JamesHitchcock

The Cyberman made their first appearance in "The Tenth Planet" where they proved such a hit with viewers that they had to be brought back, even though their entire race was supposed to have been wiped out with the destruction of their home planet, Mondas. The Cybermen in "The Tenth Planet" came across as a bit odd, with their cloth faces and what look like car headlamps on their heads, so their appearance was redesigned for their appearance in "The Moonbase".

It is the year 2070. The Second Doctor and his companions Ben, Polly and Jamie arrive on the moon, where a base has been built to track and control weather on the Earth using a device called the Graviton. The base comes under attack from a group of Cybermen, and the Doctor and his companions have to assist the scientists who run the base in repelling them. We learn, among other things, that the Cybermen are vulnerable to solvents, including nail varnish remover.

This is the third serial to feature Jamie. The original idea was that he should only appear in one serial, the now wholly missing "The Highlanders", but the decision was later taken to make him a regular companion. During my childhood he was one of my favourite companions, possibly because he shared my own Christian name, and was with the Second Doctor for most of his tenure. Unlike Ben and Polly, who are modern, trendy youngsters from the 1960s, Jamie is originally from the eighteenth century, which means that he has a different, less scientific, outlook to them. He tries to make sense of unfamiliar phenomena in terms which are familiar to him; for example, he is terrified of the Cybermen because he associates them with the legend of the "Phantom Piper" who appears to members of his clan shortly before their deaths.

Only two of the four episodes of "The Moonbase" have survived the BBC's short-sighted, penny-pinching policy of allowing tapes of old programmes to be erased so they could be reused. The two missing episodes have been recreated using off-air sound recordings and specially commissioned animations. Fortunately, these have been done in a way which closely matches the look of the two surviving episodes.

"The Moonbase" is quite an enjoyable serial, but it is not very original. It tells essentially the same story as "The Tenth Planet"- the Cybermen attack an isolated human scientific base (a space tracking station at the South Pole in the earlier story) but are defeated by the courage and determination of its crew and of the Doctor and his companions. For this reason, I am not giving "The Moonbase" as high a mark as its predecessor. 6/10.

In the eighties the arthouse auteur Peter Greenaway was the enfant terrible of the British cinema, and this is one of his stranger offerings. Whereas films like "The Draughtsman's Contract" and "The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover" had a plot, or something like one, "Drowning by Numbers" seems much more surreal and abstract. What plot there is centres upon three women named Cissie Colpitts, a mother, her daughter and her niece, each of whom drowns her husband, for reasons which generally remain obscure, and manages to cover up her crime with the connivance of the corrupt local coroner, Madgett. Madgett's young son, Smut, solemnly recites the rules of various eccentric games, with names like Hangman's Cricket or Sheep and Tides, which we see being played by the characters. A girl counts the stars while skipping. The numbers from 1 to 100 all appear on screen or are spoken by one of the characters (although not always in strict sequence). Several of Greenaway's obsessions, including sheep, cockroaches, cricket, fish and violent death, are much in evidence.

Roger Ebert complained that "When the movie was over, I was not sure why Greenaway made it." I must admit that was my initial thought as well. Yet there are some positive things about it. The actors, principally Joan Plowright, Juliet Stevenson, Joely Richardson and Bernard Hill all give very stylised, non-naturalistic acting performances, but that's just what a film like this demands. Special mention should go to young Jason Edwards for his perfect deadpan performance as Smut. The film was shot in and around the town of Southwold and there is some striking photography of the bleak Suffolk coastal landscapes, including well-known landmarks such as the Victorian water tower and Southwold Lighthouse. Michael Nyman's repetitive musical score would probably not go down very well in the concert hall, but it fits the enigmatic mood of the film.

So why did Greenaway make "Drowning by Numbers"? Possibly just because he wanted to make something beautiful, bizarre, mysterious, surreal and ultimately inexplicable. The cinematic equivalent of a Dali painting. 6/10.

The Black Boys Rebellion of 1765 is one of the more obscure events in American history. Settlers in the Allegheny Mountains of south-western Pennsylvania, under the leadership of a man named James Smith, were protesting against traders who, with the connivance of the colonial government, were selling weapons and liquor to the Indians, in breach of a Royal Proclamation forbidding this practice. The rebels were named the "Black Boys" because of their habit of blacking their faces as a form of disguise. The protests led to armed clashes between the Black Boys on one side and the rogue traders and government forces on the other.

This film follows the events of that rebellion, but for some reason changes the year from 1765 to 1759. It is sometimes classified as a Western, even though it is set in an East Coast state. No doubt in 1759 the Allegheny Mountains were seen as the Wild West, at least by folks living in Boston, New York or Philadelphia. It is one of those films which has two titles; it was released in America as "Allegheny Uprising". In the UK, at war with Germany at the time, it was originally banned because it was felt to be anti-British. When it was finally released it was given the title "The First Rebel", that of the novel on which it is based. Perhaps it was felt that British audiences would have no idea where the Alleghenies were.

The heroes of the film are Smith, played by a young John Wayne, his feisty girlfriend Janie MacDougall and his followers. The villains are Ralph Callender, the trader whose business model depends upon his being able to see illegal goods to the Indians, and the pompous and supercilious British officer Captain Swanson, who makes his snobbish disdain for the colonists all too clear.

The film has certain similarities with another film from 1939, John Ford's "Drums along the Mohawk", released only one week earlier. Ford's film is another "Eastern Western" set in the American North-East in the late eighteenth century, in that case in upstate New York during the War of Independence itself. Although "Drums along the Mohawk" was more successful when first released and was clearly made on a much larger budget- it is in colour, something of a rarity in 1939 and generally reserved for prestige projects- I actually preferred "The First Rebel".

One reason I disliked Ford's film so much its offensive treatment of the Native Americans, who are portrayed as brutal, savage, and motivated only by bloodlust. "The First Rebel" is not exactly liberal in this regard- there is no attempt to analyse why the Indians of this period should have harboured such enmity towards the whites with whom they were forced to share their country- but we do not see so much of them, and they are never treated with quite the same offensive racism. Wayne was to make much better Westerns than this- indeed, he had already made a great one, "Stagecoach", earlier in 1939, but "The First Rebel" makes for quite an enjoyable adventure story. 6/10

Some goofs. The opening credits tell us that Smith and his men regard themselves as loyal subjects of King George III. This would have been correct had the film-makers kept the real date of the rebellion, 1765, but in 1759 the King was still George II; George III did not come to the throne until the following year. There is a reference to Pittsburgh, given its modern pronunciation, but in 1759 the name of the town, founded only the previous year, would have been pronounced "Pittsborough". Its Scottish founder, John Forbes, named it by analogy with Edinburgh; it acquired its present pronunciation through confusion with the numerous American towns with names ending in -burg.