The Wherefore of Who

Well, Stephen Moffat's tenure at the top of Doctor Who's production team continues to impress. While I liked the first series in this contemporary reboot, starring Christopher Ecclestone, and could bear the first of the David Tennant series (before it cranked the creepy hero worship up far too high), when Moffat took the reins from RTD, Doctor Who became a different entity altogether. Time travel became a more central part of the story and, while there's still no shortage of episodes that focus on the Doctor himself, they're handled far more subtly than they were under RTD... and several episodes have been so good, I've watched them twice.

Not because I needed to, I hasten to add. I'm not one of these whiny morons complaining that the plots have become too complicated. I don't need the television to spoon feed me. I've watched some episodes more than once so I can be sure I've seen and heard everything, and so I can be sure I saw/heard what I thought I saw/heard the first time.

Case in point: The God Complex. The TARDIS materialises inside what looks suspiciously like a hotel stuck in the 1980s. The corridors shift, and the rooms contain nightmares. And hiding in this labyrinth is a Minotaur. Naturally, the Doctor, Amy and Rory are not alone... there are initially four other occupants, each unable to account for their presence, and each aware that they're likely to end up dead fairly soon. One of them is already off his rocker, and looking forward to his demise.

Written by Being Human's head honcho, Toby Whithouse, it's an intelligent, touching episode about which the title tells a great deal more than you might at first think. The phrase actually turns up in dialogue to offer one meaning, but there's also the pun of the maze containing a being that was once treated as a god.

The writing in the whole series has offered more genuine insight into the Doctor than anything that's come before (apart from the Chris Ecclestone episode that featured a lone Dalek in a bunker/museum), and the speech he gives Amy about his real reason for bringing her along on his magical mystery tour of time and space is a fine example. You could take it that he's only saying that to break her faith in him... but the ring of truth is far too loud for comfort.

I have to admit that a couple of points left me strangely unsatisfied... David Walliams' character seeemed to serve little purpose other than to offer a certain perspective on events so, when I started forming suspicions about him almost immediately, I was disappointed to find them completely unfounded. Also, the Doctor's dialogue with the Minotaur felt underdeveloped... as if it was the first draft of subtitles, rather than finished dialogue between characters, and not just because all the Minotaur ever actually said was "Raaar!".

There was also one little glitch, returning to the David Walliams character... One moment, he's indicating his home planet to Rory out of a window then, at the end of the episode, he asks for a lift, saying that "to the nearest galaxy would be alright"... So his home planet is close enough to identify it by colour, yet he's asking for a lift away from it, having spent the entire episode whining that he wants to go back home?

Still, I'm hoping Mr Whithouse has a few more episodes of Doctor Who up his sleeves... as long as it doesn't delay (or in any way negatively impact) the next series of Being Human.

Yes, I want it all.

I also managed to cram in a few hours worth of Xenoblade Chronicles, largely exploring and completing quests from the first two areas of the game, filling in the Collectopaedia for the first three areas along the way. Initially, I'd intended to follow the story path a bit further, but the route takes the player through several groups of Mechon, some of which are pretty difficult, and even just wandering the large, open plain that takes up much of the third area - Bionis' Leg - introduces one to monsters whose level rankings are up in the 70s, when mine has just broken into the 20s. Needless to say, they're best avoided until later in the game...

While wandering aimlessly, I noticed on interesting graphical feature in the landscapes. Taking a wide view of an open landscape, the sight of repeating tiles was no surprise, and it's been cleverly minimised. Swishing the camera around, though, it was very strange to see the clumps of grass retain their orientation relative to the camera, not the landscape it's sitting on.

Being honest, that's a trick I haven't seen since the very early days of 3D games, and it struck me as cheap back then. I know it's unfair to compare Xenoblade's landscapes to those in something like Monster Hunter Tri, because the former deals with far larger individual areas, and the latter employs all kinds of graphical cheats to convince the player they are looking at a vast, continual landscape when they're very definitely not.

That said, anything in a game released in 2011 that reminds me of games I was playing almost 20 years ago cannot be good. Still, looking at the big picture - such as the fact that you can see most of Mechonis from the lookout point on Bionis Knee, including such wonders as Sword Valley (where the battle in the game's intro takes place) - the game is a graphical wonder.

Just as impressive are the loading times in between areas - I've heard horror stories of game maps on the XBox and Playstation taking so long to load, you could make yourself a hot drink in between areas... Not so with Xenoblade. It's not instantaneous, and the cut to a black screen with a glowing Monado in the corner is jarring... but at least it doesn't last long.