Pillars of Eternity – enjoyable homage to classic computer RPGs, created by enthusiasts with Kickstarter backing. (See review on PC Gamer.) The writing is good, and there’s some decent voice acting, which is welcome, though I find the music disappointing. (It’s not bad, but there’s not enough of it, so it gets repetitious. It compares unfavourably with the great score to Neverwinter Nights, which I still play.) Importantly, the character and combat systems are complicated but not too complicated; I tried playing Baldur’s Gate II (now on heavy discount, given that Baldur’s Gate III has been released), but quickly gave up because I couldn’t work out how not to die. Like most such games, Pillars of Eternity has epic Lord-of-the-Rings-scale proportions, and so has taken up my evenings for many weeks and will do so for many more.
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion – grief memoir, written in the year following the sudden death of her husband. Having read the grief memoirs of C.S. Lewis and Julian Barnes, I decided to read this other classic also; everyone's grief is unique and different, of course, but it's still reassuring to read other people's experiences. "Magical thinking", the attitude that one can bring something about by performing certain rituals or even just wanting it very badly, is I think not quite the right description for what she went through. Certainly she was tormented by thoughts that there was something she or he could have done to prevent his death – thoughts which only subsided when she received his autopsy report (nearly a year after the event, because in her confusion she gave the pathologists, instead of her current address, the address where they lived when they were married). But much of what she describes strikes me more as denial: not disbelieving that the person has died so much as carrying on as though they are still alive; for example, she finds herself unable to give away his shoes because he would need them if he were to return. Didion writes well and honestly, though as when reading her previously I found myself constantly irritated by the highly-specific references to places, shops, celebrities etc. which are no doubt highly significant to American readers but leave me wrong-footed. What does it signify, for example, to talk about going to Honolulu?
The Hollow Crown – reshowing of the 2012 BBC productions of Shakespeare history plays, which I missed first time around though I saw them getting rave reviews. They really are tremendous, with spectacular locations and punchy direction and (of course) top actors in all the roles, great and small, standouts from the first sequence being Ben Whishaw as Richard II, Jeremy Irons as Henry IV, Tom Hiddleston as Prince Hal / Henry V, Simon Russell Beale as Falstaff and Julie Walters as Mistress Quickly. Whenever the antique language gets difficult, it doesn’t matter because the acting is so darn good you can see precisely what’s going on. The text has been ingeniously and sensitively edited so that the drama rattles along like a train, for example inter-cutting between simultaneous-action scenes to keep up the pace. My favourite modification: Richard II’s famous speech beginning “Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings” occurs not only in its proper place (Act III, when things are all going wrong for him) but is also used as a voiceover at the very opening, over the titles, to sound a note of doom and foreshadow how it's going to end. This is what I call good editing – because we are not groundlings watching a play at The Globe; we’re used to films and how films work, and these productions have made the plays work as films, brilliantly.
Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance – milestone exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (see Guardian review): a very carefully thought-out post-imperialist attempt to engage with the legacy of slavery. The issue could hardly be avoided; the museum itself was founded from the bequest and collection of the 7th Viscount Fitzwilliam, who inherited his wealth from his grandfather, who made it largely through the transatlantic slave trade. All the exhibits are connected to slavery in one way or another: as examples of pre-colonial African culture, as representations of Africans before and after the rise of transatlantic slavery, as artefacts of the merchant and investment companies which built the nation’s wealth on the profits of slave trading and slave-staffed plantations, and as products of slavery both material (most surprisingly, a Rembrandt portrait, because painted on a panel of slave-produced South American wood) and intellectual (botanical and technical knowledge derived from slaves but credited to the white authors who published it). I did find myself thinking at points “Oh, that’s going a bit far” – as when the chronometers and sextants used to solve the “longitude problem” of navigation at sea were presented as inventions driven by slavery. And then I thought: well, there’s no question that it was international trade which drove the need for better navigation, and international trade was very largely trade in slaves and the products of slavery, so actually what they'd done wasn't unfair. And then, we were shown (a total surprise for me) that the Royal Society was described in Thomas Sprat’s 1667 History as having been founded as a “twin sister” of the Royal African Society which traded in gold and ivory and people along the West coast of Africa. My own reactions reminded me of what people used to say of the way Andrew Cunningham and I tried to re-write the history of science: “couldn’t you bit a bit less extreme, and then we might agree with it;” in other words, they might agree with us if we didn't actually say it. I think this exhibition is a noble and skilful effort to shift the centre of gravity of how we think about the history and culture of this period. It’s not the final word (the curators describe it as the start of a conversation), but it’s a step along the way.
Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion and Design – nicely-conceived exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. (See trailer video and Guardian review.) We tend to think of the Victorian era as existing in black and white (early monochrome photographs, men in dark suits and women in mourning), although in fact this was the period when synthetic dyes brought colourful clothing within the financial reach of the masses. At the same time, art critics like Ruskin (surely influenced by German Romanticism, though this wasn't discussed) gave colour a priority when judging aesthetics in the visual arts; in the classical period, it had been a poor third behind composition and draughtsmanship. And then colour in art started acquiring new sets of associations: with the middle and far East, with Oscar Wilde and the aesthetic movement, and with decadence – the sickly colours of absinthe and The Yellow Book. All very interesting, though the exhibition does rather peter out; there’s no punchline or overall story, just a collection of exhibit-based tales about colour, albeit fascinating ones.
Lux Aeterna – concert by Voces8 supplemented by Voces8 Scholars, at King's Place, London. I was disappointed with their rendition of the title piece by Liegeti, knowing it super-well from the 2001: A Space Odyssey soundtrack album, which back in the day we all played endlessly in lieu of seeing the film in those times before home video. The performance wasn’t bad, but I was expecting it to be definitive, and sometimes I could hear, even in singers of the capability of Voces8 Scholars, that tone in the voice which can be verbalised as “Oh god, I’m not sure if I’m singing the right note here.” The rest of the concert, though, was superb, including Caroline Shaw’s beautiful ‘and the swallow’ and concluding with the Elgar ‘Lux aeterna’ (to the tune of ‘Nimrod’ from the Enigma variations).
Noises Off – arch-farce by Michael Frayn, at Milton Keynes Theatre. I’d seen it twice before with my wife, and we agreed it was the funniest thing we’d ever seen in the theatre, and quite possibly anywhere, so I thought our granddaughter needed to see it, now that she's of an age, especially since she’d done drama GCSE and can appreciate all the gags to do with stage production. This is the play’s fortieth anniversary, and the content is now dated in some ways, but the comedy is timeless, and Liza Goddard, Matthew Kelly and company gave it full welly. I remember the third act as falling a bit flat after the very funny first act (a chaotic dress rehearsal) and the hilarious second act (a calamitous mid-run performance, seen from backstage, with the fictional cast struggling to keep their play going – or sabotaging it). Where can the play go from there? Apparently Frayn re-wrote the third act at least once to try to solve that problem, and though I don’t think there was any further re-writing for this production the (real) cast somehow found a way to up the power so as to end on a high (or rather, a low).
The Daleks in Colour – a reissue of Doctor Who’s original Dalek story from 1963, to coincide with the show’s 60th anniversary. The advance publicity and the new title highlighted the colourisation of the old recordings, but far more significant to my mind was the radical re-editing. I became aware of this only when I started noticing edits – a visual flashback to an earlier scene, intercutting between simultaneous scenes – which could never have been done at the time, when to economise on studio time programmes such as Doctor Who were recorded "as live", cutting between a handful of cameras while simultaneously mixing in sound and pre-shot film. I also realised that unlike most television shows from that long ago it didn’t seem slow; the action was not dragging at all, and in fact the pace seemed about right. After watching the 75 minute show and enjoying it very much (most though not all of the edits and additional background music seemed natural), I thought to look up the durations of the original version – and found that the episodes totalled 173 minutes: in other words, it had been reduced to less than half its original length. Quite astonishing to put that number on how our expectations of pace have changed. Given that the original episodes are still available, if one wishes to see them, I think this was a worthwhile transformation to make, so that (as the blurb says) a contemporary audience can find the story “as thrilling as it was in 1963”.
Doctor Who – what a relief to have David Tennant return for three special episodes between the tenures of Jodie Whittaker and Ncuti Gatwa, dropping back into the role as if he’d never been away. I wanted to like Jodie Whittaker, being the first woman Doctor and all, but I just didn’t: too much shouting, which lost her the gravitas which I think the Doctor should have. But as I’ve already noted, she did make that wonderful "emergency transmission" during the early weeks of the Covid lockdown, which apparently was her own idea. Respect to her for seeing that that message (it’s okay to be frightened, and we’re going to get through this) needed to be given and that The Doctor was the best person to give it. I still miss Peter Capaldi though, who I think was not well-served by his scripts during his last season, and over Christmas I made time to re-watch his 2014 Christmas special (Doctor Who meets Santa Claus), partly for the bitter pleasure of seeing Clara getting to enjoy one last Christmas with Danny Pink, even if only in a dream.
Doctor Who: Inferno (available on iPlayer) – classic Who from 1970. This was the final story in Jon Pertwee’s first season, and the final appearance of Liz Shaw (Caroline John), who even at the time I thought was a tremendous companion, because she was a scientist and could hold scientific conversations with The Doctor and even repair his equipment when it went wrong. The character was axed by the production team, who were worried that she might be too clever for the target audience, replacing her in the next season with Jo Grant (Katy Manning) who certainly didn’t have that problem. The DVD extras also include interesting commentary on the development of the story, the kernel idea being that scientists are drilling deep into the Earth to release a new form of energy (so, quite prophetic), but The Doctor warns that the Earth’s crust will break open and the drilling is stopped. To make the story more exciting (because there’s a limit to how exciting you can be about a disaster not happening), they came up with the idea of The Doctor falling into a parallel universe where the drilling is more advanced and the Earth really does break open and is destroyed. The parallel universe plot device was then relatively new in mainstream SF; it had been done in the original Star Trek (‘Mirror, Mirror’), but this was only the second time I recall seeing it, and as in Star Trek the alternative universe was not only different but darker, with Britain under fascist rule, giving the actors a chance to play alternative versions of their characters (the Brigadier as a petty dictator, with a duelling scar and an eye patch, and a harder, militaristic Liz who nevertheless retains some of the scientific open-mindedness of her counterpart). The other element added to the story (which otherwise would have struggled to fill the required seven episodes) was that anyone who came into contact with liquid released by the drilling turned into a hairy monster – which didn't really make sense but was very exciting. Next on my list to watch: ‘The Mind of Evil’, which I remember as being truly frightening to my twelve-year old self.
Killing Sherlock: Lucy Worsley on the Case of Conan Doyle – three-part BBC television documentary. Lucy Worsley is always fun and informative, even if as here the main theme – that Arthur Conan Doyle resented his fictional creation Sherlock Homes so much that he tried to kill him off – is actually pretty well known. But there was lots more that I didn’t know: how Conan Doyle was an amateur body-builder and arch-enthusiast for the British Empire (to the extent of worming his way into the Boer War and robustly defending Britain’s conduct in the conflict), and that his involvement with spiritualism went back to the 1880s rather than following his son’s death in the First World War. And I do like the way Lucy Worsley feigns surprise when coming on a juicy bit in the documents she’s reading (“Mmm! Listen to this!”). Of course she's see the passage before, she knows that it's there, that’s why she’s looking at that document and that page in front of the camera, but I prefer to think of this not as fabrication but rather as reconstruction: that is, reproducing for the cameras an experience – the joy of discovery – which is real and authentic, and entirely familiar to anyone who has explored archival material for historical research.
Star Trek: Picard season 3 – final tremendous season to a previously dodgy show. When my younger step-son gave me the DVD boxset for my birthday, he made me promise that I would never, never, never try to watch seasons 1 and 2, whereas this was some of the best Star Trek ever, like a combination of The Wrath of Khan (the second film) and First Contact (the eighth film). And how right he was. The ten-episode story arc reunites the crew of The Next Generation, all plausibly developed since we last saw them twenty years ago (in the tenth film, Nemesis), plus Seven of Nine (off Star Trek: Voyager), one favoured character from the first two Picard seasons, and several great new characters, weaving together most successfully elements from across the Star Trek universe. It’s like the J.J. Abrams re-boot never happened! Patrick Stewart, now in his eighties, shows us a frail but steely Picard in his best portrayal of the character, and the other actors all raise their game to play opposite him. The most poignant episode for me was the one featuring Ro Laren (at least, it seems to be Ro Laren, but is it really?): a Next Generation secondary character who many of us feel was short-changed in the original show, here given space for a tremendous return.
Star Wars: the original trilogy – the classic films, which stand up very well even after all these years. The dramatic beats still land their punch, and Ian McDiarmid’s performance as The Emperor is superbly over-the-top : total ham, but the very best ham. The CGI additions in the “special editions” (the only versions now available) add nothing, though, and are even distracting to those who remember very well what the films used to look like.
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas – much-loved Christmas song. Though originally written for the film Meet Me in St. Louis, it became popular during World War 2, especially amongst US servicemen, for whom it became a song about separation and making the best of a bad situation. “Someday soon we all will be together, if the fates allow // Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow.” It’s that second line which always gets me. This isn’t a song about success, or victory, or even about true love. In defiance of the triumphalist narratives of Western civilisation, it courageously admits that things are awful and that “muddling through” may be the best we can hope for. And yet somehow – and the gorgeousness of the harmonies tells us this – that may be enough. This has been my favourite Christmas song this year.
'Emissary’ – pilot episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. We used to have a tradition of watching this on New Year’s Eve, and I kept that tradition again this year. I think it’s one of the best ever pilot episodes for a television show, with its running theme of new beginnings and setting up so many potential storylines. However, it’s also about the past, in particular about Ben Sisko, the station commander, coming to terms with the death of his wife, who (in a link to one of the most memorable episodes of The Next Generation) was killed in the Battle of Wolf 359. When he encounters aliens who have no concept of linear time, he tries to reassure them of his friendly intentions by explaining the experience of linear existence. But to his horror, he keeps finding himself back in the room where his wife died because – as the aliens say – he exists there. And so the aliens accept him, not because he has persuaded them of the virtues of linear time and onward-going, forward-moving Americanism (baseball is his favoured example) but because they have seen that he too has a non-linear existence. And paradoxically it’s only in acknowledgement of his non-linear existence that he is at last able to move forward. A fabulous concept, and a great start to a great show; it’s just a shame it went all awry in the final season.
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