Love and Liberty

Fancy tasting a Smörgåsbord of appealing blog posts? Political restaurant critiques, Torchwood reviews, misleading statistics (I’m shocked, shocked, etc), how to get people involved in Lib Dem policy, pictures of Darwin, the limits of free will, and a beginner’s guide to Doctor Who DVDs. All splendidly worth a look, and you know which one got me most interested, don’t you? Astoundingly, it has by far the biggest comment thread, too. So, my own recommendations for ‘the nine Doctor Who DVDs you must have’ in a moment. Oh, and there’s even a bad news story about Gordon Brown that wasn’t true…

Gordon Brown Is Innocent (In One Tiny Respect)

First, that Gordon Brown story, mainly because I meant to link to it a month ago, and the poor failed dictator doesn’t get a lot of good news. Well, Jonny Morris has news for you (not good news, exactly, but wiping away one of the bad ones). He’s a chap who writes for Doctor Who and many other things, loves electropop, and – on the principle that two out of three ain’t bad – who believes in the Labour Party. I know this, because I’ve argued with him at parties about it, and he suggested voting for the Green Party last month. But, anyway, remember that story a few weeks ago when, after weeks of government cock-ups, we all heard “Gordon Brown booed by D-Day veterans!” Jonny gives us good reason to believe that wasn’t true.

Food, Glorious Food For Thought

Leaping more up to date, wasn’t last week’s Torchwood fantastic? And very much more brilliant than we could ever have expected? At some stage this week I may get my finger out and write a piece about the politics of it, but as I had long conversations about it last week with my very much more on-the-ball beloved and my piece would only be the ideas that didn’t make the cut, you should read his superb day-by-day reviews (I love the final title) of Children of Earth on Millennium’s blog.

Though I’ve not written many restaurant reviews on Love and Liberty, I love food. So much that when on odd occasions I think, ‘hmm, maybe putting on three stone last year wasn’t my best move’ and try to lose weight, I suffer from appalling chocolate cravings and write blog digests as displacement activity. With tomorrow being 25 Messidor, I felt very much more in sympathy with French aristocrats than usual on watching The Supersizers Eat… The French Revolution the other day, as the food looked fantastic (though the sanitation was appalling. No French stereotypes, then). Top fact: astonishingly, the King and Queen managed to escape their imprisonment in Paris after the Revolution, and actually got half-way to the Austrian border. Still more astonishingly, the King was actually recognised from a coin. And horribly funnily, they would probably have got much further if they’d not loaded their getaway carriage with so many goodies that it couldn’t go faster than seven miles an hour. Oh, dear. You know, one of my first political articles to be widely praised by people who rarely agree with me – though hardly revolutionary – was a restaurant review, a dozen years ago, so damning that it apparently shut the place in question for a few days by destroying their conference trade. One day, I should republish it on here, but I’m embarrassed to say that the last time I remembered it and asked if anyone had a copy, the incredibly efficient Count Packula, Prince of Markness instantly posted it to me, and the incredibly inefficient me instantly lost it before I could type it in, so I’ve been too embarrassed ever since to ask again.

Where was I? Mmm, chocolate. Ah, yes. Food. Mark Thompson has this morning published a political satire in the form of a restaurant sketch that made me smile. Some regard it as a call for change in the electoral system – or at least for tactical voting in favour of the Vegetarian Party – but it strikes me more as underlining the need to abandon Labour and Tory control-freakery and devolve power to the lowest practical level… Which in an awful lot more cases should be the individual. But for all his usual stat-fans, Mark’s also mounted a very simple and effective critique of Fraser Nelson’s misleading chart scales, a striking example of how using graphs to make things ‘easy to understand’ can also make them ‘easy to completely misrepresent’.

Policy Talk, Free Will and How Darwin Was Framed

Did you know that, a decade and more ago, masses of Lib Dem policies were motions submitted by individual local parties and organisations like what’s-now-called-Liberal-Youth (I know; I was their Policy Officer then Chair for a couple of years in the mid-’90s, when they got more of their policies adopted by the main party than anyone else save the Federal Policy Committee), but that since then the numbers of motions coming in from the grassroots have almost entirely dried up – particularly if you notice that most of them now are really from the MP for that constituency? So, well done FPC Vice-Chair Jeremy Hargreaves for launching ‘Engage’, a new network trying to get more grassroots Lib Dems discussing policy. It must be a good thing – it’s been instantly slagged off in a typically sour comment from a member of the House of Lords and long-time grouchy establishment figure.

This morning, tippety top blogger Costigan Quist asks a particularly pertinent question about the limits of free will, though unusually without coming to any conclusion. I asked a similar open question a few years ago on the Lib Dems’ philosophy in a failed attempt to be provocative; alert readers will note that I didn’t manage to come up with an answer, either. If you want something more inspiring, though, Jonathan brings us an excellent poster of Charles Darwin.

Can you smell chocolate…?

Your ‘Must-Have’ Doctor Who DVDs

And finally, the lovely Andrew Hickey yesterday sparked off much debate with his own list of ten eight seven DVDs – one for each Doctor that counts, according to his lights, though with some extras on top – that you might buy as A Beginner’s Guide To Doctor Who DVDs. I’d agree with between about two and four of his choices, depending on how you count them, but he makes an excellent case and keeps an eye on your wallet (though he hasn’t noticed that one of his picks has been deleted from the DVD line, pending a ‘Special Edition’ release rumoured for next year). He’s also not afraid to say that some Doctor Who isn’t very good, or isn’t very suitable for newcomers – I firmly believe that all Doctor Who is good, even the stuff that Andrew repudiates, though I do sometimes describe some of it as… Not as good as others. I might add to his already massive comments thread later, though I’d probably be tempted to add far too much.

Instead, with over sixty Doctor Who DVD releases to date (totalling about eighty individual stories) hailing from the Twentieth Century, looking at both the quality of the stories and of the DVD release, extras and all, for me there have so far been many excellent DVDs, several all right ones and a handful that are simply… Ah, not as good as the others. Nine, though – I know it should be ten for a list like this, but while I could think of plenty that were nearly as good, none of them quite hit top marks for me – nine DVD releases so far are so superb that every home should have them:

• The Beginning – a terrific William Hartnell box set of the very first three and a bit stories, starting with a mystery in the then present and then going backwards, forwards and sideways in time, not unlike way each Twenty-first Century Who season has opened (but with a more convincing alien world).

• The War Games – the end of Patrick Troughton, just out last week, but already indispensable. A great story of war, sacrifice and twists, cleaned up to look superb, and with one of the best sets of extras yet.

• Genesis of the Daleks – another war story, grim, powerful, thought-provoking… And with a stunning performance introducing Davros, one of Doctor Who’s two most iconic villains.

• Pyramids of Mars – another awesome villain (heard again in 2006), as Egyptology meets aliens in 1911 for the series’ most effective horror story, with marvellous extras including a celebration of Mary Whitehouse’s least favourite producer. Yay.

• The Deadly Assassin – darkly funny, horrific, groundbreaking, talky, action-packed, surreal, satirical, Tom Baker facing a stripped-down Master on the planet of the Time Lords… All these things and more, my favourite story has been out on DVD for a couple of months now, so why haven’t you bought it yet?

• The Talons of Weng-Chiang – with all the Victoriana you could ever want, the series’ vilest villain and many of its funniest moments, and a rather fab 1977 documentary. It’s the only story already packed with extras that’s rumoured for a ‘special edition’ re-release somewhere down the line, though, and you have to buy the fabulously inappropriate toys separately.

• The Key To Time – six stories, a whole year’s worth, playful, magical, wonderful. Tom Baker at his frothiest, fabulous extra features, K9 and Douglas Adams. The main snag is that this was released as a limited edition, so it’s temporarily rather difficult to find. In its absence you might try Andrew’s choice of City of Death, which is almost as amusing, but I wildly prefer the Douglas Adams story that’s one of the three truly outstanding adventures in this box.

• New Beginnings – a box set of three stories with extraordinary ideas, a Shakespeare noir love story, doom for Tom Baker, the start of Peter Davison, lots of the Master and beautiful music.

• The Curse of Fenric – not just a cracking action adventure, a murky spy plot and a frightening horror story, but complex and political, too. Sylvester McCoy’s finest story, Richard’s favourite, with a whole feature-length special edition version included.

Update: If you’re used to the ‘DVD season box set’ approach, I can also recommend the run of Tom Baker’s first four stories on DVD: Robot, The Ark In Space, The Sontaran Experiment and Genesis of the Daleks. Two fun little stories and two outstanding ones, they work much better as a set, with both direct overarching plot arcs and recurring themes. And a remarkably similarity to the 2005 series… My beloved Richard has asked why there’s no Pertwee in the list, suggesting “Why not add Beneath the Surface? Then they can always give away Warriors of the Deep.” Well, I wasn’t trying for ‘balance’, simply the best as I see them, but I have to admit, if Doctor Who and the Silurians was released on its own – fantastic story, and with arguably the best single extra in the range, the BBC4-quality documentary on politics in the series – it would certainly be on my ‘absolute must-have’ list. But it’s paired with an exciting but empty sequel and a final story that’s… Not as good as the rest (though it does have nicer music), so the box set’s more of a microcosm of Doctor Who as a whole, for good and, er, not so good. For Colin Baker, superb black comedy Revelation of the Daleks isn’t far off this list, while his best performance is probably in The Two Doctors – finally given a script by someone who writes a good Doctor, he’s relaxed, warm and interested – but the DVD has an extensive set of extras which perfectly mirror the story itself, some brilliant, unmissable and intensely watchable, others tedious and far too long.

I’ve previously published a ‘Choosing Doctor Who DVDs Made Easy’ guide, with various updates, which Andrew kindly links to but suggests is a bit long. Technically, I only pick six stories, though, while he offers ten eight seven – well, all right, he goes for one for each Doctor, while I suggest three alternative sets of six, rather than the lot, but my point stands. Sort of. And I’ve, er, added some more since. Look, forget I said anything, OK? The point is, as Doctor Who can go anywhere in time and space, past, present and future, be scary and funny, exciting and thoughtful, it’s more difficult than with any other series to point to just one DVD and say ‘that’s it’. And if you think that was long-winded, back in 2004 I wrote an incredibly long article making suggestions on how fans might encourage others inside our eerie world (the Who equivalent of an ALDC training manual). If you’re not a fan, you’ll probably run screaming from it, but then, as it’s on what was then top fan site Outpost Gallifrey, how would you ever find it without a link?

Hmm. The retired remnant of Outpost Gallifrey is finally to be deleted in a couple of weeks’ time, and I have several articles and reviews up there, now I think about it. Perhaps I should do something about that…

Labels: Blogs, Doctor Who, DVD, Food, FPC, History, New Beginnings, Patrick Troughton, Peter Davison, Reviews, Sylvester McCoy, The Golden Dozen, The Key To Time, Tom Baker, Top Tips, William Hartnell