It's a very overcast and dull Christmas Eve morning. I've been awake since six am when my next door neighbour's backyard light went on so he could either let the dog out (or have a fag) in his pants. Hardy hielanmen. Elgin's shops are not as frenzied as yesterday. as yet. I just stopped myself from buying a camel coat that would always get dirty, in a sale, just because I could.
I realised last night that I hadn't even mentioned The Rise of Skywalker, which I saw at the Moray Playhouse on Sunday at lunchtime. I'm not a Warsie, really. I think you have to become a convert very early- pre-school perhaps- and I was nearly fifteen when A New Hope came out. I read the gold cover novelisation and I dutifully bought Splinter of the Mind's Eye. I liked the early Marvel comics and I've seen all the Nineties- Noughties trilogy, which I didn't think were all that bad.
But this decade's films never really fired my imagination I can't remember much about the plots- or that of Solo either. I never warmed to Poe, Finn and Rey; they just don't have the charisma of the original trio.The dialogue is still woeful: functional and forgettable.
The music of John Williams remains terrifically evocative, of course. My brother and I used to listen to the soundtrack of Star Wars on cassette tape religiously in the later months of 1978.
Largely, I felt I should see ROS because it's a pop culture event and I work with kids. One of my autistic S4 boys who also has ADD and echolalia is only interested, at present, in reading the Marvel adaptation of Empire Strikes Back. He's a big, lanky laddie who's into parkour and he asked me last week: " Were you surprised when Ob-Wan was killed?"
I did like the message of forgiving the enemy and how the people rose to defeat the military. But it felt really long. I have no doubt there'll be more Star Wars movies in my lifetime It's too golden a goose. But everything in this trilogy feels like you've seen it before. Fans seem to like that, of course; Whovians -or Whovers, as Grace Dent said last night on tv- seem to want David Tennant and 2006 back, like it was thirteen years ago. It's that Brexit Britain thing, in essence. The perpetual past.
Grace showed clips from The Horns of Nimon and the BBC's Royal Institution Lecture on atoms; I find those brown shades quite comforting- Brown, At Christmas- but 1979 looked as tawdry and enervated as I remember. The past is another country,the borders are closed and it's probably just as well.
I was a bit dismayed therefore to see Big Finish were reviving Timeslip, a 1970 series I can barely recall. I often wish they would produce more new material, since the museum piece sensibility is wearying. However the First Doctor Companion Chronicles no longer attempt to fill gaps, I'd argue, so much as present an alternative history for Sixties characters. Or am I being contrary?
I finished listening to the third box set yesterday. Again, there are four stories. E is For... is a parody, I think of Mark Millar's Ultimate X-Men rather than Morrison's as the title might imply. Lisa Bowerman portrays a sadistic character called, with suitably Marvel-lous bombast, Col. Maria Rage.
The subtle Maureen O'Brien is interrogated in Daybreak as she becomes involved with a freedom fighter group from our future and her past. The most entertaining story, The Vardan Invasion of Mirth is an inventive meditation on the comedians of England's Forties and Fifties: Frank Randle and Robb Wilton in particular. Peter Purves is a bit more sibilant these days but his voice still has superb energy and pace.
Finally, Elliot Chapman makes his penultimate appearance as Ben Jackson in The Crumbling Magician. David Warner is the tragic and unsettling victim of a time collision, while Anneke Wills plays both Polly and Continuity, a demented AI with grisly designs on the Tardis crew. The acting was stupendous in an imaginative box set, which makes clever use of the audio format. (4/5 Talmars 1 Talmar deducted for rehashed X-Men).
Have a peaceful and merry Xmas. I may fit in another post before New Year, while I'm down in Glasgow. Otherwise, in January, look for a review of the new series of Doctor Who and in a fit of sheer hypocrisy, forty-year-old Marvel annuals .
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