Prisoner addendum

Just a quick note in case I have any fans who don't read the Kaldor City site: Fall Out: The Unofficial and Unauthorized Guide to the Prisoner is now available for preorder on www.telos.co.uk.

Roundup

Surprise of the week: catching a 20something John "Life on Mars" Simms as a juvenile delinquent on this week's Rumpole repeat on ITV3. Close second was discovering that Destry Rides Again is actually any good.

Non-surprise of the week: discovering that Hellraiser 2 really is as bad as they say.

Disappointment of the week: the Victoria and Albert's exhibition on the impact of slavery on art and design. They decided to do it, not as a room of objects, but as a "trail" (i.e. you're supposed to wander through the galleries finding the relevant objects), meaning that after half an hour of helpless wandering trying to find the Silver Sugar Dispenser With Scenes of African Life (ca. 1750), we gave up and went to look at the Postwar British Household Design gallery instead.

Moment of Regret of the week: The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom is over. Only three parts; why couldn't it have been six? Or twelve?

Bela Lugosi of the week: The Corpse Vanishes. More entertaining than The Black Cat, but lacking the latter's Expressionist design; less entertaining than White Zombie but with, if anything, a more ridiculous plot. Some genuinely chilling moments from Lugosi and the woman playing his wife, but the rest of the cast are only good for a laugh.

Popular Culture 101

Your essay topic for the week:

"Gilbert and George or The Pet Shop Boys? Discuss."

Number Six is loose!

The Prisoner book has finally been officially announced by Telos!

PRESS RELEASE - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NEW GUIDE TO THE PRISONER

World Fantasy Award winners Telos Publishing are pleased to announce the forthcoming release of a new addition to their Cult TV range: Fall Out: the Unofficial and Unauthorized Guide to The Prisoner, by Alan Stevens and Fiona Moore with a foreword by Ian Rakoff, to be released August 2007.

The Prisoner's impact upon society was explosive, transforming art, storytelling and popular culture like no other television programme before or since. Patrick McGoohan spearheaded the project in his role as an unnamed man, held against his will in a strange isolated Italianate village, tormented by a succession of individuals, each calling themselves 'Number 2', whose true motivations and intentions towards him remain a constant mystery. The man, known only as 'Number 6', attempts escape, is befriended and betrayed, undergoes hallucinogenic journeys, and experiences strange revelations, before the series achieved its cathartic climax.

The Prisoner was ahead of its time, and in this book, Alan Stevens and Fiona Moore, authors of Liberation: the Unofficial and Unauthorized Guide to Blake's 7, take on the task of debriefing the programme and attempting to make sense of the many interpretations and readings which have been placed on it. This is not the book with all the answers.... but it may help you ask the right questions.

Telos' range of Cult TV and Film titles is one of the most varied and exciting around, including books on Doctor Who, Blake's 7, Survivors, British horror film, Stargate SG-1, Charmed and 24. For more information and to check out other Telos ranges, please visit www.telos.co.uk.


***ENDS***

Alan and I will keep you all updated at www.kaldorcity.com as preorder information, blurbs, publicity etc. become available.

Strong and Free

I've managed to get my hands, finally, on a copy of TV North by Peter Kenter, the only comprehensive popular guide to Canadian television that I'm aware of. I haven't finished reading it yet, but I'm having a very happy time dipping in and out, alternately informing myself, scoffing affectionately, and indulging in nostalgia.

Good points:

• I'm amazed by how much of what I grew up with was, actually, Canadian content. Here I was convinced I was having my culture sapped on a diet of American imports, and yet just about every single Saturday morning cartoon I watched was homegrown. Or a coproduction.
• I was also interested to learn that there's a pretty sizeable subcategory of Canadian TV which is actually American TV, which was premiered in Canada, and just carried on that way because it didn't fly in the US.
• Big props to that huge subcategory of Canadian television, the local programme made with no references to Canadian placenames so it'll sell in the States. Canadian TV makes golden-age ITV look positively nationalistic.

Nitpicks:

• For a guide which opens by remarking that most people's image of Canadian television is of worthy nature documentaries, how has the author managed to omit Hinterland Who's Who, the worthiest, creepiest and most surreal nature documentary ever, which the CBC continually reran and reran between educational programmes?
• No French programmes = none of the lovely Franco-Ontarien offerings I wasted hours of my childhood on, like Passe-Partout, Les Bouccaniers D'eau Douce, the live-action costume version of Babar, and that weird thing with the live duckling that was sort of like a more surreal Tales of the Riverbank. As a member of the French Immersion Programme, I must protest.
• Wot-- no Owl TV? No Eureka? Nothing featuring Peter and/or Omar Stringer? Actually, the whole thing's pretty deficient on the TVO front generally.

More later, as I keep on working my way through it. Otherwise-- somebody please, please, release Seeing Things on DVD before some idiot at the CBC throws out the archive. And if anyone out there is remotely interested in CanuckTV, buy this book-- it's out of print, but I got a copy for £10 through AbeBooks.

Torchwood or UNIT?

A tall, dark and handsome leader who's travelled in the TARDIS with the Doctor, but doesn't like to talk about it much;

A creepy bisexual second-in-command whose hobbies include dating his coworkers and pulling guns on his superior officers;

A likeable blokish sort whose function is to crack wise and make the tea;

A generally goodhearted and pretty but dim girl who wandered in on the whole setup and got adopted into it;

A frumpy girl who says practically nothing aside from occasional bits of expository dialogue and has no personality whatsoever;

...and that's all I'm saying. Let's just hope Benton doesn't have an Invasion cyberman tied up in the basement or anything.

Main site update

Just so's you know, I've done another of my far-too-infrequent updates to Nyder's Dyner, adding a Torchwood section to LGB Who and taking down the Quotes Page-- quotes from your uni mates having a smashing time is fun when you're all in uni, but after a while it starts to look a bit like you can't let go of the old days.

Super-Cardiff

Back from holiday, and catching up on my telly/film viewing. So, just to kick off: Torchwood last week ("Combat"). I don't believe it-- they actually managed to do a story that worked for a change. OK, it was still transparently ripped off from another source (Fight Club is usually cited, but I see more resemblances to Super-Cannes by J.G. Ballard), but this is the first time I've seen a Torchwood where logical consequences follow. Owen acts like a twat-- and, for a change, gets beaten up for it. Tosh acts like a nerd-- and the baddie immediately twigs that the website is a fake. Gwen throws over her boyfriend-- and he starts making noises about walking out. Somebody other than Gwen actually has moral qualms about what they do for a living. Oh, and Jack actually acts like Jack, rather than Angel. It was a bit like watching a UFO episode from the period where David Tomblin comes in and sorts the whole series out; it'll probably be back to the same old crap tomorrow, but at least we had this one.

"Shaken or stirred?" "Does it look like I give a damn?"

Explanation here as to why, although I've seen Casino Royale, and although I think Daniel Craig is one of the best actors of our generation, I haven't put it in my top-picks list. Because, although the Bond Franchise did need to cut back on the silliness somewhat (just an example, the tick-the-box approach to set pieces of the last few movies: "skiing chase scene, check; motorboat chase scene, check; daring escape using helicopters, check..."), it went too far in the other direction (with Craig playing Bond as if he were a real character) and so, things which should have had a tinge of unreality to them to work (e.g. a terrorist engaging in a massively complicated scheme to blow up a plane, as opposed to simply hijacking it and flying it into something) were played as if we were supposed to take them seriously. So my favourite Casino Royale remains the version with seven James Bonds, Orson Welles and a troupe of sea-lions: it's insane, but it's enjoyably insane, and you can at least have fun spotting the bits that Robert Holmes ripped off for his 1970s Doctor Who stories.

New Torchwood for Old

So, Torchwood gets a second series. I'm really delighted by that-- and I rather hope it doesn't improve, because I'm enjoying the sheer badness of it, and I'm running out of Bela Lugosi DVDs. What worries me, though, is that it will be on BBC2. And, while ratings of between 1 and 2.5m are off the scale for a digital channel, they're lousy on terrestrial (even on second-string terrestrial), and I strongly suspect (based purely on anecdotal evidence, admittedly-- that and the BBC2 repeat ratings) that Torchwood is one of those shows with a loyal core audience but not much of a following among the general public at large. Still, one never knows.

Anyway, Random Shoes. I've just written, and then deleted, a long, rambling and incoherent in a pre-Christmas-not-enough-sleep kind of way, in order to boil my reaction down to two ponts:

1) Cool title.
2) One "Love and Monsters" is enough.

Thank you.

Two Python Posts, and a Penguin in a Pear Tree

Two lovely Monty Python fan vids from Youtube:


We shall not go to Telos. It is a silly place.


This one wins top marks from me not only for good editing and appropriate matching of song and series, but also for creative use of audio clips from the show (oh, and Brian Croucher jokes).

And, in the holiday spirit:

News that knocks the wind out of one's planned sarky Torchwood review

Craig Hinton's dead.

I just can't believe it.

My Favourite Martians

So I've been watching "The Martians and Us," the BBC4 documentary ostensibly about the history and traits of British science fiction. Unfortunately, while the first episode was by far the worst, the whole series got collectively outclassed by the average episode of Prisoners of Gravity. For a start, it has an insufferably smug, jingoistic tone (apparently, Britain invented every single aspect of modern science fiction, and the rest of us are just imitators), which is undermined by the fact that they can't find enough well-known highbrow British sf writers to take part and have to resort to bringing in Margaret Atwood and Doris Lessing as examples (presumably justifying this to themselves on the grounds that they're colonials, which is even worse). It also went on about Olaf Stapleton as if he was some amazing forgotten gem of SF, when in fact a) he wasn't that great as an actual writer (A+ for ideas; C- for prose), b) anyone over forty knows who he is anyway, and c) there are plenty of much less well-known British writers out there who deserve a fillip (no Philip George Chadwick? For shame-- then they could have legitimately claimed that British sf writers predicted genetic engineering). Also, there was no mention of the whole New Wave movement-- no Brian Aldiss, no J.G. Ballard-- no mention of modern British sci-fi writers (aside from trotting out Kim Newman, who's really a critic rather than a writer, every five minutes)-- and, most damningly, no Mary Shelley. Here they are, claiming that the Brits invented evolutionary sci-fi... and the first example they give is HG bloody Wells. They mention that the British invented the postapocalyptic novel-- and don't even mention Shelley's The Last Man on Earth. Could it be sexism, or just a sheer ignorance of anything that happened before 1850? If BBC4 really want to gain credibility as a highbrow arts channel, they're going to have to start learning about their material first.

Torchwoodwotcher

Well, this week’s episode of Torchwood was pretty watchable, for a change; having Toby Whitehouse in was a real breath of fresh air in terms of characterisation and dialogue (namely, he actually provided the characters with both). The problem was, though, that, much like after seeing a fast-paced but ultimately superficial movie, afterwards I found myself with far too many niggles on my mind. So, right after Mary tells her the mindreading pendant can be used for good, Tosh just happens to have it on when a murderer passes. And he turns out to be an actual murderer, not, say, a paranoid schizophrenic off his meds. Yet another Torchwood member commits a breach of security that would get them cashiered in any normal organisation (someone on Tachyon pointed out that “Cyberwoman” contained the equivalent of an MI5 agent smuggling his al-Quaeda girlfriend into the office, and “Greeks Bearing Gifts” is just more of same), and Jack just gives them a stern talking-to and lets them carry on at work. And while I can understand Tosh apologising to Gwen for reading her mind, Owen is such a tosser that I think she would be well within her rights to say to him: “OK, I did wrong there, but one more word about it and everyone, Gwen included, finds out about the date-rape spray incident.”

While we’re on that subject, what is it all these otherwise sensible women have for Owen? He’s not particularly attractive (he reminds me irresistibly of Jude Law made up to play an android in AI, only shorter and more out of shape), he has the sort of obnoxious personality that in real life usually is fitted to the office nuisance (the sort who thinks he’s a massive hit with the laydeeez, and somehow manages not to notice that the laydeeez tend to leave the room when he’s around), and he shows every sign of being seriously disturbed on the sex front (leaving aside the date-rape-spray incident, his idea of courtship is to shove Gwen up against a tree and effectively threaten to rape her—and she goes for it?!), and yet reasonably mentally healthy career women—one a policewoman, for God’s sake-- seem to be continually falling into his arms.

Writing all that down, it also occurs to me to say that this episode made me realise that Torchwood has a really, really unhealthy attitude to sexuality. I can’t think of a single example of a positive sexual relationship, whoever the participants, in the entire series. Even the one-off, bit-part ones: we’ve had a married couple where the husband wants to kill the wife this week, cannibal yokels last week, a teenage girl shagging men in nightclubs a few weeks back, Roj Blake the rape-murderer… hell, even Jack’s ex-girlfriend in “Small Worlds” is someone who’s apparently been pining for her boyfriend for decades, and he ultimately gets her killed. Just once, I’d like to see a healthy, loving, friendly relationship where both parties gain support and strength from each other on Torchwood. I don’t care if it’s gay, straight, polyamorous or even human/nonhuman, just so long as I don’t come away from the episode feeling like all relationships are either evil or doomed, and/or that the writing team have got some serious issues to work through.

Sadwatch

Last night I watched Doomwatch on BBC4. Unfortunately it was "Tomorrow, the Rat" again (can't they show any other episodes? I'd love to see "The Plastic Eaters" or something else for a change), which I remember finding risible last time I watched it. But the pathetic thing is that, even including the legendarily awful "rat trousers" special (sic) effect, it was still miles better than at least five of the last Torchwood episodes I've seen. It was:

• Wittier (in that there were at least three lines that gave me a chuckle)
• More interesting (in that the plot actually started, finished and kept me watching in between)
• More relevant (in that it dealt with a real issue, genetic engineering, and one which is still pertinent today, if not more so)
• More convincingly performed (need I explain?)
• More credible in its portrayal of the relationship between governments and thinktanks (yes, the Doomwatch team have to fill out forms and deal with obstreperous Ministers-- I'd love to see the Torchwood lot do that)
  
• More mature in its attitude to sex (seriously-- I believed the relationship between the lady scientist and the office Lothario considerably more than I believe, say, Gwen/Owen or Ianto/Circuit Breaker from the Transformers Comic)

God, you know it's time to give up when you're outclassed by a series which is legendary as a byword for lousy early-seventies eco-sci-fi, basically the early Pertwee era without the jokes. I'm going to watch "The Invasion" this weekend and hope it restores my faith in the franchise.

Torchwood or Scooby Doo?

I mean, think about it:

Leader: Cute, muscular and smart American guy;
Female Lead: Cute, feminine, supposedly professional but actually a bit dippy and inclined to mess things up
Techno-bod: Nerdy girl with glasses who almost never gets to do anything interesting (ETA: And she's a crypto-lesbian)
Laddish Sort: Fashionably-haired gent who's thick as two short planks and obsessed with indulging his carnal appetites
Comedy Character: A dogsbody, or dog's body if you prefer.

ETA2: this one appears to have been picked up on by Tachyon, and thence to Charlie Brooker. I'm viral!

Torchwoodwatch

After last week's B-movie spectacular, this week's Torchwood did a 180 and actually produced an episode which I would consider good by any show's standards. Suspenseful, well-planned, and which, most importantly, actually uses something which people associate with Cardiff/Wales (myths about fairies, in this case) to good effect, rather than trying to pretend Cardiff is Los Angeles. I mean, seriously. Setting a couple of stories in Cardiff worked OK in DW new series 1 (S27, whatever), because in both cases all the characters were aware of the reputation of Cardiff as a backwater and took the mick out of it relentlessly. A similar thing could work quite well in Torchwood: e.g., making the explanation for why they seem capable of getting away with murder the fact that nobody in London cares what goes on in Cardiff (cf Boom Town), or focusing stories on local but relevant issues (unemployment in industry; the media boom; Welsh devolution etc., and if you don't think it can be done well in a sci-fi setting, check out Life on Mars and The Omega Factor). But doing all these Angel-style urban night shots just looks pretentious. Come on, guys, I want to like this series!

Who are you, and what have you done with our Russell T. Davies?!

I was planning on blogging this week about how Torchwood isn't really an adult show (as the BBC keeps claiming incessantly), but a family show with swearwords and sex scenes in (seriously: watch the first few episodes, and, if you cut out the swearing, make the rape-murder in Episode 3 an ordinary murder, and tone down the lesbian-snog scene in Episode 2 somewhat, you don't have anything I wouldn't show to a reasonably bright ten-year-old). But daaaaamn. That "Cyberwoman" episode not only crossed the border into B-movie territory, it smashed down the border crossing, molested the customs guards and claimed the land for the Queen of Spain while it was at it. I haven't laughed so much since the last time I watched White Zombie (which, BTW, the lovely folks at POE-TV have made available in its entirety for download) starring a clearly desperate Bela Lugosi. If the rest of Torchwood keeps up this standard, I'll be a massive fan, but not quite for the reasons I initially assumed I'd be.

RIP Nigel Kneale

And the pool of talented TV writers in this country just gets smaller and smaller.

By a weird coincidence, my first reaction to this week's Torchwood was "Oh my God! It's The Stone Tape!"

Puppetry for the People

Again courtesy of YouTube, this is another example of what I was talking about with regard to when The Muppet Show decided to break the formula and get creative. The puppets here are structured so that they have human hands, like the Swedish Chef, allowing them to hold cards, books, cigarettes etc. realistically, and the faces are done as actual soft-sculpture caricatures, making them much more evocative as characters than usual.