INTERZONE 254 SEPT-OCT 2014 (20 page)

Made in 1975, TV series
THE CHANGES
(DVD, 25 August) posits a crackle ‘n’ buzz apocalypse that prompts mass-hysterical vandalism (of a Luddite variety) in episodic revolt against machines. In the social collapse that follows, schoolgirl heroine Nicky is home alone, but she decides not to stay and wait for her missing parents. After all the domestic gadgets and public utilities are scrapped, nothing works, and the doomsday clock sub reads 12:15 to mark the fragility of civilisation dependent upon technology. This very British drama wears its Wyndhamesque fashions well, with cider instead of tea as the cosy catastrophe’s beverage of choice. Curious oddities in the urban crash: why smash bicycles, but not prams and carts?

Predating Terry Nation’s
Survivors
by a few months, this BBC kids’ show turns a refugee caravan into a jolly adventure trek. Typical of its TV era, middle-class values abound, but many villagers’ attitudes harden against outsiders. Indian stereotypes do present a sympathetic face/force for good, with their simpler ways and national dress traditions. Although well-intentioned, they are suspiciously unaffected by the strange, brain-scrambling noises that come from an ancient magical source.

One of the worst despotic villains that Nicky confronts is a robber/kidnapper (“Do you think they will actually burn the children?” Gosh!), involuntarily supported by traders emerging from the rural shambles of broken communities where she finds refuge. Bad guys are tackled by sword-fighting Sikhs; faithful heroes not alienated by racism. Those hostage boys and girls are rescued unharmed, of course. On her way to the Cotswolds, Nicky meets sheepish farmer Peter (Jack Watson – most recognisable face in this cast), a reluctant helper of witch-hunters happily adopting superstitious nonsense, and this segues into a bucolic soap opera interlude before the story shifts back towards proper genre concerns for climactic discoveries (cue scrambling about in a quarry) related to the mythic sorcery of Merlin. A cheerful ending ensues. This two-disc set of ten 25-minute episodes has been re-mastered from its original source to produce a respectable if not quite stunning release from the film archive materials.

Another BFI release is
THE BOY FROM SPACE
(DVD, 25 August), made in 1971. This TV series is a kind of junior
UFO
, with adventurers Dan and Helen meeting young alien Peep-peep (who struggles to communicate in his ‘radiophonic’ language), and various encounters with a menacing ‘Thin Man’ who’s obviously not from around here. There’s a feature-length (70 minutes) edit on disc two of this restoration release and that’s worth seeing. Much less interesting, the main presentation – a 1980 version with wraparound commentary of the ‘Look and Read’ educational type – can be viewed as campily amusing despite the best efforts of pedantic reader Wordy and
Blue Peter
-ish astronaut Cosmo to provide spelling checklists and explain grammar via cartoons. Annoying interruptions spoil the fun as, buried in their genre-stifling antics, Richard Carpenter’s original drama struggles to exist as a half-decent kids’ sci-fi that it clearly is – but only if you see the movie cut.

Cinematographer on the
Dark Knight
trilogy, Wally Pfister earns his directorial debut with
TRANSCENDENCE
(Blu-ray/DVD, 25 August), a fascinating mystery starring Johnny Depp as Will Caster, the first man in cyberspace. If the main character’s name is a blatant pun on the movie’s uploaded-consciousness plot, then the drama ought to be a work of higher grade SF to make up for such a jokey conceit.

From white-board scrawls to over-mind menace and beyond, this is a techno-thriller and epic tragedy centred on fairly typical singularity themes. While our fatally poisoned hero’s copied mentality stumbles towards godhood opposed by neo-Luddite terrorism, there seems no doubt about whose side SF fans should be on. At first, even the genius’ wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall,
The Awakening
,
Iron Man
3
) is not persuaded by any impassioned arguments for slower development, and the opposition’s violence only strengthens her resolve to engineer a proverbial ghost in the big online machine.

The baddies, led by Bree (Kate Mara), stir the doomsayer’s pot of hot paranoia without realising there is no logic spoon. Two years later, but before you can even say “open the pod bay doors”, a virtual son-of-Will is advancing rapidly through his post-humanity phases. Forbin’s mighty Colossus of dictatorship and the rogue shadows of
Demon Seed
’s pragmatically-evil Proteus lurk as genre spectres while the iWill prog’s building a cyborg army (cue bionic stunts!), primed for networking by their nanotech implants.

Skynet angst sways the judgements, almost invalidating conventional scientific wisdom. Do people fear what they don’t understand, or are they simply rejecting what cannot be controlled? Is the question here about avoiding involuntary but practically benevolent ‘uplift’ and/or potential-immortality scenarios at any cost? Can the plans of an autonomous messiah be trusted? Why does social regression to steam-funk-city seem preferable to living with the challenges of an omniscient clone? These and other puzzlers are considered by
Transcendence
, without actually providing any answers or reaching persuasively ethical conclusions.

So, there is nothing new under this big movie’s sci-firmament of crypto-variant nihilism, and yet its romantic heart beats on long after the life-support machinery has been unplugged.

In
Dreamscape
(1984), finding real-world solutions to an American president’s WW
3
nightmares were at stake. But in Spanish director Jorge Dorado’s debut feature (and first English movie)
Anna
, re-titled
MINDSCAPE
for its DVD release (25 August), there is little more than a disturbed teenager at risk.

In this understated futuristic drama about techno-shrinks, John (Mark Strong, ‘Sinestro’ in
Green Lantern
) is a therapist tasked with convincing an apparently crazy heiress, Anna (Taissa Farmiga,
American Horror Story
), to give up her hunger strike. With competing claims to her inheritance fortune hanging in the balance, John delves into Anna’s childhood. But, just as unfussy psi-gadgetry enables John’s monitoring of her memory replays, so Anna manages to dredge up his haunted past, too. Suspicions of parental abuse and hints of systematic paedophilia attempt to award this psycho-thriller with a much harder edge than first anticipated – although it boasts more style than dramatic substance.

Farmiga is good value as the overly intense heroine and there’s one clever twist in this tale of headspace as routinely accessible media. However, like anything that is connected to our remembrances, the lack of a trustworthy narrator spoils the modest revelations and, unfortunately, results in a vapid and flimsy effort overall.

KIPPLEZONE: ALSO RECEIVED

Humour is not universal. Genre comedy is a particularly difficult sector to do well in, at least with any widespread appeal. For every popular sci-fi parody there’s a dustbin full of unsuccessful spoofs. Claiming that such dull efforts are ‘cult’ movies when they often fail to be actually funny is one typically defensive position. But, admittedly, so is that assertion. Jokes are wholly subjective (stop me if you’ve heard this one!) because the essence of a good joke is not just about timing. From the muddle of its 007-styled title-sequence, to a painfully dim ending,
ASHENS AND THE QUEST FOR THE GAMECHILD
(DVD/Blu-ray, 14 July) is a witless compendium of irrelevant ‘gags’ that only remind viewers how geeky irreverence is no guarantee of amusement value.

Directed by Riyad Barmania (co-writer of the dreary
Elfie Hopkins
), this parcel of undercooked tripe results in a spew of postmodern quirks, deadweight ironies, and insipid performances of several boring characters. Even a novelty of animated dream-sequences can’t save it. I found lead play-actor Stuart Ashen (who apparently runs a web channel that ‘reviews’ tat) is only as hilarious as having a wasp crawl up my nose. The final sting is that this idiotic homegrown twaddle lacks even the alleged charm of Larry Blamire’s gormless American flicks!