Doctor Who – The Bells Of Saint John

Series 7, Episode 7

CONTAINS SPOILERS

The new run of Doctor Who episodes has started with The Bells of Saint John. It’s a bit underwhelming if it’s considered as a series opener, but of course it isn’t that really. It’s a midseries episode, and if we’re honest on Doctor Who those have always tended to be a bit on the weak side. As an ordinary episode it’s actually pretty good. But then it isn’t really an ordinary episode either, it’s the first proper introduction to new companion Clara Oswin.

There have been rumours of problems going on behind the scenes and budget cuts being responsible for the way the show is scheduled nowadays, split into two parts rather than one continuous run of 13 episodes. But, from a narrative point of view, this has been used well, so that they are chapters to close certain points in a story. In series 6 A Good Man Goes To War ended on an epic cliffhanger, and in this series the first half of the episodes were a send off to previous companions Amy and Rory. But Asylum Of The Daleks featured Jenna Louise Coleman as futuristic Oswin Oswald, the Christmas Special The Snowmen featured her again as a Victorian Clara Oswald, and it looks like this continuous run of eight episodes will feature a modern day Clara Oswald as the companion.

The antagonists in The Bells Of Saint John were an organisation which have a sinister use for technology. They send an online link which, rather like a computer virus, infects a person’s computer if they click on it. But in this case it is the humans that are more likely to be harmed. Robots known as Spoonheads are sent to download the victims thoughts, leaving behind their physical body, and uploading them into a large data cloud. As the Doctor puts it “Human souls trapped like flies in the World Wide Web”. Clara quips “Isn’t that basically Twitter?”.

The apparent leader of the organisation is Miss Kislet (Celia Imrie), who appears to be a cold, ruthless business woman. She is able to control her staff by manipulating how paranoid or obedient they are via remote control, and can take over the consciousness of people on the outside too and speak through them. The increasing advancement of technology and the Western world’s dependence and obsession with it has been a popular topic for speculative fiction in recent years, notably Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror series.

But just as the villains have managed to use people’s own computers against them, The Doctor and Clara both manage to use the organisation’s own technology against them. Clara hacks into the organisations webcams and is able to find the social media sites of the employees (where all have listed the place they work), and the Doctor hacks into a Spoonhead and gets it to upload Miss Kislet herself into the data cloud. She begs to be freed which means that everyone else in the data cloud will be freed too, and the Doctor uses the remote control to make one person more obedient to Miss Kislet’s request. We find out though at the end that the real villain behind all this is The Great Intelligence (Richard E. Grant) who has been manipulating every person in the organisation. Having increased his strength and knowing that the game is up as far as this organisation is concerned he “restores them to factory settings” and they return to their original minds not remembering anything that happened. We get the revelation that Miss Kislet had been controlled by the Great Intelligence since she was a small child. Her mind too is restored to what it was before the Great Intelligence started controlling her. The sight of the now physically middle aged Miss Kislet sat on the floor still with the mental mind of a child asking where her mummy and daddy are is very tragic, particularly as she has basically had most of her life taken from her.

The filming of this episode looks very good and like high production values are in place. We get a lot of actions scenes such as the Doctor and Clara riding on a motorcycle and we have the Doctor teleporting the TARDIS onto a plane that is about to crash so he and Clara can stop it.

The episode features a lot of interesting bits. Some of them are just throwaway jokes and references, like the Doctor saying he found a disassembled “quadrocycle” in Clara’s garage and fixed it, before realising that wasn’t the case and that action means he has just invented the quadrocycle. I say this is just a throwaway joke, but you never really know with this show.

A couple of references that got people’s attention were a book, Summer Falls written by Amelia Williams. (Clara says “Chapter 11 is the best. It’ll break your heart”). It seems Amy Pond became a writer during her new life in 1940s New York after leaving the Doctor. But is this book going to come up again? Clara also mentions a woman in a shop giving her a number which goes to the TARDIS.  Who could that be?

The number is certainly a big plot point for this episode. Clara calls it thinking she is getting technical support for her computer. It rings in the TARDIS where the Doctor is in the 13th century as a monk. The setting and the Doctor’s costume at first implied that the episode title The Bells of Saint John referred to church bells. But it is in fact the ringing of St. John’s ambulance police box, i.e the TARDIS. My highlight of the episode was this conversation between Clara, calling from the present day, and the Doctor in the year 1207.

The Doctor: “It’s 1207”

Clara: “I’ve got half past three. Am I phoning a different time zone?”

The Doctor: “You really sort of are”

Clara: “Will it show up on the phone bill?”

Generally the strongest thing about the episode was the great chemistry between Matt Smith and Jenna-Louise Coleman. They work very well together, which is a good sign for how the rest of the series will go.

Oh, and this post is my 50th post on the blog. Appropriate that it’s reviewing a show that’s celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.

Now 84

Now 84 was released on the week in which Easter falls, and suitably the cover has an Easter theme. They have done Easter themed covers before, usually featuring Easter eggs. Now 84’s cover has bunnies on it, but not as you might expect. They are some bizarre multicoloured rabbits that look like inflatable helium balloons of Pokemon/Digimon characters. It’s a different sort of album cover, I’ll give them that.

The spring Now! album of any year is usually the one with the most filler on, as there is always a bit of a new year lull of new releases in the first three months. So as usual we have the X Factor winner’s song (1), and songs which have re-entered the chart. Ben Howard’s  ‘Only Love’ became a top ten hit after he won two BRIT Awards, Christina Perri can probably thank the Twilight franchise for stopping her from being a one hit wonder as ‘A Thousand Years’, a song used on the soundtrack of a couple of the Twilight films, gave her a long-running chart hit after it looked like she’d disappear after ‘Jar Of Hearts’. Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Everywhere’ has re-entered the chart after being used on an advert with a dancing pony (2). We also get a lot of acts with more than one song.  One Direction, Pink, Wiley, Gabrielle Aplin and Disclosure all have two songs on this album.

In all those cases I found that I liked one song much more than the other. One Direction’s medley of Blondie’s ‘One Way Or Another’ and ‘Teenage Kicks’ by the Undertones, OK it’s an inferior karaoke cover of two classics, but you know what, I don’t hate their version. There is a sense of fun to it, and it’s for Comic Relief so it’s a good cause (3). The other One Direction song ‘Little Things’ on the other hand is sappy, dreary and not worth the time it takes to listen to it. I love ‘Try’ by Pink, but find ‘Just Give Me A Reason’ to be terribly bland. I didn’t like ‘Latch’ by Disclosure at all, but I do like ‘White Noise’. Wiley’s ‘Reload’ is kind of fun, but ‘Animal’, a Conor Maynard track he features on is, well, a Conor Maynard track. Gabrielle Aplin’s ‘Please Don’t Say You Love Me’ is quite nice, but if there’s one recent trend in the charts I loathe it’s drippy girl-and-a-piano cover versions for John Lewis adverts, and her rather feeble cover of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s ‘The Power Of Love’ very much is in that mould.

Another recent chart trend I hate are throwaway club-dance tracks. I’m not saying that electronic dance songs about drinking and clubbing are always a bad thing, on this album ‘Drinking From The Bottle’ by Calvin Harris feat. Tinie Tempah is decent enough, and I’d even go as far to say that ‘I Could Be The One’ by Avicii Vs. Nicky Romero is a great track. But some of them are just lazy and disposable. ‘Get Up (Rattle) ‘ by Bingo Players feat. Far East Movement is annoying and dull, and while it may have got to number one it fell down the charts like Daffy Duck after his parachute was erased and replaced by an anvil in Duck Amuck. While it can’t be denied it was a big hit, ‘Scream & Shout’ by will.i.am feat. Britney Spears is so lacking in energy for a dance song, particularly Britney Spears who sounds even less interested than usual. It’s like she’s bored painting her nails while ordering some new paperclips over the phone. In a fake British accent. The worst track on the album is ‘Bassline Junkie’ by Dizzee Rascal, which is an irritating headache of a song, and Dizzee Rascal is capable of better.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say the chart is getting “Darker and Edgier” but more minimalist electronic music is coming through, as are some indie hits, ‘Pompeii’ by Bastille is an example. They are beginning to have an effect on pop music, which is for the better as it makes it more interesting. Taylor Swift’s ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ is probably her best song, and has some clear dubstep influences. Sia has co-wrote both ‘Diamonds’ by Rihanna and ‘Radioactive’ by Rita Ora. Nate Ruess of fun. not only features on Pink’s ‘Just Give Me A Reason’, but co-wrote ‘Die Young’ by Ke$ha.

I’m just going to come out and say I really quite like that song, and I also have a soft spot for Ke$ha’s whole drunken party girl car crash thing especially when she shows a more vulnerable side like on this song, ‘We R Who We R’ and ‘Your Love Is My Drug’. While I’m confessing my sort-of-guilty-pleasures, I’ve never got the appeal of Olly Murs. Just being a “cheeky chappie” isn’t enough for me, and let’s be honest his voice isn’t very good. But his collaboration with Flo Rida ‘Troublemaker’ is a great little pop song.

We have some of the usual trends like guitar pop such as McFly and Fall Out Boy, R&B such as Bruno Mars and Alicia Keys (4) and electro-pop girlbands such as The Saturdays (5) and the recently defunct Girls Aloud.  ‘Ho Hey’ by folk rock band The Lumineers represents the trend of acoustic indie bands having slow burning songs which stay on the chart for years even if they only peak around #8 or so. A song like ‘Ho Hey’ is a bit like fresh air. It can be pleasant and refreshing in warmer seasons, but in colder seasons it doesn’t add that much (6).

As for my favourite track on the album, I’ll go with ‘Explosions’ by Ellie Goulding (7). It has a eerie feel to it, but it is also very lovely, and as well as being my favourite track on Now 84 it is currently my favourite song of 2013 so far.

Notes

1)  This year’s X Factor winner’s song was ‘Impossible’, originally by R&B singer Shontelle, and the version by the series 9 winner James Arthur is far, far too over-earnest. Useless bit of trivia for you; had Cher Lloyd won series 7 of X Factor ‘Impossible’ would have been released as her winner’s song.

2) The CD booklet features a misprint. It says that ‘Everywhere’ by Fleetwood Mac was first released as a single in the UK in 1998. It was actually 1988.

3) I can’t really judge anyone who only knows those tracks as One Direction songs too harshly. I know about the originals, but when I hear any version of ‘One Way Or Another’ I always think of it as the theme tune to Sugar Rush, and I’m more familiar with Ash’s cover of  ‘Teenage Kicks’ than I am with the original.

4) I thought ‘Girl On Fire’ by Alicia Keys was a bit “meh”, but a couple of women where I work have been singing along to it, so maybe I’m just not the target audience.

5) I’m even more surprised about Sean Paul collaborating with The Saturdays than I was about him collaborating with Simple Plan. Still, at least The Saturdays have finally got that number one single they’ve been trying for since what seems like forever. It’s quite a good song too, very summery and catchy.

6) While listening to this album to write this review I heard some birds tweeting outside while ‘Ho Hey’ was playing. ‘Ho Hey’ is certainly the sort of song that’s sounds suitable against birds tweeting.

7) ‘Black Chandelier’ by Biffy Clyro was a very close second though. I’m pleased it charted quite well.

Only Connect: Comic Relief Special

A Comic Relief version of the show, notable in that at the end of the episode Victoria Coren was wearing a jester’s hat. Also one of the teams featured her husband David Mitchell. Perhaps sensibly, they didn’t make too much of this. It would probably the sort of in-joke that would wear thin after a while. It was more or less restricted to the opening, with Victoria Coren commenting that David Mitchell was “happier when he was single” and Rosie Boycott, the captain of David Mitchell’s team joking that their “link the management” might give them an advantage.

The Muppets (David Mitchell, Rosie Boycott and Bill Turnbull), named after, well, the Muppets. The opposing team was the Neuromantics, which was a pun on New Romantics, because Rufus Hound got engaged to his wife a week after dating her, Charlie Higson was in an ’80s band (albeit not a New Romantic one) and Baroness Susan Greenfield is a neuroscientist. Charlie Higson and Ruth Boycott were the team captains, just as they had been in last year’s Children In Need special where Charlie Higson was the team captain of The Goldfingers and Ruth Boycott was the team captain of the Fowls.

The music based ones are usually the ones I do better at than other subjects, but I didn’t get any of them right this time. David Mitchell didn’t do too well on that subject either, but at least he admitted early on in the quiz it wasn’t his strong point, as he put it “If I’ve heard of a pop star they really are massive!”.

I got the first couple of connections right, although only because of the last clue of each. The first connection was Spoonerisms. Fighting a liar (Lighting a fire), Blushing crow (Crushing blow), Well boiled icicle (Well oiled bicycle) and Queer old dead (Dear old queen). The second connection was what connected £100,000, deep purple, P.G Woodhouse and Jack Horner’s thumb was “plum”. I didn’t get one of the picture rounds, but I quite liked the idea of it, halves of crime fighting duos including an red breasted robin to represent Robin, Batman’s sidekick, and an empty rabbit hutch to represent one half of Starsky and Hutch. I got the connection right of the second picture round, that they were daily newspapers represented by pictures of the title (A star, a mirror, chainmail and the sun). I didn’t get that they were the best selling papers going up though.

I got the etymologies of summer months right, Augustus Caesar who August was named after, to go with Julius Caesar (July), the wife of Jupiter, i.e Juno (June) and the Goddess of Spring, i.e Maia (May). On the water connecting wall I guessed that Aversion, Electro-shock, Gestalt and Gene were all types of therapy, and that “belt” could be put after Radiation, Asteroid, Green and Bible.

Being Human (Series Five)

CONTAINS SPOILERS

The series with a completely different cast to the one in the first series turned out to be the final one. But it also turned out to be one of the best of the lot.

The new cast, werewolf Tom, vampire Hal and ghost Alex all arrived at different times and this series was their first time together as the main trio, but it felt like they were well established from the word go. It was amazing how all three gelled, worked well together and were able to bounce off each other. In fact, arguably I’d say that they fit with each other better than the original trio. That’s not a criticism for them as such. Part of the initial storyline in the first series was the characters all getting to know each other, but with this new cast they had to get there much quicker, and as it turned out they did.

In the first episode, Trinity, each of the three main characters got a moment to shine, all of them getting at least one great line, which served both to provide humour in the episode and show something about each character. Hal’s neat freak nature gave us this quote; “Fill a bowl of water and washing up liquid. This is a two sets of marigolds problem”. Tom talking about the old fashioned chivalry he was raised by adoptive father figure McNair, saying if a lady walked into a room you should stand up and take off any hats, and if she was a vampire you staked her. Alex got some lines to show how quick-witted she is, “I’m not going to let a good man die of grief just to protect the fucking Twilight franchise”, and there was this exchange.

Tom: “There’s some weird people out there”

Alex: “Says the werewolf spoonfeeding mashed banana to a vampire”.

The episode also showed another vampire/werewolf/ghost trio in flashbacks, and we discover a possible reason that there have been so many variations on that lineup throughout the series. A vampire, werewolf and ghost trinity are able to perform a ritual which involves mixing the blood of a vampire with the blood of a werewolf and a ghost drinking it, the result of this is it can destroy the Devil. In 1918 such a trinity included Hal, Lady Catherine, who was the leader of an army of werewolves, and a ghost necromancer named Emil. Unfortunately, the ritual is said to kill all three participants, even the ghost, and so Hal chose not to use his own blood. This meant it was not a proper trinity, so the Devil was only being weakened and trapped in a human body, which he escapes in.

The body the Devil has possessed was of a madman and he has adopted the alias of Captain Hatch, who is one of the main villains of this series. Hatch has been staying in a hotel coincidentally one where Hal and Tom get jobs. While of course you have to suspend your disbelief in a programme about the supernatural, this whole thing is a little contrived, the Devil staying in a small hotel on Barry Island for nearly a century is a little small scale. But Hatch is still a great villain, and Phil Davis appears to be having fun, showing how sinister and horrible the character is. Even though he is in a weak human body he can still wield power, summoning the often mentioned Men with Sticks and Rope through death’s door, who as we see for the first time, are rather like zombies. Hatch’s more direct way to cause horror is to whisper in people’s ear which causes them to lose control of their actions and thoughts and commit suicide. One of his victims is the hotel manager Patsy who had mostly been comical with her having a crush on Hal and blatantly allowing that to influence her work decisions, but her death which features her bleeding from her eyes is very unsettling. He’s also able to manipulate, trying to drive a wedge between Hal and Tom, playing on their insecurities and that they are on opposite ends in terms of social class and education. At first the wedge mainly results in them having a food fight and throwing jam, cream, scones and lettuce at each other, but as we will see it becomes much deeper as the series goes on.

The other major villain of the series is Dominic Rook. Last series I wasn’t looking forward to the prospect of a secret government agency cleaning up evidence of the supernatural being a main plot point in the series. But in this series we find out the agency has been shut down due to government cuts and the focus is on an individual trying to keep the work of that department going. Rook is creepy, uptight, cold, snake-like, and single minded in his cause. He has no problems killing or in some other way causing the deaths of anyone who stands in his way. He truly believes that he is keeping the world safe and so anything that they do for that cause is justified. There has been fan speculation that Rook’s anger at his department being dissolved might be a meta reference to Being Human itself being cancelled by BBC Three, as well as the Devil later commenting that he “never understood why you lot are so proud of being human”. Whatever the reason for this change, Rook is an interesting villain and far better to watch than a full staff of a secret government agency would have been.

The series had another recurring villain, Crumb. He didn’t work as well as the other two, and indeed he doesn’t quite last the full series. One of the problems with Crumb was it felt like they were trying to do three different things. Sometimes he was presented as vaguely sympathetic, certainly as a human he is ignored at his workplace and his boss treats him like rubbish, and  basically tells him he may sack him and give his job to his own nephew, who seems an archetypal “nepotist shithead boy” like the one portrayed in a  Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe sketch about working in television. Crumb ends up getting run over after an encounter with Hal, so Hal turns him into a vampire. Which is clearly a terrible idea, so you wonder why he did it really. However he may have been in life, Crumb as a vampire is a legitimate threat, and he kills the bosses’ nephew, and later Rook manipulates things so Crumb kills his own sister and niece (this is an example of Rook not caring if innocent lives are lost as long as it proves a point).  But the thing is, Crumb is mostly presented as a comedy character. It works more when it is black comedy or cruel humour. We get some absolutely gross comedy out of him having a beerhat to drink blood. When he hallucinates Hazel, one of the girls he has killed as a vampire, she taunts him. “Do you really believe Alex would go for someone like you? Forget me, that’s the real delusion!” He does go on a sort of date with Alex and he’s not exactly great company, naming his eleven favourite cheeses, and when Alex tells him as a ghost she can’t eat he tells her that’s good as “No one likes a fat girl. Believe me, they aren’t all jolly”. But the comedy nerd stuff, like the alliance he forges with Alan, a geeky ex-employee of Rook’s, doesn’t work as well because it comes off a bit awkward after he has become a killer. It was similar to the Nerd Trio villains in the sixth season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. They came off as annoying and a pathetic initially, but after one of them committed murder they mostly dropped that for him even if they carried it on with the other two. Comedy nerds don’t make good villains. To be honest  Colin Hoult, the actor who played Crumb, chewed the scenery quite a bit, which didn’t help much. Crumb eventually decides he’s better off dead and drinks werewolf blood to kill himself in the second to last episode. Overall it comes off as them creating the character but not really knowing what to do with him. He might have worked better as a one episode character, and there were a few of those series.

Most of the episodes had a “quirky supernatural guest of the week”.  In Sticks and Ropes it was a Little Lord Fauntleroy-esque ghost of a Victorian boy who was still mentally stuck in the 19th century (almost saying the racist version of Eeenie Meenie Miny Moe at one point). In Pie and Prejudice there was also a ghost, Lady Mary, who was an ex of Hal’s and had been around since the 18th century. She had moved with the times, although it didn’t exactly make her well adjusted. She now talked like a gobby chav bird and hates having to wear a dress that makes her look “like a cake decoration”. She goes clubbing and shit stirred by using her ghost powers to read the minds of people who were having affairs and dropping glasses to start fights. In the same episode there was also a werewolf called Larry, played by The Mighty Boosh‘s Julian Barratt. He bullshitted about his business success when he was actually a failure, and was bitter about his ex-wife. He owned Michael Fish’s biography and a book called I Want All The Pie, which he claimed was life changing but he hadn’t even read. He gives away his old suit to Tom, then asks Tom to lend him £150 as he needs a new suit now (and it’s unlikely he ever intended to pay Tom back). While he was brilliantly smarmy, he didn’t really do anything particularly werewolf-ish, which makes him being a werewolf something of an Informed Attribute. It’s not the fact that we don’t see him transform, we didn’t see Lady Catherine transform either, but the fact that she was a werewolf did have an obvious influence on her life and how she behaved, and we didn’t get that with Larry. Then again, that was kind of the point. Larry blamed being a werewolf for things going wrong in his life which were his own fault.

In The Greater Good, Crumb and a werewolf called Bobby both come to stay in the Being Human house. Bobby has been imprisoned in “the archive” of Rook’s government department for 33 years, and has become institutionalised,  but he had to be let out as the department was closing down. Bobby is a bit dense. “Last time I ironed something my legs got burned very badly”, but it allows Tom to be a mentor-like figure to him, a change from usual where people mostly try and teach him. Bobby tragically becomes another victim of Hatch, who gets him to commit suicide.

One of the best one episode characters of the series was in No Care, All Responsibility when we were introduced to Natasha, played by Kathryn Prescott, probably best known for playing Emily Fitch in Skins.  She arrives at the hotel seemingly on the run, and Tom takes a shine to her. She has a cut on her hand which Tom bandages up. The blood however attracts Hal’s vampire instincts. Natasha is aware of this and tells Hal that she will allow him to feed on her. It turns out Natasha is working for Rook, and has known him since she was a little girl. It seems he has become sort of a surrogate father figure for her after finding her when her family were killed by vampires. But Natasha genuinely likes Tom and feels guilty about manipulating him, moreover she no longer trusts Rook as he sent her there as bait being more concerned for the cause than her safety. Unfortunately Hatch manages to control her before she can do anything to set things right, and we get the most disturbing death scene in the series when she walks in a trance to the house and cuts her own throat in front of Hal. This is followed by Hal trying to save her by turning her into a vampire, and Natasha begging him not to. Tom seeing Hal with Natasha’s body naturally jumps to the obvious, though incorrect, conclusion that Hal killed her, and after a fight between them which Alex stops, Natasha’s ghost tells everything to Alex before passing on. In contrast to Crumb, I think Natasha should have lasted longer. It could have been a decent twist for the audience if she had been introduced earlier before her true agenda was revealed, and she worked very well with the characters of Tom, Hal, Rook and Alex. It might have been interesting to see her stick around in her ghost form for a bit longer, although it would have made the final episode a bit crowded. In any case, she was a good character.

There are developments of all three of the main characters over the series. Alex is a relative newcomer both to us and to her status as a ghost. With Hal we have a sort of Angel/Angelus thing where his evil vampire side is more or less a separate person to how he is normally. This is a bit strange in all honesty, as it’s not something that has come up in Being Human before. Tom probably goes through the most though, an overall arc for him is his attempts to better himself and a sort of coming of age story. For all three it was the main series premise, trying to deal with life with their conditions. Hal at one point says that there’s little point in them doing it and they are just delaying the inevitable. Alex replies “Isn’t that like life? We have to grab every scrap of normality we can”.

Before we get to the last episode, a few random highlights from the series;

*Hal disinfecting a computer keyboard using a cotton bud and alcohol.

*The Daily Mail/Daily Express style newspaper headline “Have the unemployed stolen the memory of Diana?”.

*The eerie effect of a water tap dripping saying “Alex” instead of a drip sound, and when Alex turned the taps on instead of running water there was a cacophony of screams.

*Alex’s interpretation of Rook saying they should deal with Crumb as they see fit. “We both know that was posh boy talk for kebab him!”

*The card game between Rook and Hatch, which saw some symbolic cards drawn. Rook draws A king, queen and jack (a Trinity) vs Hatch drawing three 6s (the Devil).

*Tom at a restaurant seeing “soup du jour” on a menu. “I’ve had that type before. It’s good”, and then talking about always wanting a rabbit for a pet, but that obviously wouldn’t end well with him being a werewolf.  Later he and Natasha arrive with a toy dragon which they got from trying to get a toy bunny from a fairground claw crane.

The final episode, The Last Broadcast opened with a musical number by Hal in a pub after he had recruited some new vampires, Alex has been thrown into a mirror by Hatch and wakes up trapped in her own coffin, and has to claw her way out a la the Bride in Kill Bill or Buffy in season six of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and Tom spitting werewolf blood on the camera. We later see that the streets are deserted and littered with corpses. The Devil has returned to power and is planning to broadcast a message to the world via television. He gets some of the best lines in the episode “I’d turn water into wine, but it’s copyrighted”. The television broadcast speech has some nice touches, such as the Emergency Broadcast interrupting the episode itself and using the old Potter’s Wheel interlude film. In his speech the Devil claims God made humans so he could retire and get back to gardening and wordsearch puzzles and talks about the human race making a mess of it (“you became my tribute act!”) and electing “leaders who despise you”, polluting the planet, being anti-intellectual, knowing beauty to be an illusion and still chasing it and finding the lowest common denominator and then try and dig down even lower.

His plan is to make the world into the Four horsemen of the Apocalypse. The Kingdom of the Dead in the North (Europe), the Kingdom of Disease in the East (Russia and Asia), the Kingdom of Famine in the South (Africa) and the Kingdom of War in the West (the Americas).

As our Trinity are about to do the ritual the Devil gives them each a bargain. All at the same time (as he puts it,  “I’m not omnipresent, but I can multitask”) he tempts all three with an alternative life where they wouldn’t have their curses. He takes Hal back to 450 years ago as he was lying wounded on a battlefield before being made a vampire. There also appears to be his werewolf friend Leo who tells Hal that it isn’t just his victims directly, it’s the victims of people who he  recruited over the centuries that will be spared if he never becomes a vampire.

Alex is taken back to the night she died. Alex’s scenes with her father are very sad, where she tearfully recollects the last conversation she had with her father, which was about the spelling of her brother’s tattoo, and these scenes echo the understated but still very moving scenes from earlier in the series when she visits her brothers.

Tom is given a chance for the werewolf to be removed from him, the Devil representing it with a small origami wolf, and to be in a loving relationship with Allison, who is presumably also cured of being a werewolf, and is pregnant with his child. But Tom figures out that it is too good to be true, and all three ultimately decide to leave, saying that the Devil missed a trick and should have put them together. They try and fail to perform the ritual, but then the Devil leaves Hatch’s body, and Hatch is shot in the head by Rook.

Later on Rook comes to visit the house, and it is soon apparent that the Devil has possessed him, which is worse as Rook is younger and healthier so the Devil is more powerful. They decide they must do the ritual for real, which is a dramatic sequence which expels the Devil from Rook’s body. Hal tells Rook as the only human the Devil will go back into his body and Rook decides to sacrifice himself, telling Hal to kill him and thus kill the Devil once he is back inside his body. When this happens, we have the big ending of the whole series.

Hal, Tom and Alex all become human. Getting rid of the Devil gets rid of their curses. Hal sees his reflection in the mirror and later Alex celebrates by changing her clothes and binge eating, even saying that feeling sick is a sensation she’s missed. Then all three settle down on the couch to watch The Antiques Roadshow on TV, mentioning that the Devil failed because he should have put them together.  Then we pan of the mantelpiece seeing items belonging to all the previous regular cast. Mitchell’s fingerless gloves, Annie’s teacup, George’s Star of David, Nina’s sonogram, Eve’s bib, Hal’s dominoes, Tom’s stakes, Alex’s phone number on a piece of paper, McNair’s wooden wolf and… the origami wolf which the Devil gave Tom in his illusion.

The finale is ambiguous as to the end. The ending is very moving and satisfying that the three have been freed from their curses, and it’s nice to see them watching TV together. The final shots of the mantelpiece are a poignant way to end the series as a whole, remembering the past characters and ending the era, and it has a final sting in the tail with the possibility that this is all just an illusion by the Devil. It was deliberately left ambiguous to leave it up to the fans. For me while watching it I thought that it was a little “too good to be true” and was expecting some twist, but I know that I would much prefer the characters to have a happy end. Apparently an extra scene on the DVD may answer the question conclusively, but either way it was a great finale, I’d even go to say it’s one of my favourite TV show finales ever. A great send off to a fantastic show.

headphonedaydreams – 1 Year Anniversary

I have been doing this blog for one year, making 45 posts, excluding this one. So to celebrate a year in blogging here is a post about some of the most popular posts on this blog so far.

Top Ten Most Viewed Posts

1) The Royle Family Christmas Special 2012

By a long way my most viewed post to date. It seems blogging about a Christmas special of a show that tends to get high ratings gets you lots of Google hits. Who knew? Quite a few were searching for “Cadging Carol”. She may be a scrounger, but she’s given me lots of blog hits.

2) The Polar Bear Family & Me

A documentary series presented by wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan about a polar bear family. A mother bear, Lyra, and her cubs, Miki and Luca, where we see their struggle for survival over spring, summer and autumn in the Arctic. It’s clear from the search terms I got that many were interested and moved by the story of this polar bear family and the struggles they faced.

3) My Mad Fat Diary

The brilliant E4 drama series starring Sharon Rooney has been very popular, so it’s no surprise that it is already one of the most viewed posts on my blog. The series has a fantastic soundtrack of ’90s classics, some of which I listed in the post.

4) The Apprentice (Series 8)

The series wasn’t well received by long-term fans, but as a relative newcomer to the Apprentice franchise I quite enjoyed it. It was won by a wrestling biochemist named Ricky Martin, but my favourite finalist was Jade Nash.

5) My Top 6 Underrated Doctor Who Episodes

You know how some songs by big pop stars with large fanbases go straight in at number one when released, and their sales drop gradually each week? Then there are other songs which never quite rise to number one but sell very consistently, like for instance ‘Chasing Cars’ by Snow Patrol. This post is the equivalent of one of those songs. It is one of the earliest posts on the blog, and one which has been viewed all year round. It seems lists of underrated Doctor Who episodes are something that is searched for all the time.

6) Only Connect Special: Eggheads Vs Davids

The crossover quiz between people from Eggheads who spoiler alert were beaten/scrambled/fried/poached/boiled/cracked/made into an omelette/saved for Easter/insert your own egg-related pun by a team of members of previous Only Connect series champions.

7) Snow White and the Huntsman

A gorgeous but, in my opinion, fairly patchy film, despite Charlize Theron’s best efforts to make it more interesting. I wasn’t too bothered about who Snow White ended up with in the end, but I personally reckon it’s the Huntsman.

8) The Snowman and The Snowdog

The rather lovely sequel to the Raymond Briggs classic.

9) Doctor Who – Asylum Of The Daleks

The first episode of series 7, and in my view the best Dalek episode of the series since it was revived in 2005. It also sees the begins the five episodes that see the send-off to companions Amy Pond and Rory Williams, plus an introduction to Jenna Louise Coleman who plays the new companion.

10) Doctor Who – The Snowmen

So the top ten posts are bookended by two huge TV Christmas specials.

Overall, snow has been a big feature in the most viewed posts in the first year of my blog. Polar bears, fairytale princesses, living snowmen and snowdogs and Daleks all against snowy landscapes. That’s before we’ve even got to my last post before this one, which was all about penguins!

For the rest of the list, there are some that didn’t quite make the top ten most viewed but still seemed to be well liked.

Only Connect: My Highlights Of Series 6

I have to give special mention to this post for the sheer amount of Google hits I got for “Victoria Coren not allowed within 100 yards of Alex Guttenplan” and variations of it.

Here are some more that were ‘liked’ by other bloggers.

The BRIT Awards 2013

In a nutshell, it was a rather dull ceremony, but James Corden’s jokes were a bit better, his presenting was a little worse, Taylor Swift’s performance was pretty good, Ben Howard’s performance was nice. But if you’d like to read more feel free to click on the link.

Africa

The breathtaking nature documentary series narrated by David Attenborough and recently broadcast on BBC 1.

Top Ten Songs of 2012

My favourite ten songs from 2012, which include a Eurovision winner, a New Jersey rock band, a stadium indie band teaming up with an pop-R&B superstar, and a drum and bass DJ collaborating with a folksy singer-songwriter.

Doctor Who – The Angels Take Manhattan

The brilliant mid-series finale of series 7. The Weeping Angels become more horrifying, River Song becomes more awesome, and an emotional, tearjerker farewell to companions Amy Pond and Rory Williams.

NOW 83

Rumoured to be the last ever album in the Now That’s What I Call Music! series at the time of release, that turned out to be not the case, but here’s what I thought of it.

Red Dwarf X

The sci-fi sitcom celebrated its 25th anniversary in February this year, and this series broadcast last year was the tenth overall and the first full length one in ages. It was a return to form.

Britains Strangest Pets

I was surprised this post was liked (it also came very close to making the top ten most viewed), but I imagine there weren’t many reviews covering this Channel 5 documentary series.

Big Brother 13

A surprisingly very good series of a franchise which, even the most hardcore fan would have to admit, is long past its best. For housemates to root for there was the lovely Lauren, nice guy female-to-male transsexual Luke A, laid back former gang member Adam and best of all the fabulous Deana. We also had some great ‘baddies’ in beefy bully boy Conor, and snooty, deranged Caroline. I got some Google hits for “Deana museum task sneeze” and “How often has Jet the Gladiator been on Big Brother’s Bit On The Side?”.

Being Human series 4

The last ever series concluded last night, and a review of that will be coming up soon, but here’s my review of series 4, which was an end of an era in itself as it was the last to feature any of the cast from series one.

The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises

Should have made some time to write up a review of Batman Begins really so I could say I did the whole trilogy. Ah well, that’s one target for the second year of the blog. He’s my take on Christopher Nolan’s take on Batman.

Penguins – Spy In The Huddle

CONTAINS SPOILERS

As TV Tropes put it, Everything’s Better With Penguins. They are a very popular, and I really like them myself, in fact they’re probably my favourite animal. Why do we generally like penguins so much? Well, they’re cute. They’re also funny. At least they look funny to us, with the way they waddle (or hop in the case of the aptly named Rockhoppers). So a series focusing on penguins was bound to have an audience, especially if that series is narrated by former Doctor Who star David Tennant.

The series is about three different species of penguin in three different locations. Emperor penguins in Antarctica, Rockhopper penguins in the Falklands and Humboldt penguins in Peru. In each location there are secret cameras filming them, and the cameras are hidden in robot penguins. ROBOT PENGUINS! That lets me geek out. I always wanted a robot penguin when I was a kid. Hell, I wouldn’t mind one now. Yes, I know I’m a dork.

Anyway, the robot penguins we had here sometimes looked a bit like the animatronic puppet used to portray the parrot in ’90s CITV series Harry’s Mad. Some were “aquatic versions” in the sea, and looked a bit like one of those swan shaped boats in Alton Towers. Of course they were nothing to be sneered at, the robots could move about a bit and could pick themselves up when they were knocked down. They also did their job in filming some good footage. The robots seemed to convince the penguins anyway. They all appear to accept the penguin robots as just another member of the colony, and don’t seem to mind that they are acting differently from the rest. One male Rockhopper appeared to fancy the Rockhopper robot when his mate was late returning. She did return eventually though, and in jealous rage knocked the Rockhopper robot down. The Rockhopper robot went through a lot it seems, the very last scene showed that it had it’s head knocked off. We also had Rock-Cam which saw one of the Rockhopper penguins hitching a ride on it as it moved.

One of the weirdest moments of the whole series is when the Rockhopper robot ‘lays’ an egg, which is eggcam. The eggcam spends a lot of time rolling around. A caracara catches it and flies away with it allowing us to see “the first ariel of a penguin colony by shot by a flying bird”. It slips from his grasp and some turkey vultures try to eat it. It then rolls away into the nest of a Rockhopper couple who have no eggs and the mother takes it into the nest to try and incubate it. One Emperor penguin who hasn’t a chick of her own tries to ‘adopt’ one of the penguin cams. I felt a bit bad for the penguins in these latter two cases, even though the narration said they aren’t fooled for long.

The programme showed just how well penguins run their lives. With all three of the species shown in this programme we see that parenting duties are shared. Humboldt penguins for example have shifts were one rears the chicks while the other goes for food, as they don’t have to travel as far for food as other penguins do.

The Emperor penguin females lay their egg and pass it over to their mate who incubates it and protects it from the cold while the females go out to sea to feed and collect food. We see one Emperor penguin chick hatch, and the proud dad showing off his chick to another father, the chicks chirping helps that egg to hatch too. (AWWWWWWWW!) The bond between father and chick is incredibly strong by the time the females return, even though they are extremely hungry after spending the Antarctic winter shielding the chick he is reluctant to transfer it back to the mother.

Emperor chicks are shown huddling together for warmth. The ones in the centre are of course the warmest, while the ones on the outside feel the cold. The penguins actually deal with this fairly though, and take turns as to who is where. Everyone will get a chance to be in the centre. They do it a little too well, as the centre sometimes actually gets too hot for them.

The Rockhopper penguins are seen falling off cliffs a lot, but their body fat absorbs the shock, and they don’t seem too bothered by such setbacks and simply shake themselves off and try again. Male Rockhoppers build the nest, some steal materials from other nests. It’s not just among their own that they have to worry about thieves, other birds such as cormorants steal their nesting material too, and the cormorants squabble among themselves for that nesting material. Cormorants rarely attack penguins directly, but that doesn’t mean they are completely harmless to them. They think nothing of trampling over any that might be in their way. One chick is knocked from his nest and walked over by some cormorants. (He survives the ordeal). Later on there are half a million Guanay cormorants that the penguin parents have to shield their chicks from.

The Rockhoppers also face many birds of prey such as skuas, caracaras, petrels and turkey vultures. Their defence is to join together as there is safety in numbers to drive the danger away. Giant petrels are found in both the Falklands and Antarctica, and are a dangerous predator for penguin chicks. One such petrel tries to get a Rockhopper chick that has wandered away from the other chicks to explore. He does, but the chick manages to escape and the adult penguins pile on the invader and drive him away. They then peck the chick as if telling him off and send him back to the other chicks.

In Antarctica the Emperor penguin chicks also protect themselves by huddling together, and the way the petrel attempts to get around this is to charge in case some leave the huddle in fear so it can isolate one. One petrel manages this, but he catches a chick by her feathers and she escapes and runs to the safety of her mother. Later we see another giant petrel try to attack the colony, and again the penguins huddle together in a wall of bodies. Even some of the chicks fight back. It is very satisfying to see the penguin parents succeed in protecting their chicks.

Later on the Emperor parents quietly leave their chicks for the last time and go out to sea. The chicks themselves will make their journey later. The petrel returns, but by this point the chicks have grown quite big and can protect themselves better. One of them makes himself look bigger and seems to be making an effort to protect the others. Then an Adelie penguin, which is smaller than Emperor penguins but is known to have a much more fierce temper, places himself with the chicks. The petrel knows he’s beaten and flies off. Despite this of course being a serious fight for survival, this scene still looked incredibly cute, especially with the chicks chirping.

The Adelie penguin might have been an ally in that fight, but he has his own agenda. He wants the Emperor chicks to move out of the nesting grounds so that he and the other Adelies can move in. He bites the chicks and tries to push them to go out to sea, despite the fact they aren’t ready as they have to shed their fluffy downy feathers.

The Humboldt penguins at one time are stuck between a rock and hard place, or between Charybdis and Scylla if you’re more of a fan of Greek mythology. Both sayings are kind of appropriate as there are plenty rocks, sea water and caves in this programme. They having to go through a mass of sleeping sealions to get to their nesting ground, but the sealions don’t take too kindly to being disturbed and try to attack them so they retreat into a cave… which is full of vampire bats. Fortunately, the cave has a tunnel which allows them to bypass the sealions and go straight to their nesting ground. The Humboldts have to cross the path of sealions several times back and forth. It’s not quite everything against the penguins though, it’s more that every creature is out for its own interests. Sometimes this leads to some advantages for the penguins. For example vampire bats are more likely to attack the sealions, as sealions are a bigger, slower and therefore a much easier target. Later on the beach which was once full of sealions is filled with Guanay cormorants, and while the sealions have moved into the sea, the cormorants get rid of them by mobbing them until they leave, which is better news for the penguins.

Humboldts and Rockhoppers usually mate for life, whereas Emperors choose a new mate every year. We see some of their mating rituals, which involve the ones looking for a partner separating from the main group and displaying themselves. When in a couple they mirror each other and synchronise to confirm that they are an item. This doesn’t always put others off though, as we see with one couple where another female, possibly the penguin equivalent of a bunny boiler, tries to muscle in on the male in the couple. The female in the couple fights the intruding female off, which the narration calls “flippers at dawn”, but she returns later to try and spoil their mating.

There are so many moments when you want to root for the penguins. One in the first episode where an Emperor penguin gets lost in an ice maze and is left behind, but thanks to a blizzard he is able to catch up as the others huddle together for warmth. On another occasion an Emperor chick stumbles into the snow and gets back up, but finds she has lost her mother and starts desperately looking for her. Luckily her mother finds her before a blizzard starts. We see a chick who is the tiniest one in the colony and is shivering as he tries to get into the huddle, which he does eventually. Another chick has kind of the opposite problem. She’s in the middle of the huddle and has to find her way out to get to her father and food, as there is a chance another chick will steal it. The parents are aware which chick is theirs through checking their calls, but chicks themselves aren’t choosy about which adult is giving them food. The chick gets to her father by sort of crowd surfing out of the huddle.

The more adventurous of the Humboldt chicks join the adults to go out to sea, but despite being among those more adventurous ones it is still very scary for the chicks. The adults have faced all these obstacles many times over, but it is all new to these chicks. One seems frightened of the new sights of cormorants and steep cliffs. An adult appears to be encouraging him to jump down with the others, which is quite a lovely moment. The chick is then terrified of the sealions and freezes. Instead of going straight through he runs away to the cave to get past the sealions and into the sea, which is the same path other penguins took earlier in the series, but then it was to get from the beach to their nesting grounds rather than the other way round. Then he finally is courageous enough to take the plunge into the sea.

A Rockhopper chick is also very cautious and tries to climb back up a cliff rather than jump into the sea with the others. He ends up tumbling down and is surrounded by caracaras. Fortunately the caracaras are driven away by some steamer ducks and the chick makes it into the sea. Then a giant petrel tries to get him and he dives underwater, coming up immediately having never done it before and then the petrel gets him, but he escapes. Penguins actually spend a significant portion of their lives in the sea, and as we can see they are more in their element there than on land.

It was a lighter, fluffier nature documentary than some. Fluffier in many ways with all the downy feathers of the chicks. It seemed to be more to make pleasant viewing. That’s not to say we didn’t get to see the harsh realities of the natural world. In particular the second episode First Steps, a Rockhopper father leaves his nest to try and chase off a turkey vulture. This proves to be a fatal mistake, as his nest is unguarded, and another turkey vulture swoops down and takes his chick. In the same episode in Antarctica an Emperor chick has died and we see the chick’s mother calling to it hoping for a response. Another female appears to be trying to comfort the mother. Penguins who have lost their chicks often try and steal the chicks of others. A bereaved couple of Rockhopper penguins try to steal some eggs from a female who is on her own, and when her mate returns he manages to drive them away, but it takes a fight.  Emperor chicks that are walking away from their parents are chased by mothers who have lost one or haven’t been able to breed that year. There is a danger the chicks can be crushed or smothered to death. One time we see them crowding around a chick and trying to force her into a pouch despite the fact the chick is far too big to fit in it at this point. It’s only after her real mother finds her that she’s safe.

But there’s also plenty of cute stuff where we can personify them. There are the Emperor penguins “skating on an ice rink'”, and sledging on their stomachs. We get to see the Humboldt penguins having a soft landing after falling off a cliff landing on the feathers of moulting sea birds. There are the Rockhopper penguins taking a shower underneath a cliff and squabbling over who gets turn, apart from one who simply f”chimney climbs” up to the source of water and washes with that.  All the penguins look playful in the sea, and underwater they are very slick and impressive compared to how comical we sometimes see them as on land.  Even on land they are resourceful, with for example the way they can use their beaks as an ice pick.

This programme was enchanting in many ways. One thing I liked seeing was how similar the different species of penguin were despite the fact that they look very different. The Emperors are the popular “tuxedo” image of penguins, standing upright living in the Antarctic with fluffy grey and white chicks. The Rockhoppers were small with a yellow feathers of their head and had chicks with brown feathers, while the Humboldts were also quite small, grey and look slightly more like other waterbirds and live in a fairly tropical climate. But in all three types the parents shared duties more or less equally with one going out to fish and the other looking after the young, and when threatened by either predators or the weather they all band together, and as the narration points out the “place they were born to be” is the sea. There have been plenty of programmes and other media about penguins because of their popularity, but it’s easy to see why they are so appealing.