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Alien: Earth - Season 1

2120. Five powerful corporations control the Solar system, including Prodigy. After a decades-long mission to collect alien specimens from various planets, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation ship Maginot crash-lands in Prodigy's city of New Siam, releasing a number of hostile creatures. Prodigy operatives are dispatched to contain the site and recapture the aliens. Leading the way are five human-synthetic hybrids, the minds of dying children moved into new synthetic bodies. The group is at first happy to take orders from Prodigy's obnoxious CEO, Boy Kavalier, but soon develop their own agendas.

The Alien franchise has been thoroughly explored previously through movies, video games, comics, novels and roleplaying games. It's actually mildly surprising that the franchise has taken this long to get onto television, despite a realistic depiction of the titular creature requiring a significant effects budget. It also required a strong showrunner, to both find a story worthwhile of the prolonged runtime of a TV show - which may not be compatible with the franchise's horror roots, which relies more on short, sharp shocks - and to stand up to the scrutiny of the infamously irascible Ridley Scott. Noah Hawley, a tremendously well-regarded writer and director for his work on Fargo and Legion, is precisely the sort of writer you need in that role.

So is the show any good? Well, for the last few weeks I've been suffering from a shoulder complaint, which is quite irritating, and I cannot rule out it resulting from whiplash from trying to follow Alien: Earth's sometimes bewildering lurches in quality, tone and atmosphere from episode to episode and sometimes scene to scene.

The first half of the season is, by far, the stronger, although that lurching in quality is still present. The Maginot's budget-straining crash into a city and the resulting cleanup operation results in a ton of impressive vfx, xenomorph-unleashing carnage, burning tension and corporate intrigue. The cast immediately impresses, especially Babou Ceesay as a Weyland-Yutani cyborg agent and reliable old hands like Adrian Edmondson and a magnificent-as-always Timothy Olyphant. Sydney Chandler is suitably weird and offbeat as lead hybrid Wendy, whilst Samuel Blenkin is supremely punchable as the ridiculously smug Boy Kavalier. The cast is good, the action is solid, the vfx impressive, and the thematic element of the synths being "lost boys" a la Peter Pan is intriguing. The show makes good use of the xenomorph, showing it early and letting it rip, but also manages the impossible by having it be just one of a bestiary of horrifying creatures which are all different types of body horror.

The first half of the season sees the crash, the aftermath, the initial exploration of the aliens and concludes with a flashback episode set on the Maginot earlier in its mission which works as a great, 50-minute version of a full-blown Alien movie, complete with its own cast and storyline.

After this, the show loses focus. The thematic exploration of the hybrids becomes over-laboured and the Peter Pan analogy becomes less interesting the more it's overtly spelled out to the viewer. Like recent Russell T. Davies, Noah Hawley (or, given their mutual element in common, Disney) evidently decided that text is better than subtext, and why use a scalpel when you can use a chainsaw? Attached to a 5-gigaton nuclear bomb? There's also a degree of plotting which requires characters to hold ever-increasing sizes of idiot balls, and some decision-making by professionals that will have even the scientists in Prometheus saying, "hold up, that's a bit dumb, don't do that!" There's an element of this early on, but in the latter half of the series it gets pretty ridiculous, probably reaching its apex when a character only just marginally avoids death from a hostile alien creature that is still at large in the same room but takes a time-out from fighting it to offer some comfort to his upset sister. It's very nice that the alien showed empathy in that situation.

The show also struggles with the exact same problem that the franchise has struggled with since at least Alien 3: we know the drill of facehugger-chestburster-xenomorph and that ceased being scary decades ago, and has risked becoming rote. Ridley Scott's experiments with making Alien universe movies which are less reliant on the predictable xeno had a mixed reception, to say the least, and Alien: Earth makes the choice to lead with the creature, have it benched for most of the mid-part of the season, and bring it back at the end in a, if not friendly, than at least neutral role. The paradox of the franchise is that everyone knows what the xenomorph is about so it's become a bit predictable, but if you don't have the xenomorph in its traditional adversarial role in the story, is it even an Alien movie to start with? Sans the xeno, I'm not sure the Alien universe is actually that original or intriguing. We could also comment on the increasingly implausible way the story fits into the Alien canon, but that would probably give everyone involved an aneurysm so best not. Suffice to say that it's increasingly implausible the xenos could be such a mystery in Aliens given that hundreds of people saw them running around causing chaos on Earth sixty years earlier.

The baggy and bizarre second half of the season is probably single-handedly (tentaclely?) saved by Alien: Earth's breakout star: Ocellus, the maths-loving eyeball monster. Ocellus' trick is that it pops out the eyeball of a target creature, sticks itself in and then steers the creature around, after a comical period trying to work out how the creature walks. It's also clearly far smarter than any other alien (possibly any other character) on the show, although where exactly the brain is it would need to do this is a question probably best left for the "oh no I've gone crosseyed," category. Whenever the show flags, Ocellus usually steals a scene with its exploits, which veer between comedy and horror. Also, given the absolute brain-dead stupidity of most of the characters (especially by the end), you kind of find yourself rooting for Ocellus to pop a few more eyeballs than it manages before the end of the season.

There's much to enjoy about Alien: Earth (***½), with some great performances, ideas, creature design, vfx and some awesome sets. However, it is overlong and flabby: eight episodes is too much to sustain the horror and tension, and you have easily compressed these events into six episodes without losing too much of value. It does over-belabour its thematic ideas, and its use of the titular xenomorph is certainly...interesting. Probably the biggest problem is the cliffhanger ending, the prospect of a second season (which can only be reacted to with mixed feelings) and the increasing likelihood of a major arse-pull to explain how none of the events of this show are known in later parts of the franchise. Still, if they rename Season 2 Alien: Ocellus, I'd be more firmly on-board (and Ocellus single-handedly raises the review score by half a star).

The first season of Alien: Earth is available to view on Disney+ in much of the world and Hulu in the USA.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

RUMOUR: One missing DOCTOR WHO episode has been located

The saga of Doctor Who's missing episodes has seen unexpected developments this week, with the Film is Fabulous charity confirming it is pursuing multiple leads. They believe the recovery of one episode in the near future is possible, and "several more" are known to exist in private collections (previous rumours have suggested that may only be two).

As previously noted, Doctor Who has a frustrating problem for people wanting to sit down and watch the entire franchise from start to finish: you can't. Ninety-seven episodes from the show's first six seasons, spanning the first two Doctors (William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton), are missing. These are episodes that were junked by the BBC to free up space in their archives, in the mistaken belief nobody would be interested in watching them after their initial release. The practice halted in 1978, and in 1983 the show started being released on VHS video. The series has subsequently been released on DVD and Blu-Ray, as well as on streaming, with the missing episodes variously filed in with animation, audio tracks (the audio for all episodes has survived) and telesnaps.

Almost immediately upon halting the destruction of episodes, the BBC launched a campaign to recover the missing episodes. In some cases, episodes had been taken home by employees, or found their way into collectors' hands. In many cases, the BBC was able to recover episodes from foreign sales, with numerous episodes located in African film archives, in some cases decades later. Since 1978, fifty-five missing episodes have been recovered in this way, with the last find being in 2013 when the recovery of nine episodes from a Nigerian TV station was confirmed. Two episodes had just been recovered in 2011, sparking hopes of momentum building for more episodes to be recovered, but in the twelve years since 2013, there have been no further episodes found, the longest "barren stretch" since the search began.

However, whilst no further episodes have been returned to the BBC, several initiatives have reportedly located the existence of missing episodes in private hands, with one Troughton and one Hartnell episode currently missing believed to have been identified. Why they have not been returned is unclear, with some of the collectors believed to have been wary of possible legal action (despite the BBC having never pursued legal action against anyone who has returned a missing episode). More likely are concerns over publicity: almost everyone who has returned a missing episode has been eventually identified by fans, leading to concerns over harassment.

One collector has passed away recently, and Film is Fabulous is pursuing ways of acquiring the collection, which is believed to include one missing Doctor Who episode. Whether this is one of the previously-reported two episodes is unknown. Negotiations and legal avenues are infamously long-winded processes which may take many months to several years to resolve. So whilst the potential recovery of an episode is good news, it will not be released tomorrow, and may not see the light for several more years. Of course, ninety-six episodes would still be missing after that, so whilst the recovery of one episode is a great thing (especially if it completes a serial, or makes completing a serial in another way more viable), it will not be a huge game-changer.

Still, after such a long, barren period, even the chance of finding 1-3 episodes is a good thing.

The episodes still missing are as follows:

Season 1

• Marco Polo - all 7 episodes
• The Reign of Terror - episodes 4 and 5

Season 2

• The Crusade -  episodes 2 and 4

Season 3

• Galaxy Four - episodes 1, 2 and 4
• Mission to the Unknown - 1 episode (the entire serial)
• The Myth Makers - all 4 episodes
• The Daleks' Master Plan - episodes 1, 3-4, 6-9, 11-12
• The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve - all 4 episodes
• The Celestial Toymaker - episodes 1, 2 and 3
• The Savages - all 4 episodes

Season 4

• The Smugglers - all 4 episodes
• The Tenth Planet - episode 4
• The Power of the Daleks - all 6 episodes
• The Highlanders - all 4 episodes
• The Underwater Menace - episodes 1 and 4
• The Moonbase - episodes 1 and 3
• The Macra Terror - all 4 episodes
• The Faceless Ones - episodes 2, 4-6
• The Evil of the Daleks - episodes 1, 3-7

Season 5

• The Abominable Snowmen - episodes 1, 3-6
• The Ice Warriors - episodes 2 and 3
• The Web of Fear - episode 3
• Fury from the Deep - all 6 episodes
• The Wheel in Space - episodes 1-2, 4-5

Season 6

• The Invasion - episodes 1 and 4
• The Space Pirates - episodes 1, 3-6

Particularly notable about any returns is the impact on the release of Doctor Who on Blu-Ray. So far, only Season 2 has been released from the early years, with The Crusade completed through animation. The more episodes that are recovered, the more likely it is those seasons will be bumped up the release order.

Doctor Who: Season 20

Several of the Doctor's greatest enemies are plotting his downfall. An enemy agent is on board the TARDIS. And, on Gallifrey, a shadowy figure is manipulating the present and past of the Doctor to restart an ancient, deadly game.

In 1983, Doctor Who turned twenty years old. As a decade earlier, it was decided to celebrate the anniversary with a big story which would reunite all the extant versions of the Doctor along with multiple companions and enemies. Unlike Season 10, which led with the big special, Season 20 would end with it, and each story of the season would feature a returning enemy as part of the celebrations.

This was a better idea in practice than reality. Once again, the show was stymied by industrial action and the final story, a big Dalek epic, had to be abandoned, fortuitously before any filming had started this time. That story was finally remounted the following season as Resurrection of the Daleks. The decisions on which enemies to feature was also a bit odd. The Cybermen had only just had a big outing in Earthshock, so it was decided to include them in the special and not in their own, dedicated story. The decision to bring back Omega from The Three Doctors, made sense even if he was a one-off villain from ten years earlier, but his place in the mythology of the Time Lords was notable and it was a nice call-back to the previous special. Snakedance being a direct sequel to the previous season's Kinda, one of the most popular stories of that year, also made sense from a recency point of view. And bringing back the Master was also a no-brainer, despite his appearances becoming so common they were verging on overuse. But the decision to focus most of the anniversary season posed by the threat of the Black Guardian was an odd one: the Black Guardian had appeared for less than five minutes three years earlier, and the average viewer wouldn't have a clue who he was. It was a solid concept in itself, just an odd one to pursue given the absence of, say, the Sontarans, Ice Warriors or Daleks (however inadvertently in the latter case).

The season begins with Arc of Infinity, in which the Time Lord genius engineer Omega, trapped in an antimatter universe for a vast span of time, once again attempts to escape. This time his machinations revolve around possessing the Doctor, who thwarted his return last time, and manipulating events on Gallifrey to his design via a mystery agent. Omega has managed to gain a foothold in this universe via - somewhat randomly - a basement in Amsterdam, where, in (probably) the biggest single coincidence in Doctor Who history, the Doctor's former companion Tegan is visiting.

The resulting story is entertaining nonsense. The Doctor plays detective on Gallifrey, hunting down Omega's agent whilst being hindered by officious security officer Maxil, played with amusing irony by future Sixth Doctor Colin Baker. The boisterous and funny Baker made such an impression on the cast and crew that he was invited to a crewmember's wedding, where he charmed producer John Nathan-Turner so much that he became frontrunner to succeed Davison. Unfortunately, Maxil is a bit of a one-note character, despite Baker's obvious screen presence. A second storyline follows Tegan looking into events on Earth, which shows her displaying investigative skills she gained on her prior adventures, but she gets a bit sidetracked once she reunites with the Doctor and Nyssa. This is also a great story for Sarah Sutton, as Nyssa fits right in on Gallifrey, immediately charming a Time Lord technician into working for her and helping exonerate the Doctor, and making an impassioned plea to the Time Lord High Council about the nobility of the Doctor's adventures.

The location filming in Amsterdam is also very nice, though even selective camera angles and quick cuts can't quite disguise the number of confused Dutch people at seeing a guy covered in Rice Krispies and green slime running through their city. But I supposed if you did see that in reality you'd stand and gawp, so it's not too out of place. Overall the story is cheesy fun, maybe a bit underwhelming in its execution with some very perfunctory wrap-up (Tegan rejoining the TARDIS crew, or showing annoyance for being left behind at the end of last season, is swept under the rug).

Snakedance revisits the events of Kinda, this time with the Doctor and company travelling to the Mara's homeworld where, perhaps inevitably, it targets Tegan for possession once again. Kinda was an exercise in bizarre surreality and pulled it off, but Snakedance is written and played much straighter, to its detriment. Without the sub-Lynchian tone of Kinda, the story ends up feeling rather standard, but well-executed. It is helped by a solid guest performance in a very early role by Martin Clunes, who would become a British comedy superstar in the 1990s and 2000s, with most of the rest of the cast putting in good performances. The worldbuilding is quite good and Janet Fielding puts in one of her best performances as Tegan struggling against the Mara. Along with Arc, the story exemplifies the strengths of a three-person TARDIS crew, allowing them to take part in more of the action without overwhelming the story with too many characters. It shows that it would be insanity to return to having four characters in the TARDIS.

Mawdryn Undead, obviously, returns the show to having four characters in the TARDIS (long-suffering sigh). The new addition is Mark Strickson as Turlough, a student at a boarding school who is recruited by the evil Black Guardian (a magisterial Valentine Dyall) to destroy the Doctor by infiltrating the TARDIS as his new companion. A retired Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart is working at the school as a maths teacher, which is a bit odd (from the POV of the Brigadier having no previous affinity for maths or indeed being remotely old enough to retire), though it makes more sense when you know the role was originally intended for a returning Ian Chesterton, one of the First Doctor's original companions, but had to be changed due to actor William Russell's availability. The story kicks into gear when it turns out that it's unfolding in two distinct timelines, in 1977 and 1983, with the two times connected by a mysterious alien spacecraft. The story builds up very nicely and Nicholas Courtney, returning for the first time since Season 13's Terror of the Zygons, gives a splendid performance as usual. Classic Doctor Who rarely dealt into the mechanics of time travel within the plot of a single story (Day of the Daleks is another notable exception) and this story is welcome for doing so, and doing so intelligently. It's only really let down by the bonkers subplot of Mawdryn (David Collings) impersonating the Doctor, badly, and Strickson's somewhat variable performance as Turlough (which becomes a recurring problem).

Terminus continues the mini-arc with Turlough now embedded in the TARDIS as the Black Guardian's agent, a potentially fascinating idea the show proceeds to do nothing with. The story itself takes place on a space hospital in the distant future where the terminally ill are treated (badly), but the hospital's location at the centre of the universe threatens to destroy all of creation (and may have been responsible for the Big Bang, one of Doctor Who's barmier notions). It's again a pretty standard story with the requisite running around corridors, with many of the more fascinating implications, such as the morality of treating the terminal ill and so forth, under-explored. The story does try to do more with Nyssa, who perfunctorily departs at the end of the story for no apparent reason, which at least helps reduce the TARDIS crew again, but Turlough for Nyssa is a poor trade. Strickson continues his unpredictable performance as Turlough, being convincingly manipulative in some scenes but hammily over-acts in others. It feels like somewhere between Waterhouse's inert Adric and Strickson's over-excitable Turlough, we've got the makings of one interesting companion. As it stands, the story is a bit forgettable, regrettably so considering it comes from Stephen Gallagher, one of the most striking British TV writers of the 1980s and 1990s who has previously given us the lyrically bizarre Warriors' Gate.

The trilogy rounds off with Enlightenment, in which the Doctor and his companions are drawn into a battle between the Black and White Guardians involving the enigmatic Eternals and their desire for entertainment. The visual imagery of a great space race between tall sailing ships is excellent and the guest cast is outstanding, with Lynda Baron, Keith Barron and Chis Brown  all doing great work. The showdown between the Guardians is a bit underwhelming, and you never think for a second that Turlough is going to finally betray the Doctor, but it's mostly entertaining stuff, with some interesting subtexts in the relationship between Tegan and the parasitical Marriner, a relationship which is disturbing but Tegan can also manipulate it for her own ends. Fortunately, Turlough is a lot less histrionic after this point as well.

Limply hanging on to the end of the season is The King's Demons, which sees the TARDIS crew arrive in 1215 England and become embroiled in what appear to be political machinations revolving around King John and Magna Carta. The potential suspense here is undercut by the Master, with Anthony Ainley not only chewing the scenery but fully digesting it "in disguise" as the French Gilles Estram. Estram is so blatantly Ainley that you wonder if it is was deliberate, but the cliffhanger revolving around the "shock" of Estram being revealed suggests otherwise. The short length of the story (just two episodes) keeps things ticking along and there's some nice performances, particularly the splendid Gerald Flood as King John, as well as stalwarts of British acting Frank Windsor and Isla Blair. It all feels a bit slight though, and the addition of the robotic Kamelion to the TARDIS crew only to not appear again until his final appearance (due to problems getting the robot prop to work) verges on the pointless.

Then, of course, we have The Five Doctors. Nobody in their right mind is ever going to call The Five Doctors a highlight of drama, tension and fine acting, but what it is, is supreme entertainment. This a romp, which returning Doctor Who veteran Terrance Dicks fully, 100% understands. The goal is to get five Doctors, five companions and as many classic villains as possible into a 90 minute TV movie and have it all make sense, and Dicks achieves that. He even finds time for five more companion cameos, the return of the High Council of Time Lords and a revisit of UNIT Headquarters from The Three Doctors (as a nod to the previous anniversary special, which he script edited).

His job is made easier because Tom Baker declined to return, so only appears in stock footage from the incomplete story Shada, along with Lalla Ward's Romana. This allows the story to focus on the first three Doctors, with Richard Hurndall doing an absolutely outstanding job standing in for William Hartnell (who had sadly passed away in 1975). Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee are as absolutely splendid as you would expect, and it's always a pleasure to see Elisabeth Sladen and Nicholas Courtney return as Sarah Jane Smith and the Brigadier. It's particularly nice to see Carole Ann Ford back as the Doctor's granddaughter Susan, her first appearance in nineteen years (since her departure in Season 2's The Dalek Invasion of Earth) and her last appearance for another forty-two years (until Modern Who's Series 14, where she only appears fleetingly in visions), although Susan spends most of the back half of the story not doing much in the TARDIS.

An undervalued aspect of the story is Anthony Ainley's turn as the Master. Having just turned in his hammiest performance in the role to date in The King's Demons, he gives possibly his finest genuine, dramatic performance here. The conceit is that the Master is for once not masterminding the evil plot, and is instead sent by the Time Lords into the Death Zone on Gallifrey to rescue the Doctor. Fairly obviously, the Doctor doesn't believe for a nanosecond that he's genuine, and the various Doctors varyingly humiliate, ignore and disparage him to the point that when he inevitable snaps and decides to turn on the Doctor, you can half-sympathise with him. Ainley's indignant frustration is outrageously entertaining.

You also can't fault the production values, which are pretty strong by 1980s Doctor Who standards, with the Raston Warrior Robot's massacre of the Cybermen being a particularly outstanding sequence. There's a lot of great set design, one of the show's best musical scores, and the production team take advantage of the budget to deliver an urgently-needed revamp of the TARDIS set and main console, which starts to look even vaguely futuristic (BBC Micro monitors excepted).

The story is even available in three different versions: the original 1983 cut, the 1995 re-edit with longer scenes and (mostly poorly) redone vfx, and the 2023 "special edition" which restores scenes to the 1983 cut and tries to subtly improve the vfx rather than completely redo them. Some of the results in the latter are quite spectacular which, alongside the HD rescans of the location film footage and the well-done upscales of the studio footage, provides us with a more definitive version of the story.

The Five Doctors - one of Russell T. Davies' favourite stories - is not high art but it is great entertainment, the closest Classic Who ever gets to a stout-and-Walkers episode (the UK equivalent of beer-and-pretzels).

Season 20 as a whole (***½) is perhaps a tad underwhelming, but there are no terribly unwatchable stories here, and the ideas in Arc of Infinity, Snakedance, Mawdryn Undead and Enlightenment are excellent, even if the execution can be variable. The Five Doctors really elevates the rest of the season, and is great fun. 

The season is available on DVD and Blu-Ray (with some very high-quality extras and documentaries), as well as streaming on BBC iPlayer in the UK and various services overseas.

• 20.1 - 20.4: Arc of Infinity (***½)
• 20.5 - 20.8: Snakedance (***½)
• 20.9 - 20.12: Mawdryn Undead (****)
• 20.13 - 20.16: Terminus (***)
• 20.17 - 20.20: Enlightenment (***½)
• 20.21 - 20.22: The King's Demons (***)
• Anniversary Special: The Five Doctors (*****)

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YELLOWJACKETS to end with its fourth season

Showtime's Yellowjackets will end after its upcoming fourth season.

Yellowjackets is noted for its split timeline, with the action unfolding simultaneously in two time periods. In 1996 an aircraft carrying a girls' high school football team crashes in a remote part of the Canadian Rockies. Although there are twenty survivors, it's a considerably smaller group who are rescued nineteen months later, leading to widespread suspicions over what they had to do in order to survive. In 2021, the now-adult survivors are reunited when they are targeted by someone threatening to expose their secrets.

The show stars Melanie Lynskey, Tawny Cypress, Christina Ricci, Sophie Nélisse, Samantha Hanratty, Sophie Thatcher, Liv Hewson, Steven Krueger, Warren Kole, Courtney Eaton, Sarah Desjardins, Kevin Alves, Elijah Wood and Hilary Swank, with Lauren Ambrose, Simone Kessell and Juliette Lewis having played major roles in earlier seasons.

The show has only aired three seasons - in 2021, 2023 and 2025 - but had a protracted development process, with its pilot episode written in 2017, Showtime picking it up in 2018 with casting commencing later that year, a pilot shot in 2019, and then full production delayed due to the COVID pandemic. Production of the third season was severely impacted by strike action. Creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson had originally mooted a five-season run for the show, but had been wavering on that after it became clear they were struggling to get the seasons out in a reasonable timeframe, with their younger actors aging in the meantime (many of the cast playing teenagers are now in their early thirties). Fan complaints about the drawn-out pacing of the show (particularly in the adult timeline) may have also played a factor here, along with the growing cost of its star-studded cast in the adult timeline.

Showtime renewed the show for a fourth season back in May but, surprisingly, the team has not written scripts yet, suggesting that they were negotiating back and forth on whether to end the show or not. Yellowjackets has been a rare ratings hit for the cable channel but the complexities of shooting it (including depicting winter in the Canadian Rockies, which they can't shoot on location due to it being too dangerous) have been considerable and possibly unsustainable, along with its starry cast being in demand for other projects.

Yellowjackets Season 4 will enter production in early 2026 for airing late that year or in early 2027. Showtime is exploring new projects the creators, although it's unclear if they are considering spinoffs from the show.

Trailer for A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS released

HBO has released the first full-length trailer for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, its TV adaptation of George R.R. Martin's Dunk & Egg series of novellas, set in the same world as Game of Thrones.

Set 89 years before the events of Game of Thrones, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms tells the story of Ser Duncan the Tall, a penniless "hedge knight" who has to make his way in the world without riches. His fortunes change when he meets Egg, a young boy willing to serve as his squire for the great tourney at Ashford Meadow, where hedge knights mingle with the great and good of the land.

There are three novellas in the series, comprising The Hedge Knight (1998), The Sworn Sword (2002) and The Mystery Knight (2010), all assembled in the collection A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (2015). Martin has a partially-completed fourth novella in the series, The She-Wolves (working title only) and a planned fifth, The Village Hero, although their current status is unknown. He has mooted writing further novellas in the series, taking the story of Dunk and Egg up through their whole lives.

At the moment HBO are planning to only adapt the existing stories and releasing them between seasons of their other Westeros-set show, House of the Dragon, which is due to air its third season later in 2026.

Season 1 of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms begins airing on 18 January 2026.

Doctor Who: Season 19

The newly-regenerated Doctor has saved the universe from total collapse, but is still being hunted by his old enemy, the Master. Evading his old foe, the Doctor tries to take his companion Tegan home, but is constantly drawn off-course by various threats...and the return in force of the Cybermen.

When John Nathan-Turner became head producer and effective showrunner (using the modern parlance) of Doctor Who in 1981, he wanted a clean slate. There was a new title sequence, new music and new visual effects techniques, but his plan for a new cast had to involve delicately maneuvering the immensely popular Tom Baker off the show and then gradually transforming the entire regular cast over the course of the season. Romana and K9 were out, and new companions Adric, Nyssa and Tegan were in.

Season 19 opens with this new TARDIS crew in place, but also some uncertainty about how to proceed with the new Doctor. At 29, Peter Davison was the youngest Doctor so far and he found portraying the character a daunting prospect after Baker's iconic, sonorous approach over seven full seasons. But with a new, younger, fresher feel to the cast and the writing team, it wasn't long before Davison found his feet. 

Things kick off with Castrovalva, an effective sequel to Logopolis with the same writer (exiting script editor Chris Bidmead). The Fifth Doctor has arrived confused and bemused, and needs the sanctuary of the Zero Room on the TARDIS to heal properly. When the Zero Room is destroyed in a mishap, he decides to seek refuge on the planet Castrovalva, famed for its recuperative properties. But the Doctor is falling into an elaborate sequence of traps prepared by the Master, who has captured Adric and is using his mathematical abilities against his friends.

Castrovalva is almost as weird a story as Logopolis, but not as accomplished, with the epic, universe-spanning tone of the latter replaced by...well, it's hard to describe. Having helped stop the TARDIS fly into the Big Bang and total annihilation, Tegan and Nyssa spend at least a solid episode carrying the Doctor around a forest in a box, and then the team spends a bunch of time inside an M.C. Escher print whilst Anthony Ainley holds Adric prisoner and terrorises him into doing his bidding, mostly by the terrifying over-use of a hydraulic lift. It's all a bit weird, but Peter Davison makes for an engaging new Doctor, especially his charming impersonations of his predecessors William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker as his brain settles down from regenerative stress. The story goes for a bit of a wander around Episode 3 as people run around waiting for the plot to end (not an uncommon problem for 4-parters), but it's reasonably entertaining.

Four to Doomsday has a bit of a rough reputation, though this mainly stems, I think, from the pretty nonsensical characterisation of Adric throughout the story. The rest of the cast get off pretty well, and the story benefits from the civility of the bad guys, with Stratford Johns giving a magisterial performance as the villainous Monarch despite a limiting makeup job. The aliens planning to invade Earth are incredibly well-mannered and polite, constantly (and apparently genuinely) reluctant to kill the Doctor and his companions as that would be terribly rude, which is at least something of a change of pace. There are some iffy effects, but clever use of the unadorned studio walls as the interior of the spaceship, and some nice additional guest turns, particularly an under-used Burt Kwouk (Cato from the Pink Panther movies). It's not often that Doctor Who gets a well-known movie actor as a guest star, and it's clear they weren't sure what to do with him when they got him, so he gets very little screen-time or action, but impresses whenever he does show up.

Kinda is one of the Fifth Doctor's best-known stories, mainly for its unusual script and atmosphere. It recalls the preceding season's Warriors' Gate in its use of surrealist imagery, but Kinda plays its script much straighter. A very standard Doctor Who premise - an Earth scientific team on a primitive planet run afoul of the natives and a powerful alien entity known as the Mara - is played with unusual intensity and thoughtfulness, with exemplary worldbuilding and a strong performance by Janet Fielding as Tegan is taken over by the Mara and spends most of the first two episodes battling the creature in her own mind (including some splendid split-screen work as Tegan has to work with an identical copy of herself). Simon Rouse also gives an intense performance as a man falling into the grip of a total mental breakdown, and Nerys Hughes, better-known at the time for her comedic performances, is also very good.

A very unique-feeling story is unfortunately a little undercut by the writers once again not giving Adric consistent characterisation, and by not having Nyssa in the script at all (resulting in her spending the whole story comatose on the TARDIS, which may redefine the meaning of "cop-out"). Also, Tegan being taken over by the Mara is a Big Deal, but after two full episodes of fighting the creature in her mind, Tegan spends about ninety seconds actually possessed by the creature, which is an odd choice. Still, left-field Doctor Who can work very well, and this is mostly a success.

The Visitation is much more standard meat-and-potatoes Doctor Who and very splendid for it. Team TARDIS arrive near London in 1666 to find the country in the grip of plague, with the alien Terileptils and their impressively blinged-out killer robot taking advantage of the chaos to their own ends. The crew team up with "gentleman of the road" Richard Mace to halt the aliens. This story is thunderously enjoyable with almost every Doctor Who trope executed with enthusiastic aplomb, and Michael Robbins' performance as Mace often verges on the scene-stealing. Even the alien makeup is unusually decent, with the Terileptils being the first Doctor Who monsters to get animatronic support. Coupled with Michael Melia's solid performance as the chief alien, this results in a highly solid slice of Doctor Who, only let down again by some iffy effects and most of the various villagers being non-entities as characters.

Black Orchid has an interesting place in Doctor Who history. It's the first purely period piece, with no science fiction elements bar the TARDIS crew, since Season 4's The Highlanders, which aired sixteen years earlier. It's also the last pure period piece ever. Every episode of Doctor Who to air after this one always has some extra science fictional element in the story or characters. The lack of an SF element makes the story more interesting: Something is Up, but we know it can't be an alien or a monster responsible.

Unfortunately, the story suffers from pacing. As the first two-part story since The Sontaran Experiment in Season 12, which also had big pacing problems, Black Orchid is a bit all over the place. We get the Doctor and his crew arriving in 1925 England, befriending the local gentry (thanks to the Doctor's outstanding cricket skills) and attending a party with the gag that Nyssa looks exactly like one of the partygoers, Ann, leading to them wearing identical costumes to confuse people. We then get an inevitable murder and the Doctor playing detective. A reasonable setup is let down by the fact that the Doctor spends a chunk of the story as the prime suspect for the murder, and then there isn't much investigating to be done as the murderer reveals himself. The story also has a very weird ending where the murderer is dealt with, but the people who enabled his crimes are not, and the deaths of at least two innocent people are not really followed up on.

Against that, the lowered stakes make for a more enjoyable story, and the characters for once get to dress up in new clothes (Nathan-Turner's determination that the entire crew should all have fixed costumes, not just the Doctor, is a clear bad decision, making things feel very flat visually) and have more fun. Even Adric is more bearable this story. It also doesn't outstay its welcome, even if it feels like it was written more with a four-part structure in mind. Inoffensive.

Then we get to the season highlight: Earthshock. Clearly the most expensive story of the season, it's also, easily, the most pure Doctor Who Big Action Movie type of story they've ever attempted to this point. The Doctor arrives on Earth in the year 2526 to find a platoon of space marines being attacked by hostile robots in deep subterranean caves. After the Doctor helps eliminate the robots, he traces the signal controlling them to a freighter in deep space, which is acting as an unwitting Trojan Horse to deliver a massive army of Cybermen to Earth. These Cybermen are, compared to their forebears, sleek, imposing and formidable.

The result feels like Aliens, as a pure action piece with everyone (even Tegan, Nyssa and the Doctor, though the latter only in extreme duress) grabbing guns to blow away Cybermen with wild abandon and the Cybermen doing the same to the unusually large supporting cast. There's something of a guilty pleasure to be had here as for once the Doctor's normally peaceful approach has little chance of success, so effectively a military operation against the Cybermen is the order of the day. The guest cast is outstanding, especially James Warwick, Clare Clifford, Alec Sabin and June Bland, and the regular cast all get a fair bit to do. This is also, easily, Adric's best story as he first jousts with the Doctor about whether he should go home to E-Space or not, then saves the day in a battle with the robots and then proves instrumental in events on the freighter. Matthew Waterhouse is at his most likeable here. Nyssa gets short shrift in the second half of the story as she observes events from the TARDIS, but has some good moments in the first half. A little bit incongruous is Beryl Reid's performance as a hard-bitten freighter captain, but you can't deny she doesn't give it everything she's got. 

Of course, Earthshock gets that absolute shot in the arm from its hugely unexpected (at the time) ending, which is a total cold shower to every expectation viewers might have developed about Doctor Who to this point. With its thunderous pace, mostly solid action sequences, impressively-designed new Cybermen, shock ending and superb supporting cast, this is a great story only let down by some pretty odd plot holes (which get bigger the more you think about them) and the Cybermen being more emotional than in previous appearances ("THIS IS EXCELLENT NEWS!" - the Cyber Leader about absolutely anything), which tends to dent their terrifying visages.

Things are rounded off by Time-Flight, which has a great killer premise: a Concorde vanishes on final approach to Heathrow Airport, so the Doctor, using his UNIT credentials for the first time in many years, commandeers a second Concorde to match its course, discovering a time warp leading back in time some 140 million years. The excellent first episode, massively helped in terms of production value by location filming at Heathrow and some filming on an actual Concorde, is instantly undercut by the remaining three, which are Doctor Who at its most panto. A game secondary cast can't help compensate for some of the worst sets we've seen on the show in many a year, the least-surprising plot twist ever, and the Doctor and his companions being very underwhelmed by the massively traumatic events they've just experienced.

There are a few laughs - intended and not - and you can't help but admire the ambition which is wholly unmatched by the budget, but this is easily the most disappointing story of the season.

Still, Season 19 of Doctor Who (****) is good fun overall. Peter Davison is a likeable new Doctor, and if the TARDIS is too crowded, at least it feels like they give it a good go (Chris Chibnall probably should have learned from this season that two companions max is a good rule to adhere to). Even the weaker stories have their interesting moments.

The season is available on DVD and Blu-Ray (with some very high-quality extras and documentaries), as well as streaming on BBC iPlayer in the UK and various services overseas.

19.1 - 19.4: Castrovalva (***½)

19.5 - 19.8: Four to Doomsday (***½)

19.9 - 19.12: Kinda (****)

19.13 - 19.16: The Visitation (****)

19.17 - 19.18: Black Orchid (***½)

19.19 - 19.22: Earthshock (****½)

19.23 - 19.26: Time-Flight (**½)

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STAR TREK fans finally get the Battle of Wolf 359 they were denied by 1990s budgets

It's been a long time coming, but Star Trek fans have finally been rewarded with a full-length account of the Battle of Wolf 359, arguably the single most iconic battle in the history of the Star Trek franchise.

The Excelsior-class USS Roosevelt (NCC-2573) engages the Borg cube at Wolf 359.

In-universe, the Battle of Wolf 359 was fought between the United Federation of Planets and the invading Borg at the start of the year 2367. A single Borg cube invaded the Federation, destroyed the colony on Jouret IV and drew out the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) into a confrontation, during which the Borg boarded the ship and kidnapped Captain Jean-Luc Picard, converting him into a Borg drone called "Locutus," who could serve as a spokesman and communicator to demand Starfleet's surrender. The Borg left the damaged Enterprise behind and engaged a hastily-assembled Starfleet taskforce at Wolf 359, just 7.9 light years from Earth. The taskforce consisted of forty Federation starships under the command of Admiral Hanson. The battle was not seen on-screen, at least initially. When the Enterprise-D finally arrived at the site of battle, they found only a graveyard of destroyed and devastated ships. Later episodes would confirm that thirty-nine Federation starships were eliminated and over eleven thousand lives were lost, Starfleet's most crippling defeat in its history. The Enterprise crew later rescued Captain Picard and used his knowledge gained from the Borg to disable the Borg cube just before it attacked Earth. Fearful of capture, the Borg ship self-destructed.

Later episodes would reflect on Wolf 359, particularly the Deep Space Nine pilot episode Emissary which shows a brief part of the battle in its opening moments, and the CD-ROM video game Star Trek: Borg, in which the Q entity rescues a Federation starship during the battle for his own inscrutable purposes.

YouTuber JTVFX has spent well over two years creating a new, fuller account of the battle. The fourth and final part has now been released. The first parts depict the build-up to the battle, with the Borg attacking Jouret IV, the Enterprise engaging the Borg and Hanson assembling the fleet. The latter two parts depict the battle in two stages, with an initial engagement followed by Starfleet retreating, getting some unexpected reinforcements and rejoining the fight. There's also some moments of hope as even the Borg struggle to hold off the sheer volume of enemy firepower.

There are some limitations, particularly with live-action footage: the only footage available is from the original episodes (Best of Both Worlds Part I and Part II, and DS9's Emissary) and the full motion video filmed for the CD-ROM video game Star Trek: Borg. There are other voice overs and some use of filmed actors in limited 2D shots.

The star of the show is the stunning CGI, which is based very heavily on the aesthetic used for Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager. The 4K quality is amazing and the attention to detail is remarkable: the Starfleet vessels' phaser colours are fluctuating as they rotate their frequencies, and each starship at the battle is correctly named and registered based on the various material and lists out there. Even obscure lines of dialogue are taken from other references. Seasoned Trek fans will also spot some tributes to some famous effects shots, like a number of shots inspired by Deep Space Nine's Way of the Warrior battle between the Klingons and Federation. Doctor Who fans may also want to keep an eagle eye out for an unexpected cameo at a certain point.

The result is lengthy (about the length of a full TNG episode when all is done), but very impressive.

The videos can be found here:

• Wolf 359: The Prelude - Part 1
• Wolf 359: The Prelude - Part 2
• Wolf 359: The Massacre - Part 1
• Wolf 359: The Massacre - Part 2

JTVFX has a bunch of other videos reimagining the CGI from various Trek episodes and movies, their channel is well worth checking out.

Titanfall 2 (campaign)

The Frontier, a remote region of space far from Earth and the Core Systems, is ravaged by war between the Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation (IMC) and the Frontier Militia. Both sides use Titans, large, AI-assisted combat exoskeletons, and Pilots, highly-trained, hyperaware soldiers with improved mobility and weapons knowledge. The planet Typhon becomes the latest battleground between the two sides. Rifleman Jack Cooper is given a field-promotion to Pilot when his commanding officer is killed. Taking command of his Titan, BT-7274, Jack stumbles on a secret IMC conspiracy to destroy the Frontier Militia once and for all, and has to foil their plans deep behind enemy lines.

Emerging from the flaming wreckage of Call of Duty developers Infinity Ward, Respawn Entertainment's first game back in 2014 was Titanfall, a heavily multiplayer-focused game where two sides of soldiers engaged in battle, with the twist that they could call upon powerful mechs for support. Bigger than power armour but not as large as full-on BattleMechs from other franchises, Titans were more nimble and maneuverable, but able to carry a much heavier weapons loadout. The game was successful, but players complained about the lack of a single-player campaign. For the sequel (released just two years later), Respawn added a story campaign to give better context to the battles. Unexpectedly, the story campaign would go on to be hugely well-received.

On one level, Titanfall 2 feels like any vast number of manshooters from the last thirty years. You control a guy with a gun and must shoot a truly colossal number of other guys with guns. You can swap weapons, with some weapons better at short range and others better at long. Some guns reduce enemies to gibs of flesh, some set them on fire, some blast them with electricity. The usual. The game throws two curveballs into the situation. The first is the freedom of movement for your character. You can run along walls and bounce off one wall to run along another, as well as double-jump and pull yourself over ledges etc. Once you get used to the movement controls, you can ping-pong all over the map like an angry ball with guns. The second is that you also have a partner, a semi-independent walking battlesuit who provides covering fire and whom you can board to command directly in battle. Fighting as a Titan is significantly different to on foot, trading speed and maneuverability for much greater durability and heavier weapons.

The game is linear, with areas that are divided into Titan-compatible zones and other areas (usually inside buildings) where the Titan can't fit, so you have to go in on foot. As with most first-person shooters, weapon choice is key as you can only (sigh) carry two weapons at once and if you run out of ammo, have to ditch one for another one. Weapon have their own advantages and disadvantages, but I generally found ditching a gun the second it ran out and just picking up whatever was nearest and making do worked fine. The game does have a very nice line in shotguns and some good sniper rifles, though given the game's focus on frenetic movement and always taking the fight directly to the enemy, switching to a sniper strategy feels a bit odd. Ground combat is chunky and most satisfying, with okay enemy AI and aggressive strategies being rewarded.

Titan combat is a mixed bag. You actually don't spend that much time doing it, which is odd given how much emphasis is placed on training you in different loadouts (this is more useful for multiplayer, of course). Different loadouts have different damage outputs and defensive options, as well as different special attack moves. There's a lot of fun here, using missiles, lasers and forcefields that catch enemy bullets and missiles and sends them straight back Return to Sender. There's also the nice stompy power fantasy of being in your Titan and being attacked by guys on foot, leading to very one-sided fights (unless they have tons of missiles and suicide drones). Some of the later battles with half a dozen Titans on each side are also pretty cool. This isn't MechWarrior and those after a more simulationist approach are directed to that franchise, whilst those who want a more anime-ish approach can check out the Armored Core series. Titan combat can be fun, but limited, as least in the single-player game.

The game has fantastic level design, which makes figuring out where to go and how to get there a constant delight. The game takes place in jungles, underground installations, scientific bases, and even inside a flatpacked house-assembly warehouse. Wall-running and bouncing between areas can be a lot of fun (though occasionally the game gets confused over what you're trying to do). There's also way more imagination than I was expecting: one level set at the scene of a scientific experiment with time that went wrong allows you to bounce between two timelines, switching time periods to get past obstacles. This bit was reminiscent of Dishonored 2's legendary "A Crack in the Slab" mission, and more impressive as it predated that game by a few months. Another level has you trying to reach a satellite uplink facility and you have to use cranes to set up the wall-running route you need to get to the destination. There's some more traditional levels - fighting in caves or on the hull of an inevitably exploding spaceship - but they're carried out with aplomb.

The game is keen on getting you in the action with a much lower-than-normal amount of tediously expository cutscenes, and animations are mercifully restrained. Although the game is linear (though some of the areas you have to fight through are quite large, allowing different routes across factory floors or through office blocks), the game is also determined to get out of its own way and to let you have fun. The game also has little truck with stealth: there's a nascent cloaking device and a stealth-kill takedown option, but they feel like they're there because they're expected, not that the game encourages you to use them. If you're not wall-running into an area, dropping on five guys' heads and stomping them with your mech feet, you're possibly playing the game wrong.

The story structure, which requires you taking down a bunch of mercenary commanders in order before tracking down the inevitable superweapon, is unoriginal but satisfying, leading to a series of amusing boss fights against special enemies with their own moves. The story is fine, with some nice moments and humour, though the worldbuilding and characters are mostly Generic Manshooter 101. They get the job done but no more, possibly with the exception of the AI piloting your Titan, whose laconic observations on the mission are often amusing.

The campaign definitely does not outstay its welcome, wrapping up in less than six hours. Given the intensity of the combat and gameplay, this felt fine, though obviously you don't want to be buying this at a premium. The game's usual price is still a bit steep for singleplayer-only fans, you probably want this to be in the £10 ballpark before looking seriously at it. But for a high production value, fun, tighly-designed, well-designed shooter, Titanfall 2 (****) is extremely entertaining.

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New STAR TREK video game will let you decide to murder Tuvix or let him live

Finally, you can make the decision yourself. Star Trek: Voyager - Across the Unknown is an ambitious video game which recreates the USS Voyager's entire seven-year journey across the Delta Quadrant, putting you in the command chair and making decisions very similar to the problems that Captain Janeway had to deal with.

Do you ally with the Borg to defeat Species 8472 or take a different path? Do you fight the Kazon or avoid them? And, most critically, will you brutally murder Tuvix or not? Will you promote Ensign Kim? Ever? And what will the long-term fallout from that be?

With some similarities to The Alters and XCOM's base-building, combined with some fine starship adventuring, the game looks like an intriguing spin on the franchise. Developed by Gamexcite and published by Daedalic, it doesn't have a release date yet but smart money is on 2026, for PC and console.