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A History of the World in 10½ Chapters
This essay was originally published in You on Target, an anthology of essays about the Doctor Who Target novelisations, released in 2020. In it, I talk about (among other things) Malcolm Hulke’s novelisation of the Doctor Who story Invasion of the Dinosaurs. Thank you to Christopher Bryant for commissioning it. 66 million years ago Somehow, […]
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Blake’s 7: The SevenFold Crown
This review of a very early Blake’s 7 audio drama was published in TV Zone issue 99 (February 1998). I can only barely remember writing it, and I didn’t actually have a copy of it anywhere until recently, when Peter Griffiths, who had commissioned me to write it, sent me a copy of it he […]
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The Wrath of Conn
This essay was first published in Outside In: Makes It So, a collection of essays published by ATB Publishing in 2017 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the debut of Star Trek: The Next Generation. For this collection, each author contributed an essay on a single episode or movie. My essay is based on the Series 4 […]
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Last Days
I’m writing this post from the Royal Suite at the Bangkok InterContinental Hotel. It’s the largest suite in the hotel. I’m seated at a glass coffee table in the lounge; there’s a lavish entryway, a 12-seat boardroom, a kitchen, a massive bathroom with a sunken bath, a dressing room, and a bedroom larger than all […]
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God mode
I met Calvin in Siem Reap on 27 December. It had taken me two days to get there from Athens. A flight from Athens to Dubai, which was delayed a couple of hours due to fog in Dubai; a night spent in the First Class Lounge in Dubai, since it was too late to get […]
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καλά Χριστούγεννα
Most of my last post was written on the ferry to Patras. I had decided to spend two nights there, not because there’s anything particularly cool about it, but because it the first place where I could see The Last Jedi in English. (English films are usually dubbed in Italy.) I saw the film a few hours […]
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Burning Star Wars to the ground
“I didn’t actually come here to free slaves.” Qui-Gon Jinn, The Phantom Menace (1999) Perhaps the most baffling complaint about The Last Jedi is this: the Finn and Rose subplot is poorly integrated, and could easily be cut without damaging the film. I’ve seen this complaint over and over again, even in reviews that are broadly insightful […]
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Bari — Episode II
If you asked me right now to name my favourite Star Wars film, my answer, without hesitation would be Episode VII: The Force Awakens. It’s the funniest of the Star Wars films, it has likeable, charismatic, well-drawn characters, and it carries on the overwrought intergenerational Skywalker saga in a satisfying way. Plenty of people dismissed […]
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Sorrento things
It’s raining like crazy today, so I’m postponing my visit to Pompeii until tomorrow, which is my last full day in Sorrento. I arrived here on 3 December. There have been plenty of day trips since then, but also a lot of relaxing and doing nothing. So, this post will be mercifully free of narrative. […]
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ἐκκεκώφωκε τὰ ὦτα καὶ ἐμπέπληκε Λύσιδος
I’ve made a lot of mistakes in the past few months. Here’s one. I’ve been booking the cheapest possible hotels on trivago.com and booking.com. I can’t afford to stay in lovely five-star hotels every night for two months: I need to find cheap hotels reasonably close to the action in whatever city I’m staying in. […]