Politics and the Language of Hatred

One of the most exasperating things you can do on the internet is to look at the comments section of an article about any kind of political issue. If you had no political knowledge and came to any given article, there is a good chance you would come away with one of two prevailing opinions. One is that the Right are all ruthlessly selfish backstabbing cut-throat cackling moustache-twirlers who actively seek other people's suffering for the sake of their own profit. The other is that the Left are all deranged irrational zealots who want to never pay for anything and for everybody in the world to march in step. Neither of these are, of course, true. The Right no more desire to succeed at the expense of others than the Left wish to force a false sense of equality down our throats.

Perhaps it has always been true that a prevailing delusion exists among certain sectors of the population that whoever yells the loudest wins the argument. Yet I am not simply talking about an argumentum ad nauseam here, but rather the framing of political discourse in terms so vituperative and irrationally hateful that any actual development of thought is impossible. Politics, such as it is, depends on compromise - realistic politics at least, I would argue - but in some that temptation which encourages us to eschew all thoughts of compromise and stubbornly adhere to a "my way or the highway" attitude can be overwhelming. What is the solution, therefore? To denounce your opponents. The Left are Stalinists, they're commies (as if communism was objectively evil), they're looters and lunatics and scroungers, scabs and robbers. If it's a libertarian stance on a social issue, then they're perverts, sickos, they're putting the interests of a minority ahead of the rest. The Right, in turn, are usually Nazis or fascists, they're slavers, gluttons, elitists and pigs. If it's an authoritarian stance on a social issue, they're backwards, brainwashed, swimming against the tide of history. Beyond being offensive or otherwise, they're simply irrelevant. Here the argumentum ad hominem rears its head: attack your opponent personally, and better still, make generalisations about entire political stances. It's pointless nonsense.

Perhaps if we could put all political extremists in one place where they could yell and scream at each other as much as they want and let other people do the talking elsewhere then our discourse would at least be more purposeful. Yet the point at which we would draw the line would, I fear, be hard to define. Each of us has in ourselves that temptation to take an extreme point of view. It might be stronger in some than in others, as a matter of disposition or circumstance, but it definitely still exists. People may be reasonable on some issues and extreme on others. So how do we remedy the situation?

We have to assume, I think, that the worst extremists on either side of any issue are a vocal minority who, for whatever reason, struggle to accept the opinions of others. This is probably, in truth, due to deeply personal matters of self-esteem and insecurity not ultimately related to the political discourse which gives them shape. That aside, how do we improve things for ourselves? How can we encourage ourselves to be more reasonable and more balanced in our political discourse? Personally I believe that the solution is education. We need to educate ourselves first of all on the issues of the day from multiple sides, putting aside any extremist arguments. Synthesis is the core component of compromise. Of course there will be positions which cannot be resolved with one another, but I am thinking of citizens who, in general, have comparable codes of ethics and are able to separate politics from personal considerations like religion.

Yet I don't think it's simply a matter of people doing their research. I think it's a matter of the way in which we're raised to think and to learn. There are, of course, deep-rooted socioeconomic problems which prevent all the citizens of practically any country having equal educational opportunities, but I nonetheless believe that discourse begins with education, especially in the humanities. In Australia our curriculum as it presently stands makes efforts in that direction - although there are currently worrying movements in the government suggestive of that situation being changed - and of course our teachers in the overwhelming majority of cases, as far as I am aware, are trained in and support a synthetic approach to learning. My particular sphere is tertiary, but having friends, relatives and acquaintances at the primary and secondary level suggest to me that it is reasonably consistent: not that there is no right way or wrong way, necessarily, to approach specific tasks, but rather that learning is not unidirectional.

Education in this way does not refer to book smarts or high marks. I am talking rather of exploring different sources and regarding different views of history, culture and ethics. It's not about a 'higher' education per se, but rather focusing on a rounded, robust education and approach to learning which leads people to seeing the world in new ways. This is one of the advantages, I would argue, of not exclusively pursuing utilitarian approaches to education. Equipping young people for the future is not simply a matter, in my opinion, of them getting a good job, but rather having a healthy attitude towards the world in general. This is the kind of attitude that is going to get things done to bring about a society which is more rife with opportunity and more comfortable for all, one which is not influenced by fruitless extremism, and one which is not constipating endlessly over the same issues. Preferably the challenges we face in the future will be new challenges.

Educated people are more open to a variety of ideas and opinions. They are used to scrutinising different approaches to problems and, hopefully, theorising consistent solutions which criss-cross various perspectives. In historical or literary criticism, for instance, you cannot simply shout down your opponent. Diverse points of view become the foundation of more synthesised solutions. The only room for extremism in the educated mind is as a source of ideas which must be either dismissed as pointlessly exclusive or harsh, or extruded into more reasonable territory. There is no room for hatred or space for personal attacks or generalisations in this kind of learning environment. Educated discourse depends on explanation, evidence and analysis. It also, I would argue, agrees on a common humanity as the basis for communication.

The whole point of better discourse is to reach better solutions. We need to accept that we can be creatures of compromise or we can suffer. That's the nature of the choice. We need to prevent voices of hatred co-opting our discussion, because we need minds which are both rational and adult to make decisions. As individuals, we need to resist that voice which tells us to make generalisations, to ignore that tiny seed of fear which wants us to shy away from reasonable opinions which are different to our own. Above all, we need to communicate, deliberate and refine in matters of policy. To be able to do this, we need to take time to learn. We need to be well-informed, to approach problems from multiple angles, and we need to help others to do the same if possible, and if not possible to ignore those loud but ultimately meaningless voices. This may seem like an unexpected approach from 'Opinions Can Be Wrong', but politics can be a matter of life and death, of suffering or safety, and this is where reasonable discourse really matters. It will hopefully help us to find solutions to the universal truth of human problems. Nothing in the world is every really ideal, but our political discourse definitely can be better if we try.

Five Shows Which I Don't Watch But I Assume They Suck

You know what people need to shut up about on the internet? Pretty much everything, but especially TV shows they like because they've been manipulated by exploitative corporations. It's like "Wow, you enjoy this incredibly popular TV show that every man and his dog claims to like? Do you want some kind of prize?" What's the deal with that? Anyway, let me completely take the piss out of myself by ripping into a selection of popular TV shows I've never watched but which almost definitely suck. If you're clever you'll notice that some of the images direct you towards old or current alternatives on screen - and some of them are just weak visual gags.

Yes, this mediocre spy show is better than Arrow.

1. Honourable Mention 1: Arrow

The reason this gets into the Honourable Mention category is because I watched the first episode out of curiosity and subsequently wanted to drill a hole in my head. Some of the worst acting I'd ever seen on television was crushed further under the weight of utterly generic "angsty" presentation, full of moody lighting and music and lame cod-emotional dialogue and some buff dude taking his shirt off a lot. Why do people getting their jollies and telling a story have to be intermingled? People go on about this show now like it's the dog's bollocks but I don't believe it for a second. This show stopped me dead after one episode, and I can't believe it actually gets any better, only probably "better" in the sense of more accomplished at tricking "geeks" into watching it. The first episode sucked, and he should have stayed on that damn island. 

2. Honourable Mention 2: The Walking Dead 

"Not very much."

This gets an Honourable Mention because I actually watched the first four episodes of the first season before I gave up because of how mind-numbingly boring it was. You watch forty-five minutes of show and about half a per cent of that actually involves zombies. The rest is all just a bunch of pretty actors with strategically-placed dirt marks on their faces having domestic dramas in the middle of the apocalypse. Maybe I could be accused of shallowness for wanting sweet zombie action, but Ramero made that into a profound statement about American society. You know what's equally, if not more, vapid? Characters having boring "dramatic" dialogue about their relationships and feelings and stuff. I could watch any dime a dozen drama if I wanted that. I wouldn't want it, of course. "Geeks" these days who watch this genre stuff are just the modern-day equivalent of soap opera buffs who put on false airs of speciality and uniqueness because their soap opera has zombies or aliens or whatever. It's crap. 

"I must apologise for not being here to greet you personally."

3. Honourable Mention 3: True Blood

I gave up on this after season two because clearly all it really cared about was guys taking all their clothes off. Hey girls (and gay guys, and anyone else, I guess), if you want to look at naked dudes, do a Bing image search for it. I assume now the situation's even more egregious. Jessica is cute though. Nonetheless, this show can piss off.  I don't even know if this show is that popular, but I still wanted to rip into it.

 

The List Proper

1. The Big Bang Theory

Probably the only TV show ever made which has a reasonably realistic
portrayal of geeks. No, The IT Crowd doesn't count.

This almost qualifies as an Honourable Mention category because I've actually watched a few episodes of The Big Bang Theory - like, literally, about three - but I don't remember anything about them beyond the fact that I found Sheldon vaguely amusing. Perhaps unsurprisingly, people have compared me to Sheldon in the past, but Sheldon is clearly way too non-critical of the puddle-like integrity of modern geek culture to really have too much in common with me. As for the rest of this show, it's basically one of those things where the audience members bark like seals every time a character so much as opens their mouth, and as far as a portrayal of geeks go it's woefully inept. That whole "Blackface for Geeks" comment someone made was a horrendous trivialisation of Western culture's history of racial prejudice, but at the same time The Big Bang Theory is from my limited knowledge basically just a bunch of lame references cobbled together and an incredibly outdated depiction of "geeks". I mean c'mon, they're all scientists? Oh, one is an engineer - which is basically like a scientist who builds stuff. Firstly, modern geeks in my experience are far from being academically minded or intellectual people, as a general rule, a lot of them are barely educated, and secondly the idea that "all smart people are scientists" is an utterly effortless depiction. Couldn't one of them at least have a qualification in the humanities instead? 

Help, we've caught a fish.

2. Community

I know literally nothing about this show. Well, isn't it set at a community college? I think there are two particular characters that people really like, but honestly I'm not entirely sure. The point of this is not to look anything up, so I'm going to remain blissfully ignorant. Oh, I know there's a parody of Doctor Who in it called "Inspector Spacetime" and I remember finding a clip of that kind of amusing, although it of course has its own fanbase now writing weak pastiches of every existing Who story and the actor trying to actually make a web series out of it, thus killing its positive side completely. Other than that I know nothing about Community beyond the fact that it has a hard core of fans who seem to think it's really funny, and yet nothing I have ever heard about it has ever made me remotely interested in watching it. 

Just so you know I don't only like old stuff:
I honestly think that before Jeph Loeb ruined it
this was one of the best superhero cartoons yet made.

3. Adventure Time

I feel bad for ripping into a kid's show, but on the other hand, it's just a kid's show. I mean, I get that like any good kid's show there's stuff in there for adults to appreciate, but that doesn't mean it needs to be portrayed as some kind of masterpiece of animated entertainment. The whole suggestion of a post-apocalyptic scenario sound vaguely interesting, but also deeply played out in innumerable sci-fi works, and while John DiMaggio is generally good value that's not really enough. Sorry Adventure Time, but for the (adventure) time being I'm going to have to assume that your most vocal adult fans are overselling it in their desperate bid to pretend that they have an identity. 

I can't think of a Fantasy TV show
I've watched, let alone liked.
Next Gen will have to do as sci-fi/fantasy.

4. Game of Thrones

The book sucked, I'm not going to watch the TV show. Well, that's somewhat unfair, the book, or at least the first one, was incredibly middling pulp of the aforementioned sort where some genre framework is placed around boring, predictable stab-in-the-back political drama so that the "geeks" who watch it don't have to feel all square like they're watching mainstream TV. When did geeks become the people of high status in pop culture that have to be pandered to? Anyway, people on the internet also act like this show is one of the best things ever, but I honestly can't believe that. The argumentum ad populum tells us that it's fallacious to argue that a proposition is true (the proposition here being "Game of Thrones is good") just because many people agree. I'd take it further: if many people like something, it's probably exploitative of the majority of the population who lack well defined critical faculties, and therefore probably sucks. 

5. Breaking Bad

You're not the boss of me and you're not so big.

So some bald dude gets a terminal illness and becomes a drug dealer. Or a drug maker. Am I supposed to care? People talk about this show as if it's some kind of divine blessing from on high. It sounds to me like the usually gritty shit that people love to lap up when they have their spoonful of gravel every morning so that they can feel edgy. Is it bad to make assumptions about people's insecurities based on what kind of shows they watch? Anyway, at least Breaking Bad is over now and people are talking about it less. Seriously though, some bald guy who cooks drugs in the desert? Why the hell should I care?

Sherlock is Overrated

"Nothing ever happens to me, because we're
too busy making jokes and crying."

As one of the few people on the internet to think that Sherlock is highly overrated at best and a big bag of shit at worst, I feel the need to express this sentiment in a few succinct paragraphs for the sake of any fellow travellers out there who might be wondering what mass delusion the television viewing public falls under when the scowling face of Benedict Cumberbatch swims onto our screens for three weeks every two years. But of course that's just my opinion. I don't give a shit if you like Sherlock or not. Fair play to you if you do. Sometimes I wonder, would it be nice to be as easily entertained as so many people seemingly are? Then I think, no, I'd rather think stuff was shit than enjoy stuff that's shit and think it's not shit. Not that I'm saying Sherlock is objectively shit, I just don't like it. My point is, I'd rather have my own tastes than someone else's because I feel like it makes actually enjoying things all the sweeter. I feel like being uncritical and liking every other show, film and book I encountered, probably because I'd fallen into a marketing trap of manipulated expectations, would be like having sweets for every meal. It'd take the zest out of life, eliminating all those other flavours that make up a tasty meal, and you'd run the risk of getting entertainment diabetes. I sometimes see people who can't handle criticism of what they like going "Why would you be miserable and not enjoy things when you could be happy?" Well, for a start, I believe we don't choose our own emotions. Sartre claimed that we do, but that's bullshit. I believe we do have a measure of conscious control over our emotions, but it's more complex than that. Secondly, what would be the use of being happy all the time? I'm not saying it'd be great to be in constant mortal terror, to be abused or to suffer any kind of horrible ill treatment that people even in "Western civilisation" (oxymoron fnar fnar) suffer every day, but that being happy all the time is just a bland, shallow existence like the World State in Huxley. What kind of life would that be? Maybe a life of promiscuity and drugs appeals to you, but it doesn't appeal to intellectually masochist stuffed shirts like myself. Anyway, let's get onto my summary of the problems with Sherlock. I have five main categories.

Just pull the trigger and then we never have to see
the New Who Master's stupider little brother again.

1. It's imbalanced

Sherlock is too concerned with character at the expense of plot. In Series 3 in particular, a full two of the episodes were more about character drama than about crime-solving. I've seen people say "Sherlock is a detective show about the detective, not about the detection." The implication is that you can throw on a Jonathan Creek or Castle or something if what you primarily care about is fanciful detective cases with surprising twists and astounding feats of deduction. But isn't the whole point of Sherlock Holmes that he's the man that people call in when they themselves (or the police) are utterly baffled and they need a particular genius for investigation? It seems like every other instalment of Sherlock's pitifully small number of episodes is more concerned with one of the following questions: Despite being a bit weird, is Sherlock Holmes a relatable character? Or, What is the nature of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson's relationship? And you know what the answer is, every time? In the former it's "Yes, he definitely has a human side to him even if he doesn't fit society's arbitrary rules" and in the latter is "They're very good friends." They've made their point. Do they have to make it again every two years? Do they think we've forgotten or something? Of course the real answer is the viewing public laps up "human drama" at the expense of everything else. "Human drama" is fine when it's part of a balanced diet of exploring other issues in our society. Making a show about a genius detective and then purely focusing on the human drama element isn't exactly making the most of the opportunity at hand. This leads me to my second point.

2. It wastes time

"I'mmm going to say something in a looong, drawn out manner
to increase my limited sssscreeeentime."

As of my writing this there are precisely nine episodes of Sherlock in existence which have been made over the last five years. Even by the standards of British television, that's not many. Sure, each episode is ninety minutes in length, but that's hardly out of the ordinary for a lot of British crime dramas. So let's put ourselves in the place of Mr Steven Moffat and Mr Mark Gatiss. You've got the job writing a modernised TV adaptation of one of Western popular culture's most famous and significant texts. You've got three ninety minute episodes to work with, and your two leads are fairly hot property who are in and out of Hollywood on a regular basis. What are you going to do? Are you going to write a bunch of filler, set pieces, pointless comedy scenes and angsty melodrama, or are you going to crack out a script that's like a well-crafted wristwatch, precise and necessary in every detail? But then the realisation crashes down on you that you're actually a sitcom writer accustomed to producing thirty minutes of silly characters making knob gags and insulting each other, and so you realise you'd better plump for the former option, writing the only thing you know that isn't sitcom scripting, the thing that's given you attention at the BBC outside the world of comedy: writing Russell T Davies brand Doctor Who. That's all Sherlock is, really, except instead of the Doctor it's Benedict Cumberbatch and instead of some woman who wants to sleep with the Doctor it's Martin Freeman, and so people crack loads of gay jokes which is precisely what would happen in New Who if the Doctor ever travelled only with a male companion. Consider the opening of "The Sign of Three" which features "Holmes" interrupting a high-stakes arrest just to get advice for his best man speech, or those bits in "A Scandal in Belgravia" he's walking around Buckingham Palace with no gear on. What's the point of all this dead air? This was exemplified in "The Empty Hearse" when they offer multiple explanations for Holmes' survival, but made clear as early as "The Blind Banker" where they go to that magic show. Then again, that episode was just racist. My point is that the episodes are flabby, and the writing tries to tie everything into the half-hearted plots using a few glib remarks from Benedict Cumberbatch at the end to make it seem like it wasn't all a complete waste of time.

Wall-running in the Sherlock video game.
"Based on something we imagined Conan Doyle
might have imagined if he'd lived today, maybe."

3. It's self-obsessed

You know that bit in "The Empty Hearse" when Holmes gets all excited about putting his trademark jacket back on? That's exactly the problem I want to explore in this point. Why is this show so in love with itself? It's like the bit where Watson says something about Holmes' "cheekbones", which is just pointless self-referential nonsense basically involving them all saying "this show is popular and successful, we're so brilliant." Maybe if it was justified, but it isn't, because Sherlock is shit! But that's just my opinion. My chief issue is how utterly unsubtle they are about everything, as if the writers are saying "look here, didn't we write something clever." It's like Moriarty going on about how he and Holmes are so unusual, or Holmes describing himself as a "high functioning sociopath" or Holmes, Watson and "Mary Morstan" having a big argument about Watson's preference in friends. The show is constantly yelling from the rooftops that it's done something unusual, that it's drawn up these unconventional and edgy characters, completely overlooking the fact that this is just taken from stuff written by a Victorian gentleman over a hundred years ago. In the same way the show is incredibly smug about the lip service it pays to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original work, through puns on original story titles and Benedict Cumberbatch slapping a deerstalker onto his curly-haired bonce. This is a show that's so self aware that we can't possibly be expected to take it seriously. When Holmes appeared to make the leap in "The Reichenbach Fall" we know he isn't going to be dead because, as Gatiss and Moffat themselves said, part of the Sherlock Holmes story is that he seemingly died and later returned. This is a show that doesn't believe it has to try because it can get by on reputation alone, and that's what makes its writing and characterisation so frustrating.

4. It's exploitative

"I need to get naked for no real reason?
Oh right, forgot Steven wrote this one."

As I discussed in my review of "The Empty Hearse" the original Sherlock Holmes narratives were written primarily in the Victorian Age where strong emotions were usually not the business of everyday people apart perhaps from fainting women in rooms full of settees. Modern-day Sherlock, however, is constantly being "emotional", which is to say twee, mawkish, sentimental and melodramatic. There are regular shots of characters staring into middle distance, and moody music playing in the background. It's a cheap trick to keep people engaged by making them cry or feel sad or what have you. It's the most trivial form of storytelling imaginable, manipulating your audience's emotional gullibility to get them invested in the show at the expense of a sound or consistent plot. A good example would be Holmes' big freak out at Watson in "The Hounds of Baskerville" when he goes on about how he doesn't have any friends. But we know of course that they're going to kiss and make up at the end, and of course it's all pointlessly subverted when Holmes traps Watson in the lab with the fear gas just to be a dick. This is a show that doesn't care about actually doing its job as long as it gets its viewers sobbing into their hankies or laughing so hard that they need to post quotes about it on social media. Emotionality is not and never has been the heart and soul of nor the entire purpose and basis of drama, and it's the domain of trash like soap operas. This is not a show that cares remotely about exploring how the issues surrounding "Sherlock Holmes" might fit into a modern context, and this leads me onto my fifth and final point.

"You know what's really going to fit into our edgy modern-day Holmes?
A guy who looks like he's out of Disney's Aladdin wielding a scimitar."

5. It's irrelevant

You know when it made any kind of sense beyond a commercial one to write a series of novels and short stories about two middle-class white dudes who fight crime in London? In the 1890s, when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was writing "The Adventures" and "The Memoirs." The world in which Holmes functioned and which gave rise to him was killed stone dead by the First World War. Why would it be even remotely relevant to British society a century later? That whole Victorian world: colonialism, Anglo-Americanism, masters and servants, it barely existed by 1918. What Sherlock really needed to do was clue itself into the vestiges and replacements of those ideas in the 21st century: the subordination of British power in the West to the United States, modern capitalist heirarchies, race relations and changing class divisions. In Sherlock, however, "Britain" is Mark Gatiss in a three piece suit with an umbrella talking about the Queen, the London metropolis is under threat by the diseased, the foreign and the insane, and the West needs defending from the evil terrorists who want to blow us all up in the name of causes we're too politically correct to divulge. This attitude made sense in Victorian Britain, but it was already starting to show its age then. It's utterly, laughably antiquated now. You might as well do an adaptation of Plato's Politeia and still have it fixated on Athenian cultural anxiety after the Peloponnesian War. As a historical exercise it might be interesting, but what's the point of the adaptation? What, indeed, is the point of adaptations at all? Instead of changing someone else's text for your own time, maybe you should come up with your own characters and stories. They can make it relevant, but then it won't really be Sherlock Holmes anymore, or it can be irrelevant, but it still isn't really Sherlock Holmes. So choose your poison. Benedict Cumberbatch and his supporting cast of overwhelmingly white, predominantly male, exclusively middle class characters saving Britain from terminally ill people, Chinese people, Irish people, empowered women, non-specifically "European" people and so on have absolutely no purpose or relevance in modern culture. It's backward-thinking, redundant and out of touch. This is Sherlock's biggest problem. It doesn't achieve anything. It doesn't need to exist.

Cumberbatch upon discovering Opinions Can Be Wrong.

So there you go then. Agree? Disagree? Good for you, go tell/complain to your friends about it. I thought I could make a point about the show having annoying fans, but that isn't really the show's fault, and all fans are annoying when you get right down to it, so I might as well have said that Sherlock Holmes is predominantly but erroneously depicted wearing a deerstalker cap for all the original information I would have been conveying. I suppose I ought to be grateful that this show isn't a bigger presence in culture due to its very sparse schedule, but that doesn't mean I can't complain about it. I think people are out of touch, which is to say, that you can't have watched that much TV if you really think Sherlock is that special, or if you have it must have been shitty TV. But again, that's just my opinion. You know what you shouldn't do if you like Sherlock? Take this as a personal attack, because I don't know you and can't judge you. You're safe. You're not going to die if the bad man on the internet doesn't like your favourite crappy show.

Are Doctor Who and New Who the same show?

The only way I contemplate the idea
of an 'old' and 'new' Doctor Who.

It's a valid question, I think. Are they? Ever since Paul McGann's "The Night of the Doctor" I've seen more talk than ever online that this had established the link to bring everything together. The general arguments I seem to see are these: firstly, that yes, Doctor Who is all one big show that ran from 1963 to 1989, briefly resurfaced in 1996 and then restarted again properly in 2005. The other is that, on the contrary, Doctor Who has almost never been the same show, the differences in cast, crew, style and so on all preventing the series from ever having been one continuous production. From a compromise standpoint, I suppose that's fine, if you're happy to compromise.

But bugger that, say I. I want to propose this: Doctor Who and New Who are different shows. You can argue that New Who is a revival or continuation of the original programme if you like, but they're not the same show. Sure, both have the TARDIS - the only thing, arguably, entirely continuous throughout the programme's entire run past and present, but that doesn't mean they're the same. This isn't necessarily what I believe (it is), but I want to see what arguments could be made for proposing how they're different. Let's have a look.

Filming Style

Doctor Who: Filmed mostly on a multi-camera setup at BBC Television Centre in London, England.

New Who: Filmed mostly on a one-camera setup at Roath Lock (previously Upper Boat) in Cardiff, Wales.

Does it matter: Yes, significantly. The camera setup element is a fairly important part, because it is due to the single camera style that New Who has the more "cinematic" feel, which for better or worse is becoming the norm in TV shows. One need look no further than the trivia section on IMDb to see a peculiar bias in the public perception towards the single-camera approach:

One of the main differences in style from the original series, Doctor Who (1963), is that this series is recorded entirely on single camera, whereas studio scenes in the old series were usually recorded on multi-camera. This enables episodes of this series to be edited far better than the old series and allows directors to inject far more energy, pace and action into it.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0436992/trivia

Trout sees his convention-
attending future.

So that's another thing which the different camera setup contributes to: New Who supposedly has "far more energy, pace and action" than Doctor Who. I find that to be quite the generalisation, personally, and seems to imply that New Who is 'better' by virtue of having "far more energy, pace and action." That's not the issue, however. The fact of the matter is, one of the reasons New Who feels so radically different to Doctor Who is because of the way it is filmed, which makes the mere act of watching any episode of New Who an entirely different experience to watching Doctor Who. One is television, the other closer to being a Hollywood action film. The camera setup also means that watching any era of the original Doctor Who feels more familiar, by which I mean you could watch "An Unearthly Child" and then watch "Survival" and they would feel more similar than watching "Survival" and then watching "Rose" (or even the TV Movie) even though there are actually fewer years between the latter two. What the above IMDb quote also obscures, of course, is that multi-camera filming lends a television programme a more theatrical style evocative of drama on a stage.

"It's fun to stay at the-"

Script Drive

Doctor Who: Primarily plot- and idea-driven.

New Who: Primarily character-driven.

Does it matter: Yes, and this is one of the other major differences. Doctor Who and New Who look different, but they also feel different. Doctor Who is mostly focused on the plot: the characters arrive and the plot occurs. Usually, as became the formula in the late Hartnell era, the Doctor arrives in a place where something is going wrong and he and his companions end up working to solve the problem. A textbook example of this is something like "Terror of the Zygons": the Doctor gets summoned by the Brigadier to help him investigate a mystery, ending up with them having to save Britain (and by extension, the world) from identity-stealing aliens. Another arbitrary example could be something like the much-maligned "Timelash" where the Doctor is accidentally snared by the titular device and ends up helping to defeat a corrupt regime.

"I specifically quit so that I could
immediately start doing Doctor Who tours!"

New Who, by contrast, is far more concerned with the "emotional journey" of the characters. "Father's Day", for example, is not especially worried about time paradoxes. It's much more interested in Rose becoming reconciled to the death of her father. "Amy's Choice" is all about Amy discovering how much Rory means to her. The plots facilitate the character development, not the other way around. Whole story arcs revolve around this, like the Tenth Doctor being forced to let go of his companions or the Eleventh Doctor coming to terms with his own dark past. New Who is a much more "emotional" show than Doctor Who, with characters often spending entire episodes affected by past events. In Doctor Who, by contrast, it's subtle and underplayed. Compare, say, the Tenth Doctor's teary-eyed farewell to Rose on the beach while emotional music plays in the background compared to the Third Doctor's quick, silent departure after Jo gets engaged at the end of "The Green Death." The classic example is the first episode of "Time Flight" immediately after the shocking death of Adric: everyone seems to get over it pretty quickly. Then again, the final moments of "Earthshock" did deal with this in their own striking way. Doctor Who has much more of a "the show must go on" attitude while in New Who we get things like the Tenth Doctor mentioning Rose in many episodes after her departure. New Who is much more sentimental than Doctor Who, and less interested in plot. "The War Games", for instance, is a ten-episode epic featuring the Doctor trying to get to the bottom of an inexplicable historical military mash-up. Consider this in relation to something like Rassilon waving his gauntlet in "The End of Time Part Two" to effortlessly turn humanity back from being duplicates of the Master with no physical consequences, or the Eleventh Doctor defeating his innumerable enemies in "The Time of the Doctor" in a montage sequence which goes into very little detail.

The universe would be much safer for
the Doctor without rubber costumes.

Doctor Who is also much more concerned with science-fiction's traditional purview of exploring the effect of new ideas on society. "Genesis of the Daleks" explores whether genocide can ever be justified. "The Aztecs" reflects on what right we have in modern Western society with the benefit of hindsight to judge the actions of other cultures. "The Curse of Peladon" deals with a number of issues regarding international cooperation and the conflict between knowledge and belief. "Vengeance on Varos" even aims a blow at the perceived hedonism and ignorance of Eighties society. New Who does this much more rarely, with a story like "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood" containing elements of reflection upon Edwardian values, but primarily being concerned with exploring a drastic change in the Doctor's identity. Doctor Who cares about "How will he do it?" while New Who cares more about "How will the characters feel at the end?" In their best moments either show can manage both, but usually each has its particular priority which receives the most emphasis. My preference obviously is for plot over sentimentality - I resent a text trying excessively to manipulate my emotions - but my point is that this is another major difference which distinguishes the two, yet is consistent in each. Doctor Who is plot-driven, New Who is character-driven: another way in which they are different shows.

Episode Format

Doctor Who: Serialised.

New Who: Individual episodes, sometimes with two or three-parters, as well as Christmas specials.

Don't get between Tom and his refreshment.

Does it matter: Yes, for the reason that it drastically affects the pacing. A Doctor Who serial usually has, on average, somewhere between four and eight episodes to establish itself, set up a main plot and sub plots, introduce a variety of characters and play these scenarios out. Doctor Who is, as a general rule, paced more slowly than New Who. The closest approximation during the show's original run is Colin Baker's first season, composed of serials of two or three forty-five minute parts, but there were no standalone episodes. Apart from "The Rescue," "Mission to the Unknown" and "The Sontaran Experiment", such short instalments were virtually unknown until the Peter Davison era, in which the then-traditional Tom Baker six parter was replaced with an additional four-parter and a two-parter. The point is that Doctor Who serials take their time. Some are paced more successfully than others. "The Keys of Marinus", for example, is a six-part serial which repeatedly changes location due to a general lack of narrative direction. Compare that, however, to something like "Inferno" which uses two parallel locations, Earth in two different universes, to build a more complex plot. To eschew  fan favourites, we might examine something like "Trial of a Time Lord", which was obviously unprecedented beyond something like "The Daleks' Master Plan" but evinces Doctor Who's continued interest in being more, and not less, involved in terms of how its formatting related to its storytelling. Despite, again, hardly being a commonly praised serial, "The Ribos Operation" is another example of how Doctor Who had the capacity over its running time to tell a complex story with multiple plot threads.

"Livers! Bladders! Gonads!"

New Who, on the other hand, sticks largely to stand alone episodes. Most of these are forty-five minutes in length, which as a general rule is still about five minutes shorter than two Doctor Who serial episodes back to back. This means that an episode has less time than half an average serial to set up a plot, develop it and resolve it. Take, for example, something like "The Power of Three", where the conclusion is very brief because the episode's main premise is focusing on a montage of the characters' lives and therefore time is pressed. Doctor Who serials have more room to breathe. Having a more tight focus means that New Who episodes have to focus on character development, big actions, set pieces and emphasised emotions because of a lack of time for plotting. Even in an example of something like the Tennant era's only real three-parter, "Utopia", "The Sound of Drums" and "Last of the Time Lords", each episode is radically different to the previous one. The same is true of some two-parters like "The Impossible Astronaut" and "Day of the Moon". In an episodic format, New Who has to focus on delivering forty-five minutes of intense entertainment with negotiable ties to following episodes. This found its logical extension in Series 7's "blockbuster" experiment. In the same way, two-parters feel more like sequels than long, divided stories. Even at the end of its run, Doctor Who was still doing serialised stories as opposed to the episodic format which has entirely been the purview of the New Series. Regardless of how these are evocative of their respective contexts, and the fact that the serialised format had become very unconventional by the end of Doctor Who's lifespan in the Eighties, this is another way in which the two shows are very different.

Continuity

Doctor Who: Variable.

New Who: Heavy.

I couldn't be bothered finding an
image from the TV Movie.

Does it matter: Yes, in terms of how focused the story is on its own backstory and also in terms of its own sense of interconnectedness. In Doctor Who, despite everything we get overall a strong sense of progression from Doctor to Doctor. The only times we don't see a direct change are when the Second regenerates into the Third and when the Sixth regenerates into the Seventh. In the former case, we see Patrick Troughton disappear at the end of "The War Games" and then at the beginning of "Spearhead from Space" we see Jon Pertwee collapse out of the TARDIS still wearing the Second Doctor's costume, but we never actually see the transformation take place. At the beginning of "Time and the Rani", after Colin Baker's rather justifiable refusal to return to film a regeneration after being scapegoated for the show's issues at the time and fired, Sylvester McCoy was put in his costume and a curly blonde wig and had his face electronically washed out. In the former case, we gain continuity through the presence of the Brigadier, who had previously appeared in Second Doctor serials "The Web of Fear" and "The Invasion". In the latter case we have the ongoing presence of Bonnie Langford's Mel, whether you like her or not (personally I don't have an issue with her) and their efforts to disguise Colin Baker's absence.

A man who could have a big cry for his country.

Compare that with New Who. At the end of the TV Movie Paul McGann, who we've seen Sylvester McCoy regenerate into, jumps into the TARDIS and then in "Rose" Christopher Eccleston shows up. Of course the producers of the New Series didn't want McGann, and he allegedly wouldn't have wanted to come back anyway, but the point is that it's another element which drives a wedge between the two shows. It may not have worked to bring back McGann, either full time or for a regeneration, but that's exactly what separates Doctor Who from its modern replacement. New Who is, and was, engineered to take a "softly softly" approach towards its audience, drawing in new audiences as a fast, romantic mainstream science-fiction programme, with most ties to its source material being for the titillation of fans of the original. Combining a change of lead unexplained in the show's internal narrative with a massive difference in format from original to new creates a large disparity. This was, of course, only resolved in the web episode released which showed Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor regenerating into John Hurt's 'War Doctor', but because of the need to show the War Doctor as originally appearing young we still do not actually see the regeneration. Similarly in the case of the War Doctor's regeneration into the Ninth Doctor, it cuts away due to Christopher Eccleston's absence. The disconnection still exists.

"Next season's gunnae be great!"

This leads to the other issue of continuity when comparing the two shows. New Who is concerned with its own continuity, with a great deal of focus on the events of the past. This includes the "Time War" storyline which was invented to fill the gap between the TV Movie and the New Series, as well as certain episodes. "The End of the World", "New Earth" and "Gridlock" are all related to each other. Most noticeably this occurs in the sixth series of New Who, which is heavily invested in multiple episodes exploring the antagonists called "The Silence" and revealing the origins and life of the character River Song, who was first introduced in David Tennant's last full series. Doctor Who, by contrast, lacks a continuity-heavy approach. References are occasionally made to past companions and a few noteworthy events. These include the Doctor's trial in Episode Ten of "The War Games", which would come to be one of the major continuity touchstones of the original show, his investitures as Lord President of Gallifrey in both "The Invasion of Time" and "The Five Doctors" and, for example, references to Victoria in "Pyramids of Mars" and Romana in "Arc of Infinity." These rarely, if ever, have any bearing on the plot, however. Most episodes featuring the Daleks and the Cybermen, for instance, have little relation to the episodes that came before, being focused more on the story at hand than consistency with prior serials. Besides the somewhat continuity-heavy "Attack of the Cybermen," the one exception might be Season 16, the "Key to Time" Season, or the trilogy of serials following the transition from Tom Baker to Peter Davison and all featuring, also, Anthony Ainley's new portrayal of the Master. Much of Doctor Who was produced before home video was commonplace and therefore it was unlikely that viewers would be watching old, potentially conflicting, serials in any event. As a general rule, Doctor Who is grounded more in its own present and focused on its own story. New Who far more enjoys making nods to its own past, or occasionally Classic elements as has been noticeable in the 50th Anniversary Year, or dropping ominous hints about future episodes to build up drama. It's not one of the greatest sources of difference between the two, but the approach to continuity is another way in which Doctor Who and New Who are not the same show.

Characterisation

Doctor Who: Unconventional.

New Who: Romantic.

The Sixth Doctor was the worst served by
the lack of romance in the Classic Series.

Does it matter: Yes, and as a concluding element this is probably the most noteworthy one. Doctor Who always had an unconventional character dynamic. The Doctor's companions were traditionally stowaways or unwilling participants in his adventures who accidentally got taken away, and by the late Hartnell era the Doctor was some combination of father figure, mentor, best friend, colleague or older brother type. One of his earliest defining traits was that he was a grandfather and that his original travelling companion was his granddaughter, Susan, and he fulfilled a similar role to his companion Vicki. From the time of Steven into Patrick Troughton's era he was a combination of the mentor and best friend type, leaning more heavily towards the latter with Troughton and the former with Jon Pertwee. Tom Baker's Doctor was arguably more like Troughton in this regard with his relationship with Harry and Sarah Jane, a mentor to Leela and a colleague of equal or even inferior scientific competence to Romana, whose second incarnation was probably the only time the Doctor-companion relationship ever bordered on the romantic. Peter Davison's Fifth Doctor was more of a brotherly type, while Colin Baker's irascible Sixth was a sparring partner with a complicated relationship with his primary companion, Peri. Sylvester McCoy with Ace returned to the mentor role, and it wasn't until Doctor Who was made more mainstream in the TV Movie that the Doctor's relationship with his co-protagonist was overtly romantic. Before that the relationship entirely rejected those notions, driven by the much greater focus on plot and the core principle of the show that the Doctor was, despite appearances, non-human and travelling with people who were almost always a very different age, background and species to himself.

"I still have to film more episodes?!?"

In New Who, the Doctor-companion relationship eschews elements of this largely Platonic characterisation for a more conventional romantic approach. The Ninth and Tenth Doctor's relationship with his first companion, Rose, is entirely portrayed as reciprocally romantic, with supporting companions like Mickey and Jack Harkness also being characterised in terms of how they relate to the Doctor-Rose romance. The Tenth Doctor's second full-time companion, Martha, was largely characterised as having an unrequited infatuation with the Doctor, and his third, Donna, was specifically and overtly focused on the notion that their relationship was not romantic, coupled with the ensuing misunderstandings this caused. In the Eleventh Doctor's era his first companion, Amy Pond, was portrayed as having a confused sexual interest in the Doctor which caused difficulty in her relationship with her fiancé and his second full-time companion, Rory, who was himself a jealous character. His third major companion, Clara, is also portrayed as having a borderline romantic affection for the Doctor in episodes like "Hide" and "Nightmare in Silver." The Eleventh Doctor's most recurring non-regular character, River Song, was also ultimately revealed to be, in some fashion, married to the Doctor. Since the TV Movie, the Doctor has kissed almost every one of his female co-stars, and several who were not co-stars, like Madam de Pompadour. The situation is almost a complete reversal of that in the original Doctor Who, in which the relationships between the Doctor and his companions were never overtly romantic. Arguably being more focused on children, Doctor Who has a much greater focus on friendship: the Doctor often describes his companion as his "friend" or "best friend". New Who, on the other hand, is more interested than its source material on pursuing a sci-fi watching young adult and twenty-something demographic, so it plumps for romance. Romance and sexuality in Doctor Who was the business of companions. Frazer Hines portrayed Jamie as being in love with Victoria. Jo left the Third Doctor to get married, as did Leela from the Fourth. Adric was sometimes implied to have an infatuation with Nyssa and poor Peri was lusted over by grotesque villains like Sharaz Jek and the Borad. The Doctor was an alien, his time of having a family and children was in his past, and his relationship with his companions was played in an unironic and sincere way, in contrast to New Who's approach of regularly drawing attention to the connotations of a mysterious man, these days often a relatively young and dashing as well as mysterious man, travelling usually with young women. It's one of the most overt ways in which Doctor Who and New Who are different shows.

Just detected the presence of a minority.

Conclusion

Doctor Who and New Who are of course similar in many ways. They're both a television programme about a time-travelling alien called the Doctor who's a member of a race called the Time Lords of Gallifrey who can regnerate to survive and change his appearance and has adventures in time and space with travelling companions by means of a ship called the TARDIS which is disguised as a London Police Box and is a different dimension on the inside. Both feature the Daleks, arguably the Cybermen, and, I suppose, the Master. The Doctor usually seeks non-violent solutions to his problems. That being said, none of this means that they are the same show. The two are very different in terms of how they are filmed, the focus of their storytelling, their format, their approach to continuity and the characterisation of their protagonists. My point in this post was to offer an alternative to saying "it's all one show" or "it's always a different show" by arguing that the different eras of Doctor Who are more similar to each other, and the two eras thus far of New Who are more similar to each other, than the two different series' are to each other in general. Watching Doctor Who is an entirely different experience to watching New Who no matter what episode you choose. It's different visually, dramatically and artistically. They are both, also, products of their time. Doctor Who lived and died in the twentieth century because that was its time: an era of decolonisation and the rejection of authoritarianism, imperialism and inequality which was killed by age, Thatcher, neoliberalism and Eighties culture. New Who is a different show for a different time, of profitable nostalgia and postmodernism. The shows are separated by time and change more drastic to the two externally than to either internally. Doctor Who and New Who, in my opinion, are not the same show, and by their nature could be nothing else.

Toy Soldiers: An Introduction

WARNING from 2019: Numerous instances of "thin your paints" style painting below! Avoid if possible.

Reading The Hobbit for the first time as a child back in 2000 was the first thing that made me interested in toy soldiers. In the late 90s, I'd seen some Warhammer Fantasy introductory material and rule books with their bright, colourful imagery of various imaginary armies. At the time, I was rather nonplussed, finding the Warhammer 40,000 Space Marines, especially their dreadnoughts, to be cooler. When I read The Hobbit and imagined Bilbo's Dwarven companions, however, images returned to my mind of the elaborate artworks and corresponding figurines that went with the Dwarf army in Warhammer Fantasy. These days I don't think of Tolkien's Dwarves that way, of course, but for whatever reason, I realised I wanted some toy soldiers of my own. Much of the limited funds of my teenage years found themselves lining the coffers of Games Workshop in pursuit of that hobby, as I collected many armies, for Fantasy, 40K (as it's known) and the game based on, simultaneously, The Lord of the Rings and its film adaptations. This last one was the most suitable for me, given that reading Tolkien had made me interested in the first place, along with the fact that it was (arguably) the simplest to play and (at the time) the most affordable.

Some call them 'miniatures'. To some it's 'tabletop wargaming'. I've dabbled in both terms in the more defensive days of my youth, but these days both the products themselves and the hobby can be summed up in a single phrase: 'toy soldiers.' Let's not take ourselves too seriously, shall we? At the end of the day, those of us who have this hobby are painting little men and simulating them fighting. They're toy soldiers. You buy them, put them together, paint them, and hopefully have some games with them. Personally my favourite part is the painting. It's just another of the hobbies that makes me a bit old school nerd. I like old genre TV shows, I like old games, I like They Might Be Giants and I like collecting toy soldiers.

What is this impulse which drives some people, myself included, to want to own little plastic and metal representations of people? It's not a masculine thing, because people of both genders do it, although I daresay the majority are male. As may be obvious from some reviews of years gone by, I once went through an action figure collecting phase, so it's not exclusive to toy soldiers really. Some of us just want to own little versions of things that we can fiddle around with. I don't know why. I don't understand people who find watching or participating in competitive sport interesting. I mean I exercise, but that's because it makes sense. I gain no pleasure from physical competition. It's just one of those things. People like different activities. I'd like to get a few more toy soldier related posts happening on my blog, so I thought I'd write this article just as an introduction to my interests and the state of the industry at the moment. Let's start with the big guy.

So you know I'm legit: the old Kurt
Helborg and Burlok Damminson models
I bought as a kid.

Games Workshop

Like, I would suspect, many people, I got my start with Games Workshop's games. Games Workshop is the major player of the industry, and for a long time held a borderline monopoly on the hobby. I don't buy Games Workshop products any more for two reasons. The first is that they're too expensive. The second is that, in this decade, the rise of internet shopping and mail order services has made collecting the alternatives much more viable even if they don't have local stores. One of the things that makes Games Workshop the power in the world of toy soldiers is that they have their own shops around the world where you can go in and buy their stuff, making them the easiest, if not the cheapest, to collect. For a long time this put them ahead of the competition. These days there tend to be more third party local suppliers who sell products from a variety of toy soldier companies, often at a discount, so that's less true. If you don't want Games Workshop, these days it's much easier to buy from their rivals than it used to be, which is what I do.

These guys were
"Daemonhunters" once
and didn't have giant robots.

Let's look at the cost issue. The most common complaint about Games Workshop is how bafflingly expensive it is. Logic would seem to dictate that if you make your products more affordable, more people will buy them, and that in the long run you'll make more money. Of course there could be a number of practical factors that make this infeasible in Games Workshop's case, but the fact is that as I got older and started earning money, and having more to spend, I actually started buying less stuff usually for no more complex reason than the fact that their prices inflated so rapidly. The standard comparison might be a box of Space Marines. When I was a kid you could get ten Space Marines for forty bucks in my local currency. Currently, it's sixty-five for ten. That's only an increase of two bucks fifty per Space Marine, but the difference between forty and sixty-five bucks isn't inconsiderable, which is to say that one of those two figures is the wrong side of fifty. It's arguably worse in Fantasy, where you often need blocks of twenty men, and a paltry ten costs, in some cases, seventy dollars locally.

When there's only one HQ option,
there's only one choice.

Now Games Workshop can charge whatever the hell they want for their products. If you want it and can afford it, good for you. If you can't, tough luck. I'm in the position, however, where I arguably can afford it, but don't consider it good value for money. The straw that broke this camel's back was the prices for the new line based on the film adaptations of The Hobbit. I think this was due to Warner Bros. ripping Games Workshop off in the licensing agreement, but there you go. The problem is this: balancing income and expense it takes too long to collect an army, your friends will never do it so you'll never get to use it anyway, and you just don't get enough product for your investment in comparison to the competition.

Cloak of live bats
vs.
Cthulhu fetishist.

Games Workshop's current tagline is "Games Workshop make the best model soldiers in the world." Well, says you. In my opinion, Games Workshop do not make the best model soldiers in the world. They make some very nice, albeit extremely expensive, toy soldiers for use in their specific games, but that doesn't prove anything. Personally I think some of their recent design choices are rather questionable, and the fact remains that they're hardly an all purpose model soldier manufacturer. I've seen it argued that Games Workshop's rationale at the moment is that they're charging premium prices for a premium product. It kind of makes sense, but I feel like they've more developed a habit of built in redundancy to jack up prices. Say you buy the 2014 Dwarfs Hammerers/Longbeards kit. Levels of detail aside, one of the reasons they can charge seven dollars per guy in the box is that there's enough bits to make each guy a 'Hammerer' or a 'Longbeard'. Say you want to make ten Hammerers. Now you've got loads of junk left over that could only be used to make the basic body into a Longbeard. Because of all that extraneous junk, among other reasons, they can justify charging seventy bucks.

Heroes don't feel right
in lightweight plastic.

For a while down here in the Southern Hemisphere it was possible to order from Europe at about half the price including shipping from various third party sellers, but a few years ago Games Workshop decided to slap an embargo on those sales. The touted reason was some rubbish about protecting the interests of local 'brick and mortar' sellers but it was transparently obvious that their motive was pure greed. I'm no economist but as far as I'm aware there's some dodgy method in which all of Games Workshop's seemingly suicidal financial practices end up lining the pockets of a few fat cats. It's not helped by the fact that it's public these days, and therefore chiefly interested in serving shareholders. That's business, but I think the main criticism is that it's regrettable that a product which had a lot of appealing imagery and interesting ideas is just infeasible for many people these days. If I could get those ten Dwarfs for prices which other companies find reasonable for a comparable product, like twenty bucks, we might still having something going. I could always go to eBay, I suppose, but it'd still be expensive, just less so, and I couldn't be arsed.

Left: an escapee from an Extended Edition.
Right: soon to be replaced by
Billy Connolly on a pig.

The reason I couldn't be arsed is the fact that besides being too expensive the two main games are overcomplicated, boring and easily exploited. I'm completely out of touch with the most recent editions of both Fantasy and 40K but having played a fair bit of the earlier editions I can attest to a lot of wearisome, repetitive experiences. At certain scales and under certain conditions some armies are just more powerful than others and the whole business becomes something that not only takes your cash but offers up little pleasure as a reward. Combine that with how often they're updating the rules and churning out new, super-expensive rulebooks and army books and I found myself giving up. There's also the fact that they make unjustified copyright claims (like the Spots the Space Marine debacle), respond to criticism by throwing their toys out of the pram and disabling social media and forms of interaction with customers, and basically have no communication with their consumers. At the end of the day, Games Workshop make some nicely-detailed fantasy and science fiction toys but their prices are so high that they are extremely difficult to justify. Additionally, these days I'm the only person I know who has the time to collect toy soldiers, so if I want to play games I just buy the armies I want and let a friend (who are willing, mind you) to pick one. With the cost of Games Workshop armies that simply isn't practical. I wonder what the rise of the 3D printer is going to do to Games Workshop. As I say, the internet among other things has given rise to some interesting competitors, so now I'll look at the other companies which have replaced Games Workshop in my affection. Incidentally, I'm not interested in Warmachine or Hordes so Privateer Press isn't one of them.

Kings of War Dwarf Ironclads: hard to beat, hard to rank up.

Mantic Games
I discovered Mantic around the time that I'd more or less given up on toy soldiers. Mantic's original premise, I believe, was the production of models that could be used as an alternative to expensive Games Workshop models, providing a viable source of competition. Their "Kings of War" Fantasy line has all the standard Fantasy archetypes of the kind that could easily be substituted into Games Workshop games: Dwarfs, Elves, Orcs, Goblins and Undead. Over time they've diversified, making some of their own, more unique forces as well. I've never actually used Mantic models as an alternative to Games Workshop, preferring instead Mantic's own Fantasy game, Kings of War. Kings of War is a relatively simple game, relying on players performing entire turns on their own while the other player waits and not having any messy elements like individual model removal, instead using a system of markers to keep track of damage. Movement, shooting (including magic) and melee combat are all as streamlined as possible to make for a well-paced experience. My main criticism of Kings of War is that it's so streamlined that the game can, at times, feel a little bland, and the shooting phase is either incredibly weak or absurdly powerful with no middle ground.

Kings of War Undead Revenants: legs of a skeleton, armour of plastic.

Mantic's science fiction game is "Warpath", but its rules are in early stages and it's a little unforgiving to play. Partially eschewing the philosophy of Kings of War in terms of its choices, it has Space Dwarf and Space Rat Men armies that lack modern Games Workshop equivalents, but at the moment the number of models are slim. The big seller in the Warpath universe is Dreadball, a sports game like Blood Bowl, but it doesn't particularly interest me so I haven't played it. Their new skirmish game, Deadzone, is in the midst of being released as of my writing this, and it does look interesting as an alternative to the standard Warpath rules.

Warpath Enforcers Captain, Forge Father Iron Ancestor
and Forge Father Huscarl Hero: guys who will one day have a use.

When it comes to the actual models themselves, Mantic are almost the exact opposite of Games Workshop. Mantic models are simple and cheap. There is very little redundancy and not as much in the way of customisation, although the same is true of Games Workshop's The Lord of the Rings products. The issue is that Mantic armies run the risk of looking a bit repetitious as the same models tend to recur in various units, and the plastic models sometimes are the same sprue of two bodies over and over. The ranges are still growing as well, so there aren't quite as many options to give all the armies a lot of visual diversity yet. That being said, some of the products, like their Undead figures, are very good indeed. Mantic's zombies in particular are much better than the Games Workshop alternatives. I personally also think their Orcs are quite agreeable. It's just not the same kind of very customisable, arguably over-designed and half-redundant product that more modern Games Workshop releases are becoming. That's the point, however. Mantic's slogans are "Building big armies" and "Affordable Fantasy and sci-fi tabletop wargaming miniatures." It's about waging a war against your toy enemies, not against your bank account. If you want to just get a huge amount of Fantasy soldiers to push around a field at a reasonable price I'd heartily recommend Mantic and Kings of War.

Spartan Games

Prussian Empire Grenadiers
'Cause the 1870s weren't violent enough already.

I only discovered Spartan relatively recently. Their big thing is games on a much larger scale than the kind I've been discussing so far, usually involving huge ships, either in space or on Earth, rather than individual soldiers. Firestorm Armada is a space ship game, evocative if anything of Games Workshop's largely deceased Battlefleet Gothic, Uncharted Seas is a Fantasy naval combat game which makes me think of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness, and Dystopian Wars is a steampunk alternative history Victorian setting featuring combat on land, sea and air with giant machines. It seems like this last one is the one which has taken off the most, and correlative with that is the game from Spartan that I play, its infantry-scale companion game, Dystopian Legions.

Prussian Empire Teutonic Knights
Anachronism in a can.

As a squad-based game with important shooting and melee components, the closest analogy Dystopian Legions might have in familiar terms is Warhammer 40K, but Dystopian Legions takes arguably one of the periods of history with the most visual flair and jazzes it up into a fast paced, fun and extremely fair tabletop game with a very strong aesthetic. The Steampunk vibe allows them to take all the cool uniforms and gear of nineteenth century armies and give them tanks, lasers, robots and all that kind of stuff. As someone who's often been interested in that historical period it's very appealing. The game uses an "Order of March" system where players alternate between activating each of their units, so you're never out of the action for long, and decks of playable game cards allow you to customise and diversify the actions of your troops. Spartan's dice mechanic relies on scoring different numbers of successes (rolling a 4, 5 or 6) to pass tests, wound enemies and so on, with different coloured dice having greater potential to score more successes, which removes a lot of messy comparison of different stats.

Kingdom of Britannia Line Infantry
Zulu with flamethrowers.

Of the seven major powers of Dystopian Wars, four are currently available for Dystopian Legions: the Kingdom of Britannia, the Prussian Empire, the Federated States of America and the Empire of the Blazing Sun. I have armies of the first two and am starting on the third. Each selects the distinctive individual style of that region from real history, combining late nineteenth century and First World War elements with a healthy dose of steampunk. Britannia opts for a Zulu Wars aesthetic, featuring redcoats in pith helmets backed up by jetpack troops in flying caps and goggles, walking machines and so on. Prussia has the classic imagery of the pickelhaube, their soldiers wearing spiked helmets and piped tunics, with Teutonic Knights in giant armoured suits, conscripts and the like in support. America utilises the distinctive Kepi hat and overcoat look of the civil war infantryman mixed in with lots of stetsons, combined with motorbikes, flying gunslingers and such. As far as I can determine, not owning any of the models, the Japanese Blazing Sun combines the style of the aggressive imperial Japan of the late nineteenth century with the distinctive flair of the samurai. They're very visually appealing models which, to my mind, strike a very good balance between the already unmistakeable grandeur of the time with a number of science fiction enhancements.

Kingdom of Britannia Sky Hussars
All named Clive.

Most Dystopian Legions models are metal, with a few larger components and the vehicles being resin, and I'll admit that they're not especially cheap, but you don't need that many to have a fun game - the starter sets alone provide you with enough for a small encounter - and they are cheaper than Games Workshop, at least locally, despite the fact that the models are all metal and on a larger scale, which means they are also as if not more detailed. The larger scale some people find objectionable because it means they couldn't sub in Dystopian Legions models for, say, their Imperial Guard armies, but frankly I can't imagine how substituting metal Spartan models for the already utterly unaffordable Imperial Guard would work anyway. My local supplier offers a pretty good discount on them, though, which means I can get, in the simplest terms, six metal infantry for twenty-two dollars. That's under four dollars per little man, and for a larger scale, in metal and with a very high level of detail, as well as every model being unique, that's not bad at all. A decent sized Dystopian Legions army might set you back a few hundred bucks, but you'd probably be paying twice that for anywhere near a maxed-out Warhammer 40,000 army at what is considered a playable level, and that's not including dice, rules or army lists. The Dystopian Legions lists and rules are free and the starter sets come with dice, a range measure, counters, cards and a print of the rules, so I would argue that it is better value. I also think the 'enhanced historical' look is more interesting than more guys with huge shoulderpads.

Conclusion
So there we go then! Toy soldiers! What do I recommend? Maybe collect Games Workshop if you're filthy rich, otherwise I say vote with your wallet and go somewhere else. The problem with 'GW' in my opinion is that they're too prohibitively expensive for a potential casual or prospective toy soldier collector, so if you and your chums just want to have a big Fantasy battle go for Mantic. Their Deadzone might be worth a look in too, I may review that if I wind up with a copy. It could give you the sci-fi action you crave. Obviously there are a lot of other toy soldier games, but these are the only ones I've played, so you'll have to do your own research if you want something else. My current favourite is Dystopian Legions, but I like the time period. At some point, hopefully soon, therefore, I'll be doing a few reviews of Dystopian Legions models to better bulk out the discussion of them online. I still don't know what the impulse is to collect toy soldiers, but if you have the desire and the means, it can be pretty rewarding.