film was that it wasn't as bad as Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (and I speak as one who lists Terminator 2: Judgment Day as a Top 5 SF/Fantasy movie sequel).

Andy? Nah, he's as human as you or m... URK!

Crimson Skies

We had our regular complement of 4 yesterday after last week's 2-player session. Andy brought his Crimson Skies models so we started our little campaign as we'd been planning. As is the fate of character sheets everywhere, some had gone mysteriously missing, so we had to waste time getting our pilots ready again. Soon enough though our heroes and their wingmen took to the skies.

We were using a mixture of metal and plastic miniatures from Andy's collection. I still don't have any decent portrait shots of Andy's own models, so in the meantime here are some images of the cardboard pieces, for purposes of identifying the factions' colours:

• Red Skull Legion (Andy).
• Confederate Air Corps (Me).
• Broadway Bombers (Donald).
• Redmond's Gang (Tony).

Our seating arrangment set Tony and I facing each other across a short map edge. I promptly offered him a truce, in the face of which he tried to hedge his bets. This was a foolish move, because I immediately directed both my planes to attack his piratical lowlives.

Home again, home again, jiggety-jig!

So I flew back into Glasgow yesterday.

A week and a half in Prague was the best of ways to start 2009. As if visiting a beautiful centre of European history and culture replete with sights to delight the heart of any wargaming geek wasn't enough, staying with Bill and his family meant that I had friends for company, and their home as a base from which to set out on my tourist escapades. This already best of both worlds was topped off by, among other things, watching the first season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

There were also more games - of course, but they're for another time.

Travel is said to broaden the mind, a point I've heard some contest in the face of modern mass tourism and the gap year. Departing Prague with a good few more levels of Tourist under my belt, and passing smoothly through Ruzyně and Stanstead airports to face one of my greatest fears - takeoff, I mused on what it meant for me to have become a seasoned traveller after all these years. Enjoying flying as it mostly turned out.

Faced for some weeks with 4 flights instead of the 2 I'd at first tried to get away with, as December counted down I'd found myself thinking increasingly often of that moment when there's just no getting off; when - touchpaper lit - the roaring engines send that highly-stressed thin steel tube hurtling down the runway to hurl itself skyward; a moment that reminds me above all of nature's laws of probability. But when you're up there? Oh my. I absolutely love the view.

So, flying out late December on my late-booked (and therefore not really all that cheap) easyJet Eurobus I briefly lamented not paying the special Speedy Boarding premium for the sake of ensuring my choice of a window seat. I needn't've worried though, as I soon found out. The trick turns out to be simply boarding via the rear door, which ensured me window seats on all flights even when I was in the last-called B boarding group 3 times.

Longtime readers might remember my last flight into Prague, when I finally knew that the view was worth those takeoffs. This trip's outward flight was marked by the snow on the heights during an afternoon's crossing into a landing in a winter's quickly darkening night. What I didn't know was how all that snow would hit the lowlands a week later.

I had a brilliant time in Prague, a better start to 2009 I couldn't've hoped for. Expect more. ;)

My 2009 gaming wishlist #2

Like I said, there's a Sunday session on today, so I'm going to post about the multiplayer games I'd like to see get a few plays in 2009. I'll start with new stuff I guess.

Battlestar Galactica
I rarely watched the original Battlestar Galactica TV show, and I watched the new one not at all. The new show's reputation did reach me though, partly through internet buzz, but mostly through Andy's enthusiasm. The new series' reimagining of the original material - with its equal-opportunities casting and darker tones - appealed to Andy where it appalled some geeks online. I have to admit it was precisely this contrast between the new and the old shows that made the new Battlestar Galactica in the slightest bit interesting to me, and then not interesting enough to get my bum in the seat in front of the TV (which says more about my TV habits than it does the show, naturally enough).

The Dark Knight... returns?

So, I did go and see this again as I'd said I would. I enjoyed it about as much the second time around as I did the first. That's pretty good going really. I mean seriously: 1983's The Return of the Jedi is the last time I can remember enjoying a movie more than once on its original release. My tone therefore, however restrained, just really cannot be a matter of damning by faint praise.



I agree with Andy about the "non-comic-bookiness of it." It'd been precisely the focus on street-level crimefighting that I'd thought had made Batman Begins the successful film that it was. I can hardly complain about the same aspect of Pt. 2 of the revival of the franchise. And of course The Dark Knight is not as such a movie adaption of The Dark Knight Returns, although I'd argue there's more of the comic in the movie than Andy asserts.

Again, that's the point for me really.

The comic is a masterpiece transcending the limitations of its genre (the presence of Superman is essential to that by the way), casting its shadow to this very day over a truly iconic postmodern character. The movie is just a superior Hollywood blockbuster. Of course, the movie's huge audience suggests that many might disagree with me.

My general antipathy towards Hollywood blockbusters aside, I have to remind readers that reading the original The Dark Knight Returns on its first release stands out as one of my peak comic-reading experiences. Y'know, one of those personal landmarks the memory of which is cherished and brought out for a polish every now and again. What chance did the movie have against that? Let's be honest: none at all really.

It's like the Lord of the Rings movies which, by adding to an already rich trove of delights, delivered the best they could've done for me. I mean to say: by the time I watched Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring, I'd had the bedtime stories and the calendar; read the books, the geek encyclopedias and the atlas; listened to the Radio 4 adaption; and played with the miniatures, the boardgame and the rpg. Oh, and I'd seen Bakshi's film, naturally enough, which I left out of the preceding list because it broke my heart, being the only bit of my sub-Tolkien Middle Earth experience that was actually shite.

So...? Well, ICv2 reported ticket sales of the order of $B1, or 100 million tickets at a mean $10/ticket. (I'm assuming that the price and multiple-purchase variations mutually cancel.) 100 million?! Holy moley Batman!

I'm going to have to come back to this. ;)

The Dark Knight: not so much superheroics as crimefighting with added latex

Andy asked me to expand on my comments about The Dark Knight, so here's what I'd written up when I decided I was going to see the movie a 2nd time before rounding off my review.

I'm a big fan of Frank Miller's original 1986 masterpiece Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, the comic that recast the iconograhpic caped crusader for the harsher times which became the comics Iron Age. Back then, Miller was a major new artist at the height of his powers being given opportunities to push the boundaries of mainstream US comics just that little bit further. The Dark Knight Returns is the finest product of this period, and is surely the work for which Miller will be most remembered. It is certainly one of the most gripping comics I've ever read, a truly memorable experience unique to serial publishing which goes beyond the simple reading to the obsessive return to existing issues as the anticipation of each next one becomes ever more unbearable.

Against this original 3-month geekgasm The Dark Knight- part 2 of just another movie franchise- could only ever've been an also-ran. Unfortunately The Dark Knight is equally an also-ran as a Batman movie- Batman Begins already gave us Miller's quintessential modern Batman; as a true comicbook movie- that honour still belongs to Spiderman; and even as silverscreen '4-colour' adventures thematically embracing the darker sides of heroism, by Doctor Who, naturally enough.

Those were heavy odds against the movie last night, odds which could only've been bucked by a truly brilliant story, the Batman done as The Wire meets Doctor Who without all the cosmic stuff, say. In the event, 2 key edits in the adaption- leaving out Superman and not killing the Joker- rendered everything else academic by stripping Miller's original story of the genre-transcending features which make it an exemplar of the first rank of all that was great in anglophone comics of the early/mid-80's. 'Genre-transcendence' is simply that quality, shown by great genre writers such as Block, Chandler, or le Carré, to turn the cliches of genre hackwork into something enduringly illuminating, a feature I believe Miller's The Dark Knight Returns enjoys in spades.

I'd suggest it is those 2 missing elements which gut Miller's original story by turning it into cops and robbers instead of superheros. More on this later I'm sure. ;)

The Dark Knight entertains but underwhelms...

Feeling a bit better today. Sleep and self-care indicators have evened out a bit. Some weak late summer sunshine is no doubt helping, but a trip to the cinema with Donald last night was most important. We went to see The Dark Knight, the undoubted box-office-busting smash-hit of this year's summer blockbuster season. As far as I know, the geeks loved it and the 'mainstream' critics were more mixed. I can't be 100% sure because I'm no more interested in reviews of the pale gruel of Hollywood action franchises than I'd be in culinary appreciations of McDonalds' burgers- my expectations of both are similarly low, and they rarely surprise me.

Readers'll've guessed by now that The Dark Knight didn't blow me away as it has so many others. I tried the obvious doublethink, that I'm feeling bitter and twisted because I'm depressed, but that didn't work. I know from experience that really good stuff, stuff like Doctor Who or The Wire, this can always work its magic on me. It's just that, well, The Dark Knight wasn't magic. It was alright really, even if not worth the hype for this cinema-goer. Readers who know me might realise that this is more than just damning by faint praise. Far from the more familiar resentment at Hollywood's time-wasting vapidity I actually enjoyed myself, even if I was ultimately underwhelmed.

No one should be surprised by that I guess. But going back again next week anyway? I'm a bit taken aback, but that's what setting out to blog this movie did to me! More on this another time I suspect. ;)

Friday Extra! Which Gears of War will those be then?

A busy week for yours truly, including trips to the pictures to see the Iron Man movie (IMDb), and Doomsday (IMDb); a Combat Commander session with Badger on Saturday; and Descent with Andy, Donald and Tony on Sunday. I've started learning my way around the Linux Ubuntu OS which I installed on my external hard drive not long after my recent rant about Windows Vista. I'm too low on the learning curve to be getting much use out of Ubuntu yet, but I really like the look of it. On top of all that, the housing association sent a workman round with remarkable prompitude so that I've finally got a working shower. Yay!

Meanwhile, here's a story which came to my attention last month. Commenting a while back on this story from ICv2, Yehuda over at Purple Pawn asked "Just how many six hour space themed galactic conflict games does one need?". But are FFG really likely to dish out another Twilight Imperium or Starcraft: the Boardgame with this licence? Gears of War is a 3rd-person squad combat shooter set on an Earth beleaguered by alien Locust horde. Here is a a short sample of the gameplay.



This video gives a deeper sense of the background, shows the richness of the settings across which the battles are fought, and demonstrates the vast scale of the war for which the PC game's protags are the pointmen.



And IGN Gears of War has a rich resource of screenshots and video clips for readers who'd like a little more detail.

Reading this page on the official site gives the impression of a game of tactical combat across an incredibly deadly post-apocalyptic earth battlefield, as human soldiers and their monstrous alien foes lay waste to their surroundings with weapons of extreme destructiveness. Looking at this, I'm more worried that FFG might plump for a cheap Doom clone than anything else.

There is definitely a great board wargame in Gears of War. The question is whether FFG will deliver it. If we're not going to see a Doom clone- which would be a sadly obvious way to represent Gears of War's gameplay, then exactly what kind of game are we going to see? Here is where I think we're more likely to see a dull retread. FFG's whole 'box-full-of-toys' production approach makes me fear that the subject of Gears of War- grunts in combat against waves of monstous aliens- will mean that the new game will be a Doom-clone.

I really hope not. I'm hoping that FFG are following the approach taken with Starcraft, refocussing the gameplay at a higher level of the battle. It is being embedded in this bigger battle which distinguishes the action in Gears of War from that in Doom; and it is this bigger battle which is represented too in the wide and rich variety of settings in Gears of War; so we really have to hope I think that FFG choose to open the game up in this direction somehow or other.

Sleek, intuitive rules for the effects of fear and confusion on the battlefield, the deadly combat environment, the destruction of cover, and hidden aliens strike me as other features of the computer game which would be nice to see in the boardgame. They'd give it its identity and could prove interesting. To be true to its original the game will have to represent a wide variety of terrain features on several different battlefields; and a good system for generating scenarios will be needed to give it strong replay value. Regular readers will need no reminding where I'd suggest the designers look for mechanics to handle some of these systems!

The Gears of War boardgame could prove interesting then, depending on what FFG make of it. I'm going to be keeping an eye on this one. ;)

Start the week @ RD/KA!: Meanwhile... new TV treats?

I finally got round to watching the opening episode of the troubled season 2 of NBC's Heroes on BBC2 last night. I say 'eventually' because I missed both the original broadcast and the first repeat, only finding out at the last moment that there was a 2nd repeat to catch.

Heroes was one of my favourite TV series last year, being the only one apart from Doctor Who that I made an effort to catch each week. The idea of the series appealed to me, and I liked the low-key way that it handled the emergence of superpowers in our own world. And yet at the same time I found the series deeply frustrating, mostly because it was so damn slow. The sprawling narrative with its wide cast plodded on becoming ever more convoluted as it developed and undermining the series' essential premise as it was revealed.

This is something that really bugs me about a lot of modern SF TV. There used to be a time when series like Star Trek (classic and next gen.) were written with no overarching plotlines or continuity so that episodes didn't need to be broadcast in a given order to make sense to viewers. This changed with the success of Babylon 5 (unless my memory fails me), the impact of which can be seen with the adoption of a megaplot in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and in the plethora of more-or-less vaguely SF action/mystery series which have become staple viewing fodder today, eg. Lost, to name the best known.

All of which would be to the good if it wasn't for the lamentable approach to TV storytelling inaugurated by Star Trek: the Next Generation, with its flabby scripts and time-wasting camera work, all of which contrasted poorly with the dynamic pacing of classic Trek. Layer this approach to creating episodes on top of the sprawling multithreaded narrative now favoured and you have the recipie for the frustration I noted.

Compare Heroes with Doctor Who or The Wire to see how limiting this approach is. Whether it is the sheer amount of story in a 45-minute Doctor Who episode, or the richness created by The Wire's multilayered narrative, it is hard to deny that these series demonstrate qualities precisely the opposite of those I find so unappealing.

Ah well, I guess every TV series can't be the best of the best. Heroes will just have to settle for being the best of the rest. Last night's episode was enjoyable enough. I expect I'll be watching as much of season 2 as I can get myself in front of. But it's got some way to go to become 'must-see-TV' like our good Doctor.

Speaking of our good Doctor, Saturday's episode went down a treat. An nice little prologue, then straight into the action, including a dramatic return of Martha from last season. By the end of the episode the Doctor was facing not just armageddon at the hands of an old enemy, but Donna's grandad was about to become a victim of the first wave, and all in less than 45 minutes. Now that's storytelling! ;)

Start the week @ RD/KA!: Meanwhile... just last week

Badger and my ongoing effort to play all the Combat Commander scenarios continued in a marathon 7-game session which took us into the new Battle Pack scenarios.

Before that though I lazed a day away watching all 13 episodes of The Wire, Season 4, which I'd been given for my birthday last month. Pure unadulterated TV heaven. Watching it, I was made vividly aware of how DVD's radically change the way we consume TV, enabling us to watch the TV we want at our leisure, the way we're familiar with from books. This strikes me as something more than just a matter of convenience, a notion which for me was underlined by the oft-cited 'novelistic' style of The Wire, a feature of the show which I'd warrant works better for the DVD viewer than the weekly TV viewer.

Speaking of TV heaven, I'm keeping up with the new Doctor Who season too, naturally enough. I know some people weren't too happy at the thought of Katherine Tate as the new assistant. No fan of her comedy sketch show myself, I've been reserving my judgement. Three episodes in, I'm quite happy. The essential relationship between the Doctor and Donna follows logically enough from those of Rose and Martha- true love, unrequited love, and now no love at all. This projects a nice line of character development for the Doctor and his assistants (all of whom we know are to appear in this series). The comedy aspect, which would be expected from a writing team playing to Katherine Tate's strength, has been handled well.

Something I'm finding particularly intriguing is the sense that, in the new series, everything is simultaneously familiar and different. Familiar: it's the Doctor we've come to love all over again. Different: I can't really say for sure. I just feel that the new kind of relationship between the Doctor and Donna gives the episodes a dynamic subtly different from those featuring Rose or Martha. Whatever, I'm liking it.

Incidentally, Doctor Who is one of those shows which just has to be watched each week. The eager anticipation, the hook of the prologue, the thrill of the theme, these features of the episodic format are irresistable essentials of the pleasure of Doctor Who for me. There's no substitute for that Saturday moment! ;)

Start the week @ RD/KA! : Doctor Who season concludes

WARNING!

-Eccleston and Tennant seasons spoilers ahead-
WARNING!

So Saturday there saw the final episode of the current Doctor Who season (I'd call it the 3rd season but it's not really, and I'm enough of a Doctor Who geek to respect that, even if I'm not enough of one to remember exactly how many seasons there have been). Andy suggested we should have a wee party for the occasion, with DVD's for after the season finalé. So Gav and Tony joined us for an evening of Doctor Who, curry, and bevvy.

'Last of the Time Lords', episode 13 of David Tennant's 2nd season as the good Doctor had a lot to live up to. After all, Rose's elevation to goddesshood via the Tardis so that she could save the Earth from the Dalek invasion had been absolutely stupendous. It set the bar high for Tennant's 1st season finalé. And that bar was duly raised by the Dalek-Cyberman war and the utter heartbreak of Rose's departure.

So Tennant's 2nd season had to do 2 things: establish a new assistant to take the place of Rose; and to continue to raise the game in the season finalé. The first was outstandingly achieved by the character of Martha Jones, ably played by the beautiful and charming Freema Agyeman.

The choice of such a strong contrast with Rose was astute and quite brave (is Martha the Doctor's first ever non-white assistant?- I missed 3 entire Doctors after Tom Baker, so I really don't know). This contrast was developed in fine fashion with the unrequited love theme, while at the same time the way in which Martha was established as more than just a substitute for Rose as the season advanced was a fine piece of plotting.

The pivotal importance of Martha as another assistant in the new style was underscored by the frankly magnificent 2-parter featuring the The Family of Blood ('Human Nature' and 'The Family of Blood'), surely up there in the Top 10 of all-time great Doctor Who stories. The story which followed- 'Blink'- was another great, with its bravura treatment of time-travel paradox. And so, not content with having to live up to the challenges posed by the previous season finalé, this year's episode had to top those 3 to boot.

The result was a triumph! John Simm may not have the Master's traditional goatee, but he reminded us all that an insane criminal genius can be every bit as dangerous as genocidal would-be universe-conqueroring alien hordes. I was particularly struck by the way that the handling of the Doctor-Master relationship seemed to echo that of the Batman and the Joker in the years since Frank Miller's seminal The Dark Knight Returns.

Anyway, I'm not going to go into any detail about the episode, because I don't want to spoil it for any of my reader who haven't seen it yet. I will just tell you all to make sure that you watch David Tennant's 2nd season as the Doctor. You won't be disappointed, because you'll be watching one of the best TV programmes on the planet right now.

-Current Doctor Who season spoiler warning ends-

If that's all I have to say about Saturday's episode of Doctor Who, it's not my last word here on the series itself. Y'see, like I said, we watched some classic series on DVD after the season finalé. We watched Genesis of the Daleks and The Curse of Fenric.

I watched Genesis of the Daleks when it was originally broadcast back in 1975. I absolutely loved it. I really enjoyed watching it again, not least because of Sarah Jane Smith, played by Elizabeth Sladen. Sarah Jane was the first Doctor's assistant I had a serious crush on, because her stint in the series just happened to coincide with the onset of my adolescence (and because she is a classic English rose).

Sarah Jane aside, Genesis of the Daleks was notable for its grim scenario: a world torn by endless war in which a scientific elite are engaged in secret research under the guidance of a shrieking megalomaniac. Ultimately the products of that research destroy their creators, but not before a brutal power-struggle leaves most of the scientists dead at the hands of their leader's henchmen. The parallels with Nazi Germany were obvious to me even at the age of 12, but I was struck on Saturday night by other references which went over my head at the time; eg. to Dr. Strangelove.

The Curse of Fenric was great too. It's one of Andy's favourite series from the Sylvester McCoy period and he has been singing its praises to me since Ecclestone's appearance. I was pleasantly surprised to find my low estimation of this period of Doctor Who being utterly revised. I saw all the familiar features of the much-loved Doctors of my childhood on full display.

This extended to McCoy's assistant Ace, played by Sophie Aldred, who'd made a mixed impression on me during the brief fragment I remember seeing back in the late 80's.

More interesting than all of that though was what watching these classic series taught me about the new series, namely how much of what is so good now was always there, and exactly what it is about what is so good which is new, and why. This can be summed-up in a single word: Buffy.

I don't think I'm being terribly original here, but I believe that Joss Whedon's acclaimed Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a landmark of modern action-adventure TV. As he went on to show again with the sadly short-lived Firefly, Whedon is the visionary of the genre today. So what was most striking about watching those classic Doctor Who series was that they were so clearly pre-Buffy. I believe that this is more important even than the oft-discussed importance of Star Wars in relation to raising people's expections of visual effects beyond what the 80's BBC budget could afford.

Y'see- as Andy is wont to repeat- Doctor Who was always about the story, not the effects, even back in the days when the BBC visual effects department led the world (which is why Lucas came to Britain for Star Wars). This can be seen in the classic episodes. So when that classic storytelling is revamped in the post-Buffy period, and with all that modern CGI can provide, the result is a thing of beauty.

I was reminded of this when I saw a repeat of 'Doomsday' (Tennant's 1st season finalé) only yesterday morning. I cried. I just couldn't help myself. The story, the visuals, the affect: it was all just so wonderful. Thirteen weeks a year, 45 minutes each week, I know I'll have these transports of delight. What a life, eh?

And so again: we wait...