Torchwood: Children of Earth - Day Four

WARNING: There Be MAJOR Spoilers Ahead!

If there's one thing Torchwood can be counted on to do well it's a death in the family. We all remember how powerful the simultaneous death scenes of Owen and Tosh were in Season Two's Exit Wounds.

Well, the sad passing of Ianto in Captain Jack's arms this evening was just as moving - and certainly not as inevitable.

The episode opened with more information about the original deal with 456 in Scotland, 40 years ago: a dozen children, who wouldn't be missed, in exchange for a miracle vaccine.

This time, however, there would be no way for the loss of 10 per cent of the world's population to pass unnoticed... and all the Earth would get in exchange would be its continued existence.

Frobisher tried to haggle the number down, on behalf of the Prime Minister, with everyone continually referring to the children as "units" - but the 456 were adamant about what they wanted and pulled the old "talking through the children" shtick again to hammer their point home.

A large portion of this episode was devoted, after the initial repulsion, to British politicians cold heartedly deciding how to select the 10 per cent of the juvenile population, eventually settling on using school league tables to identify under-achievers who would probably never amount to anything except dole scroungers and criminals.

Darkly satirical, yet I couldn't help but feel that a good proportion of Day Four was padding that, in a different format, would have been trimmed down considerably.

Torchwood had managed to record all this damning discussion - through the 'eyes' of Lois Habiba - and used it to blackmail a forced entry for Jack and Ianto into Thames House to confront the 456 ambassador in his gas-filled holding tank.

This didn't go quite as planned as Jack basically told them to "get off his planet". The 456 instead sealed Thames House and filled it with poison gas - emphasising that they still wanted their full quota of children tomorrow.

We got to see a bit more of the tentacly terror (but not too much) when a cameraman was invited in to the tank to see what had become of the children - one, still an infant, was plugged in to a mass of wires and tubes, possibly feeding the 456 in some way!

Although it moved the epic story on and had a number of great moments, this was certainly the weakest episode to date, providing the lull before tomorrow's climatic storm when the 456 and their human "allies" try to claim the children.

Obviously I have no idea what's going to happen on Day Five, but do wonder if today's chatterthon could have been edited down a bit and tomorrow's all-action finale expanded back partially into Day Four.

There's a lot to clear-up before the end of play tomorrow, not the least of which is Gwen's reaction to Captain Jack's quite callous involvement in the original incident; the fate of Jack's daughter and grandson; the political fallout from other nations that the UK had kept its connection with the 456 a secret; and Lois' career prospects after she became the spokeswoman for Torchwood in the middle of the supposedly top secret Government meeting.

Tomorrow:

DVD Of The Week: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (2008)

Ah, who I am kidding? What reader of HeroPress, worth his geek salt, hasn't already seen Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog?

Show of hands... okay, you two at the back, go off and find it on the Interwebs, watch it, then come back and join the rest of us cool kids...

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog was Joss 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer' Whedon's free-to-view Internet tragi-comedy, musical superhero mini-film in three parts, put together during the Writer's Strike.

Directed by Joss and co-written with his two brothers, Zack and Jed, and actress Maurissa Tancharoen, it stars Neil Patrick Harris, Doogie Howser MD himself, as Billy, aka wannabe supervillain Dr. Horrible, who is smitten with the lovely Penny (the equally lovely Felicia Day).

Penny in turn, rather sadly - for Billy - is taken with Dr Horrible's nemesis, the arrogant superhero Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion).

Wackiness, romance, singing and sadness ensues...

The DVD (still not released in the UK and with no date in sight) contains not only the 42-minute movie, with the standard cast commentary, but also Commentary! The Musical which is, unsuprisingly, a musical commentary - which, in all honesty, has very little to do with what's going on on screen, but is still very funny in that Joss Whedon way we've come to know and appreciate.

Complementing a trio of "making of" featurettes is also a half-hour of "Evil League Of Evil Application Videos", submitted by fans of the film.

Having endured more than my fair share of fan-movies over the years, I went into this particular extra with great reservation and gritted teeth. However, barring a couple, these are very funny, especially the ones who made the extra effort to compose songs in the Dr. Horrible style, to improve their "job" applications.

If you don't have a multi-region DVD player, then the three acts of the story are available on iTunes to download, along with the soundtrack.

Torchwood: Children of Earth - Day Three

WARNING: There Be Spoilers Ahead!

The "big reveal" of the alien species known as the 456 was always going to be a make or break moment for Torchwood: Children Of Earth.

I was keeping everything crossed that they didn't turn out to be Russell T Davies' standard "creature-that-looks-like-some-animal-from-Earth" that has become as much a cliché for the Whoniverse as the strange nose ridges on alien races in Star Trek.

At the other extreme, I would have been equally unimpressed with will-o-the-wisp balls of light, after the two and a half-day build-up to their arrival.

But the 456 didn't disappoint - they were wonderfully, truly alien; vague Lovecraftian tentacled shapes inside their gas-filled chamber at Thames House - occasionally lashing out with splashes of glorious ichor - with enough left to the imagination to make them true Cthulhoid horrors of the mind.

At this point I'd be quite happy if they remained vague shapes in the mist - to see any more of their physique would strip them of their mystique.

While Rachel and I have not been trying to second guess the plot too much, at least one other blog seems to have called it reasonably correctly when he suggested that Captain Jack was being targeted by Frobisher because he had been involved in the first contact, 40 years ago, with the 456, when a dozen children were handed over "as a gift".

The unfolding Government conspiracy seems to now be centering on keeping this initial contact with the 456 a secret from the rest of the world, which is why British Prime Minister Brian Green (Nicholas Farrell) has engineered matters so that 'expendable' civil servant Frobisher is the frontman for the nations of the world in diplomatic negotiations with the alien entities.

The arrival of the 456 came exactly at the mid-point of this five-episode mini-series and changed the pace of the show - probably only temporarily - as the second half of tonight's episode was dominated by the negotiations with the 456.

These were being monitored by Torchwood via their trusty contact lens-camera, as worn by the ever-helpful Lois Habiba (who must be being primed for a permenant role on Team Torchwood... should she survive the week).

With the climatic revelation of what the 456 actually want - 10 per cent of the Earth's children - and Jack's role in the original close encounter, the stakes continue to rise and, on the form to date, pretty much guarantee all bets are off for the final two episodes.

Although Torchwood retains its touchstones of the Whoniverse (e.g. a namecheck for The Doctor and a more prominent role for UNIT), Children Of Earth increasingly reminds me of that classic of British '70s sci-fi Quatermass, although not as enigmatic - and hopefully not as ultimately depressing.

Tomorrow:

Book Of The Month: Angel - After The Fall, Volume One

Ever since, as a kid, I read teasing, brief details in Dave Hargrave's Arduin Grimoire Trilogy about the seven-and-a-half year campaign to rescue a player character from the depths of a Hell dimension, I have dreamed of engineering such an epic quest into a campaign of my own.

Either as a player or Games Master.

But sadly, I have never been involved with a campaign that has lasted long enough for such a quest - or similar monumental task that the players would talk about for the rest of their gaming lives - to even be a possibility.

But now, thanks to Angel: After The Fall, I have a second source of inspiration.

As with Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Season Eight, this comic book series (from IDW) picks up after the end of the last televised season of Angel (which saw the remaining heroes severely outnumbered, in a rain-soaked alley, facing down demonic legions).

And like its girl-powered counter-part, Angel: After The Fall is overseen by Joss Whedon; although I sense his involvement might not be so great in this series as he is simply co-plotting it with Brian Lynch, who is actually doing the scripting. I get the impression that Joss is just there for Lynch to bounce ideas off of.

However, where the run of Buffy comics has been full of "WTF?" moments, Angel is more about the "wow" moments - and I know which I prefer.

The first volume (collecting issues one to five of the comics) sets the stage squarely as Hell - Los Angeles has been transported to Hell and everyone is trapped. But having dropped that bomb on us, Lynch takes his time in re-introducing all of Angel's old friends (and enemies): Wesley is back as a ghost, Lorne and Illyria are Lords of Hell, Connor is still Connor, but Gunn is now a vampire and Angel, himself, has changed as well!

Even by the close of play in this volume all the parties have yet to meet up as Angel, as always, is striving to do the right thing and get everyone out of Hell. I don't think it would be spoiling anything to say that by the end of issue five, he is only a baby step closer to achieving his goal.

Have to say I'm not loving the artwork of Franco Urro, except for a couple of exceptions (such as the double-page spread of a dragon-borne Angel flying over the Lovecrafted-out Los Angeles). Perhaps the colouring is to blame, but it's very dark and blurry and initial I couldn't make out who was supposed to be who.

Of course, I enjoyed the first volume of Buffy: Season Eight as well, so know not to count my chickens yet. However, while Buffy was more visually appealling (and had the benefit of Joss writing it in that first first volume), Angel has the benefit of a consistent writer all the way through its run (to date, as far as I am aware) so the fact that I enjoyed this volume means I'm more likely to enjoy future ones.

Kudos also to IDW for producing such a beautiful hardback book, complete with ribbon bookmark, that also includes many supplementary pages of cover art, sketches, scripts and the original proposal by the two co-plotters.

While I remained interested in the Buffy: Season Eight comics, because those characters are my first love, the Angel title is certainly the more entertaining and have yet to find myself thinking: "wait a minute, that's wouldn't happen..." or questioning the internal logic of the story.

Co-inciding with my rediscovery of Eden Studio's Unisystem, which drives both the Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel roleplaying games, I am once again looking at ways to put my players through Hell... literally!

Especially now there is the slimmest whisper of a chance that maybe (am I vaguing this up enough?) Eden Studios could be possibly getting the Buffy license back?

Torchwood: Children of Earth - Day Two

WARNING: There Be Spoilers Ahead!

The conspiracy thickens as Ianto and Gwen flee from the rubble that was the Torchwood Hub, and go their separate ways. Gwen and husband Rhys head to London to try and find out who wants them dead, while Ianto trails Jack's body.

Jack is carried away from the bomb site as a "bag of bits", which slowly through this episode stitch themselves back together under the stunned eyes of the Government's black ops squad. Realising they can't actually kill Jack after all, he is locked in a cell which is then filled with quick-drying cement... in true James Bond villain style.

In London, Gwen tries to contact Torchwood's "man in the Government", John Frobisher (Peter Capaldi). Unfortunately he turns out to be the leading sinister civil servant, the man who actually put the kill order out on Captain Jack and ordered the bombing of the Hub - believing that Jack's immortality was somehow connected with Torchwood's Welsh HQ.

Frobisher is a busy man - what with the aliens and all - and so his calls are being fielded by new P.A. Lois Habiba (Cush Jumbo), who realises there's something fishy going on and risks everything by secretly helping Gwen and Rhys. She appears to be the best P.A. in the world, handing over a virtually bullet-pointed plan for them to liberate Jack from the compound where he is being held.

Interestingly, the Lois Habiba role of "friend on the inside of the conspiracy" was originally going to be taken by the character of Martha Jones, until Freema Agyeman landed her role with Law & Order: UK.

This episode was written by John Fay, but still kept up the momentum of yesterday's episode and the good mix of action scenes with wry, British humour.

As well as the "regrowing Jack" sequences - most of which took place inside a body bag to prevent a nation vomiting in unison as bones, muscles and organs patched themselves back together - we also got to see Gwen leaping out the back of an ambulance firing a pair of handguns, sadly not in slow-motion, and Ianto ram-raiding a Government facility to steal the entombed body of Jack.

Meanwhile, Frobisher's boffin sidekick, Dekker (Ian Gelder) has translated an earlier message from the alien 456 and is building a large containment unit to their specifications on Floor 13 of the M15 building.

Whilst this was all well-and-good, and obviously helps move the story along, it reminded me a bit too much of the plot of Jodie Foster's cinematic adaptation of Carl Sagan's Contact. That being said, it remains a valid narrative device for alien contact, so I'm not going to hold it against them.

Through the children of the world, the 456 have announced they "are coming tomorrow".

Tomorrow:

The Week In Geek...

A round-up of geeky news you might have otherwise missed...

(1) Listen To The Evil DM: Jeff Mejia, aka The Evil DM, the author of Legends of Steel for Savage Worlds and The World of Broadsword as well as a long-time supporter of HeroPress, is interviewed on The RPG Haven Podcast.

(2) Jack And John At Camber: Torchwood's Captain Jack (John Barrowman) and Captain John (James Marsters aka Spike from Buffy The Vampire Slayer) will reunite at the SFX Weekender next February at Pontins, Camber Sands, Sussex. Other guests include Doctor Who writer Paul Cornell. More to be announced.

(3) Legends United: Batman and Superman team-up in the next animated movie from Warner Brothers: Public Enemies, released on September 29.

(4) One Giant Leap For Radio: BBC Radio marks the 40th anniversary of the moon landing this month with a whole raft of programming.

(5) Robin Hood Killed Off: The much-improved BBC light-weight bows-and-arrows drama Robin Hood has been axed and will not be returning for a fourth series.

(6) A Cauldron-Side Chat: An informative interview with Malcolm Harris, the mastermind behind Witch Girls Adventures.

(7) Get Thor In September: Marvel has released information about the wrap-up for J. Michael Straczynsk's run on Thor.

(8) Spider-Man on Broadway: Go behind-the-scenes of the forthcoming Broadway musical, Spider-Man: Turn Off The Light.

(9) And The Winner Is...: The winners of the One Page Dungeon competition have been announced - and will soon be avilable for download in a swanky pdf format.

(10) Thrilling Pre-Order: Thrilling Tales, a new detailed pulp background for Savage Worlds, is now avialble for pre-order from Adamant Entertainment. Order now and get the pdf at the end of the month and the print edition when it comes out in October.

(11) Freddy Ready For Two More: The new Freddy (Jackie Earle Haley) is ready for two more sequels if the reboot of Nightmare on Elm Street is a success.

(12) Geek Fiction Wins Top Award: Sci-fi author Chris Beckett's The Turning Test wins the Edge Hill Prize.

(13) Back For The Future: Following the success of UK Games Expo 2009, the organisers have announced dates for 2010, 2011 and 2012.

Torchwood: Children Of Earth - Day One

WARNING: There Be Spoilers Ahead!

Leaving no room for breath, Torchwood: Children Of Earth burst onto our screens this evening with the best hour of Torchwood we've yet seen.

It was quite literally an explosive start to the compact five-part (over five nights) series, and I wonder if it will be able to maintain this breakneck pace for the next four days or whether we're in for a slow patch around Wednesday as everyone slows down to get their second wind.

The story began in Scotland 40 years ago, with a group of children being abducted by an alien race known as the 456, then immediately sprang forward to modern day with children around the world suddenly coming to a halt. The second time this happened, all the children announced, in a typically spooky alien voice: "We are coming."

From then on, we were introduced to a government conspiracy involving the 456; Jack's daughter, Alice (Lucy Cohu, a superb addition to the Torchwood mythos and Captain Jack's backstory); Ianto's comedy family; Jack and Ianto's developing relationship; numerous sinister civil servants; a black ops organisation tasked with taking Torchwood out of the equation; and the fact that Gwen is pregnant.

Gwen follows a lead on the children's strange behaviour to East Grinstead, where she finds a man in a mental hospital, Clem (Paul Copley) who turns out to be the only child who got away from the mass abduction in Scotland. His fractured rambles suggest to Gwen that the children were deliberately handed over to the aliens!

Jack is captured by the black ops team (who I hope aren't connected to UNIT) and turned into a human bomb, which he discovers upon his return to the Hub. This necessary moment of revelation was one of Russell T Davies' neatest tricks, a subtle touch that didn't feel like a heavy-handed deus ex machina.

To be honest, I may have come down hard on some of RTD's writing in the past, but this episode was spot on in every regard; a fine balance between laugh-out loud one-liners and serious, dramatic shocks.

The Torchwood status quo was already shifting as the show opened and I just can't see how much further it can be dramatically twisted, torn and shredded and still maintain this high standard of entertainment for four more nights... but the Sky+ is set and I'm prepared to be dazzled.

Tomorrow:

Torchwood: Children Of Earth - Begins....

The highly anticipated return of Torchwood begins tonight at 9pm on BBC1 and runs all week.

Top Of The Pile: Doctor Who - The Time Machination

In these Torchwood-themed times, it is only fitting that the latest Doctor Who one-shot from IDW, The Time Machination, pits the 10th Doctor against the early, pre-Captain Jack, Victorian Torchwood.

IDW's Doctor Who comics have come a long way since the juvenile output of Gary Russell (author of several official tie-in books and former head of Big Finish), thanks almost entirely to the scripting of Tony Lee who not only gets the character of The Doctor but also what sort of stories really work for him.

The Time Machination tackles the issue of time travel head-on with a deceptively simple, yet convoluted, story that brings the Doctor and his old friend HG Wells back together (after their jaunt, in his Sixth incarnation, to Karfel in Timelash), along with a veritable surfeit of continuity-heavy references (from The Talons Of Weng-Chiang and Ghost Light to Tooth And Claw and The Unquiet Dead).

This is certainly not a Doctor Who story for a newcomer, but after The Forgotten it's obvious that Lee is not just a fan but is determined to write for the fans as well, something comics (and audio) are more free to do than the television show itself these days.

A wonderful cameo by the Fouth Doctor and Leela at the end confirms Lee's love of Doctor Who minutiae and I, for one, am very excited about the prospect of him writting an on-going comicbook series for The Doctor - due to start this summer!

Paul Grist's art is also perfect for this story and fast-paced Doctor Who stories in general, being neither too simplistic so as to reduce the whole affair to a Saturday morning cartoon, but neither too detailed that the pace is slowed by admiring the wallpaper.

Doctor Who: The War Games (1969)

The Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton), Jamie (Frazer Hines) and Zoe (Wendy Padbury) accidentally land the TARDIS in No Man's Land between the German and British trenches during the First World War.

They are quickly captured by the British and a rather zealous commander sentences The Doctor to be shot by a firing squad as a spy.

The TARDIS crew begin to notice strange anachronisms in their surroundings and aided by a nurse (Jane Sherwin) and Lieutenant Carstairs (David Savile) escape through a fog bank where they are immediately set upon by Roman legionnaires.

Eventually The Doctor discovers they are not actually on Earth, but on an alien planet where a nameless race have been kidnapping human soldiers from throughout history and running them through a series of "war games" to shape their own galaxy-conquering army.

The aliens have been able to carry out their cross-time kidnappings with the assistance of technology supplied by a rogue Time Lord who they call The War Chief (Edward Brayshaw).

Although the aliens claim that Earth men are perfect for their "experiment" because they are the "most vicious", this is just another unexplained example of an alien race's fascination with Earth and its history.

Yes, I know this is only a TV programme and some production executives believe it needs to be Earth-centric to hold a mainstream audience, but within the context of the story, the fascination with our planet for both The Doctor and his assorted enemies has never really been tackled head-on.

The War Games is an important Doctor Who story for several reasons, but mainly because it introduces us to The Doctor's people, The Time Lords, for the first time. In the last episode, The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe actually travel to Gallifrey, although it is never named.

Even with its incredible four hour, 10-episode duration, the story is compelling enough to hold the attention (the only longer stories to date have been The Daleks' Masterplan at 12 episodes and The Trial Of A Time Lord at 14 episodes, although most people consider that to be four seperate stories anyway).

The War Chief is a fascinating character; not only does he recognise The Doctor (despite his 'new face', and The Doctor seems to know him by sight as well), so presumably they had some connection back on Gallifrey, although this is never discussed.

And while he is apparently killed towards the end of the story, which is very close to arrival of The Time Lord delegation (one of them is Chancellor Goth, who we would next see in The Deadly Assassin), presumably he would have been able to regenerate - although I don't know if this has ever been picked up by anyone in any of the spin-off media.

Special mention also must be made of charismatic Philip Madoc's performance as the War Lord, the overall commander of the aliens. Madoc, of course, also appeared in The Krotons, The Power of Kroll and most memorably as Dr Solon in The Brain Of Morbius.

The last story shown in black and white, The War Games also marked Patrick Troughton's last regular appearance as The Doctor, although he would return in The Two Doctors, The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors - with any continuity issues this threw up dealt with by The Season 6B Theory!

Not only does The War Games explain why The Doctor stole The TARDIS and went on the run from The Time Lords, but also ends with his exile to Earth and forced regeneration (which concludes in Spearhead From Space, when he appears as Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor).

With the anonymous aliens only kidnapping humans - and none from later than 1917 - this story was a chance for the BBC's costume drama department to shine and, as usual, everything looks button-perfect authentic. Even the subdued strangeness of the alien control section (with its odd-shaped magnets as control levers and plastic shower curtains for walls) retains a certain degree of verisimilitude.

If the story has a fault, it is simply its duration. There is no getting round the fact that The War Games is overly long, probably far too long for the casual viewer, but as a point of monumental change in the direction of Doctor Who it remains a crucial story that delivers a lot of facts and just as many plot hooks for the future of the show.

Don't You Just Wish This Was For Real...?

These are a couple of fan-made posters for a Buffy The Vampire Slayer movie based on the Season Eight comics.

The teaser at the top is simply stunning, but I love the way that Dawn (in giant form) looms over everyone in the bottom poster.

The pair were posted up on Photobucket by a talented 'mock poster' designer who goes by the name of Chloesexy!

Ladies & Gentlemen, Please Give It Up For...

Inching ever closer to the magical-sounding 50 Followers, the latest recruit to the HeroPress superteam is...

* Slobberblood of The Old Gamers' Den (I strongly recommend any HeroPress readers who like miniature wargaming to check out this blog).

Torchwood For The Ears...

As a prelude to next week's epic five-day Torchwood: Children Of Earth on BBC1, Radio 4 has aired a series of three original Torchwood audio plays.

Running from Wednesday to today (Friday) in the "Afternoon Play" slot, with input from Russell T Davies, the trio of plays (Asylum, Golden Age and The Dead Line) covered the full spectrum of what Torchwood can offer from horror and personal drama through to full-scale, world-threatening adventure.

Asylum, by Anita Sullivan. This first tale was a relatively low-key story about a teenager arrested by Gwen's police friend Andy for shoplifting who turns out to be a refugee from the future who slipped back to present-day Cardiff through The Rift.

The girl, Freda (voiced by Erin Richards) is half-alien and is fleeing a grim future rife with anti-alien prejudice.

Sullivan's script emphasises the point that not everything that comes through The Rift is dangerous, but in doing so removes a lot of the action element from Torchwood and replaces it with introspective character material - which has always worked in both Torchwood and Doctor Who, but as a complement to the action stuff.

While it was interesting to hear the different reactions of the members of Torchwood, and PC Andy encountering his first alien, it would have been more exciting if this was threaded through a more action-driven story.

As strong a story as it was, Asylum failed to capitalise on the freedom that radio presents for science-fiction, that the only limitations on its effects budget is the imagination of the audience. It was therefore a shame to kick off this new series with an alien that looked human (which I know was the whole point of the prejudice angle) who came from a future Cardiff that we never got to experience.

Golden Age, by James Goss. Jack, Ianto and Gwen track an alien energy field, that is responsible for the disappearance of hundreds of people, to Delhi, India. Further investigation leads them to an old colonial gentleman's club that was once Torchwood India.

Jack is shocked to discover that not only is Torchwood India still operating - as he was responsible for shutting it down 80 years ago - but the staff don't appear to have aged one day... including his old flame, The Duchess (voiced by Jasmine Hyde).

In 1924 Jack was ordered by the Torchwood Institute to close the Delhi branch and confiscate all its alien artifacts "to prevent them from falling into the hands of the natives" when the British Empire inevitably fell. However, it turns out he didn't retrieve every item.

In contrast to Asylum, Golden Age is an epic "world-in-danger" story with a solid sci-fi core to its plot, but still with enough room to feed us interesting nuggets about the history of the Torchwood and develop the backstory between Jack and The Duchess. An excellent story with strong hints of Doctor Who potential in its colonial flavourings and "devious plot" at the heart of the mystery.

The Dead Line, by Phil Ford. 'Haunted' or 'cursed' phones have long been the subject of both urban myth and Asian horror films, but this is the first time this trope has been implemented in the Doctor Who universe (as far as I know).

A Cardiff hospital is overwhelmed with patients suddenly falling into a trance after answering their telephones and Team Torchwood is on the case.

Having discovered that all the victims have been using retro-phones from the 1970s and were all called by the same number, Captain Jack falls victim to the phenomenon as well when he calls the number. It turns out to be a dead line, but then it calls back! Jack answers... and collapses.

Gwen and Ianto turn to an old colleague of Jack's - from the 1970s - Stella (voiced by Dona Croll) a neuro-scientist who had some involvement with Torchwood back then.

While Inato sits watch over Jack's body in the hospital, Gwen and husband Rhys trace the number to an abandoned Cardiff & West building society office block and the mystery begins to unfold... as the number of coma-cases increases across the city.

The Dead Line was a genuinely creepy and tense play that rather cleverly left a lot of the mystery unresolved at the end of its 45 minutes. People are saved (as we knew would happen) but the ultimate cause of the strange occurrences is left, largely, as a great unknown for Torchwood to investigate later or not.

Although the action was left to Gwen and Rhys, Ianto's monologue to the unconscious Jack is the romantic heart of this powerful story.

* All these plays are available for the next few days on the BBC iPlayer and will soon be available for purchase on CD.

PRESS RELEASE: Girls With An Eye On Eisner's...

In celebration of the 2009 Eisner Awards, the Girls Entertainment Network comics team will be presenting a week-long feature event focusing on a select ten nomination categories (Best Short Story, Best Continuing Series, Best Limited Series, Best New Series, Best Digital Comic, Best Writer, Best Writer/Artist, Best Penciller/Inker or Penciller/Inker Team, Best Cover Artist, and Best Coloring).

The articles - released two at a time for a total of ten articles - will be written by the five comics staff members and focus on one category at a time, highlighting each of the nominees.

This upcoming event will help to promote comics at the Girls Entertainment Network and build a better interactive community of readers and fans.

To facilitate this process and strengthen the overall outcome, three winners will be randomly chosen from a pool of commenters during the event week.

The winners will be announced and contacted by the Comics Editor, Stephanie 'WITA'
Carmichael, at the end of the contest, and each will be awarded a custom Eisner-nominated prize pack featuring a congratulatory note from the GEN comics girls!

The Eisner review feature is the biggest undertaking from the GEN comics section
yet and results from the collaboration of dozens of publishers and creators - including Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, and many more!

The event and contest will begin Monday, July 6 and end Friday, July 10.

About the Girls Entertainment Network:

Forget sugar and spice - The Girls Entertainment Network is redefining what girls are made of. Spearheaded by a female staff, GEN fosters a dedicated and diverse group of ladies who are, first and foremost, fans. Readers who frequent the site can expect content written by individuals whose knowledge of the greater enthusiast culture is on par with their own.

Although GEN’s primary focus is to offer a platform to females, everyone - male and female alike - is encouraged to participate in the latest conversations pertaining to video games, comics, anime, gadgets, and cosplay as well as join our growing community of friendship and support.

GEN stands out among tech culture websites by breaking down gender stereotypes and showing the world that today’s ladies are taking control of the controller and digging through your comic collection.

What Have We Got Here Then?

If there's one thing that Tunbridge Wells (where I grew up) does better than Tonbridge (where I live now) it's second hand bookstores.

Long time readers may recall my contempt for Tonbridge's main second hand book shop from a couple of years ago, although since then we've acquired a new second hand shop closer to my home (a small, struggling, independent bookshop that 'over night' transmogrified into a pretty decent second hand store).

However, the other day, Rachel and I were down the "historic Pantiles" end of Tunbridge Wells and I dragged her into that town's newest - comparatively speaking - second hand book store: The Pantiles Bookshop.

I had previously bought some cheap sci-fi books there, but this time I hunted in vain for the science-fiction and fantasy shelves and - while the shop owner was deep in conversation with a middle-aged cricket fan who collected antique copies of Wisden - I ventured down into the shop's sub-level, where I spied - tucked away in the corner - a red plastic box overflowing with old American comics.

Bingo!

After a lengthy examination of the box's contents I came away with the eight comics pictured above for the princely sum of £5 (just over 50p each, which I didn't think was too bad).

The jewel in the haul was the 1973 Sword Of Sorcery issue with a Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story in, although I was very pleased to find an old copy of The Elementals as well (a comic that both Steve and I used to enjoy back in the day).

The other titles were The Savage Dragon #2 (featuring The Teenage Mutants Ninja Turles), Arion, Lord Of Atlantis #5, The Demon #26, New Gods #20, and Swamp Thing # 92 and #149.

At The Fleapit: Blood - The Last Vampire (2009)

Set in 1970's Japan - with the Vietnam War in full-flow - Blood: The Last Vampire is based on a popular manga and anime.

It follows the efforts of Saya (Gianna Jun), a three or four hundred-year-old half-demon with the body of a very cute teenage girl, to avenge her samurai father by slaughtering her way through the blood-sucking demon population of Japan until she can finally confront the head demon, Onigen (Koyuki).

She is currently working with a secret organisation called The Council (who "watch her" and clean up after her killings), who have directed her to a demon infestation at an American airforce base in Tokyo.

While there are similarities to the cartoon, the live-action movie greatly expands on the story - including numerous flashbacks to fill out Saya's background - but the Buffy The Vampire Slayer similarities are even more blatant, with the group she works with now being named as The Council.

In fact, it doesn't take much for a sad geek like me to imagine that The Council is simply an Eastern branch of Buffy's Watcher's Council, with a more "hands on" approach to their work.

Unfortunately this isn't the only area of the film that appears slightly derivative and despite the numerous wonderful moments of sword play and demon slayage, there are quite a few scenes when you think: "I've seen something like this in another film".

That's not to say Blood: The Last Vampire is a bad film, far from it, it just never really stakes its claim on greatness. It certainly isn't boring and at a decent duration of around 90 minutes, it's a great piece of vampire-fuelled carnage - it just lacks anything particularly original to leave a lasting impact.

As I've said before, the appeal of a "hot Asian babe with a katana" is always a major draw and I'd take Saya over Buffy Summers any day (I was always more a Willow and Anya fan).

Some surprising faces pop up in the supporting cast, including Colin Salmon (recently seen in Punisher: War Zone) as a sports coach and Larry Lamb (of EastEnders and Triangle fame) as General Mckee, the head of the airforce base.

The dramatic tension between The Council operatives and the military forces on the airforce base is forgotten as Saya's pursuit of Onigen and her minions moves into the countryside and like many aspects of the movies remains unresolved.

I'm all for films that don't explain everything and Blood: The Last Vampire leaves a lot to the imagination of its audience; from how its vampire-demons "work" and who The Council really are and what's their relationship with the American government to "is Saya's sword 'magical'?", as is suggested at one point by Kato (Yasuaki Kurata), the family retainer who raised her.

It's when the film tries to tie things together that its derivative nature really shows through, especially during the rather oblique ending, when Saya finally confronts her nemesis, with the whole "kill me and you become me" and "I am your..." vibe ringing loud Star Wars bells in my brain.

The highlight of the film is, without a doubt, when Saya takes on a massive community of demons in the backstreets of Tokyo to rescue Alice (Allison Miller), the daughter of Larry Lamb's general (whose character replaces the nurse from the anime as Saya's one friend in the base's school). Sadly the rest of the film fails to reach the same heights of awesomeness as this lengthy sequence.

Blood: The Last Vampire is a film for Buffy fans who'd like a "what if...?" story about the Japanese branch of The Watcher's Council and a Slayer who is half-vampire or vampire-action fans for whom a kick-ass hottie with a sharp sword is sometimes enough to hold their attention for an hour and a half.

Miss July: Amanda Tapping

Amanda Tapping (from Stargate SG-1)