“Doctor Who” - Series 11

I have neither the time nor energy to make full-scale reviews of the individual episodes of Series 11 of Doctor Who — or, for those of us who still bemoan Russel T. Davies's 2005 clerical error and try to reinstate the real numbering, Season 37 — but I do still want to say something about it. 

Hence, I'll make this catch-all review, not including the yet-to-air holiday special (Resolution, a.k.a. The One That Promised Us Daleks And Had Better Have Daleks Or Else The Fandom Will Literally Set Chris Chibnall On Fire). First I'll briefly review each episode, then I'll write up general thoughts about the series.

INDIVIDUAL MINIREVIEWS:

The Woman Who Fell to Earth - Sets up a nice sense of mystery and is as good an introduction to a new Doctor and companions as anything. Very efficient climax. The vlog framing device is gratuitous and annoying, however (a series opener should know better than to recall so heavily a one of the most hated episodes of modern Who), and as effectice a surprise as Grace's death is, it's also a darn shame, as an older woman is not something we've had as a companion before and might have been brilliant. As for the monsters? Middling average, I guess. T'zim-Sha is imposing enough, with just enough complexity to work, and the Datacoil is successfully scary and a creative sci-fic concept. But I could have done without the "teeth" gimmick, which is squickier than it is anything else, and overall this ain't exactly the new Daleks. The cinematography's nice, the effects are great, everyone's acting gets the job done, and can I just say that I kinda like the Thirteenth Doctor in the torn, loose-fitting Twelfth Doctor costume than in the more "cookie-cutter" attire she later picks out as "her" outfit? Maybe it's because it reminds me of the sorely-underappreciated Second Doctor's look. 

The Ghost Monument - Has the good sense to spoil its big reveal towards the beginning; it was rather obvious and a whole episode of building up to it would have been extremely obnoxious. The Race is a nice hook for a story, and Desolation is just brilliant as a setting. Unfortunately, the guest characters are unbearably cliché — the tough cynical guy whose cynicism goes back to textbook Freudian trauma, the scrappy racer of poor background who wants the money so she can support her family, blah blah blah, yeah, yeah, whatever. The Remnants are creative (if confusingly named) monsters, but are given far too little screen time compared to the stupid cookie-cutter "Sniper-Bots". …Oh, the ending scene where they find the TARDIS is suitably squee-inducing, I suppose. Not anything special, but neat. I do like this TARDIS design — that is to say I like the interior; the exterior is not nearly blue enough. 

Rosa - If Doctor Who was to return to its primitive “educational show for young audiences” aspect (…why?), this episode takes a decent stab at doing that by teaching kids about the Rosa Parks story. Certainly, a time-traveling villain who's trying to change a flurry of tiny details in order to prevent the event from happening, forcing the heroes to gather all knowledge they can about how things really happened to make sure they do happen that way, is a clever way to work the educational element into the time-travel story. Unfortunately, the episode undoes that very clever concept for "fun learning" with its incredibly clumsy ending which sees the Doctor just kind of monologue about the rest of Rosa Parks's life like she's the narrator of an abridged biopic for kids. Bluh. Combine that with the most laughably heavy-handed depiction of racism in 20th-century America you've ever seen (and I get that the show has its heart in the right place; it's just… when literally the first thing that happens stepping into 1950's Alabama is a white-skinned jerk punching your black character, you might want to crank up the subtlety just a bit), and the most uncharismatic villain this side of the Abzorbaloff, and you have a very, very mixed bag. Oh well. I wouldn't be in quite so much of a huff about this, except that (no doubt to make sure to telegraph to the world that they are of course very progressive and antiracist) a crushing majority of people gave the episode glowing reviews it simply doesn't deserve, and that irks me. 

Arachnids in the U.K. - It pains me that some of the spiders in this episode hardly look any better than those of Planet of the Spiders several decades ago. Aside from that… an entertaining enough adventure, and I'll give it that it has a very strong setpiece in the cobweb-covered apartment. Things kind of go downhill from there, however. As I said the effects are wonky; the plot is very thin in places; the well-acted but lazy Trump parody is nothing more than a lazy Trump parody, and will just serve to make future viewers wince in embarrassment twenty years from now; the episode ignores the square-cube law (which, fine, if you must have giant spiders you might as well), then suddenly decides that it doesn't and has its resolution hinge on it; the way the spiders are lured into the Doctor's trap is one the stupidest way to defeat a monster in the history of television. 

Also, the episode seems very confused on the "moral dilemma" it tries to present at the end. We're meant to side with the Doctor when she chides Not-Donald-Trump for wanting to shoot the mother spider and says the creatures deserve to "die with dignity". I have a feeling the episode got too caught up in lampooning Americans' "have you tried shooting it with a gun?" attitude to problem-solving, and didn't stop to consider that a quick painless death by gunshot to the brain is what is usually understood by "helping an animal die with dignity" when it's already fatally wounded. This is especially puzzling when the only other way for the spiders to die if Not-Donald-Trump doesn't interfere is to slowly suffocate to death, which the episode just pointed out is a miserable and painful way to die, like, a minute ago. What the heck? 

The Tsuranga Conundrum - Silly and confused in all the wrong ways, despite some cool ideas here and there. The Pting feels more like an idea than a fully-realized concept, though it has a certain silly charm. The idea of setting the action on a hospital ship isn't really used to a meaningful degree outside of the alien giving birth to amp the drama at one point. It feels like we're going to get a bit of an arc for the Doctor, who has to learn to sometimes not try to take charge and leave it to the actual professionals; that's certainly what the beginning of the episode seems to be building towards; but… nope. This episode is a big bubble of nothing with only the cinematography to recommend it, and even that (one of Series 11's strongest points overall) is stifled by the enclosed setting. 

Demons of the Punjab - Wherein the characters take a trip to the past of the forebears of the female companion, promising not to interfere, then proceed to interfere, mostly because they hadn't even begun to plan a shred of a cover story. Buh. …But, oh, I shouldn't gripe. Punjab may Rosa's flaw of being much too heavy-handed in tugging at its audience's heartstrings, but it looks very beautiful and has a number of nice moments, with good to great acting from everyone involved, and some of the best music in the series (even if I still think Murray Gold was an overall superior composer, Akinola has several great moments in this one). What's more, it approaches its historical subject matter… not perfectly, but certainly with more tact and nuance than Rosa did. 

I do think it was a bit early after Twice Upon a Time to pull another "the time-traveling humanoid monsters may look scary but they're actually nice, and visiting the times of people's death for entirely selfless reasons" twist, and now I can't help but imagine the comedy sketch that would result from a lingering 'Demon' to bump into an early-bird Testimony, but after all, not repeating itself has never been one of Doctor Who's strengths. Also: the glorious moment of the Doctor being too focused on the readings of the ubiquituous Sonic Screwdriver and missing the giant spaceship right there at her feet. Gotta love that. 

Kerblam! - My, do I ever approve of the Doctor wearing a fez. Please let her keep the fez for once, please please pl-nope, of course not. (Sigh.) Anyway. This is a very good episode. Well-shot as always, it is also well-acted; aside from the regulars, Julie Hesmondhalgh's highly energetic performance is a highlight, similar to fan-favorite Harriet Jones without feeling like a cheap copycat; Claudia Jessie's Kira Arlo is a veritable ball of charm wrapped in lovable sweetness; and Leo Flanagan is convincing both at face value, and following the twist about his true motivation (though I kind of bemoan the existence of said twist considering how charming face-value-Charlie was). And it famously hass creative plot-points and twists; this is certainly the first story I know to make bubblewrap a major plot element, let alone scary. The dialogue is probably the snappiest in the series. 

The situation of the conflict doesn't fully make sense to me — it's a future with human-level, or even superior, artificial intelligence and robots; so what hopelessly broken economy produces a world where people still need to have jobs, to the point that there are protests about it, and you solve this problem with regulations forcing companies to use fewer robots? DOES NOT COMPUTE. But then, Doctor Who's glimpses of future Earth history are rarely if ever convincing as actual speculative futurology. Few science-fiction shows have ever been more zeerusty than Doctor Who. (See, for example, The Happiness Patrol and The Long Game.) So this didn't bother too much. Oh, and in term sof monsters, the Kerblam-Men are probably the best-designed creatures in the series, even if I do wish the episode would clarify whether they're sentient, or just drones controlled by the main System's intelligence (Twirly certainly seems to have a lot of character, and, indeed, we see that a lot of the robots have names; but if the robots are sentient, then why is the System being sentient too such a revelation? and why does it control them at will?). All-around great episode!

The Witchfinders - Great actors (everyone agrees Cummings as King James is a treat of hamminess, and yes, he is — though he doesn't entirely befit the tone of the episode at large),  and the visuals are, as always, great. But as for the rest… The story, however, is a little… tepid, somehow; it's not that it's slow, not at all, but it was surprisingly hard to get invested in the proceedings. Maybe it's my aversion to the general "the heroes pretend to be something they're obviously not in front of the villains, who are inexplicably taken in despite a dozen close calls" trope. The monsters are creepy, in fairness, but not particularly appealing or well-explained. Oh, and… I was kind of hoping that Willa might become a companion, unlikely though it was. It's been far too long since we've had a non-contemporary-Earth-based companion. 

It Takes You Away - So, Doctor Who does Coraline? Why not! The first line (“Nice fjords!”) is entirely accurate: this was yet another extremely beautiful-looking episode, as seen above. Filming in Norway helps. Anyway, this was a rather original, unpredictable episode, which I like; Team TARDIS's first incursion into the Anti-Zone, with the delightfully despicable goblin-man Ribbons, feels nicely mythological, somewhat Wagnerian even. I like that a lot too. Not to mention the emotional moments with Bradley Walsh's Graham.

In the negative, I found the blind girl (Ellie Wallwork)'s performance quite lacking in emotion, and while the final confrontation between the Doctor and the Solitract was very well-acted, the lack of lip-synching on the Solitract's body was extremely distracting. It worked for the Monks, but sorry, Wannabe-Kermit, it don't work for you. 

The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolor - Not gonna lie: my reaction to the opening scene was: ‘oi, you've gotten some Star Wars - The Last Jedi into my Doctor Who’. And my reaction when we saw what T'zim Sha had become was ‘oi, you've gotten some Darth Vader into my Stenza’. …But aside from that, pretty neat episode.  Bringing back T'zim Sha was certainly a good call. As always, the visuals look fantastic, and Bradley Walsh continues to be one heck of an actor, but I say that every time; our guest actor Mark Addy was also pretty great. Still, a good episode does not a good finale make; this was constructed as a sequel to The Woman Who Fell to Earth but no more, and otherwise feels more like a standalone. And if you were going to bring back one of the monsters from The Ghost Monument, why did it have to be the cookie-cutter Sniperbots, and not the intriguing and original Remnants?  

Twas the Night Before Christmas - Oh, so that's what we get for a Christmas special? One minute? Bah. It looks pretty enough, but aren't we past the 'slightly moving cutouts' level of animation for Doctor Who? I feel like I'm back watching a slightly better-polished version of Death Comes to Time. Mind you, the story itself is fun, short though it may be (it's nice to finally see acknowledgement that Santa Claus is real in the Whoniverse after Last Christmas shed doubt on whether the writing team had tossed out that particular bit of continuity), and Bradley Walsh's narration is nice and warm and everything. Still, it's a bit lot of nothing at the end of the day, compared to what a proper Christmas special should be. Barely one and a half minute long, I ask you!

GENERAL THOUGHTS:

Aside from its famously brilliant cinematography, Series 11 is a frankly bit of a downgrade from its predecessor, which was not itself quite as good as the previous few series. The writing is decent but rarely as witty and crisp as what Steven Moffat could sometimes bring to the table, and that shouldn't be a surprise when the new showrunner's previous episodes were often agreed to be among the worst  (or, worse, the blandest) of the Moffat era; the same goes for the score by Segun Akinola, which has its moments but doesn't quite live up to the glorious operatic feel that Murray Gold could sometimes achieve. I think the series greatly suffered from lack of continuity with its predecessor, in a way that no recent Doctor Who seasons have been (2005's Series 1 anchored itself to the Classic Series via the Daleks; when Series 5 came by, Steven Moffat had already written a number of episodes and introduced River Song). One returning writer, or keeping Bill as a companion, or simply Murray Gold staying for one more season, would have smoothed over the transition much better. 

As concerns the cast, Jodie Whittaker's Thirteenth Doctor is fine as the lead, but she has far too little personality of her own; that is to say, she's good at being the Doctor, though her take on the character doesn't have as much depth beneath the friendly, puckish exterior as other similar Doctors. But she brings little to nothing new to the table. Mix up Troughton, Tennant and Smith's Doctors, and you've basically got her personality — in a way that you simply couldn't derive Tom Baker from blending together William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee. Of course, as the number of previous Doctors increases, being original at all becomes exponentially harder; and perhaps there was a conscious decision to make this Doctor "play it safe" due to a feeling that the changed gender was already risky enough a change. For these two reasons I won't be too hard on Whittaker's Doctor. But at face value, without being a dishonor to her predecessors, she really isn't the second coming of Tom Baker, either — even though, for, I think, much the same reason people heaped praise on Rosa ("I'm not one of those people! I'm inclusive! Look at how progressive I am!"), it's become fashionable to praise the Thirteenth Doctor in similar terms. And what few people don't do that are those who hate her. Well, I'd like to register a polite "I think she's average", please. 

The companions are, similarly, fine, though not my favorite TARDIS team either. Bradley Walsh's Graham is a witty, reliable presence and not without depth, or the ability to be warm and kindly at times (i.e. his talk with Yaz in Punjab) and the clear stand-out out of the three in my book. Mandip Gill's Yaz is very likeable, and introduced in an extremely funny scene, but spends half the season as little more than a wallflower, following the others around without contributing much of anything, either in term of participating in the adventure, or simply of comic relief; she's the most audience-surrogate-y of the three, and perhaps it's no coincidence that (as a young woman) she's the one who most resembles the "stereotypical companion". As for Tosin Cole's Ryan, he kind of has the opposite problem — he starts out with a lot of character and an arc to himself, but it's largely left behind past the first episode, and by the end of the season, after the Yaz situation has been somewhat corrected by Arachnids in the U.K. and Demons of the Punjab's exploration of her background, he's the one who just lumbers around without anything to do. And though he acts fine, Cole is, I find, somewhat lacking in charisma; in particular he does "sullen and frustrated" alright, but can't seem to find a way to be whimsical and giddy; and a Who companion should, at times, be whimsical and giddy, or what are they following the Doctor around to see the wonders of the universe for?

This feels like the right time to note that I'm kinda bummed the rumors of a return to "pure historicals" were unfounded. Demons of the Punjab came close, since its aliens were a misdirection and the actual plot was happening in spite of their interference rather than because of it, but it wasn't it. But aside from that, my final sentence on Doctor Who, Series 11, is: “yeah, it's good, no masterpiece but it's good, looking forward to the next one.” 

And also to the New Year's Special. Seriously, Chibnall. If you don't, episode, Dalek, we, you, burn at the stake. I mean it. 

“Going Postal”

I feel bad about the late Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. I feel bad about it because it is a masterpiece, and once well-poised to become a beloved classic; yet was irrevocably eclipsed by J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter as the modern light fantasy. Oh, Discworld remains well-liked and well-respected enough, and it has its devoted fans; but it is unavoidable that more people will know Lord Voldemort than known Lord Vetinari. And I believe that twenty years ago this wasn't that obvious. 

Fanmade pastiche wherein the two rival fantasies come crashing into each other…

and perhaps it's telling that this is the only one I could find. 

I feel bad about this because Discworld is very much the superior series in my opinion. Of course, it has the advantage of just having more books to its name — something which, as of late, Rowling has been working overtime on correcting. Don't get me wrong, I like Harry Potter fine, and if nothing else its bustling fanfiction community is something strange, something unique and fascinating and wonderful, which Discworld couldn't really have sparked in quite the same way. But as far as the books themselves are concerned, I find that what I like most about Potter, Discworld does too, and usually better. 

Speak truthfully, which of these looks like the proper

Librarian for a whimsical school of magic? 

For example, the inventive quaintness of the Wizarding World in Rowling's universe is probably the most entertaining thing about it, but whenever Pratchett tries his hand at the same, he surpasses most of Rowling's already creative output; for example, "cameras" that work through a hyperactice artistic-minded imp caught inside the box, who sketches out a picutre in a few seconds, would fit the tone of either series, but in point of fact Pratchett was the one to think it up. Similarly, both series have a great school of sorcery with colorful wizards on its staff, and a particularly memorable one (equal parts silly and awesome) as its Headmaster/Archchancellor — but Hogwarts's librarian is a stern, unhelpful woman who hushes people; the Unseen University's librarian is a conceited orangutan. Both schools also have a sentient wizard's hat, but Rowling's does little more than serve as a plot device, and occasionally sing a song, before disappearing from the plot for the rest of the novels; Pratchett's, after resting on many a headmaster head, has grown fond of power and becomes an antagonist in his own right.  

Alright, so what does Harry Potter have that Discworld lacked? The most obvious is that the Potter books star children (later teenagers), allowing a young audience to better connect with them; it's easier for a 13-year-old to imagine themselves as Harry or Hermione than as Rincewind. More generally, it has a more focused story with a steady cast of characters, as the varied POVs of Pratchett's books, though they are otherwise a strength, make it possible to enjoy a few books but loathe another set due to lacking any hint of one's "faves" — or, even, starring one of the most-despised characters. The Pratchett way of doing the Harry Potter plot would no doubt have included a novel starring Hagrid, or Snape, or Luna Lovegood; but those characters are divisive, and while all Potterheads tolerate them in small doses at least, books starring any of them instead of the main trio might have turned away large swathes of the audience. 

But, after this belabored introduction, let us wonder if some — not all, but some of Potter's success can't be laid at the feet of the eight-movie series started in 2002 under the helm of Chris Columbus, and completed in 2011 by David Yates. I'll probably talk about said series some other day; it's not without some serious flaws. But it was grand fantasy spectacle that probably did as much as Lucas's Star Wars and Jackson's Lord of the Rings to make fantasy films as “mainstream” as they are today, gathered most of the big names of British acting (John Hurt! Maggie Smith! Ralph Fiennes!), and were generally a smash hit. 

By contrast, when Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone came out, the extent of its cinematic translations was this: 

YouTube Link

Oh, Cosgrove Hall, whatever happened to you? The 1970's Danger Mouse and Count Duckula… had their flaws, but they were no worse than anything else on the air; a little cheap, but okay. But the 1990's, from my experience, brought a downwards trend for Cosgrove, and despite solid voice acting (notably bringing in the excellent Christopher Lee as Pratchett's endearing — yes, I said it, endearing — take on the Grim Reaper), the two animated Discworld series were disasters by most standards. The pacing was all over the place, the animation was jerky and uncertainly-colorized, the sound design haphazard, and the character models unappealing. 

Funny enough, Disney once wanted to make an animated feature out of one of the most iconic, if not the most iconic, Pratchett novel, Mort. But… this ain't that. 

The dearth of good film adaptations may not have been Discworld's only disadvantage, but I think it must have been the one that sealed its doom before the onslaught of the Potter films. 

If watching Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas left you frustrated

that we got to see so very little of Jack Skellington as Santa Claus — only the beginning

and the aftermath — then Hogfather is the movie for you.

In 2006 however, Discworld kicked back, with the outstanding television film Hogfather. Proving the benefits of having movies below your belt for recognition, it is this film which definitively made me a Discworld fan, for all that I'd heard of it before. Unfortunately, it was too little too late insofar as seriously competing with Potter went (though Hogfather remains a wonderful piece of cinema, and I hear watching it year on Christmas has become tradition for many), and even more unfortunately, the next film produced in the ad-hoc television Discworld trilogy, The Colour of Magic (2008), was more of a miss than a hit. Not that it had any significant flaw in comparison to Hogfather; in terms of casting, it snatched Tim Curry as its main antagonist, and Christopher Lee returned as the voice of the Grim Reaper after Ian Richardson's interim in Hogfather. But somehow, none of it gelled together in quite the same magical way it had in Hogfather. Perhaps The Colour of Magic was simply an inherently less cinematic book. 

Yeah, yeah, whatever. 

Whatever the reason for it, The Colour of Magic's lukewarm reception killed the Sky One Discworld films in their infancy, though there have been unusually persistent rumors of more films on the way for nearly a decade now. But not before they finished one last film to wrap up their anthology trilogy: Going Postal, in 2010. 

Going Postal is fantastic. Hogfather may have more charm to it, and I personally prefer it, but there is a very fair argument to be made that it's the best of the three, purely as a movie. 

Jon Jones's direction is not what I would call genius, but it is a work of outstanding craftsmanship, conveying the tone of each scene perfectly and telling a streamlined story, one that would be unlikely to confuse even a casual viewer with little to no knowledge of Discworld's universe (this is the one deciding way in which it surpasses Hogfather, which sort of assumes you know who Albert, Susan and Ridcully are from the get-go). 

That story is this: lifelong conman Moist von Lipwig is roped by mastermind dictator-from-the-shadows Lord Vetinari into reopening the derelict post office of the City of Ankh-Morpokh, closed down years prior due to the overwhelming success of the 'Clacks' Network (a loose fantasy equivalent of telegraphy). His charisma and know-how soon allow him to do so, and he even revolutionalizes how the post works, by inventing stamps through a series of fortuitous coincidences that are everything great about Discworld. While doing so, he falls in love with Adora Dearheart (the Love Interest, and not at all as cutesy as her name sounds, do give Pratchett a little credit), the daughter of the Clacks' real inventor; makes friends with a golem called Mr Pump, initially his parole office, and in the end more of a volunteer assistant postman; and draws the hire of Mr Gilt, the current owner of the Clacks Network who has had every single Postmaster before Lipwig assassinated. Things end, as they must in such a plot, with a grand public bet and a race. Gilt's misdeeds are outed, Lipwig is forgiven both by the law and by Adora, happy ever after. 

The effects are… as good as they could be with a television budget (mark that a 2000's British television budget, let alone a 2010's British television budget, is not even remotely similar to what was known as a “television budget” in the 1960's or even 1980's; I know 1970's blockbusters that wish they'd had the money for a dozen monster costumes and location shooting in Budapest). The Golems have a great design and the sound design, voice acting (from Nicholas Farrell) and direction do all they can, even if their lips just can't move right. The Count Orlock wannabe whom everyone insists is a “banshee” (Pratchett can play annoyingly fast-and-loose with folklore; in Discworld, a werewolf counts as “undead”; but this is nothing Rowling hasn't done — looking at you, Boggarts) looks perhaps a little phonier, especially when trying to convince you that it can fly, but it's not like it's that major a part of the film. The Clacks at least look great, as do the haunted letters in most — though not all — scenes where they torment Lipwig in his dreams. 

As for the cast, it is simply stellar. I've seen accusations thrown around at Richard Coyle's Lipwig is not likeable enough, but I find him entirely convincing as the sleazy, charismatic conman, and yet equally capable of selling his later redemption and heroism. You're not supposed to like Lipwig much at the beginning of the film; you'll only have a point if you still don't like him by the end. 

Pretty much everyone agrees that Claire Foy as Adora Dearheart — you might know her from Being Human — is perfect casting, and, yes, it is. Of course, Adora isn't the most original character in the story to begin with. But Foy sells her utterly, from the broader comedic “I'm going to shoot you with my crossbow if you call me adorable one more time, Mr I-think-I'm-clever-andfunny” aspect to the more tragic “I watched my father die in disgrace” beneath. 

Andrew Sachs as Postman Groat is an utter delight, all the more so because so far as I know Sachs hasn't done much of anything noteworthy since Fawlty Towers (lots of miscellaneous, perfectly honorable roles, many of them in audioplays; but nothing that had reached me), and it's delightful to see that he's still got it. Groat is easily the funniest thing in the movie. He is flanked by Ian Bonar as youthful obsessive-pin-collector-turned-obsessive-stamp-collector Stanley, whose performance is… well, I can best describe it as what Johnny Depp is usually trying to do, except done right for once. 

On the opposite side of the moral spectrum, loathsome Mr Gilt is certainly a surprise to see from David Suchet, who, of course, made a name for himself playing notoriously mild-mannered Hercule Poirot in the character's definitive television incarnation. I won't lie: it took a while for me to see Gilt as anything but Poirot playacting beneath a false beard and a wig. But by the beginning of Part 2, a combination of Suchet's acting and Pratchett's wirting finally managed to break past that reluctance. Now, Mr Gilt is not a wholly great villain, and he's certainly a notch below Suchet's other guest-star role as a villain in a popular British franchise, the Lodger in the Doctor Who episode Knock Knock. Nevertheless, he's a lot of fun to watch, and suitably scummy and grotesque. It surprises me that anyone could do cliché villain better than Tim Curry, but I think I like Gilt more than I liked Curry's Trymon in Colour of Magic.

Finally, this review wouldn't be complete without appropriate praise to Charles Dance's turn as Lord Vetinari, taking over from Jeremy Irons, who played Vetinari in Colour of Magic. Now, Pratchett's personal choice of a screen Vetinari was, I am told, Alan Rickman; but again due to Potter, this was never going to happen past 2002. Whether he liked it or not, Rickman could never have stepped on another fantasy set as a mysterious well-spoken man working in dark ways for the greater good, without everybody just going "SNAPE! SNAPE! SNAPE!" and not listening to him. 

As for Irons, he is a good actor (The Lion King proved he can play fantastic villains long ago, and it is a matter of public record that his villainous Mage Profion was the only thing of any positive value in the godawful 2000 Dungeons and Dragons film). He was fine in Colour; unfortunately little more than fine, but fine.

However, Charles Dance  (never mind his off-book fair hair) Charles Dance is Vetinari, the disillusioned mastermind who keeps Ankh-Morpokh running smoothly through whatever means necessary, for reasons that are as mysterious as they are all his own — Vetinari, who is refined without being arrogant, unfathomably ruthless without being villainous, a chessmaster without being yet another monologuing Moriarty clone, who toys with those lesser than he with a wry smile yet without deriving any real mirth from it. Every Vetinari scene in Going Postal is the thrill of one of the most fully-realized translation of a literary fantasy character onto the screen, one 

As an adaptation, Going Postal was more pragmatic than faithful, mostly to its advantage, though I'm sure some of the changes (Wikipedia has a whole list) will be disliked by people who hold the novel particularly dear to their heart. I am certainly of the opinion that making Lipwig inadvertently responsible for Mr Dearheart's ruin, for one thing, added a lot to both Lipwig and Adora's arc in the film; and Horsefry's altered method of death serves to make Gilt look even more detestable. If there are two changes one must bemoan, they are these: first, the replacement of the space-time warp (a delightfully Pratchettian bit of worldbuilding) with simply more assassinations by Mr Gilt's assassin, for all that it makes the plot tidier and allows said assassin to deliver the indubitably-awesome line “I am the Curse!”. Second, the disappearance of Death, who had a minor role in the book; his absence isn't missed per se, but to know that we had a window for another Richardson or Lee performance as Death, and that we missed it, is rather infuriating. Still, Going Postal always preserves the spirit of the novel, and that is what matters most. 

I could not recommend its vision more strongly, perhaps preceded with that of Hogfather. (If you liked both of these, you are free to then check out Colour, but do temper your expecations.) Even people not familiar with the novels should be more than able to get a kick out of this little gem. 

Post-Scriptum:

Does anyone know why Ridcully was recast from Joss Ackland to Timothy West? I guess it's sort of amusing that Ridcully has now been recast without explanation in-between films, just like his Harry Potter counterpart Dumbledore, but I doubt that was intentional. (Incidentally, for my money, the Ackland/West recasting is much smoother than Harris/Gambon.)

“The Dot and the Line”

I love Chuck Jones, and I love animation, and I love obscure, bizarre weirdness.

Hence, this.

From left to right, the Line, the Squiggle and the Dot. 

The Square is not actually anyone in particular, ignore that.

This 1965 MGM-produced Acadamey Award-winner is based on a then three-years-old Norton Juster children's book, and very closely at that, with most of Juster's text making it into Robert Morley's narration (a superior effort as far as child-oriented storytelling goes, both witty and compassionate, right up there with Boris Karloff in Jones's Grinch). 

It's 10 minutes long, which I find very interesting, as I have always regarded 10 minutes theatrical shorts as inherently more sincere than 7- or 6-minutes-long ones. Six or seven minutes was the accepted studio norm; and if you want to go into featurette rather than short, there's a sort of unspoken law that you have to reach 14 minutes at least. Hence 10 minutes is what happens two things coincide; first, the team is really into the short they're making and have a little more material than strictly require; and second, the studio executive is willing to let the team do its thing without griping. Hollywood studio executives being who they are, the second thing is vanishingly rare. 

The story is simple and weird: in an abstract world of sentient geometric shapes, a (male) Line is desperately in love with a (female) Dot. She finds him boring and as literal a stick-in-the-mud as they get, and elects to spend her time with a slovenly Squiggle instead. After some moping about the Line learns to bend himself to create new, complex and intriguing shapes, and comes back to the Dot a virtuoso of contortion with immensely more variety than the Squiggle ever had, and much more control too. The Dot is conquered, and dumps the Squiggle. 

It's a borderline-absurdist, absolutely charming children's fable. The only moral it draws for itself is a fantastic pun (one of several); but it's, of course, ridiculously easy to find all sorts of worthy themes and messages within it if one cares to look. “Adapt and improve yourself to be worthy of who you love.” “You contain multitudes; but you must work to reach them.” “A quiet well-ordered mind contains more potential than all the chaos in the world.” And so on and so forth. Certainly, those who want Meaning in their children's stories won't be disappointed. 

I could find only two flaws in this story and its worldbuilding, and they're not so much flaws as mildly weak points. The first is that despite the claim that there are other Lines, we inexplicably never see any other Dots. The second is a certain moment that, by modern sensibilities, might be taken as somewhat offensive: the Line's passion for the Dot seems unbearably shallow. The one thing the Dot does, personality-wise, is have fun with the Squiggle, and the Line is constantly telling it not to do that. The scene where the Line muses about the way the Dot is perfect to his eyes makes it clear that this perfection is entirely physical and the sole bedrock of his affection. 

But as I thought about it some more, it dawned on me that this isn't an entirely fair criticism. Much of The Dot and the Line's wit lies in double-meaning language which roots itself in the idea that in this geometric cosmos, the mathematical nature of the characters is indistinguishable from their psychic nature. The Squiggle is insubordinate and aimless, the Line is straightforward and rigid. By this metric, to love the shape of the Dot is to love her for her mind, in an abstract way. So I'll let it slide.

At any rate, Chuck Jones's animation is experimental as anything, and it's a hoot. Of course, bringing personality to a simple animated line had been done before, and would be done again, but these three ‘linear’ animation hallmarks all do it in very different ways, and Jones's is the only one that actually feels geometric, if that makes sense. The style of Jones and Maurice Noble's designs had always tended towards the abstract and angular, and one imagines they relished this opportunity to take it to its logical conclusion.

Oh, the animation's not without its flaws; not all of the stiffness can be wholly excused as an artistic choice, for one thing. Also irksome is that any pretense of making the Dot resemble an actual geometrical dot is dropped in favor of making her a disc. Notice how in the above screenshot someone is measuring the width of the Dot, which anybody with a working knowledge of mathematics will tell you is utterly shameful bogus. And as I mocked in the caption of the first picture, the abstract backgrounds occasionally include random shapes which would be fine anywhere else, but, here, can't help but befuddle a viewer who's come to accept that shapes are people in this cartoon's world, and therefore is waiting (in vain) for that square or that triangle to start talking. 

But for every slip-up there's a fantastic color palette, an innovative gag-sequence like the Line's daydreams about being a celebrity, or simply great animation. I particularly like the Squiggle's half-baked attempts to copy the Line's feat, right before it retreats, and the way it shrinks back from the swelling Dot, even if the phrase “swelling dot” is, as I said, anathema to anybody with one ounce of mathematics in them.

For that animation alone, the strange experiment in cartooning that is The Dot and the Line would be worth watching; but the witty writing, great narration, and competent music combined make it a masterpiece and well-deserving of its award. 

Post-Scriptum

Another reason I like The Dot and the Line is because (even though this must largely be coincidental) its style is as close as anything to the masterpiece of absurdist French TV animation, The Shadoks, of which despite the existence of a British dub I can only find one miserable English-language clip online, but I think it's enough to gauge the similarity. 

“Frontier in Space”

As you may know, I am greatly fond of Doctor Who; not particularly of the season that wrapped up last Sunday, but of Who in general, certainly — whether classic or modern. The 1973 six-part serial Frontier in Space, which I have just finished watching, strikes me as one of the most excellent examples of Classic Who and of Jon Pertwee's Doctor, so let's examin exactly how.

Story. Frontier is a clever little science-fiction tale, not without its wisdom. The setpiece is the year 4500 or thereabouts, where Earth's space empire has come to an uneasy truce with another, the Draconian. The modern Earth is a nuanced and interesting portrayal of the future, neither a utopia (the Doctor gets an unpleasant trip to a penal colony on the Moon for political opponent) nor an all-out dictatorship (the President of Earth is obviously well-meaning; she is, incidentally, a woman, which should alone put an end to recent media's unfair claims that classic Who contained old-fashioned sexism in spades, a blatant untruth meant to make the casting of Whittaker as the Doctor more interesting). 

The plot sees the Doctor's old enemy the Master (more about him later) is conspiring to bring the two empires at war with one another, for the sake of a fourth party in whose interest it is to see them weakened by renewed hostilities. To do so, the Master uses the clever science-fiction device of a hypnotic ray that makes you see whoever is in front of you as your worst fear, exploiting it to make Draconians think humans (“Earth-men”, as they are stubbornly called) are attacking their ships, and vice-versa. 

The Doctor, accidentally landing inside one of the attacked ships alongside Jo Grant, suffers much trials and tribulations as he is captured by one Empire and the next and interrogated as a spy, fruitlessly trying to convince both that they're being tricked. By Episode 5, our heroes are aware of the presence of the Master (who makes a fruitless attempt to rectify the situation by imprisoning them himself, and shoots himself in the foot instead), and manage to convince the Draconian Emperor of the truth. But just as it seems like the serial is wrapping up, the true masterminds who employed the Master are revealed; and they're…

Though war between Earth and the Draconians is of course avoided, the Daleks are not foiled altogether, and so Episode 6 of Frontier in Space leads directly into the next serial, Planet of the Daleks. That is in itself a point in favor of Frontier's story; arc structures weren't as established in 1970's Doctor Who as they have been since 2005, but this is quite close to it and I like it. 

Humor. From the First Doctor's inability to keep his words straight (an amusing quirk that modern audiences have often, unfairly, reduced to William Hartnell simply flubbing that many lines accidentally; but it is generally agreed among Whovians that it happens too often to have been wholly uninentional) to the Twelfth Doctor's pretending to enter the TARDIS for the first time, Doctor Who has always included a decent dose of good humor, and while Frontier in Space is hardly The Husbands of River Song, it gets its fair amount of chuckles. Most are owed to our two rival Time Lords; the anecdotes Pertwee's Doctor tells to Jo to cheer her up are simply charming, and Delgado's Master occasionally lapses into cartoony villainy to hilarious results ("Don't you want to kill him?" "Of course I do!… It's just… long-range rocket missiles… it feels like it lacks that personal touch"). 

Villains. It is notorious that Doctor Who would have been cancelled before the end of its first season, all the way back in 1963, if not for the Daleks; ever since, alien monsters and well-acted villains have been staples of the show and one of its greatest draws. Indeed, it's the weakness of many too pedestrian villains such as Josh Bowman's Krasko that has been the greatest flaw of the current series, in my opinion. 

A very appropriate choice of reading. 

Frontier in Space on the other hand is lucky enough to have two great Doctor Who villains in one story, plus secondary one-shots. The first is Roger Delgado's Master, a wonderful evil counterpart to Jon Pertwee's Doctor, refined and unapologetic in his foulness, relishing any time he's on top just as the audience relishes any time he's on screen. Sadly, due to a car accident some few months after the end of shooting, this would be Delgado's last turn as the evil Time Lord; his being a Time Lord allowed the show to bring back the character with new faces, and I absolutely love the Master's portrayals by Anthony Ainley or Michelle Gomez later on, but just like no Doctors can be quite alike, no posterior Master ever recaptured quite the same spirit as Delgado's. 

The second are Doctor Who's iconic evil tin-cans, the Daleks, who are entirely themselves and manage to pose a real threat despite their inherent goofiness. It's not the Daleks' finest turn — if nothing else, their “metal parrot” voices lack the stunning range that Nicholas Briggs would later bring to them — but it is nearly impossible for a halfway-decent Who writer to go completely wrong with the Daleks, and I think we've established that Malcolm Hulke is more than decent a writer, on the faith of this episode alone.

In terms of secondary villains, I will give special recognition to Michael Hawkins as the warmongering General Williams, whose voice is consistently full of gravitas and seems to me to have been a great inspiration for Timothy Dalton's iconic portrayal of Rassilon in The End of Time. Speaking of great actors, John Woodnutt as the Draconian Emperor is also worthy of praise, though the Emperor isn't actually a villain; and as Pertwee himself would remark, the make-up on the Draconians is probably as good as alien makeup got in the Classic Series; it's hardly more rubbery than the very similar Silurians in The Hungry Earth forty years later. 

The most unremarkable creation of the serial would have to be the Ogrons, the Master and Daleks' extraterrestrial grunts, who are little more than their name suggests — ugly, ogre-like space Orcs of limited intelligence. They're never scary, and they're only amusing because of the superintelligent Master's frustration with their stupidity, rather than because of anything about themselves. Their design is woefully uninspired. Still, they're not meant to be the memorable part of the episode, and so one shouldn't be surprised that they're not. 

Frontier in Space is all in all an extremely pleasant Doctor Who experience, highly recommended to anyone with an interest in the series, or just looking to have a good sci-fi time.