If we're going to be dragged into the Sun, it'll be summer all the way for all of us. Until we melt.

The Avengers

2.21: White Dwarf

Malcolm Hulke’s first solo contribution to The Avengers has a great “What if?” premise, running along more jaundiced lines than the apocalyptic The Day the Earth Caught Fire a few years earlier. An astronomer has forecast the re-entry of a white dwarf into Earth’s solar system, spelling destruction for the planet. When he shows up dead, Steed and Cathy are called into investigate, but rather than furnishing us with a classic doomsday scenario, Hulke offers a tale of greed via stock market manipulation.

Cathy: Do you know what the return of the white dwarf would mean? It would go for the Sun but it would take us with it.

It has to be said that Steed and Cathy seem remarkably cheerful and chipper in the face of imminent disaster, although Steed is assuming Professor Richter (Keith Pyott, Autloc in The Aztecs) was wrong, and that’s why he was killed. The government has kept a lid on things until the professor’s assessment can be confirmed, to prevent unnecessary worldwide social disorder; if the information leaks, as during threats of war, prices on the stock market would drop, and whoever contributed the leak, knowing it was false, could buy up shares on the cheap and make “the biggest killing in history”. He further suggests “the person who wants to buy up half the world would need all the money he can lay his hands on”.

Cathy: After all, what would you do if someone came bursting in here and accused your brother of perpetrating a suicide?

Steed: I’d be very surprised, because I haven’t got a brother.

It turns out that Max Barker (George A Cooper, Cherub in The Smugglers, but more especially Mr Griffiths in Grange Hill) is the man set to make a killing, along with his broker associate Johnson (Bill Nagy), having been confided in by the former’s well-meaning brother Henry (Peter Copley, Dr Warlock in Pyramids of Mars), a Ministry of Science employee.

While this is a case of, so far, so good, the ending is a typically rushed (and sped-up) muddle. We discover the hugely unlikely perpetrator isn’t Max or his minions, but Professor Cartwright (Philip Latham, who played the final, and hugely unlikely, Borusa in The Five Doctors); Cathy has swapped slides and, believing Richter’s theory to be true, Cartwright confesses he murdered the professor and also Rahim (Paul Anil, Jacko in The Underwater Menace) for the sake of one million squidlingtons (for common Doctor Who featured players completion’s sake, also in the cast is George Roubicek, Captain Hopper in The Tomb of the Cybermen).

Both Steed and Cathy are well served, the former sending the latter to Cornwall (an awful lot seems to happen in Cornwall in The Avengers) so he can get on with “Having a good time while there’s still time to have it”. He doesn’t, of course, and his own theories are key to solving the case. To wit, he has been consulting the Boys’ Book of Astronomy for all his scientific data, later managing to confuse subjects (“This book is about astrology!” exclaims Cathy, who gives her birthday as 5 October again).

The guest house is a winningly eccentric affair, with landlady Miss Tregarth (Constance Chapman) dictating meals comprising no sugar or meat, and not allowing smoking (that must be hell for Steed and Cathy). When Steed arrives asking for a room, she’s fully booked so he has to take a blanket in the lounge. But just for one night. “It won’t be the end of the world” consoles Miss Tregarth. A distinctive episode, and if it weren’t for the rather perfunctory closing stages it might have been one of the standouts of the season.

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She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

Just make love to that wall, pervert!

Seinfeld 2.10: The Statue
The Premise
Jerry employs a cleaner, the boyfriend of an author whose book Elaine is editing. He leaves the apartment spotless, but Jerry is convinced he has made off with a statue.

That living fossil ate my best friend!

The Meg (2018)
(SPOILERS) There’s a good chance that, unless you go in armed with ludicrously high expectations for the degree to which it's going to take the piss out of its premise, you'll have a good time with The Meg. This is unabashedly B-moviemaking, and if a finger of fault can be pointed, it's that director Jon Turteltaub, besides being a strictly functional filmmaker, does nothing to give it any personality beyond employing the services of the Stath. Obviously, though, the mere presence of the gravelly-larynxed one goes a long way to plugging the holes in any leaky vessel.

Dude, you're embarrassing me in front of the wizards.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
(SPOILERS) The cliffhanger sequel, as a phenomenon, is a relatively recent thing. Sure, we kind of saw it with The Empire Strikes Back – one of those "old" movies Peter Parker is so fond of – a consequence of George Lucas deliberately borrowing from the Republic serials of old, but he had no guarantee of being able to complete his trilogy; it was really Back to the Future that began the trend, and promptly drew a line under it for another decade. In more recent years, really starting with The Matrix – The Lord of the Rings stands apart as, post-Weinstein's involvement, fashioned that way from the ground up – shooting the second and third instalments back-to-back has become a thing, both more cost effective and ensuring audiences don’t have to endure an interminable wait for their anticipation to be sated. The flipside of not taking this path is an Allegiant, where greed gets the better of a studio (split a novel into two movie parts assuming a…

Never mind. You may be losing a carriage, but he’ll be gaining a bomb.

The Avengers 5.13: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Station
Continuing a strong mid-season run, Brian Clemens rejigs one of the dissenting (and departing) Roger Marshall's scripts (hence "Brian Sheriff") and follows in the steps of the previous season's The Girl from Auntie by adding a topical-twist title (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum came out a year earlier). If this is one of those stories where you know from the first who's doing what to whom, the actual mechanism for the doing is a strong and engaging one, and it's pepped considerably by a supporting cast including one John Laurie (2.11: Death of a Great Dane, 3.2: Brief for Murder).

He mobilised the English language and sent it into battle.

Darkest Hour (2017)
(SPOILERS) Watching Joe Wright’s return to the rarefied plane of prestige – and heritage to boot – filmmaking following the execrable folly of the panned Pan, I was struck by the difference an engaged director, one who cares about his characters, makes to material. Only last week, Ridley Scott’s serviceable All the Money in the World made for a pointed illustration of strong material in the hands of someone with no such investment, unless they’re androids. Wright’s dedication to a relatable Winston Churchill ensures that, for the first hour-plus, Darkest Hour is a first-rate affair, a piece of myth-making that barely puts a foot wrong. It has that much in common with Wright’s earlier Word War II tale, Atonement. But then, like Atonement, it comes unstuck.

In my day, those even endeavouring to fly were accused of witchery.

Warlock (1989)
(SPOILERS) Hero REG? Scottish hero REG? This could only have happened before anyone knew any better. As Richard E Grant himself commented of a role Sean Connery allegedly turned down ("Can you do a SKUTTISH accent for us?"), "How could they have cast a skinny Englishman to play this macho warlock-hunter?" And yet, that incongruity entirely works in Warlock's favour, singling it out from the crowd as the kind of deliciously-offbeat straight-to-video fare (all but) you could only have encountered during that decade.

Never compare me to the mayor in Jaws! Never!

Ghostbusters (2016)
(SPOILERS) Paul Feig is a better director than Ivan Reitman, or at very least he’s savvy enough to gather technicians around him who make his films look good, but that hasn’t helped make his Ghostbusters remake (or reboot) a better movie than the original, and that’s even with the original not even being that great a movie in the first place.

Along which lines, I’d lay no claims to the 1984 movie being some kind of auteurist gem, but it does make some capital from the polarising forces of Aykroyd’s ultra-geekiness on the subject of spooks and Murray’s “I’m just here for the asides” irreverence. In contrast, Feig’s picture is all about treating the subject as he does any other genre, be it cop, or spy, or romcom. There’s no great affection, merely a reliably professional approach, one minded to ensure that a generous quota of gags (on-topic not required) can be pumped out via abundant improv sessions.

So there’s nothing terribly wrong with Ghostbusters, but aside from …

My name is Dr. King Schultz, this is my valet, Django, and these are our horses, Fritz, and Tony.

Everyone creates the thing they dread.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
(SPOILERS) Avengers: Age of Ultron’s problem isn’t one of lack. It benefits from a solid central plot. It features a host of standout scenes and set pieces. It hands (most of) its characters strong defining moments. It doesn’t even suffer now the “wow” factor of seeing the team together for the first time has subsided. Its problem is that it’s too encumbered. Maybe its asking to much of a director to effectively martial the many different elements required by an ensemble superhero movie such as this, yet Joss Whedon’s predecessor feels positively lean in comparison.

Part of this is simply down to the demands of the vaster Marvel franchise machine. Seeds are laid for Captain America: Civil War, Infinity Wars I & II, Black Panther and Thor: Ragnarok. It feels like several spinning plates too many. Such activity occasionally became over-intrusive on previous occasions (Iron Man II), but there are points in Age of Ultron where it becomes distractingly so. …

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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