What’s the moral of this story? Something about the best laid plans? No, I think it’s the importance of knowing when to quit. Alan Roper is the leader of a gang of small-time crooks, and he is thinking big. We have seen this kind of group dynamic before in the Edgar Wallace film series: a trio of gang members, consisting of a clever leader, his girlfriend, and his somewhat less clever friend. It makes for a fun group of characters, and it works especially well here with three great actors playing the gang members: John Thaw, Brian McDermott and the first ever Avengers girl Ingrid Hafner (largely forgotten by those who remember The Avengers, as most of her episodes are sadly missing). John Thaw was just 21 years old when he starred in this film. He had already done a little bit of television, but this was his first film role apart from one uncredited minor performance. He is immediately brilliant, stealing every scene he is in, and Hafner and Thaw make for a wonderful acting team. Continue reading
The idea for Nightmares is very simple: bad dreams are becoming real. When that starts happening to everyone, the world eventually descends into chaos. We start with one of the obvious ones, with spiders going for a stroll across random-student-of-the-week Wendell’s face. As soon as he is questioned, and we hear his backstory about his brother carelessly cooking his pet spiders, we realise that the writer is going beyond the obvious scares here, and the fears are tailored to each victim’s phobias or other negative emotions. 
I don’t recall if I’d seen A World of Difference before, but if I had, it was a very long time ago. Long enough that I was not working for a company that dedicates a huge portion of its research to the area of mental health. Now when I watched this episode, what I see is a view of people’s understanding of mental health in 1960 and it’s alarming. We are introduced to Jerry Reagan, an actor whose life isn’t what he wants it to be. Luckily for him, he has a break with reality and starts to believe he’s the character he’s playing, Arthur Curtis. He goes through the episode pleading with his peers to believe him, to accept that he isn’t who everyone thinks he is. The thing is, he is who they think and it’s Jerry who has lost touch with reality. 
I am reasonably certain this story is recreated in the Sherlock Holmes video game, Crimes and Punishment and it’s a good one for it. This is another example of Holmes operating outside the law. But as much as I have people in my own life who would argue that he’s in the wrong, it’s a quality I love about Holmes. I’ve often wondered why some laws are even followed. Let me quickly qualify that: I made a right turn at a red light on a corner where it’s allowed, but I did it from “the shoulder” and was pulled over and ticketed. We treated the white line like a demon treats a chalk circle, when in reality, I was helping reduce traffic the way I made the turn. I questioned the logic of how a white line cost me money and really started pondering the value of some laws. So when Holmes decides to be judge and jury himself, acknowledging that the law often works only in harsh black and white, I have to say I respect the character immensely. 
I’m torn as I come into the final batch of classic Trek episodes. On the one hand, Season 3 has been a bit weak by comparison to the rest of the series. On the other, there are some highlight moments. I don’t think The Lights of Zetar does anything extraordinary but, like last week’s That Which Survives, we are given another basic adventure. In so doing, I think I recognized one of the things that is keeping Discovery from greatness. This episode opens with what appears to be a storm in space. That storm attacks the Enterprise and gets into the mind of Scotty’s latest love interest, Mira Romaine (also known throughout the episode as “the girl”). This storm ends up being an entity. And that made me realize: we don’t have any strange storms or weird events in Discovery largely because the new mode of storytelling is big arcs. To do a non-arc story these days feels like filler. Yet now and then we needed that completely weird thing; those Lights of Zetar or that amoeba in The Immunity Syndrome. I think Trek needs to go back to exploring to really capture the feeling we used to have with this series. 
Sometimes life kicks you in the head. The very day I told two people how much I had been enjoying Space: 1999 is the same day that I watched a real stinker! And it’s sad because within the first minute or so, I was so happy to hear a voice that I knew and loved. The great Leo McKern is impossible to ignore when you hear that bellowing, mirthful voice. His laugh is utterly delightful too. Between him and Brian Blessed a few episodes ago, we’ve had some great voice talent on this series. But could it be that even McKern could not raise this to a passable episode? 
I have previous watched, enjoyed and written about 
What do we want from a second season of a harem anime? Top of the list would be a resolution to the love triangle, but failing that some character development would be nice. Who am I kidding? In the world of anime that is extraordinarily rare, and instead we are drowning in a sea of stories that get started and never finished. It’s a very simply equation, and Nisekoi is a case in point; the second season was shown in 2015, but the manga on which it is based concluded in 2016. Manga readers have it so much better, because they get to enjoy an ending, but for viewers of the anime it’s a frustratingly incomplete picture. By the end of the season we are really no closer to knowing which girl will end up with Raku than we were at the end of the first. We will almost certainly never get a third season to conclude the story. 
I never liked caveman stories. Even Doctor Who couldn’t make them more palatable. Nor could Ringo Starr! These stories just get annoying. You either get Cavemen who speak English and understand full sentences or you get the grunting ooh-ooh-aah-aah’s that do not make for compelling viewing. It’s not that much different with The Full Circle, except there is a really interesting mystery and an element of fear that manage to raise this well above the standard caveman tropes. When one of the Eagles, along with 7 crew members, go missing on the latest planet the moon is drifting past, Koenig orders Paul to remote control the ship back to Moon Base Alpha. Upon arriving, they find one dead caveman on board. Koenig sends out a search party while an autopsy is performed on the dead passenger. The rescue team find a planet where cavemen dwell. But as the crew start vanishing, we realize something very strange is going on here. Lead Writers
Roger Pocock
Mike Loschiavo-
Recent Posts
- The Edgar Wallace Mysteries: Five to One
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Nightmares
- The Twilight Zone: A World of Difference
- Sherlock Holmes: The Abbey Grange
- Star Trek: The Lights of Zetar
- Space: 1999 – The Infernal Machine
- Nekomonogatari (White)
- The Edgar Wallace Mysteries: Accidental Death
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Puppet Show
- The Twilight Zone: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street
- Sherlock Holmes: The Musgrave Ritual
- Star Trek: That Which Survives
- Space: 1999 – Another Time, Another Place
- Nisekoi: Season Two
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