Gallifrey Series IV
I come to Big Finish’s new Gallifrey series from a slightly different angle from most of its listeners. I listened to the first three series several years ago, and was unimpressed – I remember the first series as being moderately entertaining fluff, while the second and third series got so far up their own arsehole they actually succeeded at navel-gazing from the inside, (This may be an unfair judgement. I remember them as being the very definition of fanwank, but it may well be that the attempt to do a fifteen-part epic story was just too ambitious for my own attention span).
But series three of Gallifrey had ended on a cliffhanger – the start of The Time War, with ‘some metal gentlemen’ having infected all of Gallifrey with a virus. And if there’s one thing I’m a sucker for, it’s the Time War. Especially since reading Richard & Alex’s wonderful Fractal History Of The Time War, I’ve been treating the Time War in my head like a gigantic multidimensional puzzle.
The interesting thing about the Time War is that the further one gets from ‘canon’, the more interesting the stories become. The Faction Paradox books are among the best books I’ve ever read, as is Dead Romance (which is slightly more ‘canon’ than the books). The Faction Paradox audios (with officially licensed Doctor Who baddies) and the Eighth Doctor books are good – sometimes very good – but rarely great. And the actual 2005-2009 TV series that established a version of the war as ‘canon’ is, to my mind, pretty much uniformly awful. The Time War/The War/The War In Heaven is as much as anything a war between alternative versions of history, and a history written by the winners and imposed from above is usually far less interesting than the multiple perspectives of the oppressed – would you rather read Homage To Catalonia or a piece of Falangist propaganda?
That’s not to compare Russel Davies to Generalissimo Franco – though I can imagine certain of the more rabid message board denizens emulating the example of the Tilbury dockers – Davies has actually been remarkably good on the issue of ‘canon’, loudly and publicly refusing to use his position of authority (in the minds of the kind of fans who like authorities) to adjudicate on what does and doesn’t ‘count’. For all the faults I find with him, Davies’ view is an inclusive one.
Rather, it’s to argue that those who are looking for certainty and ‘canon’ are limiting themselves unnecessarily (an argument I have made before, of course, in my book Sci-Ence! Justice Leak!). The Daleks as one possible Enemy in the Time War is a decent, though rather obvious, seed for other stories. The Daleks as *the* Enemy, on the other hand, closes off the other possibilities (an incursion of Time Lords from another ‘bottle universe’, the Time Lords themselves in the future/past, a new idea that radically disrupts ossified ways of thinking, the writers of the books themselves, a non-existent threat created purely to give the illusion of conflict, humanity, the vampires/Mal’akh wanting their universe back, the new TV series itself… ).
It might be fun, in fact, to do a few posts here looking at different options as to who or what The Enemy is. I particularly like the war between the Time Lords and The Enemy as the war between the ‘classic’ (small-c conservative, big-L Liberal) and Welsh (New Labour – modern, glossy, “we can brook no criticism, because however bad it is, it’s better than the horrible wilderness years we had before, do you want Thatcher back/the show off the air again?”) series…
But anyway, if we pop out of this digression from a digression from a digression, the Gallifrey audios – like the Big Finish audios generally – are in an odd place when it comes to ‘canon’ for those who care about such things. They’re officially licensed, but have to be approved by the makers of the current show. But at the same time, they can’t make reference to anything in that show. So even though Gary Russell, who is in charge of the Gallifrey series, is also a script editor on the Welsh series, and he has clearly stated (including on the special features for these stories) that he intends the War that happened off-stage between series three and four to be the Time War featured in the TV show, this can’t be stated directly in the stories themselves. This leads to an interesting kind of forced ambiguity being imposed *against* authorial intent.
And whether intentionally or not, this has produced a story where the in-universe and out-of-universe epistemic statuses are mirrored. We have a multiple-universe story (always a very good thing), but one where all the alternate universes travelled to are just that – alternate universes. They exist not as the parallel worlds in, say, Lance Parkin’s Faction Paradox novel Warlords Of Utopia, do – as worlds whose divergences produce results both good (in Parkin’s case, a peace that has lasted millennia, and a flowering of culture and technology) and bad (dictatorship, paedophilia as social norm, slavery). Rather, they exist as wrong turns that could have been taken, lessons that this (or in this case, the main Doctor Who universe) is the best of all possible worlds, with each of these universes being defined as wrong, inferior timelines, and each one diverging in precisely one way, which leads to disaster.
So along with the ‘real’ Romana, Leela and K9, plus the characters Narvin and Braxiatel from earlier stories, we get alternative versions of Romana (both her first and second regenerations), Leela (an articulate, educated fascist torturer, whose distinctly different tones show once and for all that Leela’s rather stilted way of talking is a deliberate acting decision by Louise Jameson, rather than a poor performance), two Sixth Doctors, and more, all in some ways ‘worse’ than the ones we know.
(Sadly there is no alternate K9. John Leeson was the star of the earlier Gallifrey series, with his bitching between the two K9s. Here, there is only one, and he doesn’t get to shine the same way except during his brief promotion to Castellan).
Of the four stories here – which can only be bought as a bundle, though for a very reasonable £30 (£35 if you want the CDs rather than just downloads), by far the best is CD3 – Gallifrey: Annihilation. Oddly, given that Russell was a co-writer, and he’s known for being more obsessed with continuity and fan-wank than most, there are no alternative Doctors or Romanas or whoever (though Lord Prydon *may* be intended to be an alternate Master, given that he’s played by Geoffrey Beevers), and surprisingly/thankfully Katy Manning isn’t playing Jo Grant or Iris Wildthyme, but a female Borussa.
For those of us who like playing games with that sort of thing, in fact, this story could fit quite neatly in with Faction Paradox, as it’s set on a Gallifrey where Rassilon was turned into a vampire by the Great Vampire, and there’s a civil war between the Vampire Gallifreyans and the ‘True Lords’, who never developed time travel but *could* regenerate. This could easily be the timeline from which the Faction’s masks come, and it will be in my ‘personal canon’ from now on. (Also in my ‘personal canon’, these are four of the Nine Homeworlds. No-one said the Nine Homeworlds had to be in *this* timeline – or if they did I don’t remember, which is the same thing).
It’s quite a nice piece of space-opera-Gothic, Beevers makes an appropriately sepulchral vampire, and it’s an entertaining way to spend an hour, though hardly ground-breaking stuff.
The worst, unfortunately, is Justin Richards’ Gallifrey: Disassembled. I say unfortunately, partly because this has the best performances of the bunch (from Louise Jameson as two Leelas, and a great turn by Colin Baker as Lord Burner), and the first half-hour or so is genuinely good, but it soon degenerates into a load of nonsense, with illogical, made-up-on-the-fly rules about what does and doesn’t count as a paradox, hints at Braxiatel being the Doctor’s brother, explanations as to why the Doctor originally left Gallifrey…
When I say that the big turning point in this universe is that Zagreus took the place of The Other in its history, I think that will tell everyone all they need to know (if you don’t know what those words mean, be thankful…)
The other two stories, Gallifrey: Reborn and Gallifrey: Forever, bookend the series quite nicely, providing us with, respectively, the set-up for this four-story series, and a new status quo at the end with Romana and Leela trapped on a Gallifrey which hadn’t yet invented time travel but where Romana’s now president.
Overall, quality-wise this sits somewhere in the middle of Big Finish’s range. Nowhere near a genuine masterpiece like Peri And The Piscon Paradox or some of their other recent triumphs, this still feels like it was created because of someone’s desire to tell the story, and so it’s still above some of the landfill “let’s have the Doctor team up with two companions from different eras, and have them fight the Celestial Toymaker, who’s teamed up with the Zarbi” stuff they do when inspiration fails completely.
You already know if this is the kind of thing you like or not (in fact you probably either ordered it in advance or are never going to hear it), but for the kind of thing it is, it’s well done. And thankfully, either through diktat from above or through taste on the part of Gary Russell, it leaves as many questions about the Time War unanswered at the end as at the beginning.
The Dark Knight – Conservative, but also liberal, pacifist, fascist, nihilist…
It is far, far too hot today. As a result my brain has shut down and my fingers are typing this on autopilot, so forgive the overly-verbose prose style and higher than usual levels of sarcasm.
I don’t intend to post often about superhero films here – much as I love superhero comics, I’m far more interested in comics as a medium than in superheroes as characters, and I’m not especially interested in seeing, say, the new Hulk film. In fact, to the extent that the films have become more important than the comics (and the fact that most of the reports on ‘comic’ news sites about the recent ‘comic’ con have been about TV shows and films should say everything important about that) then I consider them actively pernicious, as they lead to comics which are nothing more than illustrated film pitches.
However, I do enjoy film as a medium, and I’ll always watch a new Christopher Nolan film, so you’re getting some thoughts about The Dark Knight.Before we begin, I’m going to state that I wasn’t as impressed by this one as the previous film – the take on the character of Batman is darker than I’d like, and indee Batman/Bruce Wayne is almost a supporting character. Having said that, and thus gone against the growing consensus that this is Citizen Kane but done right and with Batman in it, I will say that it is an excellent film, and almost certainly the best of the year. Just not the best of all time, or even the decade, and probably not even Nolan’s best.
Now, apparently it’s good form to mention the presence of plot points in the review, but frankly I think that if you’re going to read someone reviewing a film you should expect plot points to get mentioned. The film, however, isn’t really one that can be ‘spoiled’ – there’s no big twist (the goodies win) and most of the tension is built up by the moral choices the characters have to make, rather than by any great hidden secrets or surprise twists and turns – there is essentially nothing in the plot itself that isn’t predictable (and for those worrying if there’ll be another film, the stock plot here is ‘second part of a trilogy’ rather than ‘stand-alone sequel’ – there’s some heavy-handed dialogue that suggests the next film will feature Catwoman and Robin).
The rather startling thing is that for all the pyrotechnics, it really is a character piece. That shouldn’t really be surprising given the calibre of the actors involved, but we’ve recently seen Iron Man, for example, have some wonderful performances in the service of action sequences (not that there’s anything wrong with that – Iron Man was a very good film of its type). In this film, on the other hand, the big set-piece action sequences feel almost bolted on – they’re done very well, and well-integrated with the rest of the film, but you could tell essentially the same story with a tenth of the budget.
Almost everyone has praised Heath Ledger’s performance to the skies. I wasn’t quite as impressed – it was a good performance, but I doubt it would be *as* highly praised as it is had he not died. Still, it *is* the best thought-out performance in a film full of excellent actors. In particular, while nothing the Joker does is funny, the *performance* is a funny one – Ledger does everything with a comic timing that makes you think something funny is going on even when it isn’t. The voice he puts on reminds me very much of Christopher Lloyd, but more than that the physical mannerisms of the character *are* those of Jack Lemmon – in particular in his drag scene the Joker moves so much like ‘Daphne’ in Some Like It Hot that it must have been a conscious decision to model the performance after Lemmon.
While the film owes a *lot* to various comics, the basic plot is one that has been used in everything from An Inspector Calls to Stephen King’s Needful Things, but is probably most familiar from Westerns – a stranger comes to town and makes everyone confront their own choices and realise who they really are. As a result, every major character in the film becomes a moral actor – the choices almost everyone makes have very real consequences (the exception being Rachel Womaninrefrigerator’s choices, which have no impact on anyone’s life except that of Alfred).
What Jonathan Nolan and David Goyer have done is take that ur-plot, and then build it up using elements from various of the better Batman comics from throughout the last 70 years. So we have the Joker’s plot coming from the very first Joker story by way of The Joker’s Five Way Revenge, the central moral dilemma (and the look of a couple of shots) coming from The Killing Joke, and the characterisation of the Joker being lifted from Arkham Asylum. I’d actually be very surprised as well if here wasn’t some co-ordination between the Batman editorial offices and the filmmakers given some of the resemblances between parts of the plot and some of what Grant Morrison’s been doing, especially the Batman imitators at the beginning of the film.
One of the more asinine claims being made about The Dark Knight is that it’s a ‘conservative’ or ‘right-wing’ film, because of presumed parallels with the ‘war on terror’. It’s entirely possible that the people making the film had that interpretation in mind (I know nothing of their politics), but I’d suggest that given that those fighting the ‘terrorist’ are portrayed as either spineless, amoral or psychotic, and that their behaviour leads directly to the deaths of hundreds of innocents and to property destruction on an almost apocalyptic scale, it is possibly not the pro-Bush rah-rah fest certain conservative commentators would suggest.
In reality, whatever their politics, the Nolan brothers (I’m discountiing Goyer’s influence here – his contribution seems from what I’ve read to have been to bring in elements from The Long Halloween, most of which is thankfully not visible in the finished film, though it serves as a framework for parts of Two-Face’s story) have far too nuanced a viewpoint to make propaganda for one side or another. The mistake the right-wingers have made is to view the film as a superhero film (to be fair, a reasonable mistake). Batman is the goody, and so if he spies on the whole city, that must be good, because the goody did it. (This thinking in fact explains a large majority of the right-wing commentariat’s opinions over the last few years).
In fact, for all its superhero trappings, this film is part-Western, part noir. Where it really excels is in its portrayal of chaos – it’s far more believeable that Gotham is being destroyed in this film than it was in Batman Begins. It’s a genuinely dark, scary vision. (I’d use phrases like ‘post-Katrina’ here if I was only slightly more of a fool than I am). The introduction of one minor random element managing to upset the whole delicately-balanced machinery of civilisation is all too plausible.
But its major theme, taken from The Killing Joke, is about what it takes to cause that chaos, and what it takes to make people break. For plot reasons, the film takes a slightly different line to the comic in its view on this – one bad day *does* manage to break Harvey Dent (SPOILER – he becomes Two Face. There, I’ve ruined it for you). Dent breaks because he’s too rigid, so when pressure is put on him he snaps. On the other hand, both Gordon and Batman compromise – they bend – and so they escape with their sanity intact, but at a huge cost (Gordon can’t trust the people he’s nominally in charge of, most of whom are working for the mob or the Joker, Batman is wanted for multiple murders and has lost the person who is, next to Alfred, his most important ally, as well as losing his love interest). You either try to fight corruption, in which case you break, or you try to compromise with corruption, in which case you become corrupt.
So the film for the most part has a bleak view of human existence – but a way out is shown by the boat scenes. I actually thought, in keeping with the rest of the film, that this literal ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ (but set up to make conflict, rather than co-operation, the rational solution) would end with the prisoners choosing not to set off the detonator, the ‘good citizens’ choosing to set off theirs, only for the Joker to have lied and have the ‘good citizens’ actually blow their own boat up. However, the film takes a less bleak view of human nature than either myself or most economists would take, and has both sides make an irrational choice, with a Batman-ex-machina to save everyone from the consequences of that irrationality.
So what is the political interpretation of that scene?
Maybe it’s a pacifist-anarchist film, suggesting that the only way to be good is to disengage from the whole process.
Maybe it’s anti-pacifism, showing that you can only choose to disengage from violence if you have Batman to commit it for you.
Maybe it’s a fascist film – the groups on the boat managed to show a strength through unity, and neither break nor bend, just like fasces.
Maybe it’s a wishy-washy liberal film – accept the compromises so long as you don’t have to see them.
Or maybe the film has a point of view that is nuanced, complex, and wholly unrelated to the real world, because the Joker and Batman aren’t real. Do you think it might be that? Actually, any political subtext seems to be at best tertiary after the aims of telling a story about three characters going through hell in their own ways and delivering action adventure that can be turned into cool toys.
The film isn’t perfect by a long way – there are far too many examples of characters giving long speeches about their place in the world, rather than just letting us infer these things from their actions, and these could easily have been cut. And Rachel Loveinterestgoboom is as much of a cipher as in the previous film, although at least this time she’s a cipher portrayed by a competent actor. But once again Nolan’s actually given us a film that’s as complex and interesting as some of the better Batman comics, and better than most.
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