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Hachette launches 100-novel DUNGEONS & DRAGONS hardcover collection in the UK, including Erin Evans's BRIMSTONE ANGELS series

Hachette Partworks is launching a hardcover novel collection of Dungeons & Dragons novels in the UK. The subscription collection will release 100 novels at a rate of two a month, meaning it will take around four years to release the complete collection. Hachette have form for this on numerous previous projects (such as their ambitious 100-volume hardcover graphic novel collection of every single Transformers comic ever published a decade ago, which remains definitive).

The collection will bring back novel series that have been out of print in hardcover for decades, if they even got hardcovers in the first place, and in paperback for over a decade. The collection will be limited to only the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance settings at this stage. Those subscribing for the duration will receive additional items, including bookmarks, bookends, dice trays and mugs.

Hachette have not so far released a full list of the books to be included, but have revealed the schedule for the first four books:

• Volume 18: Homeland by R.A. Salvatore (Book 1 of The Dark Elf Trilogy) - out now
• Volume 61: Azure Bonds by Kate Novak & Jeff Grubb (Book 1 of The Finder's Stone Trilogy) - late September
• Volume 2: Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman (Book 1 of The Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy) - early October
• Volume 19: Exile by R.A. Salvatore (Book 2 of The Dark Elf Trilogy) - late October

They've also indicated the following series and authors will be part of the collection:

• The Moonshae Trilogy by Douglas Niles
• The Legend of Drizzt saga by R.A. Salvatore
• The Finder's Stone Trilogy by Kate Novak & Jeff Grubb
• The Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
• Elminster Ascending by Ed Greenwood
• The Brimstone Angels by Erin M. Evans
• The War of Souls Trilogy by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
• Richard Baker is also named as another author who will be featured in the collection

It's an interesting idea and many of these are beloved fantasy novels that have been out of print for a long time, especially in hardcover. The price of £11.99 per book for handsome hardcover editions is also very reasonable (especially with the first book at £2.99). However, subscribing to the entire thing would be relatively expensive and the quality variation between some of these books can only be called extreme. It is possible to stop a subscription when it hits a dull patch and restart it later on, but it would be a bit of a faff. Also, non-UK fans are out of luck.

It's also a shame to see other settings not given some love. The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King by Lynn Abbey in the Dark Sun setting might be the single finest D&D novel ever published, and I, Strahd in the Ravenloft setting would be a good way of catching up on the character ahead of the TV show in development for Netflix.

Still, an interesting idea, and hopefully might lead to renewed interest in getting some of the rarer books back in print in the US and other countries as well.

Red Dwarf (XIII): The Promised Land

In the 21st 23rd 22nd Century (probably), the mining ship Red Dwarf was subjected to a lethal radiation leak that killed the entire crew. The ship's AI, Holly, aimed the ship out of the Solar system to prevent contamination. Sealed in the hold of the ship, a pet cat named Frankenstein had a litter of kittens. Their descendants, over three million years, evolved into a humanoid lifeform. There was a huge religious war, the result of confused race-memories of their god/owner, Cloister the Stupid, and the humanoid cats fled Red Dwarf on their own fleet of hastily-assembled ships, leaving behind only the stupid and bewildered. In the modern Cat Fleet, great religious arguments are again raging. Three true believers set out for the ship of their origin, to find their God...they may be risking some disappointment.

The qualitative trajectory of Red Dwarf's history is well-known: okay first season (1988), a solid gold classic "imperial period" consisting of Seasons 2 through 6 (1988-93), then three very disappointing seasons on the trot (1997, 1999 and 2009). Fans had largely written the franchise off, but an unexpected return to, if not form, at least adequacy saw another three seasons that were pretty solid (2012, 2016, 2017). Not classic, but pretty entertaining with some good ideas.

Unfortunately, this run could not continue. The show's four main actors had other commitments and were also getting on a bit, with the oldest castmember Robert Llewellyn in particular becoming less and less keen at the extensive prosthetics and makeup work needed to embody the character of Kryten in his sixties. Writer Doug Naylor also found the task of handling the entire show, from writing through producing to directing every episode of the last three seasons, to be quite demanding, meaning that a new season every year or even couple of years was not viable.

To square the circle, Naylor suggested a new approach: feature-length specials, approximately the length of three normal episodes but which could be edited into single long movies, with filming for all the episodes done simultaneously to make shooting as tight and efficient as possible. This would minimise the workload for everyone and allow the show to make return appearances well into the future.

The Promised Land was the first project to appear in this format. Writer Doug Naylor surprised fans by actually answering a question they'd been asking for decades: what happened to the other humanoid cats who abandoned the ship before Lister's awakening in the first episode? The show had teased this question but never really answered it, resorting instead to the old standbys of bringing in more GELFs (Genetically-Engineered Life-Forms) and simulants (killer androids) whenever it needed an outside threat. Naylor deemed the special a big enough canvas to bring back the rest of the cat species in force and find out what happens when they meet their god, and discover he's a middle-aged, curry-obsessed, lager-guzzling, unambitious geezer.

The story is reasonably decent, with a rare, excellent villain, this case Ray Fearon as Rodon, the tyrannical leader of the cats. The guest cast is also generally great, though unusually large by Dwarf standards, meaning that each guest character is only thinly-sketched and doesn't have much to do (Lister's three acolytes are a bit one-note). This is enhanced by the special also reintroducing Holly (Norman Lovett, returning after a brief appearance in the Season 12 finale) and giving the main cast a lot to do, including a new "Diamond Light" mode for Rimmer which turns him into a superhero, at least until his battery runs out. Surprisingly, the least-well-served character here is the Cat himself (Danny John-Jules). With the entire supporting cast being made up of cats, it feels like Naylor doesn't have as many cat-things for him to do. One late-breaking storyline hints at a larger role for him but this doesn't go very far.

Whilst the story is solid and there's a lot of extra interesting ideas to play around with, like Holly being reset to factory settings and immediately going hard on the characters because they're not disciplined, proper crewmembers (shades of Queeg here, but the show doesn't make the connection), it does feel like the allocated time is too much for the concept. Perhaps a tighter 60-minute story, split into two episodes for repeats, would have been better. As it stands we do have several chase sequences, a brief-but-fun space battle, and in the scenes where Starbug crashes in the desert, easily the most impressive vfx sequence ever created for the show.

There's also some ideas that Naylor has wanted to pursue since the very start of the series. He and Rob Grant had wanted to portray the holograms in the show in black-and-white as opposed to their full-colour crewmates, but 1980s vfx just wasn't up to it. Here he gets his wish as Rimmer goes onto low-power mode and spends a third of the story traipsing around in black-and-white (and plugged in to a wall socket!).

There's some nice ideas as Lister has to convince Rimmer to go on living, and has to deal with religious faith and the motivating force for it. Red Dwarf is at its best when it throws some big philosophical concepts into the mix, and it does that here successfully, though not as much as you might think given the storyline.

Events culminate in a reasonably clever ending with some big moments for all the characters. And, unfortunately, that's it for now. Since The Promised Land aired in early 2020, there have been no further adventures on-screen. Plans for a series of TV movies to follow this one up fell through when co-creator Rob Grant took legal action to regain part control of the franchise for his own planned TV prequel and additional novels, something Doug Naylor maintained was unnecessary and basically blocked any chances of new episodes being made. The situation was resolved, but too late; by the time the smoke cleared, the Dave TV network had suffered savage budget cuts and could no longer afford to make much in the way of original new TV. The BBC maintained its curious decades-long indifference to making new episodes, and Rob Grant's attempts to interest a streamer in a rebooted version of the show came to nothing.

Even more tragically, Rob Grant passed away earlier this year, taking the wind out of the sails for a lot of fans. Whilst new episodes cannot be ruled out - this show has come back from the dead more often than Optimus Prime, Superman, Batman, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Kenny from South Park combined - it does feel more remote than previously, especially as the actors start edging into their seventies.

If this is how it ends...it's an okay way to go out. Red Dwarf: The Promised Land (***½) is fine. It has some good ideas, some good performances, some thoughtful and introspective moments, some outstanding vfx and some good laughs, and even gives Holly some really good story and character moments for the first time since arguably Season 4. There are some painful jokes that just don't land, the cast is a bit too large to allow everyone to be serviced well, and the pacing feels off. But we're a long way from the show at its worst, and if the show and franchise can't go out with a bang, maybe going out with a miaow instead is fine.

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Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files - Volume 05

Mega-City One, 2103. Mega-City One's criminal rackets are being hit hard, by both internal divisions and by the coordinated efforts of the city's Justice Department. But as Judge Dredd's campaign against organised crime pays dividends, the city is rocked by the arrival of three Dark Judges from a parallel dimension. Their mission is to rescue their brother Judge Death from where he was imprisoned. As the city struggles in the aftermath of that conflict, a mysterious malaise spreads from city block to city block, triggering insane violence that manifests as Block Wars. As the city descends into utter chaos, Dredd and his allies discover that events are being orchestrated by their old enemies in East-Meg One...who have a devastating plan to conquer Mega-City One once and for all. The world will never be the same again.

The first four Judge Dredd collections did a fine job collecting the opening four years of Dredd's strips from the 2000AD comic. These collections show how the character was initially created and then evolved, with the world expanding and gaining more detail, with more factions, characters and enemies being invented.

A key part of the evolution was the move away from one-off strips to longer and more involving narratives, such as The Cursed Earth, The Day the Law Died and The Judge Child. These longer stories allowed for more character and thematic development, allowing the writers - mostly John Wagner and Alan Grant - to start lacing in more and more biting satire on modern life by exaggerating it to insane degrees. These long epics became more popular with readers, despite the risk of devoting a quarter or even half a full year of the comic to a single story, risking newcomers feeling lost if they joined halfway through.

Volume 05 of The Complete Case Files is notable for just dropping the idea of stand-alones altogether and running several massive, and quite influential, storylines one after other, including the combined saga of Block Mania followed by The Apocalypse War, forming one of the comic's biggest-ever single arcs and arguably its most devastating.

Backing up, things kick off with The Mega-Rackets, Judge Dredd's war on organised crime. Organised crime in Mega-City One is very good at keeping its head down and putting so many layers of deniability between the crime lords and their minions on the street that neutralising their activities is almost impossible. This arc sees Dredd taking on the rackets only to be constantly stymied by their lawyers and own cleverness. It's only when the rackets end up fighting one another and a newly-arrived crime gang - from another planet! - that Dredd gets the opening he needs to take them on. This is mostly an excuse to explore several different types of crime in the city we haven't seen before and also see that there is a functioning judiciary and law, with the right to lawyers and appeals. It's a reasonably solid story arc and could have been a highlight of the volume if this was any other volume. Instead, it has to settle for being the lowest-key storyline here.

Judge Death Lives is the shortest of the major arcs here but it's very punchy. As related in Volume 03, the evil Judge Death arrived from another dimension where being alive is itself a crime. Dredd and Psi-Judge Anderson were able to stop Death, but only by imprisoning him in Anderson's mind. Anderson herself was then imprisoned in stasis to stop Death's escape, an imperfect solution but the only one to hand. Inevitably, this stopgap runs out as Death is rescued by his three brother Judges from his home dimension: Mortis, Fear and Fire. They unleash chaos on Mega-City One until Dredd and a recovering Anderson team up to bring them down, ejecting them from our reality and then following them to their home dimension to destroy them there. Unusually, the whole story has the same artist from start to finish, the S-tier Brian Bolland (a few years ahead of his Batman run on The Killing Joke here), which gives it a tremendous visual consistency and quality, and arguably Dredd's single-minded pursuit of justice is taken up a notch here when he casually invades another universe to stop his enemies. To cap it off, the story features what is quite possibly The Single Greatest Comic Book Panel in Human History. The result is a story that is not subtle (Dredd rarely is) but moves with tremendous purpose.

After a couple of brief, disposable interlude stories (Diary of a Mad Citizen and The Hotdog Run), we move into Block Mania. Block Wars, caused by the citizens of two neighbouring blocks having enough of their neighbours and going to war against one another, have been previously established in earlier volumes, but here the scale quickly starts going out of control with dozens of blocks across the northern sector going to war almost simultaneously. Dredd's investigation is made difficult because the sheer scope of the crisis, and the response needed to quell it, is almost beyond belief. It's only when he gets a tip that a single person has caused the crisis, allowing him to potentially eliminate it at the source, that the problem becomes manageable.

The bait-and-switch here remains extremely impressive: the miscreant is caught and we discover that the situation can be brought under control...until it becomes clear that East-Meg One has manipulated events to completely distract Mega-City One so it can launch a massive, full-scale nuclear attack. Block Mania doesn't even really end, it just upgrades into The Apocalypse War, in which Earth is wracked by the largest-scaled nuclear war in its history (dwarfing even the Third World War that created the Cursed Earth and forced the people of the world into the mega-cities in the first place). The scale here goes completely berserk as the two cities trade counter-blows of land-based, sub-launched and even space-launched missiles whilst their laser interceptor screens try to intercept the incoming ordinance.

It's chaos on a monumental scale until the bad guys gain an advantage and decide to try to capture the remaining parts of Mega-City One by ground invasion, which ends up being a significant mistake, giving Dredd time to both martial a resistance movement and then plot to take the fight back to the Sov-Block homeland. The writers really sell the size of the war, bringing back almost every character of note in the comic's five-year history. Dredd's assembly of a Judge suicide squad consisting of almost all the Judges of note we've met so far is a key moment, establishing the likes of Hershey and Anderson as ongoing major players. Even Walter the Wobot and Dredd's landlady Maria have key roles to play.

It's a massive - and quite spectacularly violent - story unfolding on a scale that's pretty bananas. It's even funnier that the motivation for the story was allegedly John Wagner getting annoyed by subsequent writer and artists pushing the boundaries of Mega-City One to a ridiculous size, extending all the way down to Florida when his original map had it ending short of Georgia. The story is basically an excuse to reduce the size of the city to more manageable dimensions.

Themes in the story are more implied than explored: with the invaders showing little mercy, Dredd is not inclined to expend much back in their direction, though even he briefly pauses over one key decision and tells his subordinates to stand down so he can do the deed himself (something that has colossal ramifications that continue to reverberate in the story today, almost forty-five years later). There's also the startling decision by Mega-City Two and Texas City not to come to their ally's aid, even when the immediate threat to their cities is lifted, even more shocking when Mega-City Two was saved from complete annihilation by Dredd himself in the Cursed Earth arc. This will come up again, though not as forcefully as some might wish.

This isn't subtle storytelling - there's probably more nuclear explosions in this collection than almost any other comic book ever published - but it does the job of completely changing the worldbuilding of the setting, and making Dredd arguably the most important person on the planet (making his subsequent return to being a street judge teetering on the edge of implausibility). It'll arguably be eight years until the comic tries to do anything on this scale again, for good and ill.

The Complete Case Files Volume 05 (****½) is easily the biggest, more impressive and most epic collection of stories to date, though again these tales lack a certain subtlety compared to more recent comics. But the collection features several essential storylines that will determine the future of the character and franchise for decades to come.

The volume contains every Judge Dredd story printed from Prog (issue) 208 to Prog 270 of the comic 2000AD, published from April 1981 to June 1982. The stories are set in the years 2103 and 2104. The writers in this collection are John Wagner and Alan Grant. The artists in this collection are Brian Bolland, John Cooper, Steve Dillon, Carlos Ezquerra, Ian Gibson, Mick McMahon, Barry Mitchell, Ron Smith and Colin Wilson.

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Netflix cancels FORGOTTEN REALMS TV show mid-development, pivots to RAVENLOFT

Netflix has ceased development work on The Forgotten Realms, a Dungeons & Dragons-based TV show in the titular setting. Shawn Levy and Drew Crevello had been developing that project for around eighteen months before Netflix decided to move on. However, Netflix remain in the D&D game, as they have now pivoted to a new TV project based on the horror setting Ravenloft instead, with Alfonso Cuarón on board.

The move clears up a potentially complicated clash, as Netflix were developing The Forgotten Realms whilst HBO are working on Baldur's Gate, a TV show sequel to the popular video game sequel headed by Craig Mazin of Chernobyl and Last of Us fame (Baldur's Gate is a major city within the Forgotten Realms). Levy and Mazin had agreed to cooperate on a shared continuity, but it was always regarded as dubious that they'd be able to coordinate this across two separate production partners. Mazin's Baldur's Gate project remains in development at HBO and is likely to be his next project once work on the third and final season of The Last of Us wraps.

Whilst Netflix has passed on The Forgotten Realms, it's possible that project could be redeveloped elsewhere, maybe even at HBO as well, but that remains highly speculative.

The new Ravenloft project will instead be divorced from the wider D&D multiverse, and will focus on the tragic villain of Strahd von Zarovich of Barovia. Alfonso Cuarón, Richard Swartz and Gaby Rodriguez will produce for Esperanto Filmoj whilst Gabriel Marano produces for Hasbro. Frequent Tim Burton collaborator John August will be head writer and likely showrunner.

Ravenloft was created by Tracy and Laura Hickman as a stand-alone adventure for D&D 1st Edition back in 1983, but was expanded into a full campaign setting for 2nd Edition via boxed set releases in 1990 and 1994, expanded upon by additional sourcebooks and a line of novels. The setting was developed under licence by Sword & Sorcery Studios during 3rd Edition but the licence withdrawn so Wizards of the Coast could release their own version for 4th Edition. However, the early termination of 4th Edition saw that project cancelled. The setting returned to prominence through adventures and source material in both 5th Edition and the current 5.5 Edition.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.