Love and Liberty

It’s September, and Doctor Who’s back on TV, as it always was. Twenty-five years ago this evening, a superb cast led by Colin Baker and Michael Jayston launched into the longest and most postmodern of all Who stories, in which the Doctor is taken out of time and placed on trial alongside the show itself. Does the opening special effect still look as fantastic as it did in 1986? Can the Doctor convince the Inquisitor (and the audience) that he hasn’t been misusing his time? And might this existential crisis be a better DVD release than it is a story?

Back in 1986, the BBC high-ups had turned against Doctor Who. They cancelled it, then grudgingly allowed it back eighteen months later with a reduced running time, reduced budget and a series of directives from above that (as the excellent, if dispiriting, set of extras here reveal) were long on criticism and very short indeed in saying what they wanted instead. So when the punch-drunk series returned twenty-five years ago tonight with most of the executives wanting it to fail, it wasn’t a massive success. The Doctor Who production team fought back by giving all fourteen episodes one long story arc: in pretty much the most obvious and postmodern theme in the series’ history, the Doctor’s popularity is tested on a big TV screen while his corrupt superiors are completely stacked against him. It’s the ‘Trial’, symbolising a trial, and it’s sometimes a bit of a trial. So as to avoid swallowing the whole lot at once, it’s broken into several mini-stories as different parts of the ‘evidence’ (structured into past, present and future, inspired by A Christmas Carol), the first being sub-titled The Mysterious Planet. It’s possibly not the best of the Trial, but it’s probably the one of which I’m fondest… And what do other fans think of it? Back in September 2009, Doctor Who Magazine 413 published “The Mighty 200” – 6,700 fans’ votes on all 200ish TV Doctor Who stories to that point – and placed the whole Trial of a Time Lord 142nd (about right, to me) but these first four episodes at a lowly 165ish (I’d put it about thirty places higher).

While this ‘taster’ may not be short, incidentally, my policy in these is not to be too spoilery. So read on without fear of finding out too many key twists from the end.

That Golden Moment

“Listen… You are only a robot. The people out there – the work units, the organics, whatever you choose to call them – they’re living creatures, Drathro. They have a right to their lives.”

Everyone else rightly remembers this story for a special effects sequence that’s still striking a quarter of a century later, or for a star-studded guest cast boasting the likes of Michael Jayston, Lynda Bellingham, Tony Selby and Joan Sims. I remember it for all those things, too, but still more for Colin Baker facing off against someone you’ve probably not heard of in a big metal suit. Colin is a very theatrical actor, and one of the reasons I love his Doctor is that he’s at his best when giving speeches. Robert Holmes was the best of the Twentieth Century Doctor Who writers, and the two or three stories he wrote for Colin give him brilliant speeches that Colin rises to magnificently. The Mysterious Planet is the last more-or-less full story Bob Holmes wrote, and Colin gets superb material here particularly in the first episode – bubbling with enthusiasm then wistfully compassionate as he tells his companion that “nothing can be eternal” – and then again half-way through Part Four, trying to persuade a robot tyrant to let his people go, when the Doctor makes a mistake. Ironically, though you’d expect great speeches of a courtroom drama, not one of them is in the courtroom this time, despite this scene being fine advocacy from an actor who started as a lawyer.

And perhaps surprisingly, the character that I empathised with here even more than the Doctor was the robot tyrant, Drathro.

In September 1986, I was fourteen, and perhaps there’s something about being a bright teenager that leads to empathy with existential crises. The show was certainly in the middle of one, but from the very first time I saw this episode, I knew instinctively that Drathro was having one, too, and that that’s why the Doctor’s advocacy gets it wrong. I’ve never read another reviewer that came to the same conclusion; it may have been a theme of the script, or merely something that I read into it – making it a rare Doctor Who story that was rewritten better in my head as I was actually watching it – but ever since a man in 2000AD’s 1980 Robo-Hunter – Day of the Droids woke up, accidentally opened his face and discovered he was a robot, I’d been fascinated by existential questions. Long before I ever heard of the Turing Test, I was often on the side of robots in sci-fi, reasoning that if I didn’t know if they were sentient or not, perhaps neither did they, and that might be depressing them.

Drathro’s self-absorption is the (self-)centre of the story: the set-up of the two human tribes on the eponymous (or is it?) mysterious planet is a result of his rigid control; the threat of the black light explosion is down to his desire to take everyone with him; even his homoerotic servants Humker and Tandrell deserting him is triggered by his magnificent, hilarious reassurance that his armour means the Tribe of the Free don’t threaten him – “Their guns will destroy only you.” Drathro’s early observation that “organic” intuition often improves on his logic makes him sound slightly admiring and envious of the Doctor, while also seeking to control him – his existential crisis in a nutshell, like Taren Capel in reverse. He’s rather a good design, too, a massive robot with a curved head resembling both a signal receiver in a TV story about TV and a minotaur in a tale of a labyrinth (he looks even better next to his hench-robot, which is a bit rubbish). On the down side, he’s rarely directed to best advantage, but here he towers impressively over Colin as they debate on the crucial question of, if everything’s set to blow up, he should choose to be shut down five minutes early so that the five hundred humans he’s in charge of can live. And with Drathro entirely self-absorbed and far more charismatic than his vassals, it’s easy to miss just how appallingly he’s misused the power he gained through a state of emergency – it’s not just the explosive crisis presented here, but five hundred years in which he’s kept people enslaved by poverty, ignorance and conformity when none of it was necessary. Yet I still find him compelling.

The reason why I love the Doctor’s confrontation with Drathro to bits is that Drathro is tormented by not knowing if he’s self-aware or just programmed like that, which is why he has it in for the organics and why the Doctor’s tactless opening moral argument that he is “only a robot” is saying exactly the wrong thing. The brilliant Doctor winds him up, and the great big robot stops listening, because he doesn’t know whether he’s real or not and doesn’t like the Doctor rubbing it in. He’s such an underrated character, like Marvin the paranoid android done for real – a grumpy mechanical teenager with a marvellously flat, almost sulky delivery (Roger Brierley doing the voice, Paul McGuiness the physical acting).

And I’m certain, too, that the Doctor spots that he’s put his foot in it. His argument dances around Drathro, trying to find anything that will make him pay attention and think about anyone but himself. He offers a moral argument, then a logical argument, then one that’s both scientific and almost poetic; Drathro responds with a very ’80s Thatcherite argument, where he understands “value” only in the most limited sense, then with the sniffy thought that if no-one’s ever seen an explosion like this, well, there’ll be one soon. For me, it’s a major misstep by the script to suddenly inflate this internal debate with a threat to the world – the galaxy – the Universe!! – which seems less an exciting climax than a major loss of faith in the story’s ability to engage us so far, but I still think the misstep of dismissing Drathro’s personhood is a deliberate one: Colin plays it as if he realises what he’s said, and admits his humanity. Because he recognises that to be such a git, Drathro has to be a person – only an individual could be so selfish – and it’s at that point that Drathro’s earned the Doctor being angry at him.

“Hubris – false pride. A human sin. You’ve controlled your pointless little empire for too long – now you can’t see anything beyond it.”

Though the Doctor’s honestly talking to him as a person now, Drathro is too sunk in depression to notice – until the Doctor’s friends (and uneasy allies) turn up trying to get in the back way, aiming to persuade Drathro with Great Big Guns. Drathro, who’s been sulkily planning to let everyone else in the story die, then takes hilarious umbrage when he thinks the Doctor’s been having him on and snaps out of depression to malice, hoping to food-process and microwave the intruders to death. His angry response has far more believable undercurrents than any other villain I can think of who presses the button on the giant mincing machine: whether it’s someone tormented with doubt about whether he’s only programmed or ‘real’ and is taking out his existential crisis on everyone else, a superintelligent teenager in a strop, or displaying the self-absorbed hurt and outrage of the terrorist who suddenly twigs that their hostage negotiator is not, in fact, taking a genuine interest in them as an individual after all.

In the background, Nicola Bryant’s companion Peri is great taking the initiative; usually fine guest star Tom Chadbon is inexplicably wooden; and a pair of galactic con-artists have some entertaining moments, quoting from old Who stories, setting up the clue that the ‘muscle’ may in fact be the clever one all along, and in the end providing the very ’80s twist that the Universe is saved not by logic, nor moral force, but by Arthur Daley (oh, no, spoiler!). Just a shame about the gunge tank. But it’s the Doctor and Drathro here that have always fired my imagination.

Something Else To Look Out For

That opening special effects shot? It does still look as fantastic as it did in 1986. Turning around a Time Lord space station that’s like a baroque cathedral among the stars, it was the most complex and expensive model sequence mounted for Doctor Who in the Twentieth Century. Typically, that segues into a scene scripted as a moody procession down a darkened corridor, which ended up having to be shot in an emergency outside a brightly-lit, very tacky door. And that’s the problem with The Mysterious Planet: it can’t help lurching between brilliance and banality.

The lead actors definitely lift it. Colin Baker’s Doctor is not just a great speaker but endlessly watchable, full of entertaining business. He and Peri are at last firm friends, too; engaging and enthusiastic together rather than the previous year’s bickering, in no small part thanks to the actors deciding their characters were going to mellow. While the Doctor’s coat is as garish as ever and his hair more so, Peri now has clothes someone might actually wear, which help her into a far better role. Colin has a very different but just as watchable relationship with Michael Jayston, together turning rather tiresomely written courtroom sparring electric – “The crime was in being there, Doctor!” The coldly powerful Mr Jayston is terrific casting, cutting through Colin’s florid charm (though some of the reason for that, when I gushed over how brilliant he is recently, must remain clouded by spoilerphobia); usually it’s only the Doctor or the villain who light up the screen, but in this case…

“Hear how the Doctor condemns himself with his own words.”

The script sets the tone – of being all over the place. Among the few things on which Colin Baker and script editor Eric Saward (who does his bitching in a separate commentary to everyone else, due to his immense popularity) agree is that Bob Holmes was a brilliant writer, though this isn’t his best. Some of the snags are clearly down to Eric’s idea of the Trial, though that’s not the only structural issue. The problem with the Trial set-up emerges very quickly. Although that’s where we start in Part One, soon we’re drawn into the Doctor’s exploration of the mysterious planet, with atmospheric long shots, lighting and music in a dark ruin before Peri makes her shocking discovery (guess) and she and the Doctor share some beautifully elegiac scenes together. It feels like the story’s hitting its stride… And then, with a grinding gear-change, the Trial not only interrupts but sneers at it:

“Can’t we just have the edited highlights?”

As if, fourteen minutes into a new series, the production team have lost all faith in it and can’t help ruining any atmosphere the story had built up. And throughout not fourteen minutes but fourteen episodes, this keeps happening. Most of the story works, but interrupting it with the Trial stops it every time it gets started – you can see why they killed off the Time Lords for the next big relaunch two decades later. It doesn’t help that the production values take a tumble once we get back below. After the effectiveness of the subdued lighting and ruined stair as the Doctor and Peri talk of dead worlds, the Doctor is plonked into a brightly lit studio that doesn’t look at all as if it’s suffered five centuries of privation, where he’s jumped by condom-clad men who appear to have been huddled waiting for their cue. The only thing that could make the tunnels look naffer is if a really pathetic vehicle were to trundle through it… Oh. You’ll know, if you watch it, what sort of place this ought to look like. It doesn’t (if only someone had taken a look at Doctor Who Magazine’s End of the Line).

Back in the script, several times there are sinister mentions of things that have already been revealed: both “the Immortal” and the fate of those in the Selection would have far more impact if we didn’t see them trolling along before we heard the terrible rumours, and that’s simply poor plotting. The case in favour of the Trial largely rests with its postmodern inventiveness, alternately playful, threatening and cheap, as various characters watch others on TV. It’s mildly amusing, but all the comments about violence, incoherence and dullness (“I would appreciate it if these brutal and repetitious scenes are reduced to a minimum,” “Why are we doing this?” “I tire of this empty banter”…) are surely rather Ratnerishly unwise, like singing ‘We’re ****, and we know we are’.

“Well, if the rest of his presentation is as riveting as the first little epic, wake me when it’s finished.”

With subtler irony, while the Court accuses the Doctor of violence simply because he’s caught up in trying to stop it, pastiching Mary Whitehouse, Joan Sims’ Katryca notices that the Doctor not carrying weapons makes him “unusual” amongst star-travellers; the people sitting in judgement and picking holes don’t understand the Doctor, but the people he meets do. Similarly, while many comments are as unsubtle as people just saying ‘ooh, this isn’t very good!’ and hoping the audience at home will disagree or titter rather than nod and switch over, having Handbag and Handrail expound on syllogisms immediately before Drathro jumps to a great big syllogism of his own is a clever touch. Though why, exactly, is the screen that the jury watch for most of their time in the Court directly behind them, so everyone has to crick their necks and squint? Surely the most appropriate place for the screen is the fourth wall.

There’s more than poking fun at itself and Colin’s riveting set-piece speeches that make parts of the script shine, however. The pull-back reveal of Glitz and Dibber through the trees is one of the more stylish flashes, juxtaposing the newly relaxed Doctor and Peri pairing with the jarring dark comedy of a seedy, greedy version of the Doctor, a carelessly murderous traveller with immense but often misplaced self-confidence who keeps putting his companion down (the often dull text notes reveal that – rather than the excellent Tony Selby and Glen Murphy – the director had considered French and Saunders for the parts of Minder’s sociopathic future incarnations. I wonder if that’s why they did their sketch on the Trial set?). There are other clever juxtapositions, too – both sets of humans imprisoned by different dead dogmas while the Doctor tells us to “Never believe what is said” but find out for ourselves, and the different sets of hunters who swap places as to which is the threat to our heroes. The Reader of the Books (and, particularly, his books) is funny, and one of Bob Holmes’ best writing tics comes in, with snippets of a history that’s happened offscreen, though it’s a disappointment that the story of “the three Sleepers” is no sooner raised than it’s discarded.

Stolen Secrets

You might also ask, is it a miscalculation or a brilliant gag to do Planet of the Apes for laughs, on a BBC budget, with the climactic revelation ten minutes in? Other sources obviously date the story to 1986 – the Minder-a-likes blasé about mass murder to make a fast grotzit, touches of Spycatcher when elements are excised as “Against the public interest,” the post-apocalyptic Tribe of the “Free” being a tyranny led by a single shouting woman and her mumbling male advisers, with Joan Sims playing both Margaret Thatcher and Tina Turner – but there’s also a spray of naughty Doctor Who allusions. Not only does Colin get to spoof Jon Pertwee (and Peri respond “You’re alive. I knew it” rather than weep over his body), but Bob Holmes writes an outrageous remake of both The Ark in Space (far future, solar flares, Earth abandoned, sleepers, rigidly autocratic rule of survivors) and The Sontaran Experiment (robot with grabbing tentacles, abandoned Earth, Doctor staring right into monstrous villain’s camera) but mixed with The Krotons turned upside-down and made deeper and more layered (from the postmodern games to Drathro’s identity crisis).

I’ve criticised set design that suddenly tumbles from intriguing to just not looking like it gives a toss, but perhaps the biggest single fault is in the direction, which while not actively bad is mostly flat, simply lacking flair, pace and energy. Not even the explosions are up to the usual maniacally dangerous level of BBC enthusiasm. Thank goodness, then, for the music. Dominic Glynn provides a new version of the Doctor Who Theme which has less punch than the two previous versions, but an ethereal, almost water-like sound that suits the rippling titles and is particularly effective on the echoing fade into the story. He’s also responsible for the incidental music, which is some of the best in the series and quite the most consistently good thing about the production. It’s a great shame that, because the master tapes of the music for the next four episodes of The Trial of a Time Lord are the only ones from the ’80s which no longer exist, they chose to include no isolated score on any of these discs: I’d love to be able to play the elegy for Earth under the ground, the piping and the stately march for the Tribe of the Free, the driving music for the otherwise feeble L1 robot… The expansive music as Peri and Glitz yomp their way to the second cliffhanger, for example, is far more thrilling than the cliffhanger itself (a misfiring line that can be taken either as inappropriate despair from the Doctor or a postmodern statement that doesn’t raise a laugh). So the soundtrack, like Colin, is a highlight throughout.

“I did my best. I only hope it’s enough…”

Despite flashes of brilliance, too much of The Mysterious Planet feels uninspired, almost going through the motions – not bad, certainly, but not good enough to grab the audience and stick the two fingers up to the series’ BBC enemies that it needed. Ironically, though the direction looked distinctly unadventurous even in 1986, new Who viewers coming to the DVD might find the ‘DVD commentary’ style of the Trial more modern, with the Doctor and the Valeyard even arguing about the deleted scenes.

Classified Material

Colin Baker and Michael Jayston are more harmonious in the 25-minute The Making of The Mysterious Planet (and Colin is a splendid raconteur and ringmaster for the commentary itself), with a strong line-up of interviewees for candid discussions, revelations, and disagreements with the script editor. It’s rather good, and joined by a remarkable host of extra features even on just this first disc in the set: eight and a half minutes of deleted and extended scenes, including the TARDIS materialising in the rain (I’m glad they lost the bickering), the Doctor pointedly pointing out there are ways to come upon knowledge that don’t involve the Time Lords and a sweet scene of Humker and Tandrell skipping off as a couple; ten minutes of trailers and continuity setting the story in the terrifyingly ’80s context of Roland Rat, Noel Edmonds (for the moment…), Paul Daniels, Russ Abbot and – also twenty-five years ago tonight – the very first episode of Casualty… There’s even a cameo from a future incarnation of the Doctor! Add to that some theme remixes and a scored photo gallery which go a little way to making up for the absence of an isolated soundtrack, Wogan, Blue Peter, Points of View (Anne Robinson before she did that to her face and a very badly-written slagging-off letter from a self-important fan. How unlike the home life of our own dear internet). For once, even the DVD menus are quite well put-together, and not too spoilery. PDFs include Radio Times features and a press pack from the time; interesting that the listings threaten the Doctor with “If found guilty, he will forfeit his remaining lives!” – as if some figure from the Doctor’s future would muck about with such things these days – and advertises the new video release of Day of the Daleks (which coincidentally blows its Dalek reveal mid-way through its first episode just as this blows Drathro’s – had neither story heard of cliffhangers? – and does a different bit of Planet of the Apes), when it’s now due out on DVD almost exactly a quarter of a century later. So whatever verdict you reach on the story, it’s a terrific DVD release.


The photos, incidentally, are from the Blackpool Doctor Who Exhibition. A major part of my childhood, it was closed in 1986, making The Trial of a Time Lord its last new season of Doctor Who. A new version opened in the 2000s, but the BBC closed it and flogged off the exhibits two years ago rather than preserve them for the nation. Philistines. So even in these glory days, some BBC brass are still tossers to Doctor Who.

Should you come across the novelisation, it’s not Terrance Dicks’ best, but quite interesting; with more of the original authors taking over in the mid-’80s after a long period in which Terrance had written almost all the Target series, it was his only book for Colin’s Doctor, so his only crack at a description, and a cracking one. It starts well but doesn’t really sustain the style (as well as displaying rather more typos than usual), though fans may note that the chapter title for the climax is The Big Bang – well, it’s better than last year’s, at any rate. Oh, and that opening line Mark Gatiss thinks he made up? It’s here.

“It was a graveyard in space.”

As this “Taster” has – as usual – spiralled out of control, you’ll be relieved that I’m being contrary this time: usually I do a whole DVD release at once, even if it’s made up of several stories; The Trial of a Time Lord box set is in theory all one big story, but I’m doing only the first disc with the opening evidence this month. As the Trial continues, the Doctor seems to be his own worst enemy… While the mini-stories alternate between straightforward but perhaps forgettable, and memorable messes of conflicting ideas. So, Next Time…

The Mysterious Planet… In a Hurry

And finally… Richard and Millennium have a few things to say about this story, too. You might also like to read Millennium’s Mysteries of Doctor Who #1: Just What Is so Mysterious about Ravolox? which was the first in an extensive series that later returned with the (more spoilerish, as it covers the next ten episodes too) Mysteries of Doctor Who #15: What the TRUNK is going on at Dr Who’s Trial?

Less seriously than the elephant, and mindful that my articles tend to go on a bit, Richard has helpfully condensed the whole story into two scenes for your entertainment and delectation:

Scene 1: ext. woodland. THE DOCTOR and PERI enter

THE DOCTOR: I wonder what this Mysterious Planet is?

PERI: Oh golly, Doctor, it’s Earth, isn’t it?

THE DOCTOR: Er…


Scene 2: int. underground lair. DRATHRO – a giant robot – is pottering around. QUEEN JOAN of SIMMS enters

QUEEN JOANIE: SIDNEY!!!!!

DRATHRO: Ooh, I feel a bit funny.

DRATHRO collapses on top of QUEEN JOAN; SABALOM GLITZ – a spiv – enters

GLITZ: Ooh, look at those >deleted< They’ll be worth a few grotzits.

THE VALEYARD: (off) Nothing to see here, Sagacity, move along.


Roll titles

Labels: BBC, British Politics, Carry On, Charles Dickens, Colin Baker, Comics, Conservatives, Doctor Who, Douglas Adams, DVD, DVD Details, Michael Jayston, Music, Pictures, Richard, Speeches

A Merry Doctor Who Special Day to you all, and there's just time, with Ronnie Corbett in full flow on TV and Richard coughing over his turkey at putting on some lederhosen, for me to spoiler an ultra-special Christmas secret. I've got to tell you: Doctor Who Supremo Steven Moffat very nearly pulled off a cracker of a con-job. You think, don't you, that tonight's story is going to be A Christmas Carol again? Honestly. As if the ever-inventive* Mr Moffat would give us such a Dickensian old chestnut that the series first did it more than twenty years ago! Why, just this afternoon we put on the Christmas turkey with killer sprouts**, and even I wrote an A Christmas Carol-referencing Doctor Who story for a friend over a decade ago (it's that obvious an idea. Come to think of it, even Blackadder did it, with the same Doctor Who companion that the Doctor did. And that's on again tonight, too). So it's a brilliant Yuletide prank, isn't it, that Mr Moffat's managed to convince everyone that he's just doing the same again.

So of course it's something much more original. Ignore the Continuity Errors. Yes, from the man who in 2007 brought a Doctor Who story to the screen that he'd first published in the Annual a couple of years earlier, and who this year commissioned Gareth Roberts to adapt a Doctor Who Magazine comic strip for TV, tonight I'm hugely excited to reveal he's got a special adaptation of one of the greatest of all Doctor Who stories, The Iron Legion. Oh, you were going to be so surprised! Which is why, amid all the fake "Dickens" clips (and to think everybody's fallen for it – biggest whopper printed in the Radio Times since Neil Toynay last guest-starred), when they accidentally let through a shot from the real Christmas special, Mr Moffat went hopping mad. Such incompetence! It's amazing so few people spotted it, but just before General Ironicus thrills and delights you by striding onto your screen at 6pm, here's the clip that let it slip, where the real Malevilus Temple was inadvertently revealed.





Sorry to spoil the surprise early.

Will there be any more blogs from me to mark the end of my least productive year yet? With a bit of luck, I might soon be publishing an arguably better-informed review of a spectacularly unChristmassy Doctor Who story. But, as is so often the way, I've got to the end with no problem, but am having difficulty with the start (and it's not even one of Mr Moffat's timey-wimeys).


Apologies, one and all, for my not having sent a single Christmas card. Well, that's not quite true (how unlike most of this post). I handed one to my beloved this morning in person, and I did post one to my Grandma in New Hampshire, as the alternative is execution (only joking). But having been distinctly ill and only out of the flat three times in three weeks, I'm afraid I've not done very much that's Christmassy for the people I love. Except the lovely one who made dinner for me this very afternoon and generally makes life worth living.


And finally, as my previous post was filled with rather unseasonable language, perhaps I could make up for it with a piece of festive opinion polling…

…Don't tell the children.


*As proven mathematically down Mr Miles' sidebar

**Unlike most of this post, it is in fact true that while eating Christmas dinner we watched Doctor Who's The Trial of a Time Lord Part Eleven

Labels: Charles Dickens, Christmas, Colin Baker, Comics, Doctor Who, Matt Smith, Pictures, Richard, Tom Baker

Are you watching The Sarah Jane Adventures right now? With Doctor Who himself guest-starring? Then get to it!

But meanwhile, did you see Andrew Marr’s The Making of Modern Britain last night? Not bad, but it didn’t half demonstrate his own political prejudices – and did you spot the three things the Liberals got right and one thing we weren’t terribly impressive on a century ago, and the very same today? Not that there was an awful lot on the Liberals, as our Edwardian landslide dominating last night’s ‘era’ didn’t fit into Mr Marr’s very old Labour narrative of history: Tories are wicked, the rise of Labour’s a great thing, and the Liberals are to be mentioned as little as possible.

Much of yesterday’s opening episode, which itself was opening the Twentieth Century, was a critique of the Tories and the upper class. I was right with him on our disgusting invention of concentration camps in the Boer War (though I notice he omitted Mr Campbell-Bannerman’s famous denunciation of the “methods of barbarism”), of a piece with the rise of eugenics in showing the seeds of what we now recognise as Nazism rising in Britain… But little was made of the socialists supporting eugenics, and – as Richard observed – while Britain offered ourselves the choice of fascism, we didn’t take that choice.

Similarly, attacking Mr Balfour because he wasn’t really up to being Prime Minister but, Bob’s your uncle, and he suddenly was – well, that’s all right. But delighting in constant repetition of what sounded very like homophobic jeers against him from a century ago? Not so much. And the same with his approving hail for the creation of the Daily Mail, not yet infamous as the paper that spits on much-loved dead people and refuses to apologise when he recorded his voiceover, but still a vile rag, his encomium considerably lacking in any alternative view to the wonderfulness of tabloids. I enjoyed his class-warrior proclamation that posh Mr Rolls having to visit engineer Mr Royce rather than the other way round was proof that power was shifting massively in Britain. For some reason, though, he omitted the photos of the Rolls-Royce cars standing outside every humble tenement that would have proved his case. Can’t think why.

Andrew Marr and the Invisible Liberals (Just Like Bedford All Over Again Before)

As for the Liberals – on the rare occasions he mentioned them, and there was considerably more about violence-inciting imperialist turncoat Joe Chamberlain (hiss) than of any Twentieth-Century Liberal, with Mr Marr seemingly rather admiring of his protectionism and landslide victor Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman not even getting the courtesy of a name-check, despite technically being Britain’s first Prime Minister – when we were mentioned, it was generally in passing, as an afterthought, with the big story of 1906 election not a Liberal landslide majority but half a dozen Labourites who were all lovely, apparently.

What I did notice, though, was that the Liberals were right – not that you’d notice from Mr Marr’s commentary – on:

• The barbarous war Britain had undertaken abroad

• Investing in the welfare state for people who needed it

• The big economic questions.

• And we were a bit rubbish on involving women in politics (though horribly worse then).

How things change, eh?

Why I’m Not Watching The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith (I Might Cry)

Sarah Jane Smith is right at this very moment, thrillingly, engaged in a whirlwind romance and at some point (I’m not looking) to be joined by the Doctor himself, David Tennant diving in for a guest appearance before he hangs up his coat at the end of the year – but I’m recording rather than watching The Sarah Jane Adventures on BBC1 and BBCHD, as Richard’s not home yet to watch her with me. If you’re not doing the same, catch it on iPlayer and umpteen CBBC repeats this week.

This first part of The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith and tomorrow’s concluding episode are both written by Gareth Roberts, one of Doctor Who’s most entertaining authors, and tomorrow’s will be the first Doctor Who broadcast on my birthday since I was five, when my favourite story of all time premiered: so, no pressure, then. And read Richard’s review of last week’s as a taster.


PS Ooh! And there’s the third series of Bleak Expectations starting on Radio 4 tonight at 6.30. Harrumble for Mr Gently Benevolent!

Labels: British Politics, Charles Dickens, David Tennant, History, Reviews, Sarah Jane Smith

He’s back, he’s Christopher Eccleston then David Tennant, and he’s showered with BAFTAs. There’s behind-the-scenes series Doctor Who Confidential, Big Finish on BBC7 and Simon Guerrier’s Billy book The Time Travellers… And the trip of a lifetime begins with the world’s most fantastic trailer. The Doctor and Rose’s story involves The End of the World, The Unquiet Dead, The Empty Child, Dalek fleets and a Christmas Invasion; dining-with-monsters Boom Town and Paul Cornell’s heartbreaking Father’s Day stand out, though my heart’s with the first one we ever saw a tiny part of filmed. On Easter Saturday, Doctor Who…

Rose

“Run!”

An ordinary life meets the Doctor’s, finding explosions, rapid-fire wit, the pain of lost worlds, window-smashing Autons, that lots of planets have Norths, and the perfect introduction to the TARDIS. Treasure Rose nodding at something that’s not completely invisible, and the closing moment’s pure joy.

“By the way, did I mention? It also travels in time.”

The first fully existing TV Doctor Who story not to be released on VHS – but you can get it on DVD many times over: in a vanilla release with amazing-looking The End of the World and gorgeous gaslit The Unquiet Dead; in a box set of the whole 2005 season, complete with extras (and where you can see Twenty-First Century Who’s most thrilling monsters, the Reapers, in Father’s Day and the fabulous Margaret Slitheen in Boom Town); on its own, once, as a tabloid freebie; and now with The End of the World and a magazine as part of the newly-launched Doctor Who DVD Files. Ooh, and you can buy The Shooting Scripts for this season, too.

If you enjoyed all that, incidentally, you might like to check out a series of Doctor Who from thirty years earlier that informs many of its concepts in exploring the future of humanity…

Labels: Big Finish, Books, Charles Dickens, Christopher Eccleston, Daleks, David Tennant, Doctor Who, DVD, Reviews, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?, William Hartnell

More Time Lords than ever this year, with one even joining the Doctor on his travels as he begins his quest for the Key To Time. There’s wit, playfulness and a kind of magic as the series hits its most fairy-tale and fun. There are false gods and fabulous female villains, and the best story could easily be Bob Holmes’ Copernican caper The Ribos Operation or Douglas Adams’ first television, the witty, inventive, brilliantly structured The Pirate Planet, but for me it’s this swashbuckling tale from David Fisher:

The Androids of Tara

“Next time, I shall not be so lenient!”

Imagine a Doctor Who summer holiday, with fabulous frocks, fishing and fencing with electric swords, where the big, serious quest is dealt with in a five-minute joke. Add a moustache-twirlingly wicked Count, a bargained-down bribe and a dash of sex, then sit back and enjoy.


As usual, there’s an out-of-print Target novelisation – as well as, in the short story collection Decalog 2, Paul Cornell’s sublime, hilarious sequel The Trials of Tara – and a deleted VHS to be sought, but if you can find last year’s extras-packed The Key To Time DVD box set, you really should, you know. A complete season of Doctor Who, it’s probably the best release so far, with this story (for example) boasting a rather lovely ‘making of’, a commentary, a location feature, a featurette on doubles… I’m holding out for a toy Count Grendel and Taran Wood Beast, though.


If you’re up when I’m actually posting this, or if you happen to read it in the next week, you should tune in at midnight tonight to Radio 2 (not a phrase I’ve ever before consciously typed) or at your convenience to BBC iPlayer to catch Christopher Eccleston reading the first of four horror stories (The Devil’s Christmas, across the next four midnights) – Charles Dickens’ The Signalman which, at another Christmas, Mr Eccleston described as the Doctor

“Terrifying! The best short story ever written!”

Though I prefer the much less terrifying and much more camp The Trials of Tara myself, I mention this here because, on the final disc in The Key To Time DVD set, you can find very much the same idea: Tom Baker reading short horror stories for Christmas in BBC2’s Late Night Story from thirty years ago this very week (though I recommend Saki’s Sredni Vashtar, which was never actually broadcast)…

Labels: Charles Dickens, Christopher Eccleston, Doctor Who, DVD, Radio, Reviews, The Key To Time, Tom Baker, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?

Have you noticed The Avengers is back on, late on Friday nights on BBC4? If not, consider this a Christmas present. A Christmas present? Well, it’s September, so what could be more natural than shops stuffed with Advent Calendars and stockings full of chocolate, and The Avengers’ Christmas special showing at 12.40 in the morning? And it’s (forgive me) a cracker, too, plunging Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg into a Dickensian nightmare that’s one of the very best of the series. What’s in Steed’s Christmas stocking? Is he really losing his mind? Is telepathy real? Tune in and find out.

Steed hangs up his stocking – Emma asks for more

Richard’s inordinately fond of the BBC’s 2005 adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, with Gillian Anderson riddled with accidie and pitted against Charles Dance’s extraordinarily monstrous Mr Tulkinghorn. We’ve just finished watching it again on DVD, and were so impressed that not only have I started reading the novel (three hundred pages in, only seven hundred to go, and a note to the editors: if you’re going to stick 46 footnotes in a 7-page chapter, how about sticking them at the foot of the page rather than a thousand pages to the back so your reader has to flick so often they go quite mad?), but we’ve made a start on the 1985 adaptation with, goodness me, Diana Rigg. So far it’s being stolen by Denholm Elliott as Mr Jarndyce, but however good Diana’s Lady Dedlock turns out, it’ll be very difficult for her to beat her outstanding turn in The Avengers’ exploration of Dickensiana. And it’s not just Diana Rigg’s Dickens role coming a couple of decades ahead that gives Too Many Christmas Trees that special boost: A Christmas Carol is, of course, one of many stories that get a sly reference in the script, but if you’ve seen the Alastair Sim film from a couple of decades earlier, why, there’s young Patrick Macnee, and also Mervyn Johns, who’s cast as this story’s version of the friendly, effusive typical Dickens benefactor…

Before the details and the spoilers, why’s Too Many Christmas Trees especially worth watching? Three things stand out for this eerie corrective to Christmas. The two leads are really on top form, with Diana Rigg fabulously determined as Mrs Peel carries much of the story while Steed is cracking up; Patrick Macnee ranges from light, to madly jolly, to positively haunted in a superb performance. It’s one of darkest, most atmospheric Avengers stories, tensely directed and – in the Hall of Great Expectations – giving one of the most sinister moments of the whole series. But though a ghostly midnight tale, it’s not a downbeat story; it’s also very funny, with the tension often arising from the humour and particularly thanks to Steed and Emma’s relationship here being at its wittiest, warmest and strongest. Oh, and right from the opening moments, it boasts some smashingly stylised hallucinations that you really shouldn’t show to anyone who still believes in Santa.

More to follow next week. Harrumble!

Labels: Charles Dickens, Reviews, Style, The Avengers, The Avengers Season 4

We’re home from Conference, and utterly knackered, especially poor Richard who did the driving. Among the things we learned today: there’s apparently a standard point at which Liberal Democrat bladders hit the danger mark. At least, that’s what we assumed when we drove into a particular service station off the M3 and saw two prominent Lib Dem bloggers in front of us. And an MP to one side. And a member of party staff to the other. And some Liberal Youth in the café. And… You get the picture. It was like the conference reconvening to dash for the loos.

While driving back to London, we caught up with one of Big Finish’s intriguing Sapphire & Steel series, Perfect Day. Not bad, though not the best of them, but worth it for the eerie sense of people away at the sea, caught in a time bubble of 14th September where every day’s the same. Anyone would think we’d been caught in some time bubble by the sea for the last few days that blurred into each other and probably involved the 14th of September…

We’ve watched the news coverage of Nick’s excellent speech, with a microscope, then turned to watch some of the exquisite misery of Bleak House instead. Despite getting improbably teary-eyed for the Dedlocks, it was cheerier than watching the BBC pretend we didn’t exist or – in the case of PM – giving us a fraction the coverage of the dodgy pips this morning. I might write more about the speech when I’m more awake but, in short, it was brilliantly delivered and clearly addressed more to the country than the audience. That means that while I enjoyed the Andrex Puppy, for any ordinary voters lucky enough to have channel-hopped onto Nick by accident, his passion about helping his and other children will probably have won them over. Daft idea to robo-call a quarter of a million voters tonight, though. Even if it’s a good idea, which I find unlikely, why announce it today and dilute your rare – very rare, looking at the smidgeon of coverage – bite of publicity? Why not announce it and do it tomorrow, and get an extra day’s worth (for what that’s worth) rather than overwrite your speech news with ‘Clegg’s cold call cock-up’? Sigh.

Meanwhile, as I type Robert Peston is saying it’s good news that two big banks are amalgamating into an even bigger one. Brilliant, BBC Economics guru; because big banks are completely safe and, should they go under, in no way imperil the economy or suck up squillions in public money to keep them upright, which is what’s known as the discipline of the free market. Well done, Mr Peston, for taking that infallible lesson from this week in particular and the last year in general. Pillock. It would be madness, of course, to suggest that the solution might lie in lots of little banks that help the consumer with competition and are much more difficult for big-money privateers to circle like sharks, rather than dumping competition laws and rigging the system to create more gigantic targets with ‘kick me’ on their share prices.

Random observations from the week include the excellent pair of bloggers whom I now can’t think of as anything other than Jay and Silent Bob, so many lovely people being cheery, upbeat and huggy, and that the plush Bournemouth Conference Hotel we were staying in looked terribly posh in some bits, but in the strange extension perched on top where we were found, the floors were uneven – not inspiring confidence, though suggesting several houses taken over, knocked together and an extra floor stuck across the roofs – and the narrow, snaking yellow-wallpapered corridor looked like a set from a 1970s sit-com. Specially fond memories: the facecloths that kept mysteriously vanishing from our room when the hotel pixie cleaned it; the pricey but very tasty dinner last night; the hotel internet connection hosted in Germany that gave us Blogger and Google in Deutsch and wouldn’t let us listen to BBC7 on the iPlayer; the fabulous breakfasts that saw me given no knife three days running, raising the worry that Mr Brown might have intervened to prevent a surge of cutlery crime among Lib Dems or that they’d been stolen by members of his own party and were to be found in Mr Brown’s back. Still, I had a knife this morning, and to celebrate piled my plate with Legotastic construction skill in order to make full use of it. The Blessed Leader greeted me over the breakfast selection with “Blimey, have you got enough there? I’ve never seen that much on a plate.” Sorry, Nick, but while I may be several years and about as many stone past being a Liberal youth, old buffet habits die hard.

Besides, they were really good sausages.




…Which goes to show that sausages are more popular than speeches, taxes and analysis. Or, alternatively, that this was one of the top five links that Lib Dem Blogs Aggregated got stuck on for a week ;-)

Labels: BBC, Charles Dickens, Food, Liberal Democrat Conferences, Nick Clegg, Sapphire and Steel, Speeches, The Golden Dozen

In the rosy glow of post-Christmas overindulgence, the Tories have hit on a bonkers brilliant Neanderthal new idea to prove they are the nasty ‘nice’ party, inspired by the nasty nice workhouse patrons in Oliver Twist. So, to bring welfare back to the Nineteenth Century forward into the Twenty-first Century, they would help the poor by making them toil for gruel. Meanwhile, the Chancellor and Prime Minister are offering their very best snake oil to public service workers as ‘good for you’ when what they mean is ‘good for themselves’. Both parties are bringing the word ‘patronage’ back to basics.

Twisted Tories

You can see how all this happened. Sitting back over their enormous meals in their enormous houses, Tory MPs watched the BBC’s new adaptation of Oliver Twist and empathised with the enormous workhouse patrons who were so nasty nice in the way they patronised the inmates. You know that scene where Oliver is dragged in from demanding extra gruel (which, like benefits, has fallen well behind inflation), and the workhouse patrons peer in outrage over their tottering towers of pies to condemn the young scrounger for his presumption? Well, you can just see the Tory front bench (educated at Eton, which is almost as character-building as the workhouse) nodding at these fine public-spirited chaps who look and sound so much like themselves: ‘Hear hear! That’s just what the feckless ingrates deserve. Now let’s have another goose’ [beckons nubile researcher]. You see, poor people are all intentionally evil and love living on next to nothing, so the Conservatives just can’t help their nasty ever so nice instinct to give these low-life-chance, low-life-expectancy people an extra kicking.

Of course, this chimes in terribly well with Mr Brown’s philosophy. Unlike the Conservatives, he doesn’t want to kick the poor, but he does want to boss them about. Labour’s whole approach is that they know what’s good for people much better than people themselves, and it’s not as if the Labour Government has a record of astounding cock-ups in their bossiness, is it? Oh. Since the Labour Government took office eleven years ago, Mr Brown’s iron hand – suffering badly from mettle fatigue since losing someone else to blame for his decisions – has enforced his dogmatic belief that everyone must be in any sort of work as a panacea to, well, everything. It doesn’t matter if some people or some families know something else would work better; Gordon Brown is better-informed about the lives of sixty-million-odd people than they are themselves. In this climate, it’s no great surprise that Labour’s response to the latest Tory wheeze is not ‘You’re a bossy, bloated throwback to the Nineteenth Century who’s in it to subsidise your mates in big business at taxpayers’ expense and to humiliate the poor while you’re at it,’ but a feeble ‘It would probably cost too much’. Well, the Labour Government should know about throwing wads of public money at private consultants and not getting much back for it, but I fear they’ve not learnt any lessons from it. So what they’re probably thinking is ‘Well, we didn’t think of it, so it must be wrong. But in a little while, when we do think of it, we’ll call everyone who then disagrees deliberately evil’. They’ve got form, and you only have to give them time before the cosy consensus between Labour and the Tories sees Labour adopting more Tory ideas, or vice versa.

Living on any sort of benefits isn’t luxury. It’s a crap life, and no Tory MP who claims claimants are on the life of Riley would consider that they or their families could get by on anything like it. Of course there are things that need to change in the benefits system: if you’re out of work for a long time, you feel hopeless, and there’s no-one giving you hope. There should be far better training to help you be, and feel, employable again. And the crazy poverty trap that I remember Liberal Democrats complaining about as far back as the 1980s must be changed – the trap where if you try to work you lose money through the Byzantine web of benefit bureaucracy. But that’s more difficult, and less headline-friendly, than just whipping up nastiness Tory niceness.

Of course Tories like Mr Cameron who’ve always had more to live on in a year than benefit recipients have in a lifetime say this is an easy life. That’s what I believe Freudians call ‘projection’. And that part of their mind-set that isn’t a nasty instinct of class warfare is a hangover from the blind alley of Twentieth Century politics, the Marxism and anti-Marxism that insisted there were only two sides to politics, and that both were all about money. Only the most stubbornly Tory economic determinist would insist that all people on benefits contribute nothing to society, and so must be made to do ‘something’. Being on benefits does not mean you’re anti-social; being in work does not excuse you from being a git because you pay income tax (or have fancy advisors to help you dodge it). It is both criminally stupid and morally offensive to argue that the only way to contribute to society is through money, but it’s exactly what both Tories and Labour believe.

Then What’s It For?

But let’s say for the sake of argument that that was true, that there were no charity volunteers or extended families or artists or any other sort of contributors among the people not ‘working’. What good is saying that all people out of work are by definition feckless and lazy and must be ordered into what the big government thinks is good for them going to do? Raise their dignity? Hardly. Is ‘community work’ just some worthless activity to make people feel punished for being out of work? Then it’ll only make people feel worthless, and be no use in getting them into real jobs. Is it, instead, doing real work for the Government that genuinely needs doing? In which case, will benefit levels rise to the minimum wage? If they stay as slave rates – and it’s pretty much the definition of slavery that you either do the work you’re ordered to or starve in the gutter – for work that needs doing, then surely that will put out of work the people who’d be doing it otherwise? Which means that they can be forced into the effective slavery too, if all their jobs have been undercut by the wageless ones. Hurrah! And so we have a deflationary spiral in government costs, at just the tiny expense of a new slave class denied all choice over their lives, unless they ‘choose’ to be starving and homeless. Which I don’t think is a price most taxpayers, being human beings before being economic units, are prepared to pay.

The Labour Government is, of course, also trying to drive down public sector wages, though not – yet – in so drastic a way. I don’t know enough, economically, to make an informed argument about whether or not three-year pay deals for the public sector are on balance the right thing to press for, though Millennium Dome and Bernard Salmon have each suggested that that sort of Labour Government target may not be altogether effective. What I do know is that the weasel words heard yesterday from the Prime Minister and his Chancellor were self-serving spin. I’m happy to listen to the economic case about stewarding the nation’s finances – but saying that fixed pay would be good for public sector workers because it gives them stability is a lie. At least, I hope the country’s top politicians were lying to us; the alternative is that they know less about economics than I do. Fixed costs make it easier for the Labour Government to plan ahead, which may or may not be good for the economy as a whole. But for the public sector workers involved, they have unpredictable costs on a fixed income. Without their knowing what inflation is, they have less “long-term stability,” not more; rather than being better able to plan ahead, they must simply hope that the Labour Government has got it right and they won’t end up losing money over the next few years. Because when has Labour ever made a mistake?

Like ID cards, this public sector price-fixing is being sold as something that’ll make people’s lives easier, but in fact it’s just to make people easier for the government to organise.

Sick Plans

The last thing I want to write about – pun intended – is the Tory plan to victimise people who are sick or disabled. Labour, too, have been increasingly targeting their invective against recipients of incapacity benefit; because whether you hate the poor (Tory) or believe work is the source of all moral virtue (Labour), through not being in work, sick or disabled people are probably scroungers and evildoers and should be criticised whenever possible. And, yes, some people on long-term incapacity benefit have had their lives complicated by living in areas the Tories dive-bombed in the ’80s and having been put onto a different benefit than whatever-that-year’s-thing-you-get-that-counts-you-as-unemployed was in order to cover up the collateral damage. But how exactly does setting an arbitrary target for getting people off any sort of benefit help anyone, unless you’re a cynical politician who thinks plucking a number out of the air sounds ‘tough’?

And now for the bit that I don’t really want to write. I’m on incapacity benefit. In two years of blogging, I’ve never typed that before, though some of you may have read between the lines. I’ve not written it because, in the way this country looks at people like me, I feel ashamed. I feel ashamed for being on benefit, and I feel ashamed of why I have to be. I suffer from a number of thoroughly unglamorous, unpredictable and generally humiliating long-term health conditions. Many people are worse off than I am, and some days are better than others. Some days I can get out, or type an article; some days I can do very little other than be stuck on the loo all day, and that offers precious little dignity, still less the life of Riley. Last night I had to miss yet another Federal Policy Committee meeting because I wasn’t well enough to leave the flat; I was sacked from each of my last two jobs because eventually, not every day but most of them, I was too ill to work. And when on occasion I go through good ‘patches’, though they never last, I wonder how, if they do, an employer is going to employ someone who can be very talented at their job when they’re there, but on a lot of days won’t be able to be there at all, and won’t know until it hits. It’s not exactly brilliant for planning ahead. My self-worth is low enough, and I suspect the same of hundreds of thousands like me. The government standing over me with a stick is going to make no-one feel better – except the sort who like hitting weaker people with sticks.

At this moment, I have a 20-page form in front of me that I have to fill out, as I do each year, to say just what is wrong with me and how it affects me. And soon I’ll be seeing a government-enforcement-doctor, who’ll ask me questions that I’ve answered on the form because no-one actually reads the things, and who I’ll have to stop before they ask me follow-up questions because they won’t have heard all the thrilling different things wrong with me yet. And I’m worried right now, as I am each time, because if it’s a better day and I can make it to that appointment, I might not seem like there’s enough wrong with me. And if it’s a worse day and I can’t make it, I’ll be penalised for that, too.

Best bit of bureaucracy: being told I’ve been struck from hospital appointments for one condition last year because I had to cancel more than two of them – because of a different condition. ‘Come back when you’re cured’ is a pretty weird message for a hospital to give, unless I’m very old-fashioned.

Tory rhetoric is designed to make people feel afraid – afraid, for people in work, that someone else is doing unfeasibly well by taking them for a ride. And afraid, if they’re not in work, that if they dare to pipe up they’ll be told ‘You’re well enough to make a fuss – so we’ll stop your benefit, and anyway no-one should listen to you because you’re by definition scum’. And that cynical threat is what’s made me stick my head above the parapet, though I’m afraid, too. But if someone like me doesn’t say ‘Sod off, you vindictive bastards, and how would you like it?’ then who will?


Update: Two extra references. On the subject of the Tories and Labour choosing as their victims the people least able to hit back, I was unable to find an online copy of the old Not the Nine O’Clock News sketch of a Tory Budget – raising taxes on wheelchairs, white sticks and so on – so here’s one of Call-Me-Dave-Kids Cameron-style kindler, gentler, more understanding solutions to social problems. For a more up-to-date take on the nasty ‘nice’ new policies, I’ve come across the Daily (Maybe), who sums them up in brutal style.

Further Update: Three more references! Gavin Whenman has drawn my attention to a brilliant Balloon cartoon.

Labels: British Politics, Charles Dickens, Conservatives, Health, Labour, Personal, The Golden Dozen