Big Gay Longcat and Expensive Luxury Cat review James Bond: Moonraker

Recent news about the expensive luxury James Bond films having been bought by the Amazon Corporation of America has reminded us cats that back in 1979 James Bond already fought against a baddy who was a megalomaniac, space-obsessed billionaire with a secret lair in the Amazon.

This was Moonraker, the fourth of the seven expensive luxury James Bond films to star Roger Moore. It had the unenviable task of following on from the iconic Bond outing The Spy Who Loved Me, and it did this by going even more Over The Top than its predecessor - thanks to a little inspiration taken from the late-70s zeitgeist, a.k.a. the post-Star Wars era.

In the first scene some baddys steal a space shuttle off the back of a plane and then the plane blows up. It cuts to M in his office talking on a red (i.e. serious business) telephone asking

"What happened to the Moonraker?"

Clang! Well that didn't take long.

Bond is having kiffs with a lady in a different plane when she pulls a gun on him. Oh noes, she is really a baddy! This is exactly what happened with the lady Bond was having kiffs with at the start of The Spy Who Loved Me, except this one didn't even wait for him to leave before turning out to be a baddy. She has a manny with her for Bond to have a fight with. That manny ends up falling out of the plane, and then Jaws turns up and pushes Bond out too.

We cats love Jaws, he makes any Bond film he is in (all two of them) even more expensive and luxury than they would have been without him.

Bond doesn't have a parachute, and unlike cats he cannot expect to land on his feet, so he sends his stuntmanny to have another fight with the manny over the one parachute between them. Jaws arrives to have a mid-air fight with Bond, but Bond uses the parachute to escape from him. Jaws then lands on a circus tent for some reason.

This leads in to the title sequence. The theme song for Moonraker is rubbish, and would be much better if they had just reused the Goldfinger song but replaced the word "Goldfinger" with the word "Moonraker." The lyrics wouldn't make sense, since the baddy is called Drax and not "Mr Moonraker," but when has lyrics not making sense ever stopped them?

The titles are followed by the traditional Bond briefing scene. Bond gets sent to look for the missing Moonraker space shuttle (what do mannys want to rake the moon for, anyway? Silly mannys, always making W-word for themselves for no reason) and he also gets given a gadget by Q - a watch that can fire darts that will either explode or be poisonous. We can look forward to both of these types coming in useful for him, in accordance with the law of conservation of narrative detail.

Bond goes to visit Hugo Drax at his French chateau in California. A bit like Columbo, Bond has immediately identified the main baddy as being the richest, most obnoxious manny in the film in order to save time. Drax, the ultimate snob, is played by Michael "Grigoriev" Lonsdale, still three years from his role of a lifetime when this was made - and I'm presuming he got that part because they were practically rounding up former Bond Villains to be in Smiley's People.

Bond and Drax have a superficially friendly first meeting but, as soon as Bond leaves, Drax says to his henchmanny

"Look after Mr Bond. See that some harm comes to him."

Lol, this is a classic Bond Villain line.

Bond goes to meet Dr Goodhead, who turns out to be

"A woman!"

This bit would have been... how shall we put it... old-fashioned (to be rather more polite than it deserves) in a '60s Bond film, never mind one made in 1979. However the film quickly makes it clear that it is Bond who is being sexist, not the film itself, since Dr Goodhead soon gets her own back by patronising him for his lack of knowledge about her. She claims to be a trained astronaut

"On loan from NASA... the Space Administration."

Her explaining things to Bond as though he is thick as shit, and then Bond trying to salvage some dignity by showing off about the few things he does know about, is actually quite a clever way of getting exposition to casual viewers who may not be as knowledgeable about space as Monkeys With Badges us cats.

Dr Goodhead dares Bond to have a go in a machine that spins mannys round and round really fast. Presumably for the lols. Once it has started the henchmanny sabotages it so that it won't stop when Bond presses the stop button.

Bond makes a face to let us know he is in trouble, then uses his gadget to shoot the machine with an explosive dart - breaking the machine's main rivet, I presume, and therefore stopping it.

Bond decides to kiff some information out of Corinne Dufour, whom he met when he first arrived, on the grounds that as a named character she must have a clue for him. The henchmanny sees them, but he doesn't do anything about Bond yet.

In the next scene we see Drax and some henchmannys hunting and shooting at some birdys for no reason, just in case we hadn't realised that they were the baddys yet. Drax invites Bond to have a go, but instead of shooting a birdy he shoots a henchmanny that was about to shoot him.

Drax: "You missed, Mr Bond."

Bond: "Did I?"

After Bond has left, Drax sacks Corinne for helping Bond. He the sends his two doggys to chase her. The incidental music for this bit is very dramatic, verging on sinister, although I'm quite sure the doggys are well-behaved doggys who only want to play. The last we see of Corinne is when the doggys catch up with her to give her friendly cuddles and licks. Maybe Hugo Drax isn't so bad after all?

The scene changes to Venice, where Bond is here following up the clue he got from Corinne. He sees Dr Goodhead is also there and decides to follow her through the streets of Venice. That doesn't take long so then he decides to talk to her about why she's here. Each of them thinks the other might be a baddy, so they don't trust one another.

Bond is sitting in a gondola minding his own business when a manny hiding in a coffin starts throwing knives at him. Bond throws one back and kills the manny - the punchline to this bit being that the manny is already in his coffin when he goes

A speedboat starts to chase Bond, and it turns out that his gondola is really a speedgondola. We know by now that Roger Moore's Bond loves a chase scene almost as much as Jon Pertwee's Doctor, so this is a good bit which successfully blends the exciting peril with a number of komedy moments.

Bond escapes the speedboat by turning his speedgondola into a hovergondola and taking it across the land. This provokes a number of amusing reaction shots from the bystanders, including Double-Take Manny (returning from The Spy Who Loved Me to make his second appearance in the film series), and even one of Venice's world-famous double taking pigeons.

At night Bond stealths into Drax's base where he discovers a secret room that you can only get into by playing the music from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I wonder if Drax has other rooms that use different late-70s sci-fi themes as their keycodes? I expect there must be at least some, because if you only had one then Blakes 7 would obviously be your first choice.

This secret room is a laboratory where some mannys are doing experiments on mouses... or possibly the mouses are doing experiments on the mannys - Double-Take Manny does look an awful lot like Douglas Adams, after all. Thanks to Bond's meddling, the mannys get poisoned when they release some gas, but the mouses are unharmed by it.

Bond is trying to get away when he gets attacked by Drax's main henchmanny, leading to a big fight. They quickly take the fight into a glass museum, where they do their best to ensure that everything that could be smashed gets smashed. In the midst of the fight, Bond finds a clue - a lot of boxes addressed to Rio de Janeiro.

After winning the fight by throwing the henchmanny through a big clockface into a piano, Bond visits Dr Goodhead. He finds she has gadgets because she is also a secret agent, although hers are concealed inside lady things like perfume and a pawbag instead of a manly thing like a wristwatch. Dr Goodhead W-words for the American CIA, and now they team up in a reversal of the UK-USSR team-up of the previous film, only with even less trust on both sides.

Bond takes M and the Minister of Defence to see the secret laboratory (presumably this is meant to be the next day, although it is unclear how much time has passed - clearly it must have been enough to allow M and the Minister to travel from London to Venice, but we don't know if they did that as soon as Bond said "come and see this secret laboratory what I have found"), but Drax has already replaced the entire room with more chateau-type stuff. The Minister orders M to take Bond off the case, and so Bond says he is going on holiday to Rio.

Drax needs a replacement for his main henchmanny, so he telephones an unseen manny to arrange it. This cuts to a scene where we see Jaws getting on a plane to Rio. It is not often that we see the process of henchmannys getting employed and sent on missions - normally they just turn up and attack Bond - so this is a nice little peek behind the curtain.

Obviously there's a carnival going on in Rio when Bond gets there and starts looking for clues. There's a superbly sinister scene as his MI7 contact Manuela is waiting for Bond in a dark alley with carnival going on around her. A manny in a giant clown mask approaches her, then takes off his mask to reveal it is Jaws.

This scene helps to re-establish Jaws as looking like a credible threat after his last few appearances have all been unsuccessful attempts to kill Bond - particularly the pre-titles sequence which was mostly played for lols. Jaws is about to nom Manuela when Bond sees them and jumps on Jaws for a fight. The carnival then carries them apart, delaying their eagerly-awaited rematch.

Bond meets Dr Goodhead again. They are in a cable car when Jaws stops it and noms his way through the cable to make sure it stays stopped.

This is an iconic scene for Jaws, and is followed by a great fight sequence as he goes out to try and kill Bond on the roof of the cable car. Bond and Dr Goodhead escape as Jaws gives chase, his henchmanny (henchhenchmanny?) controlling another cable car and sending it after Bond. As Bond and Dr Goodhead get out of the way in time, Jaws crashes into the building below.

Jaws is rescued from the wreckage by Dolly and, as the incidental music informs us, they fall instantly in love.

Some mannys arrive to capture Bond and Dr Goodhead, and take them away in a fake ambulance. Bond escapes, but falls out of the back of the ambulance before he can rescue Dr Goodhead, so she is taken away still a prisoner.

The next scene sees Bond arrive at a monastery dressed as a cowboy. Bond is dressed as a cowboy, I mean, not the monastery. Mew. Sorry, but this is a very silly bit. Bond sees Miss Moneypenny and Q. Q is testing some experimental gadgets, which is not too unusual for him (save that he doesn't normally do it in a monastery), but one of them is a pewpewpew gun - foreshadowing all the mannys having pewpewpew guns later on. Q has found out that the poison gas Bond found in Venice was made from a rare orchid found in the Amazon jungle, so now Bond's task is to go there to look for his next clue.

Bond is travelling along the river in a boat when he gets attacked - yes, that looks like a clue to me! Several other boats chase him, one of which has Jaws aboard. They shoot at Bond's boat, but naturally it has gadgets on board which Bond uses to fight them with - mines, torpedoes, and one simply labelled as "roof." Obviously Bond uses each of them in turn, and the last of them releases a hang-glider that he uses to glide away and thus escape from a waterfall. Jaws isn't so lucky and his boat goes over the edge - he makes a great "oh noes!" face as it does so.

In a scene that would make Barry Letts proud, Bond hang-glides about for a bit in front of a greenscreen, until he crashes in the jungle. He then follows a scantily-clad lady who leads him to Drax's secret base. There he sees so many scantily-clad ladies that his eyebrow can hardly cope.

Bond has been in too many SECTRE lairs to fall for the old bridge-turning-into-a-trapdoor-while-you're-walking-over-it ploy, but he is then caught out by the unassuming-rock-tips-you-into-the-water trap and gets wet. Oh noes! The baddys send a snake to try and nom Bond, but he escapes and is instead captured by Jaws.

Drax comes in and explains why he - and by extension most if not all of his fellow evil masterminds - always tries to kill Bond in overly elaborate ways:

"Mr Bond, you defy all my attempts to plan an amusing death for you."

Bond is taken from the ancient temple part of the secret lair to the futuristic space part. He sees Drax launch multiple "Moonraker" shuttles into space, and learns that the Moonraker that was stolen at the start of the film was needed by Drax to replace one of his secret shuttles that had become borked.

Bond is put into a room where he meets Dr Goodhead again. This turns out to be directly underneath the next Moonraker that will be launched - Drax's plan being that when the shuttle takes off, they will be killed by the fire. This bit is lifted from the original Moonraker novel, which is good because it prevents The Girl Who Was Death from otherwise being an inarguably better adaptation of the book than this film is.

Bond uses his gadget to explode open a door and so they escape. After stealthing around the base for a bit, they steal some henchmanny costumes and use them to get on board the next Moonraker scheduled for lift off. Bond has disguised himself as a spacemanny before, and it didn't go so well for him then, but there's no Number One here to spot him this time.

Bond and Dr Goodhead launch into space and fly after the shuttle with Drax and Jaws aboard - an exceptionally elaborate way of chasing after the baddy, even by Bond's standards. Luckily for him, Dr Goodhead knows what all the space buttons do - Bond is like a cat, getting her to do all the W-word.

A bit like this, really:

They fly towards 

"An entire city in space."

(thanks Dr Exposition Goodhead) and dock with it.

Now that they're in space, all the actors get to do lots of pretend slow-motion weightless acting, which is the closest thing this film has in it to padding. 

Drax makes a pretentious speech to his assembled henchmannys which lays plain his megalomania:

"First there was a dream. Now there is reality. Here, in the untainted cradle of the heavens, will be created a new super-race. A race of perfect physical specimens."

Does he not know that cats already exist? Oh, wait, he's talking about mannys, isn't he? As if they could ever be as perfect as cats, mew. He goes on:

"You have been selected as its progenitors. Like gods, your offspring will return to Earth and shape it in their image. You have all served in other capacities in my terrestrial empire. Your seed, like yourselves, will pay deference to the ultimate dynasty which I alone have created. From their first day on Earth they will be able to look up and know that there is law and order in the heavens."

He thinks he can be Ceiling Cat!

Bond and Dr Goodhead disable the city's radar jammer so that the mannys still on Earth can spot it. We get a fleeting appearance by General Gogol as the Soviets and Americans communicate with each other to find out that neither of them is responsible for making the city in space, so therefore it must have been a Bond Villain! The Americans launch a shuttle of their own to investigate and, if necessary, have a big space battle for the climax.

Meanwhile Drax starts launching his poison gas bombs at the Earth.

Jaws captures Bond and Dr Goodhead and takes them to see Drax, who says

"James Bond. You appear with the tedious inevitability of an unloved season."

Great though this line is (and delivered in such a deadpan way by Lonsdale), I have to wonder which season he's talking about? It can't be any of Blakes 7's four seasons, that's for sure. Drax is such a snob he's probably taking about Doctor Who's 24th season, even though it is actually much better than its reputation.

Another great bit is how Bond escapes from his predicament - pointing out how Drax will kill anyone "not measuring up" to Drax's "standards of physical perfection" within earshot of Jaws and Dolly. Jaws realises this means Dolly, because she is too tiny. He refuses to kill Bond when Drax orders him to, and Drax has a classic moment of realising his previously loyal henchmanny has turned against him:

"Jaws! You obey me!"

Bond pushes a button that turns off the gravity, and all the mannys start floating around. 

Drax's spacemannys and the American spacemannys start having a pewpewpew fight in space. Anyone who tells you that "in space, no one can hear you scream" obviously hasn't watched this bit, since here the mannys clearly scream whenever they get pewed.

The Americans get on board the city and team up with Bond, Dr Goodhead and Jaws. Bond chases after Drax when he tries to run away from the fighting, but then Drax gets his paws on a pewpewpew gun and aims it at Bond.

"At least I shall have the pleasure of putting you out of my misery."

he quips. But then Bond shoots Drax with a poison dart from his gadget watch. Bond puts Drax in an airlock and outquips him with

"Take a giant step for mankind."

Dr Goodhead asks Bond

"Where's Drax?"

"Oh he had to fly."

With Drax ded it can be safely assumed that his henchmannys will be defeated offscreen by the Americans. However Drax had already launched three poison gas bombs at the Earth that will "kill millions" (thanks again Dr Exposition). Also because Drax is ded his space city starts to suffer from a lack of ontological inertia, so Bond and Dr Goodhead have to dodge explosions and the set falling down around them.

They escape in one of the Moonrakers, while Jaws and Dolly search for each other in the wreckage. As the last two mannys on board, they sit and drink a toast. We hear Jaws's only line of dialogue in either of the films he's in:

"Well, here's to us."

Bond tells Dr Goodhead (and the viewers at home)

"Don't worry, they'll make it. It's only 100 miles to Earth."

While I can understand them not wanting audiences to think Jaws is ded because he is such a great character that they might want to bring him back in later Bond films (although they didn't, mew), surely he is the one character who can be safely assumed to somehow survive offscreen, like he has done multiple times already? This line of Bond's smells to me of a late addition to the film, perhaps after test audiences were too sad at Jaws's final scene.

Dr Goodhead flies the shuttle and Bond pews the three bombs. For the last one the targeting computer can't hit the bomb, so Bond has to use the Force pew it manually. While one could see this as re-establishing the superiority of mannys over machines, really it is just ripping off the ending to Star Wars.

On Earth, the NASA mannys hack into the shuttle's on-board cameras to see Bond and Dr Goodhead having kiffs and getting up to naughtiness with no clothes or gravity on. M, Q and the Minister are also there, and M just says

"Double-Oh Seven!"

in a disappointed tone of voice that makes Bond's code number sound like a rude word. And then we end on an absolutely stone-cold classic James Bond double entendre moment as the Minister asks

"My god, what's Bond doing?"

Even though this was presumably a rhetorical question, Q replies

"I think he's attempting re-entry, sir."

Expensive Luxury Cat's rating: Very Expensive and Luxury

Moonraker!

We shoot them with our Crossbow

The Monkeys With Badges have been distracted from making their spaceship (again) by the arrival of a new book by their favourite historical weapons expect and TV presenter and second-favourite author, Mike Loades!

From The Earth To The Moon

I'm not normally a fan of "AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!" TV programmes, but the Monkeys With Badges have been watching the 1998 series From The Earth To The Moon, because it is about going into space, and I have to admit it is quite good.

Obviously made off the back of the 1995 film Apollo 13, it comes across as a labour of love by that movie's star Tom Hanks - he not only co-produced the series, he wrote an episode, directed an episode, and narrates the introductions to all the episodes except for one... which he appears in as a main character.

Aside from Hanks, the cast contains many recognisable faces from American films and TV, including Cary "not left handed either" Elwes and Bryan Cranston before he was famous.

Disappointingly, for both me and the Monkeys With Badges, the series skips over the early space adventures of Albert, Ham and Enos to concentrate almost exclusively on the mannys involved in the Apollo missions to the moon, with part one giving a condensed version of the backstory of NASA and setting up the "space race" to the moon after the Soviet Union beat the USA to getting the first manny (not to mention the first doggy) into space.

The best episode by far is part two, Apollo One, which tells the story of the fire that killed three spacemannys and the subsequent investigation into how the fire happened and whose fault it was. Being based on a tragedy, this makes for the most dramatically powerful installment of the series, but also casts its shadow over the later episodes by firmly planting the idea of how dangerous the Apollo space missions are.

This is crucial to the success of the programme, since because it is entirely based on true history then the writers cannot inject peril and excitement where none actually occurred - and the spacemannys themselves didn't want things to be dramatic and dangerous so did everything they could to avoid it!

The series also tries to highlight what dramatic moments there are through its use of incidental music, but in this it is far less successful because throughout the series the music is far too overblown and intrusive - like a lot of what we hear in modern-day Doctor Who and its ilk, the music tries to tell the audience how to feel at any given moment, and as a result it comes across as unsubtle as a sledgehammer.

With the most famous point in the Apollo missions - the landing on the moon by spacemannys Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin - coming in episode six, the second half of the 12-part series gets to tell the lesser-known stories of the Apollo missions. That is except for part eight, which avoids too much overlap with the Apollo 13 movie by telling the story of Apollo 13 from the point of view of the media reporting of the mission, as seen through the eyes of two (fictional) news reporters: Emmett Seaborn (played by Lane "New Adventures of Superman" Smith) is the old-school dependable type, having made several appearances in other episodes to deliver required exposition to us via the medium of his news broadcasts, while his rival Brett Hutchings is a sensationalist, lowbrow, tabloid-style reporter. Their conflict is a metaphor for the battle between the two styles of news reporting, with Hutchings sadly but inevitably coming out on top in the end.

Once mannys had successfully landed on the moon once, the media and the American public seemed to lose interest in the Apollo spacemannys, except for when there was a crisis such as with Apollo 13. This led to NASA having its funding cut and the end of Apollo missions to the moon. This hangs over the final two episodes of the series, and leaves us with a palpable sense of disappointment and missed opportunities. The very last episode, Le Voyage Dans La Lune, acts as an epilogue when it goes back to use the making of the 1902 film Le Voyage Dans La Lune as an example of how important imagination was to inspiring the missions that actually went to the moon.

Going from the Earth to the moon seems like a lot of effort, and I for one am happy to leave it to mannys and the Monkeys With Badges to handle the W-word. If I am ever going to go into space, I would like it to be like this:

Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Remembering of the Daleks Part Three

The recapped version of the cliffhanger scene cuts away sooner than at the end of part two, so we don't get to see Ace close her eyes and make a face this time. I do like the dramatic music during this bit, it helps cover for the fact that Ace is obviously going to escape.

The Doctor runs in and uses his anti-Dalek device (cleverly foreshadowed in the previous episode) to special effect at the Daleks, confusing them and allowing Ace to get away and Sergeant Mike to blow up the Daleks.

One of the Daleks is still alive and manages to strangle the Doctor for a bit, until he is rescued by Professor Jensen's assistant Allison. The Doctor is happy that Ace's tape player has been destroyed, saying

"That tape deck was a dangerous anachronism. If someone had found it and discovered the principles of its function, the whole microchip revolution would take place now, twenty years too early, with incalculable damage to the timeline."

and

"Ace, the Daleks have a mothership up there capable of eradicating this planet from space, but even they, ruthless though they are, would think twice before making such a radical alteration to the timeline."

But he can't have cared too much or else he might have said something about it sooner.

The Doctor uses Ace's bat to destroy the Dalek teleporter in the basement, and then it breaks.

"Weapons: always useless in the end."

he says, which is basically him acknowledging that it was a weapon, and not just an item of sporting equipment that happened to get improvised into a weapon. Why does the Doctor have this hypocritical blind spot when it comes to Ace, happy for her to carry around a melee weapon, a backpack full of high explosives, and technology that he himself admits is "a dangerous anachronism"? Not since Leela have we seen this level of indulgence from the Doctor towards his Companion, and even then he was much more severe with her than with Ace:

"Who licensed you to slaughter people? No more Janis thorns, you understand? Ever."

Compared to:

"Ace, give me some of that Nitro Nine that you're not carrying."

Mr Ratcliffe finds where the Hand of Omega is buried and gets electriced by it. This alerts the Daleks to where it is. The mysterious little manny watches as Mr Ratcliffe's mannys dig up the coffin and nick off with it.

On their spaceship, the Imperial Daleks are visited by their Emperor who is not as forgiving as I am. He has a big head like in '60s comics.

The Doctor finally gives Ace, and us watching, the exposition on what the Hand of Omega is.

"The Hand of Omega is a mythical name for Omega's remote stellar manipulator, a device used to customise stars with. And didn't we have trouble with the prototype..."

Mr Ratcliffe's mannys all get exterminated by the Renegade Daleks who take the Hand of Omega's coffin from them. Mr Ratcliffe is surprised by this but the mysterious manny in the Dalek chair (the one who isn't Davros) tells him

"You are a slave, Ratcliffe. You were born to serve the Daleks."

And turns out to be the little manny. Not Davros. What a twist.
The little manny gets out their Time Controller from where it was hidden in a cupboard.

We keep our Time Controller in a cupboard when we're not using it too.

The Doctor and Ace sneak into Mr Ratcliffe's base and see the Hand of Omega. Ace asks if it is alive, to which the Doctor smiles and replies

"In a manner of speaking, yes."

This is a great touch, and far more successful at making the Doctor seem mysterious and alien than any of the exposition from earlier on, even the Doctor's hinting accidentally-on-purpose that he was somehow involved in making the Hand of Omega.

They go inside while Mr Ratcliffe and the Daleks are out and the Doctor turns off the Time Controller. Again the subtle way in which he, a Time Lord, can instantly master the Daleks' time travel technology* is another effective moment, partially spoiled by the heavy-handed way he then leaves a literal calling card on top of it.

The Doctor and Ace run away and there is another bit of business where the Doctor almost sneezes while hiding from a Dalek. I don't know why they bothered to include these comic relief moments, the story does not need them.

They make it back to the school and join up with Mike and Group Captain Gilmore. Mike gives away that he knows the Renegade Daleks have the Hand of Omega, which he can only know because he has been working for Mr Ratcliffe the whole time. I really don't know if this is meant to be a surprise reveal to us viewers because, while on the one paw it has been really obvious ever since he was with Mr Ratcliffe back in part one, on the other paw I already knew this because I have seen this episode before - so perhaps this is another instance of this story losing some of its impact upon repeated viewings?
Ace calls him a "toerag" again, also a "lying dirty scumbag." Harsh.

Time to end the episode. An Imperial Dalek spaceship lands outside the school. It is eggboxtastic, the perfect shape for monkeys (and little mannys in the late 1980s) to try to copy when making their own spaceships at home.

While not as immediately a perilous situation for our heroes as the endings to parts one and two, this is once again an escalation of the threat of the Daleks: a single Dalek; a team of three Daleks; a whole spaceship full of Daleks. Textbook stuff.

* It took the Monkeys With Badges ages to work out how to use our Time Controller. Then they popped back in time and told themselves how to do it.

A Problem for You...

This page is not so much a story as it is a free game included with the book. It has nothing to do with Doctor Who and the Doctor isn't even mentioned, although it may be a sort of sequel to Dressed for a Walk in that it also talks about "the surface of the moon."

The game is that you have to put the 15 items in the red box into the order of their importance for being on the surface of the moon, and if you get it right then I think you are allowed to become an astronaut. To make this harder than it first appears

There is no 'correct' answer.

The game is too hard for me by myself so I enlisted the help from my friends and top spaceship designers the Monkeys With Badges. Here is our answer.

food concentrate

We are cats and Monkeys (With Badges), so we don't nom "concentrate" and, in fact, don't even know what that is. But as it is the most important item we have read so far we will number it 1.

parachute silk

The Monkeys didn't think this would be too useful, but as a cat I can see many uses for a ball of silk thread to keep me amused while away from my friends and the internets, so this gets numbered 1 (moving the previous 1 down a number as a result).

two .45 calibre pistols

At first we thought that these would be useful for shooting any hostile aliens that may be on the moon, but then we remembered that we don't have thumbs so would not be able to use them. Therefore this gets numbered 3.

two 110lb tanks of oxygen

Tanks would allow us to drive around on the moon's surface, so this sounds very useful, and if there were two it would mean I could have one and the Monkeys With Badges could have the other. This gets numbered 1. We don't know what oxygen would be used for but maybe it would turn out to be a valuable extra feature.

a magnetic compass

This is obviously another cat toy, for when I get bored playing with the silk. While clearly important, I don't think this is the most important item so far, so it gets numbered 3.

solar-powered FM receiver-transmitter

We were all agreed that this would be vital to stay in contact with our friends and the internets while in space and on the surface of the moon, so it gets numbered 1.

first aid kit containing injection needles

Needles! Mew mew mew! This is too scary for me, it gets numbered 7.

life raft

We don't think this would be useful at all on the surface of the moon because it has no water, so it gets numbered 7.

5 gallons of water

Oh, I understand now - if we take 5 gallons of water with us we can use the life raft on the water. That's clever; it is like a puzzle from an old computer game. This gets numbered at 7 since it is only as much use as the life raft.

one case of dehydrated pet milk

At last: noms! This is certainly one of the most important things on the list, up there with connection to the internets (cats cannot live on noms alone). I will number it with a 2.

box of matches

On the one paw matches are dangerous, but on the other paw we don't have thumbs and so can't use them anyway. Either paw leads me to the conclusion that matches are not useful, and the Monkeys have pointed out that you can't use matches in space. Maybe that is what the oxygen in the tanks was supposed to be for, but I will number this as 10.

50' of nylon rope

Rope is not as good as thread for playing with so I would have to rate this below the parachute silk. The Monkeys have suggested that if you could catch an alien with the rope then you could get it to pull you to where you wanted to go. While that is an ingenious suggestion, I think that we have to put this behind both the parachute silk and the tanks, so it goes in at 5.

stellar map of the moon's constellations

As useful as a map sounds at first, we don't believe in astrology so we don't think this would be much use after all. It gets numbered 12.

signal flares

Science Fiction stories tell us that signal flares have many uses, and that the one thing they almost never get used for is signalling. As a result we are agreed that these would be good to have for any unforseen contingencies, although we don't know what those might be. This gets position number 5.

portable heating unit

Keeping warm would be important if we were on the dark side of the moon, but the game explicitly says we are on the light side, so we could roml in a sunbeam if we wanted to be warm. This gets numbered 14.

If NASA is reading this and wants us to become astronauts, please leave a comment below.

We are made of socks

When the Monkeys With Badges told me they had made a spaceship, but that it was a Spaceship of the Imagination, I was a skeptical cat. I doubted that there was such a thing, and I though they were being cheeky monkeys with troll faces.

Then they showed me the TV series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, in which the main character Neil deGrasse Tyson travels through space and time in his Spaceship of the Imagination.

It is sort of a cross between a documentary series and Doctor Who, with lots of science and addressing the camera with things beyond the ken of cats mixed up with interesting stories to keep us cats (with our short and fickle attention spans) entertained.

The Monkeys With Badges' Spaceship of the Imagination doesn't look as impressive as Neil deGrasse Tyson's does. It looks a lot more like the cardboard box that Duncan's printer came in.

We has a Time Controller

I hope the Monkeys With Badges can find out how it works soon, then we can also travel in time!

It works!

Dressed for a Walk

Dressed for a Walk is the last story in Adventures in Time and Space. It is only two pages long, and even then the first page is entirely taken up by the title and the above picture of a spacesuit. The story itself is all about the spacesuit.

No one can walk in space without a spacesuit. The Doctor, of course, has to be the exception which proves the rule - but as far as more conventional explorers are concerned, the space suit is vital.

This proves to be true in the TV story Four to Doomsday, and also explains why the picture of Tom Baker as the Doctor doesn't show him in a spacesuit.

This story looks to be very interesting. When the Monkeys With Badges make a spaceship for me to go into space, I will need to have a spacesuit. So I had better know as much as I can about spacesuits for then.

The next paragraph explains that if mannys don't wear a spacesuit in space, their "blood would quite literally boil." I would be safe from that because I don't have blood, only stuffing because I am made from socks.
I hope my stuffing wouldn't boil.

The paragraph after that explains that spacesuits have to be flexible. Because I am a long cat, I would need a spacesuit that is even more flexible than one for a manny.

Later the story explains that if an "astronaut was thirsty he sipped water from a tube inside the helmet." I don't drink water but I do like noms. Perhaps there could be a fish or a bunny inside my spacesuit for me to nom if I got hungry.

I don't know if I would need a PLSS.

PLSS - Portable Life Support System. This supplied pressure at .26 kgf. per sq. cm.

I don't understand all of what this story is about, it is a bit too much like a confusing documentary for me. But it looks as though the Monkeys With Badges will have as tough a job making a spacesuit for me as they will making me a spaceship.

Take a look at our artist's impression of the Apollo 15 'moon suit', and you'll see just how much thought must have gone into the design of this remarkable garment. Remember that it is was all that stood between those brave astronauts, and whatever dangers they might have had to face on the surface of the Moon.

Such as:

Monkeys With Badges Get Over-Excited

Hello, we're monkeys.

We have badges.

We are Monkeys With Badges.

Today we have seen the most awesum thing on the internets:

BRIAN BLESSED + Mike Loades = Explodes!

The Promise vs the Reality 5

Doctor Who: Day of the Moon

Day of the Moon is the second part of a two-part story that began with The Impossible Astronaut, and together they make up the first story of season 32. Previously when I have looked at two-part stories in 'Promise vs Reality' they have come from the end of their seasons, usually having been built up towards throughout a season-long story arc. So Day of the Moon is different in that it only has one preceding episode for this build up to happen in.

Immediately prior to the trailer, The Impossible Astronaut ended on a cliffhanger of Amy shooting a little manny in a spacesuit. This was an odd cliffhanger to say the least, relying on intriguing the audience with a "WTF?" moment rather than the usual having characters in peril. Still, this was hardly the first time that this had happened in Doctor Who, with even the great Terry Nation making use of this technique sometimes.

So, with the audience left puzzling over what could possibly happen next, here's the trailer:



It starts with it looking as though the little manny is going to be alright. Amy says "I didn't mean to shoot you," so that's that cleared up. Wait, no it isn't.

A rocket is about to take off into space. Space travel is intrinsically interesting and exciting (and scary) to cats, so its presence here in the trailer seems designed to distract us from the plight of the little manny and onwards to other things that will be coming up next time.

"Do not approach the prisoner," says a sign. Mannys are approaching a prisoner.

No, it's not Number 6, it's the Doctor in a beard - suggesting that he will get captured by some baddys.

The trailer cuts to River Sue being menaced by some aliens while Rory gives some exposition:
"They are everywhere. It's like they edit themselves out of your memory as soon as you look away."
This power evidently doesn't work on cats, because I can still remember River Sue when I look away from her.

A manny with a gun (Canton Everett Delaware III, whose name sounds like it belongs to a Shakespeare king) and Amy are in a scary blue house, then Rory and Amy are running through some countryside. It looks as though they are being chased by mannys with guns. Maybe this is supposed to be exciting, but what does it have to do with space rockets?

A manny's voice counts down the last 5 seconds of the trailer, and we see Amy is back in the scary blue house with writing on her face. She screams, which has the effect of making the end of the trailer seem more like a cliffhanger than the cliffhanger itself.

While it is a bit confusing and hard to make sense of, the trailer does give the overall impression of the next episode being exciting, what with the Doctor being captured and his Companions being alternately chased and in a scary house (which is very blue). But perhaps the most puzzling aspect to the trailer is how little it seems to relate to the situation that The Impossible Astronaut left us in.

In The Sound of Drums the complete lack of reference to the cliffhanger of Utopia was clever, with no hint as to how that would resolve. Here, the trailer picks up where the cliffhanger left off for its first few seconds, and then moves on without anything to bridge one scenario (little manny being shot at by Amy) to the other (chases and captures and scary blueness). The trailer not giving us an explanation is fine - that's not what trailers are for - but it makes us want to demand an answer when we reach the episode itself.

So, what did Day of the Moon end up being like after all that?

This caption, saying "3 MONTHS LATER," is one of the biggest cheats in Doctor Who. With it, we skip forward 3 months into a completely different scenario than the one we left the characters in. Because this is virtually the first thing that happens in the episode, coming right after a recap of The Impossible Astronaut's key points.

And, while there is a flashback later in the episode, there is never a point at which the join is properly made. To that extent, Day of the Moon may as well be a separate story from The Impossible Astronaut, one that starts in media res. Even the "ONE YEAR LATER" of Last of the Time Lords doesn't feel as much of a cheat as this (though that is at least in part because that story was already broken). To illustrate...

3 PARAGRAPHS LATER - MAY 2013

When the Monkeys With Badges finish making their spaceship, I will be able to go into space. I imagine it will look a bit like this:

Sadly, they have not been making much progress with the spaceship recently, even though they now have Chu Chu to help them. Now that I think about it, maybe Chu Chu's help is counterproductive, since he is a cheeky monkey.

Given how much emphasis the trailer puts on showing the Doctor being captured and his Companions being chased, it is disappointing to find out that this is an overly-elaborate ruse to make the aliens think the Doctor has been captured.

While the Doctor pulling off such a plan is exactly the sort of thing that you would expect to see in Doctor Who, when taken in combination with the time-skip cheat it feels like yet another cheat for the episode when compared with the trailer: the trailer shows the Doctor is a prisoner, so it asks the questions "how does he get captured?" (since he was certainly not a prisoner at the end of the preceding part, we have an expectation that we will see him go from one state to the other) and "how does he escape?" The eventual answers to both of these can only let us down.

If you can take the episode in isolation, Day of the Moon is not a bad story, with some clever moments such as the way the Doctor defeats the aliens, but when compared to its own trailer or taking it - as we ought to - as being the second half of a two-part story, it is just a horrible cheat.

DANGER 5!

Monkey Challenge: You Win Some, You Lose Some

First of "The Thirteen Lost Episodes," You Win Some, You Lose Some gives us the most obvious difference with the episodes that came before as soon as the title sequence finishes and the episode itself begins. While the titles are identical to the previous (season 2) titles, including the opening narration, once the episode gets underway the story's narration is taken over by Burt Kwouk.

Apart from this, all the other changes are subtler. The rest of the regular dubbing cast are back and - with the exception of Sandy, who sounds a little different - you wouldn't have thought a day had passed since they made At The Top Of The Mountain, never mind 24 years.

There is a theory (which I don't have positive evidence for either way, but which seems plausible to me) that at least part of the reason why the final 13 episodes were not dubbed and broadcast back in 1980 was because they contained scenes or subject matter that was thought unsuitable by the BBC for the family-friendly timeslot that Monkey was shown in.

For evidence against this we just need to look back to Mothers, which contained pretty strong stuff and yet was considered acceptable.

Evidence for... well, we'll see as we cover the episodes themselves. This episode does contain several scenes of suicide and attempted suicide by hanging, including Pigsy trying to hang himself and Monkey giving him a helping hand!

There is also a shift in the language used - Sandy says "turd" and the villain-of-the-week says "shit" - which reflects the change in timeslot from the BBC's family-friendly (though that didn't stop Monkey calling people "poofters" - times change) to Channel 4's late-night 'Cult TV' slot.

The plot is sledgehammer-unsubtle about the evils of gambling. The pilgrims come to a village where all the men have lost everything they own to the villain-of-the-week, a con-artist. Some of the men have killed themselves because they have lost everything.

Pigsy and Sandy are the next victims, coming back to Monkey and Tripitaka wearing rags, having gambled away everything they owned.

The middle of the story is a comedic section involving a plan to win their money back by having Monkey turn into a die and then rolling the numbers they want. This goes well at first - despite their blatant shouting the number repeatedly at the die cup - but then Monkey gets disorientated from having been shaken about so much that he rolls the wrong number.

This wacky interlude over, its back to the serious plot again. Though the way they chose to work what happens next leaves me scratching my head and wondering WTF?

The con-artist wants to gain the power of sorcery from a demon, and thinks he can trade Tripitaka for this knowledge. So far so typical for a Monkey plot. But he doesn't just go and capture Tripitaka, he first goes to Pigsy and plays a game against him where Tripitaka is Pigsy's stake. Then, having 'won' Tripitaka, he goes straight off and captures him.

What was the point of that? How does that even work? Who in their right mind is going to think it is 'OK' for this guy to kidnap Tripitaka just because his thick-headed disciple wagered him away? Maybe I'm taking this plot-point too seriously, but Pigsy does then go and try to hang himself. Monkey is only too happy to assist him when he hears what has happened.

So the guy gets his sorcerous powers and becomes a demon, and this leads on to an inevitable final confrontation with Monkey involving cloud-flying. Do you want to bet on who wins?

Remember kids - gambling is bad.

Monkey Challenge: Who Am I?

A big improvement on the last couple, Who Am I? saves disc 10 from being the weakest of the Monkey DVDs so far.

Even the Monkeys With Badges were on the verge of criticising Monkey after The Foolish Philosopher, and for a monkey that's almost akin to treason against their Monkey King. They might even have had to hand in their badges.

The plot immediately goes off in a new and interesting direction after Monkey, Tripitaka, Pigsy and Sandy lose their memories after eating some magic mushrooms. The only one not affected is Yu Lung (because he didn't eat the mushrooms, not because he was immune), and this allows him to actually make a positive contribution to the story for a nice change.

Monkey falls in with some bandits who, after he beats them in a fight (even without his Magic Wishing Staff, which he has mislaid), mistake him for an evil prince and suggest he join them in their attempt to capture Tripitaka.

They capture Tripitaka while Pigsy and Sandy are off having their own crazy sub-plot about buying new memories from a magician, which leads to Pigsy getting the memories of a rooster and acting like one until he gets his own memory back.

Monkey mistakes Yu Lung for the fearsome Monkey, guardian of Tripitaka, that the bandits have warned him about. These scenes are amusing, with Monkey wanting to fight but Yu Lung doing his best to avoid it, until Yu Lung gives Monkey his memories back by accident.

Once Monkey has his memory back then it's all over bar the inevitable fight with the evil-spirits-of-the-week that were behind it all, since Monkey's magic is easily up to the job of restoring the others' memories.

It's a decent episode rather than an outstanding one, but a welcome return to form after the last few.

The Monkey Challenge: 52 episodes in 52 weeks

For the new year 2011 Duncan and the Monkeys With Badges are going to be watching through all of Monkey at one episode a week, just like the Prisoner Challenge or the I Claudius Challenge or the Blakes 7 Challenge.

I like Monkey too so I will be joining in when I am not having important sleeps.

Everyone knows monkeys love to fight!

Hello, we're monkeys.

We have badges.

We are Monkeys With Badges.

And now we have a great new book.

It is by Mike Loades.

He knows a thing or two about swords.

And swordsmen.

Monkey Magic

Hello, we're monkeys.

We have badges.

We are Monkeys With Badges.

We like Monkey.

Monkey is the best thing ever.

Even better than badges.

King Monkey is good at fighting.

He is the Great Sage, Equal of Heaven.

The only man who may be as good at fighting as Monkey is Mike Loades.