The Omega Factor

The Omega Factor was an unusual drama for the BBC: a paranormal thriller produced by BBC Scotland, it sparked a sudden controversy upon release before being essentially buried by the broadcaster for more than two decades. It has only been since a recent DVD release that modern audiences have had the opportunity to discover it.

The series was created by George Gallacio, a former production manager for Doctor Who who had moved to Edinburgh to take up a permanent position there as a staff producer. Gallacio was initially commissioned to produce the second season of The Standard, a 13-part newspaper drama that had been launched in 1978 with great fanfare. With that series facing flagging ratings, however, Gallacio was ordered to abandon pre-production for that show and instead develop a new drama series himself.

Five Films: Michelle Yeoh

This week’s Five Films segment is dedicated to Michelle Yeoh. She was born in Malaysia, raised in Great Britain and then introduced to movie audiences via Hong Kong. She originally trained as a ballerina, but a spinal injury led to her shifting to choreography, then modelling, and finally to acting. She will next be seen playing Aung San Suu Kyi in Luc Besson’s biographical drama The Lady, but she’s got an enormous back catalogue of films that are well worth checking out. Here, below, are my five favourites.

Police Story 3: Supercop (1992)

Yeoh featured in six films before retiring from acting in 1988. It was only after she divorced her husband, Dickson Poon, that she returned to the screen opposite Jackie Chan in Police Story 3. She is extraordinary in this film, going toe-to-toe with Chan in terms of energy, screen presence and ridiculously dangerous stunts. Her final stunt in the film – riding a motorcycle off a ramp and onto the roof of a moving train – was so impressive that it led Chan to add an even more dangerous stunt for himself (hanging off a rope ladder tied to a flying helicopter) to keep his reputation intact as Hong Kong’s most reckless and talented stunt artist.

Arthur of the Britons: "Arthur is Dead" (1972)

Arthur of the Britons was one of those strange TV shows that I saw as a child during the school holidays in the mid-1980s. It was a half-hour British adventure series, and seemed like no other version of the King Arthur legend I had encountered. It seemed rougher, smaller and dirty. Camelot didn’t seem to exist, and Arthur and his knights seemed to live in a wooden fort.

I didn’t realise at the time that the series wasn’t a new one. Arthur of the Britons was produced for two seasons between 1972 and 1973 by HTV, one of Great Britain’s regional television stations. The series was set in the Dark Ages: the Romans had withdrawn from Britain, and Arthur was Celtic tribal leader defending his territory against Saxon invaders. Even 38 years later it feels like a completely fresh take on the Arthurian legend, creating the sort of “the real Arthur” mystique that the 2005 Jerry Bruckheimer film could only dream of. In many ways it foreshadows another HTV production, Robin of Sherwood, which took the well-worn Robin Hood legend and created something new out of it for the 1980s.

 

The Greatest Show Time: Perfect Blue and Paprika

This was originally written and presented as a reading at Aussiecon 4 in September 2010. Writer/director Satoshi Kon had recently died, and I felt like commemorating him in some way.

‘It’s the greatest show time!’ announces a clown as they impossibly squeeze out of a tiny automobile. A circus ring seems like an incongruous place to begin a science fiction film, but before long we are following a middle-aged police officer from circus to corridor to train and beyond, without explanation or logical sense. We are in a dream, and that dreams is being subtly controlled and manipulated by a machine: the DC Mini.

It sounds quite a lot like Christopher Nolan’s 2010 mega-hit Inception, in which surveillance experts use technology to enter other people’s dream-states and steal their ideas. This, however, is Satoshi Kon’s Paprika, an animated film from Japan that pre-dates Nolan’s work by four years and is – arguably – the superior film.

Urine controlled videogames

You can forget all the motion-controlled games being thrown around at the moment, whether it's the Wii, the Xbox 360 Kinect or Playstation Move. Sega are already onto the next big thing: urine!

It sounds like I'm joking, but in four Tokyo arcades this month Sega are trialling a series of urinal-installed videogames. The idea is that as you play them, you will also see digital advertising on the game screen.

Five Films: Mark Hamill

For the second Five Films column, let’s take a look at Mark Hamill. Best known as Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars saga, he’s been appearing in various films and TV productions for over 40 years now. And remember: if you liked Hamill in any films not mentioned below, make sure you speak up in the comments below.

Wizards (1977)

Hamill is an exceptional voice artist, and it was a side to his career that he was developing all the way back here in the 1970s. Hamill plays Sean, the leader of the elves, in this inventive animated fantasy from writer/director Ralph Bakshi. This isn’t my favourite Bakshi film (that would still be The Lord of the Rings), but it’s still highly enjoyable.

Q*Bert (1982)

There is a purity to early videogames that ensures their continued popularity, either on a small-scale level of cult appeal, or with a much larger pop culture cache. These games were programmed on computers that are by today’s standards ridiculously limited, yet the limitations provided a structure within which some of the most enjoyable gaming experiences ever were successfully created.

This isn’t an attempt to claim that all early videogames are enjoyable. Truth be told, a lot of them are dreadful – either dull retreads and ripoffs of other more successful titles, or quite simply straight-out bad games.

When all of the elements are well designed, and one of these early titles has a unique and iconic look, memorable and original gameplay, and challenging and interesting design, then generally that game is going to be remembered and re-played for years to come.

I have a lot of favourites from the early days of videogames: Frogger, Galaga and Ms Pac-Man immediately come to mind. Another favourite is Q*Bert, a strange-looking but wonderfully addictive American arcade game from 1982.

Pale Rider (1985)

This is an old review I wrote back in 2009, but it's a good movie and deserves being talked about again. Hope you enjoy it.

A small community of Californian gold miners find themselves persecuted by a rich local banker with a jealous eye towards their claim. There’s a violent raid one morning. A teenage girl’s pet dog is killed. After burying her pet, the girl prays for God to send a “spirit of vengeance” to avenge her loss and drive away the banker and his men. The next day, a solitary rider arrives in town – a nameless preacher who unites the embattled community and inspires them to fight back.

I have an enormous love for westerns that I don’t often talk about. I love the mystique of this big, dusty, ridiculously fictionalised vision of American history. I think it’s sad that an equivalent bushranger genre didn’t take off here in Australia, because it probably would have been just as fun.

I love grim men in broad-brimmed hats, riding horses and training revolvers on one another. I love – when they’re shot like a western should be – beautiful North American vistas. I’ve never particularly wanted to visit the USA for its people, but I’ve always wanted to visit just to look at the landscape they live on.