Pete Messum Reviews...

© Lee Binding, 2019 'Logopolis' came at a rather strange time in Doctor Who history. Season 18 itself introduced a variety of new elements to the series, including the appointment of new producer John Nathan-Turner, a new script editor in Christopher H Bidmead, a new title sequence from Sid Sutton (featuring a rather awkward photograph of Tom Baker), a new theme song from Peter Howell (the show's first proper remix), new musical style from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, a new costume for the Doctor himself, a new selection of companions, a new Master and a new approach. Gone was the humour of Douglas Adams, and gone too were the Gothic Horror elements introduced at the start of Baker's run as the Time Lord. The changes were spread over the course of the season, building up to - intentionally or not - Tom Baker's regeneration into Peter Davison. Having written reviews for each serial in Season 19 (Davison's first season), I thought it might be a nice idea to

I'm honestly amazed that 'Alita: Battle Angel' has even been released. It's a huge, $200 million blockbuster adapting an admittedly niche Manga novel that makes very little effort to "dumb-down" the story or characters for mainstream audiences. As someone unfamiliar with Alita outside of this film, I certainly appreciated how weird and hyper-stylised so many aspects of the film were. The general design work is fantastic all-round, and the story takes some interesting turns as it gradually unfolds. This is definitely an American version of 'Alita', and I'd be interested to know how this compares to the Manga, but it doesn't seem as out-of-place as, say, Scarlett Johansson in 'Ghost in the Shell' (2017). There are a variety of different characters played by a variety of different actors, and nothing at least feels too out-of-place to the uninitiated. 20th Century Fox have been hoping to sell this film as "James Cameron's nex

Context time! Titans was initially pitched quite a few years ago to a few different TV Channels stateside before being morphed into a DC Universe original series - exclusive to DC's streaming service in the US, and streaming on Netflix internationally. It's a bit of a weird production because its essentially the first of its kind, trying to compete with Netflix but to a much more niché crowd. It's a re-imagining of DC comics' Teen Titans (comprised of Batman's sidekick Robin, Raven, Beast Boy and Starfire in this iteration) for a more adult, comic book-enthusiast audience and produced on a relatively low budget. Essentially, the makers of this series had absolutely no template to go off of, and thus have made DC's answer to Marvel's Netflix shows (which have ironically ended in the time its taken them to put Titans together). Because of this, Titans' first season feels awkward, clunky and demonstrates a lot of growing pains. The original run of epi