68 - 11 > 10

I just saw an advert for the new series of Doctor Who and I'm pretty sure I already prefer Matt Smith to David Tennant. I could quite easily write thousands of words as to why only I can't be arsed. I can very easily say that I definitely prefer Stephen Moffat to Russell T. Davies as a writer.

The little ad gave me a shiver down my spine, quite literally and I really can't wait for the series to start. With a far, far, far, far, far superior writer at the helm and, in my eyes, a much more suited actor playing the part of the Doctor, I can't see how this series shouldn't be the best yet.

I might eat my words in a few weeks time, but I'm pretty excited. I think I'm almost as excited about this new series of Doctor Who as I was excited at the prospect that David Tennant and Russell T. Davies were finally leaving the show.

67 - Murder

We give birth to characters. We give them life. We grow up with them. We give them back stories. We get inside their heads and they become a part of us. And then we kill them.

Why?

Because they annoy us? Because it's their time to die? Because it's necessary in order for the plot to continue? Or simply for a shock tactic that will keep readers/viewers interested?

A character's death should serve a purpose. Okay, sometimes that purpose is to not have a purpose. Sometimes killing off a character simply for shock value can be a great way to breathe new life into a piece, but only if done well. Generally character deaths should give birth to something else, no? We can't just go around killing off character after character. Spooks quickly got into the habit of introducing characters just to kill them off and generally it's more of a shock if a character survives.

Like everything else in writing there's no exact formula for killing off characters. I know there are many examples where it works brilliantly and many where it doesn't. We can all think of a TV series where they kill off one of the audience's favourite characters. Sometimes it works. Often it reduces the audience.

I think the best way to know if a character has been killed off well is if we regret their death but we don't regret the decision to write them out. If done expertly, we actually mourn these fictional people's deaths. We feel like we want to go into their world and save them and yet, we know the piece is better for their death. We know that these raw feelings that have been awoken in us should be treasured. For fiction to make us feel like this is phenomenal. We're glad and yet we love these characters. We want them to survive. We want them to have happy endings.

59 - TV's greatest dickheads

Heroes are great and everything but sometimes all you want is a good dickhead. A selfish twat who causes more problems than they solve. Characters who probably fall more on the bad side of the line than the good, but those you want to come out on top. Here are some of my favourites from TV.


Vic Mackey - The Shield
Corrupt, selfish, murdering, torturing, blackmailing, extortionist, adulterer, bully, thief. But he almost always gets his man and, you know, make the streets safer - just.


Jimmy McNulty - The Wire
Gaping asshole, alcoholic, adulterer, with a serious problem with authority who bends the law and will go out of his way to piss off his superiors. But he's an excellent detective.


Gaius Baltar - Battlestar Galactica
Self-obsessed, arrogant, selfish, cowardly, scientific genius with an extraordinary sense of self-preservation. Will never do anything that doesn't in someway benefit himself.


Eric Cartman - South Park
Selfish, greedy, spoiled, foul-mouthed, racist, manipulative, deluded, evil genius who once killed a boy's parents and fed them to him in a chili just to get revenge on him for taking his $16.12.

37 - Once upon a beginning

Six years ago I watched an episode of Father Ted. I was too lazy to roll over and turn off the TV so watched what came next; the first episode of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, and so the love affair began.

Due to low ratings a second series was never commissioned. In some ways I don't mind because what we do have are six episodes of some of the smartest and finest comedy in TV history.

For those who don't know, the show concerns Garth Marenghi, a pulp horror writer who created a TV show in the 1980s entitled Garth Marenghi's Darkplace. Apparently considered ahead of its time Darkplace was never shown, until now. In the present day Garth has knocked together interviews with some of the actors and spliced these into the episodes as we watch.

What we get is brilliant comedy from watching this abysmal TV show. Poor acting, out of sync dubbing, poor scripting, poor editing, poor SFX, poor sets, dreadful continuity, errors, sexism and ill-judged musical numbers.

But look past the fantastically observed comedy and the frequent silliness, and beneath there's a dark believable world. We have a pathetically vain and deluded man who, spurred on by a hero-worshiping publisher, created a badly-made and badly-written horror that was deservedly lost for decades.

There's so much to get from the scripts, from the sets, from the actors. I don't exaggerate by saying I'll find something new to laugh at and gawp over every time I rewatch it, which is every few months. The attention to detail is beautiful. I go on about rich worlds in novels, films and games but here's a comedy so rich you can practically taste it. Simply beautiful.

27 - Last episode

Last episodes are tough to get right. They have to match the tone and the style of the show and yet go beyond it. They have to resolve enough issues to keep you satisfied and yet not try and tie up every loose end and become drawn out and convoluted.

Most of all, I find that a great last episode of a TV show should stick with you. It should really resonate and keep running through your mind for days after. It should leave you sad that you will never see those characters again in new situations and yet happy that it was so excellent.

Last night I finished Battlestar Galactica and though I see some people weren't too satisfied with the ending, for me it was perfect. It got the tone just right and I can't get it out of my head. It's up there with the last episodes of Spaced, The Shield, The Wire and Arrested Development. Every time I go back to these shows, their last episodes deeply affect me. Cracking TV.

16 - Top ten spaceships pt.2

Hold on to your space britches, here's the shocking conclusion to this top ten spaceships list.

5 Colonial One - Battlestar GalacticaColonial One is a luxury liner converted into the presidential office when the Cylons(bad) declare war on the humans(good). If I were President of the Twelve Colonies, I'd be more than happy doing business from this bad boy.

4 Serenity - Firefly/Serenity
More than any other ship, this one looks like it's alive. Somewhere between an insect and a bird, it's a part-graceful, part-cumbersome craft and it has cool engines.

3 Discovery One - 2001: A Space Odyssey
It looks like a head on a stick. It also doesn't look like it should be capable of propulsion and yet it very gracefully, and therefore ominously, travels through space. There's a foreboding quality about it that perfectly twins Hal 9000.

2 Lambda-class T-4a shuttle - Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi
I can't put it to words what it is about this ship that has me so mesmerised. Something about how simple it looks, about its dorsal fins, about the way its wing unfolds, about how it perfectly sums up my childhood.

1 Dropship - Aliens
It looks like war. It's battered and used and strong. It makes a superb sound as it flies and it has unfolding wings (win). Again I can't really sum up what it is that makes it special, only that I see it and feel awesome.

Notable mentions: Mondoshawan ship (The Fifth Element), Klingon Bird of Prey (Star Trek), Starbug (Red Dwarf), Rodger Young (Starship Troopers), Icarus II (Sunshine), Alien fighter (Independence Day), Mother ship (District 9).

15 - Top ten spaceships pt.1

So this is part one of my ten favourite spaceships from film and TV. It's not the most well thought out list, and I'll probably think of another five I should have added immediately after posting. Also I've only included one from each show/film as I could easily do my top ten from just Battlestar Galactica, Futurama or Star Wars.

10 USG Ishimura - Dead Space
This is such a beast of a ship. It literally rips planets apart for raw materials. It's foreboding as you approach it before spending an entire game running through its elaborate labyrinth of corridors and rooms. Truly spectacular in scope.

9 - Valley Forge - Silent Running
Valley Forge is one of several ships that have been loaded with what remains of the forests of Earth, with the aim of orbiting aimlessly until the time comes that Earth is ready for reforestation. It's basically the Eden Project bolted onto a freight ship. Genius.

8 - Mother ship - Close Encounters of the Third Kind
It's the light more than anything that make this ship a sight. It completely dominates the sky as it hovers above Devil's Tower. It's simply astonishing.

7 - Planet Express Ship - Futurama
A thing of sleek beauty, it's a classic rocket design, caricatured enough to perfectly straddle the line between sci-fi and comedy as only Futurama does best.

6 - Aerial HK - The Terminator
It looks like a predator. Like a shark or a piranha. Technically it's not a spaceship, but it's badass and one of the scariest ships from my childhood/film history.

Tune in tomorrow for 5-1...

9 - Futurama

Futurama is the dog's bollocks and this dog knows his bollocks are good. All his doggy chums look at his bollocks and go, 'Wow, they truly are a fantastic set of canine testicles.'

It appeals to my humour detector like nothing else. Everything's so sharp and on the spot. Plus my sci-fi gland gets a good old pumping too. I can't get enough of it.

Anyway, I just wanted to share some of my favourite lines; those that never fail to get me giggling like a little girl before breaking into hysterics like a mad cat lady. These are merely the lines that are always going through my head. In a show of this caliber, every joke's a winner.

Ranger Park: Hi, I'm Ranger Park, the park ranger.
Fry: I get it!

Glurmo: Okay, no more questions!
Fry: Why?

Professor Farnsworth: Now I've often said, "good news," when sending you on a mission of extreme danger. So when I say this anomaly is dangerous, you can imagine how dangerous I really think it is.
Hermes: Not dangerous at all?
Professor Farnsworth: Actually quite dangerous indeed.
Hermes: That is quite dangerous.
Professor Farnsworth: Indeed.

Monster Zoidberg: What am I, chopped liver?
Leegola: Shut up! (she slashes at him with her sword)
Monster Zoidberg: Ow! Stop chopping my liver!

Zap Brannigan: She's built like a steak-house, but she handles like a bistro. (alert sounds) She's out of control! You win again, gravity.

Dwight: I heard alcohol makes you stupid.
Fry: No I'm...doesn't.

2 - Frak you

I'm currently watching season 3 of the exceptionally good Battlestar Galactica. Like many US shows, the characters don't say 'fuck' -generally they'll make do with 'damn' or 'shit' or simply nothing. In Battlestar Galactica, however, the writers have come up with an alternative. Instead of saying 'fuck' the characters use the word 'frak' and all variations thereof.

frak off - motherfrker - let's frack - fraked up

Characters use it from the start and we pick up on it quickly. We take it to be an example of semantic shift and although it seems odd at first, it works.

Thing is though, as much as it works, it just doesn't compare with the impact of the real 'fuck.' It's a step closer than shows like 24 or The Shield that have no strong swearing. Shows don't depend on swearing, but a great deal of credibility and believability is lost when all a guy who's just been double-crossed and left for dead can say is 'damn.'

Take The Wire. The characters swear in The Wire, a lot. One particular scene, one of the great scenes of TV history, has our two heroes Bunk and McNulty investigating an old crime scene. This scene is the best part of ten minutes long and literally all Bulk and McNulty say throughout is 'fuck' or variations thereof. It shouldn't really work, but it does. It's a powerful, indulgent scene that says so much more than a lot of crime procedural waffle.

I'd like to analyse this scene but I'm sure there are already many essays out there on it written by people with greater insight and verbal dexterity than me. So I just want to remind everyone who's watched The Wire of that scene. I just want you to remember watching it for the first time. I want you to smile as you reminisce. I want a shiver to run through you as I'm sure it ran through you nearly every time you watched an episode of The Wire. For anyone who hasn't watched it - you must, if just for that scene.

The Day of the Triffids & back-story

This is a sort of sequel to my last post, 'The Lost Room & depth.' When watching the BBC's 2009 adaptation of The Day of the Triffids last week, it occurred to me that seeing as this was a mostly-loyal adaptation, you could view it as a rewrite of the original text.

Some parts were changed to contemporise it, such as the Cold War subtext and the 'cosy catastrophe' feel. Some parts were altered to breathe a little new life into the well-know story - the character of Torrence was expanded without really fleshing out his character and the ending included some nonsensical and unbelievable escape plan that involved funnelling Triffid poison into the eyes using a tribal mask. Quite.

There was one change that made sense, however; most of the back-story was thinned out. In the novel we get an entire chapter of exposition that gives us far more than we need to get through the text. This scene was kept in the 1981 TV adaptation, but removed entirely in the 2009 series. The back-story we do get in the latter is revealed in small amount gradually through the show.

Though I do have some fondness for the novel's approach, there's no denying that that exposition chapter slows the pace terribly. The 2009 TV show, much more at the mercy of pacing, skips over it. Okay, a lot of the depth has been removed, and I'm a sucker for depth, but the show zips on at a far better pace.

It has made me yet again consider when and how to leak out exposition. I love John Wyndham's writing but I admit that info-dumping can be a pretty clumsy and pace-slowing, if informative and elucidating, way of giving the back-story. Of course novels can get away with slower sections easier than TV and film, and we even expect them. Then again, and I refer once more to Cube, if done right, you can get by with absolutely minimal to no back-story and create something altogether more powerful.

The Lost Room & depth

I’ve just finished re-watching the Sci-Fi Channel miniseries The Lost Room. I discovered it by chance a year ago and it’s a phenomenal TV show, compelling to the brink of addiction. In themes and levels of mysteriousness, it draws comparisons with Lost but unlike Lost it hasn’t been drawn out to a ridiculous length and subsequently become diluted and confused.

At only six episodes in length The Lost Room is an intense, incredibly deep story. It’s this depth that I admire most. It’s breathtaking just how much back-story and potential for future events there is. Rather than coming across as a show too crammed-full of ideas for its own good, it’s a rich experience that reveals its depth with subtlety and intelligence. I’ve drawn a huge amount of inspiration from this show.

When I think of my writing I don’t want to simply create an intricate, deep world that’s either clumsily exposed or kept from sight. I want to create one that expands beyond the plot and reaches both off into the past and into the future just like The Lost Room. I believe a story should sit perfectly in a moment of time. We should feel like we have come partway through it and that the plot, and the lives of the characters, continues off into the future. I believe that under the surface should be a whole other level that we only get minor glimpses of.

No other TV show that I have come across does this so succinctly and so successfully as The Lost Room and I would benefit greatly from emulating this in my own writing. If I can write something as fantastically hanging in time as The Lost Room I’d be a happy writer.

Paradox

I caught up with Paradox last night, intrigued to watch yet another sci-fi show starting on the BBC. Unlike Defying Gravity of which I knew nothing about, I was somewhat wary of Paradox.

Firstly everyone was comparing it to Minority Report which could have just been an unfair simplification of Paradox, or worrying signs of unoriginality.

Secondly it has Tamsin Outhwaite in it and she's not exactly the most animated, likeable or indeed talented actress out there.

Thirdly it's a UK drama. I don't mean to have a go at British TV but we try, and generally fail, to produce TV as gripping, as well-written and as slick as the USA. We always go for grit over style and ex-soap stars over unknown but exciting talent.

Anyway, I watched the show and it was alright. All three of my fears were sadly confirmed in varying degrees of accuracy. Outhwaite was passable, the script was pretty dire and the whole concept wasn't exactly startling new. It's unfair to say that Paradox is merely a rip-off of Minority Report when in fact it's derivative of pretty much any sci-fi that has incorporated time-travel or seeing the future.

Donnie Darko, Twelve Monkeys, Minority Report, Next, Paycheck have all covered ground that Paradox retraced. These are just the first five films that popped into my head. Add to these the TV shows and hundreds of books that have done similar things and it's not looking good. The last three are even all based on short stories by PKD. It doesn't have a gimmick or neat idea to make it stand out so it seems unlikely that we'll remember Paradox in some decades time.

But forgiving it these foibles, oh and the annoyingly clichéd broody, unsociable genius that was the scientist, it was pretty entertaining. The ending, though not perfect was far better than I was expecting and came as something as surprise to my cynical eyes. Perhaps this show will have to rely on shocks and keeping the viewer guessing in order to keep us watching.

I think I'll watch the next episode just because. For now I'm unimpressed with Paradox but I was entertained.

Defying Gravity

I caught the double-bill of Defying Gravity by chance a couple of weeks ago and couldn't believe my luck that a brand new sci-fi show was starting on the BBC. What's more, I saw it was a 13 episode-long series (the maximum length to get the most out of any TV show) and looked like it could be a fantastic serious addition to the sci-fi genre.

Three episodes in (I'll catch last night's episode later on iPlayer) and I still can't make my mind up. It's not bad, but I can't say I'm enjoying it. I'm sticking with it partly because I'm hoping it will take a few episodes to pick up speed - like The Wire. But I think I'm mainly sticking with it out of mad, stoic, sci-fi solidarity.

Though sci-fi literature is still fairly cult, sci-fi cinema and TV are phenomenally popular. What with the recent influx of American TV shows, a fair few have been sci-fi. The two biggest, Lost and Heroes, have been enjoyable yet undoubtedly nonsensical. Heroes I found particularly disappointing and gave up after series 1. Lost I'm still battling along with. Then there was Eureka! which was pretty entertaining but for all the wrong reasons. The mini-series The Lost Room has been the only sci-fi series of recent that has really blown me away. I'm beginning to doubt that Defying Gravity shall be the next.

Defying Gravity's first problem is that it's far too slow-moving for its own good. There's just not enough focus on the majesty of space. Instead there's too much concentration on characters' libidos and a few piss-poor attempts at tension. Were we ever likely to believe they'd kill off the female lead in episode 2?

Defying Gravity's second problem is it's Lost-like mystery. Something in Pod 4 aboard the craft is somehow controlling the events of the crew's voyage. It's surely some kind of extraterrestrial being or god. Now I think religion and sci-fi are a perfect marriage - both are about discovering the secrets to life and the universe. But in Defying Gravity the pairing seems jarring. I've checked the episode outlines on Wikipedia and apparently the crew find out in episode 9 what the thing is. I hope we find out too. I can't be bothered getting into another series, waiting for series upon series for a revelation that could never live up to the hype. Of course the flip side of the coin is that 9 episodes in, Defying Gravity could well lose the only thing keeping me interested...