Hub - Issue 13 Read online

  It’s never explained why The Man inserts a razor blade into his victims’ abdomens, nor why he forces them to prove they’re strong enough to survive – especially as all he does is keep them chained to a tree. Hardly enough to kill them, as long as they do as they’re told. Likewise, we never see how or why The Man chooses his victims, or indeed how he captures them. This leaves the story feeling disjointed, providing no depth – basically a series of gruesome set pieces that appear to be designed purely to shock rather than to demonstrate the strength of the human spirit. The film’s ending - which I won’t divulge here in case anyone still wishes to see it – appeared to be nothing more than one last chance to shock the audience for no good reason. It serves no other purpose that I could see. All in all, a disappointing film, with little to recommend it.

  Doctor Who: Robot

  Directed by Christopher Barry

  Starring: Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen, Nicholas Courtney, Ian Marter RRP: £19.99. Out now.

  In those dark times before Doctor Who’s glorious return in 2005 if you’d have asked someone who didn’t consider themselves to be a fan (of which there are far fewer now thanks to Russell T Davis and chums) who their favourite Doctor was undoubtedly they would have answered “That bloke with the long scarf!”. There’s no denying that Tom Baker left an indelible mark on the public consciousness during his mammoth seven years on the programme. Now we can see where it all began, thanks to the BBC’s latest ‘classic’ Doctor Who DVD release Robot, the story that kick-started Tom Baker’s record-breaking stint in the role of everyone’s favourite 900 year old Time Lord!

  Robot is an odd story indeed! Produced by Third Doctor producer Barry Letts, while new producer Phillip Hinchcliffe was still finding his feet, and written by outgoing script editor Terrance Dicks Robot feels more like a final season Jon Pertwee story rather than the moody, gothic, introspective serial that would become Baker’s hallmark in the following three years. It also has the distinction of being the only debut story to date in which the Doctor suffers no ill effects from his regeneration whatsoever! Amazingly the Fourth Doctor arrives virtually complete and character-perfect within the opening two minutes of Part One - remarkable when you consider it took Peter Davison two stories to really pin the Fifth Doctor down and Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh Doctor characterisation was all over the place for pretty much his entire first season!

  Picking up directly from where Pertwee’s swansong story Planet of the Spiders left off a newly regenerated Doctor, eager to sever all ties with Earth and hop aboard the TARDIS to wander the universe once more just like in the good old days, begrudgingly comes to the aid of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and his UNIT lads, agreeing to help solve one final mystery before heading off into the Big Black. Top Secret plans for a deadly new disintegrator gun are being stolen from several heavily guarded military bases in the area by some immensely powerful and frighteningly unstoppable force. What could it be? No prizes for guessing, I’m afraid, as the story title rather gives the game away!

  Viewed thirty-two years after it’s original transmission Robot still stands up rather well. Yes, the effects are a bit ropey in places (Colour Separation Overlay never worked properly, so why did they continually insist on using it?!) and the armoured tank is so blatantly a small kids’ toy pushed into shot directly in front of the camera so it looks huge and, yes, some of the supporting characters read like a whose who of outrageous stereotypes (Absent minded, loveable old professor? Check! Shouty, arrogant, man-hating feminist? Check! Mindless, fawning dogsbody? Check!) but on the whole the script is tight, well written and, above all, bloody exciting! Even three decades on the beautifully designed titular robot still looks damned impressive, managing to be both ominous and pitiful by turns - literally towering over the other cast members as he stomps his way through the combined military might of UNIT’s finest… as well as a few well placed empty cardboard boxes to boot!

  In a time of features-heavy, multi-disc special editions and collectors sets it’s so hard not to be ungrateful when faced with a must buy film or TV series that is somewhat sadly lacking in the extras department… but ungrateful we are! Frustratingly the BBC still remain wildly inconsistent with the quality and volume of extras offered to us on their continuing ‘classic’ Doctor Who DVD releases. It’s odd that with a reasonably important story such as Robot the ‘special features’ are rather thin on the ground – particularly when you consider that the vastly inferior Seventh Doctor story Survival, released earlier this year, was offered to us in a rather impressive 2-disc set with over two hours of documentaries and featurettes alone! Are Friends Electric? a retrospective behind-the-scenes documentary of the story, features contributions from the good Doctor himself Tom Baker as well as companion Elisabeth Sladen, producers Barry Letts and Phillip Hinchcliffe, writer Terrance Dicks as well as a host of supporting actors and behind the scenes bods, but sadly offers little in the way of anything new in terms of background information and behind the camera gossip that we haven’t already heard on the previous Fourth Doctor DVD releases and unfortunately, with an all too brief running time of just 39 minutes, it fails to impress. By far the best thing about this release (apart from the story of course) is the audio commentary, brought to us this time by Baker, Sladen, Dicks and Letts, and delivered with great passion and verve by a group of people who actually loved and believed in the programme they were making all those years ago. Sparkling with such wit and warmth listening to it makes you wonder why all commentaries aren’t like this, rather than the cut-and-paste bland diatribes thrown together from separate commentaries you often get on big budget blockbusters (George Lucas I’m looking in you direction!). Now throw in a rather bland ‘opening titles’ featurette, the obligatory Blue Peter clip, a photo gallery and some Radio Times DVD-ROM bumph and there you have your complete package!

  All in all a rather poor effort for a great little story that undoubtedly deserves so much more. If only a bit more thought and effort had been put into the extras this could have been a great little DVD, as it stands though its decidedly average.

  No Dominion

  By Charlie HustonPublished by OrbitRRP: £6.99. Published 5th July. No Dominion is Huston’s second “Joe Pitt” novel – a direct sequel to Already Dead (also published by Orbit in the UK).

  Pitt is a vampyre living in New York, but unlike the majority of his brethren he is not affiliated with any of the formal clans that run the vampyre underworld, preferring his rougue status which – though it causes him no end of trouble with the clans themselves – offers him a degree of freedom of movement.

  No Dominion begins in a bar. Pitt is enjoying a drink with his girlfriend when the relative peace and quiet of his surroundings is disturbed by a drug-user, high, and irrational. What makes this user different, however, is that he is also a vampyre – but vamps are not supposed to be particularly affected by drugs. There’s something new on the streets. Something dangerous, and Pitt is enlisted to find out what it is, and who’s dealing.

  Depicted in a pseudo-noir style Pitt and his world is ours, but with a twist. Vampires (or vampyres) exist, and have their own agenda – they’re generally peaceful, but ruthless when the need arises (and in Huston’s books the need arises with alarming frequency).

  The book is an uncomplicated read. That’s not to say it’s simplistic – rather, it is extremely accessible, with a plot that thunders along through set-piece after set-piece. If Mike Carey wrote American vampires, this is what he’d write.

  It isn’t necessary to have read Almost Dead before this book (I hadn’t), as Huston has provided all the necessary background information without having it feel too much like exposition-dumping (one of the lucky side-effects of writing noir). After reading No Dominion, I headed straight out to pick up a copy of Pitt’s first adventure. I’d recommend you do the same.

  Not Just a Pretty Face By Marie O’Regan

  Women have come a long way in the horror genre over the last fifty years. You’ve only got to
look at the difference between Merian Cooper’s 1933 version of King Kong starring Fay Wray as Ann Darrow, and Peter Jackson’s 2005 version starring Naomi Watts in the same role. In the first version, Wray screamed and fainted her way through the entire movie, waiting to be rescued by the men. Naomi Watts, however, painted a very different picture of Darrow – seeking to survive by befriending Kong and eventually growing to love and respect the creature, so much so that she is devastated by the death of Kong, in this film painted as a noble creature rather than no more than a ravening beast.

  Traditionally, the view of a woman in a horror novel or film was that of an attractive woman trapped in a situation she couldn’t control, whether that was a haunted house (The Haunting, 1963, starring Claire Bloom as the nervous Theo, haunted by her own demons as well as whatever is in the house), being stalked by a psychotic killer (Psycho, 1960, starring Janet Leigh and that infamous shower scene), or even victimised by some supernatural entity (Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby, 1968). In the earliest of these films, the woman almost always took a passive role – lacking either the understanding or the strength to defeat whatever obstacle she was facing alone, i.e. without a man to help her, or to save her. This was a reflection of society at that time, as the traditional image of the nuclear family was still very much the prevalent stereotype at the time – the man still being the provider and main wage earner, the woman being responsible for keeping the home and caring for the children. When women were portrayed as evil, as in Todd Browning’s 1931 classic version of Dracula, it was in the form of Dracula’s brides, in thrall to the male vampire, played brilliantly by Bela Lugosi.

  The rise of feminism in the Seventies, coupled with the disintegration of the traditional nuclear family as the dominant model, saw all that start to change. The character of Laurie Strode, played by Jamie Lee Curtis in 1978’s Halloween, was a pivotal one in determining how women would be portrayed in horror film (and fiction) from then on. Yes, she was young and seemingly helpless in the face of an implacable enemy (her brother, Michael Myers), but she displayed a determination and strength that were to break the traditional mould – never giving up, no matter how many times she killed him only to see him sit back up and keep on coming…the fact that the most successful of all the sequels was H20, the only one to feature a now adult Laurie, intent this time on protecting her son, speaks volumes.

  Another film that changed the perception of women in horror was Carrie – the 1976 film of Stephen King’s first novel – starring Sissy Spacek as the bullied, introverted daughter of a religious maniac. The eponymous heroine is misunderstood by everyone, not least herself. Her peers reject her as weird, her mother sees her as inherently evil – a direct result of her religious mania. All women are the children of Eve, from whom the concept of Original Sin derives, and are therefore evil themselves purely because of their gender. Kept ignorant of her own biology and unable to understand the psychokinetic powers that manifest when puberty arrives with her first period, Carrie embarks on a wave of destruction that kills anyone who has crossed her – hardly the passive female of the Fifties and Sixties.

  These films were instrumental in changing the way women were portrayed in horror – both in fiction of the time and in film – and the ‘save me’ heroine of previous years became unbelievable as a result. She simply didn’t reflect the current society. Not that that stopped women being put in peril in the movies. Apart from anything else, a woman in peril elicits more of an audience response. As Brian de Palma has said, “Women in peril work better…if you have a haunted house and you have a woman walking around with a candelabrum, you fear more for her than you would do a husky man.”

  Women in peril are still prevalent, then, that’s true, but they no longer have to conform to the stereotype recounted by the character of Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell) in 1996’s Scream, “(They’re all the same. Some stupid killer stalking) some big-breasted girl who can’t act who’s always running up the stairs when she should be going out the front door. It’s insulting.” The heroines in horror films these days take a far more active role, routinely saving both themselves and anyone around them. According to Mike Carey, author of The Devil You Know and Vicious Circle, “Yes, women in horror are often – disproportionately often – cast in the role of victims. But the horror narrative is the victim’s story. And in the course of the story the victim (the point-of-view victim, at least) makes the metamorphosis into something else, into avenger or destroyer or survivor. That’s the prophylactic function of horror: to drown us bodily in our own fears and then allow us to kick and flail and claw our way to the surface again. We have to identify with the victim for that to work. The kick-ass horror heroine of the present day – Buffy, Faith, Selene in Underworld, Sarah in The Descent – just abridges this process by refusing the victim role in the first place. Stake or sword or piton in hand, she carves her name on the dark and denatures it, makes it safe for the rest of us.”

  One of the most successful genre shows ever, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, blasted any lingering notions that this stereotype still existed. Sarah Michelle Gellar brought the feisty teenager slayer to life, but wasn’t the only strong female character in that show. There was Willow, played by Allyson Hannigan – a girl who went from geek to gay icon, playing a lesbian witch; Faith, played by Eliza Dushku – another slayer, darker and more overtly sexy than Gellar, Dushku won a legion of followers. The men, by contrast, took a more subordinate role. Xander (played by Nicholas Brendon) the class clown, hopelessly besotted with Buffy, and Giles the watcher, played by Anthony Head – an academic tasked with training Buffy, definitely more of a cerebral than a physical role. Although at times Giles’ alter-ego, Ripper, would surface, hinting at a darker, more violent side to his nature. Even the ‘good’ vampire, Angel (David Boreanaz), was no match for Buffy. Doomed to fall in love with her, he was denied the chance to act on his emotions, for fear of losing his soul and becoming evil once more. Joss Whedon, the series’ creator, recently said at an awards ceremony when asked why he writes such strong female characters, “When I created Buffy, I wanted to create a female icon but I also wanted to be very careful to surround her with men who not only had no problem with the idea of a female leader, but were in fact, engaged and even attracted to the idea.” The premise obviously worked, as Buffy was to run for seven series, spawning a sequel, Angel, that ran for four series - and even now, four years after Buffy ended, its impact is tremendous. There’s been nothing like it since, as shown by the fact that satellite TV has been showing re-runs pretty much ever since it ended.

  In the movies, a recent trend would appear to be that of the single mother seeking to protect her child: Naomi Watts in The Ring (2002) and The Ring 2 (2005), Jennifer Connelly in Dark Water (2005), Radha Mitchell in Silent Hill (2006) – all feature mothers protecting or trying to find their children. Interestingly, three of these movies are remakes of successful Japanese movies, while Silent Hill is based on a popular (Japanese) video game. Here again, the women are powerful – far removed from the characters so in need of protection in films until the Seventies. Paul Cornell, TV writer for genre series Doctor Who and Robin Hood, says “In mainstream horror, our protagonist is probably not going to make it, no matter what their gender. But post Joss Whedon, there's now a new market for Women Having Adventure in Horror stories. Which one might say is the creation of the first frontier specifically created for and by women.”

  It’s certainly safe to say that women are no longer the helpless victim, waiting for a man to come along and rescue them – the modern day equivalent of a knight in shining armour. In this time of equality and families of all types, representing all shades of the spectrum, the old perceptions could not survive. What was needed was horror fiction (and movies) that reflect modern life, and its multiple facets. The new heroines of horror are modern women – clever, resourceful, and most of all independent. It’ll be interesting to see what comes next.

  Coming Next Week: Fiction: Passing Out by Derek Muirr />
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