Lostwatch 9: Season 6, Episodes 1-6

Having been displaced in time to the late 1970s, several of the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 and assorted allies have managed to return to the present by detonating a nuclear device on the mysterious Island. Jack Shepherd's original hope was to change history and prevent Flight 815 from ever crashing on the Island in the first place, but this does not seem to have worked. Shepherd and his friends are soon re-apprehended by the Others and taken to their new home, the Temple, whilst on the other side of the Island the person who has taken the identity of John Locke is making his own plans...


Meanwhile, on 22 September 2004, Oceanic Flight 815 makes its scheduled landing at Los Angeles International Airport, despite some minor in-flight turbulence experienced whilst crossing the Pacific. All 324 passengers disembark safely.

Lost's final season opens in a brain-scrambling note. The attempt to use a nuclear device to change history at the end of the fifth season appears to have failed, although it has (somehow; this plot point is papered over a bit) also returned our heroes to the present, where the Others are preparing for a showdown with the so-called 'Man in Black' who has taken the form of the late John Locke. Simultaneously, we get 'flash-sideways' to another reality where the plan apparently worked and Flight 815 did make it to LAX. In lieu of the flashbacks of the first three seasons, the flash-forwards of the fourth and the time shifts of the fifth, we now get scenes from this second timeline interspersed with the existing one.

To some degree, your enjoyment of Lost's final season will depend on how you view the sideways storylines. On the one hand, it is vaguely amusing to see what would have happened if our heroes had never crashed on the Island, but since the point of divergence in the timeline seems to have been in 1977 there are a lot of changes to this timeline as well. Jack has a son, Kate killed a different person, Hurley never had really bad luck, Boone was unable to get Shannon to leave Australia and so on. These changes make it hard to get emotionally involved in the sideways, since they seem to have no direct impact on the 'primary' storyline of what is happening back on the Island.

This is problematic as the 'primary' storyline now seems to be moving into the endgame. The two factions (a now-ghostly Jacob and his so-far nameless enemy) are gathering their forces, some long-standing mystery elements are being explained (we now know what the Monster is, even if we are unsure how it entirely came to be) and some old story elements from prior seasons have been revisited (such as the 'Adam and Eve' skeletons in the caves, as well as the Numbers). To cut away from such elements to find out that in the parallel universe Kate is still a screw-up is frustrating, to say the least, although this does vary by character. Sayid's descent into darkness in the primary storyline whilst we see him in a (somewhat) better light in the flash-sideways is well-played, for example, whilst Jack's sideways episode (surprisingly, for a Jack-centric episode) does not suck. The producers promise that the relevance of the sideways flashes will become clear soon enough, at which point they may bear revisiting.

Elsewhere, the acting remains strong and there is a welcome addition to the cast in the form of Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada (notable for almost decapitating Tom Cruise during the filming of The Last Samurai), who plays the enigmatic leader of the Temple guardians, Dogen, although in fine Lost fashion we find out little about him before his apparent exit from the show (this being Lost, I doubt we've seen the last of him). Terry O'Quinn also works gangbusters as he simultaneously portrays Locke (in the sideways flashes) and the unknown adversary who has taken on his form, whilst Jorge Garcia as Hurley continues to provide effective level-headed leadership when required (taking over from Jack as an effective leader figure in one episode, surprisingly) and excellent fourth-wall-breaking observations elsewhere (at on point directly voicing a fan-favourite theory for the origins of the skeletons in the caves). Naveen Andrews also continues to deliver reliable performances, even if his descent to the dark side is a little obvious.

With the exception of the requisite weak Kate-centric episode, the sixth season of Lost has so far effectively mixed effective mystery resolutions with an interesting ongoing storyline on the Island, although the relevance of the flash-sideways storylines remain somewhat obtuse (they may improve once we know their full role). With ten episodes left, it will be interesting to see how well Lost is able to deliver those long-promised answers, but so far things seem promising.

601-602: LA X (****)
603: What Kate Does (**)
604: The Substitute (****)
605: The Lighthouse (****)
606: Sundown (****½)

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

Bruno is a nine-year-old boy living in Berlin who is happy going to school and playing with his friends. When his father gets a new job, their family has to move to a place called 'Out-With', a cold and desolate place in the country, where Bruno and his sister Gretel have to be tutored at home. Ignoring warnings to remain close to the house, Bruno explores the edges of the huge wired-off camp next to their house and meets a boy named Shmuel who lives on the other side of the fence, with whom he becomes friends.


The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is an un-researched, wholly unbelievable and rather insulting novel. John Boyne writes his book in an extremely earnest tone, using the horrors and misery of the Holocaust to...I'm not sure what actually. The book is extremely short (210 pages of extremely large type and unusually narrow margins) and appears to be completely bereft of any kind of point. Bruno moves next to Auschwitz (but doesn't know what it is), moans about leaving his friends behind, meets a Jewish boy and they swap some illuminating stories (except they aren't) and there's a few knowing moments when adult readers can work out some nasty things are going on off-page and then it ends on a note so contrived and unbelievable it is borderline comedic.


The book is based around a series of lies. A nine-year-old boy growing up in Berlin in 1943 would be close to the age for entering the Hitler Youth (by this stage compulsory) and would have been educated at school about the 'evils' of Judaism. The notion that a nine-year-old boy in Nazi Germany wouldn't know what a Jew was or that there was even a war on is completely farcical. His twelve-year-old sister definitely would, as she would be a member of the League of German Girls (the female equivalent of the Hitler Youth) and by this point would be pretty heavily indoctrinated in National Socialism. The idea that the daughter of a senior military official and someone personally earmarked for greatness by Hitler himself (who has dinner at the family house at one point in the book) would evade this compulsory service is also inconceivable. The notion that a prisoner of Auschwitz would be able to spend hours on end, day after day, talking to someone through a fence without a single guard or other prisoner noticing is also fundamentally unbelievable.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (*) is a book that the author conceived of and wrote apparently in a deliberate effort to be worthy and artistic, but then did no research for the book (apparently written over a single weekend; it shows, badly) at all, making elementary errors that even the most casual student of WWII, Nazi and Jewish history will pick up on immediately. This is that most pitiful of books, a contrived narrative that makes an attempt to deliberately tug at the heartstrings by employing a real-life horror to make up for the writer's lack of ability. Definitely one to be avoided.

The Mystery Knight by George R.R. Martin

Two years ago, the Great Spring Sickness swept through the Seven Kingdoms, killing tens of thousands and leaving the realm battered and fragile. Beyond the narrow sea, the defeated but not destroyed Blackfyre Pretenders remain a significant threat, whilst the Stark in Winterfell has called his banners to deal with another enemy. As the realm seethes in discontent, the quiet, bookish King Aerys I Targaryen sits the Iron Throne but leaves the realm to be ruled decisively by his Hand, Lord Brynden Rivers, 'Bloodraven', a kinslayer who is said to be accursed in the sight of the gods and men.


However, such concerns seem far away for Ser Duncan the Tall, a hedge knight, and his squire Egg, when they stop at the castle of Whitewalls where Lord Butterwell is celebrating his marriage. Hedge knights and lords alike gather to wish the couple well and partake in the celebratory tourney, but beneath the surface Dunk discovers intrigue and conspiracies, feuds dating back decades and plans that will reverberate for years to come. For at this tourney, there is more than one mystery knight...

The 'Tales of Dunk and Egg' are a series of novellas that take place in the wider world of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, decades before the events of the first novel in the series, A Game of Thrones. At this time the Targaryens are still secure (but not unopposed) on the Iron Throne and barely any of the characters from the main series have even been born. The most important event in Westeros' recent history is the Blackfyre Rebellion, when the eldest bastard son of King Aegon IV attempted to supplant his trueborn brother and seize the Iron Throne. He was defeated but he left behind brothers and sons to carry on the struggle. Readers of the novels will know that the 'Blackfyre Pretenders' remain a major problem for some considerable time, and from the prevalence of this backstory element in The Sworn Sword and now The Mystery Knight I'm going to hazard a guess their future exploits will also be chronicled in future instalments of the series (a fourth novella has been pencilled in for after A Dance with Dragons, and Martin projects as many as nine of the stories in total).

The Mystery Knight has been in gestation for a long period of time, with Martin completing most of the tale during the complex writing of A Feast for Crows before finally completing it for publication in the Warriors anthology (full review forthcoming). Surprisingly, for a story so long in the writing it's a pretty fast-paced tale, taking place over just a couple of days and focused on just a few core characters. At the same time there's some fairly complicated politicking going on, not to mention some excellent Easter eggs for fans of the main series (the excessively cautious nature of one character from the books is explained here by events that happened to his ancestor, for example) and several memorable characters that have to be drawn in a (relatively) constrained page-count.

Martin pulls this off surprisingly well. Of the three 'Dunk and Egg' tales published so far, The Mystery Knight comfortably slips into the middle in terms of quality. It lacks the elegant simplicity of The Hedge Knight but isn't as slight as The Sworn Sword. It also builds on the expositionary overload of The Sworn Sword, where the backstory about the Blackfyre Rebellion was fascinating but overdone compared to what was actually needed for the plot, whilst here it is actually essential to the story. There's more action, more intrigue and more carefully-nuanced characterisation than The Sworn Sword, but the story lacks the satisfying conclusion of The Hedge Knight, with an unusually neat ending by Martin's standards (although the final line is superb) that lacks the messy consequences he usually favours. There's also a slight leaning on prophetic dreams and visions (as indeed there also was in A Feast for Crows) that feels slightly over-convenient, considering the series' (relative) gritty realism in other areas.

The Mystery Knight (****) is a short but satisfying tale of the Seven Kingdoms that features many of Martin's hallmarks of solid writing, great characters, intrigue and action, but lacks the punch of The Hedge Knight and epic scope of the novels proper (although hinting intriguingly at a bigger picture beyond the confines of the story). The story will appear in Warriors, published by Tor Books next week. A UK publication deal has not yet been reached. A comic book version of the story is likely to appear, but not for two years (the period of the exclusivity contract on the stories in the collection).

Drood by Dan Simmons

In 1865 a steam train derails whilst it is crossing a bridge at Staplehurst in Kent. Ten people are killed and forty more injured, some very severely. Amongst the shaken but unhurt passengers is the novelist Charles Dickens, who lends aid and succor to the dying and injured. Dickens is lauded as a public hero for his efforts, but the accident has a tremendous psychological impact on him which only seems to worsen as the years pass.


Wilkie Collins, a fellow novelist and sometimes-collaborator of Dickens, observes Dickens' decline following the accident, and is particularly bemused by Dickens' account of a spectral figure called 'Drood' who appeared in the aftermath of the crash. Dickens apparently becomes obsessed with finding Drood, embarking on lengthy explorations of London's criminal and literal underground in search of the figure, aided by Collins. A private investigator named Fields joins the chase, informing Collins that Drood is a serial killer and mass-murderer, and Collins soon finds himself embroiled in a complex and clandestine struggle. These events are made all the more confusing due to Collins' own reliance on opium (a painkiller for his gout) and the fictional events of the two novels that Collins and Dickens are inspired to write by these events (The Moonstone and The Mystery of Edwin Drood, respectively) become entwined with the 'real' events that are transpiring.

Drood is a complex novel, huge in length, exacting in detail and relayed to the reader through a narrator so unreliable - Collins - that is very hard to know what is 'real' (as in 100% back up by historical fact), what is reliable (or true in the sense of the novel's narrative) and what is pure fantasy (either an outright lie or a drug-induced fantasy). As with Suzanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Simmons has attempted to write a book that is almost Victorian in its own construction (not to mention its formidable and possibly unnecessary length), but unlike Clarke's book, Drood is less obviously a fantasy, existing somewhere between historical novel and a literary and metaphorical work. Simmons also raises a lot of issues and ideas here, from the struggles all novelists and writers face in writing their books (thankfully without descending to self-indulgence) to the social issues the day. He even finds time to further explore the aftermath of the events of The Terror, his previous novel about the Franklin Expedition, which took place a few years before the start of this novel.


The result could have a confusing mess, but Simmons' skills as a writer and the orchestrator of an immense and complex narrative shine through here. The writing is strong, the story is page-turning and the characters are convincing, although also increasingly repellent as the book goes on. Wilkie Collins, our narrator, becomes particularly unlikable as the book nears its conclusion and his less savoury aspects (such as his scandalous home life) are emphasised whilst some of his more positive ones (his work on behalf of 'fallen women') almost go unmentioned. In particular, whilst the book's fantastical elements and more far-fetched moments can be explained as part of Collins' drug addiction, one plot point towards the end of the book is pretty hard to swallow and rather unconvincing.

Overall, Drood (****) is a rich, well-written and satisfying novel, very clever in construction, which will reward re-reading. However, the ending is something of a let-down and the motives ascribed to (very well-known) historical characters are sometimes dubious. The book is available now in the UK and USA. Guillermo Del Toro has bought the movie rights to the book and is planning a film adaptation for the time after he has completed work on The Hobbit.

ROME movie gets script

Rome's producer and creator Bruno Heller has completed a script for a film set four years after the conclusion to the TV series. The film will apparently be set amongst the Germanic tribes and feature the continuing adventures of Titus Pullo (Ray Stevenson) and Lucius Vorenus (Kevin McKidd). Morning Light Productions will make the film in collaboration with HBO, who screened the original, brilliant series.

Excellent news :-)

PORTAL 2 officially announced

Valve have confirmed that Portal 2 will ship as a stand-alone release (no Maroon Box or something this time around, then) for Christmas 2010. No platform announced, but based on previous releases we can guess it'll be for PC and 360 first, followed by PS3 a few weeks or months later. Next month's Game Informer magazine in the US will feature the full lowdown.


Splendid news. Portal is one of the most impressive and enjoyable games of recent years. As a bonus, Valve have also been rather unsubtly hinting that Steam and all of their Source-based games will soon be available on Macs and OS X soon as well.

Additional info on the GAME OF THRONES series

Following Tuesday's confirmation that HBO will be producing a ten-episode first season based on George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, some additional information has come to light.

The series will continue to be filmed mostly in Northern Ireland, with Shane Castle in County Antrim added to the existing filming roster from the pilot (Castle Ward and Tollymore Country Park). A new and substantial set is being built at the main studio location, the Paint Hall in Belfast, for use in the series. Smart money will be on a reproduction of the Red Keep and other structures in the city of King's Landing, where a great deal of the action in the first three books takes place. The production will also return to Morocco to film sequences involving Daenerys Targaryen (Tamzin Merchant) and her adventures on the eastern continent. Filming is expected to begin in June and run all the way through to the end of December this year.

The budget is anticipated at over £30 million ($45 million), possibly not including the rumoured $10 million already spent on the pilot. Taking into account tax breaks and the free use of the Paint Hall facility, that puts the budget in the ballpark of the amount spent on Deadwood, HBO's landmark Western series from several years ago, although still only half of the amount spent on the massive Rome. It is unclear if this includes the previously mentioned contribution by the BBC. In terms of budget that puts Game of Thrones at the same level as shows such as Lost and substantially higher than shows such as Caprica or Heroes (probably twice what either of those shows are on). It is also moderately higher than The Tudors. Earlier fears were that the budget would be much higher. With a relatively modest budget compared to the likes of Rome and Carnivale, it is likely that Game of Thrones will not be as susceptible to premature cancellation as those shows.

The schedule going forwards would seem to be an immediate resumption of casting and scriptwriting the remaining episodes of the series. Expect to hear casting news for roles such as Littlefinger, Ser Barristan Selmy, Bronn, Renly Baratheon, Gregor Clegane and Tywin Lannister over the next several months. Production resumes in June and runs through the end of this year, with transmission in the USA currently pencilled in for around March-April 2011 based on comments from HBO's head of programming in January.

Those wishing to make casting suggestions in a place where the producers will see it can do so in the Casting sub-forum at Westeros.org.

HBO has officially greenlit GAME OF THRONES

Game of Thrones has been picked up by HBO for a 10-episode first season (including the pilot), as the currently exploding state of the Internet may have informed you. Shooting will resume in Northern Ireland and Morocco in June 2010 and will last the rest of the year. Transmission is very tentatively scheduled for Spring 2011.


Obviously, excellent news. The one slight surprise is that the first season will be 10 episodes long rather than the previously mooted 12. However, given that the pilot covered almost one-eighth of the book by itself, it is possible that it was felt that 10 hours was unnecessary to cover the whole book. It is also possible that if the series is a huge hit, it will be easier to get the 12-14 episodes A Storm of Swords will need to be done justice for the third season.

Links:
Maureen Ryan's Watcher blog for The Chicago Tribune.
The Hollywood Reporter Live Feed.
Variety.
The New York Times.
Alan Sepinwall's blog.
Sci-Fi Wire.
IGN.
GRRM's initial reaction.
The BBC.
The Irish Times.

To summarize:

No HALF-LIFE 2 Episode 3 in 2010, but PORTAL 2 announcement on the way?

According to Game Informer magazine, Valve are not planning to ship Half-Life 2: Episode 3 in 2010. Episode 2 was released as part of the 'Orange Box' pack in 2007, alongside Team Fortress 2 and Portal, and word on Episode 3 has been very limited since then, despite the original plan being for all three episodes to be released in just eighteen months following the release of Half-Life 2 itself in November 2004. The magazine goes on to speculate that it's possible that Episode 3 may have even been cancelled and replaced with a Half-Life 3 running on a next-gen version of the Source Engine.

At the same time that this disappointing news has been circulating, an artificial reality game has appeared via the latest Steam updates hinting that further developments on the Portal 2 front may be imminent. The Portal team have been working on the sequel since shortly after the original game was released, despite the departure of original designer Kim Swift a few months ago to work for another company, and it sounds like some sort of announcement or preview is now on the way. A Portal 2 could certainly ease the waiting pains for the release of Episode 3.

Patrick Rothfuss completes THE WISE MAN'S FEAR (again)

Having turned in his first draft of The Wise Man's Fear last year (itself a massive reworking of the original manuscript of all three books that got Rothfuss his publisher), Pat Rothfuss has confirmed that his second draft has been turned in. I have to say that 'draft' is a bit of a misnomer here. Based on his comments, the book has been pretty heavily rewritten and re-edited with changes to the structure of the book and new material added.

As Rothfuss states, this isn't the final draft of the book, nor does it mean a publication date will be forthcoming imminently. It is, however a big step in the right direction. I suspect that this news does mean that the book will be a 2011 release rather than a 2o10 one, however.