Library's Labours Lost

When I first saw The Sixth Sense, I knew M Night Shyamalan was a storyteller worth watching out for. Even if I had trouble pronouncing his name. That and his subsequent movies all demonstrated a similar flair for taking some simple supernatural or fantastical hook - ghost story (The Sixth Sense), superheroes (Unbreakable), alien invasion (Signs), fairy tale (The Village) and, er, obscure mythology (Lady In The Water ) - and grounding it effortlessly in the real world and weaving a tale in an artful and strangely compelling way. Haven't seen The Happening, but you can rest assured I will be giving it a look. Despite a significant degree of disappointment in Lady In The Water, which may have had a lot to do with the odd choice of hook, but whatever the specific reasons for that movie failing to measure up on the Shyamalan scale, he remains, for me, very much a storyteller worth watching.

So when I say I think Steven Moffat is the M Night Shyamalan of the Doctor Who world, maybe folks will understand.

He's demonstrated a gift for hooking us in with cleverly constructed stories and fiendish ploys - little boy in a gas mask (The Empty Child), clockwork androids and a time-and-space-spanning love story (The Girl In The Fireplace), statues (Blink) and now shadows (Silence In The Library). And when it comes to things to creep us out, there's little better than shadows, so I know for a fact they weren't the reason why, overall, I found this two-parter to be the weakest weapon in the Grand Moff's Doctor Who arsenal to date.

Aside from a few problems cited at the time - like a cliffhanger as ham-fisted as any space pig - I was generally enthusiastic about part one. I just didn't feel that part two delivered on its promise.

Certainly it didn't help that I'd figured out much of what was going on while still in the midst of episode one so when it comes to the Doctor hitting on the huge revelation that the 4022 people saved were actually *saved* to the *hard drive*, I'm already a week and a bit ahead of him. And, as mentioned before, too much of the whole affair seemed hampered by this slowness on the part of the characters. Yes, by all means have the Doctor in denial about the whole she's-my-wife-but-I've-not-met-her-yet 'conundrum', but when they're still labouring the point in episode two, just in case there are a few who haven't got it yet, well, I'm sensing padding. Not as blatant, say, as the over-egged cliffhanger, but unfortunate because there is potential for so much more to be done in those wasted minutes.

As a for instance, I'd have preferred less Matrix and more Pitch Black. Because as much as it over-laboured certain aspects ("Donna Noble has been saved", "Who turned out the lights?" "Dum, dum, dum, dum, dum") , I couldn't help feeling it undersold one of its key potential strengths: the shadows themselves. Greater use of setting and, well, the darkness. But as it is, I'm not sure the story served its own Vashda Narada (sp?) very well. Piranhas of the air is all very poetic, but it's one thing to fashion 'monsters' out of shadows - and it's pretty easy I guess to digitally paint them onto a scene - but to make it a living, convincing creature, you have to give a fair amount of thought to their motivation and, to put it simply, 'how they work'.

The rules here are murky and not in a 'well they're meant to be an intriguing mystery' way but more in a 'someone didn't really think it through' way. For one thing, after the Doctor telling everyone to stay out of the shadows, they latch onto victims standing in the light. For another, these piranhas of the air haven't had so much as a wren's drumstick to feed on between the 4022 people being saved and the Doctor et al showing up, so what have they been living on? Worse, though, is the fact that this monstrous elemental force that the Doctor is at that point powerless to stop decides to cave on the strength of him telling them who they're up against. Worse still is the fact that they *don't* then use that as a trick to have the Doctor re-stock the library-cum-larder with 4022 walking takeaways.

A shame. And an especial shame because really there was much to admire here. Plenty of astounding, amazing pure-Who moments of the calibre we've come to expect from Mr Moffat: the whispered name, the clicking of the fingers to open the TARDIS doors, the stuttering husband not quite managing to call out for Donna and of course the beautifully heart-wrenching final moments from River Song. Well, her final moments before her final scene, you know.

And I'm not objecting to her 'resurrection'. In and of itself it was fitting and a nice little twist, only rendered somewhat routine by the fact we've seen that sort of thing a bit too often before (Kylie in Voyage Of The Damned and Rose's emotionally charged final parting which turns out not to be quite so final after all). Given the choice, I'd save Alex Kingston over Kylie or Billie Piper any day.

But when it comes down to it, I could sit here and list all the great points to admire - and there were many - but in the end the overall impression I'm left with is that it could have been better. Perhaps this is Steven Moffat's The Village rather than his Lady In The Water, but if this comes over as an unduly negative review it's only because the man is clearly brilliant. Average Steven Moffat is still, for my money, head and shoulders above the rest and any disappointment is inevitably measured against his previous efforts rather than against the surrounding stories in the season.

So let me conclude by stating categorically that I liked it and it stands as the highlight of the season so far. It's still clever and it's still artful and still reason enough to be excited that this is the man who's next in line to be running the show. And while others who don't care for his work might take 'Steven Moffat is the M Night Shyamalan of Doctor Who' for some kind of insult, I know it means that he remains a storyteller very much worth watching out for.

Gods R Us

Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips is in many ways a refreshing indicator of the extent to which fantasy has been embraced by the mainstream. Far more so than science fiction, of course, because if you set out to depict spaceships in space, aliens in an alien landscape/society, or attempt include any kind of science or substantive, complex plot, you are moving towards 'cult', 'niche' and other more marginal frontiers where fewer members of the general public are inclined to boldly go. I'm not sure what it says about us that, as atheism achieves new heights of popularity, courtesy of the likes of Richard Dawkins, we're more widely accepting of gods and magic in our books and movies - especially in a comfortably contemporary setting - than we are of science in our fiction.
Turns out, I'm guilty of this myself, having emerged from Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull with the feeling that extraterrestrials were somehow less credible than the good old angels of death spilling forth from the Ark of the Covenant in the original. Which is just plain weird.
It's probably why Doctor Who, for all that it trots out aliens by the gross, so scrupulously avoids anything too much like intelligent science fiction.
However, I'm not one of these grouches who considers anything populist to be automatically bad and for all its lightness, there is plenty of wit and intelligence on display in Gods Behaving Badly. It's a funny, breezy read and - apart from the fact that I had the idea first, of course ;) - highly original. And it sells us on the fantasy in no time at all, slotting the Greek gods very easily into contemporary roles. In truth, in reviewing Marie Phillips' book, I have to take special care to remain objective, because almost as much as with Doctor Who, I find myself plagued with the "I would have done it this way" virus. But the fact is, central conceit and setting aside, Marie has crafted something quite different to the titularly identical version I might have written. Whereas - if my sample scenes for the competition were anything to go by - I might have gone with the more outrageous Young Ones style humour, what you get here is more rom-com than sit-com, with a touch of the Four Weddings And A Funeral about it, although she sensibly trims it down to one of each (kind of). Although it lacks the emotional weight of that film - which, for me, always lay in John Hannah's eulogy for Simon Callow and Kristin Scott Thomas' unrequited (if inexplicable) love for Hugh Grant. To be fair, the passages concerning hero Neil's devastation at the loss of the girl he loves, are well-written and genuinely moving, but they are somewhat undermined by the fantasy element, in that we know he's going to venture down to the underworld and get her back, and it leaves little lasting impression by the end of the book.
It's the mortals though - Neil and Alice, hero and heroine - who are the best-drawn characters in the novel. Most of the gods themselves come across as little more than sketches, drawn from their ancient mythology templates. And it's a shame that Athena is sidelined as a not all that comical laughing stock in order to make the plot work. Because the gods' circumstances rely rather too heavily on them not twigging to something that should have been staring them in the face for a few thousand years, and when one of them is the goddess of wisdom (amongst other things) she's altogether too likely to have it figured out. The answer supplied by the book is to make Athena a poor communicator, but I fear it might have been a more successful ploy if her dialogue had been styled after that of Babylon 5's Ambassador Kosh - rendering her an impenetrable mystic, instead of some sort of idiot savant.
There are other areas which might have benefited from a science fiction background, at least a portrayal of a sunless Earth more informed by a reading of Larry Niven's excellent Inconstant Moon. And there's what seems to be a hiccup in the internal logic, where hero Neil is still able to see heroine Alice after his return from the spirit world, when she remains invisible to everyone else among the living. Might have been a nice extra touch to have her vanish from Neil's sight for a while, as he is returned to his body.
But these are minor gripes, doubtless born of my sci-fi bias, that really take nothing away from a read that, despite an unusual special significance for yours truly, was good, unabashed fun, plucked from the mainstream shelves of WH Smith where I'm less apt to browse than, say, the science fiction/fantasy shelves just around the corner. (Although, as I say, maybe the fantasy books should be slowly creeping around into mainstream, they're still for the time being kind enough to keep the science fiction company.) And I might even be tempted to pick up the sequel when it appears, which it surely will.
Meanwhile, I'm going to add Marie's blog to my list of links here, because it turns out she's also 'one of us'. Besides being an author - and author's blogs are inherently interesting, no? ;) - she blogs her views on the latest Doctor Who episodes, Eurovision and the like. And she acknowledges the disappointment that was The Doctor's Daughter. Clearly, someone worth trading views with.

Grand Moff Steven

See, now this is why we're all chuffed that Steven Moffat is set to take the helm of Doctor Who (can I get a premature yay!). Well, last night's episode is one reason, along with all the others he's written. As it was only the first of a two-parter, overall impressions of the story will have to wait until next week but right from the get-go, Silence In The Library was just more immediately interesting.
Of course it gets marks for Steven Moffat's trademark blend of wit, creepiness and intriguing premise - and for featuring Alex Kingston in such an engaging role. So clearly, I'm biased. So, just for the sake of balance, until the final results are in, here are what I felt were the principal negatives:
Another over-egged cliffhanger. Used to be a time when just the sight of a companion's face stuck on a sculpted android would have made for an effective cliffhanger in and of itself. Combine that with a stomping skeleton in a spacesuit and you should be onto a winner. Spin it out for lord knows how many minutes and your suspense souffle sadly collapses.
Could have used an earlier death, I think. For quite some time, we - and the archaeological expedition - were just faced with the Doctor telling us all how dangerous it was, when an early kill would have done the trick much more effectively. That's what expedition members are for in Doctor Who.
The Doctor and Donna being utterly dense. The Doctor especially. He's time-travelled for, ooh, a few years now, I'd think he'd be quicker on the uptake with the idea of running into someone from his future. After all, not to blow my own trumpet or anything, but in Emotional Chemistry, he actually prefers to consider that possibility rather than confront the idea that he might have met all these people from his past but not remember them. Fair enough, we might put the Doctor's 'slowness' here down to denial, but like the cliffhanger, it's spun out a little too much for credibility.
However, there were numerous pluses to weigh against all that, not least of which was the look Alex Kingston (sigh) gave Donna, which - perhaps optimistically - I took as a good sign that Donna snuffs it. Of course, I also have this insane theory that the Doctor 'dies', but now that's been modified to the Doctor appears to die, gets buried, to be later unearthed by a certain archaeologist, and so begins a blossoming relationship in which, if we can't have Sally Sparrow as a companion when Moffat takes charge, we can at least have River Song.
But now I'm just having fun. I blame Steven Moffat for that.
Meanwhile, take a look at a short story I wrote envisaging what Doctor Who might be like if re-imagined for our screens (shortly before it was re-imagined for our screens). (My website's due for a major overhaul, but the story should still be there for a little while yet.) It features a Doctor and TARDIS unearthed in an archaeological dig, so you can see why I wouldn't be against the idea :)

Authors Behaving Badly

Yesterday, during one of those periods of displacement activity that are a routine feature of an author's life, I decided to tackle a small mountain of paperwork that I'd allowed to build up over the past few months and see if I could at least reduce it to something more in line with a mole hill. During the course of this diversionary chore, I came across the Spring Newsletter of the ALCS (Authors' Licensing & Collecting Society), an organisation that champions authors by recovering royalties for things like the photocopying of our works across the globe. Anyway, their very worthy mission aside, shame on me, I don't ordinarily read their Newsletter. Indeed, normally, the paperwork involved with respect to their Newsletter would involve at most a quick glance over before tossing it out.

But on this occasion's quick glance over, whether out of some desire for even more displacement activity or genuine interest, my eye was caught by an article by one Joan Smith, authoress and columnist, who had much to say on the current state - or more importantly, attitude - of the publishing industry, a great deal of which struck chords with yours truly. In brief, she speaks of how

"Contemporary publishing is driven by an obsession with profit, celebrity and gimmicks, which has resulted in a cull of non-populist writers."

And she finishes by boldly declaring,

"We can react to this in two ways. One is as individuals, demoralised and struggling to find the energy to keep writing. The other is as professional writers who understand the vital role of literature in our culture. When publishers stop doing their job, ours is to get angry and tell the world."

Authors getting angry? Nothing could be easier.

This was, after all, the same week in which I'm preparing yet another round of submissions - albeit to agents, rather than publishers. Something I always drag my heels over, because it's so dispiriting and often quite damaging to that rather crucial 'other' side to what I do, the creative process. This was also the same day on which I happened to spot, in the window of the local WH Smith, an ad for the Times recommended Book Of The Week, Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips. More than striking a chord, that rang a very loud (Cloister?) bell with me because it was only four years ago that I entered a sitcom idea of the self same title in a comedy writing competition. Basically, it involved Ancient Greek gods faced with the ordeals of 21st Century life in a London flat. At worst, it might have reached our screens as a sort of Olympian My Family. But as bad as that sounds, let's set that aside and consider me, outside that WH Smith window, confronted with that ad. Of course, curiosity compelled me to go inside and read the back cover blurb:

BEING IMMORTAL ISN'T ALL IT'S CRACKED UP TO BE. Life's hard for a Greek god in the 21st century: nobody believes in you, your own family doesn't respect you, and you're stuck in a dilapidated hovel in north London with too many siblings and not enough hot water.

Etc.

Based on which, curiosity further compelled me to look inside and read the author's biog, you know, just to make sure she couldn't have had anything to do with presiding over a Channel 4 sitcom writing competition. Apparently she used to work as a TV researcher, so nothing that would stand up in a court of law, and I'd like to make it immediately clear that I'm not accusing Ms Phillips of anything. After all, it's the sort of idea anyone could have quite independently, and it's not the sort of thing I can really get angry about: after all, apropos of Joan Smith's article, what it amounts to is that somewhere there are publishers who will take a chance on a good, original idea and go ahead and publish. (This is by Vintage, part of the Random House group, and no small independent concern.) I'd just like it noted for the record, I had the idea first. And if Ms Phillips' book translates into a TV sitcom, I'll be sorely mad, of course.

But in the meantime, I've bought myself a copy of the novel (curiosity compelling me again! - £2.99 with a copy of the Times) and wish her luck with it.

No, what matters, again apropos of the article, is that it reminds me the longer the hard slog of the submission process continues - and the longer the prevailing attitudes in the publishing industry persist - the greater the danger that someone else 'out there' will have the same or sufficiently similar idea. And you can bet your butt, that would be the one time the publishers stop looking for the Next Big Thing that's very like the Last Big Thing and start turning down your material on the basis that it's too much like author X's 'Blah' series, the very one that's so much like the idea you tried to persuade them was the Next Big Thing three years before.

It is, as we know, a minefield. And yes, minefields are something worth getting angry about.

Still, it's easier for the likes of Joan Smith, an authoress who's already safely traversed the minefield, to stand up and rail against the publishers. For those of us still knocking at those august (pearly?) gates, if we stand up and shout at the publishers, surely that's just going to invite them to scatter more mines in our path? To say nothing of the agents. If publishers are the gatekeepers to this prestigious world, then they're the gatekeepers to the gatekeepers.

And I'm no expert, but it seems to me that they are all plagued by the same thinking, as cited by Joan Smith:

"...what I see is a combination of deep insecurity and hype. Terrorised by accountants and marketing departments, mainstream publishers are desperately trying to work out what sells and the only way they can do it is by referring to something else."

And of course that thinking has filtered down and out, from publishers to agencies, because what the one is looking for, the others are looking to serve. Thus, the mentality becomes policy. Worse, it becomes the unthinking mechanics of the machine. And the machine analogy occurs, because I see little evidence of imagination or creative vision in the process.

The human factor still demonstrates a capacity to recognise the key ingredients - originality, imagination, good writing. In recent years the responses I get tend to be of that especially frustrating consistently positive nature, commending the quality while at the same time admitting to a lack of confidence in an ability to sell. My wife is keen to point out that this is a failing on the part of the publishers/agents - a lack of vision or an unwillingness to take any kind of risk - rather than any reflection on my work. And I nod and persevere, while it goes without saying which line my subconscious takes on the matter. To the sensitive creative soul, however you deal with the news - wine or whine? - it makes you feel you were that much closer, but couldn't quite make the grade. But the hurdles, rather than being raised, are being lowered, so that we aren't being asked to vault them so much as bend over backwards in a perverse limbo. Perverse, because limbo is precisely where most of us - along with our ideas - end up.

What the publishing - and movie - world has lost sight of is that the likes of Harry Potter and Star Wars only happened because somebody took a chance on them after a long round of rejections and disinterest. And the saddest aspect of that is that the Next Big Thing could break tomorrow, any number of the larger concerns could be left kicking themselves for having turned it down, but they would all carry on making the same mistakes. Rather than take a chance.

It's fair enough in some respects: neither studios nor publishers want to throw money after every project that lands on their desks, but an inability to think outside the box is leaving who knows how many great ideas in boxes, gathering dust.

Authors, I think, are being asked to embrace the same mentality: to begin tailoring our works to that commercialism, to tick certain boxes, to become mimics rather than artists, and make our stories more like The Da Vinci Code or Harry Potter. It's the running joke all authors must have heard or even said at some point: be the next JK Rowling. Suddenly, we're like all those Pop Idol applicants queuing up to be the next Britney Spears or the next Justin Timberlake. When really, ideally, we should all be out to be ourselves. Carve our own niche, and leave the rest wanting to be the next us, if they so desire.

Me, I never saw myself like that. I mean, sure, I'd like some of the amounts on JK Rowling's cheques, but I've always been out to develop my own brand(s) of engaging, enduring fiction. But what good are such aims, if what I write is not sufficiently reminiscent of Potter, or Da Vinci or Spy Kids or whatever else the industry is set on emulating?

So what do we do about that? Sure, get angry. But if we fight the publishers, don't we just end up shooting ourselves in the foot? Anger, I've heard it said, is a signpost that, as well as pointing out that something's up, points the way ahead. Julia Cameron, in The Artists Way, says lots of good things about anger, not least of which is that:

"Anger is not the action itself. It is action's invitation."

The truth is, I don't have a clue what that action might be. My wife, on the other hand - long before I read the article and started thinking about all this - suggested I consider self-publishing. That is, going into publishing myself. Heck, she says, why not.

And my problem with that was that, in response to her "why not", I have too many answers. It's scary. I'm not a businessperson. What if it fails miserably? We don't have the marketing resources or know-how. We don't have the capital. We don't have the artistic talent to produce a suitably striking and professional cover. Etc. Combine that with just a general feeling that it's somehow not as valid as the acceptance and backing of a real publisher and you have some powerfully dissuasive arguments against such a rash course of action. To say nothing of the fear that in becoming a publisher, I would become less of a writer. Less time for the creative process, coupled with - horribly - the creative drive being overtaken by concern over profits, and before you know it you've become just a smaller version of the publishing world at large, governed by the same insecurities, the same hype.

So you see, I took Joan Smith's advice and got angry and told the world, but all my anger has produced is this rather inconclusive blog. Dipping back into Joan's article for further inspiration, I find that:

"The result of all this hype is a migration to small independent publishers by authors of the calibre of Francis King, Emma Tennant and Maureen Freely."

Is this an indicator that we should all be moving towards the smaller, independent publishers? Or, taking it further, becoming smaller, independent author/publishers in our own right? Should authors be mounting a wide-scale rebellion, publishing and being damned themselves? The world can offer us print-on-demand technology, so - apart from validation and recognition and distribution and marketing - what do we need the publishers for? And in this age of personal websites and blogging and the rest, should there really be any stigma attached to self-publishing? In theory at least, the author's percentage on individual copies would be greater, cutting out the middle men. And you could feasibly prove the commercial appeal of a book, where a publisher or agent was previously unable to see it. But you'd have to be - or at least I would - so scrupulous at self-editing - or pay someone else to edit you - and you'd have to be even more geared up for self-promotion than you are already - or pay someone else to promote you. The additional challenges fall far enough outside the writer's usual remit that I wonder if the writing wouldn't suffer. And the risks are not negligible and not within everyone's financial reach, it's true. To my mind though, by far the greatest risk would be proving to ourselves that, yes, actually, the publishers were right and there is no market for your work. And wouldn't that just suck. Then again, even if you sold only a few hundred copies and made a loss, all those ideas would be 'out there' and not sitting in a box or an attic or an office drawer or wherever we're currently filing away our dreams, waiting until we are confronted with a poster advertising something eerily similar and frustratingly by someone else.

Ultimately, it feels like one minefield in place of another.

Personally, I'm undecided, but while I press ahead with preparing this next round of submissions, I will be doing - as any good husband would! - what my wife suggests and considering the alternatives. And at the same time, my imagination wanders - and wonders, what would happen if every aspiring author went down that route? Is that what it would take to bring about a shift in attitudes? Or is it enough that, as Joan Smith says, we get angry?

I guess ultimately, in either case, that comes down to whether or not anyone is listening.

Clue D'oh!

Gareth Roberts. In the vespiary. With the same joke with which he bludgeoned us to death in The Shakespeare Code.

Doctor Pepper

Or, What's The Worst That Could Happen?

In the wake (entirely appropriate word choice, I feel) of Saturday's The Doctor's Daughter, I had a horrible idea. Some friends felt Jenny was a sure indication of another spin-off somewhere down the line. Whereas, my current theory on how this will all pan out, which is entirely wild speculation based only on what we know so far and thus not at all spoilerish, is:

Come end of series, they're going to do the unthinkable and kill the Doctor off, Jenny will step into his shoes, possibly inheriting the TARDIS (and I only throw that bit in because I recall that line about her being the reason the TARDIS went there), and we'll have a 'female Doctor' for a bit (possibly for the three planned specials?), but then after David Tennant's had his much-needed break, they'll regenerate the Doctor from his spare hand to which they keep returning our attention lest we've forgotten it.

Apologies to those who've read this before - sadistically, I posted it in a comment on Stuart's blog. But inspired by that, and because I'm having to amuse myself between arduous edits on an arduous project, I thought I'd invite other wild theories here to outdo the sheer horribleness of my own. So, as I said up top, What's the worst that could happen?

Your only prize is the, er, satisfaction of being right by the season finale. But if your theory is that horrible, clearly your satisfaction will be as limited as mine when the time comes!

Miss Congenealogy

Georgia Moffett was pretty, wasn't she? The Doctor's Daughter, But Not Really might have been a more accurate title and the whole thing really wasn't helped by the fact that this potentially fascinating story was played against a scenario from the Ladybird Book Of Science Fiction Plots. If you want some idea of the shortfall between promise and realisation, you need only look to some of the comments that, along with the rest of us, looked forward to the episode:

"Out on the fansites, they're guessing aliens will pinch the Doctor's DNA. But that sounds too prosaic, and not enough to justify the hyperbole of a writer who saw part of the episode and calls it "one of the single most audacious moments in Doctor Who's 45-year-history... cheeky, hilarious and brave".

and from Rusty himself:

"Yes, that's the title. And it does exactly what it says on the tin!"

And then compare with what we got. But that's the way a con works: they razzle dazzle you, then slip you a cheap imitation. In much the same way the Ood somehow got the impression the Doctor was a great hero who saved their world, in much the same way this Hath-Human colony is told to found their new society on The Man Who Never Would - when in fact he's The Man Who Most Assuredly Would, As Long As It Was With Some Device Or Method He Could Safely Claim Wasn't A Gun Even Though It Was Just As Deadly And As Often As Not Twice As Cruel. They sell you a lie.

There were some nice touches, there were. But as soon as Jenny showed up, I don't know about you, but we were expecting the Doctor to reject her, then bond with her, then watch her snuff it by episode end. But, probably, she would regenerate - most likely, I thought, after he'd departed, believing her to be dead. Which should serve to illustrate how many surprises the episode had in store for us.

It did surprise me in some small measure that Martha could, at the same time, be such a spectacularly brilliant doctor that she could deliver the prognosis on Jenny - "no regeneration, no hope" - at a glance, while being such a spectacularly bad doctor that she a) didn't even try to save her and b) got it completely wrong. Likewise, it was of some passing surprise that Martha could understand the Fishmen, and no doubt we'll be told by supportive fans that the TARDIS was translating for her, but if so why couldn't we hear the translation as we normally do? But these questions, like most of the rest of it, were of no consequence.

Perhaps this one was really just about steering us into further spin-off territory, or maybe to that most ultimate of conclusions, the killing off of the Doctor and his replacement by this non-daughter, and Doctor Who finally gets to be more like Buffy with a fraction of the wit and ingenuity. To be honest, Jenny has a lot more charm on her side than her old man so would have that going for her. But I'm afraid I rather suspect she was right, when she launched herself off in that shuttle, and that, whatever comes of this, it will involve "lots of running around". The apple never falls very far from the tree, so basically expect more of the same.

Indifference Engine

Well, I said I'd post my thoughts on the Doctor Who Sontaran two-parter once both parts were in, but now that we come to it, I find motivation fading fast. But I'm persuaded I'll have forgotten much of the thing by tomorrow, so I'd best pass some sort of comment now.
It wasn't bad, it wasn't terrible. It was better than Helen Raynor's previous old monster two-part extravaganza. But that, of course, is about as faint as praise gets before it turns altogether invisible and, with the exception of a few select moments, it left me much like a parked car, in neutral.
So, I guess I'll just wrap this up with a quick game of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly:
Good: Mike from The Young Ones as a potato-head, some nice emotional stuff between Donna and Grandpa Cribbins, UNIT making good by end of business and kicking Sontaran butt, the investigative journalist at the beginning who reminded me of Sarah Jane Smith because she was an investigative journalist.
Bad: the Sontaran second-in-command who decided not to act at all and stick with his standard toff persona, the useless but ultimately self-sacrificing prat from the League Of Less Than Extraordinary Geeks, baked-potato aliens in a half-baked plot.
Ugly: the Sontaran chant, the Doctor being such a prick in the first episode and continuing to be a bit of one in the second.
In the end though the copper was more excited than I was.

Non-Probic Vent

It being the first of a two-parter, I'm being fair and reserving comment on The Sontaran Stratagem until I've seen the second episode. When I do comment it'll only be one of my mini-reviews anyway, but in the meantime, pardon me while I have a mini-rant.

Now, I realise nostalgia must play a factor, but I do have fond memories of the relationship between the Doctor and the Brigadier and despite the fact that they were at loggerheads - the scientific versus the military mind - their friendship was a special one. And here we were with the Doctor reunited with UNIT and what I'm seeing played out between David Tennant's Doctor and this brand new UNIT Colonel actually makes me angry.

It's curious and disheartening that New Who rarely provokes anything like such an active response from me - usually it leaves me pretty much in neutral. But when I think of the opportunities in terms of painting a rounded, convincing military character and establishing relations between him and the Doctor, what we got was, if you'll excuse the pun, Major Disappointment.

Poor enough that he's portrayed as a spineless non-entity who obligingly salutes Donna Nobody on demand, far far worse that the Doctor insists he doesn't want the man standing next to him because he's *wearing* a gun. The man hadn't even been given a chance to be a *character* let alone a bit of a bastard, which might at least have earned him the snub. But no, this was entirely based on the fact that the man was in the military and completely disregards the Doctor's previous regard for the Brigadier. This from the Doctor who metes out cruel and unusual punishments on aliens who happen to piss him off, who's just recently caused the deaths of 20,000 people in an effort to save the world and preserve the course of history (and who, but for Donna, wouldn't even have saved a single Roman family), and who wields his sonic screwdriver *like a gun*.

This Doctor is apparently being painted as a Lonely God. And, in case any further evidence were needed, now we have an explanation for the 'Lonely' part. And frankly, I'd grown to dislike the man already, but this was the point where I'd really had enough of him. So, any kids out there whose father happens to be an officer in the military, don't worry, it doesn't mean your daddy's evil. It's just that, no matter how much the script will insist he's 'dazzling' or 'brilliant', this particular Doctor is a self-righteous, sanctimonious prick.

Hopefully next week a Sontaran - or maybe Donna - will slap him around a bit and teach him not to be such an ass.

Apocalypse Then

You know how it is: there you are, working away in your biological warfare lab and whoops! you drop your test tube. A few days later, you travel the globe, getting your passport stamped in all sorts of exotic locales, suddenly you start to feel a bit piquey, then everyone drops dead and before you know it civilisation as we know it is wiped out in the space of a couple of weeks. Bugger.

But you see, I have to make light of it, because the scenario is so utterly chilling. And so dramatically and effectively summed up in the opening credit sequence, that Survivors barely needs a pilot episode to tell us how it all happens. It can cut pretty quickly to the grim post-Apocalyptic business of survival.

We've only just started to watch the series - we're a mere three episodes in - and I'm just hoping our DVD rental people will keep the discs coming promptly because it's, frankly, gripping stuff. And the thing is, I'm trying to recall whether I'd watched any of it before. I don't think so. Where I get a slight buzz of nostalgia is in the opening credits, and I remember it vividly - but I also remember being packed off to bed at that point (I was eight). Good thing too. Because god knows, if I'd been allowed to stay up and watch, here is a show that would surely have given me nightmares. And not the inspiring imagination-sparking type of nightmares Doctor Who used to generate.

The Doctor Who credentials are there, for sure: Terry Nation scripting, Pennant Roberts directing the first episode, Talfryn Thomas giving it some great character actor welly. And that opening sequence that inevitably reminds me of the spread of the alien plague in Doctor Who And The Silurians. Back then, this is what adults got instead of Torchwood, I guess.

If I had one gripe with it, I'd only grumble slightly at the fact that most of the central characters so far appear to be of the crisply spoken RADA set, who will probably maintain their stiff upper lips in the face of world's end but that was a feature of a lot of TV drama back then and in any case they are at least interesting characters, whose survival you find yourself very readily invested in - even Greg (Ian McCulloch) who's so adamant about not wanting to burden himself with responsibility for others. Yeah, you say that now, mate.

By curious coincidence - you know, in the sense of not being a real coincidence at all and just one I'm choosing to see for convenience' sake - we're also at this point three episodes in on the fourth season of Battlestar Galactica, that other tale of the last vestiges of humanity struggling to survive in the wake of a man-made Apocalypse. And it's that show, if anything, that gives me a degree of optimism when it comes to the question of a Survivors remake.

I'm not saying it's the model: the two scenarios are universes apart. But the grimness, the harsh choices faced, the blurred lines of morality are suggestive of the sort of things that could be explored more fully, unfettered by the strictures of 70s era broadcasting. As long as the producers remember that the story they're telling would be about the disintegration of society and, like it or not, one of the earliest things out the window would be political correctness.

They might also do well to remember that Survivors managed, as far as I can tell, to convey grimness without (so far) showing us much in the way of gore. Good composition, less decomposition, I suppose.

Thanks to Stuart for, through no fault of his own, inspiring me to finally get on and rent the series.

Ood've Thought

A budget alien landscape. A developing sense of mystery. A simple, focused plot. And lots of running around and shooting in an old industrial complex. It's like Doctor Who all over again. All it really needed was a tweak or two here and there: less repetition of the obvious from Donna, more proactive involvement from the Doctor in the resolution, one or two fewer bad actors among the speaking extras and, of course, less Donna. But overall, I felt Planet Of The Ood was an improvement. Like the ad for the Ood at the beginning, I liked it even if it didn't make me want to go out and buy one. But so far, the series is showing a steady upward trend. It'll be a long climb from the quality abyss that was Partners In Crime, but at least it's moving in the right direction.

Resting On Caesar's Laurels

Imagine the scene. Well-to-do head of a Roman household showing off newly purchased "works of art", the wife's worried about the expense, in walks the son clearly suffering from a hangover. At about the same time, two adventuring companions arrive in the household bringing all kinds of upheaval with them. Yes, of course, it's Asterix And The Laurel Wreath, by Goscinny and Uderzo. The "works of art" are Asterix and Obelix themselves and not the TARDIS. It's also fair to point out, it's only a book and therefore can't boast the spectacular CGI of The Fires Of Pompeii, but it's fun and I recommend it thoroughly. As soon as Doctor Who introduced us to its Roman family template, I remembered the scene with fondness after a great many years. Nuff zed.

The Other Season 4 Premiere

Thank the gods, there were other things to watch after last night's Doctor Who. And no, I speak not of the BBC's I'd Do Anything, nothing but a fantastic metaphor for all reality TV shows, but of the opening episode of Battlestar Galactica's 4th and final season.
Technically, it started on Friday night in the US. But 'technically' also happened to have a lot to do with how we were able to watch it only a day later. Anyway, I know that to compare BSG with Doctor Who would be to compare two entirely different foodstuffs. On the other hand, watching one after the other is sort of like sitting down to a two-course meal, and we're free to be of the opinion that one course impressed us more than the other. Of course, if you're going to have a Mr Men yoghurt - high in poly-unsatisfacturates - for starters, pretty much anything is going to come off like a real treat. And it was - a hearty meal.
Ironically, after venting - albeit in a limited way, because I no longer feel inclined to waste much breath on the subject - on Doctor Who, I'm conscious that I can't in all fairness discuss BSG in any detail, because there will be plenty who won't have seen it yet. Suffice to say though, the impulse and the desire to discuss it are very much there and that in itself is some measure of the difference in impressions left on me by the two shows.
Now, any season opener comes with its share of inherent goodwill. In other words, if it's a show you've missed, its return is bound to be welcome and you're basically glad to have it back. So I freely confess, that bias was in play. (As it was for Who, despite The Last Of The Time Lords - at least, for the first few minutes.) Against that, by way of balance, season openers come burdened with expectations - and BSG managed to generate a lot of them in its closing third-season episodes - and so there's a lot riding on how they measure up.
So, what is it safe to say? There are answers to burning questions (supplied, if anything, a little too prematurely in the pre-teaser tag-line sequence), there's a wham-bam opening, there are intriguing developments and there are, inevitably, more questions, new mysteries. On the whole, the sense I had was that of having watched a long-awaited mini-movie, one that has properly refuelled my addiction and one that, crucially, delivered on its promise. Just what you want.
Now, there's room for things to go downhill from here, of course there is, but for all that this is one of those blog posts that doesn't tell you much of anything, one of the reasons it's here at all is a need I felt to type something positive. And the mere idea that things could go downhill from here sets BSG a few giant beanstalks above Who.
Still, all is not lost on the Who front. We have Up Pompeii to look forward to next week, and if David Tennant gets to do a Lurcio-style "The Prologue...", that should cheer things up in that quarter. Failing that, we should be having another helping of Battlestar for our main course, so I may not care.

Chewing The Fat

The fat just walks away, apparently. Unfortunately, despite the claims, the gristly bits that are impossible to digest and stick in your teeth will very likely be lodged there forever. I don't think the bad taste left in my mouth after tonight's Doctor Who Season Four premiere will be going away soon. The memory of those lardy Gremlins waving from the mothership window will probably also be with me from now until the day I die.
You know, just like those memorable scenes of old - yes, it's right up there with the Sea Devils rising from the ocean that's stuck with me since childhood. Um, no. No, that's a fond inspirational image, the sort of stuff that fired my childhood imagination. All those Pilsbury Dough Munchkins parading down the street are a horrible, horrible memory that will likely leave a stain.
You'll also remember how the old Doctor Who would have these big organisations that, because of budgetary problems, only had about two guards on the payroll... back then it was perhaps forgiveable, here it's merely laughable. But then, there's no excuse for the utter tripe (ha) that was on display throughout this whole sorry business.
Don't get me wrong, there were some nice touches in the mix. But I feel no inclination to dwell on them even now, because I know those will not be the enduring memories from this experience. Nicest moment for me had to be the scene of the Doctor and Donna mouthing silently to one another through a couple of windows. Naturally, this is a vast improvement on having Catherine Tate shout her way through The Runaway Bride. Such a pity they're going back to allowing her to speak for the rest of the series.
Even a less annoying entirely silent Tate could not have saved this though. The new mangled , could-it-be-any-busier theme sets up an aggravating, negative vibe from the get-go, and after some fairly amusing shenanigans of not quite letting the Doctor and Donna meet, we're into a wholly insubstantial daftfest with a plot that might have gotten away with it in The Sarah Jane Adventures, or whatever more juvenile spin off they come up with for the CBeebies.
Fat generally suggests weight and while I understand that you couldn't do a plot like this with any kind of seriousness, this was so high in fat and yet entirely weight-free, it's something of a miracle in itself. Added to which, there is the touchier issue of whether it actually manages to be offensive to people with real weight problems. Fat is funny, fat people have always been great comedy material - look at Little & Large for goodness sake. Rusty worshippers will defend him heartily on this point and accuse anyone suggesting anything of the kind of making something out of nothing. Irrespective of that 'debate', it was at best an expensive cheap joke and I'd argue that it's Partners In Crime that made something out of nothing. Only, not very much.
Honestly, I wish it would just walk away.

Happy Birthday, Touchstone & Viola

Far be it from me to confine my foolishness to one day in April, least of all the sentimental type. So in the interests of foolish sentimentality, I just felt like posting two pics of our kitties, Touchstone (the handsome fellow in black-and-white) and Viola (the pretty tortoiseshell princess) in rare contemplative and, crucially for photographic purposes, still mode, by way of marking their second birthday. Happy Birthday to them. Non-cat-lovers may find all this nauseating, of course, but believe me when I say it's not the intention. Merely a bonus. :)

Dixon Of Docking Bay Three

Before Enterprise made some interesting musical choices to accompany its 'special' brand of science fiction, there was another pioneering series with a theme you could sing to - if you felt inclined. Before Life On Mars, there was a show exploring the world of policing in a different time - in this case, the future - telling stories of ordinary, everyday crime and law enforcement on a new frontier, in the light of a big blue-green lamp known as Earth.
Yes, I speak of Star Cops.
For once, I'd like to be able to talk about a show without having to mention Doctor Who, but I'm not going to be able to do that on this occasion - largely because Star Cops was the creation of Chris Boucher, the man who gave us Leela. Okay, Louise Jameson had something to do with that too. Star Cops has no leather-clad savages, however - and, actually (if I can take a brief dip in entirely shallow waters), seems to steer deliberately clear of presenting us with any attractive females whatsoever. Beauty is, of course, in the eye of the beholder, but the absence of any objects of lust for the heterosexual male) in a science fiction series of its day (1987) is noteworthy. I'm being (as well as shallow) facetious, of course, but it feels like part of the essential distinction the series is making: this is not science fiction.
At least, it's not sci-fi of the fantasy breed, like Doctor Who with its long string of attractive female companions to keep the teenage lads watching long after they've grown out of it. (And quite right too.) Despite its discernible Who pedigree - Chris Boucher (who also worked on Blake's 7 and presumably that's why he accessorises his hero with an early prototype Orac, named Box), series creator, is joined in the writing credits by Philip Martin (Vengeance On Varos) and Graeme Harper (Caves Of Androzani) takes the directing helm for four episodes - you can sense this putting as much distance between itself and 'that sort of show' as it can. And maybe this was back when TV science fiction was viewed as a bad thing.
In that context, the series scores huge points for doing what it does. Although space is very much a backdrop and efforts are taken - after 'hero' Nathan Spring's initial baptism in vacuum and vomit - to characterise it all as routine - almost mundane - it simultaneously builds a neat sci fi concept into each of its nine (there were only nine episodes all told) mysteries. And although one or two of those mysteries emerge as sub-Bergerac (notably the Philip Martin episode, This Case To Be Opened In A Million Years, which comes across as incredibly weak next to the episodes that precede it), usually it works a charm.
I say 'charm', but charm, like the 'babe factor', is - another thing that separates it from Doctor Who - just not part of the series' approach. It wants to be a bit hard - not The Sweeney hard, of course, because it envisages a more pc future than that (well, to some extent, but we'll get to that) - and it manages a certain edginess, only let down by some deficiencies in the acting department.
David Calder as Nathan Spring is sour and cynical and appears on the surface to have few redeeming qualities, but you end up liking him because he's really very good. But after him, we're obliged to move down the list as we're introduced to each member of the Star Cops staff: Trevor Cooper is dependable and entertaining as seasoned dough-boy Brit-cop, Colin Devis; Linda Newton is variable as Pal Kenzie, Aussie WPC from the seedier side of Ramsey Street; Erick Ray Evans is, presumably, the best American they could afford as David Theroux; Sayo Inaba is rather pitiful as meek Japanese medical examiner Anna Shoun.
Still, therein lies half of the series' concerted efforts to paint the brand new Space Age as an international arena and it's sadly more successful in that regard than the other prong of that campaign: namely, an apparent game of Spot This Week's National Stereotype played from episode to episode. A good number of the stories, even the stronger ones, seem to concern themselves with one key nationality and it's a little unfortunate that you get a sequence that goes something like: Russians are spies, Americans are paranoid, Italians are Mafia, Arabs are fanatics. Now, to be fair, in the case of the Arabs, they made the powerful influential Arab a woman and she is the victim who has her unborn children (well, embryos) 'kidnapped'. But her response is to abduct the brother (well, clone) of the perpetrator and threaten to cut off his hand, partly because the man is a pianist and partly because that is, of course, what Arabs do.
It's unfortunate elements like that which, more than the fx, date the series and demote it to a rank somewhat lower than it would otherwise deserve. It's a shame, because the fx are - apart from a few dubious attempts to convince us of weightlessness (in which the glimpse of a string might persuade you you've switched over to some Gerry Anderson production, but is by no means the worst offence) - generally pretty good for the time and budget and sometimes stunning. (Examples of the stunning fx would *not* include a moon buggy, which a) they're obviously fond of b) is clearly a model and c) is rendered even more model-like and vaguely comical by the - again, curious - choice of music selected to accompany its rovings across the lunar landscape.) Add to that the fact that, occasionally, the stories show glimmers of being ahead of their time and even prophetic (intelligent listening systems, terrorists and (space) plane hijacks in Intelligent Listening For Beginners) and it's even more disappointing when you encounter elements that belong in the past (the Cold War still very much alive) and that, as a result, undermine much of what's been done to paint a convincing vision of the near-ish future.
All in all then, this is one I'd recommend for a watch - or rewatch - not only because there are only nine episodes, but because there's something worthy to be had from the experience and, for the moment, I can't think of another show that has made anything like such a brave foray into this area. (And no, Space Precinct doesn't count.) Again, it's down to a leap of imagination, but a similar attempt made today - with a similar degree of courage on the part of the producers, along with a more mature, contemporary approach to the realities of life on Earth as well as life 'out there' - could furnish us with something remarkable. On the other hand, people who like cop shows prefer to take their detective mysteries seriously, and once you transfer the action to a space station or the Moon, that makes it impossible for some - and you'd get a series that would probably only last for nine episodes or so. Possibly, that's what happened with Star Cops.
But short and sweet though it was, I can guarantee you, if you watch it on DVD within a short space of time, you will have its theme song firmly lodged in your brain.
It's actually nowhere near as bland as the Enterprise theme and it's by Justin Hayward, an actual somebody, and it's even pleasant - if a touch incongruous - the first time you hear it. Approach with caution, all the same.

Puffin Released Into The Wild

So March is already upon us and as I mentioned before, I have this pseudonymous children's book due out this month. The exact release date had slipped my mind - things do that when you're my age (yes, it starts early) - but I was reminded yesterday, by Stuart (who gets another name drop in the space of two blog posts - but then he deserves it, he's gone and ordered his copy) that the book is now out. Fright Night: The Shrieking Stones, allegedly by Steve Rogers but actually by yours truly. Go buy your copy now and who knows, maybe you'll get a mention here on my blog. Of course, that might be under an umbrella name of, say, "all the wonderful people who rushed out and bought my book", but imagine if at the end of movies they credited every person who watched them individually. That would just be madness. As an alternative, feel free to post comments here if/when you get a chance to read it.

Anyway, I've had a chance to read the finished article myself and I can recommend it. But then, of course, I would say that. On the other hand, I'll say it even louder when it's my name on the cover! :)

Times Two

Time flies. Time waits for no man. Time, gentlemen, please. Yes, 'Time' carries great and varied significance to us all. Once upon a time, if said with sufficient weight, that single word could trigger a barrage of images of clocks and watches, accompanied by the chimes and bongs and tick-tick-tick of many a timepiece. Of course, that was usually only on Pipkins, but still. Meanwhile, on Doctor Who, for some reason, the inclusion of the word 'Time' in a title came to be roughly synonymous with 'not very good'.

The ~ Monster, The Invasion Of ~ , ~lash, Trial Of A ~ Lord, ~ And The Rani, whole segments of The Key To ~ , every excruciating second of Dimensions In ~. And the tradition even continues today, with Last Of The ~ Lords.

So what was I doing buying and then, to exacerbate matters, *watching* The ~ Meddler and The ~ Warrior. Both, in quick succession, I might add. Glutton for punishment?

Actually, no. I had positive memories of each of these from the first time I'd seen them and, in the ~ honoured fashion of any Who fan armed with fresh DVD purchases, wanted to revisit them and test those memories against the reality. And I'm happy to say, both passed. One with flying colours, one with flying, er, black and white.

In terms of viewing one story after another, they're a surprisingly good pairing. They're both fun romps, both bringing in new companions as TARDIS stowaways and both are what's known in the Doctor Who language as pseudo-historicals - light on the history, heavy on the pseudo - featuring anachronistic travelers tampering with the fragile course of human history - both by tipping the balance in a conflict with supplies of advanced weaponry. One opts for an atomic bazooka, one arms the temporal natives with breech-loading rifles. One ends his story stranded in his chosen time zone, the other begins his story stranded in a time that's not best-suited to his purpose. The Meddler's ambitions are central and large-scale, while the Warrior, fairly naturally, has other priorities and for him meddling, as a means to an ulterior end, is pretty much a sideline.

Now, in the case of The ~ Meddler, it so happened that Stuart, who's practically a one-man board of certification when it comes to assessing what's good and bad in Doctor Who, had recently received his copy and had posted a review on his blog shortly after I'd watched it myself. It's a very good review and I'd be afraid of accidental plagiarism if I just went ahead and agreed with him. All the same, I do agree with him and you'd probably be as well to go and read his review while I make some effort to express much the same views in my own words.
One area in which The ~ Meddler scores, of course, is that it's the first of its kind. In Who, at least, it's inventing the pseudo-historical. And I know Stuart remarked on this, but I watched it very much into the mindset of what it must have been like for contemporary viewers encountering this phenomenon for the first time. The Hartnell era up to that point would have braced them for historicals, so the discovery of the gramophone in the monastery must have been a real "What the - !" moment and then you get the major excitement of an end-of-episode reveal that the Monk HAS A TARDIS!!! As Douglas Adams might have put it, you might think space is big, but this was REALLY BIG. It's a shame that the Doctor meeting with others of his own race (note, not Time Lords at this stage) became almost routine in later years and especially in the books. Here it's fresh and new and thrilling - and playful.

It's in great part down to the casting, with pre-Carry On Peter Butterworth putting in a warmly comic performance as the Monk, and there's humour aplenty in the script, with the Doctor clearly entertained by the notion of running into one of his own - even if the chap is a confounded scoundrel. The Monk does make a notional comeback in The Daleks Masterplan, so that's some proof of his deserved popularity at the time - but it's interesting to note that he's one of those characters, a bit like the Ice Warriors, saddled with a name and identity entirely based on his first appearance. I mean, presumably, this fellow could have - if you'll forgive the pun - change his habit to return as something other than 'the Monk'.

Some of the supporting cast aren't, er, up to Butterworth's standard, shall we say, but for one thing fight sequences in such antiquated Who were rarely up to scratch and if, on top of that, you're going to ask your Vikings to act as though they're tanked up on mead, then really you're raising the bar a tad too high. It's comforting to know, though, that back in those days the Doctor, so well regarded by so many children, could be seen to enjoy a jar or two. Who knows, maybe there were floods of complaints.

What might have caused complaint, although in all probability - like the mead-guzzling Doctor - it was looked over as entirely innocent, is the implicit rape. Edith (Alethea Charlton) is attacked by said drunken Vikings and - at one point, you think - left for dead. Then later her hubby is hovering over her demanding, understandably, to know "Who did this?" She's not been killed and you have to assume she wasn't mugged for any cash she might have been carrying. And in any case you don't have to be Barbara Wright - i.e. a history teacher - to know what drunken Vikings are (in)famous for. It's only an interpretation, but an unwelcome and inescapable intrusion on what is, essentially, as I say, a fun romp. The title The ~ Meddler characterises the story well, 'meddling' being something we're not supposed to take too seriously - and harsher realities don't sit well with that.

But really that's a minor glitch and it's really not down to anything actually presented on screen. Just a product, I suppose, of watching it in a 'more informed age'. Anyway, the moment of discomfort soon passes and we can get back to enjoying the interplay between the two (Not Yet) Time Lords as much as Hartnell appears to be.

And, since we mention Barbara - she's not in this one. She and Ian returned home in a Dalek time capsule at the end of the previous story. And the TARDIS crew is now made up of Maureen O'Brien as wide-eyed and earnest, but quite sweet Vicki and Peter Purves surprisingly good as Steven, doing his best to overcome the fact that his character makes for a fairly unconvincing space pilot.

The ending's a little rushed and not as tidy as it could be. (I had thought the story left a spare atomic bazooka on the clifftop, for instance, but according to Stuart I'd missed a line from the Doctor stating that they still had a bit of clearing up to do. But on the plus side that led to a little joke about how all Doctor Who stories could, in theory, be ended that way - so nothing was lost.) But the trick the Doctor plays with the Monk's TARDIS is inventive and satisfactory, and represents an early bit of exploration of the nature of TARDIS technology. The sort of thing that would doubtless spawn a zillion fan theories, but we mustn't hold that against it.

Overall then this succeeds with whimsical charm by the flagon-ful and earns special credit for introducing us to certain concepts entirely new to the series at the time, not least of which was a new brand of Doctor Who story.

A brand which, he segued nicely, was to see some notable service in the Troughton era (e.g. The Abominable Snowmen, The Evil Of The Daleks) before returning to form the basis of just the one story in the Pertwee era: yes, The ~ Warrior.

Being of a story type already established then, The ~ Warrior is hardly as ground-breaking but it's all played with a similar sense of fun, along with the dash and flair of the Pertwee era. The humour is sharper, offering a veritable medieval banquet of great dialogue as well as priceless moments like the Sontaran Warrior claiming the Earth and its satellites for the Sontaran Empire. As surely the first race to plant a flag on Terran soil, the idea of the Sontarans later securing the services of a Megaran solicitor and endeavouring to assert their claim through the intergalactic courts is just too tempting.As our first introduction to Sontarans, it works a treat - and, through Bob Holmes' gift for one-or-two-line world-building, we learn a few choice details about them, including their 'endless war' with the Rutans and the fact that they can 'breed' like militaristic rabbits. Clones or no, they're not all the same, as later shows will prove - and while they're well on their way to looking - and sounding - rubbish in The Invasion Of ~, by the time The Two Doctors comes around, they've completed that journey. But here, Linx looks fab and Kevin Lindsay really puts some (figurative) spittle into his portrayal of this alien soldier, making this space toad very much of the venomous kind. Even if, rather like the Monk, the Sontarans' return appearances (The Sontaran Experiment aside) are a bit wanting, you can immediately appreciate the potential for a comeback. (Sadly though, we never get to see this horrible Humpty riding into battle on horseback - a missed opportunity there.)

As well as this new alien foe, the story, as has been mentioned, also introduces us to a new companion. Not just any companion either, but Sarah Jane Smith. Lis Sladen is finding her feet in the role here, but she's given plenty to work with and the gutsy way in which she brings feminism to Olde Englande and tackles head-on what she takes for a bunch of medieval reenactment freaks is superb and funny. As is the way her suspicions of the Doctor inspire her to launch a 'commando raid' to capture him on behalf of the 'good guys'.

And 'good guys' and 'bad guys' are appropriate terms. Although the timelines are under threat from the Sontaran's interference, this story concerns itself even less with actual history than The ~ Meddler, focusing on a localised feud and cracking on with an adventure that probably owes a little bit to a quick skim through Ivanhoe. It's let down here and there - like The ~ Meddler before it - by a few extras who seem to have been given lines by mistake and maybe we can blame the mead again, but their acting prowess appears to indicate that they may indeed have been medieval reenactment freaks and not professional actors at all.

Luckily, they're offset by that brilliant (Bob) Holmesian dialogue and some truly hearty performances from David Daker as Irongron and John J Carney as his thick-as-a-brick lieutenant, Bloodaxe. There's also Alan Rowe - seen recently - by me anyway - in Horror Of Fang Rock and of course, dear old Dot Cotton, June Brown, in the days long before Who producers thought it was a 'brilliant idea' to include guest stars from Eastenders. In the days, in fact, before Eastenders. For those of us who know her as Dot Cotton, it's a little unsettling at first, but once you get used to her you realise she's doing a grand job, playing a sort of good-hearted Lady Macbeth to Alan Rowe's rather ineffectual Edward Of Wessex.

It also features Boba Fett, back when he was only trained in bow and arrow. Jeremy Bulloch (who continued his archery antics in Robin Of Sherwood, I believe). Hal The Archer is not the strongest of Bob Holmes' characters, it must be said, but he's there to act as representative of the dozen men Wessex is supposed to have at his command and to deliver that final fatal blow to poor old Linx's probic vent. By this stage, it being a Pertwee story, the Doctor has been more than involved and instrumental in a successful resolution, that it's kind of fitting that the actual slaying of the enemy is handed to this supporting character. So the ending, while a bit rushed, is fairly satisfactory.

The main disappointments, I found, were in the robot knight that Linx manufactures for Irongron - a fault of being made in a time when stiff and jerky were the only modes of movement available to robots - and some of the effects. The shot of the Sontaran spaceship, for example, as seen through a window and the 'magic' of CSO, plus the shot of generic masonry being blasted to stand in for the blowing up of an entire wing of a castle. However, that said, don't be tempted - as I was - to go back and see what the CGI wizards have done for the DVD release. The Sontaran ship crashing to Earth is nice enough, but is then completely at odds with the remainder of the production, while the castle gateway belching flame is at least as pitiful as the old masonry shot and is one of those examples of bad CGI that make you cringe and wish they had asked the Blue Peter team (Purves, perhaps?) to rustle up something in papier mache instead.

But never mind. The show stands up well enough without these flashy gimmicks. Meddler and Warrior make such a great pair - which is not to say the Monk should team up with the Sontarans (although... ) - I am not going to conclude this blog review by choosing between them. I'm just going to celebrate the fact that two stories that stood so many years apart can, in this magical age of the DVD, can stand side by side. Although at the same time, I'm happy to say, there are actually a fair few stories between them on my shelves.

ER Closure

How do you quit a soap? If we're talking the Imperial Leather, Dove or carbolic variety, then the answer's simple: quit bothering about personal hygiene. But if it's the TV brand, it's not that easy. They're this organic, living world in which we freely immerse ourselves, hoping to follow the trials, tribulations and triumphs of people for whom we're prepared to set aside, for example, 45 minutes per week, 22 weeks a year from Pilot to - presumably, if it ever gets to that stage - final curtain.

Shows like The West Wing help us out by having an effective set term built in: after Bartlett's maximum two terms, it would be difficult to imagine many continuing to watch after the cast being replaced wholesale. Now, on that one, I've yet to reach the end, but I know there is a last episode and I'm sure I'll feel an overall sense of satisfaction, not to say achievement, when I get there. But, as undoubtedly brilliant as The West Wing is, it will never quite compete with ER. Those White House bods have earned my respect, whereas the staff at Cook County General won my affections.

There have been so many characters, over the years, I've absolutely loved. Even the ones I hated - because ER always had a gift for showing us the human side of even the Weavers and the Romanos of its world. Yes, some of that love was of the romantic persuasion, but if a hospital is going to include the likes of Susan Lewis, Carol Hathaway, Jeannie Boulet, Lucy Knight, Abby Lockhart, Deb Chen and Elisabeth Corday on its staff then I - a sensitive soul who fell in love with Sarah Jane Smith at the tender age of seven - can scarcely be blamed for growing similarly fond of some of its medical professionals. And alongside that there was always the best-friend, buddy, uncle, mentor, nothing-remotely-gay-about-it-honest love for some of the male medicos - principally Carter, Pratt and, of course, Mark Green.

But the steady ebb and flow of characters is carefully managed so that, some little time before one of your favourites departs (whether as a result of marriage, the need to be with a new born niece or, quite frankly, a brutal stabbing) steps have usually been taken to introduce a new rising star with which to hook your interest and soften the blow. Like Abby with her alcoholism, there's no real ideal time to quit.

But it's that last fellow in that list, Mark, funnily enough, who provides me with an answer to my question: how do you quit a soap?

Because, while I've been faithfully following the latest season (is it really 14 now?), I've also been catching up on a rewatch of the first 8 seasons on DVD. That half-marathon, as it were, concluded yesterday with episode 21 of Season 8, On The Beach. I'm not going to say what happens in it - everyone probably knows - but it made me blub the first time and it managed to do the same without the slightest difficulty this second time around.

There was another episode after that, Lockdown, but that's a big season cliffhanger and at the end of On The Beach I arrived at a decision. Or a conclusion, you could say.

No more ER for me.

You could argue that, perhaps, it's one I should have arrived at on the first viewing. But I think you'd be wrong. I don't regret continuing to watch after that point: the show still had plenty of good - nay, superlative - drama to offer after that point. *But* it did begin to drop the ball and, particularly, mishandle certain characters in Season 10 - and that, to me, was more disappointing than a character's departure. And slowly but surely as the series rolled into its 13th and 14th seasons, I was getting a sense that one of us - either the show or me - was going through the motions. Watching the earlier shows on DVD while the new series was still unfolding finally brought the contrast home to me.

I'm watching the lives of these mostly new characters play out and I realise, as much as I still *like* some of them - Pratt, Neela, Abby - I find I don't really care about them. There's a warmth, a dynamism, a chemistry missing that, irrespective of the still-high standards the production maintains, gives me a sense of treading water. Which, when a thing used to be as good and thoroughly addictive as ER, is as close to sinking as you want it to get.

Now in the past, it's fair to say I have waxed, if not lyrical, then a fair bit about ER. Far less so than I've harped on about Doctor Who, but that's no reliable measure of where those shows place in my affections. On a purely personal note, I remember I began watching ER when my Dad was away on business the Wednesday night it started and my Mum invited me over for company and we looked for something to watch on the telly. And although my Dad was only away a couple of other Wednesdays after that, those midweek visits of mine became something of a ritual. And an entirely welcome one at that. I can't quite remember now how long that went on, but of course I continued watching in any case for all those characters I mentioned - and a few more besides. And it's only in the last two years - since, incidentally, they dropped the theme music, with its distinctive siren song opening - that I've wondered when I should think about giving up the habit.

My answer then: pick a character and follow the course of their life through to their departure. If I'd picked Susan at the start, my fanhood (is that a word?) would have lasted all of two and a half years. If I'd picked Carol or Doug, then I'd have stayed faithful for six. But the fact is, although it's easier to say in retrospect, I think if you had to pick a single character out of all of them, I'd have still opted for Mark Green. He was such an anchor to the whole team, in the midst of all the chaos. So, even though it's on a second viewing and even though I've actually watched considerably past that point, it's his departure - on DVD - that marks (ha) my own very fond farewell to the series at long, long last.

And, heck, with those discs snugly at home on their own shelf - eight seasons happened to fit *perfectly* - I can always go back and revisit any of the gang from Series 1 to 8 any time I like. And that's where all of my best medically trained friends can be found.

Apart from a couple of friends who completed their first aid course last week. Well done them.

Rocky Horror

Graham Williams comes in for a lot of stick from me, largely because he was the producer who first showed me just how rubbish Doctor Who could really be. Now, it's not his fault that I happened to be growing up at the time - and, probably, waking up to some of the show's general shortcomings - but he is at least in part to blame for the fact that, as I was growing up, Doctor Who was travelling in the opposite direction. That said, for all his Underworlds, Nimons and Creature(s) From The Pit, he was also the producer in residence at the time of The Horror Of Fang Rock.

It is, frankly, superlative Doctor Who. Not bad for a rush job from Terrance Dicks.

Uncle Terrance had originally submitted a vampire story, but Auntie Beeb was already doing Dracula and didn’t want another set of monsters baring fangs in competition, so that was set aside for a later date and eventually became State Of Decay. But it’s easy to see how this one’s title might have come about.

So, no vampires. But what it has instead is such a near perfect mix of sf horror ingredients it’s almost as though Terrance has a recipe book to hand.

Now, I talked before about how much Planet Of Evil must have influenced Drift, but that was something to which I'd only cottoned on while watching it the other day, whereas at the time of writing the book I consciously looked to Fang Rock as my 'role model', so to speak.

It has the isolated setting (a lighthouse! - and I say this without any trace of a pun - how brilliant is that!), the nicely drawn characters getting killed off one by one, the lurking horror, atmosphere by the bucketload and, not entirely unrelated to said atmosphere, the weather. It also has Tom at his most sombre and it's really this performance that most informed my characterisation of him in the novel. As in Pyramids, he’s bordering on harsh at times in his dealings with the supporting characters, as he gets on with the serious business of defeating the alien menace. As though he is very much there at the heart of the darkness in this story, along with the alien he’s hunting – as it hunts everybody else. There are softer shades from Tom as well, like the way he tells Leela that Skinsale (Alan Rowe) “died with honour”, when that’s a fairly generous colouration of the truth, but he’s wonderfully alien – remote and removed from us mere humans, and yet capable of warmth and concerned to save us all the same.

According to director, Paddy Russell (who also helmed Pyramids), Tom wasn’t happy with the script, but if this moody Doctor is evidence of that, then Tom Baker should have been handed “rubbish” like this every time. Maybe he was sulking because he’d wanted to do the vampire story too, but whatever’s going on behind the scenes, something’s working. Heck, apparently he wasn’t getting on with Louise Jameson either, and yet the on-screen between-character dynamic is worthy of the best comedy double-act. And it’s worth noting that there is room for humour – somehow - in all the creepy, suspenseful pervading gloom. It’s simply not permitted to rule, as seemed to characterise later Williams’ adventures.

Given the challenges in production, it’s all pretty effective, visually speaking, with only what amount to minor quibbles to prove that, no matter how good it might be otherwise, this is in fact a Doctor Who story and hence subject to the same budget limitations as every other episode. But to be honest, despite a few telltale CSO-type outlines, an obviously *model* boat and a glowing spotlight for an alien mothership, really the team worked wonders. Of course the fog and the menacingly economic lighting, as well as ladling on the atmosphere, no doubt help cover a multitude of sins. But if such elements can serve a story visually as well as narratively, then pile it on, I say.

The creature itself, the Rutan scout, is a blob with tentacles and, like many a Doctor Who monster, could have done with having a bob or two more spent on it, but the jellyfish configuration is wholly in keeping with the marine setting and, who knows, maybe it’s just me, but I didn’t find it anywhere near poor enough to interfere with my enjoyment of the story. And the fan in me appreciated the tie-in with the Sontarans, another little sprinkle of world-building on the notion of a coherent Who universe like glitter on a home-made Christmas card.

There are a few moments when certain actors let the side down: John Abbott (Vince) blubbing “Oh no” a tad pathetically at the discovery of the first death, some of Annette Woollett(Adelaide)’s histrionics, for example. But on the plus side, Leela (who positively shines in this one – notable highlights: threatening especially aggravating wreck survivors with a knife, popping down the stairs for a quick gloat over her fallen Rutan foe, to name but a couple) gets to slap her and the supporting cast are pretty dependable in the main, even if (again harking back to Pyramids) there are no Bernard Archards or Michael Sheards. There is, I think, a curious continuity glitch when it appears that two characters must have passed the Doctor and Leela on the stairs without either of them noticing, but without an actual plan of where each room is situated on the stairs, I couldn’t swear to that with a hundred percent certainty. Although I guess I could go back and rewatch it again soon.

When a Doctor Who is this good, it can be sure of getting a rewatch more than once. Of course, on the other hand, it can also be fairly sure its flaws and glitches will be entirely forgiven. So, perhaps instead of reporting on possible continuity hiccups, I should be apologising to Graham Williams. So, here it is: I’m sorry, Graham.

Now, in due course, at the appropriate juncture and in the fullness of time, maybe he might in turn apologise to me. For Underworld, The Creature From The Pit, The Horns Of Nimon…

But I don’t know. Maybe The Horror Of Fang Rock makes up for all those put together.