Have you ever sat down and watched your favourite science fiction drama or fantasy televisions series, and gotten so caught up in the narrative, that you actually find yourself loving these characters? I think it’s a reasonably accurate statement to say that those who invest in scifi do so wholeheartedly; they attach themselves emotionally with their protagonists (and sometimes antagonists), and we decide, as fans, that we instantly know how their stories should go, how the characters should develop… It’s probably partly where some writers get their start; we start gazing towards the end of the story… And we find our own plots for...

The Angels Take Manhattan In Brief: Detective Noir? Check. Pond Farewell? Check. Emotional? Very much check. In Depth: Beware: spoilers within. At the close of David Tennant’s last episode of nuWho, the trailer for series 5 promised us that “The end is only the beginning” and before long we had Eleven, Amelia Pond, Rory Williams, space whales, Daleks, Weeping Angels, River Song, vampire fish, Dreamlords, Sontarans, River Song (again!), Romans and the list goes on… And here we are again, at another ending, for now the end of the Ponds’ is nigh… This is a beautiful episode in terms of setting, look, theme and atmosphere;...

The Power of Three In Brief: Shades of oldWho, RTDWho, and nuNewWho! In Depth: I think, maybe, Steven Moffat and Chris Chibnall snuck in a part one, at least thematically, to the midseries finale goodbye to the Ponds… See nuWho can’t just pick up and companion and drop them off all hidy hi and hody ho like they used to in oldWho; the companion(s) are now more than ever the audience surrogate, we meet them, their families, their home life, their personal lives and for the first time ever, we now have a married couple in the TARDIS, who are feeling forced to choose between the Doctor, and normality. We have two...

A Town Called Mercy In Brief: The Doctor. A Doctor. Two sides. One coin. In Depth: The latest Who offering promised a Wild West adventure… and we most certainly got it! It’s probably best to say that, whilst A Town Called Mercy isn’t quite the beautifully dark Asylum of the Daleks romp, or the madcap hi-jinks of Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, it does manage to place itself rather squarely between them – and even finds a few moments for quiet contemplation that the first two speedy entries to Series 7 could not! Mercy begins quite simply compared to the others as well; rather than a reasonably long teaser before the opening credits, we...

In Brief: I actually can’t do better than the episode title… In Depth: A very good episode that jumps straight back into the current set up for the first half of Doctor Who series 7, whereby the Doctor has no regular travelling companion, instead he picks up people along the way for brief trips and then drops them off again! “This is the gang! Never had a gang before!” This episode figuratively blasts off from Egypt 1334 BC, to India 2367, to African plains circa 1902, to modern day Earth (specifically the Ponds [they are not Williams’] living room) and then FORWARD again to 2367. All in the first 10 minutes – got that? That is...

In Brief: Back… with a bang. In Depth: It’s been a long time coming but Eleven and the Ponds are back, with a few added Daleks. “So how much trouble are we in?” “Out of ten? Eleven!” Any fan of Doctor Who has probably taken the time to watch the short web series “Pond Life” that preceded the series premiere, which has quite firmly established that the Ponds no longer travel routinely with the Doctor – instead he pops in every now and again and keeps them up to date with his travels – whilst they carry on with real life. But for the Ponds, all is not well… indeed divorce is on the cards! So the Daleks decide to pop in...

  In brief: Smashing! In depth: When Christopher Nolan brought his unique vision of the Dark Knight to the big screen in 2005, he brought us a down to earth, super hero film, that focused more on the how it would really work and why a man would choose to dress in the cape and cowl; now he brings this chapter of cinema history to a close in epic fashion by focusing on bringing his version of Bruce Wayne’s story (which in comics will never end, check out “Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader” graphic novel to see my point) to its natural end.  Coincidentally, you can catch up on Nolan’s Batman films, and...