Video Games – Planet of Lana Review (or “How Games Can Be A Work Of Art”)

In a world where the video games industry is worth around $385bn – making it bigger than Hollywood and the music industry combined – its output is still seen by many as nothing more than mere frivolity.

In the eyes of some, you might find they have the viewpoint that “Video Games are for fun”, “Video Games are for kids” and “Video Games are not art”.

And of course, the first two points are valid – although not exclusively. Games are for fun and games are for kids, but they are also for everyone.

It’s the last point that gets me though, and two examples of that stick in my mind.

The first was on an arts review show on BBC2 many, many moons ago where fresh from enthusiastically fawning over a ballet that was showing in London at the time, the panel moved to discuss the upcoming release of the Nintendo Wii. They all rolled their eyes and scoffed at this toy that they clearly felt was beneath them, and yet that console went on to sell 101 million units across the world and brought video gaming to entirely new demographics. More fool them.

The second was an interview on BBC Radio Scotland with Chris van der Kuyl – the head of 4Js Studio in Dundee for anyone unaware – where the interviewer said in response to the suggestion that if books can be considered art, why can’t games “Well books explore the human condition”. That always felt like such a pretentious response to Chris’s valid point…

Video Games are art

And the reason I bring that point up is that Planet of Lana – a newly released video game from Swedish studio Wishfully and available to play on PC and Xbox – is one of the finest examples of art within video games I have ever experienced.

Planet of Lana Review: What’s The Game About?

To quote the official website – “A planet that used to be a place of undisturbed balance between human, nature and animal has now become something else entirely. The disharmony that had been in the making for hundreds of years has finally arrived in the form of a faceless army. But this is not a story about war. This is a story about a vibrant, beautiful planet –and the journey to keep it that way.”

In simpler terms, it’s a hand-drawn sci-fi themed side-scrolling platform puzzle game about a girl named Lana and her pet cat as they try to rescue her sister following an alien invasion of their land.

Planet of Lana Review: What Do The Critics Say?

Planet of Lana has scored highly across the board, with a 9/10 rating on Steam, 4/5 on Eurogamer and 4.5/5 on Gamesradar

Player reviews also are scoring highly, with the majority of reviews on IGN recommending it. For balance, someone called ‘Andy’ did not recommend it and suggested it was as “boring as it gets”.

Planet of Lana Review: What Do I Think?

The thing about video games is that there will always be people who love something and others who don’t. It’s such a wide-ranging industry that you can’t possibly please all people at all times.

For me, walking simulator-type games are an exercise in utter banality, yet I know people like them because they keep getting made. More power to those people.

And so I can understand why, if you like video games a certain way, you might not be especially keen on Planet of Lana. But I am.

I enjoyed the puzzles to get past the various War of the Worlds-style aliens that got in Lana’s way, I enjoyed the pacing, and having just sank 50 hours into The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom without getting anywhere near the end, I really appreciated the 5 hour playing time. So from that process point of view, it hit the spot.

What moved me to write this review though was just how amazing it looked and sounded.

With its hand-drawn animation style, cinematic depth, and terrific musical score, this truly came across as a genuine work of art.

And the story behind the game itself, told with almost no dialogue, kept me entertained and invested throughout. Without spoiling it, there were points where I felt genuinely sad and happy for the characters, and though that might sound a bit daft, how is that any different to characters in a book or on screen?

In my day job, I often work with video game developers and I know enough about the industry to identify when something stands out as special, and this does. You can tell the time, skill and effort that went into making this game what it was, and in the throwaway world of media in 2023 where games, tv, or film is so quickly forgotten as we move on to the next thing it’s worth that moment to pause and appreciate the art of the video game.

So well done to Wishfully for taking the time to develop their own IP and see it come to life for us to enjoy.

Have a look below at the trailer video and I’m sure you’ll agree that in spite of the notion that some may have that video games cannot be classed as such, Planet of Lana truly is a genuine work of art.

For those with the Xbox Game Pass, Planet of Lana is available as part of your subscription. Try it as soon as you can.

Doctor Who – The Jodie Whittaker Era: Thoughts and Rankings

Previously on Stuart Reviews Stuff.

Christmas Day 2017

 

Doctor Who – Twice Upon A Time Review: Final Thoughts

Well, there it is, the end of the Peter Capaldi era.

I think I’ve made it clear already, but I’ll say it again…

He might not have always had the best material to work with, but he always made the best of the material he had to work with, and that is why he is so good.

And it’s why – to be like Steven Moffat and provide a reference that only the Doctor Who superfans among you will get – I shall miss him. Yes, I shall miss him.

But I won’t miss Moffat.

 

Oh if I had only known what was to come. Turns out I miss Moffat very much.

With the end of the Jodie Whittaker era of Doctor Who upon us, I have been thinking a lot about writing this article, because I’m so glad to put a lid on what has been – in my opinion at least – the worst era of my favourite show.

And there are a few reasons why I think that, and I hope readers will allow me the opportunity to qualify my opinion before going into the sort of rage that has resulted in fandom being so divided over the last five years.

The Writing: First and foremost, the problem lies with the quality of the writing. Episodes were often boring, lacking any obvious threat to the main cast – of which there were too many to know what to do with  – and just oozing exposition. Watching it all (or most of it at least) again over the last couple of months it’s incredible how often the Doctor was used to move the plot along with direct explanations of what was going on and why. Similarly, throughout all three seasons, the companions just so happened to know all about some incredibly niche historical figures and would explain it to the audience in the first few minutes. All style and no substance.

The Acting: Well it often wasn’t great, was it? Two stand-up comedians, the world’s least charismatic companion (Ryan), an awful portrayal of the Master and a leading lady who was unable to break free of the status of budget David Tennant. I wish Jodie Whittaker no ill will, but as I said in my Power of the Doctor review, as an actor she’s not in the same league as her predecessors in modern Who especially. If we were to compare her skills to every Doctor for their TV work alone (by which I mean Colin Baker is much better in Big Finish), she’s in the bottom three. Not awful, but there have been others who are

better. And before anyone says it, no it’s not because she’s a woman either. Just look at her acting credits in comparison to the others. Even the most ardent supporters of the Doctor being played by a woman seem to be more in favour of Jo Martin than her. 

The Destruction of Established Lore: The Timeless Child stuff pissed off a lot of people, including me. I could have got on board with there being a missing Doctor, played by Jo Martin, but they took it too far, and actually, they failed from the first moment by having her TARDIS as a police box. I’m sorry, but the lore of the TARDIS was established in the second episode back in 1963 and has been continually referenced in the subsequent near 60 years; it doesn’t take much to stick to that bit. But the notion of the Doctor being this Timeless Child simply didn’t work. There were so many, so many examples of how s/he is just an ordinary Time Lord that it didn’t make sense. In recent months I’ve seen it written that originally Jo Martin’s character was meant to be some random Princess on the run, and at the last minute someone decided it should be the Doctor. Utterly incredible if true.

The Dropped Threads: But even if you’re going to go with that ridiculous storyline, try to see it through. Instead, it – much like other things like Yaz’s sudden love for The Doctor – was just dropped without any resolution.

Overuse Of The Daleks, The Cybermen and The Master: I can’t say this is something exclusive to this era, but it definitely seemed worse than normal. I mean…two years in a row we had the same bloody story on New Year’s Day. Also, there was no explanation for how the Master was still alive and why he’d had such a change of heart following Missy’s redemption.

The Music: I love Murray Gold, but I thought it was time for a change. Sadly this was not a change for the better. Yes, music is entirely subjective, but it didn’t do it for me. I felt the music in this era often sucked the life out of the show rather than added to it. Bring back Murray.

The Fans: You know the old saying; “Everyone is the hero of their own story”. You also know the new-ish saying; “Twitter is a cesspool”. Combine those two things and you have Doctor Who fandom since 2017. There are people out there who formed a cast iron opinion on Doctor Who – with zero critical analysis of what they were actually seeing on screen – based on their political beliefs. Now sure, that kind of crap has permeated just about every aspect of society, but it’s just so tiring that it’s happened to a TV show that is meant to be entertainment for the whole family. As a reminder, the whole family ranges from the young child through to the grandparent and it includes people who have watched the show before this era and those who are new to it now. Sadly, Doctor Who has been subject to an ideological/demographical land grab by two warring factions of fans who believe they have ownership over the direction, writing and casting of the show. Really, neither of these sets of fans have shown themselves to be particularly well-balanced, and I’ve sat back in a sort of disgusted awe at the sort of “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” mentality of people who are so angry and rude to those who don’t share their opinions. And when their hostility is met in kind, they retreat into a sort of “You’ve triggered me” attempt to take the moral high ground. My advice to you reading this, whoever you are and whatever beliefs you may have, is that you have no right to the ownership of the show. The show is not written with you in mind and it’s not a case of it being “your turn” to have the casting reflect what you want the show to be. It’s meant to be entertainment for all the family and should be free of any and all kinds of political distraction. You don’t see this level of disharmony over shows like Line of Duty or fucking Poirot do you? I suspect though that the reason for this is because, as I say above, Twitter – and indeed the internet in general – can be a bit of cesspool. If I didn’t witness this awful culture war among fandom, I’d just think of the show as poorly written and being lumbered with this last major issue.

And that leads me to the incredibly thorny subject of…

Political Correctness/Wokeism/Preachiness: As I wrote this, I went to Twitter and immediately found exactly the point I make above – two political extremes pitted against each other. I saw someone whose Twitter handle screamed ‘Ultra Left Wing’ retweeting a video of Jim Davidson on GB News talking about how Doctor Who has gone all woke, saying “Friendly reminder that Doctor Who has been woke since 1963”. And then one of the first replies – in amongst many from people with almost identical twitter profiles – was someone saying “Not a single one of them can tell you what they mean when they say “woke”. Because if they told you what they think it means they’d have to admit they’re racist, transphobic, misogynists”. I will try to take up this debate as someone who firmly occupies what I believe is a well-balanced, central viewpoint. 

Woke is defined as being aware of injustice in society, while Political Correctness is the avoidance of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against. Meanwhile being political and preachy is another kettle of fish entirely; it’s about using the show as a platform to air political and/or topical grievances.

So yes, Doctor Who has always been woke, it’s largely held true to the level of political correctness of the time (so stop trying to disown stories from the 60s and 70s that don’t conform to 2022’s PC standards) but Doctor Who has never been so regularly confronting of current social and environmental issues as it is now. I think people just bundle that in as either being ‘woke’ or ‘not woke’ to suit their argument.

What we’ve seen served up by Chris Chibnall has been week after week of stories that lack subtlety as they confront political issues that he no doubt feels strongly about; issues that people looking for a bit of light entertainment on a weekend evening don’t necessarily want to have thrust down their throats. In 24 stories we’ve seen racism (twice), anti-capitalism/automation, pollution (two weeks in a row), mental health, and gender equality (too many times to mention) presented ahead of good storytelling. 

There is nothing wrong with doing this if it’s done correctly, and I doubt anyone of a fair mind would take issue with the show occasionally being used as a vehicle to either highlight or reflect the issues of the day; this is, after all, something that we’ve seen occasionally across the show’s history. Curse of Peladon was made to reflect the UK joining the EEC, The Green Death was about pollution (a hot topic of the time that was also highlighted in other shows like The Goodies) Monster of Peladon reflected the miners’ strike, The Sunmakers was down to Robert Holmes’s frustrations about HMRC and so on. And they were done to varying degrees of subtlety and writing quality. 

But that’s a handful of examples over 26 years as opposed to numerous examples across 24 stories. And before anyone starts to say “Well, I think you’ll find the Space Museum was about the issue people have today with not cherishing our local museums” or other highly tenuous, reaching nonsense, there are only a handful of examples across 26 years. 

Orphan 55 is the worst example of the era because it combined being incredibly preachy and directly lecturing – presumably to adults rather than kids – with being absolute dogshite. Compare that to the Green Death, which is on the nose about environmental issues in a non-condescending way. But what’s it remembered for most? The final scene where Jo gets engaged and the Doctor leaves, a sad, lonely figure driving into the night. And guess what? It’s a very well-liked story. You can do political, you can do topical and you can do environmental if there’s a good story in there to prop up the point you want to make.

But that’s what it comes down to; mostly these complaints wouldn’t matter if Chris Chibnall was a good writer and showrunner and his episodes were entertaining. And I say mostly because even though both Rosa and Demons of the Punjab are actually good, I don’t think we needed two similarly themed episodes broadcast within weeks of each other; then again that’s down to being a poor showrunner, isn’t it? But anyway, generally speaking, the episodes were neither well written, nor entertaining, and what happened as a result? The general public – the sort of people who matter if you get upset about ratings – switched off. So although you and people like you on social media may have enjoyed Doctor Who over the last 4 or 5 years, you were in the minority. And the fact that there are so many people branding the show as woke – whether they’ve misused the term or not – and not watching it as a result, shows that. And it’s a problem that will hopefully be fixed by having a good showrunner and a stronger cast take over.

Aaaaaaaanyway.

You know I watch Dr Who on a loop, but after doing my big review project, I came to the realisation that I knew there were stories I just didn’t enjoy and there was no point in even attempting to watch them anymore. So they have been dropped from subsequent loops.

That list includes…

• Underworld (episodes 2-4, I like episode 1)
• The Armageddon Factor
• Warriors’ Gate (I’ll watch the first and last 5 minutes and that’s it)
• Time Flight
• Arc of Infinity
• Terminus
• Planet of Fire
• The Twin Dilemma
• Mark of the Rani
• Time & The Rani
• Silver Nemesis
• Survival
• The TV Movie
• The Doctor’s Daughter
• The Vampires of Venice
• Hide
• The Crimson Horror
• Sleep No More
• The Eaters of Light

There are 10 Jodie Whittaker stories that I will add to that list. That’s 41% of her run compared to 4% of the rest of modern Doctor Who. It’s an astonishing number.

But they are just either outright bad or so boring that I just don’t feel the need to watch them anymore.

And so with that, let’s get to the ratings.

 

The Stories

24. Orphan 55

This should come as no surprise to anyone, because frankly, it’s the worst episode of Doctor Who. Preachy, nonsensical, extremely badly acted and criminal costume design. I hated it when it was shown and made a conscious decision never to watch it again. 

23. The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos

This is what Scottish people would refer to as a wet pump of an episode. Utterly unbecoming of a season finale and it had a stupid name. That’s about all I can remember about it because I didn’t watch it again this time, and I think I fell asleep when I tried to watch it on broadcast.

22. The Ghost Monument

Nothing happened in this episode. Nothing. Looked lovely though.

21. The Tsuranga Conundrum

Again, nothing happened. The only reason it finishes higher is that I watched it again, and was taken aback by how different the guy from Ted Lasso is in it.

20. Ascension of the Cybermen & The Timeless Child

So this one, at last, has stuff going for it, and almost worked with the Earthshock vibe in the first episode, but the second episode was an affront to Doctor Who, and thus must never be forgiven! 🙂 And I fucking hated the Master in it.

19. Legend of the Sea Devils

As per my review last week, this is an absolute stinker, and yet there are five episodes even worse than it.

18. The Woman Who Fell To Earth

Another episode that just felt so limp, even though it had a lot of time, effort, and budget spent on it. This was the show’s chance to capitalise on public interest and yet 2 million people chose not to tune in the week after.

17. Nikola Tesla’s Night Of Terror

Humdrum. And I don’t like the guy who plays Tesla either.

16. The Witchfinders

Another chore of an episode. It took me over a week to watch it this time around because I just kept falling asleep. It wasn’t visually pleasing and the plot was without life.

15. Spyfall

An action-packed first episode with a good cliffhanger made way for more Master crap and a confused and outright dull second part.

14. Can You Hear Me

We’re now into the episodes I will watch again. This one has its flaws but there’s enough in it for me to want to come back to it at some point. I do love how upset people got with the Doctor’s reaction to Graham. That episode just upset everyone.

13. The Haunting of Villa Diodatti

At the time I said it stood out as one of the better episodes of the series it was in, and when you consider its standing, that’s probably still a fair reflection. It was ok and it did serve to set up the finale; it’s just a shame that the finale it set up was so bad.

12. It Takes You Away

Shout out to Ed Watkinson who I follow on Twitter. He loves this story and often champions it. I think it’s different and different can be good. It’s a story I’d happily watch again but just don’t have too much love for.

11. Praxeus

For those paying attention, we’re now finally into the episodes I genuinely do like. One of the positives about the show in this era is that it certainly looks good a lot of the time. This one had a sense of scale but it also had what I would consider a pretty interesting and culturally relevant story without being too in-your-face about it. And the guest cast was good too.

10. Revolution of the Daleks

Good cast again, and quite good fun, but this one is too much of a retread of what we saw just one year earlier.

9. The Power of the Doctor

Without the nostalgia, this would probably be in 17th place at best, but I’m a sucker for paying homage to Classic Era Who (which ironically is one of the reasons I really dislike the Jodie Whittaker Era; because it so often did the opposite). So here it ranks at 9.

8. Flux

If I was to rank individual episodes of this story in this list, I would say that Village of the Angels would finish on top, but I have a procedure and so it was only one part of a six-part story. Other elements unfortunately let it down, but it wasn’t all bad.

7. Demons of the Punjab

Again, this is an episode I genuinely like, though as above, it was thematically very similar to an episode broadcast a few weeks earlier. The villain in this episode is a troubled young man, and it felt real. The first Jodie Whittaker season essentially ignored Yaz, in spite of her being the best actor in the main cast, so it was good to see her character have a chance to develop.

6. Arachnids in the UK

I don’t get the hate for this one. It’s fun, a bit creepy for people who hate spiders and Chris Noth is wonderful in it. It feels like an RTD era episode.

5. Revolution

That they tried something different with the Dalek, and made it a bit more menacing was a nice change. Another episode with a good guest cast and a bit of development work with Ryan’s dad. It did the job for me.

4. Rosa

Confronting issues of political correctness is not a bad thing if it’s done ok, and in all fairness, this one was done well. I enjoyed it the first time around and in subsequent viewings. My only issue was the character of Krasko, who was a Playschool level villain.

3. Kerblam!

Another fun episode that felt very much like the sort of story Sylvester McCoy would star in. Made sense, was well-written and reflected the modern world without being too in-your-face about it.

2. Fugitive of the Judoon

It might surprise you that this is as high up as it is, but taken in isolation, it’s actually really good. Every member of the main cast it well accounted for, there were some great surprises in there and it asked a lot of questions that a good writer and showrunner could have developed and answered in a satisfying way. The fact that Chibnall made an absolute cunt of it does not detract from the quality of this episode on its own.

1. Eve of the Daleks

I’ll always be a sucker for a Time Loop episode. Great stuff.

 

The Companions

 

4. Ryan

I don’t think it’s fair to say Ryan is the worst companion in Doctor Who history; he’s just the worst in all of modern Who. I’ve never seen such an insipid, uninspiring performance. Maybe it’s the writing, maybe it’s the attempt at the accent or maybe it’s just him. He was rubbish.

3. Graham

While it is difficult to separate Graham and Dan, I would say that a combination of poor writing, being stuck in an overcrowded cast and too often not displaying the sort of emotion that someone should do in the situations he found himself in puts Graham in 3rd.

2. Dan

His character had more room to breathe, his dialogue was snappy and he formed a good double act with Yaz. 

1. Yaz

Although she was let down with very little development in her first series, I thought Yaz was the best actor in the cast and managed to be a strong, likable companion that didn’t outstay her welcome. Often was the case that she was stronger than the Doctor, which is a bit silly really.

 

The Cliffhangers

3. Flux Episode 2

I mean…we don’t have much to choose from here when a totally forgettable cliffhanger, the likes of which were seen every week for 26 years makes the top 3.

2. Flux Episode 4

The Doctor is turned into a Weeping Angel. Shame the resolution was so easy.

1. Spyfall Episode 1

Even though it resulted in my least favourite Master and it was never explained how he even came to be here, it was a fun cliffhanger. Just a shame what came after it.

The Music

I always include this in my rankings of era, but as I said above, none of the music did it for me. Just awful.

Thanks for reading and as someone who is always keen to debate an issue in a constructive manner, I’d welcome any comments. You can get me on Twitter @sgmilne

Doctor Who – The Power of the Doctor Review (or “Nostalgia 1-0 Shoddy Writing”)

They say that all good things must come to an end.

On an unrelated note, the Jodie Whittaker and Chris Chibnall era of also ended yesterday.

Yeah, that’s me being mean about it, but I can’t say I’m unhappy that we’re moving away from a writer like Chris Chibnall back to Russell T. Davies, or indeed from Jodie Whittaker to David Tennant – albeit briefly.

Doctor Who has suffered in recent years due to bad writing, and that issue kept going all the way through to the end, with the final episode of this run, The Power of the Doctor.

But it wasn’t all bad, as I’ll explain.

Doctor Who – The Power of the Doctor Review: What’s This One About?

The Master, the Daleks and the Cybermen pull together a plot of some kind to erase the Doctor from history and destroy the world. Or something.

It’s also about nostalgia.

Which side of this do you think I preferred?

Thoughts – Time For The Daleks, The Cybermen and The Master To Go On An Extended Break

I may come to reconsider this opinion in future, but watching The Power of the Doctor – and in particular the first 45 minutes of it – I just felt it lost control of itself and felt difficult to follow.

Regular viewers of this blog will know that I tire of the constant use of The Master, The Daleks and The Cybermen, and in particular, the way that The Master and The Cybermen are paired up again and again and again and again and again and again and again.

In recent years, they have joined forces in three separate season finales and now they are back together in this. It’s overdone and it’s boring. And obviously, the Daleks are

Suddenly Doctor Who feels like it’s back in safe hands

overdone too.

Within the Doctor Who Universe, The Daleks must have had enough of the Master’s shit, so must the Cybermen, and last time I checked, they didn’t like each other much either. And yet still, here we go again.

We’re way past the point of diminishing marginal returns with all three of these villains, so let’s just give them a rest. A long, long rest.

The problem was compounded by the way that by simply including them, it felt like Chris Chibnall didn’t bother to write a compelling story. No change there then.

So what was actually happening? Was the stuff with the Master appearing in artwork explained? Was there a reason for him being Rasputin and also a lecturer in 2022? Not that I could see. What was the end game? The destruction of Earth? Or was it that he wanted to discredit the Doctor?

And on that note, what was the point of regenerating into the Doctor when the result was it was The Master in a Doctor costume? Who would believe it was The Doctor?

All of that stuff was just an excuse really to set up the good part of the show; the Nostalgia

The Nostalgia – Just Hook It To My Veins

Ok, so firstly we’re going to just ignore how the nostalgia entirely misses out every companion from both the RTD and Moffat eras of the show, but that’s ok. They’ve had their moment and no doubt they will have more moments in the future.

This was all about celebrating Classic Who and I for one was all for it.

After the mess of the first 45 minutes, the appearance of not one but five former Doctors was a wonderful moment and one that as a lifelong fan, I massively appreciated. I cheered.

As it went forward, we had some terrific and touching scenes with Tegan & The Fifth Doctor and Ace & The Seventh Doctor. And even though I wasn’t a fan of either of those two

Lots of men aged 35 and above punched the air and cheered when this legend appeared. God love him, and doesn’t he look amazing for 97

companions, it was a nice payoff.

To top it all off though, we had the final surprise (and I say surprise because I’m in enough Doctor Who chats to have heard about this in advance) of the ex-companions get-together at the end.

What a wonderful moment it was to see my absolute favourite, William Russell appear again as Ian Chesterton, looking fantastic for 97 years old.

Ever since the show returned in 2005, I’ve always hoped he would make one last appearance, and there it was. He didn’t do much but he didn’t need to. It’s something small that will no doubt have meant a lot to so many fans, including me. Even the world’s most angry man, Ian Levine, loved it.

The way they were able to use the Doctors, in spite of time making it impossible for them to look as they did when they were on the show, was very cleverly handled. I loved it.

And I’m still holding out hope for a proper episode involving Paul McGann.

The Regeneration

Moving on from the nostalgia, we come to the regeneration itself.

For me, every regeneration we’ve had since the show returned has been high on emotion of some kind. This one? Not so much if I’m honest.

But then I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Tonally it hit the right spot because this Doctor has been a poorly written one that lacked emotional depth, and was played by a weaker actor than at least three of her recent predecessors. I don’t think Jodie Whittaker as an actress could hit the heights we saw from Ecclestone, Tennant or Capaldi, and Chris Chibnall doesn’t have the ability to write regenerations as good as those ones.

And so we were left with something that was a bit light and positive. I can handle that; it was what it was, which was fine. Nothing more, and nothing less.

I wish Jodie Whittaker no ill will; I never have. I just don’t think she’s all that good.

The Dropped Threads

The next issue is one that I’m not all that sure is good or bad.

I don’t know if it escaped your attention, but it felt like a lot of threads just seemed to be dropped.

First of all, Dan was unceremoniously removed from the episode early on because he’s the only companion other than Victoria to realise that being forced into near-death

If you’re like me, you knew the word that was away to come out of his mouth was “Adric”. Glorious

experiences every week isn’t fun. But it still seemed a bit sudden.

Then there was the Doctor/Yaz love story that just petered out completely. I felt it was rushed through suddenly in Eve of the Daleks, but here it was dropped. Maybe they just ran out of time with it. And the Doctor’s decision to drop her off on Earth was a fun one; I just hope that she doesn’t mention it to Mel or Tegan, who quite happily stayed on with the Doctor after a regeneration.

And then of course there’s the big one; The Timeless Child. For one worrying moment, I thought the girl at the start was going to turn out to be the Doctor, but in the end, nope, it wasn’t even a girl…or something…that bit confused me. But Jo Martin’s appearance as a hologramatic representation of the Doctor aside, this felt very much like we were back to there being 13 Doctors and let’s say no more about it.

Now that is both bad and really, really good. It was an absolutely awful storyline that messed with the very beginnings of a show that this episode sought to pay tribute to, so I’m happy it’s been dropped, but it’s another indicator of how bad a showrunner Chris Chibnall was.

I don’t think the TARDIS is ever going to regurgitate that fob watch back up to any new showrunner or Doctor, do you?

Random Observations

• I do not like Sacha Dhawan’s take on the Master, and never have; it’s far too over the top. That being said, even though I didn’t understand why he was Rasputin, I appreciated the nod to Roger Delgado with the “I am the Master and you will obey me” bit.
• I also liked that he knew Tegan and Ace, and remembered how he’d killed poor old Aunt Vanessa
• I didn’t like the Rasputin song bit though; I cringed.
• And I also cringed when the Dalek and Cyberman exchanged glances.
• Speaking of the Cybermen, when those ones came out of that Russian Doll, how did they also get downstairs so fast?
• Yaz is pretty strong, lifting up the Doctor like she weighed nothing.
• I wonder if I missed a couple of book or Big Finish references with the Doctor/Ace fallout and McGann not wanting to wear a robe?
• God bless her for trying, but Janet Fielding was awful. My girlfriend Mhairi quite rightly asked if this was her first attempt at acting since the 1980s.
• On the flipside, Sophie Aldred was actually pretty good; fair play.
• Speaking of awful companions, I’m not unhappy that Ryan didn’t appear. The empty chair had more charisma than him.
• If Kate wants to hire some of those companions, she’d better do it quick…
• Lastly, wasn’t it great to see David Tennant back. Seeing the Doctor regenerate into him again, it just felt like the show was back in safe hands.
• Although I don’t understand how the clothes changed.

Doctor Who – The Power of the Doctor Review: Final Thoughts

There are two sides to the story here.

The first is that in terms of a followable plot, The Power of the Doctor was pretty rubbish. Overused villains trying once again to destroy Earth without any real motivation or clever reason. it just felt like a mess.

But then on the other side of it there’s the nostalgia, which was simply wonderful.

As a lifelong fan, getting to see former Doctors and companions come back, even if only for a brief moment, was exactly the sort of thing that I love.

So on that note, the good has outweighed the bad.

As for the era as a whole? I will shortly do my final thoughts and rankings.

For now though, three cheers for nostalgia, and here’s to the future.

 

Doctor Who – Legend of the Sea Devils Review (or “To Quote Ian Chesterton, ‘What’s Going On Here???'”)

It takes a lot to unite the fractured fan base of Doctor Who in 2022 and yet Legend of the Sea Devils has managed to achieve that. Why? Because it’s a mess.

Now that gives away the tone of the review, but then I doubt anyone will have seriously thought I was going to give it praise.

No, it’s pretty much accepted that this is a bad one, and I’ll give you my take on why that is.

Doctor Who – Legend of the Sea Devils Review: What’s This One About?

Good question…

Thoughts – Making It Was The First Mistake

In 2022, there are lots of people who like to be offended. Anything relating to race, creed, gender or general identity is simply a minefield in a world where social media mobs will call for someone’s head if they perceive any sense of wrongdoing.

We live in a world where the Talons of Weng Chiang is disliked – in spite of it being one of the finest examples of Doctor Who ever written –  because of the depiction of Chinese

Good old happy Dan…the murderer

people and the way they hired John Bennett to play Li H’sen Chang. We also live in a world where it was approved to reanimate the characters in the Abominable Snowmen to look more authentically Tibetan, while also making a big show of the fact it was so wrong not to hire Tibetan people in the first place even though the chances are there weren’t many Tibetan actors to hand in 1967 and the characters they have reanimated still have the voices of white British actors.

Of course, those same people don’t vociferously criticise the same era for the cartoonish way it represents Scots in Terror of the Zygons or the Welsh in the Green Death, but I suppose its more important to die on the hill that is supporting the cause of the nation with 1.4 billion people whose radar Doctor Who is not on rather than the 3 million Welsh.

Anyway, the point is that if people look to the past to be offended and hold the past to today’s standards, then when it comes to representing Chinese culture in an episode in 2022, they have to be even more careful.

And as far as I understand, they weren’t. There were issues relating to costumes that some thought might be considered offensive even though about 0.0001% of the viewing public would have known the difference.

Depending on you speak to it was either that or just plain bad direction that meant a lot of material in Legends of the Sea Devil was cut.

And boy, does it show.

The first 10-15 minutes of this episode are a bungled confused mess, where you’d be forgiven for thinking they skipped about 5 pages of the script every time they flipped it over.

And it doesn’t really improve from there.

Everything about this episode feels misplaced, from Dan’s sudden change from jolly Liverpudlian in a pirate costume to a mass murderer with a sword to flying pirate ships and Sea Devils with the ability to jump hundreds of feet in the air.

I just couldn’t follow it in parts, and even when I could the plot just felt paper thin.

The Problem With The Sea Devils

The characterisation of the Sea Devils was pretty dull here, but I don’t think that was the main problem.

Now I am all for faithful representation of original costumes and if I remember rightly, I lamented the way the Silurians in modern Who didn’t look much like the costumes from the

As good as it is that they were faithful to the original masks, they didn’t work for me

1970 story.

So in theory I should be pleased that they are using what looked like the same masks – or at the very least the design from Warriors of the Deep – here. But I’m not.

As much as I believe in faithful representation, I also think that in 2022, for the episode to be taken seriously, the costumes should be made to the sort of standard you would expect a newly designed costume to be. Unfortunately, the Sea Devils masks barely moved, had zero emotion and had no lip sync. I just don’t think that’s acceptable. If this was a new monster, people would be right to complain.

They just looked shit.

“The Doctor had better make sure Rose Tyler doesn’t hear that”

I was watching this episode with my girlfriend Mhairi earlier this week, and when the Doctor told Yaz that she’s the best person she’d ever met and if she was the sort of person who went on dates, it would definitely be with her, I didn’t have a chance to comment before Mhairi chuckled and said “The Doctor had better make sure Rose Tyler doesn’t hear that”.

And she’s right.

If you read my reviews you’ll know I wasn’t all that keen on Pyscho Rose from Season 2, but at least by the time that season ended, you did believe in the Doctor’s relationship with her. Equally, you absolutely believe in the Doctor’s love of Renette in The Girl in the Fireplace.

The Doctor and Yaz? Nope. This ham fisted attempt at shoehorning a relationship into the Doctor/Companion dynamic hasn’t worked. It was thrust upon us with little warning and it just doesn’t resonate.

Is it down to the acting? Well it doesn’t help, but no, this is about writing. Chris Chinball simply isn’t in the same league as either RTD or Moffat.

Surely we can all agree on that?

Random Observations

• The way the Chief Sea Devil was despatched without any warning was poor on every level. It was poorly written, felt a bit like he was the wronged party and the way it was
  

  All I could think of whilst watching was Ian’s exasperation from Edge of Destruction

  directed and edited was incredibly bad.

• How did it survive inside that statue?
• Here’s another story where the cheap resolution is for a dispensible character to happily give up his life to save the Doctor and his companion. Another Chibnall speciality.
• Considering he’s been away from his fancywoman for four years, Dan probably needs to move on with his life rather than phone her like the events from the start of Flux were last week.
• I see we have another very obscure historical character that everyone in the TARDIS crew seems to be aware of.
• They are all suspiciously good at skimming stones
• When “They are all suspiciously good at skimming stones” gets in as a random observation you know I’m struggling to flesh this section out.
• Within the world the show takes place in, they aren’t actually called Sea Devils. Someone who’s watched the original story would know that, and would ignore Warriors of the Deep.
• Whilst watching this, all I could think of was Ian’s line from Edge of Destruction; “What’s going on here?” I wish I knew Ian.

Doctor Who – Legend of the Sea Devils Review: Final Thoughts

I’ve now watched this episode twice. Once on the day of broadcast and again a few days ago. I can barely remember what went on. I can’t think what the plan the Sea Devils actually had was either, and that is a testament to how utterly drab and forgettable this was.

Poorly directed, terribly edited and lazily written, it is a story with almost no redeeming features.

It’s bad and I think you’ll be hard pushed to find anyone who disagrees on that, which – as I said earlier – means it does the almost impossible and unites the fractured fanbase of Doctor Who in agreement.

Is it the worst episode ever? No, it’s probably not even in the bottom 3 episodes of this era, which is saying something, but it is crap.

Only one more adventure to go before we can put this shambolic era behind us.

Alas, that’s an opinion that certainly won’t unite the fanbase.

 

Doctor Who – Eve of the Daleks Review (or “This One’s Right In My Wheelhouse”)

I try my best to avoid spoilers for Doctor Who, which is incredibly difficult given that there are so many people out there whose very identity is based upon tweeting about Doctor Who at all times, hoping to be first to break news.

When it comes to spoilers, I would say I border on being a bit uptight about it because I don’t even want to know the names of the episodes, let alone basic synopses; to me, that’s a spoiler, because I want to go into things with as fresh a pair of eyes as possible.

But I do remember that for once, in the case of Eve of the Daleks, synopsis spoilers actually made me more excited about seeing an episode.

Why? Read on.

Doctor Who – Eve of the Daleks Review: What’s This One About?

Groundhog Day!!!

Thoughts – Oh I Love A Good Time Loop

It would be very hard for me not to like Eve of the Daleks, because I love a good Time Loop story. Groundhog Day, Happy Death Day, Russian Doll, Palm Springs and more; I’ve

“Mon then!!!”

enjoyed them all, because it’s solid, reliable premise, and it’s surprising that it’s not really been done before in Doctor Who to the level it’s done here.

And yes, it follows the same pattern of just about every example of the genre, but I’m ok with that. What I enjoy about it is the familiarity of the concept where they begin to work out the situation they are in and develop a solution to break free from it. For me, it just works; it’s right in my wheelhouse.

The twist here though is that for each loop, they have one minute less to solve their dilemma, and so that adds an extra layer of drama…well as much drama as there can be when you know the outcome will be that the Daleks lose again.

If I was to criticise it though it would be that it was probably 10 minutes too long; this would have been a very tight 45-50 minute episode but lasting an hour it began to slow a little bit in the middle.

The Daleks Are The Good Guys Here

In spite of being the universe’s greatest serial killer, the Doctor – as you might expect – is rarely portrayed as the bad guy (or girl).

And yet, in this story, the Daleks are coming at it from the position that they feel aggrieved and they are coming to sort the Doctor out. Now unfortunately in this case they were wrong to blame her, but still, they are written as the justified party to an extent.

On the other side from them there’s a very smug Doctor and Aisling Bea’s character, who it turns out is pretty horrible. She’s rude to her mum, she’s awful to Nick, she betrays just about everyone in one loop or another and on the whole, she’s just a bit of an arsehole. Meanwhile, the Daleks are coming at from the angle that millions of their kind were murdered without justification.

Fair play Daleks, I’m with you on this one.

It Fits The Occasion

Eve of the Daleks is also quite sharp with its humour, and that’s fine with me.

The danger of using humour too much is that if it misfires or is inappropriate it just falls flat. Thor: Ragnarock was a good example of a movie where humour worked well, but when

She did ask for it…

Star Wars tried to take the same approach it just didn’t work.

Eve of the Daleks was aired on New Year’s Day, so it’s ok for it to be a bit more jokey than a random episode mid-season, and with two well-respected comedians in the cast the talent was there to pull it off.

Once again, the best example of the humour came from Dan when he asked the Dalek if he was new on the job,

Another tick in the box.

Random Observations

• As I said in my previous review, I’ve skipped Season 12 in my watch-through of Doctor Who to ensure I had these reviews written in time for Power of the Doctor, so maybe I’ve forgotten something, but the Yaz/Doctor love story seems to have very suddenly crept up on us. I don’t really buy it either; but then that’s maybe because Yaz isn’t a psycho about it like Rose Tyler and the nuance has gone over my head.
• One bit about the time loop story confused me, and that was that there was an acceptance that the loop ended at midnight. Did it? I thought it just looped whenever everyone was killed.
• Also, I’m not entirely sure how accurate the timings were. In the second or third loop – the one where they lock themselves in Nick’s locker – that seemed to go on for a long time. Maybe it was five minutes in the same way that wrestlers come out every “two minutes” in the WWE Royal Rumble.
• Speaking of the scene in Nick’s locker, I thought the humour worked particularly well here.
• There were two interesting points regarding the passing of time in Eve of the Daleks. The first was that Dan suggested the events of the Flux occurred the week before, and the other was that Yaz and Dan spent four years traveling the world in the early 1900s. On that point, it would mean that they were also traveling with Jericho for that long, and yet they seem to be over his death very quickly.
• The other point here is that surely it means Yaz has spent a lot more time with Dan than she has with the Doctor.
• And then that leads to another question; with this Doctor being the only one to have traveled with the same companion throughout her entire run, how long was she supposed to have been alive? A matter of months?
• Or am I forgetting the time spent in that prison?
• My job in real life is as a business adviser, and I have to question how ELF Storage survived as long as it did with so few customers.
• “Daleks do not have managers” proclaimed the Dalek. Tell that to the Black Dalek from Master Plan, mate.
• Good-hearted weirdos are definitely the keepers.

Doctor Who – Eve of the Daleks Review: Final Thoughts

As you’ll have guessed, I really like Eve of the Daleks; it’s a clever, humourous and inventive episode that doesn’t require a PhD in Doctor Who to enjoy; it was perfect for a festive episode.

When it comes to reviewing the era, this one will definitely be up there as one of the best of the Jodie Whittaker era.

This is not something that can be said about what comes next…

Doctor Who – Flux Review (or “It All Feels A Bit Too Chibnall For My Liking”)

So based on some of the comments and DMs I’ve been getting, you’re probably wondering why this took so long?

The thing is, in the same vein as Talons of Weng Chiang, Colony in Space, The Chase and many others from the classic era of Doctor Who, Flux is one six-part story, and I wanted to review it as such. But to review it, I would have to watch it again, and to be honest, the thought of donating six hours of my life to do that so soon after transmission just didn’t fill me with glee, so I decided to wait until it came around again in my cyclical viewing of the show.

And so almost a year later, here we are, just in time for the end of possibly the most divisive era the show has ever seen.

It’s no secret that I don’t think the Chris Chibnall/Jodie Whittaker era of Doctor Who has been the best, but unlike some people, I’m always willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. When I come to do my overall rankings for the era after the transmission of The Power of the Doctor, I’ll likely go into more detail about why it hasn’t been the critical success some might think it has, but for now, I’ll concentrate on Flux.

Doctor Who – Flux Review: What’s This One About?

A sprawling adventure over six weeks that involving – *taking a deep breath* – Earth in the 1830s, 1850s, 1900s, 1950s, 1960s, 2020s, alien planets, Sontarans, Weeping Angels, Doc Cotton from Line of Duty, a pregnant Chinese girl with a thiiiiiiiiiiiiiick Northern Irish accent and an emoji for a pal along with her boyfriend, a dog with a Yorkshire accent, LIVERPOOL!!!, a very obscure historical figure roaming around some tunnels, Neil from the Inbetweeners, that version of the Doctor that some parts of Twitter are determined to consider a lead actor of the show even though she’s clearly just a guest, the Crimean War, UNIT, comedian John Bishop, two walking skeletons, three versions of the same Doctor, a token appearance for the Daleks & Cybermen (*sigh*), distinguished actor Kevin McNally and much more.

Thoughts – It’s All A Bit Chibnall For My Liking

So as you can see, there are many moving parts here; far too many.

I remember the first time I watched The Halloween Apocalypse I struggled to follow what was going on with the introduction of so many different characters, and in itself that is ok as long as it makes sense in the end, but unfortunately, I think it all got a bit muddled and confused along the way.

Viewing that first episode, I assumed that this was going to be a story about the Ravagers and how they were going to be the greatest threat the Doctor has ever faced, but after a

“And that was the moment the Big Finish team realised they had another 10 boxset released on their hands”

strong start, they just seemed to fall away, outshone on screen by the combination of the brilliant Craig Parkinson as the Grand Serpent, and the Sontarans. By the end of Flux, the two Ravagers were sidelined as a couple of pantomime villains very easily vanquished by…I think it was a planet with a conscience or something, I’m not really sure. Regardless of how they were defeated though, they lost momentum halfway through Flux and never recovered.

There were also too many heroes for me to care about. I just didn’t see the point in Vinder & Bel; every cutaway involving them just slowed things down, and I don’t believe either had a considerable influence on the outcome of the story. If I recall, when I first watched it, I just assumed that it would turn out that they were the Doctor’s parents or something infuriating like that, but no, they were just incidental.

I think perhaps the most telling problem with the moving parts is that I actually lost track of what the Flux itself was as it seemed like it was barely mentioned later on and resolved very quickly when it was. But how much of the universe has now been permanently destroyed by Chris Chibnall?

Some might argue that the number of characters and lost threads is a symptom of having – by Doctor Who standards at least – too much time to work with; after all, Doctor Who stories now are usually told over 45 – 100 minutes rather than six hours. But I think that’s a weak argument considering how many six-episode drama series are broadcast on UK TV and are able to keep things on track. Jesus, even latter-era Torchwood managed it in without much of a fuss.

If you want a direct comparison with Doctor Who, look at The Daleks’ Master Plan, The War Games or Trial of a Timelord; all of these stories managed to keep the overarching theme throughout and what was started in the first episode was resolved in the end. I just don’t think Flux managed that.

But all of the above is Chris Chibnall in a nutshell; loads of characters and grand ideas but not enough talent and vision to stick the landing.

Could It Have Been Done Better?

In spite of what I’ve written above, there is a lot that is good within Flux.

If you were to take out the unnecessary stuff with Vinder & Bel then in Village of the Angels you’re left with a very good episode of Doctor Who; comfortably the best of the era. There’s just so much to enjoy there, including the setting, the way the Angels were used, the acting and the cliffhanger. An episode like that is what Doctor Who should be, and it was one that was enjoyed by fans and casual viewers alike. A lady in her late 50s/early 60s who I work with remarked to me that she found it “exciting and scary” and left her wanting to “hide behind the sofa like (she) did when (she) was a kid”. The episode the week before she found boring and confusing; go figure.

I also enjoyed the Sontarans – although the stuff with them eating chocolate was on the wrong side of silly for my liking – the Earth setting, the storyline involving UNIT and – as above – the performance of Craig Parkinson as the best villain of the lot.

In my mind, if instead of one sprawling epic, Flux was broken down into four unconnected stories where in isolation, the villains were…

1. The Ravagers
2. The Sontarans
3. The Weeping Angels
4. The Grand Serpent (where his role was that of an evil Time Meddler type)

…then it would have worked a lot better.

The Acting

Another positive of Flux was the quality of the acting. On the whole, I thought it was good.

As per my introduction, I’m currently on the Jodie Whittaker era in my cyclical watch-through of Doctor Who, but to be honest, to ensure I had enough time to watch Flux and

That old prick is away to get what’s coming to him

review it, I skipped from It Takes You Away directly to Flux (I’ll go back and watch most of the other episodes this week) to ensure I had enough time to review it and the next two stories before The Power of the Doctor airs next week.

Anyway, the reason I’m telling you this is because there is a noticeable difference in the quality of Jodie Whittaker’s performance between her first season and this. I still can’t really take to her as a Doctor, but there is an improvement between then and now. Similarly, Mandip Gill is also better here than she was at the start.

Of the regular cast, I do like John Bishop as well. I mean, fair enough, you can tell he’s a ‘comic-turned-actor’ rather than just an actor, but he definitely has his moments and is considerably better than Bradley Walsh as Graham.

Among the guest cast, I didn’t much like the Ravagers, as they were both wooden and pantomime-ish under the layers of makeup, but Scottish Hogmany comedian Jonathan Watson does a good turn as the Sontaran.

As I’ve said, Craig Parkinson is great as the Grand Serpent, channeling his Doc Cotton vibes well throughout.

But without question, the hands-down best performance in Flux goes to Kevin McNally as Professor Jericho. Long-time readers of the blog will know that when it comes to guest performers in Doctor Who, I hold them to the Patrick Barr standard; that being that the actor puts everything into the performance and takes it absolutely seriously, as opposed to treating it like a throwaway role in a whimsical TV show ‘for kids’.

Kevin McNally does exactly what an actor should do and puts his all in, and in turn that makes Jericho a well-rounded character that the viewer cares about. Now that comes from experience of course, and the difference between his performance here compared to his turn in the Twin Dilemma is night and day, but it does make me wonder how much better Chris Chibnall’s Doctor Who could have been with better actors in key roles. I’ll expand upon that when I write my final thoughts on this era in the next couple of weeks, but I’ll leave you with one question…

Who would be a better Doctor? Kevin McNally or Jodie Whittaker?

Random Observations

• Compare the costume of Karvanista to some of the costumes in *spit* Orphan 55. It really makes you wonder about what went on in the production of that one.
• I won’t be putting a visual comparison of the two together here because that would involve putting Orphan 55 back on my screen again and I’m just never going to do that. Out of principle, it will forever remain a one-off viewing, never to be repeated.
• A lot of the humour misfired for me, but the one bit that did make me chuckle was Yaz’s line about how Dan had never mentioned that he was from Liverpool before.
• Actually, wait, the second bit of humour I enjoyed was when Dan says “Alright lads, I was just looking for the Pier Head” to the Sontarans. (I wrote that observation last)
• Two parts of the longer storytelling that worked here were the tunnels with Williamson, and the callback to how UNIT was not in operation during Resolution
• I’m trying not to be the sort of person who accent-shames, but I can’t get my head around the way Northern Irish people say “now”. It comes out as “Naw-eee”
• So are we meant to believe that the people of Earth in 2021 are going to forget about alien invasions again?
• Big Finish are going to do a series of releases in a few years time with Yaz, Dan and Jericho stranded in 1901, aren’t they?
• I’m still not keen on this Timeless Child storyline, and I hope in some way it gets forgotten about. They missed a chance here.
• Probably the ideal way out of the mess Chibnall has written himself into with destroying established Doctor Who canon was for this to have been set in a parallel universe, where in fact the resolution was that the Doctor didn’t stop the Flux. Would anyone have been upset with that?
• I’m glad that kid’s uncle got done in by the Weeping Angels. What a prick.
• The cliffhangers here were largely very good, but the resolutions to them were a bit crap. As Toby Hadoke mentions in his enjoyable podcast, it felt a bit Perils of Pauline.
• Some readers might be thinking “Craig Parkinson didn’t play Dot Cotton; that was an old woman in Eastenders”. To those readers, I suggest you stop what you’re doing now and watch the BBC drama Line of Duty from the start.

Doctor Who – Flux Review: Final Thoughts

So on the whole, Flux was a story with lots of interesting individual parts, but the sum of those parts added up to a bit of a disjointed affair that lost its way.

If he had sent a text saying “Urgent Exit Required” at this point, I’d have applauded

Taken as individual parts, there could have been four really strong stories, but it wasn’t to be. As a result, some episodes felt incredibly light on plot development and instead were there to merely set up the week after. In particular, for anyone watching just as a one-off, I felt Once, Upon Time must have felt both confusing and off-putting.

It all just felt a bit ‘Chibnall’ to me.

There is still plenty to like though, and from me it’s Three Cheers for Kevin McNally.

WWE Royal Rumble 2022 Review (or “In Desperate Need Of A New Coat Of Paint”)

It’s 2022 and I still consider myself a wrestling fan, having first discovered the WWF in 1991. By that I mean that I’m an avid listener of various podcasts like Something To Wrestle With and Grillin’ JR, I still watch classic clips on social media and indeed I regularly watch old shows. In fact, in the last couple of weeks, Mhairi and I have watched Wrestlemania X, King of the Ring 1994, Summerslam 94 and the full Royal Rumble 2002 card and have enjoyed them all into the bargain.

More than that, wrestling theme music is a regular addition to our gym and car playlists and only yesterday I pre-ordered a Mattel Legends series of WWE figures.

I am someone who still devotes time and money to wrestling, but unfortunately, it’s not current wrestling, and from a business perspective, that seems like a problem. In 2021 my wrestling viewing amounted to the Royal Rumble, the Hall of Fame ceremony, Wrestlemania, Summerslam and AEW All Out 2021 although I maintain a passive awareness of the product by what I read online.

Now if you’ve read this site – and if you have I just wanted to say “Hi, I’m still alive” since I haven’t posted since March of last year – you’ll know that I think WWE has gone stale. It just feels like the same thing being done over and over again with little attempt to change and no attempt being made to create new stars. In a business where everything a wrestler says is written for them in advance and they all come from the same cookie-cutter mould, this shouldn’t feel like too much of a surprise.

What a dreary lineup

And yet without fail, every January I look forward to the Royal Rumble because in theory, this is the one show that can’t miss. The match itself allows for a bit of nostalgia, a chance for different narratives to be set up in advance of Wrestlemania and a format that is always a little bit exciting.

What’s even more important now though is that it’s an opportunity for WWE to present to the lapsed viewer like me. If they are smart, they’ll know that this is the chance to show even the most jaded fan who still has a WWE Network subscription out of habit – or at least has a friend who still has one – what they are doing now and how they need to tune back in and start watching again. They aren’t going to get that opportunity at any other time throughout the year, even at Wrestlemania.

This is the event that has to be good, that has to be exciting and has to be fresh enough to tempt people like me back.

So how did they do?

WWE Royal Rumble 2022 Review

Well put it this way; if this was an opportunity to win me back, they blew it. Big time.

My complaint is that the product is stale and predictable and Royal Rumble 2022 only served to reinforce that point.

To go through things on a match by match basis…

Roman Reigns vs Seth Rollins: Although it was a good match, this is hardly a fresh match up in WWE. The Shield first made their debuts in November of 2012 and these two have occupied main event positions in the company ever since. It was 2014 when Rollins turned on Reigns and subsequently, both men have fought each other several times. So while putting the two of them in the ring together will always achieve a decent match, I immediately just felt like I was watching a rerun.

The result was also very cheap and the crowd in the arena were not happy, which is never a good sign.

The Women’s Royal Rumble Match: Now, on the one hand, they did do something right in this match by having some nostalgia acts – although in some cases the way they were immediately eliminated made me wonder why they bothered – the problem is that these nostalgia acts are largely the same ones who get wheeled out every year along with a core of wrestlers who never seem to change.

In fact out of the 30 women who appeared in this year’s Rumble, only five of them were making their first Rumble appearance this time; Ronda Rousey and Aliyah along with three nostalgia acts (Ivory, Melina and Cameron who all lasted about 20 seconds each). 17 of the women in this match were also in the first women’s Rumble match in 2018.

Is that fresh? Of course not. The action was also dreadful and the outcome utterly predictable.

Becky Lynch vs Doudrop: I see Becky Lynch is still the overpowered Champion living off the crest of a wave formed over three years ago. The last time I watched the show she returned from maternity leave to an enormous ovation to pick up exactly where she left off. Six months later though, the crowd seemed comparatively muted. That doesn’t surprise me. Though I’ve never found Becky Lynch to be particularly entertaining or believable due to her comparative size, I get that she was hugely popular at one stage. But no matter who it is, if they are presented as invincible for years on end, it just gets boring. The match was ok, but hey-ho.

Brock Lesnar vs Bobby Lashley: Speaking of being presented as invincible for years on end, it’s Brock Lesnar (debut date: 2002). Lesnar made his comeback to WWE in 2012 and over the last 10 years has pretty much killed everyone he has been programmed against other than when he had a tummy ache against Triple H and got shat on by Goldberg (which was fun the first time, but then the whole Goldberg thing wore very thin). Now fair enough, in this match he finally faced Bobby Lashley (debuted 2005, returned 2018) for the first time, and for what it was, it was ok, but there were two problems with it.

The first is that the finish to this match – Heyman turning on Brock – first happened in 2002 and the second is that it made the conclusion of the mens’ Rumble match depressingly predictable.

Edge & Beth Phoenix vs Miz and Maryse: I imagine this is the first time this specific handicap match has happened, but the participants debuted in 1998, 2006, 2006 and 2004 respectively and while I definitely know this is the case for the two women, I’m also confident in saying that the men will also have faced each other multiple times now across three different decades. This does not make for fresh television, nor does it make me want to tune in on Monday.

Mens’ Royal Rumble Match: This was the one that I was really tuning in for and the one that year on year I will sit down to watch for the first time with a sense of optimism. Like I’ve said above, what I want to see from a Royal Rumble match is…

• Pacing 
• Storyline development
• A mixture of one-off returns to a great pop and fresh current stars
• A sense of unpredictability

Now fair enough, I can want unpredictability, but for the most part the winner of a Rumble every year can almost always be spotted a mile away. Even though Rumbles are usually littered with stars, everyone knew that Austin would win in 98, Rock would win in 2000, Batista would win in 2005 and so on. It made sense.

But knowing neither the storylines nor the entrants ahead of time, I thought this year I might be in for a surprise…until of course Lesnar lost and it was obvious he’d come in at 30 and win. What a disappointment.

It’s not just that though; nothing about this match was worth complimenting. Other than the Lesnar bit there were no storylines within the match. Go and compare that to 1992, 1997, 2002, 2005 or any other decent Rumble match you’d care to remember and you’ll see what I mean. No feuds were started or settled, and there was no flow to it; it was just a bunch of wrestlers coming out, doing nothing of note and then being eliminated without anyone caring.

There were also no surprise entrants to get the crowd interested. I’m led to believe that the 5 unannounced spots – the ones usually reserved for the big debut or nostalgia pops – went to Ridge Holland, Drew McIntyre (I didn’t realise he was out injured), Bad Bunny (who has no appeal to a UK viewer), Super Hard Shane McMahon (fuck off) and Brock Lesnar (again, not a surprise but from a logical storytelling perspective, how was he scheduled for this match when he was already the champion going in to the show?). Just awful.

The only interesting thing that happened in the whole match was Kofi Kingston messing up this year’s attempt at the spot where he stays in by holding on to something. That he fucked it up – probably because age is catching up with him and he’s not as athletic as he once was – is a reflection of how stale WWE has become.

And that was backed up by the lack of fresh participants.

I’m not going to go through everyone, but needless to say, it wasn’t the first rodeo for a lot of them. Occupying the middle ground are the likes of Styles, Big E, Corbin, Roode, Styles, Zayn, McIntyre and Owens who must have been in every one of them since the middle of the last decade or before, but they don’t hold a candle to Rey Mysterio, Randy Orton, Sheamus, Kofi Kingston and of course Dolph Ziggler who has now appeared in 15 different Rumble matches and has achieved the square root of nothing in any of them.

In terms of new blood, only Rick Boogs and Madcap Moss were unknown to me and looked in any way impressive. Other than that it was a lot of tag team wrestlers who were never going to have any shot at winning.

Really, it just lacked star power. Out of all 30 participants, the only ones who the crowd seemed interested in were AJ Styles, Randy Orton and Brock Lesnar. Everyone else was either a no-mark or has just been on TV for so long without a break that the crowd have stopped caring, and the fact almost everyone had the same sounding entrance music added to the malaise.

To sum up, WWE is in desperate need of freshness. You look at guys like Dolph Ziggler, Rey Mysterio, Miz and so on and realise they have all been on our screens, pretty much uninterrupted for around 20 years. That’s too long. Wrestlers who are ingrained in our memories like Steve Austin, The Rock, Big Boss Man, Mr Perfect and more were on TV for a fraction of the time. Someone like Ken Shamrock was only around for 2 years!

I randomly checked the card for the 2010 Rumble and noted that 18 wrestlers featured on that show were also on the 2022 one. Of those 18, not a single one occupies a higher placing on the card than they did back then; only Edge is potentially at the same level on the card now as he was then.

Take that back another 12 years and only 5 wrestlers featured in 1998 appeared in 2010. Those wrestlers (Undertaker, Triple H, Shawn Michaels, Kane and Mark Henry) all had equal or higher status over a decade later.

Travel back only 9 years earlier to the first Rumble PPV and only Shawn Michaels and Honky Tonk Man were there.

Doesn’t that just emphasise the point? It’s the same old same old and if anything, it’s just getting worse and worse with the little stars that still exist having less appeal than they did in their prime.

But ultimately, WWE still makes money hand over fist and in spite of my complaints, I imagine I’ll still tune in again next year.

Whether I tune in at all before that though, I wouldn’t be so sure…

 

Stuart’s Gaming Roundup – March 2021

Back again with some more quick reviews of the various games – other than Warzone of course – that I’ve played through in the last four weeks.

Yakuza 0 – Xbox Series S Game Pass

The beauty of the Xbox Game Pass is that you can try games that you otherwise wouldn’t have, and the Yakuza series fits that bill perfectly.

The thing is though, a GTA style game set in 1980s Japan is the sort of thing that does appeal, so it’s a bit odd that I’d never even considered giving this a chance before. I’m glad I did though.

I don’t think I’ve played a game with a more engaging plot over a reasonably long play-time – 35 hours – as Yakuza. While most games have dull, predictable plots voiced by jobbing actors who couldn’t give a toss, I actually got really invested in the characters and the story here; it really was first class.

I wouldn’t say the gameplay mechanics matched that quality though, with the fighting becoming repetitive in reasonably short order and the various things needed to level up actually not being needed. Maybe it’s a good thing, but I found it odd that I came nowhere close to maxing up any of the six different fight styles and yet I had no trouble completing the story on regular difficulty.

Also, this is maybe a bit of a churlish thing to mark the game down for, but when I finished the main story, I had only finished 17% of the game, which perhaps shows that there’s too much going on here from the perspective of side quests etc. To complete it, I’d have to do ultimately pointless things like excessively grind the Cabaret Club and Property Management modes, wait around for investments to pay off and beat random people in the street at Japanese dice games I’m never going to take the time to learn.

From the perspective of the main quest, brilliant, but there’s just too much going on outside of it to ever consider properly ‘completing’ it.

Two Point Hospital – Xbox Series S Game Pass

Console versions of PC native games like this often don’t translate well – and Planet Coaster which I also downloaded, certainly fits that description as I couldn’t get past the tutorial mode – but this modern-day version of Theme Hospital seems to be an exception to that rule.

Easy to control, Two Point Hospital is a pretty deep hospital building game deceptively masked by its quirky comedy and cartoonish graphics. That’s a good thing though as it makes the otherwise drab quite interesting.

My relationship with games like this though has always been the same; I’ll play it intensively for a day or two, get bored and move on to something else. No doubt I’ll go back to it again in a few weeks for a quick session though

Lonely Mountains Downhill – Xbox Series S Game Pass

A charming, surprisingly difficult palate cleanser of a game, the point of Lonely Mountains Downhill is to cycle down various mountains without crashing X amount of times, or by beating time trials.

It looks great, it controls well and it’s exactly the sort of pick-up-and-play game that I like to put on first thing in the morning before the household has woken up.

What it’s not is the sort of game you would play intensively for days on end until you complete it because I think if you did that you’d get bored of racing down the same mountains. I foresee instead this being a game I slowly work through over weeks and months.

And that’s a good thing

Cricket 19 – Xbox Series S Game Pass

Took an age to download, then took an even greater age to update squads.

Then when I finally got down to playing it I realised that I had no patience to play a cricket game, so I uninstalled it.

I mean…the shortest mode in any cricket game is likely to be a T20 mode where you play 20 overs each. I elected to bat first and the controls were quite simply ‘Press X when the ball comes close and hit a six’…over and over again.

So after about 7 overs, that was enough.

Hey, at least I didn’t buy it.

Wreckfest – Xbox Series S Game Pass

At some point in time, racing games – as opposed to Kart games – stopped being fun. Or at least they stopped being fun for me.

They seemed to move away from being ‘games’ that you could have a quick go of with your controller and do reasonably well at without much of a fuss and turned into ‘simulations’ where success was dependant upon understanding how to fine-tune your vehicle’s tyre size and thrust or however the hell you’d say it, and also on whether or not you spent £150 on a driving wheel controller to play along with it.

And so games like DIRT went from being fun to fundamentally dull, while the likes of Forza and Gran Turismo were never much joy to begin with. Basically, if I wanted a realistic driving experience, I’ll go out in my own car; in a game, I want to feel like I’m ‘playing’.

Thank god for Wreckfest.

Echoing the likes of Burnout before it too forgot itself and become this baffling open-world dullfest, this doesn’t try to be a driving game for serious people, as evidenced by one of the first parts of the career mode being a destruction derby with lawnmowers.

It’s not just lawnmowers though; there’s cars, trucks, buses, three-wheelers and more, played out in races, head to heads, rallies etc, and the point is to both win and try to do as much damage to other vehicles as possible.

Put simply, it’s a throwback to a time when games developers remembered that driving games could actually be a bit light-hearted.

Well worth a shot.

Streets of Rage 4 – Playstation 5

Speaking of throwbacks, I’ve also just played through Streets of Rage 4 online with my brother.

It is what it is, a side-scrolling beat-em-up from a bygone age that can be played through in a matter of hours.

Is it good? Yeah, it is. Does it deserve the Essential it got on Eurogamer last year? Absolutely not.

With very little replay value, and – unlike the way it was on the Megadrive – the ability to save your progress at the end of every level, there’s not really a challenge here. Yes, you can ramp up the difficulty level to make each stage a nightmare to beat, but that’s not how these games should go. I still remember with pride beating Double Dragon in one sitting with 3 lives back in the late 1980s; that was the challenge.

On the whole, I think I’d go back and play Double Dragon again before this.

Don’t believe the hype.

 

 

 

Stuart’s Gaming Round-Up: Feb 2021

As much of a gamer as I am though, 2020 was all about one game – Warzone.

While most of the world struggled with lockdown, my social group embraced it with the Call of Duty Battle Royal Mode, playing it every day and using it as a way of staying sane and connected with each other. Well…almost all of us did; my brother has always rallied against it like that guy from the episode in the Simpsons who opposed every vote. Boo, Steven, boooooo.

I don’t think I actually played much else in 2020, and even now in Feb 2021, Warzone is still a daily occurance.

That being said, I have wanted to play other games and I’ve made a concerted effort to do so. In December, I was lucky enough to get my hands on both a PS5 and an Xbox Series S and I promised myself more gaming variety in 2021. The beauty of the Xbox Game Pass is that if I don’t like a game, I can just install it without buyers remorse.

So my aim is to try to play a new game every week. and sometimes those new games will be old games. Also, it might give me a kick up the backside to keep writing on the blog.

Here’s what I’ve played so far.

Assassins Creed Valhalla (PS5)

If I was smart, I would have looked back on my review of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, as it would have told me that this was a game I should have skipped.

“All in favour of playing Warzone?” (Everyone) “Aye!!”
“All opposed?” (Steven) “Me”

Valhalla is essentially Odyssey, but in a less appealing setting. What I should have remembered was that with Oddysey, I very much reached the point of oversaturation; I was bored by the time I finished and was glad to see the back of it. To come back and play the same thing again was a daft move.

And yet I sank 27 hours into it, incredibly; but those 27 hours barely scratched the surface and when someone tweeted me to say they were still playing 200 hours in, I had to cut my losses. I knew that if I was bored already I’d actively hate it if I kept going.

Also, there’s no challenge to it; you never die or have to repeat stuff again. Instead, to play Valhalla is – assuming you’re willing to commit the time to it – is to complete it. Maybe people enjoy it for the cutscenes, but I’m not one for D grade writing and bland voice acting.

Stuart’s Tip: If you like this sort of thing then great, but I had enough with Oddysey. If you’ve played neither, play that.

Sackboy: A Big Adventure (PS5)

You’ll probably think “This guy is an idiot” but again, I should have known better than to ask for this game for Christmas. In fact, Steven actually said “Are you sure? You didn’t enjoy Little Big Planet.” but I was insistent.

This isn’t a bad game, but it’s just so lifeless. It’s like going to Busch Gardens the day after being in Disney World; it’s trying to have character but that character is just not there. You just end up wanting to play a Mario game instead.

Again, much like Valhalla, this is a AAA title with no challenge to it. You put the game on, you play through it and you’re done. As I’ll come to demonstrate in my thoughts on one of the games below, a game that’s too difficult runs the risk of turning you off, but at least a little bit of a challenge would be nice.

Then again, we give everyone a medal at Sports Day now, so maybe society is no longer geared towards making things difficult…

The problems with Sackboy are not unique by any means. I find the purpose of platform games now have shifted away from a target of completing each level, and instead are about replaying each level to collect things you missed.

That’s boring

Stuart’s Tip: Looks lovely, but it’s bland as hell. Avoid.

Banjo Kazooie (Xbox Series S)

At the same time as I was trying to slog through the two games above, I was – for the fourth time in my life – playing through Banjo Kazooie on the Game Pass.

Maybe it’s not fair to compare any game against one of the all time greatest games in history, but then again, gaming should be continually progressing. And yet in the 23 years since it was first released, I don’t think many games have bettered this Rare 3D platformer.

The controls still hold up, the worlds are colourful and varied, the music is great, the game has the sort of character Sackboy could only ever dream of, and there is a challenge to it.

Oh, and it can be completed in a week; not 4 months.

I’m sure I’ll play through it again one day.

I had a lot of fun revisiting Banjo Kazooie and I’m sure it made the other games seem even blander.

Stuart’s Tip: One of the best games of all time. Play it now.

Crackdown 3 (Xbox Series S)

After Banjo, the antidote to Assassins Creed Valhalla for me was Crackdown 3. Despite only getting a rating of 5.5 on Google – partly because it apparently wasn’t long enough and partly because it wasn’t narrative enough – I gave it a go. I loved the first two and it turned out this was no difference.

In Crackdown, you shoot things and you blow shit up; that’s what I want in a game. As you progress you get stronger and pick up more abilities, and with that, it becomes easier to kill things.

Simple, but effective.

If I payed full price for this and completed it in a week would I be annoyed? No; because I enjoyed the week I played it for.

Stuart’s Tip: Play it

Donut County (Xbox Series S)

This highly rated indie release from 2018 did not take too long to complete, and if I’m honest it didn’t have much in the way of a challenge, but it was short, sweet and fun.

A little bit like Katamari Damacy, the point is for your control area to get bigger so you an absorb – or in this case drop through a hole – the items in the level you’re playing.

I liked its style and I enjoyed the storyline too.

This is the sort of game the Game Pass is for.

Stuart’s Tip: Play It

Conker’s Bad Fur Day (Xbox Series S)

Originally released in 2001 – and it cost a hell of a lot of money at the time too – Conker’s Bad Fur Day has some of the highest review scores of any game, ever. IGN gave it 9.9/10 at the time.

And its high scores at the time were with good reason. Aimed at over-18s, Bad Fur Day was as new and fresh as any game I had ever played to that point. It looked amazing, it played well, the humour appealed to me and the story was great. I loved it, and played it again when it was given a spruce up on the original Xbox a few years later.

Does it hold up 20 years down the line though?

Yes and no.

The storyline and humour remain intact; I will never tire of The Great Mighty Poo, and the war scenes and final cutscene are still remarkably moving and unusual to this day; I have no complaints on that score.

The controls though have not aged well.

Unlike Banjo Kazooie, the version on the Game Pass is not the Xbox remake, but a port of the original n64 version, and with that comes rather awkward inverted controls for combat that made certain areas – the zombies and war areas in particular – an absolute nightmare. I think we accepted controls that were clunky at the time, but things have got a little smoother in the intervening years.

The result was a rather frustrating experience, but one that I was determined to see through. The hard bits involved a lot of swearing, but I felt a sense of achievement – along with relief – when I finally beat them.

Like Banjo Kazooie, it is remarkable though that a game can stand out so much two decades later; I honestly can’t think of one that’s come anywhere close to being as good as this from a storyline point of view. Rare were ahead of their time, and the day they were bought over by Microsoft was clearly a damaging one for future games.

Stuart’s Tip: If you’ve not played it, I think you need to experience one of the greatest games ever, but be prepared for the controls to frustrate the hell out of you.

I’ll be back next month with more.

Cobra Kai Review

For someone born in 1982 who counts movies like Rocky IV, Back to the Future and The Goonies among my favourite movies and uses “You’re The Best” in my workout mix, you’d think I’d have at least seen The Karate Kid at some stage, but up until last Saturday I hadn’t. And I didn’t really ever have an urge to either.

But I’d heard nothing but good things about Netflix’s Cobra Kai and decided to give it a shot so I could be prepared.

A very quick review of The Karate Kid would be that it was decent enough but ended very suddenly. I did think a couple of times whilst watching it “Why don’t they go to the police?” and “What is wrong with John Kreese; these are children!!”.

Anyway, with that watched, I was able to start Cobra Kai and see what all the fuss was about. I wanted to know if it was as amazing as everyone – especially men of my age group – were saying. Were they right?

Abso-fucking-lutely.

Cobra Kai Review – What’s It About?

Thirty four years after events of the 1984 All Valley Karate Tournament, a down-and-out Johnny Lawrence seeks redemption by reopening the infamous Cobra Kai dojo, reigniting his rivalry with a now successful Daniel LaRusso.

Please note, there are unavoidable spoilers ahead so if this is your dropping off point, I urge you to go and watch Cobra Kai now and them come back and read the rest of this review, nodding in agreement.

Cobra Kai Review – Thoughts: A Perfect Blend of Comedy, Drama and Cheese

If the speed in which you watch a show is an indication of its quality – and let’s face it, is it – the fact I’ve watched all 30 episodes in the space of 5 days despite working a full time job shows how good Cobra Kai is.

I think about 15 minutes into the first episode I tweeted that I had a feeling it was going to be great, and I immediately received a dozen replies saying it was. By the time Sirius by The Alan Parsons Project – another tune I used in my exercise classes back in the day – played in the 25th minute as Johnny Lawrence told Miguel Diaz that he was going to be his Sensei and that he was going to teach him a method of fighting that his pussy generation desperately needed, I was sold; this was everything I could ever want in a TV show.

Over the 30 episodes Cobra Kai has everything; comedy, drama and that bit of cheesiness that it needs to give it genuine charm that makes you invest in it.

And there’s real skill in that. The writers managed to find a balance between well rounded characters with back stories you can understand and believe in, finding comedy in serious situations and developing properly dramatic plot developments which peak at exactly the right time to keep the show hot throughout.

Throughout the series, everyone – except the villainous Kreese and Kyler of course – gets a chance to be both the hero and the villain; to be the one who is in the right and is being reasonable, and to be wrong and deeply flawed. It’s a fantastic way to write it because life isn’t black and white, it’s full of shades of grey.

Of course there are still points where I did begin to say “Seriously; why don’t they go to the police?!” and “How does Kreese get away with this?!!” but that’s all part of the fun.

How To Be Both Politically Incorrect and Progressive Without Batting An Eyelid

One of the aspects of Cobra Kai that I enjoyed and found fascinating was how it danced on the knife-edge between being both unbelievably politically incorrect and yet effortlessly progressive at the same time. It’s definitely something that the BBC wouldn’t be able to manage in a modern day show.

On the one hand you’ve got Johnny Lawrence as a man stuck in his 80s heyday. He says stuff that would have been acceptable back in the day but is seriously frowned upon now. He makes fun of peoples appearance, he’s a bit of a chauvanist, he decries how weak kids are and just about everything else you can think of. In a sense, he’s written a bit like Gene Hunt in Life on Mars, but Hunt was written as an outlet for what people were like back in those days. Lawrence is like that now.

And when he says stuff like that, we as viewers laugh because although we’re not supposed to be this way, we’re all a little bit like Johnny Lawrence inside.

It’s worth noting too that for every character that is made fun of or bullied for something, they come back stronger.

Meanwhile, on the flipside you have the use of the female characters like Samantha, Aisha and Tory who are effortlessly presented as strong as any male character, and it’s done without any sort of virtue signalling about how they are showing women as equals in a physical setting. They are just three more characters in the show, who are tough as nails; gender doesn’t come into it at all. And despite that being how it should always be, it’s something that very few shows are able to do.

Random Observations

• Any show that has a scene where two guys discuss how Steven Moffat is no longer the showrunner of Doctor Who while at the same time marveling at a lesbian kiss is always going to be a winner in my book.
• Though I’m pretty sure it was written before the full impact of how shit Chibnall is came to light.
• LaRusso and Lawrence are essentially Bret Hart and Steve Austin from 1997 WWF. If you’ve seen Wrestlemania 13 you’ll know what I mean. #DoubleTurn
• No really, at some point surely Hawk should have been arrested? His rap sheet includes everything from criminal damage of property to attempted murder.
• If I have a criticism of Cobra Kai, it’s that the stuff with Daniel in Japan felt a little bit too tagged on for the sake of it. Plus, I haven’t seen Karate Kid 2.
• From a casting point of view, I can entirely believe that Samantha is a school girl even in season 3 when she was likely 23 or 24. But Tory? I’m not so sure, and I suspect you know why. #Boobjob
• There are so many characters in Cobra Kai and they all get their time in the spotlight. I laughed a lot when the two young guys from each dojo were suddenly presented as mortal enemies.
• Each season ends with a great final episode and cliffhanger, and though my favourite of the three is the fight in the school (the highlight being when Stingray got involved) the end to the most recent season raised a few goosebumps.
• In that fight scene, the direction is tremendous
• Throughout the series, the use of music has been absolutely spot on.

Cobra Kai Review: Final Thoughts

Despite only being 38, as someone who grew up in the 80s and 90s the modern world of social media can feel like a bit of a minefield when it comes to what you can and can’t say. Even though I think the majority of young people are no different to what young people were like “in my day”, the culture we grew up in, for better or worse, has been silenced by a vocal minority of overly worthy, monotonously serious cancel-culturists who could jump on any dissenting opinion from theirs and set their pack onto them. Or as Johnny Lawrence would say, a pussy generation.

You’ve only got to look at Doctor Who to see how that can influence how television is written these days.

So Cobra Kai is a pallet cleanser; a show that says that it’s alright to take things a little less seriously and re-engage with the sort of thing that used to be on TV and in the movies.

But it’s not just a show based on a nostalgia, a gimmick or a statement; it’s a show with engaging plots, well written characters and superb scripts.

It is hands down one of the best shows I’ve seen in a long, long time and I would highly recommend that you watch it as soon as you can.

If you haven’t seen it ahead of time though, do make sure you watch The Karate Kid first.