The BBC and Disney+ have confirmed they have commissioned a new mini-series spin-off from Doctor Who. The War Between the Land and the Sea enters production next month and will air in 2025.
The five-part series is co-written by Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davies and previous Who writer Peter McTighe, whilst Who director Dylan Holmes-Williams will direct. Jemma Redgrave will reprise her long-running role as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, the head of UNIT, with Alexander Devrient reprising his role as UNIT Colonel Ibrahim. Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Loki) and Russell Tovey (Becoming Human) will lead the new series. Both had previously appeared in Doctor Who, but it appears likely they will be playing new characters.
The new series sees a threat to the human race emerging from the ocean, which UNIT leads the fight against in the Doctor's absence. Unconfirmed rumours say this threat will be the Sea Devils, a popular recurring Doctor Who enemy who recently appeared in the 2022 TV special Legend of the Sea Devils.
In the meantime, Doctor Who fans can look forwards to additional Christmas Specials in 2024 and 2025, and an eight-episode new season, which is already in the can and expected to air in the spring.
Confirming earlier reports, Marvel has successfully lured its most successful directing team, Anthony and Joseph Russo, back to their Cinematic Universe. The two directors will tackle the next two Avengers movies. The first of these has been retitled Avengers: Doomsday and will be released in May 2026, with Avengers: Secret Wars to follow in May 2027. But the Russo Brothers and Kevin Feige also confirmed an old friend will be returning.
Robert Downey Jr., who previously played Tony Stark/Iron Man in nine Marvel movies, is rejoining the MCU as iconic supervillain Dr. Victor von Doom. The announcement was made at the San Diego Comic-Con yesterday.
The role of Dr. Doom, the ruler of Latveria who wants to bring about global order under his rule, was previously played in live action by Joseph Culp in Roger Corman's 1994 movie, Julian McMahon in the 2005 movie and its sequel Rise of the Silver Surfer, and Toby Kebbell in the 2015 film.
The Russo Brothers' longtime writing partner, Stephen McFeely, is also taking over scripting duties on both new films. He previously co-wrote Captain America: The Winter Solder, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, the four films previously helmed by the Brothers.
The move represents a near-inevitable pivot by Marvel Studios once actor Jonathan Majors was convicted of misdemeanour assault and harassment in December 2023. Majors had played the villainous Kangs and various alternate timeline versions of the same character in numerous projects leading up to the next Avengers face-off. Marvel had mused recasting, but, given his last appearance in Season 2 of Loki acted as a good pause point for the character, they have instead decided to move to a different story. It may be they return to the Kang storyline with a new actor at a later date, although perhaps they could be forgiven for just writing off the whole thing as a bad idea and moving on.
Speculation will now be rife that Doom - primarily a Fantastic Four villain before appearing with other Marvel characters - may appear or at least cameo in the 1960s-set The Fantastic 4: First Steps (as it was recently retitled), which is due in cinemas on 25 July, 2025 (although the main villain has already been confirmed to be Ralph Ineson's Galactus). It was also confirmed at the Marvel panel that the Fantastic Four will be (similar to Steve Rogers) travelling to the present to fight Dr. Doom in the two new Avengers films.
Given Marvel's recent creative woes, you can't fault them for turning back to their "dream team" to drag them back to the glory days, although some may also feel it's a shame they could not find a firmer footing with new talent to drive them to new levels of success.
The Twelve Colonies of Kobol have constructed robotic servitors, the Cylons, to improve their quality of life. But the Cylons, gaining self-awareness and knowledge of their status as slaves, have rebelled, fleeing into deep space to build a formidable war machine. The Colonial Fleet has been commissioned to deal with the threat, but political infighting amongst the Colonies undermines its operational efficiency. As the Cylons gain an upper hand, the Colonial Fleet learns of divisions amongst the Cylons themselves. As it seeks victory, the Fleet deploys its ultimate weapon: the Jupiter-class battlestar, foremost amongst which is a ship named Galactica.
Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock is a 2017 space strategy game developed by Black Lab Games and published by Slitherine. It is based the rebooted Battlestar Galactica TV show which aired on SyFy from 2003 to 2010, spanning a mini-series, four TV seasons, three TV/DVD movies and a spin-off show, Caprica, which lasted for a single season. I reviewed the original game in isolation here, but for this review I replayed the original game and then all of the (extensive) expansions.
Deadlock plays as the product of an unholy but compelling union between the Homeworld and XCOM franchises. The game is set during the First Cylon War, starting about fifty-two years before the events of the original TV show and, through the original campaign and the five story-based expansions, spans the twelve years of the conflict. The player has control of both the strategic and tactical layers of the war, at least to start with. Through an operations control room on the Daidalos Shipyard, you can build new ship and fleets, research and equip new technologies, and order fleets into battle via a strategic map of the Twelve Colonies. Ignore the Cylon threat for too long and they will occupy entire planets, and their funding will be cut off until you can mount a costly liberation operation.
At any time you'll usually have a plethora of side-missions to choose from, variations on defending civilian ships or stations from Cylon attack, engaging Cylon forces in a full-on battle or taking out enemy targets like resupply depots or flagships. Main story missions will usually have more elaborate goals and will feature bespoke voice acting and writing. These missions push forwards the overall strategic course of the war as well as developing the characters.
If Deadlock has a main weakness, it's that the voice acting and dialogue is a little weak, and the game has a weird insistence on making the new characters relatives of established characters from the mythos. Having Admiral Cain's aunt hanging out with Helo's grandmother never feels anything other than random. The game does have more fun when Doc Cottle shows up as a young medic, still as outspoken and grumpy as ever. Oddly the game is more reluctant to have Adama show up in the later missions, despite him canonically serving on Galactica at that point. The story itself, as in the general thrust, is very good and gives you a good idea on how the Cylons didn't simply curb-stomp the Colonies during the original war despite their apparent superiority. One weakness is that the game doesn't explain things that happened during the TV show, so if you're playing this solely as a video game on its own merits, there are a few abrupt plot turns that can feel very random without the context of the show.
The actual gameplay loop starts off very compelling: sending fleets into battle, liberating captured colonies and outposts, and pushing back a Cylon thrust in one sector is all very satisfying, especially when deploying early-game, inferior ships and having to cannily use terrain (gas pockets, asteroid fields) or special weapons to overcome usually superior enemy numbers. The strategic metagame is more XCOM than Total War though, with more of a general push of battle rather than deploying forces in detail. Once you've pushed the Cylons back into the Helios Alpha system, the nearest Colonial point to Cylon territory, it's easy to prevent further breakouts into the rest of the Colonies.
The actual space battles are very satisfying. The game is turn-based, although a twist here is that you and the enemy issue orders simultaneously, and you can't tell what orders the enemy are giving. The game then advances time in 10-second chunks with the consequences of your orders now shown, before pausing again to allow you to give orders. Your capital ships have different features, such as direct-fire main guns which fire automatically depending on what enemy ships are in which firing arcs (you can also nominate a target to focus fire on), a variety of missiles (from target-tracking warheads to dumb-fire torpedoes to nukes) and smaller ships to deploy, usually squadrons of Vipers and Raptors. Vipers are very capable, especially when you get the Mk. II variant halfway through the game, and judicious use of them to take out Cylon Raiders, shoot down incoming ordinance and then attack enemy capital ships en masse can make your battles much easier than they first appear.
The graphics are great (for 2017), even if your ships generally feel quite "small," but seeing the recoil as a battlestar's main ordinance engages enemy ships and missiles roar off never gets old. Vipers and Raiders are scaled correctly, so are quite hard to see during battles themselves and you have to rely on unit symbols. Particularly fun is when the battle is over and the game auto-generates a realtime playback of the battle, using dynamic camera angles, documentary-style crash-zooms and so on which all make them look like the space battles from the TV show (the game also allows you to upload particularly cool-looking battles to YouTube, if you wish, though this gets spotty with 4K playbacks).
A weakness of the gameplay loop is that once heavier ships are available, the need to fight side-battles as well as the main story missions becomes fairly predictable. In the latter half of the main storyline, you can find yourself trying to get through main story missions whilst a secondary fleet handles side-missions, normally by just using the exact same tactics each time (launch Vipers, send them to take care of business for you, put up flak screens, destroy lighter, faster enemy ships when they catch up). This can get a little grindy.
The original game is solid and mostly satisfying, despite something of a cliffhanger ending, but the DLC expands the scope of the game enormously. Given most of my review of the original game stands, it might be more useful here to focus on these expansions in order of release.
Reinforcement Pack (2017)
This expansion adds a bunch of new ships, including the Berzerk carrier, which is sometimes useful in early game battles but quickly loses viability compared to battlestars. The Janus heavy cruiser, which is effectively a missile frigate, is much more useful throughout the game and its expansions. The Cylon Phobos and Cerastes are gunships that don't do enough to differentiate themselves from the existing Nemesis-class, through, whilst the mines introduced in this DLC are more annoying than useful.
Broken Alliance (2018)
Broken Alliance works a bit like the old Enemy Within DLC for XCOM: Enemy Unknown. It's an "add-on" for the original campaign. Recognising that the original campaign could be a bit monotonous, this expansion adds an eight-mission side-campaign where the attempt to bring together the Twelve Colonies to sign the Articles of Colonisation is undermined by traitors and saboteurs, resulting in Colonial-on-Colonial battles. It's a solid story with some twists and turns, and it adds a much more useful array of ships to the game: the Minerva-class battlestar is an improvement over the Artemis-class light battlestar of the base game and a much more capable escort to your Jupiters; the Celestra support ship is a fun way to reinforce friendly units; Assault Raptors add massive missile pods to the standard Raptor, allowing it to become a more potent threat to Cylon heavy ships; and the Argos-class basestar is a more formidable Cylon flagship. This DLC is required, I think, to make the base game more enjoyable.
Anabasis (2018)
The most interesting and experimental of the expansions, Anabasis is a persistent fleet campaign which makes the game play more like Homeworld, and draws on both the original and rebooted TV shows for inspiration. Your fleet consists of warships and civilian vessels. You jump to a star system, pick up more civilian ships and then have to fight your way clear of the Cylons before jumping to the next target. Damage is not repaired beyond what limited ad hoc repairs you can carry out on the fly. Eventually you'll get home or be destroyed in the process. This is a customisable survival mode where you can decide on difficulty, what ships you have etc and score points for how many enemy ships are destroyed and how many civilians you get home. This mode interfaces with later DLC, like the Modern Ships Pack, allowing you to have Mercury-class battlestars like the Pegasus join the fight. This game also adds twelve new side-mission types to the base game, improving its variability immensely. For hardcore fans, this is a must-play.
Sin and Sacrifice (2019)
The first story-based expansion to the game, this is set after the base campaign and introduces a new Cylon general who is a more formidable opponent than the Cylons in the base game. The Colonials have to fight off this commander's more canny attempts to destroy the Twelve Colonies. The DLC also expands the repertoire of battle chatter and adds the Colonial Heracles gunship and the Cylon Gorgon support carrier to the game. The eleven-mission story expansion is pretty good, though suffering from some of the same grindy issues as the base game, and controls the same way.
Resurrection (2019)
Resurrection changes the gameplay of the series significantly. Rather than fighting on the map of the Twelve Colonies and organising battles from the strategy centre of the mobile Daidalos Shipyard, you're now based permanently in the CIC of Galactica, which, in a nice-if-pointless twist, you can now walk around. This is a perfect 3D replica of the set from the TV show, and is very impressive. The ten-mission campaign, set three years after Sin and Sacrifice, sees the Galactica being upgraded for a new phase of the war, as the Cylons seek to split the Twelve Colonies to more easily destroy them.
A welcome feature here is that you can play new story mission sequentially, whilst playing side-missions only to drop the Cylon threat level and make the story missions easier. This allows you to focus on getting through the story with less distractions, whilst still allowing you to fight side-battles and level up your officers and crews. The DLC adds the Jupiter Mk. II battlestar to the fleet, along with the Cylon Cratus-class basestar. Both sides also get heavy bombers to augment their fleets, if you're okay with micro-managing them. This expansion refreshes the gameplay just when it really needs it.
Ghost Fleet Offensive (2020)
Set several years after the previous campaign, this ten-mission story sees the Colonies secretly pooling together a "Ghost Fleet" behind Cylon lines to deliver a devastating blow to their command structure which will hopefully end the war. The new Cylon commander Atropos is close to overwhelming the Colonies' defences and besieging the planets, so the mission takes on fresh urgency. This DLC interfaces chronologically with the Blood & Chrome DVD and introduces the Orion-class frigate from that movie, along with the Colonial Defender and Cylon Medusa. The main story in this one is pretty good, but the new ships are underwhelming.
Modern Ships Pack (2020)
This DLC adds several ships from the timeframe of the TV series to the game. These cannot be used in the story campaigns (which would not make any sense) but can be used in skirmish, multiplayer and the Anabasis mode. The ships included are the Mercury-class battlestar, the Valkyrie-class support battlestar, Colonial Viper Mk. VII, the modern Cylon basestar, the Guardian basestar and the Modern Raider. If you want to see the familiar ships from the TV show, this is a must-have, but is otherwise unnecessary to follow the story.
Armistice (2020)
The final expansion adds an eight-mission campaign which sees the Galactica crew confront their old enemy-turned-ally-turned-enemy, the Cylon scientist Clothos, for the final time. They learn of the existence of a powerful Cylon weapon and track it down to a remote planet where they join forces with the battlestar Columbia in Operation Raptor Talon (the events of which are chronicled in the BSG spin-off movie Razor). This has the most satisfying storyline of the expansions, as it moves directly towards ending the war once and for all, even if the precise events of the final mission don't fully make sense unless you've already seen the TV show.
When combined into one complete package, Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock is a formidably impressive package. Sixty story missions and an effectively infinite pool of side missions create a campaign that will easily take you over 60 hours to complete. The Anabasis survival/challenge mode is highly replayable and customisable. There are also multiplayer and skirmish modes, and an adjustable difficulty level, as well as different tactics to employ. There is a reasonable variety of ships and weapons to experiment with.
That said, there's still a degree of repetition and grind involved, though far less than on release; Black Lab Games should be congratulated on their exemplary post-release support that took a fairly bare-bones original title and has since fleshed it out into a very comprehensive game. In particular removing the mission choice map is a counter-intuitive move which improves the game tremendously in the later DLC.
The main question is price: the Complete Edition is eyebrow-raisingly expensive, with the original game and the DLC all still being sold permanently at full price. The full package will set you back £90. It's a good game but it's not that good. Fortunately, Deadlock and its DLC are frequently on sale and I've seen the Complete Package go for under £30, which is much more sensible (note that the BattleTech Mercenary Collection has the exact same problem, going for a bonkers £75 when not on sale).
Assuming you can get it for a decent price, Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock (****) is an engrossing and rewarding space tactics game, with a good story, interesting unit variety and a formidable amount of content. The voice acting and dialogue could be stronger, but for a low-budget product this is very polished and enjoyable, and for established BSG fans, it has added value in fleshing out ideas the TV show could only hint at. The game is available now on PC (via Steam and GoG), Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
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Steven Erikson has confirmed that his in-progress Witness Trilogy, a sequel to his classic Malazan Book of the Fallen sequence (1999-2011), will now be a quartet.
Erikson published the first book in the series, The God is Not Willing, in 2021 to considerable acclaim and success. His previous two Malazan novels had been the first two books in the Kharkanas Trilogy, Forge of Darkness (2012) and Fall of Light (2016), but had sold relatively poorly, necessitating a shift to a new project.
Erikson had planned to conclude the Kharkanas sequence, writing several hundred pages of the third book, Walk in Shadow, before his publishers convinced him to return to the Witness sequence. Erikson was hundreds of pages into the second book, No Life Forsaken, before realising it was really two books. After this realisation came about, Erikson pressed on to complete both books before submitting them to his publisher.
This process is almost complete (he had two months' work left to do two months ago), and Erikson is hopeful this means that No Life Forsaken and the as-yet-untitled third book can be released in relatively quick succession (though I suspect it'll be in subsequent years) in the near future.
His plan is to then finish Walk in Shadow (which Erikson was also hinting some time ago might also become two books) and the fourth and final Witness novel. Erikson reiterated that Karsa Orlong will only appear in the final book in the series. He also has two additional Malazan novellas under contract.
Possibly not coincidentally, several of Erikson's publishing houses have put up the same placeholder date for No Life Forsaken recently: 28 August 2025. This seems fairly achievable based on Erikson's current progress.
Paramount+ have cancelled their TV series based on the popular Halo video game franchise after two seasons and seventeen episodes.
Amblin Television produced the show in conjunction with Microsoft, Xbox and 343 Industries, who developed the previous three games in the series. This group is now shopping the show to other streamers, but the reportedly high budget makes it a tough sell.
The show had a rough landing for its first season in 2022, with critics mostly left unmoved and fans annoyed by a large number of changes to the source material, including starting the show some considerable time before the games began, omitting key game characters, introducing new characters and killing off fan-favourite characters in different places in the narrative. The second season, released earlier this year, was better and had a stronger reception, finally reaching the events of the games (adapting Halo: Reach and ending where Halo: Combat Evolved begins), although the overall reception was still lukewarm. Paramount+ had indicated that the show had performed strongly for them in terms of viewership, so the decision to cancel was likely due to cost and the streamer's uncertain future, which may have also contributed to a shrinking of its Star Trek portfolio.
Fans may also hold hope that this clears the way for a more source-accurate adaptation of Halo in the future, but given how long it took this project to get off the ground and the declining reception of recent games in the series, that may be rather optimistic.
Whilst flicking through Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross's splendid 2018 book So Say We All: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Battlestar Galactica, I rediscovered the interesting story of writer Ronald D. Moore's work on a TV version of Anne McCaffrey's seminal science fantasy series, The Dragonriders of Pern, in the early 2000s.
The Dragonriders of Pern is a very long-running science fantasy series that began with Dragonflight, published in 1967. Twenty-four novels and two story collections in the setting were published before Anne McCaffrey passed away in 2011; some of the later books were co-written by her son Todd. The series is a rationalised fantasy, with the backstory being that the planet Pern has been colonised by humans from a far future Earth, but they lost their technology and were plunged into dark age by the onset of "Thread," a spore that consumes all organic material. The human colonists were able to genetically engineer a creature similar to the dragons of Earth legend to deal with Thread, destroying it in the air before it could touch the ground. Human dragonriders form telepathic bonds with these creatures to control them. After many centuries, a new, more medieval fantasy-ish society emerges.
Ronald D. Moore was a fan of the book series. He achieved his initial success in television by working as a writer on Star Trek: The Next Generation. His first script, The Bonding, was acclaimed as a character-focused study. However, he also became valued on the writing team for both his encyclopaedic knowledge of the franchise, his fascination with the Klingons (developing much of the lore behind the species) and his strong sense of story. Moore worked on The Next Generation from its third through seventh seasons (1989-94), co-writing the series finale All Good Things... with his writing partner Brannon Braga. The two writers joined forces to write the seventh and eighth Star Trek movies, Generations (1994) and the very well-received First Contact (1996). Subsequent to this he moved over to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and worked on that show from its third through seventh seasons (1994-99), amongst other things developing the USS Defiant and continuing to serve as "the Klingon guy," whilst penning many of the show's strongest episodes.
With Deep Space Nine wrapping up in 1999, Moore decided to move to work on Star Trek: Voyager, then in its sixth and penultimate season, which his former writing partner Braga was working on as effective showrunner. Moore was dissatisfied with the direction Voyager had taken, feeling that the writers had not taken the premise seriously enough. He wanted to have the ship damaged and stay damaged from episode to episode, whilst the crew would be more morally compromised by their journey to get home. Braga and franchise overseer Rick Berman both felt it was too late to make such changes, and Moore, disappointed, decided to leave the franchise altogether.
Moore briefly worked as a consulting producer on Good vs. Evil before joining Roswell in its second season. He developed the background mythology for the show's alien race and wrote some of the show's most popular episodes. After it terminated in 2002, he was offered the opportunity to develop Dragonriders of Pern.
The rights to the property had been circulating for many years, with Irish company Zyntopo Teoranta picking them up in 1996. They partnered with Canadian company Alliance Atlantis to develop the extensive CGI that would be required to depict the dragons and other fantastical elements in the story. They then consulted with Moore to develop the project further.
Moore's by-then long list of credentials had led to doors opening at other companies, and New Regency and Warner Brothers were receptive to the idea: a high concept, a proven scriptwriter with his own fanbase, a very popular book series with a huge number of readers, and fantasy being absolutely huge with the success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (still incomplete at that time). They greenlit a pilot episode, hired experienced TV director Felix Enriquez Alcala to direct, and began building sets and casting. They also engaged in concept art and further CG experimenting, developing an "in-the-moment" documentary style for the CG, to make the audience feel they were really on the back of a dragon.
Alcala and Moore were scouting locations in Santa Fe, New Mexico when word came in that the studio was sending them a revised version of the script. For Moore, who'd written the script, this was news, as the script had already been greenlit and they were moving into pre-production. For the studio to request rewrites on a script after it had been completed and drafted was unusual; for them to revise it themselves without informing the showrunner was unheard of. The revised script completely changed the story, which no longer bore any resemblance to Anne McCaffrey's novel. In Moore's words, the studio had "done a WB on it all right, it had become a teenage idiotfest." Moore asked the studio for an explanation and even offered to rewrite his script to incorporate some of the elements they'd wanted added. They replied that their script would be the only one that was going to be shot. The studio agreed to a telephone call the next day.
By pure chance, Moore was due to attend a panel at the Museum of Television and Radio in Beverly Hills that night. Also on the panel was Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski, who'd had his own confrontation with an intransigent, interfering network over his show Crusade, and well-known Star Trek writer and SFF author Harlan Ellison, a well-known fighter for the rights of the writer. Ellison's advice to the audience of aspiring writers was to "stand up and have some principles. Don't whore your talent out to anybody, show some balls in this business. Be about something. What does it really mean to be a writer if you can't protect your talent?"
During the telephone call the next day, Moore reiterated he was not going to make the script that had been sent from the studio: he was happy to rewrite the script to their specifications himself, but not just shoot someone else's crappier version. When the studio exec presented Moore with an ultimatum that they could all just call it a day there and then, they were flabbergasted when Moore agreed. The project collapsed and was cancelled, apparently after almost $2 million had been spent on pre-production and development work.
Moore was glad he'd stuck to his principles but was concerned if this move would make him unemployable; fortunately, it was only a couple of weeks before producer David Eick, whom Moore had met on Good vs. Evil, got in touch. He'd been talking to Universal, who'd been working on a new iteration of Battlestar Galactica with director Bryan Singer. They'd gotten quite far into planning a new take on the franchise, even test-building some props and sets, but Singer had abruptly taken off to work with Fox on X-Men 2 after a substantial amount of money had been offered to him. This had left the BSG project hanging. Eick asked Moore if he'd like to redevelop it with him, and Moore said yes, and the rest there is, as they say, history.
As for Dragonriders of Pern, the series rights were picked up by Copperheart Entertainment in 2006, with David Hayter (yes, Solid Snake) producing. Warner Brothers later took up a new option in 2014. So far, the series has not been made.
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Deadline has posted an article musing on the performance of the newest season of Doctor Who for both the BBC and its new international partner, Disney+.
Doctor Who returned in November 2023 in a blaze of publicity with fan-favourite actors David Tennant and Catherine Tate returning as the Doctor and Donna Noble for three specials, timed to celebrate the franchise's 60th anniversary. The three specials did well, with around 7 million viewers tuning in overnight in the UK for the reunion celebrations. This was followed by the 2023 Christmas special, which was viewed by 7.5 million people tuning in to see Ncuti Gatwa's first outing as the Fifteenth Doctor.
Series 14 proper then started airing in May and saw a mixed critical reception, with episodes like Space Babies being castigated whilst Boom and 73 Yards were much more warmly received. The overnight UK ratings saw a significant decline to under 3 million for almost the entire season. Consolidated ratings later showed a climb to just under 6 million, which was healthier but still seen as disappointing compared to the specials. Some commentators pointed out that Series 14 debuted on the BBC iPlayer streaming service almost a day before the initial transmission, but the streaming ratings took longer to count, which skewed initial results. Whilst this was true, the long-term consolidated ratings continune to show a drop, if not as bad as first feared.
Disney+ revealed limited data on the show, confirming it was the most popular UK show on the platform (not a vast field, it has to be said) and reaching as high as the seventh-most popular show on the platform at times. A Disney insider reported the performance as "okay but not stellar."
Deadline's reporting may be flawed, however; they report the budget for the new era at around $13 million per episode, but returning showrunner Russell T. Davies has already said the budget is "well under" $10 million. Other insider reports suggesting a budget of around $7 million per episode, an approximate doubling from the $3-3.5 million budget of the Chris Chibnall era, which seems much more in line with what we see on screen. This budget is unfathomably generous compared to any other era of Doctor Who, although still well down on the biggest streaming shows (Disney's Star Wars and Marvel shows are believed to all be well over $20 million per episode).
Another issue with the Deadline article is a quote suggesting that Doctor Who's 2005 return may have been modestly successful to start with; this is in fact erroneous, with the near-11 million viewers tuning in for Rose being acknowledged as a massive success even by 2005 standards.
This low-ish budget, shared between Disney and the BBC, may give Doctor Who a chance at continuing further if it can build on these relatively humble beginnings. Series 15 is already in the can and expected to air in mid-2025, with a decision on further seasons expected around then.
The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that Disney and the Russo Brothers are in talks about a return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The Russo Brothers have apparently been offered the job of directing both The Avengers 5 and 6 (not the final titles), due in 2026 and 2027 respectively.
Anthony and Joseph Russo initially made their name as directors in television, helming episodes of Arrested Development (2003-06) before achieving critical acclaim as frequent directors on Community (2009-14). They established themselves in film directing Welcome to Collinwood (2002) and You, Me and Dupree (2006) before joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe and directing Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Captain America: Civil War (2016), Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019), as well as working on the TV series Agent Carter (2015).
The directors are credited with being instrumental in the success of "the golden age" of the MCU, running roughly from The Winter Soldier to Endgame, when the franchise's critical and commercial success were both at their height. Endgame was the highest-grossing movie of all time shortly after release, although it was subsequently pushed back down by a re-release of James Cameron's Avatar and then the release of its sequel.
The Russos decided to get out whilst the going was good and have focused on developing other projects, directing Cherry and The Gray Man and producing shows including Amazon's expensive flop Citadel. They are currently in post-production on a new film directed by them, The Electric State, for Netflix.
The MCU has carried on into a new era, but one that has been decidedly patchier than what came before, with both critical and commercial performances dropping significantly from the Russo era.
With both sides' post-Endgame performance being questionable, them joining forces once more makes a lot of sense. Marvel needs the Brothers' proven ability to shape complex stories with large casts into box office gold.
However, the move may be seen as desperation on Marvel's part given the chaos that has recently engulfed their plans. Deadpool & Wolverine director Shawn Levy apparently turned down the gig after reading the draft script, whilst Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi) had previously been announced in the role of director but then withdrew to focus on a Shang-Chi sequel that has still not materialised. The two movies were being developed as one project, under the titles The Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars, culminating a story arc revolving around the character of Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors). This plan had to be shelved quickly after Majors was arrested for assault and subsequently found guilty; Marvel terminated their contract with him. The two films are now apparently being rewritten to revolve around a new threat, with the intervening projects (such as Captain America: Brave New World, due in early 2025) being rejigged to set up this new storyline.
The Russos are not believed to have accepted the offer yet, and negotiations are in the early stages, but there seems at least a reasonable chance this might come to pass. If it does, expect the timeline to be changed and the movies probably dropped back whilst new scripts are put into place.
Tsushima Island, 1274. A quiet Japanese island lying in the straits between Korea and Japan is suddenly invaded by an expeditionary force of the Mongol Empire, led by Khotun Khan. Lord Shimura leads a stalwart defence but is captured in battle; his nephew Jin is defeated and left for dead. Rescued by Yuna, a thief, Jin vows to help liberate the island, rescue his uncle and drive the invaders back into the sea.
Ghost of Tsushima is an open-world, action-adventure game that was originally released on the PlayStation 4 and 5 in 2020. The game has now been reissued on PC in an enhanced format, with its expansion Iki Island included.
The game plays like a lot of other open-world games of this type. You control a dude with a sword and have to direct him around a map covered in icons, committing spectacular amounts of violence. The game mixes together main story missions, as Jin continues his operation to liberate the island, with stand-alone side stories. The game also has a mechanic where Jin builds up a band of loyal companions and can undertake further quests to solidify their loyalty and learn more about their backstories. Finally, the game sprinkles in optional activities like bamboo-cutting, archery contests, shrine-visiting and, er, lighthouse-igniting.
Mixed in with this is combat. A lot of combat. Jin is a samurai skilled with his sword and the game goes all-in on depicting the complexities of sword fighting, at least as much as it can. Jin can make light and heavy attacks, dodge and parry, but also has four stances of differing utility: he has a solid stance for dealing with swordsmen, a fluid one for getting around people with shields, a dodge-based one for dealing with pikes and a stance that combines weapon and unarmed moves to take down larger enemies. These mechanics can feel a little daunting at first but the game's learning curve is solid enough to let you get to grips with them. Jin can also use two types of bow and an assortment of tools and weapons, including smoke bombs and, slightly incongruously for a 13th Century-set game, a grappling hook as good as any you'll find in a contemporary-set stealth game.
The key thematic conflict of the game is that Jin has been trained to be honourable, to only face his enemies head-on in direct, fair combat. But to take down a numerically superior enemy of astonishing brutality, Jin soon finds this is not practical. His rescuer Yuna encourages him to learn the ways of stealth, moving quietly, stabbing enemies in the back and luring enemies into traps, skills which Jin learns reluctantly but soon realises are necessary. As the game continues, the invaders become more brutal and merciless, forcing Jin to become the same, until some of his former allies no longer recognise who he has become.
Nothing hugely new here, but the execution is superb. In fact, Ghost of Tsushima's crowning success is that it doesn't really do anything new at all, but it looks and plays so well you don't really care. Graphically the game isn't throwing around as many polygons as a 2024 release, but the art style is so vivid and often beautiful that it's irrelevant (with the bonus that the game plays incredibly well on even older hardware). Sure, you're running around doing a lot of busywork, but that busywork is thematic: finding fox shrines, locating inspirational spots to compose haikus, challenging a local warlord to a tense duel or liberating enslaved villagers. Presentation and, as the youngsters say these days, "vibes" go a long way to making a very familiar structure really enjoyable. You can enhance this further by playing the game in Japanese with subtitles (my preferred approach) or even in black-and-white "Kurosawa mode" (although I found this to be more satisfying as a gimmick rather than for long-term gameplay). My main problem with the game was one of my own making: I played this game in close proximity to Horizon Forbidden West, a completely different game in terms of setting and story, but virtually identical in terms of structure and format, and that occasionally left me feeling a little burned out on visiting another question mark on a map.
Combat is pretty good, with some great setpiece battles, but even swordfights with random raiders can be enjoyable. The game is certainly not Dark Souls, but it's fiendish enough in that enemies will anticipate attacks if you just spam the "hit" button, forcing you to change stances on the fly and adapt to circumstances as they evolve. Combat can be surprisingly tactical as you weigh up stealthy and loud approaches. In fact, more than a few missions made me feel like I was playing a zoomed-in version of 2016 classic Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, such was the wealth of options at hand for infiltrating a castle or enemy camp in an underhanded way. The game throws in boss fights on occasion where the normal combat options go out the window a bit and the game almost turns into a beat 'em up with large enemy health bars and very specific tactics being needed to take them down. The expansion even adds cavalry and mounted attack options which spices up the endgame.
The open world map is typically massive, although the game doesn't suffer from the same scaling issues that other games set in real-world locations do. Being able to climb El Capitan in Yosemite and see San Francisco in the distance in Horizon: Forbidden West is a bit silly, but Tsushima Island is much less famous and the massive map is able to capture the 40-mile-long island a bit more convincingly in terms of scale, even if it's not a 1:1 representation. The environmental graphics are absolutely superb, with some atmospheric moments achieved solely through exploration, like stumbling into a forest carpeted with bright flowers with deer running around (or, less fun, a hostile bear).
The story is solid and Jin's characterisation is pretty good as the game unfolds. Your companion characters Yuna, Lady Masako, Sensei Ishikawa, Monk Norio, merchant Kenji and ronin Ryuzo all have elaborate story arcs of their own, including their own enemies and demons they have to confront before they can join you for the final battle. Voice acting is exemplary throughout, and some of the animation for these characters is extremely effective.
One complaint is that the game does not do a great job with reactivity. Throughout the game you explore the problems of being honourable versus dishonourable, but the game doesn't really track what you are doing. If you play the game as honourably as possible, always defeating enemy in open combat, never stab anyone in the back etc, the story doesn't really react to that and instead pretends you've been skulking around the island like a ghost (which becomes your nickname). Alternatively, if you do sneak-murder your entire way through the game, other allies will chide you on being too generous and enjoying the stand-up fight too much, endangering yourself and the cause too recklessly. It's a bit weird.
The game also has an odd approach to difficulty, by making difficulty apply to everyone. Play the game on Easy and you gain a lot of extra health, but the same happens to the enemy, leaving them tedious arrow-sponges that taken an age to kill. Playing the game on Hard paradoxically makes the game easier, as enemies drop in just a couple of hits (so do you, but you can mitigate that straightforwardly with better armour and increasing your health through side-tasks).
These are not major issues. I did find some elements of combat a little questionable, such as un-dodgeable attacks and some wonky physics where you'd be sent flying in completely the opposite direction to where you should be according to actual science. But minor amounts of jank in an open-world game are to be expected, and Ghost of Tsushima is actually better than most at this.
The Iki Island expansion offers an extended coda to the main game as you return to the island where your father died crushing a rebellion, and have to try to ally with the inhabitants (who have not forgotten your family's brutality) against the Mongols, creating a set of knotty moral quandaries. Unfortunately the main villain on this island is tedious, and the expansion has them capture and drug you at the start, meaning you periodically suffer weird-out visions. This sometimes has you trying to find a new dye or archery competition and then suffering some freak-out vision for five minutes that you could really do without. Still, most of the expansion is very good in terms of the story and new enemy types it introduces.
All told, I completed the main game and expansion in a combined 68 hours, which felt okay, maybe a little overstuffed. Obviously you can bring that down a fair bit by not trying to 100% every side-activity, so the game has some flexibility there.
Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut (****½) is a highly enjoyable game. Yes, it is another find-the-question-mark map game, like so, so many others, but a beautiful visual style, excellent voice acting, challenging-but-exhilarating combat and some good writing make it a constantly engaging experience. Just remember not to play it too close to other open-world map games, otherwise you may end up experiencing a little burnout. The game is available now on PC, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
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Fantasy author, editor and screenwriter Neil Gaiman has been accused of sexual assault with two women, one of whom was his employee at the time, as well as a fan. The accusations stem from 2005 and 2022, with the latter incident taking place in New Zealand, where the police have been notified. Gaiman has strongly denied any wrongdoing, claiming relations were consensual and the police have declined his offer to assist in their enquiry.
The Tortoise Media website published an article on the allegations and also released a four-part podcast on the matter yesterday. They reiterate at all times that Gaiman has denied any allegation of wrongdoing.
The later incident stems from February 2022, when Gaiman was 61, that he performed non-consensual acts with a newly-employed nanny, who was 21 at the time, at his residence in New Zealand. Gaiman claims the relationship was consensual and lasted three weeks. The Tortoise alleges to have seen text messages and correspondence suggesting the relationship lasted longer than this and overstepped boundaries. Gaiman has indicated that he was in contact with New Zealand police over the matter and they had declined his offer of an interview, although the New Zealand police have suggested their investigation has been hampered by Gaiman having mostly relocated to the UK and US since the alleged incident.
The earlier incident took place in 2005 when a 20-year-old fan began a relationship with Gaiman, who was 44 at the time, and she claims that he overstepped the boundaries for intimacy in the relationship that she had outlined.
Gaiman has made no direct public comment on the claims so far, only what was quoted in the Tortoise article.
Gaiman is one of the highest-profile living fantasy authors, noted for his Sandman graphic novel series and novels including American Gods, Coraline and Stardust, along with his collaboration with the late Sir Terry Pratchett, Good Omens (all adapted for the screen). Gaiman has been more active in screen work recently, overseeing both a Sandman adaptation for Netflix (currently in post-production on its second season) and an adaptation of Good Omens for Amazon (currently working on its third season). With well north of 40 million books sold, he is frequently cited as a one of the most popular modern fantasy authors and has a substantial fanbase, as well as championing various progressive causes.
So far, there has been no comment on the allegations from any of Gaiman's production partners on the status of these projects.
Gaiman was in an open relationship and later marriage with musician Amanda Palmer from 2009 to 2020, with whom he has a son. He has three children from an earlier relationship. Gaiman courted controversy in 2020 when he flew from New Zealand to Scotland during the COVID pandemic, breaking lockdown rules. He later apologised.
