“Franz Kafka's It's A Wonderful Life”

As a Whovian for whom Peter Capaldi is one of the greatest actors ever to portray the title part on Doctor Who, imagine my surprise and glee when I discovered that Capaldi was also a successful director in his own right; and furthermore, as a fan of Franz Kafka and Frank Capra, imagine my surprise that he had won an Academy Award in 1993 for, well, this. Which, as the icing on the cake, happens to feature great actor (and fellow once-Doctor) Richard E. Grant in the title part of Franz Kafka, which is perhaps the most genius bit of casting I've ever seen in a Kafka movie. 

So how does it hold up, really? Pretty good!

Those accustomed to the endless variations on the “What if you were never born?” sequence of Capra's 1946 picture It's A Wonderful Life will be surprised to note that there isn't really any of that in Capaldi's film; instead, what it takes from the 1946 feature is the general structure of “things are miserable for a self-loathing protagonist who makes it harder on himself, until they are not, as all his gathered friends come together at the end to save both him and the day”. 

What remains is this premise: in a beautifully German-expressionist rendition of Kafka's Czech hometown, the writer is about to begin work on his masterpiece, Die Verwandlung (ye Brits and colonials know this as The Metamorphosis), but can't seem to figure out precisely what it is that Gregor Samsa wakes to find himself transformed into. There are frequent cutaway (as pictured above) to various preposterous options Kafka considers before scrapping them. As the tortured soul tries again and again to fulfill his destiny, and despite the insect imagery constantly staring him in the face, he can't seem to lay a finger on it. What's more, he keeps getting interrupted by various things (a Christmas party going on in the flat below his, a caller come at the wrong address, etc.). 

It is utterly brilliant. 

The thing about Franz Kafka's It's A Wonderful Life is that it's basically the most Kafkayan film I've ever seen, and yes, that includes Orson Welles's outstanding 1962 version of The Trial. Even it didn't quite reach this level of — of — how can I put it? In The Trial, it soon becomes clear that you're in dream logic, with these sprawling vistas of absurdly long corridors and absurdly large halls. In Franz on the other hand, there's nothing explicitly fantastic, or at least, it doesn't seem so until you've finished watching it and reflect back on it. It perfectly channels the weird and unpleasant experience of a bad dream, that cramped feeling, that nagging sensation that none of this is quite right, quite real that you keep mulling over without actually doing anything about it, because you can't. It's what Kafka was a master of turning into words, and Capaldi turned it into film reel. 

And what of the cast? Well, the line of celebrities does not end as Grant & Capaldi, as you'll also recognize Phyllis Logan and Ken Stott in varyingly-incidental parts. But really, a lot of credit must also go to a frightfully young Richard E. Grant, who looks sickly and disturbed without even trying, and without losing the audience's sympathy in the process, which is key to successfully playing a Kafka protagonist. (And to play Franz Kafka in such a picture is to play a Kafka protagonist, since all Kafka protagonists are basically Kafka. The short cleverly spells this point out by having Kafka's neighbors colloquially refer to him as “Mr K.”) This is, perhaps not the part, but certainly one of the parts that Grant was born to play. 

It's also a frightfully witty film, when it's not plunging us in the precise atmosphere of a nightmare; the Capra in its DNA means it has a happy ending and is overall slightly lighter-hearted than a pure Kafka picture, and all the better for it too. I won't spoil too many of the jokes, but perhaps my favorite concerns Franz's timidity about telling the partygoers below to knock it off: after he speaks his mind to the host of said party, the host, who has not lost her smiling demeanor, agrees to yield to his commanding nature, but then asks him “if this is a hypothetical conversation or a real one”. “Hypothetical, of course,” says Kafka. And the host: “Oh, good. Because I'm quite enjoying this party. Goodbye.” She walsk back in, closes the door, and so it's revealed that this scene was all Kafka's fantasy of what he wishes he had the backbone to say. 

Add to this a great visual direction, and music that, while never genius, does its part without distracting for the whole, and you get a real gem of a short film, highly recommended to anyone who enjoys Kafka, Capaldi, Richard E. Grant, or off-kilted filmmaking in general. 

Post-Scriptum:

The underwhelming music aside, I have exactly one (1) issue with the short, and that is that the visual of Samsa-as-Bug we eventually get is pretty bad. Being about pillow-sized, and with spindly long legs, the cockroach-head-thing is nothing like the many-legged pillbug I've always imagined, and nowhere near massive enough. (It is my belief that the creature in which Gregor Samsa was transformed once existed: it is the arthropleura.)

“Born Again”

Fanfiction and fanfilms existed even before the Internet and have become a simple fact of life ever since its inception. Yet not all fan works are apiece. Where a fanfiction, say, of DuckTales, is just that, there are some franchises that have spawned such fandom that fan works based on them have begun a genre of their own, with their recurring themes and their codes, to the extent that you can find people who forego the original completely and are a fan of the fanworks. The incommensurably gigantic Harry Potter fanfiction community is the quintessential example, but Britons don't stop at that; they have a cinematic equivalent too. And that is Doctor Who fanfilm.

Ranging anywhere from children dressing up in their parents' jackets (and being very charming too!) to productions of truly professional quality — and let's not talk about the odd aberration that are fanfilms to whom the official actors contributed, just for the heck of it! — Doctor Who fanfilms are astonishing, frequently awful, and sometimes superior to many televised episodes I could name. I love them dearly and regularly enter ‘Doctor Who fanfilm’ into YouTube's search bar just to see if any new nice ones have popped up.

And just two days ago, well fancy that.

Born Again, the work of Paris Freeman (who also plays the Doctor and directs this first episode; this is very common in fanfilms, for obvious reasons), is the first episode of a new fanfilm series which transparently comes to fill the power vacuum left by the DW2012 series, the ten-year-spanning, four-seasons œuvre of Luke Newman, another fan turned writer-director-Doctor. (If you want proof of Freeman's obvious intention to be the next Newman, look no further than the name of the YouTube channel now hosting his first attempt, TimeLord2016.)

The DW2012 series was not the best fanfilm series by far, not even the best one on YouTube; some of its stories flirted with the downright imbecilic, and it had all the wobbly cardboard sets, tinfoil monsters, barely-pubescent actors and reused sountracks cribbed from the official show that are the hallmarks of cheap YouTube fanfilms everywhere. Yet it had proven to be the most popular, perhaps through sheer tenacity (ten years and four seasons is more than most halfway-competent fanfilmmakers can boast), perhaps also thanks to Newman's extremely likable, hearfelt, original take on the character of the Doctor, far more than the cheap Matt Smith impression you usually get in these things. Not that Newman isn't very Smith-esque, of course.

But we're not here to talk about the DW2012 series; we're here to talk about Born Again. How does it hold up? Averagely, is my cop-out answer. Though it commits the sin of having one of the most boilerplate pilot titles imaginable, it's off to a very strong start as we watch the Doctor regenerate into a still very harried Paris Freeman and frantically try to steer the crashing TARDIS.

It's a very strong start, full of action and moody lighting and good acting. The effects work, by fanfilm standards, is pretty amazing, and will remain so for the duration of the entire episode (not that it's a feature film, not anywhere close; it's a tight 20 minutes or so). This is, no joke, probably the best regeneration effect and in-flight TARDIS I've ever seen in a fanfilm, and still pictures wouldn't do it justice; whether or not you meant to watch the whole thing, I definitely urge you to follow my earlier link and just watch the first few minutes and the opening credits sequence. And — oh — the opening credits sequence — that too is a thing of beauty. It has nothing to be ashamed of when viewed back-to-back with the intro used in Peter Capaldi's last official season, and I daresay I prefer it to the more understated affair of Series 11, though I'm not quite sold on the creative rearrangement of the iconic opening tune, which is as far removed from Murray Gold's 2010's version as even Gold's 2005 version was from the 1963 Ron Grainer classic, and that is perhaps one step removed too many. 

Unfortunately, things rather quickly go downhill from there as Paris Freeman's Doctor crashes into an American girl's back yard, and the girl, though wary of him, ends up cooking for him, and finding herself believing that he is an alien after all, and finding herself drawn in even though she is less than impressed by some of his idiosyncrasies, and… and right about now you're probably realizing that this is just Amy Pond, except without any of the interesting bits. A common ailment in fanfilm companions, sadly. Complain all you like about the blandness and interchangeability of the official onscreen companions, but you ain't seen nothing yet.

But stuck we are with Nicole Williamson (I'll give the film that this is pleasantly sounds like an American name without being a caricature of one). The fact that she is as basic a fanmade companion as they get would be bad enough, but she is portrayed with frigidly wooden acting and a gratingly monotone voice by Gabrielle Wright.

And I realize that it is unfair to pick on fanfilm actors, who are by definition doing a labor of love with an amateur background, but I hope that the TimeLord2016 folks take this as the backhanded compliment that it is: it is only because you got so close to letting me forget this is a fan production that this acting (well, lack thereof) sticks out like a sore thumb. 

But if the companion's a dud, at least the Doctor has to be okay, right? Well, mostly, yeah.

The bad first: past the opening scene where a certain amount of harried slurriness was expected, I slowly came to notice, with not inconsiderable dismay, that Paris Freeman mumbles half his lines instead of saying them. When he does say them he does it well enough, and his American accent isn't nearly as noticeable a 'flaw' as you might think, but this is certainly not a Doctor I'd listen to in Big Finish audios. In totally unrelated matters, I won't speculate on Freeman's exact age, but there is the unavoidable fact that he looks strikingly boyish. Not in itself damning for a Doctor (Matt Smith and Peter Davison were certainly very boyish-looking), except that Freeman doesn't seem to realize quite the extent of his own boyishness. His portrayal seems to befit a considerably more mature Doctor than what we're looking at; it's telling that the feel of his costume, and the music used in his very first scene, are both clearly inspired by Peter Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor.

But those are minor problems. In a world where otherwise-great fanfilms are marred by leads who Just. Can't. Act, Freeman yields a perfectly acceptable, even entertaining performance. He's certainly no worse than Luke Newman was in his Doctorish debut (where Freeman now mumbles, Newman once muttered); he's confident and charismatic in his portrayal, though not as much so as a professional actor might perhaps be in his place. If there is one easily-fixed flaw in the Paris Freeman Doctor, it is more with the writing than the acting, and it is that he hasn't really had a chance to be funny yet. Genial, yes, but I'm still waiting for a moment of outright daffiness for him to call his own.

All in all, Freeman delivers a perfectly serviceable fanfilm Doctor — of the breed who would be a travesty if actually cast as the Doctor on actual television, unlike, say, Bryan McCormack, but who by YouTube amateur standards deserve more encouragement than criticism.

Okay, so we've got our Doctor and our companion, what of the villain/monster? Ah, I thought you might ask. Well. Again, it's complicated. 

Surprisingly for a fanfilm, where it's usually the opposite, what we have here is a stunningly-realized concept that, as a concept, really doesn't hold much water. Perhaps it might make more snese in a more polished script, but the Stratagem… let me try to sum them up for you: the Stratagem is an alien hive mind remotely controlling a robot body trying to coerce the Doctor into teaching them how to steer a time machine with which they are accidentally opening gaps in the fabric of space-time, which may destroy Earth given time. All this in the space of — well, of ten minutes, really, allowing for the opening and sequences and the half of the actual screentime that is devoted to the tepid spectacle of the Doctor meeting, and bonding with, Nicole.

By contrast, the Daleks are angry dustbins who want to kill people.

But let's not be too hard on the Stratagem; as I said, where the concept is lacking and overconvoluted, the execution is very effective. The robot body is as real-looking and imposing as any pre-2005 Cyberman, that is to say, pretty damn much for something which inescapably looks first and foremost like a chrome-painted costume; Andrew Dillon does a good job of making it move in stilted, economically jittery littlemovements, withou nary any corpsing. Dillon also provides it with a shrill, monotone voice the — the filter used on it sounds a little too much like a Dalek voice, perhaps, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing. All in all it does a very good job of making you forget that strictly all it does for all of its screentime is stand around in one place.

Also: next to the Stratagem in all of its shots is a round mechanical energy-wheel-thingy (see above) which serves as its time machine's power source, and it's such a little thing, but the effect on it is really, really good. Doesn't at all feel like tacked-on CGI. The light even seems to reflect on the Stratagem's outer plating. Congratulations.

Speaking of props and effects, I earlier congratulated the CGI, in-flight TARDIS. Well, the physical one ain't no slouch, either. Its control room is made of deep brown, well-polished wood, with a particular clever bit of set design in the panels on the hexagonal console (hexagonal, like the classic hexagonal things on the wall) which can be opened to reveal the switches and buttons and levers. Now, this hexagonal console lacks a moving, vertical column-thing (what true Whovians know to be called a “Time Rotor”), and compared to the official televised ones it is really quite a small thing, like the room itself, for that matter. But it matters not — an actual control room it is, as opposed to some unconvincing greenscreen hocus-pocus such as I have encountered in the past, and quite a delightfully-designed one. And did I mention they have an actual physical TARDIS prop for outside shots? Full props to the props department.

All in all Born Again does not transcend the genre of Doctor Who fanfilms, but it is a very fine example of the form, and if they heed the quibbles earlier outlined, I have very high hopes for TimeLord2016's fanfilm series. Let us hope it will enjoy as much of a bright future as DW2012 did!

And for our Post-Scriptum, appropriately enough, I urge you, if you do watch Born Again for yourself, to watch its end credits too. They, also, are gorgeous. 

“Doctor Necromantic”

Doctor Necromantic is a webcomic by Nate Bramble, currenly published either on its own domain or on the website Tapastic (or do they prefer Tapas now? bah! humbug! I'll call them Tapastic much as I will call Wikia Wikia to my dying breath, whether or not they rename themselves Ostrich or whatever). Webcomics, much like print comics, are a wild jungle of mediocrity with the occasional gem, and I think this is one of them. 

It concerns a wel-off gentleman by the wonderful name of Dr Olaf Derleth, who decides to take up necromancy as a hobby. Spooky fun ensues in a classic Addams Family or Comedy of Terror vein.

Even setting aside for a moment the fact that I really like spooky comedies, and that this is a very good one, I think the biggest draw has to be the artwork. The watercolor coloring/shading and the “classic” look of the characters, combined with the detailed backgrounds, make for an extremely appealing aesthetic that is too rarely seen in modern comics. Note also that this uses the comic font, the one foolish discarded by IDW lately as you'll recall from the last post. I dig it.

The above strip is representative of the kind of joke usually found, and of Dr Olaf's dynamic with his simple-minded (but in no way  Igor-eque) assistant Carl. Most of the comic is just strips of this sort chronicling Dr Olaf's studies into the Dark Arts. The Doctor himself is a fun protagonist, whose acerbic wit, ego, and cynicism somehow shouldn't work with the fact that he is also an incompetent beginner, but, somehow, do.

This not to say, of course, that Doctor Necromantic is perfect. As with any comic strip, some jokes just aren't that funny or tasteful, and some of the attempts to inject a serialized story into the proceedings don't work as well as the author thinks they do.

Nevertheless, Doctor Necromantic is a very enjoyable (and rather quick) read, recommended to all who like both classic comic strips and fun spookiness. 

Post-Scripta:

• Is it a coincidence that both this and another, much-better-known gothic-story-parody, Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events, feature an egotistical, cynical nobleman by the name of Olaf with a unibrow? I frankly don't know. 

• Yes, this review was rather short, but I don't have much time these days. Still, you can look forward to a review of a much better Disney comic than… what we saw last time… quite soon! And after that, to another, non-comic bit of wannabe-gothic hilarity…

“My Second Million” And Its Translation

I love Disney Comics, and I love period dramas, and I love ventures into the pre-1947 life of $crooge McDuck — indeed, my only beef with Don Rosa's masterful Life and Times series has always been Rosa's conscious decision to not only limit himself to Barks, but to try and write a 'definitive' biography with precious few holes for other authors' tales to fill. Thus it stands to reason that I would love All of $crooge McDuck's Millions, the miniseries which New IDW have elected to start off their run of Uncle $crooge with. 

But no. 

It's terrible. 

The series itself — it's a little on the bland side already. I'd previously read a few chapters of it, though not this one, either in French or in their online ComiXology format. But a little blandness is nothing some snappy, euphonious dialogue can't solve. That had, ever since they began, been the philosophy of American translations of Disney comics; and while I don't condone some of the heavier changes performed by these 'freeform' translators in the past, there's no doubt who I'd pick between them and dialogue that sounds like it's been written by a goddamn robot. 

And oh, does the IDW version of All of $crooge McDuck's Millions (renamed Uncle Scrooge: My First Millions in this printing, in perhaps one of its wisest decisions; mark that noting something title's is slightly less terrible than it could have been is probably the faintest praise anyone's ever damned anything with) ever read like it was written by a goddamn robot. Let me demonstrate. 

So I'll make a cursory note that Paolo Mottura's art is what it always is, namely that the background and shadowwork are extremely impressive at times, the characters' on-modelness is sometimes less so, and overall it's pretty solid. This isn't its most impressive example or anything, but it's soearing leagues above Fausto Vitaliano's frankly insipid plot, and more to the point grafting this terrible English dialogue on it feels rather like surgically giving a pig's tail to the Marsupilami. 

But so then, the dialogue. To begin with, Scrooge's line is fine, I guess, but ‘hard’ vs. ‘thrilling’ is hardly the most effective dichotomy. Might I suggest, for example, ‘tough’ instead of ‘hard’? Mostly however, it is Donald's line which fails horribly. “The second part of the soap opera is now beginning”? Who's saying this, Donald Duck, or David Attenborough? Try to imagine Clarence Nash saying this in his Donald voice. Just you try it. The line even fails on its own terms — “soap opera” is an amusing turn of phrase that cannot ever, ever, ever sound refined; sticking it in the same sentence as a by-the-book construction such as “is now beginning” simply will not do. 

The awful thing, of course, being that this line could be very funny. Comparing Scrooge's tales to a soap opera from within a serialized format of storytelling is delightfully metafictional. But you can't even think of all that, because your eyes hurt from how badly that thought is translated into words. 

And the stilted, robotical, unsayable-by-real-humans dialogue does not

ever

ever

goddamn

STOP. 

I've heard people defending the so-called ‘Fresh And New’ translation style by proposing that the higher-ups of IDW (or, indeed, Disney itself) may have ordered the simplification of translations to better appeal to younger audiences. To this I say, firstly, humbug, children haven't been the core audience for Scrooge McDuck in the united states in forever; secondly, if you dare bring up DuckTales 2017, I'll counter that even within this show's fandom, the kids are primarily interested in the triplets and Webby, whereas the Scrooge fans are on the older side; thirdly, I will kindly remind you that children love wordplay very much and stilted Grammarbot.exec speech less so. 

And fourthly, the Fresh And New translations even fail at being educational. Oftentimes they'll use English phrases wrong or just make them up. For example…

…ten second's Googling, if nothing else, will inform you that a telegraphic message is called a telegram. The telegraph is the machine you use to send it. See, this is the kind of detail you really don't want to get wrong if your aim is to have simple, grammatically-unfailing dialogue to aid and educate youngsters. 

And…

…TWO IN A ROW? HAVE YOU NO SHAME? HAVE YOU NO CONCEPT OF MERCY?! 

What we have here, in both panels, are attempts at witty dialogue. Or, rather, they are the charred husk of what was once witty dialogue in Vitaliano's original, mangled beyond repair by the Fresh And New treatment. “I smell the smell of [smth]” is not something anyone has ever said or ever will say, thank heavens. And it's painfully clear “Nothing can stop progress or my wealth!” used to be a wacky spin on the “You can't stop progress!” proberb in Italian that lost any fizz or pizzazz when the Fresh And New translator failed to consider that, A), the saying is less readily recognizable if you swap out 'you' for 'nothing', and B), “wealth” is not some sort of progress you can “stop”. 

For reference, here's how I (an unpaid amateur) would have done it. 

I think anyone with a taste for funny comics will agree it's already bounds ahead of the printed version. And I'm not even saying this is that good for localization — that first one is a little unwieldy, I kind of wanted to do something in the second one with the visual of Scrooge's ever-rising curve, and, of course, the lettering is all over the place. Yet in all humility I feel pretty confident in stating that by most metrics, it's already bounds ahead of the printed version. 

These two here are clients to whom Scrooge is giving a refund. First, “that's not enough!” and “that's right” are as boilerplate as you get. But also: unless Alistair here is a police officer, the line “I should put you in jail!” is nonsensical (it should at least be: “I should have you put in jail”). And unless he is a good friend of Scrooge (he isn't), you just can't let him call Scrooge Scrooge in the way he called him Paperone in Italian. That's as bad as those children's books where people like the Beagle Boys or even total strangers would refer to him as “Uncle Scrooge”!

And on, and on, and on. Mistake after blunder after blandness after nonsense, right up until the last panel…

…where even all of Mottura's shadowwork can do nothing to obscure the sheer fact that casual use of the word “businessduck” goes against everything we know of how anthropomorphic species work in the Scrooge McDuck universe. Fercrissake, one of the most famous and influential Scrooge stories ever is called Only a Poor Old Man, and you think terms like businessduck are a thing? What did the translator use for reference, My Little Pony? 

…

…so yeah. My Second Million, IDW edition. It's terrible. I've been trying to articulate just how lowly I think of it, and I think I have it now: if for some reason I ever want to reread the story, it's the ComiXology version I'll pick up. It would still be a travesty if a publisher tried printing it in a regular book, but it's still better than this version. Let me repeat that, for it bears repeating: this is a situation where the cheap ComiXology translation is significantly superior to the printed IDW version! THIS SHOULD NOT BE A THING THAT HAPPENS! Here's the first panel in the ComiXology version. Compare the IDW one I showcased above. The dialogue ain't Oscar Wilde, but good lord is it better here than it was there. 

And for our traditional Post-Scriptum, something else that irritates me about the so-called ‘Fresh And New’ translations, and which the ComiXology versions didn't get wrong: I didn't mention it earlier because it can't be the translator's fault per se, but what the sugar-bowl is up with the new font? For whatever reason, to go along with the change of staff, it was decided to use a completely different, and (if I had to choose) significantly uglier, font, than the one Disney comics had been using for decades. Compare the two version of the opening splah panel.

“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.)