Writer's Block

Prefect SlogAllow me to get personal for a bit. It doesn't happen often here and the fact that I've generally frittered away blogspace on trivialities like TV shows - and especially trivial ones such as Doctor Who - will no doubt make 'personal stuff' feel like something of an intrusion. For which, I apologise for any discomfort in advance and would just like to reassure my regular readers that they're perfectly free to look away now and I won't take offence. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible - in a sense, that's the point of this exercise.
There is no such thing as writer's block, I've heard it said. But that would seem to run counter to my own experience and it's possibly telling that most of the writers who make that argument frankly aren't especially good. To an extent they are right - there is no barrier whatsoever to *writing*. We can all sit down to do it, once we've mastered the art of stringing a word or two together. The problems only appear to arise when we care - perhaps too much - about the results. When there are blocks to writing *well*. Then it comes down to whether you'd rather write anything at all - and can stand to look at your work on the page (which can be like having to meet your reflection on the worst mornings in the most crystal clear Hi-Definition mirror ever). Or whether you'd rather avoid the disappointment of seeing what has - temporarily - become of your God-given gift.
Against these dry spells, I am fortunate in that I do have these bursts of incredible creative energy and entire books pour out of me in such a constant stream that I occasionally have to remind myself to take breaks, sleep, do all that sort of purely functional stuff that goes to make up real life in between. It's a better feeling than I've possibly made it sound and it amazes me to think that works like Emotional Chemistry came about as a result of just that kind of intense, on-a-roll drive. Unfortunately, the roll is a rollercoaster and there are dips and troughs and other words to generally suggest lower ebbs.
Like insomnia, they're an affliction I'm familiar with and, like a sleep-deprived, nervous Van Helsing, I'm well versed in the techniques for combatting such evils. Writer's block - we may as well call it that, since that's what we know it as - is a similar breed of demon to insomnia in that they are both about the lack of a basic need - one being sleep, the other being words - and the desire to fight it works against you and exacerbates the situation. Indeed, I find that as often as not one comes hand in hand with the other: nights spent lying awake with unwritten ideas and anxieties competing for attention, chronic tiredness undermining your ability to work, which further troubles your sleep pattern and so on.
But, as I say, as much trouble as they are, I've defeated both these demons plenty of times before. It's just these past two months that I've really been struggling.
To tell the truth, I've struggled to write anything here. I merely applied myself and forced myself to stick with the weekly habit of posting my thoughts on each episode of Who after it was broadcast. But the full truth is, that was prinicipally an exercise in maintaining some sense of normality and even, dare I say, banality during exceptionally difficult times.
The fact - the inescapable fact - is that on 24th May this year, my Mum died. In the first week or so following, I dove into my writing and honestly relished it, producing some of my best material in a while. Even if I was far from happy, I was at least happy with what was emerging on the page. It was a distraction, a diversion and, as it turns out, just delaying the inevitable. The effort floundered and here I am, two months on, taking the time to consider why that single event should have so much power to so effectively send my creative drive skidding into the nearest ditch.
You would think - well, I would - that I would welcome any chance of escapism, running away from reality to create fantastic worlds, spend some quality time with my favourite characters etc.
There are, as it happens, some fairly obvious, glaring reasons. Quite apart from the shock and the grief which I have to assume are no different to anyone else's under similar circumstances, there is the entirely selfish realisation that my Mum died while my publishing history was still limited to works of Doctor Who or related fiction. She was incredibly proud of my achievements, but they're far from being the limits of my ambitions and it rankles - no, it *depresses* me that when I make the break into mainstream original fiction, she will not be there to see it happen. Or read it. And she would have loved some of the books I'm going to publish when I eventually break out of this current slump. (Although not all of them, obviously, but she would have been that much prouder to see me a real success.) And when I cast my mind back, I know there is a history to this - which I needn't go into here - that makes that more important to me than is helpful. Because, of course, there is nothing anyone can do about it other than live the cliche - that 'life goes on' - and file away the regrets somewhere they won't get in the way.
Still, it also occurs to me that another possible factor that has stood between me and my writing is that I am, quite simply, tired of pretending. By attempting to press on regardless and assure myself that I'm doing okay, I have been inhabiting a fictional world that wasn't - at least not entirely - of my own making. It's a coping mechanism, but that's all it allows you to do: cope. Anything else will apparently require something more.
So, bringing this around - at last - to some sort of positive conclusion, it's my hope that by airing and sharing here, no matter how inappropriate it may seem next to all the stuff about TV - I'll have availed myself of some much-needed therapy. Perhaps by allowing these words out, the rest will follow.
Next time, some more stuff about telly.

La Vie Sans Rose

Prefect SlogShe's gone. She's history. She's in another universe. Yay! But no, this isn't the time for a "wicked witch is dead!" style celebratory dance, because Billie Piper's Rose was a good Doctor Who companion and her departure was an undeniably sad one. A potent counterpoint to the entertaining proceedings of Doomsday, the big season finale for this year's Doctor Who. And the episode itself was a lot of fun. Expectations of a cop-out ending ultimately served in its favour, as did the atmosphere in which I watched it, surrounded by Who fans, all seated in front of a big screen in a London pub, as an integral ingredient of a birthday party.
And it didn't disappoint. First of all, let's not mince words, the invasion resolution was a big cop-out, and any writer - or non-writer - could easily stack the odds so massively against the world and the Doctor when your alien invasion has an 'off' switch. It's laughably poor and it's a trait that Rose only draws attention to when she boasts of having disintegrated the Dalek Emperor. Well, sure, girl, as could anyone if they'd chugged down a sufficient helping of Deus Ex Machina. And it's something of a challenge to see the Doctor as much of a hero when all he has to do is pull a lever and rely on his legions of fans to plug up all the plot holes.
But - knowing it was coming (and sipping happily at a pint of Guinness) - allowed me to relax and enjoy the ride, despite the inevitability of the destination. Rose's 'death' was predictably metaphorical too, but genuinely moving all the same - and was only a 'disappointment' in the sense that I'd heard a few far more intriguing speculative fan theories in the week leading up to it. Which is something you can scarcely hold against the story. As it was, the key factor was that it felt right. Not only in the right and proper, fan-approved sense of the word, but also in the cynical, bit-bored-with-Doctor-Who-lately scheme of things, in that here was a companion who couldn't travel in the TARDIS without regularly touching base with her family and friends back on Earth (for all that she declares that "I made my choice a long time ago"). So it's fitting that she ends up back with them - or, more accurately, with something of a regenerated family, in the form of Parallel Pete, Jackie with a new baby on the way, and - life just wouldn't be the same without him, would it - Mickey. At the time, I did find the coda in Bad Wolf Bay (mini-groan) a tad over-laboured, and the preceding scene where the Doctor and Rose were either side of the wall (in separate universes) - compared to Pyramus and Thisbe, by one of my more intellectual DW friends - spoke such volumes and left such a powerful impression, that I felt the added goodbye was over-egging the sentimental pudding somewhat. But it's hard to imagine what we might have had in its place and it was a nice touch that the Doctor's final words were cut off - running out of coins to put in the supernova - although that did raise a groan and a giggle or two around the room. It does at least illustrate that the Doctor has learned from his experience with Sarah Jane (and Reinette) and has determined not to make the same mistake again. He has been encouraged to think about the people he leaves behind.
On which note, I have to hope that the series feels it has covered that topic adequately and can now do a bit less of that and shift the focus back onto the people who are actually doing the travelling in the TARDIS. Because, of course - and here is the reason for my celebrating her departure - without Rose, there is no need for revisiting her family and friends, and the Doctor has a future with a new companion, someone a bit more independent, we hope, who can enjoy all her exciting adventures without the need for phoning home or popping back for cups of tea and doing her laundry. Yay!
But that's not to knock that element of the story, because that is where the substance of the episode lies. The rest is a pissing contest - although there's no contest at all, really. The Cybermen are like an army of Tim Henmans, facing just four Roger Federers - and it's clear from the get-go who comes out on top. The Daleks are spectacular, while the Cybes are clunky and pedestrian for the most part, only managing to impress to any degree in their battle with the soldiers on the bridge and while marching the Torchwood staff off for emergency conversion. Yes, they threaten to stick Yvonne's brain in a metal shell and fit her with an emotional inhibitor chip - imagine that, an Yvonne incapable of expressing emotion. Of course the heavy irony here is that she crops up as a Cyberman and displays more emotion than the actress could manage beforehand - and graces us with the painfully bad scene of a crying Cyberman. Thanks, Yvonne. Fortunately, this is easily forgotten, and we're still laughing away at the exchanges between the Cybes and Daleks when they first met - some cracking dialogue and, along with Mickey and the Doctor's traded looks when Jackie tells Parallel Pete "There's never been anyone else", it's a real comedy. Other than the Rose story, there's little drama on display here and even Mickey's error in activating the Genesis Ark is immediately dismissed with a "They'd have opened it by force anyway" comment from the Doctor. Yes, he's come a long way from calling Mickey "Stupid!" all the time.
The Genesis Ark is a cool device and it's impressive to witness in action. It is, of course, at least as full of questions as it is of Daleks - why in the name of Rassilon's Rod would the Time Lords construct a prison ship and fill it full of Daleks? Before the truth of it was revealed, I was thinking it might have been a device to re-seed the Time Lord race, which the Daleks had happened to take over, and - after the revelation - I couldn't help thinking that would have made more sense.
But this one was not about making sense, it's just there to entertain and get the job of concluding Rose's storyline done. And on that level, it succeeds. Taken in the context of a string of disappointing episodes, it is something of a case of too little too late, and somewhere in the sequence from Rise Of The Cybermen to Army Of Ghosts, Doctor Who, for me, fell from something special to 'just a TV programme'. Too many of the plots are paper-thin and full of holes that don't need to be there, and if they applied as much polish in the stories as they did to the FX and the Dalek armour, well, I'd find more in them worthy of many re-watches. As it is, I shall doubtless have a go at re-watching them later in the year and seeing what, if anything, might have changed in my - now traditional! - season overview, but I'll probably exercise my right to skip one or two of them along the way. In much the same way, I suppose, that I'd like to be able to ignore the fact that Catherine Tate cropped up at the end of this episode. Maybe that was the 'Doom' part of the title. The odd thing is that the scene gave us one of the genuine surprises of the show, but against that, I'm sorry, but Catherine Tate is one of those 'talents' who is 'highly rated' (although not by anyone I know) but who - rather like Peter Kay - generally has me - like the Doctor in the face of an overwhelming alien invasion force - reaching for the 'off' switch. Another fan theory speculated that the big surprise the BBC had in store for the Christmas special might be Gillian Anderson, a theory which, unfairly or not, only served to emphasise the disappointment felt when Catherine Tate loomed in shot.
Fortunately, between the Rose departure and my pint of Guinness, there was enough substance to counteract the resulting groan and hold Doomsday by and large together, while leaving me with no persuasive reason to believe that Season Three will be any better than this one, but with a degree of hopeful optimism nonetheless.

Phantom Menace

Prefect Slog"All phantom and no menace", I heard it said about a certain prequel in a certain famous sci-fi movie series. And that's something that applies to this week's Doctor Who, another mediocre little number called Army Of Ghosts. Given the title, there's no shortage of phantoms - apparently they've been available on tap for the past couple of months by the time the Doctor and Rose turn up on the scene. And in that time, they've been so embraced by the world's population as to become integrated into numerous facets of popular culture and the media - appearing on Eastenders, cheesy daytime talk shows (Trisha) and incorporated into the weather report. A little far-fetched - especially in cynical Britain - but all good clean fun. Only trouble is, they're so accepted by the general fictional populace that they have a hard time being scary. As does this Doctor Who story as a whole.
The ghosts are there, but they're just a springboard into the rest of the story and, I suppose, a fitting one in an episode in which Rose is supposedly telling us the tale of how she died. (Of course, unless it's Desperate Housewives, it's very unlikely that the narrator is actually dead, so expect something metaphorical come the end of this ostensibly climactic two-part finale to this second series.) I don't know if any of it was intended to be scary, but I suspect it was intended to be exciting. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite succeed in either respect and the end result is something like a high street lined with lampposts - rather pedestrian with a few bright spots.
Now, in fairness to the episode, it had a few things working against it. Not least among them, the preceding episodes - from about the clunky Cybermen two-parter onwards - all of which have served to steadily erode my interest in Doctor Who. (Another item on the dislike pile is Tennant's inane babbling which is becoming a tad annoying and at one point in the episode became unintelligible - something about "Alonso", what? - and that's an especial shame, because I had begun the season liking his Doctor more than Eccleston's.) Mainly I continue watching more for the series' potential than anything that actually transpires on screen. That and force of habit, I guess.
Then there are the Cybermen themselves. On top of all the bad work done by their previous alternative Earth outing (wasted opportunity knocks - more than ever now, I believe they should have been seen to *win*), we knew they were coming. In that context, the mind boggles at just how ridiculously long the Doctor holds his cards close to his chest, apparently reluctant to identify these foes out loud, even though we've already had their presence confirmed with the sight of one of them emerging from all the hanging plastic. There, at least, you have the one scene with true atmosphere and it offers an additonal highlight in the shape of the Cybermen slicing through said plastic in homage to past Cyber tales. As usual though there are questions about the plot, and I don't get quite why the Cybermen are fleeing, in their millions, from the alternative world into this one.
Switching more to the positives for a moment, other highlights would have to include the 'ghostbusters' rig the Doctor kits himself out with - a pure Doctor Who contraption if ever there was one. Um. Some of the dialogue (it all started when "Peggy heard a noise down in the cellar"). Um. The pre-credits sequence, to a certain extent - although the flash of an alien landscape is like rubbing our faces in the fact that we haven't seen anything of that sort and reminds us just how much we've been cheated of more exotic locales than the one on offer - again! - here. Um. The earpieces pulled out with gooey bits of brain attached. Um. The Daleks look nice and shiny.
The Daleks. Yes. And funnily enough, they might have had more of an impact had I not known they were coming too. Unfortunately, it's just too difficult to isolate yourself from online spoilers and the rumour mill, or so it seems. But, even if that hadn't been spoiled, I feel sure I would have guessed it anyway. The clues are there and, in essence, we've seen this all before.
Bad Wolf/The Parting Of The Ways. A menace mixed in with popular culture, a major Doctor Who enemy revealed to be behind the scenes, unleashing millions of the buggers on an unsuspecting Earth. Not to mention, Torchwood's ethos is an echo of Van Statten's in Dalek, except here, instead of a museum, you have an agency who search for applications for the alien devices they acquire, and instead of the impenetrable Metaltron, you have the impenetrable Sphere, baffling and frustrating all the attempts to probe it until the Doctor and Rose show up.
Just in case you're not already thinking there are Daleks in the Sphere, there are Daleks in the Sphere, the episode turns into what feels like a fifteen minute drawn-out cliffhanger, piling up the odds with the big Cyberman invasion and giving you plenty of time to realise that there's some other Kinder surprise waiting for us at the end. I should add that the whole Daleks vs. Cybermen scenario - that we would seem to be headed for here - was one that I stopped being excited about back when I grew out of coming up with such things myself. Definitely a load of what's generally termed fanwank. And if you're not a fan, you're in danger of being left with something that's just a load of the second syllable.
Another of the minor 'surprises' along the way is the return of Mickey, of course, but that's about as surprising as all the other surprises (but at least may answer the question of what the Cybermen are running away from) and is another of the factors that conspire against all this episode's efforts to succeed. And it is making efforts, you can feel that. Despite the rather mundane and no-frills approach to shooting the Torchwood office interior, it's trying so hard to impress with many of its scenes, but it's an uphill struggle. It's not helped by the inclusion of Eastenders actors - the woman who plays Yvonne is unconvincing and a bit annoying - or by plain dumb scenes like the soldiers applauding the Doctor like a bunch of idiot fanboys. But I think what counts against it most is the fact that no matter how many surprises it endeavours to throw our way, they all fall a bit flat - because we know what's coming.
Army Of Ghosts is this year's Bad Wolf and as such we're primed to expect this year's The Parting Of The Ways to follow. There's even to be a parting of the ways, with Rose's departure already scheduled, flagged, signposted and heavily publicised in advance. But more than that, there is a pattern of disappointment attached to New Who two-parters (Empty Child/Doctor Dances excepted) that, along with all the other factors, gives rise to troubling omens that hark back to that big first season finale.
If I recall, I quite enjoyed Bad Wolf at the time, but The Parting Of The Ways was a big letdown with some truly awesome moments. At the close of Army Of Ghosts, the odds are similarly stacked against the Earth and the omens portend of a similarly horrible deus ex machina DW TV Movie rewind-style resolution that will have yours truly groaning and shaking his head in dismay. I hope - really hope - to be proven wrong and that next week Doctor Who will deliver the granddaddy of all episodes, but it's going to be difficult to overcome my doubts on that score because of past experience. It's tough to counter that standard of programming.

Sketchy At Best

Prefect SlogBetter. From last week's Blue Peter competition winner, Doctor Who has improved its game to bring it in line with the standard of entry for Tony Hart's Vision On gallery, apparently choosing to draw (ha!)inspiration from Paperhouse(1988) - a movie I've only seen bits of, but one I now want to watch in order to see if it's any more creepy and effective than Fear Her.
It's not that Fear Her was bad. It's just that it was such a huge improvement on last week's Love & Monsters that it achieved the distinction of being remarkably average. Not just ordinary, but extra ordinary. And the trouble with anything that average is that it doesn't penetrate nearly as deeply as anything excellent (The Empty Child, say) or dreadful (take your pick) and leaves you with not much you can say about it.
So there we have it. Fear Her.
Oh, all right then, I'll make an effort.
Somewhere in there was a good story. A kid has the power to capture people and things in her drawings (cool) and to bring her drawings to life (also cool, but not a flip side that's explored to any satisfactory degree in the episode). It's because the girl's been possessed by an alien (so-so) that's out to secure as many friends for itself as possible because it's lonely (awww - actually a nice and fairly novel bit of motivation for an alien 'menace'.) (And I use the word 'menace' loosely, because there's actually very little of it in evidence here.)
With that to play with, the episode does manage a steady build-up, with a mystery that's allowed to develop at a well-judged pace - not something we get to see a lot of in Doctor Who these days - and even delivers some sense of menace from the drawing in the cupboard, the fact that it's a portrait of the girl's father leading the imagination along genuinely and uncomfortably creepy lines.
Working against it, all the time, is the pedestrian setting and, not just that, the pedestrian approach to shooting that setting. There's a complete absence of atmosphere. And the menace fails to materialise, in part because the only real monster on offer stays in the cupboard.
Okay, it does break out towards the end, but by then it's all a bit too late and we've been lulled into the belief we've been watching an especially sleepy episode of some X-Files/Eastenders crossover. An impression reinforced by the inclusion of Frank Butcher's Mum from the UK's number one soap. I wonder, if the producers more time working on Doctor Who stories instead of struggling so hard for all this relevance to contemporary audiences, might we begin to see something better and something more like, well, Doctor Who. And making it a bit more Eastenders doesn't ground it in reality, it just grounds it in Wolford.
For some reason, there's also this whole Olympic Games thread running (ha) throughout and we're left to wonder why, until the end, when the Doctor takes up the torch (torch - Torchwood?) and yours truly starts hunting around for a sick bag. Far too lame for track and field.
There were nice comic moments - the TARDIS materialising the wrong way around, with the Doctor unable to get out - and there were nice character moments - "I was a dad once", the Doctor says. But there's nothing, least of all the Olympic torch, that can possibly make this episode shine. Even the nicely judged (relative to what we've seen in this series) story development falls down like a - like a paper house (haha) when we fall once more into explanation territory, somewhere in the middle. There's nowhere near enough story here for two parts, but the Doctor has to know all about the aliens in order for this to meet its 45 minute deadline, and sitting in a bedroom talking about aliens might be what Doctor Who fans do when their show isn't on, but it doesn't make for great viewing or storytelling.
At which point, I'm sorry, I get tired and I'm sure there's more I could say, but I just don't have the energy or inclination. Fear Her is an instruction and obviously that's what we're meant to do, but it's about what you'd expect from the tell-don't-show approach. Which is especially ironic in an episode that, to begin with, at least made efforts in the other direction.
In the end it all boils down to one word: 'meh'. Or, as we say these days, it's all a bit Idiots' Lantern.
As something of an epilogue, the trailer for next week's would have excited some interest but for the fact that I'm a little tired of Doctor Who being used as a promotional vehicle for its own spinoff series (they're making this thing called Torchwood, by the way, did you know?) and the return of the Cybermen just manages to rub salt in the two-part wound that was Rise Of The Cybermen and Age Of Steel. They set that bloody thing on an *alternative Earth*. They could have had the Cybermen *win*, for crying out loud. Then, when they return, they're actually a bona fide, all-conquering menace, and we've a real reason to fear them. As it is, I'll just have to hope someone manages to override my emotional inhibitor chip so that I can be induced to care.

Stuff & Nonsense

Prefect SlogOh dear. I'd been so looking forward to sitting down and watching Doctor Who this week, but for some reason it wasn't on. Instead, they showed this episode called Love & Monsters from some other series I'd not seen before and hoped we would all keep watching anyway. I did, as it happens, but only under duress and it was a very close run thing. I was, for the first time in forever, on the point of giving up and going in the other room to do something - anything - more interesting when, in about the 15th minute, Peter Kay made his entrance. Peter Kay is not normally an inducement to continue watching anything, if you ask me - quite the opposite - but it was coincidentally the same moment when it looked like something of note might actually happen.
It didn't. But I rode out the wave of disappointment all the way to the end anyway. I can't say it was downhill from there exactly - it's hard to discern any kind of gradient when you start out so close to rock bottom - but it wasn't an experience I'll be repeating any time soon.
But I'm being unfair. The opening was at least a novel one and there was the hint of a story to follow. It's just that none materialised, and in its place we were subjected to what was esssentially a parody of fandom and part 'clip show', which was all very well and perhaps in another series might have made for a reasonable sitcom. And by 'reasonable sitcom', I'd put it in the Two Pints Of Lager bracket - i.e. the sort of thing that seems acceptable to BBC3 these days - if I was being charitable. To distinguish from such sitcoms, this did have its fair share of witty moments - although the early recourse to Scooby Doo antics was an ominous sign that did the whole thing no favours - but in the context of this latest series of Doctor Who - because, it's no use, I can't really kid myself otherwise, it was officially an episode of Doctor Who - it was nothing remotely like what I was looking or hoping for. What this series needed that Saturday was a decent, well-written, gripping Doctor Who adventure. As it was, in light of this farcical bit of fluff, we might easily kid ourselves that, despite the gaping plot holes and sloppy writing in the previous two-parter, we'd already seen such a thing in The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit. But the truth is we haven't - and we are long overdue. This is a flagship series for the BBC, with huge resources thrown at it and, allegedly, written by the best in the business - and yet I've seen entirely average - or lesser - American TV shows that have been consistently put together better.
People will no doubt applaud this outing for being brave and experimental, and of course I'd have to agree. But the thing about bravery is that it's easily confused with foolhardiness, and the thing about experiments is that they are often apt to fail. Experimental episodes, really, are for the shows that have achieved a comfortable and consistent high standard, not series which even in their best episodes (this year, Tooth & Claw, School Reunion) are riddled with flaws that we're sufficiently engaged to overlook.
This one, you know the outlook is poor when they're resorting to a montage so close to the beginning. No matter how much you like ELO - and I do - it's a telltale sign that there's a lack of story here.
(The montage, of course, is an increasingly frequent staple of Doctor Who: Confidential these days, used to flimsily disguise the fact that they're running out of material to fill a 30 minute instalment each week. And by a curious coincidence it was only when watching Confidential, after the show, that this week's episode made sense. This was the first I discovered that the Absorbaloff (sp?) was in fact a monster designed by a Blue Peter competition winner - a 9-year old kid. Yes, suddenly it all became clear. Although I then wondered when we were going to be introduced to the 7-year old who'd written the script. Which was, I confess, very uncharitable of me, but hey, I had just been cheated out of my weekly helping of Doctor Who and, perhaps more to the point, in amongst some of the sharper wit, I have detected too much in this latest brand of Doctor Who that is puerile and infantile, as though the show is often playing down to its younger audience, something that I don't believe the 'classic series' did, at least until its later pantomime years. Aka the Winter Years, because winter is the season of pantomime, after all.)
Just as things aren't helped by the presence of Peter Kay as the most ludicrous monster since the Slitheen (passing similarities to which I noticed with a groan, before the episode acknowledged said similarities itself), they aren't helped either by the inclusion of the guy from Hustle - for one thing he looks too much like Gordon Ramsay for my liking, and for another he was in Hustle, another of the BBC's proud series which suffers a bad case of style over substance; the only successful scam it ever depicted being the one where it ripped off every con-artist movie in history and passed it off to an unwitting public as original and entertaining. Things were moderately helped by Shirley Henderson, who was such a scream in the BBC's recent modern re-telling of Taming Of The Shrew. But against that, the same things weren't at all helped by Jackie who, despite contributing a sometimes humorous and emotional performance, just serves as a reminder that this is all about 'the people left behind'. Both in her case and - in more of a Girl In The Fireplace Doctor-just-occasionally-passing-through sort of way - in the case of Elton, the 'hero' of this 'brave experiment'. I mean, fine, go ahead and explore this aspect of the companions' travels with the Doctor - but explore it once, thanks, and be done with it. Then get on with telling us some cracking Doctor Who stories. Please. I am BORED with 'the people left behind'. Doctor Who is NOT about them. That's for another show that, let's be honest, really doesn't deserve to be made anyway.
Rather like Love & Monsters, in fact.
It's all a bit like one of those experimental short stories you encounter from time to time in a Doctor Who anthology, and in that kind of context it might have amused and entertained, while registering as a fun bit of speculative Who-related fiction. But, at the risk of repeating myself, in the context of a series that has been sadly wanting when it comes to good, solidly told Doctor Who stories, it just comes across as a wasted episode and a huge disappointment - and given that there are only thirteen of these per year and that they're all hideously expensive (apparently), that sense of waste is magnified.
Next week, I notice, we are back on Earth. Woo bloody hoo. This, in a series that allegedly promised to take us further than before and visit more alien worlds - a promise that has, as far as I can see, only managed to set us up for further disappointment. Surely there's enough space in the TARDIS interior to accommodate a kitchen sink, so we don't have to keep returning to Earth for that? I don't really see a great deal of evidence to suggest that the series has come any great distance from its flawed beginnings or learnt from any of its key mistakes. It seems content to hover in what it perceives as safe territory and troll out the same substandard goods, when it has already shown itself to be capable of so much better.
This was the week I officially grew tired of Doctor Who - as I said, some 15 minutes into the episode (I was even SMSed and have been 'accosted' since by friends and family who wondered what it was all about, who thought it had to be 'the worst storyline EVER', and who thought it should have been called Doctor Where? - like I had something to do with it! I disagreed with the latter, arguing that they might have called it Doctor WTF?.) Three worthwhile episodes so far out of thirteen, with the rest ranging from meh to blech, is a poor showing in my book.
Doctor Who is a wide-ranging and flexible show and one which can accommodate experimental episodes with ease, but I think this series needs to focus on getting the 'standard' ones right before it has another go at one of these. Come back in, say, seven years maybe, and while we're about it can we make sure that 'the people left behind' are left behind?
Thanks to the way things have played out, I'm now actively looking forward to Rose's departure at the end of this series. Not through any fault of her own - she's been great. But getting rid of her should in theory see the series shedding all the baggage that came with her and, maybe - just maybe - with the TARDIS thus unburdened, we might get to travel a little further.

Pitfall

Prefect SlogWhat a ride. I mean, only last week Doctor Who left us gasping with a three-way cliffhanger, which - after a shabby piece of expositionary storytelling - showed a real knack for drama and heightened tension.
So what went wrong?
If you're so good at blowing up all those dramatic balloons, surely the thing to do is let them loose and see where they fly. Not pop them all in quick succession and spend the rest of the time desperately trying to keep them up in the air. At the end of The Impossible Planet the possessed Ood are on the march, the planet's hurtling into the black hole and something's rising out of the pit. At the beginning of The Satan Pit, Jefferson decides to open fire on the Ood, begging the question why he didn't get around to doing that last week, the planet decides to stop heading for the black hole, and all that rose out of the pit, it turns out, was the camera. And unfortunately, from there on in, too much of this episode was just like that - throwing away good dramatic potential like it was going out of fashion.
Thankfully, while this shameless waste was going on, there were saving graces. It was hugely spectacular, for one. I'm not usually one to be easily impressed by spectacle alone, but credit where it's due, this one was dazzling and cinematic for most of its screentime. So much so, that the big-budget fx made the cast look too much like low-budget actors. Yes, I'm afraid to say it, but there was little sign of that elusive charisma from the previous week, but again I'm disposed to be charitable and put that down to the failings of the script. There are, after all, moments when the script is working - and the actors work with it. Too much of the time though, they are toiling against script inadequacies: each of the crew has backstory, it emerges, but it's only something that we're made aware of as Satan dishes out token character sketches like helpings of Protein 3, or whatever slop they were serving in the Sanctuary Base kicthens last week. It's a perfunctory, shorthand form of storytelling that's best reserved for a synopsis, and doesn't belong in a completed and, we would hope, finely polished TV episode. Of them all, only Toby really comes alive to any significant degree, and that's largely because he becomes the Devil and is voiced by the mighty Gabriel Woolf, the man who gave us Sutekh and the man who, if the truth be known, inspired us to do our best Sutekh impersonations in the playground all those years ago.
Setting the crew aside, there are further problems with the storytelling that grate a little more and jumped me out of the action just a little too frequently. Immediately after the multiple-deflation of the cliffhangers, things revert to exposition and explanation territory, as the Doctor engages the Ood legions in a little conversation and gets the Beast to oblige us all with a little information about itself. There's no attempt to learn or uncover the truth in the proper manner of an epic tale of archaeological discovery, which, come on people, this should have been. And even the Doctor at one point postpones the action by backing away. It's a fair attempt at a twist, but dramatically speaking it does the story no favours. It's another deflated balloon and also feels very un-Doctorish. Or, to put it another way, very Ninth Doctor.
The tension and drama are given a welcome shot in the arm with a chase through the ducts, but this feels a bit like it's been shoehorned in simply because chases through ducts are requisite scenes in stories of this nature. It's undermined too by the fact that the action follows an entirely predictable path: we knew Jefferson was going to sacrifice himself, and we knew there would be Ood waiting for them behind Door 9.2. It wasn't helped either by an oddly placed lull in the middle, where we are even given a fart gag to relieve the tension, when being relieved was the last thing the tension needed.
There are all manner of other niggles along the way, most of which are sprinkled in for convenience: how did the Doctor hear the rocket taking off when he was, what, ten miles or more down? how did the TARDIS end up all the way down there (which we knew it was going to) when the Pit was closed at the time it fell? when did the TARDIS acquire a tractor beam device? The answer to that last one, of course, is 'When the writer realised the story required it to have one.' (Grounds for a rejected book proposal, right there, if you'd ever care to try your luck.) But there were alternatives that were not only more expedient but potentially more satisfying, dramatically speaking. The TARDIS could have materialised in the rocket and the Doctor rescued everybody while the air was still being sucked out into space and the rocket being dragged into the black hole. But no, Rose shatters the windscreen and - ooh, look, the Emergency Shield slides up. That's handy.
Unfortunately, that scene in itself illustrates perhaps the biggest pitfall of the lot. And this is a key lesson that all would-be supreme forces of evil really ought to take on board: don't go manifesting yourself in human form or possessing a human body. Most especially if you're an inexorable elemental force or, say, a fifty-foot tall Horned Beast. Word to the wise: in human form, you are surprisingly vulnerable to quite mundane and predictable forms of attack and generally a good deal easier to kill. The Beast himself was, frankly, a supremely impressive piece of CGI - a veritable Balrog of a creation - but when you know it's just a dumb brute helplessly chained to a cavern wall, it kind of loses something. Especially when you happen to have worked out a while back that Satanic Toby was going to be finished off by Miss Tyler, in the rocketship, with the bolt gun. At that point, and an unfortunate number of points throughout, it's a competition between me and the black hole to see who can yawn the widest.
Against that, you do have some solid conflict in the Doctor's dilemma, and his struggle against his own belief system offers some good material, particularly when he's hanging suspended and alone in the darkness of the Pit, but really, it's not given a sufficient foundation earlier on to ensure that we all know that this is what this story is about and it lacks a certain potency. If we'd seen a story that was more apparently built around that core from the beginning, we might have been onto something better. And in the end, smashing a few vases to bring about the Beast's destruction, is not all it's (haha) cracked up to be.
In the end, what we're left with is a two-parter that had a great scenario, given the full cinematic treatment - and that's a rarity and something of note for Saturday night telly. There's energy and pace to a lot of it and a good deal between the two episodes that's worthy of applause. It's a rollercoaster ride, with some good ups, a few too many downs and a lot of minor bumps along the way. What it needed was a good script doctor and, sadly, come the concluding part, instead of having all that dramatic potential come spilling out of the Pit, it just unearthed a convenient hole in which to dispose of it all.

Have TARDIS Will Travel (Eventually)

Prefect SlogWhat do you know, we finally broke away from Earth's orbit. So where, in last Saturday's episode, The Impossible Planet, did we end up? On a remote frontier base on a, well, an impossible planet, in orbit around a black hole - one of those impressive, swirling cinematic jobs too, that's sucking everything into its dark heart: light, entire star systems, time and apparently the charisma of the Sanctuary Base crew.
But let's be clear on this: it's not their fault. In the early stages of this otherwise really pretty good sf/horror outing, they're all handed such dull explanatory dialogue that even the cast of Alien would have trouble standing out from the scenery. Of course, I say Alien, but really this was all more reminiscent of Event Horizon, and a fairly decent homage too, with the added advantage that this one has a second part and could actually amount to something in the end. Unfortunately, it's fair to say that in the case of The Impossible Planet, it's the early stages that let it down. Not the beginning, that was a good little opener, with some effectively scary critters (reminded me a lot of some B5 aliens) and a nice twist with their translation devices where they turn out not to be scary at all (except, see later). No, what kept me from really getting involved in the action very early on was, well, the fact that there was no action. Presumably feeling constrained - yet again - by the 45-minute episode format, the writer adopts an almost painful tell-don't-show approach. Lifeless exposition is bad enough, worse when it's repeated, as though we the audience need the details drummed into us. And instead of introducing us to the station crew as part of a developing story, they just go ahead and make a round of introductions. Jeez, I think I'd have preferred the Reservoir Dogs approach: slo-mo stroll, freeze frame and add a tag to identify each of the station personnel in turn. For this slow, early explanatory third, I really was thinking of Event Horizon, not so much for the horror or suspense elements, more for the fact that we always felt on the brink of events, rather than actually have something happening.
But, when all that's said, somewhere along the way, this episode actually comes alive and becomes a bit of a doozy. I'm not really sure when it happens, I'd have to watch it again to pin the moment down, if that's at all possible. But the main thing is, it does happen and thankfully we're treated to a superbly handled gallop towards a three-way cliffhanger, wherein the Ood return to being scary (although they are still somewhat hampered by a bloody silly name), the eponymous planet is being sucked into the black hole (where we can hope that the crew might be reuinited with their charisma) and the Doctor and, er, that woman (see, despite the functional introductions, I can't remember her name) are confronted with Satan emerging from the pit. Ooer.
It's also worth noting that the woman's face, when seen through her lighted spacesuit visor during the descent in the elevator, looks incredibly like a skull which, whether by design or accident - surely the former - is a great and wonderfully creepy bit of foreshadowing. Ironic, isn't it, that for the first episode of New Series Doctor Who away from Earth or (allowing for New Earth) an Earthalike, that they filmed the subterranean sequences in a quarry. And those sequences were amazing - a real sense of scale and something epic, and a momentous, forbidding archaeological discovery.
Given how successful the later stages were, I could have wished for an opening fifteeen-to-twenty minutes with much better crafted story development, but in the end, the impressive elements were impressive enough to save it - although of course a lot now hangs on the ability of the second episode to deliver a worthy payoff. So overall, I'm erring on the side of positive on this one, but as with all two-parters, holding off until the closing stretch. The TARDIS has finally travelled, now it just needs to go the extra mile.

Shop Of Little Horror

Prefect SlogThere are times when I wonder whether I've simply grown tired of Doctor Who. Saturday night's instalment, The Idiot's Lantern, was one of those occasions. It was nothing as bad as the Rise Of The Cybermen/Age Of Steel combo that preceded it - it wasn't anywhere near that big a mess. Neither was it as disappointing. How could it be? There was far less at stake here: all this one had to do was entertain. By the end of it though, the best I could say was that I felt it had managed to distract me for 45 minutes, but that was about it. It was okay - no more, no less - and probably, as result, less memorable than the Cyberman two parter.
It started reasonably enough, with Mr Magpie working late in his shop, being addressed directly by the creepy lady on the telly, whereupon lightning-like energy lashes out and grabs a hold of his head. I thought he was going to be sucked into the telly, like John Ritter and Pam Dawber (Mrs Mork!) in the movie Stay Tuned (1992). No, thankfully it didn't go down that unoriginal road. Instead it pootled along its own entirely predictable course like, well, like that motor scooter of the Doctor's.
There were some expectations attached to this one. I have fond memories of The Unquiet Dead from last season, so I was looking forward to another offering from Mark Gatiss. And at least this one did deliver a nice sense of period, along with a great character actor in a key role. In the place of Victorian times, we have the 50s; in place of Simon Callow as Dickens, we have Maureen Lipman as the Wire.
And right there, I have to stop myself because the comparisons fall down. Actually, there are no comparisons. The characters are nowhere near as well-drawn, the period, although nicely realised, is lacking the atmosphere of the previous Gatiss story and Maureen Lipman, although brilliantly creepy to begin with, is hampered by the fact that she's been called upon to play such a generic alien entity with such a rubbish name and then hamstrung by the fact that she's given a stream of tiresome, repetitive pantomime dialogue. She does her best, she really does, but reduced in later scenes to shouts of "I'm hungry!" and "Feed me!", she comes across as a bizarre humaniform Audrey Two from Little Shop Of Horrors.
With that in mind, I'd have welcomed the Doctor and Rose striking into "You'll Be A Dentist" while riding along on that scooter. At least it would have been a surprise.
The one memorable 'shock' moment would have to be the sight of the faceless granny in the upstairs bedroom. But the creepy potential of these 'Faceless Ones' was somehow left underexploited and the thread with the police whisking them all away appeared contrived as a means of justifying the scene in the warehouse where the Doctor is surrounded by all these featureless somebodies. It did offer one bright spot: the nicely played reversal of position between the Doctor and the copper in the interrogation scene, but the thread as a whole beggared belief. When 'Operation Market Stall' rolled into action - in essence, er, rolling a market stall out into the road and closing a gate - I just laughed at the idea that the Doctor had been so easily duped. Especially this Doctor who, by the constraints of the 45 minute rush-a-thon story, is generally obliged to know or work things out a little too easily. As always, if this had occurred within a great story, I'd have probably overlooked it. But because this one only ever rises to the level of 'all right', it throws such flaws into sharper focus.
I think we were supposed to be shocked and horrified by the sight of a faceless Rose, but the unfortunate downside of that moment was that it confirmed, much too far ahead of time, that all these unfortunate 'faceless ones' were going to have their features restored in a miraculous and barely explicable solution. One that was duly delivered. By the time the celebratory street party was underway, I was yawning and waiting for the Next Week... trailer to roll by.
Through all this, there was some okay character stuff, with the family frictions, but that was fairly basic and again predictable and for me, The Unquiet Dead is proof that Mark Gatiss could have done so much better. I hate to say it (because it's getting as repetitive and tiresome as the Wire's "Feed Me, Seymour"-style exhortations) but the story wasn't helped by the fact that it was another one set on Earth. In London, for crying out loud. And this idea of Russell T Davies', of using Earth as an anchor, is rapidly becoming a ball and chain for this incarnation of Doctor Who. What we want is the kind of telly that kept all those people glued to their sets in the early days, and thus so vulnerable to the Wire's attacks. More of this kind of thing, and the Wire is liable to find even this dedicated Doctor Who idiot forgetting to tune in to his lantern one of these weekends.
Still, I am being overly negative there. On balance, so far this series, I've seen three episodes that impressed, three that sucked, and one - this - that was just 'meh'. So at this midway point, the scales are even. And on a more optimistic note, here's hoping for better things in the second half.

Lead Zeppelin

Prefect SlogWell, that went down a treat. No, wait, it just went down - and not in a good way. After last week's episode climbed to the dizzy heights of mediocrity, the follow-up Age Of Steel managed a nose-dive into the ground, which became something of a race to see whether it could crash spectacularly before the whole thing deflated. Either way, this particular viewer was left to salvage what he could from the wreckage.
To be honest, I'd be hard-pressed to think of anything sufficiently positive to save this sorry shambles. Mickey's departure should have been like a golden light at the end of this two-part tunnel, but by that stage I was so thoroughly dismayed by the whole thing, even that ray of sunshine only managed a dull glimmer. That and the realisation that Mickey, set on a globe-trotting campaign against the Cybermen, was soon to be more widely travelled than the Doctor and Rose. (Next Week: looks like we're headed for... somewhere in the UK, Earth!)
It wasn't that this was the worst Doctor Who episode ever (Timelash? Time And The Rani? Boomtown? You tell me.) It was just that this was such a huge wasted opportunity. This was the Cybermen's big comeback. And it should have been big. Monumental. Event One of this series. Instead, all we got was a load of old Cyber pants.
It started poorly, with the Doctor side-stepping last week's feeble cliffhanger with an even more feeble get-out clause. Even his miraculous deployment of the TARDIS energy crystal might have been redeemed dramatically speaking had he burnt out their only option of escaping this dreary alternative reality. But no - "It'll recharge in 4 hours." Fine, wake me up when it's done.
From there, it went downhill, continuing with a lengthy confinement in the back of a truck for the purposes of some 'vital' plot explanation, interspersed with lots of meaningless metal mayhem, and a convenient Thames-side conference to discuss how to go about defeating the menace, all culminating in a final plummet towards a finale worthy of Independence Day and Stargate SG-1, which may, along with warm woollen mittens etc, be a few of Julie Andrews' Favourite Things, but they're certainly not mine. "Ooh look - an emotional inhibitor chip." "Ooh look, a handy USB port for my mobile phone." I mean, I remember being dissatisfied with the Cybermen's previous Achilles' Heel: their vulnerability to gold was fine enough for the purposes of Revenge Of The Cybermen, but after that it was overused - some would say flogged to death - as subsequent degenerations of Cybermen succumbed to what only amounted to metal fatigue. They just used to show up and blow up. But at least the gold thing was only built in by the writers as a too-convenient plot device. This emotional inhibitor chip override was, on top of that, built in by their creator within the context of the story. Apparently I was mistaken about John Lumic. It really was Trigger in that wheelchair.
I realise the aim here was to make Mickey the hero, but surely there was another way besides coming up with such a dumb resolution? Sorry, but I expected better of a New Series Cyberman story. And what compounds the disappointment here is that we know they were capable of so much better. What a waste.
The Cybermen themselves were only 'scary' when they were standing still - either in the tunnels or staring at Mickey through the fence. Otherwise they were tramping about like a lot of dumb ham-footed robots. (What is it with this need for overly stylised movements? The street-mime Autons from Rose were similarly misjudged.) It didn't help that the Cybermen spoke such electronically treated gibberish, forcing us to concentrate to hear what they were saying, generally to discover that it wasn't much of note. Having their mouths flash lights as they spoke was no help in understanding the dialogue and also had the misfortune of looking A Bit Crap(TM).
The shots of the cyber-surgery and the incinerations might have been more effectively creepy had they not been undermined by all the hard work done by the first part: as they appeared on screen, I couldn't help think back to them operating to the tune of 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight'. Thanks for that, guys.
During that first episode, the writer side of my brain was too busy thinking of ways in which this could have been done better. During this one, that same side of my brain had reached the conclusion that the only way to go was to scrap the thing and rewrite from scratch. Sadly, that's not going to happen. What's done is done. A lot of actors and production crew wasted their time and talent and I'm left with that overwhelming sense of a thoroughly wasted opportunity.
Unfortunately, rather more of New Series Who than is strictly necessary appears to rely on that old mantra used for crossing yourself (and here, to my shame, I'm remembering a quote from Eric Idle in Nuns On The Run): Spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch. Essentially, go for a lot of spectacle, throw in some things that are a bit bollocks, give it the big budget treatment and hope to rake in the viewers. Eurovision follows the same philosophy, but it was sad that I actually found that more entertaining than Age Of Steel that evening. (And that included the more compelling mystery of why so many people across Europe voted for Finland - fair enough "The Day Of Rockening" is a priceless lyric, but we can't all share the same sense of humour, surely?) The thing is, we generally get what we expect from Eurovision - but we know that Doctor Who can do so much better.

Not Another Doctor Who Top 10, Honest

Prefect Slog
As I sat down this week to enjoy my regular dose of Space:1999 courtesy of ITV4 the horrible wrongness of the opening music (a feeling like tuning into Doctor Who to find the unique Ron Grainer theme replaced with, say, the non-music that fronted every episode of JMS’ B5 spin-off, Crusade) tipped me off that they had jumped to the start of Series Two and the introduction of metamorphosing Maya. I’m sure it will be fun to continue (re)watching them, but right from the outset you know it’s an altogether different series, the point where the whole thing went all Frieberger and cheese - to coin a phrase. Anyway, the unexpectedness of the jump was owing to the fact that I couldn’t really say whether ITV4 have been showing these in the relevant order: as familiar as I am with dear old Space:1999 and the rest of the Gerry Anderson catalogue, I simply don’t have that same intimate knowledge of episode titles, episode order and what have you that I have with some series. Doctor Who, for instance, I’ve long had what amounts to an episode guide in my head, although with a lengthy programme of therapy and learning not to care to quite such an unhealthy extent, it’s become more of an impressionistic work and not the factual compendium with the worrying level of detail it once was. Thank goodness for that, because I wouldn’t want anyone mistaking me for a Fan with a capital F. Still, the fact that I rattle off a review of the New Series episodes each week and am still enthusiastic about the nice continuity touches (Doctor James McCrimmon, International Electromatics, Sarah Jane Smith – sigh!) is an indicator that I still give an f, no matter how lower case it might be.

Anyway, given that I’ve moaned a bit about certain aspects of New Series Who that have been less than satisfying, especially in the light of how the Rise Of The Cybermen fell somewhat short of expectations, I thought it was a good time to leaf through that internal episode guide of mine and come up with a list of my own Top Ten Doctor Who stories.

Now, bear in mind that these lists are about as changeable as a British summer and that, unless you’re compiling a Top Ten of Chantelle’s brain cells (in other more depressing news, the woman has just landed herself a £300,000 deal for her autobiography – dear God) it’s almost impossible to sensibly limit yourself to ten. This exercise was, in any case, prompted by Stuart Douglas, fellow Doctor Who fan and friend-in-blogdom, responsible for Half A Dozen Streets And A Bit Of Wasteland. So I absolve myself of all blame.

As with his worthy list, these are in no particular order:

The Talons Of Weng Chiang (TV – Classic)

A popular choice, apparently, but a fairly obvious one. Okay, the fluffy giant rat could do with being a bit more terrifying and a bit less Basil Brush, but Talons gets away with it. Frankly, I could forgive a lot more of Talons, but there’s precious little else to forgive. It's smogbound Victorian London, it's deadly Chinese Tongs, it's Mr Sin, Magnus Greel, Chang, it's Jago and Litefoot, it's Leela – it is, dare I say it, the Good Old Days. This is not just good Doctor Who, it's essential Doctor Who. Horror and history and science fiction, dark and humorous, great characters, bags of atmosphere and gorgeously realised.

Spearhead From Space (TV – Classic)

You can keep your Roses, this is the best introductory story for any Doctor post-Hartnell ever. (We'll allow David Tennant a few points of handicap for the fact that his was at Christmas so had to incorporate spurious Santas and deadly Christmas trees into what was otherwise a fun romp.) This is the one in which the Autons first broke out of shop windows and this is the one in which they didn’t move around like a bunch of jerky street mimes. This is the one in which they’re scary. The Doctor’s erratic and out of it for much of the time, but thanks to Pertwee’s charisma and screen presence when he is on, we get to know him fairly early. And it introduces Liz Shaw. Sure, the Nestene is just a blob in a tank and a lot of rubber tentacles, but anyone who thinks the CGI blob and the ‘climactic’ fight at the end of Rose is any better has been duped by the often flimsy illusions of better technology and bigger budget.

The Ambassadors Of Death (TV – Classic)

Ah, Season 7. How to choose? They all feature Liz Shaw and so score valuable points over the rest, but it really doesn’t help when it comes to deciding between them. Well, Spearhead’s already earned a slot. I can hardly include Inferno after having a go at the alternate Earth setup in Rise Of The Cybermen – although Inferno, which does suffer from the fact that the Primords are A Bit Rubbish™, is better in that respect since the parallel Earth featured there is more interesting than the real one. So I’m left with a really tough call between Doctor Who And The Silurians, to use its full title, and Ambassadors. Ambassadors has all the requisite James Bond stuff, decent sci-fi stuff that’s half-Quatermass, half-Avengers and one of the best endings ever. It has a similar moral resonance to Silurians in that the monsters are not villains and both stories are presenting something novel. Both stories are long and Ambassadors does involve a lot of runaround (but since some of the running around is done by Liz, we can certainly forgive that) to fill it out, but to be honest every time I’ve watched either of them I just enjoy immersing myself in the adventure for the long term. In the end, well, it comes down to that ending I guess – the Doctor walking away and handing the actual task of first contact over to humanity – and the fact that this one was responsible for what must be my earliest childhood memory of Doctor Who: the simple but effectively creepy images of the alien ‘astronauts’. So Ambassadors wins not by a nose but by a whisker.

An Unearthly Child (TV – Classic)

This is the best introductory story, full stop. It’s that perfect bridge between the world of the mundane – teachers at a school – and escapism – one of the pupils knows far more than she should but also has telling gaps in her knowledge, and her Grandfather has a time/space ship in the shape of a Police Box in the corner of a local junkyard. With Ian and Barbara we’re crossing over into a whole new dimension and it’s all conveyed with that vital sense of wonder. Their reactions are perfect. Susan’s suitably ‘alien’, and the Doctor is a terrifically remote figure, all the more engaging for his famous irascibility and smug superiority. Never mind all the gubbins with the cave people afterwards - they had to go and travel somewhere so it might as well have been One Thousand Pence, BC. It’s the first episode that counts.

The Aztecs (TV – Classic)

I felt the need to name a purely historical story, and this is the one that stands out best to my mind. Some nice moral questions raised for Barbara and a romance for the Doctor.

Fury From The Deep (Novelisation/Audio)

I'll admit it may well be better in my imagination than it ever looked on screen, but thanks to the highly effective combination of the novelisation and a couple of listens on audio, the imagined version remains intact. Again it scores oodles on atmosphere, it's a great setup for the base under siege scenario and manages to make seaweed creepy, for goodness sake. Plus it has some strong emotional touches with Victoria’s impending departure in the, er, pipeline. Lovely.

Planet Of Evil (TV – Classic)

This one I’m including as an alternative to The Ark In Space, which is brilliant and also gave me lots of welcome nightmares as a kid. (Stuart included Ark in his list and I was tempted to do the same for all the same reasons he cited, but at the same time I didn’t want this gem to be overlooked.) Unlike Ark, it doesn’t have Harry and that is a point against it, but the horror is just as effective and the memories just as vivid. It’s Jekyll and Hyde with a Forbidden Planet vibe, and Sorenson is great in the Jekyll/Hyde role. Also, take note ye makers of New Who (and here’s another reason for including it), it features an alien planet, creepily effective and effectively creepy and all managed on a fraction of today’s budgets. Prentis Hancock is a bit annoying but what else do you expect from Paul Morrow? The one they really needed to enlist from Moonbase Alpha was Sandra Benes, who would have spent the entire story screaming her lungs out. Right up until the mostly-invisible monster with the crackly energy outline sucked her soul out and spat out her horrific dried-up husk of a corpse. Luckily plenty of other Morestrans were on hand to die for our viewing pleasure. Plus Sarah Jane Smith is as gorgeous and terrified as she can be.


Caves Of Androzani (TV - Classic)

Ah, Graeme Harper, what happened? From the superb melodrama of Androzani to the mellow drama of Rise Of The Cybermen. This story’s giant rat is the Magma Creature, of course – a big plastic walking bat that looks, let’s be honest, a bit guano. The odd thing is, it’s really not needed and adds nothing to the melting pot. And what a melting pot. As with Talons, there’s that balance of humour and horror, but here it’s stretched taut as a tightrope, walking a fine line between taking itself incredibly seriously and sending itself up. Morgus talking to camera is completely mad but it really works. Sharaz Jek is a memorable Phantom Of The Opera who does all but break into a chorus of ‘The Music Of The Night’, and the Doctor’s not trying to save the day for a change, he’s just caught up in everyone else’s conflicting motivations, trying to save Peri and paying the ultimate price. Finally, a Davison story that makes you sit right up and pay attention.

Fear Itself (BBC Eighth Doctor Novel)

Best EDA I had the pleasure of reading. (And that’s no offence to the others.) It just had that perfectly judged balance of substance and pace, atmosphere and action, dark and light. Nicely written throughout, some great character material – special mention to poor underrated (and often underserved) Anji – and a lot of neat sf ideas pooled together in a very Doctor Who-ish mix.

Heritage (BBC Seventh Doctor Novel)

Quite simply better than any Sylvester McCoy story on the telly. Doctor Who meets Unforgiven, and better than that makes it sound. The atmosphere is so palpably dark that you feel the presence of monsters where (at least in the expected sense) there aren’t any, and yet somehow it gets away with throwing a dolphin into the mix without detracting from any of it. Quite the opposite, in fact, because Bernard is portrayed with the same conviction as the heartfelt human story at its core. Arabella the crow is as well characterized as the human cast. It also kills off Mel and should therefore be considered definitive, canon and all the rest.


And, bubbling under at Number 11…

One I Haven’t Written Yet

Dear me, that sounds conceited, but I’d be lying if I pretended otherwise. Somewhere in me lurks a great Doctor Who story, one of the best, and it wants out. Of course I do have other things to write, quite possibly better things too, but until it’s written that Doctor Who story is not going away. I think it’s probably more of a ‘classic’ Doctor Who, so until we see the return of what was the Past Doctor range to the bookshelves I expect I’m stuck with it, although I may have to just get on and write it in my spare time to get it out of my system. Time will tell.

It can’t have escaped anyone’s notice – least of all mine – that there aren’t any New Series entries here. I don’t think that need be very telling – plenty of great ‘Classic Series’ stories are necessarily missed off the list too! New Series highlights such as The Empty Child and School Reunion might have nudged out The Aztecs, for instance, but for the fact that a pure historical helps to represent the range of stories Doctor Who can do effectively. But to pursue that line is to extend a Top Ten to a Top Twenty, then a Top One Hundred and so on until we’ve ranked all the stories in whatever medium according to their various pros and cons. And none of us wants that, do we? I’ll leave that to the Fans with capital Fs. :)

Pedal To The Metal

Prefect SlogAfter complaining about the frequently 'rushed' pacing of the new 45-minute format Doctor Who, I am going to feel like such a hypocrite for saying this, but the Cybermen have returned, plodding onto our screens in an episode in which I just couldn't help feeling should have had more of the energy and drive we've been used to seeing. Let me just say that Rise of the Cybermen was not bad, but the most overwhelming impression it left on me come the end credits was how much better it all could have - and should have - been.
Now, to be fair, it had some disadvantages at the outset. For one, I knew it was going to be set on an alternate Earth. Which, sorry, instead of a 'pinch me, I'm dreaming' scenario, leaves me in a 'poke me, I need waking up' frame of mind. It's much harder to care for alternative worlds populated by alternative people - even more so when we're faced with an alternative Mickey and an alternative Jackie Tyler. The other key element hampering this story was one that only really emerged as the episode went on, in that it lacked impact because it was all too much like the Troughton Cyberman story, Invasion. Fortunately, I think the story will have an impact on the young uns who have no idea there was a Troughton Cyberman story, but for this seasoned DW veteran, as much as I enjoyed seeing International Electromatics emblazoned on the side of the truck, I already knew most of what was coming. And I think what I most wanted out of a new Cyberman story was something that could surprise and impress me, as well as the new generation of viewers.
I'll try not to bang on for too long about this one, because it may all come out in the wash, or failing that the second episode (thank you BBC for remembering not to tack a spoiler-packed trailer on the end), but I was left wanting something more - from this week's episode as much as next week's.
What I wanted less of was Rose Tyler's family, alternative or otherwise. Too much focus on the domestics and you're going to end up with a very domestic, dare I say pedestrian feel to the thing. It started well, I thought, with Roger Lloyd Pack engaging wheelchair-bound Rotwang mode, but then followed it up with a lot of padding, too much plodding and too many misjudged moments. Of the latter, off the top of my head, the ones that stood out the worst were the premature 'solution' to the dead TARDIS situation (what was the problem with leaving the Doctor & Co stranded in this reality with no hope of escape?) and (dear oh dear) cyber-surgery to the tune of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". Tarantino pulls this sort of thing off, using "Stuck In The Middle With You" to accompany a chilling act of torture. This was just a poor choice of soundtrack for the moment, whatever effect the director was aiming for. On a much smaller point, they could have also saved the Rose-is-a-dog-in-this-reality gag until Rose gets to discover the amusing fact for herself. A joke loses something in the repetition. Also, I did wonder why, when everybody was equipped with natty earpieces, the Cybus signal bothered to patch into stray mobile phones.
These are fairly minor points, but they're part of what added up to 45 minutes of me in writer-mode, thinking how it could have been done differently. Instead of me being absorbed, involved and enthralled, the way I generally prefer.
There were a loose collection of positives that I should cite, by way of balance: the Metropolis-style Cybermen (although, going back to the plodding, probably a bit too much focus on those clumpy great feet); good to see Don Warrington as the President of the UK (although he did ask for it at the end, didn't he, harping on about what would happen if he refused the Cybermen's offer of an upgrade - D'uh!); the scene with Mickey and his blind Grandma was nicely played (although a bit too much of an attempt to shoehorn in some background for the character now that he's a companion, when really we should have been let in on some of it before, given how long we've had to put up with him).
But, further to that parenthetical aside, the last thing the story needed was more domestic stuff to hold up the pace. Impatience is not something I'm used to feeling in a Doctor Who story these days, and I am all for allowing the story time to develop and come alive, but most of what we got here was diversionary and, since the Rose and her family kitchen sink stuff has been done more than adequately before, a bit old hat. The time should have been taken to build up the Cybermen - the clue was there in the title! - but at the end of the day, they simply weren't given the chance to be scary enough. As I say, the whole thing may well have had much more impact on the youngsters and that's to its credit, but for me this one lacked the necessary metal.

Lost: A Leap of Faith

Prefect SlogFor those of you who, like me, are irrevocably hooked on Lost, something to think about. This whole thing with the bunker and the pressing the button every 108 minutes, it's just a metaphor for us, the hopelessly addicted viewers, isn't it? We have to keep tuning in every 168 hours, otherwise we're afraid something dreadful will happen. In our case, of course, we're afraid something dreadful will happen and we'll miss it. C4 kept trailing the series' return with the tag line, "Finally, some answers" and, as expected, all we have are more questions. They really threw a curve ball my way by having that guy, Desmond, turn up in the bunker. WTF? I thought, not for the first time. Yes, I can accept polar bears, black smoke, bad robots and all sorts of twisty turny stuff, but for some reason I can't quite explain, Desmond was possibly a stretch too far. Now, for all I know, the producers have a wham-bam, huge WOW of an explanation for all of this, but the more the series goes on throwing curve balls, the better that explanation is going to have to be. If you've ever read a Peter F Hamilton SF epic, you'll know that the conclusion has to be proportionate to the time invested in following the story - and that it rarely is! So I do wonder if the whole business with the button is a deliberate tongue-in-cheek metaphorical piss-take stuck in there by the producers because they know what they're doing to us. Naturally, they're afraid we'll all stop tuning in every 168 hours. In the case of poor old Locke and Jack and the others it's only by *not* pressing that damned button they will ever find out the truth - whether there's anything really explosive to it, or whether it's just a scam to keep them pressing the button. All I can say is, to the producers, I am going to keep pressing the button, but there had better be something big at the end of all this; and to anybody out there who has stopped pressing the button, what is it like? Did the world implode? Are you plagued with curiosity? Or do you just get on with your lives and snigger at the rest of us poor deluded individuals who are continuing to take the Lost leap of faith?

The Doctor Almost Dances

Prefect SlogOf all the writers contributing to this season of Doctor Who, Steve Moffat had the most to live up to. With last year's The Empty Child, he showed how brand new 45-minute Who should be done and with The Doctor Dances, despite a slightly painful to watch extended dance mix on the end, set the bar for the two-parter. The title of last night's episode, The Girl In The Fireplace, suggested something similarly creepy, to the point where I had to wonder if Mr Moffat had a thing about creepy children. But before I get done for defamation of character, the end result was I came at last night's episode with an unpredictable combination of a great deal of positive feeling and high expectations. Things could have gone either way.
I certainly didn't expect a time-spanning love story - and anyone who's read my own Doctor Who books will know how fond of those I should be (Emotional Chemistry ranges from the 51st Century back to the early 19th, so Mr Moffat threw a few extra decades on his temporal fire, but hey). And I didn't expect the second story in a row to bring a tear to the eye and a lump in the throat. Bastards! I'm a grown man - there's only so much I can take!
This is less surprising when you realise that the stories are thematically similar. Sophia Myles is, no offence, no Sarah Jane, but in The Girl In The Fireplace we have a whirlwind romance that is, in effect, the answer to the questions raised in School Reunion. Questions that were already answered in that episode, but here they're illustrated, shown rather than told. I've heard it suggested that the stories should have been shown farther apart, but the other alternative would have been to press them closer together. Thus, in School Reunion we could have been prompted to wonder why the Doctor moves on and leaves his companions behind, often - as in Sarah Jane's case - without so much as a by your leave (sniff), and then in The Girl In The Fireplace we could have been shown the answer. The curse of the Time Lords: the Doctor lives on while those he loves fade and die.
In fact, The Girl In The Fireplace should really have been a two-parter in its own right. It's positively crammed with stuff, but once more it's given the whiz-bang treatment and the Doctor's romance with Reinette is conducted at such a whirlwind pace that they omit the one vital scene where they actually dance. 'Dance' in The Doctor Dances meant something else entirely, of course, but here I'm not speaking in metaphors. A revolution or three around the grand ballroom, the Doctor and Reinette losing themselves n each other until they are the only ones there would have spoken volumes and would have had the added benefit of looking gorgeous. Honestly, six episodes of the BBC's Pride & Prejudice (the Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle one) and not a minute goes by without a major dancing epidemic, and they can't even give us one bloody waltz where it really counts. It stood out as such an obvious missing piece at the time that I was left dismayed, while they cut straight to the scene where the drunken Doctor rescues Mickey and Rose (who are, funnily enough, something of a couple of spare parts in this anyway) from a spot of clockwork surgery.
Then to be further dismayed by the sound of the Doctor spouting insults at the androids like Edmund Blackadder: "Mr Thickety Thick Thick Thick." And when you're producing such a curious, wonderful blend of fantasy, history and sf, you need to take care not to jump your audience out of the action with oddities like that.
Luckily, for the most part, as with School Reunion, I was so absorbed and involved by the human story that I could quickly forget that little glitch and, more importantly, overlook the flaws and inconsistencies in the more Doctor Who-ish aspects of the plot.
Indeed, it was all so magical that at the time (the station reminded me of the house in Gulliver's Travels, full of mirrors leading to different times, and the Doctor riding through the mirror on horseback was the stuff of fairy tales) I wasn't questioning the logic of 1) the time portals (how, exactly, did they work and why, if the androids knew so much about Madame Pompadour's history, didn't they go straight to when she was thirty-seven?), 2) the clockwork androids (why?) or 3) the cannibalising of the crew for parts (I mean, okay, a heart's a pump and a liver's a filtration unit, but there are a limited number of useful parts in the human body when it comes to patching up a spaceship). A mate of mine picked far more holes than those and to be honest, I couldn't disagree with any of them. But nevertheless we ended up with diverse impressions of the episode. And it's just another illustration of what often happens with Doctor Who, old or new: namely, that it comes down to a measure of what you're willing to forgive, based on the overall impression left on you by a given story. With School Reunion, the feeling was overwhelmingly positive, with The Girl In The Fireplace, slightly less so, but more than sufficient to prompt me to look on it like the clockwork androids: illogical, but beautiful.
They certainly gave me the chills, with their creepy masks, the most effective scene of course being where the Doctor is rooting one of them out from under the young Reinette's bed. But there's really not enough time to savour that creepiness after that, and the whole thing, as usual, flies by in a rush. To be fair, the story may have needed a few more complications in order to warrant a two-parter, but the dividends might well have been worth it. Ultimately, with this one, everything would appear to hang on whether you buy into the love story or not. Me, I'm a hopeless romantic and a writer of a Doctor Who love story myeslf and therefore an easy target. There was a tangible chemistry there, fairly obviously, between Tennant and Myles, and it's especially obvious in the kiss, which did much to convince. (Sophia Myles is also one of those actresses who looks like she's born for period costume and short of hiring Kate Winslet, whom some of us might have liked to have seen in a Doctor Who, she does the job admirably enough.) And the mind-meld works well to cement their bond - I particularly loved the turnaround, where Reinette is able to step through and see into the Doctor's thoughts. But two parts would have lent the story an epic feel more befitting a story that's meant to span 3000 years and allowed us to really experience the two-speed romance as it should have been experienced: at two speeds. Most crucially, two parts would have allowed plenty of time for that missing scene in the ballroom. This was one occasion where the Doctor definitely needed to dance. With that, I might have loved it unequivocally. Without it, I still loved it, but it was more of a fleeting love affair that did well to last past the end credits.

Me & Sarah Jane

Prefect SlogWe go way back, we do. Surely my earliest crush, and unlike the girls my age at school, she'd come round to my house every Saturday - even though she was busy fighting monsters or peering around corners and whispering 'Doc-tor' in that irresistibly timorous way of hers. She had that perfect balance of fearful and fearless, she was an intrepid investigator who knew when to be afraid. She was a bona fide, 100% real Doctor Who companion and, damn it, I lurved her. It was wonderful to see her return in School Reunion last night and no wonder at all that the Doctor greets her with the boyish excitement and delight of a fan. I'd be the same.
Quite simply, *every* moment of that story was exquisitely judged, beautifully performed and everything it needed to be. And by 'that story', of course I mean the 'Reunion' part. The 'School' part - the vampire-like Krillitane (surely a food additive?) taking over the school, feeding the kids brain-enlarging chips and trying to crack the something paradigm or the Da Vinci Code or whatever - was like the narrative equivalent of the musical score - mostly incidental, sometimes intrusive. There was nothing terribly wrong with that side of things - apart from the dreadfully convenient fact that the aliens' own oil was lethal to them, which is probably just another product of having to tell these stories too fast. When I saw the trailer the week before, I was mildly concerned that they were attempting to cram too much into their usual 45 minute slot: Sarah Jane, K9, Mickey, Anthony Head, aliens invade Grange Hill etc - and to a certain extent that turns out to be true. A fair bit of the "tell don't show" principle, and no real development on offer. And, not that its relevant, a lot of kids tapping away at keyboards according to the Space:1999 school of possessed computer programming - as a result of which I envisaged a Krotons-style scenario, where the aliens were skimming off all the High Brains for their own devices. Curiously, the bat-creatures are a tad too reminiscent of the Reapers from Father's Day, last year's Doctor Who blub-fest, but it might have been one continuity-dredge too far to explain that they had evolved thus as a result of an encounter with those particular monsters. But the 'School' part is anyway, let's face it, there for the kids - what better setting to rope in the younger audiences, especially with the obligatory blowing up of the school at the end. And the rest of it, the 'Reunion', was so absolutely perfect, that it didn't matter what was going on in the background. Actually, that played in its favour, because equally it didn't matter much if there were flaws with the alien menace plot.
The emotion in every scene that counts is played out beautifully - from that first meeting, to Sarah's encounter with the TARDIS, all the way through to that heart-warming and heart-wrenching goodbye. It's all played out naturally too - it's like they know the heartstrings are going to be playing themselves, especially for us sad old fans who know what it all means, so there's no need to pull on them. Even K9's return is handled deftly, with gently mocking humour, while at the same time allowing him to do what made him such a story liability in the first place - i.e. to save the day.
Then there's the emotional angle between Sarah and Rose - "the ex and the missus" as Mickey says, and you won't often find me quoting him. Sheer brilliance, and again there's a progress to it that feels perfectly natural, all the way up to and including that touching farewell, where Sarah tells Rose to look her up if she ever feels the need. Of course, when bickering they could have thrown names of visited planets at each other, but we know how that would have looked. Sarah Jane: "Earth, Peladon, Mars, Karn, Zeta Minor, Skaro, Voga etc." Rose: "Earth, Earth, Earth, a station orbiting the Earth, Earth, Earth, and an alien planet called New Earth." Compared to SJS, Rose's list reads like the Monty Python Spam song. With the monsters thing, they at least achieve the illusion of a balance they can work from. Although Rose all but blows her game by playing the Slitheen card. :)
But see, even though it gives me the chance for some evil humour, that Rose-Sarah Jane scene was, like so many other aspects of this very human story, pitch perfect. And to have the Doctor walk in and find them laughing about him is pure magic.
Even Mickey, dear God I can't believe I'm going to say this, is bearable here. Although he's perhaps one character too many in this all too short 45 minutes, he does serve a purpose and it's worth it for the aforementioned line and his comparison of himself to the 'tin dog'. Cue my first real Metal Mickey joke opportunity.
Obviously I am going to have to watch this one again. In part, to remind myself of the 'School' part of the story, which I'm afraid may remain forgettable even after a second viewing. But chiefly, just to savour that 'Reunion' again. I mean, I know I'm a married man and all, but - between you and me - you have to envy the Doctor that ecstatic final hug. :)

Fang Horror Rocks!

Prefect SlogNo, not a new variant of Scissors Paper Stone, but a brief summary of my response to Tooth & Claw, the second episode of the second series of new Doctor Who. Was that the werewolf's bollocks or what? Okay, it kicks off with the guys from the BBC One idents giving up their waterside T'ai Chi for a spot of Matrix style ass-whupping, but that just serves as a welcome reminder that it's only really in Doctor Who that you're going to get warrior assassin monks, a spacefaring werewolf and Queen Victoria in the same episode.
To tell the truth, throughout it all I was getting two strong past DW story vibes, one of which was of The Unquiet Dead: simple ghost story, terrific atmosphere, beautifully executed and featuring a key historical figure played brilliantly by a great character actor. Replace 'ghost' with 'werewolf' and replace 'characters helplessly trapped in a room at the end' with 'a Doctor who's actually doing something to solve the situation', and that's pretty much what you get here. With more action.
The other strong vibe I was getting was one of Horror Of Fang Rock: period piece, isolated setting, classic horror with an sf twist, diamonds etc. So much so that somewhere in the middle I actually commented that if the Doctor adapted the telescope into a laser to destroy the beast, that would certainly clinch it. And lo and behold...!
Of course, the major difference - er, other than the lack of a lighthouse and the fact that the isolation is achieved by a cordon of armed monks instead of stormy seas and fog - is that we have a single 45 minute episode and the whizz-bang storytelling that comes with it. But it's the episodes that achieve this kind of standard within that framework that remind us that new Doctor Who needs to be judged by its own new set of rules. I.e. they set the bar and show what can be done with that new pacing. I recall when Rose first appeared, I bemoaned the fact that 'We have no time to stand and scare'. It's the same here: the scaring has to be done on the move. But when it's done well, it makes all the difference between a rush and a rush job.
I'm afraid that these reviews have to be done at much the same speed at the moment, because of writing commitments and what have you (hopefully I can make an announcement before too long), but I'd have to scrabble around a bit to find much worth criticising in this one. Yes, it all turns a bit Buffy when they're in the library leafing through books for a clue as to how to defeat the monster. Yes, I did wake up this morning wondering what the hell had happened to all the monks surrounding the house. At the death of their leader Wolfie, they *might* have dropped their weapons and wandered off to resume their pondside callisthenics between BBC One programming, but I missed what happened to them. (Basically I'm going to have to rewatch it to find out if I blinked at the wrong time or something, but a rewatch is no trouble at all in this case.) And yes, the episode should have ended with Rose and the Doctor departing in the TARDIS, laughing their socks off at the royal family and howling like wolves - instead of that ham-fisted ad for the spinoff series, Torchwood, that was tacked on at the end.
I mean, I've heard fans complain about nods to the past - well, phooey, I loved the bit where the Doctor refers to himself as Dr James McCrimmon - means nothing to anyone watching DW for the first time, but it's a nice touch for those of us in the know. Whereas, by contrast, this little nod to the future as Queen Vic plugs the spinoff felt unnecessary and clumsy - and others who had no idea Torchwood was on the way have told me much the same thing. They were left wondering what the hell that was about. Surely a subtle reference in Torchwood to the idea that they'd been established by Queen Victoria would have sufficed to build a subtler but just as firm bridge?
But really, never mind. Last season, it wasn't until episode 3 that I really felt like Doctor Who was back. This year, it's an episode earlier and that's a step in the right direction. And next week: the return of Sarah Jane Smith. So woo, and indeed, hoo!