Novel Review - Snuff by Terry Pratchett

Lots of nice things have been said about Pratchett's writing: his wit and humour, the wackiness, the power of the Discworld as a satirical tool and the general reflectiveness of his work. One piece of praise that I never really hear, however, yet seems to me as true as any of the others is this:

Hot damn can that man write an action set-piece.

Not that you should expect an action packed book, however: this is perhaps the most meandering Pratchett book I have come across. The plot is unusually woolly; there is both an antagonist and a destination, but neither are as present or as emphasised as you would expect. Whilst his scene construction, sleight of hands left right and centre, are as nuanced and brilliant as ever, this is a very unusual problem to come across in Pratchett's writing. Some of the threads that are introduced are left hanging, once again rather unusually. Nonetheless, it's a coherent plot that is paced well and tied strongly to the characters and themes.

Pratchett is a writer who knows how to write as well as anyone, and his technical skill is fully exposed here. He builds tension, creates a memorable villain very quickly, misdirects and plays an incredibly subtle hand with symbolism. As well as being layered, this novel displays Pratchett's abilities in an area I tend to underestimate him. Stylistically, Snuff is memorable, quotable and sharp - his descriptive powers are equal to many, and the way he laces thematic echoes into his work is really the work of a storyteller still at the height of his prowess. The use of limited perspective is about as good as you'll find anywhere.

Another strength that is ably on display in Snuff is Pratchett's ability to introduce conflicting ideologies into the story without ever really taking a side from the point of narrative. Characters will often contradict each other, and the book will never tell you which to believe - you will have to make up your own mind. This is true of the themes too, with the old class issue being giving a good seeing to. Much of what happens here is Pratchett as usual - if you have read the Watch books, you know what you are in for.

Nonetheless, Snuff is a great read. Sharp, funny prose; intelligent writing; engaging and nuanced characters: there's a lot on offer here, and even if this is a slightly more flawed affair than your average Pratchett book, it's still a remarkably good book even before you consider the author's health. If you are a Discworld fan, read it - if you're new, go read Guards! Guards! and work your way to this book.

Merlin, Episode 10 - Herald of a New Age

Howard Overman, you're a good writer. I know you are. Misfits may struggle to find tonally consistency, but it's sharp and original and fun with flashes genuinely brilliant characterisation. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (all one episode of it) was one of the best things I have seen on television in a while, on a par with the Dr Who Christmas Special even.

Yet when I went back and watched Howard Overman's first episode of series 4 of Merlin - The Wicked Day - I found something that was too fast paced and crammed with awkward dialogue. Less than stellar acting did not help. So approaching this, Overman's second episode, I felt that my expectations were that this would be an improvement. Certainly, the trailer promised a creepy concept that looked like a welcome break from the norm.

Five minutes in, and I've given up. The banter between Arthur's harem of knights is stilted and awkward enough that I can only imagine the writer was contriving to bad writing. Like The Wicked Day, Herald of a New Age seems to be going too fast, delivering perfunctory and economical dialogue without an ounce of weight to it. Anything that we need to know is telegraphed to us, and the performances do not help.

The director does know how to direct horror, it seems, and build tension. This story certainly seems like it has   a touch of Ring inspiration somewhere in there, as the choice of a pale, corpse-like child who is constantly dripping evokes deja vu rather too potently to be coincidence. Either way, the choice is a good one, as the child's presence is genuinely eerie, and some really good atmosphere is built up.

It seems to me, however, that the better the story in Merlin, the worse the episode. Merlin does silly campy fun, and when it tries to tells really good stories, it's shortcomings get in the way. These characters, written as they are and acted as they are, can hold up lightly entertaining nonsense, but when something of more depth or more interesting plotting is attempted it serves only to draw attention to insufficiencies of the series.

The attempts to deal with the emotional impact of last episode's events are rather badly misjudged. They seem to just be thrown out in a cursory manner, used as devices to justify certain plot elements rather than actual deal with the emotional ramifications of recent events. When the episode then goes on to deal with and resolve totally separate character issues, it makes the whole thing feel very muddled.

This was a fun episode at times, and genuinely creepy, but ultimately a failure. Merlin is a place of mindless fun, not of sophistication, and so I come to the baffling conclusion that this story would have been better were it worse.

Choice Words - Haruki Murakami's After Dark

"Eyes mark the shape of the city.

Through the eyes of a high-flying night bird, we take in the scene from midair. In our broad sweep, the city looks like a single gigantic creature - or more likely a single collective entity created by intertwining organisms. Countless arteries stretch to the end of its elusive body, circulating a continuous supply of fresh blood cells, sending out new data and collecting the old, sending out new consumables and collecting the old, sending out new contradictions and collecting the old. To the rhythm of its pulsing, all parts of the body flicker and flare up and squirm. Midnight is approaching, and while the peak of activity has passed, the basal metabolism that maintains life continues undiminished, producing the basso continuo of the city's moans, a monotonous sound that neither rises nor falls but is pregnant with foreboding."

And that's after it has been through the translator. It's a testament to both Murakami and the translator Jay Rubin that this retains such descriptive power.

Okay, so I need to restore some sort of life to this place...

But in lieu of saying anything substantive (that's coming), here's some music:

Warren Ellis's Planetary - Series Overview

Warren Ellis's Planetary is a comic-literary comic. As I've gathered from fans of the work and essays written online about it, it is very much about comics. It's plain enough to see the pulp tradition that runs through the stories, which evokes more or less every conceivable major genre within pulp. Sci-fi, horror, western, exploration, mysteries, conspiracies and so on fill the story of the organisation, Planetary, a team of archaeologists meta-humans.

In a very real sense, this comic isn't for me. Aside from the central figures, pretty much every character that appears in this book is a direct reference to someone else, and I only got the most obvious of these allusions. Where I did recognise them I saw just how clever they were, but nonetheless my lack of familiarity with comics put me at something of a disadvantage.

The fact that I am not all that familiar with comic pulp tradition, on the other hand, perhaps makes me the ideal reader of the book. Someone entrenched in modern comics, being given the key to a rich pulp history and being shown just how much greatness there is to be found there. And that is without doubt part of Ellis's mission here, as our archaeologists are more storytelling archaeologists than anything else, uncovering a time when stories in comics were more diverse and routed in a rather more basic discourse.

Further, Ellis looks to incorporate it all into one coherent world in Planetary. We are repeatedly told by Drummer, a character with the ability to manipulate information, about how magic and science and the superpowers that exist in this universe are all just part of some larger code. This is a really cool idea that never comes across particularly convincingly. Ellis's attempts to create a coherent narrative from all of these different genres shows no lack of ambition and no little amount of skill, yet never end up working. Really, it drains the narrative of a central driving force and a slows character development down to a crawl.

Where I really felt the story suffered was in it's characters. Elijah Snow, Jakita and Drummer are not badly written or badly conceived characters, but there's no point of connection between us and them. They develop slowly, often pushed to the side by other narratives, and it often feels like there is no destination. I'd argue that only one of them really gets a resolution, and the emotional core of their story comes out of left field to a great extent. The characters are not all that engaging, and although subtly developed in many respects, there is too little to latch onto.

Warren Ellis is well known for his decompressed storytelling, and this is my first real experience with it. Personally, I found it made the stories rushed and overly terse, leading to the sense that none of the little stories told within Planetary felt entirely satisfying. The artwork is very pretty and detailed, but  also a little too static and clinical. To a great extent, much of my disconnect from the comic was due to the art. Very good nice looking art, but nI never felt it was great at telling a story.

What is otherwise a very good plot suffers because of many of the above factors. Make no mistake, Warren Ellis is certainly a very skilled writer, the story being subtle and complex whilst never overpowering, but without the clear direction and character investment I found it hard to really get into. Even after what's conceptually a very strong chapter, the overriding feeling I had upon putting this book down was "meh".

I've went rather hard on this series, but for what it's worth it is original, inventive, subtle, pretty looking and does not suffer from a lack of depth. Upon execution, all these great plans and ideas were never really translated into a cohesive story, and a sense of balanced to keep everything in check is really needed in this series. If your a fan of more intelligent comics, or of pulp comics or of Warren Ellis this is certainly worth giving a look, but I can't look past it's core problem of being unable to engage me as a reader.

Film Review - Contagion

tl;dr Well made and intense, this is a more than competent disaster flick.

Feeling a bit poorly? Stuck as a scene in worldwide montages? Electronic music pulsing in your head, with an understated intensity? Sounds like you're contagious. Not to worry, for a large cast of characters across America, and even in China, are working hard to find some sort of resolution. This a large experience in every sense, covering almost half a year, with a large cast of characters and a disease that is rampaging across most of the world.

Yet Contagion is also a movie of the small details. It's terrifically shot, and the emphasis on small details is what makes the experience so powerful a one. There's a big emphasis on the way infections spread from small touches or shared air. Melodrama is mostly avoided by letting us react to situations, rather than showing the characters reacting. The scenes of death and suffering and chaos are fairly minimal. By avoiding gratuity, a real weight is brought to proceedings.

The characterisation is all the better for being all the briefer. With a central conflict for all of them to deal with, characters all have an arc to go through and the fact that the movie never overplays it's hand is how it keeps such a large cast well balanced. It knows how to be impactful with little, and avoids the temptation to go for something rather more blatant or cliche or even a bit safer.

It also asks questions without hammering them in. The subplot in China very quickly could have turned overwhelming and evoked a sense of xenophobia. Instead, there's a very potent question asked about priviledge in the face of tragedy, and how help is distributed.

It's not a perfect movie. I found that it was a movie I could appreciate, but all of this heaviness and anxxiety kept me from every really having any fun. It stressed me out, and as well made and affecting as the movie was, I never really found it an experience I enjoyed. That's not to say all films should be fluffy escapism, but rather that the disaster genre holds little for me, personally, to enjoy.

This film is never really gonna surprise or stretch you, and I feel it's greatest weakness actually lies with the characters it chooses to develop the most. Whilst the family who lose the first American casualty is a story that tries to give us a personal connection to the tragedy, as we see a man trying to cope with the loss of his son and wife and the knowledge his wife was having an affair and his daughter who has to cope with a lost brother, mother and imposed isolation. It's well enough done, but feels out of place in the movie and something of a betrayal of the subtlety that had been running through the piece. Plus, it's emotional messiness gives us not much real resolution and - once again this is probably more to do with me - is just a kind of downer throughout.

If you fancy it, it's worth a look. If you like disaster movie, definitely see it. Not one I really enjoyed though.

Doctor Who Series 6 - Some late thoughts and rantings

So Dr Who, Series 6, came and gone a few weeks ago. At this point we've got over the lack of Who on our Saturday nights, and the series is settling into it's place at the back of our mind with many of the other series past. As much as I've loved this series (and goddamn, have I ever), critical reaction seems mixed. To great deal of people, Moffat's as bad as RTD ever was it seems. River's been labelled a Mary-Sue willy nilly, the heavy through line has alienated more than a few and accusations of inconsistency are not hard to find.

Having just watched this video, in which an internet reviewer accuses Moffat of betraying the fanbase and emotional integrity of the characters whilst simultaneously undoing a whole series worth of development, I feel that I need to get my own thoughts out of my system.

I'm getting married tomorrow

Firstly, I'd like to recap the overall message of series five, as in many ways it pretty much tells us how six wil end. Five had the idea of fairy-tales and growing up. Amy spends her whole time running away from her wedding, travelling in the TARDIS as a way of escaping that responsibility and commitment. In the end she does both, and goes travelling in the TARDIS with her husband. She grows up whilst having childish fun adventures, and affirms that one does not need to exclude the other.

On her home planet, "Doctor" means "Warrior"

The overriding theme of series six seems to have been The Doctor's effect on the Universe, and the irresponsibility of his actions. This idea really first reared it's head during Smith's tenure when, in The Pandorica Opens, all of his greatest enemies descend on him. This is a direct subversion of one of Moffat's favourite tricks. Multiple times, The Doctor only needs to invoke his name to defeat his enemies, the very fear he induces being enough to tame them. As we hear in Forest of the Dead:

"You're in the largest library in the universe. Look me up."

The implication, of course, being that his name will be scattered throughout history, as well as records of all of his victories. He's using his long and actually fairly violent history self-knowingly, and that's bound to have an impact. In The Pandorica Opens, all of his enemies are able to team up against him as they believe he can destroy the universe. Fear of him drives them together, and when he, once again, invokes his name to scare them off, there is no small amount of irony. It's his history that has caused his enemies to get together at all.

This theme comes to it's climax in A Good Man Goes to War, when it's revealed that The Doctor is the target of the Silence's campaign.

"A war? Against Who?

Against you, Doctor."

The Order of the Silence, an organisation that calls think of themselves as the guardians of history, think they are at war with The Doctor. Between the army girl Lorna and River Song's speech, we are left with no doubt that this is an ongoing critique on the way that The Doctor travels and fights and destroys.

This is further hit home in the centre-piece of the secodn part of the series, with The Girl Who Waited and The God Complex. Both of these utterly brilliant episodes do incredibly interesting things with The Doctor. The God Complex couples him with the evil minotaur god that feasts on people's belief, suggesting he cultivates adoration from his companions and that he can only bring them harm. The Girl Who Waited plays an even more subtle and complex game, casting The Doctor as the villain in a tragedy that sees Rory have to let Amy die. Not only is The Doctor getting told he's doing the universe harm, but also his closest friends.

One of the best things about The Wedding of River Song is that it's rejection of such ideas. This may have been a series long deconstruction of The Doctor, but The Wedding of River Song is a reconstruction. His companions love him, and won't let him traipse off alone into that byronic hero suit that RTD was so keen on dressing Tennant in. Let's Kill Hitler hints at this, with the Tesselecta's obvious veneration of The Doctor, suggesting his death to be one of the worst events in history. If The Silence represents the negative legacy The Doctor leaves behind him, the Tesselecta shows that this view is not one shared by the rest of the universe. River Song shows him the signals that come through the stars, the replies to her distress call. The Doctor is loved, throughout the universe, and if he's had a negative impact he's made a stronger positive one.

He may have had a past that's been littered with conflicts, but he's also brought hope and made friends aplenty.

Even you cannot change this

The series starts with a prophecy: The Doctor will die by Lake Silencio. He has to die; we saw it happen. This is where series six both starts and ends, and much of The Doctor's fretting revolves around accepting his own mortality. The series is littered with things that must happen: River's already played out future, The Doctor's death, Melody's indoctrination. The Silence's ability to subconciously control people seems to suggest a certain element of people's future beyond their own control. In The Wedding of River Song, Amy and Rory get together again in a different time stream.

Much of the build-up, especially after Dorium's words, seems to point towards The Doctor accepting his own mortality. It's even suggested that it's for the good of the universe. So when The Doctor cheats this inescapable death, does that detract from all of his brooding over it, and attempts to come to terms with it? Funnily enough, River seems to have given us the answer already, all the way back in The Forest of the Dead:

"When you run with The Doctor, it feels like it'll never end. But however hard you try, you can't run forever. Everybody knows that everybody dies, and nobody knows it like The Doctor. But I do think that all of the skies of all the worlds might just turn dark if he ever, for one moment, accepts it."

"He just can't do it, can he? That man. That impossible man. He just can't give in."

The Doctor is not going to lie down and die. The Doctor will find a way, a third option, because he's The Doctor. He'll cheat time and history, and convince everyone he's dead if he has to. But that he finds a way out, rather than accepting that he has to die, is exactly what The Doctor would do. Or, at least, what Moffat's Doctor would do.

So basically...

Series six's finale is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a subversion. It takes the ideas that had been proposed so far, the nuanced deconstructive work, and considers them, but ultimately turns into a celebration of the aspects of The Doctor that get lost in all the navel gazing. It's not undoing the work beforehand, but rather leading us to a different conclusion. It's not pulling new ideas out of it's ass, it's reminding us of how much more The Doctor is than all of that frowny stuff.

Series six was a messy affair, at times convoluted, and not as consistant as it should have been. A betrayal, however? No. It's not at the fanbase Moffat's sticking his middle finger at, but rather the idea that The Doctor has to be some kind of tragic, dark, lonely hero. He's taken The Doctor apart and put him back together again. Concluding the deconstruction with a celebration seems the only way to resolve it.