The Pull List: 17 December 2014

Since DC relaunched their entire superhero line with the New 52, one of their consistent standouts has been Batman. Scott Snyder has been writing some outstanding storylines, most recently his epic "Zero Year", and Greg Capullo and Danny Miki have been doing career-best work with the art. Now they're three issues into "Endgame", which features the eagerly anticipated return of the Joker.

It's a great take on the character. In his last appearance, "Death of the Family", he was going out of his way to prove how important he was to Batman. Now he seems to be entirely out for revenge. It's a much darker, creepier version of the character than we usually get. In one scene he pays Jim Gordon a visit, and it's pretty much the most unsettling I think the character has ever been.

Capullo and Miki draw him brilliantly as well. His face, famously cut off in Detective Comics #1, is back - although quite how has not yet been explained. His old pre-New 52 look is gone, and he now looks a lot more realistic with a sort of vague 1920s kind of a haircut. The more realistic take is part of what's making him look so disturbing here.

Either in monthly instalments or collected into trades, Batman has been such a standout for the past three years. I really hope the creative stick around, and that "Endgame" doesn't refer to their tenure on this excellent comic. (5/5)

DC Comics. Written by Scott Snyder. Art by Greg Capullo and Danny Miki.

Under the cut: reviews of Batman and Robin, Batman Eternal, Batwoman, Black Widow, Catwoman, Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man, Ms Marvel, Multiversity, The Wicked + the Divine and Wytches.

Doctor Who: "Last Christmas"

In an isolated arctic research station, a team of scientists are under threat from a terrifying alien menace, and only one man can possibly save them - but is that man the Doctor or Father Christmas?

Since it's revival in 2005 Doctor Who has enjoyed an annual Christmas special: usually a little longer than the average episode, a little more light and festive, and more often than not - in fact almost unanimously - nowhere near as good as the regular episodes that come before and after them. I'm not quite sure what it is about these specials that make their writer - either Russell T Davies or Steven Moffat - throw quality to the wind and just chuck up any old silly tosh onto the screen. While some - "The Christmas Invasion", "A Christmas Carol" and "The Time of the Doctor" - were quite entertaining, others - "The Runaway Bride", "Voyage of the Damned", "The Next Doctor", "The End of Time", "The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe" and "The Snowmen" - ranged from the disappointing to the actively unlikeable.

So overall I have fairly low expectations for the Christmas special. It's usually got a relatively famous guest star (in this case Nick Frost) and often a slightly silly premise (in this case Nick Frost playing Santa Claus). It's played in broad strokes and offers a more simple, sentimental story than usual. As a result of these expectations, "Last Christmas" came as quite a surprise.

The Fourth Doctor: 40 years on

On 28 December 1974 BBC1 broadcast the first episode of the Doctor Who serial "Robot", heralding the beginning of a record-breaking seven-year run for Tom Baker in the title role. Today is the 40th anniversary of his tenure as the Doctor, and he remains pretty much the most popular and definitive lead actor in the series' 51-year history.

David Tennant might have given Baker a run for his money, and certainly remains the iconic face of new Doctor Who, but when it comes to representing the franchise as a whole it's never going to be anybody but Tom Baker. Audience reactions to his cameo in last year's 50th anniversary special confirmed that beyond a doubt.

Now "Robot" was actually a fairly ordinary Doctor Who story, and not really one of the classic. In honour of the Fourth Doctor's 40th anniversary I wanted to highlight other stories; seven in fact, one from each of Tom Baker's seven seasons. Are these categorically the best? Who can say? Opinions will differ. All I want to say is that these are seven entertaining, wonderfully indicative examples of his time on the series.

Big Hero 6 (2014)

In the city of San Fransokyo, teenage super-genius Hiro Hamada is invited to apply to an advanced school for robotics - but when tragedy strikes he turns to fighting crime instead, with the assistance of his fellow students and a white inflatable medical robot named Baymax.

The Walt Disney Animation Studio has been on a bit of a roll in recent years with a string of critical and commercial hits including Tangled, Wreck-it Ralph and Frozen. It's pretty easy to assume Big Hero 6 is going to join those films: it's beautifully animated, has immensely appealing characters, and tells a slick, well-paced three-act story in the most deft manner imaginable.

And yet it's very slightly disappointing. It's not the fault of Big Hero 6, its directors Chris Williams (Bolt) and Don Hall (Winnie the Pooh), or the multitude of Disney artists and technicians who made it. It's just that it's the 27th superhero movie of the past five years, and by this stage the tropes and archetypes of the genre are getting pretty god-damned stale.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: "Defiant"

It's 21 November 1994, and time for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Commander William T. Riker (Jonathan Frakes) visits Deep Space Nine, and a somewhat smitten Major Kira offers to give him a tour of the station's facilities. When he stuns her with a phaser and steals the USS Defiant, it become apparent that it isn't Riker at all, but rather his duplicate clone Thomas. As Thomas directs the Defiant towards Cardassian space, Commander Sisko is forced to help Gul Dukat in stopping him.

There's one big hurdle to jump over with "Defiant", and that's Thomas Riker. If you missed that one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation two years earlier that introduced and explained him, then you're possibly going to be scratching your head here. Or rolling your eyes. It's a strange trick to pull: going to all the effort of signing up one of the Next Generation stars weeks before the first TNG movie debuts in theatres, then suddenly revealing that you've brought him back to play an almost identical character of whom you may or may not have heard instead.

Tsuritama: "Goodbye Fishing"

What the hell do you say about the finale of a serialised story? You can't criticise the structure, because all you're generally watching is a climax and a denouement. You can't talk at length about the characterisation, because if the characters aren't working at this stage in the game - episode 12 of 12 - then there's not really much that can be done.

What I can say about this final episode of Tsuritama is that it's a visually brilliant climax, and it's followed by an emotionally satisfying epilogue. There's even a little post-credits 'kicker' that I almost missed, that sits somewhere between being a sweet little hint that life goes on and a hopeful lead-in to a second season that never arrived. This series doesn't need a second season: I liked it a lot in the end, but 12 episodes of fishing for sea bass in Enoshima is probably enough for any series.

Rocky Balboa (2006)

18 years after his retirement from professional boxing, Rocky Balboa continues to live in Philadelphia. He owns a restaurant, Adrian's, named after his dead wife. He is partially estranged from his son Robert, a banker struggling to break out from his famous father's shadow. When a TV sports network presents a computer simulation that shows Rocky beating the current heavyweight champion Mason Dixon, Dixon's management approach Rocky with an offer for an exhibition match against the champion.

Let's not waste time beating around the bush: Rocky Balboa is a great movie sequel, picking up a long-retired franchise and giving it precisely the send-off it needs. It does precisely what good sequels should do. It gives audience more of what entertained them in the first place, but it also gives that audience something they haven't seen before. The latter is achieved almost entirely through the time it took for the film to come out. It was released in 2006, 30 years and one week after the release of the original Rocky. Its title character isn't a 30 year-old boxer any more: he's 60 years old. His wife has died of ovarian cancer, his son doesn't spend as much time with him as he should, and all he's really left with are his memories. He re-lives them every night, going from table to table in his restaurant and recounting his famous title fights against Apollo Creed. When he is offered one final chance to get into the ring, he takes it because he wants to re-live that past and prove to himself that it's still a part of him now. While Rocky was about a man getting a chance after almost allowing his life to slip by, Rocky Balboa is about a man who's had that life, and wants to recapture it one last time.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

In The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (released with the unnecessary subtitle Rise of Electro in Australia) Peter Parker continues to fight crime while vacillating over his relationship with Gwen Stacy and reuniting with his childhood friend Harry Osborn. When an industrial accident transforms the shy engineer Max Dillon into the super-powered villain Electro, Parker has to stop him before he destroys all of New York.

And so on and so forth. This is actually a difficult movie to describe in a sentence, because the majority of its 142 minutes are devoted to cross-film story arcs and subplots, without a lot of space left over from a strong narrative through-line. The film has a beginning, a middle and an end, but they're all just a little too unfocused and flabby. The story appears to straddle across the film rather than fill it: it picks up on a string of plot threads from 2012's The Amazing Spider-Man and finishes with a bunch of stuff left over for The Amazing Spider-Man 3 in... well, we'll get to that. In between there's a movie that's amiable, and often enjoyable, but far too weakly put together to fully recommend.