Trollheart

Like Christmas, it's coming....
Just to explain briefly, I work it this way normally: original series first (Babylon 5, Red Dwarf, Supernatural) then returning series (Love/Hate, Futurama etc) followed by new stuff. Now, new stuff is first introed then soon afterwards you get the first episode. As I've already introed a few series (Doctor Who, HHG2G etc) they have to be "screened", as it were, first. Then there are movie reviews and ... um, a few new things that are as yet still under wraps.

So I'll be doing an intro from Blake's 7 soon, but even after that I wouldn't plan to up any episodes for a little bit. Can't take on too much at once. I'm probably looking at a month or two down the line before I get to actual episodes. Don't forget, I've five other journals, not to mention the PRAC. But since I did mention it, don't let the newbs get their reviews in before you --- oh. Too late I see ....

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

There's no doubt that there's a wealth of great movies out there, from the forties right up to today –- classics, cult classics, blockbusters, sequels, prequels and other things ending in “quel”, everything from westerns to sci-fi and war movies to comedies --- but there are an equal amount of terrible movies, movies that should never have been made, movies that are so bad they're good and movies that are so bad they're bad. Movies that make you cringe, squirm and occasionally think about demanding your money back. These are the movies I will be presenting in this new section.

Now, before any knickers are twisted, let me remind you all as ever that this is my own opinion and my view. You may love a film I feature here and want to take me to task for slagging it off. If so, I have three words for you: get over it. I'm just poking fun and am not really debating the merits or failings of these movies. Well, I am, but all in jest. I realise every movie can't be a runaway success and that sometimes budget constraints will lead to the film being, shall we say, less realistic than it could have been? But of course some bad movies are worse than other bad movies, and some have the saving grace of having maybe a good plot or a star, while nothing else about the movie is worth considering. Some, of course, don't even have that. Some have a good idea that suffers from poor writing, poor acting, low-budget effects or poor production or direction. And some don't. In the world of crappy movies, some are naturally crappier than others.

Back when I were a lad (yes this again!) we had no movie channels, no downloadable content, no Netflix or Amazon and no Sky Movies much less video on demand. For a long time we didn't even have video recorders, and the only time you could hope to see a film outside of the cinema was at the weekend on TV, and it would likely be an old one. Occasionally one of the channels might run a series of movies based around a theme, such as sci-fi or horror, and then you'd get a few decent ones, along with some real turkeys. But when videos became a reality and video rental shops began to spring up, we all rushed to them and rented the movies we had either never seen, or hadn't seen for years. This of course led to some truly turdurific choices, many of which have been blotted from my poor young mind so that I don't even remember them. But I do know that more often than not, without the likes of the internet to guide us in our choices, it was a random effort that often failed to pay off.

The movies I'll be looking at here, old and new, will all be ones that have either impressed me with their blatant crappiness, made me laugh at how bad they are (but I still watched them), or ones I think could perhaps have been good if it wasn't for certain drawbacks. Such as editing, production, acting, plot, budget, music and so on. I won't be running total full reviews of them like the movies I usually feature, but will be focussing more on the way they try perhaps and fail to be good movies. Or don't try at all. Sometimes a movie is both at its crappiest and its best when it realises it is a turd and doesn't try to be anything else. Like they say, we're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. Some of us, though, are looking down at the human crap floating down towards the drain.



Title: Battle beyond the stars
Year: 1980
Writer: Anne Dyer
Producer: Ed Carlin/ Roger Corman
Genre: Science-fiction
Stars: Richard Thomas as Shad
Robert Vaughn as Gelt
George Peppard as Space Cowboy (um...)
John Saxon as Sador
Darlanne Fluegel as Nanelia

(And a lot of other people who surely now regret it...)

This movie, in case you haven't seen it, is basically a pastiche of two very popular (and far superior) movies: “The Magnificent Seven”, a famous western based on Japanese director Akiro Kurosawa's “Seven Samurai” and the blockbuster “Star Wars”. Although Lucas's space opera had set the world alight and rekindled a new interest in science-fiction movies, this was a double-edged sword, as everyone and his mother thought they could write and produce a sci-fi film. This led to a glut of truly terrible rip-offs such as “Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone”, “Warlords of Atlantis”, “Starcrash”, “Brother from another planet” and “Prisoners of the lost universe”. Even Disney tried to get in on the act, and foisted the godawful “The Black Hole” upon us. Yeah, everyone was at it. But some were better than others and even all of Disney's financial clout and all the resources of its mega-empire couldn't stop that movie from being a turkey. By contrast, that same year would see the result of a movie which would go on to become both a sci-fi and horror classic, and introduce us to a new breed of heroine in Ridley Scott's “Alien”, although in fairness it would also see the underwhelming start of the Star Trek movie franchise with the boring, dull-as-dishwater-and-bearing-little-resemblance-to-the-series “Star Trek: the Motion Picture.”

But once “Star Wars” had opened the floodgates and shown movie studios and execs that sci-fi was not just for kids, that it could play in major cinemas and, more importantly, smash box-office records, there was no stopping them. Which is the only real reason I can see for this movie ever having been released. To call it derivative is being extremely kind. It has a plot ripped right out of “Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven”, down to the casting of one of the actors from that movie --- in virtually the same role --- and the role of another being played by a different actor.

Unkindly, but appropriately and accurately referred to by me and my friends as “John Boy in space”, the movie does indeed star Richard Thomas, better known as squeaky-clean eldest lad John Boy Walton in squeaky-clean American family drama “The Waltons” --- he's never ever going to shake that connection, even if he does a hardcore adult drama (urgh! The image! The image! Get it out of my head!) --- he'll always be John Boy. The wafer-thin plot concerns the efforts of farmer Shad (John Boy I mean Thomas) to recruit a “magnificent seven” sorry “group of fighters who number seven and may or may not be magnificent” to help defend his planet which has come under attack by vicious Mexican bandits, sorry space pirates. The leader of the pirates, a man called Sador (could that name be any darker if they had called him Pure Evil?) possesses a weapon called the Stellar Converter whcih turns planets into stars. No, I don't mean it's a weaponised Simon Cowell! Not those type of stars! Real stars, like, you know, the sun. One can only assume this is not good news for anyone inhabiting the planet, and generally speaking a thing to be avoided at all costs.

Sador wants the planet for its resources and issues his ultimatum: submit to him and his army of space mutants (I'm serious!) or he will return in seven days. Yes, seven days. Exactly. Just enough time for the poor oppressed space farmers to run off and enlist some mercenary cowboys, I mean space heroes, to help them defeat the dread warlord. And of course there will be a rich reward for the saviours of the ... huh? Food you say. Food and shelter. Um. That's it? Who wouldn't jump at the chance?

I love the way the farmers, whose home planet is Akir and so they are all --- Akirans! --- are so meek and submissive that when the few crewing the only battered little weather satellite they have orbiting their planet encounter the space fleet they politely ask if the invaders wouldn't mind identifying themselves. Please? If it's not too much trouble? Annoyed by such unnecessary politeness, and probably (and probably correctly) assuming the crew are gay, Sador destroys their little weather station without a second thought and then goes to quite literally overshadow the lives of the Akirans as his huge ship moves in over the planet. As this happens, someone quite unnecessarily asks “What is it?” What the fuck do you think it is, idiot? It's a big-ass motherfucker of a starship, and you had better just start sucking Sador's co --- Hold on a moment. How did The Batlord get in here and start writing my copy?

He's right though: who could see such a sight and ask that question? It's pretty damn obvious what it is, and if it isn't then the smell coming from all those other farmers standing around beside you and gawping up at the sky like a hick on his first visit to a big city should alert you. There'll be no shortage of fertiliser for the crops this season! Assuming there still is a season.

Sador delivers his ultimatum. He pulls no punches, and speaks as if to children. And slow-witted children at that. “I have come with my forces to conquer you” he tells them. Well firstly there wouldn't be much point in his coming without his forces to conquer them, would there? Damn! I knew I forgot something! And if he had come with his forces, he's hardly likely to be delivering a consignment of toys to the Akiran orphanage, now is he? But just in case the hayseeds haven't got the message he spares a few of them the tedium of remaning in this movie any longer than they need to be and blows them away with lasers. Lucky them: there's another hour and a half of this drivel to go!

Note: we now learn that, despite or even because of his tough-guy image, Sador is actually gay, as he orders “Full thrust to Umateal!” His underlings go scurrying off to wake up Umateal and tell him he's wanted in Sador's bedchamber. Meanwhile, John Boy makes his entrance --- no, that was not a clever and well-thought-out sexual segue! --- and is immediately told in contempt “You are a boy”. He must be getting tired of these references by now. For some reason he is the “only one who can fly Zed's ship”. Or maybe he's the only one who's not too embarrassed to. Look at it! It's a flying pair of breasts! With some sort of penile extensions! The Batlord must love it!

Just a note on the budget here. They may have been able to afford James Horner for the soundtrack (probably told him it was the next Star Wars movie, or else took him into the future and showed him that he would be forced to write the score for “Titanic”, then lied they could save him from this fate if he wrote for them) but they had to steal effects and sounds from other films and series. As the lights come on in Nell, the boobship, the sound is that of the USS Enterprise firing photon torpedoes! Nerd alert! Nerd alert!

Now, a few observations before we get on with this thrilling plot. Firstly, Sador is a flithy stinking smegging stinking flithy liar. The “stellar convertor” cannot possibly work. I know this is a sci-fi movie but look at the first part of that abbreviated genre title. In general, science has to be observed in sf movies, and you cannot turn a planet into a star by any means at all, certainly not by hitting it with a massive laser beam. You can of course turn it into a cinder, which is what will happen to Akir if the dastardly tyrant has his way, but not a star. Not that I think the ex-inhabitants will be bringing this up as a point of order! Still, if you're going to be a megalomaniac, at least be an honest megalomaniac.

Secondly, John Boy's character just appears out of nowhere, and conveniently is the only one who can pilot the tittyship --- which has, of course, a female AI --- other than old Zed, its owner who is of course now too old to pilot --- probably have a double coronary if he even saw it now, in his condition and at his age! I suppose he's been womping swamp rats in his old T-15 back on Tattooine as well, has he? Talk about clumsy plot devices with absolutely no buildup. Actually, let's not. Let's get back to this riveting film. As in, whoever wrote it deserves to be riveted to a crossbeam and left there as a warning to other aspiring directors and screenwriters that you can't just rip off a classic movie --- two classic movies --- actually, almost three --- and call the script your own. Yes, I know they meant to rewrite "The Magnificent Seven", but they didn't do it very well, did they?

So where were we? Oh yeah. John Boy --- sorry Shad (You know what? Let's just call him John Boy, it's easier. And more fun) is on the way off his home planet for the first time ever he says. Eager to welcome him to outer space, the guys Sador left behind attack him but he gets away. When the leader wants to go after him his subordinate reminds him that they were told to watch the planet, and their master does not take kindly to his orders being disobeyed. “Remember Lobo?” he prompts. “He disobeyed orders, now Sador is wearing his left foot!” Quite right too: anyone who can write a song called “Me and you and a dog named Boo” has no right to both feet. Mind you, the B-side was terrific. Anyway, back to the firefight. Note that the ship, Nell, does everything for John Boy but push the fire button, yet he's not even prepared to do that. She locks on target, zooms in, frames the ship nicely and gives him a HUD (Head-Up Display, you dirty beggar!) but he can't push one simple button. “We'll tip our hand!” he complains. What? You mean they'll realise you're armed? “Can we outrun them?” he asks, revealing that, whatever Richard Thomas may say, you can't take the Walton out of him. Still a bloody peacenik. This is going to be some battle. Beyond, you know, the stars.

And there's another thing: the title is complete rubbish. How can you go beyond the stars? The stars are everywhere. The bloody universe is made up of them. There is no beyond the stars. Give me strength! How much longer? Crap! We're only fifteen minutes in! Better haul space-ass then or we'll be here all night. Anyway, preferring to keep both his feet the alien mutant in charge agrees that they head home and allow John Boy to continue on his way. Nell complains that she has been forced to “show my backside to those aliens!” Why is she bitching? She's showing everyone her tits! But I digress. So they arrive eventually at Heph – Hefas --- Huffast --- ah screw it! Vulcan station and announce “This is an emissary from the planet Akir.” No answer. No reason why they should answer. Akir is in the arsehole of nowhere; why would they care if an “emissary” (read, cocky kid who thinks he's Luke Skywalker and so isn't) from there has arrived? John Boy calls the professor's name. Again, nothing. Receiving no answer he does what any experienced pilot does, and waits for permisson to ... oh no, wait, he doesn't. He just goes in anyway.

Things get much sexier as he boards the station. He meets Nanelia, (seriously? Are you kidding me? Leia??) who is unsuccessfully trying to create a robot boyfriend for herself, but drops everything (not literally: this is a family movie) when she sees the striking young man stride confidently towards her. Well, after all, she works here with one old man and a bunch of androids. Beggars can't be choosers and any port in a storm, you know. Clearly fighting back the urge to ask “Aren't you himself from the Waltons?” she loses no time interrogating him, thinking he is an android. Well, she can't be blamed really can she? A robot would act better. When she realises he's human he asks her if she has never seen “an organic form” before, which has to go down as one of the worst chatup lines in a sci-fi movie ever.

Some obvious Star Wars comparisons: young buck who has never been offplanet before is sent to do battle with an evil empire. Well, sort of. On the way he meets a beautiful woman, but she does not turn out to be his sister. Boo. Nor a princess. Double boo. The not-princess tells John Boy Skywalker that her father is not as he was when Zed knew him, which kind of feeds into the whole Obi-Wan Kenobi thing. Oh, and of course the stellar convertor is just the weapon off the Death Star, which even now Darth Vader is looking for. After all, what good is a massive battlestation if it hasn't got its main weapon? What use are any of us without our main weapon? Batlord! I told you to get out of here! Okay, back we go.

John Boy meets the not-princess's father, the one he was sent to find, Professor Hephalump, or whatever, but when Nanelia said he wasn't the man he used to be she wasn't just whistling Dixie! In fact, he's gone right off the deep end (possibly due to having to be a member of the cast of this movie!) and far from helping poor old Shad, tries to matchmake him with his daughter, hoping the two will create a superrace of ... well, I'm not quite sure, but it may have to do with androids. Or maybe Mexicans. Or Mexican androids. Anyway, whatever the case ol' John Boy is not digging the scene, even if Nanelia is hotter than the surface of the sun. He's got a planet to save!

One of the many funny asides comes when the cracked professor tells his robot butler, Saunders, “Prepare the conjugal suite”. The robot goes to do so, but the prof calls him back to say that his daughter will convince the young man to stay. The robot smiles and moves off but Prof Loon calls him back again, to advise him that the defence of Akir is hopeless. About as hopeless as getting away to prepare the fucking conjugal suite like you asked me to, surely thinks Saunders, and makes another valiant attempt to get away, but the prof again calls him back, telling him there will be children here again soon! Great, thinks Saunders: then they can keep you busy while I get on with the tasks I was bloody manufactured to carry out!

John Boy vainly tries to convince Nanelia to let him go, but the not-princess is more interested the more he talks. She says she has never heard of wind, and surely he experiences a desire to let one rip, but thinks better of it. He does however convince her to help him escape, though rather unkindly calls her “Dummy” when she refuses to come with him, preferring to stay with her insane father. Or is he talking to the robot? Hard to say really. After he's gone Nanelia decides maybe that rather than stay on this station surrounded by emotionless androids, she'd rather go after one emotionless android sorry human sorry Akiran, and anyway she'd like to find out what this thing she's heard about is, called sex. But that ship has literally sailed by the time she makes up her mind so she has to take her own little craft.

“No weapons at all?” sneers John Boy condescendingly. Or maybe he's referring to the fact that she rather selfishly abandoned her bipolar father without carrying an armful of laser disruptors, or phaser rifles or whatever. Never mind that she has left her life behind and taken her first step into the big outside world stroke galaxy: why didn't she tool up first? Bloody women! She does mollify him though by saying “I've brought an analyser”, so he at least knows he'll be on for some kinky sex later!

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Nell seems to like it too: “I'd like to exchange data with that thing!” she purrs. Sure you would, you old space whore. Nanelia seems incensed to hear a female voice on John Boy's ship, which, considering she hardly knows him and has not yet admitted to any feelings for him is pretty unbalanced really. Meh, typical female territorialism I guess. They set a rendezvous where they will, you know, rendezvous later. Meanwhile old Sador is not too happy with the “fuck you” message he gets back from the other species he has been threatening (who says space tyrants can't multitask?) and does his best dark scowl. Looks like the folks over at Umateal are off his Christmas card list. Off everyone's Christmas card list, if he has his way.

John Boy reflects that Nanelia “is an interesting form”. Yeah, she has nice tits JB: we noticed. But before you can say “autopilot mode, Nell, I have to use the restroom” they're under attack, with very familiar music (original Battlestar Galactica? Not sure but oh James!) and it sounds like they're being attacked by the creatures from Robotron: “Intruder alert! Stop the humanoid!” Those sound effects are right out of some late seventies videogame for sure! Actually, let's be honest here: they're not being attacked, it's another ship that's under fire, though the pilot, a relaxed and laconic George Peppard, doesn't seem too bothered. He loves it when a plan comes together, but if it doesn't, well to hell with it. He's the Space Cowboy, and this is not his first rodeo. That is the first and last western reference I will make to him.

Disclaimer: The above statement is a lie.

Leaning back in his chair with his hat tilted over his eyes, Han Solo, sorry Space Cowboy puts out a distress call. “Can we help him?” John Boy asks, to which Nell replies caustically “Not without a fight!” Well what did she think he was going to do? Ask the aliens nicely to stop firing? Invite them to a summit where they would try to open a dialogue and settle their differences peacefully? Play some sitar music? Eager to try to put his pacifistic John Boy Walton image behind him (lots of luck with that, guy!) the intrepid Akiran piles into the fight and the alien ship, either turned on or surprised to be attacked by a pair of flying boobs, is taken unawares.

Mind you, you can take the Richard Thomas out of the Waltons but you can't take the Waltons out of Richard Thomas. I know I said something similar earlier. I'm getting bored here: we're only half an hour into a film that still has twice that amount to run! Anyway, he baulks at the idea of attacking his unknown target from behind, and as he squeals “Not from behind, Nell! Not from behind!” if Nanelia can pick up his transmission she'll be rolling her eyes and jettisoning that analyser out into space about now. Nell however takes charge: she doesn't care about hitting from behind and truth to tell has probably taken it up the ass more times than you or I have had hot dinners, so now despite John Boy's outrage that she fired without him they're in the middle of a dogfight.

The Robotron ships, seeing a new player enter, peel off and attack him. They are no match for Nell's tit-lasers though and they're soon toast. Nell tells John Boy “You done fine kid”, which proves that though she may be an artificial intelligence her creator did not apparently see fit to install a grammar chip in her system. Or a respect module, come to think about it. Space Cowboy is happy to be rescued, though to be honest he looked not too worried about dying anyway: looked like as far as he was concerned, either way was good. He is however grateful to his rescuer and offers to show him his collection of old western movies, but realising that this might give the origin of the plot for this movie away John Boy quickly steers the conversation towards the more important idea of recruiting help for his poor defenceless --- and piss poor --- planet.

George ain't too thrilled with the idea; he knows Sador and says they'd have a snowball's chance in Hell of beating him (what if it was a really BIG, FROZEN snowball and the heating was on the fritz that day...? No?), while to underline his point they watch the Umateals pay the price, both for having defied the warlord and having such a stupid name, as their planet is turned into a cinder. Oh yeah, jsut noticed: the dark music used whenever Sador appears is the same used for the approach of V'ger in “Star Trek: the (slow) Motion Picture”! James you devil! Did you write that one too? Oh no you didn't you little tinker! Jerry Goldsmith will not be happy: he's strapping on his Doc Martens as we speak!

John Boy looks surprised to see the stellar converter in action. What? Did he think Sador was bluffing? Oh yeah: evil megalomaniacal overlords always bluff, don't they? Mind you, the effect, such as it is, for the s/c is the worst I've ever seen. A small orange spot appears on the planet's surface, then it's all Photoshopped to total white, and just kind of ... rolls away. Shee! Give me the Death Star every time! Alderaan: now there was a planet that knew how to explode! Always one to see the bright side apparently, Space Cowboy offers John Boy his cargo of weapons, which he just happened to be intending to deliver but now that the delivery point has turned into a point of dust --- and more to the point, there's nobody left to sign for them, for what haulier leaves goods without getting a signature? --- he has no use for them. John Boy is overjoyed, and since the weapons are already paid for there's no fee. Sweet.

The fact that uncounted millions have just lost their lives doesn't seem to bother either of the space adventurers, and one assumes Nell is too busy trying to give Space Cowboy's ship a blowjob to care. Ol' George, having agreed to help train the farmers to use their shiny new guns, invites John Boy to watch “Custer's last stand”, which is appropriate as not only will it be the planet's last stand but is likely to end the same way. Not-princess Nanelia is meanwhile heading towards the rendezvous, probably already bitching about why John Boy hasn't called her and wondering if her bum looks big in the tight leather pants she's wearing (no chance for a girl to change into anything slinkier when escaping from a space station crewed by androids and run by a nutcase!) when she's suddenly attacked by a malevolent coloured cloud, ripped right out of the Star Trek episode “Metamorphosis”, which for some unknown reason seems to give her an orgasm.

Maybe it's a knob-ula? Sorry. She then gets sucked into the maw of a huge ship in a very lesbian fashion and the next time we see her she's suspended from a bar. Yum! Bondage ahoy methinks!

Yeah but this is a family film isn't it? Boo. Get the whip! But instead she's met by aliens, who tell her they saved her from the “zime”, (come on: that's jsut a shortened form of enzyme!) the nasty coloured cloud that was trying to eat her. Meh, would have been her first (and maybe last) sexual experience. The head alien, Cayman, introduces the Kelvin. Not only are these creatures so closely based on the aliens from the Star Trek pilot “The cage”, but the writer couldn't be bothered thinking up a name for them and just took one from a temperature scale. Lucky she didn't call them the Fahrenheits I guess! The aliens tell her they're slavers and will sell her but unfortunately (for them) when she mentions Sador's name they decide to join her in the fight to protect Akir. Guess they don't like the warlord so much.

Note: Much as it pains me, I must admit that the leader of the aliens, with his vaguely fishlike face and reptilian scales, looks like he was partially at least the model for Babylon 5's Drazi. Assuming any of the show's effects guys ever watched this movie. Which I hope they never did; I don't like to think of people suffering. Other than my father. Back to the film. John Boy encounters a flying lampshade and finds himself apparently a guest at a reunion of the five Doctors, who for some unaccountable reason are all wearing white robes and masks, standing around the TARDIS control trying to make it work.

For a man who has never used a weapon John Boy is quick to draw his, blissfully unaware that he has now become a plastic figurine.

He is rather surprised though to find that the five white Doctors --- who tell them they are called Nestor, and appear to be clones, or some sort of gestalt entity (thank you Red Dwarf!) --- all want to get in on the action and will help in the defence of his homeworld. This perhaps provides an argument to the idea that they are an intelligent lifeform.

Those jolly pair Tembo and Kalo meanwhile, left behind to guard the planet (as Tembo says “Where is it gonna go?”) gatecrash a wedding on Akir and abduct the bride. John Boy heads to Mos Eisley, sorry Nascato, where the best, or worst, mercenaries can be found. Living up to its reputation, teh city has a very handy “dial-a-drug” vending machine, which I'm sure some of our members here would be very happy trying out! But that's the only way Nascosto lives up to its rep, as there is only one mercenary left. When John Boy gasps “You kill for pay?” you have to wonder if he quite understands the concept of a mercenary? It's Robert Vaughn, playing almost exactly the same character as he did in “The Magnificent Seven”, just here he's called Gelt instead of Lee.

Somehow, although he can't afford to pay the famous killer, John Boy recruits Gelt who says “Your offer seems very attractive to me”. How? All he can offer is food and shelter. And quite probably a quick death if you're lucky. Your future holds nothing but ashes and cinders. How can that be attractive? But hey, we're not dealing with logic here. This is a guy who tells John Boy that he eats serpents seven days a week. Why not? He's probably ready to die. So off they go, and they are now two. Three, if you include John Boy. Which I would not. At least the writer resisted using the “How many have you got?” idea, which would really have sealed this as the worst ripoff of “Seven Samurai” since, well, since “The Magnificent Seven” I guess. And speaking of western cliches, which we weren't, a tiny ship approaches John Boy's and Nell says that the pilot must not think the galaxy's big enough for the both of them. Oh dear. Turns out it's some big-titted mercenary from a race called the Valkir (really? The Valkir? A warrior woman in, no less, a horned helmet, and that's the best they could do? Why not go the whole hog and call her Helga or Brunhilde? Jesus Christ on the subway at night!) who was testing him and wants to join his army. God help her.

John Boy however is not impressed. She has no weapons and the ship is small, even if it is, as she claims, the fastest in the universe. Which is of course an impossible claim to make, for who has travelled the universe from one end to the other? The galaxy is a big enough boast, but the universe? Seems this woman has some serious issues. But no amount of pouting will get John Boy to change his mind, and of all people/things, Nell accuses him of being harsh! Nell, the AI with a tongue other AIs fear the lash from! Nell, who is easily the most sarcastic, overbearing, snide and self-satisfied computer this side of Orac! She's accusing him of being harsh!

John Boy gathers his forces at the rendezvous point where they all meet each other for milk and cookies. Gelt says he doesn't like anyone behind him, so no doubt Nanelia is glad she ditched that analyser!

Pause for a short discussion on the dialogue in this film: it's so stilted. Discovering Space Cowboy is smoking (when did you ever see Peppard without a cigarette or a cigar, now really? They're as much a part of him as a lollipop is to Kojak! Oh go look it up, young grasshopper! That too!) he asks incredulously “Is that real smoke you're putting in your lungs?” George says it is and he knows it's bad for him, whereupon John Boy opines “Well I don't think you should do it.” No shit Sherlock! As if a man who is far older and more experienced than you is going to give a crap for the opinion of an uptight, morally rigid farmer from Nowheresville, Akir!

Cayman says “I want Sador's head” to which John Boy replies “You're welcome to it.” Like he was going to stop the alien. Not to mention that when John Boy is taken aboard the Nestor ship he doesn't respond with "Who are you?" or "You don't know what you're messing with here!" or even "Take me to your leader!" Nah, he goes all forties gangster, asking "Hey! What's the big idea?" Smooth, John Boy, smooth. Remember, I warned you not to mention it...

These are just a a few of the incredible examples of Ms. Dyer's razor-sharp writing prowess and command of the English language. God help us.

The fleet heads to Akir, and Gelt takes out Tembo and Kalo's little fighter. They agree their only chance is to knock out Sador's stellar converter. In order to fire the weapon the warlord has to lower his forcefield, at which point he's vulnerable for a precious second or so. Original. Here's a thought: with an experienced mercenary, a gestalt alien which seems to have lived forever and a space cowboy who at least knows how to operate weapons, they're given their strategical briefing by Nanelia! Yeah, the girl who up until now has never seen another human being other than her father and whose job has been to repair robots! Where has she suddenly acquired all this tactical knowledge? How come she's the general, preparing her troops?

The annoying Valkyrie with the big tits has invited herself along and John Boy doesn't seem to be about to drive her off. She assures Nanelia that the not-princess will learn all about sex if she sticks with her. Are we on for some girl-on-girl here? Again, let me remind you: family movie. Don't even think about it. Nice cups though! Nanelia asks John Boy to show her the ropes: can we expect bondage? Then she wants him to show her some more of this Earth thing called kissing. Yeah I know it's Akir not Earth; you get the idea. An awkward moment when she advises him “Your torque bar has slipped its groove. You're going to need a new one.” Wow! What a tigress! Another dig at “The Magnificent Seven” as Space Cowboy whiles away the time as they wait with a tune on the harmonica. Could this be more cliched? Gelt responds to the question “Are you a bad man” by explaining that “If you think differently you get called bad.” He leaves out the part where if you kill people for money you also get called bad.

Rather inappropriately I feel, one of the Akirans tries to get a rave going, then we realise it's actually a siren warning of the arrival of Sador, who is surprised and worried to find that poor old Tembo and Kalo have suffered the kind of fate he has planned for John Boy's people. Cowboy betrays his fear and pisses himself. Either that or he's pouring whiskey out of a flask attached to his groin.

Note: I really hope that's whiskey!

The video game, sorry space battle begins. The Nestor seem blissfully unaware that their ship is lit up like a huge luminous lightbulb: might as well have a big target painted on it! Even though the space valkyrie's ship is supposedly the fastest in the universe, she finds that the enormous drag created by her boobs is holding it back. Meanwhile the ground invasion begins and Space Cowboy leads the defence: the sound those hand lasers are making is definitely out of the original Galactica! Gelt is hit and it looks like his ship explodes as he veers away from the battle, while the invasion leader for some odd reason seems to be utilising the services of a well-loved videogame character as he calls out “Sonic! Check all systems!” It seems they have the little blue hedgehog manning an armoured vehicle, as they roll up the sonic tank. Things are not looking good for the defenders.

Step forward the good ol' Kelvin, who --- wait for it --- have no ears. They also seem to be able to destroy the sonic tank just by standing in front of it and spreading their arms. Um. This drains their energy though, and they may have made the ultimate sacrifice. Kind of like anyone who's watching this movie. After they've pushed the invaders back, for now, the valkyrie tells John Boy “You've never seen a valkyrie go down”, which surely must give him ideas? Gelt pops his clogs, bringing his role full circle with that of Lee in the western. John Boy orders that a meal be prepared and buried with him. That was the deal, he says: a meal and a place to hide. Well, it was food and shelter but come on: how literal and pedantic are you being here, man? What's the point of that? Couldn't your people be better employed in the defence of your planet than cooking a meal for a dead man?

The Nestor have arranged to have one of their kind captured by Sador. “What one sees,” they tell John Boy, “we all see.” But have they considered perhaps that what one feels they all feel? As the “facet” of their personality/commune/whatever the fuck it is these guys are faces torture at the hands of the tyrant he is asked the size and strength of the Akirans' fleet. “That would give you an unfair advantage”, he says matter-of-factly. Duh! When Sador informs him that he has someone expert at inflicting pain, the Nestor replies “It is good to have skills”. Well it doesn't matter anyway as once his arm is sliced off he dies, and for some reason Sador --- who it appears only had one arm --- has it grafted onto him. Bad move!

The arm is part of the Nestor, even if that one is dead, and the other Nestor can control it. Oh come on! I know it's silly and implausible but is it any moreso than the rest of this film? So they try to get him to cut his throat (how do they know he has a sword in his belt? Guess the other one --- the one now dead --- saw it. Maybe) but his torturer manages to wrest the weapon from his grasp and then cut off the offending arm. Hey, if thine arm offends thee!

The mood of the film now takes a serious downer. “We have failed”, moans the Nestor. “We're finished!” snaps John Boy. Only Big Tits is still ready to fight. “The Valkyrie never give up!” she declares. “Never!” Whether the white guys got a boner (do the Nestor get boners? And if they do, do they all get it at the same time? Enquiring and dirty minds need to know!) or what, they suddenly cheer up and head to their ship to renew the fight. John Boy is still moody though, but when Nanelia says “I want to go up there with you” he must surely think “I want to go up there!” She tells him sweetly “I could help you up there” and John Boy wonders has she a jar of Vaseline with her? Either way, the two lovers set off in Nell, and it's borrowed sound effects and crappy footage time again as someone pops twenty cents in the machine and the game begins again.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Somebody finally manages to hit the Nestor ship. How the fuck did they miss it, glowing like a bloody white light in space? It's a flying target! And serve them right too: that control column is totally ripped off from the TARDIS. The only thing it doesn't do is move up and down. Sador tells his men to ready the stellar converter and fix it on the planet Akir. Somehow this seems extraneous information: where did he think his men thought he was going to target it? Did Governor Tarkin say “Target Alderaan?” No he did not. The Death Star was orbiting it. His men knew what the target was. Further confirmation or instruction would have been pointless, and would have left him less time to chuckle in a cold evil way as Princess Organa's homeworld was destroyed. Some tyrants know how to do things properly!

Valkyrie girl's beasts implants finally give up the ghost and her ship blows up (very appropriately I have to say), while George goes back to his with his best friend, Johnny Walker and takes off to join the fight. He doesn't help much though, and goes out with a song on the harmonica. Cayman engages in some pointless insult trading with Sador, reminding him that the warlord was responsible for wiping all his people out and the alien has a score to settle. Unfortunately this seems to involve trying to ram Sador's ship as Cayman sets a collision course. Not to anyone's surprise, he is blown out of the stars.

And then there was one.

John Boy's ship has sustained damage in the fight and Nell's memory banks have been knocked out. She can't remember anything. Lucky her. The ship gets taken up into Sador's tractor beam and John Boy uses the oldest trick in the book, the old self-destruct-while-trapped-in-a-tractor-beam, and it's bye bye Sador. John Boy and his squeeze escape, but there's no escape from this movie.

As they say on Futurama: “You watched it: you can't un-watch it!”

Notes on the ending

Almost everything about this movie is pathetic and derivative, but the ending needs to be examined for extreme crappiness. First of all, a ship that's crippled gets drawn into the tractor beam of the warlord's ship. Why? He said he wanted to take them alive. Again, why? He hasn't given any clue up to now that he even knows who these people are, much less cares. Why does he now want to take these two alive? Is it that he knows they're the ones who created the alliance that defeated him? Oh sorry: they didn't defeat him. They were all blown out of the stars. For all the use they were, John Boy might as well have stayed at home.

So having made the fatal villain's error of dropping his shields to pull the little ship aboard, he doesn't think that maybe it's a trap? That once caught, if this ship self-destructs he won't be able to get away from the blast? Really? Is he that thick? Not to mention his final scene: Governor Tarkin didn't break down like a spoiled little boy and stamp his foot, saying “I'm going to live forever! I want to live forever!” Well, in fairness Tarkin never saw the end coming, as he balanced his chin on his hand and waited for the rebels to be destroyed. Vader had the good taste to go down fighting, spinning out of control yes, but with a “fuck you I'll be back you bitches!” fist of defiance. Defiance too was in Khan's eyes as he met his end in “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” and even Rimmer, right at the end, declared “Better dead than smeg!” What an end for the galaxy's most brutal tyrant: whimpering like a child as he realised the end had come.

And the final speech, about everyone who died being part of Akir, stuck in my throat. Existential crap. I think on balance John Boy's allies would all rather have survived to taste the victory than end up part of some imagined shared consciousness of a backwards farming planet they hadn't even heard of seven, um, cycles ago. And wasn't this in essence a massive defeat? John Boy headed off to raise an army, and for all the good they did he may as well not have bothered. One of his allies insisted on flying about in a mobile target, and was deservedly destroyed. The big bad mercenary hardly got a shot off before he was killed and as for Space Cowboy? Well if you want a man who can play a harmonica and drink hard liquor, he's your guy. And he did help organise the ground defence of the planet. But once he got spaceborne he basically flew right into the atmosphere, drunk and playing that damn harmonica to the end.

Cayman fared little better. His great plan to take revenge on the annihilator of his people was to, um, ram a far bigger and better-armed ship shouting his battlecry. He, too, was splashed across the stars. Not too much in the way of tactical thinking, I have to say, and all of this despite General Nanelia's complicated battleplan down on the planet. What happened to that? I suppose you could say they lured Sador in by, um, purposely being blown to shit so that they had to be taken into the tractor beam, thereby forcing the megalomaniac to lower his shields, but how did they know he was going to do that? He could as easily have blasted them out of the sky. No, that was just dumb luck.

And of course, following the plot of “The Magnificent Seven” almost to a fault, everyone dies at the end save the two main characters, and the Mexicans, sorry, Akirans are saved, in the end, by one of their own. Luke Skywalker, eat your heart out. Or rather, don't.

I realise I have probably written a lot more on this bad movie than I have on some of my favourites --- or possibly not; I write a lot, as you know --- and it was not really my intention but once I got into it I couldn't stop picking out the hilarious points and the awful dialogue, and though it never quite became “so bad it was good”, it was clearly enjoyable, if only because I got to slag it off so much. The real mystery is why a director of the stature of Roger Corman would be involved in a low-budget ripoff like this? I guess some mysteries will never be solved.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Note: Before I begin, and in case you didn’t read the intro, there will be no Classic Who here. I’m beginning from where the show rises from the dead, so to speak. After twenty-five years in the wilderness the show was rebooted, though generally speaking still linked to and a continuation of the original series. As there is such a gap between the two eras though, I’ve chosen to go with “New Who”, since although I did watch Classic Who I was very young and remember little of it (see http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...who-thing.html for explorations of the classic era, and more) and only really came “back” to the show when it returned in 2005.

So although this should probably technically be labelled 27.1, I’m going with the consensus that sees this as a new series, and calls this season one.

1.1 “Rose”

An outer space shot zooms in on the planet Earth and from there down to Britain and into the streets of London. Scene changes to a digital alarm clock chirping 07:30 and a blonde girl awakes in a (very pink) bedroom, jumps out of bed, kisses her mother goodbye and heads off to work. We see her at work in a department store, later taking lunch with a guy we assume to be her boyfriend, then back to work. Everything moves, as you might expect, at something of a frenetic pace, but eventually it’s quitting time. As she goes to leave though she is reminded she has to carry out an errand, and while in the basement she hears a noise and goes to investigate. We learn at this point that her name is Rose.

It’s lonely and spooky down there in the basement, with only the mannequins for company, and she begins to get a little edgy, especially when she can’t find the guy she was supposed to be seeing. As in most instances when things like this happen, shadows start to look sinister and the whole place takes on a dark, creepy feeling, as if something is just waiting to jump at her from around the next corner. Of course such feelings are natural when you’re alone in the dark, but usually they’re just the product of fear and an overactive imagination. This, however, is Doctor Who, and despite what we have been told by our parents as children, down the years and decades we have learned from the good Doctor in his many guises that horrible things do lurk underneath the bed, in the locked cupboard, and that horror and danger do in fact wait for us in the dark.

As if to confirm that it is not just Rose’s imagination running wild, we see one of the dummy’s heads turn in her direction. She does not see it, though she hears the sound and the vaguely jumpy feeling that has settled over her since she came down here turns to the cold sweat of fear. This fear is heightened to fever pitch when, beyond all reason and in direct disobedience of all logic, a mannequin lurches blindly towards her! Still trying to convince herself that someone is having a laugh at her expense --- a joke in very bad taste --- she backs away from the advancing dummy, but others are following it, and more are behind her. She realises with cold dread that she is being surrounded.

Suddenly, a man looms out of the shadows, leans forward and grabs her arm, grunting one word: “Run!” She takes his arm and obeys, following him as they leg it away from the creepy store dummies. The dummies give chase but Rose and her mysterious rescuer make it to the lift before they can catch them. One of the mannequins forces its arm through the gap but the man snaps it off, throwing it to Rose as the doors close. “Plastic!” he remarks. She now not unreasonably assumes he is the one responsible, somehow, for the animated dummies, since he seems not only to know so much about them but not exactly be afraid of them either.

The man tells her he is The Doctor --- he gives no other name --- and that he will look after things now. She can go home. He seems quite dismissive of her, obviously reasoning that she just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that if she remained here she would only be in the way. As she runs off she looks back as the store explodes into the night, sending orange and yellow plumes reaching up into the black sky, and shaking the ground. Back home her mother worries that she could have been hurt, while Mickey, who we see now is indeed her boyfriend, fusses over her. Another day begins and Rose realises she does not have to get up as early as she used to: she has no job now.

However she is both surprised and a little annoyed to see the man who introduced himself as The Doctor outside her front door. He for his part also looks surprised, asking her what she is doing there? She tells him she lives there and he shrugs. He goes to leave but she is not having that: he is, after all, responsible for the destruction of the department store and her current unemployed state. As she makes the tea the Doctor investigates an odd sound, which turns out to be the plastic arm she brought home. Wasn’t Mickey supposed to have thrown that away when he left? Anyway the arm possesses its own rudimentary intelligence and attacks him. Rose thinks that he’s just messing about until he manages to throw the arm off and it promptly attacks her, like an evil version of Emu. He manages to deactivate it and leaves, but the girl wants answers and follows him.

She seems worried that he appears to be taking all this on by himself, and asks him to explain what has been going on. But he tells her to forget him, and then literally disappears. She turns her back and he is gone. With a rising feeling that something momentous has just happened, or could have happened, she goes to see Mickey and searches on his computer until she comes across a post with a picture of the man she has just left, and the message “Have you seen this man? Contact Clive.” She goes to meet him, and finds this Clive is something of a conspiracy theory nut, but he has been tracking the appearances of the man known as The Doctor through news and history.

Outside, as he waits for his girlfriend, Mickey is suddenly attacked by a wheelie bin. I’m serious! It starts moving slowly towards him, then stops. He gets out of the car, approaches the bin, warily opens the lid and finds … nothing! It’s completely empty inside. But as he goes to leave he finds he is stuck to the bin. The plastic seems to stretch and elongate, like sticky toffee or tar, and he can’t let go. Moreover, the bin is pulling him back towards itself until … he’s sucked inside and the lid closes. Yes, Mickey has been eaten by a wheelie bin!

When Rose gets back to the car though her boyfriend is at the wheel. She doesn’t notice that he looks weird: shiny, more, well --- plastic. And he smiles like a simpleton. When she suggests pizza he grins and rolls the word around on his tongue, as if hearing it for the first time. “Peet-za!” He also seems suddenly unsure of how to drive. At the restaurant he seems more interested in the Doctor than in Rose’s problems, but when the strange man appears in person the “plastic Mickey” (lucky he wasn’t metal, eh?) leaps into action, shaping his hands into weapons, Terminator 2-style. As they escape, they find the gate out of the yard locked but the Doctor doesn’t seem concerned. He just strolls into a blue police box, which as it happens is his time capsule, the TARDIS. Urban can tell you all about that if you want, just check http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...who-thing.html, but for Rose it’s a reaction the Doctor has seen many times down the centuries.

You see, in case you don’t know, the TARDIS is huge. Much much much by a factor of about a million bigger inside than out, and this always throws humans. It’s not surprising: you walk into something that’s basically the size of an old payphone kiosk you don’t expect to see room for a small city inside! But that’s what the TARDIS is: it bends time and space so that its dimensions inside bear absolutely no relationship to the outside. The Doctor uses the head of the plastic Mickey to track the signal, to find out who or what is controlling the plastic monsters. But the head melts and he only gets a partial fix.

He tells Rose that the entity that is controlling the plastic, an alien consciousness, feeds on things like oil, smoke, toxins. It needs teh Earth as , well, food basically and so will attempt to bring every piece of plastic on the planet to life. Why? I'm not entirely sure to be honest, just go with it. He has a way to stop it (Antiplastic, would you believe?) but he is stumped as to where the transmitter, which the alien needs to broadcast its signal, could be located but it should be close. When Rose figures out that the place they’re looking for is the London Eye (to the amazement of the Doctor) they descend into the sewer beneath it, in search of their adversary. Just like that, the one has become two, and the Doctor now has a companion, though not yet with a capital C. Call her an ally perhaps, a partner, a helper. But he is no longer, for the moment at least, alone.

Beneath the city they find the Nestene Consciousness”, as the Doctor calls it: a huge, bubbling, plastic alien in a vat, like lava. Rose wants him to kill it but he wants to talk to it, and approaches. Rose is overjoyed to find Mickey is still alive, though furious with the Doctor for not advising her that it was not hopeless. The Doctor knew the boy might have been kept as a “master copy”, but failed to pass on that information to his companion. After trying to get the consciousness to bugger off, unsuccessfully, the Doctor finds himself grabbed by mannequins and the antiplastic is taken from him. Seeing this as an aggressive act, the consciousness then seems to point out that it recognises the TARDIS, that it was at the war in which its planet was destroyed and it seems to blame the Doctor for this. He admits he was there but denies being responsible, but the consciousness is not listening, and he is dragged closer to the vat.

Seeing the TARDIS also spooks the alien, who activates the signal to animate every piece of plastic in the world. Rose tries to call her mother to warn her, but Jackie is already on her way into a shopping centre as the signal goes out. Shop dummies begin to come alive and go berserk, although for some reason they are now armed? Poor Clive is shot down as he realises too late that everything he has read about the Doctor’s adventures has been true. Panic ensues as shop dummies run rampant, and Jackie is menaced by three dummy brides in the street. Meanwhile, Rose refuses to leave the Doctor to his fate, despite the urging of the terror-stricken Mickey. Grabbing a chain she Indiana-Joneses across the pit, kicking out at the dummy holding the Doctor and the other one, which loses its grip on the antiplastic, dropping it right into the face of the alien consciousness.

With the signal disrupted the dummies begin to flail about, seeking instructions and directions, and Rose, the Doctor and Mickey leg it in the TARDIS just before the whole thing goes up. The Doctor offers Rose the chance of a lifetime, to come with him and explore all of time and space, but though tempted she says she has to find her mother, and Mickey is acting like a child, his mind shattered by the things he has seen. He clings to her like a limpet and she can’t leave him. Disappointed, the Doctor departs. A moment later though he returns, grinning. “Did I mention it travels in time?” he says, and Rose, seeing a chance she had surely thought slipped through her hands, a chance that only comes once in a million lifetimes, grabs it with both hands and runs towards the TARDIS.

The beginning of a beautiful, and cult partnership.

QUOTES
Rose: “So what are they? Students?”
The Doctor: “Why would they be students?”
Rose: “Because, well, to get that many people to dress up and act silly … they’ve got to be students.”
The Doctor: “That makes sense. Well done.”

(The first indication that the Doctor is impressed with the young girl. Even fleeing for what could very well be her life --- or at worst, a bad joke ---she still has the clarity of thought to be able to make a logical assessment of the situation and come to a general idea of what might be happening. She hasn’t panicked, screamed, cried or said “This isn’t happening!” She’s trying to work it out logically. Clear thought and a certain amount of fearlessness: two very important qualities in any Companion.)

Jackie: “I’ve got Debbie on the phone. She knows a man at the Mirror. Five hundred quid for an interview.”
Rose: “Oh great! Give it here!” (Slams down phone).

(This is a great little scene, and tells us that Rose is not the kind of gold-digging, publicity-hungry teenager who will sell her secrets for the price of a weekend in Magaluth. She is not interested in talking to any reporters, making money or drawing attention to herself. Another quality that will be needed if she is to make it as a Companion.)

Jackie (blushing): “I’m in my dressing gown.”
The Doctor: “Yes you are.”
Jackie: “There’s a strange man in my bedroom.”
The Doctor: “Yes, there is.”
Jackie: “Well … anything could happen.”
The Doctor: “No.”

The Doctor (to himself, looking at a glitzy trash celeb mag): “That won’t last: he’s gay and she’s an alien!”

The Doctor (looking in the mirror): “Ah, could have been worse. But look at the ears!”

(This is the Doctor’s ninth incarnation, and obviously the first time he has seen his new face in a mirror, although one would have assumed the TARDIS would have one. Every time he regenerates, this is a ritual the Doctor goes through: always interesting to see what he’ll look like this time around. It’s also a sly aside to the fans, as the show is at this point returning for the first time in twenty years or so, and in a sort of breaking of the fourth wall Eccleston is saying to the fans of Pertwee, Baker, Davison et al you could have done worse than me.)

The Doctor: “There you are, I’ve disarmed it. See? ‘armless!”

(This is probably the most obvious joke anyone could make about this situation. That and “let me give you a hand”...)

Rose: “So who else knows about this?”
The Doctor: “No-one.”
Rose: “So you’re on your own?”
The Doctor: “Well, who else is there? I mean, you lot, all you do is eat chips, watch telly, go to bed, while all the time, underneath it, there’s a war going on!”

(The first indication both of the massive burden placed on the shoulders of the Doctor, and the immense loneliness of his position. There’s also a note of frustration --- disguised under a chirpy “what-can-you-do” attitude --- that he has to do all this and nobody knows, or cares. He’s like the shepherd who protects his sheep, the animals oblivious to anything but the fact that he provides food and shelter for them, unaware of the dangers that lurk beyond their fields. The Doctor is the ultimate shepherd, protecting his flock against all the predators out there who wait for their chance to strike.)

Rose: “It’s gonna follow us!”
The Doctor: “The assembled hordes of Genghis Khan couldn’t get through those doors. And believe me, they’ve tried!”

(Probably a reference to an earlier season, though you’ll have to check http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...who-thing.html and ask this man…)

Rose: “Did they kill him? Mickey? Did they kill him? Is he dead?”
The Doctor: “I never thought of that.”

(A fundamental failing perhaps in the Doctor. He is not human. Remember that. He is not immortal but he has lived about nine hundred years at this point. Humans, though he has an affinity for them, are not important to him. He does not see them as equals. If anything, he sees them sort of more as pets: something to be protected but only because they can’t protect themselves, and he has grown fond of them. Constant exposure to the companionship of humans has not really softened this aspect of the Doctor over eight incarnations. From here that will begin to change, but slowly.)

Rose: “Mickey. My boyfriend. And you forgot him. Again. You were right: you are alien”
The Doctor: “Look, if I forgot the name of some stupid kid, it’s because I’m busy trying to save the lives of every stupid ape blundering about on top of this planet, all right?”

(Here the Doctor shows his true contempt for humans and what they are, or more importantly are not, capable of. Again, he sees them as mindless animals, who look to him for protection even if they don’t realise it.)

Rose: “If you’re an alien, how come you sound like you’re from the north?”
The Doctor: “Lots of planets have a north!”

(Great little line. Up to now, most if not all of the incarnations of the Doctor have been men with deep, cultured voices --- Peter Davison. Jon Pertwee. Syvester McCoy. Tom Baker. This is the first time the timelord has sounded like he comes from Lancashire!)

The Doctor: “How can you hide something that big in a city this small?”
Rose: “Hold on: hide what?”
The Doctor: “The transmitter. The consciousness is controlling every single piece of plastic, so it needs a transmitter to boost the signal.”
Rose: “What’s it look like?”
The Doctor: “Like a transmitter. Round, massive. Somewhere slap bang in the middle of London. A huge circular metal structure, like a wheel or a dish. Close to where we’re standing. Must be completely invisible.”
Rose: (indicates the London Eye over his shoulder)
The Doctor: “What? What? What is it? What? Oh. Fantastic!”

(See below under “Oops!” but also note: the Doctor thinks of London as a small city. Still, given the metropolises he has visited no doubt there are cities into which you could drop a hundred Londons or New Yorks or Beijings, and never find them again!)

The Doctor: “Am I addressing the consciousness? Thank you. Now, might I observe that you infiltrated this system by means of warp shunt technology, and so may I suggest with the greatest respect that you shunt off?”

Rose: “I got no A-Levels, no job, no future. But I tell you what I do have. Junior under-fifteens school gymnastic team. I’ve got the bronze!”

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Urban Hat€monger ?

16

Not in the TV series, can you really see the series budget stretching that far back then.
Although the first Doctor did lose the Tardis to his grandson Kubla Khan in a game of backgammon during 'Marco Polo' back in 1964.

Good write up, don't be stealing my thunder though

__________________

Janszoon

Oh man, I loved Battle Beyond the Stars as a kid! Was a big fan of the ship's breasts as well.

__________________
A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man

Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

last.fm

Trollheart

True Companion

In this section I’ll be looking at what it takes to be a proper assistant to the Doctor, why some Companions rose to the challenge and why some failed, and how each fares against the other. If we ever get that far, eventually I’ll face them all off and see who comes out on top. For now, I’m going to obviously concentrate on Rose, who is the Companion for the first two seasons, and look at the qualities that made her the perfect Companion to accompany the Doctor’s return, and how she manifested those qualities.

I’ve already spoken of how her analytical mind impressed the Doctor from the start: her ability to stay calm in a crisis --- even when facing the dummies on her own, before the Doctor showed up, her mind was trying to make sense of it, find a logical explanation for what she was seeing --- her willingness to listen to his story and her innate human sympathy for him, even though she didn’t know him. Now she shows extreme resourcefulness when, in the midst of a fight between the Doctor and what appears to be her boyfriend --- who has, let’s not forget, just had his head ripped off --- she has the presence of mind to realise that the sooner the restaurant is cleared the easier it will be for the Doctor to do what he has to, and she hits the fire alarm. Talk about a cool head! Sorry, I know: Mickey just lost his. But still.

And of course, it's her that saves the Doctor (and, by extension, her mother and the entire planet) by swinging across the chasm and helping free the Doctor, in the process killing the Nestene Consciousness. Not bad for a bimbo teenager!

Laughter is the best medicine

Not always the most humourous of shows in its original incarnation --- well, not intentionally anyway --- the “new” Doctor Who focusses rather a lot on being lighthearted at times. This could be due to its being aimed more at a family audience and its intention being more to entertain than to scare, or it could be because some of the coming episodes are quite heavy and dark. But whatever the reason, there is humour sprinkled liberally through the so-far seven seasons, each of the actors who assumes the role giving the funny side their own particular and personal twist.

The wheelie bin “eating” Mickey is one of the first of these (it even belches afterwards!), though going back, the scene where the Doctor is wrestling with the animated arm and Rose, with her back to him in the kitchen continues making the tea and jabbering on, is quite amusing. Also Jackie’s coy attempts to woo the handsome man standing just outside her bedroom, while perhaps a little sad, raise a smile too. The best part though is probably when the Doctor is searching for the transmitter and it turns out it’s been in plain sight all along! Also Rose’s comment as he says “Think of it: plastic all over the world, every artificial thing waiting to come alive. The shop window dummies, the wires, the cables, the phones” and she says “The breast implants!” The mind boggles!

Enemy Mine

A section in which I’ll look at the enemy facing the Doctor in that episode, or series of episodes. Classic Who used to have the episodes made into one overarching story, so you could have, say, “The Green Death, part one”, “The Green Death, part two”, etc. They don’t do that anymore but often a few episodes, which will all be titled differently, may go together to form one big story. In those cases, I’ll only run this section in the first part of the story, unless there is a compelling reason for me to do it in the other parts.

The foes the Doctor has faced, in this and Classic Who, range from brilliant to awful, and here I’ll be rating them on a sliding scale, giving them a Dalek rating (why not?) where five Daleks is a superb (or indeed, returning from the classic series like the Daleks themselves) enemy and one Dalek is less than pathetic. I’ll talk about their impact on the show, if any, and any future appearances they may make. I will as ever try not to give away any spoilers for future episodes, though the current writeup will always be complete, so if you’re planning to watch this series and haven’t yet got around to episode one, well too late cos you’ve already had it Spoiled! But beware and take notes for future episodes.

This one, to be fair, is not good, and for the opening episode of a series that has waited to be reborn for over two decades, it’s pretty damn weak. I mean, you can call it a “Nestene Consciousness” if you want Doctor, but it’s just really a big lump of gooey plastic, and looks like the vat Arnie fell into at the end of T2!



Evolution of a Timelord

Here I’ll be charting the progress of the Doctor’s relationship with humanity, mostly through the agency of his Companions, and how he comes to see them as less than just insects he has to protect and more as actual people, lifeforms with their own hopes and dreams and how, despite himself and perhaps to his chagrin, he begins to become just a little bit more like them, more human and less alien.

When this episode kicks off and the ninth Doctor makes his appearance, it’s clear that humanity is in his way. He’s carrying on the work of his previous incarnations, which includes saving the Earth from all dangers, domestic and foreign, as it were (mostly foreign, if you include extraterrestrial) but is a little teed off by it, particularly the fact that nobody even seems to know he exists, much less appreciates the work he does. He’s almost like someone repaying a favour for a friend, doing something he would really rather not do, even if the friend in question is himself. It’s a little as if he’s so used to saving the Earth that he feels he has to keep doing it: in many ways, it’s become something of a raison d’etre for the Timelord.

However we do see the way he interacts with alien species. Where we might see a monster he might see something totally different. His scientific curiosity can be stirred by something we would shrink from, or fear, or loathe. He has a basic and almost unshakeable respect for life in all its forms, and only attacks if he is attacked, or if he is forced to defend. When they encounter the Nestene Consciousness Rose says “Tip your vial of antiplastic into the vat and let’s get out of here!” But the Doctor replies “I haven’t come to kill it”. And he hasn’t. He’s prepared to try to reason with it, convince it to leave this planet, and only if pushed will he resort to deadly force. It’s quite a revelation really, that the Doctor seems to care more for what we would call monsters than he does for the people he seeks to protect.

By the same token, when Rose finds Mickey alive and says it to the Doctor he nods and said it was a possibility, as the consciousness might want to make copies of him. But she is angry that he did not bother to mention this to her, to give her hope. Did he fail to say it because he didn’t want to give her false hope? You’d like to say he did, but in reality he really just was not that bothered about Mickey. He doesn’t know him like he’s starting to get to know Rose, and he certainly doesn’t, at this point anyway, care about him. So he doesn’t figure in the Doctor’s plans. The fact that he’s alive is a bonus --- for Rose, but not for him. It would not matter to him had Mickey died. He’s just not important enough to worry or care about.

A long and lonely life

And here we’ll be looking at the Doctor’s romantic relationships, not just with various Companions but with other humans or even aliens. After all, it’s a lonely task he has set himself and spending all that time alone in a blue box hurtling through space and time with a nubile female, even if she is alien to him, the odd romantic thought must cross his mind. These thoughts get stronger as the series develops, though here of course he wouldn’t even consider such a thing.

This is why,when Rose’s mother flirts with him as he stands outside her bedroom, he laughs at the concept. It’s not that he doesn’t think she’s attractive or sexy, but to him she’s an alien lifeform --- and in his estimation, a far lower one than he --- and the idea of becoming intimate with such a lifeform just doesn’t even cross his mind. Of course, this doesn’t make him any friends with Jackie, who thinks he’s spurning her.

Oops!

There are occasions though when the Doctor, despite living for almost a millennium and having, as Marvin the Paranoid Android would put it, a brain the size of a planet, is out-thought by the “lower lifeform”. Sometimes it’s a case of being unable to see the forest for the trees, his inability to stand back and look at a situation from a totally different angle. Sometimes it’s just being incapable of thinking as humans do. Much of what we base our decisions on is not only logic, but instinct, intuition, a gut feeling. Call it what you will, it defies most mathematical expressions and appears in no textbooks, but often its use is what can turn the tide in any given situation. These are the times when the Doctor may realise, just for a moment, that smart as he is, these “stupid apes” can sometimes show him a thing or two.

He makes a classic blunder here as he tells Rose in exasperation that he can’t believe that the alien consciousness could hide a massive transmitter in plain sight. What would it be like, Rose asks, and he says massive, round, bang in the middle of London. Like a wheel, a dish, close to where they are now. He shrugs: it must be completely invisible, he decides, as Rose eyes the huge, circular, metal form of the London Eye over his shoulder….

Even then, it takes him three looks before he realises what she’s indicating. Brain the size of a planet, indeed!

FAMILY

Like most, if not all dramas, Doctor Who is based solidly around the idea of family. Although much of the time it’s just Rose and the Doctor, they are in themselves something of a small family, and when they return to Earth they often join family life. So Rose’s mother, later father, her boyfriend, and any other figures in her life are all pulled into the story. As with this section as it runs in my other series writeups, I’ll be delving into the relationships between the characters, particularly familial ones, here.

JACKIE
A typical mother, Jackie’s one main concern is her only daughter. When she hears about the explosion at the shop, Jackie is frantic until she confirms Rose is okay. Then she tries to arrange an interview which will get her some money, as she no longer has a job. Later, after the attack of the killer dummies, her first thought when Rose rings her is not to tell her about how she faced death, came close to being killed, but to warn her daughter, to protect her, as is a mother’s natural instincts.

This behaviour will harden as she realises that Rose’s decision to go off with the Doctor is putting her in danger, and her attitude towards the mysterious man she once tried unsuccessfully to seduce will become cold and angry, like a lioness defending her cub against predators.

MICKEY
Though he will not remain in the show past the first season, Mickey is Rose’s boyfriend but comes across as quite childish in ways. He’s very happy-go-lucky and probably doesn’t realise how fortunate he is to have Rose. When he drops Rose off at Clive’s, he acts the macho boyfriend, trying to protect her, though really he’s not a tough guy. Not yet. Seems everyone wants to protect Rose. But after his experiences with the Nestene Consciousness, he regresses, becoming less a child and more a baby, clinging to Rose for something familiar, something friendly, something human. In a very un-macho show of selfishness, he entreats her not to go with the Doctor when he offers, but though she acquiesces initially, even her fondness for Mickey (I doubt it is or ever was or will be love) can’t stop her from running towards her destiny, and Mickey must now know that he comes a very distant second to the odd man in the blue police box.

HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM!

I have to take issue with the activation of the dummies. Okay I know this is a sci-fi show and sort of meant to be for kids, and much of it is played firmly tongue-in-cheek, but that’s no excuse for lazy writing, one of my bugbears. When the Nestene Consciousness sends its signal the Doctor tells Rose it’s supposed to activate every piece of plastic on the planet. Why then is it that only the dummies come to life? And why, for the love of God, have they suddenly got weapons built in? Shop dummies aren’t generally fitted with automatic weapons, so why are these? That’s never explained, ever. And that annoys me. It won’t be the only thing that does about this series, despite my love of it, and any others will be noted here.

Also, didn’t Mickey take the plastic arm and throw it away? How come then it is in Rose’s house when the Doctor calls the next morning? Did it somehow claw its way out of the bin, make it back to the house and lie there in wait?

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Urban Hat€monger ?

I can explain all of these if you like

__________________

Trollheart

Maths was never my strong point!

Meh, they could just have had some guys dress up in furs and shout gibberish. The Doctor could have told an impressed Companion "That's Genghis Khan!" when in fact it was Larry from Shepherd's Bush.
Interesting..
Nah, we work in two different ways. But anyway I said I was thinking about doing this back before you started your journal. I'll keep plugging yours though for those who want to know or read about the classic era, or get more technical or indeed humourous information on the show. I'm more about exploring the stories and characters than I am bothered about who did the set lighting or even who wrote the episodes. You'll note I haven't even mentioned RTD, which I probably should have.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018