Daily Archives: Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

The King’s Demons

  • Reading time:4 mins read

In retrospect people describe season 20 of Doctor Who as a huge flashback. They make pains to point out how every story features a returning character from the show’s history. In reality I only think two or three reappearances are worth noting. You’ve got the Black Guardian back for a three-serial arc, for the first time in four years. That counts as one, so far as I’m concerned. Then you’ve got Omega back from the 10th anniversary special, to lead off the season. That one’s pretty overt. And finally the season ends with The Five Doctors, which is sort of a menagerie of all the show’s history.

Other serials are a little more dubious. In one story we have the long-awaited return of a villain introduced just the previous season. And then we have The King’s Demons. Considering that the Master has been a semi-regular feature of the show since his reintroduction in season 18, and will continue to appear about once a season throughout the 1980s, I don’t see how he alone counts as a blast from the past. It’s more like business as usual, really.

I think I’m prevaricating to avoid the actual topic of this review. It’s not that there’s anything specially wrong with The King’s Demons. It’s more that there’s very little of note about it. It’s a short, two-episode pseudo-historical that seems to drag on for twice its length. The TARDIS crew touches down in medieval England, for no particular reason. They exit the ship into the middle of a jousting match, overseen by the figure of King John himself, on his way to sign the Magna Carta.

If this were a David Whitaker script, maybe we’d be onto something — a sensitive exploration of a cultural context that we tend to blur into stereotype. Indeed some of the disc’s special features adequately explain the situation that birthed the Magna Carta, and dwell on the daily lives of the various factions involved in the treaty. This is good stuff, and might well have been the focus of the story.

Instead, as in Terence Dudley’s earlier Black Orchid, the characters mostly stand, occasionally skulk, around and avoid talking about anything in particular, expressing any opinions or perspectives, or accomplishing much of anything. If you like, here’s the full story: our heroes get alternately accused and praised for various things not of their doing, and then one of the characters is revealed as the Master. The Master accuses our heroes of various things not of their doing, and then another of the characters is revealed as a shape-shifting android. Our heroes lock the Master in his TARDIS (I think) and then leave, the android in tow. The end.

This android is of course Kamelion, an ineffectual prop that the writers promptly forget about until they choose to kill him off about a season later, in Planet of Fire. The only comment I can offer is that their eventual solution to the Kamelion problem — substituting a man with silver face paint for the original prop — was actually rather elegant, and that if they had hit on that idea earlier they could easily have used Kamelion as a regular character. In that sense he was perhaps a bold missed opportunity. Given his actual on-screen use, however, the widespread tendency, amongst those even aware of the character, is to consciously forget that Kamelion even existed.

Given that the Kamelion’s introduction is perhaps the only memorable detail of The King’s Demons, you can see my hesitancy to get to the point. I guess the point is simple enough, though. You’re safe in skipping this one.

The DVD is fairly solid, though. As I said, the special features add wealth to a dreary production. The commentary, led by Peter Davison, is jovial as ever. The actual serial is also beautifully restored. I’m used to this serial looking like blurry, over-exposed mud. As tedious as it may be, at least now there’s plenty of production detail to distract the eye.

Run For Your Life

  • Reading time:3 mins read

Run for Your Life is a documentary of two halves, one more interesting and less developed than the other. It begins as a story of the New York City Marathon — how it came about, how its growth affected the city and paralleled other social movements of the early 1970s, and how it grew into the cultural monolith that we know today. Then somewhere around the half-hour mark, the film meanders into the personal life of marathon founder Fred Lebow.

Lewbow is a fascinating guy in his own right; he never knew how to have a personal life, and so he just kept running — both metaphorically and literally. There was always something new, somewhere new, someone new to chase after. The only thing that he never ran from was an idea. He was a brilliant guy, able to see to the center of complex problems and successfully argue for a solution before the problems were even on the radar of most people. More than brilliant, he was faithful to his ideas and principles to an extent that few people are. He came off as crazy, arrogant, and then visionary.

So his story is interesting, and rather inspirational, just on the basis of his personality. Yet that story fairly well consumes the latter two-thirds of the movie, leaving several intriguing questions about the marathon itself to dangle in the wind. The film toys with the social effects of the marathon on the city, both in terms of its general reputation and in the practical effects on specific neighborhoods. Were the effects permanent? How did the residents of those neighborhoods feel? Are there any statistics on crime and demographics, or any representative anecdotes about the change in tone?

How did the route evolve over time? Why has it stayed the same basic shape since the start? Has it come into any criticism? If the marathon grew out of a Bronx running club, why is the route based mostly in Brooklyn, with only a few minutes each in the Bronx, Staten Island, and Queens?

How has the public perception of running changed? The documentary states that back in the early ’70s no one thought of running as a serious sport. Let’s have some more details about the changes — some milestone moments that mark its cultural evolution. It also says that back then, running was all about going fast. So how has the science changed, and how has the marathon tied into that? Back then, some experts advised that women should never run more than a mile. Explain that, and explain some of the adversity that women had to face before the cultural and scientific mainstream accepted them as athletes. Lebow is supposed to have been a major catalyst in addressing all of this, so great. Address it.

The editing is dynamic and clear, which helps to power through exciting sequences like the history that makes up the first half-hour. When the film slows down to dwell on Lebow’s life, the constant cutting and animation begins to feel overly busy and distracting, making the slow portions feel all the slower.

The film gives a fair glimpse at a remarkable mind that thrived off of and in turn enriched a remarkable cultural context. For my money I want a little more of that context in the mix.

Psych

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Well. I can see why Netflix recommended this on the basis of Better Off Ted. I’m still not sure what to make of it, so let’s see what materializes as I type.

Psych is written, shot, and performed with a smug, self-consciously clever tone. Characters quip, smirk, make ironic observations about the nature of their current situation. They’re all conscious of the fictional conceits that they embody, and they carry out those conceits with a wink. “We know that you know what we’re supposed to say and do in a situation like this, in a show like this. And okay, we’ll play along. But we’ll be very wry about it, because maybe we’ve got something special up our sleeves to surprise you. Or maybe we don’t! You never know!”

Joss Whedon can get away with that, sometimes. In small doses. A show like Arrested Development is written brilliantly enough to transcend self-consciousness. Yet this is ground that a show has to tread with a caution that kind of negates the gonzo spirit of such a tone.

I guess… Think of it this way. There are actors who are naturally eccentric. They’re fascinating or hilarious precisely because they don’t know how odd or awkward they are. Then there are people who make a show of behaving eccentrically. They soon become tiresome, because you can feel the effort and after a while the effort feels like desperation.

Based on the pilot, em>Psych doesn’t exactly feel desperate. More… unctuous, perhaps. I can feel it trying to endear itself to me, like a con man. Maybe the desperation comes out later, when its first few passes miss the mark.

It is shot well, though, and some of the actors are very well-cast. The premise — a guy with eidetic memory poses as a psychic in order to solve crimes — is derivative but serviceable. At least at the beginning the show does a decent job of selling his gift, both empirically and logistically, without over-explaining it.

There’s all the potential for this show to settle into itself and become more than a tangle of autocongratulation and technical polish. It’s not particularly cynical. It’s smart enough. I just kept waiting for it to stop flirting and get on with whatever it really has to say. It didn’t within the first hour, and that’s the end of my patience. At least for the moment.