[Spoiler warning]

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…as The Cabin in the Woods can be summed up as The Evil Dead mixed with The Truman Show (1998); a description that is apt on a number of levels but completely spoils the nature of the film.
Regarding the plot, five teenagers go to the titular location, summon a group of blood-thirsty zombies by reading an incantation from an old book and then get slaughtered one by one. This aspect of the film is Sam Raimi by the numbers, but right from the start of the plot we are shown a parallel narrative where an international corporation with an underground lair (as hi-tech as any Bond villain’s) is spying on the teenagers via surveillance devices and once they arrive at the cabin, trap them in the location via an invisible forcefield that fries anything that touches it. Much of the humour of the film not only comes from our familiarity with the horror tropes the plot comprehensively works its way through, but also from the callous and dispassionate way the controllers of this environment watch the kids being killed, taking bets on the nature of their demise et al.
As mentioned above, the film not only refers to Raimi’s undead but also Hellraiser – a Clive Barker-esque puzzle box and Pinhead analogue appear in the film – and also dozens of other other horror icons, from werewolves to vampire bats, Japanese vengeful ghosts and giant serpents. All of these monsters are kept by the company below the cabin in glass cages that owe a debt to both Roald Dahl’s Chocolate Factory sequel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator and the Cube trilogy (1997-2004), and they can be sent to the surface at will according to which horror cliché the inhabitants have unwittingly chosen – mysterious book, Lament Configuration, conch horn, music box etc. – to realise the curse within.
Compared to the trailer which shows the forcefield within seconds, at least the film’s eye-catching poster is more oblique, using the Cube and Hellraiser puzzle box references visually in a rendering of the cabin as potentially redesigned by Ernő Rubik.
In the film’s scenario, where these malevolent office workers can deliver any monster or demon to devour the kids in the cabin they desire – one of the leads complains that they never summon the merman – this suggests the film is a sequel to hundreds of other horror films, as if this corporation was behind the events of all the other fictions the narrative references. Occasionally this means the film is a little too clever for its own good; snide allusions to Japanese horror tropes, while amusing, are a little too mean spirited (no pun intended). The deconstruction of every aspect of horror films, such as the characters being drugged to make them act stupider than they should be and woodland mist being an aphrodisiac released to manipulate those nearby, sometimes tip over from being smart plot devises into grating on the audience’s expectations.
However, the film’s sour notes are confidently exceeded by its many intelligent and delightful visual gags, plus a smart script that generally stays one step ahead of the audience. While the numerous references to other films are necessary for the plot to work, some entire sequences seem lifted from other movies, and the film strays a little towards plagiarism rather than homage with not only the third act of the film being lifted generously from Westworld (1973) and Blade (1998) but even the last scene between the final girl and boy being a visual copy of the end of Heathers (1989). This scene plus the deus ex mechina which follows would have perhaps been bettered by a conclusion more unsettling and disturbing, such as the final girl acquiescing to the evil company’s boss (another welcome cameo) after all. However that might have set up a sequel, something the more definitive conclusion here pretty much excludes.
While The Cabin in the Woods does have a degree of familiarity to it, regarding the basic premise, other films have attempted to tackle some of the above elements and failed dismally. Previous attempts to mix the horror and reality TV genre, such as Halloween: Resurrection and FeardotCom (both 2002) were pedestrian to say the least, while the execrable Scary Movie franchise (2000-present) which also uses numerous references to other movies sees its familiarity with the horror genre matched only by its misogyny, homophobia and general lack of imagination. While one could argue these are also common themes in other horror films, they aren’t elements that should be lauded.
Another critic summed up The Cabin in the Woods as Scream (1996) for the current generation, and this is an apt description as Goddard’s film deconstructs horror fantasy films as cleverly and knowingly as Wes Craven did the slasher genre. However as part of a chain with each generation referencing the last, Scream doesn’t work as a final word on the subject as not only did it usher in its own trio of disappointing sequels, but also the dreadful Scary Movie sequence. Like the original Scream, Cabin also never patronises the viewer, but if anything the film might expect a little too much from the audience in accepting all of the movie’s obscure twists and cameos.
Compared to other modern horror movies, the film is thankfully a hard act to follow, as it uses up and comments on nearly every horror plot that preceded it and does so with great affection and intelligence. The only question is: could the film-makers make an genuinely innovative and scary film that doesn’t rely on familiarity with the genre and meta-textuality to work? Rather than being a remix of The Evil Dead for the mash-up generation, it would be great to see Goddard and Whedon make a film that stands on its own two feet and looks forward as an influence on future film-makers rather than back.

Firstly, that this is some serious art piece where filmmakers of real passion have hustled money from all over, inspiring support with their great idea.

… OR …

… it’s some big tax write-off.

‘Shadow of the Sword’ feels very much like the latter, a production botched together to take advantage of some neato European investment opportunities. It’s got some decent photography, a solid cast of reliable luvvies, and very effective historical locations, but none of these positive elements unify into a decent film.

There’s a lack of drive to the movie, no sense that this is a story that anyone involved had any enthusiasm for. There’s a pervading sense of going through the motions, that the film itself is a contractual obligation rather than a work in its own right.

The problem lies at both ends of the film’s storytelling, with a bland script and insipid direction. The dialogue is almost shockingly banal, with everyone speaking in cliches and mundanities. Simon Aeby’s direction lacks any verve, a problem rubbed in by editing that let’s pointless shots drag on to no end.

This should be intense material: set in 16th century Austria, it concerns the persecution of a growing Anabaptist movement by a corrupt Catholic church, seen through the eyes of two childhood friends, orphans from the local monastery forced down different paths: Georg (Peter McDonald, one of the gruff Leeds players from ‘The Damned United)), who returns as the monastery’s new prior, and Martin (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, the incestuous regicide from ‘Game of Thrones’), a soldier in the Emperor’s army.

The schism between the two just kind of happens, with no real sense of the fervour and seething tensions of the time.

Martin sees Anna, a local woman, being derided as a witch due to her knowledge of traditional medicine, and intervenes on her behalf. She treats his war wound, which rather abruptly leads to a sex scene which even more abruptly leads to their undying love. Overnight.

Oh, and Anna is the daughter of the headsman, the local executioner, and as such is considered untouchable by the Church. In spite of Anna being an untouchable accused of being a witch during a period of religious tension, Martin doesn’t seem to consider this a problem.

When Martin returns from a disastrous war he finds Anna has borne his son and her father dead, leaving a vacancy for the new headsman. He takes the job and marries Anna, even though it puts him outside polite society and the marriage – and their son Jacob’s baptism – needs to be conducted by those cheeky Anabaptist.

There’s a complete lack of tension through all of this, and an equal lack of surprise as crackdowns on heresy begin and embittered rivals conspire to put the tolerant Georg, as well as Martin, Anna et al, in the path of the Inquisition (as embodied by a characteristically ’subdued’ Steven Berkoff).

This is a bad film, hitting the unlovable sweet spot of being too competent to be enjoyably bad, yet too relentlessly unremarkable to induce even a flicker of interest. Dreary.

As Parsons points out, ‘Just a Minute’ has been going on the radio for 45 years. Paul Merton, who arrived after the death of Kenneth Williams as a shockingly young new regular, has now been on the show for more than half of its lifetime.

And, as is pointed out in the introduction to all versions, the game really is quite simple. Players have to talk for just a minute on a subject without hesitation, repetition or deviation. If they break the rule, other players can buzz in.

Previous TV productions have tampered with the format. One version put the players in teams, which just doesn’t make sense. There was also a mystery object round, presumably because TV producers thought Nicholas Parsons reading a word off a card wasn’t visual enough.

This version, which I approached with the cynicism of a lifelong listener to the game, dispensed with any attempt to make the programme “more visual”. And so it actually worked. It’s filmed as a live performance: as well as standard shots of the panelists, there are shots from the back of the audience and pans across the stage. There are, in short, no distractions.

‘Just a Minute’ is always about the words, about listening intently. You get drawn into one of Paul Merton’s flights of fancy, or Sue Perkins’s anecdotes because you are listening so hard. If someone is doing well, you’re hoping they don’t mess up because you want to hear more. If someone is doing badly, you groan in empathy. (Peter Jones, probably most familiar to Shiny readers as the Voice of the Book in the original ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’, was such a bad player of the game that I used to suspect he was messing up on purpose.)

So filming a TV version without any flash visual elements allows you to focus on the words. It’s fun to see the players interact. For example, Paul Merton and Julian Clary’s long running rivalry contains a lot of non-verbal wind-ups. But that’s a bonus rather than a distraction.

For the first time, I want to see more. But please invite Sheila Hancock as she’s one of my very favorite players.

Matt has come full circle, writing once more as King Oblivion PHD for his first book, ‘The Supervillain Handbook’, which comes out this week from Skyhorse Publishing. I started our interview by asking a thuddingly obvious question:

Shiny Shelf: So – why supervillains?

Matt Wilson: Here’s the practical reason: When I started the ISS with a friend of mine, I needed to be able to write under a pseudonym. I had been writing comedy at Cracked.com, and on a few occasions I actually asked them to take my name off of stuff I wrote, not because I thought it was bad, but because I was working as a political reporter at a newspaper at the time and didn’t want my editors seeing my name attached to a story where I was joking around about Sarah Palin or whomever. Political editors tend to frown on their reporters stating any opinion about politicians, and that’s particularly true if the statement is about which one’s more evil.

I went with the supervillain theme and pseudonym because I just always tended to like the bad guys better, going back to probably all those hours of ‘Masters of the Universe’ I watched as a kid, where I sort of secretly rooted for Skeletor. Even now, I love Spider-Man and Batman, but Dr. Doom is easily my favorite character in comics. The villains always seem to have more fun.

Shiny Shelf: Supervillains in most comics also lose most of the time. That’s a fairly good basis for comedy, I would think: a character with grandiose ambitions who constantly fails?

Matt Wilson: There’s certainly more comedy value in losing. That, combined with how needlessly complicated most supervillain plots are, and you’ve got a goldmine.

Shiny Shelf: The ISS site has a wide variety of different gags and articles, not all of which would transfer to print easily (or, in the case of the movie recaps, legally). So what’s in ‘The Supervillain Handbook’, and how did you approach bringing King Oblivion PHD to a longer form?

Matt Wilson: The book only has a handful of pieces from the website, thrown in as sidebars or supplements. The meat of the text is all original stuff, and it reads as a straight-up parody of how-to or self-help guides. It goes through assessing motivation and goals, how educated you should be, developing a persona, finding a lair and henchmen, getting powers and/or equipment, what setbacks you’ll see. It’s quite thorough. King Oblivion PhD is the ‘author’, so he’s the one giving all the (terrible) advice, and generally talking down to the reader.

Shiny Shelf: If I recall correctly, you have a background in journalism? How does that day job influence your comedic/creative writing, or are they totally different disciplines to you?

Matt Wilson: It’s a pretty badly kept secret that every journalist really wants to be a novelist, and I’m no exception, though I tend more toward comedy. I think the best part of being a reporter, in terms of having an effect on other writing projects, is that it exercises the muscle. I write every day. The content of what I’m writing is quite different from what I write in my free time, but choosing interesting words, building concise sentences and having a consistent voice are all still part of the process.

Shiny Shelf: Let’s move on to your noir webstrip, ‘Copernicus Jones’. You mentioned the title Copernicus Jones, Robot Detective on WRA for a while before the strip actually emerged. How much did you have planned before Daniel Butler sent you his sketch of Copernicus, and the strip became a real proposition?

Matt Wilson: The title ‘Copernicus Jones: Robot Detective’ started as a joke. I used to spend a lot of time on a comedy forum where we’d take old comics and rearrange the panels, put in new speech bubbles, stuff like that. Something I did with those comics a lot was rename the character something goofy, and give them a funny job, stuff like Rick Dickensworth: Male Secretary. I came up with the name Copernicus Jones through that, and for a long time it was just a joke bouncing around in my skull.

It was only about two years ago that I thought about making it into an actual comic, and I just sort of wrote a script out of the blue. I meant for it to be a full-on noir parody, but in the process of writing it turned into a more serious story. I had the script for the first issue of the comic sitting around for a few months before I mentioned it on War Rocket Ajax and met Daniel, who was just a godsend for the comic. I can’t imagine a better artist for it.

Shiny Shelf: Are you a big noir reader?

Matt Wilson: I’ve read the basics: Hammett, Chandler. I’ve got some gaps. There are a ton of Charles Willeford books I need to get to. I have to admit the lion’s share of my knowledge about noir comes from movies, and I think that comes through in ‘Copernicus Jones’, which I think reads as a take on film noir more than anything. I love the genre, and I love all the recent attempts to modernize it or parody it. Drive is such a great neo-noir. And for parody, I can’t recommend ‘Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid’, with Steve Martin, enough.

Shiny Shelf: Following your work from The ISS, to War Rocket Ajax, your twitter feeds and tumblr not to mention others, it seems like you’re involved in a lot of different web projects. What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages of launching ideas online?

Matt Wilson: The big disadvantage is that it’s such a big pond. Almost everybody is a small fish, because there aren’t any gatekeepers. There are millions of people who think they’re the funniest person on the Internet. With all that chatter, it’s hard to get anyone to listen to YOU. But it isn’t impossible. Keeping at something often means you can build an audience, and projects often lead to other projects as you make connections and meet like-minded, talented people.

The biggest advantage, and this is really a flip side of the coin, is that there’s basically no risk. If you start a blog and it just doesn’t strike a chord, you can retire it with nothing lost except the time you invested in it. Same goes for a webcomic. And, really, you don’t even really have to care if you have an audience or not. If you like doing it, keep doing it. All you have to pay is your time and a few bucks for a domain. In a lot of cases, you don’t even have to bother with a hosting fee.

Shiny Shelf: You mentioned earlier that every journalist really wants to be a novelist, and that seems doubly true in comics, where I can think of quite a few columnist and commentators like Gail Simone who have moved into being quite prominent writers. With Copernicus Jones ongoing and the Supervillain Handbook out, you seem to be moving to writing longer work. Is that an ambition of yours, to perhaps move from shorter gags and being a commentator to writing books and comics as a longer term gig?

Matt Wilson: I’d certainly like to, yeah. I’ve got a sort of high-concept superhero pitch ready to go right now. But, of course, moving ahead with any of that isn’t totally up to me.

Shiny Shelf: And finally… War Rocket Ajax came second to my other favourite comics podcast, House to Astonish, on a chart of comics-related podcasts worth listening to. Any chance of aligning the time zones and hearing Paul and Al on one of your roundtables? I think that would be something a lot of people would like to hear…

Matt Wilson: After that list came out, Chris Sims and I had a little back and forth with them on Twitter. I challenged them to a trivia contest and they sort of demurred, but the challenge stands. THE BALL IS IN THEIR COURT.

‘The Supervillain Handbook’ is available from Amazon US on 25 April 2012 and from Amazon UK on 7 June 2012.

Produced by ‘Lost’ co-creator JJ Abrams, it adopts a lot of the basic structure and trappings of its predecessor, flipping between two time zones to unpeel a character’s back-story, while combining fast-moving and straightforward episodic A-plots with an underlying, slowly unfolding mystery.

The central concept of ‘Alcatraz’ is this: the 300-plus inmates in Alcatraz, along with the warders and staff, disappeared one day in 1963, and the US government covered it up by claiming the prison was closed and the prisoners transferred. In the present day, the criminals from Alcatraz are returning, unaged, and continuing their criminal careers. An unnamed agency of four people have to stop them.

It’s a simple enough pitch to be summed up in the title sequence, but also a very obscure idea for a big budget TV show and kind of pointless – beyond the time travel gimmick, we’re just talking about cops and criminals, so why bother with the Sci-Fi framing at all?

It’s also intensely predictable if you’ve seen any Abrams shows before: when characters are not what they seem it’s in entirely expected ways, the ‘twists’ are telegraphed so far in advance you wonder if they’re even supposed to be surprises. The first three episodes all end with ‘look, this character has turned up in a place we didn’t expect’ scenes of the kind that became a cliche in ‘Lost’.

So, in spite of the presence of Abrams and ‘Lost’ alum Jorge Garcia as a nerdish Alcatraz expert, as well as the fervent wishes of the marketing people, ‘Alcatraz’ isn’t ‘Lost’. It doesn’t have the initial impact of that show’s intriguing, huge budget pilot – in fact, the pilot is the worst written of the episodes so far, and falls far short of blockbuster action – nor the compulsive pull of its plotting. The characters are stock types for this type of show, and the majority of each episode is a straightforward procedural.

Nonetheless, ‘Alcatraz’ is entertaining, and very watchable in its own mindless way. While it lacks the big bangs of ‘Lost’ or even the first series of ‘Heroes’, it is slickly made entertainment that motors along. After the clunky pilot the thudding, exposition-heavy dialogue gets lighter and sharper, and builds an appealing central partnership between Sarah Jones (as former cop Madsen) and Garcia. The mystery isn’t particularly compelling, but there’s enough development to keep the show lightly intriguing.

It passes the time, basically. I expect the producers and network wanted to have a bit more impact than that but, you know – tough.

Three additional thoughts which didn’t really fit in the review so I’ve put them here instead:

1. Is Sam Neill – who ‘plays’ Hauser, mysterious boss of the mysterious agency hunting the Alcatraz time-travellers – ever going to wake up and realise he’s in a TV series?

2. The pilot for a TV series based on Brian Michael Bendis’ comic ‘Powers’ has recently lost its Deena Pilgrim, British actress Lucy Punch. The ‘Powers’ camp must be hoping for ‘Alcatraz’ to be canceled, because Sarah Jones is the perfect Deena, from haircut to attitude.

3. Anyone else think that the proliferation of fantasy shows is spreading these concepts a bit thin? Seriously, this is not the first big US fantasy/SF show of the last couple of years where the central mystery/phenomenon is the kind of thing that Mulder and Scully or Doctor Who would have wrapped up in a single episode.

It’s a formula that has worked for plenty of comedies from ‘Fawlty Towers’  to ‘The Office’, and while animated comedy ‘Archer’ may be set in the world of espionage its the character conflict that makes it funny.

Superspy Sterling Archer is James Bond, an already egotistical and selfish character, turned up to eleven in terms of swollen ego but also forced to deal with exactly the kind of banal realities – a bossy mother, snarky co-workers – that don’t exist in 007’s glamorous bubble.

The series avoids the easy laugh of making Archer incompetent, and instead he’s every bit the efficient action hero and irresistible to women that Bond is, but also exactly the kind of insufferable jerk you’d expect someone with those abilities to become. It’s a contrast perfectly expressed in H Jon Benjamin’s vocal performance, which is both seductively deep and whinily petulant.

Writer/creator Adam Reed has surrounded Archer with a strong cast of supporting characters at spy agency ISIS, including Archer’s boss (and mother) Malory Archer (Jessica Walter) and various bitchy, deranged and bitchily deranged colleagues.

With the possible exception of fellow agent and sometime love interest Lana, all the staff of ISIS have their own selfish fixations that drive them, from accountant Cyril’s sex addiction to scientist Krieger’s unsavoury personal experiments, and many of the plots and sub-plots of the show are driven by the tensions these personal vices create. They’re the petty character clashes of any workplace, but writ fantastically large and especially funny when contrasted with the world-threatening odds of ISIS’ espionage work.

The animation is sharply retro, with a classic comic strip style but modern animation technique that fits with the show’s deliberately vague setting, which combines a general 60s Cold War atmosphere with 80s computers and modern mobile phones.

It’s a great show to look at, evocative of ‘The Man from UNCLE’ and other period spy pieces, and that atmosphere is delivered straight enough to appeal to fans of the genre. There’s also  just enough tension – as well as gags – in the action scenes to make them exciting as well as funny.

‘Archer’ is a very dense show: in the course of this thirteen-episode second season Archer discovers he has a child, recovers from cancer, and goes on a quest to find his father that ends in a particularly unexpected way. Rather brilliantly, instead of having the throwaway approach to continuity taken by virtually every animated comedy since ‘The Simpsons’, ‘Archer’ turns throwaway references into running jokes – after Archer gets an ill-advised tattoo in one episode, it appears every time he takes his shirt off. It’s a contradictory, ahistorical fictional universe, but strangely consistent too.

In spite of that level of attention to detail, ‘Archer’ never gets bogged down by that kind of thing, with snappy pacing and super-short episodes that, watched on DVD, just fly by one after another. Espionage fans who like the tongue-in-cheek side of the genre, and who are up for some sharp and sometimes harsh laughs, will tear through this season in no time. It’s smart fun.

The crux of the episode – whether the survivors should kill Randall instead of letting him go and taking a chance on Randall leading his group to Hershel’s farm – forms a potent moral quandary that props up the episode. It’s rife with dramatic potential, but the episode chokes on a few points. First and foremost is the way Rick has been handled this season.

A few episodes ago it was he who was advocating saving Randall from walkers and not leave him behind. This is after Rick had been shot at by Randall’s people for killing Tony and Dave (who, incidentally, attempted to coax the location of Hershel’s farm out of Rick and then tried to kill him). While the argument could be made that Rick wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) trust Randall, why go through all the trouble to save him in the first place? This logic flaw has been killing this particular storyline for me.

It also continues Rick’s somewhat wishy-washy character arc this season. At times hard, other times deeply indecisive (the trend from ‘18 Miles Out’ continues here). Rick here tries to be the strong leader, but comes off as following the colder Shane’s lead, and the ultimate moment of truth – and Carl’s involvement – was plain awkward. And not in a dramatic way. It was just preachy and obvious, and felt contrived.

Speaking of Carl, I have another nitpick. For a group that is supposed to be jumpy about walkers and losing Sophia, they don’t seem to have a great track record in keeping an eye on kids. Carl wanders off, first obtaining a gun and then traveling down a ways until he finds a zombie stuck in the mud (and almost pays the price for it). Really, who is watching the kid? How does no one notice he is missing for a while?

It comes back later to haunt them later, and it turns out to be truly gut wrenching.

o_O

Meanwhile, Dale opposes the execution, providing the voice of civilization that the group has been lacking recently. Jeffrey DeMunn provides his best performance as Dale, providing an impassioned and well-timed speech that defines the issue laid out before the group. This scene, where the entire group meets in Hershel’s living room, really showcases how fractured the group has become on a subtle level. Tired, weathered, and their humanity in fringes… it encapsulates the state of the group. And it’s not pretty.

‘Judge, Jury, Executioner’ is an episode that will be remembered for its stomach-turning conclusion, but the middle is uneven. DeMunn’s performance lifts the episode, and the story does offer a compelling look at an awful moral conundrum, but it’s a bit of a speed bump in terms of quality. Hopefully things will pick up from here.

One of the key components to the episode is Rick and Shane finally coming to a head regarding Lori, the baby, and Rick’s role as the de facto leader of the group. Their discussion on the road is a dramatic treat, and exemplifies what the show does best. Andrew Lincoln and Jon Bernthal’s on-screen dynamic shines here, as they continue to drift at opposite poles of morality. Shane’s darker turn over this season has been a fascinating theme, and Rick’s continued attempts to be the better person and pull Shane back from the brink are well-served.

However, in the wider context of the series, Rick’s arc has faltered. His continued indecision is not a character strength, and yet the writers force him into situations where, when taken from a long view, make Rick look naive. In this episode, they drive Randall (the young man whom they saved previously from zombies after falling on a fence and impaling his leg) the titular 18 miles away from Hershel’s farm to let him go off on his own.

After going all of this way, it takes one sentence from Randall – that he went to high school with Maggie – and the implication that Randall may know where the farm is, to cause Rick to balk at their plan and need a night to reconsider. It’s a thin conceit that does no favors for Rick’s character, given his continued holding out hope for Sophia’s safety, going back Daryl’s brother, going after Hershel, and more. Rick is hellbent on being the good guy, but whose decision can be suspect at times. Thankfully, Lincoln’s acting covers a multitude of these sins.

The other key component is the confrontation between Lori and Andrea. Although I don’t care to compare the comic book and television series too often, this is one area where the TV has expanded upon and explored some opportunities. In the comic, the group moved on from Hershel’s farm after the barn incident. Here, the series has used the farm as a way to explore the microcosm of the survivors’ dynamic in a quieter environment. Most telling is the confrontation between Andrea and Lori. It’s interesting that Lori has fallen back to a classical (if antiquated) mode for their mini-society: men are the hunters, women are the homemakers. Lori’s disinterest in such a role, and her objection to Andrea taking a more active part in their defense against the walkers, makes for a fascinating scene. Again, these two represent a dichotomy in the series, and neither is necessarily wrong or right (although Lori reveals a bit about herself in her snipe about Andrea working on her tan while holding a rifle). The best part is that this is realistic; no group would function in perfect harmony, and the prevalent pettiness from pre-apocalyptic society is alive and well here.

The entire Beth suicide watch sub-plot didn’t work for me. Part of the problem is in Emily Kinney’s role and performance. She has had limited time to really develop as a character, so I found myself not really caring about her, and Kinney’s performance is rather flat. There was potential with the tease of an Andrea / Beth discussion about life, suicide, and going on in a world that has fallen apart, but their scene together is unfortunately too short and never really goes anywhere.

And the Rick and Shane comment about the walker guards not having any bites? A potential tease for down the road? I hope so, because the fact that it had non bearing otherwise in the episode makes it an odd, superfluous piece of dialogue.

‘18 Miles Out’ continues a strong second-half of the season, and although light on regular characters (Daryl, Carol, Carl, Dale, Glen, T-Dog, and Hershel are all conspicuously absent this episode), the limited cast, writing, and zombie action shines.

Seriously though, convincing any remaining doubters almost seems pointless. Fantasy, despite being a perennially popular genre, is one of the most fiercely resisted by those who feel it’s not their bag. With this in mind, hailing Game Of Thrones for ‘taking fantasy seriously’ – as some have done – is probably not helpful. Fantasy is often at its worst when it seems to be taking itself too seriously. The classic brand of fantasy is always about matters of life and death on an epic scale – which is why we’ve started calling it ‘epic fantasy’ to distinguish it from all that embarrassing stuff about sparkly vampires – so it’s serious by default. But you have to convince your audience that something is really at stake. Anyone can say ‘the fate of a whole world rests on this’, but if it’s a world you’ve made up, it has to be solidly realised – otherwise it just seems a bit silly in its seriousness.

And that’s why Game Of Thrones works. It takes its time and builds a world (and it has the benefit of being based on a large body of prose by an author who’s taken years to work this stuff out). It opens with an excellent action sequence involving soldiers being slaughtered by supernatural creatures – who are then not seen again in this episode, or in the next, or the next… thus the viewer is primed for supernatural elements, but these are then pushed into the background to leave room for the characters and situation to be established. Anyone with a fantasy allergy can relax for a bit, as there’s no magic, no talismans – there isn’t even a quest for some plot tokens. It’s more of a political/family saga, so those comparisons to The Sopranos are not spurious. It takes its time, but never feels slow. And for all the talk of seriousness, it does have proper jokes in.

Like other HBO series, it finds excellent roles for actors other shows would’ve overlooked: Sean Bean is obvious casting for Eddard Stark, Lord of t’North, but Mark Addy makes a superb gone-to-seed King. Of course, the real star is Peter Dinklage (previously best known as the blockbuster children’s author in Elf) who gets the lion’s share of the funny lines without being a mere comic relief character. The production values are superb, rising to the challenge presented by scripts featuring dozens of locations. And like other HBO series, the makers assume that the viewer is paying for this stuff and is going to be committed enough to watch the whole thing – so in the UK they find their best home on DVD.

The DVD contains a very significant bonus. There’s a decent 30-minute making-of documentary and some little featurettes on matters like the adaptation and the excellent title sequence, and seven of the episodes feature commentaries. But the really valuable extra is the cheapest one – a complete guide to every character, divided into families. So if you find yourself asking ‘Who’s that guy again?’ you can easily find out without having to consult a potentially spoilery Wiki entry. Smartly, this is included on all five discs, so you can access it at any time. Additionally, on the first disc fifteen of the major characters are also profiled by the actors who play them. It’s not easy keeping track of all the characters in a massive ensemble piece like this, so there’s no shame in needing a cheat-sheet. In fact I’d go one step further: I’d like to be able to point the remote at the screen, Wii-style, and click on characters to bring up their name and a potted bio in Pop-Up Video style. Give it a few years, I bet it’ll happen.

With the finale due out next month, I dusted ‘Conviction’ off of the proverbial to-read pile (okay, more like virtual pile, since I read this on my Nook Color) and engrossed myself with it.

‘Conviction’ is noteworthy in that it kicks off a mini-trilogy to wrap up the series (along with book eight, ‘Ascension’, and the finale ‘Apocalypse’), bringing a distinct color scheme for the cover and raising the urgency of events coming to a head. Several running threads are tied up, only to leave room for fallout throughout the remaining books.

‘Fate of the Jedi’ took its inspiration from the classic Greek work ‘The Odyssey’, in that Luke Skywalker and his son, Jedi Knight Ben Skywalker, undertook a journey in an attempt to understand what made Jacen Solo fall to the dark side and become the Sith Lord Dark Caedus. They retraced Jacen’s earlier journey in meeting with different groups of Force users, gaining insight into not only how they uniquely used the Force but also discovering clues as to what drove Jacen to darkness. The series also focused on tensions back home on Coruscant, where the Jedi Order finds itself in conflict with Chief of State Daala, as she attempts to bring the Order under her heel. Complicating matters is a strange madness that begins enveloping younger Jedi Knights, who come to believe their loved ones and the Order itself have been replaced by impostors, and attempt to root out the conspiracy, often placing civilians in harm’s way.

And that doesn’t even include a Lost Tribe of Sith, whose ship crashed on a planet 5,000 years ago, and which grew in isolation until an opportunity allowed them re-emerge onto an unsuspecting galaxy, as well as the true threat of the series: an ancient dark side being named Abeloth intent on spreading her horror across the galaxy.

‘Fate of the Jedi’ has been much more ambitious in scope than its predecessor series, ‘Legacy of the Force’. Whereas the former took its inspiration from the Prequel trilogy (debatable as to whether that was a good or bad thing) and focused on Jacen Solo’s fall and a second Galactic Civil War, ‘Fate of the Jedi’ tells a much grander and complex tale. Much of it has to do with the political fallout from ‘Legacy of the Force’, but also side-stepped the sticky issue of having Sith return. The Lost Tribe of the Sith are a throwback to the Old Republic-era Sith, but are in many ways the mirror image of the New Jedi Order. These are Sith who have family, a unique, creative, and passionate society, and which are more complex than simply being a foil to the Jedi. Del Rey and Lucas Licensing have provided an impressive level of detail in developing these Sith (including releasing a free series of eBooks under the ‘Lost Tribe of the Sith’ banner depicting events over their 5,000+ year history), providing a case for them being more than just a cheap rehash.

The biggest surprise in this series has been the advent of Abeloth. When reading depictions of Abeloth, the only thing that comes to mind is her being a Lovecraftian Force Horror. Unbelievably old and powerful, she is a unique creation that was a welcome change, and the fact that she has altered the balance of power between the Jedi and Sith (sometimes causing them to team up against her) is a breath of fresh air.

‘Conviction’ takes this rich setup and begins hurtling towards the endgame. As expected, the title works on several levels. There is the literal trial of Tahiri Veila, the opposition of the Jedi against Chief of State Daala’s increasingly militant tactics, Luke’s determination to find and stop Abeloth, and the Sith’s intentions of removing Skywalker. These are just a few of the subplots running through ‘Conviction’, and Allston does a great job of keeping events moving and the reader engaged. Allston can write a great action or space sequence, and he gets these characters. His plotting is spot-on, creating a page-turner that ‘Star Wars’ fans will burn through.

Although the novel works well enough as a standalone, and explains prior events as needed, I highly recommend picking up previous novels in the series. ‘Conviction’ is a great beginning of the end for ‘Fate of the Jedi’, and if you want a wonderful combination of space opera, political thriller, and science-fantasy adventure, you could do a lot worse than this.