iainjclark's Mysterious World

My wife and I have seized the opportunity to attend WorldCon while it's in London this August. It took some determined childcare planning (and our daughters have been duly bribed/compensated with a family holiday) but it's happening!

Not only that, but I'm delighted to say I've been invited onto a panel at LonCon:

2014 Hugo Awards: Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
Saturday 11:00 - 12:00

The actual nominees under discussion are here.

Having never done this before, at this stage I'm feeling slightly under-qualified, but since a few people may be wandering over to this fairly moribund blog, here's a quick roundup of my published reviews.

Film Reviews

V for Vendetta

X-Men: The Last Stand

Spider-man 3

Iron Man

Star Trek (2009)

TV Reviews

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (Season One)

Torchwood (Season One)

Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

Primeval (Season One)

Doctor Who: School Reunion

Smaller contributions

SF Signal - Mind Meld: Battlestar Galactica Series Finale (waaay down at the bottom)

Strange Horizons: 2007 in Review

Strange Horizons : 2006 in Review

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Yes, my eldest daughter is currently obsessed by Frozen, why do you ask?

I'm a contributer to the latest Mind Meld article over at SF Signal along with many others including wrong_questions and saxonb. My bit is allllll the way down at the bottom. Take that however you wish. ;-)

The rather leading question at hand is this: BSG has ended, and no one appears to be thrilled with the finale. What would you have done differently, if you could run the show?

It's a question I singularly fail to answer, on the grounds that it's much easier to complain and point fingers than to offer solutions *cough*. In fact I quite enjoyed the Battlestar Galactica finale, on just about every level except logic. I've been known to forgive a lack of logic when a) the writer is Joss Whedon, b) the characters and the emotion hit me the right way, or c) both of the above (e.g. Buffy's 'The Gift'). There are certainly some fine and poignant moments of character and emotion in the BSG finale, but somehow along the way I stopped caring, enough, about these particular characters.

I think BSG and I parted ways emotionally and intellectually at the end of Season 2, when I stopped my reviews, but the rot certainly set in before that.

My review of the Babylon 5 straight-to-DVD movie is up today at Strange Horizons.

If you're thinking "Dude, didn't that DVD come out, like, aeons ago?" you'd be right. You'd also be a geek but we can't help that. I wrote this last year as a reflection on both the new movie and the original series, and (my feelings on Babylon 5 being somewhat conflicted) it wound up being longer, more personal and more retrospective than normal. It's been waiting in the wings until now, but I'm quite fond of it.

Now get the hell off my space station. And, y'know, go and read it.

My review of Iron Man is up at Strange Horizons today. Should you care to take a look.

I'm not normally one for fan-made videos setting TV clips to music but this one of Firefly/Serenity to the music of Wicked has Joss Whedonian and Tim Minearian endorsement, so I went to look. It's extremely well done.

< insert obligatory *sob* for Firefly here >

While I'm here, the 2007 in Review piece in Strange Horizons has a very small contribution by yours truly, in which I inexplicably can't find anything better on TV last year than Doctor Who. Three times in a row. It's just wrong. Fortunately everyone else is very erudite and reads books and stuff. Also pikelet is insane but you knew that.

Of course The Wire is far better than any SF-related TV currently airing but that doesn't count for Strange Horizons. My Season 4 DVD arrived today, and Season 5 has just started in the US. It's just so very satisfying, layered and intelligent and you should all be watching it but will you lot listen? *Will you*?

In lieu of any other good TV and with anyone who could potentially write some being on strike, we've resorted to DVDs. We've been hugely enjoying Cracker on DVD, a series we missed in its entirety when it was on TV. Robbie Coltrane is fantastic, and the writing is incredibly sharp, with a real interest in psychology and themes rather than just the surface process of investigation. This definitely puts it a notch above most other ostensibly 'crime' related television which seems more formulaic with each passing year. We've only the final one-off special and the more recent Cracker reunion TV movie to go.

We've also been bingeing on old Doctor Who. The Time Warrior is splendid, and gives me my fix of Sontarans in a way that The Sontaran Experiment just didn't accomplish. The Claws of Axos is, sadly, complete rubbish despite featuring some iconic images that have stuck with me since childhood. In contrast, Tom Baker's debut story Robot is great. Yes, even the rubbish FX are great. All of this has made me so nostalgic that I've rashly ordered the Beneath the Surface box set, despite it having the really terrible Warriors of the Deep in it.

My review of Primeval is up at Strange Horizons today. I know there can be few people in the world today who wouldn't rate this groundbreaking drama as their favourite show of all time, so I know you'll all want to head over and take a look. Ah, go take a look anyway.

I'd comment on the Life on Mars finale but it's been covered in many other places. It's odd for such a lightweight--if extremely skilful and enjoyable--series to have such a controversial ending. Like The Prisoner, Twin Peaks and even Quantum Leap before it the conclusion casts a strange shadow over the series. Right now I feel fairly ambivalent towards the finale, but I suspect that in a week's time I'll either hate it or have come to regard it as a work of genius. At least it wasn't dull.

Although there's a dearth of good TV on at the moment until Veronica Mars and Heroes make their long awaited returns, I'm quite enjoying House, Bones and CSI: Original Menthol Flavour (although so far this year CSI is not matching its superb sixth season).

We've also been watching The Dresden Files, an entirely formulaic piece of television involving a down-at-heel P.I. who's also a wizard, and his Tim Curry-esque mentor, who's a ghost. It's exactly what you'd expect: vampire of the week, werewolf of the week, skinwalker of the week. I'd place it somewhere above Charmed and occasionally up to the standard of below par Angel, riding on the rumpled charm of its lead performance and the feeling that everyone involved is giving it slightly more effort than the show strictly deserves. I have to say that the second half of the 12 episode season has shown a notable improvement with a lot of input from Robert Hewitt Wolfe and Hans Beimler of Deep Space Nine fame: the plots have become less obvious, and the story arc involving Dresden's father has moved forward very rapidly. I would only recommend it if you're in an undemanding mood and predisposed to like this kind of thing, but on those terms I *would* recommend it.

The one thing I can't recommend about The Dresden Files is the main theme music, one of the most anodyne themes-by-numbers I've heard since the 1980s. They try to funk it up mid-season with some up-tempo trumpets in the background, but it's the very definition of polishing a turd.

My review of the Torchwood season finale is up¹ at Strange Horizons today, should you feel yourself overcome with curiosity...

¹ "The reviews section. Separate from the articles, outside the poetry, beyond the art gallery."

In honour of Strange Horizons' Tenth Doctor Week, with which I have no affiliation of any kind, the BBC have put up a few pics of the Doctor and new assistant Martha Jones on their website. Nice, although not as nice as this. I think I prefer the brown suit to the blue, but the red plimsoles are a nice touch, and it's good to know that the Doctor cares deeply about colour-coordinating with his companion's outfit.



Plus a press release. Is it wrong that of all the episodes mentioned, the thing that got me most excited was the episode set in 1930s New York?

Your lives will be sallow and empty if you don't read my review of X-Men: The Last Stand on Strange Horizons.

Okay, my life will be sallow and empty. Yours... not so much.