Space Buttons

Despite the impending pantomime season this is nothing to do with a Space Panto written by Terry Nation. Sorry to disappoint, zanni.

This is actually about the visible futuristic space buttons I just noticed on Avon's costume, which you can see here:

Isn't it odd that I never noticed these before? I suppose I must have been too busy looking at Avon.

Purr.

Ben Steed tries to decide on a name for his latest episode

The Planet of Manly Men and Weak Women

Avon and Gunn Sar

The Planet of Gunn Sar

The Moobs of Gunn Sar

The Manly Moobs of Gunn Sar

Gunn Sar's Moobs

Avon and Gunn Sar's Moobs

The Power of Gunn Sar's Moobs

Power ✔

Best end credits of all time?

In any list of the best TV end credit sequences of all time, Terrahawks has to be in consideration for the top spot. It is glorious in its full early-80s fake CGI (very much in the style of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy TV series), which portrays a wonderfully simple concept of the goody Zeroids and baddy Cubes playing a game of Noughts-and-Crosses.

I mean just take a look at this:

Purr.

And in this one the Cubes cheat, lol!

An Unexpected Crossover

Combat Colin was a comic strip that ran in the pages of Action Force and then, later, in the pages of Transformers and Action Force. It was written and drawn by Lew Stringer, who had previously written Robo-Capers for the Transfomers comic prior to the addition of Action Force to that title.

From November to December of 1989 the Combat Colin strip featured a five-part story (each part consisting of only a single page) that crossed over with the setting of a certain 1960s TV show, and included multiple references to the most iconic imagery and dialogue from that series, as well as a couple of title drops gratuitously crowbarred in.

I can only assume that most, if not all, of these references would have been lost on the intended readership of the strip, who would have been much too young to have seen the programme in question upon broadcast - even on repeat. And DVDs hadn't been invented back then!

The first reference to The Prisoner, other than the font used for the story title, is the knockout gas being put through the keyhole to incapacitate our heroes. This on its own could have been passed off as a coincidence - the real clincher comes in the final panels where we see the arrival of Combat Colin and Semi-Automatic Steve in a suspiciously Village-like place.

The second instalment references the famous exchange between Number Six and Number Two from the title sequence, even if it is somewhat mangled:

"Where am I?"

"In the place!"

"What do you want?"

"We want information!"

After encountering a number of other characters familiar to regular readers of Combat Colin who are respectively "the prisoners" and "the warders," the plot diverges from that of The Prisoner by revealing the identity of "Number One" early - it is Colin's old enemy "the Brain!"

Part three sees Colin attempt an immediate escape in a similar style to Number Six's early attempt from Arrival - though Colin's use of a penny-farthing is borrowing a different element of the show's iconography.

Making his way across the beach, Colin's shout of defiance is undeniably that of Number Six:

"I'm not a number... ...I'm Combat Colin!"

The pursuing Mountain Man answers him:

"Please yourself... ...It's your funeral!"

Clang!

Title drops continue in part four when Madprof tells Colin

"Better start living in harmony with this place, pal!"

and the comics tradition of teasing the next episode is here done with a simple:

Next week: Free for all!

Other Prisoner references on this page include the Brain making his base in "the greenish dome" and, after the heroes and villains team up against him, the Brain describes them as

"Six of one, and half a dozen of the other!"

The original plot, of the Brain stealing Colin's Combat Trousers to use against him, concludes in part five with no explicit Prisoner references other than the "Village" setting continuing from earlier parts, and there's one line that sounds more like it could have come from Police Squad:

"Now you'll be a prisoner, Brain, ~ in Wallytown jail!"

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord

Part

So Robert Holmes went

before he could finish his script for the final instalment of this fourteen-part epic. His protégé, script editor Eric Saward, finished it, but the producer John Nathan-Turner rejected this script because of the cliffhanger ending that Holmes and Saward had put in. It seems very likely this would have involved a crash-zoom to the Doctor's face, but we'll never know because it was never made. Instead JN-T turned to Pip and Jane Baker (the writers of parts nine to twelve) to write an alternative part fourteen with a happy ending, with the side effect that the plot crashed between two very different writing styles between the penultimate and ultimate episodes.

This is immediately obvious from the first moments of the final part - the Bakers, having no idea how Holmes and Saward intended to resolve the cliffhanger to part thirteen, had to make up a solution of their own. Glitz runs over and tries to save the Doctor from disappearing under the quicksand, but fails.

The Doctor then pops back up, perfectly alright again. The justification for this seems to be that this was an illusion, which is a dangerous precedent to set (for the viewers, if not the Doctor) because it means that it is harder for us to accept later threats to the Doctor as being genuine when the plot requires them to be.

The Valeyard appears to talk to the Doctor, all the while teleporting around like a second-rate Tim the Enchanter. He explains, in a roundabout, overly verbose kind of way, that he wants to kill the Doctor because this will free him of the good side of his personality. A cleverer writer would have made use of this motivation later on in the plot, by (for example) having the Doctor's conscience burden the Valeyard at a crucial moment and interfere with his evil plans, but the Bakers seem to have forgotten they introduced this trait for him by the time they wrote the climax.

The Valeyard vanishes and the Doctor and Glitz have to run away from "asphyxiating nerve gas." The Doctor claims

"This is in deadly earnest."

so apparently we are supposed to take this threat seriously. Glitz, like the viewer, cannot tell the real threats apart from the illusions. I can't blame him - this seems more than a little arbitrary to me.

The Doctor and Glitz make their way to a hut on the beach, which turns out to be the Master's TARDIS.

The Master hypno-eyeses the Doctor with a flashing light and some noises. He sends the Doctor out into the Victorian-era location of the Valeyard's "Fantasy Factory" base to act as bait. When the Valeyard comes out the Master attempts to pewpewpew him, but he has a forcefield that deflects the Master's pews. The Valeyard shouts at him

"You really are a second rate adversary."

and then returns fire by throwing explosive feathers at him. The Master and Glitz run away while the Valeyard does an evil lol.

The Doctor snaps out of his hypno-eyesed state when he hears Mel's voice. Mel takes the Doctor back to the trial room, where there is a subtle wrongness to the way Mel and the Inquisitor speak to him - staying too still, or pausing just slightly too long before speaking. This is either a very clever way of indication that this is all an illusion of the Matrix, or else yet another example of the director not being very good at his job.

They replay a short excerpt from the end of Terror of the Vervoids, which Mel says is an accurate depiction of what happened. The Inquisitor then finds the Doctor guilty of "genocide" and insists that

"Your life is therefore forfeit."

The camera then pulls back to show the Inquisitor and Mel watching the courtroom from another version of the courtroom. While this is easily the best twist of the episode, it is responsible for the many subsequent theories that this courtroom could be another illusory one in turn, and that therefore every adventure the Doctor has from this point on still takes place within the Matrix. Perhaps the Time Lords should have named their Matrix after a different film?

Mel takes the key to the Matrix from the Keeper and runs for the seventh door. The Doctor, meanwhile, is on an old cart being taken through the dimly lit Victorian streets by some Gallifreyan guards. It's a good thing we've already seen that this isn't real, or else this would have been a massive giveaway. The big question now is why the Doctor hasn't noticed yet, but of course he has and is only playing along. When Mel comes to 'save' the Doctor - with her most panto line-reading yet

"Never mind the Sydney Carton heroics, you're not signing on as a martyr yet."

the cart vanishes and he tumbles to the ground. Instead of being grateful for Mel's rescue, he is grumpy.

Back in his TARDIS, the Master attempts to hypno-eyes Glitz, and when that doesn't W-word he instead bribes Glitz with a large chest full of prop pirate treasure - it's super effective!

Now in the Valeyard's base, the Doctor and Mel search for clues. Mel opens the door to the waiting room, but instead of being teleported to a beach she instead sees a dragon who breathes fire at her. Naturally, this bit was my friend Dragon's favourite bit in the whole story, and I also enjoyed it for the odd way it foreshadows Mel's final story the following year.

Glitz captures Mr Popplewick and brings him into the room. Popplewick directs the Doctor and Mel to where "Mr J J Chambers" is to be found "across the courtyard." Once they have gone, Popplewick paws over the Matrix secrets to Glitz. He then attempts to shoot Glitz with a gun, but Glitz has already stolen the bullet. The Master arrives and points a gun of his own at Glitz, and takes him (still carrying the secrets) back to his TARDIS. This short scene of all these baddys double-crossing each other is almost too good to belong in this episode.

The Doctor pulls the Mr Popplewick disguise off to reveal he is really the Valeyard using an old-school mask like the Master used to back forward in the UNIT era.

"The performance was too grotesque to be real. I have never been able to resist a touch of the Grand Guignol."

Mel opens the Valeyard's cupboard to reveal

"A megabyte modem!"

With such power the Valeyard can connect to the internets! He will be unstoppable!

The Valeyard's plan is revealed. He wants to assassinate the Time Lords attending the Doctor's trial by firing a "particle disseminator" (a pewpewpew gun) through his modem to the courtroom. The Doctor sends Mel to warn them while the Valeyard does another evil lol.

In the courtroom the Time Lords are concerned with the news they've just heard, that "the High Council has been deposed." The Master attempts a coup by holding the Matrix hostage. He makes a speech that is somewhat reminiscent of his universal ultimatum from Logopolis:

"What I have to impart is of vital importance to all of you. Now that Gallifrey is collapsing into chaos, none of you will be needed. Your office will be abolished. Only I can impose order. I have control of the Matrix. To disregard my commands will be to invite summary execution."

His plan is then immediately defeated by the Valeyard because he booby-trapped the Matrix secrets that they stole, which now activates and hits the Master and Glitz with some kind of effect that makes them go all slow-motion and black and white. So it seems the Valeyard was correct to call the Master "a second rate adversary" since he can defeat the Master without even being there.

The Valeyard taunts the Doctor:

"There's nothing you can do to prevent the catharsis of spurious morality."

At least I think that's a taunt, I don't really know what it means, mew. I like the sound of the word "catharsis" though.

Mel bursts into the courtroom and warns them of the danger. The guards run away while the Time Lords, encumbered by their costumes, just have to duck as the Matrix TV screen explodes and lets some dangerous SFX into the room. The Doctor manages to break the Valeyard's modem - oh noes! How will he post his important opinions on who is best out of Blake and Tarrant now? The Doctor and the Valeyard run away from the "feedback" (the manifest form of a thousand angy cats telling him his opinions are this: wrong) but the Valeyard is caught by the SFX and pewed.

The Doctor escapes back to the trial room where he is presumably just as guilty of genocide as he was in the fake courtroom earlier.

Doctor: "Now, let me see, where were we? I was about to be sentenced, I believe?"

Inquisitor: "All charges against you are dismissed, Doctor."

Phew, thank goodness for Gallifreyan make-it-up-as-you-go-along Law! The Inquisitor also tells the Doctor that

"The young woman, Miss Perpugilliam Brown, is alive and well and living as a warrior queen with King Yrcanos."

This is not quite what the Master told her in the previous episode, which was that Peri had been made a queen by King Yrcanos - not that she was a warrior, nor that she was with Yrcanos. Though if he offered, I can't imagine her turning down BRIAN BLESSED, can you?

The Doctor suggests that the Inquisitor should stand to be the next President of the Time Lords, no doubt thinking her flexible attitude towards law and order makes her eminently qualified for the job. The Doctor and Mel then head off to the TARDIS for the traditional quick exit now that the story's over - except, of course, that Mel didn't arrive by TARDIS, and in fact the Doctor hasn't even met her yet.

You might think this impending temporal paradox might worry the Doctor, but he is more concerned with Mel putting him "back" on the exercise and diet plan we saw him on at the start of Terror of the Vervoids - though this isn't really "back" on it for him, since he won't have started it yet. Mew. The Doctor's last lines are him complaining about carrot juice. There's a good chance this is what brings on his next regeneration...

Back in the courtroom, the Keeper of the Matrix has also regenerated - into the Valeyard! He turns to camera and does an evil lol for our benefit. The Bakers snuck in a cliffhanger after all.

The considerable problems encountered by the production team when making The Trial of a Time Lord - not least the death of Robert Holmes and the resignation of Eric Saward - go a long way to explaining the problems that we viewers can see on screen when we watch it. But arguably the story was flawed from its conception, especially the "Christmas Future" segment which required much more careful pawing in order for it to make sense as part of the overall trial story.

The other segments were hardly free of issues - The Mysterious Planet had a glaring plot hole that betrayed the fact that Robert Holmes was no longer around to fix it in another draft, and Mindfuck suffered from the gaping flaw that we in the audience lost our connection to the Doctor's motivations for more than a whole episode, without even a satisfying payoff to justify it.

The story suffered throughout from mediocre direction and a lack of ambition in the smaller things that undercut what would otherwise have been the show's most ambitious story since the 1960s - as exemplified by the majestic opening model shot cutting to a dull beige interior set.

And yet, in spite of all its many flaws (and in some cases actually because of them, varoonik), The Trial of a Time Lord is a tremendously enjoyable story to watch - a colourful, fun, silly, messy romp; a pantomime across time and space, if you will. I mean, a story that contains both the lines

"I AM A MAN OF ACTION, NOT REASON!"

and

"Whoever's been dumped in there has been pulverised into fragments and sent floating into space, and in my book that's murder."

can hardly be all bad, can it?

It may be the longest (which ought to mean best) story the series ever attempted, but the decision to split it into four identifiable parts means it need never be a burdensome time commitment - one can dip into it for an episode or two and simply bask in whatever nonsense one sees unfolding on screen. In that respect the story it most closely resembles might be The Time Monster, only with a less good Master.

On the subject of the Master - the Valeyard ends up here becoming a much better Master than we have seen since the glory days of Roger Delgado - even being revealed as the Doctor's dark side, a long since abandoned possible origin for the Master. Michael Jayston does his best to make the character stand out, especially once he gets the chance to be out of the courtroom in the final two parts, but really the only reason he isn't the Master is so that we can have the twist where he turns out to be an evil Doctor. It's easy to see why the Valeyard never returned - the universe simply has no need for two characters who are both the hero's shadow, metaphorically or literally, or both.

I have made repeated reference to the make-it-up-as-they-go-along nature of Gallifreyan Law in these reviews. I think the reason this is so obvious - more so than in the other times the Doctor ended up being tried by the Time Lords - is due to the trial format and courtroom setup on this occasion being so close to that of a real British courtoom trial - judge, jury, prosecutor, defendant in the dock, prosecution evidence followed by defence evidence, witnesses, and so on. The result is an uncanny valley effect where the audience - familiar with real life courtroom procedure, if only from other TV shows - feels cheated when it then proceeds to make up its own rules, which wouldn't be the case if the trial was wholly alien from the very beginning. The trial at the end of The War Games being the purrfect example of the latter.

And given the central importance of the trial to the story - the clue is in the name - it is surprising to me that the makers did not get David Fisher in to be one of the writers. Fisher wrote for the series back during Tom Baker's era, but he also had considerable experience as a prolific writer for the 1970s TV series Crown Court - a show entirely concerned with courtroom trials. Why not at least get him involved for the structure and writing of the courtroom scenes?

We can see in The Trial of a Time Lord the forerunner of many of the tropes that would go on to be common in the 2005 revival series of Doctor Who. Most obviously, it is almost impossible to imagine the new series without some sort of overarching plot arc running across an entire season. But digging a little deeper, we can see more things in common - the arc being forced to intrude into stories that don't need its presence, making them worse than if they had been allowed to stand alone; the build up to a grand finale that is then written in a hurry so that it all unravels like a load of bollocks (I told him that was a mixed metaphor and he would insist -ed); and the chickening out of killing off Companions after saying they have been/will be. Even an insistence on spending the budget on impressive bits of SFX because the showrunner producer is embarassed by the show's reputation for being unable to compete with glossy American sci-fi can be traced to here.

At least in Trial of a Time Lord the Doctor acting out of character can be explained away as the Matrix lying to us.

Finally, I must say something about the controversy that surrounds The Trial of a Time Lord's cliffhangers. Contrary to poular belief, not every episode ends with a crash-zoom to the Doctor's face. In fact, only eight of the 14 episodes end in this way, which is only just more than half. Of course, of the other six, three feature close ups of the Doctor's face (four if we count the Valeyard as the Doctor) without a zoom, which means it feels like it happens more than it does. Only parts three and nine are completely free of this repeated phenomenon, so it is no wonder the story has the reputation it does, but there is actually more variety there than you might expect.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord Part Thirteen

Colin Baker's finest hour (well... finest 24 minutes) as the Doctor begins with the arrival of James Bree as the Keeper of the Matrix, the only manny to remember the Doctor's first trial by the Time Lords.

The Doctor is back to using insulting nicknames for the Valeyard, calling him "the Railyard." Moving from the lowbrow to the highbrow in the same speech, he then compares him to "Ananias, Baron Munchausen, and every other famous liar."

The Inquisitor has brought in the Keeper of the Matrix to prove that the Matrix cannot have been tampered with as the Doctor claims, but the Doctor quickly seizes upon what he says in his testimony as evidence that "the Matrix can be physically penetrated." Oo-er.

It has been a while since we have seen the very expensive space station, so we go back to see a cut down version of the same SFX sequence (I'm only surprised they didn't show the whole thing again) except that this time the light beam brings in two boxes, not one TARDIS.

Glitz gets out of one, and Mel is inside the other. They don't look very comfortable - certainly not bigger on the inside than they are on the outside! But you know the rules: if a cat fits, a cat sits. Glitz says

"Dibber? What's happened to your voice, lad?"

Bonnie Langford gives the second of her most panto-level line readings when she replies:

"I'm not Dibber. Neither am I a lad."

They enter the courtroom, surprising everybody there.

The Master appears on their TV screen, leading to the Doctor saying

"Oh no, now I really am finished!"

lol. The Master, after establishing that he is speaking to them "from within the Matrix (proof, if proof be need be, that not only qualified people can enter here)," says that he has sent Glitz and Mel to be witnesses on the Doctor's behalf. The Inquisitor says

"The Doctor may, in his defence, call witnesses to rebut your evidence, after which you may cross-examine them. That is the procedure, Valeyard."

which adds even more credence to the theory that the Time Lords are making up the rules as they go along, if even the Valeyard has to be told what their procedure is.

Glitz starts to give the explanation missing from the Mysterious Planet section, about what the secrets were that Drathro was protecting and which Glitz and Dibber were so interested in stealing - secrets that the Valeyard had so clumsily drawn attention to by ham-fistedly bun-censoring it. These were taken from the Matrix. The Valeyard accuses Glitz of lying, to which the Doctor responds

"I don't think so, Stackyard."

It also comes out that the Earth was moved "billions of miles across space" (as the Master puts it, perhaps because by now they have realised that sounds a lot more impressive than "a couple of light years" when talking about astronomical distances) by order of the High Council of Time Lords.

This is quite a stagy scene so far, in which Glitz and Mel in particular can both at times be seen standing around waiting patiently for their next cues to come up. But it's all worth it for the speech that the Doctor now gives, one of the defining moments of the sixth Doctor (and in a good way, not in a strangling-Peri way):

"In all my travellings throughout the universe I have battled against evil, against power-mad conspirators. I should have stayed here. The oldest civilisation: decadent, degenerate, and rotten to the core, ha! Power-mad conspirators... Daleks, Sontarans, Cybermen... they're still in the nursery compared to us. Ten million years of absolute power, that's what it takes to be really corrupt!"

This is a direct continuation and logical extension of writer Robert Holmes's first Time Lord-centred story, The Deadly Assassin, the first to suggest the Hofflike Time Lords are really an insular civilisation in a state of decline, with their great power used only for self-preservation. One could therefore see this episode as the climax of a long story arc that began with The Deadly Assassin and which continued through the intervening Gallifrey-set stories (The Invasion of Time, Arc of Infinity, The Five Doctors) with each one revealing more aspects of the messed up society of the Time Lords. How appropriate it is that the Master, who was present for the start of this conflict, is here again at its end.

The stakes get even higher as the Master reveals the Valeyard's role in the High Council's plan:

"They made a deal with the Valeyard, or as I've always known him, the Doctor, to adjust the evidence. In return for which, he was promised the remainder of the Doctor's regenerations."

I love this revelation, especially the amount of ambiguity that is squeezed into the Master's few words of explanation about what he means by "the Doctor":

"There is some evil in all of us, Doctor, even you. The Valeyard is an amalgamation of the darker sides of your nature, somewhere between your twelfth and final incarnation."

It is strange to think that we are now well past the "twelfth incarnation" of the Doctor on television in our time, but that must have still seemed very distant in 1986. The Valeyard responds to this by running away.

The Doctor chases him, but he has escaped into the Matrix using "the seventh door." The Keeper lets the Doctor and Glitz in to follow the Valeyard, warning them "the Matrix is a micro-universe." If the parallels to The Deadly Assassin hadn't been apparent before, they are about to become blindingly obvious.

Appearing in the Matrix, which looks like a Victorian edition of The Great Pottery Throw Down, the Doctor hears the Valeyard doing an evil laugh, and some other lolrandom sound effects so that we know we are in a place of illusions. For some reason the Doctor decides to look for the Valeyard in a barrel, which a manny tries to drag him into so that he gets wet. Oh noes!

Back in the courtroom, the Master tells the Inquisitor about which parts of the Matrix evidence had been altered by the Valeyard, including that Peri is alive, "as a queen, set up on high by that warmongering fool Yrcanos." This is an odd way of phrasing it, which we should try to remember when the time comes for the Inquisitor to pass this news on to the Doctor.

The Master explains his interest in the trial, hoping that one version of the Doctor will destroy the other. This leads to another quite extraorinarily panto line reading from Bonnie Langford:

"How utterly evil!"

In the Matrix, the Doctor and Glitz meet Mr Popplewick, looking a lot like Anthony Hopkins as Pierre Bezukhov in the BBC's War & Peace - which is a good thing to look like if you want to beat the shit out of Colin Baker. This encounter with Victorian bureaucracy confuses Glitz, but the Doctor explains that the Valeyard wants to "humiliate" him before he kills him.

The second Mr Popplewick they meet wants the Doctor to sign a consent form:

"The corridors in this factory are very long and dark. Should you unexpectedly die, our blessed proprietor, Mr J J Chambers, insists he inherits your remaining lives."

The Doctor agrees to sign while saying

"Obviously the Valeyard doesn't trust the High Council to honour their side of the bargain."

Mr Popplewick sends the Doctor to a waiting room, which turns out to be a beach. He hears the Valeyard doing another evil laugh, and then lots of mannys' paws come out from under the sand to grab him. The Doctor tries to escape by using the old classic

"This is an illusion. I deny it!"

The paws try to drag him under the sand, and the Doctor tries to help them by shoogling himself under. The unseen Valeyard says

"Goodbye, Doctor."

Crash cut (not a zoom) to the Doctor's face - cliffhanger!

Big Gay Longcat and Expensive Luxury Cat review James Bond: The Spy Who Loved Me

Made in 1977, The Spy Who Loved Me is the third of seven expensive luxury James Bond film to star Roger Moore, and of those seven this is the one that most resembles an archetypal Bond film, with everything that cats around the world associate with the franchise: chases, explosions, gadgets, masterminds with plans for world domination, secret bases, quips, innuendo, and Jaws.

Every subsequent Bond film can be compared to The Spy Who Loved Me, and almost all of them will be found wanting, because it is almost the purrfect Bond film. Almost, because the one thing it is lacking is an expensive luxury cat.

A submarine on which both DCI Roy Galloway and Boba Fett are both W-wording undercover starts getting into difficulties. Tiberius Caesar (recently returned from his stint as Number Two in the Village) gets a telephone call from somebody to tell him that they have lost one of their nuclear submarines. In Moscow, Chief Constable Cullen has successfully infiltrated the highest echelons of Russian Intelligence only to be given the bad news that they too have lost a submarine.

Not really of course, this is the first appearance of Walter Gotell as General Gogol, who will go on to be M's best frenemy in five further expensive luxury James Bond films after this. He telephones "Agent Triple X" and puts her on the case. She was having kiffs with Colonel Paul Foster (who can blame her, purr) who we were obviously supposed to think was Agent Triple X for a moment as an audience fake-out, but we cats aren't so easily fooled because we have seen this film before.

In a scene that is obviously intended to parallel what we have just seen the Soviets doing, M orders James Bond to be put on the case, telling him to "pull out" of his current mission. Of course Bond is busy having kiffs with a lady, so "pull out" has a double meaning, lol, these films are so smutty! Bond gets dressed, and the lady says

"But James, I need you."

He replies

"So does England."

So as far as he's concerned the rest of the UK can obviously get to fuck.

As soon as he is gone, the lady turns out to be a baddy and telephones her henchmannys to chase after Bond. This is an iconic ski chase, with Bond and his stuntmanny taking on four henchmannys single-pawedly. Bond skis off a cliff to escape, and the incidental music suddenly cuts out, making it seems as though Bond is in deep trouble. But then he deploys the famous Union Jack parachute (though if all he cares about is England, really it should have been a St George's flag, mew) and the music bursts back in with the James Bond theme.

This segues into the "Nobody Does it Better" theme song and title sequence. This is probably the apex of the nude-mannys-in-silhouette titles, which was a trope for the Bond films for quite a while, but always makes me think that the filming of these sequences must have been a really weird experience for all those mannys involved - nude or otherwise.

The lyrics of the theme song are worth examining - it is clar from context that James Bond is the manny that "nobody does it better" than, but what is the "it" that nobody does better than him at? My suspicion is that there is a naughty double-meaning there (or maybe I just need to recalibrate my expectations because the innuendo level in the previous Bond theme, The Manny with the Golden Gun, was so high), with the first meaning being that he is best at spying, but the second that he is best at kiffs. Couple this with the line

# "Though sometimes I wish someone could" #

and I don't think it is a coincidence that, within a year of this film's release, Blakes 7 started on TV.

I must conclude that this song is responsible for wishing Avon into existence!

Post-titles, the first scene is set in Moscow, because in an interesting reversal of the normal briefing scene between Bond and M, we instead see General Gogol briefing Agent Triple X, Major Anya Amasova. This deepens the parallels already established, showing us that she is Bond's Russian counterpart, but it is still very unusual to present a briefing from their point of view first, almost as though Amasova is the protagonist of the film instead of Bond. Gogol also tells her that Agent Sergei Borzov (who Paul Foster was pretending to be) has been killed, although clearly he must have only faked his death to go back to SHADO.

At Bond's briefing is more than just M. Q is there, as is Tiberius, Dev Tarrant representing the Federation, the Minister of Defence (who, like Gogol, is making his first of six appearances in the Bond films), and Future M Admiral Hargreaves. Things must be serious if they need more than one M in the same film! Or maybe it's just inflation - this was the late '70s after all. We see another example of this when the Minister tells Bond the missing submarine had 16 nuclear missiles on board. In Thunderball SECTRE only stole two, and that was serious business enough. Bond is sent to Egypt to look at pyramids for clues.

We get our introduction to the film's baddy, Stromberg (played by Curd "General Vladimir" Jürgens), when he is having noms. He meets with the two henchmannys who have invented the submarine-finding machine for him, one of whom is played by the Shapmeister himself, Professor Cyril Shaps. Stromberg establishes his Bond villain credentials by dropping his assistant into a shark tank for betraying him.

He also has a giant underwater base, although if I didn't know better I might say

When the Shapmeister and his friend leave in a helicopter, Stromberg uses a button to blow it up. Do you think he got this base and all its gadgets second-paw from Blofeld?

As well as sharks and exploding helicopters, he also has unusual henchmannys to do his killing for him, and he sends them to kill anyone trying to discover his plans. His main henchmanny is someone who loved Steven Spielberg's 1975 shark film so much he even changed his name to

Jaws

In Cairo we get a scene that is almost too much a parody of the sort of thing you expect to see in a Bond film that even most send-ups wouldn't play it as straight as this: Bond is having kiffs with a lady who is secretly in league with the baddys, a henchmanny aims his gun at Bond, but the lady switches sides, screams "No!" and gets shot instead of Bond.

The manny Bond is looking for is out by the pyramids, because of course he is. Also there are Amasova and Jaws. They are all watching a strange show that lights up the Sphinx and the pyramids at random intervals and, even more randomly, has narration provided by Blofeld. So what seems to have happened is that, after the events of Diamonds are Forever, he sold his SECTRE world-domination business to Stromberg and then got a job here.

Jaws catches up with the manny and bites his neck like a vampire. I'd make a joke about it being too soon after Christopher Lee played Scaramanga for them to recast him in this as Jaws, but I genuinely don't think that would have stopped them.

Bond and Amasova meet again at a Cairo club, where they are both looking for the next clue. They recognise one another, and order each other's trademark drinks:

"The lady'll have a bacardi on the rocks."

"For the gentleman, vodka martini shaken not stirred."

The film is doing very well so far in giving the impression that this is a crossover event starring two equals, and not the 10th in the film series for one of them, while the other has never been seen before this film and will never be heard from again after the end credits have rolled. It isn't even clear which one of them is "the spy" of the title, and which is the "me."

Bond meets with Vernon Dobtcheff, who was in so many things over the years that it is astonishing that it took this long for him to appear in a Bond film. He was in The Assassination Bureau with Telly Savalas and Diana Rigg in 1969, so he must have been considered for a part in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, surely? It turns out Amasova also wants to meet with Dobtcheff, since they have the same mission to obtain a microfilm from him, but before he can decide which of them he will give it to, Jaws kills him and takes it.

Bond and Amasova both chase after Jaws and hide in his van. They aren't as stealthy as they think, because they can't resist chatting and Jaws hears every word they say. Jaws takes them to a place in the Egyptian desert where they can have a fun game of Cat and Mouse. But who is the Cat?

Bond tricks Jaws into bringing some scaffolding down on his own hed, while Amasova gets the microfilm and runs away. Bond quips

"Egyptian builders, tut."

but this joke doesn't W-word at all, because surely if Egyptian builders are famous for anything it is the pyramids which have stood stable for thousands of years? Although I suppose 'tutting' at anything to do with Ancient Egypt has to W-word on at least some level, so I'll give him that. Mew.

Escaping on a boat at night, Bond and Amasova start having kiffs under the pretext of keeping warm, and then Amasova takes out a trick cigarette and gases Bond with it. When he wakes up she is gone, and has taken the microfilm with her.

Bond goes to a secret underground HQ, equipped with electric doors that sound suspiciously Village-like, where he meets Miss Moneypenny. When he goes in to see M, he is surprised to instead see...

General Gogol. He has teamed up with M so that they can send Bond after the real baddy, Stromberg. Bond has to team up with Major Amasova again, and they are both sent on a train to Sardinia. There's a long, quiet scene of them in two adjacent cabins ignoring one another, which seems like it is just there to build up the Unresolved Sexual Tension between them, but really it is so that it is a surprise when Jaws bursts out of Amasova's wardrobe (he took a shortcut through Narnia?) to attack her.

There's a tense fight (made more tense by the lack of incidental music) that ends when Bond electrics Jaws and then defenestrates him. Jaws survives this, and we see him dust himself down and straighten his tie, which is the sort of thing that Bond himself might do after a fight. Jaws is a superb subversion of the usual tropes of henchmannys we see in other Bond films - it is like instead of a succession of henchmannys who attack Bond one at a time before getting killed by him, instead they have all been replaced by Jaws, who always survives.

There's a scene in which Q delivers a car to Bond, which is necessary so that we aren't surprised when the car turns out to have gadgets in it. But they take a boat out to see Stromberg in his lair, not the car.

Bond meets with Stromberg and introduces himself as

"My name is Stirling, Robert Stirling."

because even when he's in disguise Bond can't help but use the 'surname, firstname surname' format. Stromberg shows Bond his collection of fish (making us cats very hungry) and also his sharks. He pretends not to know who Bond is until he has gone, then he meets with Jaws and tells him to kill Bond and Amasova. Although Jaws was probably going to try and do that anyway, seeing as he has spent the better part of the film so far trying to do just that.

Time for a car chase. A motorbike chases after Bond's car, but when it crashes off a cliff it turns out it was being driven by a really obvious dummy. Jaws and some henchmannys start chasing them in their own car and shooting at them. I love the way Jaws just takes the guns off the other henchmannys instead of reloading his own gun when he runs out of bullets. When their car inevitably crashes, Jaws once again walks away unharmed.

Next a helicopter chases Bond and Amasova, piloted by Naomi, a manny that Bond was perving over back at Stromberg's base, and so confirming that Stromberg must be the baddy (as if we didn't know already). The helicopter chases the car into the water, where it turns into a tiny submarine. Bond then shoots the helicopter with a missile, although it is unclear why he waited until now to do this - presumably he was intending to take the car underwater anyway, so he thought he would troll Amasova by not telling her about it in advance. This backfires when she reveals she knew all about it:

"I stole the blueprints of this car two years ago."

They take the underwater car back to Stromberg's base, and use it to have a look in through some of Stromberg's windows. Then there's an underwater chase... oh noes, these slow-motion underwater chases have become something of a chore in Bond films ever since Thunderball, we cats usually just sleep through them without risking missing much. At least this one has some funky incidental music over it.

When the car drives out of the water onto a beach, we get the first appearance of one of the most insignificant recurring Bond characters, Double-Take Manny. Still a better recurring character than Sheriff J. W. Pepper.

Amasova thinks that Bond killed Paul Foster, based on Bond having a lighter from the place where Colonel Foster was supposed to have died (oh, and Bond claiming that he did kill him), and so says

"When this mission is over, I will kill you."

This means she hates him now, so there is a dramatic possibility that this might interfere with their joint mission to save the world.

They go on an American submarine, where Shane Rimmer, king president of the rentayanks, is in command, and where Jeff Ross from The Sandbaggers is undercover for the CIA. Stromberg's tanker has a front bit that opens up in order to capture the submarine, in a very - one might say suspiciously - similar way to how SECTRE's spaceship captured the American and Russian rockets in You Only Live Twice. Yet more evidence that Stromberg is using a plan that SECTRE just never got around to.

When all the captured submacrewmannys are taken out of the submarine, Bond and Amasova are recognised by Stromberg, which he is happy about because it gives him somebody to explain his plan to. What does he want with all these captured submarines and nuclear missiles?

"At 12 noon they will have reached firing positions. Within minutes, New York and Moscow will cease to exist. Global destruction will follow. A new era will begin."

Bond asks what Stromberg's price "for not firing those nuclear missiles" will be. He's probably thinking it's bound to be higher than Blofeld's price, what with all the inflation since SECTRE's heyday. But here Stromberg's plan differs from Blofeld's Operation Thunderball goal of extortion - he wants to destroy the world, so that he can create "a new and beautiful world beneath the sea."

I don't think he has thought this plan through. But he has clearly given it more thought than Blofeld did that time when he tried to start World War 3, because at least Stromberg has a plan for where he will keep his Blakes 7 DVDs after the world has been blown up.

Stromberg sends the submarines on their way, then leaves for his underwater base, taking Amasova with him. I don't know why, but it could be because, as a Bond villain, he has to take the protagonist with him to his lair to put in a deathtrap, and he has mistaiken her for the protagonist and Bond for her sidekick. He does say to Bond before he leaves:

"'Farewell' Mr Bond. That word has, I must admit, a welcome ring of permanancy about it."

As villainous quips go that one is poor, but then you wouldn't waste your best lines on a sidekick, would you? Stromberg and Amasova leave on a monorail, which is frankly the clincher that this base was designed by the same manny that did SECTRE's bases for them.

Bond quickly escapes and rescues all the friendly submacrewmannys. A big fight breaks out, with both sides shooting submachine guns and throwing grenades at at each other. Fortunately all the baddys are wearing red so we can easily tell the two sides apart. This goes on for quite a while, since it is clearly the film's big action set piece, and it is just like (and I do mean 'just like') the ninja attack on SECTRE's volcano lair in You Only Live Twice.

There is quite a good bit when Bond hitches a ride on top of the thing that used to be a henchrobot for Ming the Merciless. After defeating all the baddys in their control room, Bond sends new orders to the two baddy-controlled submarines so that they blow each other up with all the power of stock footage of nuclear explosions. Bond and his friends then escape in the third submarine.

The sumbarine is ordered to blow up Stromberg's base, with Shane Rimmer saying his orders coming from "the top." He must mean from Ceiling Cat! Bond wants to rescue Amasova, and he has only one hour in which to do it before the submarine will attack. This is an unusual Bond film in which the goodys have essentially already won, and can finish off the rest of the baddys whenever they want, including the main baddy Stromberg. Except that they haven't won completely until Amasova is saved.

Stromberg sees Bond as soon as he gets into his base, and says the classic line

"Good evening Mr Bond, I've been expecting you."

Bond gets into the lift that we saw near the start of the film, which has the secret trapdoor to drop mannys into the shark tank.

"Goodbye Mr Bond."

says Stromberg and presses the button to drop Bond in it. But Bond is too clever for him (or else Bond has by now noticed all the reused SECTRE plans and so knew what to expect) and didn't fall for it. So to speak. Mew.

Stromberg tries to shoot Bond, but Bond dodges out of the way and returns fire. I think it is supposed to be implied that Bond's first shot hits Stromberg in the willy, but he then shoots him a few more times just to make sure that Stromberg goes

Bond isn't safe yet, since he now has to have another fight with Jaws. Bond finds a highly convenient magnet that he uses to capture Jaws.

"How does that grab you?"

he quips, before dropping Jaws into Stromberg's shark tank. Any other baddy would be done for, but this is Jaws so he noms the shark instead.

Bond rescues Amasova just before the submarine blows up the base, so they have to escape through the explosions and, even worse, the base filling up with wets. They find Stromberg's expensive luxury escape pod and do an expensive luxury escape in it.

Amasova looks like she is about to shoot Bond like she said she would earlier on, but instead she shoots the top off the bottle of expensive luxury Dom Perignon '52. She must be a fan of The Avengers.

They are still having kiffs when a ship finds them. What are the chances of it having their bosses on board?

"Bond, what do you think you're doing?"

"Keeping the British end up, sir."

Curtain.

Expensive Luxury Cat's rating: Very Expensive and Luxury