The Signalman (1976)

It is 22 December 1976, and time for another Ghost Story for Christmas.

A railway signalman (Denholm Elliot) is haunted by a ghostly spectre that appears to foreshadow calamity. Over two nights he tells a curious gentleman (Bernard Lloyd) his supernatural tale.

For his sixth annual Christmas ghost film, Lawrence Gordon Clark abandoned the short stories of M.R. James in favour of Charles Dickens. Dickens has written the original story in 1866 following his near-fatal experience in a train crash a year earlier. The change in source material gives The Signalman a very different feel to the earlier films. M.R. James presented horror stories that were quite malevolent and fantastical, whereas here the supernatural elements are ghostly and unsettling but ultimately attempting to achieve some good. This feels like the cosiest and most reassuring of the four Christmas films I have seen thus far, which may go some way to explaining why it is probably the most widely acclaimed film of the set. This feels like a very safe, comfortable BBC short feature.

The Pull List: 7 December 2016, Part 2

When DC announced Tom King was taking over as the writer of Batman I was initially very excited, because through his astonishing work on The Sheriff of Babylon and The Omega Men he had become of the best and most interesting writers the publisher had. My initial reaction to King's Batman, however, was disappointment. It was solid without being exceptional, and I was expecting exceptional. The second story arc, "I Am Suicide", seemed much better than the first, "I Am Gotham", which gave me hope that the A-grade writing that made King's earlier series so amazing was gradually coming back.

With Batman #12 it comes back and then some. The previous issue finished with Catwoman unexpectedly betraying Batman, leaving his plan to kidnap Psycho Pirate from under Bane's nose seemingly in tatters. I had expected to see how Batman got out of this trap, but instead I got something so much better.

This is a very special issue, as Batman fights his way through a series of gorgeous double splash pages on a path from the bottom of Bane's fortress to the top. I usually dislike splash pages, but here they work perfectly because they're covered with the text of a hand-written letter from Bruce Wayne to Selina Kyle. This is an issue that explains Batman, and also the relationship between Batman and Catwoman. Every writer of Batman needs to know what their idea of the character is, and how he works: King's is honestly one of the best I've ever seen. This is one of the single-best comic book issues of the year. (5/5)

Batman #12. DC Comics. Written by Tom King. Art by Mikel Janin and Hugo Petrus. Colours by June Chung.

Under the cut: reviews of Doctor Aphra, Revival, and Superman.

Doomsday (2008)

27 years after Scotland was sealed off from the world due to an uncontrollable outbreak of a deadly virus, that same virus appears in London. As satellite photography appears to indicate that people are still alive north of the border, a military mission is dispatched into Glasgow to investigate the survivors and potentially find a cure. Once in the city they discover a wild, broken-down society of punks, violent murderers and cannibals.

Or business as usual on a Glasgow Saturday night, as the joke probably goes. There's definitely a sly sort of ribbing going on in Doomsday, the second of three Neil Marshall films about people venturing into Scotland and getting violently massacred. Marshall himself is English, but here as well as in Dog Soldiers and Centurion he gets an extraordinary amount of value from sending English characters north of the border to their doom. You would think the Scots would get offended: instead funding body Scottish Screen actually invested funds in Doomsday's production. It's possibly all of those scenes of English people getting beaten by angry Scots.

Schalcken the Painter (1979)

It is 23 December 1979, and time to watch Schalcken the Painter.

In 17th century Leiden the apprentice painter Godfried Schalcken (Jeremy Clyde) falls in love with his master's niece Rose (Cheryl Kennedy). Before he can marry her she is spirited away by the gaunt and mysterious Vanderhausen (Justin Jones), sparking off a mystery involving the supernatural, horrifying apparitions and possibly even Death himself.

Schalcken the Painter is yet another Christmas-time horror film produced by the BBC. In 1979, seeing that the long-running annual series A Ghost Story for Christmas had been cancelled, producer/director Leslie Megahey took the opportunity to provide a replacement. This 70-minute period thriller, which acts as a fine replacement for the cancelled series, created a minor controversy within the BBC at the time. Megahey had recently assumed control of the documentary series Omnibus, and allocated part of its budget to this film on the grounds that - as it focused on the real-life Schalcken as well as his teacher Gerrit Dou - it could tenuously qualify as docudrama. As it is a fictional ghost story, one adapted from a Sheridan Le Fanu short story, it makes for terrible docudrama. As yet another supernatural chiller for the Christmas season, it's rather wonderful.

The Pull List: 7 December 2016, Part 1

Okay, so every 90 years twelve gods are reborn in the bodies of young twentysomethings, who then boast supernatural powers and draw huge crowds of followers before dying after two years. We used to think it was some kind of natural order thing, but it turns out an immortal named Ananke - who ostensibly wakes and guides them - has actually been killing them to avert 'the Great Darkness'. Now one of these young gods, Persephone, has stone-cold murdered Ananke, leaving the future for the surviving gods (down to 10) very much unknown.

It's a nice and ridiculously blunt bit of symbolism to begin this new story arc on New Year's Day. The old reign under Ananke is gone, and quite frankly anything could happen going forwards. That makes it a pretty exciting time to be a Wicked + the Divine (or WicDiv) reader. It's a particularly uncertain future for Laura - now reborn as Persephone. She was our protagonist, but can we even really trust her any more?

Jamie McKelvie's subtle, expressive art is so good at capturing emotion and character. He is one of my all-time favourite comic book artists. Kieron Gillen's script is smart and beautifully paced. The ideas are phenomenal. I found WicDiv was struggling a little about a year ago but this issue feels like a phenomenal return to form. (5/5)

The Wicked + the Divine #24. Image. Written by Kieron Gillen. Art by Jamie McKelvie. Colours by Matthew Wilson.

Under the cut: reviews of Aquaman, The Electric Sublime, and Faith.

Star Trek: Voyager: "Faces"

It is 8 May 1995, and time for another episode of Star Trek: Voyager.

Torres (Roxann Dawson) and Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) are captured by the Vidiians. In an attempt to cure the Phage with Klingon dna, a Vidiian scientist (Brian Markinson) uses advanced technology to split Torres in two - one version fully human, and the other fully Klingon.

Despite some neat ideas around the edges, and a solid guest performance by Brian Markinson, "Faces" never quite escapes its ridiculous and hokey premise. 'B'Elanna Torres gets split into two' is some a-grade sci-fi nonsense, and was probably unsaveable at the conceptual level. The production team, including writers Jonathan Glassner and Kenneth Biller, deserve credit for giving the story their best shot, but I strongly suspect it was not a workable premise with which to begin.

The Ash Tree (1975)

It is 23 December 1975, and time for another annual episode of A Ghost Story for Christmas.

Sir Richard Fell (Edward Petherbridge) inherits the country seat of Castringham, and intends to settle there with his new wife Augusta (Lalla Ward). The house is cursed, however, and the longer Sir Richard stays there the more consumed he becomes with visions of his ancestor Matthew Fell who condemned a woman to death for witchcraft.

Another M.R. James short story gets a Christmas-time short feature, courtesy of director Lawrence Gordon Clark. The film is based on a script by playwright and screenwriter David Rudkin, whose other film and television works include Fahrenheit 451, Artemis 81 and Penda's Fen. While it boasts some nice horror imagery, and a particularly unexpected climax, it is the weakest of the three Ghost Story films I have seen to date.

David Bowie: Blackstar (2016)

Blackstar is David Bowie's 25th studio album, released back on 8 January to widespread acclaim. Two days later, and without warning, David Bowie was dead, succumbing to a liver cancer that he had deliberately kept quiet from the public and the press.

The death of such a hugely talented and influential artist overshadowed his final work. It was impossible for me, at any rate, to listen to Blackstar without dwelling on its creator's passing. David Bowie was and remains one of my all-time favourite performance artists. His music was astonishingly good. His various styles and performing identities were groundbreaking and near-unique. The album and the artist are irrevocably united now in his death.

That is clearly a deliberate choice on Bowie's part. It is typical of an artist of his kind to not only plan his own funeral, but to transform it into an artistic event at the same time. The album was fantastic for two days, and then upon hearing it following Bowie's death the entire work took on a new significance. Lyrics suddenly meant different things. Even the term 'blackstar' refers to a form of cancerous tumour.