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Doctor Who “Utopia”

1000/10 … holy cow … two Masters for the price of one …

OK, so I missed a few weeks … and they were good weeks, but I can’t go back. Looking back now as we teeter on the edge of the massive trilogy that ends this season is pointless. We are fully launched and I can’t go back to something like “Blink” (which was another Doctor-Lite story … meaning they didn’t have time to get David and Freema for most of the episode and made up another story around nothing … though it was better than “Love and Monsters” from last season.) I can sort of look back at “The Family of Blood” the conclusion of “Human Nature” … but there isn’t much to add apart from more of the same. The story was great.

But, this is “Utopia.” Yes, say it like you mean it, because in more ways than one this was a Doctor Who fan’s Utopia! Forget that Spiderman vs Superman ending of last season with the Cybermen and Daleks (the war that never should be seen) … this is the reinvention of the Master. Arguably 3rd (certainly chronologically) of the Doctor’s enemies, The Master is also a Time Lord. But, how? The time war? Yes, yes … I’m sure we’ll get to skirting around those issues in the future. Or is it the past? You see how that works? But most importantly to the series itself, a humanoid not a robot, which allows for the possibility of a real sense of uncertainty. Even though The Master is a cliché mustache (or goatee) twirling villain, if pitched right by the right actor, there can be real menace in knowing that the Doctor’s “tricks” could be out-matched.

Basically, if you heard anything about Utopia, you heard something that is a spoiler. Though it was kept a fairly unconfirmed secret for quite awhile … the cat is out of the bag after Saturday. Captain Jack is back from his purgatory in the dreadful Torchwood and is very much a good spike of adrenaline with his “yes sirs” and coat holding thing. Whatever, he’s good fun and has a great entrance.







And then there is The Professor or Professor Yana played by Sir Derek Jacobi.



Well, there is a reason they gave this guy a knighthood. He plays the befuddled Professor with such incredible skill and talent that you feel, what with the high production values, that this might be a major motion picture you are looking at instead of the legendary “cheap sets” Doctor Who.




What we discover … in quick succession is that he has a watch like the Doctor’s from “Human Nature” and that he doesn’t really recognize what it is or means. He was discovered with it as a naked child on the edge of the Silver Devastation (which is where the Face of Boe is from.) This all connects up as the Professor opens the watch and becomes The Master. The turn from befuddled friendly genius to sad old man to pure evil is just astonishing acting for 44 minutes. Everything from the previous episodes comes into play (the watch from the chameleon arch explains why the Doctor couldn’t sense another Time Lord and even his name, Yana, is an anagram for “You Are Not Alone”.) During the Master’s transformation (or “ascendance to his majesty”) the Doctor realizes who he is … even though he isn’t in the same room.





The Master is shot by his assistant as he enters (and steals) the Doctor’s TARDIS … and regenerates into John Simms (“Life on Mars”).



Simms has a moment of insane glory at the end, yelling to his old foe the Doctor from inside his stolen TARDIS, “Why don’t we have a nice chat where I tell you all my plans so you can work out a way to stop me. I think not!” (Very Austin Powers, but still … to the point.)







This is the first of a 3-part ending to the series. Next week we see the Master’s assume his new identity as the oft mentioned Harold Saxon, the new Prime Minister … in all his insane glory.

HOT FUZZ

8/10 – “I’m a slasher … of prices!”

Yes, this is a good film. Don’t read what the critics say because they never get comedy as a medium of its own. Simon Pegg and chronic co-conspirator Edgar Wright (see “Spaced” and “Shaun of the Dead”) have created yet another pyrotechnical display of average Joe style comedy that only they can do … well. It is a new take on the buddy movie, without actually doing much to damage the genre. Like Shaun, they clearly love the genre they are using and clearly would never wish to damage it. What they do instead, again like Shaun, is provide a cast of characters and situations around which insanity is allowed to fly.

Simon Pegg (see also Doctor Who and Black Books) plays Nicholas Angel, an extremely dedicated and over-achieving police officer in London's Metropolitan Police Service. He is so good that he makes everyone else on the service look bad. As a result his superiors send him to a place where his talents won’t be quite so embarrassing: the sleepy and seemingly crime-free village of Sandford, where there hasn't been a recorded murder for twenty years.

Once there, he is partnered with well-meaning but overeager and naive police constable Danny Butterman (Edgar Wright,) the son of local police chief Inspector Frank Butterman. Angel, tries to adjust to the quiet and uneventful pace of the village with only the minorist sort of minor crimes (such as an escaped swan.)






Suddenly, all Hell breaks loose with a series of “accidents” that are obviously crimes. Angel is met with constant rebuke from the “yocals” and, ultimately discovers that the entire village is responsible. And, as with the zombies, Pegg is once again surrounded by loads of people who want to kill him.




What Hot Fuzz does so well is to take the road less traveled. At some point, when we discover that the entire village is involved and even his new friend Danny, Angel’s life is spared by Danny and taken to the edge of town. What ensues is action mayhem when Angel decides he must return to the village to see that justice is done. Armed with almost every weapon conceivable, he rides into Sandford on horseback … ready for battle.



This was just a great, not too heavy movie for the end of the week. Quite honestly I laughed more than I thought I would and, hell, it even has a great soundtrack.

“Yarp.”

Hi, It’s Been a Long Time …

So, I’ve been busy. In fact, I will continue to be busy, so I’ll try and get this down in some form and post it all in one mighty lump. My spare time has been boxed and limited due to exhaustion from work and a new medication my body is adapting to (don’t worry, I’m not dying.) My viewing habits are largely dictated by the fact that I’m too lazy make up and then change my mind.

I promise I’ll catch up on my new Doctor Who series reviews soon …

So, first up

Deadwood – Season Three



I still can’t decide if I love this show or hate it. What I do know is that it makes me watch it, whatever the feeling I am having. HBO’s complicated DVD menus sure do aggravate me, but the presentation is always high quality. Deadwood season three is easily the best of the three (so far, anyway) with the Bullock and Swearengen becoming allies in the town’s war against George Hearst. In fact, the third season is easily the best season as it sees the characters come to terms with who in what they are, but not in any sentimental or cliché TV show way.

What everyone knows and talks about when they mention Deadwood is the amount of swearing. Yes, in fact, episode 1 of season 1 was like listening to someone swear who didn’t know how to do it … ie, very odd and off-putting. But, what isn’t mentioned, though is immediately apparent if you haven’t watched the show in a while, is that convoluted language (vacillating from the eloquent, well-read classical style to gutter talk) that makes for quite a strange and highly stylized show. When Al comments “and Leviathan smiles” the audience is expected to understand and know what a Leviathan is and the literary reference (in this case, Hobbes’ very famous philosophic masterpiece). Not the average show about violence and swearing.


Doctor Who “The New Beginnings” Box set
The Keeper of Traken, Logopolis, and Castrovalva



Once upon a time, this was the “new” Doctor Who. Reinvented in 1980 under the leadership John Nathan-Turner, it is hard to believe the this looked really fresh and new, but it did. To be totally fair to this DVD set, you must remember that this was the “new” era of video effects, music videos were literally just beginning, and the synthesizer hadn’t yet become an innocuous invention and was appreciated as a new sound. The video effects look very dated now, but back then Duran Duran hadn’t even gotten off the ground (the New Romantics wave had barely started.)

This trilogy of stories features probably the most jaw-dropping TV moment of my entire life – the regeneration of Tom Baker into Peter Davison. Tom Baker had been the only Doctor for many Americans since the show first began to pop up on PBS stations and, although I did know something about the past Doctors by the time I saw Logopolis, I was not prepared to actually deal with seeing the series go on without the character I loved.

In the US we don’t perceive the series as being scary or family oriented or even mass market. It was mainly for more mature/geeky kids and was on Saturday nights and therefore will always be seen as a niche or cult program by outsiders (or the “not we”.) Add to that the essential “cheapness” of having the program shot on videotape in an era when only game shows and soaps were on video, science fiction in the post Star Wars environment shunned it as a whole. In short, being a Doctor Who fan in the US has always had some “shame” attached to it. Even now, as I write this, the show is all but invisible on people’s radars in the US because … well, it’s on the sci-fi channel, which carries such a stigma that some refuse to watch it. In fact, a few stragglers found it on BBC America and even though I said “the 2nd series is coming on Sci-Fi channel …” they will obviously wait until it shows up on what they consider “respectable” channels.

Much of the charm of the series – back when it caught the cult TV public’s eye on a bored Saturday night -- was generated by the personality of the lead actor playing the part of the Doctor and Tom Baker’s seven year reign in the role made him unquestionably "the" Doctor for many people. When, at the end of “Logopolis” he fell (rather feebly) from the Pharos radio telescope and regenerated into Peter Davison (the Vet from “All Creatures Great and Small”!!!) many casual viewers just dropped it altogether.

Watching it then was just bizarre. Oh sure, on soaps they occasionally have actors replacing another in the same role (with a disturbing disembodied voice-over saying “the part of so-and-so will now be played by …”) but to actually have a story device to change out the lead actor in the series and allow them to be different is just revolutionary. It can also be quite startling to a 12 year old (or whatever I was back then.) At one moment you are watching a character’s death and then (fortunately “Castrovalva” was broadcast back-to-back with “Logopolis”) you have to get used to entirely different person as the same character. And, it wasn’t the same at all.

Now, over 25 years later, it’s kind of embarrassing to watch these studio-bound melodramas because, although nothing emerged unscathed from the 80s, Doctor Who was then being managed by a man who especially was conscious of trends and fads. Add to that the introduction of THREE companions (none of which could act) and you have a series of comedic tragedies. But, on the plus side both Tom Baker and (yes I do like him) Peter Davison are great in this changing of the guard, as it were. Fans of the new series will find it mostly cheap, while fans of the old series might also find the new direction to be a little too casual (question marks on the lapels, a stick of celery … wha …?) But, for a generation, this really was a startling moment … something new and inventive and weird. I suppose that’s why were are still watching … hoping for that moment again.

It was forty years ago today ...

Why is The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" still the most important album ever made? Sure, it fairly reeks of pot smoke and teeth-clenching LSD drops. It is the hallmark and to some extent the nadir of the hippie culture that ultimately failed completely to change anything. Hell, it isn't even the best Beatles' album, so what's the big deal?

Well, first, it changed rock music from pop to art. By pushing their profoundly dense and stupendous talents, skills, and imaginations, The Beatles decided to push the studio as far as it could go. They basically invented most every single recording technique that musicians and listeners take totally for granted. Sure, they weren't the first to do many things in this little arsenal of technical wizardry. As far back as the late 50s musicians were double tracking vocals, etc. But, the Beatles used the considerably wonderful studio at EMI as an instrument itself, creating something that could only be created on stage ... many years after it was recorded in the studio. (Paul will frequently recreate these sounds with "Wix," the keyboard wiz, on stage ... but that exists mainly as recordings).

It isn't the greatest concept album ever, either. It's actually not a concept album in almost everyway. As John said, "It worked because we said it worked." And, really that is how it should be remembered: The Beatles at the height of their popularity and power and creativity.

Track for track, this record doesn't really give you the impression of what it all means, apart from the twisted brilliance of "A Day in a Life" ... which still stands as one of the most amazing pieces of music of all time. From opening listesslessness, to Ringo's incredible drumming (Phil Collins said, "How do you fill a song like 'A Day in a Life'?"), to the mind blowing 4-layers (recorded 4 times on tape) of an orchestra just playing a rising cacophony of insanity.

The music is not only good, but actually sophisticated, even for the Beatles. No band today ... and I stand by this ... could have done what the Beatles did in 1964, i.e., stand on stage and sing in 3-part harmony with little amplifiers and no effects ... flash-forward 3 years and these proficient players and prolific song-writers wanted to make something more than a mere pop phenomenon. In fact, it's almost a pity that the hippie movement came to pass, because it ties the music to something which is fundamentally idiotic.

The many many times I've listened to this album has only given me more inspiration. I have read The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions: The Official Story of the Abbey Road Years 1962-1970 by Mark Lewisohn so many times that it has become my bible.



It recounts in tiny detail each thing put on tape and how, at times, The Beatles themselves made the technicians "invent" things to do what they had in their heads. For me, it was the roadmap for learning how to record music.

But, even if you don't care about when Paul dubbed a bass line on such and such track, or when the technicians had to link up several 4-track machines to get more sound out of the primitive equipment, all the listener needs to do ... is listen. Pick out Paul's bassline and you will realize that no one ever played bass like that. Pick out the harmonies and realize that this is more than just pop music. Listen to the imaginative, almost child-like lyrics and you will hear that this is much more than an ode to childhood or a hippie mantra. This is art.

And, like Bach or Beethoven, will live on for hundreds of years.