Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 2004 Brilliant?
Christopher Eccleston will be the Doctor; the brilliant, provoking About Time handbooks begin; Of the City of the Saved… looks askew at Heaven; Sylv’s The Harvest renews an old monster; there are splendid Short Trips anthologies Past Tense – featuring the fabulous Thief of Sherwood – New Adventuresish 2040, and joyful A Christmas Treasury. And there are Daleks. Billy’s Day of Armageddon is found; little-known actor David Tennant chooses Dalek Empire III over the National Theatre; and Paul Cornell has Bernice face at last…
This Big Finish drama, like all the others, is available on CD. As well as completing Life During Wartime and drawing together all of Benny’s life since her very first meeting with the Doctor (and before), this forms a very direct climax to Big Finish’s monster-heavy Series 4 of the Professor Bernice Summerfield Adventures. To keep the ultimate enemy a secret until the story was released, it was originally advertised not as Death and the Daleks but as “The Axis of Evil” – but, of course, there was no such thing. The rediscovered Day of Armageddon, incidentally, was the last Twentieth Century Doctor Who I got to see ‘new’ before the 2005 series began, as it was swiftly released as one of the three surviving (and beautifully restored) TV episodes of The Daleks’ Master Plan you can see on the Lost In Time DVD set.
Oh, and Lib Dem readers of a certain age may understand that, while the wonderful Lisa Bowerman is now absolutely the definitive Professor Bernice Summerfield, in my head Benny always used to look and sound like Helen Bailey.
Death and the Daleks
“Why were you in the Secure Zone?”Resolving the cliffhanger to 2003’s Secret Army-toned anthology-novel Life During Wartime, Benny discovers the secret behind the suspiciously advanced, history-changing occupation of her home. The Daleks have overshadowed her whole history from childhood through the New Adventures; now it’s about family. With gratuitous nudity. Yay!
“Bit of a misnomer, actually…”
“Is it too late to say I don’t agree with anything she says? I like Daleks – the design sense; spot on. That noise you keep going in here? Actually very calming. Ambient.”
This Big Finish drama, like all the others, is available on CD. As well as completing Life During Wartime and drawing together all of Benny’s life since her very first meeting with the Doctor (and before), this forms a very direct climax to Big Finish’s monster-heavy Series 4 of the Professor Bernice Summerfield Adventures. To keep the ultimate enemy a secret until the story was released, it was originally advertised not as Death and the Daleks but as “The Axis of Evil” – but, of course, there was no such thing. The rediscovered Day of Armageddon, incidentally, was the last Twentieth Century Doctor Who I got to see ‘new’ before the 2005 series began, as it was swiftly released as one of the three surviving (and beautifully restored) TV episodes of The Daleks’ Master Plan you can see on the Lost In Time DVD set.
Oh, and Lib Dem readers of a certain age may understand that, while the wonderful Lisa Bowerman is now absolutely the definitive Professor Bernice Summerfield, in my head Benny always used to look and sound like Helen Bailey.
Labels: Big Finish, Books, Christopher Eccleston, Daleks, David Tennant, Doctor Who, DVD, Faction Paradox, Professor Bernice Summerfield, Reviews, Secret Army, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?, William Hartnell
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 2003 Brilliant?
Alternative Doctors appear in novella The Cabinet of Light and Big Finish’s Unbound: Michael Jayston; David Warner’s Sympathy For the Devil (with Nick Courtney and David Tennant); Derek Jacobi first someone who’s seemingly the Doctor but isn’t, then the Master in an animated adventure. There’s Peter’s Creatures of Beauty, Colin and Sylv’s Project: Lazarus, villains like Davros, and fantastic DVD extras. The year ends with the brilliant news that Russell T Davies will bring Doctor Who back to telly. It starts with a Dalek…
Rob Shearman’s and Big Finish’s best* The best of Rob Shearman and Big Finish. Great speeches for Colin, extraordinary dialogues, bitterly black comedy, Martin Jarvis, evocative sound design, a striking cover and disturbing questions… Who is the prisoner, who the monsters, what happens without orders, and what if the Daleks won?
As with all the Big Finish dramas, this is available on CD and download. There are several related pieces, too, from a Big Finish ‘magazine’ CD including such deleted scenes as an English Empire Blue Peter and adverts reinforcing the message about merchandising and trivialising evil to, rather more famously, two later TV stories borrowing significant elements from the plot. The best of these is Rob’s own Dalek from 2005, with a very similar central core of a single Dalek alone set in a much less funny (though no less grim) story. Which seems an opportune moment to mention that, ironically, Jubilee was first devised for broadcast on the BBC website, but back then Rob decided that he couldn’t squeeze it down to under an hour.
*Richard tells me this is such an obscure Doctor Who in-joke that, unlike the other ones here, it really needs a footnote. In an English Empire that takes its concept of strength from the Daleks, contractions are outlawed. They don’t go the whole hog and speak through ring modulators at state occasions, though. Millennium, on the other fluffy foot, has his own reasons for the brilliance of 2003, and who am I to disagree?
Jubilee
“History isn’t the past, Evelyn. It’s a version of the past we choose to remember.”
“More action! More excitement! More Daleks getting killed in very loud explosions! And introducing Plenty O’Toole as Evelyn ‘Hot Lips’ Smythe…!
“Daleks – The Ultimate Adventure. Coming to a cinema near you, soon. Your supervisor will inform you of the cinema to which you have been assigned. Attendance is compulsory by order of the Historical Instruction Act. All praise the glorious English Empire.”
As with all the Big Finish dramas, this is available on CD and download. There are several related pieces, too, from a Big Finish ‘magazine’ CD including such deleted scenes as an English Empire Blue Peter and adverts reinforcing the message about merchandising and trivialising evil to, rather more famously, two later TV stories borrowing significant elements from the plot. The best of these is Rob’s own Dalek from 2005, with a very similar central core of a single Dalek alone set in a much less funny (though no less grim) story. Which seems an opportune moment to mention that, ironically, Jubilee was first devised for broadcast on the BBC website, but back then Rob decided that he couldn’t squeeze it down to under an hour.
“You told me it would be a bloodless revolution!”
“It will be. Dalek guns do not puncture the skin.”
“There will be a lot of dead bodies, though.”
*Richard tells me this is such an obscure Doctor Who in-joke that, unlike the other ones here, it really needs a footnote. In an English Empire that takes its concept of strength from the Daleks, contractions are outlawed. They don’t go the whole hog and speak through ring modulators at state occasions, though. Millennium, on the other fluffy foot, has his own reasons for the brilliance of 2003, and who am I to disagree?
Labels: Big Finish, Books, Colin Baker, Daleks, David Tennant, Doctor Who, DVD, Michael Jayston, Obscure Doctor Who Jokes, Peter Davison, Reviews, The Brigadier, The Master, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?
Monday, January 19, 2009
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 2002 Brilliant?
Big Finish produces chilling audio dramas like Peter’s Spare Parts and Paul’s Embrace the Darkness, then an epic season climax in Neverland; Kaldor City’s intrigue deepens in Death’s Head and Hidden Persuaders; Daleks surprise in the comic strip as Children of the Revolution; and I can barely read Jealous, Possessive (Short Trips: Zodiac) or Beedlemania (A Life of Surprises) for laughing. But the best Doctor Who short story anthology of all technically contains neither Doctor Who nor short stories…
At last! The easiest way to get hold of this isn’t second-hand, for once, but still today by ordering direct from independent publisher Mad Norwegian – and, as if to show off that I’m finally recommending a book that isn’t out of print, it’s available in hardback and in paperback editions. We have both, of course, one particularly well-thumbed and with six pages of notes stuck into it. It’s described as “part story, part history and part puzzle-box,” you see, and though the A-Z structure means you tend to meander through stories in a distinctly non-linear way, there is a pathway of references that’ll take you through every entry but one and make – well, not sense, but slightly more coherence out of it. If you can’t find the ‘order’ online, drop me a line… As for the identity of the other side of the War from theTime Lords Great Houses: like The Prisoner’s Number One, it could be something you can work out from established opponents; something postmodern; or something the different writers (or even the visionary at the centre of it) all have contradictory views on. I could tell you our two most plausible theories, but there’s never going to be a right answer, is there? Unusually, some of the histories here were fleshed out into audio dramas, too, which you can get from BBV: The Eleven-Day Empire and The Shadow Play.
Faction Paradox – The Book of the War
“The coolest character is the one whose face you never get to see.”Lawrence Miles masterminds this metatextual Time War encyclopaedia, spinning some of the most inspired Who novels into a rich, bewildering tapestry of imagination. Amid distorted reflections of Ada Lovelace, Heaven, vampires, James Whale, The Phantom Menace, Morbius and the Bible, the most extraordinary reimagining’s ignored…
At last! The easiest way to get hold of this isn’t second-hand, for once, but still today by ordering direct from independent publisher Mad Norwegian – and, as if to show off that I’m finally recommending a book that isn’t out of print, it’s available in hardback and in paperback editions. We have both, of course, one particularly well-thumbed and with six pages of notes stuck into it. It’s described as “part story, part history and part puzzle-box,” you see, and though the A-Z structure means you tend to meander through stories in a distinctly non-linear way, there is a pathway of references that’ll take you through every entry but one and make – well, not sense, but slightly more coherence out of it. If you can’t find the ‘order’ online, drop me a line… As for the identity of the other side of the War from the
Labels: Big Finish, Books, Comedy, Daleks, Faction Paradox, History, Paul McGann, Peter Davison, Professor Bernice Summerfield, Reviews, Star Wars, The Master, Toys, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?
Friday, January 16, 2009
The New Avengers – The Tale of the Big Why
Tonight at midnight, BBC4 brings us The New Avengers’ puntastic The Tale of the Big Why, which I’d not seen for ages but which, in one of the joys of writing these reviews, I watched again today and thoroughly enjoyed. Although it has a surprising amount in common with last week’s disappointing episode, it’s both much more exciting and much more laid back; in short, much more Avengers. It looks great, it keeps you guessing with plenty of dodgy characters (a young Roy Marsden, a crooked Tory councillor…), and Steed, Purdey and even Gambit all come out of it superbly. Oh, and the opening titles have finally replaced that uninspiring assemblage of clips with a remarkable bit of 1976 CGI, a union flag lion that so delighted the producers that, in tonight’s adventure, Purdey wears it emblazoned on the back of her rather fetching biker jacket. Along with her name, in big letters. What a fabulous secret agent she is – at last, someone’s even more noticeable than Steed.
Before the analysis and the spoilers, for the second week running, the most entertaining scenes include those of Gambit and Purdey zooming about the countryside. Again, he’s at the wheel, but this time rather than his talking about sex, it’s Purdey’s carnal lusts that drive their destination. She’s gagging for a meal, and dreams of Italian. Gambit, bless him, pulls up outside The Chef’s Hat, a roadside hot dog caravan. Purdey, not finding this what she had in mind, emerges from the car in a gold lamé cocktail dress and, in between bites of huge sausage sarnie (actually, I rather fancy one as I watch her), engages first Mike and then the cuisinier in conversation:
Though it’s not quite as light-hearted – there’s an unexpected death, which I’ll mention shortly so look away now if you want to avoid spoilers, which comes quite early on and has a particularly grim aftermath – this has a lot in common with the marvellous Avengers episode Dead Man’s Treasure. That’s more of a summery week off than this is, but both feature extended treasure hunts with remarkable numbers of participants on remarkable numbers of sides. Admittedly, Dead Man’s Treasure has many cryptic clues while The Tale of the Big Why features only one, but the near-eponymous racy Western The Tale of the Big Y is a doozy (despite our heroes’ cracking it rather depending on all aviators’ maps being identical).
The other story from the same stable that this week’s bears an uncanny resemblance to when looked at from the right angle is, as I mentioned above, the previous New Avengers episode, To Catch a Rat. On paper, you’d think this was shallower – there’s none of the genuine emotion of a wounded old spy recovering himself to take on his old enemy, but rather more of the jolly runaround. On screen, it comes across as having a lot more to it. While the actors injected considerable pathos into the last story, it moved very slowly and had very little to it to live up to its serious intent – you could have halved it to a 25-minute episode without losing anything very important, while this week’s all-action frivolity not only deserves its length but passes the time much faster. The chasing around the countryside has had far more thought put into it; there’s far more variety, of scenes, of characters, of vehicles; again, there’s someone emerging after years away to expose a traitor in the Department (one of the perennial New Avengers clichés), but this time the exposer’s corrupt, too, and swiftly dead, which is a real shock after last week’s weary dragging-out. The feel’s improved, too, by a Jazz-flavoured score with which Laurie Johnson is clearly more comfortable than the usual more noticeably ’70s style; though Cornelltoppingday dismiss it with “Porno Funk Music Factor: 10,” I’d say it’s far less dated than that, and I rather enjoy the jazzy ‘chasing around’ theme that accompanies Purdey’s bike and the odd other vehicle.
Though there’s a less powerful emotional core to the acting than Ian Hendry provided and the script is one of the last gasps at fetishising macho Mike Gambit, this story makes far better and more interesting use of the three leads, too. I’ve mentioned Purdey’s fabulous biker’s outfit and gold frock; Joanna looks great in a fairly practical red jacket and black skirt, too, so it looks like the days of the diaphanous dress (so handy for running in) are behind her. Nothing can save Gambit and most of the others, though. Anyway, not only is she better-outfitted, but her part continues to break out of the sexist trap the series’ initial set-up had consigned her to. She’s heavily favoured early in the story, with some fantastic bike work as she takes the lead, Gambit only following at a distance and mainly to report back to Steed at ‘home base’. Towards the end of the story, Purdey’s kidnapped so the two men will break and have to save the poor little girlie – sigh – but, again, that template’s swiftly broken, as Purdey gets hopping mad and, in a terrific scene, shows that she can beat the villains with both arms tied behind her back.
Steed, too, has a much better part this week – rather than kept back until virtually the last scene, he not only has much more to do back at ‘base’ but gets out towards the end, where he’s caught up in some splendid action sequences and has a great time exploring the wonders of nature (while tiring out poor Gambit). Given a far more dynamic role, he seems far more like the old Steed than in most of the previous New Avengers episodes. It’s not that he takes the lead as the action man – though, when two heavies come calling, there’s a great moment where he slaps a gun out of one villain’s hand, instantly punches him out, then repels another with his hat – but that he gets the space in the narrative to relax and enjoy himself. It’s how Steed should be: carefree in doing his job, serious in what he does but not how he does it. He’s perfect when sent to charm a lady and catch a package in his bowler hat, when performing a Holmesian piece of deduction in tracing a location through orchard crop-spray on a pair of boots, or when giving Purdey her moment at the climax with a typically off-the-wall distraction, and Gambit rewards him with absolute trust (when it matters). Amid a profusion of villains, it’s Steed’s attention to detail that captures the most important one, because he’s got almost as much of an eye for photos and guns as for antique doorknobs. We also spend time, for once, not in Purdey’s bedroom but in Steed’s palatial apartment and Gambit’s groovy pad, and to complete the set Gambit gets two action set-pieces towards the end (against a plane and a gun) which really work.
Although I’ve made it sound like it’s all rather fun, and it is, there are some serious undercurrents, particularly in the guest parts. Rarely, almost every new character in the script is working for someone different – themselves, for almost all of them, and so many of them chasing that it resembles Wacky Races – yet almost every one of them has the same motive: greed. It opens with everyone focused on Burt Brandon, a spy just about to get out of prison after nine years and all set to make a fortune, he claims, by exposing a secret at the heart of government. Played by George A Cooper in his third Avengers role, he’s an instantly recognisable actor (Mr Griffiths from Grange Hill) and so blatantly the centre of attention that it’s a real shock when he’s killed barely a dozen minutes in. This takes the viewer by surprise, not least because now it means that no-one knows what they’re looking for, nor where to find it: the chase becomes that much more unpredictable. And, of course, when Steed and Gambit finally unearth the ‘buried treasure’, it isn’t there, so even solving the clue of the pulp paperback doesn’t tell you who has the goods, let alone what the goods actually are.
The story’s main ‘villains’ are apparently Eastern Bloc heavies gone native – they’re communists who’ve turned capitalist, the power of all that money having turned their heads. And one of them’s a Conservative councillor into the bargain! Well, all right, that’s not strictly true, but a corrupt, communist, capitalist traitor Tory is believable, isn’t it? It’s not like we can’t all think of the odd crooked Tory with an extremist political past… No, no not that one – I’m actually thinking of the actor’s later role in The Vicar of Dibley. Yes, it’s him, isn’t it? That surprised you. Anyway, where was I? He and his nervous henchman ambush Brandon and kill him without actually intending to, as this means they can’t get the truth out of him; instead, in the episode’s grimmest sequence, they strip and search his body, splayed out in the middle of a field. Fortunately, the nastiness of that moment is swiftly followed by a surreal echo as, having failed to find anything on him, they search his car then take it to pieces and lay them out around the frame, creating an image in the field like an exploded diagram of all a car’s components. Gambit drives up later, seeing Purdey sitting on the completely disassembled wreck of a car:
Next week, it’s about-face for a story of spies right up close rather than ones you have to chase, and there’s another villain who’ll grow up to be a famous detective on TV, in one of The New Avengers’ best.
Before the analysis and the spoilers, for the second week running, the most entertaining scenes include those of Gambit and Purdey zooming about the countryside. Again, he’s at the wheel, but this time rather than his talking about sex, it’s Purdey’s carnal lusts that drive their destination. She’s gagging for a meal, and dreams of Italian. Gambit, bless him, pulls up outside The Chef’s Hat, a roadside hot dog caravan. Purdey, not finding this what she had in mind, emerges from the car in a gold lamé cocktail dress and, in between bites of huge sausage sarnie (actually, I rather fancy one as I watch her), engages first Mike and then the cuisinier in conversation:
“Is this one of your favourite restaurants? I suppose you bring all your girlfriends here… Did he book?”The script’s fast-paced and, though simple in its story, quite complex in its plotting, so it’s to The Tale of the Big Why’s great advantage that Robert Fuest’s in charge, probably my favourite and almost certainly the most strikingly pop-art Avengers director. The story’s shot almost entirely on location, and illustrated with many striking images – justly the most famous is the recurring close-up of a beer glass used as chronometer, but it’s also perhaps the New Avengers episode most packed with chases. My favourite moments are probably of Purdey on her motorbike, zooming towards a great stunt in the pre-credits freeze-frame or popping suddenly into startling close-up, but there’s a lot more variation than that. Through tonight’s story, the vehicles move from a motorbike to an exciting chase with smashing cars (well, very ugly cars, actually, but they get smashed up), then lots of action with a crop-duster plane. Even Gambit gets a strikingly heroic moment facing off against it.
“Nah, he’s just lucky!”
The Regular Characters (and some familiar plots)
Though it’s not quite as light-hearted – there’s an unexpected death, which I’ll mention shortly so look away now if you want to avoid spoilers, which comes quite early on and has a particularly grim aftermath – this has a lot in common with the marvellous Avengers episode Dead Man’s Treasure. That’s more of a summery week off than this is, but both feature extended treasure hunts with remarkable numbers of participants on remarkable numbers of sides. Admittedly, Dead Man’s Treasure has many cryptic clues while The Tale of the Big Why features only one, but the near-eponymous racy Western The Tale of the Big Y is a doozy (despite our heroes’ cracking it rather depending on all aviators’ maps being identical).
The other story from the same stable that this week’s bears an uncanny resemblance to when looked at from the right angle is, as I mentioned above, the previous New Avengers episode, To Catch a Rat. On paper, you’d think this was shallower – there’s none of the genuine emotion of a wounded old spy recovering himself to take on his old enemy, but rather more of the jolly runaround. On screen, it comes across as having a lot more to it. While the actors injected considerable pathos into the last story, it moved very slowly and had very little to it to live up to its serious intent – you could have halved it to a 25-minute episode without losing anything very important, while this week’s all-action frivolity not only deserves its length but passes the time much faster. The chasing around the countryside has had far more thought put into it; there’s far more variety, of scenes, of characters, of vehicles; again, there’s someone emerging after years away to expose a traitor in the Department (one of the perennial New Avengers clichés), but this time the exposer’s corrupt, too, and swiftly dead, which is a real shock after last week’s weary dragging-out. The feel’s improved, too, by a Jazz-flavoured score with which Laurie Johnson is clearly more comfortable than the usual more noticeably ’70s style; though Cornelltoppingday dismiss it with “Porno Funk Music Factor: 10,” I’d say it’s far less dated than that, and I rather enjoy the jazzy ‘chasing around’ theme that accompanies Purdey’s bike and the odd other vehicle.
Though there’s a less powerful emotional core to the acting than Ian Hendry provided and the script is one of the last gasps at fetishising macho Mike Gambit, this story makes far better and more interesting use of the three leads, too. I’ve mentioned Purdey’s fabulous biker’s outfit and gold frock; Joanna looks great in a fairly practical red jacket and black skirt, too, so it looks like the days of the diaphanous dress (so handy for running in) are behind her. Nothing can save Gambit and most of the others, though. Anyway, not only is she better-outfitted, but her part continues to break out of the sexist trap the series’ initial set-up had consigned her to. She’s heavily favoured early in the story, with some fantastic bike work as she takes the lead, Gambit only following at a distance and mainly to report back to Steed at ‘home base’. Towards the end of the story, Purdey’s kidnapped so the two men will break and have to save the poor little girlie – sigh – but, again, that template’s swiftly broken, as Purdey gets hopping mad and, in a terrific scene, shows that she can beat the villains with both arms tied behind her back.
Steed, too, has a much better part this week – rather than kept back until virtually the last scene, he not only has much more to do back at ‘base’ but gets out towards the end, where he’s caught up in some splendid action sequences and has a great time exploring the wonders of nature (while tiring out poor Gambit). Given a far more dynamic role, he seems far more like the old Steed than in most of the previous New Avengers episodes. It’s not that he takes the lead as the action man – though, when two heavies come calling, there’s a great moment where he slaps a gun out of one villain’s hand, instantly punches him out, then repels another with his hat – but that he gets the space in the narrative to relax and enjoy himself. It’s how Steed should be: carefree in doing his job, serious in what he does but not how he does it. He’s perfect when sent to charm a lady and catch a package in his bowler hat, when performing a Holmesian piece of deduction in tracing a location through orchard crop-spray on a pair of boots, or when giving Purdey her moment at the climax with a typically off-the-wall distraction, and Gambit rewards him with absolute trust (when it matters). Amid a profusion of villains, it’s Steed’s attention to detail that captures the most important one, because he’s got almost as much of an eye for photos and guns as for antique doorknobs. We also spend time, for once, not in Purdey’s bedroom but in Steed’s palatial apartment and Gambit’s groovy pad, and to complete the set Gambit gets two action set-pieces towards the end (against a plane and a gun) which really work.
The Irregular Characters (and a deadly sin)
Although I’ve made it sound like it’s all rather fun, and it is, there are some serious undercurrents, particularly in the guest parts. Rarely, almost every new character in the script is working for someone different – themselves, for almost all of them, and so many of them chasing that it resembles Wacky Races – yet almost every one of them has the same motive: greed. It opens with everyone focused on Burt Brandon, a spy just about to get out of prison after nine years and all set to make a fortune, he claims, by exposing a secret at the heart of government. Played by George A Cooper in his third Avengers role, he’s an instantly recognisable actor (Mr Griffiths from Grange Hill) and so blatantly the centre of attention that it’s a real shock when he’s killed barely a dozen minutes in. This takes the viewer by surprise, not least because now it means that no-one knows what they’re looking for, nor where to find it: the chase becomes that much more unpredictable. And, of course, when Steed and Gambit finally unearth the ‘buried treasure’, it isn’t there, so even solving the clue of the pulp paperback doesn’t tell you who has the goods, let alone what the goods actually are.
The story’s main ‘villains’ are apparently Eastern Bloc heavies gone native – they’re communists who’ve turned capitalist, the power of all that money having turned their heads. And one of them’s a Conservative councillor into the bargain! Well, all right, that’s not strictly true, but a corrupt, communist, capitalist traitor Tory is believable, isn’t it? It’s not like we can’t all think of the odd crooked Tory with an extremist political past… No, no not that one – I’m actually thinking of the actor’s later role in The Vicar of Dibley. Yes, it’s him, isn’t it? That surprised you. Anyway, where was I? He and his nervous henchman ambush Brandon and kill him without actually intending to, as this means they can’t get the truth out of him; instead, in the episode’s grimmest sequence, they strip and search his body, splayed out in the middle of a field. Fortunately, the nastiness of that moment is swiftly followed by a surreal echo as, having failed to find anything on him, they search his car then take it to pieces and lay them out around the frame, creating an image in the field like an exploded diagram of all a car’s components. Gambit drives up later, seeing Purdey sitting on the completely disassembled wreck of a car:
“I say! Need any help? Could be a blocked carburettor.”Brian Clemens creates an interesting flourish with the names, too. The two heavies are Roach and Poole, and there’s something distinctly fishy about them; Roy Marsden plays Turner, an apparently ordinary guy who’s tempted to the dark side by the lure of lucre (his first name, ironically, is Frank); and the top civil servant who’s sold out his country for whacking great pay-offs (again, entrepreneurship from the communists) is called Harmer. Incidentally, for Doctor Who fans of old, the two main suspects for the turncoat at the top are Hepesh and Shardovan, but the traitor’s the other way round in this series. With so much money said to be washing around, one of the most memorable things about this story is that it creates new villains among everyone who hears of it, as they’re all tempted just that little too far – an ordinary woman turned gleeful gas-bombing femme fatale, crop-sprayer Turner who takes the vital parcel (and who never had any hair) and is prepared to sell to the highest bidder… Though, with each, there are hints that the lure is only bringing out incipient corruption: the woman is jailbird spy Brandon’s estranged daughter; bluff, friendly Mrs Turner is first seen at her farmhouse, dipping bits of machinery in acid to sell them on to “Genuine Antiques”. But the multiplicity of villains, like the multiplicity of chases, help to keep the episode constantly lively, unpredictable and much better than the ordinary. It all leads up to a splendid series of climaxes with different villains – big and small – and they’ve all been set up so well that each grabs your attention, whether it’s an edge of the seat fight with Soviets turned independent, an impressive stunt with a plane to stop an ordinary bloke, or the fun of revealing and dealing with the traitor that, it turns out, the whole thing’s been about.
Next week, it’s about-face for a story of spies right up close rather than ones you have to chase, and there’s another villain who’ll grow up to be a famous detective on TV, in one of The New Avengers’ best.
Labels: Joanna Lumley, Reviews, The Avengers Season 5, The New Avengers
Why Mr Churchill Is A Better Prime Minister Than Mr Brown (Number 5069 in a Series of Eight Million)
Watching tonight’s QI, in which Mr Stephen Fry has been visibly straining (and failing) not to mock Pam Ayres, there was a discussion of bearskins – you know, the big, stiff, furry things associated with a guardsman and head. Anyway, the conversation turned to the remarkable number of guardsmen caught in thoroughly interesting positions in the 1950s. Apparently, one morning Winston Churchill was woken by a Prime Ministerial aide, who nervously informed him that a backbench MP had been arrested in the bushes with a guardsman, and that the newspapers had got hold of it (as, presumably, had the soldier).
Mr Churchill ruminated for a moment, and then asked whether he was right in thinking that it had been particularly cold the previous night. The aide shakily confirmed that it had been one of the coldest February nights on record. Before turning over and going back to sleep, the Prime Minister exclaimed,
Now I must buckle down and attempt to finish my review of tonight’s jolly entertaining episode of The New Avengers, up on BBC4 at midnight. Though tragically naked guardsman-free, on the bright side it not only makes you proud to be British (or better-disposed if you’re not), but it’s quite a nippy night and you can stay in for it.
Mr Churchill ruminated for a moment, and then asked whether he was right in thinking that it had been particularly cold the previous night. The aide shakily confirmed that it had been one of the coldest February nights on record. Before turning over and going back to sleep, the Prime Minister exclaimed,
“Makes you proud to be British!”Likelihood of the dour, Puritan, killjoy, bullying, Mr-Ban-Everything current occupant of Number Ten saying anything of the sort: nil.
Now I must buckle down and attempt to finish my review of tonight’s jolly entertaining episode of The New Avengers, up on BBC4 at midnight. Though tragically naked guardsman-free, on the bright side it not only makes you proud to be British (or better-disposed if you’re not), but it’s quite a nippy night and you can stay in for it.
Labels: Gay, History, Labour, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, Stephen Fry
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 2001 Brilliant?
The fairy-tale Grimm Reality and The Adventuress of Henrietta Street’s complex histories are among Paul McGann’s best books – and it’s ‘new millennium, new ranges’, including the DVD releases starting in earnest; Occam’s Razor, first of the intelligent, dangerous Kaldor City CDs; and Billy novella Time and Relative. Perhaps most excitingly (not ignoring Peter’s and Colin’s fabulous Loups-Garoux and The One Doctor), Big Finish relaunch Paul with Storm Warning, then visit…
As with all the Big Finish dramas, this is available on CD and download, both on its own and as part of a collection of the first Paul McGann stories broadcast on BBC7 (starting in 2005).
The Stones of Venice
“I don’t carry weapons. I don’t need them. But I must say, I think you treat your visitors here in a very shabby manner indeed.”Edwardian adventuress Charley Pollard thinks the TARDIS is a gothic nightmare – wait until she reaches a poetically doomed Venice at the close of a hundred-year curse. The Duke’s moping over his lost love, her cult’s praying for resurrection, and there’s something fishy about the gondoliers…
As with all the Big Finish dramas, this is available on CD and download, both on its own and as part of a collection of the first Paul McGann stories broadcast on BBC7 (starting in 2005).
Labels: Big Finish, Blake’s 7, Books, Colin Baker, Doctor Who, DVD, Paul McGann, Peter Davison, Reviews, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?, William Hartnell
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 2000 Brilliant?
Big Finish really hit their stride with some thrilling audio dramas: Sylv’s The Fires of Vulcan, The Genocide Machine and brilliant, New Adventuresish The Fearmonger and The Shadow of the Scourge; Colin’s The Marian Conspiracy and, most captivatingly, Rob Shearman’s darkly comic The Holy Terror. The Web of Fear is grippingly recreated on stage at The Portsmouth Arts Centre. The books include Colin’s Grave Matter and Tom’s Festival of Death, reaching their pinnacle in Paul Cornell’s most wonderful story…
Any time now we might hit novels that are still in print. But not yet, sadly, so do search it out second-hand. Fortunately, you can still get all the Big Finish plays on CD and download. Most of all, though, find this marvellous, marvellous book – even just flicking through it looking for quotes this evening, I’m a sufficiently soft old thing that I worried Richard by bursting into tears.
In real time, Paul’s signing his new Captain Britain graphic novel at Forbidden Planet in London this evening. I’m intrigued; I’ve read no Captain Britain for about two and a half decades, but I remember it being quite Arthurian, and that’s a favourite theme of Paul’s – The Shadows of Avalon itself is a mixture of love letter and literary criticism for Battlefield. I’m tempted to go, but am concerned that, in my present mood, I may blub.
Doctor Who – The Shadows of Avalon
“Stories are about endings. They don’t mean anything unless they come to an end.”The first Doctor Who to make me cry brilliantly explores the Doctor’s loss through the Brigadier’s – and tells of hopeless bravery, Faerie Silurians, Time Lord swearing, Armando Iannucci and The Proper Use for Chandeliers. The Doctor and his friends rediscover themselves, and at the end…
“From across the blackened turret, the sound came again… The Doctor closed his eyes and luxuriated in it. Could it really be? To him that sound meant home, safety, freedom –
“And adventures in time and space.”
Any time now we might hit novels that are still in print. But not yet, sadly, so do search it out second-hand. Fortunately, you can still get all the Big Finish plays on CD and download. Most of all, though, find this marvellous, marvellous book – even just flicking through it looking for quotes this evening, I’m a sufficiently soft old thing that I worried Richard by bursting into tears.
In real time, Paul’s signing his new Captain Britain graphic novel at Forbidden Planet in London this evening. I’m intrigued; I’ve read no Captain Britain for about two and a half decades, but I remember it being quite Arthurian, and that’s a favourite theme of Paul’s – The Shadows of Avalon itself is a mixture of love letter and literary criticism for Battlefield. I’m tempted to go, but am concerned that, in my present mood, I may blub.
“The Brigadier’s lips managed to form the word. ‘Doctor?’
“All around him, the UNIT men had started to cheer.
“‘About time and all,’ said Joe Boyce.”
Labels: Big Finish, Books, Colin Baker, Comics, Doctor Who, New Adventures, Paul McGann, Personal, Reviews, Sylvester McCoy, The Brigadier, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 1999 Brilliant?
There are several inventive and entertaining books, from Paul’s The Taking of Planet 5 and Unnatural History, through Pat’s grave The Final Sanction to Benny’s hilarious The Joy Device (cheering me up, stuck in a grotty hotel). Perhaps the most memorable is Lawrence Miles’ Dead Romance, disturbingly brilliant and reaching across the ranges. Meanwhile, Big Finish starts producing full-scale Doctor Who audio plays starring Peter, Colin and Sylv, while on Red Nose Day the TV brings even more Doctors…
This was released on BBC Video, oddly re-edited, but there’s no sign of it yet on DVD, despite introducing many of our new timey-wimey overlord’s themes and featuring a mass of famous actors (including two who also play Doctors in other decades, a long-rumoured candidate and another actually offered the job). There was a little of it on last Christmas’ Doctor Who Confidential the other week, though.
Sadly, as I mark the last thrilling Twentieth Century appearance of the Daleks on TV, news has broken this week that the man who inhabited more Dalek casings than any other, actor John Scott Martin, has died at the age of 82. He played a host of roles with his own face on, too (next Monday evening will be the fiftieth anniversary of his second TV appearance, and the first with which I’m familiar, in Quatermass and the Pit), my favourite of which is probably the slightly deranged granddad Rico Vivaldi in Russell T Davies’ Mine All Mine; suddenly revealed at the climax of the first episode, it’s impossible not to see it as a fantastic joke on the Part One cliffhanger always being a Dalek.
The Curse of Fatal Death
“He was never cruel, and never cowardly. And it’ll never be safe to be scared again.”Steven Moffat’s four mini-episodes, each better than the last: very funny; rather loving; fart gags; breast gags; and a brilliant gag against Charlie Brooker (I’ll explain later). The Master’s augmented by superior Dalek technology, and five Doctors regenerate all the way to Joanna Lumley. Hurrah!
This was released on BBC Video, oddly re-edited, but there’s no sign of it yet on DVD, despite introducing many of our new timey-wimey overlord’s themes and featuring a mass of famous actors (including two who also play Doctors in other decades, a long-rumoured candidate and another actually offered the job). There was a little of it on last Christmas’ Doctor Who Confidential the other week, though.
Sadly, as I mark the last thrilling Twentieth Century appearance of the Daleks on TV, news has broken this week that the man who inhabited more Dalek casings than any other, actor John Scott Martin, has died at the age of 82. He played a host of roles with his own face on, too (next Monday evening will be the fiftieth anniversary of his second TV appearance, and the first with which I’m familiar, in Quatermass and the Pit), my favourite of which is probably the slightly deranged granddad Rico Vivaldi in Russell T Davies’ Mine All Mine; suddenly revealed at the climax of the first episode, it’s impossible not to see it as a fantastic joke on the Part One cliffhanger always being a Dalek.
Labels: Big Finish, Books, Daleks, Doctor Who, Faction Paradox, Joanna Lumley, Obituary, Patrick Troughton, Paul McGann, Professor Bernice Summerfield, Reviews, The Master, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?
Norman Tebbit Is An Undead Christmas Present For Labour
I rarely watch The Daily Politics except for Wednesdays, after forgetting to watch Prime Minister’s Questions. Today’s boasted all my usual reasons for not watching (unfailingly smug tosser Andrew Neil, Labour apparatchik, Tory sneerer, Tory Press Office’s own Nick Robinson and no Lib Dem), but the lucky Labour Party were handed a late Christmas present. Presented with Norman Tebbit, Labour’s oleaginous Phil Woolas couldn’t believe his luck. On their loathsomely racist immigration policies, you can’t slip a BNP membership card between Mr Woolas and Lord Tebbit, but as a reminder of the wicked ’80s, Lord Tebbit was an open goal.
David Cameron’s attempt to present a new Conservatives has so many problems, the poor lamb. He opens his mouth or one of his palatial residences and you think of the Nineteenth Century old rich Tories, of course, but the main problem he’s been desperate to distance himself from is the last century, and the 1980s in particular. He tries not to mention it all, but that decade keeps coming back: his activists scream that he must or he’s an apostate of the Church of Thatchianity; and Labour’s principal, increasingly shrill and desperate message has for years been, ‘We’re shit, and we know we are, but, oooooh! The Tories! Scary!’
At the moment, we’re led to believe Mr Cameron’s wrestling with whether to bring back the Conservative ’80s sole remaining asset, Ken Clarke, to the front bench. In his usual decisive way, the papers have been reporting that he’s been trying to make up his mind over this simple question for the last couple of months, but – though I first remember him as a Thatcherite ultra prompting every ambulance worker in the land to go on strike, and his main activity over the past few years has been to export cancer to kids – to everyone except Mr Cameron it seems a no-brainer. Ken Clarke doesn’t just have a brain (an independent-minded one, at that), but is the only affable-seeming Tory to have come out of the ’80s. Arguably the only affable-seeming Tory in the last couple of decades, too, saving Mr Cameron’s lordly condescension to us all. And, of course, Mr Cameron’s right-hand man Mr Osborne is plainly such a useless lightweight that he really needs someone who looks like he has a clue about the economy. Only two things can possibly have prevented Mr Cameron from announcing Mr Clarke’s triumphant re-entry months ago. One is that, stood next to Mr Osborne as his main lieutenant, Mr Cameron can’t help but look capable and charismatic. Stood next to Mr Clarke… Oh dear. The other reason is, of course, that when I said to everyone except Mr Cameron it seems a no-brainer, I was excluding the swivel-eyed Tory maniacs who want Mr Clarke executed as a traitor (I’d like to say I’m exaggerating some of the views on ConHome for comic effect, but…) for not sharing their knee-jerk Tebbitastic hate of all things beyond the Channel Tunnel (or, indeed, north of Watford).
The last thing that Mr Cameron needs, then, is for almost any Tory from the ’80s who isn’t Ken Clarke to rear their philosophically ugly head. So, if he retired from today’s PMQs to see any of Andrew Neil’s self-satisfied nonsense, he can only have groaned, reached for a crucifix, been grateful that very few people watch The Daily Politics and hoped none of it gets pulled out for the news. Because quite literally the worst person to appear for the Conservative case right now, given that Mrs Thatcher is in no fit state to be interviewed, is Norman Tebbit. He has in common with Ken Clarke that he was part of Mrs Thatcher’s Cabinet and one of the driving forces of the Thatcherite revolution, but more importantly that he’s one of the very few Tories that a significant section of the population will still instantly recognise (sagging types of my age and older, but still quite a few). And that’s not good. Where Mr Clarke gives an impression of likeability and empathy with the ‘ordinary bloke’, his image of lazy indulgence now all the more appealing after a decade of Labour’s shrill, bullying Puritanism, Norman Tebbit is forever the Spitting Image bovver boy incarnation of Thatcherite callousness, divisiveness and just plain nastiness.
As I’ve said so many times, but still so many thousand times fewer than Labour have, Labour’s main election pitch has long been reduced to ‘We’re shit, and we know we are, but, oooooh! The Tories! Scary!’ Unfortunately for them, this works less and less, like the Tories attacking Labour for the Winter of Discontent well into the ’90s (which they did, to increasingly risible effect): Mr Cameron isn’t associated with the ’80s; many voters no longer remember them anyway; after more than a decade of Labour, the present government have stored up more than a few of their own negatives, persistently dragging up to be as harsh and nasty as the Tories were and now seeming as rubbish as John Major on top; above all, Mr Cameron has worked as hard as he’s capable to try and ‘detoxify the Tory brand’ (despite that being as ’80s a piece of marketing speak as you’re likely to hear). Labour still have no idea of how to attack Mr Cameron – their ‘he’d do nothing’ charge at last has some bite, but their instinctive reaction remains ‘He’s a toff!’ Well, Tony Blair was also in the country’s top 1% of poshness, so while Labour are exercising some of their residual self-loathing over him, most of the country just don’t care. So imagine their delight whenever Norman Tebbit appears. If only the Tories ditched David Cameron and had Lord Tebbit as Leader, Labour would be in heaven. Whether they won the election or not, there’s no doubt that’s the dream election they yearn to fight.
So, though Phil Woolas is both deeply unpleasant and almost always wheedling and ineffective, pitched against Norman Tebbit on a show about the economy, even he couldn’t fail to score. One of my defining early political experiences was the newly formed Liberal Democrats, pretty much at their lowest in 1989, alone in standing up for the rights of Hong Kong British citizens. Mrs Thatcher’s Government wanted to stand by our promises to only the richest, offering citizenship by bribery; but that wasn’t racist enough for Norman Tebbit and his fellow travellers in the Labour Party. Mr Tebbit led a Tory rebellion against Mrs Thatcher to stop anyone with the wrong colour skin entering Britain, and the Labour Party voted with him. Two decades later, Mr Woolas is one of the most shameless exponents of New Tebbit authoritarian bigot-pandering, but you’d never have known how much he’s one of Norman Tebbit’s ideological bedfellows by watching The Daily Politics today.
Both Mr Woolas and Lord Tebbit had messages they wanted to get over today, and they each repeated theirs endlessly. For Mr Woolas, it was that the economic meltdown is a global economic crisis; for Lord Tebbit, it was that, if Labour had run the economy better during the good times, they wouldn’t be in this mess now. Despite messages coming in from viewers scorning Mr Woolas’ crib sheet in pretty much his very parroted words, Mr Woolas won hands down. That’s because Lord Tebbit made two very stupid mistakes. The more minor one was laughing when Mr Woolas’ string was pulled and the line came out again. Suddenly, the Labour muppet came alive. Much as his opponent protested that he was only mocking the repeated excuse, Mr Woolas laid into him with shining eyes and the fervour of being able at last to attack the ‘real’ Tories he’d grown up with. My constituents who are out of work won’t thank you for laughing at them, he snarled, to Norman the Idiot. But of course you’re a monetarist, he went on, so we know you and the Tories have always stood back and not cared when people lose their jobs. And, in a recession, everyone who remotely remembers him nods and thinks, yes, that Labour git’s right, the Tories were horrible, and out of touch, and they never cared about unemployment.
Norman Tebbit’s biggest mistake, though, was in indulging his monstrous ego by turning up at all. He lacks the most rudimentary self-awareness. In the ’80s, his uncompromising working class Tory made good image appealed to almost as many people as it repelled. Today, all that’s gone. No-one remembers his life story, and he’s a Lord – he can’t pretend to be ‘in touch’ any more. All he is is a walking billboard for Labour’s wish-fulfilment campaign against the callous, laughing-at-unemployment Tory Government of a quarter-century ago. In short, he is everything David Cameron wants people to forget. If Norman Tebbit wants the Tories to win the next election, he should climb back into his coffin and refuse the bait of any media appearances. He’s been a blast from the past and a mere embarrassment for most of Mr Cameron’s tenure, but in the current economic climate, he’s pure poison. Every time he pops up, he can only do his party harm.
Of course, I’d love him to be all over the airwaves, too, but at least the Liberal Democrats have something positive to say in the event of the Tories not being self-destructively stupid.
In other news of Labour’s out-of-work-in-progress completion of Mrs Thatcher’s thousand-bomber-raids on British industry, the last television factory in the country has closed. For obvious reasons, I’m rather sad about that.
And in at number 49 on The Golden Ton for 2008-9.
Bring Back the ’80s! But Only If They’re Ken Clarke
David Cameron’s attempt to present a new Conservatives has so many problems, the poor lamb. He opens his mouth or one of his palatial residences and you think of the Nineteenth Century old rich Tories, of course, but the main problem he’s been desperate to distance himself from is the last century, and the 1980s in particular. He tries not to mention it all, but that decade keeps coming back: his activists scream that he must or he’s an apostate of the Church of Thatchianity; and Labour’s principal, increasingly shrill and desperate message has for years been, ‘We’re shit, and we know we are, but, oooooh! The Tories! Scary!’
At the moment, we’re led to believe Mr Cameron’s wrestling with whether to bring back the Conservative ’80s sole remaining asset, Ken Clarke, to the front bench. In his usual decisive way, the papers have been reporting that he’s been trying to make up his mind over this simple question for the last couple of months, but – though I first remember him as a Thatcherite ultra prompting every ambulance worker in the land to go on strike, and his main activity over the past few years has been to export cancer to kids – to everyone except Mr Cameron it seems a no-brainer. Ken Clarke doesn’t just have a brain (an independent-minded one, at that), but is the only affable-seeming Tory to have come out of the ’80s. Arguably the only affable-seeming Tory in the last couple of decades, too, saving Mr Cameron’s lordly condescension to us all. And, of course, Mr Cameron’s right-hand man Mr Osborne is plainly such a useless lightweight that he really needs someone who looks like he has a clue about the economy. Only two things can possibly have prevented Mr Cameron from announcing Mr Clarke’s triumphant re-entry months ago. One is that, stood next to Mr Osborne as his main lieutenant, Mr Cameron can’t help but look capable and charismatic. Stood next to Mr Clarke… Oh dear. The other reason is, of course, that when I said to everyone except Mr Cameron it seems a no-brainer, I was excluding the swivel-eyed Tory maniacs who want Mr Clarke executed as a traitor (I’d like to say I’m exaggerating some of the views on ConHome for comic effect, but…) for not sharing their knee-jerk Tebbitastic hate of all things beyond the Channel Tunnel (or, indeed, north of Watford).
Tebbit Returns; Labourites Cry With Synthetic Outrage and Genuine Joy
The last thing that Mr Cameron needs, then, is for almost any Tory from the ’80s who isn’t Ken Clarke to rear their philosophically ugly head. So, if he retired from today’s PMQs to see any of Andrew Neil’s self-satisfied nonsense, he can only have groaned, reached for a crucifix, been grateful that very few people watch The Daily Politics and hoped none of it gets pulled out for the news. Because quite literally the worst person to appear for the Conservative case right now, given that Mrs Thatcher is in no fit state to be interviewed, is Norman Tebbit. He has in common with Ken Clarke that he was part of Mrs Thatcher’s Cabinet and one of the driving forces of the Thatcherite revolution, but more importantly that he’s one of the very few Tories that a significant section of the population will still instantly recognise (sagging types of my age and older, but still quite a few). And that’s not good. Where Mr Clarke gives an impression of likeability and empathy with the ‘ordinary bloke’, his image of lazy indulgence now all the more appealing after a decade of Labour’s shrill, bullying Puritanism, Norman Tebbit is forever the Spitting Image bovver boy incarnation of Thatcherite callousness, divisiveness and just plain nastiness.
As I’ve said so many times, but still so many thousand times fewer than Labour have, Labour’s main election pitch has long been reduced to ‘We’re shit, and we know we are, but, oooooh! The Tories! Scary!’ Unfortunately for them, this works less and less, like the Tories attacking Labour for the Winter of Discontent well into the ’90s (which they did, to increasingly risible effect): Mr Cameron isn’t associated with the ’80s; many voters no longer remember them anyway; after more than a decade of Labour, the present government have stored up more than a few of their own negatives, persistently dragging up to be as harsh and nasty as the Tories were and now seeming as rubbish as John Major on top; above all, Mr Cameron has worked as hard as he’s capable to try and ‘detoxify the Tory brand’ (despite that being as ’80s a piece of marketing speak as you’re likely to hear). Labour still have no idea of how to attack Mr Cameron – their ‘he’d do nothing’ charge at last has some bite, but their instinctive reaction remains ‘He’s a toff!’ Well, Tony Blair was also in the country’s top 1% of poshness, so while Labour are exercising some of their residual self-loathing over him, most of the country just don’t care. So imagine their delight whenever Norman Tebbit appears. If only the Tories ditched David Cameron and had Lord Tebbit as Leader, Labour would be in heaven. Whether they won the election or not, there’s no doubt that’s the dream election they yearn to fight.
Labour Are Tebbit’s Disgusting Race-Baiting Heirs
So, though Phil Woolas is both deeply unpleasant and almost always wheedling and ineffective, pitched against Norman Tebbit on a show about the economy, even he couldn’t fail to score. One of my defining early political experiences was the newly formed Liberal Democrats, pretty much at their lowest in 1989, alone in standing up for the rights of Hong Kong British citizens. Mrs Thatcher’s Government wanted to stand by our promises to only the richest, offering citizenship by bribery; but that wasn’t racist enough for Norman Tebbit and his fellow travellers in the Labour Party. Mr Tebbit led a Tory rebellion against Mrs Thatcher to stop anyone with the wrong colour skin entering Britain, and the Labour Party voted with him. Two decades later, Mr Woolas is one of the most shameless exponents of New Tebbit authoritarian bigot-pandering, but you’d never have known how much he’s one of Norman Tebbit’s ideological bedfellows by watching The Daily Politics today.
Both Mr Woolas and Lord Tebbit had messages they wanted to get over today, and they each repeated theirs endlessly. For Mr Woolas, it was that the economic meltdown is a global economic crisis; for Lord Tebbit, it was that, if Labour had run the economy better during the good times, they wouldn’t be in this mess now. Despite messages coming in from viewers scorning Mr Woolas’ crib sheet in pretty much his very parroted words, Mr Woolas won hands down. That’s because Lord Tebbit made two very stupid mistakes. The more minor one was laughing when Mr Woolas’ string was pulled and the line came out again. Suddenly, the Labour muppet came alive. Much as his opponent protested that he was only mocking the repeated excuse, Mr Woolas laid into him with shining eyes and the fervour of being able at last to attack the ‘real’ Tories he’d grown up with. My constituents who are out of work won’t thank you for laughing at them, he snarled, to Norman the Idiot. But of course you’re a monetarist, he went on, so we know you and the Tories have always stood back and not cared when people lose their jobs. And, in a recession, everyone who remotely remembers him nods and thinks, yes, that Labour git’s right, the Tories were horrible, and out of touch, and they never cared about unemployment.
Norman Tebbit’s biggest mistake, though, was in indulging his monstrous ego by turning up at all. He lacks the most rudimentary self-awareness. In the ’80s, his uncompromising working class Tory made good image appealed to almost as many people as it repelled. Today, all that’s gone. No-one remembers his life story, and he’s a Lord – he can’t pretend to be ‘in touch’ any more. All he is is a walking billboard for Labour’s wish-fulfilment campaign against the callous, laughing-at-unemployment Tory Government of a quarter-century ago. In short, he is everything David Cameron wants people to forget. If Norman Tebbit wants the Tories to win the next election, he should climb back into his coffin and refuse the bait of any media appearances. He’s been a blast from the past and a mere embarrassment for most of Mr Cameron’s tenure, but in the current economic climate, he’s pure poison. Every time he pops up, he can only do his party harm.
Of course, I’d love him to be all over the airwaves, too, but at least the Liberal Democrats have something positive to say in the event of the Tories not being self-destructively stupid.
In other news of Labour’s out-of-work-in-progress completion of Mrs Thatcher’s thousand-bomber-raids on British industry, the last television factory in the country has closed. For obvious reasons, I’m rather sad about that.
And in at number 49 on The Golden Ton for 2008-9.
Labels: Bigotry, British Politics, Conservatives, History, Labour, Stupid Ideas, The Golden Dozen, The Golden Ton
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 1998 Brilliant?
The first Short Trips collection delights with stories like Model Train Set; Pat upsets Dreams of Empire; Peter faces the expletive-deleted Pope in Zeta Major; Bernice seeks The Sword of Forever and goes Where Angels Fear; the Doctor regenerates again in a DWM graphic story – or does he? And Big Finish’s first audio play stars Benny in Oh No It Isn’t! (Paul Cornell’s book rewritten for actors? Fancy). While back in history…
This is yet another one you’ll have to track down second-hand to read; once again, Billy’s Doctor gets the best from ‘his’ original novels.
Oh, and – this is getting to be a habit – popping back to real time for a moment, at this very minute (and I suspect for the whole of the last day, so it’ll probably still be there when you wake up and read this) the BBC are showing Doctor Who At the Proms on one of their red button channels. It’s much more full version than the one BBC1 showed on New Year’s Day, running at over an hour and a half rather than an hour, and a lot of it’s rather good. Other than the Doctor Who Theme, my favourite’s probably All the Strange, Strange Creatures, myself, though in our household it’ll always be known as ‘Dance of the Macra’. Anyway, on Freeview (it doesn’t seem to be there on Freesat) the appropriate red button channel is 301. Happy promenading!
Doctor Who – The Witch Hunters
“Rebecca Nurse, you have been brought here to answer accusations that you are a practitioner in the black art of witchcraft.”Steve Lyons takes us to Salem Village’s tragedy to put the TARDIS crew, the accused villagers and the reader through the emotional wringer – but the Doctor can’t interfere. I’m in the States, Fall ’98; on one of two days off, I visit the Danvers Memorial.
This is yet another one you’ll have to track down second-hand to read; once again, Billy’s Doctor gets the best from ‘his’ original novels.
Oh, and – this is getting to be a habit – popping back to real time for a moment, at this very minute (and I suspect for the whole of the last day, so it’ll probably still be there when you wake up and read this) the BBC are showing Doctor Who At the Proms on one of their red button channels. It’s much more full version than the one BBC1 showed on New Year’s Day, running at over an hour and a half rather than an hour, and a lot of it’s rather good. Other than the Doctor Who Theme, my favourite’s probably All the Strange, Strange Creatures, myself, though in our household it’ll always be known as ‘Dance of the Macra’. Anyway, on Freeview (it doesn’t seem to be there on Freesat) the appropriate red button channel is 301. Happy promenading!
Labels: Big Finish, Books, Comics, Doctor Who, History, Music, Patrick Troughton, Paul McGann, Peter Davison, Professor Bernice Summerfield, Reviews, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?, William Hartnell
Monday, January 12, 2009
Nearly Bye-Bye, President Bush
President Bush has given his final press conference – keener to be held to account now he’s suddenly paying some attention to history (much too little, much too late). He claimed that he was “disappointed” not to have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Well, that’s one way of putting it.
He’s earned some unexpected credit over the past couple of months; he was an occasionally good outgoing President. He decided to be, at the last, a unifyer in supporting President-Elect Obama (actively so, rather than in the country uniting in relief that anyone else was to be President). It doesn’t make up, of course, for matching that with all his last-minute shittery in rushing through Presidential edicts to pay off all his big business fundraisers by destroying the US environment, and nothing could make up for the unspeakable butchery of the worst Presidency in American history. Still, it’s reassuring to find something nice to say about even President Bush, as my Mother always used to tell me about everyone (though I suspect she’d be very pushed indeed to find a nice word to say about him – but then, she was born an American, and I have dual nationality, so as well as being as horrified by him as 90% of the world, we feel soiled).
He finished by saying that history would judge him. As with his friend Mr Blair and their Cabinets, I’d rather it was the Hague.
He’s earned some unexpected credit over the past couple of months; he was an occasionally good outgoing President. He decided to be, at the last, a unifyer in supporting President-Elect Obama (actively so, rather than in the country uniting in relief that anyone else was to be President). It doesn’t make up, of course, for matching that with all his last-minute shittery in rushing through Presidential edicts to pay off all his big business fundraisers by destroying the US environment, and nothing could make up for the unspeakable butchery of the worst Presidency in American history. Still, it’s reassuring to find something nice to say about even President Bush, as my Mother always used to tell me about everyone (though I suspect she’d be very pushed indeed to find a nice word to say about him – but then, she was born an American, and I have dual nationality, so as well as being as horrified by him as 90% of the world, we feel soiled).
He finished by saying that history would judge him. As with his friend Mr Blair and their Cabinets, I’d rather it was the Hague.
Labels: American Politics, Corruption, History, Iraq, Labour
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 1997 Brilliant?
Endings and beginnings, as the Doctor’s New Adventures go out in a blaze: Lungbarrow provides some of the answers from Sylv’s decade, in new questions; The Dying Days introduces Paul McGann at the series’ end; landmark unfinished story So Vile a Sin appears at last; The Well-Mannered War says “Bye-bye!” for Tom; and Bernice voyages into several spin-off series. Then Lawrence Miles provides the powerhouse of ideas that drive the BBC Books, and beyond…
Another one that’s out of print and that you’ll need to search for, I’m afraid. You can’t read this one online, but you can read three of the Virgin novels I’ve tipped, so try them out, won’t you?
Doctor Who – Alien Bodies
“It was a dead body! Dead! Its biodata was of no use!”A hearts-rending requiem. A laugh-out-loud comedy. A carnival of invention, from four-dimensional voodoo-cults and reverse-linear structure through reimagined monsters and crosswords to a new form of TARDIS, it’s remembered for its big idea: the future. The Time Lords are heading for a massive Time War…
“A legend never dies, Cousin. You should know that.”
Another one that’s out of print and that you’ll need to search for, I’m afraid. You can’t read this one online, but you can read three of the Virgin novels I’ve tipped, so try them out, won’t you?
Labels: BBC, Books, Christopher Eccleston, Doctor Who, Faction Paradox, New Adventures, Paul McGann, Professor Bernice Summerfield, Reviews, Sylvester McCoy, Tom Baker, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Alternative Viewing
Richard has just put on The Andrew Marr Show, and he’s gone out to see David Cameron’s house, because the Tory Leader is now too important to come into the studio. Oh, god, and now it’s royal news. Much as I’m fond of Andrew Marr, and much as I enjoy his Prisoner fanboy opening titles, I’d rather watch almost anything else. Even ITV (well, on Tuesdays, when ITV4 at least is now repeating proper The Prisoner).
Before I go off to the bedroom to read instead, then, links to two online clips for your entertainment, one very funny, one loving.
I’m no huge fan of Microsoft, but I use a PC. And not being hugely technical, I tend to use my computer to type things into and watch things on, for which it’s adequate. I sometimes find Apple tempting because they have rave reviews from some people I know, and look pretty. But I can’t imagine touching a Mac with a bargepole for the foreseeable future. Why? Partly because learning to use a whole new system and worrying about compatibility with my last decade and a bit of PC stuff rates too high on my cantbearsedometer, and partly because of the Mac ad campaign.
No, ‘being just like everybody else’ isn’t a great selling point for me… But ‘excluding everyone else, because I’m part of a superciliously snobbish proselytising cult’ just utterly gets on my wick (and anyway, some of us prefer would prefer David Mitchell, at least if he hadn’t taken all that money from Apple). It gave a brilliant opening to giant corporation Microsoft to advertise the PC as something people-sized that breaks down barriers and lets people talk to each other instead, and that was a poke in the eye Apple fully deserved, the wankers. “Life without walls” is a Liberal message; ‘We are superior beings, so we can look down on 90% of people for being rubbish’ isn’t. Oh, and claiming that PC users are just following the herd when you’ve got massive market dominance in many other technological fields through your many iBrands doesn’t impress me, either.
So thank you, Forceful and Moderate, for this. It made me laugh.
Thanks, also, to the lovely Simon Guerrier for reminding me about this terrific recreation of a Doctor Who trailer from 1968. I’ve heard it before on audio and seen it accompanied by stills, but the CGI recreation of some of Patrick Troughton’s mannerisms is quite uncanny.
PS I love Richard very much, and this is not having a dig at him. It’s having a dig at Andy Marr luvvying up to the even-more-up-himself-than-Apple-with-even-less-reason Mr Cameron.
Before I go off to the bedroom to read instead, then, links to two online clips for your entertainment, one very funny, one loving.
I’m no huge fan of Microsoft, but I use a PC. And not being hugely technical, I tend to use my computer to type things into and watch things on, for which it’s adequate. I sometimes find Apple tempting because they have rave reviews from some people I know, and look pretty. But I can’t imagine touching a Mac with a bargepole for the foreseeable future. Why? Partly because learning to use a whole new system and worrying about compatibility with my last decade and a bit of PC stuff rates too high on my cantbearsedometer, and partly because of the Mac ad campaign.
No, ‘being just like everybody else’ isn’t a great selling point for me… But ‘excluding everyone else, because I’m part of a superciliously snobbish proselytising cult’ just utterly gets on my wick (and anyway, some of us prefer would prefer David Mitchell, at least if he hadn’t taken all that money from Apple). It gave a brilliant opening to giant corporation Microsoft to advertise the PC as something people-sized that breaks down barriers and lets people talk to each other instead, and that was a poke in the eye Apple fully deserved, the wankers. “Life without walls” is a Liberal message; ‘We are superior beings, so we can look down on 90% of people for being rubbish’ isn’t. Oh, and claiming that PC users are just following the herd when you’ve got massive market dominance in many other technological fields through your many iBrands doesn’t impress me, either.
So thank you, Forceful and Moderate, for this. It made me laugh.
Thanks, also, to the lovely Simon Guerrier for reminding me about this terrific recreation of a Doctor Who trailer from 1968. I’ve heard it before on audio and seen it accompanied by stills, but the CGI recreation of some of Patrick Troughton’s mannerisms is quite uncanny.
PS I love Richard very much, and this is not having a dig at him. It’s having a dig at Andy Marr luvvying up to the even-more-up-himself-than-Apple-with-even-less-reason Mr Cameron.
Labels: Adverts, BBC, Conservatives, Doctor Who, Patrick Troughton, Personal, Technology, The Prisoner
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 1996 Brilliant?
This year’s New Adventures include Lawrence Miles’ debut, Christmas on a Rational Planet; Happy Endings’ comedy wedding; Just War’s Nazi occupation; and a tragedy’s aftermath in Bad Therapy. Other Doctors appear in Sylv-Peter crossover Cold Fusion, Tom’s witty The English Way of Death and Billy’s fabulous The Plotters and nightmarish The Man in the Velvet Mask. Paul McGann stars in a one-off TV movie – and Russell T Davies writes his first Doctor Who…
Of all the New Adventures that aren’t available as eBooks – sadly the vast majority of them – this one’s the most surprising. Perhaps Russell thinks this dark tale of drugs, despair and bargained children too disturbing, or perhaps the peppering of its ideas all across the Twenty-First Century series would just spoil too many surprises, from Rose right through to The Next Doctor? Either way, it’s another one you have to find second-hand, I’m afraid.
And once again back on the ‘real’ date, today is probably – well, I was three and a bit – the thirty-fourth anniversary of my seeing my first Doctor Who episode. I’m so glad I did.
Doctor Who: The New Adventures – Damaged Goods
“At the far end of the street, hostile armed men came to the party, and twenty minutes passed.”A bloody, brilliant book, set on an ’80s estate haunted by past and future: Christmas, motherhood, ancient Time Lord wars; Roz’s destiny, and elements surging to TV a decade later. Be careful what you wish for, and even more so, what you try to return…
Of all the New Adventures that aren’t available as eBooks – sadly the vast majority of them – this one’s the most surprising. Perhaps Russell thinks this dark tale of drugs, despair and bargained children too disturbing, or perhaps the peppering of its ideas all across the Twenty-First Century series would just spoil too many surprises, from Rose right through to The Next Doctor? Either way, it’s another one you have to find second-hand, I’m afraid.
And once again back on the ‘real’ date, today is probably – well, I was three and a bit – the thirty-fourth anniversary of my seeing my first Doctor Who episode. I’m so glad I did.
Labels: Books, Doctor Who, Drugs, Gay, New Adventures, Obscure Doctor Who Jokes, Paul McGann, Personal, Peter Davison, Reviews, Sylvester McCoy, Tom Baker, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?, William Hartnell
Friday, January 09, 2009
The New Avengers – To Catch A Rat
Are you still up? Well, stop what you’re doing, and turn over to BBC4 at 12.25 for tonight’s episode of The New Avengers, To Catch A Rat. While its sexual attitudes aren’t as wholesome as your everyday Internet porn, it’s still interesting for all sorts of reasons. On Wednesday, The Avengers was 48 years old – in this one, you’ll see the return of Ian Hendry, the show’s original lead actor (that’s right; in 1961, Patrick Macnee was the co-star). It’s a Cold War ‘thriller’ in which the story makes little sense but the main characters are rather beautifully drawn.
Gambit and Purdey are driving in circles, discussing what they were doing seventeen years ago. Gambit is driving, quite badly, and flirting, very badly. Purdey is eating marshmallows.
That’s not to say that Joanna has it all her own way. I’ve written before about the sexism in this version of the series’ format (suddenly, an older Steed gets to do the ‘thinking’ and Gambit the ‘action’, both previously the purview of Avengers women) and in the deliberate writing and directing decisions, and Purdey is still leched over by every character to an uncomfortable degree. This was one of the few New Avengers episodes to be novelised, and the only one I’d actively urge you to avoid; the author makes every male character drool over her in a way that leaves you feeling soiled. The TV original is less sleazy, but we still get her involvement with ludicrously improbable men, and the director offers lingering shots up her legs as she rolls filigree coverings over them. No male character’s ever objectified in this way, though I have to admit I wouldn’t thank them for offering the same treatment to Mike Gambit. Thankfully, Purdey’s relaxed teasing of Gambit (and her spotting and nearly stopping the villain) points the way the series is going to go – Joanna’s clearly the one to watch here, and that leg shot is almost made up for by her scenes spent in a suit and big tie, which both looks fantastic and shows that she still commands the camera when completely buttoned up.
The main plot, though, centres on the older actors – and it’s rather nice to see so many of them about, whether in charge of records, swilling brandy and smoking cigars in the bath in the world’s largest bathroom (yes, all right, one rather nicely acted old chap gets to show off even more of his body than Purdey does, though I don’t think the director’s enjoying it so much), or of course being the main protagonists. On the one hand, the villains are rather bland; there’s a double agent to be exposed, and though technically there are several suspects, we only get to know two of them. One of these acts so suspiciously throughout that he may as well have a neon sign above his head saying, ‘You’re supposed to think it’s me!’ while the other’s more urbane until he becomes Purdey’s unbelievably slimy date. If you’re under the age of four, you may not have just worked out whodunnit. It’s odd, really, that the usually prime parts of the villains are so dull, when almost all the bit-part old chaps shine, and both Patrick Macnee and Ian Hendry are marvellous, despite neither having much in common with the characters they were playing together back in 1961.
As in several of the earlier New Avengers stories, Steed largely stays in the background and gives the orders while the young ’uns handle the action; though I still prefer him light but dangerous against a diabolical master mind, this is one of the few episodes where his serious, authority figure persona really works, giving weight to the George Smiley figure in this cut-price le Carré (though the script’s so flimsy on that side that, without Patrick Macnee, there’d be nothing to it but lots of running around and looking concerned on the radio). Despite that, the show’s stolen by Ian Hendry, who’s the only actor in the whole series to get a full screen ‘Guest Star’ credit and thoroughly deserves it.
Ian Hendry once played Dr David Keel, whose fiancée was murdered by drug dealers in the first ever episode of the series and who was assisted by a shadowy government operative named Steed to avenge her. He left after the first series, Patrick Macnee remained and became the lead, Honor Blackman took over the second ‘man’s’ role, and the rest is history. While every later Avengers episode still exists, only two and a half of Mr Hendry’s remain in the archives (the first reel of the very first episode, Hot Snow, up until the murder; The Frighteners, a mundane plot enlivened by great characters and performances; and Girl on the Trapeze, the only Avengers episode without Steed, and like this episode of course featuring a trapeze). His glittering film career never quite materialised, other than character roles like the violent chauffeur in Get Carter, and perhaps it’s not just his (make-up-assisted?) heavy ageing that helps inspire the melancholy feel of this episode.
In Doctor Who terms, this is less The Five Doctors, more Meglos, as the original star returns but not to play his original role. In an uneven script’s best and most self-referential bit of writing, he’s a former agent, lost for sixteen years, come back a shadow of his former self but determined, once again, to avenge his own dead. And Mr Hendry’s performance as Gunner is full of that pathos – one early scene has him struggle to pull his identity back out of his fragmented mind, then see a little girl and break into a warm, reassuring smile, not wanting to frighten her, and it’s beautifully played.
The trouble with the episode, then, isn’t with the leading actors, but with the plot. It desperately wants to be John le Carré, but misses out the multiplicity of suspects, the intricacy and, well, all the clever bits. So we’re left with a trapeze artist agent in East Germany who wounded the double agent who blew his cell – arguably the only ‘clever le Carré plotting’ here has to be inferred to precede the first scene, in the trap Gunner has laid ‘off’ for the “White Rat”; I’d rather we actually got to see some intelligent intelligence work than have to assume it was there just before we joined the story – but was then let down by his traitorous partner before he could tell London. His brain and body broken by the fall, he takes sixteen (or seventeen, depending on who’s speaking) years to be hit on the head again, in traditional fashion, get his memory back and go on the hunt for the White Rat. If you’re hoping for more character moments and subtle intrigues, tough luck; his return is just a cue for everybody to run around the countryside and the odd flat after everybody else until everybody’s either cleared or dead, or simply tired out after all the chasing. Perhaps the biggest let-down, other than the pre-titles freeze-frame, is that the logic of what passes for the plot means Steed can’t catch up with Gunner until the last couple of minutes. Patrick Macnee has one tender moment with his old co-star, but I can’t help hoping for more, and it’s not as if the story came up with a gripping alternative.
The plot isn’t merely thin, either, but full of holes. How come the terribly wounded Gunner was moved to a ship’s hold to be found and cared for, rather than finished off or turned over to the Stasi? Why, if the villains were going to soft-heartedly put him on a boat, did they stick him on a boat to Britain, where he can expose them (Richard wonders if they gave him a memory test before dumping him)? Why does the man who dropped him from a great height just happen to be listening in all those years later to spot Gunner’s signal? Why does he then go to ‘reassure’ Gunner, when surely if the man’s finally got his memory back he might remember who betrayed and tried to kill him? Why are the villains the only ones who remember the Department’s signals and codenames from a mere decade and a half earlier, while others in the service at the time – all the other potential White Rats Gunner checks out, Steed himself – have to shrug and wonder? Why isn’t the first thing the Department does to check everyone who was involved back in 1960, then isolate and interrogate them, rather than the identity of one of the main participants being sprung as an off-hand ‘surprise’ at the last minute? And did they really think the contrived nudist jokes about Steed’s old codename were funny – though it does make me wonder which came first, the laboured puns or Patrick Macnee’s naturism? At least if Pat was already hanging out nude, the in-joke’s amusing, if not to the viewers.
So, I’m afraid this isn’t one of the great episodes (rather, among the weaker ones; not actively bad, but dull, plodding and with very little distinctive Avengers feel to the script). It does, however, have some great moments for the regular cast, and particularly from the one who stopped being a regular fifteen years before. But that’s not the only recommendation – despite on the surface being a very old-fashioned story, probably dated in 1960 let alone 1976, it has some elements that the series will take further and improve on. There are some of the first steps in elevating Purdey in the script and treating Gambit as a bit of a prat, rather than the holy soul of machismo. Most strikingly, elements of Terence Feely’s script – a pre-titles sequence years ago on the Iron Curtain, the lost old agent returning from the other side, a melancholy exploration of Steed’s past – are reworked into a far, far better script that knows what to do with them a year later, when Brian Clemens writes by a long way the greatest episode of The New Avengers, Dead Men Are Dangerous. One thing that doesn’t point to the series’ future, though, is the title sequence; sorry, I said last time that this would be the first to have the swishy, expensive, nearly-three-colour 1976 CGI opening. It isn’t. But this time I think it really is the last one to have the by-the-numbers clips montage. Tune in next week to see if I’ve got it wrong again, and for an unusual secret code, an hilarious ‘secret’ outfit and a very dubious young Roy Marsden…
Gambit and Purdey are driving in circles, discussing what they were doing seventeen years ago. Gambit is driving, quite badly, and flirting, very badly. Purdey is eating marshmallows.
“Me? I was discovering sex.”Our two young leads seem slightly out of place in this story, but they’re still among the best things in it – their relationship is coming on in leaps and bounds, as the camera has stopped fetishising Gambit as a hard man and Purdey has started taking the Mike out of him. And Joanna Lumley is fantastic at it, from the exchange above, through her pointed failure to get his terrible “undercover” pun, to one of the best scenes in it – at best peripheral to the plot – when they stumble into a church, Gambit’s gun drawn, and startle two ladies doing the flowers. Purdey’s brilliant idea for getting them out of there without causing any embarrassment is worth tuning in for alone.
“What a waste of time. You might have been learning to drive.”
That’s not to say that Joanna has it all her own way. I’ve written before about the sexism in this version of the series’ format (suddenly, an older Steed gets to do the ‘thinking’ and Gambit the ‘action’, both previously the purview of Avengers women) and in the deliberate writing and directing decisions, and Purdey is still leched over by every character to an uncomfortable degree. This was one of the few New Avengers episodes to be novelised, and the only one I’d actively urge you to avoid; the author makes every male character drool over her in a way that leaves you feeling soiled. The TV original is less sleazy, but we still get her involvement with ludicrously improbable men, and the director offers lingering shots up her legs as she rolls filigree coverings over them. No male character’s ever objectified in this way, though I have to admit I wouldn’t thank them for offering the same treatment to Mike Gambit. Thankfully, Purdey’s relaxed teasing of Gambit (and her spotting and nearly stopping the villain) points the way the series is going to go – Joanna’s clearly the one to watch here, and that leg shot is almost made up for by her scenes spent in a suit and big tie, which both looks fantastic and shows that she still commands the camera when completely buttoned up.
The main plot, though, centres on the older actors – and it’s rather nice to see so many of them about, whether in charge of records, swilling brandy and smoking cigars in the bath in the world’s largest bathroom (yes, all right, one rather nicely acted old chap gets to show off even more of his body than Purdey does, though I don’t think the director’s enjoying it so much), or of course being the main protagonists. On the one hand, the villains are rather bland; there’s a double agent to be exposed, and though technically there are several suspects, we only get to know two of them. One of these acts so suspiciously throughout that he may as well have a neon sign above his head saying, ‘You’re supposed to think it’s me!’ while the other’s more urbane until he becomes Purdey’s unbelievably slimy date. If you’re under the age of four, you may not have just worked out whodunnit. It’s odd, really, that the usually prime parts of the villains are so dull, when almost all the bit-part old chaps shine, and both Patrick Macnee and Ian Hendry are marvellous, despite neither having much in common with the characters they were playing together back in 1961.
As in several of the earlier New Avengers stories, Steed largely stays in the background and gives the orders while the young ’uns handle the action; though I still prefer him light but dangerous against a diabolical master mind, this is one of the few episodes where his serious, authority figure persona really works, giving weight to the George Smiley figure in this cut-price le Carré (though the script’s so flimsy on that side that, without Patrick Macnee, there’d be nothing to it but lots of running around and looking concerned on the radio). Despite that, the show’s stolen by Ian Hendry, who’s the only actor in the whole series to get a full screen ‘Guest Star’ credit and thoroughly deserves it.
Ian Hendry and Dr Keel
Ian Hendry once played Dr David Keel, whose fiancée was murdered by drug dealers in the first ever episode of the series and who was assisted by a shadowy government operative named Steed to avenge her. He left after the first series, Patrick Macnee remained and became the lead, Honor Blackman took over the second ‘man’s’ role, and the rest is history. While every later Avengers episode still exists, only two and a half of Mr Hendry’s remain in the archives (the first reel of the very first episode, Hot Snow, up until the murder; The Frighteners, a mundane plot enlivened by great characters and performances; and Girl on the Trapeze, the only Avengers episode without Steed, and like this episode of course featuring a trapeze). His glittering film career never quite materialised, other than character roles like the violent chauffeur in Get Carter, and perhaps it’s not just his (make-up-assisted?) heavy ageing that helps inspire the melancholy feel of this episode.
In Doctor Who terms, this is less The Five Doctors, more Meglos, as the original star returns but not to play his original role. In an uneven script’s best and most self-referential bit of writing, he’s a former agent, lost for sixteen years, come back a shadow of his former self but determined, once again, to avenge his own dead. And Mr Hendry’s performance as Gunner is full of that pathos – one early scene has him struggle to pull his identity back out of his fragmented mind, then see a little girl and break into a warm, reassuring smile, not wanting to frighten her, and it’s beautifully played.
The trouble with the episode, then, isn’t with the leading actors, but with the plot. It desperately wants to be John le Carré, but misses out the multiplicity of suspects, the intricacy and, well, all the clever bits. So we’re left with a trapeze artist agent in East Germany who wounded the double agent who blew his cell – arguably the only ‘clever le Carré plotting’ here has to be inferred to precede the first scene, in the trap Gunner has laid ‘off’ for the “White Rat”; I’d rather we actually got to see some intelligent intelligence work than have to assume it was there just before we joined the story – but was then let down by his traitorous partner before he could tell London. His brain and body broken by the fall, he takes sixteen (or seventeen, depending on who’s speaking) years to be hit on the head again, in traditional fashion, get his memory back and go on the hunt for the White Rat. If you’re hoping for more character moments and subtle intrigues, tough luck; his return is just a cue for everybody to run around the countryside and the odd flat after everybody else until everybody’s either cleared or dead, or simply tired out after all the chasing. Perhaps the biggest let-down, other than the pre-titles freeze-frame, is that the logic of what passes for the plot means Steed can’t catch up with Gunner until the last couple of minutes. Patrick Macnee has one tender moment with his old co-star, but I can’t help hoping for more, and it’s not as if the story came up with a gripping alternative.
A Bit of A Disappointment, Then…?
The plot isn’t merely thin, either, but full of holes. How come the terribly wounded Gunner was moved to a ship’s hold to be found and cared for, rather than finished off or turned over to the Stasi? Why, if the villains were going to soft-heartedly put him on a boat, did they stick him on a boat to Britain, where he can expose them (Richard wonders if they gave him a memory test before dumping him)? Why does the man who dropped him from a great height just happen to be listening in all those years later to spot Gunner’s signal? Why does he then go to ‘reassure’ Gunner, when surely if the man’s finally got his memory back he might remember who betrayed and tried to kill him? Why are the villains the only ones who remember the Department’s signals and codenames from a mere decade and a half earlier, while others in the service at the time – all the other potential White Rats Gunner checks out, Steed himself – have to shrug and wonder? Why isn’t the first thing the Department does to check everyone who was involved back in 1960, then isolate and interrogate them, rather than the identity of one of the main participants being sprung as an off-hand ‘surprise’ at the last minute? And did they really think the contrived nudist jokes about Steed’s old codename were funny – though it does make me wonder which came first, the laboured puns or Patrick Macnee’s naturism? At least if Pat was already hanging out nude, the in-joke’s amusing, if not to the viewers.
So, I’m afraid this isn’t one of the great episodes (rather, among the weaker ones; not actively bad, but dull, plodding and with very little distinctive Avengers feel to the script). It does, however, have some great moments for the regular cast, and particularly from the one who stopped being a regular fifteen years before. But that’s not the only recommendation – despite on the surface being a very old-fashioned story, probably dated in 1960 let alone 1976, it has some elements that the series will take further and improve on. There are some of the first steps in elevating Purdey in the script and treating Gambit as a bit of a prat, rather than the holy soul of machismo. Most strikingly, elements of Terence Feely’s script – a pre-titles sequence years ago on the Iron Curtain, the lost old agent returning from the other side, a melancholy exploration of Steed’s past – are reworked into a far, far better script that knows what to do with them a year later, when Brian Clemens writes by a long way the greatest episode of The New Avengers, Dead Men Are Dangerous. One thing that doesn’t point to the series’ future, though, is the title sequence; sorry, I said last time that this would be the first to have the swishy, expensive, nearly-three-colour 1976 CGI opening. It isn’t. But this time I think it really is the last one to have the by-the-numbers clips montage. Tune in next week to see if I’ve got it wrong again, and for an unusual secret code, an hilarious ‘secret’ outfit and a very dubious young Roy Marsden…
Labels: Joanna Lumley, Naturism, Reviews, The Avengers, The Avengers Season 1, The New Avengers
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 1995 Brilliant?
There’s the first of Gareth Roberts’ signature Douglas Adams-style Tom, Romana and K9 novels, then a darker Tom in the twisted Managra. Sylv’s Doctor has the funny, postmodern, disturbing Head Games and, from Andy Lane’s Original Sin, future police companions blond, heroic Chris Cwej and grumpy Xhosa aristocrat Roz Forrester. And it’s a fantastic year for Paul Cornell, with stand-out novel Human Nature, sublime short story The Trials of Tara and Cornelltoppingday’s refreshing The Discontinuity Guide. But Ben Aaronovitch still pips him…
Once again, this is one you’ll have to track down second-hand to read, and you really should. And e-mail the BBC, too. Come on, BBC website – please could you dust off your ‘Classic Series’ website and add this to the eBooks, eh? Particularly as we’ve got three copies between us, yet all are peculiarly susceptible to their pages falling out, which is a bind.
Today – returning to the real year for a moment – is the one hundred and first anniversary of William Hartnell’s birth. Cheers, Billy, for starting it all so brilliantly, and isn’t it marvellous that last Saturday’s second-largest audience of the day was for a programme that said, in detail and very firmly, how wonderful you were? And quite right too. In fact, everything people said about each of the Doctors was praise; a bit like someone writing about how brilliant Doctor Who is, really.
Doctor Who: The New Adventures – The Also People
“When is a lightning bolt not a lightning bolt?”The other best New Adventure breezes through extraordinary prose, imagination, bread, techno-utopia, African legends, comedy, moral theology, drinks and very aggressive spaceships. The Doctor, Benny and Chris each have perfect roles, but it’s Roz’s noir murder mystery that captivates. And there’s a price to pay…
“‘In that case,’ said Bernice, ‘I’ll have an exaggerated sexual innuendo with a dash of patriot’s spirit and extra mushrooms. Roz?’
“‘I’ll have the same,’ said Roz. ‘But with an umbrella in it.’
“‘Coming right up,’ said the table.”
Once again, this is one you’ll have to track down second-hand to read, and you really should. And e-mail the BBC, too. Come on, BBC website – please could you dust off your ‘Classic Series’ website and add this to the eBooks, eh? Particularly as we’ve got three copies between us, yet all are peculiarly susceptible to their pages falling out, which is a bind.
Today – returning to the real year for a moment – is the one hundred and first anniversary of William Hartnell’s birth. Cheers, Billy, for starting it all so brilliantly, and isn’t it marvellous that last Saturday’s second-largest audience of the day was for a programme that said, in detail and very firmly, how wonderful you were? And quite right too. In fact, everything people said about each of the Doctors was praise; a bit like someone writing about how brilliant Doctor Who is, really.
Labels: Books, Doctor Who, Film Noir, New Adventures, Professor Bernice Summerfield, Reviews, Sylvester McCoy, Tom Baker, Utopia, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?, William Hartnell
Boris and the Tories – Nationalism or Nationalisation?
I’ve not been too well (for a change), but a story from the last week or so’s caught my eye. With all the attention on Mr Cameron’s switch from his early “Let sunshine win the day” to his old-fashioned Daily Mail-friendly ‘Modern life is horrible’ social attitudes, people haven’t been saying much about that older Tory tension between hard-faced British nationalism and starry-eyed worship of their version of the free market – perhaps they’re fighting shy of the economy, with Mr Osborne so clueless. So what’s London Mayor Boris Johnson’s answer? Britain’s most powerful elected Tory has gone for nationalisation.
You might find this a surprise from a party that embraces full-blooded capitalism, except on alternate days when Mr Cameron’s calling for the imprisonment of bankers, or that so excoriated the Labour Government’s nationalisation of banks, except on alternate days when Mr Osborneacquiesced in said it should have been done sooner supported said it should have been done later didn’t know whether he was coming or going over the policy. But there we go.
So, what’s Boris decided to nationalise? A bank? The Tube? A housing corporation? Something really important to the well-being of Londoners, no doubt.
Well… Not exactly. He’s nationalised a brand.
Still, with all the fuss the Tories are making over how much all the Labour Government’s nationalisations and other economic interventions are costing, both now, and in borrowing, and in deferred tax rises, and in money shovelled off onto council tax payers, Mr Johnson must have got a really good deal and not hidden it away in stealth taxes like Labour do, eh?
Well… Not exactly. He’s refusing to say how much of our money he’s spent.
You see, at his regular question session at the London Assembly the other week, Liberal Democrat Assembly Member Caroline Pidgeon asked
In other news, the privately-owned, natural monopoly Tube, the bit which actually does things and hasn’t been nationalised by Mr Johnson, saw its fares rise last week by an average of 6%. London Buses, too. Passengers will continue to pay through the nose and above inflation, as we’ve done year after year. I moved in with Richard fifteen years ago; I don’t dare look up what prices I was paying on public transport then. Still, it’s not like Mr Johnson’s short of a few bob and his own very personal public transport with chauffeurs, eh? Or share a taxi with Brian Coleman. And if he runs short, he can always take a bit more from us.
After all, he doesn’t have to tell us.
You might find this a surprise from a party that embraces full-blooded capitalism, except on alternate days when Mr Cameron’s calling for the imprisonment of bankers, or that so excoriated the Labour Government’s nationalisation of banks, except on alternate days when Mr Osborne
So, what’s Boris decided to nationalise? A bank? The Tube? A housing corporation? Something really important to the well-being of Londoners, no doubt.
Well… Not exactly. He’s nationalised a brand.
Still, with all the fuss the Tories are making over how much all the Labour Government’s nationalisations and other economic interventions are costing, both now, and in borrowing, and in deferred tax rises, and in money shovelled off onto council tax payers, Mr Johnson must have got a really good deal and not hidden it away in stealth taxes like Labour do, eh?
Well… Not exactly. He’s refusing to say how much of our money he’s spent.
You see, at his regular question session at the London Assembly the other week, Liberal Democrat Assembly Member Caroline Pidgeon asked
“What has been the cost to the taxpayer of TfL [Transport for London] buying ownership of the Oyster brand?”That’s the brand, you understand. Not the Tube itself, but the brand for the card you can use to travel on it. Personally, I’d like to ask former Mayor Ken Livingstone just what he was doing letting a natural monopoly be private in the first place, but that train’s left the platform. Anyway, apparently we’ve all clubbed together and bought it now, so how much did we spend, Mr Johnson?
“Under the terms of the recent agreement between TfL, Electronic Data Systems and Cubic Transportation Systems TfL agreed to treat this information as being commercially confidential.”Riiiigght. So, those eight million or so of us who live in London have just had a big – or a medium – almost certainly not a small outlay on something important, but we’re not allowed to know how much it cost. We just sign a blank cheque with our council tax precepts. As Mark Pack wrote about the story:
“Spending 50p on it would be a bargain. Spending £500 million would be a rip-off. The problem is, we don’t know whether or not a good deal was negotiated in our name. The figure is secret because TfL (proprietor: one Boris Johnson) agreed to keep it so - and Boris Johnson is happy with this state of affairs.I wonder how many people who voted for ‘Boris’ expected this? From a man who promised to be open and transparent when he ran for office, unlike the secret deals and cronies that he attacked ‘Ken’ for? And how many expected secret council tax-paid nationalisations from a Tory? At least he’s kept up with my expectations of his economic competence.
“In other words - terribly sorry old bean, I know you might wondering whether we’re spending your shillings properly, but it’s all a jolly big secret.”
In other news, the privately-owned, natural monopoly Tube, the bit which actually does things and hasn’t been nationalised by Mr Johnson, saw its fares rise last week by an average of 6%. London Buses, too. Passengers will continue to pay through the nose and above inflation, as we’ve done year after year. I moved in with Richard fifteen years ago; I don’t dare look up what prices I was paying on public transport then. Still, it’s not like Mr Johnson’s short of a few bob and his own very personal public transport with chauffeurs, eh? Or share a taxi with Brian Coleman. And if he runs short, he can always take a bit more from us.
After all, he doesn’t have to tell us.
Labels: British Politics, Conservatives, London, Nationalism, Tax
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Carry On Demon-Hunting
I write about quite a few BBC shows here, but very few ITV ones… Largely because ITV1 is rubbish, while the BBC at least tries occasionally. However, ITV tried something interesting last night, albeit with half a million fewer viewers than the announcement of Matt Smith for Doctor Who. Demons is Gene Hunt’s Philip Glenister’s new vehicle, not a Quattro but a British attempt at Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You can catch it again tonight at 8pm on ITV2, followed by the even more implausible Van Helsing – for classier horror pastiche, I’d turn to ITV3 at 7pm for Carry On Screaming (with Carry On Cleo following at 9pm). Oh, and if you spot this a bit later, both channels have a +1 shadow, so you can just add an hour to the time and tune in then.
Any thought that Demons was going to be a great success was demolished by three things in the first three minutes: the naff CGI gremlin of the pre-titles sequence; the even naffer opening titles, which appear to have been borrowed from a 1998 video game; and Mr Glenister’s hilarious American accent. For several minutes, listening to his cod drawl and looking at his ’40s gumshoe drag, I wondered if he was doing a murder mystery weekend or some other diegetic play-acting, but no, it seems to have just been for a bet. And, perhaps, because in American series Buffy the Vampire Slayer the wise old (actually middle-aged, but most of the cast look teenish) tutor Rupert Giles who tells pretty young Buffy her destiny, reveals the world of the undead and demons all around her and teaches her how to use her amazing natural abilities has a stereotyped ‘English’ accent, while in British series Demons the wise old (actually middle-aged, but most of the cast look teenish) tutor Rupert Galvin who tells pretty young Luke his destiny, reveals the world of the undead and demons all around him and teaches him how to use his amazing natural abilities has… You get the idea.
Young lead Christian Cooke as Luke Rutherford was in uniform as Ross in The Sontaran Stratagem from last year’s Doctor Who, and out of his clothes a lot in Echo Beach. Guess which option Demons goes for? Not many minutes have gone by before he’s wandering around his flat in a pair of tiny trunks, the camera crawling over his abs and lingering on his legs in a way that would make Sarah Michelle Gellar say, ‘Ooh, that’s a bit exploitative.’ Still, he’s quite pretty (if he could do with putting on a few years, stone and hairs). And life for him, his he-doesn’t-think-she’s-his-girlfriend and his unwitting mother (“Have you tried not being the Slayer?”) will never be the same once his long-missing godfather Rupert turns up. In a rare difference from Buffy – other than Buffy being a terrific series, and Demons a mediocre one – Luke is raised by his mother alone not because his father ran out on them, but because he died in a-not-in-fact-the-car-crash-they-were-told. In fact, Luke is now the last descendent of the Van Helsings, and Rupert’s turned up at the door to bond because, after years of innocence, the monsters have tracked him down and it’s time togive Luke his father’s lightsabre bring Luke to his father’s secret library, the Stacks (yet another thing to wind up Lawrence Miles).
Anyway, the CGI gremlin gives way to a misshapen demon-bloke in a big overcoat, apparently dragging up as the macho-dragged-up Mr Glenister, and then we get to meet the main villain behind him, who’s Mackenzie Crook dressed as a cockatoo. Gosh, and he’s invulnerable to one of Q Division’s magic demon-melting guns! Gosh, but not the other! At least Zoë Tapper’s much less anonymous than she was in Survivors. It’s got some potential, but the first week hasn’t delivered much on it. Charlie Brooker finds it a bit offputting, though it was the preview from elsewhere in this week’s Guardian Guide that put its finger on it:
Oh, yes, and Van Helsing to follow at 9pm… Van Helsing was a bookish, religious man who used his scientific and mythological learning to defeat vampires. So let’s make him a pumped-up walking armoury for the Pope! That’ll work. An attempt to launch the same sort of franchise as the film of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (we suspect Zoë Tapper’s character in Demons may have an unnatural amount in common with her namesake in ‘LXG’, too), this fails for much the same reasons, though is a rather worse film; instead of realising that the dumb bits got in the way of adapting a clever, witty and dark comic, this scoops out any bits that look clever or witty and just goes for a big dumb action flick. I do have a sneaking fondness for it, despite all that, thanks to a pretty good leading actor in the ludicrous title role and all its little homages to my beloved Universal monster movies of the ’30s and ’40s. I’d rather watch most of them, though.
The Carry On films are undoubtedly one of the greatest parts of Twentieth Century British culture, and I’ve written before that, rather than the Gordon Brown squeezing some joyless work ethic into a laboured definition of Britishness and boring kids to death with it, they should just show every child in the land Carry On Cleo and Carry On Up the Khyber, because they do a much better job of communicating what being British is all about than anything Hazel Blears wants to test us on.
The Carry Ons are, of course, a real mix – they run all the way from one of the greatest films ever made right down to pretty terrible. The best has to be Carry On Up the Khyber, and I’m sure there’s a mathematical formula somewhere that can predict the likely quality of a Carry On by looking at the strong correlation between the number of the regular ‘team’ working on each film and how good it is, with high weighting given to Kenneth Williams and Sid James, then Joan Sims, Hattie Jacques, Charles Hawtrey, Barbara Windsor, Bernard Bresslaw (controversially, I’d say the Carry On actor with the widest range) and so on. That’d make Carry On Loving the limit of the standard deviation, I suppose. But an easier way to do it is to say that, in common with my love of historicals, the ones with dressing up are generally better than the modern day ones. So, while the best of the ones set in ordinary life is probably Carry On Doctor, there are at least four films in the series that are quite a lot better. Gnashing at Khyber’s heels, I’d go in no particular order for Carry On… Don’t Lose Your Head, Carry On Screaming and Carry On Cleo. So it’s rather fun that two of them are on tonight, back-to-back.
Carry On Screaming was my favourite of the films when I was a little boy, and it’s easy to see why – it’s a Hammer spoof that was turning up on TV just as Doctor Who was doing the same sort of thing. It even sees Jon Pertwee gruesomely murdered, and who could complain about that? There’s no Sid, but manic detective Harry H Corbett is a fantastic replacement, whether paired in an hilarious double act with Peter Butterworth or acting opposite Fenella Fielding’s fabulously smouldering performance. The wordplay of the “Whereabouts?” “Hereabouts” and “Watt’s his name!” scene is utterly sublime, and Bernard Bresslaw’s toes are very rude. The film’s stolen, though, by Kenneth Williams’ reanimated Dr Watt, who’s having difficulty with his regeneration and even more with a mummy he wants to get moving.
Of course, if you’re fed up with everything on all 637 channels, there’s always The Randomness Times (in an aside to the first ‘issue’ of which, Lawrence Miles notes that ITV is “ten years late with its Buffy homework”).
Demons
Any thought that Demons was going to be a great success was demolished by three things in the first three minutes: the naff CGI gremlin of the pre-titles sequence; the even naffer opening titles, which appear to have been borrowed from a 1998 video game; and Mr Glenister’s hilarious American accent. For several minutes, listening to his cod drawl and looking at his ’40s gumshoe drag, I wondered if he was doing a murder mystery weekend or some other diegetic play-acting, but no, it seems to have just been for a bet. And, perhaps, because in American series Buffy the Vampire Slayer the wise old (actually middle-aged, but most of the cast look teenish) tutor Rupert Giles who tells pretty young Buffy her destiny, reveals the world of the undead and demons all around her and teaches her how to use her amazing natural abilities has a stereotyped ‘English’ accent, while in British series Demons the wise old (actually middle-aged, but most of the cast look teenish) tutor Rupert Galvin who tells pretty young Luke his destiny, reveals the world of the undead and demons all around him and teaches him how to use his amazing natural abilities has… You get the idea.
Young lead Christian Cooke as Luke Rutherford was in uniform as Ross in The Sontaran Stratagem from last year’s Doctor Who, and out of his clothes a lot in Echo Beach. Guess which option Demons goes for? Not many minutes have gone by before he’s wandering around his flat in a pair of tiny trunks, the camera crawling over his abs and lingering on his legs in a way that would make Sarah Michelle Gellar say, ‘Ooh, that’s a bit exploitative.’ Still, he’s quite pretty (if he could do with putting on a few years, stone and hairs). And life for him, his he-doesn’t-think-she’s-his-girlfriend and his unwitting mother (“Have you tried not being the Slayer?”) will never be the same once his long-missing godfather Rupert turns up. In a rare difference from Buffy – other than Buffy being a terrific series, and Demons a mediocre one – Luke is raised by his mother alone not because his father ran out on them, but because he died in a-not-in-fact-the-car-crash-they-were-told. In fact, Luke is now the last descendent of the Van Helsings, and Rupert’s turned up at the door to bond because, after years of innocence, the monsters have tracked him down and it’s time to
Anyway, the CGI gremlin gives way to a misshapen demon-bloke in a big overcoat, apparently dragging up as the macho-dragged-up Mr Glenister, and then we get to meet the main villain behind him, who’s Mackenzie Crook dressed as a cockatoo. Gosh, and he’s invulnerable to one of Q Division’s magic demon-melting guns! Gosh, but not the other! At least Zoë Tapper’s much less anonymous than she was in Survivors. It’s got some potential, but the first week hasn’t delivered much on it. Charlie Brooker finds it a bit offputting, though it was the preview from elsewhere in this week’s Guardian Guide that put its finger on it:
“The end result… veers too much towards a splicing of Hollyoaks and Torchwood.”Both of those are quite watchable, as far as I’m concerned, though I don’t find myself keeping up with either as religiously as I might, and don’t miss either when they’re not on. Let’s hope later episodes do a better job of making me watch with enthusiasm. In the meantime, I’m tempted to stick on some old episodes of Buffy or Ultraviolet, but I suspect that’ll make me rather less tempted to return to the apparently inferior new one.
Oh, yes, and Van Helsing to follow at 9pm… Van Helsing was a bookish, religious man who used his scientific and mythological learning to defeat vampires. So let’s make him a pumped-up walking armoury for the Pope! That’ll work. An attempt to launch the same sort of franchise as the film of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (we suspect Zoë Tapper’s character in Demons may have an unnatural amount in common with her namesake in ‘LXG’, too), this fails for much the same reasons, though is a rather worse film; instead of realising that the dumb bits got in the way of adapting a clever, witty and dark comic, this scoops out any bits that look clever or witty and just goes for a big dumb action flick. I do have a sneaking fondness for it, despite all that, thanks to a pretty good leading actor in the ludicrous title role and all its little homages to my beloved Universal monster movies of the ’30s and ’40s. I’d rather watch most of them, though.
Carry On Screaming / Carry On Cleo
The Carry On films are undoubtedly one of the greatest parts of Twentieth Century British culture, and I’ve written before that, rather than the Gordon Brown squeezing some joyless work ethic into a laboured definition of Britishness and boring kids to death with it, they should just show every child in the land Carry On Cleo and Carry On Up the Khyber, because they do a much better job of communicating what being British is all about than anything Hazel Blears wants to test us on.
The Carry Ons are, of course, a real mix – they run all the way from one of the greatest films ever made right down to pretty terrible. The best has to be Carry On Up the Khyber, and I’m sure there’s a mathematical formula somewhere that can predict the likely quality of a Carry On by looking at the strong correlation between the number of the regular ‘team’ working on each film and how good it is, with high weighting given to Kenneth Williams and Sid James, then Joan Sims, Hattie Jacques, Charles Hawtrey, Barbara Windsor, Bernard Bresslaw (controversially, I’d say the Carry On actor with the widest range) and so on. That’d make Carry On Loving the limit of the standard deviation, I suppose. But an easier way to do it is to say that, in common with my love of historicals, the ones with dressing up are generally better than the modern day ones. So, while the best of the ones set in ordinary life is probably Carry On Doctor, there are at least four films in the series that are quite a lot better. Gnashing at Khyber’s heels, I’d go in no particular order for Carry On… Don’t Lose Your Head, Carry On Screaming and Carry On Cleo. So it’s rather fun that two of them are on tonight, back-to-back.
Carry On Screaming was my favourite of the films when I was a little boy, and it’s easy to see why – it’s a Hammer spoof that was turning up on TV just as Doctor Who was doing the same sort of thing. It even sees Jon Pertwee gruesomely murdered, and who could complain about that? There’s no Sid, but manic detective Harry H Corbett is a fantastic replacement, whether paired in an hilarious double act with Peter Butterworth or acting opposite Fenella Fielding’s fabulously smouldering performance. The wordplay of the “Whereabouts?” “Hereabouts” and “Watt’s his name!” scene is utterly sublime, and Bernard Bresslaw’s toes are very rude. The film’s stolen, though, by Kenneth Williams’ reanimated Dr Watt, who’s having difficulty with his regeneration and even more with a mummy he wants to get moving.
“Frying tonight!”Carry On Cleo is another cracker, spoofing (and borrowing expensive props from) Cleopatra with the perfect relationship between Sid and Kenneth as Mark Anthony and Julius Caesar. And the two of them supply far too many of my favourite lines:
“Blimus!”And, of course, the famously nicked from Frank Muir and Denis Norden but unbeatably delivered by a phenomenally camp Kenneth Williams:
“Ooh, I do feel queer!”
“Friends, Romans…”
“– Countrymen.”
“I know!”
“Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!”All that, and Amanda Barrie’s poisonous asp, Jim Dale actually pulling off the heroic lead from Flintstones Britain, and a few Doctor Who connections. There are similar scenes and one of the same actors as in The Romans, actors who’ve appeared in half a dozen other Who stories, and at least two crossovers with The Key To Time series: Sosages, Captain of Cleopatra’s bodyguard, is no doubt the man from whom the Doctor learned his sword skills; and Terrance Dicks’ novelisation of The Stones of Blood carries a rare out-and-out in-joke on Jon Pertwee playing the soothsayer who warns Caesar about his assassination when the Doctor thinks to himself in an aside:
“He’d always got on very well with Julius Caesar, though you couldn’t really trust him. And, of course, he’d never listen to advice. Even when the Doctor had gone to all the trouble of dressing up as a soothsayer, and croaking ‘Beware the Ides of March’, old Julius wouldn’t listen.”
Of course, if you’re fed up with everything on all 637 channels, there’s always The Randomness Times (in an aside to the first ‘issue’ of which, Lawrence Miles notes that ITV is “ten years late with its Buffy homework”).
Labels: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Carry On, Comedy, Comics, History, Jon Pertwee, Life On Mars, Matt Smith, Obscure Doctor Who Jokes, Reviews, The Key To Time
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 1994 Brilliant?
The most marvellous thing Doctor Who brings me in 1994 is Richard, obviously, but you can’t buy one. Low-budget video Shakedown – Return of the Sontarans beats any BBC Sontaran story, while the Master returns in a book (but which? Dun-dun-dahh…!). New Adventures highlights include Conundrum’s fun and games, Tragedy Day’s telethon satire (and openly gay character), and hugely entertaining Sherlock Holmes-Doctor Who-Cthulhu hustle crossover All-Consuming Fire. And with Sylv’s Doctor doing brilliantly, a new range beckons for the rest…
This is one you’ll have to track down second-hand to read, and you really should, you know. For some reason, Billy’s Doctor seems to be the most author-proof of the first six Doctors in print, with more of ‘his’ original novels succeeding than for the others, and this is the best of the lot.
Doctor Who: The Missing Adventures – Venusian Lullaby
“‘Remember us, Doctor,’ he breathed. ‘I beg of you, remember us all.’”What would you do if your world was doomed? Paul Leonard offers black humour, desperation, horror and acceptance from the series’ most perfectly alien race and culture in a perfect novel for William Hartnell’s Doctor, a grand historical tragedy from the history of another world.
This is one you’ll have to track down second-hand to read, and you really should, you know. For some reason, Billy’s Doctor seems to be the most author-proof of the first six Doctors in print, with more of ‘his’ original novels succeeding than for the others, and this is the best of the lot.
Labels: Books, Doctor Who, Gay, New Adventures, Personal, Professor Bernice Summerfield, Reviews, Richard, Sherlock Holmes, Sylvester McCoy, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?, William Hartnell
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 1993 Brilliant?
There’s one old Doctor on radio and a whole bunch of them in both documentary Thirty Years in the TARDIS and an East End anniversary knees-up, but it’s New Adventures firsts that really make this year brilliant. There’s Gareth Roberts’ clever, funny debut The Highest Science; Kate Orman’s The Left-Handed Hummingbird, mixing the Sixties, drugs, pain and the Titanic; Blood Heat’s gripping alternative universe of Silurians and multiple endings is a superb second novel, though the author’s first beats it…
Here’s another one that’s long out of print and well worth tracking down, though to whet your appetite the Prelude written for Doctor Who Magazine is available online.
Doctor Who: The New Adventures – Lucifer Rising
“Everything is history, if you look at it from the right perspective.”Jim Mortimore and Andy Lane open with probably the best New Adventure: a murder mystery; breathtakingly imaginative alien worlds; Gladstone; ending in hope; exploring the Doctor (a sublime introduction, comic moments, his darker side)… And, as across the whole series, the shadow of the Daleks.
Here’s another one that’s long out of print and well worth tracking down, though to whet your appetite the Prelude written for Doctor Who Magazine is available online.
Labels: Books, Daleks, Doctor Who, Jon Pertwee, New Adventures, Professor Bernice Summerfield, Reviews, Sylvester McCoy, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?
And The Next Doctor Is… (Matt Smith, Eventually)
…Not David Morrissey* (look, I think we all knew that before Christmas, didn’t we?)
…To be revealed this evening at 5.35 on BBC1, in a special edition of Doctor Who Confidential called The Eleventh Doctor (but mainly celebrating the first ten**)
…Not actually going to appear in an exciting adventure on TV for another year yet, so don’t get too excited today
…Oh, who am I kidding, the most exciting announcement since, ooh, Christopher Eccleston was cast or Tom left
…Paterson Joseph, according to the smart money. Or James Nesbitt. Or Matt Smith. Or Rupert Penry-Jones. Or Chiwetel Ejiofor. Or…
But in the meantime, BBC1’s been showing wall-to-wall broadcasts of a trailer with all the first ten Doctors! They’re plastering the airwaves and the internet with pictures of William Hartnell and Sylvester McCoy because they know that will get people watching in their millions! Truly, the time of restitution has come.
I remember the emotional roller-coaster of the last few days of October and first few of November – up to my parents to see the dentist for urgent drilling, lurching back in time for my birthday and the news suddenly breaking that David Tennant was leaving, then the joy of Obama and heartbreak of Proposition 8 – and the couple of months since have been a frenzy of media speculation. There’s been nothing like it since Tom Baker left (and sorry, Lawrence, otherwise the most comprehensive tipping about the eleventh Doctor of many, many on the Internet and probably even responsible for the Billie Piper rumour, but there was nothing like as much attention when Peter went).
I’ll miss David Tennant, though I know Jennie’s rejoicing (and I never got round to replying to all of her very persuasive points against him). I’d have liked him to do one more year, if not expecting the role to be prised from his cold, dead hands. In part, that’s because it would have helped the new production team settle in; in part, because stretching the last year out with just the occasional special feels like a bit of a let-down rather than a solid goodbye; and in part because I do actually rather like him as the Doctor.
I thought David was terrific in The Christmas Invasion, though I was disappointed to find him very uneven and often too cartoony in 2006. Last year, though, I thought he really hit his stride; the 2007 season is easily his best for me, with a strong through-story and a great central performance. I think what changed is that Russell T Davies discovered that what David does really well is suffering, and put him through the wringer. Moments like his confession to Martha at the end of Gridlock, his despair as John Smith in Human Nature, or his grief over the Master at the close of Last of the Time Lords gave real weight to already marvellous stories. And, I have to admit, a bit of me’s rankled that just a handful of stories after all the emotional investment of a cop-out fake regeneration we’re being asked to care about the real one: you can’t ask “Why would I want to?” and then do it anyway, though I admit that in retrospect there have been stronger than usual intimations of mortality in every episode from Midnight on.
This time round… I really don’t know who I’d cast. My preference is instinctively for someone old, authoritative but unpredictable, though for the last few years it’s been clear that younger, sexier actors who can have their backs ruined by lots of running. Had the series come back in the 1990s, I’d have said like a shot that it should be Graham Crowden, having seen the demented majesty of his Dr Jock McCannon in A Very Peculiar Practice and his child-like enthusiasm as Tom in Waiting For God (a little like the original casting of William Hartnell for his tough sergeant from the likes of The Army Game and his pathetic old trainer from This Sporting Life, it suddenly occurs to me). And when time travel is a reality, of course, I hope the 393rd Doctor Who production team will cast Alastair Sim. Perfect!
But the Doctor doesn’t have to be Scottish… I remember on a fan e-group I used to belong to, when David Tennant was announced back in 2005 there were people who argued that he was Scottish, and that wouldn’t do, and that he was far too young – ignoring that previous Doctors had both played the part as far more Scottish and been several years younger. I suggested some actors that I thought were terribly good, and might make suitable Doctors, being neither too young nor ostentatiously from Scotland: for some reason Adrian Lester, Judi Dench and Bruce Boxleitner seemed to press people’s buttons, too.
I suspect the Doctor is very unlikely to be American, quite unlikely to be a woman (though the first woman tipped for the job way back in 1980, Joanna Lumley, did the best job of many sort-of cast in 1999), but quite likely to be black. There are as many runners and riders as there are agents, tabloids and fans to promote them. James Nesbitt’s been a top tip for his work with Steven Moffat, but the fact that David Tennant’s been telling fans to stalk him for months (well, and Wee Jimmie Krankie) suggests that he may not be the actual chap. Like David Morrissey, I might even put money against (too late). Harry Lloyd could be brilliant, but is probably too young (oh, dear, I’m at it now), and Matt Smith both too young and a bit too insipid when I’ve seen him… The big question, really, seems to be not ‘Who will it be from this big list?’ but ‘Will it be Paterson, or a surprise?’
It’s difficult to think how Paterson Joseph has been on the boil for so many weeks, having first been the ‘surprise’, without some sort of discreet plugging from inside sources. So, is he just a big bluff? Pretty much every other surprise story that’s leaked out in the last four years has turned out to be true, and there was that slip in an interview from one of his co-stars in Survivors (in which he was rather good, if underused, and given a cliffhanging ‘He’s been shot in the chest so he doesn’t have to be in the second series if, cough, he’s cast in anything else’), but you never know – this could be the one. It’s got to the stage that it could almost be a disappointment either way: disappointed that he’s not a surprise, or all keyed up to expect him and disappointed if it’s someone who doesn’t seem as good. I’m sure whoever it is will cope, though.
Back in 2005, when I was thinking of potential Doctors who were either black, female or American – all attributes I knew would wind up some fans, but trying to come up with actors I’d rather like in the part as well as for mischief-making – three black actors all sprang to mind. They were Adrian Lester (charismatic and sexy), Don Warrington (charismatic and authoritative) and, of course, Paterson Joseph (charismatic and dangerous). I went for Adrian, simply, because I was wary I was associating the other two too much with one Doctorish part and thinking ‘that was good’: respectively, Rassilon in Doctor Who CDs (particularly Neverland, ironically) and the Marquis de Carabas in Neverwhere. Neverwhere was the first time I remembered seeing Paterson Joseph in anything, and – appropriately for a series that felt very much like someone trying to do something very like Doctor Who – he instantly seemed to be playing a Doctor-like character perfectly. It’s precisely because of that that I had reservations a decade later, because although his playing of that role was a perfect ringer for the Doctor, I don’t want the Doctor to be just a repeat of AN Other Role. I can remember long wariness of polls during the wilderness years where fans pleaded for the Doctor to be played by, say, ‘Captain Picard’ or ‘Mr Giles’, rather than looking at the whole range of the actors who’d played them.
Despite all that, Paterson’s a fine actor, and it’s been enough time since Neverwhere that I’m sure he could do something new and exciting even in much the same part, and for anyone, sorry to feel I have to say this, who complains that the Doctor’s never black before… Oh, get a life. If you’re a racist, have you ever actually watched the show? And if you’re just a pedantic, conservative fan, you’re wrong, too. As I wrote a couple of months ago, we saw a potential black Doctor in The War Games in 1969. He’s up there, right on screen, no denying it, when the Time Lords offer a choice of new bodies to Patrick Troughton’s Doctor on his execution and the Doctor turns them all down. The Doctor calls out “Too fat” as part of looking for excuses for the lot of them, and I’ve never spotted anyone trying to mis-hear it as “Too black” (since then, we’ve had a fat Doctor, and a thin one, too, so you can't use those excuses either. Yay!). So, that’s 39 years out of the 42 that we knew the Doctor could change body that we knew he could change not just his hair colour but his melanin count (or alien equivalent), too. And only a few minutes to find out…
Are you excited? I am.
5.40 update: Well, he’s going to be really young, so it’s not a woman, and it’s not Paterson – now forever the former next Doctor, poor man. It’s a surprise. Is it really Russell Tovey after all, with Russell T Davies so jealous? He’s brilliant and sexy, but I’d probably slightly go for Harry Lloyd now, who’s both, too. Of course, if it’s Matt Smith (more tipped right now), ignore what I said above, because I’ve always thought he was a very mature and exciting actor. Ahem.
And now William Hartnell’s on BBC1! In prime time! After being in the titles! Oh, heaven. I suppose a CGI Billy’s out of the question? Russell’s praising his range, as people damn well should. Ooh, and my favourite Troughton scene, too…
Yes, I have fallen into liveblogging this. I may pop.
5.50: The next Doctor’s 26 (and I’m officially old). It’s surely Matt Smith, and I refer you to the paragraph above. No, not that far above. That was an impersonator. Three above. It’s what I said all along, honest, guv. Excitingly, there’s also a man on screen who I’ve met with Millennium, as his welcome to the scariness that is to come.
The Doctor Who Forum has almost certainly melted down. I’m not even looking.
Wow.
And he says Robin Hood and Sherlock Holmes! He’s right.
They’re showing a favourite Confidential montage to close – I suspect it was cut together personally by David Tennant – and I’m grinning and teary-eyed. My favourite Billy line, too. And I whooped when it cut to the new Doctor at the final shot. I don’t care that he’s 26. I just want him to be marvellous.
If you’ve just watched The Eleventh Doctor and been taken with some of the Twentieth Century Doctors, incidentally, there’s a bewildering array of their stories available on DVD (and more every month). If you can’t decide which to go for, here are some tips I prepared earlier.
Next, what about the next Master? Who can live up to the legend?
There’s no doubt, of course – albeit too late for the Christmas number one – about the new hit sweeping the nation (later: in between making toptastic poptastic hits, Will has even prepared a fact-file on Matt Smith. Is there no end to the man’s talents?). Sunday Update: there are more versions! Soon it’ll be better-covered than Yesterday.
Comedy links pre-prepared, of course, because now I’m all emotional.
* And you can trust me on this, because the last time I was so sure about who a wide-open pick wouldn’t be, I knew there was absolutely no way John McCain could possibly pick Sarah Palin.
** (See *)
…To be revealed this evening at 5.35 on BBC1, in a special edition of Doctor Who Confidential called The Eleventh Doctor (but mainly celebrating the first ten**)
…Not actually going to appear in an exciting adventure on TV for another year yet, so don’t get too excited today
…Oh, who am I kidding, the most exciting announcement since, ooh, Christopher Eccleston was cast or Tom left
…Paterson Joseph, according to the smart money. Or James Nesbitt. Or Matt Smith. Or Rupert Penry-Jones. Or Chiwetel Ejiofor. Or…
But in the meantime, BBC1’s been showing wall-to-wall broadcasts of a trailer with all the first ten Doctors! They’re plastering the airwaves and the internet with pictures of William Hartnell and Sylvester McCoy because they know that will get people watching in their millions! Truly, the time of restitution has come.
(Long) Goodbye, David Tennant
I remember the emotional roller-coaster of the last few days of October and first few of November – up to my parents to see the dentist for urgent drilling, lurching back in time for my birthday and the news suddenly breaking that David Tennant was leaving, then the joy of Obama and heartbreak of Proposition 8 – and the couple of months since have been a frenzy of media speculation. There’s been nothing like it since Tom Baker left (and sorry, Lawrence, otherwise the most comprehensive tipping about the eleventh Doctor of many, many on the Internet and probably even responsible for the Billie Piper rumour, but there was nothing like as much attention when Peter went).
I’ll miss David Tennant, though I know Jennie’s rejoicing (and I never got round to replying to all of her very persuasive points against him). I’d have liked him to do one more year, if not expecting the role to be prised from his cold, dead hands. In part, that’s because it would have helped the new production team settle in; in part, because stretching the last year out with just the occasional special feels like a bit of a let-down rather than a solid goodbye; and in part because I do actually rather like him as the Doctor.
I thought David was terrific in The Christmas Invasion, though I was disappointed to find him very uneven and often too cartoony in 2006. Last year, though, I thought he really hit his stride; the 2007 season is easily his best for me, with a strong through-story and a great central performance. I think what changed is that Russell T Davies discovered that what David does really well is suffering, and put him through the wringer. Moments like his confession to Martha at the end of Gridlock, his despair as John Smith in Human Nature, or his grief over the Master at the close of Last of the Time Lords gave real weight to already marvellous stories. And, I have to admit, a bit of me’s rankled that just a handful of stories after all the emotional investment of a cop-out fake regeneration we’re being asked to care about the real one: you can’t ask “Why would I want to?” and then do it anyway, though I admit that in retrospect there have been stronger than usual intimations of mortality in every episode from Midnight on.
Who Would I Cast?
This time round… I really don’t know who I’d cast. My preference is instinctively for someone old, authoritative but unpredictable, though for the last few years it’s been clear that younger, sexier actors who can have their backs ruined by lots of running. Had the series come back in the 1990s, I’d have said like a shot that it should be Graham Crowden, having seen the demented majesty of his Dr Jock McCannon in A Very Peculiar Practice and his child-like enthusiasm as Tom in Waiting For God (a little like the original casting of William Hartnell for his tough sergeant from the likes of The Army Game and his pathetic old trainer from This Sporting Life, it suddenly occurs to me). And when time travel is a reality, of course, I hope the 393rd Doctor Who production team will cast Alastair Sim. Perfect!
But the Doctor doesn’t have to be Scottish… I remember on a fan e-group I used to belong to, when David Tennant was announced back in 2005 there were people who argued that he was Scottish, and that wouldn’t do, and that he was far too young – ignoring that previous Doctors had both played the part as far more Scottish and been several years younger. I suggested some actors that I thought were terribly good, and might make suitable Doctors, being neither too young nor ostentatiously from Scotland: for some reason Adrian Lester, Judi Dench and Bruce Boxleitner seemed to press people’s buttons, too.
OK, Is It Going To Be Paterson Joseph, Then?
I suspect the Doctor is very unlikely to be American, quite unlikely to be a woman (though the first woman tipped for the job way back in 1980, Joanna Lumley, did the best job of many sort-of cast in 1999), but quite likely to be black. There are as many runners and riders as there are agents, tabloids and fans to promote them. James Nesbitt’s been a top tip for his work with Steven Moffat, but the fact that David Tennant’s been telling fans to stalk him for months (well, and Wee Jimmie Krankie) suggests that he may not be the actual chap. Like David Morrissey, I might even put money against (too late). Harry Lloyd could be brilliant, but is probably too young (oh, dear, I’m at it now), and Matt Smith both too young and a bit too insipid when I’ve seen him… The big question, really, seems to be not ‘Who will it be from this big list?’ but ‘Will it be Paterson, or a surprise?’
It’s difficult to think how Paterson Joseph has been on the boil for so many weeks, having first been the ‘surprise’, without some sort of discreet plugging from inside sources. So, is he just a big bluff? Pretty much every other surprise story that’s leaked out in the last four years has turned out to be true, and there was that slip in an interview from one of his co-stars in Survivors (in which he was rather good, if underused, and given a cliffhanging ‘He’s been shot in the chest so he doesn’t have to be in the second series if, cough, he’s cast in anything else’), but you never know – this could be the one. It’s got to the stage that it could almost be a disappointment either way: disappointed that he’s not a surprise, or all keyed up to expect him and disappointed if it’s someone who doesn’t seem as good. I’m sure whoever it is will cope, though.
Back in 2005, when I was thinking of potential Doctors who were either black, female or American – all attributes I knew would wind up some fans, but trying to come up with actors I’d rather like in the part as well as for mischief-making – three black actors all sprang to mind. They were Adrian Lester (charismatic and sexy), Don Warrington (charismatic and authoritative) and, of course, Paterson Joseph (charismatic and dangerous). I went for Adrian, simply, because I was wary I was associating the other two too much with one Doctorish part and thinking ‘that was good’: respectively, Rassilon in Doctor Who CDs (particularly Neverland, ironically) and the Marquis de Carabas in Neverwhere. Neverwhere was the first time I remembered seeing Paterson Joseph in anything, and – appropriately for a series that felt very much like someone trying to do something very like Doctor Who – he instantly seemed to be playing a Doctor-like character perfectly. It’s precisely because of that that I had reservations a decade later, because although his playing of that role was a perfect ringer for the Doctor, I don’t want the Doctor to be just a repeat of AN Other Role. I can remember long wariness of polls during the wilderness years where fans pleaded for the Doctor to be played by, say, ‘Captain Picard’ or ‘Mr Giles’, rather than looking at the whole range of the actors who’d played them.
Despite all that, Paterson’s a fine actor, and it’s been enough time since Neverwhere that I’m sure he could do something new and exciting even in much the same part, and for anyone, sorry to feel I have to say this, who complains that the Doctor’s never black before… Oh, get a life. If you’re a racist, have you ever actually watched the show? And if you’re just a pedantic, conservative fan, you’re wrong, too. As I wrote a couple of months ago, we saw a potential black Doctor in The War Games in 1969. He’s up there, right on screen, no denying it, when the Time Lords offer a choice of new bodies to Patrick Troughton’s Doctor on his execution and the Doctor turns them all down. The Doctor calls out “Too fat” as part of looking for excuses for the lot of them, and I’ve never spotted anyone trying to mis-hear it as “Too black” (since then, we’ve had a fat Doctor, and a thin one, too, so you can't use those excuses either. Yay!). So, that’s 39 years out of the 42 that we knew the Doctor could change body that we knew he could change not just his hair colour but his melanin count (or alien equivalent), too. And only a few minutes to find out…
Are you excited? I am.
5.40 update: Well, he’s going to be really young, so it’s not a woman, and it’s not Paterson – now forever the former next Doctor, poor man. It’s a surprise. Is it really Russell Tovey after all, with Russell T Davies so jealous? He’s brilliant and sexy, but I’d probably slightly go for Harry Lloyd now, who’s both, too. Of course, if it’s Matt Smith (more tipped right now), ignore what I said above, because I’ve always thought he was a very mature and exciting actor. Ahem.
And now William Hartnell’s on BBC1! In prime time! After being in the titles! Oh, heaven. I suppose a CGI Billy’s out of the question? Russell’s praising his range, as people damn well should. Ooh, and my favourite Troughton scene, too…
Yes, I have fallen into liveblogging this. I may pop.
5.50: The next Doctor’s 26 (and I’m officially old). It’s surely Matt Smith, and I refer you to the paragraph above. No, not that far above. That was an impersonator. Three above. It’s what I said all along, honest, guv. Excitingly, there’s also a man on screen who I’ve met with Millennium, as his welcome to the scariness that is to come.
The Doctor Who Forum has almost certainly melted down. I’m not even looking.
5.59: Matt Smith. The Eleventh Doctor. He’s on screen now.
Wow.
And he says Robin Hood and Sherlock Holmes! He’s right.
They’re showing a favourite Confidential montage to close – I suspect it was cut together personally by David Tennant – and I’m grinning and teary-eyed. My favourite Billy line, too. And I whooped when it cut to the new Doctor at the final shot. I don’t care that he’s 26. I just want him to be marvellous.
If you’ve just watched The Eleventh Doctor and been taken with some of the Twentieth Century Doctors, incidentally, there’s a bewildering array of their stories available on DVD (and more every month). If you can’t decide which to go for, here are some tips I prepared earlier.
Next, what about the next Master? Who can live up to the legend?
There’s no doubt, of course – albeit too late for the Christmas number one – about the new hit sweeping the nation (later: in between making toptastic poptastic hits, Will has even prepared a fact-file on Matt Smith. Is there no end to the man’s talents?). Sunday Update: there are more versions! Soon it’ll be better-covered than Yesterday.
Comedy links pre-prepared, of course, because now I’m all emotional.
* And you can trust me on this, because the last time I was so sure about who a wide-open pick wouldn’t be, I knew there was absolutely no way John McCain could possibly pick Sarah Palin.
** (See *)
Labels: A Very Peculiar Practice, Blogs, David Tennant, Doctor Who, Fandom, History, Joanna Lumley, Matt Smith, Music, Sylvester McCoy, The Golden Dozen, Top Tips, William Hartnell
Friday, January 02, 2009
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 1992 Brilliant?
The New Adventures increase in breadth and confidence, with cyberpunk future histories and the series’ defining companion, archaeologist Professor Bernice Summerfield. Andrew Cartmel writes urban nightmares of poverty, pollution and profiteering private corporations; Ben Aaronovitch’s nuts become infamous; Marc Platt’s Cat’s Cradle: Time’s Crucible is one of the stand-out novels, turning the series inside-out with a new, old mythology; and another favourite is…
This is one of the easiest New Adventures to track down – long out of print, but available for free as a BBC eBook, with new illustrations, notes by the author and, most excitingly of all, even MP3s of the ‘soundtrack’ from Cybertech, who released CDs of superb Doctor Who-inspired music in 1994 and 1995. I could have lauded them under those years, but the one that always stood out most for me was the ‘Nightshade TV Theme’… This was also the first novel to have a special Prelude written for Doctor Who Magazine, and that’s available online, too.
Doctor Who: The New Adventures – Nightshade
“In her shock, Betty could have been forgiven for not recognising the creature. But, in point of fact, over twenty years late, her brother Alf had come home to stay…”A Christmas ghost story from Mark Gatiss. Imagine! A Quatermass evocation of ageing actors, ancient evil and radio telescopes, this is the first Doctor Who since 1977 to scare me (read in a dark, strange room). What could terrify a fan more than killer nostalgia?
This is one of the easiest New Adventures to track down – long out of print, but available for free as a BBC eBook, with new illustrations, notes by the author and, most excitingly of all, even MP3s of the ‘soundtrack’ from Cybertech, who released CDs of superb Doctor Who-inspired music in 1994 and 1995. I could have lauded them under those years, but the one that always stood out most for me was the ‘Nightshade TV Theme’… This was also the first novel to have a special Prelude written for Doctor Who Magazine, and that’s available online, too.
Labels: Books, Doctor Who, Music, New Adventures, Professor Bernice Summerfield, Quatermass, Reviews, Sylvester McCoy, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Doctor Who 45th Anniversary – Why Was 1991 Brilliant?
It’s far from being all over. Happy New Year, and happy (or, often, emotionally mangling) New Adventures! The 1963 Pilot episode’s TV premiere and the wildly creative Battlefield novelisation both suggest new beginnings, and Virgin starts publishing Doctor Who’s most cohesive and inspiring continuation between 1989 and 2005. A linked theme of the villainous ‘Timewyrm’ runs through such books as Terrance Dicks’ Nazis-and-time-warlords novel Exodus and…
This is one you’ll have to track down second-hand, and it’s not on DVD, I’m afraid…
Newer› ‹Older
Doctor Who: The New Adventures – Timewyrm: Revelation
“You mean I’m dead?”Paul Cornell expands the boundaries of Doctor Who original novels in a story too broad and too deep for television, beautifully illustrated by Andrew Skilleter’s cover of the Doctor. Dancing. With Death. On the Moon. In front of the school bully. And a sentient church.
“…Oxygen starvation, brought about from finding yourself on the moon having believed the place to be Norfolk. I do believe that’s unique.”
This is one you’ll have to track down second-hand, and it’s not on DVD, I’m afraid…
Labels: Books, Doctor Who, New Adventures, Pictures, Reviews, Sylvester McCoy, Why Is Doctor Who Brilliant?, William Hartnell
