Dark Prince Of Skaro.

One of the truly unexpected( For me anyway.) delights of Saturday nights Doctor Who episode the Magician's Apprentice was the return of Davros played brilliantly by the remarkable Julian Bleach. He is just such a presence on screen that when he appears I find the scene moves towards him and away from anyone sharing the same space. Buried under layers of damaged , ravaged and scared Kaled tissue he is never more menacing than when speaking gently with that hissing almost reptilian sibilant speech form he issues as the genius creator of the Daleks. For me it is a mix of Michael Fassbender and Boris Karloff with just a trace of fallen angel. The way he taunted and mocked the Doctor who seemed actually rattled by just being in the same room. Just wonderful.
               I have seen him before in other things. He has been in Torchwood as well as The Sarah Jane Adventures as well as playing the magnetic Niccolo Machiavelli in the television series The Borgias. He also performed in the live stage production of Shock Headed Peter. A musical written and performed by Martin Jaques and the genius Tiger Lillies( honestly, treat yourself.) he played "that great long-legged scissor man" and it was as though he stepped from a nightmare "snip,snip.".
               He is that rare thing; a sensitive intuitive actor capable of playing soft spoken monsters.
               Which we all know are the worst of all.
               The return of Skaro to the Doctor who canon is something to be celebrated and relished. Despite its destruction so long ago now in Remembrance Of The Daleks.The destruction of whole worlds seems like such an overcooked epic first response in so many stories.It seems as much a cliche  now as alien worlds seemingly having only one climate or region where life exists. Since Alderann went boom in 1977 it seems the expected thing in science fiction movies or television series which is surely one of the reasons it be avoided as a source of tension.
                 Skaro.
                 Even the name evokes a sense of dark mystery.  In my imagination I have roamed its ghostly petrified forests beneath the light of its moons Falkus and Omega Mysterium. I have scoured its fetid and dangerous swamps in search of clean drinking water with only the map from an old Dalek annual to guide me.
Its vast wastelands teeming with all manner of mutant life and genetically altered botanical atrocities.
                 And whatever walks the wastelands of Skaro walks there alone.

Mark Of The Reihill.

Just look at this cover of the latest issue of Starburst by Belfast based artist Mark Reihill! Is it not a thing of beauty? Was so delighted to get it I felt not unlike the magical Patrick Troughton dancing a wee jig as only a truly cosmic hobo can(as the photo below from some BBC archive shows.)
              Felt as though this was a message from The Doctor saying YOU BETTER BE READY FOR SATURDAY NIGHT.YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE WHERE WE ARE GOING NEXT. ..

Bumble-Me Three.

                                                              (from my sketchbook)

Bumble-Me Two.

                                                                (from my sketchbook)

Who Will never Let You Down.

The nights are Fair drawin' in. There is a dark Saturday-nightish quality that you can feel in the air. It is that time of year. The Good Doctor( And he is The Good Doctor despite his own self doubt) returns this Saturday 19th September.
             We have seen the teaser.
             We have seen the trailer.
             We have seen the prologue..
             All of time and space awaits.
           

The Green Man.

Just finished this and by Jove it was a good 'un. A saucy romp and an honest to goodness ghost story to boot. A story set deep in the English countryside where the wind stirs the restless branches and the eaves of the house echo with a spectral scratching and the creaking of bed springs. Really loved this book by Kingsley Amis. It smelt of autumn windfalls and apple cider downed beneath sturdy pub beams next to a crackling fire and if I am not mistaken that well might be Ma and Pa Larkin planning a late summer bloom romp on the way home if that randy smirk is anything to go by.
           The restless spirit of Underwood which stalks the green man is not a blithe one. It is an unsettling persona which has survived the corporeal death of its body yet still seems driven by the cruel passions that stoked its fire in life. It is not the only other worldly presence which inhabits the old homestead. There are other shapes glimpsed where none should be, footsteps where no foot fell and the woods seem to breathe and exhale in a palpable expression of crude being. There is a spiky very human horniness that permeates the novel that would bring a blush to the bark of old Tree-beard. a very British Oh-er vicar quality that seems of another age but this detracts in no way. Quite the contrary in point of fact as it endears the characters to the reader with a blushing familiarity of all things human and needy and impermanent. Some of the characters in the book are at the beginning of their lives, some are on the cusp of almost adulthood, some are adults struggling to break free of unresolved adolescent impulses while others face their own mortality and pass beyond. All are affected by the ghosts and spirits of The Green Man in different ways.
             As I suspect the readers will be depending upon what age they are when they come to read the book and find their sympathies and empathies perhaps at variance with the writers intentions. Or lack of them depending on how you interpret the mercurial morality of the central character. Especially when the characters desire for a threesome seems to exceed  his desire to lay to rest the spirits of the restless dead.

Bumble-Me.

(From my sketchbook) I had a dream I was a bumblebee just buzzing around collecting pollen and flying like I just dropped my road map and was a bit discombobulated. As you do. as it were.