Mission Report by UNIT Agent Bill Filer to Trap One - Subject matter: (Zygon: When being you just isn't enough)

This is a story that keeps popping up in discussions, mostly it seems as a source of ridicule - I might even be the most guilty of bringing it up any chance I get. But thinking about it, it is probably a full decade since I last actually watched it - so guess what I did last night?

What mostly gets brought up about this story is nudity and the soft porn, but as our resident TARDIS Guide Swede @Tian recently said, it is on par with a great deal of Nordic films. It isn't that excessive when it comes down to it, with only two sexual encounters. The first shows Lauren and Mike getting closer to each other after they have had a long affection for each other but have been unable to move along with the relationship because of the Doctor/Patient situation. The second sexual encounter is when Lauren is in the body of that random businessman, and is basically an exploration of Lauren's sexuality as she has sex with a woman, as a man. Her attraction to woman was shown earlier in the movie when she was eyeballing her colleague in the locker room. There is actually something really interesting going on here in terms of Lauren's questioning nature of her sexuality, but unfortunately it isn't explored much further and is buried beneath the plot.

The plot of the story with Mike forgetting he is a Zygon, and getting treated for a mental illness when images surface in his dreams is super interesting. The other Zygon, Bob, trying to use Lauren's professional relationship to Mike to get him to remember his Zygon nature, is again a good narrative idea but not explored enough. The movie is just too short at around an hour to actually flesh out the plot and the intricacies of Lauren becoming a Zygon, and her exploration of her sexuality, it needed probably another half an hour.

But I am kind of grateful that it is so short, because the production value is appalling. Really low visual quality, shaky cams, the same extras everywhere in the same clothes, weird editing in post-production, bad effects when Zygon stuff happens, the script needed a bit of a rewrite, and sadly acting that isn't quite up to scratch.

It's a movie that has a bunch of faults, but at the end of the day I think it has gotten an unfair reputation. I won't be rushing to watch it again any time soon, but I would still say this is a 3/5 :star: story.

End of report. Logged and filed at The Black Archive.

Mission Report by UNIT Agent Bill Filer to Trap One - Subject matter: Transit

How to make this review without being as sexually explicit as this book? 🤔 Let's just say that if "Kola nuts" pop up in future books I will not look at them the same 😳 I'll try to keep it clean, but did we actually need a story that include a scene about how a prostitute cleans her nether region?

This is really a very straightforward plot for a futuristic sci-fi book (sentient interplanetary transit system gains consciousness when stretched to go interstellar and goes rogue) - then Ben Aaronovitch takes too many cues from Marc Platt and makes it as convoluted as possible. Marc Platt just have a better handle on convoluted storytelling. If tightened up and rigorously edited this could have been a really good 50-page short story in my opinion.

Having Benny possessed in her first proper outing as a Team TARDIS member was a bad call, I would much have preferred to have a story that highlights her best features and gives us more information on our brand new companion. It gives the impression that Aaronovitch is only interested in the on screen companion that he helped create.

Ming was totally unnecessary for the story and it could have worked just as well if not better if she had been cut in editing. She was fleshed out as a character (polyamory and a preference for floor sex, again with too much graphic sexual content - did we really need to know about her first climax?) but in the end she was expendable to the story.

The Angel Francine was a tad confusing I'll admit, a blind hacker/crime boss/fighter pilot/friend of the Doctor - what was she really all about? Make her make sense! 😉 And was the Flying Dutchman she encounters supposed to be a version of the Doctor as Merlin?

Kadiatu Lethbridge -Stewart is a good character - even if you disregard her family heritage. Genetically engineered or enhanced, genius-level time travel theory student with a hard edge and a heart of gold - that's a proper sci-fi character. Her sexual encounters were really unnecessarily graphic in their nature and overshadowed the story. Include sex in a story all you want, but it should work within the framework of the overall universe - for Doctor Who I would argue that you can include pre-coital and post-coital scenes but should refrain from the "middle bit".

Graphic sex is in the end what is memorable about this novel, which is just a giant detriment to the story. I think Aaronovitch is going for adult storytelling here, but misses the mark completely and end up with a juvenile, adolescent approach - he tries to push the boundary for graphic content by using a rocket launcher. This is taking "not understanding the assignment" to the next level. Seriously that sentence with the Kola nuts? 🤨

End of report. Logged and filed at The Black Archive.

Mission Report by UNIT Agent Bill Filer to Trap One - Subject matter: The Power of the Doctor

I love this one. It came out right at one of those times where life had decided to continuously kick me in parts best left unmentioned. Things changed in my life right around then and left me able to enjoy things I hadn't in a long stretch of time and watching Jodie Whittaker's swansong just rekindled my love for Doctor Who in the best way possible. I love the way stories sometimes just gets intertwined with your life, stories becomes more than the sum of their parts.

This is roughly the same storytelling technique Chibnall used in Flux. It's a great big tapestry of scenes like puzzle pieces that you have to do some of the work yourself in piecing together.  It is filled with delightful scenes, moments, lines and cameos, almost to the point where the narrative becomes secondary in nature. Sophie Aldred and Janet Fielding were so fantastic, they really portrayed their characters as having lived full lives after their individual travels, while remaining true to the core personality of their roles. If I were to write out all the positives I find in this story we would be here for a while. But I will say, seeing Ian in the companions' support group brought a tear to my eye.

"The Blossomiest Blossom" surely would get most Classic Who fans thinking of Jon Pertwee and the "Daisyest Daisy", but it is also a quote from a playwright called Dennis Potter. After being diagnosed with terminal cancer he used that phrase to describe how he saw the beauty in the little things knowing the end was near - what could be more apt for a regeneration scene? And Jodie's Doctor saying "Tag you're it!" before exploding in regeneration energy in what I think is the most visually stunning regeneration in Doctor Who history was sheer perfection for me. It was Jodie Whittaker and Chris Chibnall passing the baton to a whole new era in the best way possible - with joyful expectation of the future, it might be the end but the moment had been prepared for.

End of report. Logged and filed at The Black Archive.

Mission Report by UNIT Agent Bill Filer to Trap One - Subject matter: An Unearthly Child

Okay, I've never actually done a review before - so starting at the very beginning seems like an approach my brain would accept, though I think it will be a bit random which stories I will write reviews for. I will aim at highlighting the positives and the joy that I find in the Whoniverse, hopefully it will help me to appreciate Doctor Who even more - if that is even possible. No writer or production team deliberately sets out to create a bad story, though circumstances during production can limit the end result. There will still be joy to be had in every single story, at least that is my philosophy.

The first episode has been described as a perfect 25-minute introduction-piece of television ad nauseum, and rightly so. It is really atmospheric and just oozes mystery. Susan and The Doctor are just the right shade of eccentric and enigmatic, and Ian and Barbara have got such fantastic chemistry right of the bat as they decide to go sleuthing. The casting is perfect and generally speaking one of Doctor Who's greatest strengths, and a big reason for it's longevity. Just - thank you to everyone involved with making this show from the get go: Verity Lambert, Sydney Newman, Waris Hussein, Delia Derbyshire, Raymond Cusick and a whole ream of other talented people.

The Cavemen episodes that follow are oft ridiculed a bit for being boring, with humans barely able to communicate over the level of a grunt, and that newcomers should just go straight into The Daleks - as was indeed the case with the novelisation of The Daleks. I concede that folks who aren't used to 60's television probably would be better served by this "machete order", but then the linguist in me kicks in! We are at the very beginning of articulated communication - the rules of language as a concept are being formed, the ever-changing nature of lexicography and grammar are being birthed. I find that immensely fascinating. It is a story of political intrigue and societal status - all expressed in a power-struggle about fire. I think that that is really clever, that basic narrative structure can easily also be applied to a contemporary or future setting. And being an easily recognisable narrative allows for greater focus to be placed on character development of our main cast and the incredibly unbelievable nature of breaking down the temporal barriers in a box that is flippin' bigger on the inside.

A deserved shout out to Mark Gatiss for immortalising the genesis of this magnificent show in "An Adventure in Space and Time"

End of report. Logged and filed at The Black Archive.