John Walker's Electronic House

Jim and Kieron have gone all suck-i-up and posted links to the new ish of Gamer.

So I go one stage further, and write the PCG blog entry about it. I AM BEST!

Hello everybody. I appreciated your attendance. Now, the reason I arranged this meeting was to make sure everyone was up to speed with how freaking awesome the new issue of PC Gamer is.

We all know how important these are for bringing in the ABC1 15 to 35s are, so it’s important that you get to know these carefully. The first important area is Crysis, where Tom’s only freaking gone and played the game, then written six pages on the Jeep-punching, foliage-generating, nano-besuited, explod-o-fest. Make special note of “OMG!”.

Mr Davies,

Doctor Who isn’t very important at all, really. It’s a television programme with a legacy of kitsch nonsense, recently revived to provide a moment’s entertainment at Saturday teatime. It’s trivial. In the end, it doesn’t matter. But it’s also capable of being something special.

The recently broadcast two-parter, Human Nature/The Family Of Blood, demonstrated this. The premise, from start to finish, was wholly silly – a man who travels through time putting his person into a watch that he then ensured the remaining human form would not consider of any consequence. Daft. Aliens chasing him through time, possessing humans, shooting green deathrays, animating scarecrows – all ridiculous. And yet, in its execution, it was something special. It told a story of love, of fear, of tragedy. At its heart it was the moving and horrific tale of a love doomed by death, but death made so much worse by the illusion of survival. The cold cruelty of the Doctor contrasted with the unconditional love of Mr Smith made his ghastly offer of letting Joan accompany him all the more chilling and upsetting.

It spoke bravely of the terror of war, and the depths of awfulness when children are forced to fight. Its ending at the memorial was bold and beautiful. It scared children, it moved adults. It was what television should aim for, wrapped up in the silliest of clothes.

It was written by Paul Cornell.

Looking back at the previous two series, Cornell once more stands out with Father’s Day – another remarkably emotional and evocative episode, made all the more impressive by using the dreadfully cast and constructed family Rose was surrounded by, and somehow making them tolerable, let alone engaging.

Mark Gatiss has written hugely entertaining episodes that tap into people’s memories of the classic series, while still appearing fresh.

Then there’s Steven Moffat’s episodes. In the first series his wonderful The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances two-parter was both terrifying and wildly fun. Then series 2’s The Girl In The Fireplace was a stunning piece of writing, containing an epic story in under forty-five minutes, and somehow surviving containing the hateful character of Mickey. I look forward greatly to his offering for this series, Blink, next week.

You have a great team of writers contributing to the series. And you have successfully relaunched a franchise that was previously too tired to work. Please, Mr Davies, concentrate on your godfathering of the series, focus on maintaining the thematic arcs of darkness and emptiness in the Doctor’s life, and please, stop writing for the programme.

Where you have succeeded, you have achieved a lot. You’ve created a space in the UK schedules where the fun of science fiction can be made accessible for a family audience while leaving room for genuine pathos. This is wonderful. The vast majority of episodes you have written for the last two years have taken all this opportunity, and wasted it. Nasty, flimsy outlines of ideas glumly inflated with special effects.

Please, look at what the recent two-parter achieves, and compare the results with your so many episodes this series. Look what your programme CAN be, when you work in the position for which you are so talented and accomplished. Let your programme BE that. We don’t need another soap opera. We don’t need endless attempts at contemporary references (in a time travel programme, for heavens sake). And we really don’t need a tourism commercial for Cardiff. (If we wanted that, we’d watch Torchwood, and then gouge out our eyes with rusty spanners). Step up, sit in your executive throne, continue your script editing maintenance, and give the writing task to the fantastically talented crew you have recruited.

Let Doctor Who rise above a trivial Saturday teatime filler, and let it be that little bit more of which it is so clearly capable.

Thank you,
John Walker

A Summer show tends to mean it wasn’t even good enough for a mid-season pick up, but they had the episodes, so they might as well show them. Traveler, from its first episode, seems surprisingly reasonable.

Three recent university graduates, at least two of them comfortably rich, the other a new lawyer, are on a Kerouac-inspired road trip, beginning in New York. Visiting an art museum, they agree to race from the top to the bottom on rollerblades. But what’s this, the guy filming them on his camcorder is looking a bit shifty. The front two race off and he lingers behind. A fire alarm goes off, the two on the blades are being chased by a security guard, and they slip out through the crowds. Outside they phone the third friend who asks if they got out, then apologises, then a bomb blows up the art museum.

So we’ve got ourselves a terrozritz situation, and some unlucky suspects. Immediately their faces are on the news, and the fear sets in. Oh noes, I thought – they’re going to refuse to ring the police for a spurious reason, aren’t they? And thus the set up begins, one shouting that they should call the police, the other saying they shouldn’t because of the… because of the monsters and you know mumble.

BUT! Shock, horror, first guy wins and immediately phones the FBI. He explains everything, explains about his friend, and asks for help! Goodness me. Then the twist arrives as the other guy’s dad tells him that it’s a set up, that they’ve got to get out of Manhattan and fast. They can’t trust the police, and they know it for sure. Justified running, rather than the tiresome: “If they’d only go and say something they’d be fine” nonsense that plagues so many of these ideas.

And so off they run, surrounded by conspiracies, discovering that their friend is not who he claims. Twists and turns, lots of the police shouting, “What’s your 20?”, and the runners being decently smart rather than useless morons.

It’s fairly rubbish still, with some of the most awful exposition I’ve ever seen. (One character informs the others what their jobs are one at a time). But maybe some hope? We’ll see.

Let me tell you the story about the time I did the final race of Adventure mode in Mad Tracks. It was a single lap race, taking place on an “Oh God I so desperately want to be Micro Machines, why can’t I be Micro Machines?” track in a bedroom, littered with dominos and toy soldiers.

New review hidden away in the weekend embarrassments on EG.

You know what? Big Brother 2 was a really great social experiment. I watched it obsessively, more the live feed than the nightly broadcasts, including, I will confess, falling asleep to the image of their falling asleep. I do not boast this, and I don’t pretend to defend it. It gripped me for one summer, and I genuinely believe it was a very different programme back then.

BB2 was won by Brian – super-camp and very sweet young guy who I imagine is now selling the sort of jewelry that turns your skin green on a channel in the deepest depths of the cable swamplands. And I think he deserved it. Not for the reasons broadcast on the nightly episodes, but those constantly revealed in the live feed. While the newspapers fellated themselves into a mad twisted snake over Pa”Ya’know, I mean, sersiously”ul and Em”I like blinking I do”ma, the much more quiet Dean and Elizabeth (oddly painted by the edited show as deathly boring and deeply evil, respectively) made it their mission to help Brian change from the selfish little brat that entered into the rather lovely chap who deserved the win, and the TV work that followed. They literally created school time for him (at his request), where they would send him away to read a chapter of one of their books, then talk over what he’d read. He declared himself Catholic, but had never heard of Adam and Eve. Rather than being disgusted, Dean instead patiently taught him the history of his religion. They cared for him, and he transformed. Meanwhile Dean would strum melodically on his guitar, and when pestered by the housemates, sing some of his songs. (He was of course announced by the papers to be simply trying to promote a singing career by forcing his music on everyone).

Of course, a couple of things stand out rather oddly now. Books and instruments are now banned from the BB house. They made it “boring”, because people “would just sit around reading.” God forbid it. It’s imperative that instead they spend their days lying perfectly still in their competitive efforts to see who can grow the most threatening melanoma/atheroma. FAR more interesting! Of course, just to be safe it’s also been the policy to only allow in those very unlikely to know what a book is, let alone stare confused at the pictureless words inside.

For the last three years I’ve not even been able to bear the thought of watching a single minute of it. I’ve tended to read the BBC news stories during the launch week, have a scan of the profiles to be sure it’s everything I’ll hate, and then dig myself a bunker in the garden to avoid the Summer rays of gleaming headlines and asinine conversation. As Jesus nearly said, “Wherever two or three are gathered, bleating about Big Brother will be there.” This year I admit to having been intrigued. Not because it’s an “all women house”, but because those women appeared, from their descriptions, to have been chosen by their potential political conflicts. Yes, yes I was stupid and wrong.

For your pleasure I will now tell you why everyone involved is hateful, and why I shall be back in the bunker from now on.

Sam and Amanda are twins! Blonde twins! They like pink! They squeal! Perhaps these two things could be combined if someone were to slit their bellies open and spill them inside out. They like to speak at the same time, and simultaneously announced that they don’t like people who “speak in dictionary language.” Just actions people, just actions.

Lesley is in the WI, and is 60, and has serious hair and serious glasses. Watching her face became the only reason to continue putting up with the hour’s descent into the abhorrent, as each screeching halfwit entered the house and her spirit died a little more. It’s looking like it could be Britain’s first televised suicide.

Charley can’t spell her name. She also considers herself an It Girl, and has big earrings and the mutant mouthchild of Billie Piper and Julia Roberts. I imagine she’ll announce her friends call her “Chazzer” soon, and then I get carried away and imagine she’s run over by a combine harvester.

Tracey is possibly the most irritating human being of all time. Kudos to the producers for finding her. She’s a “mad quaver” or something, with PINK HAIR OMG! and a man’s set of chromosomes, which she uses for largin’ it. She is in fact a really badly programmed robot, malfunctioning horribly such that it can only sputter three phrases no matter how irrelevantly. “‘AVE IT!” she must shout at the post as it arrives through the letterbox in the morning, followed by getting the kettle “BUZZIN'” before “LARGIN’ IT” into the mug. “‘AVE IT TEABAG!” She collects carrier bags because, well, because she’s an idiot. She won’t break down impressively because the malfunctioning robot has taken over completely now. Instead she’ll go all dark and moody, and punch a door, and then all the others will cluck in worry and bump into the walls.

Chanelle is, as far as I can tell, the sort of name that only ever appears on Big Brother. Surely in the real world a child named such would be generously drowned to save it from her parents? Chanelle wants to be “rich, or famous, or a speech therapist in Spain.” She also wants to be Posh Spice, and has confused Planet Earth with a giant look-a-like contest. If anyone watches this (and I know you will be, James) could you alert me the moment she says a sentence that doesn’t include some form of the phrase, “People tell me I look a lot like Victoria Beckham”? Thanks.

Shabnam is apparently made of soggy tissues.

Emily conspiratorially informs us that “there’s a new music and it’s taking over our country. It’s called Indie.” Goodness me, whatever must this new sound be like? Will it catch on? Can you dance to it? Can you catch on fire? Reading about her she appeared interestingly right wing. In reality, she’s just going to vote Tory because Mummy and Daddy do. Annoucing, “Education, education, education” in her introductory video somewhat gave away her confusion over politics. But she hates stupid people. She’s rich and posh! Private school doesn’t seem to have held her back from investing her massive intellect into working as a waitress.

Laura was the crowd’s favourite because she’s fat and deeply stupid, and thus not a threat to the sorts of egos who give up a day to stand and scream as eleven people walk past them and go inside a building. Until a fatter and more stupid contestant came along after. My accurate prediction: She will spend the vast majority of her time in the house in tears, because that’s always got her the attention she needs before. She will refer to every other younger constestant as “Such a mean… sniffle… bitch” at some point.

Nicky wants to prove that being Indian doesn’t stop her from not being Indian. Or something. Possibly the only contestant with a life potentially containing some interest (she was living in Mother Theresa’s Indian orphanage at one point in her life), her vacuous demeanour suggests that we’ll only get to learn her favourite lipstick. Were we to watch. Which we won’t.

Carole is the result of some mad scientists’ seeing what would happen if they crossed the colour grey with a binbag full of wet clothes, and brought it to life. A massive 50-something bisexual (ie. divorced and so desperate) who dedicates her life to announcing her geographical location (east London, apparently) and saying “fuck” like a teacher trying to appear trendy during assembly. “I’m going to shake it something rotten. And they will be shaken shitless.” So much so she’s too busy to be employed at the moment, what with all her war protesting and all. War’s not nice, we learn. And if the others can’t cope with her, then, well, that’s their problem because she’s who she is, and that’s just the way it is. It’s funny how it’s only the most wretched people who feel the need to announce this, rather than reflecting on the fact that everyone they ever meet hates them, and therefore there might be something about themselves that could be questionable. No! Stop the thoughts! Swear some more – and I speculate here – and spell Tony Blair, “Tony BLIAR!!!”.

If anyone can think of a reason not to bolt the doors shut, turn off the cameras, and quietly forget about them, then, well, you should probably go in and join them.

Pirate Master starts tomorrow night!

Seriously, can life get any better? And best of all, the Australian host, Cameron Daddo, claims to be descended from pirates himself. The show’s created by Mark Burnett, and that is a Good Thing, whether you love Survivor or not. It means it will be filmed like a multi-million dollar movie, scored by a composer, and rock like a thousand bells.

“But this time, they’re also on hunt for a half-million dollars in gold coins buried on the island of Dominica. The winning team each week gets to elect a captain and split the loot. The losers swab the decks, eat gruel and cook steaks for the winners. Everyone gets to keep the money they find. But the ultimate winner gets an additional 500 grand and the title “Pirate Master.””

(Comment on the fire story, you bastards. Especially to comment on Kim’s excellent photography).

One evening, sitting in Kim and Nick’s beautiful basement, Nick and I were flicking through channels, juggling the double-TiVo to keep track of the baseball, as well as the remarkable output of a gay channel we’d stumbled on. You know, like you do. At around 9pm, Kim came down and asked if we could flick over to the news to catch the headlines.

WGN’s news led with a story about a building that had caught fire somewhere on the west side of the city. We watched the exciting flames and billowing smoke, and Kim asked Nick, “Hey, where’s W. Caroll St? Nick looked blankly for a moment, and then both their faces burst with realisation at the same time. “That’s CPE!” they both exclaimed.

A few days before, Kim had been telling me about some friends of Nick’s who had set up a business, CPE. They offered unsigned bands recording studios at affordable rates, complete with loan of all the equipment they might need. They rented the fourth floor of a five storey building on… W. Carroll.

Nick gave them a call to see if all were alright, and beyond being shaken and somewhat devastated, no one was hurt. In fact, the fire (which looks deeply like arson) took place in the early morning – a time when no band, nor anyone working with a band, was likely to be around.

The next day, late afternoon, Nick’s phone rang. It was the CPE guys. The fire marshals had told them that if they wanted to go into the building, now was their only chance, as the next day the building inspectors would arrive and never allow anyone in again. They were phoning everyone to get a hand shifting stuff out before dark.

Why was there stuff? The fire had destroyed the two three-storey buildings next to the five-storey in which their business was housed, where it had started on the third floor. This had, I’m told, created a pocket of CO2 on the fourth floor that caused the fire to go around it and burn the fifth floor next. Boggling. Apparently a great deal of their equipment was recoverable, even if the building was not. Nick, motivated by helping his friends, leapt to action. Kim, motivated by getting some awesome photographs of the inside of a burned out building, leapt into action as much as someone six months pregnant can. I followed, because that’s what I do.

So here’s what had happened:

Next to the taller building, the two smaller ones were all but gone. Just half-walls and rubble. The five-storey stood more firmly, but without glass in the windows, and soot everywhere. A doorway led into a dark opening, and some wooden stairs, that had impossibly survived.

We cautiously made our way up, stopping on the third floor to have a look. A doorway from the stairwell looked into a vast, empty room, made almost entirely of embers. The floor was missing in huge areas, and a foot put down would remove an awful lot more. It looked amazing.

The fourth floor, while not burned to bits, was hardly undamaged. Lots had burned, and everything had been cooked by the intense heat from above and below. It looked an awful lot like this:

A sad story: On the way in a guy asked me to take his photograph in front of a poster that had survived on the stairwell wall. In the process of trying, I dropped my camera, causing the lens to smash into a million pieces. The good news is it meant I got to buy a new camera in the amazing Half Price America (“Everything’s 50% off! Buy now before the complete collapse of the economy!”). The bad news is I could take no pictures, and so what you see here are Kim’s excellent snappings.

We explored the rooms, checking the floors before putting our weight on them, each of them looking remarkable where the effects of the fire had decorated with elaborate patterns. It was peculiarly haunting, like discovering the entombed remains of a 2007 civilisation in the distant future. Regular, familiar objects reduced to ash-coloured ghosts.

Kim and I explored, rather than helped. She had the rather valid reason of being heavily pregnant (although one might argue such an excuse should probably have kept her from being in the building in the first place). I was just being amazed at the amazing sights, and pretending I was checking Kim was OK.

We stood in one back room, staring in amazement at the bookshelves, and a clipboard on the wall that had been cooked brown but not burned. It was all hypnotising, as people busied around us, grabbing amps and drum kits and lugging them down the stairs. Kim looked up and nonchalantly said to me, “There’s a fire up there.” I looked up at where she was pointing, and indeed there it was. A little fire dancing in the rafters of the room we were in. How pretty. Waking up suddenly, I went to find a fire extinguisher. It was apparently on the bottom floor, and so I ran down the stairs alerting everyone I met. Maybe it was my odd accent, maybe it was their rock-addled brains, but no one seemed that phased by the news that the building we were in was currently on fire. Until I found Nick on the bottom floor, who flew into Action Hero mode, and learned that the fire extinguisher was apparently in the very room I’d started in. We ran back up, and Nick grabbed the extinguisher and aimed it at the flames, which had now spread further, and were very close to lighting a main beam in the room.

The extinguisher was empty. In a moment of fantastic madness, Nick became possessed by the spirit of every gunfight when the bullets are gone, and the only thing left to do is throw the gun. He threw the red canister like an American football, and perfectly nailed the shot, wedging the extinguisher into the beams on top of the fire. In fact, he almost snuffed them out. But, you know, didn’t. Sort of creating a big red bomb.

Nick got to cry, “Evacuate the building!”, as we attempted to shepherd people toward the stairs and down. This wasn’t easy. In complete reversal of every school fire drill, rather than being sternly told to leave everything we own in the rooms and file outside slowly, people yelled, “Grab an amp and run!”

So we all grabbed hold of something heavy to make one last run out the place, and called the fire brigade. Then people had to go back in and get the guy out who had decided he was going to rescue the last drum kit. The fire brigade turned up and ran in, and we all stood outside while the building’s owner, a twenty-something girl who had inherited it from her father, came down to watch. It was a sad story, really. She had hoped to fulfill her father’s wishes and use the building as an arts centre. However, others in the Italian family (Family?) had other ideas. This, of course, had nothing to do with the fire. Obviously.

The fire fighters told the group that they didn’t recommend going back in, but if they insisted they’d likely be fine. We decided to call it a night, since it was now night, and made out way home to unsuccessfully try and shower off the smell of fire. A rather remarkable evening.

All the photos are by Kim, and are rather amazing. Can be seen here.

Can whoever has my copy of The Perfect Fool by Stewart Lee (book) please return it?

Thanks!

I wish I didn’t feel the need to write “spoiler warning”, but apparently even when I do some people still can’t help but read it anyway, and then complain that they spoiled it for themselves. I can’t imagine what would happen if I didn’t.

Helpfully titled “The Disaster Show”, Studio 60’s ‘comeback’ demonstrated every reason why it needed to be left to die. What a horrible mess.

So it’s the hilarious episode where everything goes wrong. Danny pisses off the prop guys so they walk out at the last moment, and the cue-card guys are in the same union. So the guest host, Allison Janney, is left with no monologue to deliver, and only Cal in her ear delivering unhelpful words. Cue the first reference to The West Wing. Nggghhh. So all the sketches go wrong, the props are spiked, and wouldjabelieveit – a bomb threat has been phoned in. Then Frank Spencer slips on a banana skin and lands on a skateboard and crashes into a cupboard full of ladies’ underwear! Oh, Sorkin, fuck off into outer space.

We never see Danny pissing off the prop guys. Danny, we’re told, is in the parking lot trying to negogiate with the prop guys. It’s already too late for that, as they’re taping live. So why he is doing this, rather than directing the programme he directs is left somewhat unexplained. As such he never appears. And Matt? The reason for his not appearing in a single scene? Because he’s “helping the cast write their lines on their hands.” Good grief, what? At least try. This seriously is the given reason for his absence on the floor for the entire shoot. Rather than it being the episode that emphasises the rest of the cast by taking the focus from the main characters (something Scrubs does well, but too often), it became an awkward muddle where the two characters were refered to constantly, were integral to the plot, and were apparently just nearby throughout, but somehow never got caught by the cameras.

Of course, this is the second half of the season, so it can’t be about making a TV show. It has to be about relationships. So we get Harriet neurotically announcing that people are allowed to go out with Matt, which I’m fairly certain was a storyline covered quite extensively at the beginning of the season. Plus there’s an extraordinarily out of character moment where she spitefully refers to one of the minor cast members as “rook” and is disgusted that he would be in the same room as her, let alone speak in her presence. She becomes instantly hateful, and I now hope for nothing but her miserable, grisly death in every coming episode. This is as nothing when compared with the constant annoyance of a story following Simon’s fruitful lovelife. He gets dumped right before he was taking a girlfriend to Hawaii, then trawls the green room for another last minute date, finds one, then guess what! The first girl wants to go back out with him again, and he says yes! Then the second girl gets cross and slaps Simon, then Lucy tells the first girl about the second girl, then Simon gets slapped again! Why, his crazy lovelife! Somehow this most cliched of ideas is stretched out over the hour, as if we’re supposed to be either intrigued or in stitches over the wacky muddle of his womanising ways.

But worst of all is the impossibility of the premise. Every second of the show is a failure, but apparently they’ll air it anyway. And of course the cast are all super-cool about it. Hey, this happens every couple of years! Except, no, it doesn’t. With no props, all the sketches failing midway and being cut off, no monologue, and a bomb threat on a building filled with the public, just maybe, maybe they’d cancel the show and put on a re-run. The idea that we’re asked to suspend disbelief to this extent so that we can have the slapstick adventures of a prop table that collapses when it’s touched, and an actress so stupid that she can’t tell if the shirt she’s wearing contains squibs, is insulting.

As ever, the depth of frustration is only made worse by some really fantastic moments of dialogue. Best of all would be Tom explaining to Janney who she should thank at the end of the show, receiving a curt “Thank you,” to which he immediately replies, “Yes, like that, but nicer.” But they are tiny flickers in a very dark room. No Matt or Danny, nor indeed Jordan, makes it a pointless exercise, worryingly revealing the paper-thin nature of the rest of Sorkin’s characters. Janney appearing does little to help, only reminding everyone that he used to write the West Wing (and even worse, the repeated references to the show). I hate that NBC were right, but they were so right. Studio 60 had nowhere to go, and it’s determined to prove it.