The answers to my Star Wars/Doctor Who puzzler then.

Nick correctly identified Leslie Schofield (Caleb in The Face of Evil and Leroy in The War Games), Don Henderson (Gavrok in Delta and the Bannermen), Dave Prowse (the Minotaur in The Time Monster) in the Vader costume, and Peter Cushing, who played Dr. Who in the two 1960s Dalek films.

The other Who actor in the scene – which I only discovered while checking my facts before putting this up – is Cy Town, who plays one of the guards (“Imperial Trooper Guard Tajis Durmin”, apparently) and has an absolutely massive list of Doctor Who credits, albeit many of them uncredited. He was a Dalek operator in every Dalek story from Frontier in Space to Remembrance of the Daleks, and was also in Spearhead from Space, The Silurians, Inferno, The Three Doctors, Invasion of the Dinosaurs, The Android Invasion, Revenge of the Cybermen, The Masque of Mandragora, The Invisible Enemy, The Sun Makers, Castrovalva, Enlightenment, Attack of the Cybermen, The Happiness Patrol, and The Curse of Fenric. And he gets extra points for playing, uncredited, a technician in the last episode of Blake’s 7.

Went to see V for Vendetta last night, which was good fun. I almost didn’t go, after reading a slagging of it by Peter Bradshaw in theguardian. Then I remembered that Bradshaw also gave Revenge of the Sith a preposterous one star and decided to ignore him – and I’m glad I did.

Some of V‘s core message – which is equally critical of authoritarian government and a population that allows it – is less than subtle, but it is well-timed.

There are some minor quibbles: the backstory isn’t well explained, leaving us watching the police investigate an apparently crucial mass murder we’ve been told little about; having John Hurt – who is typically good as the High Chancellor – also play an actor who is lampooning the High Chancellor is a recipe for audience confusion; and the Underground station used to illustrate mass Tube closures is Strand, which has been shut for donkeys years. Oh, and a very minor complaint: V’s Wurlitzer jukebox clearly doesn’t hold the 872 songs he claims – it looks like it takes around two to three hundred at most. I was concerned that V’s mask would make it hard for his personality to come across, but Hugo Weaving (previously Elrond in The Lord of the Rings and a drag queen in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) does an excellent job of carrying the character in his voice.

Typically for Hollywood, while the villains are English, the actors playing the heroes are not: Weaving is Australian, Natalie Portman is American, and Stephen Rea, who plays the chief inspector (who, for unexplained reasons, appears to be part of the High Chancellor’s kitchen cabinet) is Irish, as is Sinéad Cusack, the only sympathetic one of V’s tormentors. Portman just about manages to pass herself off as English, although her accent, while not a Thurman or a Van Dyke, leaves a little to be desired; Rea seems to be playing his character as a Yorkshireman, but this accent comes and goes. Given that the dialogue states that his mother was Irish, perhaps he should’ve stuck with his natural voice.

It was great to see such a range of British acting talent though. Hurt’s number two is played by Tim Piggott-Smith (I didn’t recognise him at first), who is best known for The Jewel in the Crown, but was also in the Doctor Who story The Masque of Mandragora. Ben Miles from Coupling (with a really bad haircut), Rupert Graves (last seen as a far right MP in Spooks) and John Standing, whose many roles include in the Avengers episode School for Traitors.

Rea is good, and much better than in the last thing I saw him, an episode of 1970s Brian Clemens anthology series Thriller calling K is for Killing (Cusack appeared, incidentally, in the episode The Eyes Have It). The man of the match award, though, goes to Stephen Fry, whose performance as Gordon Dietrich was charismatic, nuanced and thoroughly winning.

The use of familiar London locations for the finale makes it all the more powerful. I must confess to a guilty enjoyment of the pyrotechnics when V attacks establishment landmarks – I’ll put it down to an appreciation of the spectacular effects.

It’s not a great film, and I’m not familiar with the comic so I can’t comment on the truthfulness of the adaptation, but it is enjoyable and effectively directed with no major flaws. Its message, that handing power to governments in response to fear is not a good idea, is summed up in V’s motto:

People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people.

Those in favour of ID cards and authoritarian terror laws would do well to see it.

A geeky puzzle for you.

These images show all eleven characters (one appears twice) who appear in the Star Wars “I find your lack of faith disturbing” conference room scene on the Death Star.

Simple question: how many of these actors were in Doctor Who (in the widest sense)? And which of them was in more Doctor Who stories than the others?

A lollipop for the person who gets the right answers. Two lollipops if your answers are better than the ones I was thinking of…

Went to the cinema yesterday for to see the fillum Aeon Flux. I enjoyed it, but it did demonstrate the gulf between being enjoyable and being particularly good.

It was shot in Europe which probably explains the many Brits in the cast: Jonny Lee Miller, Oscar nominee Sophie Okenedo (off of Scream of the Shalka), Pete Postlethwaite, and the ubiquitous Paterson Joseph (Johnson in Peep Show and Rodrick in Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways). The eponymous character was played by Oscar winner Charlize Theron. Sadly, despite her Academy Award, her flat performance was one of the reasons the film wasn’t as good as it should have been.

Some things were slightly excusable because they presumably came from the source material. The action scenes occasionally overstayed their welcome, but that’s to be expected from an adaptation from Manga. The plot twist was a terrible sci-fi cliché – so much so that it was used in an episode from the second series of Star Trek: TNG. (I only remeber it was second season because Dr Palaski was in it and it was a unintentionally funny episode.) This particularly twist involved a significant suspension of disbelief from anyone with a scientific bent – fair enough if the conceit is presented at the beginning of the film, but harder to accept as a twist introduced two-thirds of the way through.

The film took itself terribly seriously – I can’t remember a moment of humour in it. One scene, which should have been very powerful, involved a group of guards being disarmed by a speech from one of the protagonists. Unfortunately, the script didn’t remotely reach the level of rhetoric required to pull this off and it was therefore unconvincing.

I don’t want to be too down on it tough – I did enjoy the film and it didn’t commit the ultimate sin of being boring.