The Doctor, The Widow And The Wardrobe- my review of the 2011 Christmas special.

It’s been a while since I’ve been online to make posts on my various blog pages, and followers of my page Book Of Daze will know that I have had various medical issues to contend with over the past year. After the dust had settled somewhat, I decided to take a sabbatical until the new year.

By now, most of you will have seen the 2011 Christmas special, so I won’t worry about giving away any spoilers while I review the episode. You may recall that the 2010 episode, A Christmas Carol, turned the schmaltz levels to 11, and left me hoping that the 2011 episode would be easier to digest. Well… almost. The story kicked off promisingly, with Matt Smith’s Doctor racing along the decks of an impressively large starship, all gunned up and ready to attack the Earth once again, until the Doctor’s intervention caused it to explode in a rather spectacular fashion. It was after this point that things took on a somewhat, for me, bizarre turn.

To escape the disintegrating craft, the Doctor launched himself into space in pursuit of a spacesuit, which he had to don before plummetting groundwards and landing in a field close to Marge, the eponymous soon-to-be widow of the title. This sequence had me facepalming with disbelief, as it seems the Doctor can not only survive in an absolute vacuum, (Thus rendering the climax of The Waters Of Mars null and void, as the Doctor could surely survive Mars’ thin atmosphere long enough to pilot the Tardis to the rescue rather than use the remote robot) but also the spacesuit seemed to possess the ability to survive the heat of re-entry and render the Doctor immune to the forces of impact, as well as not burn Madge’s hands when she tried to open his visor. The dialogue claimed that the suit was reconstructing him, but surely a trauma of this magnitude would have triggered a regeneration? It was a bizarre piece of dialogue to explain away a situation that was remimiscent of the kind of dialogue you’d get from children at play; “Bang, you’re dead.” “Your bullet didn’t hurt me, because I’m a tank.” I was probably over-thinking this, so decided to switch off my critical faculties a little and carry on.

There was a missed opportunity for a fan gag there, when the Doctor told Madge to look for a Police box, only to find a real one rather than the Tardis- I’d have loved to see a proper Police box so as to highlight the difference in shape between it and the Tardis- a nod to ‘the windows are all wrong’ from fans of old. The story progressed on to World War 2, where Madge’s husband, played by Alexander Armstrong, was piloting his stricken Lancaster home after a raid. (Some have used the Lancaster as another opportunity for a dig, as it seems they didn’t see service until about a year after the story was set, but being familiar with war films using whatever hardware they had available, this was not a biggie for me- it was WW2, he was flying a bomber, so the plot point was established adequately enough- besides, it would have been more difficult to portray, say, a Wellington instead, as there aren’t any left.) Although Armstrong was perfectly cast as an RAF chappie, I couldn’t help but think of his character in the Armstrong And Miller Show, quipping that he’d “Well mashed the ‘plane up, innit!”

The main story revolved around the Doctor, returning the favour to Madge for her help after his re-entry by helping her children have an enjoyable Christmas in a big country house. This involved a dimensional portal to an alien forest, in which the children and Madge had an adventure that resulted in the safe return of her husband in a most unexpected way. The story as such was more of a string of set-pieces rather than a storyline, and while the dial was set to schmaltz, at least it was on a lower rating than last time. There was a nod to classic fans when Androzani Major got a mention, but personally I think Bill Bailey and Arabella Weir were wasted in their brief cameos- although the tripod walker they were piloting did make for some of the best visuals of the episode.

The tripod walker, from The Doctor, The Widow And The Wardrobe. (Picture courtesy of the BBC.)

The main gist of the story, it seems, was that the Androzani team were going to destroy a forest with acid rain to generate energy, and the trees had created two humanoid beings- a ‘forest king and queen’ complete with Rapunzel-styled tower, to find a suitable candidate to allow the spirits of the trees to go out into space and evade destruction, by piloting the glass globe at the top of the tower with psychic energy. So far, so fairytale, but it didn’t stop there, as it transpired that Madge was the perfect candidate, and after being urged by the Doctor to focus on something she loved in order to get the glass globe back home, she decided to focus on her husband, and caused the globe to be some kind of foo fighter that guided the Lancaster back home.

This led to everyone (Except for the rest of the bomber crew, who had mysteriously either disappeared or had decided to remain in the aircraft) going back to the manor house for Christmas dinner, prompting the Doctor to say his goodbyes and make his own way. That would have been a good enough place to leave the story, but it seems that we hadn’t been given enough warm and cozy feelings, so the Doctor ended up back at Amy and Rory’s house that we’d last seen in The God Complex, where Amy was busy getting ready to hose potential carol singers with a water pistol. (So much for adventuring with the Doctor making you a better person!) This led to the inevitable reunion, Christmas dinner, and the Doctor ‘crying because he was happy’ which was signposted earlier in the episode.

I could have done without all this as the story was schmaltzy enough, and I thought Amy and Rory’s story had ended in The God Complex when they went to their new home, but it seems we will have them in the Tardis again for much of next year, when a ‘heatbreaking’ ending will be planned for them. So much for Doctor Who moving on; it appears that the new series will be forever looking back at companions, and rather than have the occasional shock ending for them, as we got in Earthshock or The Dalek’s Master Plan, the show will be forever upping the ante with character’s emotional goodbyes. I wouldn’t be surprised if the ‘sting’ theme for cliffhanger episodes gets replaced with the ‘doof-doofs’ from Eastenders at this rate.

In conclusion, many fans I’ve discussed this with appear to be of the opinion that Christmas episodes should be taken as somehow separate from the main series, and more warm and cozy for families to enjoy after a hearty Christmas dinner. Maybe I’m a Scrooge, but I prefer a spectacular or a blockbuster action film at Christmas- give me a Star Wars (No prequels, please!) or a James Bond rather than a Miracle At 42nd Street or Holiday Inn. That’s when it hit me, that I enjoyed Russell T. Davies’ Christmas specials because they were action-packed spectaculars, and then I found myself wishing that I’d seen the story that led up to the ship exploding at the beginning, rather than the hour of what happened afterwards.

Fractures in time- my review of the 2011 series conclusion.

If you recall, the mid-series finale ‘A Good Man Goes To War’ left me distinctly underwhelmed, and the premise of the next episode title gave me little hope of things getting better. As the second part of the series drew closer, I found myself hoping that it had all been some kind of joke on the fans, but when the trailers went out, it seemed that ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’ was confirmed as the episode title- frankly the most absurd episode title of all in the entire Doctor Who canon. As promised, this was a continuation in the River Song saga, and thankfully the Reichsfuhrer actually had precious little screen time during the episode- less, in fact, than the entire length of the trailer, in which you actually get to see most of it, thus giving the impression that he was in most of the episode. What we actually got was a continuation of the melange we had in the mid-season finale, with a regenerating younger River Song in a childhood back-story with Amy and Rory that we hadn’t seen before, (Which we should have seen, really, having already seen  so much of their back-story, in which such a ‘prominent’ character was strangely absent this far) and a shape-shifting robot with a microscopic crew called the Tesselactor. Many viewers found the episode entertaining, but after the previous outing I was rather hoping for something rather less gung-ho and self-congratulatory than this, and wishing for better fare next week.

A bemused Hitler inspects the Tardis. (Picture courtesy of the BBC)

Given that Mark Gatiss’ contributions to the Who canon have been varied so far, (The excellent ‘Unquiet Dead’ being followed by the less inspired ‘Idiot’s Lantern’, and ignoring his acting role in ‘The Lazarus Experiment’, there was the divisive ‘Victory Of The Daleks’, which some hated, but I liked.) the next episode, ‘Night Terrors’ was a frankly fantastic return to first series form. This was a wonderfully shot and rather eerie little chiller, concerning a young boy, George, who seemed to be imbued with uncanny powers. In many ways, this reminded me of vintage ‘Tales Of The Unexpected’ or ‘Hammer House Of Horror’, and the cast all put in sterling performances. It was good to see Daniel Mayes on-screen after his seminal performance as DI Keats in ‘Ashes To Ashes’, and I have often thought that he would be a great casting choice should Moffat ever consider looking for someone new to play the Master. This episode was an absolute joy and helped get rid of the bad taste left by the previous two outings, so my hopes were kept high once more for the rest of the series.

George is menaced by the Peg Dolls in Night Terrors. (Picture courtesy of the BBC)

The next episode, ‘The Girl Who Waited’, was an interesting tale centering around Amy and Rory, who became separated into different time streams and ended up more than thirty years apart. Maybe their characters don’t ring true to me, or maybe it’s just me, but I found myself thinking that while this wasn’t the continuing saga of the River Song show, (Which was getting to be an irritation that I hoped would end by the season closer) there was still something lacking, but many other viewers in the various online forums loved this one, so what do I know. Given that Amy had had the best part of four decades to think things over, she still seemed to be unmoved by the fact that her baby had been abducted, and while she got snappy and irritable with Rory through having to wait that long, I was disappointed and somewhat irritated that Rory didn’t remind her that he’d waited two millennia for her in the previous series- the lack of character development with those points were rather jarring for me. Not one of my favourite episodes, but definitely not one of the worst by a long chalk.

The next episode was written by ‘Being Human’s creator Toby Whithouse, and given his track record with that series, I was hoping this episode would have his trademark incisive observations into the human condition, with a supernatural or science fiction twist. He’d already covered his beloved vampires last series, so I was wondering what ‘The God Complex’ would bring. I was not disappointed, as this was one of the stand-out episodes of the entire series for me. Here, we had Whithouse’s trademark vision of hell- all dreary, dull hotel corridors with unspeakable horrors behind each door that centred around the mundane and the effects they had on the lives of those for whom the rooms were created. The science fiction element came courtesy of am alien Minotaur creature, related to the Nimon (A wonderful shout-out to classic Who) and imprisoned there to use the hotel complex to prey on the innocent for food. The episode was brilliantly written, the characters well-written and incisive, and the creature itself was frankly beautiful- not CGI this time, but an actual costume that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Pan’s Labyrinth- just lovely stuff. The ‘next time’ trailer promised a sequel of sorts to ‘The Lodger’ featuring the Cybermen, so I was rather looking forward to this as well.

The rather delightfully realised Minotaur in The God Complex. (Picture courtesy of the BBC)

As in last years’ series, the penultimate episode was a bit of light relief to prepare us for the grand finale, and also, this saw the return of James Corden’s character Craig in the story ‘Closing Time’. As before, characterisation centred around the comedy of errors wherein the Doctor was clearly the alien fish out of water trying to blend in with human society. This time, the menace of the episode wasn’t an abandoned Silent timeship, but a crashed Cybership, buried beneath a department store in Craig’s home town. The Cybermen, forced into hybernation to preserve energy, utilised Cybermats once more to obtain energy, and lure hapless victims below to be cyber-converted into a new crew. These guys weren’t the parallel universe Cybus guys, despite having the same overall look- these were the original Mondas bad boys, as we could quite clearly see the absence of the Cybus corporation logo, as had also been indicated previously in the mid-season finale earlier. As in the classic series, Cybermen work best when they’re hidden away, lurking and plotting in the dark rather than stomping down the road in great armies. (‘Earthshock’ and ‘The Invasion’, while having vast cyber-armies, worked well because up until the armies revealed themselves, the Cybermen were still lurkers and plotters.) As a result, this was easily my personal favourite Cyberman story of modern Who.

Craig is captured by Cybermen in Closing Time. (Picture courtesy of the BBC)

And so we come to the finale, ‘The Wedding Of River Song’. Here, again, we had the ‘chuck-in-everything-but-the-kitchen-sink’ approach to the story that we had in the mid-season finale, but because this was the end of the saga, thankfully everything made sense and the various plotlines finally came together- although, annoyingly, there are now new ones to play out next year, such as ‘the fall of the eleventh’ and the ‘asking of the question,’ which is apparently ‘Doctor Who?’. I hope to blazes this never gets answered, because once the mystery goes, the entire premise of the show is gone forever. I actually found myself distinctly non-plussed at the further plotlines, and rather hope that future episodes will continue along the same self-contained story format we enjoyed in classic Who, and which provided so much joy in between the arc-heavy stuff. In point of fact, the arc-centred episodes could have been shown back-to-back as a self-contained story in their own right, and would probably have been less confusing and frustrating all round. Apparently, Steven Moffat has been requested to make future seasons consist of entirely self-contained stories and drop the arc stuff, so maybe these new plotlines will be quietly forgotten- I live in hope. One nice touch was the fact that the tribute to Nicholas Courtney was actually made in-episode, as the death of Brigadier Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart off-screen proved to be the pivotal moment for the Doctor to finally go and accept his fate at the hands of the impossible astronaut, yet when he finally did, the get-out was actually cleverly done, via a ‘Chekov’s gun’ that was introduced a few episodes ago. The fact that most of the cast were wearing eye patches was also a lovely nod to a bit of studio banter between Jon Pertwee and Nick Courtney during the filming of ‘Inferno’. It says much for the writing of classic characters compared to the modern ones, when the Brigadier’s passing off-camera actually moved me more than the demise of any character post-2005, however many times they’ve done it.

Eye patches abound in the finale romp. (Picture courtesy of the BBC)

So with the 2011 season over, we now have a new Christmas episode to look forward to, which I hope will be better than the previous one, although all told, there were some very good stories this season- and now that River’s story appears to be told, I hope we’ll see some new companions next year. As we’re approaching the 50th anniversary of the show in 2013, I predict that the next series will be a run-up to that, with plenty of nods to the past along the way.

Roy Skelton, voice of the Daleks, has passed away.

It is with great sadness that I learned today of the tragic death of voice actor Roy Skelton, aged just 79. Mention Dalek voices to anyone who watches Doctor Who today, and nine times out of ten they’ll mention Nick Briggs- but mention them to anyone who used to watch the classic series, and they’ll tell you that Nick owes everything to Roy Skelton. In early Dalek stories, the ring modulator became their trademark, but it took a skilled voice actor to project through the sound effect, and make the voice of the metal monsters believable- at first, the voices were often staccato to the point of being vaguely intelligible, or nasal and monotonous, but when Roy took to the microphone during The Evil Of The Daleks something magical occured, and the Daleks finally took on a life of their own with vocal inflections and nuances that positively dripped with menace.

Actor Roy Skelton, who pased away today aged 79.

Roy provided voices for not just  Daleks- during his time with Doctor Who (he stayed with the series until Remembrance Of The Daleks in 1988) he provided voices for the Cybermen and the Krotons, among many others. Many people who watched classic Dr Who will recount the three basic Dalek voices- the deep-pitched, confident monotone of the superior, the slightly higher pitch of the subordinate, and the manic, rising in pitch of a Dalek soon to meet its’ doom, and it was Roy who worked out these ideas and made them into vocal standards for the series that carry on to this day.

The Doctor (Jon Pertwee) is menaced by the Daleks in Death To The Daleks. (Picture courtesy of the BBC)

It wasn’t just Doctor Who that Roy will be remembered for. Many others will recall the children’s TV series Rainbow, and the colourful characters of Zippy and George; Roy provided voices for both characters. Whenever these lovable puppets argued (And they did, frequently) Roy was able to create the impression that the soundtrack had been overdubbed, as he was able to make the characters speak over each other.

Zippy, the lovable rogue from children's show Rainbow.

Roy will be sadly missed, by Whovians and Rainbow fans alike- and if you ever get the chance to watch the now infamous ‘naughty Rainbow’ sketch on the various online video sources, think of Roy- as well as providing the voices of Zippy and George, he actually wrote the script for that one. Rest in peace, Roy, and thank you for so many vivid childhood memories.

A Darker Edge- My review of the 2011 series so far.

I’ve decided to review the series this year in two distinct blocks, rather than episode by episode, as the season arc seems to intertwine every story to the point where the whole series seems to be one continuous tale divided into distinct chapters. This year, the series has a mid-season break before resuming in the autumn, which gives us not one, but two finales this year. This review takes us up to the mid-season finale. To avoid spoiling people who haven’t watched the episodes yet, I’ll also try to avoid giving plot summaries for each episode, and instead concentrate on my reactions to each episode as it aired. OK, preamble over, let’s begin!

It seems that the 2010 season was visualised as a way of reassuring the public that what we were seeing was the same Doctor Who we’ve been seeing since 2005, albeit with a new lead actor and redesigned studio sets and interiors. This was done to ensure that the viewers stayed with the show so that showrunner Steven Moffat could then subtly introduce his various themes, tropes and plotlines, so that the overall feel of the series became what he envisages Doctor Who to be. this became evident towards the close of last year (Notwithstanding the Christmas fairytale schmatlzfest) when The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang showed events taking a decidedly dark twist, and left us with more questions than answers at teh series’ climax. We knew the cracks in time were caused by the Tardis exploding, but we didn’t know what caused it to explode, the prophecy of ‘Silence Will Fall’ had not yet been realised, the mysterious voice remained unidentified, and we still didn’t know much about River Song’s backstory, although since her timeline in the series is doing a Benjamin Button, we were sure to find out before long. This is what we knew so far, and the Christmas special lulled us into a false sense of security by thinking everything was fine and dandy now the universe had been rebooted. Not so, as 2011 dawned, and things have turned decidedly darker.

The series opened with a two-parter, called The Impossible Astronaut/Day Of The Moon, which had viewers sitting bolt upright in shock within the first ten minutes of transmission. The Doctor had been quite deliberately killed off, and his body burned, and as we watched incredulously, we realised that he’d invited his companions to his own execution and funeral- as well as his previous self from around 200 years back in his own timeline. An interesting premise to begin with for sure. The story centered around America in July 1969, and the time of the first Moon landing, and was a complex, multi-threaded tale of alien incursion, intrigue and the setting up of the various story threads for the rest of the series.

The Silence claim another victim. (Picture courtesy of the BBC)

Both episodes were wonderfully atmospheric and reminiscent of  The X-Files in places, and the alien menace The Silence managed to capture the feel of grey aliens and men-in-black both at once, and typical of Steven Moffat inventions, had unique abilities that seemed trivial at first, but had chilling implications. With the Weeping Angels, they could move if you didn’t look at them, (But not in the eyes!) but these bad boys made you forget you’d ever seen them whenever you looked away! What was that in the corner of my eye again? Along with this, we learned that Amy was pregnant, and that there was some mysterious child on the loose that could regenerate when she reached death, and a creepy woman in an eyepatch who could seemingly open a hatch in the middle of nowhere just to pop into our universe and say ‘hi’, but only Amy could see her. Not only that, but when the Doctor had time to use the Tardis scanner on Amy, she seemed to be pregnant and not pregnant. A Schroedinger’s baby?

Some thought this story was too creepy, and I know that my nephews had nightmares about the story, so I imagine there were a fair few sleep-deprived youngsters while that story was on. Vintage Doctor Who was always at its’ best when it scared the bejasus out of you as a kid, and I have fond memories of being scared witless by shop mannequins thanks to the Autons in my distant youth- as far as I was concerned, this was business as usual, Who style! Parents needn’t have worried overmuch, as the next episode promised to be more kiddie friendly, and involved pirates.

The Curse Of The Black Spot was lavishly shot and looked wonderful in HD, but for me was disappointing as a story after the tense, thrilling series set-up of the previous weeks. The story hung on the premise that the ‘monster of the week’- played by the ethereally beautiful Lily Cole- was not really a monster, and that 17th-century pirates could take up the controls of a futuristic starship and fly it off into space with barely any training or adjustment to futuristic technology. For me, this was a premise too far, and took me right out of the episode. As Arthur C. Clarke once explained, any futuristic technology would appear to a less advanced race as if it were some sort of magic, and rather than seeing this starship as some kind of devilry, the crew just shrugged their shoulders (Taking care not to upset the parrot) and set off at warp speed before the captain had time to say ‘Make it so’. In my household, the episode became affectionately referred to as ‘The Pirates Of The Gallifreyan’, as we hoped for better fare next week.

The next three weeks proved to be the best of the series to date, as we were treated to a lovely little tale by fantasy maestro Neil Gaiman, and a frankly classic chiller of a two-parter. Gaiman’s story was one of those rarities that transcends Who, and actively serves to add something to the overall mythos. In The Doctor’s Wife,  an alien threat possesses the Tardis, sending the ship’s consciousness into the body of a young woman who befriends the Doctor. There were plenty of nods to years gone by, referring to the Doctor’s origins as ‘a daft old man who stole a box and ran away’, by adding a twist- that the Tardis wanted to steal the Doctor so that it could see the universe. In the pre-credits sequence, we even saw a Timelord emergency message cube, which hadn’t been seen on TV since The Wargames in 1969!

The Doctor meets the Tardis in human form. (Picture courtesy of the BBC)

All in all, this was a lovely story with a wonderful blend of whimsy, melancholy and fantasy, which was beautifully shot and acted, and it was wonderful to see more of the inside of the Tardis beyond the control room once again; corridors hadn’t been seen since the late eighties on TV- can we see some other rooms next?- and the life-affirming message at the end was truly heart warming. I loved this story, and I wouldn’t mind seeing Neil Gaiman running the series after Steven has enough, as he showed true affection for the show, and displayed incredible respect for the source material by adding to the mythos rather than stamping all over it as some authors would have unwittingly done. I didn’t think things could get any better until the next story put me right back on the edge of my seat.

In the early days of Tom Baker’s era, under the aegis of Phillip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes, we saw classic horror stories re-envisioned and re-told in a science fiction format that became legendary in the Who canon. The Mummy? I give you Pyramids Of Mars. Frankenstein? How about Brain Of Morbius or even Genesis Of The Daleks. The Thing From Another World? Seeds Of Doom.  Sometimes, Doctor Who worked at its’ very best when the source material was clearly shown, and when this happened, it worked best when giving a new slant to that material. By so doing, the viewer is at once familiar with the tropes that go with such a story, so making the premise of the tale easier to convey, and the new slant kept things fresh and innovative, and held the viewers’ attention.

In this modern world of cloning, virtual reality, and the struggle to define who we truly are, the rich vein of source material for The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People came from Blade Runner, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and John Carpenter’s The Thing. This was a wonderfully thrilling story that held my attention from the get-go, with not one, but two cliffhangers that more than did their job in leaving me wanting to see more. It was such a pity that the second cliffhanger, that made the bridge between this and the next story, promised so much yet gave so little in return by the time of the next episode; but while this lasted, this was definitely the highlight of the season so far, and I didn’t see the final twist coming despite how well it was signposted during the course of the story.

Classic base under siege in The Almost People. (Picture courtesy of the BBC)

With Amy in the Tardis revealed to be a Flesh doppelganger, we then saw that the real Amy was pregnant, and about to give birth in some hellish dystopia, and the eyepatch woman turned out to be the midwife from hell. That was the set-up, so we looked set to be in for a treat with the mid-series finale. After all the promises that everything would be revealed, and that we’d be in for a ‘game-changing’ cliffhanger by the end of the episode, I was expecting something rather more than what I actually got, and I’m well aware that I seem to be in the minority with this opinion.

In the past, there have been a few graphic novels- some of which that were made into successful films- that based themselves on the premise that several famous fictional characters from different books were not only in the same fictional universe, but had actually met and adventured together. In The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, we had Dorian Gray meeting The Invisible Man, Captain Nemo, Alan Quatermain and a host of other Victorian legends. It must have seemed a good idea, then, to bring together as many disparate characters as possible within the Whoniverse, and put them into one big spectacular. Moffat had experimented with this in The Pandorica Opens, and not afraid of re-using a trope before, decided to do this again in A Good Man Goes To War.

Instead of a rattling good adventure, what I got was a rather over-egged pudding that left me with a decidedly bad taste in my mouth.  In the opening pre-credits sequence, we were treated to our first glimpse of proper Cybermen since Silver Nemesis, which were basically the same Cybermen we’d had since 2006, with the Cybus logo removed from their chest plates. Despite being given back their scare factor last year, they were treated as nothing more than cannon-fodder, while the Doctor blew up their battle fleet as a kind of  ‘or else’ threat while Rory desperately searched for Amy. As the episode progressed, we saw Amy’s baby, named Melody Pond (Aha- melody = song, pond = river- how obvious!), and it became evident to me what the ‘big reveal’ was going to be at the end of the episode, so I am frankly surprised that so many people I’ve spoken to online didn’t actually see this right up until that moment.

There were so many ideas flying around the episode that would have been good in stories of their own; the Silurian swordslinger of Olde London Towne, the Sontaran having to serve as a battlefield nurse by way of penance, the Headless Monks, but all in one episode, they were a bit much to take in and all seemed to be vying for the viewers’ attention to the detriment of the storyline. (Why didn’t Rory tell the Sontaran that he was a nurse, too? That would have made the character see that nurses could fight with honour as well- I digress.) on top of all this, we even got a fleeting cameo by the Pirates Of The Gallifreyan, (A story of their own to set them up, all for less than a minute screen time.) and I must confess that my eyes rolled ceilingward when Danny Boy radioed in, and the x-wing fighters – sorry- Space Spitfires swooped in to hit the battletstion’s thermal exhaust port- sorry- communications array.

It’s one thing to pay homage to your source material- as in Pyramids Of Mars, or Brain Of Morbius, so long as the story has a unique enough slant to carry it off, but when you put something that’s obviously a steal from another oeuvre in a story, it tends to detract somewhat from the overall effect. The Headless Monks were a wonderful concept- a religious order that literally beheads all initiates- but when they began their attack with swords drawn, I found myself wondering whether Rory would use the force to defeat them, or the Doctor would throw a magic ring into the cracks of doom; the glowing electrical swords were a design step too far in my opinion.

The episode was set up to reveal River Song’s identity, and was hyped to indicate that the Doctor would be at his most powerful, yet suffer his greatest ever setback. River’s identity was suspected for a while before this episode, and became blatantly obvious to all bar those who weren’t paying attention before the climactic ‘big reveal’, and the great setback for the Doctor was that Amy’s baby was another Flesh duplicate, and although the armies of Sauron- sorry- order of Headless Monks were defeated, the Sontaran and a few other characters we’d been introduced fleetingly to had been killed. I somehow think that the climax of the Time War was a teensy bit bigger in terms of defeat; after all, the Doctor was left with no homeworld, and his greatest nemesis still persist in surviving. Although we now knew the truth about Amy’s baby and River’s identity, we were now left with some more unresolved questions; what the hell were the Silence, and what would happen when they fall? Who was the little girl at the start of the series, and how would the Doctor get out of being killed off by the impossible astronaut? Who was the ‘big bad’ that everyone seemed to be working for? I felt frustrated and somewhat cheated, because we’d been promised answers, and those were replaced with yet more questions.

To sum up then, the mid-season finale was, for me, rather anti-climactic and overblown, which was a shame of a way to end a series that has shown so much promise so far. The only two episodes that I felt fell short of the mark were The Curse Of The Black Spot and A Good Man Goes To War, and the rest were simply wonderful examples of how to update classic Doctor Who and add more to the mythos. I hope the series conclusion later this year lives up to those, and the final finale is not as much of a letdown as the mid-season one was.

I will add something by way of a postscript; it was wonderful to see a tribute to Lis Sladen at the start of episode one, as well as having a special documentary dedicated to her, but Nicholas Courtney, who had played just as big a part in Who history, has so far received not one mention. I hope this is rectified later in the year.

Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith.

Yesterday, I have to admit that words actually failed me when I heard the news about the tragic death of Elisabeth Sladen. Like many people of my age, I became a fan of Doctor Who when Jon Pertwee stumbled out of his Tardis to fight the Autons, and stayed with him and his companions, Liz Shaw, Jo Grant and Sarah Jane Smith, the Brigadier and the Master, until they became like a second family to me. Of those I mentioned, only Caroline John (Liz) and Katy Manning (Jo) survive, even series producer Barry Letts has gone, and a large swathe of my precious childhood years has all but gone forever. Tom Baker mentioned on his own website that he couldn’t believe Lis had gone, and neither can I; such was her dignity in keeping private things private that I think I can speak for many when I say that I didn’t even know she had cancer until it had taken her from us all too soon. She was only 63, which is no age really, and easily looked over ten years younger than that.

Lis as Sarah Jane Smith (Centre), with Matt Smith as the Doctor and Katy Manning as Jo Jones (Nee Grant) in The Sarah Jane Adventures. (Picture courtesy of the BBC)

Lis became the Doctor’s companion after the departure of Jo Grant in The Green Death, when we first met the ruthless Sontarans in The Time Warrior, and stayed with him beyond his regeneration into Tom Baker’s Doctor; and at once she became immensely popular with fans. Not a helpless screamer, she was feisty, liberated, courageous, determined and fiercely loyal, yet managed to have a charming vulnerability that won the hearts of dads all over the country. Of all the Doctor’s companions, it has to be said that Sarah Jane Smith has become the most popular and successful, and Sarah Jane it was who became the star of the first ever Doctor Who spin-off programme, K-9 And Company, despite the Doctor’s loveable metal mutt being the actual vehicle (Pardon the pun) of the show.

K-9 and Lis as Sarah Jane Smith, with a real canine friend in K-9 And Company. (Picture courtesy of the Radio Times)

In 1980 it was Tom’s time to leave Doctor Who, and series producer John Nathan Turner wanted Lis to return to the show to help fans get used to new Doctor Peter Davison, but she was unavailable at the time, yet eagerly reprised her role, together with K-9 in the 20th anniversary fun-fest The Five Doctors, which was all the more entertaining to see her reunited with Jon’s Doctor, and for the pair to resume their affectionate banter.

When Russell T Davies revived the series in 2005, few would have realised how far back he would mine the rich veins of Doctor Who history for the show, but in 2006, us old hands were rewarded with the episode School Reunion, in which David Tennant’s Doctor reunited us with Sarah Jane Smith and K-9. Such was the success of her reintroduction that she won a whole new generation of fans, and Russell realised that she would be a hit all over again. Effectively, he revived the K-9 And Company format, revitalised it, and created the hugely successful spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures. Thanks to this, Lis became the central character in not one, but two spin-off series for Doctor Who, and in 2008, she even teamed up with Torchwood in the Doctor Who finale The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End, which also saw Sarah Jane reunited with arch-enemy Davros.

The last time I saw her on-screen was in the SJA episode Death Of The Doctor, which also saw Katy Manning reprise her role as Jo Grant, now happily married since her Green Death Days as Jo Jones. It was a wonderful nostalgia fest for this old fan, and when Sarah mentioned other companions of the Doctor she’d found out about that were still out there, doing their bit, I swear I must have got something caught in my eye. That’s how I’d like to think of Sarah Jane Smith, and it would be wonderful in future episodes of Who if another former companion were to refer to her in the same way, “and then there’s Sarah Jane Smith- she does some amazing things, protecting the world from all sorts of dangers.”

If there’s a great hereafter, I’m sure that Barry Letts, Jon, Nick Courtney, Roger Delgado and Ian Marter are welcoming her with open arms, and there’s one hell of a UNIT reunion party going on right now. Goodbye Lis, and thank you- when you get to where you’re going, thank all of your friends too, for making my childhood and formative years so magic and wonderful and special.

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"A tear, Sarah Jane?" Yes, Doctor- loads of them, in fact... (Picture courtesy of the BBC)

At ease, Greyhound One- another childhood hero has departed.

As I mentioned over on Book Of Daze, I haven’t been posting regularly of late due to the ongoing course of medical tests I’ve had to undergo, and the news I received about my heart condition took a while to sink in, mainly because on the morning of the same day, I received news of the death of a long-standing hero of my childhood, namely the actor Nicholas Courtney, AKA Brigadier Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. Nicholas Courtney has the distinction of being the longest serving regular cast member of Doctor Who, and his portrayal of the Brigadier is the longest-serving companion that the Doctor ever had.

Nicholas Courtney as Space Security Agent Brett Vyon in The Dalek's Master Plan. (Picture courtesy of the BBC)

Nicholas began his Who career as Space Security Agent Brett Vyon in the 12-part epic The Dalek’s Master Plan opposite William Hartnell’s Doctor. It was opposite Pat Troughton’s Doctor that the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, or UNIT, made its’ debut, with Nicholas playing Colonel Lethbridge Stewart in The Web Of Fear. When Pat had to battle Cybermen in 60s London in The Invasion, the Colonel had been promoted to Brigadier, and remained a fan favourite ever since. I became a fan of Doctor Who during the Jon Pertwee years, when the Doctor was exiled to Earth and became the scientific advisor to UNIT, so the Brigadier, with his colleagues Captain Yates and Sergeant Benton, became old friends.

The Doctor explains a scientific device to the Brigadier. (Picture courtesy of the BBC)

The Brigadier has worked alongside every Doctor up until his eighth incarnation, as played by Paul McGann. He met the first Doctor during the anniversary special The Five Doctors, when Richard Hurdnall took up William Hartnell’s role, and met the sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) and the eighth Doctor during the series of  Big Finish audio adventures. on-screen, he appeared with Pat, Jon, Tom Baker, Peter Davison (Mawdryn Undead) and Sylvester McCoy (Battlefield).  He has even worked with David Tennant in a Big Finish story, although David was playing another officer from UNIT at that time.

Many fans have recalled memories that they have of meeting Nicholas at various conventions, and all of them speak with great fondness of his generosity of spirit, good humour and kindness. Although I don’t count myself as among that lucky number, I know from my experiences in the armed forces that his portrayal of the Brig was exactly like many officers I’ve met, and he managed to play the Brigadier with a wonderful balance of humour, wit and pomposity that managed to remain respectful to the armed services without detracting from his character. His final appearance was in the spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures, where the Brigadier, now retired, had been knighted for his service to Queen and country, and united with Sarah Jane Smith to repel yet another alien threat.

My favourite ‘Brig-isms’ have always been his calm, stiff-upper-lip delivery of the line “Jenkins- grey chap with wings there, five rounds rapid!” from The Daemons, his insistence that Omega’s world was somewhere in Cromer in The Three Doctors, and his utter defiance when faced with certain death in Battlefield, when he calmly drew his revolver and said “Get off my world!” to the alien menace. The Brigadier was a much-loved character from my childhood that always seemed to be there, and his absence is a terrible loss. I for one shall miss him enormously.

A Christmas Carol, or too much turkey? My Christmas special review.

“At last, however, he began to think — as you or I would have thought at first; for it is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too . . .”- Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.

Those were my initial thoughts upon witnessing Steven Moffat’s first Christmas special for Doctor Who. I thought them because there were several instances in the show where the Doctor’s actions made no sense, insofar as the characterisation of the Doctor was concerned- the Doctor did things in this episode that his previous incarnations would have baulked at, and this marred my enjoyment of the episode terribly. If I were the Doctor, I would have certainly known what ought to have been done, and done them. I shall go into greater detail in a moment, but for the moment, I will concentrate on the positives, so that the review is not overly swamped in negativity. I won’t bore you with a plot summary, as around 13 million of you saw it on the day, with more certainly to follow, so summary is redundant- you will all know what I’m referring to when I mention it, and let’s face it, most people that look for blog reviews like this only really do so because they want to see if the authors concerned have noticed something they haven’t, or seek to compare notes with a fellow viewer.

Visually, the production was stunning- the steampunk look and feel of the alien world was lavish, as was the realisation of the doomed starship- very Star Trek, especially the crew uniforms, and yet somehow the ship was also quirkily British sci-fi in execution, so perfectly appropriate for Doctor Who. The cast were superb- Michael Gambon and Matt Smith dominated every scene they were in, and Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill, for what scant screen time they got, played their parts well. Even opera chanteuse Katherine Jenkins, in her first acting role, acquitted herself well, especially since she was really cast because she has an amazing voice and looks easy on the eye. Given the material everyone had to work with, they put in a sterling effort, but I have to say- and I hate to admit this- that the material for this episode was sorely lacking.

The publicity picture for the 2010 Christmas Dr Who episode, A Christmas Carol. (Picture courtesy of the BBC)

A few fans on various Doctor Who boards around the net have remarked on one instance in the story, where Sardick (Gambon’s character) interacts with an earlier version of himself and makes physical contact by hugging him, which in previous series, notably Mawdryn Undead in Peter Davison’s era, would have had catastrophic consequences. This was a phenomena originally invented during the Jon Pertwee era that was called the Blinovitch Limitation Effect, for a story called The Day Of The Daleks, in which armed guerillas travel back to our time from the future to change the course of events that led to their dystopian world. Paradoxically, their actions actually caused the events they came back to change, and this was by way of explaining why someone cannot travel back along an established timeline to alter the outcome.

Blinovitch Limitation Effect aside, there was an armload of plot holes that I’m surprised no-one else on Gallifrey Base picked up- and I’m usually one of the few who doesn’t notice them. To stay with this episode and not confuse anyone further, I’ve listed them here.
1. It was stated early on that the Doctor couldn’t land the Tardis on the ship and evacuate everyone, as he couldn’t get a lock on the ship due to its’ collision speed. If so, why could he get a sufficient lock on the ship to transmit holograms from it to the planet surface, and from the planet surface to the ship? Also, at one point, he stated that 4003 people were in jeopardy, which went up to 4004 when Sardick’s hologram was transmitted aboard. Some posters on Gallifrey Base theorise that this is because Amy is pregnant, but the implication was clear- the Doctor meant to include Sardick, so he wasn’t a hologram- he was teleported aboard. Why waste all that time setting up holograms and mucking about with Sardick’s timeline, when you could use the teleport lock to teleport the passengers off, or teleport the Tardis on board the ship to evacuate people? Assuming that there was insufficient time for the passengers to board the Tardis, it’s perfectly possible to use the Tardis to manipulate time so as to ensure everyone gets aboard safely.

2. At the program’s beginning, it’s indicated that Sardick despises Christmas. During the course of the story, it’s revealed that the reason he despises Christmas is because he’s fallen in love with Abigail, a dying girl that he saw every Christmas Eve, and if he revives her one more time, she will die. This means that all the events at the beginning of the program were actually caused by the Doctor’s meddling, rather than his meddling being a solution to them.

3. The Doctor asks why Abigail’s counter is set to eight, yet fails to notice that it counts down each time she is revived to spend time with them. I don’t buy that, because he noticed the alignment of certain pictures in Sardick’s main study and deduced that he has issues based on that- so why did he overlook Abigail’s counter on subsequent occasions? Once he realised at the end that Abigail was dying, what stopped him from travelling back in time again, to a point soon after Abigail was frozen but before the counter had gone down significantly, so that he could take her into a future time where the technology existed to cure her, so that Sardick could still  fall in love with her and not live with the fact that she was dying? If the Doctor can’t go back over this event now because he’s already involved in it, then why was he able to go back over this event at the beginning of the story, when it’s clearly implicated that his actions were the cause of the situation in the first place? (See point 2)
This brings us back to the Blinovitch Limitation Effect before we even get to the younger Sardick being hugged by the older one- so what are we supposed to accept here, either the Blinovitch Limitation Effect (BLE) works and is applied here, or it’s thrown out of the window for the sake of story- you can’t have it both ways at once. You could argue that if the BLE is irrelevant, then what’s stopping the Doctor from landing the Tardis on that ship in a moment of time before the crash incident occurred, so that he can prevent that incident from happening, or rescue the passengers and crew? (See point 1)  Either time can be re-written or it can’t- it can’t work both ways at once. This was why the BLE was created in Day Of The Daleks in the first place, as viewers realised that the Doctor could potentially use the Tardis to go back over his own timeline to correct mistakes, like the guerillas, yet because of the BLE, the Doctor couldn’t do so, and also the Guerillas end up creating the circumstances they actually went back in time to avert in the first place. That was why the BLE was invented- it created a hard and fast rule that established the mechanics of the Doctor Who universe, and ensured that lazy scriptwriting could not allow the Doctor to perpetually jump back and forth across his own timelines in every episode, thus removing any instance of jeopardy, threat or thrills in the process. The Doctor was able to flout this rule in The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang purely because the universe had collapsed, so therefore all the usual rules of physics, (Including invented ones for the sake of the show) no longer applied. In an established universe, this cannot be the case- I will refer back to the importance of established rules further on.

4. The isomorphic controls. Frankly, an utterly stupid plot point- according to Wikipedia, isomorphic means:

 

Informally, an isomorphism is a kind of mapping between objects that shows a relationship between two properties or operations. If there exists an isomorphism between two structures, we call the two structures isomorphic. In a certain sense, isomorphic structures are structurally identical, if you choose to ignore finer-grained differences that may arise from how they are defined.

Essentially, from a technological standpoint, this means the controls can only be operated by someone with identical DNA to that which the system is set by- so why is a person’s morality now the deciding factor? not only that, but assuming this is the case for the sake of the plot, there are now implications inherent in what has now happened.

a) If the controls are dependent upon the operator’s morality, then as Sardick is the same person he was at the beginning of the show (Because the Doctor’s actions were the cause of his despising Christmas), then the controls should still work. If not, and we are supposed to believe that he’s changed in some way (When it’s actually quite evident that he hasn’t changed, or at least, he’s become the person we see at the show’s beginning because of the Doctor- he is the person whom the controls were set for- you see how paradoxical this is?) then why didn’t the Doctor suggest that he tell his younger self what to do, and let his younger self work the controls? Yes, his younger self comes from a timeline before the machine was set to respond to him, but in Moffat’s own continuity, his younger self is the one who is unchanged from the person he originally became, so has the right DNA and the right morality to be able to work them, and he’s now in a timeline where the machine is set to recognise his DNA and morality. Yet this doesn’t work as a plot device, because Sardick became the bitter Christmas hater due to the Doctor’s interference making him fall in love with Abigail. This whole conundrum is more hideously convoluted than any fandom debate on UNIT dating could ever be.

b) Assuming we accept all this, (Which logically we can’t, as it really doesn’t and shouldn’t work as a plot device) then this means the device is now redundant and useless, as Sardick can no longer operate it. So what happens in the future when another ship is caught up in the atmospheric storms and is doomed to crash? Countless thousands of future lives have been potentially destroyed just because the Doctor has changed this man for the sake of rescuing his friends. This goes against everything the Doctor once stood for, (And let’s ignore for the moment the equally morally abhorrent act of preserving a woman in a paving slab to become someone’s sex toy in Love And Monsters) as the Doctor would find a way to either make the machine work for Sardick once more, or fix the situation so that the machine would never be needed again. In the old days, the Doctor would have chosen the latter solution every time.

And I haven’t even touched on why he didn’t bother to rescue all the hundreds of other people frozen in Sardick’s vaults- again, this was swept aside for the sake of expediency, yet previous Doctors would never have ignored this. The sweeping aside of this plot point was particularly morally repugnant, and it would NEVER have been overlooked in classic Who.

5) The absurdity of how fish can ‘swim’ in the air despite their gills not being able to process oxygen from ice crystals rather than water, or sharks having vocal chords to growl, as that was frankly ludicrous to the extreme- why we couldn’t have had some exotic looking alien flying predators instead, I don’t know. Yes, in fantasy there can be a certain thrill of seeing the mundane in the most unusual of places, but only when they obey certain laws and conventions we know apply to them, which makes them what they are, and helps us to believe and accept their reality in this context. Statues coming to life are scary, and silicon-based alien lifeforms are not new, but the idea of having them appear as angel statues that one would normally see in graveyards popping up where you’d least expect them was genius. Similarly, the Autons- having a lifeform that could manipulate or live within plastic meant that we could have people eaten by inflatable sofas, killed by telephone cables or assassinated by mannequins- all were terrifying because they obeyed the conventions we would usually expect of them, until they attacked. Fish do not live out of water, nor can they vocalise, so any surprise of seeing them in the sky rendered them effectively absurd rather than a source of wonder. With regard to this, it’s interesting to consider something JRR Tolkien wrote in his famous essay, On Fairy Stories about the question of consistency and believability in fantasy:

“What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful “subcreator”. He makes a secondary world which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is “true”; it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore beleive it while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken: the magic, or rather the art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside..”

In other words, an invented fantasy world has to have an internal consistency (just like this one has) for the reader or viewer to be able to suspend disbelief. Even in fantasy worlds that are based around magic, there are laws that have to be obeyed. Airbourne fish clearly do not obey any natural laws, (And the throwaway lines in the plot to attempt to explain them didn’t explain any of the reasons why fish cannot function out of water,) so suspension of disbelief is shattered, along with the illusion. This was further shattered when one of the shows’ hard and fast internal rules was also ignored- I’m referring again to doctor Blinovitch and his amazing Limitation Effect.

6) Lack of consistency with the visual effects meant that the Doctor was complaining at one point of the fish biting his neck- yet there were no fish to be seen. Either the FX team forgot to put them in, or there was another reason as to why he felt something nipping his neck, yet if there was, no explanation was given in the script. Either the FX team goofed, or Moffat goofed at the scriptwriting stage. Given the sheer volume of plot holes, I suspect the latter- although given how everything was set to eleven with this story, I won’t be surprised if anyone else on the production team got careless and forgot. This instance aside, the closing shots, in HD clarity, showed the Doctor standing outside the Tardis in the snow, his hair peppered with snowflakes that were quite obviously made from polystyrene, as were the snowmen, which looked so fake as to be shipped in from the nearest Santa’s grotto. At least on the Oodsphere, they actually used a real snow machine- and that one wasn’t a Christmas special.

Not only that, this is now two Christmas specials that have featured a blonde singer and a doomed space ship, in stories that were pastiches of other stories. With Voyage Of The Damned we got The Poseidon Adventure, and with this one, at least they gave the title of what the source material was. Of the two, I prefer Voyage, to be honest- and they didn’t even let Kylie sing!

I say all this as someone who has, up until now, rated Moffat’s material as among the best of modern Who, and who thinks that Matt is the best Doctor of modern times. I don’t blame Matt one bit for any of this- all the cast did sterling work with the material they had, but the whole was so much less than the sum of its parts, and the blame there must be laid squarely on Moffat’s shoulders. I was really looking forward to this story, and it proved to be such a let-down once it went to air. I sincerely hope that next years’ series will put this right, and that we’re in for a televisual treat once more, but in honesty, for me doubt has begun to creep in…

Series fnarg ends with a (big) bang- the conclusion of my 2010 season review.

So, without further ado, it’s time for me to complete my review of the 2010 series of Doctor Who. After Vincent And The Doctor, I was somewhat apprehensive about the ‘next time’ teaser, that indicated the next episode would feature James Corden. Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the guy, but the various comedies I’ve seen him in (Which, I will freely admit are not many) didn’t particularly inspire me at all. I had a bad feeling that the next episode would be more of a disappointment than the Van Gogh one, and I was hoping against hope that the next episode would prove me wrong on that score. Hope springs eternal, and in this case I wasn’t disappointed.

Episode 11- The Lodger.

The wonderful thing about Doctor Who is that it’s not a format set in stone, and it can be used to tell literally any kind of story. Horror? I give you The Brain Of Morbius, State Of Decay, The Horror Of Fang Rock and The Curse Of Fenric to name but a few. Historical stories? Marco Polo, The Crusades and The Aztecs for starters. Space opera? The Space Pirates, and any one of a number of stories in the Who pantheon. Dang it, we’ve even had fantasy and westerns. Anything will work, even comedy.

Yep, Doctor Who has actually played some episodes in the past strictly for laughs, and when they work, they work fantastically well. Take The Romans as an example, a kind of Who homage to ‘A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum’ meets ‘Carry On Caesar’; a classic example of the comedic stories we used to love in the past, that were usually done to break up the intense schedules of the 1960s seasons, and give both the cast and the audience a break in the proceedings, before giving the viewers a dramatic story they can really get their teeth into.

The Lodger is a perfect modern example of this particular genre, a story that fits into the Who pantheon, has a storyline that makes sense, (i.e. is not based around a silly premise engineered to generate the humour) and has dialogue and character interaction that can reduce the viewer to fits of laughter. The story opens when the Doctor attempts to land the Tardis, but for some reason, he is thrown out as it dematerialises. There is something in the area that is causing disruptions in the space-time continuum, which is preventing the Tardis from landing properly. Amy is stuck inside, and the Doctor must find the cause of this anomaly, so that he can get Amy to land.

The Doctor creates mayhem as The Lodger. (Picture courtesy of the BBC.)

James Corden plays Craig Owens, an affable yet shy single bloke who lives in a ground floor flat and works in a call centre. His friend Sophie (Psychoville’s Daisy Howard) visits often, and Craig finds himself falling in love with her, although he’s too shy to actually come out and tell her. What doesn’t help is that he’s the stay-at-home type, while Sophie dreams of travelling around the world. Craig needs a flatmate to help pay the rent, but no-one seems to answer his advert. You see, there’s a strange damp stain on the ceiling that seems to be growing bigger, and there are mysterious sounds and lights coming from the flat upstairs. Naturally enough, no-one has shown any interest so far. Until now. The Doctor arrives on the doorstep, with several month’s worth of rent in a brown paper bag, a manic grin, and a willingness to move in straight away.

What none of them has noticed so far is that when the house is empty, mysterious voices beckon passers-by into the house via the intercom, where they climb the stairs to the first floor flat and disappear. Essentially, the source of the humour for this story lies in the Doctor’s attempts to blend in with human society; when he turned up on Craig’s doorstep, his facial expression was such that he could have been wearing a floppy hat and a 20 foot long scarf, and I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. This was an example of the Doctor as a truly alien being that we hadn’t really seen properly since Tom Baker’s heyday.

As if that wasn’t enough, we got an homage to Peter Davison’s era as well, when the Doctor got the chance to excell at sports. Davison was a keen cricketer, which was reflected in his costume, and he got the chance to indulge in his passion during a cricket match in Black Orchid. This time around, Matt Smith, who once played footie in several youth squads until a back injury scuppered his potential professional career, got the chance to play football (“Football- that’s the game with the sticks, isn’t it?”) for Craig’s sunday league side- in a number 11 shirt, natch.

As the episode progressed, the Doctor discovered that the space-time anomaly was caused by an abandoned tardis-like craft, that had landed on the roof of Craig’s flat. It’s perception-filter disguise was such that it convinced Craig and anyone else passing by that the house had, in fact, two storeys, and the flight computer was looking for a replacement pilot to help the craft leave. So far, every person that had been lured upstairs had not been suitable- no-one had the desire to travel, which the computer needed. That is, until Sophie went upstairs…

The Doctor was not only able to save the day, but in the process managed to bring Craig and Sophie together, allowing the Tardis to land properly at last. There was a neat twist at the end which foreshadowed the next episode; the Doctor had to travel back in time a few days, to get Amy to put an advert in the same shop window where the flat vacancy appeared, to show the Doctor where to go at the episode’s start. While rummaging in the Doctor’s pocket for a pen, Amy discovers the box containing Rory’s engagement ring…

Overall, I loved this story. After the disappointment of the previous week’s episode, this was a welcome breath of fresh air, and all the more pleasant because it was much better than I’d expected it to be. James Corden was perfectly cast as Craig, and the dialogue between him and the Doctor produced nuggets of pure comedy that had me in fits of giggles. The story worked, both as a Doctor Who story, and as a comedy; where The Romans worked because it parodied the sword-and-sandals epics of the sixties, this worked because it was a perfect parody of the men-behaving-badly genre of today. The ending was perfectly paced, and nicely set up the premise for the grand finale.

Episodes 12 & 13, The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang.

As finales go, this two-parter was altogether a different animal from what we’ve gotten used to so far. The idea of a series story-arc in new Dr. Who is a familiar one, and where before it was hinting at the series’ ‘big bad’ via word clues in the series, like ‘Bad Wolf’, ‘Torchwood’ or ‘Saxon’, or with series 4, linking together the missing planets of the various protagonists, this one was altogether more complex and subtle. Yes, there was the visual clues of the cracks appearing, but there were other things as well. For one, nearly every character the Doctor met during this series had a bearing on the set-up of the finale story, and for another, there were snippets of dialogue throughout that hinted at what the Doctor had to do to solve the problem- all of which came together rather neatly during the closing stages.

Not only that, but unlike in previous series, the story arc continues on to the following year. Where the ‘big bad’ would be revealed and dispatched in previous finales, with this one we may get a resolution for the exploding tardis causing the cracks in time, but the cause of this event has not yet been revealed, and also seems to have a hand in the series prophecy of ‘silence will fall’, which, although announced, hasn’t happened yet. It’s very rare that a series will answer most questions, then leave you with more at the conclusion than the start, unless you’re watching the excellent Life On Mars/Ashes To Ashes programmes.

For another thing, the pre-title segment of the first episode was easily the longest one in the history of the new series so far, clocking up a respectable 11 minutes. The story begins back in 1890s France, where Vincent Van Gogh is in the throes of a particularly bad bout of depression. The reason is that he’s made a new painting- one that predicts something terrible, and which he’s painted as a warning to his distant friends, the Doctor and Amy. Later on, in war-torn Britain, Bracewell alerts Churchill that the troops in France have found a painting which only the two of them can understand- that the Doctor is in trouble, and he needs to be warned straight away.

Churchill telephones the Doctor, but instead gets put through to the Storm cage prison facility in the 51st century, where River Song is imprisoned. She accepts Churchill’s message, and sets off to escape the prison, secure a vortex manipulator bracelet, and seek out the painting in her timeline. She meets up with Liz 10 on Starship UK, who says that the painting is in her personal collection, and when she hears Rivers’ story, gives the painting to her. When she looks at the painting, the gravity of the situation is clear- Vincent has painted a picture of the Tardis exploding, and on the external telephone door, there is unusual writing, which River recognises as time and spatial co-ordinates.

That’s an episode in itself, but that was just the pre-title sequence! River decides to inform the Doctor by leaving a message carved in the oldest mountain range in the universe; a nod to Douglas Adams, one-time contributor to Doctor Who and author of the famous Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy franchise. Instead of ‘We Apologise For The Inconvenience’, what we read instead was something only the Tardis could translate, an enigmatic message that baffled archaeologists the galaxy over- a message that read ‘Hello Sweetie’, followed by time and spatial co-ordinates, as well as the symbols Theta Sigma- the Doctor’s nickname in the Prydonian Academy, as classic fans will remember from Sylvester McCoy’s day.

The Doctor and Amy end up meeting River in ancient Britain, in 102 AD at the height of the Roman occupation. It seems that the Pandorica, dismissed by the Doctor as a fairytale, is only too real, and exists beneath Stonehenge. Taking horses from the Roman legion, the Doctor, River and Amy ride off to the site to investigate. Amy still has Rory’s ring in her pocket, and while the Doctor examines the Pandorica, she questions him about it. The Pandorica is a huge black metal box, which, according to legend, houses the deadliest being in the universe. “A warrior, a goblin or a trickster, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies.” And when the trio arrive, the raised carvings on the side glow green and rotate. The Pandorica is about to open.

The next five minutes does more for the new versions of the Cybermen than the entire five episodes they appeared in before. As the Doctor examines the Pandorica, Amy is attacked by a dismembered Cyberman head- a guardian of the box that was destroyed earlier. The human brain inside is dead, so the cybernetic circuitry is looking for a new command processor. The neck sprouts metallic tentacles, as the head opens, giving children all over the country a real ‘BOO!’ moment, as a human skull falls out, while the face-plate snaps at Amy like a demented Pac-Man. Reinforcements arrive to help the Doctor; a detachment of Roman guards, one of which is Rory. It seems that when the crack consumed him, he was dead- but he found himself somehow alive, Roman, and in 102 AD. While all this is happening, River informs the Doctor that her scanner is detecting all kinds of activity in the skies above Stonehenge. Millions of ships are converging- a roll-call of aliens from series past; Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, Drahvins, Draconians, you name ‘em, they were there.

With the tension ratchetted up to the nth degree, Steven Moffat then threw the final twist in what was a perfect climax for the episode. While the Doctor believes they are there to fight over the Pandorica, he also believes that somehow this is all to do with Amy, and the clues are back in her house. River runs off to the Tardis to investigate, while Rory and Amy begin to get to know each other again. In Amy’s house, River discovers the horrifying truth- by Amy’s bed, among all the raggedy doctor dolls she made, there are two books. One, the legend of Pandora’s box, the other a history of Roman Britain- with the Roman on the front cover having exactly the same face as the legion commander!

As this discovery is made and relayed back to the Doctor, the Pandorica opens, and reveals… an empty chair. Then things get interesting. The Doctor is surrounded by Roman soldiers, Daleks, Judoon, Cybermen and Sontarans, as well as Silurians and several other creatures. The Romans are actually Auton duplicates, as is Rory- and they are all there because they believe the Doctor will destroy the universe by blowing up the Tardis. Rory cannot resist his Auton programming, and kills Amy, while the alliance of aliens, ignoring the Doctor’s desperate pleas, imprison him in the Pandorica. The whole thing, it is revealed, is an elabourate trap, conceived from Amy’s mind in a way that the Doctor simply could not refuse to investigate.

The episode ends in the ultimate cliffhanger; River tries desperately to fly the Tardis back to the Doctor, when it starts to self-destruct as a sinister voice announces “The Pandorica has opened- silence will fall!” Rory cradles Amy in his arms and weeps while the aliens all depart, with the Doctor in the Pandorica, the Tardis going foom, and the resultant cracks in every point in time erasing every star at every point in history. What the aliens tried to prevent has happened by their own devices- the episode ends with a balletic shot of the Earth and Moon drifting through space to music that sounds like Cavallero Rusticana (Cavallero Pandoricana?) as the universe around it flies apart. Amy is dead, Rory is helpless, the Doctor is imprisoned, the Tardis is exploding, and the universe is coming to an end. How the HELL do they get out of that? To further ram home the impact of this dilemma (and not spoil the surprises for the next week) we were denied a ‘next time’ teaser-trailer. If the series ended forever right there, it would be the ultimate send-off for Doctor Who. Bloody hell, what a ride!

The Pandorica opens yet again for young Amelia in The Big Bang. (Picture courtesy of the BBC.)

In series’ past, finales were epic on a grand scale, with the last episode upping the scale so that we were swamped in special effects, and awed by the sheer number of alien menaces on the screen. It’s a testimony to Steven Moffat’s writing skill that the last episode does away with all that, yet still remains epic until the end. This episode had all the action happening on a personal level- no vast alien armies to conquer, and everything hinging on self-sacrifice, memory and belief.

The first twenty minutes of the programme managed to be as awesome as they were crazy and funny. The episode began, not with Rory and the Doctor, but with young Amelia, just as we’d seen her in The Eleventh Hour, making her prayer to Santa. This time, nothing happens though- no raggedy Doctor. Instead, we then see her the next day, painting the night sky, and perplexing her family by painting stars, when it is quite evident to everyone that stars don’t exist anymore. The stars in this version of the universe, you see, have never existed in the first place, having been wiped from existence and memory by the exploding Tardis, which now serves as earth’s sun. But what’s this? A leaflet pops through the door, advertising a new exhibition in the national museum. The Pandorica. There’s a note attached. “You should come and see this, Pond.” At the museum, she is informed by mysterious notes to wait until everyone has gone, and when the place is empty, she touches the Pandorica, and it opens, revealing… Amy. Alive.

How we actually got to this situation was the crazy and funny part. In a sequence that is as crazy as it sounds to describe, it is the Doctor himself that engineers his own escape, by giving Rory his sonic screwdriver after jumping back to 102 AD from the future. Once free, the Doctor then uses River’s vortex manipulator to jump to the future, after placing Amy in the Pandorica- then jumps back to just before this moment in order to give Rory his sonic screwdriver. It’s an impossible situation called a closed-loop paradox, which Stsven last used as the solution to the Tardis malfunction in the Children In Need special Timecrash. (“You remembered being me, watching you do that!”) While the Doctor heads off to the future to deal with Amy’s revival and the exploding Tardis, Rory- his ‘lifespan’ extended indefinitely due to his being a plastic Auton- elects to stay on guard over the Pandorica through the millennia, to ensure Amy’s safety.

The Pandorica, being the perfect prison, keeps its’ occupants alive by using a restoration field. With Amykept in perfect preservation within, all the Pandorica needs is a sample of her living DNA to restore her to life. This is provided by young Amelia, touching the Pandorica in the museum. Once this has been established, the Doctor then has to jump back in time to engineer the whole thing, using a museum leaflet to drop through Amy’s door, and even, hilariously, relieving Amelia’s thirst by snatching her own carton of drink from her when she first enters the museum- the action which initially causes her thirst.

There’s an awful lot of jumping forward and back here, which reminded me of the crazy bits at the climax of Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure, when they escape imprisonment by surmising that they could get away when some item is placed just so, only to discover that it has been, and then reminding themselves that they have to go back in time to leave this item there in the first place, once everything is sorted out. To add to the mayhem, in the museum are two stone Daleks- afterimages of the Dalek race, petrified by the Pandorica when the cracks in time erased them from existence. Once the Pandorica opens, its’ light bathes one of them, which reactivates and sets off after the Doctor, Amy and Amelia.

This one Dalek was far scarier than the whole army of them we were treated to at the end of series 4. While the Doctor realises that the sun is in fact the Tardis exploding, keeping itself in a perpetual timeloop, the trio- now reduced to two as Amelia fades out of existence due to the rapidly collapsing timeline- are pursued relentlessly through the museum by the ruthless stone Dalek. This causes all manner of problems for our heroes, as they are greeted by another version of the Doctor who jumps back to their time from 12 minutes in the future, apparently dying from the Dalek’s exterminator gun. The alien menace is eventually dispatched by River Song, now rescued from the exploding Tardis, who even manages to get the monster to beg for mercy before delivering the coup de grace. Blimey- just who the hell can she be to have that effect on a Dalek?

The episodes’ climax was rivetting viewing, as the Doctor realises that the universe can be saved from collapsing by using the Pandorica’s restoration field to re-boot it, by extrapolating the molecules of matter preserved inside it, and injecting them at every point in time simultaneously via the exploding Tardis. To do this, the Doctor has to pilot the thing himself, hotwiring rivers’ vortex manipulator to the Pandorica- knowing full well that in doing so, he will not only die, but erase himself from living memory. As he is now the Doctor from 12 minutes in the future (Now the present, as 12 minutes of the episode have passed- do try to keep up!) he is dying anyway, so this will be his final act in more way than one.

The rest of the episode was pure genius, and more moving for its’ subtlety than any over-emotional scenes from series past. With the universe re-booted, the Doctor’s own timeline unravels, as he rewinds back upon himself- at one point popping back to Amy in the forest of the Byzantium, to tell her to remember what he told her when she was seven. This explained the very tight shot of this very scene during Flesh And Stone, in which some eagle-eyed viewers managed to spot that the Doctor still wore his jacket despite having it torn off by an Angel only minutes before- and some uncharitable souls thought this was a continuity error!

Before finally stepping through the crack and closing it, he arrives in 7-year-old Amelia’s garden, where she lays asleep on her suitcase after having waited in vain for the return of the raggedy Doctor back in The Eleventh Hour proper. Taking her back to bed, he then speaks to her gently as she sleeps. Matt’s acting in this sequence was faultless- he really managed to carry off the idea of a very aged man accepting his fate with dignity. It was as moving as it was beautifully scripted. The closing dialogue is worth quoting in full…

“When you wake up, you’ll have a Mum and Dad. And you won’t remember me. Well, you’ll remember me a little. I’ll be a story in your head. That’s OK, we’re all stories in the end. Just make it a good one. Cos it was, you know. It was the best. A daft old man who stole a magic box and ran away. Did I ever tell you that I stole it? Well, borrowed it; I was always gonna give it back someday. Oh, that box, Amy. You’ll dream about that box. It’ll never leave you. Big and little at the same time. Brand new and ancient. And the bluest blue ever. And the times we had. Woulda had. Never had. In your dreams they’ll still be there. The Doctor and Amy Pond. And the days that never came.  The cracks are closing. But they can’t close properly ’til I’m on the other side. I don’t belong here any more. I think I’ll skip the rest of the rewind. I hate repeats. Live well. Love Rory. Bye bye Pond.”

Not. A. Dry. Eye. In. The. House. No disrespect to David Tennant, but I don’t honestly think the emotions his Doctor conveyed would do justice to this in the way that Matt’s Doctor did- this was quiet dignity, and a man resigned to his fate, not someone raging against the night- and it was all the more moving to me because of that. With this description of the Tardis, we were reminded of something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue- the traditional trappings of a wedding, and the episode ended at Amy’s wedding to the now fully restored and human Rory, with her parents- now never having been consumed by the crack- there to give her away. Naturally enough, through the prompting of a mystery guest’s gift (River Song’s now blank diary), Amy now remembers the Doctor, and, because time can be re-written (As the Doctor discovered in Flesh And Stone), her remembering of the Doctor brings him back to existence, and back into Rory’s memory as well. (“I was plastic- and he was the stripper!”)

With our hero restored, the wedding gave us some hysterical moments as the Doctor tried to dance, and concluded with our heroes now zooming back off into space and time for the Christmas episode. I cannot state how much I like this episode enough- I will even go so far as to say that this story was possibly the best one I’ve ever seen, from the classic or the modern series. All at once I was satisfied at the resolution, entertained, enthralled, moved, and left begging for more just as it all ended- and that cliffhanger was fantastic. I don’t think that can ever be topped- and we have yet to discover the person or being behind the sinister voice in the tardis that actually caused the explosion in the first place, or the exact nature of what will happen when ‘silence will fall’. I have a feeling that next year will be just as much of a roller-coaster ride as this year. As to the ‘big bad’? My money’s on Omega…

OK, to conclude, and for those of you who love lists, here’s my ratings for the series, in marks out of ten:

• The Eleventh Hour, 9.5/10
• The Beast Below, 9/10
• Victory Of The Daleks, 8.5/10
• The Time Of Angels/Flesh And Stone, 10/10
• The Vampires Of Venice, 8/10
• Amy’s Choice, 7.5/10
• The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood, 9/10
• Vincent And The Doctor, 6/10
• The Lodger, 9/10
• The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang, 10/10

So there you have it- all in all, a stonker of a series, and as far as I’m concerned, the future of Doctor Who is in safe hands with the grand Moff at the producion helm. Now roll on Christmas!

Series fnarg continues- part two of my 2010 season review.

Now that I’m back from my sabbatical, and my Doctor Who reviews now have a shiny new site all their own, here are the reviews for the middle part of the 2010 series (31, 1, 5 or fnarg, delete where applicable.) So, without further ado, let’s KBO, shall we?

Episode 6- Vampires Of Venice.

The episode began soon after where Flesh And Stone left off, when the Doctor gatecrashed Rory’s stag party in hilarious fashion, by emerging from a cake and totally surprising Rory and his friends, who were expecting a stripper to appear. (“There’s a lady in a bikini outside, who’s getting rather cold.”) Before he could fully comprehend what had happened, Rory was inside the Tardis, and being whisked off into time and space. Meanwhile, in renaissance Venice, Guido the boat builder has fallen on hard times, and in a desperate bid to secure a future for his daughter Isabella, has enrolled her in a ladies’ finishing school run by the sinister Signora Calvieri. The ladies in this school unnerve Guido, as they shun direct sunlight, wearing robes and cowls when outdoors, and they remain aloof and distant, as does Isabella once she is accepted by the school.

The sinister ladies of the House Calvieri, in The Vampires Of Venice. (Picture courtesy of the BBC.)

Into the middle of all this arrives the Tardis, as the Doctor naively thinks a holiday in the most romantic city in the world will help persuade Amy to focus her attentions on her fiance Rory once more. Needless to say, the three adventurers soon meet Guido, and help him attempt to rescue his daughter from the clutches of Signora Calvieri. She and her son, it transpires, are creatures from the planet Saturnyne; predatory aquatic beings that resemble large irridescent crayfish, which use perception filters to assume the guise of human form. These filters do not work in mirrors or change the appearance of the creatures’ teeth, hence they leave no reflection, and create the impression that their human form is vampiric in nature.

The ladies’ school is a front, in which the Saturnyne race- almost entirely male, and residing in the Venetian canals- hope to capture and convert enough human females with which to mate and colonise the Earth.  Saturnyne disappeared into a crack in time some years ago, and the Doctor learns that this is the same crack that has been following him and Amy so far, and, chillingly, he also learns that Signora Calvieri heard silence on the other side of the crack- hinting at the prophecy made by Prisoner Zero earlier in the series- “The Pandorica will open, and silence will fall.”

With her plans for human conversion thwarted, Signora Calvieri decides to destroy Venice utterly, by activating a device atop the tower of the house of Calvieri- a device that will overwhelm Venice with earthquakes and tsunamis. As the Doctor climbs the tower to deactivate the device, Calvieri realises that all is lost, and offers herself as a living sacrifice to the remaining Saturnyne in the canals before they are destroyed in the ensuing chaos. As the trio return to the Tardis, the Doctor is unnerved as everything goes completely silent, and he remembers what prisoner Zero and Signora Calvieri have said, that the silence will fall.

All in all, this story was quite entertaining, and displayed all the wit and humour that its’ writer, Toby Whithouse, employs in the BBC series ‘Being Human’. Arthur Darvill, who plays Rory, worked really well with Matt and Karen, and the three make a great Tardis crew, with Rory providing much of the humour and banter, both in his lines, and the way in which he reacts to the others. At times, I felt as if I was back in the days of Pat Troughton, with Ben and Polly, such was the impression they all made- and no bad thing. The series had now reached the halfway mark, which usually marks a change in the momentum heralding the build-up to the series finale.

Episode 7- Amy’s Choice.

This episode began seemingly five years from now, when Amy and Rory have married and settled down. Amy is pregnant, and they have both moved to Upper Leadworth, just as the Doctor lands the Tardis in their front garden to make a social call on his friends. As they relive old adventures, they discover that the old people of Leadworth have been possessed by alien parasites called Eknodyne, which can turn their victims into dust by breathing on them. All is not as it seems as they uncontrollably fall into a deep sleep, when the scene abruptly changes back into the Tardis in this time, where the Tardis crew are confronted by a sneering little man who calls himself the Dreamlord. Dressed in a similar fashion to the Doctor, he has a haughty disdain for the Doctor and his friends, and informs them that the Tardis is on a collision course, set by him, with a cold star- but there’s a catch. One of the realities they have experienced is real, the other is a construction of the Dreamlords’, yet in both scenarios, they face certain death. If they die in the constructed reality, they can wake up in the real one, and avert disaster. If the die in the real reality, they die. Which do they choose?

The Dreamlord confronts the Tardis crew in Amy's Choice. (Picture courtesy of the BBC.)

The peril in both realities increases, as the Eknodyne hunt them down in Leadworth, and the Tardis controls ice up as the temperature drops below zero. The Dreamlord continues to taunt them all, one by one, and eventually separates Amy from the rest, asking her which of her friends would she choose between- her fiance Rory, or the Doctor. Rory offers dependability and safety, yet the Doctor offers adventure and mystery. As she ponders over this conundrum, she is returned to Leadworth, where Rory is attacked and destroyed by the Eknodyne while trying to protect her. Realising that she cannot accept a world without Rory, she denies this reality, and persuades the Doctor to help her crash a van into her house, killing them both.

They all wake up back in the Tardis, which is now covered in ice, and Amy finally confesses her love for Rory. The Doctor, however, realises that this reality cannot be real either- stars do not burn ‘cold’, and a slippery character like the Dreamlord would be the kind of person that would offer a choice between two realities, while hiding a third, which must logically be the real one. Knowing this, he sets the Tardis to self-destruct, killing them all, where they awaken in the real world at last. What has happened, it seems, is that psychic pollen has found its’ way into the time rotor of the tardis and heated up, creating the Dreamlord and their alternative realities from the darkest recesses of their minds. The Doctor is particularly chilled by the Dreamlord, as it seems his darker side is a little darker than most.

This story was entertaining in places, although I personally felt that the sudden realisation of the third reality came a little too abruptly, and gave me the impression that the writer, Simon Nye, had found himself in a narrative corner that only this solution could get him out of. If there had been hints at this third alternative throughout the episode, I think this would have worked better; although I suspect that the Doctor, in wanting Amy to accept Rory, had intentionally planted the psychic pollen in order to create the whole scenario. If my suspicion is correct, this wasn’t hinted at at all in the dialogue. Overall, while not a bad story as such, this could have been much better with appropriate dialogue to better suggest what I think the story was hinting at. From seeing his work in Men Behaving Badly and Reggie Perrin, I know that good dialogue is Simon Nye’s forte, but for me, this was ultimately a disappointing episode from him. I have an idea as to why this is, so I shall return to this when I get to Episode 10.

Episodes 8 & 9- The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood.

This two-parter was written by Chris Chibnall, which had many fans nervous, as his work on Torchwood didn’t appear to be what they felt would be appropriate for Doctor Who. I can’t see why really, as the episodes he wrote for Torchwood include Countrycide, Exit Wounds and Fragments, which are among my favourites of the first two series. He also wrote the Doctor Who episode 42 from series three, which I rather liked. As this story heralded the long-awaited return of the Silurians, I was rather looking forward to this, and I wasn’t disappointed. The Tardis arrives in the Welsh village of Cwmtaff in 2020, where a deep drilling project is in operation, and graves in a nearby graveyard have been emptied- from below- while the grass is stained blue. The drilling has awakened a colony of Silurians, and the militant warrior caste are determined to rid the Earth of that upstart ape called Man. Surrounding the village with a force barrier, they send some warriors up to look around.

A squad of Silurians, from Cold Blood. (Picture courtesy of the BBC.)

During proceedings, one of the Silurians is captured, but not before lashing out at one of the humans with a venomous tongue, and one of the humans on the drilling project is also taken prisoner. When Amy is also captured, it’s up to the Doctor and Nasreen Chaudhry, the drilling project boss, to go down below to broker a peace treaty. By the time he arrives in the underground city, he realises the scale of the situation. Where before he’d seen Silurians in small groups, as in Doctor Who And The Silurians, The Sea Devils and Warriors Of The Deep, here was an entire city of thousands, perhaps millions, of homo reptilia awakening from stasis.

As with the original Silurians and Sea Devils, there were differences between these beings and the ones we’d seen before- species differences, not unlike those between the various types of dinosaur they once shared the planet with, which gave the make-up department a chance to break away from the old latex jumpsuits we’d seen in the Pertwee and Davison days. There were superficial resemblances- the same bony crests on the head, and face masks worn over their own faces that looked like an updated Sea Devil design, and the prosthetic face make-up was incredible. Gone was the third eye above the head, and instead we had a chameleon-like tongue that could lash out, lightning-fast, to sting their victims. The new makeup allowed the actors to convey facial expressions that the old costumes simply could not, and this made them look much more believable as a result.

Luckily for the Doctor, the Silurian leader Eldane has been woken, and once reunited with Amy, the Doctor presides over a peace negotiation between Human and Silurian; Eldane representing the Silurians, and Amy and Nasreen representing Humankind. As before, the Silurians are split into factions- those that want to co-operate in peace, and those who want to wipe out the apes. Things start to go awry topside, when the Silurian captive Alaya, goads Ambrose, the daughter of the man she stung, until she is killed by Ambrose with a tazer. Not content with this, she then persuades Tony to set the drilling rig to destroy the Silurian city after a 15-minute delay, so that she can force the Silurians to release their hostages- one of which is her husband. When the time comes to exchange hostages and Restac discovers Alaya’s death, she then decides to mount a coup against Eldane, and then wipe out humanity as soon as power is hers.

Eldane helps the Doctor and his friends escape, while using gas to cut off and neutralise Restac’s troops while using Silurian technology to destroy the drilling rig. He then decides to put his people back into hibernation for 1,000 years, until both races are able to accept each other, and the Doctor encourages the humans to pass on their knowledge via legend, so that humanity will be ready when the time comes. Tony Mack, the victim of Alaya’s sting, can only be cured by Silurian technology, so Eldane offers for him to join them in hibernation, and Nasreen elects to join him, now realising that she loves him, and she also hopes to help the Silurians understand humanity better.

Meanwhile, Restac manages to find a way to intercept the Doctor and his friends, and manages to shoot and kill Rory before succumbing to gas poisoning. Rory now has the dubious distinction of being the only companion to die twice in the history of Doctor Who- and within the space of one series, to boot. As if that wasn’t enough, the crack appears in the cavern wall, and the Doctor realises that it must be the result of some kind of explosion- and with any explosion, there is shrapnel. Maybe by examining the shrapnel, he can get an idea of what caused the explosion, so he reaches in and grabs a piece, wrapping it in cloth. The crack eventually consumes Rory’s body, and the Doctor then drags a now hysterical Amy into the Tardis in order to leave.

Despite his best efforts to make Amy remember Rory, the Tardis bucks in the turbulence caused by the destruction of the drilling rig, knocking them both to the floor. This breaks Amy’s train of thought, and the inevitable happens- she forgets Rory. Distraught, the Doctor notices the box containing her engagement ring on the Tardis console, which rory had left there earlier, and pockets it before examining the piece of shrapnel once everyone emerges from the Tardis back in the churchyard. He unwraps the cloth, to reveal a fragment of the Tardis! It seems the Tardis is the cause of all this, but how, and why?

All told, I thoroughly enjoyed this episode. There were several nods to classic Who, especially the Jon Pertwee era,(My favourite one, and the time in which I became a fan) and the feel of the Silurians was well realised. It was like watching Jon Pertwee’s greatest hits- drilling rig as in Inferno, check. Silurians, check. Person turning green from poisoning as in The Green Death- check. Force barrier surrounding the village cutting it off, as in The Daemons- check. All we needed was UNIT and Bessie, and we’d have had the full set. Despite all this, the story didn’t feel like a re-hash at all, and proved to be an enjoyable romp- and the twist with the crack being caused by the Tardis was an added bonus.

Episode 10- Vincent And The Doctor.

With every series, there will be favourite and least favourite episodes, and this one for me fell into the latter category. Written by Richard Curtis, one fan on Doctor Who Online referred to it as ‘Four Paintings And A Funeral’, and it proved, for me, to be as mawkish as the film this parody title referred to. The Doctor and Amy arrive in France to look at an exhibition of paintings by Van Goch, where the Doctor notices a strange creature in one of the paintings that shouldn’t be there. Asking the museum curator (Played by Richard Curtis regular Bill Nighy) when this painting was made, he and Amy then zip off in the Tardis to find out what exactly was going on.

Vincent Van Goch with the Tardis team, in Vincent And The Doctor. (Picture courtesy of the BBC.)

Vincent, it seems, is plagued by a creature that only he can see, and during the course of proceedings, we discover that the creature is called a Krafayis, and the Doctor has to come to terms with Vincent’s acute depression, in order to deal with the creature. It didn’t help that when we actually got to see the creature, it turned out to resemble a giant chicken on steroids, as it was all too easy for the term ‘giant turkey’ to crop up. I will admit to using that term on Gallifrey Base, as well as Doctor Who Online, but I will admit I was probably a little unfair. I did have niggles with this episode, but with a few weeks of hindsight, I think I can see what I didn’t like without being too unkind.

Firstly, there was no adequate explanation of exactly how this creature was invisible, or why only Vincent could see it. An artist’s eye can see many things that an ordinary person cannot, but that’s in terms of the visual poetry of what he or she intends to put on canvas. If this creature was naturally invisible, i.e. reflected light in a spectrum beyond human recognition, then it wouldn’t have any colours. Colours exist because they absorb most light frequencies and reflect only those that give them their colour. If the colour reflected is one we can’t see, then it isn’t the colours we would normally associate with a chicken, so when the Doctor’s device, which includes a mirror, reveals the creature, why do we see it in chicken colours? Again, if the creature generates an invisibility field, then it is logical to assume that once dead, it will cease to generate that field. When it met its’ inevitable demise, it remained invisible. Assuming that the Doctor and his friends don’t help to dispose of the body, there’s going to be one hell of a stink in that church caused by an invisible barrier that’ll stop anyone from getting in.

Another point is that this was the time in Vincent’s life after he cut off part of his ear, yet whenever we saw him, both ears were intact- not even so much as a bandage. Despite Tony Curran’s uncanny resemblance to Van Goch’s famous self-portrait, this one lacking detail nagged me. The worst part was at the climax of the episode, in which the Doctor takes Vincent back to the art gallery of today to meet the curator, who tells him that his work is universally admired. The music was completely unsubtle, and sounded like the worst examples of the stuff we got in series two during all of the ‘Bad Wolf Bay’ malarkey when Rose left in a tidal wave of overblown emotion. I can tell when something is emotional, and I don’t need reminding with an audio sledgehammer, thanks. Added to this was the fact that thanks to Amy, Vincent was inspired to paint sunflowers, and that painting now had a dedication, ‘To Amy’, painted on it. This flew in the face of everything the Doctor stood for before, since The Aztecs when the Doctor admonished Barbara by telling her “You cannot change history. Not one line.” What we have now, at least in this story, is someone who doesn’t mind changing it a little teensy bit, if only for fun.

The end of the episode also carried a BBC announcement, “If you are affected by the issues raised in this programme, please call the number at the bottom of your screen.” What? I’m sorry, but while I appreciate that someone somewhere must have thought this was a good idea to get Doctor Who to help those with manic depression, this jarred me. Yes, Vincent did show his depression during this programme, but this wasn’t enough, I felt, to be worthy of an information screen. I can understand soaps having these, as any issue raised there is usually part of a long-running storyline, where the protagonists’ issue has a chance to affect the lives of the characters around them. Things like that will strike a chord not only with someone with that issue, but also the lives of those whom this person has touched. Doctor Who is not that kind of programme, or at least that’s what I thought.

There were good parts, so it is perhaps best if I leave this episode with those. Some scenes were deliberately shot and framed to look like Van Goch paintings, particularly as these were the subjects of his paintings, and these worked especially well. The segment in which Vincent explained what he saw, while the night sky transformed into ‘Starry Night’ was beautifully shot and realised, and Matt’s characterisation was as brilliant as ever. The art gallery was also a nice nod to City Of Death, which was one of my favourite classic stories, so that’s no bad thing, either.

I mentioned during Amy’s Choice, that I had a theory about some of these episodes, and I think now is the time to explain. I think this story and Amy’s Choice probably didn’t work that well, because they weren’t written for Matt’s Doctor. When Matt was cast and stories were being submitted, no-one, apart from Steven Moffat, had any idea of how Matt would play the Doctor, and so David Tennant, the most recent one until Matt, was their de facto blueprint of how the Doctor is. Go back to stories like Castrovalva or Four To Doomsday, and it is clear that the writers were still writing Tom Baker stories until they got a feel for Peter Davison’s interpretation.

Looking at this series, it’s clear to me that this story and Amy’s Choice would have worked much better had they been set in one of David Tennant’s series. To take this story, for example; all that would be needed would be a couple of lines from the Doctor like “You’re Vincent Van Goch! You’re brilliant, you are!” And a throwaway exchange between him and one of his companions, when asking him if he has his sonic on him, like “No it’s OK, I’ve got one ‘ere. No offence, Vincent.” and this would have been an archetypal Tennant episode. The Dalek, Silurian and vampire episodes worked, because they were generic Doctor Who stories- they would work equally well with any Doctor. It was clear from these that the writers understood the character of the Doctor, and wrote for him, rather than for the lead actor. Anyhow, I digress. Time presses on, and I shall return later to conclude my series review, so watch this space- after a comic interlude, things are going to get epic.

Doctor Who is back with a bang- the first four stories under review.

Whether you call this ‘new series 1′, ‘series 5′, ‘series 31′ or, as Steven Moffat has jokingly said, ‘series fnarg’, one thing is certain- this is unlike any other series of Doctor Who since our favourite Timelord blasted back on to our screens in 2005. The series showrunner is now Steven Moffat, and in a recent interview with Doctor Who Magazine, he said that he wanted to bring a darker, more fairytale element to the series. This is a summary of the series so far, with my views on the first four stories as they’ve appeared on the BBC.

Episode 1- The Eleventh Hour.

Carrying on directly from where we left off in The End Of Time, part 2, the pre-titles sequence shows the Doctor struggling to regain control of the TARDIS as it plummets toward Earth following his explosive regeneration. At one point, he falls out of the doors and clings desperately to the floor, trying to climb back in. When he succeeds, the title sequence kicks in with gusto. The theme tune, while still the now immortal Ron Grainer theme and arranged by series music composer Murray Gold, now has touches of classic Who, as does the title sequence. Gone is the red and blue time tunnel, now replaced with a cloudy maelstrom that superficially resembles the blue starfield effect we saw all those years ago during Tom Baker’s heyday. The theme now has more electronic elements, and begins with a flourish that could almost be a fanfare- much like the arrangement that was used in 1996 during Doctor Who- The Movie, when the second bar was used as a fanfare before kicking straight into the middle eight. The theme itself now sounds more eerie and haunting, and in places reminds me of the special arrangement that was used for Colin Baker’s Doctor in Trial Of A Timelord.

 From here, the story really begins to take off, and we see the Doctor, now crash-landed in seven-year-old Amelia Pond’s backyard, making friends with her and learning what foods his new persona likes, in a scene that is as funny as it is charming. Matt Smith’s performance is at once engaging, and his quirks, tics and gestures show flashes of previous Doctors- most notably Pat Troughton and Peter Davison. It seems there is a crack in the wall of Amelia’s bedroom, and there are voices behind it. The voices turn out to be the Atraxi, who are the guardians of some outer space prison, and Prisoner Zero has escaped. The Doctor is forced to go back to the TARDIS to fix something, and says he’ll be back in five minutes. Amelia packs a suitcase and goes down to the garden to wait for her new friend, the Rageddy Doctor. The TARDIS being what it is, the Doctor returns 12 years later. Amelia has now grown up into Amy Pond, a sassy, smart girl who works as a kissogram, played wonderfully by Karen Gillan. Prisoner Zero is now at large, and the Atraxi have threatened to destroy the Earth if he isn’t recaptured within 20 minutes.

The Doctor (Matt Smith) with Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) in the series opener The Eleventh Hour. Picture courtesy of the BBC.

Given the impact that David Tennant had as the Doctor up until now, Steven Moffat had a marathon task to make sure the fans and casual viewers accepted Matt into the role. Not since Tom Baker’s day had one actor been so associeted with this part, and given how fans can now communicate in the Internet age, this was no easy task. The underlying theme of The End Of Time didn’t help, putting the emphasis on the Doctor dying and ‘a new man sauntering away’, but Steven rose to the challenge, and Matt’s characterisation was mesmerising. The climactic scene atop the hospital roof was a stroke of genius, in which the Atraxi scanned the Doctor’s mind to check his credentials for protecting the Earth. (“I’ve put a lot of work into it.”) We were treated to a montage of every major monster the Doctor has defeated over the years, including a few from the classic series, then a montage of every Doctor since the beginning that concluded with Smith stepping through Tennant’s image, saying “I am the Doctor. Basically- run.” The episode concluded with the TARDIS announcing that it was fully repaired, and the Doctor taking it for a test-flight, only to arrive two years later on the eve of Amy’s wedding. The Doctor and his companion have arrived, the lead actors have won us over, and the series is under way. This was a cracker of a tale, and was very much in the vein of classic era Who, albeit with all the modern touches we’ve grown to love.

Episode 2- The Beast Below.

The next tale was another from the pen of Steven Moffat, and was the kind of dystopian future that British science fiction does so well. The plot was another pure fairytale, and concerned the population of Starship UK, perched on the back of a Star Whale, and completely oblivious to that fact. The population were kept in check by sinister androids called Smilers and Winders, the Smilers looking like sinister seaside laughing clowns with twisting heads that reveal smiles, frowns or a menacing toothy grin. The Winders are worse; hooded robed men, whose heads can also pivot to reveal the toothy face of a snarling clown.

A Smiler reveals its' menacing grin in The Beast Below. Picture courtesy of the BBC.

The story was more of a character study of the Doctor and Amy than anything else, and during the course of proceedings, we learn that the Doctor seems to be over his Time War trauma, thanks to The End Of Time. When asked why he is the last of his kind, he says simply: “It was a bad day, something I’d rather not talk about.” Gone was the angst of before, and the Doctor carried on looking into the mystery at hand. The lonely god had gone, the Doctor was back!

The heart of the mystery is that the Star Whale turned up to save the people from the destruction of solar flares because it pitied them, being the last of it’s kind, and the people of the UK repayed its’ kindness by building the ship on its’ back and wiring lasers to its’ brain to urge it onward into space. Now in unbearable pain, the Star Whale is a pitiful beast that is still capable of showing affection to the children of  Starship UK. The Doctor is angered at this discovery of such cruelty, and decides, against his own principles, that the best he can do is find a way to numb the creature’s pain, so that it is dead in all but its’ locomotive power.

Ultimately, it is Amy who saves the day, when she sees the similarities between the Star Whale and the Doctor. She realises that the animal acted out of compassion, and in doing so, disabled the lasers attached to its’ brain. Freed from its’ pain, the whale continued on its’ course with renewed speed, because all it wanted to do was help the people. She effectively showed the Doctor a side of himself he was unaware of, and reminded him about his own compassion and motives for helping wherever help was needed. Once the mystery has been solved, the two adventurers continue on their way, and as they do, the crack on Amy’s bedroom wall reappears- this time on the hull of Starship UK! I loved the performances of both leads in this story; Matt and Karen spark off against each other wonderfully well, and both characters have an easy charm that is a joy to watch. They are easily my favourite TARDIS crew of recent years now.  With the team now firmly established, the series then continued with the most divisive episode so far.

Episode 3- Victory Of The Daleks.

The first story this series not written by Steven Moffat, Victory Of The Daleks was penned by League Of Gentlemen luminary Mark Gatiss, who remarked that he wanted to write a 45-minute Saturday afternoon war movie. After answering a call from none other than Winston Churchill at the end of the previous episode, the Doctor and Amy arrive in war-torn London, to be greeted by Churchill’s latest secret weapon. Invented by a scientist called Bracewell, the machines are called Ironsides, but the Doctor identifies them as Daleks, now repainted in military green from their original metallic bronze. The Doctor is surprised to learn that Amy has never heard of them, which, given their major impact on human society over the last few years, is difficult to understand. Evidently, there is something amiss about Amy’s timeline. The Daleks are every bit as chilling as they were in Power Of The Daleks, and apart from the dialogue I posted about earlier (“Would you care for some tea?”) there was a direct nod to this story, as one Dalek glided up to the Doctor and declared “I am your soldier”, which had all the concealed menace of the original line “I am your servant.”

The Doctor and Amy confront an 'Ironside', in Victory Of The Daleks. Picture courtesy of the BBC.

The Doctor is having none of this. “I am the Doctor, and YOU are DALEKS!” He rages, before smashing one over the head with a mallet. The provocation works, and the Dalek soon reveals its’ true nature, ruthlessly exterminating two guards before teleporting away. Following the Daleks in the TARDIS, the Doctor soon discovers their plan. The Daleks were three of a handful that managed to escape the destruction of Journey’s End, and Bracewell is an android created by them as an elabourate cover story; all they were after was for the Doctor to arrive and confirm their identity. They had discovered a capsule, left behind from the Daleks of old- the original Daleks of the first Doctor’s day.

This capsule was the repository of Dalek DNA and machine blueprints, which would enable the survivors to recreate their race. The problem they had was that they were no longer pure Daleks anymore; they were mutated from human DNA and DNA from their creator, Davros. The Daleks that left this capsule were pure Daleks, from the original timeline in which Davros didn’t survive, (Genesis Of The Daleks created an alternative timeline in which Davros was made aware of his creation’s limitations, and so was able to take steps to avert his demise) and as such only pure Daleks could open it. The Doctor’s testimony was enough, it seems, to open the capsule and recreate the Dalek race anew.

The new Dalek paradigm, from Victory Of The Daleks. Picture courtesy of the BBC.

To divert from the stort a little, it was the appearance of the new Dalek paradigm that proved to be so divisive, as some fans were horrified by the new design. The new Daleks were much taller- more than six feet tall, and brightly coloured, each colour denoting a function within Dalek society. The design harked back to the original one with no shoulder slats, but the shape was more chunky yet sleek, with no bolts or rivets to break up the shape. The back of each Dalek was raised and covered with a grille, which was revealed in Doctor Who magazine to be later shown as housing additional weaponry; the grille opening to allow the weapon to slide into position along the centre channel of the shoulder section.

Blueprints for the new Daleks, showing the retractable weapons system. Picture courtesy of Doctor Who magazine.

With their massive size and bright colours, these Daleks harked back to the early days, and the brightly coloured versions of the TV classics that appeared in the Peter Cushing Dalek films and the TV21 comics of the 1960s. As Mark Gatiss put it in an interview with the Radio Times: “Let’s just say that the warm glow of the 1960s films loomed large.” Some fans were in shock, saying that the new design looked hump-backed and mis-proportioned. Looking back to the design brief given by Terry Nation and it’s interpretation by Raymond Cusick, these new Daleks, if anything, are closer to the original brief than what we eventually grew to know and love. terry Nation described them as ‘machine creatures, legless, with no human features, a jointed eyestalk and mechanical appendages with pincers’.  Cusick’s first draft was too difficult to reproduce by the props department, so the design was modified.

Raymond Cusick's original Dalek design.

The design was modified into something more conical in shape, within which a man could sit, propelling the prop via a tricycle assembly. The Dalek itself would have arms that slide around the waist perimeter on rails.

An early Dalek design showing the tricycle assembly inside.

looking at this design, it’s clear that they were originally supposed to be much bulkier than what was eventually made; Shawcraft, who made the props, produced the more rakish angles we know today, as the complex curves of this version were too difficult to reproduce in plywood and fibreglass in the 1960s. It was also too difficult to mount the arms on sliding rails, so the rails became collars, and the arms were ball-mounted until this day. To my mind, the new version manages to fulfil the original design brief as well as capture the essential elements of what makes the Daleks so iconic, and I look forward to seeing what these brutes can do in the future.

An external view of the Dalek design, showing movable rails for the arms.

To go back to the story, once the new Daleks appear, they promptly dispatch the old Daleks and face off against the Doctor. The climax of the episode is pure boy’s own adventure, as Bracewell, now deciding to work for the humans, hastily modifies some Spitfires for space travel, and, armed with lasers, we are then treated to a spectacular Star Wars style dogfight in space. The Daleks decide to shake off the combatants by triggering off a bomb concealed within Bracewell so that they can make their escape, so the Doctor returns to Earth to disable the bomb. Again, Amy helps to save the day by being able to show Bracewell his human side, which successfully shuts the bomb down. As in classic Doctor Who, the Daleks are only stopped, not utterly defeated, thus being able to menace the Doctor another day. Up until now, new series Dalek stories would have the Daleks utterly wiped out, only later revealing that ‘a few survived’; this story brought back that classic series vibe of the Daleks only being able to be stopped, not defeated utterly. We were then shown the wall behind where the departing TARDIS stood, which is now sporting a crack just like those we’ve seen before. Clearly, the crack is this series’ Big Bad Wolf, which will no doubt unfold in the series finale. All told, a capable enough adventure and exciting in places- the new Daleks were for me the highlight- but the first two stories were the ones that really set the benchmark. That benchamrk was to be raised by a considerable margin in the next adventure…

Episodes 4 & 5- The Time Of Angels/Flesh And Stone.

Another story penned by Steven moffat, and this one sees the Doctor summoned by River Song to a distant planet, and the crashed starship Byzantium. On board was a deadly cargo, one of the Weeping Angels. These are by far one of the best monsters of recent years, and really imaginatively realised. in this two-parter, the Doctor, Amy and River are joined by a team of military clerics, who are on a mission to stop this Angel at all costs. The Byzantium has crashed into the top of a vast necropolis, filled with hundreds of statues. Finding the Angel will be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

As they progress through the maze towards the wrecked ship, Amy becomes susceptible to suggestions from the Angel she stared at on the monitor screen of the ship’s flight recorder, suggestions that she is turning into stone. We learn that anything that can capture the image of an Angel becomes an Angel, so once again Steven Moffat has given a generation of children something to be scared of- first it was statues, now it’s the TV they are watching!

The Doctor and friends face the menace of The Time Of Angels. Picture courtesy of the BBC.

One by one, the clerics are picked off, until one of them is used by the Angel to communicate with the team, in what proved to be some truly chilling dialogue. As the first episode draws to a close, the team realise that every statue in the labyrinth is an Angel, and that the ship was made to crash so that the radiation from the engines can awaken them to feed once more…

This story was absolutely top-notch, and did for the Angels what James Cameron’s Aliens did for H. R. Giger’s xenomorph in the cinema. Without giving too much away to spoil those overseas viewers still playing catch-up, the second part ratchetted the tension up by several notches, and we get a bit more information on the mysterious crack, which, it seems, is a fracture in time. Things are changing and being ‘unremembered’, which would probably explain Amy’s Dalek-related amnesia.

There are also dark hints at River Song’s motives, and things are nicely set up for the finale, with a few more jigsaw puzzle pieces left to put together.The story concludes with a clumsy seduction which was hilarious to watch, and quashes any concerns people may have had in the past about the Doctor always getting to kiss his leading lady. It’s clear that something has happened to Amy, which the Doctor must put right. It’s time to bring her fiance along for the ride, whom we last saw in The Eleventh Hour, for some adventure therapy. This was the best story so far, and if the rest of the series continues in this way, the Doctor’s future is assured. I’m off for a sabbatical for a few weeks, but I shall be back with more series reviews soon.