Love and Liberty

Queen Elizabeth II was crowned sixty fifty-nine years ago today. Not being much of a royalist (having been responsible for a political party debating the monarchy for the first time in centuries), I’d been intending to review an appropriately celebratory Doctor Who story such as Jubilee or Snakedance (in which the Doctor doesn’t enjoy the festivities) or perhaps The Pirate Planet or State of Decay (in which old Queens just keep hanging on). We went to a movie instead. Fortunately, here’s one I prepared earlier; Doctor Who Magazine’s Time Team marked the occasion this week with David Tennant’s The Idiot’s Lantern. And as well as an electric piece of art from Adrian Salmon, they printed a line from me in DWM 448 alongside their main review! So I’m chuffed.

What a shame that William Shatner’s festive cover of God Save the Queen (as sung on Have I Got News For You a week ago) doesn’t seem to be available to buy, and so tragically won’t be the Number One it deserves to be this weekend. Never mind – I’ll just have to put on those jolly carousers the Sex Pistols instead.

The idea of DWM’s Time Team is that – starting right at the beginning of Doctor Who and more than a decade ago in real time – they get four regular reviewers to sit on the couch and watch every story (including, these days, the lovely Mr Will). And to one side, they feature comments sent in by readers. When I get round to sending in one-liners to Time Team, I watch the story to brainstorm a lot of quickie ideas so that, hopefully, that way at least one of them’ll be something no-one else has come up with. The latest issue’s the first for three Doctors that I’ve had comments in two consecutive issues, and a letter about Philip Madoc, too. Coo. A few years ago, I was encouraged to set up a blog printing all of these; well, all right, I need a bit of a prod to get that going, but it’s not going to happen tonight, so I thought I’d leap ahead and publish what I sent in last month (try and spot how much I’ve nicked from Richard’s review on Millennium Dome, Elephant). If you read my usual reviews, this is something very different… Shorter, punchier and – a consequence of trying to keep the word count down – much cattier. Or, at least, not dressing it up. Actually, when I watched this a month ago, I quite enjoyed it, and having not seen it for a few years, some of it seemed quite fresh. But not all of it…

The Idiot’s Lantern – Not the Time Team

The tone’s all over the place, it’s hardly original, and the Doctor’s lost the big picture… But Maureen Lipman’s scene-stealing fabulousness makes the most fun villain since the series came back. And showing her frock properly even justifies Doctor Who Confidential!

I’m no royalist, but “Are you suggesting that the Queen does the housework?” is a brilliant way to puncture ’50s sexism. And did you time this Time Team for the Jubilee specially?

It almost gets across the feel of 60 years ago, when TV was rare and the Royals aloof. Before it all just became meaningless, greedy, third-rate celebrities. And TV’s nearly as bad.

They should leave Billie out of half the story more often if it means she concentrates what she has into flashes of pure impishness – taking the mickey out of Eddie and vanishing like a sprite is the best she’s been all season.

Mr Gatiss likes his Autons, doesn’t he? Blank faces, Doctor’s lash-ups needing a quick fix, New Domestic Thing Turns Evil at Evil Signal from Transmitter of Evil… Filling in the rest with dashes of Quatermass and Sapphire and Steel. Still, it’s more original than Night Terrors.

The only bit that doesn’t feel nicked is the family, and that just because it’s not very good – it might name-check Corrie, but can’t do it. And as for Dad… Not as well-rounded and subtle a working-class character as Sam Seeley.

The Wire’s sheer fun but also a real threat – Mr Connolly should be scarier, if anything, a more immediate brutish bully, but his terrible ‘My old man’s a dustman’ schtick makes him just a prat.

Eddie’s fine to start with, deliberately overdoing it like a dad when he marvels that it’s like the TV people are in the room with you. Shame that that’s as underplayed as he gets.

It’s charming but not really threatening – too cosy, save that scene where the Doctor suddenly goes off the deep end. Usually he’s just all teeth and lack of curls, not psychotic.

Tommy seems much younger than he is – not just the actor, but after children in School Reunion and the Fireplace, suddenly this seems an oddly child-populated season. It doesn’t quite suit the horror.

It might be laid on with a trowel in Tommy’s soliloquy, but it’s good to have such an unambiguously Liberal message again – in the Wire and Eddie, the Doctor stands up to bullies, big or small.

In a story from a child’s perspective, I can see the arbitrariness of authority excusing Bishop flashing between violent fascist and trusty Dixon copper, but I still don’t believe it.

I know ‘Feed me’ has been done before, but how Paradise Towers is this? That line, the disembodied villain, the Doctor reversing the interrogation… Towers still seems much fresher and wittier, though I’d take Lipman over Briers any day.

Cosy and horrific; domestic and pomp and circumstance; perhaps the tone’s at its most uncertain when it tries ‘Lovely Fifties nostalgia’ and ‘Things shouldn’t live on beyond their time’ at once. The obvious love of TV while sending up ‘It rots your brain!’ is a fab juxtaposition, though.

Lipman does a great lip-smacking single megalomaniac villain, but there just aren’t enough characters or time to pull off a ‘Florizel Street’ soap – and it doesn’t help that each member of the family appears to be acting in a different series or, in the case of Dad, a school play.

Bizarre that a ‘smaller’ historical seems so much less believable than the more ‘important’ ones – is it because we don’t all know queens (well, not all), but we can all tell when a family isn’t convincing?

The Wire’s probably the most OTT villain since the series came back, while Eddie’s just like every brute who beat you up. He should be the real scary monster. But ‘arch’ beats ‘hammy’ hands down.

I don’t think much of the Doctor being blasé over the whole of London but psychotic losing Rose. Get over yourselves!

Oh, dear, the Doctor’s ‘armed’ and the sonic much too handy. But I forgive this for sending up the psychic with “The King of Belgium, apparently”. A scream!

So how exactly does everyone get their face back…? It’s just a bit too easy – ‘Don’t worry, once TV people leave, everything returns to normal’. A more modern take would say ‘TV people do you, move on, and you’re left in a right old mess’.

It’s quite an elaborate revenge on continuity announcers always talking over the credits, isn’t it? If only they were all that cool (and had such killer frocks).

Bizarre fact: this is the episode most likely to be repeated without the “Next Time…” at the end. So it lets the continuity announcers in quicker.

Alex Wilcock
Isle of Dogs

And a few from Richard Flowers

I love the Doctor constructing a video recorder out of spares whilst on the run. A perfectly Doctor Who moment.

Is Tommy gay? I only ask because the script slaps you around the face with the obviousness of it and then pulls the punch.

In spite of the proprietor being vaporised by the Wire, Mr Magpie’s business is going to go from strength to strength, seen to still be in business aboard Starship UK in the Thirty-whatever-ish Century. I guess catering to those early Betamax adopters really paid off!

Tonight, Richard and I are watching and greatly enjoying the story that followed The Idiot’s Lantern, The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit. It’s the day before its sixth anniversary, for a story full of sixes; it’s time (slightly past time, probably) for the next Time Team… But, mainly, because we’ve just been to see Prometheus, which in no way recalled this story with its sensible black captain, industrial future chic, tepid comments about faith, giant carved face down in the darkness, Cthuliana and Alien feel. Completely different. I’d say what I thought of it, but I suspect someone else’ll be along shortly with something a lot more incisive and insightful than I’d be after one viewing…

Labels: Cthulhu, David Tennant, Doctor Who, Doctor Who Magazine, History, Republic, Reviews, Richard, The Idiot’s Lantern

You may have heard about Lord Laidlaw, a Conservative peer and donor who’s said to be the second richest person in Scotland and – gasp! – a tax exile. The BBC reports that, three years after agreeing to become a UK resident to gain a peerage, he still hasn’t done it. The Lords’ Appointments Commission will “name and shame him in a forthcoming review” (so what’s this morning’s leak news?), but the Today Programme said they’re otherwise “powerless”. I know what you’d expect me to say: ‘Tory donor, filthy rich, tax exile, cash for honours, scandal, holds up shocked mittens’. Actually, it’s not quite that simple. My biggest problem is not with Lord Laidlaw, but with Lords’ Appointments Commission.

I don’t approve of peerages, with donations or without. I was delighted last month when the House of Commons voted to replace the whole bunch with people who can be elected and held to account – though, unaccountably, the Lords didn’t agree. But despite Lord Laidlaw sounding, in a one-line summary, like one of the dodgier members of a wholly dodgy House, I’m wary of reports that throw everything at one individual. In part, it’s because that distracts attention from the need to throw out the lot of them and replace them with people we can choose to throw out, or not, on a regular basis. In part, it’s because the story contains some elements in his favour.

Obviously, if we’re going to have legislators on the basis of some whim, bung or ancestry rather than because they’ve won an election (sorry to keep banging on, but my dictionary and I have rather old-fashioned notions of what a ‘democracy’ might mean), having a legislator called ‘Laidlaw’ is as good an excuse as any, and better than most – I mean, can you think of a more brilliant name? More seriously, the BBC’s Business Editor reports that Lord Laidlaw has written to the Lords’ Appointments Commission to say that he does still plan to move, but that personal reasons have delayed it. Well, I can understand that; I’m quite attached to our flat and wouldn’t want to be forced to move from that either, though tragically it’s not worth £700-odd million, and involves us already paying taxes. And, very much in his favour, he’s said he intends gradually to give away his vast personal fortune to charity. Knowing little about him except for this story, that makes him sound rather a good egg, major donor to the Tories or not. Against him, there’s the fact that he told the BBC’s Business Editor “I have made it a rule never to speak to journalists.” Well, I suppose being a snooty git who considers any enquiries from the people they rule over to be the height of impertinence comes with the job, too (see ‘objections to House of Lords, general’, above).

So if Lord Laidlaw is a laudable philanthropist who simply has an unfortunate record of giving some of his largesse to deeply undeserving causes, what’s my real problem? It’s with this report, swallowed wholesale by journalists, that all the Lords’ Appointments Commission can do is “name and shame” tax exile peers they’ve previously rubber-stamped, and that they’re brave, noble individuals who are “powerless” to take real action such as, say, revoking a peerage. Well, aside from their being there as an artificial life-support for the concept of government by patronage, I have no sympathy whatsoever for their sanctimonious bleatings today. Their cowardly leaking that they’d like to revoke Lord Laidlaw’s peerage if they only could is shameful. The fact is, they were not powerless when it mattered – just incompetent. The Commission had all the power they needed to prevent a tax exile from becoming a peer. They could have heard his evidence that he intended to move at some point, and answered: ‘Fine. And six months after you’ve done so, provide us with the evidence you’ve settled here and we will give you your peerage.’ But they didn’t bother. This cowardly, lazy and incompetent bunch are now saying – out of the corners of their mouths, as of course their “review” remains “forthcoming” – that it’s all someone else’s fault. No, it’s not. It’s theirs, and rather than criticise someone else, they should be apologising for giving him the nod in the first place when it was their duty to have stopped him. Just as all but about 0.0001% of the tens of millions of us in Britain have no say on the Lords themselves, we have no say on this small group of people who are supposed to choose whether our potential lawmakers are ‘worthy’. Today more than ever, it’s clear they need holding to account, too.

In other news, the ‘war on drugs’ (immensely tasteless, with all the real wars about) has completely failed, as drug use remains high and a major source of criminality. Well, goodness me, bless my muffins, who’d have thought, I don’t Adam and Eve it, etc. Expect the Labour Government to sound just as faux-shocked as their Lords’ Appointments Commission as they rush round to blame everyone else but themselves and ask for new powers with which to waste police time instead of getting to the root of the problem. As long as drugs have an effect on people, people will take them. And as long as they remain illegal, criminals will take those people’s money. Like ‘Who gave the go-ahead to a tax exile peer,’ this is not rocket science.

Labels: British Politics, Conservatives, Drugs, Republic

Wow!

I’ve actually been astounded by a Parliamentary vote – and in a good way. When MPs voted by a margin of 38 for the ‘House of Lords’ to be 80% elected, I cheered, expecting no better and prepared to tolerate the compromise (welcoming the annihilation of options from ‘just 60% elected’ down). But then, only ninety-five-and-a-half years late, the House of Commons has just voted to have the ‘House of Lords’ wholly elected, and by a stonking majority of 113. This has to call into question Jack Straw’s decision to leave it with the name ‘House of Lords’. But then, seeing Mr Straw’s deathly puce face as the unwelcome tide of democracy poured through the House and swept away his own preferred option (by the largest margin!), he may not be long for this world anyway. Particularly not if Mr Blair is still in a ‘firing mood’ in his dying days.

Ironically, this most hideously authoritarian control freak of a Prime Minister will now find that the legacy defended by his apologists – the rest of us, of course, will remember him for Iraq – will consist of two significant enlargements of democracy, about one of which he was lukewarm and with the other one to which he is actively opposed: the Scottish Parliament and Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies (good luck today, Alliance!), and an elected second chamber. Despite Mr Blair’s opposition to the idea, he’s probably more responsible than anyone else for the vote. The appearance of sleaze around the accusations levelled against him of cash for peerages might be what tipped the vote so heavily against the power of patronage filling seats in Parliament ever again.

Still, the Lords may still vote against democracy, he must be hoping.

Yes, I’m afraid I’ve been hypnotised into frittering away my afternoon watching BBC Parliament instead of carrying on with the serious business of writing Doctor Who reviews…

Steve Webb’s impeccably titled Webb Log has the full results (oh, and the BBC).

Labels: British Politics, Lords, Republic

The urge to meddle is human. We see something we disapprove of and think ‘That isn’t healthy; it should be stopped!’ And it’s true that, when someone opens their mouth and the resulting activity is something I find difficult to swallow, I might be tempted to tell them what to do with themselves. But no. However bad for the digestion Prince Charles is, he should be free to say what he likes. I just object to having it forced down our throats. Mr Windsor, who coincidentally markets his own supermarket-sold brand of expensive ‘organic’ food, now wants to ban McDonald’s.

Apparently Charles came up with this brilliant notion while at the launch of a public health campaign in the United Arab Emirates. He asked a nutritionist,

“Have you got anywhere with McDonald’s, have you tried getting it banned? That’s the key.”

How insightful! Ban nasty common food, and everyone will magically turn to nice healthy banquets from the Prince’s own label instead, though I somehow suspect, not at the same price. Nothing like free competition! Normally it would be the word ‘nutrionist’ that would make me look carefully at a person’s qualifications, but whether she’s a fully trained medical expert or just someone with a dodgy diploma from the university of television, I’m sure Prince Charles will manage to know less than she does. Where science is concerned, I’d probably even give ‘Doctor’ (not a medical term) Gillian McKeith’s work more serious consideration than whatever ‘Prince’ Charles has cooked up. Still, there’s a sort of progress: it’s better to be told we have to buy his venison nowadays than be back in the days when we’d have our hands cut off for eating it, I’ll grant you. How he must miss them.

I don’t like McDonald’s. I don’t like their business practices, I’m not fond of their décor, and above all, I don’t eat there because I don’t like the taste of their burgers – but I’m not prejudiced against junk food, and I’ll occasionally grab some that I do like the taste of. Occasionally even something with a crown on the packaging (though not a ‘Duchy Original’)! Like everyone else, if I eat too much food that isn’t good for me, I’m big enough to take the consequences, and sometimes a size bigger. On the bright side, though my trousers may at times be a little tight for me, I can get in and out of them without the aid of three footmen and a shoehorn. It’s none of my business if someone wants to eat something I don’t like the look of – it’s not hurting me, and even if I felt far more strongly about it than ‘mild dislike’, that’s no excuse to have it banned, even ‘for their own good’. Choice is a fundamental tenet of democracy, but then, ‘Prince’ Charles is as well-qualified to talk about that as he is about science.

So it’s easy to think ‘Oh, just shut up’ when Charles comes up with another of these splenetic, unqualified outbursts. Each to their own taste, though. Let him open his mouth whenever he likes, just like the rest of us. But how about on the same terms as the rest of us? No automatic hotline to the Prime Minister – who needs no ‘celebrity’ prompting to ban things – no fawning media coverage as if he knew what he was talking about, no millions in state subsidy, no free ride to grumpiness at the world because he’s been kept waiting to get the country’s top job without anyone else having a say. Instead of telling us all what’s good for us, how about giving us a referendum so we can all say what we think of him, and have the chance to choose someone on the basis of what they’ve done instead of who their parents are? Give him a vote, too. And when the voting public decide they’d rather have Ms Mirren as head of state than Mr Windsor…

‘The Blogger Formerly Known As Prince’. It has a ring to it.

Labels: Food, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, Quackery, Republic

It’s ‘Lords Reform Day’, which leaves me in a quandary. No, not about whether to elect our second chamber (puh-lease!), but about what possibly to blog other than “Of course Parliament should be elected in a democracy! Are you a fuckwit, or what?” So, for fun, if you see a Lib Dem MP looking very sober and smug about how ludicrous it is that senior offices in the land should still be filled by the cronies of Prime Ministers and the descendents of the cronies of kings, just ask, “So you’d abolish the monarchy, then?” and watch them turn puce.

Only one Lord should still be about, and the hereditary principle in his case is a bit of a contentious issue. He’s got a new suit today (not bad, nasty breast pocket), and a new companion. You can distinguish her from a suspiciously similar-looking character because this one’s got a pineapple on her head.

Labels: British Politics, David Tennant, Lords, Republic

Prince Charles appears to be embarrassed that it’s come out he’s been meddling in politics. Apparently he doesn’t expect to be held to account. Well, colour me stunned. According to tonight’s Channel 4 News, he bombards MPs and ministers with ‘advice’ (while never replying to anyone else’s letters, as if only his opinions count), seeing himself as a “dissident” there to fight the political consensus and, presumably, any views later than the Nineteenth Century. Here’s a thought – why not stop trying to order the government about in secret, stop loafing about waiting to be King and stand for election instead? Then he could see how his views would go down in a democracy… Assuming anyone would actually listen to him if he was Mr Charles Windsor (particularly without the billions his family have to hand).

Strangely, though several ex-ministers were quizzed about Prince Charles and several complained, not one was willing to go on the record. You’d imagine it was some residual respect for the monarchy, but one of the courtroom revelations from the Prince’s former munchkin today was that he’s struck up a cordial relationship in the waiting room of British politics with that other frustrated old seether, Gordon Brown. Suddenly all is explained. Criticising the monarchy’s one thing, but some forms of lese-majesty are just beyond the pale in the Labour Party.

Labels: Labour, Republic