Firstly was who is she? Relatively unknown, but that's no bad thing - trust in the Moff to pair he right actress up with Matt Smith.
Secondly, I hope she is not a modern day girl from London again - after Billie, Freeman and Catherine, I think we have all had enough of that. Yes, I know they are supposed to be the everywoman to whom we can relate, but by now, most people watching the show are quite happy relating to a 900-year-old alien. Make her from the past, from another planet - whatever you like.
And finally, doesn't she look like a young Catherine Tate? My colleague at work, @grahambandage pointed it out to me, to the point where he rushed across the office to blurt it out.
Buy hey - she's Scottish! So what? So was Davey T and you'd never have known it.
Given the fact that Catherine Tate is in the final episodes - in whatever form - and her previous Time Lordiness as the DoctorDonna, might RTD & the Moff be planning a double regeneration?
Probably not, but as you know, I love driving myself crazy with this stuff. If I am honest, I think Moff will want a clean break, but you never know with Who.
NORMALLY in this loosely connected series of my fave moments, I pick out a short clip or scene here or there from a film or tv show.
But I have watched Predator all the way through twice recently (one night after another, thanks to some bizarre Sky One scheduling) and to pick one moment out from such a sci-fi masterwork would be doing the film a disservice.
Put simply, this is a perfect film - acting, direction, script, casting - you name it. And even though it is 22 years old now, yes, read that again, 22 YEARS old, it still works like a beautifully crafted Swiss watch made by pixies out of gold and precious metals.
To start with Arnold, he was at the peak of his powers here and produces some of his best work as Dutch. Check this out if you don't believe me.
Brilliant! But he also took the genius decision to change the film's focus from him against the Predator to include a team of bad-ass commandos as well, and while we know what he brings physically to any role, the camaraderie among them is obvious and something Arnold seems to genuinely enjoy.
Wisely, director John McTiernan (more on his later) gives all of this perfectly cast team moments to shine - Blain (Jesse Ventura) with Old Painless and 'I ain't got time to bleed', Billy with his nose for trouble and 'there's something out there and it ain't no man', Poncho asking if Blain had time to duck, Hawkins' terrible jokes - I could go on, but the end result is when they die, we care about them.
The stories about the set have become legend too - all the actors working out to have the biggest arms, bodyguards being hired for Sonny Landham (Billy), to protect the rest of the cast from him, Shane Black (Hawkins) who had already written Lethal Weapon, using his spare time to write The Last Boy Scout. Not bad!
In the ensemble, two truly stand out (fitting, seeing as they are killed within seconds of each other) - Bill Duke and Carl Weathers as Mac and Dillon. Duke especially brings gravitas and emotion to the whisper-voiced Mac, particularly when he mourns the fallen Blain, and Weathers, as in Rocky, shows why he is one of the top action sidekicks of all time.
They share a line, where Mac threatens to 'bleed him, real quiet' that still gives me chills.
And then there is the Predator. Against Arnie and his team, there was a risk the baddie could have looked a bit lame (indeed, this was why Jean-Claude Van Damme left the film after a few days - he was just too small). No danger of that with Kevin acting through the genius Stan Winston's wonderfully designed creature. A wonderful screen monster, albeit one whose face looks like angry women's lady bits. And finally, holding it all together was director McTiernan, amazingly in only his second film. He doesn't miss a beat throughout and as his next film - Die Hard (also perfect and one of my favourite films too) - showed, it was no fluke.
All in all, this is about as complete an example of catching lightning in a bottle as you can get, from first minute to last.
Inevitably, there's talk of a remake and the Predator has also fallen soooo far from its lofty beginnings (Predator 2 held up to scrutiny, but any more Aliens vs Predator anyone? Didn't think so.)
For me, they can make as many films as they like, but there's only one Predator and this is it.
And I got all the way through without saying "GED TO DA CHOPPAH!!!". Ah hell.
I am one of the generation that is old enough to remember the original V and based on what I have seen so far, I think the new one has its work cut out for it. Here's my reasons why.
1. Event television
The first V - a two part miniseries - was shown in 1983, in other words younger readers, the days before hundreds of channels with nothing on.
As such, because the choice was so limited, millions of people talked about it again and again before it was broadcast, watched it and then talked about it again and again the next day.
It was an event, like JR being shot or Morecambe and Wise's Christmas special and event television nowadays is much harder to make happen against the multi-media, satellite, iplayer, Sky Plus world we live in.
People find it far easier to watch something else or watch the programme in question the next day, the next week, the next month.
For something to stand out and gather that immediate reaction, it has to be truly excellent and even that isn't a guarantee.
2. What's come since
Enormous spaceships floating over cities, lizards disguised as humans, laser guns - back then you had to go to the cinema to see that sort of stuff. It was groundbreaking television, backed up by a massive budget and some clever special effects work.
Now that's not the case - any sci-fi show worth it's salt has got top of the line effects that are completely believable and affordable.
Yes, the giant ships over cities look good - and the big screen broadcast was a nice touch - but it does not carry the dramatic weight the original series did.
Plus new sci-fi has to stand out in a world that has just watched the masterwork that was Battlestar Galactica, with other shows such as Firefly still fresh in the memory or readily available on DVD or download.
3. V School Musical
Maybe I'm getting old, but half of the cast in the new version look about 12. In the original series, the focus was on the adults, with children only ciphers to help drive the plot. Plus they looked like real children.
This lot seem to have come direct from central casting, having failed the High School Musical audition. Go Wildcats!
4. Jane Badler and Michael Ironside
As an impressionable 12-year-old, I would happily have surrendered to our new lizard overlords if they all looked like Jane Badler. Hot damn, she was a total 1980s big haired space babe, with hints of lesbianism thrown in too for extra sauciness, and as good as Morena Baccarin - the new Visitor leader - was in Firefly, she just doesn't compare. Plus, look what Diana could do with her mouth!
On top of that - and although he wasn't in the original miniseries, V had Michael Ironside (pictured with Marc Singer, plus check out this great You Tube tribute, which captures his on screen stylings perfectly) in it, a fantastic actor as long as you want someone moody, gruff and balding with serious anger management issues - in other words Ham Tyler and every other character he has ever played.
Having him in anything to do with sci-fi is like a guarantee of quality, although Alan Tudyk is in new V, and he has much the same effect, minus the furious internalised rage waiting to boil over at the slightest provocation.
5. Devotion
Original V was originally going to be about the rise of fascism in modern day America, before TV execs decided to try and cash in on the popularity of Star Wars by adding a sci-fi angle.
The series still served as a broad allegory for the rise of the Nazis and the persecution of the Jews and because of that it carried some real weight, especially through the character of Abraham, a Holocaust survivor.
He saw the Visitors for what they were - Nazi-style symbols and all. I recently re-watched the mini series and it still packs a punch, especially when Abraham says to his son they could not flee from the Visitors because then they would have learned nothing.
On top of that, when you consider what has been happening in the world - extraordinary rendition, people being imprisoned without trial, Guantanamo Bay - it still has resonance with modern audiences.
By contrast the remake seems to transform that into a question of exploring ideas around faith and belief, which I have already seen on BSG. (and if they are taking that series on in the mythology stakes, I'd think there would only be one winner)
So, there we are. For my money, new V is on a hiding to nothing - but what do you think? Comments - as always - are welcome.
TO many first time directors, the pressure of helming their first feature film would have proved impossible to bear.
But to Duncan Jones - director of Moon, and a self-confessed geek - it was like being let loose in a giant toy set.
Jones and his crew worked like demons to get the film made, but a lifetime of sci-fi fandom gave him a sound and deepening affiliation with the genre to draw upon.
To show he can walk the walk as well as talk the talk, he said: "I would extend my range of geekery to be fair. I'm a hard core PC computer gamer, and have been for decades, I loved 2000AD, (the British comic equivalent to Heavy Metal,) I think the new Battlestar Galactica is WAY ahead in script writing terms from what most Sci-fi feature films are doing, and I used to play the Space Hulk board game.
Warming to the subject, he added: "I read JG Ballard before the kids thought he was cool, I prefer the Ghost in the Shell anime film to the tv series, and I'm down enough to know many fellow sci-fi geeks will think I'm a fool for feeling that way.
"I believe in Alan Moore's curse on film adaptions, I think the Wachowski brothers shot their wad on the original Matrix and had nothing left to give in the sequels, and believe it or not, I called that before the sequels came out, much to the dismay of my buddies, who were convinced all three films would be spectacular.
"I think JJ has done a very good thing with Star Trek, and I think that ONLY James Cameron should ever touch the Terminator franchise, as he is God, and Ridley Scott is the holy ghost... and I believe "Avatar" will melt our brains. I don't know.. would you say I was a sci-fi geek?"
Whew ... based on that, I would say he is an uber-geek, which could be why he poured so much of that love into Moon and also what influenced his next project.
Called Mute, it will be a hard edged noir thriller set in a future-version of Berlin.
He said: "Moon is a very quiet, intimate film about alienation and loneliness. The next film will have a closer spiritual kinship to Blade Runner than anyone else has managed to pull off.
"I really feel I know something about about the spirit of BR that no one else gets, and I hope to capture that in my film."
Duncan with his dad, David, at the Sundance Film Festival
As he did with Moon, Jones will be looking to make the most of his budget and sets to create an immersive and convincing experience. On Moon he collaborated closely with production designer Tony Noble and concept artist Gavin Rothery to capture the look and feel of beloved sci-fi films while taking advantage of their own up-to-date effects expertise.
“I had a background in effects-heavy commercials in Britain,” says Jones, “In particular those jobs that blended computer generated effects with live action photography. It gave me a confidence and awareness of which effects would be most cost effective, where we could get the biggest bang for our buck.
"We knew that by using some old school techniques like model miniatures, a retro (and cost effective) production design, and then by building a layer of contemporary CG effects on top, we could create a hybrid live action/CG style. It would create a sumptuous and textured look; beyond what you get with pure CG. But it’s something you don’t see much of in feature films.”
As befits a story line about a nuts-and-bolts mining operation, “We wanted the base and its vehicles to have the same “grit and big boots” feel as the old sci-fi we missed, as opposed to the more contemporary (but wimpier) iPod-style glass and touch-screen design most sci-fi seems to go for these days.
"Things would look like they were made of concrete. The architecture would look engineered and have hard angles. Tony Noble pulled off miracles to make our visualizations a reality.”
That attention to detail inside the station was mirrored with the Moon's surface itself, with Jones and his team working with Bill Pearson - a modeller who worked on Alien (shot in the same studio as Moon) - to create models and sections of the lunar surface.
Duncan added: “As a bible for the look of the lunar exteriors, we relied on Full Moon by Michael Light, an amazing collection of NASA photos from the Apollo missions, filled with beautiful, high-contrast 70mm photography of the moon from both space and its surface. It gave me a very clear idea of what I wanted the exteriors of our film to look like.
"With Bill and then the help of the fantastic London special-effects house Cinesite, we enhanced the models and digitally extended the landscapes.”
While such techno wizardry helps create the illusion on the big screen, Jones is also a keen user of modern day technology in every day life, including Twitter, which is how this interview came about.
After only a few days of following Duncan (@ManMadeMoon) on the social networking site, he very graciously agreed to answer some of my inane ramblings, which should tell you something about the character of the man and why everyone reading this should see Moon at least once!
Moon is released in America on June 12 and then in the UK on July 17 2009.
Moon movie - Duncan Jones interview part one: a SciFi Love EXCLUSIVE
WITH Star Trek currently hoovering up the cash at the box office, it is easy to forget when big screen science fiction's focus was a little smaller, more personal.
Back in the day, films served up complex and involving stories that made you think, with next to no space battles and phaser blasts.
In his new film Moon, director Duncan Jones takes his inspiration from those now-classic tales as he focuses his camera on Sam Bell, coming to the end of a lonely three-year shift on the moon in the not too distant future where he mines Helium 3 for the Lunar Corporation. With only a computer called Gerty for company (voiced by Kevin Spacey), Sam is just weeks from going home to his wife and daughter when things unravel as he starts to suffer hallucinations and - after a near-fatal accident - meets his replacement, who looks eerily familiar.
As the company look to get the mining back on track, Sam is forced to question everything about his life and existence.
For Duncan, his first feature film is a labour of love which has taken more than two years to complete.
He said: "I probably wear my heart on my sleeve with this film. Its obviously not about lasers or explosions, it's not about monsters or alien races. It's about people. How they work, what makes them tick, and how hard it can be to be one sometimes.
"When I was writing the script, I was going through a heart-wrenching long-distance relationship that was never going to work, and a lot of those feelings came out in the script. So did a lot of feelings and things I went through growing up."
That shows with the personal mood of the film being mixed in with broader ideas around alienation, industrial ethics, technology and corporate greed, and backed up by old school and computer special effects which created a beautifully realised but harsh futuristic environment.
"Those films and others like them told human stories in future environments. I’ve always wanted to make a film that felt like it could fit into that canon.
"People who appreciate science fiction want the best for the world, but they understand that there is an education to be had by investigating the worst of what might happen. That’s why Blade Runner was so brilliant; it used the future to make us look at basic human qualities from a fresh perspective. Empathy. Humanity."
To convey those ideas on screen, Duncan turned to Sam Rockwell to portray the on-screen Sam. The 40-year-old American turns in an affecting performance, fully repaying Duncan's faith in him.
"Sam is an amazing, talented, smart, lovely man, and the consummate professional," he added. "We became very close making this film, and I consider him one of my friends.
"I think what you get with Sam when you work with him, is someone who really wants to give you as many ideas and as much of himself as he can. I just feel so lucky that he agreed to do the film... then again, it was written for him, and I don't think I could have brought myself to make it without him."
That close working relationship must have been a pre-requisite on a highly pressured shoot over 33 days on set at Shepperton Studios and with a budget of just £5million.
Duncan said: "Oh man, the pressure on us was immense.
"Pre-production & financing, as hard as it was, was a picnic compared to two months of 18 hour days, problem solving and compromising every day to make a film that should have been impossible to make for the time and money.
"I truly believe that no one else could have pulled off what we did in the time and for that budget. It was an extraordinary achievement by everyone involved."
He added: "“Sci-fi by its very nature often demands the biggest production values, and, as you can imagine, that’s the hardest thing to achieve with an indie budget. So putting Moon together was an intricate puzzle: we wanted to tell a story that was both intimately human but universal in appeal; we wanted to keep our cast small and our shooting environment completely controllable; and we wanted to get every last drop of screen value out of our visual effects.
"It was hugely ambitious, but it paid off—we made an honest-to-goodness science fiction film, with an intense story, an amazing performance by an extraordinary actor, chock-full of gorgeous special effects, and we did it in 33 days and on a small budget.”
Duncan's indie sci-fi flick will now go up against some of the bigger guns of the genre, although he is confident there is room for everyone.
"I don't know about you, but I don't choose to see only one kind of film each summer," he said. "I see lots of films.. of all different types! Variety is the spice of life!
"Sometimes I want to eat cupcakes, other times I fancy a curry! Hopefully thats the way the audience will feel too. I certainly think as a smart indie sci-fi film, we are a "unique dish" on the summer film menu. Consider us the tasty baklava of summer film treats."
With Moon's cinema release just a few weeks away, what does Duncan hope film-goers will take away from the film?
"Actually I want them to do two very different things," he said. "Firstly I'm hoping the film will provoke a simple question: what am I like as a person? What am I like to deal with?
"I would love the film to lead an audience to that little bit of introspection.
"Secondly, I want them to want to see the old sci-fi films we pay homage to. The science fiction of the late 70s and 80s was so different from what we get today, and it was a truly golden era for smart sci-fi."
Duncan added: "Oh, and merchandise... lots and lots of merchandise! I'm joking!"
Coming next - Duncan reveals his sci-fi geek credentials and lifts the lid on how Moon was made. Plus, how I got to chat to Duncan in the first place!
Having watched the film for the first (but not the last) time, I can say that cinema's wonderkid did just that and has delivered on every frontier. It was tremendous - in fact I had an experience in the cinema I have never had before. I'm not giving anything away when I say that Leonard Nimoy cameos as Spock. I knew about it months ago, but seeing him ..... it blew me away.
I was just so delighted to see the original Spock back on the big screen that I said so out loud. I actually said 'Fantastic!'
I just couldn't help it! And I've never done that before - through 37 years of watching some of the biggest blockbuster movies.
I said it so loudly that the people in front of me laughed. I laughed with them, because I was giddy with excitement, with the thrill of having a modern icon back where he belonged for the first time in 17 years, since the sixth Trek film, The Undiscovered Country.
Now, as then, Nimoy brought tremendous class to every scene he was in, and he was not alone in that.
The two hours whizzed by in a blur of great writing and top class effects mixed with real character development that remained true to the canon of what had come before.
I won't go into the story, so you can enjoy it as much as I did when you watch it, but I must praise the cast for turning in great work, with even the minor characters having their share of stand out moments.
That goes double for Chris Pine who nailed Kirk (and his Kirk too, not just a Shatner impression), Zachary Quinto as a nuanced and emotionally vulnerable Spock and especially Karl Urban.
He plays McCoy and seemed to be channeling the spirit of DeForest Kelley to steal almost every scene he was in, as well as opening up any doors he wants to in terms of future career paths.
As good as their performances were individually, together they showed more than enough evidence of the same chemistry that made the original trio so perfect together to make me feel that future voyages on the Enterprise would be standing room only.
Looking back now, I still feel exhiliarated by the sheer spectacle of it and I can't wait for more.
In fact, beam me up JJ and set course for the next adventure at warp speed!
IN all my years of living science fiction, I have lost count of the number of times I have jumped to lightspeed, launched from a catapult bay, charged up the main gun or scored a kill in the money lane - at least in my head.
In reality, space ships are functional and boring, but in sci-fi, they are super-frickin-cool, so to that end I have picked my top five, based on the ones that blew me away the most.
It wasn't easy, and honourable mentions must go to to the Liberator, Serenity, the Borg Cube, Buck Rogers' interceptor, War Rocket Ajax and - most shocking of all - the Tardis. Even the Doctor's sweet ride didn't make it (aesthetics played a part in my choice - it is a police box, plus virtually everything I do has a Who link, so I decided to change up)
5. The Gunstar
I bet most people don't even remember the Gunstar, from The Last Starfighter. Famous for being the first film with computer generated effects, TLS saw a teenager finish his favourite arcade game, only to find it was a training programme delivered to Earth by mistake, which found potential starfighter pilots to battle Xur and the Kodan armada for real.
Brilliant wish-fulfillment premise aside, not only did it look cool, but it had the Death Blossom special move - where it would fire all weapons in every direction at once - which always made me wonder why it was kept as a last chance, all hope lost move, instead of just doing it to begin with.
4. Heart of Gold
Chosen as much for the man who 'piloted' it as its abilities, the Heart of Gold is on the list for its improbability drive.
The principle is that as its drive reaches infinite improbability, the ship passes simultaneously through every conceivable and inconceivable point in every conceivable and inconceivable universe (in other words, when one activates the Infinite Improbability Drive, the ship is literally everywhere at once).
It is then possible to decide at which point you actually want to be when improbability levels decrease, or something.
All that means nothing to Zaphod Beeblebrox - who robbed the ship and is almost as cool as the captain of two of the other ships on the list.
3. Colonial Viper I loved the new BSG for its depth, its intricate plotting, its morally questionable characters, but most of all for the genius decision to leave alone the Colonial Vipers from the original TV series.
Yes, they may have only used the same clips of the ships in flight (pressing turbo, normal flight, lasers firing, launching) due to 1970s budgetry constraints, but they looked cool and were - to my eight-year-old mind at the time - incredibly straightforward to fly.
No working out complex navigational equations, just grab the joystick and press go = cylon killing mean machine.
2. USS Enterprise This made the list for many reasons including warp speed, photon torpedoes, and in later incarnations, the holodeck.
However the main reason is that this ship died - several times over. And when Kirk made the decision to whack the original Enterprise in the third Star Trek film, it was like a friend had passed away. This was the Enterprise for god's sake - that had faced down foes from across the galaxy and TV networks without backing down.
As Kirk said to Bones, 'what have I done?' The answer - apparently - was piss Gene Roddenberry off royally for shooting his baby, but it makes for one of the most dramatic and surprising moments in the original films.
1. Millennium Falcon Could there be another? The Falcon was always going to be number one and always will be for me, because it is just so fantastically brilliant. I know that's not the most forensic answer, but logic fails me when it comes to the Falcon.
It had laser turrets, hidden laser turrets, smuggling compartments, erm ... a chess table.
It could do the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs and make point five past lightspeed. (I still only have a shaky grasp on what those actually mean, but they sound great)
And it was flown by Han Solo - Mr Cool of the Star Wars universe - instantly adding a whole other layer of cool. In fact, this is the Fonzie of spaceships and I would happily trade a kidney for the chance to have a go in it ( a level of dedication obviously shared by the people in this video and another modelmaker).
