Day 2354: Blairimort Bites Dog

Tuesday:


So, Lord Blairimort has attacked the "FERAL BEAST" of "the Media" and pinpointed the most wicked monster among them… the SU… hang on, it says "INDEPENDENT" here!

Who does he think he is kidding? He has had the most FAVOURABLE press of any Prime Monster since pretty much ever, with the SCUM and the TIMES both STILL onside thanks to all of Lord B's bending-over-backwards to keep Roger Stavro Moredick happy.

With THAT pack of wolves on your side, blaming the Indy is like keeping the HOUND of the BASKERVILLES and then complaining about SNOOPY looking a bit frothy around the mouth!

To say that the Independent is mixing commentary with news is missing the big picture BIG TIME – all of the newspapers, and the television (yes, the BBC too) have done this for a VERY LONG TIME. The Independent is, if anything, just being a bit more HONEST about the fact that they do it. At least you KNOW that you are buying an opinion sheet when you chose to pick up a copy. And if you don't like it: exercise your choice and don't BUY it.

So what if the Independent is hectoring, or patronising, or preaching.

Sometimes we seem to think that anyone who wants to be a bit Liberal has to PLAY NICE… followed shortly by rolling over and PLAYING DEAD. Well, wake up and smell the VITRIOL! The Daily Hate Mail has been hectoring AND patronising AND preaching and SPITTING POISON like a next of vipers for a hundred years.

If people want to go out and buy the Independent when it decides to stand up for British Liberal values by giving the Hate Mail a taste of their own medicine then I say HOORAY!

Anyway, Lord Blairimort is only pee'ed off because the media want to go and play with Mr Balloon now.


"I do believe this relationship between public life and media is now damaged in a manner that requires repair."

Lord Blairimort is both RIGHT and WRONG.

He is right that the relationship between politicians and media has been damaged, almost to breaking point. But he is WRONG that it is because of the rise of the Internet. The thing that BROKE the relationship was SPIN and the Internet is not the disease, it is the CURE.

SPIN was NOT invented by NuLabour. Au contraire! Spin has been with us for a very long time, because "spin" is what the MEDIA do – not politicians. It is about putting your own SLANT on every story that you report.

Sometimes it is more subtle. Sometimes it is BLATANT – like picturing Mr Kinnock as a dead dodo.

Suppose you are a bit XENOPHOBIC! – then you can add words like "bogus" or "illegal" every time that you talk about "refugees" or "immigrants" so that gradually people get the idea that these things go together automatically and that they are therefore automatically BAD. Similarly, if you are a frothing right-winger you can have all of your papers add the word "loony" every time they discuss "left-wing politics" and it will gently begin to influence their readers into thinking they would have to be INSANE to vote for a left of centre party.

Look – I just did it MYSELF when I put the worth "frothing" in front of "right-winger". Being right-wing does NOT automatically make you a RABID ANIMAL. No – it is just a COINCIDENCE that so many RABID ANIMALS are RIGHT WING!

Oftentimes what you do is put a buzz word or key phrase into a piece about something else entirely, just to keep the ideas ticking over in the reader or viewer's head.

Lord Blairimort's big idea (no, not the invading a Middle Eastern country one) was that he needed a "spin DOCTOR".

In opposition, what he needed was a specialist who could manage the media, overcome the natural barrier to the Labour that the media's own spin was making, and make sure that they got only the stories that were GOOD for the Labour. They planned their media appearances out on a GRID, made sure that everyone said the same key soundbite – i.e. was "on message" – and co-ordinated their announcements so that the media had to follow their agenda. If bad news got out, there was the Rapid Rebuttal Force, ready with a quick answer to kill the story or a juicier scoop about something else, usually the other side.

Lord Blairimort's AMAZINGLY STUPID idea was that you could run a government this way.

The idea that policy should be DESIGNED primarily with the aim of generating the GOOD NEWS STORY ought to be BONKERS. Sadly it may well have been ROUTINE for Lord Blairimort's sofa-style government. And if you can't have good news, then at least have SCARY NEWS and spend all day sounding TOUGH. If the policy can't be explained in a soundbite then don't do it. In the end, this leads to "a good day to bury bad news".

Mr Andreas Withnail-and-Smith was on the Newsnight Show last night. He said: "the government tells lies from time to time. When you are reporting on someone who tells lies from time to time, that relationship is inevitably going to become confrontational."

Now, fair play, Lord Blairimort did put up his hands to a lot of this.

"…I first acknowledge my own complicity.

"We paid inordinate attention in the early days of New Labour to courting, assuaging, and persuading the media."

But then he went on to claim that it's all MUCH MORE HORRID than it used to be.

Here is Lord Blairimort's thesis:

Increased competition means journalists look for stories that give them an "edge" over the competition, stories with "impact" – discord rather than discussion; misconduct rather than mistake. This makes the new rules of reporting:

1. Scandal or controversy beats ordinary reporting hands down
2. Better to challenge motive than judgement
3. Hunt in a pack rather than being left behind by the news agenda
4. Comment on the news with the news
5. Confuse your commentary WITH the news

His solution: media should get back to reporting PROPER NEWS (Lord Blairimort will tell them what) and there should probably be a change of the regulating of the media – probably a new SUPER-REGULATOR (who can control all that nasty freedom of information).

"Things, people, issues, stories, are all black and white. Life's usual grey is almost entirely absent."

Well, it is a BIT LATE for Lord Blairimort to be complaining about newspaper stories all being BLACK & WHITE with no NUANCE.

I seem to recall a CERTAIN SOMEONE accusing anyone who thought getting UN agreement was more important than his "let's invade a Middle Eastern country" policy of being a FRIEND OF SADDAM; denouncing anyone who thought Civil Liberties might be more important than his "let's rip up the Magna Carta" policy as a FRIEND TO TERRORISTS; condemning anyone who disagreed with him about anything at all as THE FORCES OF CONSERVATORYISM!

Who was it who claimed there were only "24 hours to save the NHS"? The Labour.

Who was it who was first to harp on about Conservatory SLEAZE and SCANDAL? The Labour.

Who was it who called them VENAL and CROOKS rather than just a bit rubbish? The Labour.

Who was it who first whipped the press dogs into a feeding frenzy? Who was it who tried to control them with the threat of them not getting the next story? The Labour.

Who was it whose aim was to make their message the news? Who was it who confused their message WITH the news? The Labour, THE LABOUR, THE LABOUR!

Lord Blairimort has spent a LONG TIME painting choices in black and white. And CONDEMNING anyone who takes a more nuanced approach.

And the media have, by and large, COMPLIED.

Much of Lord Blairimort's power comes from the COSY inter-relationships between himself personally and the very small group of proprietors and editors who control the British newspapers. They scratch his back and he scratches out restrictions on cross-media ownerships for them, er… Between them they decide what it is that "The People" want to hear. Or will be graciously allowed to hear.

The power and patronage that comes with this little coterie is TOTALLY CORRUPTING. Lord Blairimort's agenda has been entirely neutralised by wishes of the News International Corporation. Did we join the Euro… goodness, no! Have we rolled back Thatcherism… no, we just brought it all back with new names. Did we clean up all the sleaze… ha very ha very ha.

But this is where the Internet comes in. Now people have access to MORE CHOICES. They have more freedoms of information than ever before and that takes away some of the power of the press. Instead of DICTATING the agenda, they find themselves chasing it.

Is that a BAD thing? Lord Blairimort thinks so, but I am not so sure. Is it not just MARKET FORCES: supply and demand? The press are chasing to supply the stories that people are demanding.

Lord Blairimort's reaction to the new media age seems to be:

"Ooh the Internet is scary; I can't control it!"

Here is the NEWS: you have NO RIGHT TO CONTROL IT!


We are in an age of transition: this new technology means that more and more people have the power to seek out the news and the stories that THEY want, and to seek out the people who will report it in THE WAY that they want. Mr Dale Winton's diary is not popular IN SPITE of his blatant political bias – it is popular BECAUSE of his bias.

More than anything, though the new media is INTERACTIVE. People EXPECT to be able to make comments, have their say, shout and rant and froth at each other. Those comments don't disappear into a vacuum. Well, not ALL of them. They inform the journalists and commentators – reinforce some opinions, spark some new ideas.

And the online papers and news sites can TRACK which stories get the most clickage. Their readers are literally telling them which stories they find interesting, which commentators they seek out and read.

News becomes a CONVERSATION.

It is the NEW job of politicians to talk to people, listen to people, engage with people, even argue back against people. Just like their OLD job really. Before Lord Blairimort decided his job was to decide everything FOR "The People".

I am not saying that this is ALWAYS GOOD. You get dumbing down, and the cult of celebrity, and narrowing, parochial-ising of the news. You get a hundred channels of "Living-Dead TV", and "ITV Play" and "Sky Sport 666". You get spam and pop-ups and "you have won $1,000,000,000". Because change isn't always easy and people do things that are DUMB.

But it is the people who are in charge, and NOT Lord Blairimort and NOT EVEN Roger Stavro Moredick.

Mr Andy "Life on" Marr was on the telly yesterday too, talking about Lady Thatcher. She wanted to set people free so that they could be more like the Victorians, he said. Instead she got the 1980s. That's the thing about freedom – you can't control what people choose to do with it, or it isn't really freedom at all, is it?

Day 2353: Waving Not Drowning

Monday:


Okay, Daddy Richard CHEATED this week and skipped two of my diaries! This was very BAD.

On the other fluffy foot, I WAS very keen to tell you about Lord Blairimort’s speech, er, tomorrow.

I will make him use his TIMEY-WIMEY powers to fix this later earlier!

Meanwhile, here is a nice story about green energy and some swinging wavey things.

Day 2352: Lost in Translation

Sunday:


Mr Frown seems eager to usher in a whole NEW ERA of the Cult of Spin, er, not being dead at all, actually…

The day was going SO WELL for my beloved SARAH TEATHER with lots of lovely news coverage and lots of opportunities for her to pop up on telly and talk about the latest people to say that the Labour’s obsession with testing, testing, testing was doing for education, education, education what their Middle East policy has done for peace, peace, peace.

The General Teaching Council have put out a statement saying that we do too many tests on school children, and because it is a whole new test every year, then we cannot compare one year with the next or the last. Lovely Sarah has been saying this since last year, and the General Teaching Council are saying she is RIGHT!

Well, the government wasn’t happy with THAT. So it was time to deploy their own miniaturised storm-trooper: the Minister for the Representation of Bullying Cardinals, Mr Ruth Kelly, with a mission to derail.

Irritatingly, it worked too.

A few SEEMINGLY ill-chosen words on the BBC’s the Politics Show about Councils providing essential translation services so that people can UNDERSTAND the help that’s available to them, and suddenly there’s a whole DIFFERENT agenda leading the news. Out with fluffy, liberal ideas about not testing kiddies to destruction, in with hard-edged right-wing suspicion of people who are different, “…coming over here and not taking our language, harroom, harrumph”.

Honestly, at the very least someone should have reminded the Minister that the services provided by local councils are FOR THE LOCAL COUNCIL TO DECIDE.

Day 2351: DOCTOR WHO: Blink

Saturday:


This proves it: I am SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD! I can beat Cuddly Cthulhu in a staring contest – stone angels hold NO FEARS for me!

So that's three weeks running and the Doctor's barely been in it…

In fact, that's only the third way in which "Blink" resembled Paul Cornell’s "Human Nature" two-parter. Firstly, it's a story adapted from a written work ("Blink" was previously "What I did on my Christmas Holidays by Sally Sparrow" from The Doctor Who Annual 2006) and secondly, there's more than a slight odour of Doctor number seven about this tale of angels and devils…


There are two ways of looking at the events of this week's Doctor Who.

It could be that the Doctor is trapped, not so much trapped in 1969 – he has an easy and obvious way of getting out of that – but trapped by the quirk of the time loop that (for him) begins when Sally Sparrow hands him a folder containing information about his future actions.

(The obvious solution to being stuck in 1969 is to ask to borrow Martha's TARDIS key and then just nip round the corner. From Martha's point of view, the TARDIS then materialises two seconds later and the Doctor steps out in a different suit; from the Doctor's point of view, he just lives through the next thirty-eight years and collects the TARDIS from outside the angels' haunted house. Doctor number seven does something similar when he accidentally strands Sherlock Holmes in 1906 San Francisco at the end of "All-Consuming Fire".)

Since the Doctor warns Billy Shipton that it might blow up two-thirds of the Universe if he contacts Sally at a point before they first met, we might understand that the Doctor is duly cautious of the consequences of altering previously established events. Since he knows what his actions are going to be then he has no choice but to go through with them. Or get eaten by the Reapers. Again.

On the other hand, you might think: he's a Time Lord; he can do any damn thing he likes with a time loop.

So, the other possibility is that it's a trap not for the Doctor but set by him for the angels. The TARDIS is the bait and having it dematerialise so that the angels are caught in each other's gorgon stares is what he does to render them harmless. It's a very seventh Doctor sort of a trap, of course – i.e. over-complicated and without bothering to explain the details to the people caught at the sharp end.

This would certainly be in keeping with the dangerous, pro-active Doctor that we saw at the end of "Human Nature", or the guy with the arrows looking like he's wandered off the set of an early "Angel" episode.

Though surely it would be easier to turn up with a supply of mirrors and a chisel?

The Doctor's near absence from the story plays well into this Doctor as demi-god conceit that is running through the series, just as it did in "Love & Monsters" in fact – by reducing him to glimpses, the story emphasises his power and authority.

And the way time is sliced up differently to our usual Doctor-following perspective also works very well, reminding us of the Doctor's crazy paving lifestyle, and also his cleverness in being able to fit it all together. The conversation with Sally over forty years and via a DVD extra is the perfect metaphor for just how well he does this; he actually manages to have two conversations with her using the same words at one point.

It does mean that the episode rests on the talents of Carey Mulligan as Sally Sparrow, and she is well up to the task. You may remember her as pretty little cousin Ada from "Bleak House" a year or so back, or from last year's "Amazing Mrs Pritchard" – she's a bright young talent and it shows the pull of Doctor Who now that they were able to get her. And she's great. It's one of the minor disappointments of this being just a straight remake of Steven Moffat's contribution to the 2006 Annual (published 2005, obviously(!)), rather than being a sequel, that we don't get the ongoing adventures of Sally Sparrow, the Doctor's non-travelling companion, because she would be great as an occasional on-off person with whom he has adventures. His agent in the 21st Century; his very own Lady Penelope. (Or was that Sophia Miles?) And the Annual promised her a rather more exciting future than opening a DVD store with Larry.

If you're familiar with the rest of Steven's earlier work, you can recognise a lot of "Press Gang's" Linda Day in Sally: she's got Linda's sharpness and wit, though with perhaps less of the acid and insecurities. Similarly, a lot of the more everyday scenes also owed a debt to "Coupling" – I'm thinking of Larry without his pants of course, but also DCI Billy Shipton's swerve to dealing with Sally's inquiry when he clocks how she looks.

(And did anyone else think – just for a minute – that the desk sergeant was being played by Nicholas Briggs in non-Dalek mufti?)

And then the episode steps instantly and without losing its footing from comic chat-up badinage to terrifyingly sinister angels, to tragic outcome as Billy lies dying in hospital.

What could be more moving than that scene between old Billy and young Sally? It's the tragedy of a lifetime summed up in two short scenes, and as good an exposition of how the twists of time travel can screw you up as anything since "Aliens of London".


There were though, I have to admit, some niggles with this episode of grandmother's footsteps.

First, these angels that freeze into stone by the power of quantum mechanics whenever someone is looking at them. Quantum arch angels, you might call them. Right…

First up, "observation" in quantum mechanics means more like "perception" than "looking at", so rather than trying (impossibly) not to blink, you would be better off using your sense of touch to observe them.

And doesn't the TARDIS count as alive anymore? Or else how can they move when they're in the perception field of the TARDIS scanner?

Then there's the idea that if you don't blink that you are continuously observing an object. Obviously, you aren't – the retina of your eye is made up of light sensitive nerves that respond as either on or off (with variation for intensity). It might seem as though you are seeing continuous pictures, but actually, like a television set, it's really a pattern of dots that refresh after a short time. And in fact, that's exactly why a television set works, because your brain is already used to filling in the gaps. The angels should be able to just vanish into your blind spot.

And it's picky, I know, to complain that something that is essentially magical is being passed off as having a basis in physics – Lawrence Miles (again) is fond of asking: "how does a disintegrator gun know to remove the soldier and his weapon and clothes but not the grass he's standing on?" – but that is what is being done here, and done in a way that spreads common misconceptions.

In short form: the angel cannot possibly know that it has to turn to stone.

It's a violation of relativity: for the angel know whether the light from any given pattern of photons striking its surface will reach an observer, the information about where those photons are going to go would have to travel faster than light. Those photons won't, can't reach an observer until some (admittedly very, very small – distance divided by the speed of light, obviously) amount of time later. But the information that they will reach an observer has to arrive back at the angel instantly. Essentially, it would have to make the decision that it is going to be observed before it is observed.

Okay, you say, these angels have timey-wimey powers so they can do that. Fine, but don't try and pretend that it's part of quantum mechanics then, because it's not.

The idea that we change things by observing them is really a conflation of two slightly different QM concepts, anyway.

Firstly, you have to think about how you do the observing. In most cases this is by looking, which is more complicated than you think, because it involves light bouncing off the object you are looking at and travelling to a detector – in the simplest of cases, your eye. The smaller the object the more intense the light you need in order to see anything. (Strictly speaking, the smaller the object the smaller/shorter the wavelength of light you want to use; and shorter wavelengths have higher energy.) In a microscope, you have a light source that shines on the sample and that reflects off and into the focusing lenses; for something really small, you need a tool like a scanning electron microscope that fires a very high energy stream of electrons at a surface and picks up where they bounce back to. In the case of molecules, this is a bit like firing peas at a beach-ball and picking out the pattern of where they land in the sand. And that's quite an apt metaphor, because that stream of electrons hitting the molecules is like tap-tapping away at that ball with tiny peas: each hit does move the ball every so ever so slightly.

Now, if you want to look at anything that's much smaller than a molecule, you are going to run into the problem that whatever you use to look at it with – whether it's photons of light or more likely x- or gamma rays, or electrons – it's going to be similar in scale, like firing a pea at another pea and trying to work something out from the result.

So for really small, quantum level events, we do have to take into account that observing them changes them.

But that's not something that scales to the macroscopic level: the energy involved in observation is indescribably tiny in comparison to the thing being observed.

The other effect is wave/particle duality. That's the trick whereby quantum scale objects like electrons can behave either like a light wave (showing properties like refraction and diffraction) or like a miniature snooker ball (showing them bounce off atoms). This sounds very similar to the angels being fast-moving when you're not looking and stone when you are.

Except it's not similar at all – we've detected the electron at one instant and that (in the jargon) collapses its wave function so that it looks like a particle. But it hasn't stopped – we might be studying the reading of where we observed it but that electron has rattled off somewhere else by that point and is still doing wave/particle duality all over.

So if the angel was really exhibiting that sort of duality, then it could look like a statue in the instant when you observe it but still be the slathering great beastie that devours you at the same time.



Then there's this business of them feeding off the "potential future" that you lose when they send you back in time. It seems to me that by sending you back in time they give you a greater ability to affect the future – Cathy Nightingale, for example, has at least one grandchild alive (and quite possibly more) in the time zone that she was taken from, clearly each with at least as much potential to change the future as she had, never mind the potential changes to the future she could make by exploiting any historical fore-knowledge that she (or perhaps a more unscrupulous victim) might possess.

Plus, how exactly does this work in the case of the Doctor? Given that we appear to be running on "immortal barring accidents/act of Time War" in the new series, why would they think that a short jaunt back in time would be more than an irritation to him? And shouldn't the angels just blow up if they try to absorb all the energy of his potential future?

And of course it's just inviting retrospective retribution – "oh, I've been got by the weeping angels, I know, I'll just plant this atom bomb in the place where I know for a fact they're going to get me…"

And why displace their victims 38 or 87 years? As opposed to, say, 40,000 which would stand a much better chance of killing them. In fact 38 years only just works to kill Billy as he actually dies after the time from which he was displaced, if only by hours. You might guess that the angels send you backwards in time by the amount of potential life that you have in you, which would at least make a sort of sense (and be a bit ominous for Martha!)… except that the Doctor implies that in fact the time displacement is angel-specific – i.e. he Martha and Billy all get touched by Our Lady of -38 Years, whereas unlucky Cathy was graced by Our Lady of -87 years.

From a magical point of view, though, the angels were a marvellous touch. Like the scarecrows last week, in another echo of "Human Nature", they take something everyday and make it bizarre and terrifying.

Trapping them in their own gaze is, obviously, the perfect fairy tale solution to the monster; in fact more than that, it is positively mythological. I've already mentioned the Gorgons, but Alex reminds me that the angels were actually Gorgons in reverse: they kill you if you don't look at them, and it's the angel that turns to stone, not the victim.

Better hope that dodgy light-bulb in the cellar holds out, though.

I was frankly astonished by the revelation in Doctor Who Confidential (and also the Radio Time, but watchful for spoilers, we don't read that until post-Saturday!) that the statues were played by performers. They are incredible at holding their poses, especially when you consider all the latex glued to them and the stone body paint and the contact lenses!

Those prosthetics, though, were perfectly designed; both the "innocent" angel faces and then the shocking full-on fanged version when they attack.

The final montage, to suggest that this is not the end of this monster, was nice but maybe just slightly too long for a sequence that was nothing but ordinary statues. Personally, I think that if you're going to leave the kids having nightmares, you should go for the full cheese and in the last shot have something pass in front of the camera and afterwards the last statue has moved to face full stare into the lens.

"Don't blink" indeed.



A quick addendum about the accompanying "Doctor Who: Confidential" – a forty-four-minute love letter to the series from its star, written and directed by one David Tennant. Half way through there is a cursory five minutes of the obligatory behind-the-scenes on "Blink" which, we both assumed, was there for the "Confidential Cut Down" and the DVD box. How wrong we were; imagine our surprise when the "Cut Down" is thirteen minutes of Sea Devils, Zygons and the Kandy Man. (All right, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss and Gareth Roberts.)

It's long been known that David Tennant has decided how long he wants to remain as the Doctor. On the basis of this show, it's forever.

Day 2350: Have you found god? (Particle, NOT delusion!)

Friday:


Excitement in the world of PHYSICS this week where it is rumoured that FERMILAB in America may have found the Higgs Boson.

What you may very well ask is the Higgs Boson, and why are we looking for it, and who lost it in the first place?

Well, the FUNDAMENTAL FORCES that hold the Universe together – namely gravity, glue, Blu-tack™ and magnets – are supposed to work by itty-bitty particles exchanging other itty-bitty particles called BOSONS. For example, the STRONG Nuclear force works by swapping GLUONS; and the WEAK Nuclear Force is controlled by the “W” BOSON. (Not to be confused with the Weak Force in Iraq that is controlled by the “Dubbya” BOZO!)

That all makes sense, EXCEPT that the theory says that these particles should not have any MASS. This is fine for the photon (works for electromagnetism) but the other bosons are a bit massive. That does not mean that they are HUGE but that they have some MASS. In fact I suspect that they have done like Daddy Richard and put on a bit of weight[*].

[*] okay, I KNOW that in proper physics weight is not ACTUALLY the same as mass.

So, that seems to be a bit of a problem. But look! Here comes Mr Professor Higgs and says “Do not worry!” He suggests that actually, the bosons that make the force work ARE massless like they should be, but there are some STEALTH BOSONS – called Higgs Bosons, obviously – that kind of tag along.

(Interesting fact about Bosons – unlike fermions and, despite what they seem to think, passengers on the London Tube – you can have two bosons in the same place at the same time!

Scientists have been looking for the Higgs Bosons for a long time. Personally, if I was Professor Higgs, I would look where I last put them down, but apparently these engineers have built an enormous particle collider instead.

If they can find it, it will prove that all of physics works. Which is nice. In fact, some people have nicknamed the Higgs Boson the “God Particle”, because it is so important. And NOT because people believe in it even though there is no evidence for its existence.

Which reminds me – this was reported in the Metro just a few pages after this interview with my CHUM Mr Professor Richard!

Anyway, all of this is working towards telling you how EXCITING physics is, how we can discover a theory which lets us work out the formulae so we can calculate predictions and devise experiments that prove whether we have got it right or wrong.

I am telling you this because I have read a VERY SAD letter from a physics teacher called Mr Wellington Grey who is LOSING HEART because of the new national curriculum.

Mr Wellington says that the new curriculum is LESS about knowing the theories and working things out, and MORE about talking about global warming and discussing why science might be wrong. If this is true then it is VERY BAD NEWS.

In science and ESPECIALLY in physics, then you CAN come to a conclusion about whether something is right or wrong, and it should NOT depend on how good you are at convincing people but on the QUALITY of your evidence.

You have probably noticed though that newspapers and television ALL TOO OFTEN like to present a CLASH of OPINIONS, a controversy or a SCARE STORY! E.g MMR vaccine – NO EVIDENCE that it causes autism, lots of evidence that it prevents plagues of measles, but is THAT the story that papers carry? E.g. electromagnetism from wi-fi – NO EVIDENCE that it fries your brain, but is THAT the story that Panorama-rama-lama-lama-ding-dong runs with?

And now the government seems to be trying to sneak this sort of “science is who can shout loudest” into the schoolroom. We should NOT be surprised; it is very NuLabour: never mind the evidence, just talk a good story. But why would our GOD FEARING soon-to-be-ex Prime Monster want to undermine scientific thinking in schools?

Apropos of nothing, all this reminds me of the GRANDDADDY of all these wedges: Intelligent Design, the way that Creationist loonies try to get their version of god into the classroom by pretending that “god did it” is a scientific theory in the same way that “evolution” is a scientific theory. After all, they say, if they are both “theories” then the class should “discuss” them and learn to doubt the science.

Which means it probably WAS a good thing that Mr Professor Richard was in the Metro!

Day 2349: Bungs for Bandar

Thursday:


Do you remember how Lord Blairimort ordered the SERIOUS FRAUD OFFICE to stop investigating the deal where we sell a whole load of hi-tech fighter jets to an unstable Middle-Eastern feudal state?

Well, now the BBC's Panorama-rama-lama-lama-ding-dong Show have discovered that there MIGHT have been some SERIOUS FRAUD going on!

At the time of the police inquiry being so MYSTERIOUSLY dropped, Sir Mr the Merciless and the Liberal Democrats made QUITE A FUSS, only to get the BRUSH OFF from our "whiter than white[*]" Prime Monster.

[*] Other colours available, dirty greenbacks may be substituted for white at the management's discretion.

Now, Sir M is challenging Lord Blairimort again, this time for a PROPER explanation!


"Billions of pounds and thousands of jobs depend on this deal," was Lord Blairimort's excuse then as well as now.

Here is where we get into the nasty, dirty PRACTICAL problems. Lord Blairimort is caught in a bit of a cleft stick – and obviously, it couldn't happen to a more deserving "pretty straight kind of a guy". Here he is, trying to keep the British economy afloat[*] and, somewhat unfortunately, just about the only things that we are able to sell abroad these days are the financial services of the City of London and GUNS.

[*] subject to Mr Frown's approval

Yes, it is certainly the case that whilst TECHNICALLY agreeing to supply billions of pounds worth of the most sophisticated weaponry to one of the least stable regions of the planet and one of the least progressive governments on the planet MIGHT make us low-down, two-faced, double-dealing, no-good, rootin' tootin' ARMS DEALERS… it does at least keep us out of World Bankruptcy Court.

The fact that the Saudis are willing to pay in OIL might be quite handy too.

So, even though we would probably rather NOT be being arms dealers, you can't just switch off Britain's only functional manufacturing export industry. The Saudis rather have us over a barrel. An oil barrel, probably.

Except, on the other fluffy foot, Lord Blairimort HAS had ten years to turn the economy onto a new path. Why not try winding down the Export Credit Guarantee Scheme for Arms Dealers – that wheeze that means that even if foreign dictators turn out to be UNTRUSTWORTHY RASCALS who do not pay, then the good old British Taxpayer will still settle their bills for them. Why not try promoting new technologies so we can become world leaders in the next industrial revolution. Why not try and stick to that "ethical foreign policy" idea that Mr Rockin' Robin Cook came up with?

It is TRUE that today we rely on our "defence industry" too much to allow it to be threatened by anything so unfortunate as exposing its underhand dealings. But this is not exactly A GOOD THING, is it!

We need to say "look: it's all very well having this great big contribution to the balance of trade but it just doesn't fit with where we want to be as a nation. So we're going to make a plan that will see us reduce the support we give to this particular industry in order that we can increase the support for new industries that we as a country can be proud of."


In the meantime, we can get out our copies of "FAHRENHEIT 9/11" again and remind ourselves that this is the same PRINCE BANDAR who as Ambassador to America was such a CLOSE CHUM of the President he was even called Bandar Bush.

No wonder the Monkey-in-Chief jumped in when Lord Blairimort was asked about these REVELATIONS to say: "I'm glad I don't have to answer that!"

"Lots of help there, George," Lord Blairimort nearly didn't not say. AS ALWAYS.



Also, and in completely-unconnected-to-corruption-in-high-places news, Conservatory Lord Laidlaw has been wrapped over the knuckles for not correcting his tax exile status as he promised to do in order to get his peerage cleared by the honours committee.

GOODNESS, a Conservatory promised to do something and it turned out he was LYING!

Voters, do not let yourselves be made to look as stupid as the House of Lords Commission!

Day 2348: They're Geeeeeeeeeee 8!

Wednesday:


This year, German Chancellor Ms Angular Meerkat gets to play host to the conference of the world's economic super-powers. And Russia.

This has led to ten thousand protestors descending on the small German town of Heiligendamm. In response, Ms Meerkat has deployed SIXTEEN thousand police people, built a SEVEN-MILE-LONG steel-and-barbed-wire fence and concrete wall and dug a SHARK-INFESTED moat[*]. So that's all nice and safe, isn't it?

[*] sharks may be replaced by a wire net for some performances

Next year, Japan had better just take the whole thing off to MONSTER ISLAND! That way they can let the Gord-zilla protect them from any intrusion and cause a whole lot less of this FUSS!

The G8 are gathering to tackle the World's most important problems. It is just a shame they cannot agree what the most important problem actually IS.

(Climate Change, say the Germans; missile shield say the Americans; poverty in Africa says nobody since they're not keeping their Gleneagles Promises.)


So, what are all these G8 protestors protesting ABOUT?

Well, there are the usual groups who are against war or against pollution, or those who are against globalisation who I do not REALLY agree with. But then there also people protesting against the meeting of the G8 itself. Which seems a VERY ODD thing to do. Surely it is better for these world leader-people to talk to each other than for them not to!

Now I suppose it might be because this is a "rich boys" club. And Russia. And that they are EXCLUDING the one-hundred-and-eighty-four OTHER countries that are at the United Nations.

However, the way I see it, by meeting this way, the world's richest countries are not just throwing their enormous financial weight about, but also trying (a bit half-heartedly in some cases, he says looking HARD at the Monkey-in-Chief) trying to take some RESPONSIBILITY for their actions too.

They may not have done a lot about it, but they did at least make a whole lot of promises to get rid of poor countries' debts when Lord Blairimort invited them all round to Gleneagles; this year Ms Meekat has made it her mission to try to do something about Global Warming. And given by the cold reception that the Americans have given her, it must be WORKING!

No, be fair – it IS working!

In fact I would agree that there could be a case for expanding the G8 to a G10 or G11, including China and India and perhaps Pakistan too, because these countries have such huge populations that they make a DRAMATIC impact on global concerns, in particular Climate Change.

(After all, wealth isn't any longer the ABSOLUTE criterion for entry to the club, since Russia got let in. Though THAT might be something to do with their ENORMOUS NUCLEAR ARSENAL. Nice of Mr Vladimir to visit Germany now that he's pointing his nuclear weapons at it!)

China, of course, is currently very happy to stay OUT of this club, because they get an excuse under the Kyoto Protocols to keep expanding their industry and carbon output. They say they do not want to be treated as an "industrial" country until they have had a chance to catch up. Even though it could be as soon as THIS YEAR that they may overtake America to become the world's number one for CO2 emissions.


You could also say that the G8 could be a bit MORE welcoming to some representation for Africa, Asia or the Middle East, or Latin America, or in fact pretty much ANYWHERE south of the Equator.

Did you know that even though half the G8 already comes from Europe, the European Union gets to be represented there too? Isn't there a place for the African Union, as well?


It would be LOVELY if we could all just get along. But as a first step it would be quite nice if just SOME of us could get along. In particular, it would be nice if we could get along without others of us coming and shouting at them. From behind a seven mile fence!

Certainly people SHOULD turn up to voice their protests – there is nothing like actually rubbing their noses in the poverty, famine, plague and whole FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE bit to get the World's Leaders to start shovelling some of the MANURE.

But protesting against them meeting AT ALL is very silly. At the very least, this way we get to KEEP AN EYE ON THEM!

So, next year… MONSTER ISLAND.

Oooh, I do hope the Japanese remember not to serve Mr Vladimir SUSHI!

Day 2347: Illegal Enemy Incompetents

Tuesday:


The American Monkey-in-Chief has a problem. Well, actually he has a number of problems but specifically 385 of them, dressed in orange, are still to be found in Guantánamo Bay.

Except for the two that he might just have to let go. Because he was so busy trying to squeeze through LEGAL LOOPHOLES to avoid giving them a fair trial that he got the PAPERWORK wrong.

Obviously, he did TRY to pretend that the Guantánamo detainees weren't a problem at all, saying that since they were in Cuba they didn't count any more. This is called the "STICKING THEM UNDER A ROCK" solution.

Well, the US Supreme Court was having none of that and ruled that the Guantánamo prisoners could take their cases to US Courts.

It would HELP, of course, if the Monkey's administration was not so HELL BENT on insisting that the prisoners that they have taken in their War on Adjective are NOT Prisoners of War.

But Prisoners of War have all sorts of really inconvenient things like HUMAN RIGHTS all laid out in a big document called the THIRD GENEVA CONVENTION with America's SIGNATURE on the 8th August 1949 right down there at the bottom.

This is NO GOOD for the CIA as it means that they cannot very-nearly-but-not-quite-torture any of the prisoners there for information. Or even make them answer any questions other than name, rank and which Britney Song they would like to be deafened by for 23 hours a day (except on Sundays – wadda you mean you pray on Fridays?).

Fortunately for the Monkey, there is sort of a get out – prisoners only qualify as Prisoners of War if they are members of a proper army, or at least LOOK like they might be members of a proper army, i.e. they have a uniform on, or some distinctive sign, and carry their guns openly and follow the rules of warfare.

(No, we are NOT getting into whether the American army qualifies on those grounds.)

Actually, the Convention also lists "Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces" which might actually cover anyone in Afghanistan at the time of the US-led coalition's invasion.

You do have to wonder if that clause wasn't put in to cover, you know, a disparate bunch of poorly armed guerrillas conducting a running fight against a vastly superior army from a far-off country on a different continent over the ocean…

(But then the Americans tend to get uniquely TESTY when anyone compares the insurgencies in Afghanistan or Iraq with the glorious American Revolutionary War of Independence, so we're not going to go into THAT either.)


"Should any doubt arise" – says the convention – "as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal."

Okay, WHOOPS, the prisoners at Guantánamo SHOULD HAVE been treated as prisoners of war ANYWAY until a "competent tribunal" decided otherwise, so the Americans slightly BROKE THE CONVENTION after all.

Never mind, no-one was looking. (You know, except for EVERYONE!)

Quick as he could, then, the Monkey-in-Chief convenes a few military types and has them declare…

Hang on, the Convention rather assumes that anyone is either a member of the armed forces (or similar) and qualifies as a Prisoner of War, OR is a CIVILIAN and subject to the civilian laws… AND all the rights and protections that go with those too.

Well, the Monkey-in-Chief didn't want THAT either. That would have them all going directly to the US Court in Washington and demanding writs of Habeus Corpus. (You know, I TOLD YOU that was important!)

So instead, the Monkey has his crack military tribunal declare all the detainees "enemy combatants", thus placing them in a linguistic NO-PERSON'S LAND.

Without the legal protection of EITHER being a civilian OR being a prisoner of war, the detainees were at the Monkey's mercy and he set up a military commission to find them all guilty…

EXCEPT, the US Supreme Court wasn't having any of THAT either.

Despite being split on the subject, the court DID rule that "enemy combatants" basically meant SOLDIERS and that the Geneva Convention DID therefore apply.

Faced with the possibility of being BUSTED under the WAR CRIMES ACT (because it would be BAAAAAAD if one of the Administration went to the BIG HOUSE), the Monkey –in-Chief hastily got Congress to rush through some new legislation called the Let's Save Bush's Ass Act the War Commissions Act which would allow for a new military commission to try "terrorists" and "illegal enemy combatants". Spot the ILLEGAL bit to get around that ol' Geneva Convention again.

Although there has, in fact, only been ONE conviction under this scheme, and that was because the fellow pleaded GUILTY.


Now here's the part that REALLY got Daddy Alex crying with laughter seriously considering the legal implications.

The Military Commission Act 2006 includes a provision for the APPEAL procedure – it would have to or else it too would risk violating Human Rights laws. But the Monkey's administration has been DRAGGING ITS HEELS over setting up the review panel, presumably on the assumption that once their tame military types have carefully reviewed all the lack of evidence and found the detainees obviously guilty then they can go rot waiting for the Appeal Board that hasn't been set up yet.

What the Monkey-in-Chief WASN'T expecting was for his commission to say: "er, with respect sir, you said this trial was for 'ILLEGAL enemy combatants' but you did kind of have us declare them all to be just ordinary 'enemy combatants' and, er, that kind of means we can't try any of 'em. Case dismissed, Mr President Monkey, Sir."

What a GOOD thing that there is an APPEAL procedure for the Monkey to go to! Ah…

Day 2346: My Eyes! My Eyes!

Monday:


Terrible news! Just as the Olympic Committee were about to reveal the stunning, inspiring and beautiful new logo that has been designed for the London Games, a piece of art guaranteed to be remembered for hundreds of years as the acme of design excellence and a shining beacon to all the athletes, nay all the people of the whole wide world… it turned out that some GRAFFITI KIDS had broken in and TAGGED IT!

Alternatively, the BBC suggest that the designer was hit by a car and woke up in 1974… on TISWAS!

Back to the future?

Personally, I prefer this "K-9 looking at two ducks" version from the Metro.

Thing of Shapes to Come?

Day 2345: Happy Ninety Days Are Here Again

Sunday:


This is the news that NOT-SO-Secret Stalin Mr Frown would like to have another go at abolishing the MAGNA CARTA.

Coming hard on the heels of Lord Blairimort's desire for more "stop and question if you're looking at me funny" powers for the police, now Mr Frown has weighed in.

You are not going to fool us by picking up sensible Liberal policies like admitting phone tap evidence when Civil Liberties campaigners warn that your plan amounts to INTERNMENT.

Apparently Mr Frown intends to "guarantee" our Civil Liberties by GETTING RID OF THEM!

MAGNA CARTA – coming up to the seven-hundred-and-ninety-second anniversary of if being signed[*] on 15 June – has been in the news again recently.

[*] okay, apparently Good Bad Whatever King John DIDN'T actually SIGN the big paper, he stuck his seal onto it. And fed it a fish.

First, some NUMPTIES from the British Nasty Party have been boycotting the new Mayor of Sandwell because of the SOMEWHAT WRONG assumption that the document signed by NORMAN FRENCH monarch Mr King John bars FOREIGNERS from holding high office.


For the benefit of the British Nasty Party, here is a SIMPLE TEST to determine whether your ancestors were immigrants to the British Isles:

Q1: Are you a HUMAN BEING?

That is the end of the test.

If you answered mostly "YES" then YOUR ANCESTORS WERE IMMIGRANTS TO THE BRITISH ISLES!


Anyway… Magna Carta.

Now, Secretary of State for the Inquisition, Mr Ruth Kelly and Minister for Keeping Johnny Foreigner Out, Father Dick Byrne are calling for a "Happy Britain Day" Bank Holiday to celebrate the event.

This is because with 2 Bank Holidays in April for Easter and 2 Bank holidays in May it suddenly seems like a LONG TIME until the next Bank Holiday at the end of August. Like they would know, what with Parliament having more half-terms than a City McAcademy!

Actually, there is an even BIGGER gap between August and the Christmas Hols in December, so we REALLY need an extra holiday there too! Something at the end of October would break up these months quite nicely… so I suggest:

30th of October as MUFFIN THE MULE DAY

to celebrate the first television appearance of the famous fifties foal, and co-incidentally this also is the anniversary of Mr Orson Welles' INFAMOUS radio play production of the "War of the Worlds".

(might also be daddy Alex's birthday.)


Anyway… Magna Carta.

Generally thought to be the foundation of English Law and therefore all of the best laws in the world – in particular the Americans liked to think of their new Constitution as continuing the great tradition of Magna Carta – even though it was really more of an agreement by Mr King John to stick to the Charter of Liberties issued by his grandma's dad Mr King Henry the Oneth.

(In fact, Mr King Henry had much the same problem as Mr King John, namely he needed to keep the English Barons on side during a tricky war in France. His dad, William, and his brother, William (no relation… er, that's not right), had made a right royal pig's ear of running the country and – more importantly – running their own country at the same time and so Mr King Henry had to be nice and basically give the Barons back all the laws that they used to have before dad William, i.e. the Conqueror, er, conquered them all. But that's another story.)


Anyway, again… Magna Carta.

There may very well only be THREE or FOUR of its SIXTY clauses actually left in force, but a couple of those are QUITE IMPORTANT because they are HABEAS CORPUS which is LATIN for "We haven't KILLED him!"!

(39) No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.

(40) To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.

Which part of "NO DELAY" do you think it is that Mr Frown does not understand?

You would have THOUGHT that he would have had quite enough experience with Lord "I'm STILL Prime Monster for three weeks" Blairimort DENYING OR DELAYING RIGHT OR JUSTICE to know by now what a VERY BAD THING this is!

Day 2344: DOCTOR WHO: The Family of Blood

Saturday:


With rumours sprouting all over that Mr Russell Television Davies may be about to call it a day I think I must announce that the solution is OBVIOUS! The BBC are preparing their new show for next year where Mr Graham Norton and Mr John Barrowman with Mr Television in the Andrew Lord Webber role will decide on his successor – "WHO Do You DO?"

Can you sing, dance and put together 14 episodes of staggeringly good hit television drama? Apply now…

(PS: terms and conditions apply; some applications from people other than Steven Moffat, Paul Cornell, Helen Raynor or Daddy Richard may not be considered. Mr Chibnall, this means YOU.)

Last week I was – perhaps – a little unkind in suggesting that the opening was – for me – a little limp. And with an unsatisfactory opening I never quite cracked into the episode.

No such problem in "The Family of Blood".

This week took off like a rocket, combining just the right quantities of Time Lord magic, feisty Martha taking charge and Mexican stand-off to explode in your face like an adrenaline bomb. Martha's already been compared to an Avengers woman, (though personally I'd have said she's Tara King who simply adored Steed, rather than Mrs Peel who was simply amused by him) but here she's got the moves to go with the attitude. Fantastic.

Excellent too to see Matron Joan taking charge of the evacuation as Mr Smith dithers uncomprehendingly, followed along by Martha's heartfelt "god, you're rubbish as a human" on finding the daft 'apeth still hanging around outside.

This was as good for the character of Mr Smith as it was for Martha since, also last week, I had felt that there was too much blurring of the line between Doctor and Mr John Smith, that this undermined the establishing of Smith as his own man.

No such problem in "The Family of Blood".

Tennant is a force of nature in this episode, playing schoolteacher John Smith and playing the Time Lord Doctor. And even – with great subtlety – playing the Doctor playing Mr Smith. You can just tell, as soon as he walks onto the Family's spaceship, that the Doctor is back.

Tennant paints us a picture of John Smith. The very nervous tics of the man are different, stretching his face into contortions as he tries to reshape his inner thoughts to take in the changes to his world. This is a scarred, smart, sympathetic man: terrified of the responsibility as much as desperate at the loss he is being asked to make; fast enough to realise that, whatever he means to anyone else, the return of this "Doctor" means the end of his own separate identity, effectively his death.

There's a fourth-wall breaking irony here as John Smith is a "written character" who knows that his existence will end when the writer decides that his story over. Alex smartly pointed out that the Nottingham reference is not a Robin Hood in-joke at Harry Lloyd's (Will Scarlet's) expense, but more like refers to Lemuel Gulliver, born at his father's small estate in Nottingham, who met the Doctor in "The Mind Robber". Mr Smith, like that Gulliver, does not realise at the time that he is a fictional character.

And Smith has failings, or possibly different failings. Rousing the school to fight against the Family appals Martha for being un-Doctor-ish, just as it appals Joan for being too inhuman. But then it refreshes your faith in his nature, human or otherwise, to see that he couldn't bring himself to fire his gun, not even at scarecrows. It echoes Tim Latimer, from last week, unhappy at firing on "natives armed with spears" even when they were only straw men, just as Tim's own admission "yes, sir, every time," to Hutchinson's accusation of cowardice echoes the Doctor in "The Parting of the Ways".

Tennant almost makes it look easy, having Smith slide into and out of the Doctor's estuary English toned technobabble when Tim needs an explanation. And his reverse Clark Kent moment – putting the glasses on to recover his superpowers – is a triumph.

But he also turns in a Doctor who is more multi-faceted than ever, adding the terrible darkness and bleakness of his cold fury and the pain of rejection and indeed guilt at the destruction that has followed in his wake when Joan rejects and dismisses him.

Not last week, but… think of an adventure set in a school where there are two stories going on: the usual Doctor Who story of shape-changing aliens who want to seize godlike powers; and the emotional story of being human, of love and loss and growing old together and how a Time Lord cannot have those things, and throw in a companion who loves him discovering that he has feelings for someone else.

The difference between "School Reunion" and "The Family of Blood" could not be more pronounced, though. And it's simply this – in "School Reunion" the aliens' plot was an almost-perfunctory add-on to the emotional plot, done with a sense of "well it's Doctor Who, we'd better have some aliens in it. Is Tony Head free?" Apart from a small amount of waffle about needing to use children to find their god-code there was no particular need for the story to be set in a school rather than, say, a call centre or a firm of accountants; and nor was there any particular reason why Sarah-Jane should collide with the Doctor on this particular adventure. In short, the two stories pulled in different directions.

No such problem in "The Family of Blood".

These aliens plot to obtain the Doctor's Time Lord nature – and that nature is also at the heart of the emotional plot. If the aliens hadn't turned up, Mr Smith would never have faced his dilemma, never have had to choose between the mantle of the Doctor and his life with Joan.

More than that, the aliens have a family, the biggest thing that the lonely Doctor no longer has and the thing that human John Smith is on the brink of obtaining, as the flash forwards shows.

The school, of course, is a surrogate family, but also a surrogate Time Lord Academy. And the metaphor of all these young lordlings about to face the greatest war in history, one that will wipe them out, suggests that the Doctor knows this even as he tries to escape his own past. The choice that faces Smith, to fight and die or run away, is explicitly the same choice that Tim makes.

You could call this the perfect Russell T Davis era Doctor Who story, because it is impossible to uncouple the emotional story from the chase with monsters. The two sides of the plot, the location, the history all flow into one another and reinforce the message of sacrifice and redemption and what the world is like with a Doctor-shaped hole in it.



Who were the Family of Blood? The question of their origin is never answered, although we did get a very satisfactory answer to why the Doctor chooses to run from them. That the Doctor might, in a sense, be afraid of himself, of how far he might go, is a theme that has been developing since "The Runaway Bride" where Donna stated it explicitly, if not earlier with his "No second chances" remark in "The Christmas Invasion" and "No higher authority" claim in "New Earth". And – you might think – it looks set to return in this series' climax, in one way or another.

The threat of the Family is only touched on a little, as Joan reads from the last pages of John Smith's journal: with the life of a Time Lord, they could breed and wage war forever. Had the BBC had a few million pounds lying around unused, it might have been nice to see a flash forward to this possible future to match the one of John Smith and Joan's possible life together.

Russell T Davis described them as "rather small and petty", just four of them with only one ship and that's stolen. I think that does them a bit of a disservice, as they do rather impressively obtain the wherewithal to go on their little Time Lord hunt, and it also suggests that the Doctor's actions in the end might be a bit of an overkill.

On the other hand, the description of them as "Mayflies" might be telling more than we think. Obviously, everyone knows that a mayfly lives only one day, but remember that that is merely the adult form: the immature nymph or naiad lives happily in the water for a whole year. Is it possible that these would-be demi-gods are the brief-flowering "adult" form of creatures that have spent a lot longer in "immature" form preparing themselves for this hunt?

Whoever they are, they're certainly fun to watch – it's been simply ages since we had proper posh zombie baddies in Doctor Who.

Rebekah Staton is a marvellous turn as Jenny/Mother-of-Mine – her gleeful cruelty as she taunts Martha in that opening scene, her wicked mockery of poor Jenny's death screaming really set light to the screen and power up the opening. And Lauren Wilson as little Jenny Cartwright/Daughter-of-Mine is rather splendid in her defeat of the headmaster (even if it is a great shame they couldn't get "death by balloon" to work).

But the honours really have to go to Harry Lloyd, playing Baines/Son-of-Mine with an upper class sneer adhered to his features like a rictus and clearly revelling in barking out orders and staring like an unblinking loon. Particularly I loved the almost Fast Show-esque confrontation with the headmaster "here to give me a caning, sir?"; the demented "Ruuuuun!" as the schoolboys flee; and the "Super, super fun!" as the Family bombard the village. The elegiac, fairy-tale quality of his narration of the Family's punishment at the end was also masterly, as though he's learned his lesson too late.

Looking at the fate of the Family of Blood, first thing to note: if you are going to go after a god, it is likely you will piss him off – and this is baaaaad.

Appropriate for an adventure that I described as a Fairy Story, there's a very Brothers Grimm feel to the punishments dealt out, especially Sister-of-Mine trapped in a mirror, even if no one ends up dancing in red hot shoes until they fall down dead.

The Fairy Tale feel of "Once Upon A Time" is reinforced by the use of narration, previously only used for "The Deadly Assassin" to emphasise the mythic feel of the Doctor's return to Gallifrey; and for "The Army of Ghosts" as Rose reads what is effectively her own eulogy. Here we have two narrators – three if you include Tim's "He's ancient and forever…" speech – even if Baines' monster's eye view of what the Doctor does to monsters could be an unreliable narrator.

There is also an elemental – elemental in the alchemical sense – feel to their four fates: Father-of-Mine is buried in the Earth; Mother-of-Mine falls into the fire; Daughter-of-Mine is a Watery reflection and Son-of-Mine is left to stand in the Air. This is all rather in keeping with last year's "Love & Monsters" where the Doctor defeated a Shadow from the Howling Halls. It is the idea of the Doctor as magus, who struggles with dæmons.

But equally in those terms the Doctor sends them all to hell. In Norse mythology, Fenrir (or Fenric), is wrapped in adamantine chains and cast into the pit at the root of the great world tree. Milton sees Lucifer cast into fiery ruin, the same perdition as the Beast from last year's Satan Pit. From Japan, the "Hell of Mirrors" is a short story by Edogawa Rampo (Hirai Taro) where a man is driven mad by infinite reflections of himself, or it could be a reference to Alan Moore's Superman-ish comic book "Supreme: The Return", or the mirrors could even reflect the frozen surfaces of Dante's icy ninth circle. And Baines the Scarecrow is crucified.

It seems clear that Paul Cornell's version of the Doctor here is a lot closer to Andrew Cartmel than Terrance Dicks.

Think of "Never cruel and never cowardly; a man of peace caught up in violent events" and compare with "He's like fire and ice and rage. He's like the night and the storm and the heart of the sun. He's ancient and forever. He burns at the centre of time and he can see the turn of the universe. And... he's wonderful."

Alex leans to the heavily Christian-influenced idea here of the godhead as unknowable mystery, with John Smith as the man without sin (as he pretty expressly said last week) who must suffer temptation and death before returning as the saviour.

It may be my different upbringing, or it may be my recent re-reading of Olaf Stapledon but I saw this reading as a much more transcendent force than anything we humans might familiarly name as a "god". It's been likened to Neil Gaiman's idea of the Endless from his "Sandman" series, and I can see something of that.

The ending, where the Doctor's victory is pretty much taken as read, is very Paul Cornell. That's just winning and he's the Doctor: like the Bishop of Southwark, it's what he does. (See also, and most especially, "The Shadows of Avalon". A wonderful read that got Alex in tears. In a good way!)

There is though the delicate question of whether the Doctor should actually be god. It's certainly magnificent, but is it Doctor Who?


Three short notes on continuity. Not exactly niggles, they don't undermine anything, but they caught my attention as "moments it would have been nice to have". All three are probably trims for time or budget.

First, after the battle in the courtyard, the scarecrows are all scattered and "dead" on the ground. Mr Smith orders the retreat from the Family of Blood and we cut inside to see boys running, and we hear Baines/Son-of-Mine cry: "Reanimate!" Next thing we know, the scarecrows are back up and at 'em again. What's missing, is the shot of them in the courtyard literally pulling themselves together and getting up again. As I say, it's not necessary and probably expensive, but it's the horror cliché that we expect to see.

Second, in all the trailers, over and over, we've seen an exchange between Martha and Mr Smith. She says, urgently, "save us!" and he replies "I am not the Doctor!" Except where was it in the finished episode? I'd suggest that it belongs in the scene in the deserted Cartwright cottage where Martha confesses her feelings for the Doctor to Mr Smith. Did I just miss it, or was it genuinely lost in the edit?

Finally, "Confidential" revealed that the scene in the World War One trenches was a heartbeat longer. On screen, we switch to the overhead point-of-view of the falling shell or bomb, we hear Tim's shout of "to the right!" as they dive to safety. But from the behind-the-scenes recording, at that same point, we first hear Hutchinson say "carry on!" to which Tim replies "No, to the right, to the right!" which is more evocative of the choosing of a different path, the small bit of free will that says we are not bound to the wheel of history and we can avoid that bombshell.

But I must correct myself there and pay tribute to the enormous effort that the creators on this series have put in for the smallest of moments: from David Tennant's four hours in make up for quarter of a minute of screen time as the aged John Smith, to the wirework that acrophobic Rebekah Staton performs for a second-long fall into a black hole, to the entire team who were frozen to the bone in order to recreate the horror of the trenches for a single scene (albeit one seen three times). The story would have been so much less without each of these moments.



What other show could massacre scarecrows and make you think it's a war crime. And then make you think that the crime was putting guns in the hands of children to perform that massacre. And then make you think that exactly that would happen to exactly those boys in only twelve months' time. And then and then make you wonder whether after all, given the choice, the choice to go and fight might have been the right one.

In the end there is no avoiding John Smith's choice because both love and war are a part of human nature, but there is no future that we cannot avoid with a little help and a little revelation.

Joan charges the Doctor "how many people would have died if you hadn't come here", but that's not fair. And anyway, there's a better answer: how many people lived because he came there? Tim Latimer at the war memorial is enough.


Next time… all the indications are that this will be the "offbeat" one that gives David and Freema breathing room to film the big three-part finale. But it's by the author of Hugo Award wining "The Empty Child" and Hugo Award-nominated "The Girl in the Fireplace" and soon-to-be-seen "Jekyll" Steven Moffat so you won't want to miss it. Don't "Blink".

Day 2343: The Emperor’s New Skull

Friday:


So Mr Damian Hirst has taken fifty million pounds worth of platinum and diamonds and fashioned a jewel encrusted skull worth, er, fifty million pounds.

This has been hailed as the most expensive piece of modern art.

Hmmm, if someone would like to sponsor me to the tune of SIXTY million pounds, I think I can TOP THAT with my new conceptual piece “180 thousand ounces of Gold in disarranged bricks”.

It could be a seller, don’t you think?

PS

Also, the Big Kidney Donor Show turned out to be a SICK HOAX – or at least, a HOAX about people being SICK.

If nothing else, this should be a lesson for Radio Four in not recording your “News Quiz” a day early.

Day 2342: Jesus H Bidmead!

Thursday:


Daddy Alex's review of Logopolis has been touched by the HAND OF GOD!

(Well, Daddy Richard is IMPRESSED!)

Day 2341: Dinosaur Theme Park

Wednesday:


Oh very fluffy dear, America!


I suppose that most of you already know about the BONKERS Disney ride that the Creationists have opened in Kentucky to “prove” that back in the Garden of Eden, little baby Cain and little baby Abel played nice with little baby Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Sigh.

We had to get the stepladder out to scrape Daddy Richard down off the ceiling, of course, after listening to the BBC’s Mr Justin Webb reporting from this Lala Land. In spite of his wry tone of “look, you’re kidding, right?”, Mr Justin still allowed the Creationists to get away with presenting as “facts” such nonsense as there being “proof” in Palaeolithic paintings that people and dinosaurs lived together or that before the Fall, all animals were vegetarians. The idea of a super-adapted predator like a sabre-toothed Cat Monster, or a Great White Shark or even Mr Tyrannosaurus Rex himself might be designed for yumming down a FRUIT SALAD is almost as RIDICULOUS as the idea that they were DESIGNED in the first place!

You cannot give these people an inch. You really do need to challenge them on every made-up little “fact” or they’ll end up building a thumping great TOYTOWN and saying “look, there’s your “proof” – see the animatronic!”

After all, assertions without proof is where this whole creationism comes from in the first place

Day 2340: Why are the Conservatories SO determined to tear themselves to pieces over Grammar Schools?

Tuesday:


It cannot have escaped your notice that Mr Balloon seems to have accidentally hit the "RESTORE FACTORY SETTINGS" button on the Conservatory Party.

They're crazy, they're unlikeable, they're split worse than the Beatles after Yoko and they're parking in disabled parking places like they think they own the country again. It is just like old times.

What is REALLY crackers about all this is the issue that they have chosen to go into MELTDOWN over. Whether or not there should be more selection-by-brainpower Grandma Schools.

Hello! None of you GO to state Grandma Schools! Hardly anyone in Mr Balloon's Shadow Cabinet went to anywhere other than ETON!


Here is the news from January 2006 – yes, that's right, more than a year ago. No more Grandma Schools say Conservatories! A nation yawns!

Fastwind forwards a year and the (no, I couldn't believe they were tarring themselves with this label again, either!) "Heirs to Blair" follow the little avocado book of spin to the letter, relaunching the old news.

Great is the wailing and gnashing of teeth.

BOTH sides in this Conservatory IN FIGHT are claiming that this is about ASPIRATION. This is because that is a good BUZZ WORD that Conservatory supporters LIKE. As in "the Conservatory government will support our aspirations". Which sounds nicer than "the Conservatory government will give us stuff we want". But it is NOT REALLY TRUE.

Demanding Grandma Schools is not about the aspirations of the KIDS who might go there; it is about PROTECTING the privileges of their nice Conservatory parents.

But equally, the City McAcademies are not about widening opportunities for kinds either; they are vanity projects for CRAZED CREATIONISTS to take charge of public money. Taking an existing school and just bunging a bit of extra money at it is only a short-term solution at best.

It is funny that BOTH the other parties talk about CHOICE as the means to make schools better, but neither seem to understand that if you are going to give parents choice then you need MORE schools – in fact you have to have a very lot more classroom places than you would need in order that the good schools have the flexibility to take in more pupils when over subscribed, even though this means that less popular schools then have much smaller classes. Still, that would address the actually practical point that smaller classes really do make for better learning environments for kids.

And it is a BIT RICH (unintended pun) when Mr Alan Duncan-Donuts comes on the radio to say that the Conservatories LOVE Lord Blairimort's education policy, but that the Labour are at war with their leader over this.

"Delusional" says Mr Balloon of anyone who suggests opening MORE Grandma Schools. "I'm in charge in THIS party, and to prove it, anyone who crosses me will… er… get a severe wigging! And if they do it again, well I'll… er… give them ANOTHER severe wigging! That'll learn 'em! Er, what do you mean he's walked out?"

Fastwind forwards another week – "Ahh, when I said 'delusional' I actually meant, 'that's a flipping fine idea and I back it all the way!'."

What has happened in a year?

Well, the obvious answer is that the Conservatories have had a whole year more of Mr Balloon to swallow and, frankly, they are getting a bit sick of his diet of "shut up and stand in the corner".

They've had time to have a think about the local election results too. After a good old Conservatory gloat about it, they sat down and had a proper look and realised that the Tory Toff has only delivered them spadefulls of places where they've ALREADY WON. In other words: they're not going to win the next election.

These days there are only THREE crimes left that carry the DEATH PENALTY: piracy on the high seas; being Welsh within bowshot of Chester city wall; and failing to guarantee an election victory for the Conservatory Party.

Mr Balloon, three little words to remember: I.D.S!

(Because Mr Ian Drunken Swerve was elected with the popular support of the party too. Of course, he turned out to be an incoherent mumbler, but remember that Mr Balloon too likes to be "the Quiet Man"… at least on policies!)

The change at the top of the Labour is not going to have helped either. Mr Frown has arrived and so far Mr Balloon's sharpest darts appear to have bounced off the IMPERVIOUS HIDE of the Gord-zilla.

In fact, Mr Balloon rather more successfully shot HIMSELF in the foot by flip-flopping too publicly over the Freedom of Information Amendment Bill. He succeeded in moving the story away from Mr Frown and the government's SECRET STALIN COMPLICITY and making the story be about the Conservatories INDECISIVENESS over whether they supported the democratic system or had something in their expenses that they wanted to HIDE!

The media can of course only have one DARLING at a time. (No, it is never ALISTAIR Darling!) They seem to have decided that – for the moment, anyway – Mr Frown's attempts to appear NICE or even BLOKISH are to be treated as modest, shy and charmingly gauche rather than crushingly false and embarrassing.

BIZARRELY, the fact that Mr Frown is trying to be Lord Blairimort and OBVIOUSLY ISN'T VERY GOOD AT IT has somehow mutated into a VIRTUE!

This is double bad news for Mr Balloon who (a) loses his place in the media sun and (b) is now just TOO GOOD at looking like Lord Blairimort.

Did I mention that UNBELIEVABLY Mr Boy George Oboe was on the radio claiming that the Conservatories will be the "Heirs to Blair" i.e. insane, unpopular and soon to be out of office.

Funnily enough, Lord Blairimort swanning off on his farewell tour is also playing well for stay-at-home, get-on-with-running-the-country Mr Frown – actually, the Conservatories tried to pin a £1 million price tag on Lord Blairimort's "Blairwell Tour", a story which appeared in the Daily Mail and related free clones, but INEXPLICABLY seems to have been BURIED beneath other news in online editions, otherwise I could point you to the Conservatories' figures saying "look here are the £846,648 of costs that make up Lord Blairimort's million pound trip!" I wonder if Mr Boy George Oboe did the ADDING UP for them?

The mild swelling that was the Conservatory lead in the opinion polls appears to have reduced slightly too and that's ALWAYS the sort of thing that give people the COLLIE-WOBBLES. (Yes, Liberal Democrats too – do not deny it, we can panic with the best of them!)

What the Conservatories want from their leader is three things: Victory, Certainty and Very Large Tax Cuts. So far, Mr Balloon looked like he was delivering on at most one of these – but that would do. Policies are promised and we'll just nod and wink about the other.

Except the policies ARE stating to dribble out. DRIBBLE being the operative word. They come out almost involuntarily, make a nasty mess and then Mr Balloon starts trying to mop them up again.

This does not bode well for the coming months of so-called policy reviews reporting. And the main bulk of the Conservatories are already starting to pre-emptively make it clear that they are probably going to enforce their own policy line. You know, the barking mad one that they all loved when Mr Balloon put it in the last election manifesto.

This is going to end in tears!


Mind you, if the Shadowy Europe Minister has to resign over their Grandma Policy, GOODNESS KNOWS what will happen when they finally take the lid off the Europe Policy box!

Day 2339: The Gayness of Teletubbies

Monday:


Oh very fluffy dear, Poland!

We were all very happy when Poland got to join the European Union especially when it turned out that they were all hard-working, qualified plumbers which was just what we needed.

Unfortunately, it seems that the government that they have left running the country while they are all out has gone a little bit – and this is putting it kindly – strange.

They have already had a go at bringing in their own version of Nasty Old Conservatory policy, "Section 28".

And the MEPs of the Union have had to give them a stern warning over homophobia!

But now they have tipped over the edge into CRAZY-PERSON land. They are going to send the Teletubbies to the educational psychologists to see if they are TOO GAY!

You know, most NORMAL people when they first see the Teletubbies ask "what DRUGS were they on?" rather than "who could they be going to bed with?"

Still, if that is the sort of thing that you OBSESS about, then you end up reading it into EVERYTHING!

"I noticed he was carrying a woman's handbag," spokesperson for children's rights in Poland, Ewa Sowinska told a magazine. "At first, I didn't realise he was a boy."

And if you look VERY CLOSELY, Miss Winksa, you will see that he has a TELEVISION in his TUMMY and NO RUDE BITS!!

Why are you even TRYING to ascribe any kind of human behaviour to this big purple androgynous anthropomorphic walking television person?


Now, I could be wrong, but I think that someone has just been browsing the Wibbly Wobbly Web too much.

Do you remember the dear departed Mr Jerry Falwell? No? Perhaps you remember the racist, bigoted, homophobic, mad as a box of frogs, religious monomaniac Mr Jerry Falwell, co-founder of the Immoral Minority then…

GENUINE Mr Jerry quote: "This 'turn the other cheek' business is all well and good but it's not what Jesus fought and died for."

Well, I thought that I remembered this Tinky-Winky double-thinky from somewhere and GUESS WHAT: it was straight out of Mr Jerry's HAT:

"He is purple - the gay-pride colour; and his antenna is shaped like a triangle - the gay-pride symbol."

Yes, Mr Falwell, and you are SILVER – the colour of the TIN FOIL HAT people!


Daddy Alex reminds me that we have been watching "Children's Telly on Trial", and the story of "Ivor the Engine" creator Oliver Postgate. Back in the 1970's he too was accosted by "educational psychologists".

He told them they could pscht-i-cough pscht-i-cough off.

Day 2338: Rum Do

Sunday:


Yo ho ho and disguised as a PIRATE HAT, I sneaked into the cinema on top of Daddy Alex's head in order to see PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN AT WORLD'S END!

Some people have said that this movie is TOO LONG and TOO BORING, but my fluffy bottom has PLENTY of PADDING so I do not mind sitting on Daddy's head for three hours. And a jolly good thing too! People with less fluff in their heads (or bottoms!) than me might be a bit bored, but I thought this was ENORMOUS FUN!

If you remember, last year PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST had finished with Captain Jack (and his boat) being eating by big squiddly monster "The Sarlacc" (no relation to the Kraken that appear in Star Wars!)

Fortunately, this movie starts with Captain Jack (and his boat) stuck in a kind of LIMBO, called Davy Jones's Locker, and with a bit of help from his friends… well, from some people he knows anyway… he will be able to get away.

Actually, this is not the VERY start of the movie, before that there is a bit of a fight in Singapore as Captain Jack's friends… er… acquaintances try to get hold of a boat and a map to take them to the World's End. This is the only disappointing bit of the movie, as the opening fight does not seem very well choreographed, just lots of people running around and shouting – I know that in REAL LIFE fights are really like that, but this is NOT real life; it is a Pirate Movie and we want to see hero characters battling it out!

For our battling heroes this time, all our old friends (even if they're not Captain Jack's old friends) are back from the earlier movies.

Although he was the bright young thing star in the first movie, Mr Orlando Bloom – named after the place in Florida where the Pirates of the Caribbean theme park ride is to be found, no doubt! – seems to be auditioning to play the BOAT. i.e. WET and WOODEN. Bless his heart, he TRIES to show his character Will going to a bit of a DARK PLACE, but he just looks a bit sulky. You can tell that he REALLY just wants to be swinging his sword with the wind in his long flowing hair, and maybe a song on his pouty lips.

Often he finds himself a bit eclipsed by on-screen girlfriend Ms Keira Knightley. It must be scary to find yourself in the shadow of someone so THIN! She, on the other fluffy foot, shows much more surprising depths and shadows and unexpected strength, gripping the movie with both hands to wring herself some quality screen time out of it.

And that isn't a bad trick since, for what is quite a LONG movie, the surprise was how little time there really was for some of the characters. Mr Chow Yun-Fat as Captain Sao Feng is very underused, getting no more than a couple of scenes really, even if he is on one of the movie's posters!

Favourite supporting characters from the earlier films, Mr Jonathan Price's Governor Wetherby Swann and Mr Jack Davenport as once-Commodore and now-Admiral James Norrington are both reduced to little more than cameos. The poor old governor doesn't even get a decent death scene; we only discover that Miss Elizabeth's dad has bought the farm when he comes bobbing along in the afterlife!

Nor does Admiral Jim get much of a chance to regret picking the wrong side – especially disappointing after how well he kept up with the big boys in the final three-way sword fight of the second movie.

Even the Sarlacc only gets one brief scene!

But never mind that, because the rest of the movie is filled up with the REAL battling heroes: a "who can chew the most scenery" contest between Mr Johnny Depp doing that thing that he does, and Mr Geoffrey Rush dialled up to eleven as Captain back-from-the-dead Barbossa. And remember, Mr Rush ALMOST managed to steel the second movie with only ten seconds of screen time! It is not QUITE Gielgud versus Olivier… a bit more Laurel versus Hardy, really… but they both manage to light up the screen, going BONKERS in DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS! Actually, they do not get that many scenes TOGETHER – and that is probably quite a clever and careful move on the director's part, since it avoids too much of the film turning into a total HAM and CHEESE buffet. When they ARE together, too, it seems to be for quieter scenes as though they bring each other to earth – or realise that there isn't room for both of them to GO LARGE even in CINEMASCOPE™!


So, after getting over the exposition-heavy Singapore scenes, the FIRST HALF of the movie has an excellent and really WEIRD sequence that starts when Captain Barbossa's borrowed boat goes over the big waterfall at the end of the world. (Note for creationists: there isn't REALLY a big waterfall there; this is probably MAGIC!) And then we see Captain Jack sailing the Black Pearl over a desert! With a whole crew of Captain Jacks! Also there are some very strange rocks that might be crabs.

"OOOh, it's gone all Time Bandits!" says Daddy from down below, and he is RIGHT! After borrowing so HEAVILY from the Star Wars OEUVRE last year, this film has – appropriately – gone a bit further off the beaten track, a bit further into LEFT FIELD. It gets even more so when a flotilla of the dead sail past them and finally goes the WHOLE GILLIAM when Captain Jack works out how to get back to the ordinary world!

It is possible that this COLLISION of DALI-IST surrealism with a dozen Depps is what has thrown certain of the reviewers off their stride. It is not quite what you expect for your popcorn treat, but it is visually extraordinary.

On the other fluffy foot, it may be the DARK and TWISTED complicated politics bit that comes in the SECOND HALF of the movie! Back in the real world (or at least the "real" pirate world) it turns out that everyone has betrayed someone else. Except Captain Jack who has probably betrayed EVERYONE else. Including himself.

Still, I am only seven [R: six] and I could keep track of all the double and triple and quadruple crossing.

Elizabeth has betrayed Captain Jack to save the rest of them from the Sarlacc and lied about it to Will; Will has betrayed them all to the East India Company to try and save his father from Davy Jones and the Monkees and lied to Elizabeth about it; Davy Jones has betrayed his beloved Calypso into the hands to the Pirates' Brethren Court; Captain Sao Feng has betrayed them all to nasty Lord Cutlerfish Becket; Lando Calrissian has betrayed Han and Leia to the Bounty Hunter; and Captain Barbossa has… actually for a scurvy double-dealing pirate he seems to be playing a fairly straight up game. Perhaps it is the being brought back from the dead. He does get to say "ah harr!" a lot though.

And it would hardly be a PIRATE movie WITHOUT all that backstabbing and bamboozling of each other, now would it?

Anyway, they all end up at the secret pirates'-headquarters of Shipwreck Cove where Mr Keith Richards has his cameo. Oh and the nine Pirate Lords discuss how they are going to try and survive the East India Company.

This is where the movie keeps its HEART – although like Davy Jones, it is inside a bit of a PUZZLE BOX. Who exactly are we supposed to be cheering for? The pirates are all – pretty much by definition – black-hearted SCOUNDRELS. They steal and murder and generally betray each other three times before breakfast (see above!).

But the East India Company seems to do all of these things TOO – except it does it on an INDUSTRIAL scale. It is the biggest, baddest pirate of the lot. If you are brave and bold and put your back into it, you might outrun or outfight or outwit one of the pirates – but the company can always get you in the end. And even though Mr Tom Hollander is really, really good at playing a really, really hissable slimy villain, his Lord Beckett is very obviously just a BUREAUCRAT, no more than the replaceable face of the machine.

The pirates have their code, a rather flimsy set of guidelines it has to be admitted but ones that they stick to with the intention of seeing each other right in their own loop-the-loop treacherous sort of way. The company makes and breaks the rules at a whim.

In some ways it is a clash between individualism and conformity, between the magical and the mundane. The pirates might be in the wrong, but they kind of have the right to be wrong – at least to be bad in their own way. No one should be wiped out simply because it is good for business.

It is all underlined by an earlier scene on a beach with a dead squid. Yes, the Sarlacc has been unsportingly killed off between movies. The largest serving of uncooked calamari since "The Power of Kroll" and it actually manages to be a little bit moving, as Jack comes eye to eye with his one time nemesis and regrets that the World has just a little bit LESS in it.

The problem with being the last of anything, Captain Barbossa reminds him, is that pretty soon there ain't anything left at all.


Finally, the THIRD HALF of this super-size me club sandwich of a movie is then the big exciting battle between… well everyone. Or rather, everyone in the main credits – the rest of the pirates and the rest of the East India Company's armada all seem to hang bank and wait for the outcome of the scrap between our heroes on the Black Pearl and the baddies on Flying Dutchman. (Actually, I rather think that they should have come out of their battle and discovered carnage on the high seas all around them! As it is, it is all a bit too, well, GENTLEMANLY for pirates!)

But never mind that, this is the really excitingly exciting bit! All swinging on ropes and fighting in the rigging. And fortunately they all get their sense of HUMOUR back as there are lots of funny bits which you realise have been a bit missing for the middle of the movie.

The frenetic finale features fantastic effects, fantastic because you often forget they are there, merely serving to serve up an IMPOSSIBLE-TO-FILM Errol Flynn of a fight. (And I seem to be being attacked by "F"s!)

At last all of the betrayals manage to tug free of each other – yes, Will manages to have a lightsabre duel with his father before redeeming him; yes, he makes up with Elizabeth; and yes, we finally get to see that Captain Jack is a good un – in his inimitable mad, bad sort of a way.

Hooray!

And there's a nice little coda – setting up a possible "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Fountain of Youth" – in which Captain B finally gets to betray somebody (GUESS WHO!) and we all end up back where we started at the beginning of the first movie.

Double hooray!