Pete Messum Reviews...

Its that time of year again, and this time it may well be our Last Christmas, because as Doctor Who depressingly says, "Every Christmas is last Christmas". Prepare for Wham! jokes. Doctor Who: Last Christmas (2014). By Steven Moffat. Starring Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman and Nick Frost. Plot: Its Christmas, its the North Pole...Who are you gonna call? Doctor Who is owned by the BBC. This review is for critical and analytical purposes only, and is made in fandom of the series. No copyright infringement intended.

Doctor Who Christmas specials have certainly been a mixed bag over the years. Few have truly been bad, but almost all have been mediocre to 'just about bearable'. I was uncertain about this special. I was hoping to be pleasantly surprised, I was expecting something disappointing and I also was promised something surprising...I was really underwhelmed overall. I can't call Last Christmas bad at all, but its flaws are plain to see, making it difficult to just love it despite its flaws (as I can for such episodes as Asylum of the Daleks), and I just feel so underwhelmed and little fed up at the end of the episode. The big selling point of the episode was whether Clara would stay into Series 9, and I feel that this episode was re-written in some way so that she did. Clara's role felt rather small in the story as a whole, and the character of Shona felt like perfect companion material. In fact, I actually thought Shona would join the TARDIS at the end! It would be nice t

The video reviews for this site and for YouTube not so long ago stopped, and haven't returned since. Why? Well, they're a lot more difficult to make, with planning, notes/script, filming, editing, rendering and uploading, so the last one made was Guardians of the Galaxy back in August. However, I am in the process of getting these reviews done ASAP. They will all come out at some point next year, so will start from (hopefully) next week and continue on. They won't have a schedule as such, unless multiple ones are ready. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014) - hopefully coming sooner rather than later, the review of the final Hobbit film should come first! Arrow: Season One (2012/13) - the first TV review that isn't Doctor Who , each season shall be reviewed in a separate video, and hopefully this should come out in January, closely followed by... Arrow: Season Two (2013/14) - ...the second season! This should come soon after Season One, but after this

Agents of SHIELD started off as a fun, enjoyable spin-off from the Marvel films dealing with monster-of-the-week formulas to build interesting and complex characters, while also setting up arcs that would carry through the series that would be built up and concluded at a later date. This was something simple and I was happy with it. However, towards the end of Season One the show became more focused on the arcs, lost a lot of the fun and began to feel like one continuous story building up the characters. We get to Season Two though, and a lot of the character building that made Season One so great is now lost. Agent May is still lacking in actual background; Skye magically turns from being the likeable newbie to SHIELD with a mysterious background to a badass SHIELD veteran with a mysterious background over the course of a few months; Simmons is still the same person she was at the beginning of Season One, only without Fitz; Ward is still a bad guy who thinks he's a good guy; a

Its very rare that you get a TV show crossover with a scale quite like this. Back in 2008, Doctor Who tried to do a successful crossover with Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, but sadly ended up being a lackluster episode and felt incredibly bloated despite being spread over two extra-long episodes. So its great to see these two now iconic TV super heroes coming together for a special two-part story dubbed 'The Flash vs Arrow'. While both episodes were fantastic (and the best both shows have provided for quite a while, and forever in the case of The Flash), they managed to understand what made such a crossover interesting. Both shows have a very different approach, and you get to see the characters experience the best and worst of both Starling and Central City, as well as the best and worst of The Flash and Arrow. The Flash's episode 'Flash vs Arrow' deals with how the characters in Central City react to having the Arrow turn up in their city. Joe and Ha

The Flash is a show that's difficult to hate on, because despite its clichés, its mostly for fun, so you just forgive it for its problems and try and enjoy it - with great ease. The last two episodes did have those clichés, but I can see The Flash becoming its own show. Its overcoming some boring villains, its overcoming a lack of development, and is becoming some really interesting. These are characters we are interested in. This is a show that doesn't need a mid-credits scene with Dr Wells to entice the audience to come back next week. This is a show that is using its big budget to create fantastic villains and brilliantly-realized action, and to use all of this to tell interesting stories that can be told in a TV series, but not in a film. While the Pilot was just a 45 minute first film in a series for The Flash, each episode seems to realize it needs to build its story-line and characters to tell individual 45 minute stories to build up an over-arching story. While it s

Oh dear Arrow, what's happening to you? This season of Arrow so far has been quite lackluster compared to the previous two. The show is filling its episodes up with villain-of-the-week formats and nothing that interesting keeping its audience watching. We only have Ra's al Ghul (whom we probably won't see until the end of episode 8) threatening Oliver, Sara's death and... Hang on, lets talk about that. Where is the arc of Sara's mysterious killer going? It turns out she wasn't killed by Roy in a Mirakuru-entranced state (instead he's feeling like a murderer - with nights off to look awesome alongside Arrow - after having killed a SCCP officer last season. Who remembers that? I didn't, and I only watched Season 2 in October), and Sara wasn't killed by Malcolm Merlyn. I'm sure something was mentioned about Ra's al Ghul killing her, but that never got a definitive answer. And if it did, then that information was lost on someone who's bee

I don't usually do trailer reactions on this site, and certainly not usually late ones, but I feel this is a trailer I want to make an Editorial about. My knowledge of the Terminator franchise is limited to Terminator 2: Judgement Day only, and while that was a fantastic film, my interest in seeing the original film and sequels has peaked only recently. In fact, it wasn't that long ago when I realized just how good Judgement Day is, so when the trailer was released for Genisys, I really wasn't sure what to expect. While Genisys does seem to bear a strong similarity to Judgement Day from the trailer, it does also incorperate elements of the original movie, only this time with a twist. It follows the story that John Connor - leader of the human resistance against the Skynet-created machines the Terminators - sends his friend Kyle Reese back in time to, what I presume is, 1984 to protect his mother Sarah from a T-800 (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger). However, when Kyle ar

The writing on the wall... While I stand by my statement from previous weeks that there is way too much going on this season in Agents of SHIELD (hence why I'm still preferring Season 1), I'm glad SHIELD hasn't gone down the Doctor Who: Series Six route, where it just can't be bothered to tie-up any of the lose ends and just builds and builds to nothing. That being said, we could still get a cop-out conclusion to all of these arcs. Its nice that the characters actually acknowledge how convenient it is that all of the dangling plot threads connect in some way, shape or form, even if it doesn't actually give a proper explanation as to why they all are, other than convenience. The writing on the wall is the main focus of this episode, with the writers at long last giving us some answers. Its great to see more from the TAHITI project from last season, although I do feel this plot thread should have been cleared up much earlier on when we didn't have the additi