Reviews

Saul Goodman/Jimmy is quite a character. . He asks Mike about a time machine and Mike had thoughtful answers yet Saul's are about money. Mike questions it. It's the same regret Walt has. The company and the money. Yet Walt spears Saul even more astutely than Mike when he hears about Slippin' Jimmy. You were ALWAYS like this? The implication is clear. Mike sees the emptiness of chasing money, Walt at least CHOSE his final path. Jimmy was always a con artist AND he did it all for the hollow pursuit of wealth. Jimmy's noble act of confessing to save Kim is more than just saving Kim. Like Walt pointed out, he had not made a life choice. This time, it's an actual life choice. If you look at Walt, Jesse and Saul and even Mike with the day he took his first bribe, BB/BCS is all about life choices. It's always been a philosophical story about life. When Walt teamed up with Jesse, he made a choice. When Mike took a bribe it was a choice. When Jesse refused to end Walt's life and take back control of his life, it was a choice. When Walt chose to die on his own terms, it was a choice. When Jimmy confesses, it's a choice. BB/BCS is about choosing to live your life on your own terms, for better or for worse.

The interesting thing here is the episode tries to be a bit of a TV version of 2001: A Space Odyssey, (something the sequel series, Space:1999 tried in a different way). The probe here is even named Project Discovery. There's plenty of space sequences and plenty of nice music, and an ambitious notion of uncovering the origins of the aliens and their planet. A nice moment comes when the actual sting from the end credits, used when we see the alien planet, occurs as we see the alien world below the probe. There's also a human story here. Straker is clearly obsessed to the point of tunnel vision with this project and ignores a technician who wants his help. This backfires on him in the end and it's a painful lesson for the Commander. The final monologue is not exactly worthy of Kubrick, but it raises a good point. When we try to understand something truly alien, we have no reference points. Talk of worlds within worlds remind us that human perception has its limits.

Modern Dr Who's biggest epic, Dr Who Flux, comes to a conclusion in this divisive final chapter. Time, a living entity of sorts, puts paid to Swarm (a terrific performance from Sam Spruell) and his delightfully evil sister Azure, for their failure. Meanwhile, the Doctor helps Karvanista avenge his people by ensuring the Sontaran fleet meets the same fate as the Dalek and Cyber fleets, consumed by the flux. It's all very spectacular and features lots of expensive-looking CGI. But is it enough to satisfy the fans? Well, Chibnall the show runner has already deeply divided fandom by introducing the idea the Doctor is the Timeless Child. Here he has repeated the claim. Some would argue the last thing the Doctor needs is to be made less mysterious with some kind of new origin story. Perhaps it might be best to reveal the whole Timeless Child thing was just a con job perpetrated by the Master? But if you're able to look past that and enjoy this series for what it is, a long, complicated but often loosely plotted space/time adventure, you might be one of the ones who enjoys it. Perhaps I'm too forgiving, but I had fun.

Dr Who fans who gave up watching last series and declared that Chibnall had killed Dr Who are back for more, claiming he killed it even deader this series and then killed the dead series again with this final episode. Well, they will be watching next series, they know it and I know it. Frankly, this was compelling Dr Who, which added room for more mystery behind the story we already knew about the Doctor. It also featured Cybermen and the Master in all their glory, too. Whittaker is superb here, really living the Doctor's experiences. What is truly astonishing, however, is that Chibnall blatantly put the whole solution to the mystery, the whole story of the Timeless Child, in the previous episode, but in a way that was so clever you have to watch this one to understand it. I mean, talk about hiding something in plain sight. I recommend you watch the previous episode, Ascension of the Cybermen, a second time after watching this episode. It suddenly becomes so much clearer. Some fans have suggested this story has undone the show's past. It has not done that at all. In the six year of Doctor Who, the Second Doctor told Jamie that Time Lords could live forever, barring accidents. We did not get told of a 12 regeneration limit until the fourteenth year of Doctor Who, with the Fourth Doctor. What changed? We never knew. But things happened between those events. The Doctor was exiled to Earth for one thing. He also faced Morbius, in a sequence in which pre-Hartnell Doctors were shown. And it's a matter of public record that these were previous incarnations of the Doctor, because one of the faces used was that of producer Philip Hinchcliffe, and as such, he had to writer a letter to his superiors to explain his appearance in the series. He made it explicit that the Morbius faces were previous Doctors. The Timeless Child suggests there was some kind of change and some kind of plot or conspiracy to conceal the truth from the Doctor. What's more, it suggests the Doctor is far older, far more mysterious than even the Doctor was aware. People hating on this episode really are missing out on something very special. Open your mind, because there's something exciting here.

The first episode of the series gave us a new Doctor and new companions, along with a new alien race known as the Stenza. It also told its tale sans title sequence and TARDIS. But at the end, the new Doctor, in typically "oops, sorry about that" fashion, accidentally launched or teleported herself and her three companions across the Universe as she tried to reach her absent TARDIS. The cliffhanger ending showed the hapless foursome suspended in the vacuum of space, no less. This episode picks up from there as they are rescued in flashy style and hurled onto a planet that looks suspiciously like a location junket to Africa. This gets the episode off to an exiting start and we get a new title sequence, too. After ten minutes we realize the plot of this one is a tedious affair about a "space race" between two rivals out for a money prize. But this is merely a side show. The winning post is the Ghost Monument and it is the TARDIS in a weird half materialized state. The Stenza have left a mark here and we learn more about them. They have some cool if slightly useless robots called Sniper-Bots, whose predictive attack patterns are easy to dodge. But this is all about the new team bonding as they journey to find the TARDIS. The ending is worth the wait as the TARDIS has been given a weird but generally very impressive new look. It's an undemanding episode in a way, but an easy one to sit through more than once, notably with its strong start and enjoyable ending. Art Malik puts in a welcome guest appearance, too. Not sure why fandom is hating on this series so much. The episodes are all in the classic tradition of the Doc and friends traveling from place to place, facing monsters, peril and challenges. This one has shades of Key of Marinus and Marco Polo as they cross the desert to get the TARDIS back.

This one is an absolute cracker! One of the Doctor's best enemies returns. This one was always a ruthless baddie and a killer with no mercy, but this fact had been watered down a lot in the last few years until this alien started to look toothless. But with this episode, we get a new look at this alien creature and it is restored to a truly formidable foe indeed. All in all, this is a riveting episode and features maximum showmanship and excitement. Highly recommended. And as a post script, let me add this: a lot of Dr Who fandom seems to be struggling to accept the Jodie Whitaker era at the time I'm writing this review, possibly because after seven years of Moffat, we've all gotten used to gimmicky, timey-wimey potlines. This new era features much more simple and straight forward plots which may come as a let-down after Moffat. But when plots are simple, the thing to watch for is the characters. And that's the issue. You either like Jodie Whitaker's Doctor and her three new companions enough to care and keep watching, or you don't. I suspect this era may gain popularity over time, as fans get gradually get more familiar with this TARDIS team. But for now, a lot of fans seems to be feeling disappointed. I can understand it, but I personally think Jodie Whitaker and her trio of working class heroes deserve a chance to grow on us fans. I actually feel sad for the fans who have given this poor ratings. They are missing out on a brilliant episode.

This was the second Blakes 7 I ever saw and this was at the time it was new. A long, long time ago now. It's cheap and a little fake, yet it has that slightly creepy and mysterious low-resolution atmosphere about it which made UK SF shows so addictive at the time. This one is notably very Dr Who-ish, with a space web and a hideous head with a wizened little body kept alive inside a bubbling tank. Visually, it's vivid if not totally convincing. Unlike the show Blakes 7 evolved into later, Blake here is a balanced hero, more interested in bargaining and negotiating than zapping people with laser guns or kicking backsides. The plot has some similarities to Terry Nation's Dr Who story Death to the Daleks, in which a primitive race offer to help an Earth mission crew in exchange for help annihilating a breakaway group. Nation once told a magazine interviewer he based that idea on a real life story he heard about. Here Blake is similarly in a dilemma when little alien-mutant creatures are going to be wiped out if he plays ball with the main baddie. But this is Blakes 7 and Nation deserves credit for what he does here. Firstly, the new crew-member, Cally, is a telepathic alien and Nation uses this, rather than just relegating her to pressing buttons on a console. She is telepathically taken over and causes mayhem in the early stages of the episode. She also reveals that the main baddie, Saymon, is an outcast of her own alien race. In Nation's scripts, Cally and Jenna had plenty to do. Another interesting aspect is that Blake sees callousness towards little, helpless beings on this planet and a plan to wipe them out. It's a parallel to the oppression he has left behind on Earth. The little people rebel against their would be destroyers in the end, something Blake wants to do. The dilemma Blake faces here is also a small version of the same problem he will later face in the episode Star One, when he wants to destroy the Federation, but has to content with aliens who want to destroy all humans, and once again things are morally shaded. So, it's an oddity, this one, a rare bit of Dr Who-ish alien creature business, but it adds to Blakes 7 in good and interesting ways all the same.

Remember the Wizard of Oz? Dorothy travels to somewhere over the rainbow, follows the yellow brick road and meets the Wizard. He's a fearsome figure with a mask...but behind the mask is a fragile little man who is hiding behind his fake persona.

Now...let's apply that idea to marriage. We all wear masks, don't we? We put on a persona and we hide the truth. The wife asks if you've ever been attracted to other women and you deny it. You pretend not to notice anyone else, to spare her feelings.

So Stanley Kubrick wants to look at this idea of honesty in marriage and relationships. People naked, having sex, yet wearing masks to hide their faces, their true identities, their thoughts. What a clever image! It's a complete mirror image opposite of what we see in the world, people with bodies covered and faces exposed. Is he saying we are at our least honest when we have sex?

When Alice Harford opens up to her husband, when she "unmasks" and reveals her fantasies about another man, it stuns Dr. Bill Harford to the very core. Her honesty is too much for him. Kubrick let's us know we're in an adult Wizard of Oz. Two girls tell Bill they are taking him to "where the rainbow ends". Rainbow colored Christmas tree lights are in almost every shot and Bill gets a mask from "Rainbow costumes". And yellow...the color of that brick road, is all about. A yellow cab takes Bill on his journey to the orgy of masked, yet otherwise naked, bodies.

When Bill finally goes home, he finds his mask on his wife's pillow. It seems Alice has got his number. He too "unmasks" and confesses. Kubrick seems to be suggesting that temptation is dangerous and that the wisest and safest thing a man can do is go home to his wife and get honest with her. Take off the mask, have the courage to expose the fragile man behind the false persona.

The other nice thing is the final moment where Alice tells Bill they need to have sex as soon as possible. Sex is an act and perhaps Kubrick is also suggesting people should do it rather than talk about it if they want a happy marriage.

As a metaphor of human psychology, Eyes Wide Shut seems to be a film about the value of marriage and family life, and perhaps a film which encourages honestly between men and women, too. As a piece of film making, it's typically outstanding work for the meticulous Mr.Kubrick. It's also a very positive and optimistic film, suggesting that love, marriage and family can resist temptation and the dangers that temptation might bring. All in all, a superb motion picture from a true master of the movies.

A final word about Cruise and Kidman. Both worked long and hard, more than a year of shooting, with Stanley Kubrick and their efforts are deserving of appreciation. They both do some of their finest ever work.