Book Review - The Fatal Eggs (Mikhail Bulgakov)

Today I review Mikhail Bulgakov's 1928 novel, The Fatal Eggs.

In Moscow 1928, zoology professor Vladimir Persikov stumbles across a momentous discovery: a ray of light generated in a microscope that causes cells to evolve at a lightning rate. This causes the frog population in his lab to explode, becoming more virulent and more aggressive to one another. As the media and the authorities begin to intrude more into his personal life, Persikov has to fight to contain an even greater threat: a plague of giant mutated reptiles.

To anyone who knows their history, The Fatal Eggs was published at a crucial point in Russian history. Josef Stalin had just gained control of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, and would soon impose his brutal dictatorial governorship on all of Soviet society. Given the tight control of all forms of cultural expression in Stalinist Russia, it's impossible to read The Fatal Eggs without trying to separate it from its historial context.

Bulgakov came under investigation following the book's publication for being an alleged counter-revolutionary. It becomes clear soon enough why that should be the case, as Professor Persikov hardly comes across as the model Soviet citizen. He's short-tempered and anti-social, is more concerned with his experiments than engaging with the society around him, and doesn't hide his irritation and contempt for the authorities who keep intervening in his life.

The novel opens with a brief prologue about Persikov's career during the Civil War (1918-1922). Rather than go off on a rant against the Whitists or the Trotskyists, Bulgakov focuses on how the constant rationining and War Communism (confiscation of food by the Red Army) causes Persikov's specimens to starve to death. This causes Persikov far more upset than the wider geopolitical forces tearing his country apart.

Persikov emerges as the sort of bourgeois scientist you'd find in the works of Jules Verne or H.G. Wells (Bulgakov gives a nod to Wells's story, Food for the Gods at one point). Like Verne's Phileas Fogg, or Wells's time traveller, Persikov is dedicated to science itself, caring little for personal relationships. One of the first things we learn about him is that his wife ran off with another man, leaving a note where she expresses her disgust with his keeping of frogs and reptiles. Right from the start, Bulgakov establishes a dichotomy between science and interpersonal relations, with Persikov choosing the former to give his life meaning.

Persikov is at times a comical figure with his constant grumbling and irritation at the world around him, like a Stalinist-era Victor Meldrew.

Bulgakov only adds to his consternation (and perhaps Stalin's as well) by depicting Russia as a grotesque parody of a country. He makes constant reference to neon news reports delivered by garish spotlights. The reporters who pester Persikov skew the facts to give him a celebrity status he tries to reject. Whether at home or in his lab, Persikov is bedevilled by the sounds of the outside world: trams, loudspeakers, broadcasts from the Bolshoi Theatre. Even the secret police, the symbol of Leninist and later Stalinist terror, come across as nothing more than a nuisance to him.

Instead of a flowering utopia built on equality and hard-work, Bulgakov portrays a Russia that's succumbing to a sort of insanity.

In an absurdist twist, the reptilian disaster is not caused by an evil plot, but by bureaucratic incompetence. A Party apparatchik persuades Persikov to let him use his ray on a batch of chicken eggs in the hopes of procuring a bountiful source of food for the people. A screw-up in the postal service means a batch of Persikov's own snake eggs are delivered to the experiment farm instead, resulting in a plague of enormous man-eating snakes terrorizing the countryside.

Furthermore, the day is saved not by Soviet might but (in another Wellsian parallel), by a fluke of nature: the Russian winter sweeps in and kills off the reptiles. Sadly, this isn't enough to save Persikov from a furious mob who blame him for the disaster. Bulgakov ends his black comedy with a suitable ending: the bourgeois scientist (an icon of 19th century literature) is destroyed by that symbol of Soviet fury, the angry mob.

At 100 pages exactly, The Fatal Eggs is a nifty read that nonetheless leaves the reader a lot of food for thought. Bulgakov follows a man at the mercy of greater events than himself, yet just about finds enough ridiculousness in the scenario to poke fun at it. In doing so, he creates a surreal yet poignantly apt depiction of a dark chapter in Russian history.

TV Review - Primeval Series One Overview

Today I start a series of overviews of ITV's science-fiction adventure series Primeval, which debuted ten years ago today.

I was fascinated with dinosaurs when I was a kid, so this show came out at just the right time for me. My love of all things prehistoric stemmed from the BBC's Walking with franchise, co-created by Tim Haines, who was also one of Primeval's co-creators.

The show sadly was never renewed in 2011, nor was its Canadian spin-off picked up after one season. Primeval largely seems to have fallen by the wayside since. While it was a far from perfect show, it was still a pretty big deal for ITV, a channel which hardly ever makes high concept drama of this sort. The show did also last for five seasons, far more than ITV's subsequent attempts like Demons or Jekyll & Hyde.

This series of reviews will revisit this old favourite of mine, and hopefully might tempt a few readers out here to check out or else revisit the show themselves.

Primeval centres around a sudden outburst of wormholes that begin opening across England. These wormholes (called anomalies) lead to the distant past or the future and allow all manner of weird creatures to enter the 21st century. An assortment of people become involved in the phenomenon and are hastily recruited by the British Home Office to contain the creature incursions, while keeping the anomalies' existence a secret from the public.

The team is led by Professor Nick Cutter (Douglas Henshall), a palaeontologist whose wife Helen (Juliet Aubrey) vanished eight years previously. He's aided by his assistant Stephen (James Murray), wide-eyed student Connor (Andrew Lee Potts) and herpetologist Abby (Hannah Spearritt).

Primeval's first series doesn't really have much of a story arc, apart from Cutter trying to find his wife. The mythology of the show, such as it was, wouldn't really be expanded on until future series. Series One acts more like a police procedural with prehistoric fauna instead of criminals. When I was younger, I felt Series One was one of the weaker ones for this reason, as I didn't get as much of a sense of drive from it as I got from subsequent series. On reflection this mentality has changed somewhat, though I'll expand more on that in future reviews.

The series pilot is a bit messy as they try to introduce every main character at once. We have an investigation into rogue predator attacks (a Gorgonopsid from the Permian), a local boy discovering a winged lizard, the introduction of the Home Office and the subsequent cover-up, and a foray into the Permian where the remains of a human campsite are found, setting up the series finale.

Cramming all this into 45 minutes, along with every major character, comes off as a bit of a misstep as it leaves the show feeling overly-ambitious and too thinly spread as a result. It does however leave later episodes a chance to specialise more in what Primeval does better: the creature attacks.

Given it's Framestore and Impossible Pictures, the special effects are pretty impressive for a TV show. There are a few moments though that feel a bit too gimmicky - moments where a monster will lunge straight at the camera, as if the show is trying to milk some cheesy, non-existent 3D feature. The Walking with series were portrayed as documentaries, so the subjects behaved in a more naturalistic fashion. Here, the prehistoric creatures play the role of movie monsters; the more frenetic pace doesn't gel quite as with the real environments, making the creatures seem a bit more artificial. Not that this is a huge turn-off if you watch Primeval with a mind solely to be entertained.

Kudos to the writers for generally avoiding the more cliched dinosaurs and sabre-toothed cats, at least for this series. Instead we get relatively obscure Permian and Carboniferous monsters, as well as some Cretaceous sealife. Dodos show up briefly, but this quickly swerves into a parasite horror story. While I like that the show tries to leave its comfort zone a few times, I found this plot a little too outlandish even for a show like Primeval - the show even tries to work in some Devil-possession-overtones with a deep voice and purple eyes. The end result is pretty laughable, which is especially unfortunate as the episode in question is meant to be a tragedy. Furthermore, there's a flock of dodos wandering from one anomaly to another in the past, no doubt spreading their parasites to God knows how many time periods, but this is never remarked upon.

The series finale really takes a turn though with the introduction of the terrifying Future Predator. The homages to the Alien and Predator franchises are pretty stark, but the conception of the creature itself is still effective. The Predators (who would go on to be a recurring threat) are a frightening glimpse into the future evolution of life on earth. It's quite a bleak statement for a prime time show watched by kids, though Doctor Who had helped pave the way with its own conceptions of a future gone to shit. It also culminates in an exhilarating creature-fight, ending the series on a strong note.

In terms of character, Nick, Helen and James Lester (Ben Miller) are the standouts. Douglas Henshall strikes a great balance between gruffness and endearment with his character. Cutter's more interested in the anomalies than having good relations with the army or the government (or even his colleagues), but there are some nice moments of humanity here and there. Two of my favourites are him rejecting Helen's offer to run away into the past ("You call yourself a scientist?" "I call myself a human being.") and consoling Connor after one of his friends is killed by a parasite. Henshall also gives the character a sense of authority, making for a good leading man.

His wife, Helen, is an enigmatic figure with no clear allegiance. Juliet Aubrey plays to her strengths with a beguiling yet weirdly sinister turn. Season One is definitely Helen's finest due to her ambiguity; she doesn't come off as malevolent, just preferring not to have to put up with the government telling her what to do. Her behaviour around Nick throws up questions of whether her isolation has made her this way, or whether this was the cause of their estrangement before her disappearance.

And then of course there's the fantastic Ben Miller, whose cold detachment causes plenty of friction between himself and Cutter. Like Helen, Lester is at his most fascinating in this series. He really comes across as a guy who could disappear someone if he felt they posed a threat to national security. He also gets all the best lines: "You spend all your life preparing for every single eventuality - up to and including alien invasion - and this happens. So much for thinking outside the bloody box."

The rest of the cast are decent, doing the best they can with their material, but the writing doesn't help them much. Stephen's a more stolid counterpart to the maverick Cutter, but often comes across as a piece of male eye candy. Connor can be downright irritating at times. Abby and Claudia (Lucy Miller) are decent, but like Stephen, they didn't stand out much for me.

Primeval Series One is one that I enjoyed more on a rewatch than I thought I would. I'll get around to the later series at some point, but for the moment I can say I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting this series, despite its weaknesses and many lapses in internal logic. Worth checking out if you're a prehistory fan.

Film Review - Legend of the Werewolf

Today I review the 1975 horror, Legend of the Werewolf.

In 19^th century France, a young boy is found living wild in the forest by a travelling troupe of entertainers. The boy, christened Etoile, is taken in and raised into a strapping young man (David Rintoul). After attacking another entertainer in a sudden fit of rage, Etoile flees to Paris where he's taken in by a zoo keeper (Ron Moody), where he develops an affinity with the wolves. Before long, a series of grisly murders begins in the streets, and a local coroner (Peter Cushing) fears there may be a supernatural cause of it.

Legend of the Werewolf has all the hallmarks of a Hammer horror without actually being Hammer – it was produced by Tyburn studios. The shoestring budget is made clear from the measly carnival and zoo sets, but these in a way add to the feeling. The world of the movie is a seedy and awkward one. The cheap sets suit its weird characters, like Hugh Griffith's bombastic showman and Ron Moody's ratty yet somehow endearing zoo keeper.

It's a weirdness that reflects Etoile's strange relationship with the people he meets. The travellers treat him like an animal and keep in a cage, yet somehow the narrator (also played by Cushing) tells us that they become a sort of family to him. Likewise, Moody's zoo keeper comes off as a sleaze from the start, but has very brief moments of affection towards his strange young charge.

These weird tonal shifts add a charm of sorts to the movie, but I doubt this was the filmmakers' intention. The script and characters are paper-thin, and its up to the actors to wring any sort of life from them.

Fortunately, the film does have a fairly decent cast. Moody gives his zoo keeper perhaps more personality than such a thin role deserves. Lynn Badly plays Christine, a local prostitute and the object of Etoile's affections. She also brings some life to her role as a sweet but in no way timid heroine. Entertainer Roy Castle (best known for his children's show Record Breakers) provides some comic relief as a twitchy photographer.

Rintoul was clearly cast more for his beefcake looks than for his acting. However, I do remember enjoying his reading of an audiobook of Susan Cooper's The Boggart when I was a child, so it's not that he doesn't have charisma, it's just there's none to be seen here.

But of course, the real star of the show here is Peter Cushing, one of the stallwarts of British B-movie horror. Cushing seems to elevate the movie to a higher class by his very presence, playing an intelligent and rational coroner, Professor Paul, who seeks to find the werewolf before the police do, not to destroy it but to understand it. It's no accident that the film drastically improves when Cushing becomes the focus, who not only lights up the screen but delivers a welcome note of doom to the story.

If you're at all familiar with this particular genre of horror, you'll know what to expect from Legend of the Werewolf. Cheap sets, corny red-screen shots and thin plot abound. But it also retains some charm from its cast, and especially from Peter Cushing.