Nuremberg

A generally well-produced TV-Miniseries, with a particularly shocking second act. It doesn't deeply challenge issues, but informs, historically and emotionally.

The Nuremberg trials were a series of prosecutions run jointly by Allied nations in the wake of World War 2, to sentence the captured Nazi leaders for war crimes carried out under their command. Nuremberg was produced in 2000, starring Alec Baldwin as cheif prosecutor Robert Jackson, and Brian Cox as Hermann Göring - the former second in command of Nazi Germany, who establishes himself as a very Hitler-esque figure, with his radical ideas backed by incredible charisma.

The film portrays Jackson as idealistic, and Göring as conniving. Jackson is determined that the Nazis be given a fair trial; that justice be served. Göring is determined to exploit the court system to escape his fate. The two serve as tent poles for the two sides of the case, but there are a plethora of other characters and subplots revolving around them.

Serenity

Awesome story, awesome characters, awesome world. This TV series was definitely worth resurrecting - go and watch it!

It's been a long time since my last post, and even longer since I posted about Firefly, but I've finally finished it. So here's a review of the movie that completed the story after the series was cancelled (for reasons I cannot fathom, since this show is so good!)

Basically this film plays out like a much longer episode of the show, which is both good and bad; on the downside the budget is still small by blockbuster standards, so while the effects are slicker and grander, they still feel a bit cheap and tv-ish. That's the worst of it though - all the best stuff from the show is all here; the dialogue is snappy, the characters are well defined and universally interesting, including all the new ones we're introduced to, even when they have precious few minutes of screen time. The universe this franchise inhabits is fantastically real-but-not, with a vibrance and believability overpowering any stretches of credibility.

Firefly (so far)

Note to self: stop procrastinating and write the thing on the day it's due. Or write in advance and publish on time!

I haven't finished Firefly yet, but my viewing of it has been spread out across such a long time, I think if I get a few thoughts out now, I can do a post about the series (or the movie) later to wrap things up. For now; my impressions and my questions.

Firstly what I think of the show: love it. When my girlfriend and I started dating we decided to watch some favourite TV series together. I chose Trigun (definitely worth a post in the future) and she chose to show me Firefly (Buffy being her true favourite). Interesting that they both be Sci-Fi Westerns, albeit completely different in style. In a word, Firefly is brilliant. The setting is interesting and well fleshed out, characters have great personality brought on by a fantastic cast with solid writing - I understand Joss Whedon is a bit of a legend of television. I know it's old, but the whole show feels utterly fresh to me, and the blend of old styles, new ideas, and random eccentricities of speech thrown in is so great, and the story thus far is engaging as well.

If you haven't seen this beloved Sci-Fi classic, and have any interest in the genre at all, give it a watch. I can't speak for the second half, but at least the first is well worth checking out.

I THINK THAT'S ALL I CAN SAY WITHOUT SPOILING THINGS, SO HERE GOES...

Today I watched the episode "Ariel", the 9th in the series. If you include Serenity, thats probably the halfway point, right? I'm really looking forward to getting some answers from the remainder of the show/film. What happened to River, and why? What kind of powers has she got, and what will she do with them? I know the Reapers will come back, and presumably those men in blue gloves (two great, creepy and threatening villains), how will that pan out? I already know there is lots of shooting and space battles involved. Does team Serenity win? I guess that's a given, but will they all survive? And the ship?

The character of Mal is an interesting one, as a hero. In a scene I watched today, he knocked his treacherous crew mate out, threw him into the airlock and threatened (very seriously) to shoot him off into space as they left the atmosphere. That's pretty brutal. But, necessary? It certainly was a heinous betrayal, and the ordeal no doubt got the message across. Mal is in many ways an admirable leader; true to his word, compassionate towards his crew, if only in secret. He's tough on those who oppose him, but considerate to those who are vulnerable. Perhaps his trouble is that he's too honest with the kind of scum-of-the-universe that he deals with (I don't think any heist they've attempted has gone smoothly), and he's too closed about his compassion for those around him; expressing it only reluctantly, or in anger.

Where am I going with this? I don't know, but I think he's my favourite character in the show, and it will be great to see how he fares throughout the remainder of it. I expect to see some serious bad-assness, as well as some touching moments - though I'm not sure if he can ever get the girl. Something about that wouldn't sit quite right; he's too independent and headstrong to be able to depend on anyone else. Of course he has this flirty thing going on with Inara, but I think in order to develop that relationship he would have to embrace a completely different side of his character - one that she loves but he's hesitant to acknowledge.

Or I'm just rambling. Will post an update as the series draws to a close, for me at least.

The Wedding Of River Song (and Doctor Who Series 6)

I'm going to start out with a short review of this episode, then add a spoiler tag before I talk about the series as a whole. I'm also going to go ahead and bump up my word limit a bit. Since we're talking about a TV series that is at least 10 times the length of an average film, I'll assume it's reasonable to devote double my normal words to it.

To set the scene: I am not quite old enough to be a long time fan of Dr Who, but as a child I did watch bits and pieces of the old series as they were rebroadcast. I tuned in at the start of the new series, and was quite dazzled by the newness of it. I wasn't a mad fan though, and although I watched most of the following series, I wasn't hooked and I didn't follow that closely.
What got my attention was Steven Moffat (who, in my mind, always seems to be spelt 'Stephen'. Weird.) Both for his excellent contributions to the Dr Who series, and for his other stuff. I didn't see much of Coupling, but Sherlock was brilliant. So when I found out he was to be show-runner, I started to give it some attention. His first full series was probably the best of the bunch... until this one came along. That said, there's plenty of holes to plot and nits to pick, so I'll get stuck straight in.

The Wedding of River Song is one of the most confusing experiences I've had watching a TV show. All those weeks of building up suspense, and showing those crazy ads (WHOA, pterodactyls? in Dr Who?), and they finally let us in to... whatever this world is. Everything is mushed together like some kind of living history museum where somebody's jumbled up all the facts just for fun.

It's a bit jarring, and strange, but it becomes clearer as it goes on, and I do find this episode to be very intriguing to consider as a series final. Usually there's more hype. There's more grandiose claims about the survival of the universe - there's more 'universe' shown to us to be in peril. Here the grand special effects serve the purpose of building up the world, rather than adding to the 'ultimate-ness' of the ending. Right up front, all the show and fluff merely sets the scene for what really boils down to a very convoluted answer to the question 'does the Doctor really die?'.

If you've watched Dr Who for any length of time, you should already know the answer to that.

The extra bits are fun though. It's great to see more of the Silence, even though they're far better suited to the eerie bits of the Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon two-parter. References to past Dr Who, from this season and others, and from other material as well (the Dickens reference was particularly clever, both referencing Who lore, and reinforcing the strangeness of the world). Interactions between characters are entertaining, and while the resolution is a little questionable, the focus on character and engaging story are a welcome break from the bloated end-of-reality-time-space-everything-disaster stories seen in seasons past.

SPOILERS, FROM THIS POINT ON (FOR THE ENTIRE 6TH SERIES)

Let's get to that resolution, shall we?

All that extra storytelling explains what? The Tessalecta impersonated the Doctor, and was shot by River in Utah. I've been uncertain throughout the whole series about how satisfyingly they would be able to pull off the Doctors' escape from apparent death. All in all, I am still uncertain about this conclusion. It's easy to say it's a cop out - just a man in a robot suit, not very surprising or interesting. It makes me wonder why the Doctor even had to be on the beach then? To control the robot so it acted like him I suppose, but at one point he also says that 'Time demanded that I be on that beach at that moment'. Makes me wonder who this Time person is and how he controls everything in the universe? (There doesn't seem to exist a God in Dr Who canon, except for the Doctor of course). Seriously, why does he have to be there? What is a 'fixed point in time'? How is one created? How does one know when one happens? How can free will interfere if it is 'fixed'?

Brushing that aside, this conclusion has some pretty intriguing implications for the series. The Doctor has been seen as a messianic figure a few times more than once in the past 6 series. He's travelled everywhere across parallel dimensions and alternate galaxies, has conquered foes that threatened to destroy existence itself, has had dozens upon dozens of inspiring speeches said about him... and just generally, it seems, the universe relies on him way too much. I thought this show started out as being about a simple traveller who went places?

I digress: implications! With the universe believing the Doctor to be dead and gone, what shall he do now? Obviously theres a whole lot of questions still to be answered, about the fields of Trenzelor, and the fall of the eleventh (the eleventh Doctor, perhaps?). But for the Doctor, this will mean a chance to just kick back and relax with the whole 'saving the universe every other weekend' thing. Perhaps for the show this will mean a return to simple, small-scale stories. Perhaps, like this year, they will be driven by the characters (All of which were great, by the way). I hope they take this opportunity to really delve into the Doctors' character; what makes him tick?

The fact that the question is the first, the oldest, and is hidden in plain sight, and is in fact the very title of the show perhaps points to a highly self-reflexive season next year. Maybe the Doctor will realise that he is the very reason that this universe exists - that everything around him was invented for him by screenwriters and novelists, and his entire life, all he's ever known is in fact a television show broadcast to millions worldwide! Man, if only that were Tru.

Maybe all this hype is around the reveal of his name. I hope not. That would be dumb.

Other loose ends continue to hang. Madame Kovarian was only killed in the aborted timeline; she and the rest of the Silence still loom in the distance. I think series five never got round to explaining why the Tardis blew up. Considering this series was all about how the Doctor both escapes death and the attention of the universe, perhaps that's something he might now wish to follow up on. Maybe he did follow up on it in the 200 years of his timeline that transpired. That seems like an awful lot, doesn't it? Lots of gaps that could be filled in.

It's hard to say what the next series will bring along, but there's plenty of ways it could go, and although it could slide down a dangerously canon-crushing (or worse, uninteresting) path, there is potential here for something amazing, and I look forward to tuning in next year!