The latest series of Doctor Who kicks off with the show travelling to America. The Doctor, Amy, Rory and River come together to discover what the world has forgotten about the events of 1969, but only after a deadly encounter with an impossible astronaut. We discuss all the twists and turns in our commentary!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:24 — 28.2MB)
Wow. If last week left me reeling with just how they could possibly square the opening ten minutes then this one has totally blown apart any theories, thoughts or expectations that I might have built up over the previous 40 minutes.
It’s almost impossible to describe how excited I am about that.
For a long time Doctor Who has been a monster of the week piece. Word is there are two types of series. There are your monster of the week style series, like Doctor Who under RTD, where each week the villain is introduced and wrapped up in one. Think of your Scooby Doo’s, your early Smallville or Buffy. Great episodes could be thrown in but there’s no through line. Characters may develop, there may be consequences, but the plot of that monster doesn’t follow through over a series in an important way. What happens in that episode may be referenced, the villain may pop up again but there won’t be anything in that episode that you need to have watched in order to understand what happens next week, or in the season finale.
The Impossible Astronaut, or ‘Silence in the White House’, starts off Season 6 of Doctor Who in the most ridiculously explosive way imaginable. In the run up to this series two things have been vigorously advertised; it’s American credentials (simultaneous broadcast with America, shot on location in America, set in a quintessentially American locale of the White House, featuring the American space programme) and that one character would die in the first episode.
Now, if you’ve ever seen any Sci-Fi at all, you’ll know how that works. One character will die means it’s a hoax or a dream or a clone, or there’s a handy hand lying around to siphon off regeneration energy into*. The character will come back, or a clone of them will, or their body will be possessed by a primal force, or there will be an alternate reality version of them appearing soon, who’s left handed or has a beard or something. What it never means is that that person is gone.
In my last article, I tried to rescue science-fantasy from the dumpster of “soft” sci-fi and restore it to its rightful place as an equal but contrasting genre with its roots in traditional folklore. But this “science-as-magic” approach to storytelling is not confined to modern space operas.
Evil spirits, monsters, ghosts, the undead, fatal curses, mysterious powers… Of all genres, horror has the clearest links to the folklore and fairytales of the past and still relies heavily on supernatural tropes to drive its stories. And yet, just as with science-fantasy, the genre has been undergoing a secular revolution in the last handful of decades.
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| Bela Lugosi (and friend) in 1932’s “White Zombie” |
Take zombies, for example. Throughout the first half of the 20th Century they stuck pretty closely to their Voodoo origins. A powerful, charismatic but ultimately malevolent figure uses black magic to raise a workforce of mindless slaves (sometimes living drones, sometimes re-animated corpses) in an attempt to further his power over society. At the same time, he usually pursues a beautiful and virtuous young woman who resists his advances until she too succumbs to the zombie curse and has to be rescued (or dispatched) by the heroes.
In such scenarios, the zombies are little more than a psychological threat while the true danger is posed by the zombie master himself (it’s always a man – has there ever been a zombie mistress?) whose role is to remind us that even the strongest will and most upright morals can be undermined and usurped. (Not unlike the character of Dracula. Is it a coincidence that Bella Lugosi was cast in 1933’s White Zombie?)
If you’re reading ‘American Vampire’ then chances are you’re only doing so because of the draw of one man’s name – Stephen King. A straight vampire project by Snyder alone would have been unlikely to pick up many readers, but by pairing him with a celebrated (and established) horror writer and a fantastic artist, Vertigo have hit on a winner.
Approaching ‘American Vampire’, King’s first direct foray into comics, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.
King is a difficult writer to pin down; his early work is some of the best written ‘pulp horror’ around, his habit of writing scary stories is often parodied but his ear for language and his ability to write convincing characters and dialogue is unmatched in the field. If there has been a drop off in quality recently it is more noticeable in his longer novels than the ever reliable short stories he seems to excel at. Much can be chalked up to the accident he suffered a few years ago which impacted so heavily on his writing, the direct effects most clearly seen in the derailing of the Dark Tower series into a self-pleasing anti-climax.
And yet, I love him. I buy anything he releases. So I went in with high hopes but low expectations.
The podcast takes a literary turn as we discuss the latest in young adult literature, in particular Patrick Ness‘s award winning Chaos Walking trilogy, and A Web of Air, Philip Reeve‘s second prequel to Mortal Engines. For the first time, we’re joined by our friend Claire Fayers, writer and children’s literature aficionado extraordinaire!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:37 — 12.2MB)
Note: Apologies for the sound quality – we recorded this podcast over lunch in a café, and there was a fair bit of background noise, which we’ve done our best to remove in editing!