Doctor Who Season 3-eps 7-9.

7. 42- Director Graeme Harper, the same man who gave us so many classics, such as; the best regeneration story to date, 1984’s ‘The Caves of Androzani’ and the best 80’s Dalek story, ‘Revelation of the Daleks,’ the two-part Cybermen story of 2005, ‘Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel’ and that year’s explosive finale, ‘Doomsday’… returns to work on a gimmicky and so-so story.

There’s no justice, is there?

The Doctor and Martha land on a spacecraft that is plummeting towards a sun. The story is hampered with the ‘real time’ gimmick that our heroes must solve the problem witin the 42 minutes of the program’s run time (I have no idea how this will play out when it gets edited for US transmission). Throw into this frantic pace the charismatic crew that have so little time to register that I’m still struggling to figure out what program so-and-so is from by the time he or she is killed or drenched in red light and sweat.

Martha is hurled into a sub-plot as she and a nameless sweaty technician attempt to hack their way through a series of doors protected by questions programmed by the crew during an all-night drink-up. While it’s not a bad concept, it plays out as an embarrassing conceit that works against the program’s futuristic setting (why would they care about who had more #1’s out of the Beatles and Elvis?). It’s such a lame idea that even the Doctor can’t be bothered and Martha has to phone her mum who is still trying to talk her out of traveling with the Doctor because of info fed to her by the evil camp of PM-hopeful Mr. Saxon.

Add to this pacey runaround a possessed crewman who is killing off the crew by raising his visor and saying ‘Burn with me’ and you’ve got one of the most contrived Doctor Who stories to date.

It’s like the production team thought ‘we need to introduce a moody villain with a catchphrase in every other story.’ It ends up making the program seem far sillier and less imaginative than it needs to be.

The phrase ‘burn with me’ is hardly even a clue to the solution of the problem, it’s just an evil phrase. The possessed men might have instead saaid ‘Oooga-booga’ with about as much meaning.

All of this aside, it does look wonderful. The CGI ship, the sun and the possessed ‘effect’ are all great visuals. The acting is top notch and the cinematography is outstanding. The set is almost identical to last year’s ‘Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit’ which reduces the program’s already slim margin of impact. In fact, I had to remind myself what happened in this story before writing the review.

Martha spends some time trapped in a life pod with some nameless very polite guy and decides to call her mum which seems very odd considering both of them are very… up for it. This continues the ‘Martha loves the Doctor‘ storyline and throws a few extra minutes into the ‘Mr. Saxon’ storyline which is clever but perhaps not as well told as it should be.

I feel there should be a little inset image of John Simm in the bottom of the screen every time Saxon gets mentioned. The Saxon threat is so disembodied, that it’s difficult to pay attention to it.

The Doctor goes through perhaps his most harrowing experience as he is possessed and almost driven to tears with fear that he’ll hurt the crew. It’s a character defining moment that Tennant pulls off with aplomb. The conclusion involves lots of shouting and a button push to release the sentient energy that the ship scooped up and the trouble is over.

Not the most memorable episode, 42 did have lots of style and character. I still say that Harper saved a lame script, but at least the conclusion did not involve the Doctor waltzing in front of the villain and pressing a button to end the threat.

The sci-fi lifestyle

While dressing in a shower curtain, toting a squirt gun and looking for aliens in your backyard worked as a kid, living in a fantasy world of sci-fi ain’t that simple for an adult.

Or… at the least you need a much more expensive play suit.
Escaping a mundane and pedestrian lifestyle is the true intent of any fan of sci-fi. We don’t just want to read about it, we yearn to live the adventure.

You can say that role-playing is a way to transform your life, but it’s actually just actively creating a more exciting and flamboyant person under which to act out in public.

But at least it keeps you off the streets. Plus, making plush swords and armor is a safer outlet for those urges to make stuff than… well let’s just leave it at ‘it’s safer.’

Immersing yourself in the virtual reality of video games is a temporary reprieve but you just get sprained pinkies for that high score and little else. Trust me, I’ve tried.

For certain modern thinkers, the answers have been obvious from the get go. The best way out of a rut is to think outside of your normal behaviors.

Beat writer William S. Burroughs pointed out that spaceships are a totally laughable form of outer space exploration. He called it the equivalent of a fish taking along its a bowl of water to travel on land. To travel outside of our realm of reality, we have to leave behind what we have here. In one way or another, we have to evolve. We have to leave our bodies and all those Earth habits behind.

Not as flashy as your own stylishly cut space suit and a raygun that gos ‘Wuuu wuu wuu’ to fight aliens with but it makes sense.

Look at what painter Brion Gysin did with a record player, a light bulb and a patterned tube. Sure, he had to do a hell of a lot of drugs to get to this point (why else do it?), but it recreates the experience of music light and motion in ways that the Pink Floyd laser light show only dreams of.

Footage of Brion Gysin’s Dream Machine

Fiddling about with the Dream Machine is one way to actively stretch outside of yourself and experience life in a new way. In many ways, it’s a kind of Western-ized version of meditation.

It’s science fiction.

There are imagineers that have been working at making their dreams a reality for decades, such as Ray Harryhausen.

Looking at the documentary ‘The Sci-Fi Boys,’ you can see how his stop-motion work broke the ground for sci-fi and fantasy film while cluttering up basements across America with boys madly creating their own monsters and special effects (much to the chagrin of their moms).

But in the end, the reverberation from Harryhausen’s creations was simply more elaborate movie monsters. There’s got to be a better way to use the gifts that these film pioneers gave us aside from revering their work on nice DVDs.

Take some time today to think about how you can live a sci-fi lifestyle… and don’t forget to check out the cool stuff at the Daily P.O.P. Shop!

Another Invasion of the Bodysnatchers?

The plagued 2007 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers will soon hit screens this August.

Daniel (James Bond) Craig and Nicole (formerly Mrs. Cruise) Kidman star as the leads in a story about an infection spread by the fragments of a crashed space shuttle (as if the space program doesn’t have enough bad press).

Production started as far back as 2004 and in the end, the studio decided that since pods are not involved, the film is not a remake, hence the simple title, Invasion. However, seeing as how the ‘alien disease’ can only take possession of you while you sleep and the only way around it is to stay awake and not show emotion… it’s a remake.The Wachowski Brothers were called in late in the game to rewrite the film, causing re-shoots of several scenes and provide a ‘twist ending’… which I’m guessing involves Daniel Craig turning out to be Pierce Brosnan, but… I really cannot get motivated about yet another remake of an incredibly important sci-fi film.

However, Hollywood has achieved one good thing here. It has shed a light on the amazing other versions of this story.

The original 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers was based on the novel by Jack Finney. With a truly terrifying script and an inspired performance from Kevin McCarthy desperately trying to save a world from an invasion that replaces the human race with emotionless zombies.

Reminiscent of H.P. Lovecraft’s spine-tingling short stories of alienation and hopelessness, the film closes with an hysteric hero screaming at the audience that they are next.

In 1978, Philip Kaufman directed a haunting remake of ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ debuted, featuring Leonard Nimoy (in one of his only non-Star Trek acting appearances) as a self-help guru.

A thrilling and deeply disturbing film about justifiable paranoia in a post-Watergate America, this is a movie that still freaks the living crap out of me to do this day.

In 1993, Abel Ferrara (one of my mom’s favorite incredibly creepy directors) and Stuart Gordon (of Re-Animator fame) released ‘Body Snatchers,’ which while praised with a Palm D’Or nomination at Cannes, received poor distribution and lackluster critical review.

Despite the fact that the remakes of Invasion of the Body Snatchers to date have been incredible in their own right, this new version just seems like a mish-mash of intentions.

And anytime a movie takes 3 years to complete and has re-shoots and multiple writers working over each others’ work… AND it’s a remake posing as an original work… I worry about what kind of movie that could possibly be.