Support The Wertzone on Patreon

STICKIED POST

After much debate (and some requests) I have signed up with crowdfunding service Patreon to better support future blogging efforts. You can find my Patreon page here and more information after the jump.

Discworld Review Index

Having completed my five-year mission to read/reread all forty-one Discworld novels, it seems reasonable to include a handy index to revisit all those reviews from one place.

The Discworld being carried through space by the great star turtle A'Tuin. This comes up way less than you'd expect in the novels.

The Discworld Novel Series

1. The Colour of Magic (1983) - Rincewind / Ankh-Morpork
2. The Light Fantastic (1985) - Rincewind
3. Equal Rites (1987) - Witches
4. Mort (1987) - Death
5. Sourcery (1988) - Rincewind / Ankh-Morpork
6. Wyrd Sisters (1988) - Witches 
7. Pyramids (1989)
8. Guards! Guards! (1989) - City Watch / Ankh-Morpork
9. Eric (1990) - Rincewind
10. Moving Pictures (1990) - Ankh-Morpork
11. Reaper Man (1991) - Death / Wizards / Ankh-Morpork
12. Witches Abroad (1991) - Witches
13. Small Gods (1992)
14. Lords & Ladies (1992) - Witches
15. Men at Arms (1993) - City Watch / Ankh-Morpork
16. Soul Music (1994) - Death / Susan Sto Helit
17. Interesting Times (1994) - Rincewind
18. Maskerade (1995) - Witches / Ankh-Morpork
19. Feet of Clay (1996) - City Watch / Ankh-Morpork
20. Hogfather (1996) - Death / Susan Sto Helit
21. Jingo (1997) - City Watch / Ankh-Morpork
22. The Last Continent (1998) - Rincewind / Wizards
23. Carpe Jugulum (1998) - Witches
24. The Fifth Elephant (1999) - City Watch
25. The Truth (2000) - Ankh-Morpork
26. Thief of Time (2001) - Death / Susan Sto Helit
27. The Last Hero (2001) - Rincewind / City Watch / Wizards / Ankh-Morpork
28. The Amazing Maurice & His Educated Rodents (2001)
29. Night Watch (2002) - City Watch / Ankh-Morpork
30. The Wee Free Men (2003) - Tiffany Aching / Witches
31. Monstrous Regiment (2003)
32. A Hat Full of Sky (2004) - Tiffany Aching / Witches
33. Going Postal (2004) - Moist von Lipwig / Ankh-Morpork
34. Thud! (2005) - City Watch / Ankh-Morpork
35. Wintersmith (2006) - Tiffany Aching / Witches
36. Making Money (2007) - Moist von Lipwig / Ankh-Morpork
37. Unseen Academicals (2009) - Ankh-Morpork / Wizards / Rincewind (cameo)
38. I Shall Wear Midnight (2010) - Tiffany Aching / Witches
39. Snuff (2011) - City Watch / Ankh-Morpork
40. Raising Steam (2013) - Moist von Lipwig / Ankh-Morpork
41. The Shepherd's Crown (2015) - Tiffany Aching / Witches

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

The Shepherd's Crown by Terry Pratchett

Some people live such lives of integrity, honour, wit and compassion that their absence leaves a voice in the universe that cannot be easily filled. When one such person on the Discworld dies, triggering continent-wide remorse, their enemies find that hole and pour through. The elves are back, and they have unfinished business...

In an interview in 1995, Terry Pratchett said he found the idea of writing "the last Discworld novel," to be disconcerting. Though he always underestimated how many ideas he could mine from the setting (declaring in The Discworld Companion in 1994 that he doubted he'd still be writing regularly in the setting five years hence), he always saw it as a toolbox and a world he could continuously return to even after hiatuses. In the event, there were no (or very brief) hiatuses, and he would only reluctantly write "the last Discworld novel," its forty-first installment, a full twenty years after that statement.

The feeling permeates The Shepherd's Crown that Pratchett knew, or strongly suspected, this might be Discworld's final hour. He usually had multiple novels in progress, but though he had ideas for several novels beyond this one (famously crushed under a steamroller after his passing to prevent cashing-in by other writers), he hadn't really advanced far with them at all, but instead poured everything he had into getting this book into a publishable state. Facing mortality, he made the choice to go out with a (politely) raised finger and one of his most epic books.

The Shepherd's Crown opens with the death of one of the Disc's most beloved characters, someone who has been a force of nature in the series since almost its very start. Their passing will already have regular readers (perhaps teetering on the edge of teariness knowing that This Is It in terms of there being no more Discworld books after this one) feeling moved as Pratchett ponders on the impact of a single person's life on the people around them and the wider world. An avalanche of long-standing Discworld character cameos reacting to the death may have the reader reaching for the hankies already.

But Pratchett is far too clever to have a novel that's basically an excuse for melancholy. The elves, his most reliably hateful villains, take advantage of the absence to return in force and it's all hands-on-deck as the Disc must muster its forces to oppose them. There are crowd-pleasing cheers as the young-but-not-untested Tiffany Aching leads the battle against the invaders in force, with a surprising return to prominence from the long-retired witch Magrat Garlick, who's already taught the elves a thing or two previously. As with the previous book, Raising Steam, it feels like here Pratchett is borrowing a lot of ideas from the subgenre of epic fantasy, a genre he's not been afraid to gently (as a huge Tolkien fan) mock in the past, and finds them both surprisingly useful and something that he is very good at employing.

But Pratchett is still Pratchett. Wars, battles, epic fights to the death etc are all very well, but he's more interested in the human soul and the human mind, and the impact upon them of these concepts. Empathy and compassion are also present, as Tiffany tries to bring the exiled Queen of the Elves to an understanding that may lead to peace...but there are those elves who don't understand the world has changed to one of iron and steam and they have no place in it any more, and are unwilling to change with it.

The Shepherd's Crown was said to have been left unpolished and only partially edited at the time of Sir Terry's frankly unacceptable passing in early 2015, but I wonder if this was overstated. It's clear that several subplots are not as fleshed-out as you'd expect (Geoffrey and his unusually intelligent goat feel like they needed at least moderate expansion), but the main narrative thread is here, complete and relatively tight. For a novel written by someone deep in the grip of Alzheimer's, the attention to detail is at times astonishing, with minor characters showing up from 20+ books back to kick names and take bottom, or possibly (and hopefully) vice versa. Pratchett himself extends thanks to his assistant Rob Wilkins and his editorial team for providing supporting during the last few novels, but even so, Sir Terry himself had to get the words down just months before his passing and it's frankly astonishing he did it, and did it so well.

The Shepherd's Crown (****) is not the best Discworld novel, but it might be the one that best sums up everything Sir Terry Pratchett set out to accomplish in this series. A tremendous feat of worldbuilding, frequently laugh-out-loud jokes including some that take a while to parse (is it bad that I only got the joke in the name "Casanunda" with this book, thirty-two years after reading the original gag for the first time?), and a tremendous sense of human compassion. Pratchett famously did not take fools gladly, but he had a lot of time for people with all their strengths and foibles, and that shines through here perhaps more strongly than ever before.

A full assessment of the entire Discworld series will require a much longer article, but it has to be said here that The Shepherd's Crown, unpolished though it might be, is a fitting capstone and a final footnote (Pratchett loved those) on the series. Like many others, I was reluctant to read these last few books because the idea of there being no more Discworld books to read for the first time was a horrible one. But there is also a gained appreciation for the author who, facing mortality square in the eye socket, still went out delivering some of his best ideas.

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

Red Dwarf X

Three million years into deep space, the crew of the Jupiter Mining Corporation ship Red Dwarf continue to try to find ways of staying sane. Unfortunately, the universe is not interested in helping them.

Back in 2012, it was fair to say there was trepidation awaiting the arrival of the tenth season of venerable British science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf. The show had just had three pretty weak seasons back-to-back-to-back, with co-creator and long-time co-writer Rob Grant still not involved, the prospects for the show being a success seemed limited.

It was with tremendous relief that Red Dwarf X turned out to be pretty good. Not on the level of the "imperial period" of Seasons 2-6, of course, but still a pretty fine run of episodes. It helps that the season has a lower budget than the last few, forcing Doug Naylor to rely on the strength of the scripts to sell the ideas instead of flashy vfx. We get more Lister-and-Rimmer two-hander scenes, the core of the show, and more creative use of the show's setting. The continuous reappearance of both GELFs (genetically-engineered lifeforms) and killer simulants through the last few seasons had become rote, but they are used more creatively in this season and some fresh life is breathed back into the old concepts.

The ideas are generally great: Rimmer getting to meet one of his superstar, space hero brothers as a hologram gives us some more grist for the Rimmer emotional turmoil mill, and the results are pretty funny. The storyline of Lister becoming his own father in Season 7 was weird, but here they revisit the concept in an original and amusing way, as well as showcasing a new, hyper-efficient computer. Another episode has the crew time travel to the first century and meet Jesus before he was well-known, but what could have been a bad-taste extravaganza turns out to be a surprisingly well-considered, even thoughtful yarn about what happens when you find out you're destined to become one of the single most famous humans to have ever lived. The season finale, featuring the arrival of a new type of killer simulant, is also very entertaining.

None of these episodes are challenging Marooned, Polymorph, Back to Reality or Thanks for the Memory in comedy, drama or pathos, but they each have something interesting to offer. It helps that Naylor is happy to row things back and tackle smaller-scaled ideas (Lister discovering the history of his ex-girlfriend through letters she sent him which have only just caught up with the ship) as happily as the really big SF ones, like an AI can foresee the next few seconds of a conversation with total accuracy, making it unnecessary to have the conversation  (shades of Cassandra from Season 8, but better-executed).

There are some negatives. There is still the occasional lowbrow and easy-pickings kind of humour that the earlier seasons tried to avoid. The relaxed approach to continuity, though by now such a feature of Red Dwarf that it mocks it itself, may aggravate some as the missing Kochanski, offline Holly and how Rimmer saved the ship in Season 8 are referenced but never explained. But it feels like the negatives are hugely lacking compared to what fans had endured for three seasons at that point.

Overall, Red Dwarf X (****) is a huge improvement over the preceding three seasons and highly enjoyable to watch, even if it still can't match the show in its prime.

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

House of the Dragon: Season 3

The civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons is in full force, with Rhaenyra Targaryen and Aegon II Targaryen pitted against one another with their armies and dragons. Aegon II is reportedly dead, though his body has not been found, and his brother and heir Aemond has gone to ground with his dragon Vhagar, the sole survivor of the three dragons that conquered the Seven Kingdoms. But Rhaenyra faces new challenges as a massive naval battle erupts and a substantial Hightower army advances from the south-west. With more claimants to the throne waiting and new dragon riders emerging, the war is about to get a lot messier.

House of the Dragons, Game of Thrones's spin-off prequel about how the Targaryens lost their dragons, has been a bit of a mixed bag so far. The first season was excellent, with impressive fidelity to the source material and Paddy Considine's phenomenal performance as King Viserys Targaryen anchoring a well-considered project, possibly the finest season in the franchise since Game of Thrones's mid-point. The second season was, in sharp contrast, an odd, dispirited convulsion of television that didn't seem to know what it wanted to do or how to execute it. The phenomenal Battle of Rook's Rest aside, it was a bizarre slide into mediocrity.

Season 3 comfortably splits the difference. More dynamic character arcs and two massive battle sequences (one at sea) give the season more verve and pace than the second season. Season 3 is also enhanced by the presence of James Norton as Ormund Hightower, a deliciously scheming performance that adds a lot of character to a minor role from the books. Freddie Fox was already a bit of a breath of fresh air as Ser Gwayne Hightower in Season 2, but here he is presented as the only sane man in the room as he has to traipse around half the continent with Criston Cole (a satisfyingly, increasingly unhinged performance by Fabien Frankel) proving that some people just succeed in life by failing upwards. These two actors do a lot to keep the story afloat during its more questionable moments, helped by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth giving a game performance as the young but wise-beyond-his-years Daeron Targaryen. Phia Saban, who has always been great as Helaena Targaryen, is particularly outstanding, elevated from a few lines in the source material to the damaged heart and soul of the green faction.

Elsewhere the cast is replete with fine actors given iffy scripts or not much to do. Olivia Cooke and Emma D'Arcy remain superb actors but here the writers seem at pains not to have them actually hate one another, and instead constantly come up with ways of getting them to hang out. At least that makes more sense this year than the previous season's "let's sneak into the enemy stronghold" mechanic. Matt Smith is also excellent as the rogue prince Daemon, an at-heart honourable man desperately trying to be bad but not quite pulling it off. Early Season 3 has him not doing much but later on he is finally given quality scripts to cut loose with, and as usual nails it. Fortunately, he doesn't spend half the season in a bizarre horror side-story in Harrenhal.

Unfortunately, Ewan Mitchell's Aemond does spend half the season in a bizarre horror side-story in Harrenhal that will cause screams of frustration from viewers. Stop benching your best characters in Harrenhal doing nothing! It also massively detracts from Harrenhal's reputation as a bleak and foreboding place. By the end of Season 3 it feels about as scary as the Addams Family mansion. Deep untold horrors from the pit in the kitchen again? Must be Tuesday.

Other storylines are a mixed bag. The newly-promoted "dragonseeds" have a lot of good plot material, but Sonoya Mizuno's Mysaria has nothing to do except give bad advice but inexplicably still be trusted. Replacing Nettles from the books with Rhaena Targaryen is one of those ideas that isn't completely bad (at least in terms of keeping the cast manageable) but in execution is half-hearted, though it does at least remind us that dragons are very dangerous creatures that can't always be controlled. The northern greybeards led by Roderick Dustin (Tommy Flanagan) are entertaining and fortunately are not overused, but characters like Alysanne Blackwood (Annie Shapero) feel like they've had 80% of their scenes cut as the camera dwells on them and you're trying to remember what they've done that warrants the attention.

Still, at least this time around the season storylines build satisfyingly to their climax at the Battle of Tumbleton, rather than being cut short and left to flap in the wind by a last-minute episode count cut as with Season 2. The shorter, eight-episode count for Season 3 helps provide it focus and cuts short some storylines that I suspect would have been interminable at ten episodes (particularly anything to do with Harrenhal, or more Criston Cole stomping around the woods looking vaguely constipated).

Season 3 of House of the Dragon (***½) improves on the second but doesn't rise to the heights of the first. It is certainly an entertaining season of television with lots of vfx eye candy, great performances and several satisfying storylines, but the show seems to still be rolling around with its safety wheels on, not letting things cut loose with how vicious and vengeance-driven the story in the books could be, and tying itself into pretzel-like knots to explain why it's holding back. Hopefully the show can deliver a stronger run of episodes for its fourth and final run.

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

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Cost of Hope

As Skif's journey through the Zone continues, he gets word that the checkpoint to the Iron Forest region is now open, and the people there are asking for help. Skif's answer leads him into an uneasy alliance with both the Duty and Freedom factions as they face down a mutual threat, which will eventually lead them to the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant itself, and a fateful decision.

STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl launched in late 2024 and was an instant commercial success, selling millions of copies. The game was also critically well-received, but some criticisms were made of the game not living up to its predecessors' impressive "living world" AI and featuring some janky bugs. The Cost of Hope expansion, launching alongside the v2.0 patch, is designed to not just add huge amounts of new content to the game, but also help boost the mother game's reputation and get more eyes on what is an impressive and atmospheric game. It's designed to be the Phantom Liberty to the original game's Cyberpunk 2077, in terms of revitalising the entire game, and it is certainly a partial success.

Launching the expansion can be a bit of a fiddle though. It takes place during the original game's story so you need to either launch a save file from before the point-of-no-return or have the game generate one for you from your end-of-game status. To be honest, it feels like it makes more sense to play this earlier in the game's timeline. Combined with all the 2.0 improvements to the game, it might even be worthwhile considering a total new playthrough. However, Cost of Hope adds at least 30 hours of new gameplay to the title, taking a 60-ish-hour game to closer to 90 hours, which is a fairly hefty time investment.

The expansion is broken into several sections. The first is set in the Iron Forest, so-called because it's a large region covered in electrical substations and pylons, with electricity anomalies running rampant. This area is interesting, not too big with several buildings to explore and a friendly camp to hang out at (as well as an eccentric single prepper), but it's no big shakes. I completed everything in this sector pretty quickly.

The storyline then takes you back into the main Zone and you end up revisiting several key locations, where things quickly take on a much more epic feel. The original STALKER trilogy (Shadow of Chornobyl, Clear Sky and Call of Pripyat) focused heavily on the opposing ideologies of Duty, who want to protect the rest of the world from the Zone and destroy it if at all possible, and Freedom, who want to exploit the unusual nature of the Zone to improve all mankind. These two factions took a back seat in STALKER 2 itself, where all the factions in the Zone are abiding (more or less) by a shaky treaty. Cost of Hope brings the two factions back to the fore in a strong way, with not just the tension between them explored but also the tensions inside each faction as different people have different idea on how to proceed. During the game you'll align more with one faction over the other, and have to deal with both a civil war within that faction (which can turn a previously peaceful and reliable base into a combat zone hellhole) as well as managing the tension between both factions when their ideologies eventually clash in a way that cannot be managed diplomatically.

This unfolds between the major NPCs representing each faction and, it has to be said, these are pretty good. One is a returning character from the original trilogy whilst the other is a major NPC from the Arena side-missions in STALKER 2, so you're already somewhat invested in their storylines from the start. Having to side with one over the other is sometimes quite painful, and, impressively, the game has the two NPCs as being allies with a lot of respect for one another who genuinely don't want to have to kill the other either, resulting in some anguished choices and moments (fortunately the game doesn't over-egg this too much).

Another sequence takes the STALKER franchise where it's never been before by converting it into a Resident Evil-style environmental puzzle game, playing out in a time-displaced town apparently designed by M.C. Escher having spent way too much time playing the Ravenholm level of Half-Life 2. Possibly the expansion's finest hour, the weird dreamscape feel and under-emphasising of combat in favour of exploration make this a very successful experiment in a different style of gameplay.

It takes about 20 hours for the expansion to even start herding you back to the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant itself and it pretty much lives up to its reputation of being dark and haunted. Delving deep into the bowels of the facility is foreboding, and it's a tribute to both the game designers and the team at HBO when you find yourself in locations that you recognise straight out of the TV series Chernobyl. Navigation can be a little bit of a pain - indestructible chainlink fences divide the NPP up into districts and sometimes going round them can take a major diversion - and the area is further complicated by the Flare, an absolutely massive anomaly that can give you terminal migraines very quickly and requires you to constantly break line-of-sight with it, which is hard when it's towering above the centre of the complex. Removing the Flare is, surprisingly, not a goal of the main storyline, with instead an entire side-chain of missions dedicated to getting rid of it, after which moseying around the ruined power station becomes a lot more fun.

As well as the very chunky main storyline, the expansion adds several significant side-quests. Removing the Flare is one, and another is a faction war storyline where your actions make it safer and easier to get to the facility, resulting in a free-for-all. Your aligned faction has to fend off an invading one in an absolutely massive battle sequence raging across most of the power plant and it has to be said this is satisfyingly epic. You lead a strike team in attacking enemy positions and driving them back until you can hold key points until reinforcements arrive. STALKER 2's combat versus human opponents has always been its strongest point, as the human enemy AI is reasonably clever. Enemies use squad tactics to try to flush you from cover, circling around to flank and use grenades. Enemies are also susceptible to grenades and headshots. If you're playing this expansion late in STALKER 2's run-through, you should also have the more formidable armour, damage-reducing anomalies and higher-calibre guns that should make the battle winnable, but it can be a hard grind to push the enemy lines back to their base and eliminate them (also refreshingly, once they've suffered catastrophic losses, the enemy does retreat rather than forcing you to kill every one of them).

The game also adds a multitude of new quests, some in the new locations (I enjoyed working with a high-powered sniper in one) but many in existing locations. Revisiting previously-visited bases will usually reveal new questlines in that region. As a result, Cost of Hope not only adds two new regions to the map but a substantial amount of content to existing ones. There is also new equipment, with binoculars (standard and night-vision, the latter capable of some stunning photo-realistic moments) being a particularly welcome addition to your toolset.

The v2.0 expansion itself increases the game's stability and drops system requirements, but this does come at the cost of slightly less-impressive visuals. In particular, lighting takes a bit of a hit and can be quite flat in some areas where it was previously dynamic. This seems to have been done to improve the game's performance on console, which is fine, but downgrading the game for PC players who previously had zero problems with how the game ran previously is weird. A big positive shift is foliage, with the new version of Unreal Engine the game is using being able to render much denser forests much more efficiently, which can make some of the more threadbare areas of the Zone suddenly much more realistic.

Whilst stability in the existing areas seems to have improved, the two new areas are less-blessed, and in the power plant itself I had multiple crashes to desktop and even one total-reset crash, which I did not appreciate. To be fair, GSC Game World has been pushing an aggressive patching schedule (the game has had multiple patches in just the week-and-a-half the expansion has been out) so a lot of these problems should vanish soon, but keep an eye on the discussion forums to see what areas remain problematic.

In terms of gameplay, the expansion does make a couple of dubious choices. STALKER 2 was already a bit irritating for having some major game moments play out in cutscenes rather than interactive gameplay, and Cost of Hope probably has one or two too many similar moments. Situations that you'd normally avoid by sneaking through the area stealthily and using a silenced pistol become heavy action sequences based on narrative fiat. A couple of boss fights feature tedious enemy mechanics. One boss fight involving two extremely tough creatures was so annoying it seems to have been nerfed in patches already (a door opens after a few minutes allowing you to simply leave the area). The expansion has several moments relying heavily on parkour, and given that Skif has less stamina than an arthritic 94-year-old nun midway through an asthma attack, these sections can be monumentally frustrating to get through. Fortunately they are brief.

STALKER 2: Cost of Hope (****) is a flawed but enjoyable experience. It adds new equipment, areas, enemies and weapons to an already-chunky game, and its main storyline is compelling. Side-quests are also very accomplished, and the faction war sequence (possibly a test-run for ideas for the upcoming multiplayer mode) is genuinely epic. Fiddly map design, an overreliance on clunky mechanics (especially jumping) and the ongoing issue with bullet-spongey mutant enemies are irritating, but ultimately ignorable.

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

RIP Peter Cullen

In what is turning out to be a trying week, it is sad to report the passing of Canadian actor Peter Cullen at the age of 84. Although well-known for numerous roles, he will forever be iconically known as the voice of Optimus Prime in the Transformers franchise.

Born in Montreal in 1941, Cullen graduated from the National Theatre School of Canada in 1963. He worked as an announcer for Montreal radio. He began working in television in Canada and picked up interest from American television. He made a breakthrough by appearing regularly on The Sonny & Cher Show from 1971 to 1974.

In the early 1980s Cullen's agent spotted the emerging genre of animated television with toy tie-in lines, and put Cullen forwards for multiple roles. Cullen impressed the team at Sunbow Television responsible for the animated tie-in to Hasbro's Transformers line (initially an extensive import and rebranding of Takara's Diaclone and Microchange toy lines from Japan) and was cast in the core role of Optimus Prime, leader of the heroic Autobots, as well as his lieutenant, Ironhide, in 1984. When trying to work out a voice for Prime, Cullen was inspired by his older brother Larry, who had volunteered to fight in the US Marine Corps in Vietnam. Larry had advised his younger brother to not "act" like a hero, but instead "be" a hero, with wisdom and compassion instead of just acting tough.

Cullen rapidly became iconic in the role. Famously, young children were left traumatised by Prime's death in Transformers: The Movie (1986), something that left Cullen shocked. Cullen returned to voice the character during his resurrection in the third season of the TV show.

The success of the role saw Cullen become in-demand for other voice roles. He played multiple roles in the US dubs of Voltron and Saber Rider, and multiple roles in the GI Joe animated series. He voiced the villainous computer KAAR, nemesis of KITT, in Knight Rider, and provided the voice-over sounds for the titular enemy in the film Predator (1987). He voiced one of the titular creatures in Gremlins (1984). Arguably his two most iconic voice-over roles after Prime came with playing the evil Venger in the Dungeons & Dragons animated series (1983-85) and Eyore in The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1988-91). Amongst Cullen's numerous achievements was providing the first English-language voice for Mario in 1983.

Cullen reprised his role as Optimus Prime in the 2007 live-action film Transformers, proceeding to play the role in sequels Revenge of the Fallen (2009), Dark of the Moon (2011), Age of Extinction (2014), The Last Knight (2017), Bumblebee (2018) and Rise of the Beasts (2023). He also played Optimus Prime in the animated series Transformers: Prime (2010-13), Rescue Bots (2011-16), Robots in Disguise (2015-17) and Titans Return (2017-18). He also played the role in numerous video games and advertisements, and had a key appearance as himself in The Toys That Made Us (2018), in the episode about the Transformers franchise.

Cullen began appearing at Transformers conventions in the 1990s and was struck by how his performance had inspired young people. He struck up a strong friendship with fellow voice actor Frank Welker, who played Prime's nemesis Megatron in Transformers. In the 2020s both Cullen and Welker were cast in the animated series Invincible, playing on their iconic characters' rivalry. Peter Cullen was given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Children's Emmy Award in 2023 for his huge contribution to iconic voice roles across forty years.

Peter Cullen was a huge inspiration and reassuring voice for several entire generations of children. He will be extremely missed.

RIP Tim Curry

In sad news, British actor Tim Curry has passed away at the age of 80. One of the best-known and most popular actors of his generation, Curry was known for his charisma, acting skill, singing voice, his ability to make the cheesiest roles his own, and his generosity to fans.

Born in Cheshire in 1946, Curry was raised abroad in Hong Kong as well as different towns around the UK. At school he studied singing and became a soprano. He decided to focus on acting and studied drama at the University of Birmingham, graduating in 1968.

Curry almost immediately demonstrated his flamboyance and love of combining acting with singing and dancing by appearing in the West End musical Hair, which involved interactions with the audience (including dancing with my mother during one performance!). He met Richard O'Brien during the tour and they struck up a key friendship.

When O'Brien was developing The Rocky Horror Show, he reconnected with Curry and cast him in the key role of Frank-N-Furter. Curry relished early reviews of the play in 1973 which called him "ambisextrous" and "Bowiesque." Curry played the role in London and New York, attracting significant acclaim. Curry continued the role in the 1975 film adaptation, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which made him an immediate star. The film's longevity, with regular viewing parties at cinemas worldwide to this very day and the mega-selling soundtrack album, is almost unmatched among pop culture phenomena.

Curry would go on to enjoy considerable success on stage through the 1970s and 1980s, such as the title role in Peter Shaffer's Amadeus, and continued with TV and film roles in the UK and USA, keeping a toe in both countries. In 1985 Curry enjoyed additional success with his roles as the Lord of Darkness in Ridley Scott's Legend and Wadsworth the Butler in Clue, the latter being arguably his second-biggest film role as the movie became another cult success, frequently referenced to this day.

In the late 1980s he focused on Hollywood work, and famously turned up in movies both excellent and dismal, though he was never less then supremely entertaining in them. His work ethic was formidable. Iconic roles  followed in The Hunt for Red October (1990), Home Alone 2 (1992), Loaded Weapon 1 (1993), The Three Musketeers (1993), The Shadow (1994) and Congo (1995). He also played scores of guest roles on television, but his outstanding performance was playing Pennywise in the 1990 TV mini-series Stephen King's It.

Curry also had a substantial career in animation, providing voices for shows such as The Wild Thornberries, Captain Planet and Gargoyles. He also began providing voice-over work for video games, including Wing Commander III, Toonstruck, Brutal Legend, Dragon Age: Origins and the Gabriel Knight series. In 2008 he played the role of Premier Anatoly Cherdenko in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 and gave what is generally regarded as the most hilarious line reading in filmed history.

Curry enjoyed a late career surge starting with his role as King Arthur in Spamalot on the stage. He took over the role of Emperor Palpatine in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars and appeared in the film Burke & Hare.

Curry experienced a stroke in 2012 which left him unable to walk and partially paralysed. He worked hard at rehabilitation and resumed voice-over roles, as he found memorising lines after his stroke very difficult. In 2016 he made his last on-screen appearance, fittingly in the television remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. His final role was a voice-over in the horror movies Stream (2024) and Stream 2: Sudden Death (2026). In 2025 he published his autobiography, Vagabond.

An international treasure, noted for his quick wit, humour, warmth and impressive output, Tim Curry will very much be missed.

RIP Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton, pop culture titan of the 20th and early 21st Century, has sadly passed away at the age of 80.

Parton was born in 1946 in Tennessee and became one of the United States's best-known country singers. She was known for her musical giga-hits, including "Nine to Five," "Jolene," and "I Will Always Love You," as well as her acting career and her philanthropy, including an international literary programme for children that positively impacted millions of lives.

I usually cover the passing of people with genre connections, though if anyone was universally beloved enough to overcome that, certainly it would be Dolly Parton. However, she did have several minor and perhaps surprising ties to genre fiction. In 2011, she voiced a role in the animated fantasy film Gnomeo & Juliet, which was her penultimate acting role. However, far more significant was her ownership of Sandollar Productions.

In 1996, the production company played a key role in bringing the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer to the screen, and was credited as a production partner on the show for all seven seasons (Parton herself declined a producer's credit, not wanting her name to overshadow the cast). Parton watched and enjoyed the show, and arranged parties and gifts for the cast and crew during its early seasons. Sandollar went on to produce spin-off series Angel as well. Star Sarah Michelle Gellar has expressed her admiration and gratitude for Parton's support.

An international legend and icon, Dolly Parton will certainly be greatly missed.

GAME OF THRONES: WAR FOR WESTEROS gets a new trailer

Game of Thrones: War for Westeros, the latest attempt to bring George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire novels and their HBO TV adaptation Game of Thrones to the video game sphere, has received a new trailer.

War for Westeros is a real-time strategy game drawing heavy inspiration from the venerable Battle for Middle-earth series from the mid-2000s. You choose a faction - House Stark, Lannister or Targaryen, or the invading White Walkers - and guide them to victory over a series of battles. Your armies will include cavalry, infantry, archers, siege equipment and more exotic creatures such as giants, wights and, of course, dragons (well, three). The game features multiplayer and a single-player campaign mode, where you apparently choose which area to attack next.

The franchise has had a mixed history with official video game adaptations. Game of Thrones: Genesis was a poorly-received real-time strategy game that has been almost completely forgotten about. Game of Thrones: The Roleplaying Game was a surprisingly decent game (and easily has the best story set in Westeros not written or outlined by Martin himself) but had a horrendous opening couple of hours which put most players off. Game of Thrones: The Telltale Adventure Series was promising but the story devolved in a poor retelling of the main storyline with lower stakes and less-interesting houses.

The franchise has had much better success with fan-made games, such as Westeros: Total War, a mod for Medieval II: Total War, and the mods for Crusader Kings II and III, plus Mount & Blade.

War for Westeros is targeting an early 2027 release window on PC.