Portents of Doom

The thing about *Portents* is that there's the shadow of a good film in there. Like, the idea of this strange otherworldly man, this Stranger, if you will, dropping in out of nowhere and falling in love with you and charming you until you almost fall in love with him is very *Torchwood*, and fits in very nicely with the whole otherworldly feel of *PROBE*. The direction is good, Solomon's acting is occasionally vaguely passable (but Baggs's sets new records for how flat it is actually possible to deliver a line), and Evil Creepy Giles is actually played quite well. The music is likewise good, the dialogue and CGI abysmal, and the ending a complete nothing, but ultimately this has the vibe of a charming queer student film, and it's none the worse for it. Ultimately, it's largely very bad, but it does end up being *interesting*, and I think that's somewhat commendable, and I can't help being somewhat charmed by it, especially with how off the wall it gets at times.

So bad it's good.

Unlike When To Die, this is one I can actually reccomend watching to laugh at because it's just so so funny completely unintentionally, and it's mercifully short.

Baggs can't act, and unlike the other case files where the format at least slightly hides that, it's just on full display here. Another thing on full display is that Baggs wrote this as he has the only other actor they could get to star constantly complimenting and flirting with him.

Speaking of constant flirting, the other character that's doing that flirting is Solomon, who viewers of previous BBV work may recognise as the true name of The Stranger, is here seemingly doing his best Captain Jack Harkness impersonation, at least I think that's what the character is meant to be. I've only seen the first episode of The Stranger so far, but it's a very far departure from how he was characterised over there. I mean, sure there's a lot of difference between Hartnell and Ncuti's doctors, but this is just even moreso than that.

And then there's the production..... Bad effects (some solid ones and some where they've masked it by making the image quality flicker when they happened which was a fun workaround, but mostly just awful), clear use of stock photos and videos (two times there's a call from someone and it's so obviously a video playing on a stock photo), poor location scouting/shooting (It's set in london..... but there's a 'Missing Cat in Southampton' poster very clearly readable in frame), 0 care for props (Solomon is just using a literal smart phone, and they expect you to pretend it's future tech) and the shot continuity is awful (there's one point where Baggs is trying to get into a building and getting frustrated that it's locked... and in one shot it's just open behind him)

Other fun things to note, Baggs tries to imply that PROBE has contacts at Torchwood 3, and I can't for a second believe that Torchwood would take PROBE seriously, especially the season 8 team, and also there's one bit where the alien impersonates Baggs to get at Solomon (because they couldn't get more than those two actors), and Solomon says "Clever, disguising yourself as someone I care about" when they literally met like 20 minutes ago.

All in all, go in know it's bad, and just laugh at it.

2/10 for quality, 8/10 for entertainment