By Roy Mathur, on 2024-06-23, at 23:15:28 to 00:13:04 BST, for Captain Roy's Rusty Rocket Radio Show
Not SFFH, but trueish-life biopic of Maurice Flitcroft, starring Mark Rylance as an ex-crane driver and fairly bad golf pro. Mildly fantastical, sweet, comedic fluff.
Sith! Potential spoilers! Is it Darth Plagueis? Even better, is Qimir, Maes's comic relief, Plagueis? I doubt it, but still...
Season 4 is still mildly entertaining, this time parodying the US's real world upcoming election, while our supe-murdering team is on the ropes.
Over-the-top sex and violence, but overall thankfully tamer than Garth Ennis's pull-no-punches comic it's based on. As a Londoner, I'll never get over Bill Butcher's diabolical accent (please fire the dialect coach and casting director). It should have ended a season ago, but season 5 is earmarked for 2025, if Bill's brains don't leak out his ears by then.
On beating unbeatable video game, future warriors demand that caretaker leads their fight for freedom.
Live-action that wraps The Last Star Fighter, Back to the Future, Terminator, Demolition Man, etc., in a revoltingly comedic Rick and Morty-type shell. And that is certainly not how you recharge.
Jamie Donoughue (The Last Kingdom) directs Russell T. Davies' written final episode (story 311b) of Ncuti Gatwa's first season (season 14 or 1). Co-stars Millie Gibson as Ruby Sunday, features Gabriel Woolf as Sutekh, and including Bonnie Langford as Mel Bush.
Sutekh says he survived the Pyramids of Mars by clinging onto the TARDIS. He says that Susan is one of his many cloned life-destroying weapons (explaining Susans memories of being a villain). The Time Window device creates a Memory TARDIS, in which Ruby sees evil Roger ap Gwilliam from 73 Yards being interviewed about a DNA database. A possessed Mel takes them back to UNIT, where the Doctor manages to tie Sutekh to the TARDIS and drag him through the vortex reversing his destruction, including the dead UNIT staff, then releases the tether, killing him. The DNA database enables Ruby to reunite with her biological mother and the Doctor and Ruby part. Mrs Flood breaks the fourth wall:
"And that's how the story of the Church on Ruby Road comes to an end... with a very happy ending for little Ruby Sunday. But life goes on, doesn't it? Ruthlessly! And what happens, you might wonder... Oh, what happens to that mysterious traveller in time and space known as the Doctor? I'm sorry to say his story ends in absolute terror. Night-night!"
Thoughts: Murray Gold's music was not as powerful as his season 14 theme, nor was it as emotional as at the end of Dot and Bubble, but it was inoffensive. The theme, along with the stunning visuals, as I've said before, is amazing.
The Doctor's outfit starts off vaguely 50s rocker, a chunky cardigan in the middle, and ends with my favourite Ncuti outfit of 70s brown leather trench coat and trainers. I had worried with Jodie's outfit, it was going to be continuation of costume mistakes reminiscent of poor Colin Baker. Ncuti's wardrobe proved me wrong.
The explanation of how Sutekh survives is stupid and unearned. It almost made me scream. This time Sutekh is CGI'd, but lets pay tribute to the original anonymous suit actor in Pyramids of Mars. As the story's big bad monster, Sutekh looks like a bat. Although much improved from RTD's concept stretch, which looks even sillier, with the grandiose title Empire of Death; a big bat, divine or not, doesn't cut the mustard, especially after epic stories like The Timeless Children and insane arcs like Flux. This story and villain did not have the gravitas to live up to my expectations. At least original Sutekh voice actor Gabriel Woolf lends his interesting, menacing, but not overtly evil voice to the god.
RTD neatly weaves in an explanation for Tales from the Tardis's Memory Tardis. The pop culture source of RTD's Memory TARDIS is stolen from Steven Moffat's Mind Palace from Sherlock, which is in turn stolen from Hannibal Lector's Memory Palace, originating, in the West at least, from ancient Greek and Roman sources.
I don't like Mel Bush. She was an annoying screamer in classic and she's an annoying, humourless badass in New Who. Unfortunately, following the reversal, she survives. Maybe I'll change my mind when I start revisiting Colin Bakers tenure.
That short chap on the Segway is blasting his machine gun behind Dr Kate. Gun safety!
Russell T. Davies values purple prose over logic, which isn't acceptable. This is actual science fiction, not fantasy, and even fantasy has internal logic. You can't reverse the polarity of death. Death plus death isn't life, it's death. It's not like magnets, RTD.
Is Mrs flood looking like a winter-white-clad Mary Poppins another Missy/Master red-herring? I hope not.
Thank god RTD didn't do a Clara and Ruby is just an ordinary person. I liked how Gibson left the Doctor because somethings are more important than space and time japes with Doc, but it is a bloody time machine, isn't it? And why can't the new Doc, with all his touchy- feeliness and high EQ, not just stick around for a few months? He could help fix the mess he created at UNIT, while being Millie's friend?
Conclusion: muddled, convoluted, absurdly soft science fiction throughout that barely hung together thanks only to Ncuti's acting, and an equally nonsensical deus ex machina ending. To make something out of so complicated and senseless a story proves to me that post-Who Ncuti will be great.
This season would have been a disaster without Ncuti's vibrancy and emotional depth selling the largely ludicrous plots. 73 Yards is the exception and was great, which proves RTD can still do the business, but I think he overstretched himself by writing all the scripts except Rogue.
Utopia, a Doctor Who con was held just minutes down the road from me recently. I was too late to attend, the price was steep, and I'm not really into meeting celebs in any case. If you are from elsewhere, or local, and attended, let me know how it was.
In 542, I was going to briefly talk of Albrecht Durer's Melencolia I for obvious reasons, i.e. I was feeling that way, but in the end decided to spare you my misery. That must have unlocked something in my head to talk art, as we haven't broached the subject in a while. So it gives me great pleasure to make brief mention of the art of Polish arist Zdzislaw Beksinski.
His artworks are fantastic, honorific, and nightmarish.
If you like the work of H. R. Gieger, you'll see ghastly parallels here, and also with the gothic memento mori-style of the Late Medieval period reflected in horrifying paintings like The Dead Lovers. Night night.