Bootlace Cinema Volume Two

Boot Suites

Bootlace Cinema Volume Two
by Mark Williams
Tree Frog Publications
ISBN 9798243641975

Following on from the first book in this series (reviewed by me here) and subtitled ‘Collecting All Kinds Of Movies On Super 8’, Mark Williams gives us his first sequel tome, Bootlace Cinema Volume Two and, as did the last one, doing very much what it says on the cover. 

The foreword on this one is by Allan Bryce, a guy who writes amazing editorials I read every month on his two excellent magazines, The Dark Side and Infinity. He’s always witty and charming and he gives his usual spin on this subject, which I know was a hobby of his as I am reading through, little by little, his 1968 diaries through Teams every night to someone in Switzerland. We then get a nice introduction to the book by Williams himself, filling us in about details of his early life when he was, amongst other things, a messenger for the film company CIC in London at one point. And, frankly, anybody who mentions, as he does here, my favourite shop of all time, the sadly now extinct Dark They Were And Golden Eyed, gets an extra gold star. 

The previous volume gave us a lengthy overview of the various companies putting out all these Super 8 digest versions back in the day and, rather than repeat all that (and I’m glad he didn’t, we already have that stuff in the first book), he has a small section devoted to... something that very much took me by surprise. Three new companies, from different countries (including the UK) which have now recently started making these things today for modern and presumably deeply nostalgic collectors of the Super 8 digest versions. Those companies being Dave Film in the US, Dorun Films in the UK and Ultra 8 in Spain.

Then comes a lengthy stand alone section, contributed to by Andy Allard, all about the many and varied films in the Lemon Popsicle series. Now, okay, it’s not my thing and I haven’t (I would say somewhat gladly) seen any of these movies (nor the American remake of the first) but it’s a nice addition for people out there who are as enthralled by this stuff as the author, for sure.

And then we get the same format as the last tome... 

Lots of colour pictures of, not just the box art in various languages but also various trade and commercial adverts of some of the films or packages covered, which in this case is a big look at films alphabetically from Airplane to Yeti. 

So each entry will start with a summary of the main plot of the film followed by, in some cases, some interesting and often informative stories from behind the scenes... and then the technical details of the various Super 8 cut downs which found their way into the market place (including the odd airline versions of the films), not to mention details about censorship cuts and sometimes the lack of, therein. 

And the book has value not just to collectors of these things and for people who want to see the artwork but also because there are some things revealed that somehow had managed to escape me and maybe other film friendly readers too. For instance, I didn’t realise that John Carpenter’s Dark Star wasn’t released in UK cinemas until it had already played on television back in 1977. Or that the first and last days of the shooting of the Charlton Heston disaster vehicle Earthquake were hit by actual earthquakes. 

I also didn’t know that Michael Caine had turned down the role of the serial killer in Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy or that, on the set of Shout At The Devil, Lee Marvin got into a fist fight with Roger Moore and Moore definitively won, leaving Marvin to comment that “The guy is built like granite, nobody will ever underestimate him again.” 

There are a few mistakes in the book too such as saying the score for Live And Let Die was composed by John Bary (nope, it was George Martin) and, although he says the third Battlestar Galactica film, Conquest Of The Earth was never released in UK cinemas well... all I can say to that is, I definitely saw it at my local cinema and that was in Enfield Town in the early 1980s (and I don’t care what the IMDB says either, it was in my local flea pit on general release and the film was a real head scratcher continuity wise, in the way it didn’t really follow on logically from the first two theatrical releases, for sure). 

I did also take umbrage at his dismissive description of the first two scores in the original Planet Of The Apes series of films, by Jerry Goldsmith and Leonard Rosenman respectively. The Goldsmith score is especially a masterpiece and if you ever get a chance to hear it performed live, definitely get yourself along to that. 

The author also, sadly, confirms the bad news that there seems to be no negative of The Day Of The Triffids in existence. So that long desired Blu Ray upgrade will probably not come to pass anytime soon (or ever, is my guess). 

All in all though, this is a good little book and I especially laughed at the snippet of information that the first film in the Star Trek franchise had been re-christened Star Trek The Slow Motion Picture by discerning critics (yeah, we all thought it at the time... those effects sequences were way too long). So if you liked the first volume of Bootlace Cinema then you should be very much into this, perhaps slightly superior, sequel book and, I heard it on the Twitter grapevine (and I hope this rumour is true because I will be first in line to buy a copy) that there will possibly be a Bootlace Cinema Volume Three at some point in the future. Good stuff and worth more than just a peek between the covers. 

Bootlace Cinema

Lace With The Devil

Bootlace Cinema
by Mark Williams
Treefrog publications
ISBN 9798333275219

Subtitled Collecting Horror, Science Fiction & Exploitation Movies on Super 8, Mark Williams’ new book Bootlace Cinema starts off giving an overview of the phenomenon of buying and collecting Super 8 cut down/condensed versions of movies on the format in the UK, before the home video boom ushered in by VHS (and technically also by Betamax, I guess), effectively killed the phenomenon almost overnight. That is, as I learned from this tome, except in Germany, where home video Super 8 cut downs were an ongoing thing right up until 2003, with the last release in the format over there apparently being Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.

The book starts off with a few essays detailing the rise and fall of the format and highlights the main players, such as they were, in terms of the companies putting out this stuff. So the likes of Castle Films/Universal 8, DVR Films, Derann Film Services, Fletcher Films, Mountain Films, Perry’s Movies, PM Films Limited, Ritz Films and Walton Films are all given their own mini section, giving some information about them, with some of them detailing the history of each company and, of course, a lot of the information throughout the book relies on the memory and expertise of the author... as this new tome appears to be the first of its kind in terms of covering this once popular secondary market for what were, in a way (and due to their mostly incomplete nature of the product into very condensed, short run time highlight reels), a high end piece of cinematic merchandise. This stuff is not forgotten by the people who used to buy this kind of thing though and, relatively recently, the art form of editing these things down into these bite sized (for the most part) reels has come back into vogue with Blu Ray purveyors such as British boutique label Indicator including these cut down versions in their extras on some of their releases.

After these opening sections the book starts proper with an alphabetical list of many of the films falling under the auspices of the book’s subtitle, each having their own entry comprising of (for the most part) a short summation of the movie, some interesting history of the film in question and the details of the various cut down versions of the film released into the ‘bootlace market’ at the time.

Now I’ve never gotten into this particular hobby myself (although I believe my dad has some old Hal Roach shorts in the loft) so I found this mostly fascinating in terms of the various versions of the films on offer and what shape they were in. I also found a parallel to the early days of DVD purchasing in that the US imports I used to get before a film even hit UK cinemas is similar to many of these cut down films being released before the film was even shown in the cinemas here... and in some cases with footage which was censored out in the UK by the BBFC as part of those condensed reels.

I also, as it happens, picked up some interesting information about some films in general which had somehow managed to escape me before now (don’t ask me how). Such as the UK theatrical release of Buck Rogers In The 25th Century being cut for violence. Or the fact that, when he starred in The Omen, Gregory Peck took a huge cut in salary but opted instead for 10% of the film’s profits. The Omen was, of course, very successful indeed and so it actually ended up as being Peck’s highest paid role. I also didn’t know that, while David Cronenberg’s Shivers was passed as an uncut X certificate in the UK, it was actually banned in Hampshire, where the town’s council decided it was too much for the sensibilities of the locals.

I also found it interesting in terms of the extra work the UK collector would have to do if they wanted to get their product in a more palatable shape. Sometimes a few different condensed reels of a film would be released into the market and some of the companies had a rule in their contract with the films’ original distributors that each reel would be able to make sense as a self contained story... which meant some repeat footage to contextualise the rest of the contents. Which meant that many collectors would go to the trouble of splicing and re-editing their purchases together, to get a presentation closer to the original version of the film (even if a couple of reels combined would only come to about a half an hour).

And that’s me pretty much done on this, pretty much invaluable tome on the subject of Bootlace Cinema. With the annoying caveat that the writer seems to not know the difference between there, their and they’re... using the first spelling for all the many instances of the other two in the book also. Which, I confess, irritated me no end but certainly not enough to fail to recognise the hard work and the enlightening information which has gone into this feature presentation, so to speak. And if you’re on the fence about it, please know that the book is chock full of colour representations of the original Super 8 box artwork (including many of the German releases), along with various print adverts for these items so, for that reason alone, the book is more than worth the price of admission.

VHS Forever - Once Upon A Time In Camden

A Fistful Of Pre-Certs

VHS Forever?
Once Upon A Time In Camden
(aka VHS Forever 2)
UK/USA 2019/20
Directed by Mark Williams
Son Of Bill Productions - Screener

Regular readers of this blog may remember my review, a few years ago, of a low budget British documentary by director Mark Williams called VHS Forever? Psychotronic People (reviewed here). Well, I was recently lucky enough to be contacted by Mark to see if I wanted to take a look at a preview cut of his new sequel to this film, VHS Forever? Once Upon A Time In Camden. So of course I said yes and I think my main takeaway from this one is probably going to be... when can I get my hands on a legitimate copy of this on DVD or Blu Ray so I can re-watch it without the time code? The answer to which is, apparently, sometime around the start of next year.

This film is pretty much more of the same in terms of the kind of content as the last movie but, for my money, I think this one is a little better than the first. Shot in the Electric Ballroom during and after, by the looks of it, a day of the Camden Film Fair (I failed to see myself walking around in the background), this one has the usual mix of people sharing their treasured memories of buying ‘hard to get’, mostly pre-certificate video tapes ‘back in the day’ (mid 1980s to early 1990s?) but it mostly concentrates on the three different incarnations of the Psychotronic Video Store in London. Two incarnations of the store were in Camden and... I think the other was in that dodgy street near Tottenham Court Road behind where the old Virgin megastore used to be. The term Psychotronic was, as many of you will probably know, filched from the old Psychotronic Guides that Michael Weldon used to put out... goodness knows where my old copy went to but it was a thick brick of a book so I don’t think I could have easily lost it.

Added into the mix of this one is also a load of guest speakers who actually are important movers and shakers in their own right and so their words and insights into... not just the original shops and their passion for horror and exploitation movies but also the people, often larger than life characters who ran the shops... is the real deal. So, yeah, you have guests like horror illustrator extraordinaire Graham Humphreys; the founder of Eastern Heroes magazine Ricky Baker; David Gregory, the co-founder of the amazing Severin Films in the US (who seems to be from Nottingham, I didn’t know that) and Jane Giles, former Scala programmer and author of the incredibly important tome Scala Cinema 1978 - 1993 (which has my name in the back of the book alongside all the other kickstarter people listed, so I should probably get around to reading this gorgeously rendered document at some point soon... watch out for a review on this blog).

It even has a few words from Paul Brown, who has been running the Camden Film Fair and its sister fair at Conway Hall for quite a while now... so it was nice to see him talking on here because I always grab stuff from him when I can and he’s definitely one of ‘the good guys’. Actually, one of the guests here makes the point that, with one of the guys who ran Psychotronic having a stall at the fair, the Camden Film Fair has almost become, in its bi-monthly ‘one day only’ shows, the modern equivalent of going to the old Psychotronic shop... although the VHS format itself is not as prevalent as the other media on offer there.

To me, this was a lot more satisfying than the first film because of the way it’s been edited together although, I recognise that the style here is somewhat different and I suspect the decision on the way it’s been spliced is going to divide people. I prefer it because the chunks with each guest are longer or, rather, perceived as longer because it doesn’t cross-cut between various talking heads... instead, it mostly stays with each person and allows their stories to come across uninterrupted (although there’s a nice moment when a lady walks in front of the camera, which is quite funny). Now, I found this to be a much better way of hearing the various stories here because it gives the recollections time to breathe and come to life naturally but, I’m guessing some people might prefer a more dynamic editing style cutting between people on various thematic points. Not this viewer though, so I was much more impressed.

There are, of course, various clips and artworks of covers, posters and fanzines edited into parts of the frame to liven up some of the sequences and these are a nice addition but not totally necessary. That being said, if you’ve never seen some of these old covers and clips before, you’ll probably get more out of this.

My favourite bits were the almost unanimous shared experiences of the majority of the people interviewed having been well ‘under age’ when they first started buying their highly dodgy, often third generation copies of various, ‘less than legitimate’ future video nasties and exploitation titles. That and the genuinely charming testimony of the guy who first started going to the shop to fuel his interest in blaxploitation movies but ended up having his mind and tastes expanded by the huge cornucopia of bizarre material available, coupled with the community spirit of the people who used to frequent the store. That was a nice section to include here.

And that’s me done on this one. If you liked the first movie, VHS Forever? Psychotronic People, then it goes without saying that you’ll also get a blast out of VHS Forever? Once Upon A Time In Camden. And even if you didn’t know the times, locale and spirit of this particular slice of the VHS phenomenon first hand, then I’d still say you might get something good out of it... dare I call it ‘valuable insight’ into a time long gone and a species of movie collector who is, perhaps, like the dinosaurs, dying out to make way for a new and slightly different, if no less avid, breed of exploitation movie connoisseur (I think it’s fair to say that, with the present DVD and Blu Ray market, cinephiles have never had it so good). As far as I’m concerned... and I won’t beat around the bush here... this is, like the first movie, an important document of a particular time and place in history which both modern collectors and casual buyers would be richer for knowing about. Even though I’ve seen it, I’m going to be one of the first in line to pick up a copy of this on a shiny disc when it comes out next year and I’d urge you to look out for it when it does get released ( I believe it’s actually getting a VHS release first). I thoroughly enjoyed this one.

VHS Forever - Psychotronic People

Tape Worms

VHS Forever - Psychotronic People
UK 2014
Directed by Mark Williams & Darren J. Perry
Son of Bill Production MultiRegion DVD

So I’d heard about this relatively new documentary film from the tail end of last year via Twitter, got kinda interested in it and then promptly forgot about it, what with all the other digitalised celluloid attractions on offer these days. However, when I realised I’d only been to three film fairs this year, instead of the 13 or so a year I was knocking back a few short years ago (due to varying reasons, mostly budgetary), I realised that I should maybe get myself down to the latest Camden Film Fair and see what was going on... mostly because I’d been hoping to catch up with the stall of the Camden Fair’s organiser at this year’s London Film And Comic Con (reviewed here) and, like a fair few other dealers, he’d not bothered with that one this time around.

Anyway, when I got there I visited a stall run by Tony & Donna Clarke of the Psychotronic Video Store (www.psychotronicstore.com) who were selling a fair few treasures, including the beautiful limited edition (only 300 copies folks) Lucio Fulci playing cards I’d bought a few weeks before and, among the many gems available, was this movie. So I thought, yeah, I still wanted to catch up to this and, once I’d been around all the stalls at the show, I went back to make the purchase. I was further surprised when one of the directors of the movie, Mark Williams, was there to sign copies for people... which was great.

Now, I’ve seen a few of these small, independent low budget documentaries over the last few years, my favourites being the two epic docs on Video Nasties (reviewed by me here and here) and this is probably one of the lowest budgeted I’ve seen. The IMDB entry for VHS Forever lists it as costing approximately £1000 to make and, I have to say, for the small amount of money it cost, the writers/directors have come up with a very entertaining and fairly informative, depending on how much of this stuff you already know, little homage to the early days of VHS collecting.

Now it would probably be remiss of me not to point out that this particular documentary film is about a very specific aspect of early VHS collecting in this country and, sadly for me, it’s an aspect of the scene I missed out on as a teenager because I was more interested in World Cinema at the time than many of the movies covered here, although watching this film has made me realise I might have a couple of cardboard sleeved rarities sitting on a shelf somewhere which may bear further investigation. There’s not much of anything about the early days of UK collecting when the budget arm of the sell through market was established and tapes were coming down in price, for example. You won’t find The Video Collection label and their early hits like Bringing Up Baby and Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers being praised and lionised on here. But you do get another view of the world of the pre-certification, video nasty style horror market and the first hand stories of the people who used to buy these. This makes it very much a companion piece to the two Video Nasty documentaries I mentioned earlier and, although it won’t mean a heck of a lot to a certain section of the VHS buying market, to me this is essential viewing.

The film covers a little bit about the infamous banned list and the stories of the victimisation of the people who used to buy and sell these tapes and, once again, highlights how out of step the UK was, and still is, with the rest of the planet in regards to trying to conform and control what an individual should be allowed to watch on his or her TV set. Another thing which makes it valuable to me is the kind of people the crew interviews for this movie. Along with well known and well loved names like Norman J. Warren, Lloyd Kaufman, Caroline Munro and Kim Newman, they’ve also got some of those less well sung experts like Nigel Burrel who, perhaps, should be better known amongst lovers of film than they are right now. There were a fair few people talking, also, who have taken my money over the last few decades at shows like the Camden and Westminster Film Fairs and it was kinda nice to see them and, also, rewind them to catch what they said again when I realised the locations they were being shot in meant I had been concentrating more on the background to see if I saw either myself or one of my friends wandering around rather than paying attention to what was actually being said.

The film is not going to give you a thoroughly detailed account of the persecution and horror that people were up against at the time... I remember a lot of the kids in my old school playground used to swap copies of tapes that would have given Mary Whitehouse an absolute fit if she’d have known how easy these things were to get a hold of for teenagers or younger, some of which still wouldn’t be allowed in this country or many other countries due to various laws... but the film does give a lot of interesting stories and reminiscences by a few of the hardcore collectors of the time that are vastly entertaining and well worth the £10 I paid for this DVD. This includes stories about visiting the original Psychotronic Video store in Camden in the 1980s and its infamous ‘back room’, where certain highly prized and riskier titles might be purchased in illegal trade.

It also talks to some of the illustrators at the time who were responsible for the fantastic artwork on the sleeves of some of these things and, furthermore, interviews some of the modern poster and sleeve artists who were inspired by them... I now know why we still get the odd, fantastic exploitation sleeve like the one used for Hobo With A Shotgun, for instance (reviewed here). So, yeah, one of the things which sticks in my mind about this film... and it’s something I think I was half aware of before but this certainly drums it home... is that the lurid artwork of the sleeves themselves were as easily responsible, if not more so, for making some of these dubious pleasures targets of an increasingly watchful yet uncomprehending government body. And, yeah, I think it’s good that the filmmakers here have included the graphic design element of the original tapes and it also leads to two scenes where one of my favourite people of all time, the always lovely Caroline Munro, talks about the artwork on a couple of the VHS sleeves of movies she’s been in, namely Dracula AD 1972 and The Last Horror Show.

Now, one of the most noticeable aspects of this film is that the quality is questionable and this might possibly put some people off... however, it should also be pretty obvious to a lot of people who spent a fair amount of the 1980s watching VHS transfers that the footage has been deliberately shot like this, possibly even downgraded, to look a little fuzzy like an old VHS recording. It’s also shot in a 4:3 aspect ratio to emulate the horrible pan and scan look which was a feature of many of those early cassette tapes... and one of the reasons why I stopped buying this stuff until they started releasing widescreen editions. However, it works pretty well here regarding the subject matter and the kinds of people who are going to want this account of years gone by in their library are probably not going to have a problem with it... it’s certainly endearing.

All in all, I’d say this movie isn’t going to exactly appeal to a great amount of people but for individuals like myself, who were around during these days and remember having to go and approach dodgy looking people on the streets of Camden Town if we even wanted to be in with a chance of acquiring withdrawn movies like Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange... then there are a lot of memories, stories and judgement calls about those days which are quite appealing. Also, it’s edited pretty well and some of the transitions between segments of interviews leading onto other comments by people are intelligently done and their juxtaposition gives all the sides of the story on certain issues without clinging to a specific agenda... which is a good approach to take if you are trying to give an overall picture and capture a specific zeitgeist without trying to gloss over the inherent problems which were made manifest by this area of ‘the VHS scene’.

VHS Forever - Psychotronic People is a charming look at a time which people from younger generations won’t know much about but which is still relevant to the current issues of censorship and film trading going on now... I can’t remember how long ago since I last had to wait outside the Electric Ballroom until the police had finished raiding the Camden Film Fair and confiscating materials... but it can only have ben a couple of years ago at most and some of the questionable (and therefore often the most fun) things you can get at these kind of film oriented events are really not that different to what was going on 30 or so years ago. So this is definitely a film which a specific section of modern cineastes of a certain kind are going to want to get their teeth into, methinks. At any rate, it’s something I’m very pleased I bought and probably a movie I’ll be dipping into again and again for reference purposes over the coming years. So put this one on your list if this specific kind of home video subculture is something you either remember from the time or have an interest in... you should have a fun time with it.

VHS Forever - Psychotronic People is a limited edition but, at time of writing, it’s still available to purchase here... http://psychotronicstore.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=5_29&products_id=3385

There is also a facebook group for the film, if that’s your kind o’ thing, here https://www.facebook.com/groups/784032254947602/ and the main website page for the film is here www.vhsforeverthemovie.com

Doctor Who - The Power Of Three

The Three Whomigos

Doctor Who - The Power Of Three
Airdate: 22nd September 2012. UK. BBC1

Warning: A few right angled spoilers lurking in this one.

You know, I'll be kinda relieved about not having to write any more of these Saturday night reviews once Doctor Who takes a little break from our airwaves after next week's episode. Not because they’re in any way terrible, similarly, not because I am having to heap praise on them on a weekly basis (I wish). That’s the thing though... these episodes aren’t that terrible but they aren’t that great either. The last two series especially had their share of “not so great” episodes in them... but they also had some great “stand out” event episodes in them too. This season it all feels just a little bit... I dunno... a bit humdrum?

I was expecting, quite honestly, for this weeks episode to be the best of the current bunch re-materialising onto our television screens. Truth be told though, if you’re comparing just the stories from the last four weeks, that honour has to go to the season opener, Asylum Of The Daleks. This weeks installment though, it has to be said, runs it a close second in the entertainment stakes and I have to admit I found myself well and truly entertained this time around... up until a point.

The episode had a great slow burn premise of an invasion of harmless seeming black cubes which lay low for a bit while the entire population of the planet get used to them. The Doctor, therefore, comes to stay with the Ponds and also, we see a welcome return from Rory’s dad from the Dinosaurs On A Spaceship episode... as played, wonderfully, by Mark Williams. The cubes stay for a few months or a year... depending on whether you believe what Amy Pond says in UNITs secret Tower Of London base or, if you believe the much more credible evidence of Rory’s dad’s invasion log, which lasts for over 361 days. These little and easily fixed continuity errors creeping into Doctor Who again is actually quite alarming and it should be stopped. I’m not saying it’s limited to this programme... it seems every movie I see has problems which seem to have been based on decisions to cut stuff out or use alternate takes of a scene which doesn't match up with others. It seems to be a blasé attitude which has crept into modern day thinking and which allows for these kind of slap-dash decisions to be made. I’m not impressed.

But anyway... moving swiftly on...

The Doctor comes to stay with The Ponds and though it would be true to say that the episode has a lot of scope for comic moments and genuine feeling, it doesn’t quite take all the opportunities it presents itself with, if truth be told... but I don’t care really because if you get a script which places The Ponds and The Doctor in a social setting, then I’m all for it.

Unfortunately, this one did seem like a combination of two old episodes combined. The “coming to stay” scenes did seem to feel like they’d been stolen from a previous Matt Smith story, The Lodger, from his debut season... while the invasion of the cubes who are accepted into humanity as an anxious UNIT ponder their meaning was very similar to the opening of the two part finale of David Tennant’s second season... Army Of Ghosts. Still, self referential plaguerism aside, the episode kinda worked well, with Rory and Amy in the process of making a decision as to whether to stop their adventuring with The Doctor for good or carry on “in the loop” so to speak. Along the way there were some references to a new adventure with the Zygons (last seen in their debut episode in Tom Bakers Fourth Doctor story Terror Of The Zygons) and a new UNIT character introduced called Kate Stewart, who happens to be the daughter of a long serving and endearing character from Doctor Who history, Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge Stewart... so that was a nice touch.

So yeah, the episode was good, like I said... up to a point.

Alas, that point was roughly the last fifteen minutes when things started going all "extra-terrestrial action stations" and the threat was finally understood, only to be reversed in mere minutes as The Doctor became a really terrible example of a "deus ex machina" and everything was as it was again. Pretty rubbish and definitely felt a little rushed if you ask me. Could have done with being a two parter, perhaps, and adding more dramatic weight and a more harder earned victory, don’t you think?

The whole episode led up to the dramatic point that Rory’s dad has encouraged The Ponds to carry on their adventures, after The Doctor has all but promised that they’ll never die on him. Yeah, right, well we can all see where this one is going can’t we? Maybe they’ll just die of old age but next week is being touted as The Ponds last episode on the series, so we’ll just have to see. Personally, I’m hoping that we don’t lose River Song too in the process, but I’m guessing we will. I think something funny and irreversible may be about to happen on the show concerning the last few years of Doctor Who history... and all I can say is, I hope I’m wrong.

Not a bad episode, though...on the whole. Could have done with a little more emotion and a little less running about but I’m guessing there’s going to be a lot of running about next week so maybe that’ll make up for it. Still looking forward to it... just about.