Greenberg told Joystiq that limiting the release of the console is “part of what makes it special”

Huh. Ironically, not letting people get hold of a large hard drive without buying a whole new Xbox is part of what makes Microsoft complete jerk-offs.

Ranking of Indomie Noodle flavours

1. Mi Goreng Normal (10/10)
2. Mi Goreng Satay (4/10)
3. Mi Goreng BBQ Chicken (1/10)

One of these days I’m going to stop trying these kooky new flavours. It’s just not worth the risk.

I love a good ‘The X of Y’ title. That said, they do tend to signify what one might charitably call “traditional” Doctor Who. Base under seige. Lots of running about. People getting picked off one by one. Fun, sometimes, but often a little boring. ‘The Waters of Mars’ is in fact just that sort of thing. And yet, pleasantly, not. It’s nice to see that in his last episodes of Who ever, Davies is back to taking some risks with the Doctor’s character, in a way not seen since the heady days of series one.

Our story opens with the Doctor landing on Mars, full of beans and ready for a new adventure. However, after only a little bit of exploring, he suddenly realised he’s landed smack bang in the middle of history; the first manned colony on Mars, one of those awkward events in time that must happen.¹ And so quickly, the Doctor’s enthusiasm and wonder gives way to its disturbing and self-destructive flip-side; near-psychotic curiosity as he sticks around, forever wondering what’s going to happen next, and what on earth happened to Bowie Base One.²

The heroic and doomed humans are played well, but generally get little do do. Peter O’Brien’s Ed Gold continually verges on being interesting, but never quite gets there. The notable exception of course is Lindsay Duncan’s formidable Captain Adelaide, the ‘companion’ for the episode and one of the best characters in recent Who.³ The conversations between her and the Doctor start to peer into some of the peculiar elements of time travel that usually get swept under the rug, and provide one of the aspects of this story that elevate it above the dumb runaround it so easily could have been.

Also worth praising in ‘The Waters of Mars’ are the water creatures themselves. It may just be me, but these must surely be the best realised, scariest monsters that new Who has created. The cracked lips, the creepy eyes (well, on some of them). And what could be more terrifying than a slow dribble of water over your chin? It’s horrific when your drunk uncle Jim does it, and it’s horrific here too. It’s worth watching Doctor Who Confidential just to see how crummy they could have been, however.⁴

But the most intriguing and peculiar element of ‘Waters’ is the ending. Suddenly the story goes from being a nice but pointless base under seige story to something very special. Of course, then it sort of stops being special again next week, but I’ll get to that. Having spent the whole story telling himself he can’t interfere and has to leave, as the Doctor hears the brave humans scuttle about in abject futility, something snaps. Why does he need to follow the laws of time? Who, exactly, is defending them? HE’S in charge, dammit. HE’S the Lord of Time. All shall look upon him and despair. Nothing in the world can stop him now. It will be a deadly vengeance of deadly revenge.

It was at this point that I was tempted to reach into the TV and lend the Doctor a copy of ‘Father’s Day’, just to remind him exactly what does happen when time gets messed up these days, and how close he once came to being erased from existence. But let’s ignore that point as it’s easily handwaved.The really annoying stuff comes further on. There’s a few points of story logic which don’t fit in together as well as I’d like.

1. The Doctor can convince Adelaide that she will need to die on Mars to guarantee her daughter’s future, and for that matter, the future of the human race. This is fine. He does this sort of thing all the time.
2. If the Doctor goes loopy, Adelaide will believe what he told her first, and not his later post-revelation speeches. This is fine, too. If you tell someone you’re not going to eat a cookie, but then later start to rationalise to them why you definitely needed a cookie while you brush the crumbs from your t-shirt, then they’re unlikely to believe you. You’re just going to sound like you’re making excuses to bypass your principles.
3. The future inspired by Adelaide and her team dying bravely on Mars is generally similar to the future inspired by Adelaide and two survivors inexplicably escaping to Earth, and in one case, committing suicide inside their apartment. This seems ropier. If I go to climb Everest and die on the way up, I’m a bloody hero. If I go to climb Everest, my team dies, and the next thing people find is my dead body back at home, I’m looking highly suspicious.
4. Adelaide will be sure enough of point 3 to kill herself and make it come to pass. This seems shaky too. She’s a stubborn, single minded individual, of course. But she doesn’t seem the sort to operate on half-formed guesswork. And if she were, surely the obvious course of action for the Doctor after she shoots herself is to grab her body and drop it on Mars again, to make things look a bit more like history’s supposed to? If I were Adelaide, that’s what I’d have expected him to do. But no, apparently he needs to go have a cry instead. Doctors are so emo these days.

So, generally a bit odd, that. But still, exciting. The Doctor’s finally gone off the deep end and changed history! What horrible damage will this wreak on the universe? If you guessed something along the lines of THE END OF TIME, then I could understand why. However, with the benefit of hindsight, it turns out that the only consequence is the Doctor getting his knees a bit damp in the snow, and getting a bit mopey and stubborn. Which means that I’m not really sure how I feel about ‘The Waters of Mars’. Pointlessly interesting springs to mind. Which is a damn sight better than pointlessly boring.

1. It’s a funny old theory of Time, this fixed/flexible model that we’ve ended up with, but as far as I can see, it’s the only one you can have in the Doctor Who universe without ruling out great masses of story types.
2. Is it cold in space, Bowie?
3. She’s certainly a far more interesting character than the last temp, Lady Christina de Souza
4. And I don’t say that lightly. Dear God, that show’s boring sometimes. I don’t want to see a montage people setting up a special effect with a Snow Patrol soundtrack ever again.

It’s that last one that I’d like to expand on. You see, I’m normally a very good person in these games. I save the innocents, forgive the guilty, generally act like Jesus, if Jesus had a gun and awesome psychic powers. But now, you’re given the option at key moments in scenes to suddenly do something very good or very bad. And if someone’s standing right above a gas canister, well, how’s a person who likes explosives supposed to stop himself from blowing them up? Or, if someone of dubious character is stuck up against a full size glass window on a skyscraper, how do I hold myself back from kicking them out?

I guess what I’m trying to say is that Bioware, not happy with simply stealing my free time, are now trying to corrupt me as well. Bastards.

This build not only contains the promised ability to walk, but also a light source. User testing has revealed that some gamers are afraid of the dark.

The game is after the link and as before you’ll need the Unity web player to view the game.

You might need to click on the game to give it focus so you can move. Use the mouse to look and WASD or arrow keys to move. Don’t fall off the plane by the way. You’ll just keep falling.

It’s all thrills at atypicalreview.com this week. I know, it’s been quiet around here, but now, we have a game in development. And no one is more thrilled about Andy’s Animal Crossing RPG than I. Which makes me feel a little awkward as I steal the thunder somewhat with my new announcement.

I present to you the first build of my new RPG FPS Puzzle RTS. It’s called Jemima Pricklebottom in the Transcendent Pineapple World of Elgentwist: Modern Warfare. It’s early days yet, but with build 1 I think you’ll notice two key elements that set it a notch above Andy’s effort. Not that we’re competing or anything.

1. You don’t need to install some crazy plugin to play.
2. I’m not using that harsh and scary “black” colour. I’m more keen on a soft yet firm shade of #1b1b1b.

The game can be found after the link. Prepare to have your mind BLOWN.

I know, right? Awesome. I mean, obviously improvements will come in days to come. And even if they don’t; well, at least you’ll know, based on this, that I’m working damn hard on something pretty impressive.

OK. It’s a bit of ‘Choose Your Own Review’ today. I’ll be your narrator. You have just seen the Sherlock Holmes trailer. It has a bunch of explosions, some stilted dialogue, and a bit of fighting. Are you:

1. Thrilled that it seems they’ve ditched that pesky mystery crap that Holmes has to deal with usually and thrown him into a solidly structured action-o-rama. Scroll to Heading One.
2. Amused but concerned that the core of Sherlock Holmes may be completely absent from the film, and indeed, that it may be shite on a level similar to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Scroll to Heading Two.
3. You didn’t care either way. Scroll to Heading Three.

Heading One

You’ll feel ripped off by this film. All the action in the movie has pretty much been seen in the trailer, and all the bits that weren’t there involve the Great Detective… detecting. WTF? Also Holmes and Watson are, like, totally gay. OMG. Boring, lame and gay. And you don’t even see Rachel McAdams in the corset she wore in the trailer.

Heading Two

You’re me.¹ Congratulations. Not just because you’re generally awesome, but also because this review is largely relevant to you. I don’t really understand those other two. Don’t make eye contact. Follow me.

I’ve always been a bit of a Holmes fan. The Hound of the Baskervilles has long been a favourite, and possibly is my most re-read book ever. I have some really nice collections of all his stories that I’m very seriously meaning to read at some point. Oh alright. I’m a pretty average Holmes fan. But I know what I like. And I liked this. I reckon there’s three things you really need to tell a good Holmes story, and this movie has those things.

Firstly, you need your leads. You need an unflinching portrayal of Holmes. He’s a dick, a social misfit. Don’t shy away from that. Oh alright, I understand you probably can’t go near the drug use without upping the rating. But don’t shy away from the rest. And while you’re not compromising, don’t you dare make him stupid, either. Or if he is going to be stupid, it has to be in a logical sort of way. Which leaves the way for a good portrayal of Watson, as the emotive, humanising link between Holmes and society. There’s a few moments in the film where they draw the relationship between the two wonderfully. Holmes’ trick with the fortune teller. Holmes deeply offending Watson’s fiancé. Watson starting to realise that he can’t really let go of his life with Holmes.

Secondly, you need a decent mystery plot. Like quite a few of the Holmes stories, the mystery is less ‘whodunnit’ but ‘howdunnit’. Guy Ritchie’s quick flashes of past visuals as Holmes explains his reasoning are particularly helpful in making the whole seem generally plausible, even when I’m sure with less skillful writing and direction, the same ideas would have seemed like complete rubbish. The main disappointment with the plot of the film is that the villain’s motive is “take over the British Empire”, which in old-timey scale is rather like starting off with the Daleks wanting to destroy REALITY ITSELF in the first episode of Doctor Who. There’s not really much room to escalate things in the sequel.

Thirdly, you want the themes to be spot on. Holmes has to solve things with logic and deduction; even if his unerring ability to divine the exact details of people’s holiday plans from a scuff mark on their shoe looks like magic, it’s got to be explainable. And the film doesn’t put a foot wrong here. In keeping with the time of the stories, there’s a lot of interest in the supernatural, and communing with the dead. This stuff all works well, and it builds up a bit of suspense around whether or not there are dark forces at work. From early on in the film, Holmes is unfazed by this–he reasons that even if the explanation is supernatural, he’ll still be able to use reason to decipher it. This seems to me the right way to handle it. Mind you, I’ve not yet gone back to Hound of the Baskervilles to see exactly what his reaction was to the idea that a giant flaming hound was terrorising Dartmoor.

So, there’s your three. There’s a few other elements worth throwing in. Humour–check. The film is far funnier than some of the trailers would lead you to believe. Holmes in disguise–check. And cleverly handled as well. Some lesser-known elements of the Holmes stories, such as boxing and gambling. Perhaps most importantly, they’ve grabbed one of the most interesting female characters and thrown her in to disrupt Holmes and Watson’s sausage fest. Rachel McAdams charms your socks off as the charismatic, manipulative, yet caring Irene Adler. Between her and Watson’s fiancée, the writers have done a good job inserting a female touch without it feeling contrived.

In summary: hurrah, it’s a good, fun, modern Sherlock Holmes film. Hopefully we won’t have to wait 24 years for the next one.²

Heading Three

I’m impressed you even bothered to come down here. Why did you even click on this review in the first place? What’s wrong with you? Leave this place.

1. Well, alright, not completely. I do have some corset-related disappointment in common with option 1.
2. What? How could you not love Young Sherlock Holmes?

And so it came to pass that at the end of his days, Russell T Davies finally got his crazy back.

I’ve liked a lot of Davies’ Doctor Who, but I’ve felt as the series has gone on, that a lot of his more outrageous ideas have been a little tempered, or disappeared entirely. Season four was enjoyable, consistent, and safe. And subsequently, nowhere near the awesome of earlier seasons. It doesn’t take long to realise where Davies’ priorities are when writing popular science fiction, and they’re certainly not in the science area. It seems like he writes as if you would a fairy tale; anything’s possible, but everything has a price. And as long as there’s some involving fantasy logic at the core of the story, things work well. When there isn’t, well, then you get ‘Journey’s End’.

But with ‘End of Time’, the man who blew up Number 10, opened a two-part finale with reality TV spoofs, and wrote ‘Love & Monsters’ is back with a vengeance. There’s two twists at the end of ‘The End of Time, Part One’, and while both are exciting, it’s the first which is so delightfully mad that you’re both laughing and intrigued at the same time. I won’t go into either of them here since all my guesses are probably wrong. After all, if I’d actually managed to write something about ‘Waters of Mars’ before now, I’d probably have guessed that whatever was happening this week was caused by the Doctor’s interference there, and not, as it seems, completely unrelated. So instead, I’ll focus on the individual elements of what is, really, an episode of setting up and not paying off. Prepare to be unsatisfied.

The Ood. Meh. The Ood do nothing for me. Ood Brian Cox is cooler than your average Ood but would appear to be just a big-brained exposition machine. The obvious caveat here is that it’s quite possible they’ve got something to do next week. Unfortunately, just looking at them again reminds me of ‘Planet of the Ood’ and the fact that a species has evolved which HAS TO CARRY IT’S BRAIN IN ITS HAND. Ahem. It would appear I’m still not over that.

The Master’s Return. Oh my, but this scene feels dumb. I’m not sure exactly what it is. It could be Lucy Saxon’s painfully long and undramatic piece of vaguely implausible exposition right at the end. It could be the idea that Lucy hasn’t washed her lips for a year or so. It could be that the “Potions of Saxon” sound as stupid as the ludicrous legend of the gun that could shoot the Master in ‘Last of the Time Lords’, but appear to be very real. I think it’s mostly just because it’s a lot of shouting by people who sound very silly when they shout.

It’s a shame, because as Davies alludes to in the commentary,¹ he’s playing around with the idea of the Doctor and the Master’s timelines being linked here–a concept hinted at but never really explored in the original series–and the whole idea of the Doctor rushing across the universe to catch up to events (and failing) is kind of cool. Or rather, the idea is cool when it isn’t juxtaposed with one of the lamest scenes in new Doctor Who ever.²

The Master Himself. Based purely on this story I think we have to put John Simm’s Master up on top of the “Best New Who Villain” pedestal. Yes, he’s still insane³ but he’s also amazingly sympathetic in places. It surprises me that an alien who grins like a loon, eats entire people and has previously decimated the population of the earth feels less “eeeeevil” to me than the big army doofus from Avatar. What’s particularly satisfying is getting a nice, solid, proper scene between Doctor and Master, after being cruelly denied it in ‘Last of the Time Lords’. Watch for the bit where the Master zaps the Doctor, catches him before he hits the ground, then realises what he did and drops him. Awesome stuff.⁴

Wilf. It’s nice having a male companion every now and then, but of course even more interesting to have an old one. Everyone’s going on about the scene in the café, so I won’t, except to say that I was very relieved that no one actually quite broke down. Hard-hearted bastard that I am, I wasn’t completely sold on Cribbins until ‘Turn Left’, but I’m a complete convert now and his storyline with the mysterious woman in white is the most intriguing aspect of the episode.

Lots of random old people. I guess they were almost funny. I’m letting them off only because generally everyone’s so young in Doctor Who–including next year’s Doctor. I reckon Minnie was the Tenth Doctor’s last chance for a snog though, so he’ll be totally kicking himself on New Year’s Day when he realises what got away from him.⁵

Joshua Naismith and his weird daughter. I think I may have missed something here. If I did, it was most likely the point. Seriously. These two have about three scenes where they generally act a shade peculiar in not terribly interesting ways, and then seem to get removed from the plot completely. It seems barely worth even having them in the story at this stage. Why not just have the whole thing run by the comedy aliens? Perhaps they’ll do something fascinating next week, but I somehow doubt it.

The comedy aliens. Inaccurately named. But potentially important to the plot, so they’re at least one up on the Naismiths.

Timothy Dalton. I’m not sure there’s many people out there who could speak the narration he’s given and make it sound awesome instead of stupid.⁶ He will have to work on his problem with spittle though. It’s unprofessional. Ron Howard never spat on anyone for three years of Arrested Development.

Donna’s Mum. Suddenly gets to be really funny. I didn’t see that coming. More of Donna’s Mum!

It’s tempting to say at this point: “What a lot of silly plot elements that didn’t go anywhere.” But that would be a stupid thing to say halfway through a story. That said, I’ll be disappointed if Minnie doesn’t save the universe come New Year’s Day.

1. Here’s the podcast URL if you’d like to grab it–part two’s commentary should turn up next week as well.
2. Note I didn’t just say Doctor Who. That’d be a somewhat larger call, and not one that I’m comfortable with.
3. Something that has rather hamstrung previous Masters, making them appear cartoonishly stupid. I’m looking at you, Anthony Ainley Master.
4. Not stuff which I actually explicitly noticed until Davies pointed it out in the commentary though. I’m clearly not very perceptive.
5. Unless he pashes John Simm.
6. And some of it is certainly stupid. “To the west of the north of that world”? Oh come on. Do I have to sit down with Russell and explain to him about spheres? How about “Many of the humans of that world did gather…”?