A certain quarter of Doctor Who’s fan community – admittedly not the largest quarter, but a significant one nonetheless – was rocked recently by an announcement from 2|entertain (the company that puts the show out on DVD), via its @classicdw Twitter feed. “REIGN OF TERROR missing eps to be animated for DVD,” read the tweet on June the 2nd, and the followers of the forthcoming DVD speculation threads all across the internet sat back in their seats and goggled their eyes.

But why was it such a surprise announcement and what is the bigger significance behind it?

Back in November 2006, The Invasion (a final season Patrick Troughton story) had been released on DVD with the missing first and fourth episodes animated by Cosgrove Hall. At the time, this was a huge development; prior to this release, those 1960s Doctor Who stories which were upwards of 50% complete in the archives, but for which there were still a number of episodes missing (The Reign of Terror – four episodes extant out of six; The Tenth Planet – missing its fourth and final episode; The Ice Warriors – two missing from six; and The Invasion – six existing of the original eight) had been steadfastly ignored by 2|entertain and the Restoration Team (those lucky and widely respected fellows whose excellent work in bringing ancient and damaged videotape and film prints back to life is a significant factor in the quality of the classic Doctor Who DVD releases); the only release thus far to address the incomplete stories was Lost in Time, a 2004 set collecting together what’s known as the ‘orphaned episodes,’ those which exist for stories the greater part of which has been lost.

There are eleven stories completely missing from the BBC’s Doctor Who archives, including Patrick Troughton’s debut, The Power of the Daleks, the earliest Hartnell historical, Marco Polo, and other fairly highly regarded stories such as Fury From the Deep and The Massacre. Beyond that, there are another sixteen stories which are partially, or more often mostly, lost. Among this number is William Hartnell’s final story (the aforementioned The Tenth Planet; the regeneration exists but the 23 minutes building up to it don’t), along with fan favourites The Daleks’ Master Plan (only three of which’s twelve episode span survive), The Evil of the Daleks (six of seven episodes lost) and The Web of Fear, the first, thrilling episode of which is on Lost in Time, the rest of which is missing.

For the past decades, there have been three ways in which fans have been able to enjoy these stories, even with 108 episodes of Doctor Who missing from the television canon. Firstly, the Target books, those sterling works most frequently associated with the early adaptations of third Doctor stories, but which ultimately converted almost every episode of Doctor Who ever broadcast into prose. Among their number are some great novelisations of missing or partially-missing stories; Gerry Davis’ Doctor Who and the Cybermen (a version of the Troughton story The Moonbase, short of 50% of its four episodes) and David Whitaker’s early (it was originally published in the 1960s) The Crusaders (adapted from a similarly depleted story) spring easily to mind. Later on, after a period in which the Target books had become slightly lacklustre and had concentrated mostly on adapting recently-televised stories, a new editor (Peter Robinson) returned to the earliest days of the programme and commissioned better quality re-tellings – often from the original writers – bringing the rest of ‘dead’ Doctor Who back to life.

Then there are the audio releases. It is a significant and wonderful fact that Doctor Who has had such a considerable influence over successive generations of children, that right from almost the very beginning, certain amongst their number sought to preserve its episodes for repeated consumption. Their solution, in the days long before home video (and later DVD) became a household commonplace, was to hold a microphone next to the speakers on the television, and record the soundtrack of the story onto tape. It’s not perfect (how many of these kids must have sighed listening to mum clacking about in the kitchen in the background, whilst the Doctor faced off against the Daleks?) and it sounds silly to us now that anyone might have done such a thing, but thanks to these foresighted fans, we today have audio copies of every single episode that has otherwise been lost or destroyed. Listening to The Celestial Toymaker or The Space Pirates on a pair of headphones on the way to work might not compare with being able to watch it on a television screen, but it is an awful lot better than nothing. And the work of these overenthusiastic children has since become vastly more important for reasons about to be relayed.

During the 1960s, it was commonplace for television directors – not having recourse to showcasing their work via cassette or disc – to secure the services of a telesnap artist in order to maintain a visually interesting portfolio. A telesnap artist, if you’re unaware, is a photographer who takes pictures of a television screen. The resulting shots (about 80 per half an hour of programme) are then shown by jobbing directors to prospective employers, in the course of seeking employment. The significance for fans of 1960s Doctor Who was immense: all of a sudden, when the existence of such galleries of telesnaps was discovered, there was a visual record of the missing episodes as well as an audio one. Eventually the two were put together and what’s known as the Recons were born.

The most widely distributed Recons are the version of The Tenth Planet Episode 4, as released by the BBC on VHS, and the half-hour romp through Marco Polo’s seven episodes that adorns the DVD of William Hartnell’s earliest stories. These are generally fairly simple exercises, that merely screen the telesnaps as a gallery while the audio recording of the episode in question plays on the soundtrack. The marrying of the images to the action is key, and while it’s not, and never can be, remotely like watching the actual transmission episode, it does enable the viewer to understand how the stories would have looked and what they might have felt like. Recent developments by Recon specialists like Loose Cannon have resulted in computer animated reconstructions, whereby three-dimensional backgrounds have been extrapolated from production photographs, and the figures from the telesnaps can be animated (to a degree) inside them.

Thanks to the excitement generated by the Recons and the possibilities afforded by cheaper and more advanced home computing, it is even possible these days for fans to put together (mostly quite short) animations, in a similar manner to Cosgrove Hall’s efforts for The Invasion (a story for which no telesnaps exist), and the hope following The Invasion’s 2006 release was that further animated adventures would emerge.

Sadly, this optimism proved to be – in the short term at least – unfounded, and gradually withered and all but died. The reason was finance. The basis for The Invasion’s existence as a ‘complete’ story in the first place had been accidental, you see.

Back in 2003, there seemed little prospect of Doctor Who’s imminent return to television, and yet knowing that the brand had returned to a position of respect and popularity in the public consciousness, BBC-Interactive were about to relaunch the show with a web-based identity, in the form of Richard E. Grant’s (alternative, as it turned out) ninth Doctor in the story The Scream of the Shalka. Three previous web-based stories had been made, as one-offs, but Shalka was being planned as the first of an actual continuing series. Before Paul Cornell’s story was even released to the public, however, the announcement was made regarding Russell T Davies and the television resurrection, and Grant’s take on the Doctor was doomed – but not before funding for a second story had already been allocated. There existed a situation, therefore, by which funding for an animated Doctor Who existed, and yet there was nothing to animate. Until somebody struck upon the idea of animating those two missing instalments of The Invasion, thus completing a story for which only 25% had been missing, and exhibiting the results on the internet, through BBC-Interactive. In the end, BBCi declined to make The Invasion available, but all was not lost and the episodes were – effectively – given to 2|entertain to release on DVD.

Cue immediate excitement from fans and cries of,“What’s next?”

Of course, there was nothing next. The two episodes of The Invasion had cost, we gather, in the region of £30k each to produce. Insofar as any of us can be aware, the entire budget for a Doctor Who DVD release – including restoration across as many as six episodes or more, plus the commission and production of Value Added Material, or extras – is probably less than the figure required to animate a single episode, perhaps considerably so, and therefore fan hopes of an animated DVD of The Power of the Daleks (always the first story wheeled out for consideration when developments occur, and a story for which no episode – of the six that were made – still exists) were rather far-fetched. The question that remained, after time passed and the hope of a follow-up release more or less vanished, was: Could animating Doctor Who episodes ever be made cheap enough to be commercially viable?

We are approaching the end of the classic series DVD releases now (all extant stories should be available to buy by about the middle 0f 2013), and with time running out, and no further activity on the animation front (at least as far as any of us were aware; a couple of vague announcements in the now-distant past from Dan Hall, head of the RT, about things being in the talking stage, almost forgotten), those of us with a particular interest in the missing episodes had seemingly arrived at the conclusion that The Ice Warriors and particularly, as the least fashionable of the three stories in question, The Reign of Terror, would be released in a similar fashion to the manner of their VHS releases: a short reconstruction bridging the gaps between the extant beginnings and ends of the stories. Hopes remained for The Tenth Planet, however; as Hartnell’s final story (and missing only a single, but extremely significant, episode) and the debut of popular monster the Cybermen, surely they’d push the boat out for a mere 25 minutes’ worth of animation?

But with the announcement of the 2nd of June, all bets are off. If The Reign of Terror’s two missing episodes can now be completed by animation for DVD release, then surely that means The Ice Warriors and The Tenth Planet are a given? Even The Crusade and The Moonbase, two stories which had already previously appeared on the Lost in Time set, but for each of which only two further episodes of the original four need be animated in order for the stories to be released ‘complete’, must now be at least worthy of consideration. In fact, if the process by which The Reign of Terror is being completed can be made cheap and efficient enough, then it might even be possible that before too long, stories which are mostly or even entirely missing from the archives can be animated and released to a public that has been waiting the better part of five decades to see again? Speculation has been running rife these past few weeks.

So what is the process that is being used, who are the team of animators behind it, is there a chance that its use might become much more widespread, and why was The Reign of Terror chosen for its debut appearance?

The last of these questions is the easiest to answer. As the least anticipated of the mostly-complete stories, expectations are lowest for a successful outcome; what this means, in effect, is that it matters slightly less in the case of Reign, if the kinks that need ironing out in order to make the animation process an ongoing concern are done so less thoroughly. Which is not to say that there will be any lack of professionalism on the behalf of the team working on the story; simply that as they hone their process, so it will improve, and thus hopefully that as good as the results might be on this first story, the second story (and the third, and the fourth) will be even better – and if we are to enjoy the debuts of the Cybermen and the Ice Warriors as complete as they can be made, then surely it is to the good that those initial problems such a process will inevitably throw up can be overcome as efficiently as possible beforehand.

The company that has been tasked with the work is known as Theta-Mation, working alongside Big Finish. Big Finish already produce (and have done for many years) Doctor Who audio plays, and indeed were heavily involved in the production of Real Time and the Paul McGann Shada, two of those pre-Scream of the Shalka BBCi webcast stories. Theta-Mation have been working with Big Finish on the production of non-Doctor Who-related animated stories, and it seems their ranks have been augmented by several highly-regarded amateur internet animators, whose unofficial Doctor Who creations have adorned such places as YouTube.

What this means is essentially that the people working on The Reign of Terror are doing so for love rather than for money (although undoubtedly for both!), that rather than having a central ‘factory’-type set up, the work is being completed in a disseminated fashion online (and is thus saving on office rentals and similar such overheads), and that with an emotional stake in the end product, the animators will be working to the very best of their already-proven abilities (and beyond), in order to ensure that what we ultimately get would be what they too would have wanted from such a project. All of which is extremely promising.

The actual process itself also sounds interesting, if the few nuggets of information we’ve gleaned about it are true. From what is being said about The Reign of Terror online, then it is to be animated via a process more akin to virtual puppetry than the usual drawings-on-plates that such animators as Cosgrove Hall employ (however much that particular style of animation might have been enhanced by the use of computers). Effectively, what seems to be happening is this: the sets for a particular episode are built inside a computer (presumably with significant recourse to production photographs), and the characters are then introduced and ‘piloted’ around inside the virtual models, interacting with one another in much the same way as the actors originally did back in the 1960s. Such an approach would probably have been unthinkable as little as ten years ago, when the kind of puppeteering we’re talking about would have proven prohibitively expensive, but now that the overheads appear to have receded to the point whereby use of such a method is the most efficient and cost-effective available, the advantages of the approach are legion.

For a start (and this is by no means as obvious as it will sound), characters only have to be built the once and then are available for all the episodes in which they appear. This isn’t quite as true with more traditional animation: Cosgrove Hall would need to have re-drawn each of these characters whenever a new facial expression or angle of shot was required. With a 3D model of William Hartnell or Frazer Hines, the puppet need only be manoeuvred into a succession of positions to achieve the same result. Moreover, the creation of a series of ‘stock’ secondary characters, which can be redressed and have different ‘faces’ applied, removes the need to start from scratch with the guest cast of every story to be attempted. Once The Reign of Terror is complete, it remains only to create new models for Patrick Troughton and his various companions (plus the later Hartnell companions, of course), and the missing episodes could potentially be animated in earnest with little more than the virtual version of what constitutes the costume department’s responsibility.

The same can perhaps also be said, to a greater or lesser degree, for the sets. Once the process of manoeuvring the ‘puppet’ characters around a virtual set has been honed, the method can then be used to move a succession of different characters around almost any environment encountered by the actors during the weekly rep days of 1960s Doctor Who. Obviously I’m oversimplifying for effect, but once the process of puppeteering these virtual characters around computer-generated sets has begun, the technique becomes much simpler and quicker to repeat thereafter.

Once The Reign of Terror has been completed, then – and once all the hurdles that will doubtless present themselves along the way have been surmounted – the process of continuing with animations of The Tenth Planet and The Ice Warriors (and who knows, maybe The Crusade and The Moonbase, can begin apace. I might be putting the cart before the horse here (and even if Reign proves something of a failure, or runs so far over budget the other stories aren’t even attempted, just to have the one story will be more than many expected or even hoped for), but it isn’t beyond probability that 2|entertain wouldn’t want to continue and finish the nearly-there canon, if not the entire back catalogue of missing stories.

Indeed, although we actually know very little of what is happening, how quickly work is advancing, and how likely further animations might be – and whether or not the Reign animation will be successful enough even to distribute – it’s equally unlikely that ‘classicdw’ would have seen fit to broadcast the fact that work has commenced if they weren’t sufficiently confident of its success. The very fact that they’ve chosen Reign as their first story indicates the wherewithal exists to animate at the very least The Tenth Planet and The Ice Warriors, if not several (and hopefully many) more.

It’s not a perfect substitute for the original episodes though, by any means. A large part of televised Doctor Who – particularly, I might suggest, during the second Doctor’s tenure – was in the physical performance of the actors. Animations and Recons will never be able to recreate William Hartnell’s fingers-to-face close-up work, or Hartnell and Hines’ mugging to camera. But neither should they attempt as much, for trying to recreate such idiosyncratic actorial responses artificially would be doomed to failure. There are people who will argue that the animations are further away from the original work than the Recons have been, and that money ought to be being ploughed into creating more sophisticated Recons rather than wasted on ‘cartoons’. In fact, at one point, Loose Cannon’s Recons were due to have been made officially available via I-Tunes (and an abridged telling of Galaxy Four was to have been included on The Time Meddler DVD), but at the ‘eleventh hour’ all of these things were cancelled. This should have been a clue as to the eventual Reign of Terror announcement, had we been looking for it.

But the Recons have pretensions towards authenticity, taking as they do the bona fide available elements and creating something as close as possible to the original experience in its absence. Without the actual actors’ performances, though, the Recons can become even more distancing than a cartoon representation of the episodes. You know that old favourite maxim about androids beloved of science fiction storytellers, that it’s the approximation of humanity without its authenticity that is so disturbing? The same can be true of Loose Cannon’s product: it’s as close as can be achieved to the original experience, and yet without the participation of real human beings instead of merely photographic representations of them, there’s something a little chilling and alienating about the result. The animations create a very definite boundary of unreality between the story and its telling, that makes the experience of watching them – watching from a shared and ‘agreed’ distance between the viewer and the viewed – that much more palatable and easy to enjoy.

There are other concerns that certain fans share about potential animations, too, mostly regarding how closely they should stick to the original transmissions. Should the sets be identical to what was originally created, should they be in black and white and 4:3 (as the original broadcasts of course were), and should they follow the camera scripts as closely as possible to recreate the actual shots and order of their appearance as originally transmitted? Or would it be wiser to accept that the effect of watching an animation will never match the experience of having watched the episodes on broadcast, and introduce colour and widescreen and a little artistic license into the process?

Steve Roberts, of the Restoration Team (who subsequently added the caveat that he was speaking hypothetically, and “you know as much as I do about these animations … I was just saying how I would do it if it were down to me”), waded into the discussions on Gallifrey Base at the end of June, voicing his opinion that, “Personally, I think all animations should be done primarily in 16:9 colour, with a view to being able to extract a 4:3 monochrome version from it. It wouldn’t add a significant cost overhead, but would mean that the colour version could be offered as an alternative on the DVD and also could be made available for TV sales in a market which wouldn’t touch 4:3 mono.” I think he has an exceptionally good point. If the animations are already set at a ‘distance’ from the experience of the originals, then what is the point of their slavish adherence to the original broadcasts when, to be frank, they would be a great deal more watchable freed up to create an identity of their own? One of the problems of Cosgrove Hall’s realisation of The Invasion was in how dull certain sequences became, when very little was happening (or was allowed to happen) onscreen. A lingering close-up of Patrick Troughton’s face might have been acceptable television back in 1968 (Troughton’s face was a wonderful asset and could be mesmerising even when doing – or seeming to do – very little); a lingering close-up of a more-or-less static drawing of Patrick Troughton loses all the magic of his performance but fails to replace it with any kind of a substitute.

Enhancing the animations by creating them in colour and in widescreen (and I’m not advocating this practice for all of the potential animations: stories of which the majority exists and animation is being used to ‘join the dots’ between episodes, as it were, really ought to be completed in a style as closely resembling the original as possible; the difference between live action and cartoon will be jarring enough without adding colour and widescreen into the mix) can only serve to make the experience of enjoying them a more fulfilling one. Not only that, but as Steve Roberts so rightly states, it opens up the potential for sales to television and the extra revenue that such sales would create. If making The Power of the Daleks in 16:9 colour means making The Evil of the Daleks also becomes possible, then by all means do it. And even if it doesn’t, but that versions of Power for both the purists (on Disc One) and us non-traditionalists (on Disc Two) are available (for very little extra cost), then do it anyway.

There’s an argument that making these stories in colour and then transferring them to black and white (ditto widescreen and 4:3) would result in an inferior end product, but this isn’t necessarily the case either. Taking the latter, there was a very strong television tradition during the early part of this century, in which many television programmes shot in 16:9 would take account of the fact that large portions of the audience would be watching in 4:3, and would frame the shots accordingly. Ancient Doctor Who in 16:9 would mean a greater picture at the sides of the frame, rather than a reduction of necessary content when reframing for 4:3. Similarly, the colour into black and white aspect of the operation needn’t mean a necessary muting of the definition such that areas of the picture would become an indistinguishable grey blur. Contrast would be taken into account when creating the pictures in the first place, and in any case, the effect that is to be reproduced is that (in the main) of videotape recordings, where the black to white contrast is markedly less distinct than on film.

For those people whose main worry is that these animations might attempt an entirely different ‘feel’ to that of the original recordings (such as the difference between, say, the Cosgrove Hall style of animation and Anime), there is always comfort in the knowledge that the Theta-Mation technique will effectively be a recreation of the original recordings, with a limited number of ‘camera set-ups’ following a limited number of ‘characters’ around limited scale ‘sets’. If anything, the very process being used will recreate the originals more effectively than if the animators were to deliberately set out to do so!

One question that I’ve been mulling over is this: if this new style of animation proves efficient and cost-effective enough that the mostly- and completely-missing stories become viable projects, should 2|entertain then sanction the animation of existing episodes (in stories where only a single episode, or possibly two, of the original story exists)? There are two possible reasons for doing so. On the one hand, potential foreign buyers (or even domestic ones; imagine a run of Patrick Troughton stories airing on weekday mornings on CBBC during the school holidays – I’ve long advocated such a potential home for Who animations as a means of raising the money for their creation in the first place) might be put off to discover that their purchase of an animated Doctor Who story included a single episode of live action, in black and white and 4:3. A lot of sales might be lost to such discoveries, whereas the relatively small extra cost of animating, say the fourth episode of The Celestial Toymaker might also bring in sales that would potentially cover the cost of animating the whole story in the first place.

The other reason is a purely aesthetic one: if The Web of Fear exists only as a single episode and a soundtrack for the other five, then surely the experience of watching an animated reconstruction of the story would be a more consistent (and thus pleasing) experience, if it were to be of an entirely animated version of the story – with the extant episode thereby becoming effectively an ‘extra’ on the DVD release. Obviously, fans could choose to watch the live action version of Episode 1 and ignore the animated version if they so wished, but for the majority of people, I’m sure having the choice would hardly be a privation.

Before I wrap up, it would be remiss of me to fail to mention Ian Levine. As many of you will know, Ian is a Doctor Who fan of long-standing and often oddly-worded opinion. He has as many enemies as friends within the Doctor Who fan community, despite – or perhaps because of – the fact that he was a very early champion of saving episodes that were no longer required from destruction (were it not for Ian, The Daleks would be among the list of the missing), and the fact that he had a semi-official advisory capacity on the show during the JNT/Eric Saward regime, which led to the production of such stories as Attack of the Cybermen, which he is widely believed to have partially co-written. He is also a man of greater means than many, being a record producer by trade and having been instrumental in the creation of Take That, and one of Ian’s great pleasures in life is in ploughing some of that money into the restoration of missing Doctor Who.

Ian’s latest projects have been recording and then animating the missing material from the cancelled Tom Baker production Shada (there is a gallery of images from the new version on Ian’s Facebook profile) and an entirely self-financed animation of the single episode prelude to The Daleks’ Master Plan, Mission to the Unknown. Whether either of these projects (which have been taken on entirely outside of the auspices of the BBC) ever see the light of day is questionable; Ian’s mode of operation is to complete the projects wholly independently, and then present the results to 2|entertain almost as a coup de grace, leaving the decision over whether or not to purchase and then distribute them entirely down to the company itself (a little emotional blackmail surely comes into play here; having whet fans’ appetites with mentions of, and screen caps from, the projects, it then leaves 2|entertain looking like the spoilsports if they fail to take up Ian’s offer).

Whether or not we do ever see them, though, they are at least an indication that animation is indeed the way forward; Ian has been a longstanding champion of the Recons, but if even he is now bowing to the inevitable, then it looks like the only way we’re ever going to be able to enjoy those 108 missing Doctor Who episodes (officially, at least), is through the medium of animation. Dan Hall’s reason for cancelling the Galaxy Four reconstruction’s appearance on The Time Meddler was that the animation of the two missing episodes of The Invasion had raised the bar for what fans expected in terms of quality on the DVD releases, and that Recons simply no longer cut the mustard.

I can’t wait, myself. I think ‘cartoon’ versions of the missing stories are by far the more attractive prospect (although I’ve nothing against the Recons per se); the artificiality of the reconstruction is not – to me – so much a stumbling block, as it is instead a way of making accessible episodes that are, to many, otherwise only available on audio (and I for one find listening to stories that were intended for visual consumption an unsatisfying occupation; particularly in the case of stories that are six or seven, or even twelve, episodes long). As a visual aid, an animated representation of what’s happening helps us to follow the plot without becoming distracted by questions of the accuracy of the depiction. For many, a cartoon Fury From the Deep or The Macra Terror will be the equivalent of an entirely new story. And if we are to experience them for the first time as DVD releases, then it’s almost like we’re back in the 1960s all over again, a generation of Doctor Who fans enjoying these stories for the first time, at the same time as one another – just like we did when they were first broadcast.

So fingers crossed that The Reign of Terror is less a false dawn than the beginning of something wonderful. And good luck to Theta-Mation and 2|entertain: our hopes are with you!

So, the first season of Game of Thrones has reached its conclusion. Has HBO delivered what we were all hoping for, a masterpiece, The Sopranos with billowing capes and hair extensions, Rome minus all that faffing around with historical fact? Or will the studio have to look elsewhere for its next killer show?

You could be forgiven for being gloomy after tuning into (and out of) some uneven early episodes. Robert Baratheon, King of Westeros (Mark Addy,) summons his old friend Eddard, Lord Stark (Sean Bean,) to leave his stronghold in the North and serve in the royal palace as Hand of the King. Unfortunately, most of the courtly scenes that follow are as dry as a direwolf’s turd, while Eddard’s attempts to investigate the death by poisoning of the previous Hand would embarrass the Famous Five. The mind quickly wanders to the characters’ wigs and the dubious performances taking place under them. Sean Bean oozes glumness (perhaps he thought he was in Game of Drones) and Mark Addy morphs into Brian Blessed.

But performance-wise, the major disappointment is Aiden Gillen, who is inexplicably subdued as Petyr Baelish. It can’t be easy to turn a conniving whoremaster into a bit of a yawn, but somehow this usually excellent actor manages just that.

Despite a few naked wenches to liven things up, the way Game of Thrones is mounted sometimes feels old-fashioned too, and lacking in kinetic energy compared to such red-blooded fare as Spartacus: Blood and Sand. For once, you sense that HBO isn’t at the cutting edge. With a few notable exceptions, the series also shows a lack of conviction when it comes to the geographical sweep of the source material.

What saves the opening episodes are the villains and shady characters. Among the fair-haired Lannisters, the stand-out is the mischievous “half man” Tyrion, played with oodles of lovable roguery by Peter Dinklage. Just as entertaining, although less prominent, is Viserys Targaryen (Harry Lloyd,) the fey exiled princeling who eagerly pimps his sister Daenerys to the barbaric king of the Dothraki in hopes of a conquering army.

As the timid but determined Daenerys, Emilia Clarke gives a thoroughly winning performance, despite what must have been the considerable distraction of HBO exploiting to the full the nudity clause in her contract. For fantasy fans, this plot strand has the weird fascination of presenting Jason Momoa from Stargate Atlantis as the mindless killer/shagger, Khal Drogo. (Is it just me, or is there something strangely troubling about an actor from a beloved early-evening show being seen in this steamy new light?)

The patchiness in quality continues until somewhere around Episode Five, and then, like a dragon from a well-baked egg, Game of Thrones rises above its troubled beginnings to become something special. This is helped no end by a refreshing willingness to kill off the characters and move the story on, thus allowing other figures, such as the younger Starks, to come into focus. As with all of the most celebrated HBO series, the narrative begins to develop a cumulative power, so that each new incident has a context and history.

There are scenes of Falstaffian comedy with Tyrion, and a chance to meet his icily cruel father Tywin (played brilliantly by Charles Dance in a scene which memorably co-stars a slaughtered buck.) We also finally get to spend some quality time with the Night’s Watch, soldiers oath-bound to defend the kingdom against the supernatural terrors of the snowy wilderness beyond the Wall without so much as an electric blanket to keep their spirits up.

The first season concludes at a point where the best seems yet to come. Whether or not Game of Thrones will ultimately be reckoned an HBO classic, there’s so doubt that winter in Westeros is going to be interesting.

Dredd, naked, pulping Spider-man’s head into a metal post. That’s what some of the top 2000AD creators want to see.

That not-quite-so-serious view came from the likes of Zombo and Judge Dredd writer Al Ewing, Savage artist Patrick Goddard, Flesh artist James McKay, Caballistics, Inc’s Gordon Rennie, Dredd and Sinister Dexter artist Greg Staples, Low Life scribe Rob Williams and cover artist Sean Phillips.

They formed the 2000AD panel at the Bristol International Comic and Small Press Expo and gave some very frank answers to questions from Rebellion’s PR droid Michael Molcher.

The panel was quizzed on:

The Lawgiver MKII

What would you change about Judge Dredd?

Ewing: “I want to see Dredd take everything off, except his helmet.”

Williams: “I think Dredd works pretty well. A lot of artists say he’s a pain in the ass to draw. It’s very easy for me to write: ‘Dredd turns up’.”

Rennie: “I would change everything. It has always bothered me Dredd’s worn the same uniform for 30 years. It needs an overhaul. Get rid of the gardening gloves. I heard he was designed so artists didn’t have to draw a face or hands.”

Staples: “I have never liked the gun. It’s just three blocks with a pipe. I liked his other Lawgiver a lot.”

Flesh.jpg: Plenty of Thrill-power if Flesh was coloured every week

If you were 2000AD editor Matt Smith, what would you do?

Williams: “Push into the American market. But I don’t know the financial difficulties of it all.”

Rennie: “Change the title. It’s a comic book named after a year 11 years in the past.”

Ewing: “Call it 3000AD, perhaps 4000AD to hedge our bets. We don’t want to be in the same position again.”

Staples: “I would give everyone a pay rise.”

McKay: “I definitely think Flesh should be in colour.”

Goddard: “I think Matt Smith is doing a really good job. I get an email form him once a year asking how’s things and that’s it. Great editor to work for.”

Phillips: “There’s a lot of nudity. It’s not so child friendly. It should be aimed at kids.”

Should Johnny Alpha be left in peace?

Nikolai Dante is coming to an end. Which other characters should be finished?

Williams: “I think Strontium Dog has had its day. Knowing a character dies stops all the drama. There can be good individual stories but we know what the end is. I think it was a mistake to kill off Johnny Alpha in the first place.”

Sylvester Stallone blurting “I am the lah”

What was the impact of the old Judge Dredd film?

Staples: “Some don’t get there was a comic book.”

Ewing: “I don’t know any people who came from the Stallone film knowing what to expect from a Judge Dredd comic. Something camp? In Dredd we like that he’s not taken entirely seriously but he’s a serious figure in his own world.”

Judge Dredd – unkillable?

Should Judge Dredd die?

Ewing: “The rumours of me and John Wagner collaborating are completely false. Dredd is only 50 in real terms. Dredd can keep rocking the progs. If Matt Smith said to me ‘What’s your opinion on killing Dredd,’ I would say make it like Taggart. Let the supporting cast carry the title.”

Ewing is informed that Taggart has just been cancelled.

Ewing: “Let me reconsider …”

Williams: “Rico is Dredd’s clone so just make him Dredd and make him try to live up to the legacy. If it loses something then it would be up to the story being told. Let’s kill Dredd!”

Batman and Judge Dredd during one of their team ups

Dredd teamed up with Batman in the 90s. Should there be more 2000AD crossovers?

Ewing: “Wasn’t there going to be a Superman and Nemesis the Warlock team-up?”

Ewing is categorically told no.

Ewing: “What about Strontium Dog and the X-Men? They are both mutants. There are a lot of people who will buy anything with Spider-man on it. So if Dredd is smashing Spider-man’s face into a metal post … a lot of people will buy that.”

Is there any hope for the human race? Vampires are everywhere, and there’s nothing we can do about it. We can’t escape them, and we certainly can’t fight them. There has been a recent invasion of vampires in popular culture, spread across TV, films, books and comics like the blood of their victims. Twilight is, of course, the big name at the moment (forgive me, I’ve not seen the films or read the books), but we also have True Blood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and so many, many more.

However, whenever Halloween comes around, which vampire is represented with the highest number of costumes? Spike and Dru? Blade? Edward? No, it’s all about Bela Lugosi, his accent and that hungry, terrifying smile of his.

It has been eighty years since Universal released their version of Dracula, and this short black and white feature still has a grip on the public imagination that no other vampire has been able to touch.

The film is based on a theatrical production which first toured the UK, and then – following a few changes – America. Whilst the reviews weren’t all spectacular, the play was hugely successful. At first Universal wished to make a big-budget adaptation of the novel, but once the Depression really set in, the expense couldn’t be justified. The rights were bought for the play, and the film eventually went into production.

Of course, I didn’t see the film on its release or even on the big screen. In fact, until recently I hadn’t even seen the film all the way through at all, believe it or not. Yet, I have always known the film well.

Opening to Tchaikovsky’s stirring Swan Lake, the first scenes set the tone for the rest of the film. A lone carriage travels the crumbling roads of Western Europe, with dark night approaching and heavy clouds in the sky. Renfield (Dwight Fry) is on his way to Castle Dracula. A brief stop, and conversation with the locals illustrates the fear that they have of the castle and the night.

The Castle itself is decrepit and gothic and filled with so many classic horror icons that it feels almost like a dream, or nightmare. Huge cobwebs stretch across rooms, the walls are crumbling, the windows smashed. Bats fly amongst the rafters and – oddly – armadillos live amongst the shadows. The castle is no longer a home to a civilised man, but is becoming consumed by nature. The Count descends the grand staircase, candle in hand and wrapped in his cloak. In the distance, a lone wolf howls, and the classic line ‘the children of the night. What music they make’ is heard on screen for the first time.

The following scene is a perfect example of Lugosi’s Dracula. He leads Renfield to a warm, welcoming room and provides food and wine. He is at once a courteous host, and also very threatening. Renfield is offered food and ‘very old wine’, although Dracula does admit that he never drinks… wine.

Once Dracula leaves, Renfield is joined in his room by three vampire women, all dressed in flowing white nightgowns. As is well known, this image was one of the first that came to Bram Stoker that led to the book being written. In the novel it is sexually loaded, but here less so, due, undoubtedly, to the strong censorship in Hollywood at the time.

A ship  – the Vesta – arrives at England, and the entire crew is dead, killed by Dracula. We see the shadow of the Captain, tied to the ship’s wheel. It is truly horrific. Investigators hear manic laughter, and find Renfield staring up at them. Even now, I find this scene chilling.

We see Dracula in London. He’s a predator in the city. A very symbolic little scene, I think. He is a parasite, living off civilisation. This just seems more apparent in a city, than in ruined castles. It is here that he meets Mina (Helen Chandler), Lucy (Frances Dade) and John Harker (David Manners). I find these three the weakest characters of the film. This is probably because they have been the most diluted from the characters in the novel. Harker in particular doesn’t serve any purpose, and has nothing to do for most of the film.

Van Helsing is investigating the unexplained deaths that Dracula’s presence has brought. He quickly deduces that they are being caused by a vampire, or Nosferatu, and sets out to prove his theory. He eventually catches Dracula’s lack of reflection in a mirror.

Director Tod Browning made his name on several successful silent horror films, and he uses many of the techniques he learnt with them in Dracula. Indeed, it almost seems as if he is reticent to make the jump to sound – many of the most iconic shots are silent. This silence, though, really helps to create a sense of being alone with the vampire. These shots often feature Dracula by himself, shrouded in mist. He seems mysterious, dangerous and lonely. There are also some great close-up. It is almost as if we have become transfixed by Dracula himself, and are being pulled in against our will.

Dwight Fry gives an amazing performance as Renfield; tortured, terrified and insane. His manic, throaty laughter is truly disturbing, even now.  I believe that he wants to eat insects and rats, and that he serves Dracula, but also that he wishes to escape. There is still some part of him that remains human, and at times, he understands what he has become.

Edward Van Sloan as Van Helsing is also worthy of note, carrying an authority that makes it believable that he can match wits with the Count. He had played this character in the stage version, and the experience he had working with Bela Lugosi is evident.

Of course, most praise must go to the star of the piece, Bela Lugosi. He had been playing the part on stage for some time, and it shows that he understands the character of Dracula. His Hungarian accent, along with a lyrical, carefully paced delivery creates an eerie quality to the Count, as if he is hypnotising everyone who is listening. The Count can be both courteous and menacing at once. Amazingly, Lugosi wasn’t the first choice for the role, despite having played Dracula on stage, and had to fight for it. Some of the exaggerated moves that he used on stage make it into the film. The clawed hands, the swirl of his cape, and his unnerving stare.

So much that is now associated with the character of Count Dracula comes from Lugosi’s performance. It is difficult to really appreciate how much his version of Dracula has become a part of popular culture. Of course, some very big names have played Dracula over the years. Christopher Lee, Gary Oldman and Frank Langella spring to mind. Each of these actors has brought something different to the role, but each has been judged in comparison to Lugosi.

At the end of the night, he is Dracula.

This is the first collection of short stories from CJ Lines but, given the effortless way that he manipulates the format, I’m willing to bet that it won’t be his last. Ranging from visceral modern updates of the classic English ghost story to heartbreaking uses of modern technology, these are all dark tales, but that’s to be expected from an author whose first novel Filth Kiss was applauded by bastions of horror like Rue Morgue Magazine. In the interests of full disclosure I have to admit that I don’t read a lot of horror fiction, primarily because I take umbrage at the way a lot of prolific horror writers take one good idea and spin it out for 600 pages, but do you know where something like that isn’t a crime? In a short story.  Every one of CJ Lines’ stories is built on a brilliant conceit, and while some work better than others I admired the range of subjects that he wanted to tackle and the variety of voices that he brought to the different tales.

Of the fourteen collected stories, my favourites were Lambkin, channelling the spirit of M R James, Debut, a thoroughly disturbing look at Victorian puppetry, and The Trending, a beautiful and haunting meditation on grief in the modern age. My biggest complaint about Cold Mirrors would be that The Trending was the first story in the book and it absolutely towers above everything else in the collection. It’s wonderful to read an author at the height of his power, when all the pieces come together and create something timeless and powerful, but it was disappointing that none of the other stories in the collection made such a strong impression on me.

As a package Cold Mirrors serves as an introduction to a bold British author that deserves to be known more widely. At his best he filters the human condition through a dark aesthetic that we all look for in horror and at worst I had no complaints about Cold Mirrors that I wouldn’t level against mainstream short story writers like Stephen King. Cold Mirrors is a professional collection of stories from an independent British publisher and it deserves to rise above the clichéd mess of contrivances that most high-street retailers are trying to sell you as Horror. Watch closely for where CJ Lines goes from here.

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Because this is Starburst and we pride ourselves on giving you more for free than most magazines would give you for a handful of dirty cash, I tracked down CJ Lines for an interview, giving him one last chance to convince you to buy his book:

For anybody not already familiar with your work, who is C J Lines?

I’m the author of one novel, Filth Kiss (2007), and one collection of short stories, Cold Mirrors (2011). I started to write when I was a little kid, after seeing Clash of the Titans. There was something about hooded skeletons in rowboats and crawling green snake-women that sparked my young imagination and I wanted to replicate it by any means possible. As I grew up, the obsession with horror and monsters never went away. Although I moved from Birmingham to London and wrote music and film reviews for awhile, I yearned to write about monsters again so I enrolled in some Creative Writing classes at nightschool which totally relit the (Hell)fire. After a few years of tormenting classmates with short stories, I retreated from the classroom to the bedroom and plucked up the courage to try my hand at a novel. This eventually ended up being Filth Kiss.
 
What sort of an experience can a reader expect when they open one of your books?

Hopefully something different every time! The last thing I’d want to be is predictable. I think Cold Mirrors is a broad showcase of styles. There’s dark speculative fiction in there alongside more light-hearted stuff, some gothic period pieces and a couple of straightforward, sting-in-the-tail horror stories. Filth Kiss is a different beast. I originally wrote that as an experiment in how far I could take things, as well as a tribute to the 80s pulp “nasties” and while it took on its own distinct voice away from that, it’s still a brutal and unpleasant read. I like the idea of occupying a middle ground between your more abstract, atmospheric or cerebral horror and that gleeful balls-out mania of the genre at its daftest extremes.

Can you name any other authors or artists that you would consider to be your peers?

I’ve not found many authors who seem to have similar aims when it comes to horror. There’s a lot of really scrappy, unimaginative, grammatically questionable writing on the gorier end of the spectrum in small press which is bad. But on the other side, I find much of the more “mature” horror far too dry; lots of outdated Poe and Lovecraft imitation with little of interest to offer. I’d hardly call him a peer as he’s both a far greater writer and rightly more successful than I am but John Ajvide Lindqvist is definitely investigating the same avenues. Let The Right One In (the book, not the film) is an incredible mix of disturbing, hyper-violent horror, beautiful writing and emotional depth. Likewise, I loved Handling The Undead, in which he took a really old, overdone trope (zombies) and turned it into something both very shocking and moving. It’s great how he uses violence and grotesquery within deeper, more sophisticated narratives and I very much aspire to do the same.

What have been the biggest influences on your development as a writer?

When I was too young to rent all the 18-rated video nasties I longed to see, I naturally moved on to horror books because they didn’t have an age rating and I could buy them in the newsagent. I figured it was certainly worth honing the old reading skills if it meant the ability to access the impressively depraved levels of filth plied by Guy N. Smith, Shaun Hutson and Clive Barker at the time. There’s no question that this stuff sculpted my creative mind. It’s weird because, as a teenager, I found a lot of the stuff Channel 4 would show late at night – films by directors like Peter Greenaway, Derek Jarman and Ken Russell – would be another excellent way of accessing the kind of sex and violence that I wouldn’t normally be able to watch so I would stay up late and catch all of those. I saw so many genuinely brilliant films that way, many of which remain favourites even today. It’s weird to think how much cultural influence stemmed from an adolescent search for tits and gore! Yet somehow it all went in and, one way or another, it all comes out in my writing.

Since you mentioned them, I have to ask, which was your favourite Video Nasty and why?

Yikes, that’s a tough one. Even if we’re sticking with films that were actually on the official DPP list of “nasties”, I have a lot of love for so many of them. I’d say Flesh For Frankenstein is probably my favourite overall. It’s got a little of everything. Horror, comedy, vile gore, a surprising beauty at times and even a little genuine dramatic flair. Udo Kier’s performance is career-defining too! Close runners-up would be The Beyond and Evilspeak. The last fifteen minutes of the latter, despite being a blatant knock-off of Carrie, are some of the most frenzied of any horror film. Very underrated!

Have you ever written for any other mediums or do you prefer to stick to prose?

I stick to prose in general because it’s what I feel I’m good at. I’ve written one screenplay for a short film, there are some songs locked away in a dusty drawer somewhere and I occasionally write light poetry but this is largely for my own amusement.

Do you have another project lined up yet? Will we be seeing another full-length novel anytime soon?

I don’t have another project lined up, although I’m working on a few things. I tend to avoid talking too much in interviews about things I’m working on since they don’t always ever see the light of day. I wouldn’t want to get anyone excited for something they’ll never read! There are a couple of projects that I’ve been giving my attention to this year but I’m not sure which one will get carried through to completion. They’re both novels. One is a more sombre, literary effort about angels and the other is an unrepentant gorefest about a killer priest. Opposite ends of the spectrum, basically. I’m not a prolific writer at all and I tend to edit myself to the nth degree so whichever I choose to work on, it’ll be awhile before anyone reads it!

He’s the 21st century’s longest-serving law man with 54 fictional years of meting out justice under his belt. Since the second edition of 2000 AD, Judge Joe Dredd has lost his eyes, been shot, broken, tortured and aged every day since 1977. So what’s his secret?

While the early part of his career is occasionally revealed in snippets, his adventures were primarily open-and-shut cases until 1979, bar some multi-part exceptions and ambitious storylines like The Robot War instigated by the Spartacus-esque Call Me Kenneth (considered a mini-epic in its own right). Then Pat Mills penned The Cursed Earth, setting the blueprint of what would be the Judge Dredd epic.

The Cursed Earth

Mount Rushmore – as seen in The Cursed Earth

The Cursed Earth was spoon fed in 25 parts from progs 61 to 85 and saw the lawman’s universe expand dramatically. Up to then he had been focused on Mega-City One but a mission of mercy saw him sent 1,000 miles west across the Atomic War scarred plains of North America to Mega-City Two with a vaccine for the cannibal-causing 2T (FRU) T virus.

Michael Molcher, spokesman for 2000 AD publisher Rebellion, said: “It’s not so unusual in British weeklies for long-running stories – look at Charley’s War or Darkie’s Mob in Battle, or in 2000 AD something like Return to Armageddon (which ran for 34 weeks) or Meltdown Man (50 episodes). With five pages of black-and-white art turned around in a week on average, these stories could be generated over a long period of time.

“Epics are a good chance to explore Dredd’s world and establish environments (Cursed Earth) or take Dredd out of his natural environment (Judge Child). Most of the time, they simply shake up the status quo.”

The Cursed Earth took six months to tell in the weekly magazine and was mainly a daisy chain of one and two-part stories pitting Dredd against superstitious villagers plagued by the Devil’s Lapdogs (flying deadly rats), vampire medic robots charged with keeping the last president of the United States alive and taking in such landscapes like an army of war bots at Death Valley and Mount Rushmore –with the addition of a mutant face wearing a possum for a hat.

The future saga also beat Michael Crichton to the punch by resurrecting tyrant lizard Satanus the Unchained from the series Flesh through cloning for a national park devoted to dinosaurs – preceding Jurassic Park by 12 years.

Satanus showing why he’s leader of the pack

Despite the satire, some stories hit a little too close to home, with two John Wagner stories banned from future reprints as they infringed on the copyright of burger lords McDonalds and Burger King. Dredd and reluctant ally Spikes Rotten Harvey end up captured by the two camps, force fed fast food by one and put on trial by the other for eating it. A Dr Moreau creation of the Jolly Green Giant didn’t help in the second story.

Against insurmountable odds, injury, the death of his allies and a lot of weirdness, Dredd crawls the last leg of his trip to the stricken Mega-City Two with vaccine intact – setting the formula for future epics which got bigger and better.

That formula, said Molcher, is “usually some threat that affects the entire city – see Necropolis, Judgement Day, Apocalypse War – where it comes down to Dredd to save the day, or Dredd has a mission to complete – Cursed Earth, Judge Child. Latterly, epics like The Pit or Tour of Duty have been built on smaller stories that grow to a bigger picture, allowing for a big cast of supporting characters”.

The number of Dredd epics out there is debatable. Some are clear cut cases of fitting the trend. Others, while shorter, are no less ambitious or status quo-shaking. By our reckoning there are 12 to 15 of these must-read Dredd stories.

The longest Dredd epic to date is the recent Tour of Duty – a 46 prog parter, running from July 2009 to August 2010.

Dredd is technically aged 67 but was ‘born’ aged five in a clone lab, physically making him 62. Whichever number you plump for, is he getting a little long in the tooth – and are epics getting too long and scaring new readers away?

 Molcher said: “Not really, we haven’t seen Dredd physically limited by his age at all. His character has developed over the decades so he’s probably more sympathetic than he was 30 years ago, more introspective.

“Summer is the traditional time for a new epic – if you advertise it and give enough teasers, there’s no reason why people can’t jump on board.”

The Day the Law Died

Like his namesake, Judge Caligula was a truly mad monster

Back in October 1978 and flush with the success of the marathon Cursed Earth, 2000 AD couldn’t wait to get Dredd started on his second 20-prog saga, beginning with a three-part prequel to The Day the Law Died.

Dredd has barely got back to Mega-City One and flopped into bed when he is awoken by the Gestapo-esque Special Judicial Squad, arrested for murder. Clearing himself, Dredd makes an enemy out of the squad’s boss, Deputy Chief Judge Caligula, and finds himself in the sights of a sniper’s rifle. Shot in the head, Dredd is not the only casualty as the chief judge is slain and Judge Cal assumes the highest office.

The fearsome Kleggs and their war cry turned the tide for Cal during the citizens’ revolt

This epic was written by Dredd co-creator John Wagner under his John Howard pseudonym and had more humour than The Cursed Earth. Despite lacking a road trip, this epic had the perfect anti-Dredd foil in Judge Cal, equal parts mad and funny.

On his elevation to office, Cal appoints his goldfish to the position of Deputy Chief Judge – who delivers the infamous “bloop!” law which no one understands but everyone fears as it comes with the death penalty. Cal also orders the city to report for execution in alphabetical order, beginning with Aaron A. Aardvark.

The Judge Child

Mean Machine, Junior, Link and Pa Angel put the screws on the Judge Child’s kidnapper

The Dredd epics got a break until prog 156 when Wagner, later joined by long-time writing partner Alan Grant, sent Dredd on another road trip, this time mainly in space, in the 25-part Judge Child saga.

Mega-City One faces doom in the year 2120, claims a dying precog, unless Owen Krysler, a boy born with the mark of the eagle of justice, is found. Dredd again finds himself in the Cursed Earth looking for the boy, ending a garbage pharaoh’s dirty reign and locking horns with the boy’s kidnapper in the larger-than-life Texas City.

Popular Dredd villains The Angel Gang intervene and spirit the Judge Child to outer space, sending Dredd on a cross-planets trip, notably the planet Lesser Lingo where everyone hires their bodies out to personality-replacing biochips and the living Hungry Planet, which gobbles up Dredd’s ship until he nukes his way out.

Not many can claim to have killed Dredd, like Murd the powerful black magician

The hunt ends for Dredd on Necros, domain of the powerful Murd the Oppressor, who kills the lawman only to return him to life for the enjoyment of his pet, the giant toad Sagbelly. Dredd feeds the dark magician to the beast and homes in on a lead to the Angels on the wacky planet AB – the highlight of the epic where artist supremo Brian Bolland shows his geometrically-perfect style with the Jigsaw disease, a wasting illness that causes random body parts to vanish.

The Jigsaw disease in action

The tale ends on the planet Xanadu when Dredd takes out the Angel gang one by one and looks into the suspect Judge Child’s eyes – only to find evil in them. In a shock twist Dredd turns his back on the object of his quest and leaves the boy behind.

But the Judge Child would later return in the abortive epic City of the Damned under the guise of the powerful Mutant, the form of the predicted disaster in 2120.

To get there Dredd and Psi Judge Anderson take their first time travel trip – only for writers Wagner and Grant to realise they don’t like time travel stories and begin wrapping up the saga which cost Dredd his eyes before it has barely begun, coming in at 14 episodes.

The Apocalypse War

The Soviet forces of East-Meg One invade in The Apocalyspe War

Arguably the best Dredd epic – and the one that nailed the formula of an uber-threat – was the gargantuan Apocalypse War. It tricked the readers with a mini-epic in its own right, Block Mania, when the entire North American city erupts in civil violence over a dropped ice cream cone.

As imaginatively titled housing blocks (each containing 50,000 residents and up) like Joan Collins, David Niven and Martin Sheen wage war on their neighbours, badly depleting the judges of men and armament, Dredd hunts down the man responsible, Orlok the Assassin, who has been poisoning the city’s waterways with mind-bending chemicals.

Dredd is outdone by the super-spy when he sabotages weather control and its infected rain falls on the last remaining parts of the city without Block Mania – and reveals all this was an overture to invasion by the Russian East-Meg One.

This epic had it all – unique villains with enough character to steal the scene but ultimately set up to die, the death of important Dredd characters like Judge Giant, numerous spreads filled with warfare and detail, a lengthy storyline long-reaching consequences that can fuel more stories for years and, most importantly, a horrific body count.

Dredd kills 500 million people with the press of a button at the conclusion of the war

The writers’ true purpose was to cull Mega-City One down to a manageable size, bothered as they were by the limitations of getting Dredd from one side of a city that touched Canada in the north to the other side where it met Florida.

Apocalypse War killed 150 million Mega-City One residents in its opening salvos, and wiped out the southern sectors, leaving a city focused on its north east remains. East-Meg One fared worse, it was obliterated and half a billion killed when Dredd pressed the button of the Total Annihilation Device. This wasn’t be the last time Dredd killed a city with a touch of a button.

Two billion were killed in the Wagner/Garth Ennis Dredd crossover with Strontium Dog’s Johnny Alpha in zombie epic Day of Judgement when Dredd nukes Mega-City Two. Before that 60 million were killed by Judge Death and his death judges in the Necropolis storyline.

No official death tally is kept by Rebellion, but they believe in terms of the overall strip “you’re looking at three, maybe three and a half billion killed in total. The numbers Dredd’s killed on the street are pretty paltry”.

Since then the population of Mega-City One hovers around 400 million. Now Dredd has just embarked on his latest epic, Day of Chaos. A new mayor needs electing but doom is predicted by a promising new psi-cadet. Mysterious terrorists are in the city and legendary serial killer PJ Maybe is on the loose.

What the status quo will be after the Day of Chaos remains to be seen. To find out see 2000 AD, published every Wednesday.

Once a month in Hollywood, California, the Hollywood Mortuary screens upcoming and classic films on the back of a large mausoleum that doubles for a screen. It’s the closest thing to a drive in theater experience as a communal feeling of the love of movies envelopes the patrons who bring blankets and picnic baskets filled with goodies.

Some celebrities that are buried here are Alfalfa Schweitzer from the Little Rascals, Hattie McDaniel from Gone With the Wind, Toto from the Wizard of OZ, Peter Loree, Valentino and the late, great Johnny Ramone.

Excited Star Trek fans entered the front gates in a well-behaved, orderly fashion (some dressed in uniform), for a rare treat to see William Shatner’s documentary on the Captains who also appeared introducing his film.

The Captains deals with Shatner’s journey of discovery as he candidly talks with the actors who played the leads in one of the most beloved series ever created.

Interviews with Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, Kate Mulgrew, Scott Bakula and the new Captain Kirk, Chris Pine, open up and tell their stories about their early years, how they got chosen for their roles in Star Trek and what impact it had on their lives.

We also discover a little more about William Shatner and his beginnings on stage standing in for (then an unknown actor) Christopher Plummer when he was taken ill one night while performing Shakespeare.

It’s a fascinating (no pun intended!) behind-the-sceens look at the mythos of these characters and how they influenced the lives of millions of people.

Patrick Stewart is very reflective, while Kate Mulgrew is emotional with moments of humor. Avery Brooks, a jazz composer and teacher by trade, has a fun time with metaphors, Scott Bakula is analytical as he sings and Chris Pine is humble and respectful even when he’s arm wrestling with the Shat to see who the real captain of the Enterprise is.

Shatner has created an interesting look at the roles, even coming to grips with himself so that he is now content with being indentified as Captain Kirk (something he fought against for a long time). Perhaps it’s the fact that our hero is 80 years old (hard to believe it) and that in his winter years he now looks back with pathos, realizing how many people his character influenced all over the world to do great things with their lives.

That’s not a bad legacy to leave behind.

It’s a must have for any Star Trek fan.

The Captains will be available in the UK on Blu Ray and DVD later this year.

Dear readers: this column will be something of a departure from the last
several. Normally, I make it a point of reviewing movies, games or books, but
this review is as much a report on some breaking Internet news as it is about a
game, or rather, several games. If you are looking for snarky opinion, come
back next month when I rip apart The Smurfs 3: The Revenge of Azrael. If you
are still with me, sit down, put on your thinking caps, and be prepared to look
at the Big Picture.

It’s a game. It’s a business. It’s a future business model. It could
revolutionize the future of currency markets. It’s a threat to governments all
over the world.

It is Denarius.

Denarius is three things rolled into a package. It is a virtual world. It is a
virtual currency exchange game. It is also a revolution. This is not mere
hyperbole, dear readers. This is one of those rare games that shakes the
foundations of heaven and hell and promises change on a global scale.

Have I built it up enough for you? No…I can tell…by that smirk on your
face. You are skeptical. Very well; allow me to make with the exposition.

There have been a number of games over the years meant to simulate buying and
selling of goods. The intrinsic challenge of capitalism lends itself to
gamification: money is the way the world keeps score, after all. What makes Denarius unique is that it is the first game that allows trading of other
virtual worlds’ currency.

Blown away yet? Let me restate. If you play World of Warcraft, you can use
gold pieces in Denarius to invest in the Linden dollars of Second Life, the
Florins of New Renaissance, or even the U.S. Dollar. It is full currency
trading, regardless of source. Your guild can now purchase stakes in the economy of
ChampionsOnline, or buy stock in a real estate business in Second Life. You can
make money, then exchange it for real-world cash at they appropriate in-world
exchanges or sell your shares to another investor in-game. It is economy
without borders; the nations are virtual and real-world economies intermingling
in a way that would make Milton Freeman proud.

And your government is probably shitting itself over it.

Denarius is run by Swedish serial entrepreneur Sigurd Magnusson. How does
Sigurd manage to handle all this currency without being taken down by objecting
governments? Get this: the servers are housed in space. Yes…in space.
Magnusson was one of the early investors in Space X, the privatized spacecraft
venture owner by Elon Musk. When regularly scheduled orbital flights commenced
last year, Magnusson placed his own bank of satellites in orbit. These are the
currency exchange servers, placed well beyond the impotent grasp of more
Terrestrial governments.

I know, I know. Why, Chris, are you telling us about this? Shouldn’t you be
reviewing movies?

Yes, of course I should. But this will change your life…unlike the latest Superman reboot.

Imagine this: you have money invested in your favorite MMORPG. A new one comes
out. It has a trading station on Denarius. Instead of starting from zero, you
can purchase the currency of the new game in Denarius, and get a leg up on your
playing.

…or, your guild produces some high quality virtual goods. Investors who might
not play the game but who know a business opportunity when they see it can
invest in your business as you sell shares on Denarius.

…or you are looking to fund your own project. Cash poor but game-currency
rich can invest in your venture and you can exchange the currency for cash
through the Denarius Paypal exchange.

But Chris, you say, I thought this was a game?

Yes, yes. It is. You can use Denarius in one of two modes. The first is what
we’ve been talking about, called Live Mode. In Live Mode, all trade require actual verified capital (virtual or real-world) to buy in. You trade much as you would on Wall Street. The other is Fantasy mode, wherein you
gather virtual funds to invest, purchase, and trade. No actual money changes hands, but you can chart your success or failure over the long term to hone your skills. There are achievements,
there are scores, and there are very few rules. Both modes are the free market,
taken to a logical extreme. It is possible to move from Fantasy to Live Mode
for a small fee, when you feel up to getting some skin in the game.

It is making waves.

So, far, only France has openly outlawed the game, but it looks as though other
countries will follow. Why? They cannot collect taxes — they do not get their
cut. The British Parliament is openly debating the legality of mixing virtual
and hard currency. The U.S. Senate has taken on the subject from two angles:
the first, can they regulate it and if not, two, can they take campaign
contributions through it?

Ayn Rand would be so proud. I say that with only a small amount of irony.

Some economists have been sent into twitching fits by all of this. In the three
months since Denarius launched, certain early adopters (both technology and
business) have made a ton of money, and the mainstream economists cannot figure
out why. Not so for Kent State Professor Bryan Pirnat, himself a student of
virtual economy guru Edward Castronova. Pirnat suggests that all economies have
been virtual for a very long time.

“In the U.S., our paper money has had no actual value ever since Nixon took us
off the gold standard. Yet we all act as if it is something more than just wood
pulp and metal tracking RFID tags. Why? Because we can use it to get things we
want. That’s what value is…trading desirable objects for other desirable
objects.”

There have been other attempts at developing a generic online currency, but they have ultimately failed. The most well known, Bitcoin, finally collapsed in 2013 due to general apathy. The idea of basing an ecomony on CPU processing cycles, while novel, ultimately lacked something that Castronova pinpointed in this 2011 post:

“How do I know these things are bad? I know because I play games. Game designers could have made currencies on the Bitcoin model many years ago. They didn’t. One thing we know about game currencies: People like them. We know this because the objective of the game designer is to make people happy. Game currencies are good currencies. What are the features of those currencies?

• You get money only by doing things that can be interpreted as “productive work.” No freebies or handouts, and nothing abstract. You don’t solve puzzles to get coin, you run FedEx quests.
• Mild inflation. As in the real world, mild inflation makes people happiest. Small enough to be unnoticeable in the short run, yet gives people a sense over time that their wealth and power is rising (even if it isn’t).

• It assumed that the currency will be hacked and exploited. A strong central authority is in place to seize illicit funds and roll back damage.

  Bitcoins don’t have these features.”

How does Denarius measure up?

First off, they learned from Bitcoin: do not start a currency. Start an
exchange. While there were Bitcoin exchanges for buying and selling Bitcoins
with real-world money, the realization that the value proposition was not in
starting a new currency but in leveraging virtual currency against one another
was sheer brilliance.

Secondly, the users/buyers/sellers/players are trading coinage that is of
value, produced by actual work, be it working for a real-world business or as
part of a World of Warcraft Guild.

Third, fluctuations in the market, inflation and deflation of currencies is
possible. This is nothing new, just an extension of real-world economic
conditions. That sense of accomplishment that Castronova speaks of may be
coming over time; in truth, it is too soon to tell.

Finally, the idea that the technology will be hacked is part of any software
enterprise. The way to deal with this is simple; you take the exchange offline
until the problem can be addressed. All trades are frozen, no money is lost.

Magnusson may be on to something. What, exactly, is his goal? (Beyond the
businessman’s usual goal of PROFIT, that is…). In a recent interview with
Xeni Jardin of Boing Boing, he had this to say:

“It has been shown that the gamification of systems leads to more active participation in the system
and more dynamic evolution of the system in a shorter amount of time. The mingling of the
virtual and real-world economies has been coming for a long time, and it seems
to me that change on an economic level through a system like Denarius could wipe
out some of the cruft engendered in the current economic systems of terrestrial
origin. Understand, I am not saying that economic change in virtual space will
result in a utopia…on the contrary, it will be a bloodbath. However, our
older systems no longer serve any useful purpose; they are stuck in a morass of
antiquated regulations that stifle creativity and competition. By releasing
Denarius to the world. I am hoping that a better, more informed group of
motivated people who are invested in the current and future technologies yet
still grow and foster working communities will rise up and leave the old models
behind.”

Madman? Revolutionary? Savvy businessman? All of the above? You make the call. The reality is that the exchange is starting to take hold. According to sources inside the gaming industry, Valve is about to roll out the ability to purchase games on the Steam platform with virtual currency. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is accepting memberships purchased with virtual coin. Electronic Arts is reportedly working on a way to move virtual currency from other games into The Sims 4. Admittedly, we’re a long way from Amazon taking gold pieces to buy that new Jim Butcher novel, but if Magnusson is successful with Denarius, that day may yet come.

My advice to you? Check out the site. Follow the news on Boing Boing, on The Command Line Podcast, even in the mainstream media. See which politicians embrace it, and which attempt to squelch it. I will admit to being too cowardly to start putting my own funds on the line, but I am playing in Fantasy mode, and the results have been surprising. If you have a tolerance for risk in your virtual portfolio, you might be able to make this system work for you in ways you never thought possible.

At the same time, watch how the governments of the world react. Watch who benefits, and who is left behind. It is my firm belief that some system like this will take hold, if not this one, then one in the future. As the things we value become more virtual than real, it is only natural that the currencies we use follow the trend. We are a long way from a single currency, and if the past is any guide, it may never happen. Denarius will be a great experiment, and we have as much to learn from its possible failure as its improbable success.

That’s all for me this month, my little capitalists. Look for me in the usual places, the social networks, and now, inside Denarius on the trading floor. Until next time, be well, buy low, and sell high.

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Rise of the Planet of the Apes marks the
seventh big screen outing for the Apes franchise and what Fox will hope will be
the start of many more. It’s now ten years on from the failed Tim Burton reboot
and 38 from the end of the original franchise. The extended absence has done
nothing to diminish the series’ place in pop culture though, with TV shows,
adverts and films referencing the Planet of the Apes saga in all kinds of ways.
Here, we run down the ten best send-ups to work out what’s the finest Parody of
the Planet of the Apes.

1. Stop the Planet of the Apes, I Want to
Get Off (The Simpsons)

A three-way parody, this majestic send-up
from seventh season episode A Fish Called Selma is a highpoint for The Simpsons
and pop culture parodies as a whole. Looking to relaunch his failing career and
clinch the sidekick role in McBain IV: Fatal Discharge, Troy McClure embarks
upon a relationship with Marge’s sister Selma. “The marriage thing is very
in these days,” his agent, the magnificent named MacArthur Parker, reminds
him. Alas, the couple eventually split, and McClure ends the episode rejecting
the sidekick part in favour of the lead in self-penned magnum opus The
Contrabulous Fabtraption of Professor Horatio Hufnagel. In between comes this
masterpiece of parody. Part Apes satire, part riff on Falco’s Amadeus, part
musical theatre spoof, it features some of the show’s most quotable lines
(“I hate every ape I see/From chimpan-A to chimpann-Z”) and a
toe-tapping finale that may even better the original’s ending. The Simpsons
writers have a long history with sci-fi parodies and in particular Apes
references (listen out for Jerry Goldsmith’s The Hunt music during riot
scenes), and it’s the fidelity to the source that really make Stop the Planet
of the Apes stand out. From the clothes to the backgrounds to the awkward
movements of the apes’ mouths, this is just like watching the real thing.

2. Spaceballs

One of the original and still one of the
best, Mel Brooks’ Star Wars spoof also found time to reference Apes in its
farcical conclusion. When President Scroob, Colonel Sandurz and Dark Helmet’s
dastardly plan is foiled, their ship Mega Maid (a gigantic Statue of
Liberty-esque woman, just with a vacuum instead of a torch) is blown to
smithereens, plunging the trio, along with Mega Maid’s head, into a nearby
planet. Which just happens to be inhabited by talking apes. “Dear
me,” says one to the other as the three villains descend, “what are
those things coming out of her nose?” “Spaceballs?!” comes the
reply. “Oh shit, there goes the planet.” Like The Simpsons, it’s
Brooks’ fidelity to the source that makes the Spaceballs parody work, with the
set-up, the make-up, even the eerie crashing of the waves upon the shore all
perfectly replicating the original. Of all the film’s riffs and references,
this is comfortably the best.

3. Charlton Heston, Saturday Night Live,
1993

Charlton’s Heston’s relationship with the
Apes series was surprisingly affectionate considering many stars of his stature
tend to look down upon sci-fi. He spoke fondly of the films in the 1998
documentary Behind the Planet of the Apes, and would go on to make a brief
cameo in the Tim Burton remake three years later. He was also happy to appear
in several skits parodying the series, most notably during his hosting spot on
Saturday Night Live in 1993. Having fallen asleep just before the show starts,
Heston wakes up in the Studio of the Apes, a dark inversion of the SNL studio
populated entirely by talking simians. “Oh, my God! It’s happening
again!” says Heston as he runs for his life. He’s eventually captured in a
neat play on the original film’s hunt sequence and brought before an enquiring
ape audience, who refuse to believe he’s anything but a talking mutant. The skit
ends with Heston reprising his famous madhouse dialogue from the film and
continuing with the show. After all, even an ape audience is better than no
audience at all.

4. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

“In this world gone mad, we won’t
spank the monkey; the monkey will spank us”, so says Jason Mewes during
Jay and Silent Bob’s minute long take on the Apes saga. It’s a tour de force
for Mewes, who embraces the nonsense concept with his trademark manic glee.
Highlights include a surprisingly realistic Ape City, cameo appearances from Clerks
duo Brian O’Halloran and Jeff Anderson and the sight of Jay taking Heston’s
place on the original film’s beach-head. Planet of the Apes with Jay instead of
Heston? Now that’s something we’d like to see!

5. Siskel and Ebert and Jay and Alice (The
Critic)

Simpsons writers Al Jean and Mike Reiss’s The
Critic only ran for 23 episodes between 1994 and 1995, but even in that short
period they managed to fit in a host of movie references and jokes. Planet of
the Apes‘ moment in the spotlight came at the start of second season episode Siskel
and Ebert and Jay and Alice, in which Jay is forced to partner with both the
famous movie critics after their successful partnership comes to an end. Before
all this, Jay fronts his own show in which he discusses 1970s sci-fi classic Planet
of the Dogs. The clip references the famous stinking paws line and stars an
unusually friendly Doctor Zaius. “Quit rubbing my leg you bloody
bowsers,” indeed.

6. Return to Beneath the Planet of the Pigs
(The Muppet Show)

No list of parodies would be complete
without The Muppets, and this entry dates back to the very start of the phenomenon
in the mid-70s. Jim Henson produced two pilots for the series before it was
officially picked up: the first, The Muppets Valentines Show, aired in 1974,
the second, the curiously named The Muppets: Sex and Violence, hit screens a
year later. It is this episode that features the Apes parody. In a similar
set-up to The Critic, we’re introduced to a movie programme, Film In Focus, where
the presenter informs us of the latest “pseudo-epic from Colossal
Pictures”, Return to Beneath the Planet of the Pigs. It’s not one of the
Muppets’ finest movie parodies, but it scores points for capturing the Planet
of the Apes atmosphere perfectly and creating an uncannily realistic Muppet
version of Charlton Heston. Kudos too for the punchline, where our, of course
totally unbiased, piggy reviewer praises the film for its realism.

7. Planet of the Aches (The Simpsons)

Another one from The Simpsons, though this
time it’s Itchy and Scratchy who are sending the series up. This is a unique
entry into this top ten, being the only one to reference one of the series’
sequels, in this case Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Itchy traps Scratchy
behind a wall and when the embattled cat emerges some 3000 years later he’s
greeted by Itchy’s ancestors who have grown massive, throbbing brains and
telekinetic powers like the subterranean humans in Beneath. They bathe and feed
Scratchy, but the kind treatment doesn’t last long. He’s eventually sliced and
diced (telekinetically of course) and left for dead. Bart, watching on, is
unimpressed. He’s wrapped up in a movie parody of his own, acting as Jimmy
Stewart to Ned Flanders’ Raymond Burr in the episode’s main parody: Rear Window.

8. Go, God, Go XII (South Park)

Tenth season South Park episode Go, God, Go
is a bit of a treasure trove for sci-fi fans. Brazil, Logan’s Run and Aliens
are among the films referenced by Trey Parker and Matt Stone in a story that
sees Cartman freeze himself in a bid to make the three-week wait for a new
games console go quicker. Sadly all does not run smoothly and, when he awakens,
Cartman finds himself in a nightmarish future where otters ride ostriches and
Nintendos don’t exist. Parker and Stone have always been masters of sly
references and the image of the otters riding the ostriches, along with the
horn-blast sound that goes with it, is as neat and surreal a reference to the
original film’s hunt sequences as I’ve ever seen.

9. The Apes of Wrath (Garth Marenghi’s
Darkplace)

Apes took centre stage in the fourth
episode of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, a show that made a virtue of sending up
sci-fi and horror tropes of the 70s and 80s. Though there are no direct
references to the series – save the use of the central concept and some subtle
hints at Goldsmith’s score in the music – this is the most consistently funny
clip on this list. Great scenes come thick and fast (the bike chase through a
forest is particularly good) as do the notable lines, which come loaded with
‘highly political subtext’. “Maybe we shouldn’t do anything,” says
Richard Ayoade’s medical chief character. “No-one takes days off any more,
everyone’s grooming each other and the doctors are literally working for peanuts.”
Reports that David Cameron is seeking his own ape workforce are so far
unfounded.

10. Serta Mattress commercial

This 1998 advert for an American mattress
company isn’t a parody, but for sheer weirdness it had to get a mention.
Dreams, the commercial reminds us, are the realm of the impossible, where
anything can happen. One can have afternoon tea with your childhood
sweetheart…and Cornelius from Planet of the Apes. Someone’s been eating too
much cheese…

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The highlight of the San Diego Comic Con
this year turned out not to be hot movie news, but old-fashioned comic book
controversy. DC Comics have been generating column inches ever since they
announced their ‘New 52’, but thanks to one persistent Batgirl cosplayer (known
only as Kyrax2), the Jeremy Paxman of Comic Con, the focus was instead put
firmly on the role of women in comics, as creators, characters and fans. Didio
was dismissive and downright confrontational when this Batgirl asked why the
number of female creators and characters had dipped in the relaunch. Defending
his lack of female creators, Didio referred to Marvel’s similar imbalance. His
timing couldn’t have been worse. Because while DC were getting a tough time
from their neglected female fans, Marvel were announcing a female-led TV slate.

They currently have three live-action TV
shows in development: AKA Jessica Jones, Mockingbird and Cloak and Dagger. All
three feature women in leading roles, and two have black leading men. While DC
are doing nothing but ticking off their vocal minority of female fans, Marvel
are actively catering to them and trying to bring more on board. And, in a very
savvy move, they are doing that through a more female-friendly medium: TV.

Ever since Buffy the Vampire Slayer
(although it seems unfair to overlook The X-Files), sci-fi and fantasy
television shows have had a strong female appeal. Iconic female action heroes
were suddenly everywhere, from Sydney Bristow in Alias to True Blood’s ballsy
Sookie Stackhouse via River Song. The real indication that the tide had turned
came when the Battlestar Galactica reboot recast Starbuck as a women – and made
her one of the best female characters of all time. Women are increasingly
taking over message boards on even male-heavy shows, like Game of Thrones and Supernatural.
Maybe that’s just down to the leading men being really ridiculously good
looking. But I hope that the real reason is that sci-fi and fantasy shows are
growing up. The clever balance of comedy, drama, scares and action make these
shows equally appealing to both men and women. The fact is, you don’t need a
female lead to attract a female audience. These days people come to a show if
it’s good, regardless of the gender of the lead character.

Comics are a different beast, though. To an
outsider, they are dense and intimidating, with their decades of tangled
stories. New readers wouldn’t know where to start. The fact that, up until now,
you actually had to venture into a comic book shop in order to buy one also put
a lot of people off. Comics have never been the most inclusive medium. Luckily,
TV can act as a great gateway drug to the harder A-class comics. DC has had
prior success with Smallville, a show that introduced many fans to Clark Kent
and the wider DCU, as the cast of characters grew to include Green Arrow,
Aquaman, Black Canary and the JSA. Smallville – and before it Lois and Clark:
The New Adventures of Superman – attracted an adult audience in a way animated
shows can’t. DC tried to capitalise on this again with their Wonder Woman
pilot, but weight of expectation (and a shoddy script) sunk it before it could
get going.

There’s nothing to say Marvel’s new TV
slate will make it beyond development, but since Marvel is owned by Disney, and
since they also own ABC, the channel that will show these programmes, we can
assume it’s a fairly safe bet. The fact that they are using these shows to
attract women and non-white viewers, traditionally untapped market in comic
books, is especially smart. DC is currently talking up a TV series centring on
the Teen Titan Raven, but compared to Marvel their TV and film schedule is very
flimsy. Comics on their own are unlikely to attract new demographics. Films and
TV shows make more people familiar with comic book characters. Digital comics
make it easier for people to buy them. But they won’t keep those new audiences
unless the comics themselves are up to scratch. And it seems the Batgirl of San
Diego has scored a victory: DC have just announced more projects by women, and
they’ve taken some projects about women out of mothballs. I’m a DC fangirl, and
in my opinion they have more and better minority characters (and in the comic
book world, that includes women) than their chief competitor. I just wish they
had a media strategy that would make more people aware of that. Because without
it, I fear Marvel is going to sink them.