Movement Point – Page 29 – Gaming, Science Fiction, Culture, and Such

Game Preview: Red Storm: The Air War Over Central Germany, 1987 (GMT Games)

July 24, 2023November 20, 2016 by Chris Baer

Near the end of the Cold War, both NATO and the Warsaw Pact fielded impressively large and varied air forces that, thankfully, never contested the skies over Europe. Where the Warsaw Pact relied on larger numbers of robust but technologically-limited fighters and bombers, NATO offered up qualitatively superior but numerically inferior forces, making any conflict between the two sides one of doctrine as well as ideology.

Forthcoming from GMT Games and designer Doug Bush, Red Storm: The Air War Over Central Germany, 1987, seeks to model this potential conflict by enhancing the time-tested operational system originally designed by Lee Brimmicombe-Wood for his seminal work on the air war in Vietnam, Downtown. I’ve been lucky enough to work with Red Storm from the early playtest phase, and as a long-time admirer of both Downtown and its follow-on game, Elusive Victory, I find that Red Storm neatly brings the system’s strengths to the quite unique situation over Central Germany while addressing the complexities of the modern air battlespace.

As the playtest counter art shows, players will have at their disposal aircraft from several nations: the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic, the Federal Republic of Germany, Belgium, and Canada. And what a varied assortment of aircraft it is. From the top-of-the-line F-15s and MiG-29s through to the lowly Su-17s and puttering Alpha Jets, nearly every fighter and bomber that could have seen service in the Central German front makes an appearance. Doug has meticulously differentiated the airplanes, so that each flies, and fights, quite differently. Gamers who take the time to dig through the aircraft notes and make use of differences in radar, altitude performance, and weapon loadouts will be rewarded for their efforts.

Of particular note to me, the Su-25 Frogfoot close attack plane earns a few counter slots—it’s my personal mission as a wargamer to play every game that features this delightfully ungainly craft.

Complicating both players’ plans, the electronic warfare support and anti-air missiles on each side make the mere act of flying hazardous. Going in on the deck might keep one safe from the SAMs, but then there are the copious low-level infra-red missiles and flak batteries to deal with. Successful ingress and egress require quite a few difficult choices. Making the initial flight plans could be a game in itself, and while players are never “on rails,” that initial planning does guide proceedings to a large extent, a hallmark of the system as a whole.

Planned scenarios range from contested bombing missions on both sides through to SAM-busting missions, rear echelon interdiction strikes, and escorting special forces on behind-the-lines infiltrations. One and two map scenarios will be included.

Red Storm promises to be both a worthy addition to the Downtown system and a signal accomplishment in air combat gaming in itself. Discussion of the game as it moves through development is taking place on ConsimWorld, and any gamer with interest in this hypothetical air conflict is welcome to head over there to follow along and participate.

(Playtest images and banner via GMT Games.)

Doctor Who Project: The Ambassadors of Death

July 24, 2023November 10, 2016 by Chris Baer

What about reducing the g’s by mixing K and M3?

What if they held an invasion and nobody came? With “The Ambassadors of Death” (Series Production Code CCC), series regular writer David Whitaker provides an engaging answer to the recent profusion of alien invasion plots in Doctor Who by neatly subverting all expectations of how an alien invasion story should play out.

Comparisons between “The Ambassadors of Death” and its immediate predecessor, “Doctor Who and the Silurians,” cannot be avoided. We have aliens, to be sure, and the threat of invasion from beyond (or below) gets bandied about, but this time, the aliens actually do come in peace. While Malcolm Hulke toyed around with the idea in his story, Whitaker comes right out and finally says what the series has been suggesting for some time now: the real monsters are human beings and their foibles.

To Whitaker’s immense credit, and in keeping with the series’ long-standing tradition of concealing the monster as long as possible, the viewer doesn’t quite know what humans and which foibles are at fault until nearly the finish of the seven episode story. A tangled set of interwoven conspiracies develops around the mystery of the missing astronauts from Mars Probe Seven, and the cast of players seems immense at first. Will it be the bureaucratic pride of the civil servant, the simple greed of a cunning con man, the unbridled Promethean lust for knowledge of the foreign scientist? We’ve seen them all before. Instead, we find at the core of this story a sad tale of misplaced morality coupled to the human destructive impulse. All summed up with a swagger stick.

A Meal Fit for a Doctor: Alton Brown’s Fish Sticks and Custard

January 20, 2023October 23, 2016 by Chris Baer

Under ordinary circumstances, I would keep my distance from this particular dish, given that I’m about as far from pescatarian as is humanly possible. But Alton Brown‘s recipe for Fish Sticks and Custard, from his recently released (and beautifully photographed) cookbook, EveryDayCook, combines my abiding appreciation for Alton Brown’s approach to food with my undying love of all things Doctor Who.

Fish Sticks and Custard from Alton Brown's EveryDayCook

To explain briefly, just understand that the Eleventh Doctor manifested a craving for this particular dish upon his regeneration, a telling and touching scene involving the young Amy Pond, and Alton Brown, as a card-carrying Whovian, saw fit to include this version in his cookbook:

My version is different in that it’s actually tasty…even if you don’t have two hearts and live in a blue box.

Note, too, that the dish is photographed upon the Fourth Doctor’s scarf. A nice homage to Doctor Who indeed.

It’s interesting to note that, up to the current point in the Doctor Who Project (Season Seven, Story Two, “Doctor Who and the Silurians,”), food has played a very minor role in the series. There’s been the odd poisoned coffee and more than a few cuppas, but as yet, no stories with much gustatory focus. Indeed, thus far in the re-watch, I’m not sure if we’ve even seen the Doctor eat anything besides a very hard candy. And, as the events of “The Gunfighters” bear out, that wasn’t good eats at all…

(Image from Alton Brown’s EveryDayCook.)

Doctor Who Project: Doctor Who and the Silurians

January 12, 2025October 12, 2016 by Chris Baer

It’s a bit hard to accept one monster, let alone two.

The Third Doctor and UNIT go hand in hand. Far from being a harmonious relationship, however, the Doctor often finds himself at odds with his putative employer, and as Malcolm Hulke’s oddly titled “Doctor Who and the Silurians” (Story Production Code BBB) demonstrates, UNIT and the military-bureaucratic mindset it represents serve as a second foe more often than not, one occasionally as deadly and bloodthirsty as the monster of the week.

From a narrative perspective, the bureaucratic bumbling that prevents UNIT from mustering sufficient resources to answer threats helps drive, and pad, all the stories of the UNIT era, here allowing this tale of a reptilian civilization that has slumbered, and now awakens, in a cave network under Britain to reach seven episodes.

But more than that, this inertial force helps define the Third Doctor quite clearly, and consequently we have a more distinct understanding of his essential character more quickly than we did with either of his predecessors. For while the Doctor has always been disdainful of the martial mindset, the force-before-reason mentality, this story cements the Third Doctor as a scientist first and foremost, with no patience for rules and no qualms about subverting his relationship with Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and the military organization he represents if needed to save lives.

Neatly, Hulke provides the Doctor with a Silurian counterpart who shares his efforts to broker a truce between the former masters of the planet and the current inhabitants, and the nameless reptilian leader has his own version of the Brigadier to contend with. This one, however, has the ability to kill with a third eye at the top of his head and desires the complete eradication of the “apes” infesting the Earth; our Brigadier just has a mustache and a little portable radio. But in the end, the Brigadier is the one who oversees a mass extermination.

Is There a Doctor in the Deck? Doctor Who: The Card Game Classic Doctors Edition (Cubicle 7)

July 24, 2023September 25, 2016 by Chris Baer

Sometimes, it’s like they make games especially with me in mind. Doctor Who mixed with Martin Wallace? I’m intrigued.

Doctor Who Card Game Classic Doctors Edition

Doctor Who: The Card Game Classic Doctors Edition (Cubicle 7, 2016) should, on paper, be my most favorite game ever, combining my love of all things Who with an appreciation for the designs Wallace comes up with. And yet, I can’t help but feel that the theme here is pasted onto a fairly simple filler game.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with a filler game to take up the time between plays of more elaborate games, but this license deserves something grander than reducing the Doctor (all of them from the First through the Eighth) to a numerical value to be played against enemies (Daleks, Cybermen, and other old-school baddies like the Macra (!) and the Sensorites) who are likewise just numbers.

Doctor Who Card Game Classic Doctors Edition

Some of the companions and other cards do have special abilities that attempt to bring some of the show’s unique flavor to bear, but on the whole, the game would not be changed if the cards were patterned after Babylon 5 or Space: 1999. The experience just doesn’t make for very compelling gameplay once the novelty of pairing up Nyssa and the Third Doctor against the Primords at the Temple of Yetaxa wears off. It’s a fine game, but not much more.

Perhaps I’m splitting hairs, as any focus on the original run of Doctor Who makes me happy (even as I cringe at thinking of it as “classic Who“). The components are up to standards, with nice quality playing cards and a handful of decently thick counters. I’ll certainly throw it in the bag for a filler, and if even one person is intrigued by the original series, then the game has succeeded in that regard.

One can only wish, though, for a Doctor Who game on the scale and complexity of Wallace’s A Study in Emerald. Now that would be a thing of beauty.

Doctor Who Project: Spearhead from Space

July 26, 2023September 8, 2016 by Chris Baer

My dear fellow, how nice to see you again.

Absence, they say, makes the heart grow fonder. Or hearts, perhaps, in the case of Doctor Who.

Six months elapsed from the end of Season Six to the beginning of Season Seven, making Jon Pertwee’s debut story as the Third Doctor, “Spearhead from Space” (Story Production Code AAA) by series regular Robert Holmes, a long awaited reunion for viewers indeed. And what a change they found when they tuned in. A new Doctor and the use of color footage, to be sure, plus a new companion in Caroline John’s Liz Shaw, but also a vigorous sense of confidence in the storytelling that manifests itself in a four episode story filled with fast pacing and dynamic directing by Derek Martinus. Never did the camera zoom in on people in various stages of horror quite so often as in this story. Shame the Doctor spends the first two episodes in bed, though.

And the cause of this extreme terror? A plastics factory run by aliens has been turning out plastic automatons, none of which are quite as terrifying as their usual line of work, plastic dolls. The establishing scenes in the factory, with conveyor belts lines with disembodied plastic baby heads, must surely count as some of the most disturbing in the series’ history.

The intended monsters in the story, the Autons, derive their menace from their nearness to human beings, humanoid without quite being human due to the slight angularity of facial features and the overall blankness in the visage. The effect harkens to the original, Mondasian Cybermen, whose obvious similarity to human beings causes a degree of ontological dread that the later versions simply lack. The Autons function quite similarly to Cybermen as well, lacking any affect or individuality and obeying the orders of a centralized hierarchy. And wouldn’t you know it, they want to conquer the Earth, too, only while wearing blue coveralls and cravats.