Here in the North East the summer weather did not last the weekend although in fairness it has remained significantly warmer than normal despite heavy rain at times and a wind of some force. However today, Tuesday it is warm and was sunny when I rose later at 9.30. It was a difficult night full of wakenings, unsatisfactory dreams and perhaps was the after effects of the melancholy earlier which in part reflected the dissatisfaction with my present fate and knowing that I have only myself primarily to blame and because of past and more recent choices.
Yet yesterday was a productive day. I went for a swim and then enjoyed a read of the Honourable schoolboy. I cannot understand why I failed to read the book before now. It is significantly better than Tinker Tailor. It strikes me as more descriptive developing the main characters more fully and I can see the structure of suspense behind the writing.
I enjoyed some mushrooms and some cereal for breakfast yesterday and to day just mushrooms, with coffee in a moment when I finished rewriting the opening. I made a mess of lunch yesterday in that planning a curry and with the addition of chopped new potatoes and peas from Sunday lunchtime, I forgot the chicken. If the weather holds I will walk down and back up the hill for some stir fry otherwise it will be curry again and I will go by car this evening for fresh supplies or tomorrow morning if I am going again for a swim. I need to check to find out if I am paying in advance, as I suspect, or in arrears for the Marriott Leisure and decide to do this now after making a cup of coffee. I have checked and it is a month in advance so I will continue until the end of this month.
Last evening I settled for noodle pot, some prawns and some grapes. I am managing to keep just under 18 stone for the past few days and will continue to monitor the weight closely although this is more to prevent increases and the opposite.
I registered the new refrigerator and then horror of horrors discovered it is the same firm that had to recall appliances made 2002 2006 because of fires. I will try and not let this fact affect me especially as the appliance appears more effective and is better designed than the previous.
I completed the writing on the first season of the Borgias. I also completed 100 new sets for the money and got off for October with sufficient sets ready for registration to bring me up to date. In the evening I attended to me feet
I have watched two films in their entirety. I was singularly displeased with the 2010 film The Town which follows a number of recent similar capers using the latest technology to create super clever thefts but where the main character, sympathetically played by Ben Affleck who also Directed and contributed to the screen play escapes the consequences of his crimes which include attempting to kill legitimate pursuers and his girl friend then uses his share of the theft to restore the local skating rink as a contribution to reducing juvenile delinquency. She is the improbable bank manager of the bank from which the money was stolen. The other irresponsible theme, but frequently vaunted by Hollywood, to appeal to ghetto audiences, is that if only one was brought up in a different environment with different opportunities ones lives would be successful, happy and crime free, in sense of not becoming a criminal. The most well cry is that of Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, ’I could have been somebody’ if only I had not been made to throw the fight. The basic premise is of course rubbish although I concede that peer pressure will play its part on those whose parents have been weak, inadequate or irresponsible. Harsh but true.
So here is the chronological plot: Ben has been brought up by the parents of a fellow gang member who operate on behalf of the local crime boss played by Pete Postlethwaite who runs a florist. They have undertaken a number of successful and lucrative robberies but without physical violence, of course, which again is another Hollywood mythology suggesting that armed robbery can take place without damaging the lives of those immediately involved. In the latest robbery on a bank the lifelong friend gratuitously beats up one of the senior staff and decides to take the female bank manager hostage. She is terrified when released blindfolded and told to go ahead slowly until she touches water. She fears she is being led towards some chasm to her death so she tips toes as the criminals intended.
To ensure that she does not reveal anything which might lead the police to them her identification with address is taken and she is warned that any suggestion she has helped the police will lead to her death. Ben’s friend wants to take responsibility for checking up but Ben insists that he will find out the position. In order to do this he meets with the woman who in her spare time is part of a local action group which includes work on a community garden. Surprisingly whenever there are shots of them or her in garden there is no one else present, some community garden! They fall in love and Ben hovers over abandoning his life of crime and telling her the truth about his life.
Meanwhile The FBI have been doing their homework and commenced surveillance on the gang waiting for them to attempt another robbery. I cannot remember if it the FBI or through meeting Ben’s friend that the woman Rebecca Hall as Claire Kingsley works out that he is a hardened criminal. He brings her round by explaining that he was raised by a criminal father in prison whose wife had disappeared and brought up by a foster family part of the sub culture neighbourhood when one does not stand a chance self justification garbage. She falls for this and agrees to run away with him to Florida for a new start.
When he tells Postlewaite and his foster brother of his decision they both react negatively. The friend explains that he once killed a man who was going to kill Ben and Postlewaite says he will kill Claire if the gang do not carry out a major theft of millions of dollars from the local baseball Park (as if the customers pay by cash these days for entry or merchandise. This suggests that everyone in a 50000 crowd buys 70 dollars of fast food, drink and programmes!) Postlethwaite also discloses that he was responsible for the death of Ben’s mother.
The heist appears to go well although the Feds have become aware of when and where through the former girlfriend of Ben, the foster sister who has a child by someone else but who Ben has raised as his own. She splits on Ben, her brother and the others, in part out of revenge for his rejection of her but also from self interest of being kept out of being charged and her daughter taken into public care. The lifelong friend dies in a shoot out rather than going back to prison and the performance by Jeremy Renner was nominated for several major awards as was Pete Postlethwaite who had died after the film was made and who looked ill in his performance.
Ben is the only member of the gang who escapes and the Feds keeps watch with Claire knowing that he will contact and demand she assists or become an accessory to murder. However while she follows the script she makes a comment which is sufficient to alert Ben that he would be walking into a trap. He departs on his own but before this undertakes two actions. The first is to kill Postlewaite and his henchman. He steals a bus to the railway station and takes the train to Florida. I said there were two actions. Claire goes to the Community Garden where she finds Ben’s share of the bank robbery which she puts to restoring the local ice rink. The audience are left to make the assumption that in due course the couple are able to meet up and live together despite the FBI warning that they are a national organisation. It is a well made film but!
The other film watched is Behemoth, the title given to the computer creature created for the film and the sea serpent mentioned in the Old Testament. The film is part of a monsters week on a film channel and but unlike The Town it cannot be described as well made film of its genre.
Unbeknown to the local inhabitants the USA government has noted a number of seismic developments around the world which cannot be explained in the usual way but appear to relate to an area beneath a mountain (Lincoln) near the town of Ascension in Canada and then send observer teams and amazingly take with them a shoulder launched multi loaded war head contained in a field carried box complete with shoulder straps. Gosh they knew it was some kind of monster. Fortunately for the sake of the film they are not alone in working out that if you destroy the monster you save the world.
The area is known for many minor quakes which resulted in many buildings being destroyed two generations earlier and this has led to a retired college Professor who suffers from mental health problems requiring medication constructing a great theory that from time to time when the world gets out of balance the earth has somehow corrected itself such as the Ice Age, the Flood, the Great Plagues and that there is a connection between these events and belief in the existence of monsters who are warning that human kind needs to get its act together or be destroyed. He is convinced something catastrophic is about to happen and that for some reason the centre is their community.
A local girl has become a scientist working for whom it is not clear but studying seismic activity is concerned that the readings form local ‘boxes’ is so odd that they must have malfunctioned as appears to have occurred six months previously. She does to check out and finds that the readings are correct and her assistant back is able to confirm the development of similar readings around the world which do not appear to have any explanation but which appear to relate to some underground activity at the mountain. She decides to stay in town, not clear where, as we do not see her with any family but her uncle is the local Sheriff who is sceptical about any suggestion that the volcanic mountain officially dormant is suddenly coming to life.
In town she meets the son of the ‘mad’ professor she meets a former boyfriend, family friend, someone with whom she had a relationship, called Thomas. We learn he had a military career but I cannot remember if we are told how he earns his living and who worries about the mental condition of his father demanding that he takes his medication. Thomas has brought up his young sister Grace who is embarrassed and frightened by the behaviour of her father. She has along standing boyfriend of four years and the two plan a weekend on the mountain where her family used to go for picnics and where she plans to lose her virginity and he plans to ask her to marry him complete with engagement ring.
There are other signs of an unusual situation as a local woman dies on the mountain and is found with marks on her face and a man part of a work crew dies suddenly although he has only broken in leg as a result of the most recent seismic activity. The scientist Emily works out that during the activity fissures of carbon monoxide escape and temporarily concentrate a few feet above ground causing asphyxiation to anyone who remains in the immediate area.
Another activity causes the death of a government man working on the mountain so another arrives and seeks help to go up the mountain to investigate, He has attempted to do so by the roadway but further activity has blocked the roadway. He tries to persuade Thomas to take him but he refuses. We also see a shot of someone leaving his home on the slopes because of activity outside only to see his home disappear to roof level because of further activity, but he survives, Before the young couple go off the girl’s father tries to explain his theory about what is happening to his daughter and that quoting from the bible the only way to defeat the monster is to fire something in his mouth into his belly to split it in two.
The Sheriff is eventually convinced that something is radically wrong and that the whole mountain top could explode and single handedly evacuates the area for town to 20 miles around the mountain. The mad professor is persuaded to go and stay with a relative but before he leaves he tries to persuade the owner of the local diner he visit regularly that she must also leave. She hesitates and they are caught in further activity which results in all but the roof of the building going underground in what emerges to be a vast cavern. Learning that his daughter has gone up the mountain with her boyfriend he goes to where he thinks they might be camping and Emily volunteers to go with him. It is at this point amazingly all the members of the family become involved with the Behemoth in addition to the Government agent.
It appears that the monster a creature with a giant head and several gigantic tentacles had been trying to break out from within the cavern under the mountain and so far it has only managed to release an individual tentacle. It breath instead of fire is carbon monoxide. At the moment the young man is proposing to Grace they catch sight of the monster through one of its tentacles. During their attempt to escape the young man is lost but fortunately the girl is able to meet up with her brother and Emily and instead of getting off the mountain quickly, having met up with the government agent they are persuaded to help him retrieve the weapon. The agent is wounded and dies but Ed manages to retrieve the weapon just avoiding falling into a great chasm off the mountain. Meanwhile back in town the mad professor and his friend the diner owner has also encountered the monster viewed though the plate glass front of the diner which has cracked and therefore letting the poisoness gas inside. They managed to escape into the loft of he building and amazing out of its roof. Back on the mountain Ed and the two women make for where he knows here will be an unmanned helicopter which amazingly Emily knows how to fly. She gets the craft going while Ed sets up the weapon not knowing it contains several warheads and is uncertain what part to aim for and it is then his sister remembers what their father has said and tells him to aims into its mouth. Because it is a multiple warhead they do not go directly to where aimed despite an official lock on and his body and but also one does enter the mouth and the creature and mountain top explodes. They see her father as they fly back over the town so there is happy ever after for the family and a blossoming relationship between Ed and Emily. So nice.
I have been neglectful of Dr Who this season but the last episode of the present season was exceptionally clever and thoughtful and I can do not better than use the Wikipedia entry,
The Doctor, aware of his death at the fixed point of time on 22 April 2011 at Lake Silencio, attempts to track down the order of the Silence, to learn why he must die. He encounters the Teselecta shapeshifting robot and its miniaturised crew who are currently posing as one of the members; through them, the Doctor is led to the living head of Dorium Maldovar, one of the Doctor's allies taken by the Order of the Headless Monks. Dorium warns the Doctor that the Silence are trying to prevent him from answering the oldest question in the universe "on the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the Eleventh". The Doctor continues to refuse to go to Lake Silencio until he discovers his old friend, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, has passed away. The Doctor then accepts his fate. To avoid crossing his own time stream, he gives the Teselecta crew the envelopes to deliver to Amy, Rory, River Song, Canton Everett Delaware III, and a younger version of himself, inviting them to witness his death.
As shown in "The Impossible Astronaut", the Doctor joins his friends at Lake Silencio and then approaches the astronaut, now known to be a younger version of River Song trained to kill the Doctor by the Silence and Madame Kovarian. River does not want to kill him but is unable to fight the suit's control. The Doctor shows her her future self, sentenced to Stormcage prison for killing him, as evidence that her killing him is inevitable and that he forgives her for it. River, in the astronaut suit, surprises the Doctor by draining the suit's weapons systems and averting his death, despite his warning against interfering with a fixed point. Time becomes "stuck", and all of Earth's history begins to happen all at once, fixed at 5:02pm 22 April 2011.
In a time-confused London, the Holy Roman Emperor Winston Churchill takes the Doctor, his "soothsayer," out from his locked cell to ask him about the stuck time. The Doctor explains the preceding events, but notices they have lost track of time and tally marks are appearing on his arms, indicating the presence of the Silence. After they observe a nest overhead, they are rescued by Amy, leading an army of soldiers; due to the effects of the crack in her bedroom, Amy is cognisant of the altered timeline, though she has failed to notice that her trusted captain is Rory.
Amy takes the Doctor to "Area 52", a hollowed-out pyramid among the Giza Necropolis, where they have captured over a hundred Silence (in fluid-filled tanks) and Madame Kovarian. River is also there, well aware her actions have frozen time and refusing to allow the Doctor to touch her, an event that would cause time to become unstuck. They all wear "eyedrives"--eye patches identical to the one worn by Madame Kovarian that function as external memories, thus enabling them to remember the Silence.
They soon come to realise that this was a trap arranged by Kovarian, as the Silence begin to escape confinement and overload the eyedrives, torturing their users to death. The Doctor and River escape to the top of the pyramid, while Amy and Rory fight off a wave of Silence and Amy realises who Rory is. Madame Kovarian discovers her own eyedrive is being overloaded; she dislodges it, but Amy forces it back in place with the intention of killing her, explaining that this is revenge for her taking Melody away.
Amy and Rory regroup with River and the Doctor. River tries to convince the Doctor that this frozen timeline is acceptable and that he does not have to die, but the Doctor explains that all of reality will soon break down. The Doctor marries River on the spot, whispers something in her ear, declaring that he had just told her his name. He then requests that River allow him to prevent the universe's destruction. The two kiss, allowing reality to return to normal. At Lake Silencio, River kills the Doctor.
Some time later, Amy and Rory are visited by River, shortly after the events of "Flesh and Stone" in River's own timeline. When Amy explains that she had recently witnessed the Doctor's death, River reveals that the Doctor lied when he said he told her his name, instead saying "Look into my eye". The Doctor had in fact enlisted the Teselecta to masquerade as him at Lake Silenco, with the Doctor and his TARDIS miniaturised inside it ever since, which River saw during the wedding ceremony.
The three celebrate the news that the Doctor is still alive. Elsewhere, the Doctor takes Dorium's head back to where it was stored; the Doctor explains that his perceived death will enable him to be forgotten and return "to the shadows." As the Doctor leaves, Dorium warns him that the question still awaits him, and calls it after him: "Doctor who?"
A prequel to this episode was aired after the previous episode, "Closing Time". It was the fifth prequel in the series, the first four being for the episodes "The Impossible Astronaut", "The Curse of the Black Spot", "A Good Man Goes to War" and "Let's Kill Hitler". The prequel shows Area 52, with a clock stuck at the time of the Doctor's death, Silence kept in stasis and River Song wearing an eye patch in the same fashion as Madame Kovarian. As all of this is happening, there is a voice-over of the children, the same as that from "Night Terrors" and the conclusion of "Closing Time". They sing "Tick tock / goes the clock" three times, and then "Doctor, / brave and good, / he turned away from violence. / When he / understood / the falling of the silence."
Several scenes from the episode reuse footage from "The Impossible Astronaut" leading up to and immediately following the Doctor's death. The Doctor tells Dorium Maldovar, "I've been running all my life, why should I stop?", a precursive echo of his early, pre-death dialogue in "The Impossible Astronaut": "I've been running all my life...and now it's time to stop". Following the death of actor Nicholas Courtney, the Doctor learns in this episode that Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart has died peacefully in a nursing home. The Brigadier last appeared in Doctor Who in Battlefield, and the character's final appearance came in The Sarah Jane Adventures story Enemy of the Bane.
When listing all the things he could do with the TARDIS' ability to travel in time, the Doctor suggests visiting Rose Tyler in her youth (which Jack Harkness admitted in "Utopia" to having done) to help her with her homework, attending all of Jack Harkness' stag parties in one night (several of his marriages are mentioned or alluded to in "Something Borrowed" and Torchwood: Children of Earth), and returning to Queen Elizabeth I, met in "The Shakespeare Code", and mentioned in "The End of Time, Part I", "The Beast Below" and "Amy's Choice").
When the Doctor awakens in Amy's rail car office, he tries to remind her of the crack in her wall ("The Eleventh Hour") and fiddles with one of her TARDIS models ("The Eleventh Hour", "Let's Kill Hitler"). Amy's sketches include a Cyberman's face ("The Pandorica Opens") a Dalek ("Victory of the Daleks", "The Pandorica Opens", "The Big Bang"), herself seated in the Pandorica ("The Pandorica Opens", "The Big Bang"), a Silurian ("The Hungry Earth", "Cold Blood", "A Good Man Goes to War"), herself wielding a cutlass and sporting a tricorn hat ("The Curse of the Black Spot"), a Smiler's face ("The Beast Below"), a vampire girl ("The Vampires of Venice"), the first time she met the Doctor ("The Eleventh Hour"), Rory and another centurion ("The Pandorica Opens"), a side of the Pandorica ("The Pandorica Opens", "The Big Bang"), a Weeping Angel's face ("The Time of Angels", "Flesh and Stone", "The God Complex"), and the TARDIS.
Winston Churchill and River Song describe Cleopatra as, respectively, "a dreadful woman but excellent dancer" and "a pushover". River posed as Cleopatra in "The Pandorica Opens". The Fourth Doctor claimed in The Masque of Mandragora to have learned swordsmanship from a captain in Cleopatra's bodyguard. Mickey Smith implied in "The Girl in the Fireplace" that the Doctor had had some romantic history with Cleopatra and that he affectionately called her 'Cleo'. River Song states that she used her hallucinogenic lipstick on President Kennedy; she used the lipstick on guards in "The Time of Angels" and "The Pandorica Opens".
A Silent calls Rory "the man who dies and dies again". Rory dies in "Cold Blood" and appears to die in "Amy's Choice" and "The Doctor's Wife". In reference to the Doctor telling River his name, she reprises the line "Rule One - The Doctor lies" from "The Big Bang" and "Let's Kill Hitler". In "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead", River whispers something in the Doctor's ear that makes him trust her, which the Doctor states just before her death was "my name" and that "There's only one reason I would ever tell anyone my name".
The Doctor also refers to the events and conversation shortly before her death in "Forest of the Dead", stating "You, me, handcuffs - must it always end this way?" when he is handcuffed in the pyramid and reversing part of his final exchange with her in the Library during their conversation by Lake Silencio ("Time can be rewritten" / "Don't you dare!", with the first line spoken by the Doctor in the Library and River by the lake). The episode's main plot centers around the damage caused by River when she tries to re-write a fixed point in time. The Doctor tries to do this himself in "The Waters of Mars" but fails when Adelade kills herself in order to keep history the same. Fixed points in time have also been mentioned in "The Fires of Pompeii" and "Cold Blood".
Charles Dickens describes his upcoming Christmas special featuring ghosts from the past, present and future, alluding to A Christmas Carol.
Within the alternate London several previous characters reappear, including Charles Dickens (Simon Callow) from "The Unquiet Dead", Winston Churchill (Ian McNeice) from "Victory of the Daleks", and the Silurian doctor Malohkeh (Richard Hope) from "Cold Blood". William Morgan Sheppard is credited for his brief appearance in the background of the Doctor's death scene, reprised from "The Impossible Astronaut".
Mark Gatiss previously played Professor Richard Lazarus in the episode "The Lazarus Experiment", and provided the uncredited voice of Danny Boy in "Victory of the Daleks" and "A Good Man Goes to War"[4] along with a number of roles in audio dramas based on the show. He has also written for the revived series of Doctor Who. He is credited in this episode under the pseudonym "Rondo Haxton".
American television hostess Meredith Vieira recorded her report of Churchill's return to the Buckingham Senate in front of a green screen while filming a segment for The Today Show’s "Anchors Abroad" segment.[5]
Dan Martin of the Guardian noted that the episode "moves along the bigger, 50-year story and effectively reboots the show. After seven years of saving the Earth/universe/future of humanity," the show now has new impetus. Martin stated that the revelation that silence will fall when the oldest question in the universe is asked - "Doctor Who?" - will safeguard the programme for future generations.
Gavin Fuller of the Telegraph called the revelation of the Doctor escaping death by using the Teselecta a cop-out and likened it to serials of the thirties where scenes were cut and shown later to create a cliffhanger. However Fuller praised the episode as visually clever and noted that the question "Doctor Who?" harkens back to 1963 and the original theme of the show. Fuller concluded by surmising that Moffat is obviously plotting story arcs in the episode, hinting that the question will be asked at the end of the Doctor's eleventh incarnation.
Gosh and you thought this was still the Saturday evening children’s adventure series.
Yet yesterday was a productive day. I went for a swim and then enjoyed a read of the Honourable schoolboy. I cannot understand why I failed to read the book before now. It is significantly better than Tinker Tailor. It strikes me as more descriptive developing the main characters more fully and I can see the structure of suspense behind the writing.
I enjoyed some mushrooms and some cereal for breakfast yesterday and to day just mushrooms, with coffee in a moment when I finished rewriting the opening. I made a mess of lunch yesterday in that planning a curry and with the addition of chopped new potatoes and peas from Sunday lunchtime, I forgot the chicken. If the weather holds I will walk down and back up the hill for some stir fry otherwise it will be curry again and I will go by car this evening for fresh supplies or tomorrow morning if I am going again for a swim. I need to check to find out if I am paying in advance, as I suspect, or in arrears for the Marriott Leisure and decide to do this now after making a cup of coffee. I have checked and it is a month in advance so I will continue until the end of this month.
Last evening I settled for noodle pot, some prawns and some grapes. I am managing to keep just under 18 stone for the past few days and will continue to monitor the weight closely although this is more to prevent increases and the opposite.
I registered the new refrigerator and then horror of horrors discovered it is the same firm that had to recall appliances made 2002 2006 because of fires. I will try and not let this fact affect me especially as the appliance appears more effective and is better designed than the previous.
I completed the writing on the first season of the Borgias. I also completed 100 new sets for the money and got off for October with sufficient sets ready for registration to bring me up to date. In the evening I attended to me feet
I have watched two films in their entirety. I was singularly displeased with the 2010 film The Town which follows a number of recent similar capers using the latest technology to create super clever thefts but where the main character, sympathetically played by Ben Affleck who also Directed and contributed to the screen play escapes the consequences of his crimes which include attempting to kill legitimate pursuers and his girl friend then uses his share of the theft to restore the local skating rink as a contribution to reducing juvenile delinquency. She is the improbable bank manager of the bank from which the money was stolen. The other irresponsible theme, but frequently vaunted by Hollywood, to appeal to ghetto audiences, is that if only one was brought up in a different environment with different opportunities ones lives would be successful, happy and crime free, in sense of not becoming a criminal. The most well cry is that of Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, ’I could have been somebody’ if only I had not been made to throw the fight. The basic premise is of course rubbish although I concede that peer pressure will play its part on those whose parents have been weak, inadequate or irresponsible. Harsh but true.
So here is the chronological plot: Ben has been brought up by the parents of a fellow gang member who operate on behalf of the local crime boss played by Pete Postlethwaite who runs a florist. They have undertaken a number of successful and lucrative robberies but without physical violence, of course, which again is another Hollywood mythology suggesting that armed robbery can take place without damaging the lives of those immediately involved. In the latest robbery on a bank the lifelong friend gratuitously beats up one of the senior staff and decides to take the female bank manager hostage. She is terrified when released blindfolded and told to go ahead slowly until she touches water. She fears she is being led towards some chasm to her death so she tips toes as the criminals intended.
To ensure that she does not reveal anything which might lead the police to them her identification with address is taken and she is warned that any suggestion she has helped the police will lead to her death. Ben’s friend wants to take responsibility for checking up but Ben insists that he will find out the position. In order to do this he meets with the woman who in her spare time is part of a local action group which includes work on a community garden. Surprisingly whenever there are shots of them or her in garden there is no one else present, some community garden! They fall in love and Ben hovers over abandoning his life of crime and telling her the truth about his life.
Meanwhile The FBI have been doing their homework and commenced surveillance on the gang waiting for them to attempt another robbery. I cannot remember if it the FBI or through meeting Ben’s friend that the woman Rebecca Hall as Claire Kingsley works out that he is a hardened criminal. He brings her round by explaining that he was raised by a criminal father in prison whose wife had disappeared and brought up by a foster family part of the sub culture neighbourhood when one does not stand a chance self justification garbage. She falls for this and agrees to run away with him to Florida for a new start.
When he tells Postlewaite and his foster brother of his decision they both react negatively. The friend explains that he once killed a man who was going to kill Ben and Postlewaite says he will kill Claire if the gang do not carry out a major theft of millions of dollars from the local baseball Park (as if the customers pay by cash these days for entry or merchandise. This suggests that everyone in a 50000 crowd buys 70 dollars of fast food, drink and programmes!) Postlethwaite also discloses that he was responsible for the death of Ben’s mother.
The heist appears to go well although the Feds have become aware of when and where through the former girlfriend of Ben, the foster sister who has a child by someone else but who Ben has raised as his own. She splits on Ben, her brother and the others, in part out of revenge for his rejection of her but also from self interest of being kept out of being charged and her daughter taken into public care. The lifelong friend dies in a shoot out rather than going back to prison and the performance by Jeremy Renner was nominated for several major awards as was Pete Postlethwaite who had died after the film was made and who looked ill in his performance.
Ben is the only member of the gang who escapes and the Feds keeps watch with Claire knowing that he will contact and demand she assists or become an accessory to murder. However while she follows the script she makes a comment which is sufficient to alert Ben that he would be walking into a trap. He departs on his own but before this undertakes two actions. The first is to kill Postlewaite and his henchman. He steals a bus to the railway station and takes the train to Florida. I said there were two actions. Claire goes to the Community Garden where she finds Ben’s share of the bank robbery which she puts to restoring the local ice rink. The audience are left to make the assumption that in due course the couple are able to meet up and live together despite the FBI warning that they are a national organisation. It is a well made film but!
The other film watched is Behemoth, the title given to the computer creature created for the film and the sea serpent mentioned in the Old Testament. The film is part of a monsters week on a film channel and but unlike The Town it cannot be described as well made film of its genre.
Unbeknown to the local inhabitants the USA government has noted a number of seismic developments around the world which cannot be explained in the usual way but appear to relate to an area beneath a mountain (Lincoln) near the town of Ascension in Canada and then send observer teams and amazingly take with them a shoulder launched multi loaded war head contained in a field carried box complete with shoulder straps. Gosh they knew it was some kind of monster. Fortunately for the sake of the film they are not alone in working out that if you destroy the monster you save the world.
The area is known for many minor quakes which resulted in many buildings being destroyed two generations earlier and this has led to a retired college Professor who suffers from mental health problems requiring medication constructing a great theory that from time to time when the world gets out of balance the earth has somehow corrected itself such as the Ice Age, the Flood, the Great Plagues and that there is a connection between these events and belief in the existence of monsters who are warning that human kind needs to get its act together or be destroyed. He is convinced something catastrophic is about to happen and that for some reason the centre is their community.
A local girl has become a scientist working for whom it is not clear but studying seismic activity is concerned that the readings form local ‘boxes’ is so odd that they must have malfunctioned as appears to have occurred six months previously. She does to check out and finds that the readings are correct and her assistant back is able to confirm the development of similar readings around the world which do not appear to have any explanation but which appear to relate to some underground activity at the mountain. She decides to stay in town, not clear where, as we do not see her with any family but her uncle is the local Sheriff who is sceptical about any suggestion that the volcanic mountain officially dormant is suddenly coming to life.
In town she meets the son of the ‘mad’ professor she meets a former boyfriend, family friend, someone with whom she had a relationship, called Thomas. We learn he had a military career but I cannot remember if we are told how he earns his living and who worries about the mental condition of his father demanding that he takes his medication. Thomas has brought up his young sister Grace who is embarrassed and frightened by the behaviour of her father. She has along standing boyfriend of four years and the two plan a weekend on the mountain where her family used to go for picnics and where she plans to lose her virginity and he plans to ask her to marry him complete with engagement ring.
There are other signs of an unusual situation as a local woman dies on the mountain and is found with marks on her face and a man part of a work crew dies suddenly although he has only broken in leg as a result of the most recent seismic activity. The scientist Emily works out that during the activity fissures of carbon monoxide escape and temporarily concentrate a few feet above ground causing asphyxiation to anyone who remains in the immediate area.
Another activity causes the death of a government man working on the mountain so another arrives and seeks help to go up the mountain to investigate, He has attempted to do so by the roadway but further activity has blocked the roadway. He tries to persuade Thomas to take him but he refuses. We also see a shot of someone leaving his home on the slopes because of activity outside only to see his home disappear to roof level because of further activity, but he survives, Before the young couple go off the girl’s father tries to explain his theory about what is happening to his daughter and that quoting from the bible the only way to defeat the monster is to fire something in his mouth into his belly to split it in two.
The Sheriff is eventually convinced that something is radically wrong and that the whole mountain top could explode and single handedly evacuates the area for town to 20 miles around the mountain. The mad professor is persuaded to go and stay with a relative but before he leaves he tries to persuade the owner of the local diner he visit regularly that she must also leave. She hesitates and they are caught in further activity which results in all but the roof of the building going underground in what emerges to be a vast cavern. Learning that his daughter has gone up the mountain with her boyfriend he goes to where he thinks they might be camping and Emily volunteers to go with him. It is at this point amazingly all the members of the family become involved with the Behemoth in addition to the Government agent.
It appears that the monster a creature with a giant head and several gigantic tentacles had been trying to break out from within the cavern under the mountain and so far it has only managed to release an individual tentacle. It breath instead of fire is carbon monoxide. At the moment the young man is proposing to Grace they catch sight of the monster through one of its tentacles. During their attempt to escape the young man is lost but fortunately the girl is able to meet up with her brother and Emily and instead of getting off the mountain quickly, having met up with the government agent they are persuaded to help him retrieve the weapon. The agent is wounded and dies but Ed manages to retrieve the weapon just avoiding falling into a great chasm off the mountain. Meanwhile back in town the mad professor and his friend the diner owner has also encountered the monster viewed though the plate glass front of the diner which has cracked and therefore letting the poisoness gas inside. They managed to escape into the loft of he building and amazing out of its roof. Back on the mountain Ed and the two women make for where he knows here will be an unmanned helicopter which amazingly Emily knows how to fly. She gets the craft going while Ed sets up the weapon not knowing it contains several warheads and is uncertain what part to aim for and it is then his sister remembers what their father has said and tells him to aims into its mouth. Because it is a multiple warhead they do not go directly to where aimed despite an official lock on and his body and but also one does enter the mouth and the creature and mountain top explodes. They see her father as they fly back over the town so there is happy ever after for the family and a blossoming relationship between Ed and Emily. So nice.
I have been neglectful of Dr Who this season but the last episode of the present season was exceptionally clever and thoughtful and I can do not better than use the Wikipedia entry,
The Doctor, aware of his death at the fixed point of time on 22 April 2011 at Lake Silencio, attempts to track down the order of the Silence, to learn why he must die. He encounters the Teselecta shapeshifting robot and its miniaturised crew who are currently posing as one of the members; through them, the Doctor is led to the living head of Dorium Maldovar, one of the Doctor's allies taken by the Order of the Headless Monks. Dorium warns the Doctor that the Silence are trying to prevent him from answering the oldest question in the universe "on the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the Eleventh". The Doctor continues to refuse to go to Lake Silencio until he discovers his old friend, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, has passed away. The Doctor then accepts his fate. To avoid crossing his own time stream, he gives the Teselecta crew the envelopes to deliver to Amy, Rory, River Song, Canton Everett Delaware III, and a younger version of himself, inviting them to witness his death.
As shown in "The Impossible Astronaut", the Doctor joins his friends at Lake Silencio and then approaches the astronaut, now known to be a younger version of River Song trained to kill the Doctor by the Silence and Madame Kovarian. River does not want to kill him but is unable to fight the suit's control. The Doctor shows her her future self, sentenced to Stormcage prison for killing him, as evidence that her killing him is inevitable and that he forgives her for it. River, in the astronaut suit, surprises the Doctor by draining the suit's weapons systems and averting his death, despite his warning against interfering with a fixed point. Time becomes "stuck", and all of Earth's history begins to happen all at once, fixed at 5:02pm 22 April 2011.
In a time-confused London, the Holy Roman Emperor Winston Churchill takes the Doctor, his "soothsayer," out from his locked cell to ask him about the stuck time. The Doctor explains the preceding events, but notices they have lost track of time and tally marks are appearing on his arms, indicating the presence of the Silence. After they observe a nest overhead, they are rescued by Amy, leading an army of soldiers; due to the effects of the crack in her bedroom, Amy is cognisant of the altered timeline, though she has failed to notice that her trusted captain is Rory.
Amy takes the Doctor to "Area 52", a hollowed-out pyramid among the Giza Necropolis, where they have captured over a hundred Silence (in fluid-filled tanks) and Madame Kovarian. River is also there, well aware her actions have frozen time and refusing to allow the Doctor to touch her, an event that would cause time to become unstuck. They all wear "eyedrives"--eye patches identical to the one worn by Madame Kovarian that function as external memories, thus enabling them to remember the Silence.
They soon come to realise that this was a trap arranged by Kovarian, as the Silence begin to escape confinement and overload the eyedrives, torturing their users to death. The Doctor and River escape to the top of the pyramid, while Amy and Rory fight off a wave of Silence and Amy realises who Rory is. Madame Kovarian discovers her own eyedrive is being overloaded; she dislodges it, but Amy forces it back in place with the intention of killing her, explaining that this is revenge for her taking Melody away.
Amy and Rory regroup with River and the Doctor. River tries to convince the Doctor that this frozen timeline is acceptable and that he does not have to die, but the Doctor explains that all of reality will soon break down. The Doctor marries River on the spot, whispers something in her ear, declaring that he had just told her his name. He then requests that River allow him to prevent the universe's destruction. The two kiss, allowing reality to return to normal. At Lake Silencio, River kills the Doctor.
Some time later, Amy and Rory are visited by River, shortly after the events of "Flesh and Stone" in River's own timeline. When Amy explains that she had recently witnessed the Doctor's death, River reveals that the Doctor lied when he said he told her his name, instead saying "Look into my eye". The Doctor had in fact enlisted the Teselecta to masquerade as him at Lake Silenco, with the Doctor and his TARDIS miniaturised inside it ever since, which River saw during the wedding ceremony.
The three celebrate the news that the Doctor is still alive. Elsewhere, the Doctor takes Dorium's head back to where it was stored; the Doctor explains that his perceived death will enable him to be forgotten and return "to the shadows." As the Doctor leaves, Dorium warns him that the question still awaits him, and calls it after him: "Doctor who?"
A prequel to this episode was aired after the previous episode, "Closing Time". It was the fifth prequel in the series, the first four being for the episodes "The Impossible Astronaut", "The Curse of the Black Spot", "A Good Man Goes to War" and "Let's Kill Hitler". The prequel shows Area 52, with a clock stuck at the time of the Doctor's death, Silence kept in stasis and River Song wearing an eye patch in the same fashion as Madame Kovarian. As all of this is happening, there is a voice-over of the children, the same as that from "Night Terrors" and the conclusion of "Closing Time". They sing "Tick tock / goes the clock" three times, and then "Doctor, / brave and good, / he turned away from violence. / When he / understood / the falling of the silence."
Several scenes from the episode reuse footage from "The Impossible Astronaut" leading up to and immediately following the Doctor's death. The Doctor tells Dorium Maldovar, "I've been running all my life, why should I stop?", a precursive echo of his early, pre-death dialogue in "The Impossible Astronaut": "I've been running all my life...and now it's time to stop". Following the death of actor Nicholas Courtney, the Doctor learns in this episode that Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart has died peacefully in a nursing home. The Brigadier last appeared in Doctor Who in Battlefield, and the character's final appearance came in The Sarah Jane Adventures story Enemy of the Bane.
When listing all the things he could do with the TARDIS' ability to travel in time, the Doctor suggests visiting Rose Tyler in her youth (which Jack Harkness admitted in "Utopia" to having done) to help her with her homework, attending all of Jack Harkness' stag parties in one night (several of his marriages are mentioned or alluded to in "Something Borrowed" and Torchwood: Children of Earth), and returning to Queen Elizabeth I, met in "The Shakespeare Code", and mentioned in "The End of Time, Part I", "The Beast Below" and "Amy's Choice").
When the Doctor awakens in Amy's rail car office, he tries to remind her of the crack in her wall ("The Eleventh Hour") and fiddles with one of her TARDIS models ("The Eleventh Hour", "Let's Kill Hitler"). Amy's sketches include a Cyberman's face ("The Pandorica Opens") a Dalek ("Victory of the Daleks", "The Pandorica Opens", "The Big Bang"), herself seated in the Pandorica ("The Pandorica Opens", "The Big Bang"), a Silurian ("The Hungry Earth", "Cold Blood", "A Good Man Goes to War"), herself wielding a cutlass and sporting a tricorn hat ("The Curse of the Black Spot"), a Smiler's face ("The Beast Below"), a vampire girl ("The Vampires of Venice"), the first time she met the Doctor ("The Eleventh Hour"), Rory and another centurion ("The Pandorica Opens"), a side of the Pandorica ("The Pandorica Opens", "The Big Bang"), a Weeping Angel's face ("The Time of Angels", "Flesh and Stone", "The God Complex"), and the TARDIS.
Winston Churchill and River Song describe Cleopatra as, respectively, "a dreadful woman but excellent dancer" and "a pushover". River posed as Cleopatra in "The Pandorica Opens". The Fourth Doctor claimed in The Masque of Mandragora to have learned swordsmanship from a captain in Cleopatra's bodyguard. Mickey Smith implied in "The Girl in the Fireplace" that the Doctor had had some romantic history with Cleopatra and that he affectionately called her 'Cleo'. River Song states that she used her hallucinogenic lipstick on President Kennedy; she used the lipstick on guards in "The Time of Angels" and "The Pandorica Opens".
A Silent calls Rory "the man who dies and dies again". Rory dies in "Cold Blood" and appears to die in "Amy's Choice" and "The Doctor's Wife". In reference to the Doctor telling River his name, she reprises the line "Rule One - The Doctor lies" from "The Big Bang" and "Let's Kill Hitler". In "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead", River whispers something in the Doctor's ear that makes him trust her, which the Doctor states just before her death was "my name" and that "There's only one reason I would ever tell anyone my name".
The Doctor also refers to the events and conversation shortly before her death in "Forest of the Dead", stating "You, me, handcuffs - must it always end this way?" when he is handcuffed in the pyramid and reversing part of his final exchange with her in the Library during their conversation by Lake Silencio ("Time can be rewritten" / "Don't you dare!", with the first line spoken by the Doctor in the Library and River by the lake). The episode's main plot centers around the damage caused by River when she tries to re-write a fixed point in time. The Doctor tries to do this himself in "The Waters of Mars" but fails when Adelade kills herself in order to keep history the same. Fixed points in time have also been mentioned in "The Fires of Pompeii" and "Cold Blood".
Charles Dickens describes his upcoming Christmas special featuring ghosts from the past, present and future, alluding to A Christmas Carol.
Within the alternate London several previous characters reappear, including Charles Dickens (Simon Callow) from "The Unquiet Dead", Winston Churchill (Ian McNeice) from "Victory of the Daleks", and the Silurian doctor Malohkeh (Richard Hope) from "Cold Blood". William Morgan Sheppard is credited for his brief appearance in the background of the Doctor's death scene, reprised from "The Impossible Astronaut".
Mark Gatiss previously played Professor Richard Lazarus in the episode "The Lazarus Experiment", and provided the uncredited voice of Danny Boy in "Victory of the Daleks" and "A Good Man Goes to War"[4] along with a number of roles in audio dramas based on the show. He has also written for the revived series of Doctor Who. He is credited in this episode under the pseudonym "Rondo Haxton".
American television hostess Meredith Vieira recorded her report of Churchill's return to the Buckingham Senate in front of a green screen while filming a segment for The Today Show’s "Anchors Abroad" segment.[5]
Dan Martin of the Guardian noted that the episode "moves along the bigger, 50-year story and effectively reboots the show. After seven years of saving the Earth/universe/future of humanity," the show now has new impetus. Martin stated that the revelation that silence will fall when the oldest question in the universe is asked - "Doctor Who?" - will safeguard the programme for future generations.
Gavin Fuller of the Telegraph called the revelation of the Doctor escaping death by using the Teselecta a cop-out and likened it to serials of the thirties where scenes were cut and shown later to create a cliffhanger. However Fuller praised the episode as visually clever and noted that the question "Doctor Who?" harkens back to 1963 and the original theme of the show. Fuller concluded by surmising that Moffat is obviously plotting story arcs in the episode, hinting that the question will be asked at the end of the Doctor's eleventh incarnation.
Gosh and you thought this was still the Saturday evening children’s adventure series.
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