darkthirty

A Strugatsky day is always a good day, but when it includes a nice DAW copy of Hard To Be A God and a new translation of Roadside Picnic, it's extra special by any reckoning. The publisher's page for the new Roadside Picnic is here. It was published on May 1 this year. As you can see, the cover is a famous shot from Tarkovsky's film Stalker based on the book, and a note at the bottom refers to my favourite video game of all time, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl, based on the book, the film, and the Chernobyl disaster. It's a fine translation (I'm not all the way through yet) and sets to right some missing things from the subtle and excellent Macmillan Antonina Bouis version. LeGuin provides an introduction, and Boris Strugatsky provides some notes at the end, mostly referencing the long publication history, under Soviet rule, of this book and a couple others dealing with first contact - Space Mowgli and the utterly fascinating and original Inspector Glebsky's Puzzle, a contact story masquerading as a mystery. Whatever reservations Boris had about Tarkovsky's magnificent 1979 film, about working on the script with him or about the finished film in relation to the book, in the end he calls the film brilliant. Remember, Moby-Dick, Persuasion, Correction and Roadside Picnic are my four interchangeably favourite novels ever, so this new translation is a bit of big deal for me. I'll talk more about this new translation and other things regarding the novel in a day or two, but it is so good to have it back in print. Yay.

An Unearthly Child - The Doctor and Susan being annoying, Barbara and Ian being somewhat less so. In all the fumbling around in the dark, the idea that the show means to be about ideas is clear. Everything else, not so clear. (Humanity is stupid is such a different way than proposed here by the depiction of distinctly unclever primatives.)
The Daleks - These early serials are too long by 50%, but this was lovely none the less. Big ideas are introduced for the first time, without the layers of nuance that develop later, in particular regarding the Daleks, but the gist is there. Who knew the Doctor's sly ploy to see the city would unravel such an outstanding complication? Already here the typical Terry Nation dual-rigged plot with romantic highlights is on display. The best of number one that I've seen so far.
The Edge of Destruction - First half amazing, second half goofy (different directors). Coming far too early in the show to have the impact it should have, this could have been a powerful story a little later, when the impact of a rift between the Doctor and Barbara, who represent the polar extremities of this bunch, would have been hugely dramatic. Here it just seems like the doctor suddenly realized he's actually a misanthropist. It could have been wonderful, with a more gradual but deeper rift between the parties, hints of a rift between Ian and Barbara and the Doctor and his granddaughter, and a more thematically (and technically) satisfying reason for the TARDIS going loopy than a... well, you know. The images of Susan staring coldly into space from her bed where she is hiding a pair of scissors, or wielding them crazily are some of my favourite DW images of all time. David Whitaker had some vision, I think, of the possibilities for this show. Was he successful? Also, if you ever wondered why people talk about Hartnell and line delivery, this is one to check out. This may have been the first DW I ever saw. The speed at which this was written and the sparse editing contribute to the Freudian undertones, which are really strong.
Marco Polo - Not a fan of the historicals, but this not bad at all. The reconstruction is very easy to follow. I find the security of the TARDIS in the new series strangely comforting. Is this just a reflection of the tech savvy world we live in and it's sense of safety, it's belief in technological grace? At any rate, the TARDIS itself is too often the plot in these stories I find. On the plus side, Ian gets an amazing jacket.
Keys of Marinus - The direction of this serial is almost great, and again, Terry Nation's way of writing about perception and reality is fine, and that approach survives in the new Who, and I'm pretty sure influenced other sci fi series' as well. I think it's a story that wanted some budget, and got chump change. Still, I liked parts of it very much (the camera work is great) even if the challenges and solutions were uneven. On the plus side, Ian wears his amazing jacket.

Doctors in order of preference: Christopher Eccleston (by far), Tom Baker, Paul McGann, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Peter Davison, David Tennant, Matt Smith, Sylvester McCoy, Colin Baker, William Hartnell. Okay, I've not seen every ep of the classics, but I'm starting a slow re-watch of all I can get, and I have seen multiple eps of each. Some of the individual eps from the Doctors I've ranked lower are excellent and memorable of course - the first part of An Unearthly Child had such promise, didn't it? - I'm talking merely about presentation of a character. McGann's third place on my list says something about how much I enjoyed his all too brief take, and Hartnell wasn't actually bad, he just had such a crappy, changeable attitude for such a long stretch, I liked his companions a lot more almost always. Colin Baker is challenge to watch anytime - some of the scripts are very well written but so poorly directed and acted (not so much by Colin but by those around him, including and especially the continuously breathlessly pleading Peri) you want to see them redone. Oh, wait. Looking at this list, the block from Pertwee to Smith is very close and hard to rate - some of each of their stories are just excellent, and some are damned irritating - but when Pertwee was more restrained, he could be grandly compelling, and was the first doctor that was easy for me to identify with. Davison occasionally had real depth to his interpretation, and his streak of melancholy (which survives in Davison's characters to this day) was attractive. I found Troughton's peculiarities pretty easy to take, because his Doctor had a very interesting arc - the gravitas came slowly but unstoppably. Also, during the second Doctor's run, the Who universe seemed to expand to a proper size. Tom Baker - what can I say? He could make even the stupidest stories entertaining, and the great ones fantastic.
It looks like this

Composed for a friend who died of breast cancer at the age of 43. It was performed on an Axiom 61 with East West Choirs, recorded on a Zoom H1, and mastered in Acid with Acoustic Mirror to create the suggestion that the entire thing is being heard in a seashell found on the beach.

I find myself with less and less to say about this incarnation of the Doctor - or should I say, Moffat's DW, because Matt Smith is actually fine. Mildly more interesting than the last season, but hardly anything stayed in my mind. The Doctor's Wife, I suppose, and The Girl Who Waited. What is lacking? I remember serials from almost all of the classical Doctors - Two, Three, Four and Seven especially - that were both much more philosophical and much more interesting than anything from Season 6.

It's nothing more than the absence of Russell T Davies, I'm going to say. I don't like Moffat's DW so far. Ethics, philosophy and history just occur, are "mentioned," but in a dramatic context that doesn't add up to thematic depth, because it's not shown how those things relate to given individuals and their peculiar, particular motivations and choices and so forth. I'm still not sure why the hell Amy bothers to wait for the Doctor at all, for example.

I don't even like the opening theme and credits for Seson 5 and 6. Season 1 and 2 had the best theme arrangement and credits, at least since Delia Derbyshire's original one.

Speaking of Moffat - how is Sherlock itself not nominated for a BAFTA?

Also, I've been watching the Champions League games, and while I'm solidly behind Chelsea (I actually dislike all three of the other teams in the semis) and believe they deserve to be going to the final, can anyone tell me WTAF is wrong with John Terry? Is there anyone left who actually wants to shake his hand?

Least favourite season of the new series. Complicated story lines do not equal interesting, Moffat. We get the River Song thing, stop acting like it's some big prize at the bottom of the cake. The Eleventh Hour, introduction of Amy and all that, was a pretty good beginning, and The Beast Below was okay, and The Lodger, but the only truly memorable one from this season was Vincent and the Doctor. The whole silence motif was irritating, and the double stories were a little too far over the top in Doctor deification, which, under Moffat, has become extremely persistent and damned irritating. The very things that work for Sherlock - focussing on big stories and pushing boundaries ridiculously, work for a normal human, but for a Time Lord, they can have the opposite effect.

I like Amy, Rory, River and Eleven separately, but their "complicated" stories just keep smashing into each other loudly like doors that don't line up, so they have to be forced open or closed. I've already begun season 6, and at least the writing is better, so I hope that continues.

Or, the season that went on forever.

Alright, maybe Tennant isn't my favourite Doctor, but this two part season, while seeming never to end (or end over and over), was full of great ideas. Eps that stood out - Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead, which I loved, obviously, The Doctor's Daughter, and the arc of stories Midnight, Turn Left, Stolen Earth and Journey's End - emotional arc for the audience, I guess, in that they constitute the beginning of The Doctor's fall. One could argue that the fall began with The Doctor's Daughter, but Midnight (fascinating planet!) really signals the beginning of the end, doesn't it. Donna's fate seems to affect The Doctor deeply too. I enjoyed Turn Left a lot, second only to the aforementioned Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead.

After Donna, for pure science fiction value, Planet of the Dead and The Waters of Mars, the latter marking the point of no return in the fall, were quite fascinating, but The End of Time, while creating a truly awesome suggestion of the degeneracy of the Time Lords at the end, and making great use of the Wilf character, was a little heavy going. And did they have to wrap everything up so tightly? I know Tennant is probably the second most popular Doctor ever, and was four years in the role, but did we really need a LOTR extended edition ending?

General comments on the season - I was slightly disappointed that the Ood turned out to be a quasi-religious order more than a species, though I liked them well-enough, even from The Impossible Planet. I thought Donna's story was handled really well, all told, and I felt her absence in the second part of the "season" quite a bit. The Waters of Mars almost worked - it didn't, but it was close enough - the Doctor bit collided thematically, I thought, with the Mars base story, weakening both. The resolution of Bad Wolf was fun. David Morrissey would make a fine Doctor, wouldn't he? A better Colonel Brandon perhaps than Doctor, but still.

Tennant's tenure as The Doctor was long enough to have highs and lows, but I don't want to talk about the lows. I think his wobbliness at the end worked for me, when it wasn't bathed in melodramatic writing (his interaction with Rose at the end was ideal, but I suppose it wouldn't have been effective but for the more sentimental preceding good-byes.) And while The Fires of Pompeii did in fact telegraph some of Donna's story arc, it was in fact telegraphing The Doctor's, almost entire.

Now, I've watched Vampires of Venice in another context already, and was impressed by the actor, at any rate, so I am looking forward to Matt Smith's Doctor.

Time Crash, while more interesting as an archival document than an entertainment, reminded me how much I hated that celery.

Voyage of the Damned avoided giving me any kind of Minogue rash, but somehow the death scale was wonky again.

Partners in Crime was memorable for all the wrong reasons, but The Fires of Pompeii, even though it was an "historical" tale, was pretty good. My question is: did the second episode of Season 4 just telegraph Donna's entire psychic journey?

Again with Season 3, the serial eps were quite good - I liked parts of all of them quite a bit, but it was Human Nature and The Family of Blood that were most memorable of the longer stories - though it wasn't without a certain wobbliness regarding the Doctor as a human. Strangely though, it was Smith & Jones, 42 and Blink that really stood out - Blink obviously because Carey Mulligan is such a great actor and carried the nearly Doctorless and Marthaless story by herself. 42 was a fine story in ensemble mode like The Impossible Planet, but where the tension was palpable throughout. Out of the whole season, only Blink and 42 come easily to mind.

Freema Ageyman - does anyone think she'd have been better with either Eccleston or Smith (who I've only seen in one ep so far)? Or, hell, Colin Baker? At any rate, I enjoyed this season partly because it was a respite from the intensely emotional first two seasons.

Three new compositions. The first, Sight of Home, is a short brass piece about coming home at dusk after a long day - that warm mixture of relief, happy exhaustion, familiarity, and golden light. It's very simple, but I like the way brass can create a shimmering yet still well-defined, particular and peculiar space. The call and response with the trumpet works too, I think.


The second, Intuition 2, is another go at illustrating intuition musically, and quite different from the way Intuition 1 on After Darkness (still available here) approached the idea.

The third is about 10 minutes long, and it's the culmination of a series that started with Conifer and continued in The Ocean Wall. I had a dream about friends disappearing from a ship at sea, while deep engines droned a slow, sad melody. It's actually composed for a film in three parts I'm wanting to make soon, but the sound is inspired by that dream. It's called The Sound I Heard As My Friends Disappeared.

I realize there's little interest in this music, but I hope someone out there might enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed creating it. And yes, The Sound I Heard As My Friends Disappeared is as good as sleep tea, or a half ounce of Jager. It is NOT driving music.