Doctor Who 7x05: The Angels Take Manhattan

Previous reviews can be found on the Doctor Who tag.
 
Maybe it was a bad idea to watch Doctor Who on the same day as going to see Looper, because Looper was so goddamn amazing that most other time-travel stories pale in comparison. But Looper issues aside, this episode still wasn't terribly impressive. I avoid Doctor Who spoilers as much as humanly possible, but if you live in the UK it's very difficult to ignore widely-reported information such as the departure of the Ponds. All the coverage seemed to focus on "This episode is a real tearjerker!!" which annoyed me because a) you're not my dad, Steven Moffat, don't tell me what to do, and b) show don't tell, for god's sake! Surely it's enough that most viewers already knew that this would be the Ponds' final episode -- why bother hammering home all the stuff about how upsetting it's going to be? Let the story tell itself.

The end result was one of those TV moments that made me feel like a sociopath -- ie, a screen full of people crying hysterically to an overwrought orchestral soundtrack while I sat there, utterly unmoved. I find it increasingly disappointing that while Moffat's episodes were some of the very best in previous seasons, now that he's the showrunner I find myself practically groaning out loud when his name comes up on the credits. Of the five episodes we've had this season, the two that were written by Moffat have been laden with speedy emotional conflict/resolution subplots and the kind of sudden U-turn revelations that are beginning to remind me of M Night Shyamalan.

In theory, I was an ideal audience for The Angels Take Manhattan. I love Amy, I love the Eleventh Doctor, and I'm invested in the Amy/Rory relationship. I should have been weeping along with Matt Smith in the final scenes, but instead I found it to be rather anti-climatic. A lot of this was, I think, down to pacing, since the entire story had to unfold in a single episode and the latter half seemed very rushed. The rooftop scene was a particular problem for me because it took place so soon after the Doctor's uncharacteristically pessimistic revelation that Rory would "have to" live out the next 50 years in the Angel hotel. Plus there was the added distraction of the Statue of Liberty, which I have no doubt will be a bugbear for New Yorkers because when is there ever a time when no one is looking at the Statue of Liberty? Even if there was some moment when no one was looking at her, people would definitely stop and take notice when she began stomping across the city.

I wouldn't give the episode a wholly bad review. Even if I did find the supposedly tragic tearjerker scenes to be rather forced, the facts of the Amy/Rory epilogue were satisfyingly final. What interested me more was the Doctor's increasing neediness, with him noticeably freaking out over Amy getting older. I really enjoy the way the Doctor has come to value Amy and Rory as a unit without undercutting Rory's importance, even though the Doctor clearly has a far closer relationship with Amy than with Rory. Actually, I've come to think that the foreshadowing towards this episode's emotional arc was better than the episode itself, because the sense of foreboding had been ramped up so much that it couldn't really be resolved in one single episode. Even without the knowledge that this would be Amy and Rory's final adventure, the emotional focus of this season has been Amy and Rory getting older and growing away from the Doctor, and the Doctor trying to grab some time with them while he still can.
The slow-breakup story was engaging and well-timed but the ultimate breakup itself seemed weak and rushed, which to me is emblematic of Steven Moffat's main flaw as showrunner. With no one to rein him in, he tends to write stories that put huge weight and significance on the run-up but then fail to live up to expectations when it comes to the payoff. Season 6 was the most glaring example of this because the first couple of episodes were so fascinating and exciting that I didn't realise until the finale itself that Moffat had written himself into a corner and the show had been going downhill all season. I'm hoping that the truncated nature of the next companion's half-season run will avoid this kind of thing happening to her -- at least, not at first.

My feelings on River are very mixed, because while some of her appearances are entertaining, an equal number seem forced and random. She's an archetypal Awesome Side-Character, like Spike in the early seasons of Buffy, and Jack Harkness in season one of Doctor Who. Like the Weeping Angels, River is intriguing in moderation, but the more she appears the more irritating she becomes. The problem is that if you want to turn an Awesome Side-Character into a regular, you need to give them some flaws or else they just seem too larger-than-life, which is extra problematic in DW because the Doctor is already such a huge personality. This makes me irritated at myself because I really want to love a badass lady space-archaeologist, but the nature of River's role so far has been so one-note that I still don't view her as a fully-realised adult character. In this particular episode I rather liked her, which is just as well because the other Moffat favourite -- the Angels -- are reaching saturation point. The concept of the hotel/farm was scary, but the Angels themselves are a true horror-movie monster in the sense that their power lies in the fact that the audience can imagine their existence in real life. The whole idea of statues moving while you're not looking is a perfect horror-story, but the more they appear onscreen (particularly in that earlier episode where we actually saw them move, which I hated), the less frightening they become.

Tangentially related to River, there's one ongoing characterisation detail for the Doctor that I found particularly noticeable in this episode. It's never 100% clear just what goes on within the Doctor/River relationship, but I'm pretty sure that the Eleventh Doctor is supposed to be sexual in a way that Nine and Ten really weren't, as indicated by the way River flirts with him and the Doctor's reaction to that as the series progresses. But in complete opposition to that characterisation, he seems utterly baffled when it comes to other people in sexual/romantic relationships, particularly Amy and Rory. There are tons of little moments where he reacts to Amy and Rory's relationship with blank incomprehension (Why don't they want to sleep in bunkbeds? Bunkbeds are cool!) or a kind of comedic, childlike disgust (ie, he gets grossed out by them kissing), whereas any problems the Ninth or Tenth Doctors had with their companions' boyfriends were more to do with jealousy. I guess this characterisation may tie in with Eleven's strange mixture of childish and grandfatherly traits, but I still find it confusing.

Looking toward the Christmas episode, well... you know as much as I. The one comment I do have is that I wish the new companion wasn't being introduced this way, because Christmas episodes are by nature so different from a typical week's Doctor Who. Christmas episodes tend to be rather hackneyed because there's a built-in audience of drunk-on-Christmas-spirit adults and small children to entertain, and the story kind of has to fit in with various sentimental Christmas-story cliches. I suspect that the new companion may end up getting a negative reception from adult Whovians for this reason, which is unfortunate because it's already difficult to get audiences to like a new companion right off the bat.

(P.S. Am I the only one who found themselves singing the episode title to the tune of "First They Take Manhattan" by Leonard Cohen? No? Anyone?) 

Previous reviews can be found on the Doctor Who tag.

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The Bletchley Circle, Part 2: Costume Design.

Previously: The Bletchley Circle.

Historical dramas have a symbiotic relationship with costume design, with the clothes in high-profile shows like Downton Abbey receiving almost as much coverage as the stars. I suspect that this is one of the contributing factors to the popularity of historical movies about aristocrats, since it's a lot easier to interview Keira Knightley about corset logistics for the fiftieth time than it is to publicise a bunch of photoshoots of people wearing muddy pinafores and staid woollen caps. I love a good crinoline as much as the next girl, but sometimes movies about The Poors can be just as visually interesting because the costumes can illustrate more than just a statement of expense and luxury.

Downton Abbey is the reigning queen of costume-design coverage because it just entered the 1920s, and fashion magazines looooove the 1920s. Downton is in an enviable position, costume-wise, because several of its main characters are real clothes-horses and are rich enough that it's believable for them to be agonisingly on-trend as the show inches forwards into the first years of "modern" fashion. Once you reach the mid-20th century, popular fashions begin to move fast enough that most viewers will know the time period without much need for scene-setting, whereas it would take a historian to tell the difference between, say, 1830 and 1850 based on visuals alone. The problem is that it's easy to get carried away with year-by-year trend accuracy, and forget that not everyone could or even want to be up-to-date with the very latest styles.

Lucy

The popular image of 1950s fashion stems from Dior's New Look, a "return to femininity" after the supposed horror of having to wear trousers, uniforms and sensible shoes during wartime. (Unsurprisingly, the New Look was not immediately met with widespread jubilation -- I imagine that a couple of our Bletchley girls would have been less than enthused about the return of the corset girdle.) Full-skirted New Look outfits have never really gone out of style for things like prom dresses and semi-formalwear because they still represent a certain kind of 1950s ultra-femininity. But while The Bletchley Circle is set in 1952, it's very aware of the social background of its main characters, none of whom are exactly fashion plates. In some ways it reminded me of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, a movie whose story relied upon a particular historical setting but whose visuals were often strangely nebulous when it came to time-specific details. A couple of the younger characters in Tinker, Tailor were very obviously living in the 1970s, but many of the older men were either stuck in the past, or were just wearing the same suits they'd been wearing for the past twenty years. Which is, I think, satisfyingly realistic.

From left to right: Susan, Millie, Lucy, and Jean.

People don't just throw away all their old clothes as soon as a new decade rolls in. In The Bletchley Circle, Jean's matronly suits could easily have been worn by her character any time from 1935 to the present day, and Susan isn't much more fashion-forward. In fact, Susan is gloriously lacking in vanity, dressing in a selection of sensible, drab skirts and home-made knitwear. I kind of love the fact that she wears no makeup whatsoever, which is vanishingly rare to see on TV. It definitely adds to the contrast between Susan and Millie -- Millie being the character who spends the most time and money on her appearance despite probably being the poorest person in the group.

While Jean, Susan and Lucy are still mostly stuck with rationing-era clothes, Millie is closer in appearance to a classic 1950s look. She wears trousers and headscarves, and understands why a young woman would follow a strange man off a train in order to buy black-market cosmetics. When it comes to the moment when Lucy has to play decoy to lure in the Strangler, Millie is the one who supplies the dress and the lipstick. That scene was a real standout for me because the characters evidently had such a clear idea of what kind of look they were going for, whereas the end result seemed, to a modern eye, to be relatively sedate. It was a very narrow, precise cultural distinction, hinted at in the first episode when Susan's husband makes an offhand remark about the Strangler's victims being "not our kind of girls". That kind of girl being young single women who take the evening train home from work by themselves, and wear makeup. Yet if Lucy's temporary disguise as that type of girl had been introduced at the beginning of the show rather than halfway through (as a contrast to her frumpier outfits as a working-class housewife), I doubt that any viewer would have picked it out as being in any way unusual.

Lucy, after her makeover.

One last thing: UNDERWEAR. You do see Lucy getting undressed at one point, but I was pleased to find out that the costume designer made them all wear 1950s underwear under their clothes. This may sound like a weird thing to appreciate, but underwear does make a big difference to whatever is worn on top, particularly once you get beyond the long reign of the corset. Not only have ideal body-shapes changed a lot over the past few decades (thanks, idiotic internet memes, we know that Marilyn Monroe was "fatter" than "modern supermodels"), but "normal" body-shapes have changed as well. A middle-aged woman in 1952 would have been a young adult during the Great Depression and lived with rationing for over a decade of her life, which was definitely a contributing factor towards dress and waist sizes being dramatically smaller then than they are today. Add to that the fact that people were aiming for different body-shapes than we do, and it's surprisingly difficult for modern-day actresses to successfully wear fashions from 50+ years ago. Particularly if, as in this show, the costumes were at least partially made up of real vintage clothing. Some uncomfortable stockings and a pointy bullet-bra not only mean that the clothes look and fit better, but they help the actors stand and walk correctly as well.

Millie

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The Bletchley Circle

This may seem like an idiotic complaint coming from someone so obsessed with costuming and appearances, but one of the reasons why I'm so judgemental about historical dramas is that they're often so much more concerned with style than with substance. Not that style's necessarily a bad thing, since if historical dramas were actually "accurate" then it'd be damn near impossible to write them for a modern audience. A tremendous amount of research and effort goes into making things like Downton Abbey and Titanic into glittering caricatures of a particular time-period, but it's less common to see that same effort go into the non-visual aspects of the setting, mostly because very few people want to watch a movie that directly reflects the culture of actual real-life humans in the 17th century. You know, back when everyone was stunningly racist, people had wooden teeth, and public executions were the popular equivalent of Keeping Up With The Kardashians.

The Bletchley Circle is one of those rare historical dramas that combines modern writing styles (in this case, a murder mystery) with real emotional and psychological fidelity to the time-period. British television is unwaveringly obsessed with the two World Wars (as evidenced by the simultaneous popularity of Downton Abbey, Upstairs/Downstairs and War Horse, not to mention Doctor Who's unerring ability to end up in 1940s England at least once per season), but I can't remember having seen anything that illustrates the post-war period as well as this show does. The protagonists are four women who worked as codebreakers at Bletchley Park during WWII, but following the War found themselves falling into dull and disappointing routines either as housewives or in jobs that failed to measure up to the excitement of foiling Nazi spies. When we first meet these women they're in their element, working diligently to break German codes and help the men stationed overseas, but the moment the show skips forwards to 1952 it's immediately obvious that things have changed for the worse.

Susan Gray, your new role-model.

It's common knowledge that after the War many women failed to regain the kind of power and freedom they'd been allowed during wartime, but The Bletchley Circle goes beyond that. In almost every scene, there's this palpable awareness that this is a story about an entire generation of people who have been emotionally obliterated by the War. On top of the main characters' frustration with being reduced to "women's work", it's glaringly obvious that no one talks about anything of importance -- that not only are these women legally forbidden to discuss their wartime work due to the Official Secrets Act, but no one wants to talk about anything that disturbs the banal veneer of peacetime Britain. It's incredibly 1950s. I could go on for hours about how brilliant this show is when it comes to the grim, low-level, everyday details of emotional trauma while still managing to be an uplifting story about friendship and a straightforward crime procedural.

At its heart, this was a "getting the gang together" story like Ocean's 11 or The Avengers, with the atypical detail that all the conflict was external rather than coming from clashes between the main characters. There's no macho posturing or shouty arguments with unwilling police chiefs here -- more like a quiet acceptance from the get-go that very few people are going to take them seriously, so they may as well just get down to business. With no practical knowledge of how to track down a serial-killer, the four women reverse-engineer their deductive methods from the way they used to track Nazi troop movements and spies during the War. It's the ultimate Make Do And Mend -- working out new ways to do old jobs, and finding out that they're actually better at it than the experienced professionals who ignore them.

The main focus was on Susan, a housewife whose ongoing fascination with solving the Strangler mystery is impossible to explain to her husband, a war veteren whose main desire is to live as safe and conventional life as possible. Susan has a head for mathematics and is fuelled by a secret streak of indomitable self-confidence, but unlike most maverick TV detectives is is far from a loner wolf. She's the one who brings the rest of the gang together, exhibiting a perversely enthusiastic attitude towards the "puzzle" until she encounters the horrifying reality of the crime for the first time. The rest of the Circle is made up of Jean, a matronly who used to be their supervisor at Bletchley; Lucy, a timid newlywed with a photographic memory; and Millie, a down-on-her-luck "free spirit" (by 1950s standards, at least) who went traveling after the War but had her adventures cut short by lack of funds. While some shows would have emphasised the differences between these women, The Bletchley Circle focuses what brings them together: boredom, loneliness, and a sense of frustrated determination that only needs a spark to explode into its Wartime mood of bustling efficiency.

My only criticism is that although The Bletchley Circle is thoroughly female-oriented in way one rarely sees in mainstream crime TV, it includes some surprisingly cliched forays into torture-porn whenever another young woman is murdered. These kids of scenes have become so run-of-the-mill that I'd barely remark on them showing up BBC Sherlock or The Killing, but since The Bletchley Circle is otherwise so thoughtful and subtle in tone, I found they really stood out. To audiences already familiar with crime TV and serial-killer fiction, this show supplies nothing new in the way of murder and mayhem. In fact, the idea of a mysterious killer strangling young women on the streets of London seems almost prosaic when compared to your CSIs and your Hannibal Lecters. But not only are our detectives from an era before the influences of procedural crime dramas, they exist in a society that is still tentatively easing back into peacetime and is unwilling to acknowledge any kind of upset to normalcy. Even though these women are undoubtedly on the side of the angels, there's no question that they will keep their work a secret from everyone they know, even when it begins to endanger their lives.

Next: The costumes of The Bletchley Circle.

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Honour Among Punks: Sherlock Holmes like you've never seen her before.

Did you know that I quite like Sherlock Holmes? DID YOU ALSO KNOW that there's a comicbook where Holmes and Watson are both women and it's set in an alternate-history 1980s where Victorian society continued on throughout the 20th century because World War II never happened? And Holmes (Sharon) is a punk who solves punk crimes that are ignored by the police? And she has an angry punk girlfriend named Sam, who lives with her and nerdy American med-student Watson at 112 Baker Street? THIS IS SO IMPORTANT, YOU GUYS. So important.

(source)

I had a couple of long train journeys today, and found myself reading the entire run of Baker Street by Gary Reed and Guy Davis (two full story arcs, "Honour Among Punks" and "Children of the Night") from cover to cover. And now I'm passing on the love, because a) the premise is so evidently super-awesome that everyone should at least give it a try, and b) more selfishly, I want people to write fanfic about it for Yuletide. If you haven't heard of Yuletide before, it's an annual fanfic festival for people who want there to be fic for something reeaaaally obscure like a yogurt advert or a song by The Supremes or, say, a now-defunct queer lady punk Sherlock Holmes comic. Many Yuletide participants are have little or no previous experience with fandom or fanfic, because Yuletide is for EVERYONE and you can request anything. Seriously, there are multiple Kierkegaard fanfics out there, all thanks to Yuletide. But I digress from our main focus: Sharon Holmes: Punk Crimefighter.

Sharon and Watson.

So, first up, there are a couple of flaws in this comic, although quite frankly the concept is so delicious that a few clumsy turns in the execution did not bother me enormously. The book's most basic problem is that the writing is a little rookie-ish towards the beginning, but it picks up a lot after the introductory sections and by the time I got to the second of the two main stories (billed as "a tragedy in five acts", which BTW -- they're not wrong) I was totally invested. The other problem, which will only be a issue for people who require historical exactitude in their punk-detective comicbooks, is the fact that the entire1970s/80s-era punk subculture could not exist in a universe where WWII never happened, because punk was a reaction to the mores of the post-war generation. Also, there's a scene where a character wears an outfit with swastikas all over it, which doesn't really make sense as a piece of shock-style in a world where the swastika was never appropriated by Hitler. However, I found that the alternate-history aspect of the setting isn't a particularly prominent feature, so if you're the kind of person who is willing to accept things like Steampunk futurism or, you know, costumed superheroes, then post-Victorian punks should be a cinch.

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Flaws aside, it's a satisfying Holmes pastiche. It's almost more from Watson's point of view than Holmes canon, because Watson-as-narrator is enthusiastic but still mostly a naiive outsider to Sharon and her girlfriend's standoffish circle of punk acquaintances. Sharon is more of a mystery than canon Holmes, possibly because her closest emotional connection is to Sam rather than to Watson, who fills the role of well-meaning sidekick as Sam becomes more and more embittered about Sharon's obsession with her work. The mysteries resemble classic Holmes without being direct adaptations (they investigate a forgery ring that's somehow connected with the London punk scene; Sharon tracks a latter-day Jack The Ripper who preys only on men), and the characters frequent an underground nightclub called Baskerville's. Sharon is different from Sherlock Holmes in more than the obvious ways, but I still love her. She's still obsessed with her work, replacing cocaine addiction with a compulsion to solve mysteries that the police can't be bothered to look at, but she's a lot more caring and... maternal, I guess? And her relationship with Sam is excellent, which is part of the reason why I'm kinda-sorta not joking at all when I say I want you guys to read this book so you can write fanfic for it. ;)

Sharon and Sam. (source)

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Elementary: characterisation, the unaired pilot, and its relationship to Sherlock Holmes canon.

Previously: From Arthur Conan Doyle to New York City's "Elementary": The Costume Design of Holmes and Watson.

Given the nature of Sherlock Holmes fandom, it's not entirely surprising that people were forming their opinions of Elementary and arguing about it before anyone had even seen the show. Some Holmes canon purists hated the fact that it was set in America; some fans of BBC Sherlock hated the idea of "another remake" so quickly on the heels of the British series. And people from both groups seemed irritated by the concept of a female Watson, prompting the first wave of backlash from pre-emptive Elementary fans who were determined to love it because Lucy Liu is awesome and sexism is bullshit. My own reaction to the early Elementary announcements was trepidation, partly because I didn't trust American network television to make a crime drama centering around a male/female relationship not be a romance. But since the showrunners had expressly put out statements to counteract this worry among Holmes fans, I decided to give it a go.

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I should mention now that this post will contain some spoilers, although they won't be connected to the crime plot. The main focus of the episode was the fledgling relationship between Holmes and Watson, and to be quite honest the mystery/crimesolving aspects were not good. Even by the standards of long-running formulaic crime dramas like Bones or CSI it wasn't particularly interesting, and the vast majority of deductions made by Holmes were ones that could well have been made by the police. Not to mention the fact that it fell for the old crime-TV problem of there only being one believable suspect, ie "that one actor you kinda recognise". Which isn't to say that I'm giving the episode a negative review -- I just feel like the detective work never really approached the quality of the deductions in Holmes canon, or indeed in BBC Sherlock.

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Some people will probably take issue at comparisons between BBC Sherlock and Elementary, but it's unavoidable. The main thing one has to take into account when judging them against each other is that Elementary was made for the framework of mainstream American crime TV while Sherlock was not. Sherlock had to be fantastic right off the bat because it was a flagship show for the BBC, was created by the writers of the BBC's other cult show (Doctor Who), and because it was a three-episode miniseries wherein each episode was the same length as a feature-film. Elementary, on the other hand, is intended to have a longer run, and unlike Sherlock will not be covered by a nation-wide media blitz. A full-season episodic crime drama on CBS is by nature a completely different animal from the high-budget, high-stakes fannish dream that is BBC Sherlock. Oh, and for anyone who is still worried that this show is "based on" BBC Sherlock, I can assure you that whatever its origins, it bears no resemblance to Sherlock whatsoever. So any die-hard Sherlock fans can rest easy in the knowledge that no narrative toes are being stepped on, regardless of Elementary's future success or failure.

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I'm surprisingly optimistic about the Holmes/Watson relationship in Elementary. The pilot lives up the showrunners' assurances that they won't be paired together romantically, although I wasn't wild about the explicit indications that Holmes isn't asexual. First of all I think that it's an important aspect to Holmes's character, particularly in a modern context when his canonical disinterest in women can't so easily be put down to misogyny. Secondly, I doubt that Elementary will ever include a serious love-interest for Holmes so these hints at a "brought low by A Woman" backstory are uninspiringly similar to the hordes of other TV detectives who turned to substance abuse after a breakup or fridged love-interest. I hate stories where the unwritten prologue is "an invisible woman was evil or died violently, and that's why your male hero is what he is today". UGH.

Looking back on it, the way the show introduced Holmes' attitude to sex and romantic relationships was pretty bizarre, and not intentionally so. While Holmes' very first lines to Watson were an attention-grabber, the whole "Do you believe in love at first sight?" thing ultimately went nowhere. For a few seconds I was sure that he was going to sham at being "in love" with Watson in order to get rid of her, because that's the kind of thing BBC Sherlock would do in the same scenario. But in fact it just turned out to be him showing off a memory trick that was never properly explained and wasn't all that impressive to begin with. The ability to pick out one conversation from a selection of background noises will undoubtedly come in useful in later episodes, but introducing it in this situation was random and jarring.

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As for the conversation regarding his earlier visitor (Sex-worker or one-day-stand? The former seems more likely, seeing as he only just got out of rehab.) and the handcuffs, I found it to be as clumsy and abrupt as the first few lines of the Holmes/Watson introduction scene. I understand the desire to set out some information regarding Holmes' sexuality in the first episode, but the delivery didn't really gel with the relatively considerate and respectful way he treated Watson in other scenes. I'm more interested in the ongoing subtext that Holmes is submissive and has some familiarity with BDSM terminology, as in the rooftop scene where he refers to someone as "more of a sub than a dom". Obviously this kind of statement is silly and you can't categorise people like that, but otherwise the references to D/s dynamics interesting and far from sensationalised. A welcome change from Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes and BBC Sherlock, both of which featured tiresome scenarios where Irene Adler acted out the role of saucy, whip-cracking minx to Holmes' nonplussed and/or overwhelmed naif. Come to think of it, it's rather bizarre that all three included those scenes in the first place, but it seems a lot like Elementary is going the psychological route rather than the Carry On Bondage route, thank god.

I expect that these efforts to soften or normalise Holmes are partly down to the need to quickly highlight the differences between BBC Sherlock and Elementary. Sherlock is loud, attention-seeking, and refers to himself as a sociopath, whereas Elementary Holmes is more eager to please, openly expresses empathy for complete strangers, and seems relatively functional in everyday society. Something I picked up on right away with Elementary Holmes was that when he said to Watson, "I don't form connections with people," it didn't ring true. Possibly this was intentional -- another indicator that Holmes' Dark Past has led him to avoid relationships? -- but while BBC Sherlock can't make friends easily because he's so demonstrably an utter dickwaffle, it seems like the only reason why Elementary Holmes is alone is because he's purposefully avoiding personal connections. Which is another reason why I'm hoping that the as-yet-unconfirmed Tragic Backstory is actually a reference to Moriarty (male or female) being the catalyst for Holmes' isolation and addiction, rather than it being a more typical failed relationship story.

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It's difficult to tell whether the softer characterisation of Elementary's Holmes will make any difference to the overall popularity of the show. For one thing, Elementary and BBC Sherlock are playing to different audiences, both culturally and in terms of fannish interest groups. I doubt that Elementary is ever going to command the kind of hyper-enthusiastic fervour that BBC Sherlock receives, at least not if it continues on in the vein of "watchable-but-generic episodic crime drama". Plus, Sherlock is far more likely to attract fans of the original Holmes stories because it's a closer adaptation and is full of classic Holmesian trivia. On the other hand, Elementary has considerably more freedom and opportunity to change over the course of a season-long run, and some of those changes will almost certainly be in response to audience reactions.

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The main detail in which Elementary is more canon-compliant than BBC Sherlock is the characterisation of Holmes as being nice. All three recent Holmes adaptations  -- BBC Sherlock, the Guy Ritchie movies, and House, MD -- have set Holmes in the "genius asshole" mould, with him being a man so elevated from everyday society that he finds it acceptable to be actively horrible to "normal" people, even his best friend. This type of character is very popular at the moment because people behaving badly and getting away with it can make for very entertaining viewing, but taken to its current extreme it's really not all that similar to canon Sherlock Holmes. A takedown of the "lovable arrogant bastard" cliche is a topic for another day, but I will say that it's refreshing to see Elementary break away from this type of characterisation. It's not a particularly significant scene in the grand scheme of things, but towards the end of the episode when Holmes apologises to Watson through the glass of the holding cell... how unusual is it to see that type of exchange in a "socially maladjusted genius fights crime" TV show?

(source)

I suspect that thanks to Holmes-inspired shows like BBC Sherlock, House, MD and so on, the public perception of Holmes has been skewed slightly from the original characterisation of a man who, while misanthropic and sometimes rude, is ultimately a very caring and moral person. There are a couple of quotes from Lucy Liu to the effect that the Holmes/Watson relationship in Elementary will be a lot more equal than we're used to seeing, and there's already evidence of that in the pilot. Holmes already listens to Joan's opinion, as well as seeming eager to please and, I think, to let her be in charge. And a lot of this may be a direct effect of Watson being a woman because while "long-suffering sidekick" is funny when it's Martin Freeman or Jude Law, it's less funny when the long-suffering sidekick a woman who is technically being paid to be a caregiver. So in fact, the casting of Watson as a woman had a significant impact on the characterisation of Holmes himself.

My least favourite deduction. (source)

So: While the the combination of Watson's no-nonsense steeliness and Holmes' mix of vulnerability and enthusiasm were delightful, the writers are really going to have to up their game when it comes to the crimesolving aspect of the show. In fact, I'm hoping that some better-written crime scenes will be added to the pilot episode when it airs, along with some cleanup regarding the somewhat incoherent Holmes/Watson introduction scene. Aside from that, here are some things I'm hoping to see more of in future episodes:

• BEES. (Almost certainly we will get this. HURRAH.) 
• Further (respectful) indications that Holmes is what I saw described somewhere on Tumblr as a "happy sub". By which I mean, no to cheesy handcuff jokes (these stopped being funny in 1975, yet TV writers still seem to love them), and yes to more coherent characterisation of Holmes as a person who likes to have someone to ground him, ie Watson. I strongly suspect that the show is going in this direction already, especially since every single publicity photoshoot has been choreographed to have Lucy Liu in a position of authority while Jonny Lee Miller sits or lies at her feet, which is not the way male/female duos or buddy-cop pairings are usually pictured. 
• BETTER DEDUCTIONS. A couple of the deductions made by Holmes in the pilot episode were acceptable, but the rest were things that could have been made by any number of TV detectives, and Holmes needs to stand out. At the moment, it's honestly unclear to me why the police would allow him -- directly out of rehab! -- to be at a crime scene. (Sidenote: Holmesian deductions don't even need to make sense in the real world -- they just need to be showy and impressive. These were neither.) 
• Tying into the previous point, I'd love it if the format of each episode's crime storyline could break away from the tried-and-true CSI formula wherein it's very easy for viewers to work out who the killer is, but I don't have high hopes of this because the show is on CBS. I'd be happy enough if they kept the formula but added smarter and more elaborate deduction scenes.
• Some kind of scene where Joan protects Holmes in a physical altercation.

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New York Fashion Week, spring 2013: Proenza Schouler, Ralph Lauren, and more.

Proenza Schouler
The close-up shots from this show are far, far more interesting than the overall effect of each individual outfit. The silhouettes were boxy but chic, as I'd expect from any season of Proenza Schouler, but this kind of unique design detail is one of those moments where you can really understand why these clothes are so stupidly expensive. (Something that I don't alway believe when it comes to -- totally random example here, guys -- Calvin Klein's neverending supply of knee-length white dresses.)

Ralph Lauren
OK, this was one of those "Mediterranean" themed shows where there were either flamenco-style ruffles, black lace accents, or matador references on every single goddamn outfit. But instead of me posting all 62 very obviously Ralph Lauren-ish outfits plus their respective "Mediterranean" hats, instead we're going to talk about these trousers:

Guys, this is a VERY SPECIFIC STYLE that can potentially look very cool and retro, but only if you do it right. Also, I feel like it's a look that doesn't go very well with a skinny model's frame? 1930s/'40s riding breeches can look great if they're buttoned at the calves and are tightly fitted around the waist and hips, but if they're remotely un-shaped around the lower leg and are worn by someone with a very thin frame, you tend to get the effect of a recently-deflated balloon with a stick rattling around inside it. On the whole I don't think most women are likely to be in favour of an item of clothing that emphasises the hips and upper thighs anyway, so it's kind of important for it to fit correctly in the first place.

Vivienne Tam

Nicholas K
Tattooine is so in this season.

 

Kimberly Ovitz

I'm including this outfit not because I think it's particularly interesting or attractive in itself, but because a) it's another indication that hood-scarves are A Thing now, and b) this whole show was a perfect example of WTFM: "What The Fashion Muse??"

Kimberly Ovitz's entire Spring collection was reportedly inspired by a Kazakhstani performance artist who specialises in Russian Futurism and something to do with nomad culture. What I would like to know is, how do designers invariably manage to get from such esoteric beginnings to an end result of 37 near-identical white/beige shift-dresses? Karl Lagerfeld or Jean-Paul Gaultier can take a theme like "oranges" or "office supplies" and run with it, creating a collection of unparalleled weirdness and beauty, but I feel like at least half the time when designers try to attach an explicit theme to their work, it sounds like absolute nonsense. In fact, it wouldn't hugely surprise me if it turned out that some of the labels that turn out whole shows of skirts-and-shirts outfits just go on Wikipedia two hours before the show and pick out a random article to claim as the "muse" of their latest collection.

Peter Som
Cropped bra-shirts and high-waisted pencil skirts are a brilliantly flattering Spring trend that is sure to catch on like wildfire among the general populace. (Seriously though, I'm relatively slim myself but this outfit would still make me look like an overcooked sausage whose skin has split in the middle.)

Katie Gallagher
I WANT THIS OUTFIT. If I had it I'd wear it every day. No further commentary than that because technically speaking it's not all that interesting, but on the off-chance that any of you guys  know where I can get something that looks exactly like this but doesn't cost $$$? Call me. (Although I have a sneaking suspicion that the skirt is made of kangaroo skin. So, uh, not that particular detail.)

 

Richard Chai Love

Needs more gold, Aquaman.

Tadashi Shoji
Kate Middleton's latest picnic outfits.

Veronica Beard

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The new Judge Dredd movie is a great chick-flick.

Most people have a favourite genre of fiction, one where they'll watch or read any old crap as long as it ticks the right boxes. For my mother, it's those crime novels that always have a dark picture of an alleyway on the cover and a blurb including the phrase "web of deceit". My friend Alex is a great aficionado of any and all vintage SF/F where the sets and costumes look like they were made out of cereal boxes. My own speciality is dystopic sci-fi/action movies, meaning that I got near-equal quantities of entertainment from the truly brilliant Children Of Men as I did from the baffling cinematic fart that is The Spirit. (For those of you who haven't seen The Spirit, it's basically what would happen if someone tried to remake Sin City while tripping balls. And allowed Samuel L Jackson full creative control over all of his and Scarlett Johansson's costumes. Seriously, ask me about The Spirit sometime. It has a bellydancer/Nazi/dentistry scene that you would not believe.)

My point is, you could not pay me to watch a three-star movie about a middle-aged white guy angsting over his divorce from Kate Hudson, but a three-star movie where the exact same guy duels a malfunctioning android in a city made entirely from neon striplighting and concrete rubble? I'm sold.

The problem is that my own outlook on the world often seems to clash with that of the filmmakers I love, ie: I generally view women to be people, and the creators of the films I watch give every impression of disagreeing with this viewpoint. Of course, I could try watching nothing but feminist documentaries and serious real-life dramas about women overcoming personal tragedies, but quite frankly those kinds of movies don't fulfill my needs vis-a-vis mutant zombie hordes, improbable leather body-armour, and soundtracks that sound like twelve-ton steel girders being banged together by Skrillex. Sadly, if I want to sit down and watch some ridiculous bullshit about a bunch of murderous idiots rappelling down the ruins of a post-apocalyptic megacity, then I generally have to put up with the only female characters in the movie either being Lara Croft clones, or a roomful of strippers who get gunned down in the second act.

My knowledge of the Judge Dredd comics is fairly limited (I'm more of a Halo Jones girl), but the trailers for the new movie were generic enough that I had every reason to suspect that it was your average run-of-the-mill "guy goes on a brainless killing-spree in the name of Justice" story. The surprising 95% Rotten Tomatoes rating and the presence of Cersei Lannister as the primary villain (!!!), however, were enough for me to give it a try. And you know what? This is an ideal girl-nerd action movie. It has all the exploding-head violence you'd expect from a movie about a capital punishment-obsessed cop battling drug-dealers in a futuristic towerblock, but none of the sexism you'd expect from, well, any film with that premise. Lena Headey is sneeringly excellent in her somewhat typecast role as a villainess perched at the top of the criminal food-chain, ordering her lackeys to rain death upon any commoners who get in her way. Dredd's rookie sidekick (Olivia Thirlby) may be young and inexperienced but she's also competent and professional, and actually gets more screentime and character development than Dredd himself.

Dredd (or Dredd 3D, because the 3D-movie marketing people are apparently still trying to make Fetch Happen) effectively shoots down the assumption that if you're going to see a brainless action movie, you're going to have to put up with some offensive shit as well. A lot of the time when people complain about Transformers and how it's, you know, sexist and all-round badly written, the comeback is that it's "just a stupid blockbuster". And this doubly counts for movies with higher age-ratings, where the filmmakers have a green light to show as much T&A as they want. In the case of Dredd, however, you have a relatively simple comicbook adaptation that's dark and gory enough to receive an 18 rating and yet mysteriously contains zero scenes where the camera lovingly pans over naked and/or recently-murdered strippers. The thing is, I'm not even advocating some kind of puritanical no-boobs law for cheesy action movies, I'd just like filmmakers to class up the boobs scenes a little, you know? Like maybe giving the lady characters a personality other than "daddy issues" or "likes to blow things up while wearing hotpants". 

After watching Dredd, I realised that the reason why it seemed so... weird, I guess... is that it didn't follow the kind of predictable cliches I was expecting. This type of movie -- especially one with an adults-only rating -- usually has very poorly-drawn characters and a lot of throwbacks to grindhouse cinema, but despite Dredd's plethora of extreme violence it never really went that route. Although it has the basic plot of a shoot-em-up videogame, the decision and emotional reactions made by the characters were far, far more intelligent and realistic than other movies of the genre. Which makes sense when you find out that it was written by the screenwriter of 28 Days Later, Sunshine, and Never Let Me Go, all sci-fi movies with a broader appeal outside the main target audience of teenage boys and genre fans.

Judge Dredd has more in common with the emotionless killing-machines of '80s action movies than with the wrong-place-wrong-time John McClanes you see in most modern blockbusters. I'm kinda hoping this movie is successful enough for a sequel, actually, since the director has already stated that he'd like to explore the idea of Dredd as a fascist. Judge Dredd is in the unique position of being an adult comicbook antihero who hasn't been neutered or simplified by his film adaptation, filling a role that's almost a parody of the kind of right-wing American cop characters who glorify the idea of hyper-violent law enforcement. In some ways, Dredd 3D reminded me more of sophisticated films like Blade Runner and A Scanner Darkly than it did of more thematically similar movies like Demolition Man. The vision for Mega City One was founded in the real world rather than looking like the type of cartoonish, larger-than-life post-apocalyptic settings where most leather-clad antiheroes seem to reside. The aesthetic was solidly reminiscent of inncer-city towerblocks in the real world, neglected and graffiti-spattered, with charmless breezeblock slums sporting ironically chirpy names like "Peach Trees".

Upon reflection, I'd rate Dredd as being significantly better than The Dark Knight Rises because it's so much more consistent and self-aware. Obviously Nolan's Batman trilogy is more complex than any Judge Dredd series is likely to be, but TDKR missed its mark by such a wide margin that I'd put it below a simpler but more clearly thought-out movie like Dredd. And -- surprisingly enough considering Judge Dredd's total absence of backstory or character-development -- I found him to be a more appealing and engaging character than the most recent appearance of Nolan's Bruce Wayne. The two characters fill the same basic niche, but Dredd is virtually ego-free while the Dark Knight movies gradually became more and more about Bruce Wayne's manpain until we reached a point where the actions of side-characters and villains seemed tailored exclusively to inspire an emotional reaction from him. Judge Dredd is motivated so purely by dedication to the Law that we never even see his entire face, yet he somehow seemed more authentic than TDKR's Bruce Wayne.

Links
The full Dredd soundtrack is available to stream online, and I'd highly recommend it for any and all criminal ventures out into your friendly neighbourhood post-apocalyptic megacity. Also available is the equally excellent but rather more '80s-influenced Drokk: Music Inspired By Mega City One, by Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow of Portishead.

Interview with Alex Garland, the writer and producer of Dredd. Having read this, I can really see how the film turned out so well and so faithful to the comics.

Previously on Hello, Tailor: Dressing for the Apocalypse, and Movie Costumes I Have Loved: Doomsday.

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