Kidnapping, Arson and Murder

That seems to be the order of the day in Chester's Mill.  All of that occurs in the 48 hours following the arrival of the Dome.

The second and third episodes of Under the Dome mostly seem to be concerned with setting up the future conflicts that will escalate within the confines of the Dome. There are very few alliances formed (though city-kid Norrie and geeky Joe seem to have made a connection that results in synchronised fitting), but lots of suspicion and aggravation.

Reality and prejudice make themselves known fairly clearly. When Norrie disappears from her Moms' sight overnight, several people at the bar make comments including "how does that work" (on how the black Carolyn can be the white Norrie's mum) and "did you think they would posh the gay out of her?" (when told that they were on their way to drop Norrie off at a prestigious boarding school). As much as I'd hate to admit it, that attitude probably can still be found in some places in small town America. And it is great to see a same-sex couple with a teenage kid being depicted on prime-time TV. And Norrie herself acknowledges the possibility of prejudice in her total denial of it. She isn't afraid to stand up to the local bully, but covers up any possibility of her parents both being female.

Barbie also suffers from a different kind of prejudice: the outsider in a small town. Carolyn, Alice and Norrie are spared this - partly because they have a good reason for being stuck in the town and partly because they are just considered freaks. But Barbie is more mysterious. His "just passing through" doesn't seem to hold much water with folk. His taking down of an armed man is much commented on (though no one gives him credit for organising people to fight the fire). And both Big Jim and Julia seem inclined to believe the psychotic Junior's  acusations of an unprovoked assault.

We get no further on in discovering what Big Jim was doing with so many propane tanks and why the Sheriff was covering for him, though we get another conspiritor in the strung out reverend (who doubles as the town undertaker). And even though Big Jim tells Barbie the story of how he got the nickname "Big", a story which much be well known in the town, only Barbie and Junior (who gets the brunt of his fathers malice at home) seem to see past the upstanding citizen act to the untrustworthy and potentially violent man beneath.

I usually like character development episodes, and this early in they really are necessary to establish the people the audience need to bond with if the series is to survive. But, other than seeing the dynamic between Big Jim and Junior which may explain why Junior is such a psychopath, we don't really learn any more about the characters than we did in the pilot. And the story isn't moved forward at all either. The fire seems to be a big set piece hangover from the pilot, but other than that there isn't much real drama in either episode. 

I've been told that after a few slow character episodes, the show picks back up. I hope that happens soon - it is only a 13 episode season.

I couldn't resist...

So I indulged in a little retail therapy at the weekend (thanks, Ellis). As well as replacing some XBox games I lost in my separation, I bought some new items for my wardrobe.  I think they'll suit me, don't you?

Pink Stars are falling!

I’m writing this a little late, having seen the show at the beginning of the week, but I wanted some time to let this show sink in and to have a think about it.

I remember when the Stephen King book Under the Dome first came out, picking it up in a bookshop and thinking I’d have to get it when it came out in paperback. I never did but I think I will now since the concept is so fascinating. And I do enjoy seeing the differences between TV shows and the books they're based on. 

I actually first heard about the series because some colleagues were discussing it. My boss saw a taped copy, passed it onto someone else and they ended up enthusiastically discussing it over lunch several times. When I saw C5 was airing it, even though I'm not usually a fan of their output, I thought I'd give it a go.

It's definitely a show I'll be sticking with. I wasn't as instantly "OMG this is fantastic" as my colleagues, but hearing them chat about the first episode had spoiled a couple of the big setpiece moments so I was waiting for the cow chopped in half, the concertinaed truck and the exploding pacemaker. But it's still intreguing. I can already see that there's going to be a lot of interpersonal conflict that could lead to interesting places. And it looks like it will be quite dark. Junior Rennie and his dad "Big" Jim seem to be people to watch. And what will happen to the spark between Julia and Barbie when she finds out what he was doing pre-titles.

It was a bit gorer than I was expecting. They showed a lot more blood and nastiness, but I suppose you'd expect a few nasty injuries if I giant invisible dome suddenly dropped over a town. And they have to create some major excitement in the pilot to keep people coming back from the pilot.

And "the pink stars are falling. The pink stars are falling in lines". Stated by two characters I'm pretty sure have never met. What does that mean?

I guess I'll stay tuned to find out.

Doctor Who and the Daleks: Book Review

This is a cross-post from my Goodreads page. I know it's the second DW book I've reviewed in two days, but holidays and long train journeys give an excellent opportunity to read and these books are never terribly long. I promise it won't usually be such a regular occurance. 

Well, this is different. Most Target novelisations are direct adaptations of the script for the TV series. They might add in what a character thought to explain their motivations, include a scene that was in one of the original scripts but was cut for time, or fill in a plot hole, but in the main they are straight adaptations with little room for creativity from the author.

David Whitaker’s adaptation was, according to his Wikipedia page, based on Terry Nation’s original notes for the story. But the first 20% is completely different to what occurs in the episode (I have seen the serial several times, most recently towards the beginning of this year so I am pretty familiar with it). It would not have been out of place as the introductory episode of the series, except it is also different from the beginning of An Unearthly Child. Ian Chesterton is a bored school teacher who has just been rejected for a job at a science research centre. Lost on Barnes Common in the fog, he is stumbled upon by an injured Barbara Wright who has just come out of a car wreck. She is a bored secretary who has taken up tutoring a private pupil for extra cash. She was driving that student, Susan English (not Foreman?), home when their car crashed. They go back for the badly injured Susan, but are unable to find her. From there the story is familiar to people who have seen An Unearthly Child – they meet an old man who is suspiciously evasive and a locked, out-of-place Police Box, they fight their way inside to discover it is a space ship. There is anger, resentment and disbelief, and then acceptance of what has happened. Then the book finally gets into the same territory as the originally screened episode.

In another departure, the book is not written in the omniscient third person that is usual for the Target novelisations. Instead, everything is from the direct POV of Ian Chesterton. Things that he couldn’t have seen, like Susan’s trip back to the TARDIS for the medication necessary to save them from radiation poisoning, is relayed back to him by someone who was there. This change makes the most of the altered beginning, as we get Ian’s internal reactions to his situation and surroundings. We can read his thoughts as he moves from scepticism to belief at his being in a Time/Space machine and it is a delight to discover the marvels of the TARDIS through his eyes – the shower is definitely something I’d like to try out. I would have preferred less of the animosity that was shoehorned into the Ian/Barbara relationship and leads to a very obvious place at the book’s conclusion.

The other addition, not normally present in the Target books but found in my copy, were the illustrations. These line drawings correspond more to the TV series than the book – for example the first drawing Susan appears in shows her in the blouse and tight fitting cropped trousers of the TV show, rather than the bright jumper and ski trousers she’s described as wearing on the previous page. The drawings themselves are actually quite nice little sketches, though the artist clearly had some trouble with accurately rendering the faces.

All in all, this is a curious little piece, quite different from the normal Doctor Who novelisation, or even most TV tie-ins. This was written before Whitaker did any of his script writing for the actual series and may have been, in a way, an audition piece. An interesting little curiosity for fans of the series.

The Eight Doctors: Book Review

This is a cross-post from my Goodreads page and was the 62nd book I've read this year. I did say I read a lot, right?

I last read this book shortly after the Doctor Who TV movie was first released. A big fan and an impressionable tween, I read it with delight – simply happy that there was a new Who book out, featuring the rather attractive new doctor, that I hadn’t read yet, having devoured all the Target novelisations owned by my local library several years earlier.

Reading it now, sixteen year on, while I am still a fan, I can look at it more objectively. It’s still a fun romp through all of the Doctor’s seven previous incarnations. Only the First and Seventh Doctor meetings are brief. The others tend to either add flavour to the conclusion of a story (as in the Second Doctor meeting), or show a coda to the events of an adventure (as in the Third and Fourth Doctor meetings). There is a side plot of President Flavia watching procedures in confusion and facing a minor conspiracy on Gallifrey, and the Sixth Doctor gets a massive role when the Eighth interferes in his trial.

It’s Terrance Dicks at his best – rattling along nice and quick, fixing a few minor plot holes or adding reasonable explanations for phenomena seen in televised stories as he goes. The language is simple and easy to follow, Dicks always remembering that children might be reading. It did lead to some laughably tame language from a 1990’s drug dealer and his gang, chasing the girl who is to become the Eighth Doctor’s companion in the series of books that follows. My copy also had several glaring typos that a good proof reader should have picked up on.

A pleasant little Sunday afternoon read for a fan of the series. Each Doctor has his little moment, made all the more enjoyable as a retrospective on them in the show’s 50^th anniversary year.

Value Judgements

I'm on holiday visiting family at the moment and for the past few days I've been staying with my sister. I'm just dashing this off before I go to catch a train because I can't get it out of my head.

Last night one of my sister's friends came over for a quick cuppa. She watches Doctor Who and knowing I'm a fan, she asked what I thought of the new Doctor. When I said I thought he'd be really excellent, he was a talented actor, etc., she looked puzzled.

"Oh. But he'd not very attractive is he?"

I brushed it aside with a comment that, as a newly single woman I wouldn't turn him away (and I do think he is a fairly good looking older man) but it bothered me. Is this what the David Tennant and Matt Smith eras have done to the show in the eyes of casual viewers? Is it judged not on having the cream of British talent playing the lead roles, but on whether the Doctor is "sexy"?

And the Twelfth Doctor is . . .

Scottish!

That makes a quarter of the actors playing the Doctor Scottish. That makes me, as a proud Scots girl, a very happy lady. But that's not the only thing I'm taking from this.

Peter Capaldi.

An excellent actor. Best known for The Thick of It, as Malcom Tucker. So best known as a foul-mouthed spin doctor losely based on Alistair Campbell. Not the most obvious Doctor. But he's a very talented actor who's played a great many different parts. Besides The Thick of It, in the recent years I've seen him as a transexual suspect in Prime Suspect 3, a philandering painter in an early 1990s Poirot, King Charles I in The Devil's Whore, and an 1950s newsman in The Hour. That's a very ecclectic set of characters. And it doesn't include his two previous Whoverse appearances. 

He was patriarch Lucius Caecilius Iucundus in the Tenth Doctor adventure The Fires of Pompeii. He was also the hard-nosed civil servant John Frobisher in Torchwood: Children of Earth. So Whovians have already seen him in action.

He's a good choice. Simply by dint of his age and life experience he will be different to Matt Smith. He won't be able to help it. Which is good because if a new Doctor is too similar to the last there will always be more critical comparisons. There will be comparisons anyway, but if you can take the role and make it your own then people are more able to separate your differing portrayals. He is a mature and experienced actor, and a well-established name to close out the 50th anniversary year.

He's a good, solid choice. Some might say a safe choice, but there's really no such thing when you're casting the new Doctor. But I have no doubt he will do very well.

Now just to find out what John Hurt is up to...