TV – Orphan Black, season 3 (2015)

I discovered quite by chance that BBC has been showing the third season of the Canadian SF thriller Orphan Black.  Curiously, they launched it by putting all ten episodes up on the BBC iPlayer - the internet-based service normally used for storing, for one month, programmes already broadcast, for the benefit of those who missed them. They followed this up by showing the episodes on BBC3 in the middle of the night, without any publicity. Fortunately, our internet connection has at last improved to the point at which we can watch video without constant buffering, so we've been catching up with the series.

To refresh the memory – from my previous blog comments:

Sarah Manning (played by Tatiana Maslany) is a young woman who is down on her luck when she meets her double, who turns out to be genetically identical. When her double dies, Sarah takes over her life. Then she meets another double, and another…. This is a constantly intriguing and frequently amusing drama as the doubles try to figure out their history while being faced with an acute danger – someone is trying to kill them. By the end of the first season, it becomes clear that being hunted is only one of their problems; they are also under covert observation and their future hangs by a thread. Maslany has great fun playing the various, and very varied, doubles and the constantly evolving plot gripped my attention from the start, with one unexpected twist after another.

The second season has the story of the assorted group of clones continuing as they struggle to discover how to respond to the various threats facing them, not least a lethal genetic illness. What makes this so entertaining is that, while it certainly isn't a comedy, there is enough humour in it to balance the drama.

The third season continues directly from the previous one, with the emergence of a second line of clones – this time men (all played by Ari Millen) – providing more complications for the band of "sisters" as they try to find a way out of their multiple problems, with competing organisations taking an uncomfortably close interest in them. The drama is as good as ever, as is Maslany whose performance has rightly won awards. Her pony-tailed Alison still makes me smile every time she appears – a wonderful portrayal of an obsessively conventional suburban "soccer mom" who develops criminal tendencies. As the tension increases in the first few episodes of this season, the dark humour which previously added to the entertainment is scaled down, although the seventh episode switches mood and returns to the original form, with a lot of laugh-out-loud scenes (mostly involving Alison, naturally).

The finale sees the core of the mystery of the sisters' origins revealed and some problems solved – but others still lie ahead. Fortunately, another ten-episode season is on the way. Overall, the result is a multi-layered, constantly developing and gripping plot which puts Orphan Black among the very best SF series.

Blackout, & All Clear, by Connie Willis

I have had these books in my reading pile for some years, but until now have been put off from tackling them by their massive size. Don’t be fooled by the different titles; they are not separate novels, but constitute one continuous story some 1,500 pages long. The prospect of a couple of weeks away from home involving several long flights encouraged me to pick them up (risking excess baggage charges!) and in fact they lasted me for the whole holiday and a week afterwards.

Those who have read this author’s other work will find themselves in familiar territory: Oxford in 2060, with the university using a time machine to explore the past. The regular crew of Mr Dunworthy in charge aided by Badri the technical time-travel expert are present and correct, with other familiar names also popping up. Those who have not read other stories set in this world have a steep learning curve to climb, as no concessions are made in the way of introductions or explanations – readers have to make sense of it as the plot develops.

The focus of this story is on World War 2 in general and the London Blitz of 1940-41 in particular (hence the titles), with the action following several time-travelling historians in this period.  Scenes are set in the Dunkirk evacuation, the preparations for D day, the celebrations for VE day in 1945, with a final visit in 1995. The structure is for each chapter to follow a particular character at a particular time, with chapters hopping about between both characters and time periods (some of the characters appear in more than one period, sometimes under different assumed names, just to keep readers on their toes). To make matters even more confusing, some of the characters visit different time periods out of sequence – for example, they spend some in time in 1944 before subsequently travelling to 1940 – whereas others stay in sequence, confusing their relationships somewhat. The author must have worked out a complicated time chart of who was appearing when under which identity and what happened to them at each stage to keep on top of all this. The reader just has to stay alert, concentrate hard and try to read the story over a short period of time to avoid losing the plot. Making notes might be helpful, not just of the cast of characters but also of the terminology of time travel: for example drops and retrievals, flash time and real time, and temporal slippage.

The main plot thread is a technical hitch with the time-travel system, which prevents it from working for several months during the Blitz. This causes all sorts of problems for the trapped historians, who are desperate to return (in some cases, being faced with death if they do not). Characteristically of Willis, the overall mood is one of perpetual frustration as one plan after another keeps going wrong. While the historians try to solve their problems, at first individually and then together, we learn a great deal about them and about the period in which they are trapped.

This is the real strength of the novel; Connie Willis has exhaustively researched the period in terms of both historical events and the social background, and the result is a very richly detailed world which readers share with the cast of characters as they develop. Much of the story is rather downbeat, concerning the increasing desperation of the characters as they face one problem after another, but as usual, there is a lot of humour spread through the writing to lighten the mood. Mostly this is integral to the writing but there are some comic set-pieces, most memorably a confrontation between a bull and an inflatable battle tank. The ending is satisfying; bitter-sweet and elegiac, and with a new take on the eternal question of free will versus fate.

In one sense Blackout and All Clear are typical of this author as they are written in her distinctive style, but they differ in being on such an epic scale. While admiring her story-telling ability, I have complained in the past about the excessive wordage and repetition in the author’s writing, but I have no objections this time. The length and detail are necessary to create the richness and authenticity that make this story so memorable and left this reader rather emotionally drained. It is a magnificent achievement, and rightly won the Hugo award.

Films: Shaun the Sheep (2015), and Race to Witch Mountain (2009)

And now for something completely different…

Aardman Animations is a spectacularly successful British film studio specialising in the "old fashioned" stop-motion clay animation technique. Ostensibly their films and TV series are aimed at children but their humour has universal appeal and they are very popular with adults. Characteristically, many of the jokes are so quick-fire that it takes more than one viewing to spot them all. Their most famous feature-length film is probably the multiple-award-winning Chicken Run (2000), but they were already very popular for their shorter films; Creature Comforts (1989) and, above all, the Wallace and Gromit series starting with A Grand Day Out (1989), then The Wrong Trousers (1993 – Academy Award winner), A Close Shave (1995 – Academy Award winner), and A Matter of Loaf and Death (2008), plus a feature film: Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005 – Academy Award winner). Wallace and Gromit have now acquired the status of national treasures, with each new outing eagerly anticipated.

One of the characters in A Close Shave is a small, mischievous sheep who loses most of his wool after being shorn by one of Wallace's fantastic machines so was promptly dubbed Shaun. This character proved so popular that in 2007 he was given his own, long-running TV series Shaun the Sheep (130 seven-minute episodes and counting) and this year has appeared in a feature film with the same title. The setting for each TV episode is the same: a small, bucolic farm in which Shaun and the rest of the flock are always up to some mischief, despite the efforts of Bitzer the sheepdog and the (nameless) Farmer to keep them in line. One unusual feature is that there is no speech – neither dialogue nor voice-over – so the humour is entirely visual, but there is usually at least one laugh-out-loud moment for adults in every episode.

In the feature film, the Farmer is accidentally transported to the big city where he loses his memory. Shaun, Bitzer and the flock chase after him in order to rescue him but have to contend with Trumper, an evil catcher of stray animals. Needless to say, after many bizarre and hilarious adventures all ends happily with the recovered Farmer back on the farm and Trumper receiving his just desserts (that really isn't a spoiler – all of the Shaun series end in the same way!).

I was a bit concerned that stretching the adventure to a feature-length 85 minutes wouldn't work as well as the brilliant shorts, but I needn't have worried; the film maintains a high standard and has already received the universal critical acclaim which has become almost routine for Aardman's output. There is talk of a sequel, but the stop-motion technique is so painfully slow to produce that it will be a long time coming.

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Race to Witch Mountain is nominally aimed at somewhat older youngsters. The plot is basically the same as Paul (reviewed here in May last year): alien(s) loose on Earth are being hunted by evil-minded authorities and recruit the help of ordinary people to escape and reach the location from which they can be returned to their native planet. The difference is that while Paul is an hilarious spoof of the genre, RTWM takes itself more seriously. Thankfully it does have some amusing moments, but the plot and production struck me as very routine and by-the-numbers, and the film was not really worth the time taken to watch it. Maybe I should have watched this before watching Paul…

Pavane by Keith Roberts

In my recent review of  The Owl Service by Alan Garner, I mentioned that the atmosphere created in the story reminded me of some of Robert Holdstock's work, and also (if a long-distant memory served me correctly) Pavane by Keith Roberts. Not having read this for some four decades, I decided to pull it off the shelf. This review contains some spoilers.

Pavane is an alternative history novel with the PoD (Point of Departure) being the assassination of Queen Elizabeth 1^st in 1588, resulting in the subsequent success of the Spanish Armada's invasion of Britain, and with the long-term consequence of a Roman Catholic western world. And it's nothing like the present-day Catholic Church either; without any non-comformist countries to act as a safe haven, all attempts at reform had been suppressed, leaving a decidedly medieval kind of Church Militant strongly in control, in a very different 1960s.

After a brief scene-setting prologue, the novel consists of five linked but self-contained novelettes (originally published separately) and a final short story, all set in Dorset in south-west England, each exploring a different aspect of this world. Technology is far more primitive, because nothing new can be introduced without the formal approval of the Church, which first ensures that it does not conflict in any way with Catholic doctrine. Much of Dorset is still wild heathland, not safe to travel over.

The first story is The Lady Margaret, the title referring to a powerful steam traction engine of that name, used to pull road trains of goods wagons – the main method of commercial land transportation. Jesse, the young driver who has recently inherited the company from his late father, is about to set out on a round trip on a winter evening, braving the routiers (highwaymen) in search of both trade and romance. The world of traction engines is powerfully evoked, which would not have been a challenge for the author as many of these engines still survive and can be seen steaming every year at fairs around England.

The Signaller concerns a young boy who is fascinated by the towers and moving arms of the semaphore stations which handle all of the fast communications across the country. The story follows his life as he passes through training until he has his own small station to look after. Again, the author takes the reader into the signaller's world, their practices and procedures, in loving detail. Such semaphore systems used to exist in England, before being replaced by telegraphy. This story also features the concept of the Old Ones, the people of pre-Christian England who are still rumoured to survive in remote parts of the land, and it is in this that the similarity to Holdstock and Garner is most obvious.

The third story concerns Brother John, a monk who is a skilled illustrator. He is sent to Dover to draw the proceedings at the Court of Spiritual Welfare, previously known as the Inquisition. The horrors of the torture he witnesses there cost him his sanity and he leads a revolt against the Church.

Lords and Ladies takes us back to the Jesse, much later in his life, by which time he is immensely wealthy as he controls the steam traction trade throughout south-west England. His young niece Margaret meets Robert, heir to the Lordship of Purbeck and the story concerns the developing relationship between them in his home at Corfe Castle. 

The fifth novella, Corfe Gate, is set a generation later and features the Lady Eleanor, the young mistress of Corfe Castle and the daughter of Lord Robert, who is driven to defy the power of the Church and inspires another rebellion against it. This also has the final appearance of the old steam engine, The Lady Margaret.

The book finishes with a short story, Coda, which jumps yet another generation to a time after the control of the Catholic Church has finally collapsed, releasing a torrent of technology which had been developed but stored away unused, the world now looking much more like our own. A young man visits the now ruined Corfe Castle (just as it actually is today) to learn how he is associated with the place. Another strongly atmospheric story, although I couldn't help thinking that such dramatic changes would surely have taken longer than a generation.

Pavane provides a fascinating and carefully thought-through insight into a strange and forbidding alternative world.  The stories are beautifully written and powerfully evocative, giving the reader a strong impression of what it might be like to live in such a world. It is something of a dystopia, however, so don't expect happy endings.

I did a bit more research into Keith Roberts, since this book is the only work by him I have come across. Wiki informs me that he wrote many stories published between 1964 and 2000, the year that he died. Pavane does however seem to be his masterpiece, The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction stating it is "now credited as the finest of all 'alternate histories'." Other opinions included "A rare and beautiful novel" (Brian Aldiss); "A tapestry of a book, a marvel of story-telling" (Algis Budrys); and "An imaginative tour de force" (Edmund Cooper). I wouldn't disagree with any of these, and am adding the book to my list of favourite SFF novels.

Film: Frequencies (2013)

I picked up a recommendation for this one from somewhere but couldn't recall what kind of story it was, so I watched Frequencies (also known as OXV: The Manual) without any expectations – and was rewarded with one of the most unusual, intriguing and enjoyable films I've seen in a long while.

It is set in an alternative world which differs from ours in that people are recognised as emitting different frequencies: the higher their frequency, the more in tune with nature they are. This not only has a direct bearing on intelligence but also on good luck; nature "works" to help those with high frequencies, so the highest of them can walk blindly across a busy road without getting hit, turn up at a station and never miss a train, find some money just when they need it, and so on. Furthermore, very high and very low frequency people can't mix for more than a minute, or unfortunate accidents start to befall the low-frequency person. This sounds crazy, but bear with me…

The film follows a group of young people with various frequency levels as they progress through junior and high school to university (three sets of actors are used). They are all extremely intelligent by normal standards and are taught in a special school, but some are more equal than others. The particular focus is on Zak, whose frequency is so low that he only just qualifies for the school, and Marie, the girl of his dreams who has the highest frequency on record but is an emotionless genius known as "the Machine". Zak's many attempts to get closer to her all fail until one of his friends, Theo, finds a way of temporarily boosting his frequency, to the benefit of Zak's romantic aspirations. The problem emerges that this method can be used for much more nefarious purposes, and raises the fundamental question of the strength of free will versus fate. The government gets involved and there is a scramble to try to find an antidote.

Frequencies is light-hearted and amusing, with the virtually unknown cast performing well. It has an unusual structure as well as theme, with the same scenes shown from the viewpoints of different characters, and it has a teaser of an ending. The writer/director/producer is Darren Paul Fisher, a Brit who is currently a lecturer at Australia's Bond University.  The film received excellent reviews, unlike his two previous efforts, Inbetweeners and Popcorn. It will be interesting to see what he comes up with next.