Reading/Watching Log #84

I had to post this later than usual, as I simply ran out of time. Between full-time work and all the other errands I have to do during the day, my allotted time for writing has been significantly whittled down.

This month was a desperate rush to watch as much stuff as possible and get it all deleted from my hard-drive before December kicks in and Christmas viewing begins. And by “Christmas” viewing, I mean all the stuff I’ve been saving for the end of the year: The Rings of Power, Interview with the Vampire, Andor, The Sandman, The Midnight Club, Willow, Wednesday, My Father’s Dragon, Rosaline, Enola Holmes, Wednesday – this Christmas, I FEAST.

But first I have to get through all of this...

Garlic and the Witch by Bree Paulson

The follow-up to Garlic and the Vampire, a low-stakes graphic novel in which a sentient bulb of garlic grapples with anxiety while going about her daily life as a helpmeet to a kindly witch.

This sequel begins with the genesis of Garlic and her friends: the witch Agnes is having trouble keeping on top of her chores, and so performs a spell over the vegetables in her garden, bringing them to life. Since then, Garlic has befriended a friendly vampire who lives in a nearby castle, and has been helping Agnes concoct a vegetarian blood substitute for him.

Yeah, it sounds like a bizarre premise, but the cozy illustrations and earthy palette counterbalance the oddness of the story and invite the reader to just... chill out for a while. There’s nothing traumatic or terrifying; the worst that happens is Garlic is blown slightly off-course while making for the local market.

Of more concern is that she’s gradually changing into a human being, as per the magic Agnes utilized in bringing her to life in the first place, and we’re witness to the slow transformation over the course of the book (though I’m not sure what it’s meant to be a metaphor of; or even if it’s meant to be one at all. Perhaps it just symbolizes change).

Garlic herself is a delightful character: a worrywart who overthinks everything, but also determined and brave and extremely adorable. There are panels in which she visibly braces herself before doing something that scares her, or thinks carefully before taking a course of action, and it makes for a lovely depiction of how a person deals with the obstacles of anxiety. Is there such a thing as cottagecore fantasy? Because this is definitely it.

Ariel’s Adventure Journal: The Curse of the Sea Witches by Rhona Cleary

A graphic novel about Ariel, post-The Little Mermaid movie? I couldn’t resist that, if not just out of sheer curiosity, and this is a nice enough little tale that covers the hot topic everyone is currently preoccupied with: colonization.

I’m not trying to sound facetious: it’s good that such a complex subject is making its way into children’s stories, but naturally a short comic book commissioned by Disney can’t even begin to do it justice. I feel stupid for even having written that sentence, though it’s no more absurd than Ariel solving colonization by rowing a boat between two feuding factions and successfully getting them to talk to each other by asking nicely.

But hey, baby steps. Ariel and Eric arrive in Greenland to oversee the building of a port, only for Ariel to make friends with the local mermaids and discover that it’s destroying their coral reef. Queen Arnaaluk is staunchly against humans considering she was once in love with a man who eventually married a human woman – but Ariel sees the similarities between their two stories and attempts to broker a peace between land and sea.

The most interesting canonical thing it establishes is that the film took place in Denmark, which is not something you’d ever derive from the movie itself (heck, for whatever reason I always assumed it was set in the Mediterranean). But this entire story gives itself a surprisingly grounded basis in real history, with the inclusion of Inuit culture and mentions of the New World and the Royal Trading Company.

Ariel herself is nicely characterized, as someone who collects natural specimens and sketches the world around her in a notebook, and prefers adventures over relaxation (in other words, someone who is making good on her longing to explore that shore up-above). Quite a lot of the story is told via her journal entries, though I was somewhat amused by the fact that the writer can’t avoid the fact she’s Eric’s sixteen-year-old wife. These days there’s no way The Little Mermaid would have ended with the two of them wedding at such a young age, and I found myself wondering how the target audience might respond to their protagonist being a married woman.

Goodbye Stacey, Goodbye by Anne M. Martin

It’s Stacey’s third book, and she’s outta here. Yeah, there’s really not much to say about this one. Stacey learns that her father’s company, the one that saw them all transferred to Stoneybrook at the start of the series, is now transferring him back again. She and her family are moving home to New York.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this is that Stacey actually kinda wants to return. There are tears, but no histrionics or tantrums. In fact, the rest of the Babysitters Club (and Charlotte Johansson) are much more upset about it than Stacey is, and so go to extremes to give her a decent send-off – which involves what can only be described as a “babysitting party” in which all the neighbourhood kids are invited to Kristy’s house and entertained for a few hours by the club.

It’s unclear to me why Anne M. Martin wrote Stacey out of the series – perhaps she was tired of the character? Perhaps she thought she’d taken Stacey’s arc as far as it could go? Perhaps she wanted to introduce Mallory and felt that someone had to leave in order to make that happen? Maybe she just felt like writing about the complex feelings of moving away.

In any case, Stacey doesn’t stay away long: if we divide this series into “cycles” (with each cycle comprised of one book belonging to each of the soon-to-be seven sitters) then Stacey isn’t even gone for a single rotation – she gets a “guest appearance” in book #18 when the others visit her in New York, and returns to Stoneybrook permanently in #28. Apparently Martin misjudged how popular Stacey really was (the back of one of my books announces her as the winner of the “most popular babysitter” competition) and soon had fans clamouring for her to be brought back.

So I couldn’t really get too emotional over her departure, as she’s not even gone long enough for anyone to miss her. This is also one of those books in which the actual babysitting is at a bare minimum: one chapter involves the Pike kids just spying on their new neighbours because they believe they’re spies. That hasn’t dated well.

Hello, Mallory by Anne M. Martin

Stacey is out and Mallory is in. Ah, Mallory: everyone’s least favourite babysitter. It’s a shame in a way, as she’s a well-sketched character and has a lot of loveable qualities, but she’s also the one that nobody wants to project themselves onto. She’s dorky. She’s self-conscious. She’s awkward. She has the glasses/braces/freckles trifecta. All her problems are profoundly unglamourous: eldest daughter syndrome, poverty, mononucleosis, too many siblings, having bad hair.

In a 2010 interview, Martin herself infamously said she had “no strong feelings” on where Mallory ended up as an adult and the recent Netflix series didn’t even give her a character-centric episode (all the other girls had at least one). She’s painfully relatable, but not in a way that makes anyone feel good about themselves.

When the Babysitters Club invite her to join their ranks, she naturally gets all dressed up in her best outfit (a sweater with her name across the front and tights with love hearts on them) and is promptly put through the wringer. She has to draw a diagram of the digestive system, gets tested on words the older girls have clearly just looked up in the dictionary themselves, and is made to feel a fool for every little mistake she makes.

It makes perfect psychological sense to me that Kristy, Claudia, Mary Anne and Dawn would experience a massive power-rush on realizing that an overeager eleven-year-old who idolizes them is ripe for messing with, and I suppose I should give Martin kudos for not being afraid to make them the bad guys in this scenario – but she does go a bit overboard, especially since it was their idea that Mallory join the club in the first place (and they don’t do nearly enough apologising for having made her jump through so many ridiculous hoops).

But more important than Mallory joining the club is the introduction of Jessi Ramsay and her family, who have just moved into Stacey’s old house and are feeling unwelcome in the neighbourhood due to the fact they’re Black. For having been written in the early nineties, Martin does pretty well with this material. Not everything works: because the story is told from Mallory’s POV, it’s more a story of her experiencing racism by proxy, in which she decides that she and Jessi have a lot in common because both are ostracized – Jessi for her skin colour and Mallory for her large family (oh honey, no).

But there are some sharp insights here as well: Jessi is a gifted ballet dancer, but she tells Mallory that if she were ever to get the lead in a production, people would assume it was because she was Black. Likewise, the neighbourhood isn’t even being overtly racist; rather they’re just not making as much of an effort to welcome the Ramsay family as they did the McGills. In the final chapter, Jessi tells the other girls that making her part of the Club might be bad for business. All of it rings as true now (if not moreso) as it did back in 1988.

But the Jessi/Mallory friendship is actually one of my favourite relationships in the entire series, and there are some genuinely sweet moments here. Mallory always reminds me of Anne Shirley; not just for the red hair, but in her desperate longing for a bosom friend, and the way in which their friendship is formed leads to some choice quotes:

I’d been waiting for this. I needed a best friend. I’m pretty friendly with most of the kids in our grade, but I don’t have a best friend. For one thing, all the other girls already have best friends. There aren’t any loose ones floating around. For another, I spend so much time with my brothers and sisters, and reading and writing, that I’d never needed a best friend. Lately, though, I’d decided it would be nice.

When the bell rang, Jessi and I stood up together and ran to the school building. I couldn’t wait to begin our own club. I was really excited. So was Jessi. Maybe we didn’t belong with some people, but we belonged with each other.

“This is getting mushy,” I said, but I was smiling too. Maybe Jessi really was going to become my best friend. My first best friend. It felt awfully nice to be sitting in my room, telling each other important things and making each other smile.

“The girls in the club are older than we are, so maybe we won’t end up close friends, but we can get along. We can work together. Besides, you and I have each other.” “Always,” said Jessi firmly. “Always,” I repeated. I looked at Jessi and knew that we were best friends.

Excuse me, I have something in my eye...

Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of ‘80s and ‘90s Teen Fiction by Gabrielle Moss

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of the eighties/nineties pulp paperback surge – or at least certain parts of it. I had no real interest in the YA “life time specials” involving drugs, suicide or teen pregnancy (there wasn’t a chance in hell of any of those things happening to me, so why on earth would I care?) but stuff like The Babysitters Club, Sweet Valley High, Fear Street… that’s where I spent a fair portion of my (very) early adolescence.

So did Gabrielle Moss, who has put together a rough compendium of the books that got Millennials through those formative years, and are now old enough to look back on it all with rose-coloured glasses. It’s not the definitive work on the subject; rather a quick tongue-in-cheek guided tour through the biggest subgenres of YA fiction, highlighting some of the most famous titles from within those categories and their impact on both readers and publishing trends. As she says at one point: “Remember, a book can be culturally pioneering and not very good at the same time.”

With glossy, pastel-coloured pages filled with the cover art of various titles, it’s certainly a lovely book to flip through. Because the subject matter is so broad, Moss can only dip her toes, but perhaps her biggest contribution to the conversation is in dividing early YA fiction into definitive categories: Love (romance novels), Friends (social clubs, frenemies, BFFs), Family (domestic problems, dealing with siblings), School (classmates) Jobs (babysitters, camp counsellors, summer jobs, teen sleuths), Danger (drugs, teen pregnancies) and Terror (stalkers, slashers, the supernatural).

Thinking it over (and digging through the crates of my own paperback collections) even the stuff that didn’t make the shortlist of this book-about-books can easily be slotted into one of these seven categories.

There is a brief look at the inception of the genre (Maureen Daly’s Seventeenth Summer in 1942 is largely regarded as the very first YA book) and some of its pitfalls (the lack of diversity, the obsession with romance, the lurid and substandard prose) but also a fairly spirited defence of it.

These were books aimed at teenage girls, about teenage girls, and (to paraphrase Greta Gerba’s Little Women) the simple act of writing about the issues that mattered to that demographic elevated them to a level that demanded they be taken seriously – if not just for the millions of dollars they were raking in for their publishers. Clearly there was a market here.

But Moss says nothing about the impact they had on a generation, or the reasons behind the success of certain titles over others, or an in-depth look at why exactly these books were catnip for teenage girls. Heck, I’d kill for a dissertation on the cover art of these books.  

Still, there’s still plenty to discover here. There’s a rare interview with Christopher Pike, which explains how he got into writing for YA, and one with the girl who modelled as Claudia on the covers of the later BSC books (as she hilariously points out, she was nineteen at the time, a fact that is blatantly obvious once you really look at her in comparison with the other girls).

There’s an interesting commentary on the fact that before Twilight came along, most mortal/vampire romances for teens were more likely to have the female character as the immortal bloodsucker, inexplicably attracted to a high-school boy, and a rundown of the inherent lunacy of the Sweet Valley High books (the twins get stranded on a deserted island TWICE, first as middle-graders, then as high-schoolers). There were also some surprisingly early attempts to include non-white protagonists and LGBTQ issues in books aimed at young readers, most of which went unnoticed at the time.

Oh, and did you know that the model for the baby in Claudia’s arms on the cover of The Phantom Phone Caller was Kirsten Dunst?

And then there’s the downright random. Turns out Isla Fisher and her mum wrote two paperbacks for teens (okay, it was most likely her mum, but Fisher’s face on the cover was definitely used to sell them) during her early years on Neighbours (Moss describes it as “an Australian soap” as though some people in the world haven’t heard of it – bless).

Naturally there’s particular focus on The Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley High, and how the latter eventually managed to bleed into several of the YA subgenres: the twins had their fair share of stalkers, joined a few clubs, had summer jobs, and even took a foray into the realm of supernatural fiction with their “werewolves in London” trilogy. We get a glimpse at R.L. Stein’s early career, back when he was trying to write comedies instead of horror, and the hosts of Teen Creeps (my favourite podcast) are quoted. It’s all there, but only lightly skimmed over.

The underlying thesis of the book is that YA focused on what teenage girls were preoccupied with at the time, and the societal trends they reflected: the onset of summer jobs for would-be career women, the wish-fulfilment of being attractive and/or drama magnets, the AIDs crisis, the difficulties of high school, everyone’s obsession with their inner circle of friends. And prom, of course. As Moss put it: “they gave us space to explore our identities, dream of the future, and, when the time came, engage in growth and rebellion by turning our backs on them. They validated girls’ stories by putting them to paper – simple as that.”

It's a fun read, and hopefully it will inspire someone to write the definitive compendium on the YA paperback books of this era.

My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett

I’m saving Cartoon Saloon’s adaptation of My Father’s Dragon for my Christmas break, but saw the source material sitting on the library shelf in the children’s section. Hey, why not read the book before seeing the film?

First published in 1948, this is an odd little story in which the titular dragon only turns up in the very last chapter, which mostly concerns the young protagonist (called Elmer Elevator, but constantly referred to as “my father” by the narrator, which could cause some confusion with young viewers) making his way to Wild Island in order to rescue said dragon from the abundance of other animals that live there.

The story veers heavily on the side of whimsy, with Elmer solving problems by providing chewing gum to a number of tigers, and evading a rhinoceros by teaching it how to brush its horn with a toothbrush. It's a very short book, designed to be read to children over the course of several nights (much like Ted Hughes’s The Iron Giant) but an adult reader could churn through in under five minutes.

Now more than ever, I’m intrigued by how Cartoon Saloon is going to expand upon this material, as there’s really not much to go on (though I can already tell it keeps the original design of the dragon as illustrated by Ruth Chrisman Gannett, the author’s stepmother).

Empty Smiles by Katherine Arden

What is it about funfairs and carnivals that are so scary? Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari take place in carnivals, as do a significant few chapters of Stephen King’s It and the third season of Stranger Things. I even recall that the third book of L.J. Smith’s The Forbidden Game ended in an abandoned funfair.

Maybe it’s the contrast of bright lights and darkness all around, or that they can be quite scary and intimidating if you’re a child, or perhaps just the liminality of it all. They’re here today and gone tomorrow. And clowns, of course. Clowns are terrifying.

This is all to say that the fourth and final book in Katherine Arden’s Small Spaces quartet largely takes place in a travelling carnival. Each of the four books has pertained to a specific season, and Empty Smiles occurs in the height of summer, in which our protagonists Coco, Brian and Phil are still mourning the loss of their friend Ollie, who sacrificed herself to “the Smiling Man” at the conclusion of the previous book in order to save all their lives.

But their immortal enemy is not done with them yet. Unbeknownst to the pre-teen heroes, Ollie is still alive and well and travelling with the Smiling Man’s carnival, stopping at various sites across America to prey on the hordes of children that pass through its gates. When a traumatized child manages to escape his clutches, Ollie’s friends realize that their promised chance to win her back is soon approaching.

Yeah, Dark Waters ended on a cliff-hanger that very much upped the ante for this book, and Arden is a master at ratcheting up the suspense. When Ollie is offered another deal to stay safely in the carnival forever (the price: her friends and family forgetting her forever), or when terrifying clowns with rictus smiles carry out a home invasion, I was in a cold sweat. If anyone wants to adapt these books for television or film, you’ll be leaving an indelible mark on your child audience’s psyches.

It’s a satisfying capper to what’s been a very good series of books, in which even the inscrutable Smiling Man gets a chance to explain what he’s all about (and the answer to the question: “why?” is a fascinating one). But if there’s one thing that bugs, it’s that it’s all over extremely quickly. Once Brian and Coco reach the funfair, all ready to set themselves against their enemy and rescue Ollie, I was like: “hell yes, it’s on now, let the games begin!”

There was a huge chunk of book left to carry out the grand climax of the entire series – but then they find Ollie, find the keys, and free themselves within a handful of pages. The end. And what of all those pages that promised at least six more chapters to wrap things up? They were just preview chapters of the last three books (so not really “preview” chapters, since anyone who has been reading this story properly has already read them). I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen a bound book devote so many pages to what is essentially advertising. 

They had to count for at least one-third of the book’s length. One-third! I can’t lie, it put a real damper on my enjoyment of the story, simply because it fooled me into thinking there would be more of it than there actually was. At the point where I was anticipating an elaborate showdown between the characters and their foe, I was actually only a few pages out from the end. Bad form.

Larklight by Philip Reeve

I’m not generally a fan of comedy/fantasy mash-ups (the latter already requires a suspension of disbelief, and making jokes about the genre just makes more difficult to swallow) but Philip Reeve can do anything as far as I’m concerned.

The vibe of the book is captured in its full title, which is Larklight, or the Revenge of the White Spiders! or to Saturn's Rings and Back! It’s part steampunk, part Victorian gaslight fantasy, part science-fiction space opera, part pulp adventure – and it works.

In an alternative history in which the British Empire discovered the alchemical secrets to space travel in the Victorian era, Arthur Mumby and his family (a father and sister) live in a house that orbits Earth’s moon, when they’re attacked by extra-terrestrials that resemble huge white spiders. Narrowly escaping with his sister, Art crash-lands on the moon and is rescued from further danger by the pirate Jack Havelock and his motley crew.

Joining forces to get to the bottom of the spider invasion, the unexpected allies end up on an adventure that takes them to a sentient storm in the middle of Jupiter, the eerie forests of Venus, and the heart of the British Empire. Reeves’s imagination knows no bounds, and the only bad thing about reading his books is that you know you’ll never write anything half as good.

Aside from the adventure, Reeve also includes commentary on colonialism (this was first published in 2006, well before it became the trendy topic that everyone mentions but seldom delves into) which is handled magnificently. Art is very much a product of his upbringing, which is to say he’s a citizen of the British Empire, and his first-person narration is something the reader is invited to challenge.

As he says when they land on the moon: “Things have improved somewhat upon the Moon. Some useful mines have been dug in the hills west of Port George, and at nearby Mount Ghastly a colony for convicts has been established. These villains, transported from England for sheep-stealing and machine-breaking, soon see the error of their ways after a few years’ hard work in the thin air, and their descendants may one day populate the entire moon.”

Later Myrtle will comment: “Last night I saw [the moons] glittering in the sky, all wreathed in the smoke of Sir Waverley’s mills. What a great man he must be to have left his mark upon the Heavens like that!” while the villain of the piece shares the following opinion on Jack Havelock’s residency at a state-funded research facility: “been here seven years, eh? Seven years of vittles shovelled into this black savage at the taxpayers’ expense, and to what end, pray? With what result? Eh? Eh?”

Reeves does not play around, but he inserts these passages into his story without commentary, leaving it up to the reader to ponder and respond to them. (As you might suspect, Art slowly-but-surely has the blinkers taken off him as the trilogy continues). It’s so rare to have this type of subject matter dealt with thoughtfully and “invisibly” if you like, in the sense that it’s an integral part of the story rather than something slapped on to give the illusion of depth.

More importantly, it belongs to a book that’s objectively good: exciting and clever and beautifully written. It’s so much more difficult for bad faith pundits to wail about wokeness when something is of undeniable quality, just as it’s deeply disheartening when material that is diverse and inclusive is also not very good. And every time I see fandom collectively complain about the lack of children’s stories that incorporate important social commentary, I want to shake Philip Reeve at them. He’s been delivering for years.

No one can turn a phrase like he can. All the characters have distinctive voices, and everything is described with perfect clarity, no matter how outlandish – such as dials that adjust the gravity so all the crumbs and dust motes start floating, at which point Art can release the hoverhogs: alien creatures that look like little pigs with flippers, that propel themselves forward via sweet-smelling flatulence and eat up all the clutter. It sounds absurd and crude, but in Reeves’ hands it’s charming and creative.

A few chapters are told from Myrtle’s point-of-view and she’s hilarious. A quintessential Victorian lady who is horrified at the idea of physical exertion and frustrated when she can’t faint on cue, it ends up being a case of the lady doth protest too much when she sets eyes on young pirate Jack. (And of course, when we head back to Art’s narrative, he’s completely unaware of what all the body language and cues mean between the two of them).

And then of course, it’s just damn funny. Here’s Jack telling the siblings his tragic backstory:

“I wondered if I should not just make my way to the river and put an end to my miserable existence once and for all...”

“But you didn’t?”

Jack glanced wearily at me. “Course I didn’t, Art. I’m here, ain’t I?”

“Oh yes,” I said.

Starcross by Philip Reeve

The direct sequel to Larklight, with the full title: Starcross, or the Coming of the Moobs! or Our Adventures in the Fourth Dimension! This was probably my favourite of the three books, on account of its villains: nebulous shape-shifting extra-terrestrials called moobs that look like floating black blobs, who feast on a person’s thoughts and dreams. And what better way to disguise themselves in this endeavour than to take on the visage of expensive top hats?  

I’m pretty sure there were mind-controlling hats in Darkwing Duck as well, but Reeves takes the idea and expands it. Because these creatures devour an individual’s thoughts, the moral nature of each person influences how the alien develops. And when they’re dining on a crew of pirates, the consequences can be dire...

Luckily, Art and Myrtle are on the scene. Having been invited to a hotel called Starcross on an isolated asteroid, the siblings are looking forward to a jolly holiday, only for things to get mightily strange once they’re settled in. Mingling with other guests straight out of an Agatha Christie novel and realizing that former allies are working undercover at the hotel, they begin their own investigation into what exactly is going on.

Along with the moobs, the books contain French anarchists, sentient plant-professors, and aggressive Punch-and-Judy shows (as in, the booths themselves will attack people). Plus a time-travelling device that eventually brings everything full-circle. Is there anything more satisfying than a Stable Time Loop?

And because I didn’t mention it above, these books are illustrated by the wonderful David Wyatt, who manages to turn himself into an actual character. Because the stories are told by the Mumby siblings, presented as official reports of their strange adventures, they occasionally reference Wyatt as their designated illustrator. This leads to plenty of laughs, as when Myrtle insists that she’ll only recount certain details of her experiences on the strictest assurance that Mr Wyatt not depict her in her night attire.

Then you turn the page, and there’s a full-page picture of Myrtle in her night attire, labelled as such. Reader, I genuinely laughed out loud.

He also fills the inside covers with advertisements of strange paraphernalia that might be sold in a Victoriana steampunk space opera world, and fills even the strangest aliens with personality and life. He’s one of the greats for a reason.

Mothstorm by Philip Reeve

The third and final book in the trilogy, which begins with the Mumby family and their friends celebrating Christmas together, only to be interrupted by government officials who have noticed a mysterious cloud moving through the Solar System towards Earth. The gang head off to Georgium Sidus (actually Uranus, but no one calls it by that vulgar name anymore) to investigate.

The title of the book pretty much tells you what the cloud is comprised of, but there are plenty of surprises when it comes to just how well Reeve has foreshadowed this particular threat. The two previous books have set up a number of Chekhov’s Guns that begin firing in quick succession throughout Mothstorm, and the suspense ratchets up as our heroes struggle to keep one step ahead of their foe.

Much like Philip Pullman, you can tell that although Reeve is an atheist (or at least agnostic) he’s powerfully interested in matters of religion, the afterlife and higher powers. As subjects of the British Empire during the reign of Queen Victoria (even in an alternative history) protagonists Art and Myrtle are obviously Christian, and Reeve doesn’t deprive them of this faith – even when it’s rather at odds with other “facts” that he establishes in his narrative. Like, for example, the fact their mother is a god-like being who takes credit for the creation of their particular galaxy, and that another Shaper (as they’re called) is the book’s antagonist, set on conquering and spreading the cult of herself across the entire universe.

It would be fascinating to see what an actual child reader would make of all this!  

You can also see plenty of ideas and material that Reeve is clearly fond of, as a lot of it turns up in his other books: trains that travel through space, a mother’s sacrifice, questions about heavenly powers, and reptilian Amazons (that one’s very specific, as they turn up again in the Railhead trilogy, so he clearly loves this one).

Oh, and I forgot to mention there are also footnotes, which elaborate on some of the minor allusions that are scattered throughout the text, and which help deepen the world (or galaxy) that Reeve and Wyatt have created. The trilogy in its entirety is so rich in detail and imaginative force that my first impulse on finishing was to just re-read the whole thing from the start.

Robin Hood (1912)

This is the earliest Robin Hood film in existence. Not the first one ever made, but the earliest one to have survived and been restored. Filmed by Éclair Studios in America, it clocks in at about half-an-hour long, and is available on YouTube if you’re curious.

Robin and Marian are in love, only for her father Merwyn to promise her to Guy of Gisbourne. On realizing that her heart belongs to another, Guy sets up an ambush and arrests Robin. He’s quickly rescued by his friends, though the Sheriff of Nottingham issues a warrant for his arrest. And so on and so forth.

It’s basically a series of captures and escapes, though there’s a surprising number of women involved. The Sheriff has a wife, a housemaid plays a relatively big part, and Marian has several friends that help her distract the guards with a little flirting so that the menfolk can escape from prison.

Other interesting features is that the colour filter changes depending on the scene (green for the forest, grey for the village, and red whenever there’s danger) and that the inner quality of certain characters is demonstrated by cross-fading from the actors to emblematic animals. Oh, and the comedically large prosthetic chins/noses on Guy and the Sheriff, just in case you were in any doubt they were the bad guys. It’s a fascinating little curiosity piece, and in many ways, where it all began for Robin Hood in film.

The Black Cat (1934)

Well, this was a weird one. I’ve no idea how this film came to my attention in the first place, only that it was sitting there in my hard-drive, ready to be watched.

Heavily inspired (or so it seems) by Bram Stoker’s Dracula and NOT Edgar Allen Poe’s short story of the same name (which the titles credit) it tells the story of newlyweds Peter and Joan Alison, who are travelling by train through Hungary. Due to a mix-up, they have to share their compartment with Doctor Vitus Werdegast, a man who hasn’t seen his home in over eighteen years due to having spent most of that time in a Siberian prison came for the duration of WWI.

He’s going to visit his friend Austrian architect Hjalmar Poelzig for undisclosed reasons, and when the bus they’ve transferred onto crashes, they all make their way up to Poelzig’s mountainous home, Fort Máramaros.

This is what’s known as the Überwald, a trope I learned after having watched this film, and which covers all the clichés of Eastern Europe: dark forests, hilltop castles, primitive locals, eccentric nobles...

While Joan recovers, Peter learns that Werdegast is seeking revenge upon Poelzig for having betrayed the fort to the Russians and stealing his wife and daughter (both called Karen – THAT hasn’t aged well) by telling them of Werdegast’s death.  This makes for an awkward visit, as Peter is now subjected to the erratic behaviour of his drugged wife, the array of dead women on display in glass cases in the basement, the Satanist cult getting ready for a human sacrifice, and Werdegast freaking out every time he sees a black cat. Peter just wants to get back to his honeymoon.

The drawcard of the film is putting together horror stars Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, and this was their first collaborative film (though not their last, in fact they went on to star together in six more films). It’s become something of a cult classic since then, but the story and characterization leaves a lot to be desired. Once the characters reach the fortress home it plays out like a Random Events Plot, with stuff just happening without rhyme or reason. It’s worth a look as a curiosity piece, but I’m afraid the appeal was a bit lost on me.

Spellbound (1945)

It was a black-and-white gif-set that led me to this movie, of a woman blankly stating: “I hate men.” It was funny enough for me to track down the film it was from, though as it happens this character barely figures into the story itself, and her presence clearly had more to do with Hitchcock’s hang-ups with women than any sincere attempt to explore this particular woman’s inner demons.

Though in saying that, the whole film leans into the balderdash side of psychoanalysis (in which a dream about wings leads the protagonists to a place called Gabriel Ski Fields and Easy Amnesia can and does strike anyone after a traumatic experience) so perhaps it’s best this woman’s appearances are kept to a minimum.

Ingrid Bergman stars as Constance Peterson, a psychoanalysis at a Vermont mental institution. The hospital director is nearing retirement, and when his replacement appears (a young and handsome Gregory Peck) Peterson is instantly smitten. She and Edwardes are soon in love, only for her to realize that something is amiss. He has a powerfully negative reaction to stripes set upon a white background, is oddly evasive about his past, and his handwriting does not match samples of the real Doctor Edwardes. He confesses he’s an imposter, believing himself to have killed the real Edwardes despite remembering nothing of the man’s death, and flees.

With the police after him, Peterson decides to take matters into her own hands: tracking down the man she loves (even though she barely knows him) and proving his innocence. Plenty of Freudian psychoanalysis follows, which is saved by the fact that most of it plays out in a vivid dreamscape inspired and created by Salvador Dalí. (Apparently nearly twenty minutes of this sequence was filmed, though sadly it was whittled down to only two in the final cut).

The fascinating thing about Bergman playing a career woman in a male-dominated field in 1945 is that she’s not ostracized by her colleagues. Regardless of how the filmmakers may actually feel about women doctors, they know that depicting the men hazing the single woman in their midst is only going to make them the bad guys by dint of the fact they’re bullying the story’s protagonist. So for this reason, she’s spared any overt misogyny at her workplace.

Of course, this doesn’t mean she’s treated as an equal either: they’re constantly talking about how unnaturally cold and emotionless she is, and that women make terrible doctors since the moment they fall in love, all logic and reason gets thrown out the window. One of them even kisses her without permission, something she endures with beatific self-indulgence. Oh, those silly men! Always sexually harassing you in your office while you’re trying to work!

And of course, there’s the “head versus heart” theme at the crux of the film: Peterson’s mentor is technically proved correct about women when Peterson falls in love with Edwardes and immediately starts breaking the law and jeopardizing her career in order to protect him. Like a good little villain woobifier, at one point she insists: “I couldn’t feel this way toward a man who was bad, or had committed murder,” even though most disciples of Freud would probably argue that her attraction to Edwardes is enhanced, or even caused, by the possibility he might be a violent murderer.

But here’s the thing, Peterson’s instincts are CORRECT. She’s convinced that Edwardes is innocent, and in this she’s vindicated. She saves the man she loves, and walks off into the sunset with him. And in direct contrast to this irrationally emotional motivation, she eventually gets to single-handedly defeat the film’s true antagonist at its climax by using cool logic and nerves of steel. She is comprised of multitudes. The film is almost a feminist treatise in spite of itself!

An Affair to Remember (1957)

I’ve been meaning to track this one down since watching Sleepless in Seattle earlier this year, just to see if it would have the same effect on me as it did all the women in that movie. It… did not. Guys, I’m beginning to suspect I’m just not a romantic. That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it though – I just wasn’t left a sobbing puddle of tears like Meg Ryan was.

Cary Grant plays his typical caddish playboy type, travelling home to New York on an ocean liner when he crosses paths with Deborah Kerr. Both have significant others, but neither can deny the attraction between them, much to the amusement of the other passengers, who are aware of each one’s reputation (it’s extremely subtle, but one gets the sense that Kerr is a kept woman, whereas Grant is engaged to a wealthy heiress). When they disembark in New York, they each make a promise to the other: that they’ll end their current relationships and find honest work. If their feelings are still strong six months later, they’ll meet at the top of the Empire State Building to start a new life together.

I like the fact that each one has to sacrifice something significant in order to be together. Clearly both of them enjoy the highlife, and setting forth into the world without a penny to their name is a daunting prospect. But they’re serious about their intentions, and once the messy business of the breakups is done, each one gets a job: he as a painter, and she as a lounge singer. You know what happens next: on the agreed-upon date they both head to their designated rendezvous, but Kerr is struck by a car and rushed to hospital. Waiting until closing time at the top of the Empire State Building, Grant doesn’t realize what has happened.

It's not until Christmas time that the two bump into each other again, and eventually the truth comes out. Cue the complete lack of tears on my part, though all credit to Grant when he manages to sell the line: “if it had to happen to one of us, why couldn’t it have been me?!”

The strength of the movie inevitably rests on how much you’re rooting for the couple to overcome the hurdles thrown before them and reach their happy ending. Disposable Fiancés come in two flavours: so nasty that the protagonists look like morons for ever being in a relationship with them in the first place, or so nice that the protagonists look like dicks for cheating on them. Here, the likes of Kenneth and Lois fall into the latter category, so Grant and Kerr have to work extra hard to sell their romance over the hurt feelings of two decent people that haven’t done anything wrong (who make matters worse by being very dignified in rejection).

The film itself seems aware of this, as there is a strong subtext of sanctimonious piety taming the wild passion of the lovers, not to mention the idea that each one is punished and/or tested by the hand of fate for their indiscretions. Early on the two pray in a private chapel while visiting Grant’s grandmother, and later Kerr is forced to journey through the darkest depths of hell when she becomes a choir teacher to a bunch of gap-toothed orphans who sing an extended song about “The Tiny Scout” who teaches you right from wrong. It’s horrible.

But I’m glad I finally saw it; I’m sure a lot of references and parodies in other media will now start making a lot more sense.

The Queen (2006)

Well, I had to mark her passing somehow. For what it’s worth, I neither celebrated nor mourned her death – my strongest feeling on the matter was simply that it very much felt like the end of an era.

There was a time, years ago, when I was mildly obsessed with this movie. I couldn’t tell you why; I think it just became my film of choice when I needed something playing in the background while I was doing other stuff around the house. But given that I lived through the events depicted in The Queen (albeit as a child on the other side of the world) it all had an immediacy and intrigue to it that other biopics usually lack. Plus, there’s something fascinating about watching people respond to a crisis.

As with 9/11, everyone knows what they were doing and how they reacted when news broke that Princess Diana had been killed in a car accident. I was at my Nana’s house (she lived above my parents in a self-contained unit) playing on the floor in front of the television. I raced downstairs to my parents in the kitchen and cried: “you know Princess Diana? She’s dead!” and vividly remember my father saying: “well, let’s turn on the news to see if it’s true.”

This film purports to take us into the inner circle of the royal family to see how they reacted to the accident in the hours, days and weeks after her death – specifically the PR crisis that exploded when the British public deemed that the royals weren’t honouring or grieving Diana properly (or publicly enough if you’re so inclined).

This is deliberately contrasted with the masterful way in which newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair leads the nation, coining the phrase “the people’s princess” and riding a wave of ever-increasing popularity as the out-of-touch royals flounder. (Of course, we’re eventually treated to the Queen foreseeing that it will all come crashing down for him one day, which of course it inevitably did).

It's the film that taught me a story can be made up of various people just talking in rooms, and still be absolutely riveting.

This is not the first or the last time Michael Sheen has played Tony Blair, and having watched four-and-a-bit seasons of Peter Morgan’s The Crown, it’s easy to see that the prime minister/royal family dynamic is one of his favourite subjects. Starting out with a mix of both awe and cynicism, Tony is eventually won over by the sacrifice the Queen makes (which is essentially eating crow in front of the nation) and in many ways the film is just as much his as it is the Queen’s.

Speaking of whom, Helen Mirren rightfully won her Oscar for this role, though if anything her natural poise and clarity actually elevates Elizabeth to a level of majesty that even the Queen herself didn’t possess! It’s fun seeing Alex Jennings as Prince Charles considering he went on to play the Duke of Windsor in The Crown, and it’s a rather generous portrayal of the man, as the only person who understands the public demand for a performance and the price that will be exacted for not delivering.

On the other hand, James Cromwell is absolutely brutal to Prince Philip – if there’s a villain in this film, it’s him. I also jumped a little when I realized Helen McCrory played Cherie Blair – I’d forgotten she was in this. And for the record, the script tries to depict her as smug and derisive, but there’s not a word that came out of her mouth that I didn’t agree with (and not just because she was played by McCrory).

It’s also a great film for playing “hey it’s that guy!” Hey, it’s Lord Merton from Downton Abbey! Hey, it’s the man who played Benjamin Palmer in Robin Hood!

With the power of hindsight, it’s really quite shocking to see just how badly the royals fumbled the aftermath of Diana’s death, but what’s really chilling is that over twenty-five years later, no one seems to have learned a damn thing. No matter how you feel about Meghan Markle, the fact that the press relentlessly harangued and demonized her, and that the palace did nothing to try and alleviate it, is a baffling example of a lesson not learnt.

People just love hating women too much, I suppose, as eloquently demonstrated by this newspaper clipping:

A finer and more shameless example of affixing the Madonna/Whore Complex onto a woman will possibly never again be seen on this earth.

Spencer (2021)

So at the risk of sounding like a philistine... I didn’t really like this.

The last Princess Diana film was so bad it knocked Naomi Watts off the A list and onto the B (which sucks) whereas this one has cemented Kristen Stewart’s newfound status as an actress to be taken seriously, even if she can’t completely get rid of her own affected mannerisms – and it’s always disconcerting to see/hear Diana’s distinctive body language and speech patterns on someone else.

Presented as “a fable from a true tragedy,” it provides a fictionalized account of three days spent over Christmas at Sandringham Castle in 1991, in which Diana wades her way through the abject misery that is her life. Anyone expecting a standard biopic will be disappointed, as this plays out more like a Gothic Horror, complete with isolated mansion, unsettling atmosphere, encroaching madness, eerie visions, nervy violins, and a cast of complete weirdoes...

The tone is set by the opening scenes, in which an empty kitchen is searched by armed guards, an array of chefs arrive with all the discipline of a trained army, and begin their work under a sign that says: “Keep noise to a minimum. They can hear you.”

The depiction of Diana is one of a woman who is shackled by invisible fetters, and in order to maintain her sanity she pushes her boundaries, just to give herself a necessary sense of agency. Every aspect of her life is micromanaged – the menus, her outfits, her schedule – and in response she engages in all sorts of weird behaviour; she has to in order to fight back, to carve out room for herself in the prison of tradition that closes in around her.

The royals themselves are barely seen, and in lieu of their influence it’s actually the servants that control Diana, who in any other princess story would be her obedient underlings. But here, to disobey them is to be rude, and that’s the weapon that’s wielded against her.

And in a way she’s her own worst enemy: oversharing with the staff, talking to her father’s jacket, her eating disorder...

It’s extremely slow, all the more so compared to The Queen, and without Peter Morgan’s sparkling dialogue. He writes wonderful dialogue that still feels naturalistic; speech that you believe articulate, intelligent people could come up with on the spot. Here, the dialogue (perhaps deliberately) feels stilted and overly rehearsed.

The impression it left me with is that the royals are ordinary people – no better and perhaps rather worse – than the rest of us, and only notable because they’re stuck in an otherworldly situation that they cannot escape from, and in which they’ll die. It’s so ironic that Princess Diana entered this so-called “fairy tale”, attaining everything that every woman is apparently supposed to want: royal pedigree, boundless wealth, a life of luxury, an endless array of clothing chosen specifically for her, no job, the world’s rapt attention, a handsome prince – and it was horrible. It nearly destroyed her, and in a way it ultimately did.

What must that feel like, really? To get the impossible, to live the dream, to enter a fairy tale, and discover that it’s a nightmare? It’s apt then, that when we use the term “like a fairy tale” we’re either referring to something wonderful beyond expression, or something that simply doesn’t exist. Films like this remind us of the singular experience of Diana’s life: the highest highs, the lowest lows, and all played out on the world’s stage – until she died young, and was immortalized (and deified) forever.

If you wrote this as fiction, you’d be derided for being too unrealistic.  

As it happened, a YouTube deep-dive led me to this fascinating footage of a group of friends reacting to Diana’s death. The gist is that one of them was testing out his new video camera while the others were playing cards and watching television, having heard that Diana had been in a car accident and keeping their eyes on the developing story. Then the news breaks, and so does the mood in the room. It’s fascinating for two reasons, firstly that we can see people react in real-time to the reality of her death, and secondly (as the guy who uploaded it points out) that this is quite possibly the very first reaction video to ever exist, well before that term was coined.

It just goes to show the impact that day had, on individuals as well as the world.

The Batman (2022)

It’s difficult to know what to say about The Batman; as a film it’s fine without doing anything to really distinguish itself. There’s something wearying about getting yet another Batman continuity within a decade, and for the longest time I had assumed that this would belong to the DCU, with Robert Pattinson playing a younger version of Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne (though the casting of Jeffrey Wright instead of J.K. Simmons as Commissioner Gordon put an end to that theory).

But my interest was piqued by the fact it was meant to showcase Batman as a detective rather than a superhero, even though it turns out he’s not a particularly good detective. The plot reminded me very much of Seven in that our protagonist moves through the story, tracking the serial killer but never truly catching him, finding clues but never utilizing them in the solving of the mystery, and eventually just arriving at the right time and place because the information has literally been handed to him.

Perhaps realizing that they’ve written a main character (Batman no less!) who never actually achieves anything, it’s at the point the film should be wrapping up, with the truth revealed and the culprit behind bars, that we head into the third act. Having done nothing particularly useful thus far, Batman must suddenly become a superhero in order to take out some minions just to justify his own existence in his own movie. It’s actually kinda fascinating.

That it clocks in at over three hours is mildly insane, though the highlight is Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, even if she’s not really given all that much to do. I appreciate that she has her own motivation and agenda (at one point she ditches Batman’s investigation in order to pursue her own leads) but she deserved to have more impact on the plot itself.

And they do that irritating thing when the female lead gets to save the hero’s life (good) only for her to be immediately incapacitated so that he can save her (bad). It’s a great performance though, Kravitz imbues her with the sultriness and street-smarts of any good Catwoman, and she gets some of the best lines. Her motivation is her own: finding out what happened to her (implied) girlfriend and then confronting her father.

There’s not much else to say really: like I said, it very much felt like Batman’s take on Seven, right down to the villain killing other villains out of a misguided sense of justice, and then letting the police pick him up because it’s all part of a bigger plan to goad the hero into violence. There’s no real sense of humanity in the film, or a sense of what Batman is actually trying to save in Gotham City, which seems to be populated solely by gruff cops, corrupt politicians and a couple of traumatized orphans.

Colin Farrell as the Penguin is as unrecognizable as he is superfluous. Andy Serkis is fine as Alfred, though we don’t get much of the familial rapport he’s meant to have with Bruce. Selina is the smartest character because she ultimately gets on a bike and gets the hell outta there.  

And also, it’s over three hours long!

Catwoman: Hunted (2022)

I thought this would be a good follow-up to The Batman, given Selina Kyle’s starring role and the fact it was written by the great Greg Wiesman, creator of Gargoyles (among others things). Turns out it was imminently forgettable; largely just a succession of chase sequences and fight scenes.

The gist is that Selina steals a precious gem from the crime cartel known as Leviathan (didn’t Supergirl go up against them in one of the CW seasons?) and ends up getting recused by Batwoman, Julia Pennyworth and Interpol. In exchange for her cooperation in helping them take down Leviathan, they promise her complete amnesty for her numerous crimes.

Many cat-related puns ensue, as well as an awkward flirtation with Batwoman, and lots of fights with various bad guys: Cheetah, Cheshire, Solomon Grundy, Tobias Whale, the League of Assassins, some demons...

But shouldn’t a movie about Catwoman be about, I doubt know, A HEIST??!! Honestly, the most interesting part of this is the opening credits, which depict Selina freeing a bunch of trafficked girls. Apparently raising money for their welfare is her motivation in stealing jewels, and I would have much rather been watching THAT film.

Its most notable feature is its anime-style animation, which separates it from other continuities in the DC Animated Universe (or whatever we’re calling it) and at least gives it some visual distinction. Other than that, I’m afraid it’s So Okay It’s Average.

The Siege of Robin Hood (2022)

What. The. Hell. Was. This.

On learning there was a film released this year relating to Robin Hood, I tracked it down, thinking it would be a nice capper to the year, especially having also watched the earliest Robin Hood movie this month. I also saw The Adventures of Maid Marian back in June, hoping it would be bad in the best way possible (cheap sets, bad acting, incoherent story) only for it to be... kinda okay?

Turns out that THIS is the movie you want for that “can’t watch but can’t look away” je ne sais quoi, with all the cheap production values, absolute randomness, and veneer of bewilderment as to how it even got made in the first place. Who even came up with this? (Turns out it was Saban, the studio that gave us Power Rangers, which in hindsight actually makes a lot of sense).

Taking place in a shitty Renaissance Fair or some sort of cheap medieval theme park, the story opens with Robin Hood running away from a couple of guards, grabbing a nearby shield, and using it to surf away... for about three feet. Amazing.

This Robin has artfully smudged cheeks and a strained Australian accent. He does over-choreographed kung fu and parkour. His favourite word is “shit” and he says it about half a dozen times. Whenever he fires an arrow, it makes a noise like a firework going off. He has a little sister, which interested me for a hot second (have any Robins ever had sisters before?) until she immediately gets fridged in order to motivate his fight against the Sheriff.

Actually, before that happens, the siblings are handing out food to the hungry plebs when they come across a trebuchet in the forest. It’s just there. It’s not explained who put it there or why, but when Robin gets into trouble at a nearby prison encampment, his sister uses it to launch massive fireballs. She apparently does this in order to save him, but there’s no way for anyone to aim this thing with any accuracy, and it nearly kills everyone! Seriously, there are giant explosions going off everywhere, and it’s only sheer dumb luck (and the fact he’s the main character) that Robin isn’t killed!

Meanwhile, the Sheriff is collecting obviously plastic treasure for our Prince John stand-in, who is inexplicably referred to as “The Queen of Nottingham.” As though this shire is a whole-ass country, and she’s the ruler of it. Here’s my favourite scene, filled with incredible acting, the aforementioned plastic treasure, and a guy whose voice has clearly been dubbed in:

And then Sir Lancelot turns up. Turns out that the Queen’s whole thing is pitting two people against each other and then telling the victor to kill the loser. When Lancelot refuses, he’s thrown in the dungeon, tortured for a bit, and then told his sentence is “a fate worse than death.” This turns out to be banning him from Nottingham forever. Because yeah, getting kicked out of this place would break anyone’s heart.

Robin enlists Little John, who agrees to join him on the proviso that he’s never sober. Tuck is a young blacksmith who knows kung fu, who agrees to join after this exchange:

Tuck: “The chances of succeeding are a million to one. Why would I join you?”

Robin: “Why wouldn’t you?”

Because the chances of succeeding are a million to one. HE JUST SAID IT.

Look, I don’t know! And hey, now Merlin is here. He tells Robin to forge himself a mask that covers the lower half of his face and makes him look like Bane. Then a tavern wench decides to join. Is she Marian? Heck, is she Guinevere? No, she’s... Freydis. What. Just what is happening.

This movie does not know who it is for. I’m not sure this movie even knows it exists. It’s just... stuff.

They all decide to lay siege to the castle, during which Lancelot is forced to watch a young woman get brutally beaten to death, and Freydis is immediately damselled so Robin can save her. Tuck dies. Lancelot beats up the Captain of the Guard, who demands that he strike the killing blow. But noble Lancelot tells him: “where there is life, there is hope.” Then he kills him.

Also, the Sheriff and Merlin are half-brothers, a revelation which means nothing and goes nowhere. Then the Sheriff stabs him to death. Then the post-credit scene reveals he’s still alive, wearing the crown, and was actually the bad guy the whole time? Or something?

The Sword in the Stone makes a cameo appearance, everyone solemnly sits around a Round Table, and Robin makes a speech, telling the people: “I give the wealth of this land back to you” and throws them about thirty coins in total. Then he and Freydis (who IS this person??) get married, and the truest thing about the whole fiasco is Little John commenting: “how long do you think they’ll last?”

Someone in the end credits is credited as “Mordred” but I swear this character never turned up in the actual movie.

The whole thing is like a fever dream, and somehow has a run-time of over TWO HOURS. Please watch it immediately. I can’t wait to see it again.

Sailor Moon: Season 2 (1995)

It feels like I’ve been watching this FOREVER. It’s been forty-three episodes across eight discs and several library renewals, but I’ve finally completed season two – or Sailor Moon R as it’s often referred to.

This season is divided into two distinct narrative arcs that kickstart after Usagi’s memories are restored to her (having lost them once the climactic battle in season one was completed). The other Sailor Scouts aren’t far behind, and then it’s up to them to defeat a couple of aliens that have arrived on Earth to harvest energy for the Makai Tree that sustains them, disguising themselves as a couple of ordinary school students in the meanwhile.

Aside from the genuinely awesome designs of the aliens, this arc isn’t particularly interesting. It’s only after its completed that things really kick off – even if we’re subjected to one of the show’s most irritating characters for its duration.

Just as Usagi and Mamoru are finally able to enjoy being a couple, a little girl falls from the sky (literally) and integrates herself into Usagi’s family, who all believe she’s a visiting cousin. Between her hairstyle and her “Luna-P” ball, it’s pretty obvious to the audience that she’s from the future, having returned on some mysterious mission to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. (Honestly though, if you were unfamiliar with The Flash comics, the idea of someone’s future offspring time-travelling to the past to meet her parents was a revelation for a nineties kid).

The little girl is nicknamed “Chibiusa” and it soon becomes apparent that she’s being hunted by agents of a group known as the Dark Moon Clan, an extensive chain of leaders and subordinates who ultimately answer to a guy called Prince Demande, who himself is being manipulated by a being known as Wiseman.

It all gets surprisingly epic, especially once the girls travel into the far-distant future and meet Sailor Pluto, the Sailor Scout who guards the door to space and time (and doesn’t yet realize she’s not a planet). Of course, it can also go to some pretty weird places. When Chibiusa falls into Mamoru and Usagi, this happens:

Much later, Sailor Moon is taunted by the illusion that Mamoru and Black Lady (a grown-up Chibiusa) have fallen in love with each other. SHE’S HIS DAUGHTER. AND USAGI KNOWS THIS. It’s unspeakably weird, as is the scene in which Usagi is in the bath, and Chibiusa (unnoticed) rises up from the water in order to attack her. Then there’s the part when Chibiusa crawls into Usagi’s bed, wets herself, only for Usagi to wake up and believe that she’s done it.

There are some bizarre choices here, that’s all I’m saying. In any case, I’m looking forward to season three, as I never watched past this point when I was a kid. It’s unknown territory for me from this point on, though I know enough about Sailors Saturn and Uranus to be very excited for their arrival...

The Secret Circle: Season 1 (2011 – 2012)

You know you’re getting older when the hottest guy in the teen show is the protagonist’s father.*

The Secret Circle is based on the book trilogy of the same name by L.J. Smith, and is an obvious attempt by the CW to strike gold in the same place given that Smith is also the author of The Vampire Diaries, which was adapted into a show that lasted eight seasons and a handful of spin-offs (of which I’ve seen none). Given that The Secret Circle was cancelled after a single season, this hope clearly did not pan out. So what went wrong?

The Vampire Diaries was one of Smith’s earliest works and as such, left plenty of room for improvement in its story and characterization. On the other hand, The Secret Circle is a tight, self-contained trilogy with a clear beginning, middle and end. Unlike its predecessor, there was no real need for any drastic changes – in fact, the story in its entirely could have been told in a one-and-done twenty-two-episode miniseries.

Instead, the show immediately starts to make strange and unnecessary changes.

Cassie’s mother is killed in a house fire within the first five minutes (she survives the book trilogy) requiring Cassie to move into her grandmother’s house with no lasting trauma or even mild sadness that she’s just lost her mother in such an horrific manner. Luke Skywalker grieved Owen and Beru for longer than Cassie misses her mother.

She’s enrolled at the local school and begins to integrate herself into the community at Chance Harbour, Washington (not New Salem, New England, which is a fairly crucial locale in the book) and draws the attention of five unusual classmates. That’s five, not eleven, whittling the coven from twelve members to a more manageable six.

Although Faye and Diana are very well cast (though the latter doesn’t have her fairy tale “sunlight/moonlight hair”) the actors for Adam and Nick are totally round the wrong way, and there’s a brand-new character called Melissa who seems to be an amalgamation of Suzanne and Laurel. Maybe?

As far as talent goes, Britt Robinson isn’t bad as Cassie, given that she’s playing your standard teenage protagonist in a YA story (the requirement is to be as bland as possible so the audience can more easily project themselves upon you) and Jessica Parker Kennedy is the obvious stand-out (or maybe I’m just biased by her stints in Black Sails and The Flash – girl’s got range). Everyone else seems to have been cast on generic attractiveness.

The most interesting relationships of the books are jettisoned: Faye and Diana are no longer cousins, Cassie is never blackmailed by Faye, and though the Diana/Adam/Cassie love triangle remains intact (even though no permeation has any chemistry) Nick barely lasts five episodes before he’s killed off.

Things like the crystal skull, Black John’s true identity, and the deliberate “breeding” of the youngest generation all make appearances eventually, but the context is completely different and doesn’t pack nearly as much of a punch as it does in the book. Instead the story is stretched out almost to breaking point, packed full of so many pointless detours and subplots that it only leads to endless stretches of nothing much happening.  

Also, everything has such a drab, washed-out quality that it’s as though the whole thing was filmed through a grey filter. Never underestimate the importance of something looking good, and at the very least, this means actual colour should be involved.

Between the formulaic storytelling, the odd and unnecessarily restructuring of the source material, and the generic cast, it’s no surprise this didn’t last long. C'est la vie.

*It wasn’t until finishing this entry that I found out who played Cassie’s father and HOLY SHIT IT’S SULLY FROM DOCTOR QUINN: MEDICINE WOMAN. MIND BLOWN.

Safe (2018)

You can always count on a Harlan Coban adaptation to keep you entertained for an afternoon – or in this case, eight weeks, as my mum and I always spend Thursdays up at my place, watching an episode of something. We’ve just finished Safe, which was a perfectly satisfactory thriller/suspense/police procedural, with all the typical Coban twists. Of course, the moment you start scrutinizing the story it all falls to pieces, but that’s not why these shows are made. Just switch your brain off and enjoy the ride.

Michael C. Hall plays Tom Delaney, a surgeon and widower raising two teenage girls. His wife died of cancer a few years ago, and he’s enjoying a low-key relationship with police D.S. Sophie Mason, whose ex-husband lives in a caravan in her driveway. Yeah, it’s a bit of a complicated situation, especially given that they all live in a gated community. Everyone knows everyone, and many of the neighbours have resided there for several decades.

Then one day his daughter Jenny doesn’t come back from a party she attended the night before. Making matters worse, he soon learns her boyfriend didn’t return home either. Though he doesn’t panic straightaway, his preliminary search leads him to all kinds of strange detours, involving a night club, a psychiatric ward, the local school, his best friend, the strained marriage of Jenny’s boyfriend's parents, and his deceased wife.

Yeah, this story bites off a lot, though to its credit, manages to chew most of it. All the various subplots and dangling threads are eventually brought together, with one last big twist to finish things off. I can’t say I like Michael Hall as an actor, there’s just something about him that I find off-putting (I’d say it was because he played Dexter for all those years, though I’ve never seen a single episode of that show) and he’s clearly struggling a bit with his accent.

But the rest of the cast is solid, and the pacing too hectic to pay any attention to much else. The concept of the story taking place in a gated community doesn’t amount to much in the end (it’s meant to be the crux of the entire show, but it honestly wouldn’t have made a difference if it had taken place in any urban area) but it holds your attention throughout.

iZombie: Season 5 (2019)

And that’s that. Back when iZombie first aired in 2015, it was with the most bewildering premise I’d ever heard of. Medical student Liv Moore attends a boat party that gets out of control, is scratched by a rampaging guest, and wakes up the next morning in a body bag. She died and came back as a zombie. With her career and personal life in shambles, she desperately clings to the one thing that can give her undead life meaning: eating the brains of murder victims, which leads to having visions of their lives prior to dying, and therefore the ability to solve crime.

I mean, wow. They really went with that.

But they obviously did something right, as five seasons is nothing to be ashamed of – in fact, I think it’s the perfect length for a television show. What makes iZombie even more impressive is that it managed to keep its core cast from start to finish. At a time in which characters are being written out or killed off or even replaced by different actors entirely because cast members want to leave, iZombie is notable for starting with Liv, Major, Ravi, Clive, Peyton and Blaine, and finishing with Liv, Major, Ravi, Clive, Peyton and Blaine. That’s genuinely impressive these days.

Admittedly, the show lost its footing a little when it moved from the episodic procedural format to a long-running arc in which humans and zombies fought for control of Seattle (without the budget to make any of it look remotely genuine) but for the most part it hangs together.

And season five is all about tidying up loose ends. They bring back Liv’s mother and brother (not seen since season two) to give them a proper send-off, while Candy (a minor recurring character) is given a well-deserved happy ending. There’s an appearance from the show’s best guest-star, television personality Johnny Frost, and the likes of Dale, Blaine and Don E also end up with the endings they deserve.

In fact, they cull the supporting cast pretty vigorously, and a lot of them come to rather ignominious ends (poor Michelle returns in the finale just to be killed off immediately). And what happened to the Freylich kids? And the hateful Dolly? And why does Enzo of all people end up as the Big Bad?

There’s also a somewhat misbegotten storyline involving Liv’s long-lost father, who is not only a drug addict but patient zero of the zombie plague. Even established plotlines like undercover zombies posing as hookers to transmit zombie-ism to an electronics convention, or senators that are compromised by the zombie plague in a bid to spread it outside the walls of Seattle go nowhere, and are rendered null when the cure is made anyway.

So yes, the story does get a bit out of hand at times, but for the most part the show remembers to focus on its core cast. The whole thing has very much been a metaphor for mental health: in the premiere Liv suffers an existential crisis that throws her into a tailspin, but she adapts by using her newfound situation to help people. In this she has a loveable support system: understanding boss Ravi, best friend Peyton, confused-but-sympathetic ex-fiancé Major, and investigative partner Clive, who all had close ties not only with her, but each other. Even Quinta Brunson is introduced in a small but key role, just before she made it big in Abbott Elementary.

I will probably never watch it again, but it held my interest while it lasted, the cast chemistry was top-notch (you can just tell they got along on-set) and it delivers on that rare and precious thing: satisfying closure. Nicely done, show.

Doctor Who: Holiday Specials (2022)

It seems like only yesterday that Jodie Whittaker was announced as the next Doctor, and now she’s made her final bow. Let’s be honest, her tenure wasn’t great. I think the highlights were Jodi herself and Sacha Dhawan as the Master, as each one sank their teeth into their respective roles and gave consistently wholehearted performances.

I enjoyed the six-part Flux miniseries (even if it didn’t stick the landing) and a few of the one-off episodes (I recall “Demons of the Punjab” was good, as was “The Haunting of Villa Diodati”). And... that’s about it.

Unfortunately, the past three seasons have also featured the most uninteresting companions of the entire new era (Ryan doesn’t show up for Jodi’s final episode, and honestly, I wouldn’t have even noticed if they hadn’t briefly mentioned him) and overarching storylines that were most notable for a. Chibnall immediately throwing out the premise that Stephen Moffatt painstakingly set up for him (Gallifrey and the Time Lords weren’t destroyed after all – except just kidding, the Master has just annihilated them again) and b. all that weirdness about the Fugitive Doctor and the Timeless Child (which I couldn’t make heads or tails of) that didn’t really lead to anything and will probably never be brought up again.

The three specials that make up Jodie Whittaker’s swansong are “Eve of the Daleks,” “Legend of the Sea Devils” and “The Power of the Doctor.” The first is a fairly fun Groundhog Day Loop story, in which Daleks attack the Doctor, her companions, and a couple of bystanders who work/live in a storage unit on New Year’s Eve. It’s actually carried by the two guest-stars, geeky Nick and prickly Sarah, who negotiate the realization of a long-simmering attraction as they run for their lives.

There are some clever bits strewn throughout, such as the Doctor applying logic and lateral thinking to the situation, with an extra twist on the formula being that each time the clock resets, they have less time than before to outmanoeuvre their assailants.

“Legend of the Sea Devils” is completely forgettable, and I’m struggling to remember what actually happened. The highlight is Crystal Yu as the real-life pirate Madam Ching. I think a sea monster was involved at some point? And Yaz is in love with the Doctor, but it’s the second-to-last episode and there’s no time for it to be explored or resolved properly, so I’m not sure why anyone should care.

Finally, “The Power of the Doctor” provides the Thirteenth Doctor with a reasonably satisfying send-off. After ditching Dan within the first three minutes, the Doctor and Yaz fall into a trap laid by the Master, but luckily old companions Tegan and Ace (as played by their original actresses) turn up to help out. They kick a lot of ass despite their advanced age, and get surprisingly touching reunions with (it’s safe for me to assume) their Doctors.

Peter Davidson, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann and David Bradley (as William Hartnell’s First Doctor) all cameo as past reincarnations in Thirteenth’s mindscape, which makes for a nice visual, but inevitably makes me wonder why all the rest didn’t turn up. They seriously couldn’t book Matt Smith or Peter Capaldi for a couple of minutes?

The same goes for Tosin Cole, who (unlike Bradley Walsh) doesn’t return for one last hurrah. (That said, it’s very obvious that Jacob Anderson’s return as Vinder was a role originally written for Ryan). Also, I’m not entirely sure why Yaz even leaves. She knows that the Doctor will regenerate into someone else, so why not stick around for a while longer? Companions have made the leap from one Doctor to the next before, so why doesn’t Yaz doesn’t do the same, especially if she’s in love with her? Perhaps that’s meant to be the reason she goes, in which case, let that be something that’s actually discussed.

But the internet tells me the final scene of Graham’s support group features more companions from earlier eras, including William Russell, appearing a record FIFTY-SEVEN YEARS after his last appearance on the show. Apparently he’s pushing one hundred years old, so colour me impressed.

And of course it ends on the big surprise that Thirteen does NOT regenerate into Ncuti Gatwa, but David Tennant. It’s horribly unfair to say this, since Jodi Whittaker really did give it her all, but the trifecta of Tennant, Gatwa and Russell T. Davies has me excited for the future of Doctor Who for the first time in YEARS.

Plus they’ve just announced that his companion will be Millie Gibson as Ruby Sunday. Want to feel old? She was only one year old when the show was rebooted in 2005.