Why Doctor Who Needs Arcs Again

Posted on 20 May 2013 by James

First things first: Matt Smith is my favourite Doctor. There, I said it. Smith is the Doctor I always wanted him to be: energetic bordering on wild, eccentric bordering on crazy, funny and weird and dark. The finale to Series Seven proved to me how great Smith is: he has a moment where he cries and it’s just perfect.

But, that said, this series has been a bloody shambles and the finale fell flat because the preceding episodes hadn’t earned it.

Be warned: this post is spoiler-heavy.

You have to buy your epic moments

Series Five was an almost perfect series. With a new Doctor, showrunner and companion it could have alienated the fans. But Amy Pond was the first and best impossible girl; her and her cracks in the universe were there from episode one. And each episode expanded on both of them, teasing out the mystery. Pieces of broken TARDIS, memories of Rory and refugee aliens kept popping up. There were plenty of stand-alone episodes, but they all managed to tip their hat to the arc.

So when it culminated in the epic finale, you were invested. You were desperate to know the answer to the questions you’d been teased with. You felt the losses and the sacrifices. It deserved its big moments. It deserved its deep emotion. Because the arc had paid for them.

The lack of an arc left Series Seven weak

New companion Clara is an impossible girl too, popping up over and over throughout history. But her mystery barely got a line or two each week.

The Great Intelligence claims that the Doctor continually thwarts him and that is why he wants revenge. But he only appeared twice this series.

Trenzalore has been built up in preceding series as a sort of end game for the Doctor. He must never go there. Terrible consequences will ensue if he does and villains have wreaked enormous evils to ensure that he doesn’t. Didn’t get a mention in Series Seven.

Then Moffat writes an epic finale where Clara’s mystery is solved, the Great Intelligence wreaks his revenge and the Doctor is forced to go to Trenzalore.

You can’t build an epic finale on stand-alone episodes

So the finale fell flat. An ending built on an uncared-for mystery, a villain’s third appearance and a concept that’s gone unmentioned since Series Six. And it’s such a shame, because it was a waste of so many good ideas: the remains of the Doctor as temporal scar tissue; the enormous, dead TARDIS; the dream conference call. Plus the treat of Alex Kingston, whose very presence injects life and wit and sauce. And the revelation of John Hurt as the Doctor was the best teaser I’ve ever seen ever. Ever.

But it wasn’t an ending. It wasn’t a close to the series. It was just another episode. Because no-one had raised any stakes, built any tension or left the audience desperate for resolution to any burning questions. The finale hadn’t earnt its epic moments. So they were empty. Hollow. Just like the villain.

Arcs aren’t anathema to casual viewing

Continuity always suffers on television because it sits at odds with jumping on points. Showrunners don’t want any potential new viewers to be put off by back story. So they gravitate to stand-alones. (It’s also why comics are always being retconned.) But if each episode stands like the proverbial cheese, why tune in next week? Why not skip a few weeks? After all, you won’t miss anything, will you?

Series Five had stand-alones. But they hinted at the arc. They left you with a question at the end of the episode that meant you’d tune in next week. Not one episode of Series Seven left me desperate to watch the next. Because there was no continuation. I knew next week would be something completely different. Unconnected. That it would carry as much consequence as this week.

That won’t keep an audience. If a viewer doesn’t feel like they have to watch the next episode, it’s only a matter of time before they find something else to watch. Turning Doctor Who into a montage of disconnected stories will be the death of it.

In short, Moffat needs to up his game. Series Five was fantastic. Series Six was good. But Series Seven started weak and got weaker. And if Series Eight doesn’t have any consequential storytelling then I’ll start losing interest. I’m sure I won’t be alone. I’ll try to keep watching. But, no matter how good Matt Smith is, one day I’ll just forget to tune in.

And that will be very sad.

How Iron Man 3 Got Extremis Wrong

Posted on 14 May 2013 by James

I couldn’t love Iron Man until Warren Ellis came along. Until that point, Marvel didn’t seem to know what to do with him. He lacked a spark, so he was just a guy in a suit. Then Warren Ellis wrote his Extremis storyline. And I loved Iron Man.

Now if you haven’t seen Iron Man 3, look away now. In fact, drop everything and go see it.

To everyone else: wasn’t it a good film? Highlights for me included Tony’s panic attacks, Ben Kingsley as the Mandarin and, as ever, Don Cheadle. Good stuff. But man did they drop the ball with Extremis.

I mentioned earlier that Iron Man in the comics lacked a spark. That’s because every superhero character has an identifying core. Captain America’s is patriotism. The Hulk’s is the monster/man, ego/id battle. Iron Man didn’t have one. But Ellis got the premise in five little words: test pilot of the future. Iron Man’s core is cutting edge technology.

That’s something Jon Favreau realised. His Iron Man films were grounded in tech, almost obsessed with it. But Iron Man was created fifty years ago. Today we’re building exoskeleton suits that aren’t miles away from Iron Man.

So Ellis gave us Extremis. The storyline gives us a Tony Stark whose Iron Man suit is reaching its limits. It’s become heavy and slow. And when Iron Man battles an Extremis-enhanced man, he gets his tin can handed to him.

What does he do? He’s outdated, antiquated and broken. So he upgrades. He installs Extremis into himself. Iron Man becomes a techno-biological upgrade to Tony Stark. He is the test pilot of the future. He is Iron Man.

Extremis puts Iron Man beyond today’s science. It lets Tony mentally interface with any wireless technology. It lets him power the suit by thought. It lets him control multiple suits and call them to him. Sound familiar? Barring the first, this is all the ending of Iron Man 3, isn’t it? Only Tony can’t do those things. He has to ask JARVIS to do them.

I like JARVIS. Great idea and I love Paul Bettany’s performance. But JARVIS overshadows Tony; Tony can stay in bed and send JARVIS instead. You can tell Shane Black knew that because he broke JARVIS for a huge portion of the film. JARVIS makes Tony, as a character, weak and redundant. When a computer can fly the Iron Man suit, it makes the notion of a human pilot outdated. Antiquated. Broken.

An Extremis-enhanced Tony Stark could have remedied that and given us Iron Man: test pilot of the future. But where Warren Ellis used Extremis to update Iron Man to 2.0, Shane Black used it to make monsters. And we got Iron Man 1.4. Incremental update.

Am I right? Or am I wrong? Leave a comment, I’m interested to hear what you think.

Can I Help You?

Posted on 1 May 2013 by James

Let me tell you a story. I was walking home and I walked past a woman who had dropped some Lego. A lot of Lego. A hell of a lot of Lego.

It would have been easy to walk on by. But I knew if I did that I’d be disappointed in myself. So I put away my phone, pulled out my headphones and started picking up plastic bricks. And two other guys stopped and helped. Working together we had it all up in about two minutes. Two minutes of our time but it had saved the poor woman about fifteen of hers. It felt pretty good.

Why am I telling you this? To brag? No. To tell you that I’ve realised what a kick you can get out of helping people. So this post is an open call. I’m looking to do good deeds. Is there something you need? A favour to ask? Anything I can do? Let me know. I’m not promising I’ll say yes, of course, but I will if I can. And if I can’t, maybe I know someone who can.

And I won’t ask for anything in return. Because good turns make life awesome and I just want to make more of them.

So can I help you?

Replacing Google Reader with Flipboard

Posted on 14 April 2013 by James

Are you still mourning the loss of Google Reader? Still not found a good replacement for it? Rocking an iPhone or Android phone? Then I’ve got the app for you: Flipboard.

You might have heard of Flipboard already as it’s been out for a while. It’s intended purpose is a social media aggregator. You can add streams from almost any social media service, from Facebook and Twitter to Google+ and Tumblr. That meant my early experiments with Flipboard were doomed. I like my social media segregated rather than aggregated. But Flipboard can also add RSS feeds. And it’s so pretty!

The screenshot above shows how one blog looks. Looks like a magazine, right? And that’s how all blogs look. It certainly looks better on a tablet but it’s still good on a phone; the smaller screen just means you view story previews one at a time rather than as a magazine-esque spread. But it’s so easy and intuitive to use that I love it anyway. All you need to do is paste the feed URL (such as this one) into the search bar or you can also search for the blog by name. Bingo. Tap it, add it and you’ll get a new tile on your home screen.

These tiles also sync across devices, so if you’re using a tablet and a phone you won’t have to add or delete feeds on each one. I have noticed that sometimes the tiles can be slow to update, but nothing life-changing. I’ve also not played with the magazine feature, which lets you offer a bundle of RSS and social network subscriptions to fellow users. But it does sound like a cool idea.

So I’m actually kind of glad they pulled the plug on Google Reader. What about you? Which service did you pick to replace Reader?

Review: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Posted on 3 April 2013 by James

If you read my review of House of Leaves, you may finish reading this review thinking I have a weakness for narrative gimmicks. You wouldn’t be wrong. Sometimes I read a book purely because it sounds like it’s doing something weird with narrative. But, in this case, I read the book because I saw the trailer for the film. And I didn’t understand it at all.

Cloud Atlas tells six stories from six different time periods:

1) notary Adam Ewing’s travels around the Chatham Islands in the 1850s;
2) composer Robert Frobisher’s apprenticeship to composer Vyvyan Ayrs in 1931;
3) journalist Louisa Rey’s investigations into a coverup surrounding a nuclear facility in 1975;
4) editor Timothy Cavendish’s incarceration in a nursing home in the present day;
5) rogue clone Somni~451′s interrogation in a dystopian future;
6) goatherd Zachry’s encounter with a technologically advanced visitor in a post-apocalyptic future.

If you’re expecting the stories to link up, get ready for some disappointment. The only connections are thematic. Well, that and one character in each story has a similar birthmark. I never did figure out why.

A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.

Here’s my biggest problem with Cloud Atlas: the stories are all split in half around the centre of the book. So you read the first half of story one, then the first half of story two, then the first half of story three, four and five. Then it’s all of story six before you get to read the ends of stories five, four, three, two and one. This has the effect of making the first half of the book an exercise in frustration and the second half one in relief. Sad to say I reached the end of Cloud Atlas and said, “I’m glad that’s over.”

Now I’m a spent firework; but at least I’ve been a firework.

That’s not to say that Mitchell is a bad writer. Far from it. I enjoyed a lot of this book, particularly Frobisher’s letters and Somni~451′s interrogation. Mitchell writes in very different styles in this novel and he does so successfully. Except for the sixth story. The style he adopted is annoying and I skimmed that story in an effort to escape.

Yay, Old Uns’ Smart mastered sicks, miles, seeds, an’ made miracles ord’nary, but it din’t master one thing, nay, a hunger in the hearts o’ humans, yay, a hunger for more.”

Aside from that awful style, Mitchell is a good writer. I would pick up another of his books, though I couldn’t recommend this one. The series of beginnings left me dissatisfied for the first half and the series of conclusions left me breathless with resolution for the second half. It’s a nice narrative device in theory, but in practice it doesn’t work.

In short, I can’t recommend this book. But, off the back of it, I would recommend Mitchell as a writer. Which is an usual result from an unusual book.

Has Amazon Ruined Goodreads?

Posted on 2 April 2013 by James

It’s a burden being right all the time. Not too long ago I wrote a post stating that Amazon needs to embrace social media. And what happened? Amazon bought Goodreads, the leading social media site for book readers. Did I call it or what?

Well, not really. I had imagined Amazon introducing some homegrown social solutions. But I forgot the Golden Rule: when you’re as big as Amazon, you don’t have to make your own products; you just have to buy other people’s. So Amazon saw what Goodreads had created and got them some of that. But is this a good thing for readers?

Otis Chandler, one of the founders of Goodreads, claims that he sold the site to Amazon for three reasons:

• Greater reach – Amazon can extend Goodreads services to all of its customers now;
• Ereader integration – Amazon can now bring social interaction directly into the reading experience;
• Independence – Amazon will keep their hands off the wheel.

Yeah, I’m not buying that last one.

That Goodreads was an independent entity was what made it so great. It fostered a truly open environment and encouraged free discussion. Goodreads was somewhere you could go to talk books online without a salesman taking notes over your shoulder. But now it has a vested interest in making you buy from Amazon. Cue heavy advertising, links aplenty and pretty soon features will be exclusive to the Kindle. And Goodreads will exist solely to build up Amazon and break down its competition.

Are there any upsides to the deal? I’m not counting all these social reading ideas; reading will always be a solitary experience no matter how many buttons you add to the ereader. But Amazon will bring money and resources to the party. That might help Goodreads develop their mobile app, for instance, or improve the online interface. And it’s unlikely that Amazon are going to mess much the site, other than channeling buyers to their site. So the Goodreads we know won’t go anywhere any time soon.

But the data belongs to the Mighty Zon now. That will be a bitter pill for some people to swallow.

But perhaps I’m being too negative. What do you think? Is Amazon going to break Goodreads or can things only get better?

Books Don’t Need Reinventing

Posted on 21 March 2013 by James

I recently watched a fascinating presentation by Mark Waid called Reinventing Comics. If you like comics it’s worth a watch (I believe it’s a preview of the future), but today I’m writing about books. Because while comics might need reinventing, books do not.

A lot of the comments I read on this video said things like “now someone needs to do this for novels” and “when will this be done for all books?” I was surprised because it’s been tried and people are still trying.

Reinventing books is an old idea that isn’t gaining any traction.

Apple released software that makes it easy to create interactive ebooks with video, audio, multi-touch models and more. Booktrack lets you add effects and a soundtrack to ebooks. And now Socialbook wants to make reading a social experience, letting your friends scribble notes in the margins of your book, highlight portions, pull out quotes and even re-arrange the content.

But none of these gimmicks have revolutionised books which remain, largely, words on the page. And for one very simple reason:

Gimmicks are distractions from the narrative.

I downloaded the Charlie Brown’s Christmas app last year. I was all hopped up on Christmas chocolate and wanted to try an interactive book. And while it’s not an awful little app, all the interactive elements were just…naff.

•Voiceover? Switched off; I like reading, not being read to.
•Tap the pictures to make them move? Why? All they do is wiggle to a sound effect.
• Play the music along with Schroeder? All that does is remind me I’m no good at music.

And all of these things stopped the story from flowing and yanked me out of the narrative again and again. No-one likes being interrupted while they read, but in this case I had paid for the interruptions to be part and parcel of the book itself.

Trying to cram in interactivity and video and the social media isn’t reinventing books.

It’s creating a bastard of book and app, a Jack of all trades. It removes focus from the key element, the words, in favour of bells and whistles. But people who want bells and whistlea buy apps. And people who want words buy books.

So to the people who think that books need to enter the 21st Century, I have only this to say: keep all your bells and whistles. A good book needs only the words and a quiet place to read them in.

And letting your friends rearrange the content of your book? Are you high?

Review: Legend Unleashed by M. Latimer-Ridley

Posted on 5 March 2013 by James

“Little Alice here is taking a trip down the rabbit-hole with you then.”

Regular readers will know that I interviewed M. Latimer-Ridley about Legend Unleashed before Christmas. Now that No More Books 2012 is over and I’m free to buy books again, I didn’t waste much time in picking up a copy. Thanks to the preview on their website I already knew it started with some brilliantly intriguing imagery. But how was the rest of it?

A wide black oak grandfather clock towered in front of him. A figure had been chiselled into it; a snarling animal with human hands trying to escape. Roughly carved and splintering in places, it was fused to the ground in a mixture of stone and wood. Numerous white rocks encircled it in a symbolic ring of salt, old magic that was supposed to trap demons inside.

Temperance Levinthal is a regular girl who finds herself caught up in a conflict between wizards and werewolves and finds out more about herself than she expected. Maybe that sounds like standard fare but it’s written with a wit and a warmth that keeps you engaged. There’s no overblown dramatics and not much teenage angst either. M. Latimer-Ridley hit the right tone unfailingly and that made this book an absolute pleasure to read.

“Poor crazy Levinthals, I hope you’ve taken your medication today, you’d be mad not to!”

The Twilight series has made paranormal romance seem rather hundrum now. In fact it’s difficult to make paranormal YA stand out. And Legend Unleashed doesn’t take massive steps to do so. Rather it folds in quirks and foibles that are memorable enough to make the story feel fresh yet comfortably familiar.

For example, Temperance is well aware that she suffers “hallucinations” and takes pills to keep them at bay. She relies on them for stability and it’s a very nice touch to see her rely on them more and more as her world is increasingly filled with impossible things. I do wish more had been done with this idea, but perhaps this will come up in a sequel. For now it’s a nice wrinkle.

A part of her had always wanted to find someone as lonely as she was.

This is a book that wears its Young Adult audience on its sleeve and I loved it for that. There is an enormous influx of YA titles of late and you get the feeling that a lot of writers are chasing the Twilight dollar. No such feeling here. This is true YA. It’s not a dumbed-down “adult” book; it’s written for its target audience. And, like all great books, it can be enjoyed by anyone.

It was nice to see wizards as well. We’ve seen lots of witches and werewolves and vampires but the poor wizard seems to get short thrift. So kudos to M. Latimer-Ridley for resurrecting the wizard.

If I have one complaint about this book it is this: it feels too rushed. M. Latimer-Ridley weave a nice world but I didn’t feel I was given enough time to explore it and settle in. Events happen at a breakneck speed and even major revelations don’t seem to have quite enough space to breath. It was quite a shame as I think I would have enjoyed the book a lot more if the pacing had been a bit calmer. As it was the plot always seemed to have one eye on the horizon. I’d have preferred its full attention on the moments as they unfolded.

That said, if werewolves and YA are your thing then this book is for you and I can definitely recommend it. Legend Unleashed has a well-crafted world with some great characters and a nice, twisty plot. But all I can really say is that I would buy any sequels: what greater recommendation is there than that?

Your Guide to Gay Superheroes

Posted on 25 February 2013 by James

Last week I wrote about the controversy surrounding DC hiring anti-gay activist Orson Scott Card. And it seemed no sooner did I put down the metaphorical pen than I heard the news that Batwoman had proposed to her girlfriend. (Damage control on DC’s part? Or am I being cynical?) So this week I decided to put together a little guide to the major gay superheroes in comics.

Northstar

Northstar has to come first in the list. He was arguably the first major gay superhero, coming out back in 1992. Even if he wasn’t the first gay superhero, though, he’s certainly the first superhero to get married! So he definitely gets top billing.

That said, though, you’ve probably never heard of him. That’s because Marvel couldn’t (wouldn’t) out a major character in 1992. So they chose a member of Canadian mutant super team Alpha Flight.

Apollo and Midnighter

Apollo and the Midnighter come from the Wildstorm Comics stable of characters and came out quite quickly. They had a commitment ceremony long before Northstar started shopping for rings and they’ve adopted a daughter (and she’s the spirit of the 21st century, so make of that what you will). Wildstorm is now owned by DC but started life as a separate company and Apollo and the Midnighter are unabashed Superman and Batman analogues.

Which makes sense. There’s always been a chemistry between Supes and Bats, right?

Ultimate Colossus

I took a little dig at Northstar for being a minor league hero, but Colossus is definitely a bigger ticket. He’s one of the X-men and even made it into the X-men movies. Okay, yes, he’s straight in mainstream continuity. But back in the 90s Marvel launched their Ultimate line, comics using the same characters but updating and reinventing them for new readers. And in this universe, Colossus is gay. In fact he dated Ultimate Northstar.

Green Lantern

DC wiped out years of continuity in 2011 and completely rebooted every one of its titles as part of their “New 52″ initiative. As part of this reboot, DC announced that they would out one of its classic characters. Batman was immediately everyone’s favourite candidate (perhaps due to the enduring influence of Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent). But DC opted for Green Lantern. But not Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern you might recognise from the movie. They picked Alan Scott, the Green Lantern from alternative and second string universe Earth Two.

I won’t lie, I was a little disappointed. Alan Scott wasn’t the quite the big ticket name DC had led us to expect.

Batwoman

Batwoman has been around for almost sixty years but came to the fore during DC’s 52 event when Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman disappeared for a year. Although Batwoman is a bit of a Batman clone (she’s a millionaire and suffered some childhood trauma of her own) she’s quite beloved and big enough to have her own comic. And she just proposed to her girlfriend in a frankly stunning panel of comic art.

There. That feels a lot more positive than last week’s musings. Now tell me: are there enough gay superheroes in comics? Or are there some characters you think still need to step out of the closet?

Should Orson Scott Card Write Superman?

Posted on 20 February 2013 by James

DC have recently announced that their latest Superman title, Adventures of Superman, will be written by Orson Scott Card. Card is perhaps best known for his Ender’s Game series and for his two volume run on Ultimate Iron Man. He is also vocally homophobic. Cue the Internet outrage.

At the time of writing over 11,000 people have signed a petition to have DC give the boot to Card. Some comic stores are even boycotting Card’s Superman comic. I don’t dispute that Card’s views are anything from misguided to disgusting. But can we not separate the creator from his content?

Ender’s Game is a great book. So are the sequels (although they can get a little preachy) and I recommend them to every SF reader. They are clearly written by a talented writer. I own the book and I enjoy the book but that doesn’t mean I have to agree with everything Card believes in.

Similarly, can’t DC pay for Card’s work without condoning his views? The argument behind the petitions and boycotts is that DC shouldn’t be associating itself with hateful people. But if I can buy Ender’s Game without condoning homophobia, can’t DC buy Card’s comic work without being associated with his views?

On the flip side, of course, DC wouldn’t hire an outspoken racist. And, putting aside how women are often drawn in comics, they probably wouldn’t hire an outspoken sexist either. Although Frank Miller’s work might make you think twice about that one. But given that they wouldn’t permit racists and sexists on their staff, why will they permit homophobes? And should they?

Freedom of speech means you get to say the most appalling things and not be punished for it. So it doesn’t make sense to not hire someone for having views other than your own. That might even be discrimination. I believe the problem comes when those views make it into the work. To bring up Frank Miller again, his work is filled with misogyny and that should have been unacceptable to DC. Will Card fill his Superman comic with his anti-gay bias? It’s unlikely. But if he did, that would be the time for DC to drop him like a hot rock. Not before.

Despite having written that last paragraph, I still feel uneasy about DC’s decision. I can’t quite put my finger on why. But I think, logically, that’s the right answer: separate the content from the creator and enjoy it until their objectionable views taint it.

I’m just not sure if I feel that’s the right answer. Which might be why so many people are upset about this.

Update: This story just won’t go away. All the controversy around Card has led the artist he was due to work with, Chris Sprouse, to quit. But is Sprouse standing up for what he believes in or is he letting the issues get in the art?

James T Kelly

Website of writer James T Kelly

Why Doctor Who Needs Arcs Again

How Iron Man 3 Got Extremis Wrong

Can I Help You?

Books Don’t Need Reinventing

Review: Legend Unleashed by M. Latimer-Ridley

Your Guide to Gay Superheroes

Should Orson Scott Card Write Superman?

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