“The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos” completes the first season of Doctor Who with Jodie Whittaker in the lead role.  She is accompanied by Bradley Walsh, Tosin Cole, and Mandip Gill.  Mark Addy and Phyllis Logan guest star in this episode which is penned by showrunner, Chris Chibnall.

The Doctor and her companions answer a distress call and find a planet littered with crashed spaceships where they encounter a long amnesiac survivor played by Mark Addy.  They also find the Stenza warrior Tzim-Sha has been waiting for her since their first encounter in “The Woman Who Fell to Earth”.

This episode seems to be pretty low-key for a season finale. Low-key works sometimes and I was hoping that the new producers would resist the temptation to have some galactic menace every week.  A season finale needs to have a story where the stakes are higher.  Tzim-Sha did have some plans to destroy Earth, but the threat did not seem that urgent since everyone was on a distant planet.

Once again, it is Walsh and Cole who get the more compelling personal material.  Walsh’s Graham O’Brien has an opportunity to settle a score over the tragic death of his wife which could be laid at Tzim-Sha’s feet.  The two of them work well together, and it was kind of moving when Ryan Sinclair called Graham granddad and admitted his love for him.  Graham had been married to Ryan’s grandmother and had yearned to be acknowledged as family by the younger man.  Yasmin Khan, played by Mandip Gill, still isn’t all that germane to the story.  Chibnall’s team of writers could stand to take some cues from the original writers of 1963 since the initial three companions each were able to contribute to the momentum of the story.

Whittaker had a few interesting moments, but she still lacks that moment where she really grabs me.  The Doctor’s little pep talk about traveling with hope at the very end of the episode was kind of cool.  Some fans feel that this year has been a disaster for the show.  I haven’t quite gotten to that point, but I can understand where some of the harsher critics are coming from.

The title is somewhat misleading because there really isn’t much of a battle.  Some battle is alluded to that took place in the past, however the title still doesn’t seem to have been really justified.

This particular addition once again had a few moments that worked well enough, however the overall story still doesn’t really make an impact.  The only real triumph was how Graham and Ryan finally connected and acknowledged that they were family.

I thought there has been some minor improvement in Whittaker’s take on the Doctor although she still seems to be channeling her more recent predecessors.  Her reaction to Graham’s stated intent to avenge his wife’s death rang with a certain familiarity.  Some critics claim that her acting is just atrocious.  She’s not going to be a favorite Doctor of mine, but I don’t think her actual acting ability is that bad.  I think Chibnall makes some terrible decisions in his plotting, so I lay the bulk of the weaknesses in this series at his door.

So, there is going to be a special New Year’s Day episode and no new Doctor Who episode until 2020.  I will have more to say about that in an upcoming blog as well as some pontification about the direction the series has taken this past season.

“The Quantum Possibility Engine” is a Doctor Who audio play released by Big Finish Productions and is written by Guy Adams. Sylvester McCoy stars as the Seventh Doctor with Sophie Aldred and Bonnie Langford reprising their respective roles as Ace and Mel.

Mel has betrayed her two friends and delivered the TARDIS to the corrupt President of the Solar System, Josiah W Dogbolter, played by Toby Longworth. It seems that Mel had accrued some kind of debt which she had kept concealed from the Doctor and Ace. Dogbolter is a rather unusual sort of president since he comes from a race resembling humanoid toads and has the demeanor of a cosmic gangster. He has a psychotic robotic servant known as Hob, portrayed by Wayne Forester.

Mel’s betrayal and theft of the TARDIS attracts the attention of a Time Lord known as Narvin, who is on assignment from the covert Celestial Intervention Agency, to straighten the matter out before a paradox beyond repair manifests itself. Narvin is a recurring character in the Big Finish world played by Sean Carlsen. The caustic banter between Narvin and the Doctor is worth the price of admission on its own.

There was a lot that worked quite well for me here. Dogbolter is a somewhat cliché villain, but he’s a pretty amusing one. Mel was actually utilized quite well in the story, especially when she is trying to correct her error in judgment throughout the story. McCoy was really good in this one, but that is not unexpected considering how long he has been at this between his television era and these audio releases. I wouldn’t want to see or hear Narvin with too much frequency, however he certainly need to keep turning up for a while and could still conceivably pester various Doctors for years to come.

The Doctor, Narvin, and Ace are transported into the Possibility Engine where they are living in roles created by whatever. I am not quite sure how to describe the Possibility Engine or its function. That may take another listen for me to grasp more fully.

Rounding out the cast is Jules De Jongh as Captain Regent of the Krasi. who wants to muscle in on Dogbolter’s territory and has designs on the Possibility Engine herself. The Captain Regent and Dogbolter have a pretty good double act going as well.

I did find the ending to be somewhat rushed and inadequate in some ways. Most of the adventure comes off pretty well, but I was not terribly satisfied with the resolution. For the most part, I appreciated the somewhat unexpected comedic turn this story took at times. It had some clever ideas throughout. Pretty much all of the supporting characters were pretty compelling and eccentric. The main cast performs well together as they usually do. In fact, they always do well even if the writing sometimes falters.

Even though not everything worked for me, most of it was pretty enjoyable.

“Schindler’s List” is a Steven Spielberg cinematic masterpiece that was initially released in 1993.  Liam Neeson stars in the title role.  Ben Kingsley was cast as Itzhak Stern, who assisted Oskar Schindler in  his efforts to save the lives of Jews who were targeted by the Holocaust during the World war II.  Ralph Fiennes plays the brutal SS commandant Amon Goth who was quite the enthusiast when it came to killing Jews.

There is not a single bad note in any of the performances.  Fiennes plays a truly loathsome creature who manages to convey some complexity to his cruelty.  There is nothing to make Goth really sympathetic, but he was certainly played with more depth than I have seen in many other Nazi roles in various films about this era.  Neeson certainly delivers in his role as well.  Schindler comes off as quite the party animal and womanizer, however that hides a certain craftiness that is exhibited when he really commits to aiding those Jewish refugees he can reach by having them work in his factory where they are protected from the brutal attention of the SS.  Kingsley excels in his role as well, but he usually puts forth a compelling performance.

There really is not much about this film that falls short of being amazing.  I did find the end to be a little more protracted than was necessary, but the very end where cast members and real life survivors who were rescued by Schindler’s efforts paid tribute to him at his gravesite was quite moving.

It is very easy to see how this film was a labor of love without having to hear Spielberg’s explanation.  It’s a hard film to say that one enjoys seeing considering the subject matter and the brutality depicted, however it is not hard to express appreciation for the presentation of a painful yet important part of world history.  There is no perfect way to describe or discuss the horrors of the Holocaust since our language can seem so inadequate.  Spielberg seems to strike a perfect balance between displaying that horror yet not quite going so far as to make it unwatchable.  Of course, I have a stronger stomach than most people.

The movie manages to be strangely heartbreaking and inspiring at the same time.  It took me twenty-five years to sit through this film.  No question that it’s a long one, however the critical acclaim from professional critics and friends who encouraged me to see it were absolutely right.  Although I have no real reason to have taken this long to see it, I am glad to have finally taken the time.

“Shada” is a Doctor Who serial that was supposed to have aired on the BBC in the seventeenth season of the original run of the series in 1979.  Tom Baker was the Doctor during that time and was accompanied by Lalla Ward as the second incarnation of Romana.  David Brierley provided the voice of K9.  Production was halted by a strike so there was not enough material on film to have been broadcast at that time.  BBC Video released what material they could in 1992 with Baker providing narration to explain the missing scenes.  Big Finish Productions teamed up with BBCi and retold the story with animation but with Paul McGann filling in as the Eighth Doctor, which was not a bad effort.

Just last year, BBC got together the surviving actors and recorded the dialogue that would been done in 1979 and animated the unfinished scenes.  The final product is a rather strange mixture of the original live action footage flowing into animated scenes.

The iconic Douglas Adams wrote this screenplay which was originally directed by Pennant Roberts.  Really, this particular serial carries some significant and complicated notoriety among the fandom.

Now that some of the overly simplified background explanation is out of the way, I will now share my humble opinions and thoughts about this latest effort to relay this incomplete tale.

The overall plot is a bit of a mess, however the performances from Baker, Ward, and the supporting cast are strong enough to find considerable forgiveness.  It seems to embrace the absurdity just a bit more enthusiastically for some reason.  Of course, this trait is a hallmark of Douglas Adams’ writing.

The Doctor and Romana arrive in Cambridge answering a summons from the absent-minded Professor Chronotis.  Chronotis is soon revealed to be a retired Time Lord who has taken on the guise of a harmless, befuddled university professor, however he has taken some books from Gallifrey and one very important and powerful one has gotten away from him.  This book contains the way to Shada, which houses a powerful, corrupt Time Lord named Salyavin. The now deceased Denis Carey in this role can almost steal the moment from Tom Baker sometimes, which isn’t an easy feat.

Christopher Neame plays an alien scientist by the name of Skagra who is also searching for the missing Gallifeyan artifact to learn the location of a forgotten prison planet called Shada.  Neame goes a bit over the top in his performances but still manages to make that seem fitting in this story.  Skagra works fine as the villain in this story, but it’s still a relief he did not become a recurring adversary of the Doctor’s.

The story is a little longer and more convoluted than necessary, but the charm and wit of Tom Baker’s version of the Doctor pretty much removes any resentment of that.  Lalla Ward is also great in this one.  Sorry, Brierley, but I prefer John Leeson’s version of K9.

The style of animation isn’t really that impressive, but it still works.  The actors who performed the new dialogue sounded pretty good.  The voices have  aged fairly noticeably, but not bad enough to pull me out of the story.

The story was meant to be told in six twenty-five minute episodes originally, however the producers of this particular release chose a more cinematic format, much like the old days when Americans would watch the show on PBS affiliates.

There is a very cool epilogue scene which makes no sense but is still profoundly amusing.  May Tom Baker have more years than he thinks to continue his performance in the Big Finish audio plays!

“Shada” is a pretty flawed effort initially, but there is plenty to enjoy regardless.  As an obnoxiously avid Doctor Who fan, I applaud the efforts to complete this story almost as originally intended.  Adams knows how to have fun in his writings, and this story demonstrates that just as effectively as “Hitchhiker’s Guide”.

“Shada” has a unique place in Doctor Who’s long history and in the hearts’ of the fans. It was long past time an effort like this was made.

“The Shell Collector” is a collection of eight short stories written by Anthony Doerr and was published in 2002.  There is quite a bit of variety of characters of settings throughout, but there seems to be a theme of people traveling and coming together outside of their usual surroundings.  The various stories take place throughout the world.

I am not going to review each and every story, but I would say the ones that engaged me the most started off with the first story “The Shell Collector” in which the title character has his island beleaguered with desperate people who come to believe he has amazing abilities of healing.  I also liked “The Hunter’s Wife” where a reunion is about to take place between a couple who have not seen each other in twenty years.  It dips in and out of the past where the reader learns about their meeting and eventual separation.  “The Caretaker” and the final story, “Mkondo” are also two of the strongest entries in this anthology.

“The Caretaker” is a about a refugee from Liberia which seems to also echo the controversies in today’s reality.

This really isn’t my usual choice for reading entertainment, but I was glad to have tried it out.  Doerr does have the somewhat exasperating practice of not using many quotation marks when depicting dialogue, but he is an interesting writer overall.  Some stories grabbed me more than others, as what usually happens with anthologies.  I would still recommend for my fellow readers to give this one a try.  I may also peruse some of Doerr’s other works since my curiosity is sparked.

I think I will next check in on the exploits of Jane Hawk with “The Whispering Room” by Dean Koontz.

“It Takes You Away” is the ninth episode in the eleventh series of the revived Doctor Who and stars Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor.  Mandip Gill, Bradley Walsh, and Tosin Cole are all still along for the ride.  Ed Hime wrote this particular story which was directed by Jamie Childs

The Doctor and company arrive in present day Norway where they find a young girl in a remote cabin seemingly abandoned by her father.  They hear what sounds like a very formidable creature lurking in the trees.  The Doctor’s tenacious curiosity has her find a peculiar portal in a mirror that leads to a tunnel and another very unusual universe that can recreate the past.

This episode started off pretty well.  It has some my favorite elements in that there is an isolated cabin in the thick Norwegian forest.  A young blind girl has a father who has not been seen for days, and something ferocious appears to be stalking the area.  The companions seem to be utilized a little better in this story.

Whittaker still has some moments where she seems to be almost emulating some of her predecessors.  I guess that can work for now until the scripts start to have more reliable improvement.

There was some real effort to be original here, however the final manifestation that the entity behind this whole thing was pretty appalling.  Once again, the Doctor ends up not  being in a real fight for her life against something really intent on killing her.

Although there were some elements that showed some improvement this year, the ending comes apart for me.  I hate to say this, however there may be a need to actually bring back a more familiar foe to help remind me this is still the same show I have been following for the past thirty or so years.

 

“The Possession of Hannah Grace” is the latest horror film where a young woman is possessed and then killed during an exorcism.  It stars Shay Mitchell, Stana Katic, and Grey Damon.  Diederik Van Rooijen is the director responsible for bringing Brian Sieve’s scrip to the screen.

Shay Mitchell plays a traumatized former Boston cop who is starting a job on the midnight shift at the morgue.  The character, Megan Reed, is apparently just starting in recovery from addiction and gets on with the morgue in order to help stave off the temptations brought on by too many lonely nights.  A very unusual corpse ends up on her gurney where Megan later learns that the young woman died during a failed exorcism three months before.

Stana Katic, formerly of the television series “Castle” plays a nurse on the midnight shift and also is Megan’s sponsor in their recovery group.  It was pretty cool to see Katic in one of her first roles away from “Castle.

Films of this genre do suffer from a bit of predictability and this one is no different.  It ends up being a chase scene around the typical gloomy corridors in the bowels of the hospital.  There were some pretty creepy scenes through.

I thought Mitchell did provide a fairly engaging performance in the lead role.  Kirby Johnson played the title role and was the typical and yet unusual girl who finds herself possessed by a malevolent demon for some inexplicable reason.  The films starts off with her rather disturbing death after the exorcism goes awry.

The visual effects were fine.  Kirby Johnson was made up quite convincingly as the contorted and mutilated corpse which isn’t quite as absent of life as first assumed.

I thought Mitchell presented the audience with an interesting protagonist in the form of Megan Reed.  When the strange occurrences really start to manifest, Mitchell’s fear is convincing enough.

I did not find the film to be terrible, but there was not much I expect will really stay with me.  It’s just another movie in a long line of possession plots that provides a few moments of started gasps and jumps but not much else to make it stand out.

“The Woman in the Window” is a film noir first released in 1944 and stars Edward G. Robinson alongside Joan Bennett, Raymond Massey, and Dan Duryea. Fritz Lang directed this film which was written by Nunnally Johnson, who adapted it for the screen from a novel written by J.H. Wallis.

A psychology professor whose family has gone on vacation without him encounters a woman who modeled for a portrait displayed in a storefront near his club.  Professor Richard Wanley, played by Robinson, ends up joining the woman at her apartment for a late night drink when another man barges in and attacks him.  The professor ends up killing this overly belligerent stranger in self-defense.  He and Joan Bennett’s character end up deciding to dispose of the body and make a pact to live their lives.  Of course, the professor is friends with Massey’s role Frank Lalor, a district attorney who is involved with the investigation once the body is discovered by a curious boy scout.  Just when matters can’t seem to get any worse, the blackmailer played by Dan Duryea is on hand to really raise the stakes.

This is mostly a pretty interesting film for the most part.  I thought Robinson did well enough playing this somewhat bland intellectual who finds himself in this unusual predicament.  The performances all around were solid.  Robinson is an interesting actor who had a reputation for playing the tough, dangerous types in films.  This particular role was a bit of a departure from what he usually portrayed, however he was also known as a very compelling actor no matter what he did.

Bennett was also quite good as the mysterious model who pulls Wanley into her mess.  The two played off each other quite well as they concoct the plan to conceal their murderous mishap.

Now, the film does have an ending which was rather odd and somewhat disappointing.  It just seemed rather out of place.  In spite of my reservations, I would say there is still something worthwhile to see in this one.

“The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak was first published in 2005 and takes place during the era of Adolph Hitler’s reign over Germany leading up to and through the Second World War.

Zusak has decided to have the personification of Death relate this tale of a young orphan who is taken in by foster parents after her younger brother dies on a train.  The main protagonist, Liesel Meminger, is illiterate but is just clever enough to recognize to recognize the power of words and starts to steal books that the Nazis are wanting to destroy.

Her life is further complicated and then enriched when her foster parents take in a Jewish fist-fighter needing refuge from the Nazis. It seems the father of the household, Hans Hubermann, has a debt to pay since the young man’s father saved his life during the First World War.

The story explores the lives of the residents of Germany during what would become one of those most turbulent times in world history.  These are the people who weren’t in the battlefields but faced their own horrors of being under such a dictatorship.

It’s not hard to see why this novel has such acclaim.  There are lots of engaging and complex themes interwoven throughout this piece.  Death often seems an effective and subtle narrator.  It’s a pretty clever road to choose to have Death tell the tale.

Zusak is definitely a talented writer who works hard to differentiate himself from his peers.  His style of prose is elegant and engaging enough to have me somewhat envious of his talent.

If one started a real in depth analysis of this work, I would find it hard to know where to stop or feel like every relevant aspect was covered.  I will just conclude by suggesting that my fellow bibliophiles not pass this one up,

I am now in a book club and need to catch up with the next selection as I get to know the works of Anthony Doerr with his anthology entitled “The Shell Collector”.

 

“The Witchfinders” is the latest Doctor Who episode to star Jodie Whittaker alongside Bradley Walsh, Tosin Cole, and Mandip Gill.  Joy Wilkinson wrote this tale of the Doctor and her crew in 17th century England where they come across a witch trial. It doesn’t take long for the Doctor to realize there is indeed an unearthly menace afoot, however it’s something considerably different from what the frightened villagers had in mind.

Alan Cumming guest stars as King James who is there to supervise the hunting of these accused witches.  Cumming is a pretty accomplished and talented actor, and he is fairly amusing in this episode.

I thought this episode worked fairly well.  Whittaker still seems to rely on characteristics of previous Doctors., which could make sense since the Doctors are all one person is various forms.  It was amusing to find the Doctor’s change of gender sort of hamper her in her investigations since the king was reluctant to take her seriously.  Graham ends up getting a surprise promotion to Witchfinder General after the Doctor attempts to adopt that guise with the aid of the psychic paper.

Dear Yasmin seemed a little less superfluous this time around. I could be finally getting used to the new TARDIS crew somewhat.  That’s not to say that I necessarily am on board thinking some of the fundamentals changes to the series is some stroke of genius from head writer Chris Chibnall.  It just so happened this episode annoyed me a little less than many of the others in this current series.

Of course, this episode did the obligatory reminder of how unfairly women were regarded around 400 years ago yet had Siobhan Finneran playing the county landlord or whatever she was supposed to be.

Of course, there was the matter of people of misusing Scripture to justify these witch trials. It was mentioned, but I didn’t catch anything too heretical when the Doctor mentioned the sequel to the Old Testament which would make drowning women to test their capacity for witchcraft as rather unnecessary.

I was also pleased that an alien menace with real malevolence appeared.  It was also a new alien adversary with whom the Doctor was unfamiliar.

It was one of the better episodes of this series. It’s not one of the great ones of the series as a while, but his is still shaping up to be fairly mediocre series in spite of some of the efforts to make some radical changes.