Babylon 5: "Day of the Dead"

It's 11 March 1998, and time for more Babylon 5.

Babylon 5 receives a visit from popular comedians Rebo and Zooty (Penn and Teller). The Brakiri temporarily purchase part of the station to allow them to celebrate their mysterious "day of the dead" - a ceremony that leads to unexpected conversations for several of the station's residents.

It's been 57 episodes since anyone other than J. Michael Straczynski wrote a script for Babylon 5 - not since Larry DiTillio wrote "Knives" all the way back in Season 2. The drought is broken by popular novelist and comic book writer Neil Gaiman, who contributes this slightly odd effort about people meeting and speaking with the souls of the dead. It's only partially successful, but does have a lot to recommend and certainly feels like a much more effective script that what Straczynski himself has been providing to Season 5.

Doctor Who: "Victory of the Daleks"

It's 17 April 2010, and time for more Doctor Who.

The Doctor (Matt Smith) is summoned to war-time London by Winston Churchill (Ian McNeice), who presents his latest weapon to fight the Nazi menace: the Daleks. Can the Doctor convince Churchill of the error of his ways and discover the Daleks' true motives before it's too late?

Now where should we begin? Let us not muck about: "Victory of the Daleks" is a dreadful episode of Doctor Who. The basic ideas at its foundation are terrible ones. The execution of those terrible ideas is awful.

It's almost a requirement of a new Doctor to face the Daleks - almost as if they're not fully legitimate until they've defeated the psychotic pepperpots at least once. Patrick Troughton got to debut opposite them in the peerless "The Power of the Daleks". Jon Pertwee got the time-travelling shenanigans of "Day of the Daleks". Even Colin Baker, whose tenure was cursed with poor script writing, managed to get the superbly satirical "Revelation of the Daleks". Poor Matt Smith is saddled with this: Spitfires in space and caricature Prime Ministers.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

I have never been a particularly keen fan of the Mad Max films. It's not that I don't appreciate their quality - it's eminently possible to appreciate the quality of art without actually enjoying it. For whatever reason, and despite being a fan of both action and science fiction, I have never emotionally responded to explosive car chases through deserts with angry men wearing funny leather costumes. Call it a blind spot if you like, or a personal failing. Mad Max has simply never been my cup of tea.

It was quite a surprise to see director/producer George Miller's interminably delayed fourth film Mad Max: Fury Road actually get filmed and make it to cinemas. He had been developing it for so long that it was originally going to star original Max actor Mel Gibson. What was even more surprising was how well received this fourth film was. It was a reasonable commercial hit, but critics went crazy for it. The National Board of Review even named it the best film of 2015. Reliable friends were telling me it was an amazing film, and a cinematic master work. Despite not really caring about the franchise in the slightest, the sheer weight of acclaim made me feel obliged to give it a shot.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: "Clues"

It's 11 February 1991, and time for more Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The Enterprise slips through a small and unstable wormhole, knocking out the entire crew for 30 seconds. As they attempt to continue their mission, small inconsistencies begin to appear. Dr Crusher (Gates McFadden) finds her botanic experiments have grown without explanation. Lieutenant Worf (Michael Dorn) discovers he has a recently broken wrist. There is evidence that someone has tampered with the ship's internal clock. All indications point to Commander Data (Brent Spiner). Has there been an entire day erased from the crew's memory? Why won't he explain what has happened?

How much one appreciates "Clues", a Next Generation episode first broadcast in February 1991, potentially depends upon whether or not one has already seen "Thanks for the Memory", a Red Dwarf episode broadcast all the way back in September 1988. The two episodes share a premise and a narrative gimmick: the crew wake up without any memory of the preceding day, become paranoid and - through their panicked investigations - discover the very good reason why their memories were erased. This isn't a suggestion that one episode plagiarised another, but the similarities are overwhelming. While "Clues" is a solid episode, it simply doesn't do the premise justice to the degree that Red Dwarf managed.

Lock Up (1989)

Frank Leone (Sylvester Stallone) is a convict living out his final six months in a minimum security prison. Without warning he is transported in the middle of the night to the maximum security Gateway Prison, whose sadistic warden Drumgoole (Donald Sutherland) bears a personal grudge against Leone. With Drumgoole hell-bent on breaking Leone's spirit, how long can Leone last before something snaps and he winds up trapped in prison for life?

Fair warning from the outset: Lock Up is a terrible movie. Its storyline is a dreadful pile of obvious clichés, the characters are all stereotypes, and the dialogue is consistently predictable. Furthermore it's awfully unrealistic, with a plot that doesn't bear much scrutiny before it all falls apart.

On the other hand, if you lived through the 1980s there's still something strangely watchable about these old action movies. They're like a warm, reassuring blanket, giving us characters and stories that won't surprise so much as comfort. We know what we're going to get with a film like Lock Up. We can find enjoyment in seeing Sylvester Stallone flex his muscles and be the idealistic hero. Have no doubt: this is a bad film. Don't also doubt that I have an absolute ball watching it.

Doctor Who: "Hell Bent"

Season 9 has been, to my mind, the best season of Doctor Who since it returned to our screens in 2005. The quality of the scripts have been much stronger generally, and certainly more consistent. Peter Capaldi has settled into the title role and given his Doctor new angles and depths. The broad change in structure from self-contained episodes to two-part serials have given each story room to breath, and a very welcome ability to devote several minutes at a time to proper drama and dialogue between characters. There has also been a fair amount of experimentation, including an attempt at a found footage format and last week's solo outing. Basically if you couldn't find something to enjoy in Doctor Who this year, then it's probably time to hang up your scarf and stop watching the show altogether.

Of course all of this new-found quality puts extraordinary pressure on the season finale. Doctor Who also seems to aim for a big, show-stopping final episode of course, whether it's a mass Dalek invasion in "The Parting of the Ways" or the Master taking over the Earth in "The Last of the Time Lords", or even more recently Missy's Cyberman invasion in "Death in Heaven". In many ways this final episode, "Hell Bent", feels like it has higher stakes than most. For one thing it's never felt quite so personal for the Doctor himself.

Tag (2015)

Sion Sono really seems to be out to claim the title of Japan's busiest film director. He kicked off 2015 by directing the made-for-television movie All Esper Dayo! SP, and followed that up with the theatrical releases Shinjuku Swan, Love & Peace, Tag, The Whispering Star and The Virgin Psychics. You didn't misread that: five feature films and a TV movie, all in one year.

So in the middle of that flurry of activity we have Tag, a genre blend of horror, thriller and fantasy. It begins with a schoolgirl named Mitsuko (Reina Triendl) on a bus to summer camp. Within about a minute and a half pretty much everybody around her is dead, and she's running for her life. The film lasts about 85 minutes and, excluding the closing credits, she's pretty much on the run the whole time. To explain the film any further would be to ruin half of the surprise.

The film is an adaptation of Yusuke Yamada's novel Real Onigokko, which has already been adapted into a series of feature films in recent years beginning with 2006's The Chasing World. Sono takes maybe half of the premise of Yamada's novel and uses it as a springboard for his own story. The result is something that echoes the original without actually resembling it very closely at all.

The Pull List: 2 December 2015, Part II

Daredevil has always been a relatively dark character, but in recent years he had seemed to get ridiculously bleak. A series of writers beginning with Brian Michael Bendis appeared to push the character further and further down a hole until he was pretty much the most depressing thing either of the big two superhero publishers were putting out there. That all changed when Mark Waid took over writing the book a few years ago. He made the book brighter and funnier. He kept the darkness around the edges, but it became a much more engaging and entertaining comic. This was emphasised by the wonderful artwork of Paolo Rivera and Chris Samnee. For a good four years or so - it was the single-longest run on the character by any writer - it was one of the best comics out there.

That's an awful lot of pressure for new writer Charles Soule, who takes over writing Daredevil for its latest relaunch - its second in about as many years. Soule is a great writer, and after his exceptional run on She-Hulk I was pretty convinced he was a great person to take over from Waid. For one thing he's a lawyer, which guarantees some excellent material for Daredevil's alter-ego Matt Murdock in the courtroom.

Sadly, and I assume it's by editorial edict, the book has dived headlong back into the dark, dingy style of Daredevil comic. Ron Garney's artwork is grim and gritty, and Matt Milla's moody, almost murky colours drive the tone even harder. It's as if all of the work done by Waid to make Daredevil/Matt a more entertaining character has been abandoned wholesale. There's also a huge jump in story here that I assume will get explained out in future issues. He's back in New York, despite being never allowed to practice law there again. His girlfriend Kirsten McDuffie is nowhere to be seen. He has a sidekick named Blindspot, and his best friend Foggy doesn't want to see him any more. Oh, and nobody knows Matt Murdock is Daredevil any more.

I respect both Soule and Garney's talents enough to give this book another issue, and on its own merits this is reasonably high quality stuff, but really: everything that made Daredevil a must-read for the past four years is gone. (3/5)

Marvel. Written by Charles Soule. Art by Ron Garney. Colours by Matt Milla.

Under the cut: reviews of Batman and Robin Eternal, Doctor Strange and Revival.