Flux
by Jinwoo Chong (Melville House, 2023)
audiobook read by David Lee Huynh (Tantor, 2023)
Suitably twisty in its time travel motifs and displaced narrative perspectives. The human element and the TV show’s formative influence are well integrated. Still, there’s a sense of Chong writing himself artfully into a corner and passing it off as a dénouement.
Arne Dahl: To the Top of the Mountain
dir. Jörgen Bergmark (SVT, 2012 / BBC, 2013) [subtitled]
[originally “Upp till toppen av berget”]
![Miniseries poster: “Arne Dahl: To the Top of the Mountain” dir. Jörgen Bergmark (SVT, 2012 / BBC, 2013) [subtitled] [originally “Upp till toppen av berget”]](https://www.derelictspacesheep.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Arne-Dahl_To-the-Top-of-the-Mountain.png)
The middle story of Arne Dahl’s first season shifts the focus to second-generation Chilean Swede Jorge Chaves, resulting in a more up-tempo narrative. A-group’s personal lives are better integrated into the investigation, which links a car bombing to a deep-buried paedophilia ring.
Doctor Who: Mind of the Hodiac
by Russell T Davies & Scott Handcock (Big Finish, 2022)
This two-parter is rather too long for what it offers, though the female-centric plot is welcome and Colin Baker is once again a delight. Davies and Handcock capture the Sixth Doctor’s personality, yet (as usual) have him largely superfluous to the resolution.
Black Doves
by Joe Barton (Netflix, 2024)
Standard spy thriller material—the plot builds to a point where let-down and exposition prove inevitable—but elevated by Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw, top-notch actors who add depth in the gaps beyond dialogue and direction. Well worth a holiday season binge.
Doctor Who: The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe
by Steven Moffat; dir. Farren Blackburn (BBC, 2011)
“This hammock has developed a fault.” With his childlike enthusiasms and underlying vulnerability, the Eleventh Doctor is tailor-made for holiday specials. This one is a near-perfect concoction of whimsy, adventure and rousing Christmas miracle. Holly Earl and Matt Smith are both brilliant.
Artemis Fowl
by Eoin Colfer (Viking, 2001); audiobook read by Gerry O’Brien (Puffin, 2013)
The fairy world is imaginatively realised and affords a new set of (magical) parameters within which Colfer can manifest Artemis’s ingenious criminal scheming. O’Brien’s audiobook reading goes some way towards papering over such writerly cracks as blatant tell-don’t-show and one-dimensional, stereotyped characters.
Doctor Who: Out of Time
by Matt Fitton; dir. Nicholas Briggs (Big Finish, 2020)
David Tennant and Tom Baker make for an arresting duo and are given time to interact, the story’s emotional depth further complemented by Kathryn Drysdale’s performance as Jora. A shame, then, that the threat had to come from blustering, blogging, self-opinionated Daleks.
Teen Titans: Beast Boy loves Raven
by Kami Garcia; ill. Gabriel Picolo (DC Comics, 2021)
The title says it all, with Garcia and Picolo keeping an unapologetic focus on Raven and Beast Boy’s burgeoning romance (instalove, to be sure, but not out of keeping with their age and shared insecurities). The bad guys’ plan is concomitantly half-arsed.
Dylan Moran: What It Is
(Live in Sydney, 2009)
Moran appears more inclined to make a point than in previous recordings, and consequently less able to do so (his off-the-cuff artillery ceding ground to encroaching vagueness and derailments of thought). When in flow, still a waspishly beleaguered, bildungs-roaming, man-child philosophiser nonpareil.
Doctor Who: The Five Companions
by Eddie Robson (Big Finish, 2011)
Nostalgia is well and truly satisfied with five former companions yanked back into the fray. Evergreen acting chops notwithstanding, the opportunity for poignant character moments is largely frittered away in a pointless Death Zone slugfest involving Sontarans, dinosaurs and, inevitably, screeching Daleks.