Love and Liberty

Have you seen the trailer for Ashes To Ashes Series Two? Classy, fun, cinematically shot and set to one of Spandau Ballet’s better tunes, it’s been all over the BBC for weeks, and I’ve been looking forward to tonight’s first episode… But not without doubts gnawing at me. I’d already had more problems with Ashes To Ashes than its predecessor Life On Mars – and, after Red Riding made old-fashioned violent policing seem less funny, and the death of Ian Tomlinson warned us that the Met’s changed less than we’d all hoped, will we still be laughing with Gene Hunt?

Life On Mars was a brilliant concept, superbly delivered, with two great leads. John Simm’s Sam Tyler was the ideal modern cop – efficient, intelligent, compassionate and brave – transported back to ‘simpler’ days of arrest first, ask questions when you know which answers you want to beat into the crook. But Philip Glenister’s Gene Hunt, like that other ’70s invention Judge Dredd, was such a ludicrously authoritarian parody that people couldn’t help falling for him, so naturally he became the big hit. If Sam Tyler was an echo of Jane Tennison, this time he was never going to convert the team; the bunch of old scrotes he was stuck in with won him over more than the other way round. Still, the scripts were sharp, the overarching mystery was intriguing, and Gene was funny because he was played and written straight down the line, with entertaining lines opposite the solid, respectable Noughties man.

Eventually, Sam Tyler made his exit, and the ’70s-set Manchester show – filmed around places I remember when I was a kid up there – moved, like me, down to London. With a new title, a new decade, and a new lead called Alex. What could be better?

Well, despite the music being more to my taste, I didn’t warm as much to the first series of Ashes To Ashes as I had to the two of the earlier model. And there were two key reasons – both relating to the leads. Now he’s become a well-loved folk hero, Gene Hunt’s off the leash; he is, god help us, our audience identification character, there’s no longer any tension that he might not be entirely trusted, and even his least appealing underling Ray Carling, who was initially a brutal, corrupt thug, has been airbrushed. And permed.

The other was Keeley Hawes’ Alex Drake, a perfectly good performance, but a real problem of a character for me. While Sam Tyler had been the one with his feet on the ground that you could recognise from normal life, in this series the lead from ‘now’ is far more of a stereotype than even DI Hunt, shallow and peripheral. Despite a chilling through-line of the story of her parents in last year’s series, I couldn’t help thinking that for most of the time she was more the comic relief than ‘funny’ Gene. Structurally, her character was in a much more difficult position than Sam had been: where Sam was the lead, she was just the ‘new girl’; with Gene fully established and her already in a side job rather than in the thick of it, she becomes far more peripheral; and, after Sam’s inner mystery was solved when he woke up, there was never going to be the serious tension about the extent to which the series was real.

So, with both Alex and the audience knowing that the whole thing’s a comatose delusion, she knows that it’s literally all about her. The problem with that is that, while Sam would be torn – like Thomas Covenant – between treating people as if they mattered deadly seriously and not wanting to give in to what could be madness, she can treat the whole thing as if it’s one big laugh, because she ‘knows’ that no-one else matters. So, when we have serious subjects and the ‘serious’ character is the one who’s pissing about the most, there’s something very offputting about it. She’s become the stereotype of a ‘flighty’ woman who doesn’t take anything seriously, a much older stereotype even than Gene Hunt, mixed with the lady psychiatrist in a ’30s screwball comedy. That part was pretty advanced feminism for the ’30s, but three-quarters of a century later and without nearly as many sassy lines as Rosalind Russell or Katharine Hepburn would have been given, it seems like a backwards step. And, let’s face it, I just don’t find a solipsist leading character appealing, and if she’s meant to personify the ’80s as the ‘me’ decade… Well, I didn’t like ‘me, me, me’ ’80s characters in the ’80s, and I’m no more likely to identify with them now.

Last year’s final episode crystallised the good and the bad of the series for me. The revelations about her father were predictable, but brilliantly executed; Take the Long Way Home made such a haunting closing track that I picked it up on CD. But, while I enjoyed the fictionalised version of Tom Robinson, someone I’ve met a few times, it couldn’t help dragging me back to the police attitude to gays in the ’80s. When I first started going out in Manchester in the late ’80s, noticeably illegal by some years according to the law at the time, I had a bit of a culture shock; I’d always been brought up to think well of the police, yet there all the stories I heard were of thugs and rapists who either laughed off homophobic violence, perpetrated it, or arrested the victims. And it didn’t help that our local Chief Constable at the time was a raving bigot who was determined to cast us into Hell.

So, when Alex Drake laughed and made postmodern remarks about how funny gays were because she was fine with that sort of thing, I noticed that the men she was laughing at were in the cells, and thought how repulsively smug she was. And when a fictionalised – but, again, real name, real person, just an actor playing him and fictional lines – Lord Scarman came in and the team lionised Gene Hunt and said what a waste of time the busybody Scarman Report was, getting in the way of good policing, I just felt rather ill.

I was at my most politically active in the ’90s, yet despite realisation of my sexuality triggering my political involvement and always being out, among the dozens of policy issues that I pressed I was always wary of being seen as ‘the gay one’. I knew that no matter how many other things I pressed, that was what would get me labelled as a single-issue politician. Eventually, I decided ‘oh, fuck it,’ because if I didn’t press for what I was pressing on LGBT issues, no-one else was going to do it (the one Manifesto for the last 15 years until today that I wasn’t on the FPC for is the only one that didn’t mention sexual orientation. I look forward to reading the new Euro-Elections Manifesto with a tiny amount of trepidation). And the issue that I fought hardest to raise our profile on was hate crime, right up until I eventually piloted a full motion on the subject through Conference in 1999. I started by picking up and running with the issue of Police Racial Attack Squads, which was knocking about the party ineffectually in the early ’90s; it wasn’t just because I wanted us to bang on about homophobic violence too that, when I started getting the idea into major policy proposals, I made sure we gave them a different name. Because too many people assumed the police already had “Racial Attack Squads,” and that they might be on the receiving end of them. It was a policy I pushed because it tackled an issue that most police forces at the time were shamefully ignoring; because hate crimes were something that the other parties would go nowhere near, making it both distinctively Liberal and tough on crime; and because I knew from first-hand experience that there were plenty of places and communities where, unless the police made it absolutely clear that they’d changed by taking such issues seriously, there were an awful lot of law-abiding people who would never trust or help a police officer.

Perhaps Gene Hunt could be funny and loveable because he and his attitudes were safely in the past. And perhaps the ’80s version of the series was just a little too much closer to the present for me to be comfortable with it last year. Reminders that there are still times when we can’t always trust the police, that the other side of them always getting the right man was the police always knowing what ‘sort’ the right man would be, don’t chime in with the jolly advertising that the ’80s are back, and it’s criminal.

So, again, I’m looking forward to this show. But more than ever before, I’m worried what it’ll laugh away. And, after the past few weeks (with more fallout daily), I wonder just how many other people will be laughing with it any more at the idea that the police should just beat up whoever they like, because they’re always right and only evildoers get in their way.

Labels: Ashes To Ashes, British Politics, Gay, History, Life On Mars, Music, Personal, Reviews

Living on the Isle of Dogs for the last fourteen and a bit years, my MP has been identikit Labour machine politician Jim Fitzpatrick. I assume. Of course, being an identikit Labour machine politician in an apparently safe Labour seat, I’ve never seen him, nor heard from any of his minions outside of election time. So imagine my surprise when our buzzer went this afternoon, and the person trying to get into the flats introduced himself as Jim Fitzpatrick, our local Member of Parliament. Shame he instantly gave away the reason for his shock appearance with the words “George Galloway”. Still, my opinion of him’s risen sharply for having got off his arse at last, even if it’s because he’s scared silly that he’s about to face an election that he can’t sleep through.

“Mr Clark?” he asked. Obviously, Labour turn up to canvass this area so often that two guys living here since 1993 and 1995 respectively are too recent a pair of incomers to show up on their records. Anyway, once I’d set him right on our identities, he asked who I was planning to vote for at the General Election, and seemed very surprised indeed at my answer. “Would it change your mind if you knew that George Galloway was planning to move over to this seat, and that voting Liberal Democrat might let him in? Or,” and here he sound less chirpy, “is George Galloway the sort of person you like and admire?”

I reassured him. Well, up to a point.

“No, I can’t stand him,” I replied, but before he could take that as an endorsement, “but while I have nothing against you personally, your bossy, smearing, warmongering Government is even worse. So it’s much of a muchness, isn’t it?”

At this, he laughed, and thanked me for my time. And because he’d actually come along and seemed to demonstrate genuine good humour, were I voting by a preferential voting system, I would consider giving Mr Fitzpatrick my second preference, because Mr Galloway is a loathsome, lying, puffed-up, opportunist shit. And the only reasons I can think of that Mr Galloway is chicken-running to Poplar and Canning Town from the seat next door are that he’s pissed off enough of his constituents by being a rubbish MP and pissed off enough of his own party by being a rampaging egomaniac that he thinks getting re-elected on his record (rather than posing as an insurgent again) would be impossible. But as one of the many, many broken promises from Mr Fitzpatrick’s Government was over any sort of electoral reform, I have just the one vote, and there’s no conceivable way that that will ever go to an anonymous Labour machine politician, even one who’s finally introduced himself, and even with Satan as his main opposition.

Last night, incidentally, I had to wave a piece of paper at my beloved Richard when he came in, rather than greet him with my usual effusive lovingness. I was on the phone, having just been rung up by Ipsos-Mori with an opinion poll (the first of those since I was grabbed on the street in Eastleigh in 1994 and, having – cough – established my local credentials and carefully obscured my Lib Dem rosette, told the woman asking the questions that I thought Margaret Beckett would be a real vote-winner for the Labour Party and that they certainly shouldn’t pick that Tony Blair). Anyone would think there was a General Election looming…

Labels: British Politics, Labour, London

The deaths have been announced of two men with enormous track records in entertainment: Peter Rogers, who fabulously produced every single Carry On film; then celebrity cook, glacially slow Just A Minute speaker and contributor to the gaiety of the nation through Parliamentary Liberalism Clement Freud. Both of them and their work have been presences through my whole life, and I’m sorry that I never met either of them. I did, however, meet John Cater, an actor whose death was also announced recently, and I’d like to celebrate that genuinely nice chap as well as the two more famous men.

Intellectually, I’ve known for many years that Clement Freud was a Liberal MP, but as he lost his seat and largely disappeared from politics at around the time I started getting interested, it’s always been difficult to feel that political presence in the man who I’ve always known as a lugubrious regular alongside Nicholas Parsons (the only time I can remember hearing a Lib Dem conversation about him was scurrilous rumours that he and Roy Jenkins used to compete to see who could go for longest without visiting their seats). So as well as lauding Stephen Glenn’s very appropriate tribute, I’d like to direct you to Paul Walter, whose Clement Freud’s Vital 12.5% puts in perspective just how important Clement was to the Liberal Party during his time in Parliament – first elected on a day when, astonishingly, we won two by-elections on one day (26th July 1973) and, in those days long before being able to get 63 MPs elected, at a stroke increased our Commons representation by a third on top of what we’d had a few hours before. And, of course, I was always a great fan of Band On the Run, too (Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five is still one of the most stirring rock anthems). But, for all those people who talk about how off-message he was, you can read via Jonathan Calder how sharp his instinct was for getting a political point in at the most unlikely moment.

John Cater – Intense, Reliable, and A Disturbing Sort of Spear-Carrier

You probably knew of Clement Freud, and you’ve almost certainly watched some of Peter Rogers’ films, but you may not be able to place the name of John Cater. He was an actor with a hugely impressive list of screen credits across fifty years – from Saturday Night Theatre in 1958, via the Dr Phibes movies, Dad’s Army and a regular role in The Duchess of Duke Street to, oh, never mind, Bonekickers last year – but taking in along the way an enormous number of roles. I particularly remember him for his appearances in arguably my three favourite series of all, Doctor Who, I, Claudius, and the one I’ll always associate him with, The Avengers.

He was quite slight, and often bearded, with an inquisitive look to him; though usually found in moderately-sized rather than leading roles, he was a very reliable character actor, and managed to combine a light touch for comedy with an extraordinary intensity. He was always terribly watchable. In Doctor Who – The War Machines, the 1966 story that warns that the Internet is coming and it will TAKE OVER THE WORLD! he’s Professor Krimpton, one of the developers of the deadly computer system who, on seeing his boss become a starry-eyed zombie, first laughs and just thinks he’s flipped, as you would, then fights against the Machine’s hypnotic control in a very disturbing scene, then eventually succumbs. A decade later, he was one of the Emperor Claudius’ two trusted Greek administrators towards the end of the serial, the one who saw what was coming and didn’t betray him.

Back in the mid-’80s, however, it was John Cater’s death in an episode of The Avengers that made him unforgettable for me. During a Channel 4 repeat run, I got hooked on the series first through some of the Tara King episodes and then on catching some of the black and white Mrs Peel outings. It was in one of the latter, Death At Bargain Prices, that he plays a store detective who befriends Mrs Peel – sent there to investigate strange goings-on – and comes to a particularly nasty end. Though he’s also an entertainingly diffident foreign spy in the later episode The Living Dead and “Disco” (not who you imagine) in the Cathy Gale story The Nutshell, for me he’ll always be Jarvis, creeping around Pinter’s Department Store. But what harm could come to you in a big store? Well, when there’s a large jungle set up in the middle of it – to show off camping equipment, of course – where better to find yourself winding up with a spear through your chest, for one of the most haunting images of my teens?

In the last couple of years, I met John twice at different Doctor Who events, and had the chance to chat to him (and to get him to autograph my Avengers DVDs). Spry, animated and a great conversationalist, he came across as a genuinely lovely guy, with a wicked twinkle. Discussing I, Claudius, he talked about how Derek Jacobi would always learn his lines at least one episode in advance, so he could sit doing the Times crossword as other actors got it right, and how another actor he worked with, Ronald Culver (father of Michael), would do the same. From the inside, he too was very impressed by I, Claudius, but unimpressed by the industry not giving any work to its director, “the great Herbie Wise,” because “directors over forty are past it” – recalling Herbie’s being asked “What have you done?” when going for a job on The Bill, “whereas actors can get away with it, because there’ll always be old fart parts for old farts like me.” He remembered, in The Avengers’ The Living Dead, “being a rather silly second lieutenant to Julian Glover,” but enjoying playing the piano badly and being asked by a gruff shop steward, “Are you in the Musicians’ Union?” And as he’d always been a bit of a muso, he joined on the spot and still kept it up to that day, which gave him the odd free entry to concerts and things. He found that episode’s director John Krish a real gentleman – he got him a car home despite the unions making a fuss, and did him a copy of The Living Dead when he couldn’t find one (he recalled that John also did a film, Decline and Fall, which John regrets was ruined by the editors forced on him).

I mentioned, of course, my memory of that gloriously surreal Avengers image of him lying dead with a spear in his chest, in a jungle, in a department store, one of the moments that so captivated me about the series when I was new to it. He told me about the filming, and the “mechanism” he was fitted with:

“Yes, I remember that shot. The props man passed by as I was being set up for it and shouted, ‘Stick it up his Jacksie’. And I thought, how rude! ‘You wouldn’t say that if I was Laurence Olivier,’ I said. ‘But you’re not, are you?’ he said. ‘Stick it up his Jacksie!’”

Peter Rogers, Carry On Up the Khyber, and The Worst DVD Commentary in the World, Ever!

Peter Rogers was a brilliant producer. To have made so many Carry On films, and for so many of them to be brilliant – as well as some that were all right, some mediocre and one or two downright dreadful – means he deserves to be remembered for giving people an awful lot of pleasure and, for someone who clearly had a sharp focus on the bottom line, for being responsible for the one of the most successful British film series ever made. I think only James Bond can touch it.

The best way to celebrate him, then, is to bung on one of his films and simply enjoy it. If you need a tip, try going for Carry On Cleo, or Carry On Screaming, or Carry On, Don’t Lose Your Head – yesterday, Film Four showed Leslie Howard’s version of The Scarlet Pimpernel, and though that’s much-lauded, Don’t Lose Your Head is not only (naturally) a much funnier film, but a far more exciting one. The 1934 adaptation may have a strong plot and some good lines (if none to match “The Duc de Pommes Frittes has had his chips!”), but the action in the comedy version beats it hands down, and you can’t beat Sid James’ joyous foppery. For years, every time Leslie Howard’s Pimpernel came round, The Guardian’s film review would praise its swordplay as “exhilarating”. And every time, I’d raise an eyebrow, because that film contains no swordplay at all, still less any to compete with the genuinely exhilarating swordplay at the climax of Peter Rogers’ Don’t Lose Your Head. Or, of course, you could simply watch the finest of all his films, set in part in the aforementioned town of Jacksie, Carry On Up the Khyber.

Ah, yes, Carry On Up the Khyber. It may be an inappropriate way to remember him, but I didn’t hear all that many interviews with Peter Rogers, and the one that sticks in my head with fascinated horror was his DVD commentary for that movie, an experience so dreadful that – years before I started blogging – I was moved to send an e-mail round relating it. So here, from the 24th of May 2003, is my reaction to his reaction. I hope you’ll find it entertaining, if a cautionary tale in why being brilliant behind the camera doesn’t necessarily mean entertainment in front of it…

The Worst DVD Commentary in the World, Ever!

OK, I admit that (paraphrasing Donald Cotton on Helen of Troy) it’s impossible to know this without the most extensive surveys, but yesterday evening I listened to such a mind-boggling train-wreck of a commentary that I had to share it with you. Or give you a warning.

The DVD in question is one just bought for me by my beloved, the Special Edition of Carry On Up the Khyber (or “Carry On the Regiment” as a team of censors unfunnily tried to persuade them was a better title). Now, for the most part this is a terrific DVD, with added subtitles, a nice little booklet with Doctor Who references, rather good extras – even the bonus Carry On Laughing show (usually unimpressive), The Sobbing Cavalier, is quite a fun Civil War piece – and the film itself is fantastic, which is why we went for the Special Edition even after getting the original DVD release. But the commentary is astoundingly painful.

The Carry On Special Edition commentaries I’ve heard so far have mostly been Jim Dale on his own, which are only so-so, or a team of the more minor actors, which are rather more entertaining, each moderated by Carry On reference book author Robert Ross (Barbara Windsor doesn’t seem to be doing any). For Khyber, sadly, almost all the actors are now dead, and presumably they didn’t think Angela Douglas, say, was a big enough draw on her own. You can imagine Mr Ross thinking, ‘Hey, this is the best Carry On, so for something really special, let’s bring in Peter Rogers, the producer of all the films. That’ll work.’

It doesn't.

By half-way through, I was actually wondering if they’d get to the end of the recording; if this was a marriage, it’d be at the stage of acrimonious divorce due to irreconcilable differences. Ross has gone into it with a trayful of fascinating facts and a set of questions to prompt heart-warming anecdotes; Rogers is under the impression that he’s being paid to sit and watch a film – with gritted teeth – and regards any attempt to engage him in conversation as the utmost impertinence.

Before this, my most grumpy commentary was with Nigel Kneale on the laserdisc of the Quatermass II film, being prodded every few minutes by his moderator and either staying silent or snapping viciously at the stick that’s prodding him. At least, though, Kneale is a brilliantly evil old curmudgeon who hates directors, actors, and above all every single young person in the world, and can be relied on to say something waspish and indiscreet (notably taking a fiendish delight in Brian Donlevy’s flying hairpiece) that makes the long periods of silence bearable. Rogers’ lofty hostility beats this hands down as a grim listening experience.

Peter Rogers appears to have entered a bet with someone that he can take profound personal offense at any remark, even if it’s actually praising him, rather like the “I Couldn't Disagree With You More” round on the much-missed ’90s panel game If I Ruled the World. “So, this film is often thought of as one of the best British films ever made – do you feel proud of it?” asks Ross hopefully, for example. “Proud? No, certainly not. What a thing to say,” is just one of the affronted retorts I remember from last night.

Rogers’ other tactic is silence. Getting any reply at all out of him is like pulling teeth. You get the feeling that Ross was considering shooting himself after the 433rd complicated question which had been greeted with “… (pause) … (more pause) …No.” Admittedly, he asks for trouble a couple of times, trying persistently to correct Rogers on facts which the other man clearly isn’t going to give way on (tip: never mention Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in his presence), but you can’t blame him. I’d probably have strangled the rude old git.

He’s hypersensitive about money; he puts down Ross’ attempts to infodump to give the listener something for their money (“You sound like a football commentator”); he says, in the tone of a headmaster cleaning urine out of the drinking fountain with his hands, “As long as I make people laugh, I’m happy.” At one point, he has the cheek to remark, “You’ve not asked me any questions for a while,” immediately qualifying it with “Not that I want to answer them.” Most of all, he just doesn’t want to speak. I suspect he’s never heard a DVD commentary. Except as a lesson in how not to do one, you shouldn’t try to hear this one, either.

Oh, and it closes with Ross somehow forcing himself to say, “Thank you, Peter Rogers. It’s been a pleasure.” “I wish I could say the same,” he stiffly replies. Straight up!

Finally, though you won’t see John Cater in either of them, tonight BBC4 spoil us with two episodes of The Avengers. At 7.40 you can see Obsession, a reasonable story notable for Purdey’s ballet career and sad love affair, asides about Middle East politics and being the first time Lewis Collins and Martin Shaw (later to be a memorable Citizen Camembert himself) worked together, and that’s on again tomorrow night at 12.25. Steed’s pretty damned terrific at the end, too. If you’re seriously sleepless, they’re also showing a signed repeat tonight of the very much better House of Cards, the last of Peter Jeffrey’s strange trilogy of villains spread across a decade, each time a different old foe bent on revenge against an Avenger, where each uses a playing card motif, each has a dubious continental connection, and each one is dead… But that episode’s not on until 2.30am, so I hope not to be watching it this time.

Labels: Carry On, Fandom, Film, Liberal Democrats, Obituary, Peter Jeffrey, Reviews, The Avengers Season 3, The Avengers Season 4, The Avengers Season 5, The New Avengers, William Hartnell

Well, just before the latest attack of the alien space lizards (as Millennium calls The Apprentices), BBC1 has premiered a minute-long trailer for Easter Saturday’s Doctor Who special, Planet of the Dead. Sounds, er, jolly, but looks striking… More after the next paragraph for readers preternaturally wary of spoilers. So, good news – new Doctor Who in ten days! Woo hoo! Bad news – Richard and I will be out of town at a family do. Let’s just hope our new recording technology is delivered by then… And while I’m about it, why no Doctor Who Easter Eggs this year?

Tragic Loss of Doctor Who Easter Eggs Shocker

For the last three years, I’ve been thrilled to see Daleks, TARDISes and others on the shelves (even though they can’t beat my childhood’s unforgettable Suchards “Peter Davison Spunking Fire” Easter Egg), but looking around now – nothing. Maybe the sad collapse of Woollies’ has cut the ranges that went into the supermarkets, but what about the Marks and Spencer versions? Yet they’ve got room on the shelf for bloody Top Gear. Grr. So I’ll just have to select Easter Eggs by the chocolate rather than the packaging, and that’s surely not the point at all.

“Something is coming. Riding on the wind. They devour!”

But back to that trailer for the day before Easter. Planet of the Dead will be the 200th* Doctor Who story, and the trailer promises:

• A battered bus!

• A bionic woman!

• Glamorous desert world with blazing suns!

• Giant flies and flying bitey things!

After Midnight last year and one or two old stories, my advice to the Doctor would be – don’t go by bus (better than a bastard bike, though. Scroll down). If you want to see the trailer, anyway, the lovely Will has it on display; it appears to be showing on the BBC HD Preview in the daytime, too. Ooh. Must remember that tomorrow.

Coming through the letterbox today, incidentally, was the rather fab new issue of Doctor Who Magazine, where you can take a peek at that bus on the cover and read all about Planet of the Dead. Well, I say “all”. It’s probably not massively spoilerish, but I don’t actually know – I, too, am wary enough of spoilers that I never read their previews. You’ll notice, incidentally, that the bus is number 200.

*Ah, those “200” stories. Everyone reckons them differently – the 204th, by my count – but apparently the ‘official’ 200th is now this one. 53 stories ago, in 1987, we had the then official 150th. Anyway, the important thing isn’t the iffy numbering, but that DWM this time gives you the exciting opportunity to send off your scores for every single one of them, to find which stories people love, and which ones they don’t. Look, don’t scoff – you know I’m going to do it…

In the run-up to Matt Smith becoming the Doctor next year, DWM this issue starts a new series profiling each of the first ten Doctors. This one’s on William Hartnell, of course, and it’s rather good (well, I always love reading about the original and best); informative and punchy for brand new fans and oldies alike, and opening with an introductory paragraph that could happily have been printed in, say, The Doctor Who Monster Book, where I first learnt about Billy back in the mid-’70s. Though its mini-article nuggets include choice fluffed lines the wildly varying names given to some stories – and the Doctor – it strikes me that there are two key elements missing. New fans, sadly, really ought to be warned that not all of the published list of Billy’s stories still exist, except on audio… And, other than relating how he regenerated in his final story, there’s really nothing that gives a taste of the stories themselves. In short, the most important thing missing is why Billy is brilliant, whether it’s by picking stories (perhaps unwise, given the polling that’s just opened in the same issue) or simply singling out a few great scenes or moments. If you’re going to do bluffers’ guides for each Doctor, the very first thing you should put over is them at their best.

On top of that, there’s a superb interview with one of Doctor Who’s most brilliant – and most Marmite – script editors, Mr Jesus H Bidmead, who was in effect the Russell T Davies of 1980-1 and who’s not shy of sharing his views. The regular Time Team are also great fun reviewing 1988’s The Happiness Patrol and, yay! this time they’ve printed one of my comments, and on a story I love, too. Too late for a morning April Fool, Richard brilliantly suggested we should put out the rumour that the TARDIS – which is painted pink in the story – is to leave a CGI swirl of disintegrating pink and blue paint when it dematerialises in the DVD release. I quite like the idea.

Why Some Cyclists Are Selfish, Dangerous Bastards

The April Fool that went through my head this morning, though, was more of a traffic patrol one; out to meet friends yesterday in Greenwich, I once again walked back through the Greenwich Foot Tunnel and was nearly hit by all those bastard cyclists who, faced with all the signs and even paint across the floor saying “NO CYCLING,” glide at great speed down a curving tunnel with very limited visibility and – by definition – lots of pedestrians, clinging to the side of their bike with one foot perched on a pedal, so they can deny they’re “cycling”. Because being under far less control of your bike than usual is a really great way not to injure the people you’re careering stupidly into and making dive out of the way. What utter, stupid, selfish bastards. Travelling in such a manner appeals only to the homicidal side of my nature. If only some sort of automated spikes could shoot out from the tunnel wall and straight into their wheeling spokes. Because, if they’re not cycling, that can’t knock them off their bikes.

Where was I? Oh yes, April Fools. Well, it ran through my still mildly misanthropic head this morning that, despite my usual dislike of intrusive spying cameras and ‘naming and shaming,’ I could turn my blog into a series of photos of cyclists from the Greenwich Foot Tunnel – not every one of them, but most – endangering people with captions like, ‘This Person Is A Bastard. If You See Them On Their Bikes, Stick A Brolly In Their Spokes and Give Them An Accident Before They Seriously Injure Someone Else, The Bastard’. At that point, I realised this may have been less of an April Fool than a genuine unleashing of my inner Daily Hate Mail. There are signs up in the tunnel saying “No Photography,” too – it’s political correctness gone mad. At this point, before the Happiness Patrol come to arrest me for being grumpy, I notice Charlie Brooker’s just started on BBC4. I’ll watch him, instead, because he’s always a happy-go-lucky cheery chap.


PS: Millennium has chastised me, being an innocent young elephant, for the superfluity of “bad words”. Sorry, readers, and I’ll see tomorrow if my local library’s banned my blog again.

Labels: Chocolate, David Tennant, Doctor Who, Doctor Who Magazine, London, Personal, Peter Davison, Sylvester McCoy, William Hartnell

The Labour Government has always acted as if announcements change the real world while tawdry things like money and delivery are left to those of us who live in it. We’ve had twelve years of Labour Ministers announcing fixes and pouring scorn on anyone with the temerity to ask where the actual results are. But this last week has shown more urgently than most the appalling gap between Labour’s words and actions, with rhetoric about education and a “Green New Deal” collapsing into Labour’s cancelling funding for 144 colleges in mid-building work and closing schools funding for solar photovoltaic energy.

A Nightmare Week of Labour Education Cuts…

Cast your minds back to last Thursday, when the news abruptly broke that 144 further education college building projects had suddenly seen their funding pulled, costing them a minimum of £170 million. When colleges were asked what extra costs they would incur if their projects were delayed or staged over five years, the lowest estimated total came to a staggering £241 million. So, even if the Labour Government just put back these programmes until after the General Election (translation: they hope someone else will have to deal with it), it’ll waste a quarter of a billion pounds of badly-needed college funds.

Further Education colleges have been underfunded for many years, yet demand for them is bound to skyrocket during a recession. It’s not a difficult sum to do; more people are out of work, so they enrol on college courses to get new skills, both ones they’d always wanted to but had never had the time, and ones that will help them find a new job. And, good for Labour, over the past few years they’d actually committed money for FE college buildings: to repair the ones that are falling down, and expand into new buildings for the ones with many more students.

So whatever possessed them to suddenly pull the funding?

In the tiny minds of Labour ministers, because all they need do is say magic words to the media and tap three times on a despatch box with a white paper for everything to be perfect, withdrawing the magic words means things can ‘unhappen’ just as quickly and easily. In the real world, colleges have already paid for architects, made contracts with builders, and in many cases knocked down buildings that were too old or too small to make way for the planned expansion. Even if they hadn’t yet started the actual building, things take longer and cost very much more than a wave of a ministerial magic wand. Many colleges have already spent so much money, having been told they’d be paid in full, that they face bankruptcy. That’s why saying magic words to promise money, then pulling it away again, may seem to the Labour Government like it put the world to rights for a while, but to real colleges and real students in the real world, it’s far worse than if they’d never announced the mirage money at all.

Labour Government minister Siôn Simon, of course, had an answer. The answer from the Labour Government that’s been in power for a dozen years, with enormous Parliamentary majorities to push their agenda through and the most centralised massive state power in British peacetime history… Was that it was all someone else’s fault. He told the BBC that all the blame lay with the Learning and Skills Council. The Learning and Skills Council said that colleges were to blame, for taking all the various stages of approval – including a promise that ‘final’ approval would come, with the money, on the day that building would start, once architects had been paid for all their designs, builders contracted and old buildings demolished – as if they were some sort of approval after the LSC had encouraged colleges to take up funding, rather than vague airy-fairy possibilities that irresponsible principals had put an unwise punt on.

You’ll probably have noticed that the head of the Learning and Skills Council, Mark Haysom, then resigned on Monday. No doubt he was partly to blame. But did he jump, or was he pushed by panicking Labour Government spin-doctors looking for a bureaucrat to pin everything on? And when was the last time a Labour Minister resigned because they’d made a mess of their job, rather than just being an embarrassment by breaking the law / having their fingers in the till / not being able to keep it in their trousers (which, as usual, is the one Labour cock-up I don’t think is anyone else’s business and which no-one should resign for).

Call me an old cynic, but that still leaves one or two tiny questions:

• Who created the Learning and Skills Council?

• Who, if it’s all the fault of the LSC, let Britain’s largest quango make such a mess of things without any democratic checks?

• Who refused to decentralise any power and funding, so if a mistake was made it was going to be a massive one?

• Whose departmental civil servants were in meetings with the LSC six months ago when the funding problems first (we’re told, though that may be an underestimate) became apparent, but did nothing about it?

• And who told the LSC that they could have all the money that they then got colleges to spend?

The answer to every one of those questions is, of course, the Labour Government. It’s no wonder Mr Simon was looking for someone – anyone – else to take the blame. But the fault lies squarely with Labour.

Siôn Simon also claimed that no college would go bust – without committing a single penny to make sure of that. Another magic word to the media, and he thinks the world’s righted itself. How does that square with his statement, presumably out of the other side of his mouth, that:

“It is right to say that the LSC has given in principle approval to 79 colleges which would total nearly £3bn of government money and it is clear that that level of expenditure cannot be funded in the current spending round.”

The Labour Government announced a big building programme; they told the LSC to get on with it; and now they’re cutting all that money. Whose fault is it, again?

By coincidence, on Monday – the same day as Mr Haysom resigned – the Labour Government announced a new white paper giving a ‘boost’ to adult learning. Real money and real buildings bad; magic words to the media and paper buildings good. This alleged boost to adult learning has the advantages of being pushed well into the future (translation: they hope someone else will have to deal with it) and only promising £20 million even then, a tiny fraction of the vast sums they’ve backed out of giving to colleges. Those are advantages for Labour, of course – not for anyone actually wanting to learn anything.

Hilariously, having let colleges down so damningly, this future promised £20 million would go not to the colleges, but to community groups like the Labour Government’s old friends, the churches, so that they can host classes instead. Even I’m not cynical enough to think this was planned so that the Labour Government could continue with their sectarian, ideological ‘faith agenda’ at the expense of colleges – I’m fairly sure they just didn’t have a fucking clue and made a total mess of it – but it does look like Labour’s saying, ‘The college has fallen down, so go to church instead,’ doesn’t it? Mind you, if I were a church making decisions on the basis of money promised by the Labour Government, rather than planning to repair the church hall, I’d keep a careful watch on the roof in case the local Labour MP pops by to nick the lead. And did you notice that, just yesterday, the Labour Government and the Church of England have banded together to create government subsidies for Post Offices and other outlets in churches? Special bungs to religion so they can have moneychangers in the temple… You couldn’t make it up.

On the same day as the massive cuts to colleges, last Thursday, the Labour Government announced an extra £50 poll tax on students from outside the EU. Yet another bit of populist immigrant-bashing, and for what purpose? It’s not going to raise a massive amount of money; it’s not going to raise it fairly; and, for overseas students who already pay vastly higher fees than even UK students do, announcements that the Labour Government wants to dip into their wallets at will may just put more of them off studying here – and lose our universities their lucrative custom.

Oh, and talking of UK students, it was last week, too, that Labour and their Welsh Assembly manifesto-breaking-mini-mes Plaid Cymru announced that, just like the Labour Government at Westminster and completely against every election promise Plaid have ever made, they’re scrapping the Welsh tuition fee grant, slashing student funding by around 40%. Labour broke manifesto promises to bring in tuition fees in the first place; now tuition fees will run rampant in Wales because telling-election-lie-itis has spread from them to Plaid Cymru in government in a particularly virulent form.

And the nightmare continues. Although the BBC still haven’t put up anything about it on their website, if you go to iPlayer and listen to this morning’s Today Programme at about ten to seven for the full details – or any of their news headlines for the short version – you’ll find that, despite touting a “Green New Deal,” one of the Labour Government’s biggest green technology initiatives has abruptly been closed.

Again, not all of the Labour Government’s ideas are bad. It’s just their delivery that’s an absolute disaster. Offering money to schools for green technology was a thoroughly good thing, both for encouraging green businesses and for getting the message over to kids and their local communities. It was such a good idea that I remember it being in quite a few Liberal Democrat manifestos before Labour picked it up, but at least they did pick it up. But today… All of a sudden, the money’s run out for installing solar photovoltaic energy panels on schools, and the Labour Government’s refusing any more. There’s even some more in their tiny green technology kitty, but it was aimed for other, less popular technologies that no-one’s put in bids for… So the Labour Government’s refusing even to release that for more PV panels that are actually successful, and instead wants to claw back even a measly £8 million.

I despair. And if you have kids, want to go to college, or just want Britain’s future to look brighter through better education and a wider range of skills improving people’s lives and the country’s economy, and through green technology leading through example, you’ll probably despair of the Labour Government too.

…But Labour Still Shower Cash on Snooping

Now, no doubt a Labour minister confronted with all of this would scoff. A Liberal Democrat going on about education and the environment – they always do! But in a recession, there are tough choices to be made. Well, that’s true. Education and the environment have headed the Liberal Democrat agenda for two decades, whether or not they’ve been flavour of the month for other parties, and tough choices do indeed need to be made; even with the Labour Government nearly doubling public spending over the last ten years, there’s still not enough money to pay for everything, particularly when they’re putting the country in hock with the largest British borrowing in history to try and spend their way out of recession, some of it spent wisely, some of it wasted.

But how do you go about making those tough choices on what to spend and what to cut? And why have the Liberal Democrats been banging on about education and the environment for so many years? Well, the answers to both are related. Education and the environment are investments for the future – and surely investments for the future are exactly what you shouldn’t cut back on in a recession.

When people have lost their jobs, it makes sense to invest in new skills; when the old economy’s crumbling, it makes sense to invest in something more sustainable, rather than grit your teeth and just pump money into things as they were in the hope that everything will return to ‘normal’. I don’t want things back just the way they were. I want them better. And if you pair education and the environment as priorities, that’s surely at the heart of that “Green New Deal” that the Labour Government waves its magic words at, but won’t deliver – new skills for new jobs in new technologies that will not just help us out of recession, but cut down on pollution and resource use, slowing climate change and tackling all the ill-health caused by runaway pollutants.

The Labour Government has a different priority. Where do they still shower our money like there’s no tomorrow?

Snooping.

Massive databases. Bossing people about. ID cards. Bits of paper; IT projects gone out of control; magic words they pretend will make people safer, or healthier, or whatever else their buzzword of the day is.

Today’s specialities: spending billions of pounds monitoring who you talk to on Facebook. I mean, really. And for schools… Yet another set of regulations about school meals, bossing even the dinner ladies about, when all the evidence is that schools are now producing plenty of good, healthy meals, but if the Labour Government compels them to meet every possible health target at once all they’ll do is drive kids out of the school gates and into the chippies. But Labour Government targets will have been ticked, and another wave of the magic wand satisfied. Better hope none of those healthy choices directives are vegetarian, eh? And, guess what? Yes – another massive computer database that every school dinner has to be entered into to make sure the Labour Government knows exactly what’s in every kid’s stomach in the land. Except all the ones who get fed up of being force-fed and go down the chippie, obviously.

Wouldn’t you rather money went on more teachers and college buildings rather than an army of Labour Government snoopers and more giant databases?

Labels: British Politics, Education, Environment, Labour, Religion, Stupid Ideas, Wales

12.30, tonight, BBC4 – stay up, set your DVD recorder or set your alarm! There’s been much to enjoy in BBC4’s repeats of The New Avengers, but tonight’s haunting Dead Men Are Dangerous is the one I enjoy the most. A beautiful, tragic character piece, with a disturbing opening sequence and a nail-biting conclusion, it’s the best episode by a long way. The series’ strangely friendly Cold War rivalries give way to the bitter, deadly rivalry of a friend. This is simply magnificent television.

“The only thing that can’t be replaced is the love and life of an old friend.”

It’s been an interesting week for slightly or very off-beat programmes on TV, whether you call them comedy-thriller, sci-fi, fantasy, horror… I can never quite warm to the artificial umbrella of “telefantasy,” can you? Anyway, last Sunday we had the gripping penultimate episode of Being Human – a striking series that defies categorisation, and which I’m pleased to say has this week been recommissioned. Demons, on the other hand, had just one episode that hit the mark (the one with Mina’s vampire son) but several that were just rubbish, and after nosediving ratings ITV have this week cancelled the series. It should have been better, but the right series will be back.

Less off-beat – unless you count the distracting ‘Ooh, which Tory MP is that weirdly made-up actor of a cast of thousands meant to be? And why, with all the people they got right (Geoffrey Howe was uncanny), did they mess up John Sergeant so badly?’ effect – was last night’s Margaret, which I found rather gripping and even made me feel a twinge of sympathy for her. I can still remember exactly where I was when I heard the news of her fall, and who I was with; a Green who I’ve not seen for many years and a hard right Tory who shed a tear, then had a brief moment of rejoicing when news broke that John Major was to stand as the continuity Thatchianity candidate (within months he was snarlingly calling him a “bloody social democrat”). That second chap’s a Lib Dem these days… Still, looking back at that time, House of Cards still knocks spots off Margaret.

For me, though, the really stunning shows this week have been in the repeats. On Tuesday, ITV4 showed The Prisoner’s finest hour, Dance of the Dead, with its intricate plotting, insane ending and commanding Number 2 (though they mucked up the transmission); on Wednesday, ITV3 showed Robin of Sherwood’s greatest episode, The Greatest Enemy. The last half of that is still one of the most compelling and moving TV experiences I’ve ever had, and like Dance of the Dead – and unlike most ‘action’ shows where death is common but disposable – it’s an intelligent meditation on death. So, too, is The New Avengers’ Dead Men Are Dangerous with its lingering death and killer nostalgia, beating Dance of the Dead for twisty foreboding and vying with The Greatest Enemy for elegiac tragedy, all making three very fine series which have each had their very finest stories repeated within a few days of each other, remarkably. Next Friday (concluding the Monday after), as it happens, BBC3 is repeating the best story since Doctor Who returned to the screen in 2005. Human Nature is more about love than death, though death and, particularly, war still come through.

But back to tonight, and the main thing that comes to mind is that Patrick Macnee is simply outstanding in this story; funny, gentle, wounded, authoritative, even athletic – he’s lost some weight between seasons and looks really good on it, and he’s extraordinary whether standing mourning his destroyed memories to sombre brass or dashing desperately through the woods to trace a chilling loudspeakered message. His old friend turned jealous enemy Mark Crayford is an equally brilliant performance by Clive Revill, though Mark’s bitterness offers fewer layers for his character. The episode hinges around their two gripping face-offs, beginning and ending the story, each stolen by Steed’s heartbreaking reply to Mark’s challenge.

After so many New Avengers episodes in which an old friend of Steed’s lurches in and dies on the carpet, to be avenged by our heroes through the rest of the story, Dead Men Are Dangerous both gives that recurring theme its finest ever treatment and turns it on its head: while for once you can genuinely believe that Mark was Steed’s oldest and best friend, this time the old friend is dying because Steed shot him (reluctantly but efficiently, as you’ll see in the opening scene), and his death is to be avenged not by the Avengers but on them. It’s an especially fine use of the top Avengers cliché ‘a dead man who isn’t dead’, too, with a twist to that as well…

I love Dead Men Are Dangerous so much that I would love to spend hours on my usual sort of long, discursive review to tease out every subtle moment. And the ones with Gambit. But I’m having a bit of a time today – though not as much as Steed, obviously – so I’m having to write rather more quickly. Were I writing a longer review, there are all sorts of issues that I’d be discussing in detail. Instead, I’ll mention some of them to whet your appetite and see what they prompt you to come up with when you watch it:

• Several of what I regard as absolutely the finest Avengers stories feature an Avenger under some horrendous pressure targeted at them in particular; a strong element of this story, however, is that Steed has his friends around him, so he’s less isolated than Mrs Peel in The House That Jack Built or Tara King in Pandora.

• After getting hooked on The Avengers through intermittently catching Channel 4’s 1984 repeats, a couple of years later I spotted a few New Avengers slipping through the schedules (probably on ITV, as late-night schedule-fillers). Back then, I was still at school and could afford very few video tapes – usually just enough for Doctor Who – and so I only ever recorded two episodes of The New Avengers, both of which I watched repeatedly. Fortunately, this was one of them.

• This builds on and perfects various elements and themes seen in several previous New Avengers stories; I could, for example, make a list of incidental similarities as long as your arm with the rather fine House of Cards (how many can you spot? And, no, it’s not the Ian Richardson one I mention above), while thematically and plotwise it’s very similar – though far superior – to the rather disappointing To Catch A Rat.

• This was the first episode of the second series of The New Avengers, and despite building on what came before it has a very different tone; you’d expect the second series to feel very different from the first. In fact, it does, but not in a good way. Unfortunately, as well as being strikingly better than any episode from the first thirteen, it makes the remaining twelve from the second year look even worse than they are – a few are serviceable (next week’s is OK) but, on a steep decline from here to the end, some of them get pretty bad.

• There are some splendid guest stars, including Gabrielle Drake (that woman in the purple wig from UFO), Trevor Adams (that great bloke from The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin and Fawlty Towers, with my old name) and, of course, the extraordinary Clive Revill as the villain – who you may remember as one of the earliest Babylon 5 villains (sadly not in the one where a main character’s dying old enemy devotes his last days to getting even) and as the man who played Emperor Palpatine before Ian McDiarmid did, despite Mr Lucas later airbrushing his performance from The Empire Strikes Back.

• Steed, Gambit and Purdey are all superbly characterised and in each case we learn something new about them; each also reveals something about their tastes in alcohol. Steed’s is as refined as ever, but poor Mike evidently stretches no further than lager and the occasional stout, given that he thinks Purdey’s vodka and lemonade is a new invention. In fact it is, but neither because of the lemonade nor the vodka, but thanks to Purdey being rather more creative than that.

• Though I often wince at the sexual politics in The New Avengers, this has rather a mature and lovely three-cornered relationship between the leads, despite one of Gambit’s more unconvincing ‘conquests’ (at least the situation’s so absurdly improbable you may laugh)… But it also, unusually, has a touch of a very ’70s sort of homophobia – like the otherwise entertaining Carry On Abroad, it’s from a time when they could now feature a minor character who the audience will recognise as gay, but only because ‘they’ are swishy, weak, dishonest and generally unreliable (I once wrote a psychology paper about that). Here, improbably, there’s a fey gay thug. On the other hand, he isn’t too distracting, it could be more in the actor’s and dresser’s interpretation than in the script, and it may be there to distract you from the more subtle but far more powerful homoerotic undercurrent between the villain and Steed. As a hint to Mr Crayford’s character, listen to the James Bond theme Goldeneye.

• And Purdey offers a suggestion for Steed’s one and only failing, though in the villain’s eyes his one and only failing is in fact…

Just think how long I’d have gone on if I were writing this properly, eh?

Instead, I’ll finish with a word from someone else. I usually enjoy Cornelltoppingday’s The Avengers Dossier (originally published and pulped as The Avengers Programme Guide), but I very often disagree with them, not least on my favourite episodes. Just this once, though, our tastes converge, and their review puts it beautifully. If you ever chance across a copy of the book, do pick it up, but if you can’t find it, here’s a sharply edited extract:

“This is by far the best episode of The New Avengers. The difference is in the fondness with which it’s written… Steed and Purdey have a bittersweet relationship with real heart. But mainly this is Steed’s story. The damage done to his property is horrifying, but he doesn’t care a jot as long as the people he cares for are safe. It’s all rather wonderful, and is written with a nostalgia and grace that could have got the show another season if this had been the new format. Very special.”

Labels: Being Human, Conservatives, Joanna Lumley, Reviews, Robin Hood, Star Wars, The Avengers, The Avengers Season 4, The Avengers Season 6, The New Avengers

The Labour Party is in revolt this morning over proposed part-privatisation of the Post Office, complicated by news that the pension fund is apparently in crisis, and by signals that, if Labour MPs don’t vote for the Labour Government’s proposals, Tories and Lib Dems will. Now, I’ve written before that I’m agnostic on Post Office privatisation; I’ve always been economically pragmatic rather than ideological, looking at what works. Where there is privatisation, I instinctively favour increased competition and decentralisation, which it strikes me would make a bigger difference than painting the words ‘under new ownership’ onto a big state monolith.

All this means I find myself sceptical of the Labour Government’s sudden headlong rush into another privatisation. On first hearing the way this was reported, it sounded like a partial sell-off. Well, I thought, show me why that would work, but for goodness’ sake don’t do it now. We all know of several privatisations in the past that have got a very bad deal for the taxpayer – rail, in particular, was both grossly undervalued at sell-off and has consumed even more state subsidy since, a Tory tax double-whammy at one remove – and it seemed crazy that you’d think of floating part of another big state-owned outfit when the market’s in a ditch.

But no, I discovered as I listened to more of the story, this won’t be a matter of shares being available to the public, but of one private ‘partner’ being invited to take partial ownership. Uh huh? I thought. This doesn’t sound like a massive increase in competition to me. What sort of competitive bidding will there be, at least, to see who offers the best deal? Ah. Apparently, the Labour Government really hasn’t got the hang of this competition thingy. When they say they’re interested in one private sector partner, they really do mean one. They’re planning to just bring in TNT. So, an effective reduction in competition; no decentralisation; everything decided at the most top-down level; no searching around to find the best deal for the taxpayer; and no private company is going to be asked to underwrite the pension fund anyway, so that threat’s pure spin (either way, if it crashes, we taxpayers foot the bill).

So, remind me – what exactly is this part-privatisation supposed to achieve? Because it sounds precisely like that sort of stitch-up where a big state corporation and a big part-private company are indistinguishable, except that some of the profit can be siphoned off by a private company no doubt grateful for the gift in an economic downturn. How does this work better, and how does it make a difference to either the taxpayer or the customer? Because it sounds like the very definition of just painting a different name on the door. And if so, why support it?

Labels: British Politics, Labour, The Golden Dozen

Though I’ve not blogged for a bit before today, bulletins from round the world have still been catching my eye – there may well be a flurry of late news at some point, but as a quickie from Valentine’s weekend, did you hear “Children’s Secretary” Ed Balls’ particularly fine example of politicians’ Daily Mail-friendly hyperbole without actually engaging his brain? In all the outcry over a thirteen-year-old dad, Mr Balls sonorously pronounced that it was “awful” and “unusual,” and that

“I want us to do everything we can as a society to make sure we keep teenage pregnancies coming down.”

Having children so early in life is no doubt a bad thing for the bodies, emotions and finances of all concerned, but while young teens should certainly be discouraged from having sex through much better information on the consequences (and at the very least on how to make it safer if they do it), some of them are always going to find a way. It’s not like it’s a new idea, is it? All that’s new is that nowadays the press are allowed to print it, and then get in a tizzy because the one example they’ve found and showered money over is proof that the entire country is breaking down (sex! It’s awful! Turn to Page 3 for more!). It isn’t. It’s just evidence that one pair of kids had more hormones than sense, which is not exactly news. Mr Balls’ pledge to “do everything we can” is as daft and out of proportion as the Labour Government’s knee-jerk overkill when they “DECLARE WAR!” on anything the Daily Hate Mail goes on about: drugs; binge; dog-fouling…

Obviously, led by the press, most politicians have been falling over themselves to say how appalling, reprehensible and unique / universal [delete as applicable] this is, despite Britain’s teenage pregnancy rate actually falling. There was a sign of hope on last night’s Question Time, though. One-of-the-most-loathsome-men-in-the-media Piers Stefan Puke-Morgan spewed out a stream of repellent authoritarian drivel, only to find that as usual he was taking the ‘popular’ out of ‘populist’ when the audience clapped less the further he raced from reality. Mr Morgan’s attempt to get on the David Cameron “Broken Britain” bandwagon was shot down in flames by Sarah Teather, who challenged the idea that Britain was in any way broken and said that she’d rather live today than in any previous time, in a more tolerant age than ever before, and got a storm of applause for it.

If you didn’t catch last week’s Any Questions on Radio Four, grab it in the few hours remaining on the iPlayer; the debate there was even more enlightening. Jonathan Dimbleby, made a prat of himself as usual, saying it was a “sombre” issue – it’s not a funeral, it’s a birth, you pompous idiot. Denis MacShane, to no-one’s surprise, couldn’t open his mouth without blaming everyone in the world except the Labour Party, having somehow missed who’s been in government for the last dozen years. Janet Street-Porter went breathtakingly off her rocker, saying that the real problem was “all these disgusting men in their sixties” having children with women in their twenties (also far from a new phenomenon). Imagine! Yes, this Morgan-a-like newspaper editor wants to almost literally infantilise women – if they fall in love with or are otherwise enamoured of older men (the famous interview line “So, what first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?” springs to mind), she thinks that’s a terrible social problem and Something Should Be Done. Well, Ms Street-Porter, grown-ups should be treated like grown-ups and allowed to make their own decisions, so it’s none of your business, you ludicrously authoritarian busybody. David Davis gave the lie to anyone who doubts “liberal Conservative” is an oxymoron, by blaming it all on sex education – despite the fact that the better-educated a country is, and particularly the better the education about sex and relationships, the later young people are likely to start having sex, and the more protected they tend to be when doing it. But the show was stolen throughout by the brilliant Jo Swinson, talking sensibly about education, contraception, confidence, self-respect and there being no standard “ideal age” to have a baby.

But despite all of those thousands of words frothing around the subject, I keep coming back to the first time I heard the story. It was on the Today Programme a week ago, and I still can’t get over my first impression of Mr Balls’

“I want us to do everything we can as a society to make sure we keep teenage pregnancies coming down,”

which I couldn’t help but instantly translate as

‘Cut their goolies off!’

A Difficult and Controversial Topic

Earlier this afternoon I wrote how the Labour Government bear an uncanny resemblance to a famous moment from Dad’s Army. On hearing Mr Balls’ promise to do anything and everything, though, I couldn’t help thinking of a famous panel discussion on Not The Nine O’Clock News, which sadly isn’t available on YouTube. But cast your mind back, and you may remember a serious examination of a difficult and controversial topic by Professor Duff of Cambridge University and Sally Barnes, community worker from the Borough of Lambeth, looking into the problem over the last few weeks. Professor Duff’s team had concerned themselves fundamentally with a statistical analysis of the problem as a whole, in tandem with and related to a psychochemical and behavioural analysis of over a thousand individual teenagers:

“And we came to the inevitable conclusion that the one course of action the authorities must take is… To cut off their goolies. Cut their goolies off!”

And Sally Barnes?

“Look, I know these kids, I’ve worked in the areas we’re talking about – round Lambeth, Lewisham – I know their problems, I know their frustrations – lack of community facilities – I know their parents… And in my opinion, Professor Duff’s suggestion that we should cut off their goolies is the only solution.”

“Absolutely. I mean, cut the goolies off! Cut them off!”

“True! Whip off the goolies.”

“Well, there we have it. Expert opinion seems to be in favour of –”

“Cutting off their goolies!”

Place your bets for the next Labour Manifesto now.

Update: Hurrah! That sketch has since become available on YouTube. Try it now (it may disappear).

Labels: BBC, British Politics, Comedy, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, Stupid Ideas

The arrogant, self-important, holier-than-thou, über-bossy bullying Labour Government famously has no sense of irony (the last two words may be superfluous there), but today’s news brings joy for taxpayers, friends of freedom and ironists alike. Labour’s position is very clear: only criminals and terrorists have anything to fear from their humongously expensive ID cards and databases holding every scrap of personal information on every citizen (all the better for thieves, blackmailers and newspapers to get hold of it); but only criminals and terrorists could possibly have any interest in exposing what the Labour Government is up to in our name. And they see no contradiction in that.

The Labour Government’s fervour in poking into, preaching at and misplacing our every personal detail is only matched by their religious fervour in preventing any of us finding out how badly they’re doing it. They’ve entirely forgotten that the Government is employed by the people, rather than the other way round. And so the Labour Government mounted stitch-up after stitch-up to try to stop anyone being able to find what MPs’ expenses were, while coincidentally the Cabinet member with responsibility for bossing the police about and inventing stupid new crimes was thieving from the taxpayer; they still refuse to hold an independent enquiry into the Iraq War; they put pressure on the courts to cover up torture evidence; they block court cases altogether to cover up bribery over BAE; they refuse to tell us how much money they’ve wasted on horrendous messes of private sector contracts because of “commercial confidentiality”; trying to change the law so they can bar the public from coroners’ inquests, sack independent coroners and bribe their appointed placepeople to make sure they give the ‘right’ result; they make it a serious crime to photograph a police officer so no-one can supply evidence of the effects of the Labour Government’s appalling new laws…

Today, however, exposes the most hilariously ironic of all the Labour Government’s irony-bypass operations – despite threatening every member of the public (starting with ‘foreigners’ and, er, Mancunians) with prosecution and bankrupting fines if we don’t regularly disclose every detail of our lives to their insanely huge ID cards database, they’ve been fighting for four years to prevent any member of the public seeing the two independent reviews the Labour Government themselves commissioned… Into how the ID cards scheme was working.

The Information Tribunal has at last ruled today that the Labour Government’s attempts to say Freedom of Information doesn’t apply to them are wrong, and that the results of both reviews into the ID cards process must be published within 28 days. So, to have spent so much taxpayers’ money on four years of lawyers’ fees to try and stop us finding all this out, how bad will the decision-making process have been? How many practical errors have been uncovered? How much money has been wasted? And how many Labour Government Ministers will be revealed to have lied to Parliament about how well, and how cheaply, it’s all been going? Meg Hillier, for one, must be eyeing her smoking undergarments apprehensively.

Don’t hold your breath, though. These reviews were carried out way back in 2003 and 2004, so the vast bulk of the billions upon billions of pounds wasted and the amazing extent of the Labour Government’s ineptitude will barely have been scratched. And if you think this ruling means that we can see the results of any other in-depth examinations of the Labour Government’s in-depth examinations of our lives, again, I wouldn’t get your hopes up. A Labour Government spokesrobot announced after the ruling:

“It has made clear that its decision refers only to this specific request and does not set any precedent. We are currently assessing the detail of the Information Tribunal's decision and will respond in full in due course.”

But, surely, if they’ve done nothing wrong, they’ve got nothing to fear? The rest of us can only conclude that the Labour Government’s got plenty of wrongdoing to hide from its employers – all of us – or that they were lying when they repeated that mantra to stop us objecting to their prying and bossing. The answer is ‘probably both’.

Let’s just say no to ID cards now.


Update: despite me being the Dad’s Army fan in the household, my beloved reminds me that one of the nation’s favourite comedy moments features the awesome Philip Madoc issuing a demand for personal information – which is definitely regarded as not very British. There is, however, a very British precedent for the pompous buffoon in charge to be careless with our personal details.

Labels: British Politics, Corruption, Crooked Coroners Corruption, Labour, Liberalism, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, Philip Madoc, The Golden Dozen

Yesterday, Caron revealed the horror of Alex Salmond’s attempt a Scottish independent Eurovision entry. Tonight, instead, you can see the proper Scottish entry on BBC4 at 9pm (well, probably more like 9.25, as it’s the climax of the show). And unlike Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s postmodern ‘Please let me win’ song, Pif Paf Pof is a proper Eurovision song about shagging. The High Life was perhaps the Nineties’ finest sit-com, and tonight it’s Dug, one of the finest episodes – Alan Cumming shooting to stardom, Forbes Masson somehow not, Siobhan Redmond and Patrick Ryecart showing just how very funny they can be.

Alan Cumming is Air Scotia trolley dolly Sebastian Flight with Forbes Masson Steve, his partner in crime and Siobhan Redmond their ferocious chief stewardess, Shona Spurtle. They’re all brilliant, though for me the show’s persistently stolen by Patrick Ryecart as posh but probably still Sixties drug-addled pilot Captain Hilary Duff (no, really. You’ve no idea how difficult I find it to listen to the later one). Tonight mixes pop fame, giant dog costumes and Shona’s unhappy love life to spectacular effect. Being a sit-com, albeit a more than slightly off-the-wall one in which (for example) Captain Duff’s occasional Star Trek delusions give him the ability to teleport, of course everyone is unhappy in love. Shona, Steve, Captain Duff… But, in one of the few aspects that dates the series, not Sebastian. Yes, the flamboyant and blatantly gay lead character is said to be “celibate”. As if. Still, though he may sympathise with Steve’s doomed attempts at female companionship, we all know they’re shagging.

There are only two episodes to go in the BBC4 repeat season, so do yourself a favour and pick up the DVD to see Winch, the third of the six episodes made; probably my favourite, and probably the cheapest. With hardly any speaking cast barring the four regulars, it has the time to let them all let rip. There’s an obvious secret just waiting to explode; an unreliable narrator supplying a memorable version of Love Is the Drug; and Shona finally – she thinks – getting the ammunition to take Sebastian down:

“Themed breakfasts, my Auntie Arse. I will have you over a barrel!”

“You will have to chloroform me first.”

“Silence, you insolent toe-rag. You are a waster, Sebastian. You are a lying cheat. You are a fibster, a fabulist, an equivocating shim-shammer, a cozening card sharp, a pathological mythomaniac, a yarner, a poulterer – who perjures – a whited sepulchre, a cantering serpent, a rat!”

It’s so unfair, then, that the show’s stolen in the final seconds of the episode and the flight by Captain Duff emerging from the in-flight loo with his usual affable, slightly disorientated beneficence and the inspired closing line:

“Have we landed yet? [Pause] Oh bugger!”

There’s still the most surreal of the lot to come next week, as Molly Weir, Batman, an Avengers villain and delicious tablet combine in Dunk. Oh, dearie me! In the meantime, here is tonight’s main event – Pif Paf Pof…

Labels: Comedy, Music, Reviews, Scotland

Tonight at 12.10, BBC4 is showing The New Avengers: Sleeper, one of the series’ most memorable (if not best) episodes as our heroes stand alone against gun-toting villains in a deserted London. And Purdey’s trousers fall down. Though other Avengers stories feature Cold War ‘sleeper agents’ (House of Cards, To Catch A Rat…), the sleep here is more prosaic. In the pre-titles sequence we’re introduced to: an astoundingly powerful new sleeping gas; the antidote; and the villain who’s replaced one of the observers at the top-secret test. Then the title comes up… “Sleeper”. Coo, wonder what it might be about?

“We have made exhaustive tests.”

“Exhaustive tests on rabbits. People aren’t like rabbits.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Uncle of mine sired nineteen children. He was a keen bicyclist.”

Anyway, the plot is, Steed, Gambit and Purdey all happen to be staying in London overnight – even Steed, who in this iteration of the series has a stud out in the country to which he normally repairs – and it turns out they’re all in the very part of London seeded by sleeping gas (well, apparently it’s really a fine powder, but the effect’s much the same) S-95, which gives every single person in the area a longer than usual Sunday morning lie-in. Everyone, that is, save our three stars and the coachload of gun-toting gangsters who’re running around the city looting all the banks (or, mostly, wandering aimlessly). That’s pretty much it, save for our heroes – wait for it, spoilers – foiling the dastardly plan.

Given that the story’s so slight, it’s mostly made up not of complex plotting but of moments of character, humour and style. Fortunately, the director’s got quite a lot of style, and so has Joanna Lumley – Purdey is today’s featured Avenger, starting off by ineptly locking herself out of her flat but then becoming the lead character for most of the episode. And she’s terrific. Look out in particular (or listen out, I suppose) for all the scenes with the radio on, like Steed and Gambit rushing to the rescue of a radio drama and, even better, Purdey in an exciting car chase as she swerves around town in a stolen mini, the sleeping owner flopping about next to her, crooks with machine guns roaring after her, while she’s coolly doing the exercises to an absurdly posh wireless-wake-up-with-torture woman. Superb. Then once she’s out of the car… Boy, can she run.

The Eroticism of Pyjamas

Others, of course, will mainly remember an unarmed (but ready to high-kick) Purdey hiding from her pursuers as a shop window dummy, at which point her pyjama pants fall down. Still, Joanna manages to carry it off without losing her cool, her blue pyjamas are hugely more stylish than her nasty floral frock of the day before, and her fighting her way out of the shop afterwards showcases her brilliantly. And if you think that element of sexuality’s a bit off, this is also the episode where you can catch a bizarre level of homoeroticism among men who you really wouldn’t want to. Not only does Steed inviting himself for a nightcap at Gambit’s flat frequently seem like he’s trying to chat Gambit up, but the villain’s apparently chatted up by Dr Graham early on, too (and do note that, while he and his group of hilariously over-tooled-up machine gun and bazooka-wielding macho thugs have no compunction about murder, he doesn’t kill the doctor to preserve his secret, but merely knocks him out… And throws him a single rose). At least, when a scene turns up where Gambit’s pyjamas feature, it’s both mildly amusing and gives him points for not wearing any.

Update: Richard, on watching late tonight, is struck (right between the eyes) by the full day-glo glory of Gambit’s décor: “I kept a man here for three weeks. At the end of it, he could never look at a lime again.”

The story’s other main stylistic touch is in all the eerie views of a deserted London. Almost the whole story’s shot on location, and in the grimy ’70s it does sometimes seem like a cross between The Sweeney and Survivors, with urban shooting meeting the feel of apocalyptic disaster stories. It looks great, though, with only a few exceptions – notably, the unbelievable night-time scenes shot in full day, without even a half-hearted filter on the camera, for lines such as “It’ll be light at four forty-five” (you scream, it’s light now!), intercut with scenes of genuine night supposedly taking place at the same time. And then back again. Such little details can really sabotage a production, just as – living in London – I find it difficult to believe in just one police car crossing the ‘border’ to find out what’s happening in the nation’s silent capital, or the mind-boggling take on London geography that, for example, places the Post Office Tower in Tower Hamlets.

The Morning After That Came Before

Unfortunately, it’s not just the few miffed details and skimpy plot that let down a generally quite well-mounted story. My big problem is that The Avengers has already done the same story, and done it very much better. Eight years earlier, our heroes are knocked out by sleeping gas, coming round a day later to find the small town they’re in mysteriously deserted. Setting out to explore, they find the army gunning down “looters” and a plot involving nuclear blackmail… Yes, I’m afraid The Avengers – The Morning After does indeed have more thought, mystery, layers, tension, twists and does just about everything better than Sleeper does – despite being written by the same author. Though the scale is bigger in 1976, the ambition is much, much smaller, both of the story and the villains’ plans, our heroes (and the viewers) know from the start what’s happened, there’s no murderous betrayal by authority and consequent threat from all sides… While in The Morning After, too, from The Avengers’ much less ‘realistic’ days, sealing off a small town took several truckloads of soldiers and a huge public information campaign, here sealing off a large portion of London can be done with a group of people from just one coach. In the intervening years, even Doctor Who had done the same story, with lots of soldiers again and added dinosaurs, in 1974’s Invasion of the Dinosaurs (over which one might draw a discreet veil for many of the visuals, though it has some thought put into it). So it’s a bit of a shame for it to be so familiar, but to have so much less in it. It’s not bad, you understand, but frustrating when it’s mundanely recycling one of The Avengers’ strongest episodes.

Though it’s quite a shallow tale, you’ll also find Sleeper has quite a few ’70s concerns that are still live today, not that it treats them in any great detail: the S-95 ‘gas’ has been developed to knock out terrorists instantaneously (and magically, as one helicopter pass can put a densely populated city to sleep without a single exception, regardless of volume, wind currents or closed windows); after that mention, we’re primed to think that the looters look very much like terrorists of the time, act like terrorists in their brutal machine-gunning lack of concern for life, have a bit of a Baader-Meinhof vibe in the youngish mixed-sex couple who run the outfit… But only rob enough banks to take a helicopter’s-worth, as if Brian Clemens decided to write hard-hitting ‘real world’ villains but then copped out and came up with a plot so sanitised it could crop up in a children’s book, as is the thought that a bunch of savage killers would be entirely trusting about their bosses flying off to Rio with all the spoils. In one of the funnier moments there’s another topical touch, too; when Steed and Gambit are working out what the looters’ targets are, Steed suggests no-one would bother robbing the Bank of England when the economy’s in such a state. One of the minor actors also has a later political theme: Gavin Campbell, to be of That’s Life and career-killing anti-Europe loonyism fame. And there’s CCTV, as the main villain warns his minions to keep their faces covered because the cameras won’t sleep. Obviously, he shows his face all over the place anyway, because, well, he’s the villain.

If You Value Your Life, Don’t Befriend Steed

Oh, and Steed has yet another closest ever, ever, ever friend get caught up in the plot and die a short way into the episode. I know this happened from time to time in the ’60s series, but The New Avengers takes it to absurd lengths in an attempt to drive home the ‘Avenging’ narrative; actor Neil Hallett, who played the best friend who died in last week’s episode, was Steed’s bestest and most doomed chum in an episode at the end of the ’60s, too, so he’s really unlucky. If you want to fit The Avengers into a coherent, ongoing story, best of luck (it makes Doctor Who seem seamless), but there are two possible explanations. Either Steed had a best friend who was killed in an early episode and then, with fine attention to detail but absolutely rotten luck, he worked out who the next-best was and ‘promoted’ him – and so on, and so on, down the line – and each time he works out who’s the best out of what’s left the swines happen to choose that week to kill the very chap, or Steed, always having had an eye to technological innovation (carphone in 1967, the first answering device on British television, mind-swap machine, and so on), invented Facebook forty years early and he takes it really seriously when all these people friend him. He’s a very polite chap (except with a ’phone); even when technically looting a pub because he and Gambit need a drink, he’s adamant that they leave a tip.

If I sound like I’m in two minds about this story, I suspect I am – because how much I enjoy it really depends on the mood I’m in. It’s fun but uninspired; nice to look at, but you really need to switch your brain off. And the move towards greater ‘realism’ rather than outlandish plots and villains means, ironically, that stories like this are less believable – outrageous details are easier to swallow than mundane ones that simply don’t fit with our everyday experience. Next week: spies live and spies die, but the dance goes on. Plus, for Blake’s 7 fans, the first of two appearances by Travis in as many weeks, and for Gambit fans (there must be one, surely?), after Purdey drops her trousers in tonight’s, next week Mike gets his kit off.

Labels: Joanna Lumley, Jon Pertwee, London, Reviews, The Avengers Season 6, The New Avengers

The best television programme ever made, and one that’s become much more than just a television programme… Last November, Doctor Who was forty-five years old, and I began a series of posts looking at each year and picking out the most brilliant thing about it. I published 2008’s post twelve hours ago, so here’s a round-up of what I aimed for, which years most enthused me and just how to find them all.

“If you could touch the alien sand and hear the cries of strange birds – and watch them wheel, in another sky – would that satisfy you?”

And hasn’t it all been brilliant? Or, at least, good (go on, click – it’s a fab clip).

Some Doctor Who stories are adored. So are some whole periods of the show. Others get less attention, or nothing but criticism. I love it all – even the bits I’m less keen on than other bits. So my aim was to pick something that I could enthuse about for every single year since the show started, from the overlooked and the frowned at eras as well as those which are universally feted. It’s easy to get caught up in criticism, and slagging something off is often more fun to write than praise. I wanted, then, simply to say why Doctor Who was brilliant.

I also knew I have a tendency to go on a bit, and (partly as a result) to start things but not finish them. So, to guard against writing far too much for one year and never getting on to the next, I set myself several little rules as challenges. I won’t list them all, but the opening paragraph would set the scene, rounding up as many good things from that year as I had room to mention; then I’d name the story I’d chosen as the pick of the year, with a quotation from it and a paragraph about it; and finally I’d say how to get hold of a copy. I set one word limit for the introduction, title and quote – which I occasionally ended up breaking or, towards the end, just putting in more than one quotation – and another, 45 words (for 45 years), to write about the chosen story itself. As other forms of Doctor Who (the Target novels and the New Adventures in particular, but also comic strips, other books, audio plays and more) have always been as ‘real’ and thrilling to me as the TV series, I treated any Who I liked, in whatever medium, on the same basis. I also decided that I’d only name a story or its author in the introduction as a particular recommendation, and (most difficult of the lot) that I’d only write positive things. I can find something to pick holes in for every story, from the top of the lot to the fair-to-middling (and much more for those below that), but I set out not to mention anything that I didn’t like. Although I’d only say things I believed, just for once even the tiniest criticism could wait at the door. And I pretty much managed it, though a couple may have snuck in at the back…

Some stories were easier to be glowing about than others, and so were some years. I found that, having set out in part to take a fresh look at years I didn’t think much of, I could be genuinely enthusiastic about at least a part of them all – though two or three were a bit of a struggle, I managed it. There were plenty of years, on the other hand, where I wanted to praise much more than I could fit inside my self-imposed word limits (and a good dozen where a brilliant runner-up story was very close to being my ‘pick’ for the year). Of the last few entries where the drafting’s still fresh in my mind, for example, 2003, 2005, 2006 and 2007 all had stories that I’d have loved to have raved about cut for space. There was something about the fives, as well – I said when writing about it that 1975 might just be Doctor Who’s most brilliant year for me, in part because it was when I discovered the series, but 1995 and 2005 were extraordinarily exciting, too. My favourite eras of the show have long been Billy Hartnell’s, Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe’s, and the New Adventures, so I’d happily point anyone towards the mid-’60s, or 1975-78 (well, 1975-81, quite easily), 1989, 1994-96, 2005, 2007… And while I loved writing about each of those, the others were a joy, too. So if you’ve been reading them, I hope you’ve found something to be enthused about.

The Ten Faces of Doctor Who

I’ve not really answered the question in my late-at-night-administrative meanderings above, have I, and I fear I won’t come up with any great insight at this hour. To make up for that, here’s a shorter, pithier piece on the essentials of Doctor Who that I prepared earlier, which has a crack at answering the question. And is readable.

Along the way, I’ve been cheered by quite a few other people’s Who enthusiasms – among my favourites were the lovely Nick, who sent me his own complete 46 years of picks; the Doctor Who author who told me he was enjoying them; and Neil and Millennium, who each picked a year to join in on. I came across Calapine’s list of favourite bits – and “Worsts,” which I’ll resist temptation on – which had quite a few that had me nodding. One of her changes to the list she was working from is something I heartily disagree with, but as I’m being fluffy and positive for one more night I’ll merely point you to a hint.

Stuart, impressively, has been inspired by the fabulous 1981 repeat season that kept those of us around at the time going when we were agog for Peter Davison to appear, and has begun work on an update of The Five Faces of Doctor Who entitled (roll of drums) The Ten Faces of Doctor Who. He’s come up with some persuasive reasoning for the first five stories he’s picked, as well as some terrific clips, so I’m fascinated to see what his next five will be. I’d love to see the BBC remind everyone what’s brilliant about William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant.

Stuart’s so far chosen The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Tomb of the Cybermen, Spearhead From Space, The Ark In Space and Frontios, all rather good and a couple of which I’d probably have picked myself. Having just done 46 individual picks, rather than being fagged out I’m actually feeling quite upbeat about the whole series in all its many forms, so I was tempted to do my pick right now. But, partly because I don’t want to gazump him – he still has five more Doctors to go – and partly because making another big list already might be a bit much, I thought I’d do something else instead.

Picking a full set of 46 stories might be a bit much for you, but if you enjoyed reading my selections, why not pick what ten stories – there you go, that’s a more manageable number – that you’d show if you were in charge of a repeat season? To help you get your thinking cap on, what sort of ‘repeat season’ would you want, and where would you want to show it? I reckon if I were in charge of BBC1 or BBC2, I’d go for ten stories edited into feature-length ‘movies’ (probably with the new DVD special effects, where they have them) and show them on ten Saturday afternoons or evenings, but if I was Mr BBC4, I’d show them in their original episodes, probably one story a week stripped across weeknights, and be more relaxed about showing talky historicals. What do you think? And would you pick the best story from each Doctor? The best individual performance by each Doctor? The best representation of each Doctor’s era (easiest for Pat’s monsters and Pertwee’s UNIT; trickiest for Tom, with his massive variety, and Peter, with his split between ‘arthouse’ and ‘macho’)? Do you balance your ten to reflect the series’ diversity, with comedy, action, drama / past, present, future, or pick them to appeal to people who’ve come to the series in the Twenty-first Century, with Daleks, Cybermen, the Master and Sarah Jane? Go on, have a rummage.

“’Pon my Sam. I may have had a bang on the head, but this is a dashed queer story.”

Update: rather belatedly, I did devise my own ‘BBC2’ and ‘BBC4’ The Ten Eleven Faces of Doctor Who sets. Almost at The Eleventh Hour, you might say (groan).

Why Doctor Who Was Brilliant – Year By Year

At last, the point of this post. I’ve written about why Doctor Who was brilliant for 46 separate years, so here they all are for you to click on and open – which I thought I’d bettter do on discovering that the less-useful-than-they-look labels at the bottom of each post only find you the last twenty. If there are any you’d like to read, here’s the easy way to do it. Because the only real answer to ‘Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?’ isn’t to be found in someone telling you, but in you watching or reading or listening to it for yourself, and that’s why I kept my recommendations short (if numerous!). Here are some of the best stories to dip into:

1963 – An Unearthly Child
1964 – The Aztecs
1965 – The Crusade
1966 – The Daleks’ Master Plan
1967 – The Evil of the Daleks
1968 – The Mind Robber
1969 – The War Games

1970 – Doctor Who and the Silurians
1971 – The Mind of Evil
1972 – The Curse of Peladon
1973 – Carnival of Monsters
1974 – Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion
1975 – Genesis of the Daleks
1976 – The Deadly Assassin
1977 – The Talons of Weng-Chiang
1978 – The Androids of Tara
1979 – The Iron Legion

1980 – Full Circle
1981 – The Master’s Doctor Plan (The Keeper of Traken / Logopolis / Castrovalva)
1982 – The Tides of Time
1983 – Snakedance
1984 – The Caves of Androzani
1985 – Revelation of the Daleks
1986 – The Trial of a Time Lord: The Mysterious Planet
1987 – Paradise Towers
1988 – The Happiness Patrol
1989 – The Curse of Fenric

1990 – Doctor Who – Remembrance of the Daleks
1991 – Doctor Who: The New Adventures – Timewyrm: Revelation
1992 – Doctor Who: The New Adventures – Nightshade
1993 – Doctor Who: The New Adventures – Lucifer Rising
1994 – Doctor Who: The Missing Adventures – Venusian Lullaby
1995 – Doctor Who: The New Adventures – The Also People
1996 – Doctor Who: The New Adventures – Damaged Goods
1997 – Doctor Who – Alien Bodies
1998 – Doctor Who – The Witch Hunters
1999 – The Curse of Fatal Death

2000 – Doctor Who – The Shadows of Avalon
2001 – The Stones of Venice
2002 – Faction Paradox – The Book of the War
2003 – Jubilee
2004 – Death and the Daleks
2005 – Rose
2006 – Doomsday
2007 – Human Nature
2008 – The Fires of Pompeii

And it doesn’t stop there…

“No. No. Don’t tell me how it happened. Although – hope I don’t just trip over a brick. That’d be embarrassing. Then again – painless. Worse ways to go. Depends on the brick…”

This year will see a few more stories for David Tennant, and a great deal of speculation and anticipation about Matt Smith. I’m looking forward to it – and, while I’m waiting, delving into so much of the past inspired me at last to wake up my long-neglected Doctor Who blog, and I’ve gone right back to the very beginning.


Update 1: DWM gets in on the ‘Why is this brilliant?’ concept, gloriously.

There will, eventually, be more updates, as the comments below make clear that I didn’t quite answer the main question. I will, one day, though I still think ‘just go and watch it’ will provide a better answer than any article ever could.

Labels: Blogs, David Tennant, Doctor Who, History, Matt Smith, Top Tips, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?, William Hartnell