Sliders: The Next Generation

Book Review: TIMERIDERS
Written by: Alex Scarrow
Published by: Puffin Books
Released: February 2010
425pages
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[SPOILERS] Three teenagers from three disparate periods of time – one from the past, one from the present day and one from the near-future – are plucked from their plains of existence in the moments before their untimely deaths and recruited by a shadow agency to become TimeRiders; “fixers” of broken history, if you will, who right the wrongs that less well-meaning time travellers from the future disrupt for their own avaricious and diabolical gain.

In this opening volume in a proposed nine novel arc from thriller writer (and Norwich resident) Alex Scarrow, Titanic deckhand Liam O’Connor, techno-nut Maddy Carter and fire victim Sal Vikram must adjust to their new raison d'être; before being thrown in at the deep-end pre-completion of their training when desirous physicist Paul Krammer travels back from the 206o's to dethrone Adolf Hitler and see Nazi Germany to victory over the Allied Forces who, in our correct time line (as you all should know) did win the war.

It is up to appointed “field agent” Liam – accompanied by an AI “meat robot” christened Bob (think Arnie in Terminator, only on the good guys' team) – to travel back to the source of the blip and erase Krammer's threat, or face living in a world which was never meant to be; a shell of a world brought to the very brink of destruction after the ripples of the butterfly effect see power – and paranoia – go to Herr Krammer's head; with catastrophic results...

For Scarrow to rely upon the Second World War for his first historical destination screamed to me of lazy cliché (much like the JFK assassination – which, surprise, surprise, the author exploits as well – it's been done to death), but my opinion mellowed when I considered that it was probably wise to ease his young adult readership into his newborn vision via a period today's teenagers would relate to having learnt so much about it at school. Whether it's tasteful to play around with such horrendous true events is another matter entirely. Which brings me conveniently onto my most major qualm with this work...

Living outside the realms of reality, the TimeRiders exist undisturbed in a continually resetting 48hour “time bubble” located in a disused warehouse in New York City on – wait for it – the 10th and 11th of September 2001. Yep, you read that correctly. Am I wrong to think that less than a decade on it's a mite insensitive to use 9/11 as a plot-point in a sci-fi fantasy? Scarrow's reasoning is that in this period of almighty tragedy for the modern world, everybody will be too otherwise concerned to notice three teens and their trainer wandering the streets looking for ripples in the fabric of space/time. But still...

Questionable moral decision aside, TimeRiders is otherwise a fairly entertaining read (if not quite as “mindblowing” as the cover blurb promised). Scarrow may not rewrite the rules on time travel here, but he has clearly done his research, and he has fun with some quite horrific alternate visions of our world. The revised 2001 which Maddy, Sal and agency headhunter Foster find themselves trapped in following Krammer's “amendments” was a shockingly graphic apocalyptic nightmare, and Scarrow often doesn't hold back in his gory descriptions; clearly a beneficial hold-over from his adult thriller works.


In a CR@B Shell: With the entirety of history at his fingertips, Alex Scarrow's all-too predictable primary destination bordered on self-destructive, but it soon opened up a more exhilarating and engrossingly ghastly bag of worms for the sub-team of teen heroes – and knowing where (and when) book two takes them, I'm prepared to stick around for a another trip with the charismatic TimeRiders.
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Death Repeats Itself

Blu Review: THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT 3: REVELATIONS
18 – 90mins – 2009
Written by: Holly Brix
Directed by: Seth Grossman
Starring: Chris Carmack, Rachel Miner, Kevin Yon, Lynch Travis, Melissa Jones, Richard Wilkinson, Sarah Habel, Mia Serafino, Hugh Maguire
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Despite my continued admiration for the underrated 2004 Ashton Kutcher-starring thriller, even I was surprised to find they had produced a third Butterfly Effect film. After all, the first direct-to-video sequel from 2006 was such a limp and limited cut-price retread of the original’s philosophical time-travel plot device that it barely justified filming; the conclusion achingly predictable.

Mercifully, Revelations is a very different butterfly indeed. True, it still incorporates the familiar “Change one thing, change everything” premise into its mind-bending narrative, but an ever-altering murder-mystery element and an injection of sex and graphic brutality (no doubt at the suggestion of horror house After Dark Films*, who came onboard as distributors) help spice up the time-jumping core concept.

Sam Reide (The O.C.’s Carmack) has long learned to control the gift Evan Treborn introduced us to in The Butterfly Effect. Monitored by his psychologically introverted hermit of a sister, Jenna (former Mrs. Macaulay Culkin, Miner), Sam uses his phenomenal ability to aid the police in tracking down murderers and criminals by travelling back to witness the crimes being committed. He must never interfere, or he risks altering the timeline and severely changing life as he knows it.

He is happy to keep to this self-inflicting rule. That is until Elizabeth Brown (Habel), the sister of Sam’s long murdered high school girlfriend (Serafino), walks back into his life and begs him to use his gifts to identify her sister’s real killer and exonerate the innocent man (Wilkinson) who is about to be executed for the decade-old crime.

Against the recommendations of Goldberg (Yon), the man who tutored him in time travel, Sam takes the case and begins his unmonitored jumps into the past. Inevitably, the more he tries to help, the more he perverts the timeline, and his rash actions soon lead to the “creation” of a serial killer who is still on the loose. When Goldberg goes missing and Sam’s livelihood deteriorates, he must do all he can to track down the “Pontiac killer” before he is convicted for the murders himself.

Now obviously the whole leaping-back-into-your-body-from-yesteryear premise is utter wish-fulfilment gubbins, and I suspect Revelations gets tangled in a web of impossible paradoxes as Sam jumps time-and-again, his situation ever-worsening as he loses his grip on what is real in the reality he now inhabits, but regardless of logistics I was incredibly impressed by the film's density; a lot of thought has gone into this intricately constructed mind-fuck of a standalone story – a compliment (and it is a compliment) which cannot be levelled at The Butterfly Effect 2.

Personally, I could have done without the excessive mutilation scenes – the camera lingering a little too long on slashed-open corpses and blood-splattered limbs – and the wholly unnecessary soft core pornography. Now, I’m in no way opposed to such mature elements if they are warranted, but they are foreign to this franchise and thus all the more obvious. Furthermore, Revelations didn’t need to cheapen itself with such shameless titillation and gimmicky shocks when the story was enthralling enough without it.

Finally, I must applaud the deliciously dark conclusion, which – following the unforeseen reveal of the killer’s identity and the disturbing reasons behind the glut of murders – sees Sam jump back to a rather crucial milestone in his family’s history and make a difficult but altogether necessary decision for the good of the people he loves. It adds further fuel to my belief that this is a complex and emotionally superior sequel which far outshines its lazy predecessor, and it’s a pity Revelations has been buried on DVD and pigeonholed as a second rate horror.


In a CR@B Shell: “Jump” beyond the superfluous slasher flick gore and lowbrow smut and you will be able to appreciate The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations as a sinister yet remarkably inventive reignition of a previously exhausted franchise.
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* After Dark Films are the company behind recent vampire horror Prowl, which I reviewed HERE

Through a Glass, Darko

DVD Review: S. DARKO
15 – 99mins – 2009
Written by: Nathan Atkins
Based on the characters created by: Richard Kelly
Directed by: Chris Fisher
Starring: Daveigh Chase, Briana Evigan, Jackson Rathbone, James Lafferty, Ed Westwick, Zucay Henao, Elizabeth Berkley, John Hawkes, Bret Roberts, Matthew Davis
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“There must be some connection between what happened to Donnie and Samantha…”

I’ve seen my share of redundant direct-to-DVD sequels over the years, but I think S. Darko truly takes the bunny-shaped biscuit. From phallic-shaped cones of time fluctuation, to nightmarish lagomorphic masks, suspicious house fires and objects falling from the sky – there really is little from Richard Kelly’s head-scratcher of a cerebral mind-fuck that hasn’t been recycled in this belated and lazy cash-in.

It’s 1995 and Daveigh Chase, now all grown up, reprises her role as Donnie’s little sister Samantha (clearly considered too long a word for the abbreviated title…). Leaving behind her family – who have fallen apart following her older brother’s death – Sam Darko and rebellious mate Corey (Step Up 2’s Evigan) are on their way to start a new life in L.A. when their car breaks down and they are forced to take up temporary residence in a backwater town while cool dude Randy (Gossip Girl’s Westwick) fixes their water pump.

A meteorite strikes nearby (evidently the smaller budget couldn’t stretch to a plane engine), a shy nerd (Twilight’s Rathbone) gets a “gnarly” rash and flips out, some Jesus loving adults in positions of authority have questionable opinions about some missing children (sound familiar?) and a shell-shocked war vet (One Tree Hill’s Lafferty) with a recognizable surname is ostracised from the community but haunted by the ghost of the still living Samantha, who tells him the world is going to end (again).

Basically, there is too much going on with too many characters, especially taking into account the fragmented nature of the plot with alternative realities, time travel and dream sequences aplenty. At one point halfway through I was questioning for about 10 minutes whether Samantha was even the main character!! It’s not necessarily confusing (if you’ve seen the 2001 original you can foretell what happens), just unnecessarily busy, with many subplots building up then all but disappearing before they’ve reached a pay-off.

Rathbone’s Jeremy, for instance, becomes infected by the radiation from the meteorite, morphing from a shy and retiring lad into an angry and violent maniac. This could have been a key plot point (even a film of its own), but it comes to nothing, and the truth of his transformation is never revealed – it could be alien possession for all we learn. Ultimately, Jeremy’s only major contribution to the narrative could easily have been offloaded to another character and the dead weight discarded. This is true of most of the film’s minor players, too.

Writer Nathan Atkins was clearly trying too hard to stay faithful to Richard Kelly’s iconic vision while simultaneously injecting his script with a myriad of original elements, without compromising, belittling or negatively impacting Donnie’s legacy. I’m afraid to say that this cowardly approach failed, as S. Darko – so packed to the rafters with nods and callbacks as it is – comes across as more of a distorted reimagining than a franchise-sustaining sequel.


In a CR@B Shell: A spinelessly unoriginal mirror image of Richard Kelly’s imaginative stand-alone time travelling conundrum. Pretty enough to look at, but S. Darko is far too reliant upon Donnie to stand on her own two feet.
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The Bubble-jet Effect

DVD Review: HOT TUB TIME MACHINE
15 – 101mins – 2010
Story by: Josh Heald
Screenplay by: Josh Heald, Sean Anders, John Morris
Directed by: Steve Pink
Starring: John Cusack, Craig Robinson, Rob Corddry, Clark Duke, Lyndsy Fonseca, Crispin Glover, Chevy Chase, Lizzy Caplan, Sebastian Stan, Charlie McDermott
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In an extreme example of lazy journalism, it seems that every US comedy with a lead cast of middle-aged men is evermore destined to be compared to commercial goldmine The Hangover. But am I the only person who wasn't overly enamoured with last year's less black, more slapstick take on Very Bad Things, and feel “2010's answer to The Hangover” (as the Hot Tub cover quote boasts) flies waaaaay over the bar set by Todd Phillip's Road Trip for the over 30's?

A far more appropriate comparison – take note, Glamour “critics” – would be to call Hot Tub Time Machine the US answer to the brilliantly underrated Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel, minus the cosy quality of the intimate pub backdrop and chummy dynamic of the nerdy leads. What d'ya mean that's too wordy for a cover quote?!

But whereas the UK's feature-length sitcom flushed its characters into a baron and apocalyptic future via a lavatory portal, Hot Tub spins in the opposite direction, beginning with its protagonists at an all time low, despairing at their miserable adult lives, before an evening in the titular outdoor jacuzzi hurtles them back to their 80's heyday at a holiday ski lodge brimming with jheri curls, leg warmers and icons of old (Crispin Glover! Chevy Chase!! ALF!!!).

Eshewing a total geek-out, Hot Tub is fully loaded with crude humour (“It looks like Gary Coleman's forearm!”) and gross-out moments (“You drive a BMW, right?”), while the foul language gauge is (unnecessarily) cranked up to code blue throughout. This is, after all, a post-American Pie product, albeit with an 80's flava.

Yet it's hard to be insulted by the laddish banter thrown about by the middle-aged trio of Cusack, Robinson, Corddry and young tag along Clark Kick Ass Duke as Hot Tub's depressed gents come to terms with being wild teenagers all over again (or in Duke's case, not even born) and attempt to retread the exact same steps they took two decades previous – with hilariously disastrous results.

The zealous cast are superb, their every desperate action exuding charm as they attempt to appease the timeline and not erase themselves from existence. “The butterfly effect?” Corddry's loud-mouth Lou questions, “I LOVE that movie!” Any viewers initially deterred by the high concept time travel shennanigans will be won over by the human plight at the film's core, and the fact that only Duke's basement-dwelling role-player Jacob has any real grasp of the technicalities (“I write Stargate SG-1 fan fiction!”).

From Lou's fascination with anticipating when the hapless bellboy (Glover) will lose his arm, to Robinson screaming down the phone to his nine year old future-wife about the evils of adultery, even the most clichéd and farcical genre tropes become laugh-out-loud running jokes which won't confound even the most resolute sci-fi hater.

The writers know Hot Tub Time Machine is by no means the first comedy to genre hop; it's out-there, sure, but they aren't reinventing the wheel here. Yet they are having a blast sending up the classics (Back To The Future!) and wallowing in retro heaven while the amiable characters rediscover friendship, fun and how to take a fork in the eye for a second time. And that's what comedy is all about, right?

Finally – and this deserves a paragraph all of its own – Craig Robinson's singer-turned-under-the-thumb-husband Nick getting up on a stage at Winterfest '86 and regaining his youthful groove by giving the awestruck audience a twenty year preview of The Black Eyed Peas' “Let's Get It Started” is a stand out scene I simply cannot watch without cracking an almighty grin. Don't believe me? Do a search for the clip on Lougle.


In a CR@B Shell: Anyone dissuaded by the bonkers expository title really should learn to jump in and relax, as Hot Tub Time Machine is an endearing tale of lost friendship salvaged by time (travel), humorously dressed up in a laugh-out-loud sci-fi concept and neon leg warmers.
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Angels with Dirty Imaginations

TV Review: DOCTOR WHO - “FLESH AND STONE” (PART 2)
BBC One - 1st May 2010 – 6:25pm
Written by: Stephen Moffat
Directed by: Adam Smith
Starring: Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Alex Kingston, Iain Glen, David Atkins, Darren Morfitt, Mark Monero, George Russo __________________________________________________________

[“SPOILERS!”] Part two of this highly-anticipated Weeping Angels story was another top notch slice of prime, sharply written entertainment, topped off with a brave, adult edge. “Flesh and Stone” began by turning last week's cliffhanger on its head. Literally. Playing with the gravity field on the spaceship Byzantium, the Doctor's (Matt Smith) diminishing team are able to allude the ever-strengthening army of Angels and enter the bowels of the crashed craft, with the stony foes hot on their heels and hungry for... oxygen. Yep, the Angels need to breathe, too, granting us the pleasure of a fabulous Oxygen Factory set (“Trees... with technology!”), which made a pleasant and exotic change from rock and steel.

Following her terrifying trailer encounter with an Angel in “The Time of Angels”, Amy (Karen Gillan) has picked up an unnerving habit of counting down, which is a simple but chilling device courtesy of the Angel currently 'living' inside her mind, ratcheting up the episode's tension, especially because you aren't even aware it's a countdown until she's nearly half way to zero. The Doctor's shockingly obtuse diagnosis that Amy is dying is a fantastic look inside his alien mind, especially when it is juxtaposed with a tender, comforting word and kiss on the forehead for his inflicted companion.

Some fans may complain that the resolution (Amy must close her eyes to 'pause' the Angel within and pretend to see while she walks between the encroaching enemies) damages the Angel's formerly indomitable reputation (not to mention the show's internal logic, but, hey this is fantasy), but they still make fearsome foes. The fact they are making Amy count down “for fun” while they manically cackle at their victims demonstrates their dominance over - and disregard for - humans, and the scene when he finally see them move is chillingly executed.
The mysterious crack which has plagued Amy since her youth and trailed the travelling companions since “The Eleventh Hour” is dealt with much earlier in the run than many probably expected (Who story arcs usually stretch the entire 13 episode series), the burst of “time energy” – the cause of many a forgetful moment due to its ability to rewrite and unwrite time; particularly effective when the cleric's deny their fellow commando's existence – sealing itself shut on a diet of Weeping Angels. But as one arc closes, another arc opens in the form of the eight digit base code for the universe, but more about that later.

Despite delivering a cryptic sneek preview to the Doctor about a future meeting when “Pandorica opens” (the third time this event has been mentioned in new Who), I couldn't help feeling that River Song's (Alex Kingston) impact upon this episode was somewhat decreased after her bombastic return in a blaze of banter last week. At times she seemed little more than a backseat apprentice to the master in “Flesh and Bone” (the times that the Doctor lost his rag with her were delivered with aplomb from Smith), her only plot point of note being Father 'Bishop' Octavian's (Iain Glen) revelation that River is an untrustworthy murderer in his custody, her objective to achieve her mission and earn a pardon. There is a strong hint that her (future) victim is our dear Doctor, but this seems a far too simplistic outcome to this time flux murder mystery.

I mentioned in my review of “The Time of Angels” that last week's episode felt like there was a distinct break in proceedings which brought together two disparate story threads (River Song's reintroduction > the Maze of the Dead), and the same is true here. With the Weeping Angels being caught out by the “gravity of the situation” (guffaw), the final ten minutes are dedicated to a rather surprising, tone-shifting epilogue back at Amy's house, where she finally admits her desire for the Doc, coming onto him in rather an extreme fashion – particularly considering the early timeslot and young demographic tuning in. Promiscuous girl, indeed. Okay, so nothing overtly sexual was spelled out, but I'm sure some puritan cages were rattled as Amy lay on her bed expecting, well, you know... The Doctor dutifully declines (is he mad?!!) – something about a 900 year age gap, oh, and him being an alien – but it does spark his realisation that the aforementioned base code of the universe is interlinked with Amy's timeline – and ours – 26/06/2010 is the air date of the series finale. Handy, that.

Let the countdown begin! Next stop: Venice...


CR@B Verdict: A thrilling if flawed pay-off packed with action, frights, emotion and an unexpected injection of passion. Yep, in Doctor Who!! Perhaps “Flesh and Bone(r)” would have been a more apt title...? ;-)
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Return of the Master Race

TV Review: DOCTOR WHO - “VICTORY OF THE DALEKS”
BBC One – 17th April 2010 – 6:30pm
Written by: Mark Gatiss
Directed by: Andrew Gunn
Starring: Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Ian McNeice, Bill Paterson, Nicholas Pegg, James Albrecht, Susannah Fielding, Colin Prockter, Nina De Cosimo
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[SPOILER ALERT] Having taken writing honours on his first two episodes at the helm, for episode 5.3 Stephen Moffat handed scribing duty to a man well known both outside and within the Who-niverse. Renowned for his role in surreal black comedy The League of Gentlemen, Mark Gatiss has also penned two other new Who adventures (“The Idiot's Lantern” and “The Unquiet Dead”), as well as starring as the unstable eponymous scientist in “The Lazarus Experiment” in 2007. This time around, Gatiss is charged with his most challenging task to date: finding a viable excuse for bringing back the Doctor's most distinguishable foe for the umpteenth time. That's no mean feat...

Following directly on from the telephone tag at the close of last week's (personally) disappointing space adventure, “Victory of the Daleks” sees the Doctor (Matt Smith) and Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) return to Earth and return in time – to the Second World War! Summoned to the Cabinet War Room by his old chum and PM Winston Churchill (Ian McNeice), the travelling twosome are introduced to the Allied's latest secret weapon in the war against the Nazis: Professor Edwin Bracewell's (Bill Paterson) Iron Sides. But you, I and the Doctor - though, curiously, not Miss Pond - know them better as encased alien foes who-just-won't-stay-dead, the Daleks.

The Doctor is quickly and physically incensed by the Iron Side's refusal to acknowledge their true identities as they mill around the squaddies serving tea to the troops (!), until his testimony triggers a Progenitor Device which unlocks the dying race's DNA and allows them to return to their flying saucer and repopulate the Dalek species (in snazzy multicoloured form), turning on the humans they used as bait to lure the Doctor to unlock the key to their survival. Impressive.

It was a fantastic twist to reveal Prof. Bracewell as a robot created by what he believed where his creations and indebted with a life of false memories, leading to suicidal thoughts – in a pre-watershed family show! Props to Gatiss for an original and credible concept married to an energetic script which sizzled with humour, horror, brains and adventure, without feeling weighed down in any one area. The episode could have fallen flat on so many levels, but it was a roaring success. A standout moment for sheer entertainment value was the Doctor's threat to blow up the Dalek's ship by pushing the TARDIS's self destruct button: “Alright, it's a Jammy Dodger - but I was promised tea!”

The visuals of a blitz-ravaged London were stunning, and the climatic space battle as the Allied spitfires bombarded the Dalek saucer was exciting and vibrant (if a little ridiculous: early 20th century human guns defeating a merciless time-travelling alien enemy?!!). One small worry I am left with concerning future instalments, however, is Amy's role: for the second week running she has been of questionable value to the story until she saves the day with a brilliant last minute solution which even the super-intelligent Doctor hasn't thought up. I like her zesty characterisation and rapport with her childhood idol, but it will become far too predictable if this plot device is employed every week.


CR@B Verdict: A well-balanced and spirited return to form after last week's stumble, and possibly the greatest Dalek story of modern Who. A definite victory for Mark Gatiss: “Ex-cep-tion-al!”
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