Doctor Who: Evacuation Earth

*** Contains spoilers ***

So it's come to this - Doctor Who for the Nintendo DS.

I'm surprised to even find myself reviewing this. There was a time when I would claim to only be interested in actual TV episodes of Doctor Who. Not the spin-offs - apart from any other reason, there were just too many of them!

However I watch the minisodes, because they are TV episodes of a sort. Then more recently there have been live shows which have included footage that, viewed in isolation, to all intents and purposes form further minisodes. Similarly, computer games contain cutscenes.

And then there's this one.

This handheld computer game from Asylum Entertainment features a mere five - count 'em five - cutscenes starring Smith and Gillan as the Doctor and Amy, that are audio only. (at a picky stretch ten if you factor in the DS' dual screens, stacked above each other)

Unlike the BBC's Adventure Games series, they don't even sync with any moving images - just stills, and drawn ones at that. If they're not good enough to count, then by the same token, maybe I should no longer watch slide-show reconstructions of the missing TV episodes from the 1960s, productions which are themselves spin-offs, like Big Finish's original TV cast CDs? Hrrrm.

And yet, author Oli Smith has scripted these nuggets of banter to be so enticing…

Doctor: "Can you pass me a screwdriver by the way?"
Amy: "You need a screwdriver to fix your sonic screwdriver?"
Doctor: "I'm not fixing it. I'm improving it."
[AMY SIGHS IN DESPAIR. THE TARDIS MONITOR EXPLODES.]

Doctor: "Argh no you've hit the time-defibrilating-re-bustler!"
Amy: "The WHAT?"
Doctor: "The time-defibrilating-re-bustler!"
Amy: "Is that really what it's called?!"
Doctor: "I don't know, 'time-defibrilating-re-bustler' just sounds better than what I usually call it!"
Amy: "And what's that?"
Doctor: "Well the 'if-you-press-this-the-TARDIS-will-stop-being-bigger-on-the-inside-than-the-outside-and-crush-us-in-forty-seconds-switch'. See - that's even less catchy!"
Amy: "Why do you even have one of those?!?"

I have to admit, I wanted to believe in dialogue like this so much, that I was unable to construct an argument not to. Yes, I was sucked in by the script. I guess I should be pleased about this.

All right, all right, onto the game then…

With Amy impressively still wearing the same outfit as in the BBC computer games series (I never notice what the Doctor's wearing), this story features the duo helping mankind to abandon the future Earth onto a giant spaceship only hours before the solar storms will start to do their thing. Along the way, and with agonising slowness, they repeatedly pause to help out just about everyone they meet with some task or other, although quite why the Doctor would want to fix a broken water tap when everyone is about to evacuate the planet is anyone's guess.


This results in a huge collection of puzzles to solve, most of which are very simple. Indeed, in the case of the sonic screwdriver mini games, a few of them seem to even be identical. And that's when the characters even remember that they have the sonic - other tasks require a lockpick! Nearly if not all of them are fairly irrelevant to the action that they are intended to represent though. For example, cracking a password - a repeated need here which you would have thought a touchscreen computer game could replicate quite well - is on multiple occasions achieved via a game of Pipe Dream.

Now, obviously, in order to enjoy this, you just have to take on board the culture and limitations of the Nintendo DS, however it's still a significant disappointment that the original TV voices feature in this so fleetingly. Aside from oft-repeated soundbites like "We haven't got much time" (which perhaps they should have conserved for timed games), most of the dialogue has to be read in speech-balloons, which on occasion contain some open-minded punctuation:

Or a good old-fashioned typo...

All this dialogue does quite well too though, and remains in character, if a little clunkily in places, but dang I'd prefer to actually hear the actors again, like when I was hooked in at the beginning.

Stretched out across these four chapters, there is a legitimate Doctor Who story getting up to speed, but not one which I've really found myself daydreaming about between sessions. There are some nice pieces of design, such as Eleanor's quarters, and plenty of nods to the TV series' long history.

However, as you may have noticed, there's only really room on that lower screen for two character-stills at a time, which clearly got confusing for the programmers when three or more people were meant to be present…

As for placing it, several lines reference different episodes from season 31, the chronologically latest of which I think was their recognition of Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers painting, suggesting this game to be set later than Vincent And The Doctor. Taken together with the absence of Rory, that only leaves before or after The Lodger. Given the Doctor's almost total inability to hold a normal conversation with a stranger in that one, I gotta place this after it, along with, by implication, all the BBC's Adventure Games in which Amy is similarly attired.

On a related note, Amy somehow recognises some Power Ranger Daleks that she and the Doctor believe they have met before in the future.

Amy: "Doctor? It's them. The squad we defeated in the future!"
Doctor: "They must have engaged the time axis at the last minute."

Sheesh, when/where was that? During City Of The Daleks - a computer game by another company - in which the Daleks' home planet was arguably in the future?

Or does the answer lie somewhere in sister game Return To Earth which Asylum Entertainment went onto release a week later for the Wii?

Naw, surely they didn't release these the wrong way around?

Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl

Governor Weatherby Swann: "Perhaps on the rare occasion pursuing the right course demands an act of piracy, piracy itself can be the right course?"

The reason why I re-watched this movie this morning, is because I wanted to write a review of it for this blog.

If that sounds like a case of the tail wagging the blog, then remember to factor in that the only reason why Disney made this film in the first place, was because they had already opened a theme park ride with this title.

In 2003, Herschel and I first saw the trailer for it before Hulk. Afterwards we both agreed that neither of us wanted to go see it. Pirates, pfft. So, that was that.

And yet, somehow we found ourselves spending the next couple of weeks mis-quoting it to each other. "You'd best start believin' in email conversations, Goble, YOU'RE IN ONE!" (yes, that's probably mis-quoted) Pretty soon we realised that we needed to go see this movie after all, if only to recover from 138 minutes of Hulk.

And it turned out to be okay. Again at nearly two-and-a-half hours, Pirates Of The Caribbean (as it was commonly known back then) went on for long enough, but it didn't drag. In fact the movie uses such a duration to its advantage, taking time over its long scenes, and giving the characters a chance to talk.

And that, in my opinion, is one of several things that the makers really got right here. It's a film that constructs a world for the viewer to believe in, and then lets you get to spend some time living there.

Using very rough timings from memory, something like the first 45 minutes all take place at a port (Port Royal), where as well as a harbour there's also a fort, a government, a prison with inmates, and a blacksmith's. Once the lead character Jack Sparrow has duly escaped, something like the next hour of the film takes place at sea. When those authorities finally catch up with him a day or so later, in elongated cinema-time, it felt to me like a couple of years had passed. It had been so long since we had last seen those guys! Truly, I was immersed in this.

However it's not just the world which has been constructed with great detail, but the twisting plot, and such a cast of characters. Aside from the comic reliefs, everyone here keeps their wits about them, resulting in a story in which everyone sees a bigger picture, and no-one's word can be taken at face value.

Mr. Gibbs: "Then, on the fourth day, he [Jack] roped himself a couple of sea turtles, lashed 'em together and made a raft."
Will Turner: "He roped a couple of sea turtles."
Mr. Gibbs: "Aye. Sea turtles."
Will Turner: "What did he use for rope?"
Jack Sparrow: "Human hair."
[PAUSE]
"From my back."

Mr. Gibbs: "He's a mute, sir. Poor devil had his tongue cut out, so he trained the parrot to talk for him. No one's yet figured how."

Barbossa: "And thirdly, the code is more what you'd call 'guidelines' than actual rules."

Having enabled me to believe in this world, the film's most significant shortcoming for me would have to be the second half's descent into fantasy. The promise of an adventure of olde on the high seas with pirates, gets diluted by the science-fiction genre. The lengthy spectacle of so many computer-generated skeletons prancing lightly around in a way that was hard to reconcile with their human actor counterparts didn't help. Memo to the producers: CGI aliens look far too modern for a historical setting. Were you aiming for the same realism as Bedknobs And Broomsticks? Well then.

This morning I kept willing the characters with flesh on them to just slice the skeleton's backbones through with their swords. Swann manages to break off a forearm at one point, but he seems to be the only one.

All the same I find it interesting to note that, just as Herschel and I had been originally hooked in by the trailer's quotes, the film went onto to become a highly quotable one too. If you've seen the film yourself then I'm sure that you already have your own list of favourite lines in your head, so after rewatching most of it this morning, permit me to close with a few of mine: (they're not all funny ones)

Jack Sparrow: "One question about your business, boy, or there's no use going: This girl... how far are you willing to go to save her?"
Will Turner: "I'd die for her."
Jack Sparrow: "Oh good. No worries then."

Will Turner: "In a fair fight, I'd kill you."
Jack Sparrow: "That's not much incentive for me to fight fair, then, is it?"

Jack Sparrow: "The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do. For instance, you can accept that your father was a pirate and a good man or you can't."

Jack Sparrow: "Not just the Spanish Main, love. The entire ocean. The entire world. Wherever we want to go, we'll go. That's what a ship is, you know. It's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs but what a ship is... what the Black Pearl really is... is freedom."

Barbossa: "Find it, we did. And there be the chest... and inside be the gold. And we took 'em all. We spent 'em and traded 'em and frittered 'em away on drink and food and pleasurable company. The more we gave 'em away, the more we came to realise, the drink would not satisfy, food turned to ash in our mouths, and all the pleasurable company in the world could not slake our lust. We are cursed men, Miss Turner. Compelled by greed, we were, but now we are consumed by it."

Barbossa: "For too long I've been parched of thirst and unable to quench it. Too long I've been starving to death and haven't died. I feel nothing. Not the wind on my face nor the spray of the sea. Nor the warmth of a woman's flesh. You best start believing in ghost stories Miss Turner. You're in one."

(available here)
Related posts:

Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl
Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End
Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Robots (2005 film)

"This isn't what I was thinking at all!"

There is one thing wrong with this film, and it happens right at the very start.

It's not about robots.

It's about people. Almost everything that happens in here might as well be happening to regular flesh-and-blood folk. Marriage, kids, job, society, consumerism… After the excitement of the title Robots, seeing a robot mum and robot dad cooing over a robot baby makes for a highly disappointing opening. These three 'robot' characters are even named Herb, Lydia and Rodney. Really Blue Sky, just film some actors already and call it Humans.

In fact, in the filmmakers' attempts to make the movie as relevant as possible to their audience, they seem to have impressively managed to out-Dreamworks Dreamworks, right down to following their awful practice of redubbing characters for the UK market. Funnily enough British broadcaster voices like Terry Wogan, Chris Moyles, Vernon Kay and Cat Deeley tend to jar within the context of a movie from Hollywood starring the likes of the A-list Robin Williams. (I still can't believe we lost Stephen Tobolowski to Eamonn Holmes)

The film does feature a few sequences that filled me with awe though, mainly the ones involving transportation. As I watched Rodney and Fender being repeatedly hurled across the lazily named Robot City, the idea that an automaton society could develop a system of travel dependent upon such extremes of exacting calculation held me in a very happy trance. I could have watched a lot more of such inventive design work, but for the most part this film wanted to stay with a boring old tried-and-tested formula.

In fact, I'm afraid that by the end I found myself rather siding with main villain Ratchet's advertising slogan of "Why be YOU, when you can be NEW!" Quite.

A fun film, especially if you like playing with dolls.

(some version or other available here - good luck)

A Muppet Family Christmas

Kermit: "Life would just pass in a blur if it weren't for times like this."


Sometimes a TV series will make an episode when it crosses over with a different series.

It usually works best when the two series are already known to be coming from the same place, and may even already share a connection. Think of Buffy and Angel, or Cheers and Frasier, or even The X Files and The Lone Gunmen. Not to mention all those well-intentioned, but paradoxically half-hearted, hybrid telethon sketches.

In very exceptional instances three different series may all crossover within the same programme, but this is very rare indeed. Off the top of my head I can only think of Doctor Who: The Stolen Earth / Journey's End, which also packed in the skeleton casts of spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood.

And then, back in 1987, there was A Muppet Family Christmas, which pulled off the unthinkable - a four-way crossover extravaganza.

Yes, four.

FOUR!!!!

Namely The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock and, wait for it, wait for it… Muppet Babies! And all this despite the tiny matter of that last one being a cartoon!

Ironically here they get re-realised as puppets, despite their segment being watched by the other characters on a projector screen. In the circumstances you gotta wonder if they were originally intended to be drawn as usual.

Anyway, where do I begin with gushing about this hour of meticulously scripted Christmassy perfection? Perhaps I'd better not - I'd only be quoting every line of the entire script, including the overdose of songs at the end, which go on forever but can never outstay their welcome.

The whole thing is joy in an undiluted form.

Faced with shots of what just might be the hugest assembly of muppets ever, it's probably best not to dwell upon how disappointingly the old gang later became split up among different companies. (so here I go…) The recent movie The Muppets was a hugely enjoyable adventure, but even with a climax that required a whole theatre of seats to be filled, the owners of the Sesame Street characters wouldn't even permit Elmo to cameo. Boo, they don't sound Muppetational at all.

However that wasn't a problem in 1987, largely I'm sure due to the then alive-ness of muppet creator Jim Henson, who went on record at the time about how much he liked it when they all got together like this. His unseen presence throughout this warm celebration of fuzziness is yet another of the programme's beauties. Since Henson's death, puppeteer Steve Whitmire has done an unfaultable job of taking over playing Kermit, but in this show it's still Henson, with all the depth and little mannerisms of his classic self, not to mention so many other characters. These are the muppets exactly as they were when I was growing up, right down to the last little twitch.

Well, almost. For just like every Christmas family gathering that this programme deliberately sets out to champion, there is one relative who I confess I found myself rather wishing hadn't come.

It's not Doc's fault of course. He was the human owner of Sprocket in the original US version of Fraggle Rock, although around the world all his scenes got reshot with local actors. Here in the UK Fraggle Rock got through three British actors over the course of the series' run, none of whom appear in this American special for ABC.

Well of course they don't. I mean the very idea of flying over John Gordon Sinclair from the UK, Michel Robin from France and Hans Helmut Dickow from Germany, and to shoot alternate takes of these scenes for each of their own territories sounds… well actually y'know it sounds kind of doable.

Anyway, however much I may understand who Doc represents, his presence in this wonderful special inescapably implies that 'my' Fraggle Rock didn't really happen. Even Sprocket here can be witnessed siding against me and betraying his 'real' British masters, which gives me a really bad feeling in my stomach. Oh well.

Mind you, given advances in vision mixing and how the muppets themselves haven't aged since then, it's still not too late to put that right. Maybe a special edition featuring new replacement footage of a 47-year-old Simon O'Brien as BJ with Sprocket. And while they're about it, they can reshoot all those segments of his that have since been wiped. And what the heck, maybe in 3D.

Oh, come on Doc, I know it's not your fault really. Come sit over here with us and play Monopoly, we'll have fun…

(Available here) (It probably won't matter that much if you pick the wrong one.)

Pick Up Sticks

They say the simplest games are the best, and they don't come much simpler than Pick Up Sticks in which you all have to take turns to see who can… well, you'll never guess.

The Cosmic Avenger Quasar #8: Still Life With Metal

*Contains spoilers*

Writer: Mark Gruenwald
Penciler: Mike Manley
Inker: Danny Bulanadi
Letterer: Janice Chiang
Colorist: Paul Becton
Editor: Howard Mackie
Editor In Chief: Tom DeFalco

Well I guess that depends upon your definition of the word 'last'. And 'tie-in'.

Anyway, while out searching for aliens, Quasar looks in on his old employers Project: Pegasus, and quickly finds himself fighting a giant metallic monster that has evolved from spare parts that Iron Man found on Battleworld. (during the above-mentioned Secret Wars) Quasar then successfully engineers it into a nearby bottomless pit, which isn't really bottomless, but short of going right through the Earth is about as close as you can get.

Along the way he helps out his job's successor there in the form of the new Security Chief - the Blue Shield. The rescue enables Quasar to pay some penance for his own failing in the role, and turns his regrets into a more positive force by reassuring the new guy afterwards, to avoid letting the cycle of self-blame repeat.

I gotta be honest and admit that I found this issue to be dull throughout, but that final page was so worth it. It shows the choice that our own failure confronts each of us with, in greater clarity than I think I've seen anywhere else.

Will the Blue Shield let his own psychological insecurity get the better of him, or will he overcome it? Will he choose to become a victim of the monster, or a survivor? Will he choose spiritual death, or life???

Click away now if you don't want to know the answer...

Tut. Temps.