DOCTOR WHO hates my dad

Much has been made of the homosexual agenda that some people have suggested runs under the reinvention of the universe's favourite Time Lord under Russell T Davies, but there is a more insidious plot going on here - to undermine fathers. Call Fathers for Justice and have red powder thrown at the show's creators.

The evidence?

Rose's dad is a loser and a coward and, though he saves her in the end it's only after he's been shown time and again to let her down (see Father's Day)

'Are you my mummy?' asks the Empty Child, but he isn't asking for his daddy and why? Because the blighter's gone and done a runner.

The Idiot's Lantern features an abusive father, who is so bad he has to be sent packing in the end.

And I don't know why we have to 'Fear Her' in the episode of that name because it's the (again absent) father who turns out to be a monster to be feared.

Where is Donna's father? We see her mum and her Grandad, but her father? Nope, not a sign. Clearly another absentee pater.

Then there's 'The Doctor's Daughter' in which the Doctor gets a surrogate child and immediately disowns her and won't have anything to do with her. Good parenting image that one.

'The Next Doctor', well he just manages to forget that he has a son that needs rescuing. That's the kind of thing that slips the minds of all dads at one time of crisis or another.

But it's not just restricted to the main series either. In THE SARAH JANE ADVENTURES, Sarah is bringing up Luke without a dad (admittedly through a technicality) and Clyde's father is shown to be a right selfish git who is also absent. Maria and Rani both have non-absent fathers, but they are shown to be a bit rubbish and pompous.

And Captain Jack Harkness, what kind of a Dad is he, going around killing his own grandson in CHILDREN OF EARTH.

So, the next time that you want to go on about supposed gay subtexts in DOCTOR WHO spare a thought to the real victims of this show - fathers.

AVATAR biggest money grabber ever

James Cameron's AVATAR has lumbered past the impressive box office record held by TITANIC (made of course by James Cameron). It's no wonder that studios keep entrusting this man with more money than was lost by Icelandic banks to make his pet projects because his huge budgets bring in huge receipts.

But is AVATAR really a film?

Sounds like a silly question since it's showing in cinemas all over the world, but bear with me.

Films are about narrative, about character, about plot development and emotional involvement. AVATAR is about pretty pictures. HUGE pretty pictures...and in 3D. Watch in awe as cartoon creatures sweep over huge landscape paintings. Wonder as mountains float in the sky. Gasp at the beauty of a tree hundreds of feet high releasing its seeds. Fantastic images all, but do they add up to a movie.

The characters in AVATAR are cyphers, barely deep enough to be called characters. The plot is back of a postage stamp stuff and nobody develops at all. If it's a film then it's a bad one.

So how come it's made more money than the Mint?

AVATAR isn't a film it's a spectacle. It's intent is not to tell a compelling story, but rather to use what minimal story it can be bothered to come up with as an excuse to create those compelling, startling and wonderful images. It's no surprise that AVATAR is available in 3D and on the IMAX system because it is here that those images will have the greatest impact be they aerial journeys, mystical moments of giant machines blowing the hell out of everything in sight in an orgy of mechanistic (but nonsensical) violence.

The problem here is that success talks and AVATAR will make Hollywood think that throwing enough special effects at the screen is all you need to do make a great sci fi movie and that means we'll get more films from the likes of Michael Bay where eye-candy takes the place of mind candy and we really don't need more of that. Our only hope is the fact that the same year brought us the mind-blowingly brilliant MOON (infinitely better on 1% of the budget) and the entertaining DISTRICT 9 both of which acheived more with less.

So well done to AVATAR for making so much money in the middle of a global financial meltdown, but we just hope that the cost hasn't been too high and the damage too deep.

Vampires are the new black

Once upon a time the vampire was the forgotten man of the horror genre, but right now you can't walk into a multiplex or switch on a TV without falling over the blighters with the pointy canines.

The latest evidence of this hits TV in the shape of THE VAMPIRE DIARIES on ITV2, but it's hot on the heels of DAYBREAKERS at the UK cinema and in recent months there's been the oversexed TRUE BLOOD, MOONLIGHT AND BLOOD TIES. And that's without mentioning BLADE THE SERIES (which we don't like to do because people might try and watch it).

The blame for all this can be laid at the door of the impossibly successful TWILIGHT books, but that's not going back far enough because they are just part of a cycle that has been going on right back to Bram Stoker's gothic horror novel.

The thing is that girls love vampires. And we're not just talking about in the books and films either. Stoker gave his Dracula an irresistible sexual attraction that has filtered down through almost every vampire movie that didn't use the NOSFERATU template, but in recent years the vampire has become a tragic, lonely figure to be loved and cared for. This could be as a result of the love story between Buffy and Angelus in BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (and ANGEL). Nobody thought that the romance between a young teenage girl and a man a couple of hundred years old was a bit icky there! Did TWILIGHT author Stephenie Meyer ever see that whilst the novels were congealing in her mind?

Look around you now and there's no end of 'good' vampires who are tragic figures just looking for a good (and preferably teenage - old habits die hard) woman to put them right. Bill in TRUE BLOOD doesn't drink blood, Mick in MOONLIGHT loves a reporter he first saved as a child (Freud would have a field day with that one) and Henry Fitzroy from BLOOD TIES only bites those who want him to (and he's royal too).

The shelves of the local Waterstones are overflowing with the literary works of a newly burgeoning 'gothic romance' genre that is completely dependent on young girls wanting to be the misunderstood thing that can save the lonely monster by doing nothing more than understanding him.

Dracula would be spinning in his undead grave.

Where is this year's Sci Fi Classic Movie?

Last year saw a couple of films leap directly into the top drawer of the 'all time greats' in the shape of the bleak and twisted 'THE DARK KNIGHT' and the altogether lighter and brighter 'WALL-E', both of which were mandatory viewing (subject to the Batman opus's certification of course). There was also the extremely good 'HELLBOY 2' pushing to join them.

We're halfway through blockbuster season and there's no sign of this year coming up with a single genre film to impress. To date the closest we've come are the kiddie flick releases 'CORALINE' and 'MONSTERS vs ALIENS', both of which were highly enjoyable, but not really what you could call classics. 'STAR TREK' also entertained, but turned out to be surprisingly forgettable as well.

'WOLVERINE', 'TERMINATOR 4' and 'TRANSFORMERS 2' all turned out to be disappointing at best.

'HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF BLOOD PRINCE' is the last of the big budget hopes for the season, but advance word suggests that it'll entertain, but not surprise. '2012' is Roland Emmerich's new destructathon which might be spectacular, but will probably also be as empty as the robot mash ups of the year so far.

In fact it looks like the science fiction movie hope now lies with James Cameron's 'AVATAR' which might manage to make it into the cinemas for December, but in the UK is likely to be next year. Whilst he's a safe pair of hands is that the best that we can expect for half a year? The cost of sci-fi epics makes them a target for a cost-conscious film industry in these recession-hit times, so this summer could mark the last throes before the genre goes to sleep like ancient Magrathea, waiting for the economy to recover enough to afford them once again.

Ghosts are Good For Business

Whilst the graveyard of television is littered with the headstones of short-lived science fiction series there is one corner of the genre that is positively booming and that is the one that deals with the life hereafter.

With Virgin 1 running GHOST WHISPERER with the latest series on Living TV and repeats showing on E4 it is significant that this uninspired and, frankly, repetitive show has reached its fourth season and shows no signs of running out of support. Each week Jennifer Love Hewitt meets a ghost, sorts out its social problems and everyone cries a lot. Ok that's unfair because the latest season has mixed up the plotting a lot, but it's essentially that.

GHOST WHISPERER though is not alone. MEDIUM is essentially the same story with a police twist as Patricia Arquette helps to solve crimes by talking to the victims, or dreaming about them to be completely accurate. It's got a strong cast and a great depiction of home life, but episodes can blur together, but it too is on its fourth season.

SUPERNATURAL is less traditional in its view of the afterlife, but it has demons and angels and all kinds of things that ought to be dead, so whilst it might not be positive about whether we'll like it the show is in no doubt that death is not the end. REAPER also deals with souls escaping from hell, but if Hell exists then so must Heaven.

In the UK, BEING HUMAN about a vampire living with a werewolf and a ghost has become a surprisingly strong hit for the BBC and Christmas brought ghost tales CROOKED HOUSE and AFFINITY to UK screens.

Perhaps it's a sign of our troubled times. In a world where tube trains are bombed, planes hit skyscrapers and religious hatred divides the world it is perhaps a comfort to believe that there is a better place waiting for us at the end. Perhaps science hasn't wiped out the sense of wonder in our world and this is just a sign of us looking for the magical in our mundane lives. Or, of course, it could be that we just like the shivers of a good old ghost story.

Whatever the reasons, ghosts are big business on the small screen and it seems likely that folks will be saying 'I see dead people' for quite some time to come.

Gag episodes R Us

Every genre show, providing that it lasts long enough, will sooner or later get around to the gag episode, an episode based around a single gimmick rather than a plot or character development.

SUPERNATURAL's Season 4 (recently finished on ITV) had an episode entitled Monster Movie which was shot in lush black and white with a gothic orchestral score to mimic the old Universal black and white monster movies, just as the title suggests.

The greates exponent of the gag episode was BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER which had all manner of gags. The most famous of these was Once More With Feeling, the musical episode, but no less impressive was Hush which was mostly silent and Superstar where the show was taken over by a minor character. Buffy's spin off ANGEL also has a notable gag episode in which Angel the vampire is turned into a muppet (no really).

In the STAR TREK universe, the main source of the gag episode was the holodeck. Thanks to this wonderful device VOYAGER was able to visit the Saturday morning serials in Bride of Chaotica, and DEEP SPACE NINE redid Bond in Our Man Bashir.

Unfortunately there is a downside to the gag episode when it is not done well. In the wake of CLOVERFIELD, the 'shot by a reporter' episode has appeared in SANCTUARY and SUPERNATURAL and was reworked in BABYLON 5's View From The Gallery to shockingly poor effect.

The gag episode is a sanity saving device for writers looking to put a new spin on a show to freshen it up for the audience and for themselves. This is all well and good if it serves the plot and characters, but if it's done just for the sake of doing it then it falls flat.

Eli Stone and Pushing Daisies cancelled - criminal

It's been a while since the news came that both Eli Stone and Pushing Daisies, two of the most excitingly original genre shows for some time, have been cancelled in the US (and, since that's where they're made, all over the world) in an act that ought to be prosecuted under crimes against humanity.
It is perhaps ironic that humanity is what is at the heart of both of these shows. Despite Eli Stone being about lawyers and Pushing Daisies being about death both these shows are relentlessly optimistic.
And that's what probably killed them.
With Iraq and Guantanamo Bay and global financial meltdown and poverty and everything crashing down around our ears perhaps it isn't the time for a message of goodness and kindness and positivity to be heard and yet this is the message for our times. Surely there can't be a better time for people to be getting the message that we ought to be nice to each other, that tolerance and goodness and just plain being nice are good things.
Eli Stone and Pushing Daisies occasionally tipped into sentimentality and sludge, but they were sweet and lovely and the world is a poorer place without them.