#GoodbyeIdeasTap - An Open Reply

Dear IdeasTap team,

I haven't written on my personal blog in God-knows-how-long, but I didn't know where else to put this, so I hope I'm not just howling into the wilderness of the internet here.

I should introduce myself to you. I'm a jobbing writer, and I've been a member of the site for some time now. I never won any of your own briefs or applied for any funding. I've still yet to create my masterpiece. I guess in the end I'm not the greatest IdeasTap success story ever. And yet, for all that, reading the news today was like taking a blow to the gut. It made me want to cry, punch back and feel a bit sick all in one go. Because for all I may not be your most prolific member, I cannot begin to quantify what I've got out of being a part of your project.

IdeasTap was how I had my first play script performed. I saw an advert back in 2013 for writers to apply to a youth theatre company. Actual applications were made externally via email, so even though I was responding to a brief, it was a bit different to how those kinds of things usually work on IdeasTap. In the end, I wasn't the winner (in as much as that means anything), but while they decided it wasn't quite right for them, the company thought my work was strong enough to get me involved in other ways (strong enough too that I haven't given up on it – just stowed it away for safekeeping, for now). Instead of my own original story, then, I was invited to create a short piece to preface and feed into the play that did get chosen, and that was how, a few weeks later, I experienced the sheer euphoria, not just of seeing my work performed, but of watching the people around me enjoying it. They laughed when they were supposed to, and I left the theatre feeling light and free and happy in a way I never had before. I can't take all the credit, of course: I was lucky enough to be working with a brilliant, lovely director and a super-talented and charismatic pair of actors - something else I owe in large part to you.

To most people, it wouldn't sound like much, but to me, at that point, it meant everything. My confidence had recently taken a blow when I'd found myself out of work after the exciting BBC job I'd been doing beforehand came to an abrupt end, but more generally, I'd always been so frightened of sharing my ideas - so embarrassed for even having them, that getting that instant and unfeigned positive feedback brought out more courage in me than I had ever thought I was capable of possessing. My sneaking suspicion is that this accounts for the greater part of what you've done for people. The ones who've gone ahead and been brilliant – as much as you definitely helped them by making sure people saw their work, some of them, at least, would have found a way to be brilliant anyway. Meanwhile, those of us who really needed that little extra push – we really couldn't have done it without you.

Ultimately, though, I don't think those distinctions matter much, because this is about all of us: the more reticent among us who needed a leg up, and those more sure of themselves, who just needed a platform to do their thing. The thing is, now I'm in a good position to get a broad perspective on this stuff. As a young arts journalist, I've had the privilege of being able to see and add up the good you've done for so, so many people. The number of talented, successful theatre professionals I've spoken to who have been able to hone their craft and to fund and present their work thanks in large part to the support you've given them is amazing. And every time I think about you going, I think about all of them, and the great work they've done, and how that might not have existed otherwise. And then I think about the people coming after them, and wonder what's going to happen next.

And then, even more troublingly, I think about those conversations themselves. All the fascinating discussions with interesting people I might have missed out on because our paths would never have crossed otherwise. Perhaps in my case, the link is mostly tangential, but this isn't true of everyone: plenty of people, as you said yourself, have met, and collaborated, and networked directly through the site. I've attended workshops that I've discovered through IdeasTap, and met some amazing people that way. But this isn't just about having nice chats. I've been approached about jobs that I haven't actively applied for on IdeasTap. Less quantifiable, but far, far more important is the validation, the mutual support, the realisation of how profoundly un-alone we are that you've enabled us to discover. More than the money, the ideas or the work, the single greatest opportunity you gave to us was the opportunity to find each other.

So here's a question. You said yourself that the enthusiasm and creativity of IdeasTap's thousands of young members were what really made the organisation what it was, and I agree. What if that doesn't have to be over? What if IdeasTap could remain as a simplified networking platform, like a forum, run by its members – plenty of whom, I'm sure, would be prepared to work to keep it operational? And the jobs board – couldn't that stay as well? Surely recruiters would be happy to keep posting their ads on the site? I know it won't be the same: no funding, no briefs, so many of the unique and brilliant things that you did all gone, but something has got to be better than nothing.

If this isn't possible (what a terribly sad prospect), I have just one request to make before you leave us. I see from your FAQs that you plan to leave up a simpler site that will look back at the wonderful things you've achieved over the last six years, which is some comfort. Tentatively then, may I suggest a small inclusion? You may be removing profiles and portfolios, but I hope that somewhere on your frozen site, you'll at least hold onto the names of all of us who are deeply sorry to see you go. Names mean more than numbers, somehow, so I think it would be nice to leave them there, as a memento of what IdeasTap was to those who loved it, and as a reminder of what it could have been to those who didn't.

On behalf of all of us, thank you so much for all your hard work. I can't imagine how difficult this must be for you.

Love, and all the very best of luck,

Heather Kincaid

Writer, editor, passionate young creative  

And I Find It Kinda Funny, I Find It Kinda Sad...

These days, it's not often that non-Shakespearean Jacobean plays get performed. When they do, it's almost always Marlowe or Jonson, and it's rarer still that said performances will be good. It's incredibly exciting, then, that Sean Foley's and Phil Porter's adaptation of Thomas Middleton's A Mad World, My Masters, currently showing at The Swan, turned out to be one of the most thoroughly enjoyable productions I have ever seen.

A Mad World, My Masters revels gleefully in its sexuality, in it's casual, almost careless breaking of laws, reversing of morals and shattering of taboos. It delights in its gratification of desires - not only sexual, but financial, social and even vengeful: one of Middleton's greatest strokes of genius in Mad World is the play within his play, which sees a grumpy policeman/guard symbolically tied up and forced to be part of the fun. Elsewhere, Mr Shortrod Harebrain (here renamed Mr Littledick) unwittingly colludes in his wife's adultery, speaking a language laden with unintended innuendo. This is a laugh-out loud hilarious show, brimming with the same kind of subversive energy that made The Rocky Horror Show an instant cult classic. By developing its own perverse kind of logic, it seems to insist that anything is possible by taking us in directions at once both unexpected and yet strangely fitting. 

Following a similar pattern to Shakespeare's Much Ado, it's the unlikeliest couple who seem, by the end of the play, to be the most well-suited: though duped and coerced into their relationship, nobleman Dick Follywit and common prostitute Frank Gullman (Truly Kidman here) spend most of the play proving themselves to be more than a match for each other - they're the only characters who can effectively and independently navigate their way through the intricate and slippery structure of the world they inhabit. This they do by acting, sliding smoothly from role to role, moving between different social classes and circles, and even, in one instance, swapping genders. It's rather appropriate, then, that we begin to see where things are headed when Dick dresses up as Frank/Truly. Despite never having met her, he does a good enough job of "playing her" to hoodwink her clients: since she herself is an actress of sorts, it's the very stageyness and blatant artifice of his performance that makes it a convincing one. It's also apt that Frank/Truly, who spends most of the play gratifying the desires of others, should first realise and express her own longings and feelings when watching Dick perform in "The Slip".

In bringing the play to a contemporary audience, Foley and Porter could hardly have chosen a better setting than 1950s Soho: seedy, satirical and glamorous in equal measures, full of acting, sex and people from all walks of life, this is a place and point in time which has acquired an almost mythic status. The location was brilliantly realised through Alice Power's incredible designs, from Truly's luxuriant four-poster bed and Sir Bounteous' elaborate mansion with its apparently bottomless safe, to Penitent Brothel's dingy bachelor pad and the shabby, street-corner café where everyone seems to meet. The music, too, was convincingly of its time, and in terms of quality was probably the best in any RSC production I've yet seen. In particular, singer Linda John-Pierre was phenomenal - I'd honestly have gone along purely to see her. I was even pretty impressed by how well the cast coped with their singing parts.

The acting was practically faultless all round. Ian Redford made a brilliant Sir Bounteous, his greed and lechery matched by Ishia Bennison as Mrs Kidman, Truly's mother and pimp. Richard Durden and Steffan Rhodri were magnificent as aged butler, Spunky, and the hapless Mr Littledick, both with immaculate comic timing. However, the show was ultimately and quite rightly stolen by Sarah Ridgeway, starring as a truly ingenious Truly, every bit as shifty, sly and shocking as the Soho setting itself.

I may well have to see this one again.

Titus and Tarantino - The RSC's Titus Andronicus

I won't lie: Titus Andronicus will never rank amongst my favourite plays. My first encounter with the text came during my final year of university, when I was simultaneously studying two different modules on Shakespeare. The first week of term saw me reading Titus alongside The Taming of the Shrew. At this point, I very nearly decided that I didn't like Shakespeare any more.

That said, I did end up actually writing on Titus in my final essay (alongside the infinitely more entertaining Richard III). As such, I'm as aware as anyone that there are a lot of interesting things going on in this play. Unfortunately, it is one of a very tiny number of theatrical works that I'd probably prefer to read than to see, and not because, like certain other critics, I think that it's a shocking abomination of a play. Quite the contrary: performed on stage, it's mostly rather dull.

This is the combined result of boring Marcus's long, boring speeches (which you can skim over much more quickly on the page), and the barrage of devices used to distance us from its universally appalling characters and excessive violence. After all this, there's very little left to actually engage us in the action of the play. There's the humour, for sure, and where this play is funny it's hilarious. But the tone is inconsistent, and there isn't enough comedy to fully justify even the comparisons made in the programme between this youthful Shakespeare and Quentin Tarantino (who I personally think is over-rated anyway - at least Shakespeare made some other things as well). In sum, I don't think that this is a bad piece of work and I wouldn't be silly enough to dismiss it as stupid juvenilia. I recognise that everything that annoys me about it is wholly deliberate, and I understand what it is trying to achieve.

I still don't like it.

So much for Titus in general. All my prejudices aside, the quality of this particular performance was difficult to fault.

The RSC's current production of Titus Andronicus is virtually every bit as good as it could possibly be, with well-thought out design and a generally fantastic cast. I loved the styling of the Goths especially, and Stephen Boxer made an excellent Titus (funnily enough, the last thing I saw him in was a rather depressing production of The Taming of the Shrew...). The play's young cast were exceptional, particularly Perry Millward and Jonny Weldon as Chiron and Demetrius, chilling in their complete credibility (I'm sure I've seen those characters for real somewhere before). All of Titus' offspring did a great job of bringing their characters to life, especially Rose Reynolds as Lavinia and Matthew Needham as Lucius, and even those in non-named parts showed flashes of brilliance, with Ellie Beaven shifting impressively from her chavtastic concubine part to her much more proper and respectable handmaid role.

If there was an obvious weak link, it was Kevin Harvey as Aaron, who mostly failed "seethe" with what Andrew Dickson describes in the programme as his "volatile energy". Aaron should be as gleeful in his crimes as Richard Gloucester; and as seductive in his wooing of the Queen as Richard is with Anne. Harvey's emotional responses, on the other hand, all seemed rather half-hearted. I wasn't fully convinced, either, by Katy Stephens' Tamora: it wasn't a terrible attempt, but she was certainly no match for Stephen Boxer and his Titus. A little more stage presence and commanding of attention would have gone a long way.

Overall though, this was a very strong production - tight, coherent, and funny. Most of all I loved the final, full-on, Hammer Horror-style bloodbath. More things should end with everyone dying hilariously and utterly outrageously. It was so well done, it was almost very nearly enough to make me dislike the play a bit less. And I promise you that's high praise.

Sex and Race: The Final Frontiers - Star Trek: Into Darkness

J. J. Abrams' latest Star Trek flick has elicited a mixed bag of responses from critics, with many enthusiastically taking to his pacy, action-packed additions to the franchise, while others have accused him of “dumbing it down”. The divide seems to fall largely between loyal Trekkies and the rest of us approaching these films with fresher eyes. Personally, I feel that Abrams' version does something fantastic in dispensing with the Star Trek series' dull, drawn-out debates and long, static, conversational scenes, without getting rid of its characteristic intellectualism and moral complexity. Instead, he follows that classic film adage - “show, don't tell”, to present the same moral dilemmas and thought processes through exciting action sequences. To compare specific examples, the opening sequence of Into Darkness sees Kirk and Spock arguing over Starfleet rules and regulations – while Spock stands in the middle of an erupting volcano. On the other hand, the opening of The Wrath of Khan sees an ageing Kirk wandering around a surprisingly quiet Starfleet HQ having moody, sulky conversations about how he's getting too old for adventuring.

Far from “dumbed down”, I felt that the political aspects of this film were strong, clear and engaging. The moral dilemmas it threw up were complicated, often remaining unresolved as it played off personal and family responsibilities against duty to society as a whole. The story's inciting incident is a man agreeing to do something terrible in order to save his dying daughter's life. It's extremely difficult to condemn a desperate father, particularly one that informs on himself in advance of the crime he feels compelled to commit. This theme continues as Kirk and Spock are repeatedly thrown into situations that force them to balance the needs of the many against the needs of the few. As both of these characters have lost all blood relatives, their crew is now the only “family” they have left. Sacrifices must be made, and between them they must decide whether or not their duty as Starfleet officers to humanity as a whole outweighs their duty as leaders to their crew.

Connections are repeatedly drawn between the events of the film and real-world terrorist activity. There are several striking visual sequences, including a bomb attack on London, and the deliberate crashing of a spaceship into a major American city, with terrified citizens running about as skyscrapers collapse around them. These present-day parallels fit in well with the film's musings on the nature of time and change. The past/future contrast first emerges in the aforementioned volcano sequence, where the Enterprise, with all its advanced technology, is juxtaposed against a much more primitive civilization. Later on, we see an extremely old character attempting to grapple with modern scientific and cultural developments, and at one point, Spock calls on his alternate future self to ask for help. This interplay even extends to the costume design: Uhura's very 2010s civvies on Kronos contrast sharply with the classic 60s style of the Starfleet uniforms, reminding us of how the story takes the form of a kind of alternate history to the pre-existing Star Trek films and series.

The other main criticisms that have been levelled at the film concern representation. The first of these is race-related, and unfortunately it's difficult to talk about this very much without giving away a major plot point, but essentially the issue is that a white actor has been cast as a non-white character. Given Star Trek's reputation for political correctness (which at times has verged on the ridiculous), this is genuinely problematic, though to be fair to the filmmakers, I doubt that their casting decision was racially motivated: I suspect it was more a question of deciding which star they wanted to include. It's not at all difficult to see why the actor in question was chosen – his performance is undeniably spellbinding. Still, thoughtlessness should never be a valid excuse.

The second concern is a gender-related, and perhaps even less excusable one. Whilst I can appreciate the 60s throwback element of the film, and recognise that the representation of women in Into Darkness is considerably better than it is in older films like The Wrath of Khan (even before they do anything stupid, you only need to look at the way the women are dressed to get an idea), it is incredibly frustrating that Abrams and his writers were unable to resist an unnecessary stripping-off scene for one of its female characters, Dr Carol Marcus. Those who know a little about the franchise and the characters already will of course recognise that this particular scene is actually designed to set up something big between Kirk and Marcus (Kirk being with her when she starts taking her clothes off), but it's still an incredibly lazy, sloppy way of going about this: their relationship would have been much more satisfactorily set up through better development of Marcus' character, and the establishment of proper, believable chemistry between the two of them, rather than just seeing Alice Eve in her knickers.

All that said, one of the best characters in the film overall is Lieutenant Uhura, for whom neither race nor sex seem to be a problem. Although arguably the new addition of Spock and Uhura's romantic involvement in 2009's Star Trek film has seen her relegated to a slightly more sterotypical “love interest” role, Zoe Saldana plays the part with great integrity. Not only is she more than a match for her male colleagues in terms of intellect and courage, but along with Spock, she is the emotional centre of the film, taking the audience with her in her shifts from fear to relief, and from frustration to joy.

Great performances are given by most of the major cast members. There aren't all that many films that can boast multiple actors capable of convincingly playing thoughtful, introverted, intellectual characters, but Into Darkness is definitely one of them. Both Benedict Cumberbatch and Zachary Quinto (quite possibly the two best names in Hollywood), are not only brilliant at conveying their characters' complex interior lives, but also manage wholly to persuade us of their alienness, and this without alienating viewers. Zach Quinto presents a Spock divided equally between Vulcan logic and human emotion, whose feelings are all the more powerful because of his attempts to conceal and out-think them. Cumberbatch similarly wavers between putting up a cold and unfeeling exterior, and offering insights into the deeply troubled and damaged man beneath. Unfortunately, these actors' subtlety rather shows up the lesser abilities of poor Chris Pine, of whom many more demands are made in this film than in the last. Though pretty good at all the Shatner-esque comedy, Pine is undeniably let down by his rather hollow, melodramatic responses to deaths and crises.

Overall, this movie gives you everything you could want from a summer blockbuster, as well as a great deal more. It's great to see successful film franchises like Star Trek and Iron Man refusing to talk down to their audiences, challenging them even as they entertain. Still, it has a few flaws that could easily have been ironed out with a little more care and attention. There are a couple more issues left to get over - a couple more frontiers yet to cross over.

Being Brave

"Be brave and learn things. That's what Doctor Who is about. Not be pretty and the Doctor will fancy you."

Those are words of wisdom from my mum, spoken as we shared our feelings about Saturday's episode of Doctor Who, "Nightmare in Silver".

There are many things that have bothered me about this series so far, not least its inconsistency. Out of a total of six episodes, two have been forgettable, two have been pretty well incoherent, and two have been fantastic. The problem with this is that the really good episodes are so good that they leave me reluctant to give up watching altogether, however terrible the bad bits are.

Brave: The Queen of Years

After a slow, rather oomph-less start this year with "The Bells of Saint John", which was high on concept but low on narrative tension and character development (not to mention its featuring an embarrassingly high volume of advertisements for a BBC programme - off the top of my head, logos were clearly displayed for Twitter, Google and Facebook, amongst others), we moved on to the first episode that simply didn't make any sense. "The Rings of Akhaten" started out well. I'm always pleased on those odd occasions when they actually decide to set something on another planet, since it makes no sense to me that that the Doctor would be constantly hanging around 21st-century Earth with all of time and space at his disposal. In this episode, he finds himself at a festival marketplace that is something like a cross between the Mos Eisley Cantina and the observation deck in "The End of the World" (New Who Series 1). On top of this, the story centres on a little girl, who also happens to be the Queen of this alien planet. So far, so good. Unfortunately, it all ended rather anticlimactically, with some magic business to do with stories and souls. I understand that there was some metaphorical point being made here, but I don't really understand why, if Clara's potential stories were enough to over-feed and blow up the baddie god, the Queen of Years' potential stories wouldn't have done the same, particularly bearing in mind that she's a child with, presumably, considerably more life left to live than Clara or her parents. But I've spoken about this lazy resort to magical solutions before.

Professor Grisenko: Loves Ultravox and
Duran Duran

Just as I'd pretty much lost hope of seeing any halfway decent episodes this year, however, we were hit with two brilliant ones in a row. First came the wonderful and thoughtful "Cold War", which featured the most intelligently drawn antagonist I've seen in Who since "A Town Called Mercy". This episode was a cleverly conceived piece about war, power and desperation which - as should really always be the case - strove to tell us more about humanity than it did about any alien threat. It also included some fabulous characters, particularly Professor Grisenko, a Russian military scientist with a passion for 80s British pop. Most importantly of all, it never took sides. Unlike any of the rather cringe-worthy episodes featuring Winston Churchill, "Cold War" emphasized both the self-perpetuating nature of militarism, and the fact that in war, there are no real winners. Even when Grand Master Skaldak, the Ice Warrior, found himself without comrades and with nothing left to fight for, he decided to take his revenge on whoever was closest, because his culture and world-view required him to have an enemy. In much the same way, Cold War Russia and America made villains of each other, even when there was nothing real to fight about.

Braver: Emma Grayling

"Hide", the 1970s follow-up to this, saw writer Neil Cross pull himself back on form after the mess that was "The Rings of Akhaten". This episode featured more exciting characters, with fantastic performances from Dougray Scott and Jessica Raine, and some interesting musings on the nature of love and empathy. Like "The Rings of Akhaten", this episode had a strong and brave female character at the heart of its story: it was down to empath Emma Grayling to save the day. Furthermore, contrary to the expectations that the story built up, the most important personal connection turned out to be that between a woman and her [insert multiple greats here] granddaughter, rather than the romantic one between Emma and Professor Alec Palmer.

Weird Pointless Zombie Things

It was back to incoherence with "Journey to the Centre of the Tardis", whose characters fell utterly flat, and which seemed not to have bothered with anything vaguely resembling a plot at all. There's not much positive I can say about this epsiode, other than that it was interesting to see the expanses of the Tardis being explored.

"The Crimson Horror" saw the always-welcome return of fan favourites Madame Vastra and her assistants Jenny and Strax, as well as by far the series' best gags. Unfortunately, though, the story just didn't hold water, or wasn't fully explained. Why was Mr. Sweet so picky about only preserving the fittest humans? Surely a leech would be largely indifferent about its food source - there aren't many conditions that a human can pass on to an

"Turn around where possible. Then, at the end of the road,
turn right." - Thomas Thomas

invertebrate, and blindness and scarring certainly aren't amongst them. Also, what on earth was the Doctor supposed to have done to cure himself and Clara of the paralysis? More irritating jiggery pokery.

Then came the icing on the cake. "Nightmare in Silver" was far and above the most eagerly anticipated episode this series, as well as the most whole-heartedly disappointing one. Once again, the New Who team proved that they have absolutely no comprehension of what a Cyberman is supposed to be, and what it is that makes them so terrifyingly believable. True, this story moved away from the style of Cybermen that they've been using so far, which are so inhuman as to be virtually indistinct from Daleks, other than being vaguely man-shaped. Unfortunately, the re-styled ones it offered were even worse and more redundant: here we were presented with yet another alien threat designed to bring out the deep, dark secrets of a romanticised (in both senses) Doctor (see, amongst others "Amy's Choice"). The episode essentially takes the form of an excursion inside the Doctor's head. Thinking about The Sandman comics series, I guess in some sense this is very Gaiman. On the other hand, one might have expected a gothic fantasy writer not only to have leapt at the chance to restore the Cybermen to all their original chilling glory, but also to have made a better use of the dilapidated fairground set which was promised but never actually delivered. This failure to deliver extends to many other things across this episode. We were promised interesting child characters à la Sarah Jane Adventures; these then went on to spend most of the story staring vacantly into space. We were also promised Warwick Davis and Jason Watkins; both were largely wasted. And then, worst of all, were the constant nudge-nudge, wink-wink hints that the Doctor secretly fancies Clara. Clara, who goes around the whole of this episode acting important but not really doing anything or having any power because the Emperor is there in disguise all along. Clara, who, throughout the entire series, has displayed no personal qualities or characteristics whatsoever, other than, I suppose, a taste for soufflé. Clara, who somehow manages to win over the Emperor as well as the Doctor without apparently doing anything or being anyone. This was maddening. Clara is doubly objectified here, even if she does turn the Emperor down. And as if all that wasn't bad enough, the story finishes with the blowing up of a planet - the outcome that, up until this point, everyone has been striving to avoid. Apparently, the Doctor is okay with genocide now. Let's pretend "Genesis of the Daleks" never happened. As a big Neil Gaiman fan, all I can say is that I hope most of the worse decisions here were out of his hands.

Pretty Vacant: Clara Oswin Oswald

Clara, predictably, has been the biggest problem across the entire series. Kissogram Amy Pond and her annoying daughter (and of course, all the inappropriate gags that came with them) were worse than bad enough, but next to a non-character like Clara, both look positively engaging and progressive. At least they were actually people. They did things and felt things. Clara, on the other hand, remains the same empty shell of a plot device that she started out as. A quick Google image search will throw up dozens of photos, all with pretty much identical expressions to the one above. No disrespect to Jenna Louise Coleman. I don't really know what she'd be capable of given a stab at a better role, but I now truly believe that her character is the worst thing that Steven Moffat has done to Doctor Who so far. She is pure fantasy, a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, as Anita Sarkeesian would have it. Clara is, in the Doctor's own words,

"the impossible girl: a mystery wrapped in an enigma, squeezed into a skirt that's just a little bit too tight."

There's no significant context for this quotation that I'm missing out - we can fairly well consider these words truthful as the Doctor speaks them in a confessional moment, alone inside the Tardis at the end of an episode.

It is a disgrace.

I have no other way of putting it: if that quotation isn't self-explanatory, then you may as well not bother reading on. I suggest you go read some books and talk to some women instead.


The weekend before last, I went to a talk by some Doctor Who comic and novel writers, followed by a screening of the 1965 film, Doctor Who and the Daleks, as part of the Sci-Fi London Festival. In this film, the Doctor's main companion is his clever, bolshy young granddaughter - a child who uses her brain and even risks her own life to save the day. She outsmarts Daleks, shows up her sister's silly boyfriend, and proves even to be smarter and better-natured than "Doctor Who" himself. Although this film is considered non-canonical by those who make up the (rather arbitrary, if you ask me) rules about these things, for me, it really does epitomize everything that Doctor Who is supposed to be about. Okay, so its script is a little clunky, particularly in the Dalek-to-Dalek expositional exchanges, and perhaps the monsters are a bit too easily beaten, but at its heart, this is a very moral film, in which learning and discovery are valued, teamwork and intellect are the best tools for problem-solving, and the fact that it is essentially written for children is never lost sight of. It's also exciting: unlike most of New Who, this film shows us a truly alien world, with a set that in 1965 would have looked incredibly bizarre and futuristic. It's about the horror of war, and the devastation and divisions it leads to. It's about how technology can have both positive and negative effects. It's about having adventures, meeting new people, and learning not to be prejudiced or make assumptions about them. The Doctor and his companions assume that the aliens in the woods will be scary and bad, while those in the city will be civilized and helpful, while in fact, the opposite turns out to be true. In this way, its characters are dynamic and complex. In some way, all the characters change between the beginning and the end of the film. They are brave, and they learn things. And no one is romantically involved with the Doctor, who is what he should always be - a funny old man who likes having adventures.

Awesome Role Model Susan Bravely Faces the Daleks on Skaro

Unfortunately, all of the things that make this film good are increasingly absent from the Doctor Who television series. Individual stories and the all-important sense of excitement and adventure have been dispensed with in favour of drawn-out series arcs centred on ideas, themes or mysterious "characters" like River, Clara and The Master. Characters are static, failing to grow, learn and develop. "Monsters" and aliens are generally bland and indistinct (there are significant exceptions to this). Plots go nowhere, trailing off anticlimactically, and are bankrupt of any kind of morality - nowadays, the Doctor is happy to blow up planets and kill people. The series is no longer really appropriate for children: anyone who has watched with kids will surely know what its like to flinch at the perpetual barrage of innuendo and sexual subtext. Worst of all though, is that no female character over the age of eighteen is safe from Steven Moffat's lascivious pen. [insert relevant Clyde Langer quip here] It's quite shocking when the gender politics of a 1960s genre film clearly outstrip those of its related 21st century BBC TV series. I don't think anyone could have anticipated that.

From Brave To Sexy

Interestingly, all this is happening alongside a massive media buzz about a petition to Disney started by anti-gender-stereotyping organization, A Mighty Girl. The petition, which criticizes the sexualization of Brave heroine Merida, has recently received backing from Merida's creator, Brenda Chapman. Chapman not only conceived the initial idea for the film, but was originally employed as its director, before leaving the project due to "creative differences". In the light of Disney's current attempts to sabotage her vision of a young, active heroine who is not yet ready for romantic attachment, there are fairly strong grounds for guessing at what these "differences" might have been.

This emphasis on the appearance and desirability of just about every female character going is an extremely troubling one, which effectively renders all women (and even, in Merida's case, teenage girls) passive objects of the male gaze, stripping them of any agency, or at least distracting attention away from it, making their actions and decisions subordinate to their looks - that is to say that what they think and do is less important than what men think about them and do about that.

One might well question the relative importance of how fictional characters are portrayed, when real women face real problems every day as a result of sexism - "there are bigger things to complain about" is a common response to feminist criticism of this kind. But the impact of these character portrayals should not be underestimated. Fiction and fantasy have traditionally been arenas in which other possibilities can be explored, providing people - and especially children - with alternative perspectives and ways of looking at the world. If our children are absorbing the same misogynistic messages from both real-world gender inequalities and from the fictional stories they grow up with, what room is there left for them to question the social and cultural norms that persistently disempower women? Essentially, it all comes down to this: what kind of values do we want our children to grow up with?

For me, it's summed up nicely by that quote I started out with. If you could tell all children (and girls particularly) just one thing, you could do a lot worse than that. Be brave and learn things. Everything else will follow.

Reaching Out and Moving On - Lessons from Sundance London

Since I've already reviewed the films I saw at Sundance UK last Saturday for Momentum Publishing (here and here), I thought I'd use this post to give more of a general overview of both and my experience of the day as a whole, including the screenwriting flashlab that started it off.

Both Emanuel and the Truth About Fishes and The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete are essentially films about loss and longing, dealing with the commonly marginalised theme of motherhood (or lack thereof). The main characters in Emanuel and Mister and Pete show great determination and resilience in the face of seemingly unbearable hardships, developing their own coping mechanisms to help them survive the situations in which they find themselves. Both Mister and Emanuel are teenagers who feel keenly the absence of a supportive and reliable maternal figure in their lives. As a result, they try to grow up too fast, creating hardened, self-sufficient personas to cover up the reality of their loneliness and fragility. This leads them to isolate themselves, rejecting the support that is available to them in their attempts to steel themselves against further suffering and disappointment.

These two key characters, however, are not the only ones who lie, pretend and keep secrets to protect themselves from a painful reality. In Emanuel, the mysterious Linda moves away from her home in an attempt to sever past connections, refusing to face up to the truth about her past, while in Mister and Pete, even little Peter withholds information, concealing the extent of what he has endured because he belives that Mister will disapprove of him "squealing".

Inevitably, though, all attempts to live independently and to deceive those around them are doomed to failure. Redemption for all of these characters ultimately comes in the form of honesty, openness, and better communication: though both Mister and Emanuel are intially resistant to fostering connections with others, the friendships they form with Pete and Linda eventually help them to reach out to other people and to realise that they are not alone in the world.

Another crucial lesson in both films is that change is not always a bad thing. Both Emanuel and Linda spend much of their story reliving the past, while Mister and Pete live alone in Mister's house for a whole month, holding on to the hope that Mister's mother will eventually return and things will go back to normal. As such, they fail to allow themselves to develop or move forwards, instead clinging to things that are already over or broken, and were probably never right in the first place. In opening up to new people and outside influences, these characters are finally able to let go of the weights that drag them down and to move on towards a better future.

What is interesting is that the lessons learned in both of these films were also a major focus of the screenwriting flashlab I attended earlier in the day. This panel discussion, which took failure as its theme, explained how failure is not only inevitable, but also a useful part of any creative process - or in fact any journey worth taking - provided we can learn from the things that go wrong. Everything worthwhile involves taking risks and sometimes failing, yet not doing anything risky or innovative is in itself a failure and a worse one, whether it's a failure of imagination, of confidence or of will-power. In the end, we will always feel worse about the things that we haven't done than about those that we've done and done wrong.

Scriptwriters find themselves in a position very different from other kinds of writers in that their creative process is always a collaborative one. Panelists Tony Grisoni, Peter Straughan and Lyn Barber discussed the importance for screenwriters of working with directors and producers that they trust and understand. Communication is an absolutely crucual part of film-making, and all of those involved in this process must learn to seek advice and to know when to take it. Unlike, for example, novelists or poets, scriptwriters cannot isolate themselves, and their finished work will never really be their own, since so many other people are involved in bringing it to life.

Connected to this is the need to know when to let go of something. As a scriptwriter - or indeed anyone involved in the filmmaking process - you cannot be precious about any of your work. Even if something you've done is great, and has been a useful part of the process or helped to explain your vision to other people, if it's no longer necessary or serving the film of which it is a part, you must be prepared to get rid of it. Much like people, films take journeys which enable them to grow and develop, and along the way, they will be influenced by many different things, over which their parents or creators have very little control. Sometimes, this process sees a film transform completely from the initial idea that brought it into being, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. The more we learn to seek help, trust others and allow things to change, the better our work will generally become.

"Everyone knows amnesia is bollocks": Danny Boyle's Trance

With echoes of Inception, Memento and Vanilla Sky, Danny Boyle's Trance is the latest in a line of what I've decided to call the "What the hell is going on here?" genre of films. Much like Inception, it shows the dangers of mind control and the unforeseeable outcomes of planting ideas in people's heads. Like Vanilla Sky, it features a protagonist with an altered memory, trying to rediscover what he has lost.

One area in which the film clearly differs from other thrillers of its ilk is its interest in genre film. On some level, Trance is a sort of film noir, with its gangster mob and its mysterious femme fatale. Rather than following the genre formula through, however, Boyle manipulates conventions to confound our expectations. Elizabeth is much more than just her sex appeal: in an underworld of gambling, drugs, theft, coercion, manipulation, torture and murder, she's turns out to be the best and the worst of all of them, repeatedly refusing to be victimised.

Not one character comes out of this film well, and their shallowness can at times make it difficult for us to care much about them. Yet each is still a more interesting personality than any of those in, for example, Inception, where ideas take precedence over people. Unfortunately, the characters behaved just a little too inconsistently to be completely compelling. This is particularly true of hypnotherapist and love interest Elizabeth: I frequently found myself wondering why on earth someone like this, who has worked so hard to achieve her ends, would decide to risk everything for the sake of a silly fling with a criminal. Still more frustrating is that her real aims and motives remain unclear even at the end of the film.

It's unfortunate that, despite Elizabeth being the film's most interesting character, I suspect that it's her full frontal nudity scene which will be many people's main reason for watching and remembering the film. The sexual politics here are murky. On the one hand, we're presented with a deliberately objectified and self-objectifying woman, remaking herself to satisfy a man's fetish. It's not quite as straightforward as just being pornography, however: the film makes it clear that Elizabeth's objectification is intellectual and artistic as much, if not more, than it is sexual, through Simon's obsession with the hairless nudes of Classical art. And of course, it's possible to argue that, because of Simon's obsessive, possessive and abusive nature, we may be being asked to condemn or at least to question this objectifying element. Unfortunately, assuming this to be the case, it feels rather too much like Danny Boyle has tried to have his cake and eat it: the same point could have been made much more subtly without the complete nudity or lingering close-ups, which in the end were gratuitous and far from essential to the plot. Furthermore, what the film attempts to present as an unusual fetish, specific to someone with Simon's interests, is actually so mainstream now as a result of a pornography industry which has ballooned to monstrous proportions, that his amazement that she "knew what he liked" ultimately rang false.

Trance is undoubtedly more problematic than any of the other films mentioned here. There were a fair few plot holes, and many things which just didn't seem to make sense. This may be partly because there's just too much going on - too many twists and turns to keep track of. It's ultimately neither as tight as Vanilla Sky nor as clever as Inception or Memento. Nevertheless, taken on its own terms, it's an enjoyable film, tense, fast-paced, slick and nicely straddling the middle ground between popular and intellectual.