Doctor Who: Closing Time

Yes, in the week neutrinos broke the speed of light I’ve managed to write this post on time. There are rather significant spoilers regarding the next (and final, of this series) episode contained below.

Continuing New Who’s penchant for irritating sentimentality, the Doctor, having ditched the Ponds last episode, paid a farewell visit to James Corden, whom he saw last season (I missed that episode). Corden, whose character is named Craig, realises the Doctor’s recognised some strange occurrences and nags his way into helping out (despite having to look after his very young son Alfie/Stormageddon).

It soon transpires that someone has spotted a silver rat with glowing red eyes. In a welcome nod to the… Troughton era, I think, it turns out to be a cybermat (think a computer mouse, but silvery, with a tail and equipped with snapping jaws). The cybermat has been gnawing on electrical cables, causing power cuts and feeding the energy to a group of cybermen (still New Who rather than the Mondas originals).

Oddly, the Doctor stumbles across a cyberman and merely gets knocked out rather than killed, but discovers that they’re a bit old and knackered and using spare parts. He finds out that a changing room leads to their ship, which landed centuries ago, is buried underground and was powerless until the council put a load of electrical cables right next to it. The cybermat reactivated and began feeding power to the ship. Only six cybermen have been created, but when Craig follows the Doctor they begin to convert him.

However (and it’s a strain not to break into four letter words) Craig hears his son crying, and magically resists the conversion. The cybermen, who are apparently all psychic, then suffer a ‘feedback loop’ from this emotion and their heads start exploding. Deus ex machina indeed. Only, this always bloody happens with the New Who cybermen. When they were first created the Doctor made some remember emotion and they killed themselves (I think), and when Dervla Kirwan got made into the cyberleader she ‘resisted’ and defeated them.

It’s not exactly a great villain anymore if the ending can be predicted the moment their identity’s known.

End rant [until they appear next time].

Anyway, the last five minutes was much more interesting. It showed River Song just after she received her doctorate. Evil Eye-patch Woman and two of the Silence creatures accosted her, and she was brainwashed and placed in an astronaut outfit.

It’s pretty unlikely the Doctor will properly die next episode, not least because the next two series have been confirmed. So, how will he escape it? The Flesh is the most obvious answer, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Anyway, the episode was average, I liked the cybermat, but the cybermen are becoming pretty bloody pointless. They’re a step away from being hugged to death, or slain with snuggles.

Thaddeus

Should Hannibal have marched on Rome after Cannae?

One of the interesting things about history is to ponder if certain key events had turned out differently. What if Alexander had lived to see his son to adulthood, preventing his slaughter at the hands of the Diadochi? What if the Ten Thousand had never made it back to Greece?

Some historical events are down to chance, but others are down to choice. After Cannae, Hannibal elected not to march upon Rome. The decision has been frequently debated in the 22 centuries since it was made.

First of all, a little background. Hannibal had already shocked the Romans by marching to Italy in winter, which involved passing the Alps (defended not only by bitter winds and snowfall but also hostile Celtic tribes). After this, he slapped the Roman army about, winning at Trebia, luring Flaminius into arguably the greatest ambush in history at Lake Trasimene and so demoralising the Romans that they made Quintus Fabius Maximus dictator. Quintus took the very un-Roman step of choosing to play a strategic game, refusing to battle Hannibal directly and instead dog his steps, starve him of provisions and generally prevent him from gaining the big tactical victories he had previously enjoyed. This was highly controversial, as the standard Roman tactic was to point a big army at The Enemy, march forward and kill everything that didn’t look Italian. Despite an uppity deputy, the dictator was highly successful and Hannibal did not gain another big victory to invigorate his supporters.

After this, the dictatorship lapsed and Varro and Paullus were made consuls. They combined their consular armies and, for good measure, doubled them in size, putting a force of about 80,000 into the field. This army, despite consular disagreement, then attacked Hannibal’s forces (roughly half the size) and was thoroughly obliterated by perhaps the finest battlefield tactics in the Ancient World (or, perhaps, ever).

Hannibal had survived the sly intelligence of the dictator, smashed the largest Roman army ever assembled in a battle with slaughter on a scale not dissimilar to WWI and was now posed a difficult question: Should he march on Rome?

He decided not to.

There are many sound reasons for this. Firstly, it was still an era when a Roman citizen and a Roman soldier were practically interchangeable, and Rome was a large city (despite the huge numbers Hannibal had killed). Secondly, it was a walled city, and Hannibal had no siege engines and little experience of sieges. Thirdly, it would tie Hannibal’s army down, and keeping such a force fed and watered and preventing an external army from attacking it could prove highly difficult.

Hannibal did survive for many years in the Italian peninsula after this, but to no avail. He was recalled to Carthage to face Scipio Africanus and had his first and last loss of the Second Punic War.

So, what if he had marched on Rome?

I think it unlikely that he could have taken it by storm. The Romans were patriotic to an almost deranged extent. After Cannae the land upon which Hannibal’s victorious army rested was sold at full value in Rome, indicating the confidence/bravado of the Romans even after a crushing defeat. It’s always possible an internal conspiracy could have opened the gates, but for similar reasons I think this unlikely.

What’s more interesting is to consider the social/political impact of such a move. An army encamped outside the walls of Rome, led by a man who had repeatedly massacred the Roman army, might have caused a shock to the allies of Rome. Might more of them have abandoned the city if she had seemed helpless before the Punic conqueror? This might have enabled Hannibal to grasp a strategic victory and either conquer Rome or force a favourable peace treaty.

Ultimately, I think Hannibal made the right choice. As I think it unlikely he could have taken Rome, marching to it and then leaving it untaken would have dealt a severe blow to the morale of his men. The misfortune he faced was to fight Rome at the time of its patriotic zenith. Centuries later, the city repeatedly fell, surrendered and crumbled before lesser men, but when Hannibal fought it was still blazing determination and confidence.

Thaddeus

Doctor Who: The God Complex

Apologies for the absence of bloggery and blogcraft. My computer suffered a severe maiming and a new hard drive was required, hence me reviewing a Saturday night show on Tuesday. [Spoilers lie herein, by the way].

This was much more to my liking than the previous episode. The Doctor and Ponds arrive, unexpectedly, in a rather bland hotel with irritating lobby music and three terrified, paranoid people (a conspiracy theorist geek, a mostly normal Muslim nurse and a habitually surrendering alien played very well by David Walliams).

It soon transpires that the hotel is filled with rooms, and in each room is a bad dream. After someone finds their specific worst nightmare they end up praising a minotaur, which then feeds (metaphorically) upon them, leaving the body intact but killing the worshipper.

The Doctor manages to chat, briefly, with the minotaur, and discovers that the beast is running on instinct, feeding when it can but not desiring life any more.

The Doctor initially advises everyone to focus upon their faith, but shortly thereafter realises that that’s the problem. Most of the people captured (Rory being an exception) have strong faith systems, whether luck* (one of the early victims was a gambler), religion or, in Amy’s case, in the Doctor.

Amy starts to praise the minotaur, and they manage to manhandle her into a room, which happens to be her own (with a young Amy Pond). The Doctor tells her that he didn’t want her, he just wanted someone to admire him because he was vain, and destroys her faith in him. The minotaur collapses due to lack of food and slowly dies, as the hotel around it is revealed to be a kind of holo-deck in a floating prison.

The minotaur tells the Doctor of an ancient creature travelling the universe in a shifting maze prison, desiring nothing but an end and suggesting that it speaks not only of itself, but of the Doctor too. At the end of the episode the Doctor drops off the Ponds at a nice little house with Rory’s favourite car, and leaves them because, as he tells Amy, “You’re still… breathing”.

There’s a lot to like in this episode. The concept was simple but quite cool, and it was moderately disturbing to see the sensible, intelligent nurse descend into a mindless, rapture-ridden worshipper, eager for her own death. Serious questions were raised about faith and the Doctor, and I rather liked it.

But, there are some flaws as well.

*Firstly, I’d disagree that gamblers believe in luck. I’d say they believe in analysis, knowledge, and weighing up of probabilities.

Secondly, it was suggested that the minotaur was imprisoned and ejected from its original home because the people became more secular and scientific, but a liberal religious perspective is entirely compatible with a scientific way of thinking.

However, those didn’t materially affect anything and I did enjoy the episode. It’s the best one since the mid-season break, I think.

Thaddeus

F1 2011 Preview

Last year, around this time, Codemasters released F1 2010. After some prevarication I bought it, and quite liked it, despite the two large bugs (which can be worked around mostly).

The new game is more an evolution than a whole new game, which makes sense given the makers mapped all the circuits save India and the Nurburgring for the previous game. There are two questions: is the game any good, and is it worth buying if you already have F1 2010?

My non-exhaustive research suggests that the first answer is Yes, and the second is Maybe.

First of all, a brief recap of the pros and cons of F1 2010.

Pros

Full-length seasons available

Many options to vary the length of races and difficulty

Pretty nice visuals and sounds

Brilliant weather system

Cons

The race engineer

Big Bug 1: when in the pit lane you get held until every other car there has left [can be mostly worked around by altering your pit stop strategy pre-race]

Big Bug 2: if you save when partway through R&D your save file gets corrupted. R&D can be done, but saving should only occur (at the earliest) after Q1.

It’s enjoyable but flawed. In retrospect the score I gave may have been a bit too high, as the second bug can be forgotten during the course of seven seasons and is irritating as hell.

Happily, the fact that the game builds on its predecessor suggests that the two above bugs should be fully resolved. If not, whoever is responsible deserves to be fired into space from some sort of giant artillery gun.

The weather system was pretty much perfect, and that’ll remain, and the graphics have also been improved (I think).

Additional extras include more non-racing stuff, such as Parc Ferme and a new paddock area.

Multi-player’s not my thing, but the options from the last game have been expanded, and it’s possible for two players to compete in a co-operative championship, which sounds pretty cool.

A very significant addition is the safety car. It was missing last time, and it’ll be interesting to see whether or not they’ve managed to make it work. If the pit bug remains then diving into the pits could, instead of being brilliant, be costly.

Some of the biggest changes reflect those that have happened with the 2011 rules. Here’s a brief rundown:

KERS: Kinetic Energy Recovery System

Basically, KERS harvests the energy lost through breaking and recycles it. This means that for a short time per lap you can press a button and unleash the energy, gaining a small but significant power boost.

DRS: Drag Reduction System

The rear wing now has a flap. When opened (on a straight typically) it cuts down drag and increases the top speed. In the race, it can only be used under certain conditions, in practice and qualifying it’s available anywhere the driver can manage with less grip.

Pirelli tyres

These degrade much more rapidly than the Bridgestone ones of 2010, and they have an often substantial gap between the compounds in terms of pace and durability. This should add a significant element of strategy to the races.

Will I be buying this game? No, even though I’m a big F1 fan. I’m reasonably confident the bugs of F1 2010 will have been ironed out and many areas will be improved, but it would, for me, be too similar to it. Besides, with no major rule changes in 2012 the next game will be even more improved and offer the same rules as F1 2011.

If I didn’t have F1 2010 it’s pretty likely I’d be buying it. But, I do, and it isn’t.

I’ve also recently toyed with the idea of buying Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which has gone done very well with some friends of mine. However, as remarked upon recently, I need to spend more time writing, not less, and as I’ll be losing 6-18 months of productivity to Skyrim I don’t want to lose anymore.

On Skyrim: my plan is to write a preview a week or so before it comes out (11/11/11), then do a quick First Impressions post (think I did this with Dragon Age 2) a few days later, and a proper review when I think I’ve experienced enough of the game to do one (that might well be months after buying it, and weeks at least).

Thaddeus