Doctor Who - The Movie

Harmony Padme Hum

Doctor Who - The Movie
UK/USA Directed by Geoffrey Sax
UK Airdate: 27th May 1996
BBC 1 - Region B Blu Ray

Doctor Who was dead... and had been for several years. 

The Seventh Doctor as personified by Sylvester McCoy was the current Doctor when the show was cancelled (for pretty much no good reason by people in power at the BBC who never liked it to begin with... from what I remember). However, this attempt was made, in 1996, to start up the series again as an American/British co-production, shot in Canada. So, yeah, entitled Doctor Who - The Movie, this was a pilot film which, although it did well in the UK, bombed in the US and so was never commissioned as a series. And looking at it now, it’s still easy to see why.

Now, the last time I watched this, before revisiting it on this current Blu Ray incarnation, was on the broadcast date mentioned above. However, this was not the first time I had seen this and this is how I know that both the TV broadcast and this Blu Ray are heavily cut... or rather, missing some footage. I think I first saw this on a bootleg VHS tape somewhere around 3 or more months before the episode... sorry, movie... was broadcast and, to be honest, most people I personally know had already seen this in the same way before it hit our airwaves. Doctor Who, despite the stupid fate of the classic run of the TV show, was always a much loved British phenomenon and so the Brits were desperate to see this one as soon as they could. So, yeah, it was almost impossible not to run into someone at a jumble sale or in your office who had access to a copy.

And that’s how I know this was cut. Admittedly, it had even more excised from it on British TV but in this current version, after the Seventh Doctor, played once again by McCoy for the first ten minutes or so, lands on Earth... he stumbles into a gangland conflict and is shot. Now, on the broadcast version and in this one, he only takes one bullet, despite a later piece of dialogue revealing that he was hit three times. In the print which was doing the rounds on VHS bootlegs, that scene went on a little longer and he takes many more bullet hits. And that’s just one of the cuts I remember and it’s very frustrating now because, the bootlegs were obviously struck from an earlier, pre-cut print of the episode and so, some of the scenes just never existed in any broadcast or home video version to this day. Which is such a shame because I would love to see it again.

Looking at the show now... it really hasn’t held up well over the years but there’s still lots to like about it, as much as there is to hate. For instance, McCoy is excellent in his scenes, as is the new incarnation of The Doctor played by Paul McGann, who quickly manages to make the part his own, playing the role with exactly the kind of flourish and personality quirks that many previous actors had built into the role. He really shines in this and it’s a shame the pilot episode never took off. And another good thing about the pilot is the companions... both Yee Jee Tso to an extent, as a gang member with his heart in the right place but, especially Daphne Ashbrook as Dr. Grace Holloway, who is so good in this she almost steals the show from McGann... but not quite. The chemistry is good, though and they do make a lovely pair... quite literally as they share a kiss on more than one occasion, hinting at romantic entanglements if the show was to continue to run.

And the whole of the first half an hour or so... set in our near future on December 31st 1999 and dealing with the death of the seventh incarnation on the operating table as Puccini plays on the stereo (as Grace manages to kill him with a defibrillation machine because she doesn’t realise he has two hearts), his resurrection in the morgue intercut with and echoing footage from Universal’s 1931 movie Frankenstein, the escape of The Master as a kind of slime mould who invades an ambulance driver and takes him as a host body and The Doctor’s attempts to convince Grace of who he is and just what is going on... is really great. And then it all goes completely pear shaped when The Master somehow gets on board the TARDIS without a key, gets the gang member to open the Eye Of Harmony which powers the TARDIS and then uses it to threaten the existence of the Earth so he can steal The Doctor’s remaining lives for himself. It’s truly dreadful and makes not a lick of sense, with physics bending scenes such as The Doctor walking through a solid glass window because physics is compromised... but only when it’s convenient to service the next dramatic point of the story.

In fact the writing in this is pretty bad, for the most part... again, once the Eye of Harmony is open. It tries hard to appeal to an American audience and has scenes like a motorbike ambulance chase and even a fist fight in the TARDIS between The Doctor and The Master. It’s just not very well done. Eric Roberts plays The Master and he does his best but he just comes off as a cheap villain for the most part, rather than having the gravitas of the versions which came before him (something McGann seems to get right with his version of The Doctor). I don’t believe it’s Roberts’ fault, to be honest... it just wasn’t written any differently in the script. And the dead giveaway here that this was half financed with American money is that there are a fair few references to Tom Baker’s incarnation of The Doctor (the one best known Who actor to American fans of the show at the time, on the cable networks which showed it in the US) via little ‘object cameos’ such as a long, colourful scarf, his yoyo and a bag of Jelly Babies.

And alas, all that hard work to get it to appeal to a multi-national audience... those Fourth Doctor moments, the pop culture references and the nice, steam-punk look of the new Doctor’s costume... really didn’t matter because the second half of the movie is just, yeah, it’s mostly terrible with the producers seeming to want to turn it into an action packed US cop show or some such. It just doesn’t work and it becomes ‘bad Doctor Who’ pretty quickly. Which is a shame because, McGann and Ashbrook would have made a good crew for the TARDIS in any future adventures.

As it is, the ratings dive bombed in the US and this was never followed up. Paul McGann would eventually play The Doctor again in a series of Big Finish produced audio adventures and, most notably, in the short internet streamed prelude to the 50th Anniversary show The Day Of The Doctor, fittingly called The Night Of The Doctor (and included as an extra on both the 50th Anniversary special Blu Ray and on this Blu Ray too). That prelude showed how McGann’s Doctor regenerated into the retrofitted incarnation The War Doctor, created for The Day Of The Doctor, after Christopher Eccleston refused to return to the show and John Hurt was called in to fill the role instead.

And that’s me done on Doctor Who - The Movie... it’s kinda nice seeing it again (albeit in the official cut as opposed to the pre-release version) but it wears it’s mis-steps very firmly on its sleeve and, despite its warm reception in the UK at the time, it really isn’t a good version of the show, to be fair. I would certainly not recommend this one as a jumping on point for anyone interested in the modern show’s past but, you know, it’s currently available if you want it.

Doctor Who - Frontier In Space

Master Plan

Doctor Who -
Frontier In Space
UK Air date: February - March 1973
Six Episodes
BBC Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Slight spoilers.

So Frontier In Space is the third story of the tenth series of Doctor Who, as reissued in the nice Blu Ray set of that season from the BBC. I was five years old when this story aired but I only seem to have hazy recollections of this one. Whereas, the next two stories in the box, I have a lot of childhood memories of terror. Looking back on it now, though, I have to say that it’s easily one of the best of the John Pertwee Doctor Who stories I’ve seen.

This one’s a six parter and involves The Doctor and Jo Grant (played by the always brilliant Katy Manning) getting involved with a cold war climate powder keg in the far future between the people of Earth and the people of Draconia (who are kind of a short hand version of ancient Japanese style lizard people, in terms of their manner and codes). The TARDIS is taken away from our two heroes more or less from the start of the tale and the majority of the first three episodes sees them being imprisoned by various people and spending a lot of time in jail cells, as the plot moves along without them in some areas. It sounds boring and padded but, well okay it possibly is padded but it’s nothing short of interesting and exciting since, you know there’s going to be some jail break or other set piece in each episode.

The plot is kickstarted by an outside party committing hostile acts of space piracy on the two species and using a sound based, hallucinogenic gadget to make the victims believe they are seeing the other race, humans or Draconians, committing these crimes, in order to start an intergalactic war. Fairly soon it turns out that the actual people committing these acts are the Ogrons, a race of quite dumb mercenaries for hire which were on a lot of merchandising such as jigsaw puzzles when I was a kid but were only actually in two stories in the Pertwee era (I’m not counting their cameo in Carnival Of Monsters, reviewed here and nor am I counting the 1990s Eastenders charity crossover, Dimensions In Time). The Ogrons, of course, are being directed by a higher power and it soon becomes evident that this is a master plan of... um... The Master, kind of. In the last episode it is revealed that he is working (although he plans to double cross them) with the Daleks, who only turn up in that final episode.

The story is absolutely superb and it has a great script. Katy Manning’s always watchable Jo Grant is given more to do here and there’s a wonderful scene where she is holding up a very long, one sided conversation with The Doctor to hide the fact from a security camera that he’s already escaped the cell... demonstrating that Jo Grant can talk the hind legs off a donkey with ease when she has to.

The Master is, once again, played absolutely brilliantly by Roger Delgado (aka Roger Caesar Marius Bernard de Delgado Torres Castillo Roberto) who, alas, died quite violently while shooting a television show in Turkey when the car he and two other crewmen were in plunged into a ravine, just a few months after Frontier In Space aired on television. It was a real loss and I think it’s probably why Jon Pertwee opted to leave the show a year later. Delgado’s last scene in this story is of him shooting The Doctor down, before Jo helps the wounded Doctor into the TARDIS at the end of the last episode. The Master would not return again until he was pictured as a kind of melted looking monster in the Tom Baker story The Deadly Assassin in 1976. He’s been played a few times by different actors since then and, in at least two of the incarnations of this time lord, the actors have somewhat resembled the look of Delgado in the role.

The special effects in this one aren’t great as the story calls for things like space walks and so on but, it never really bothered us as kids. Even then, I’m sure, we could see those big cables holding the actors up but, you know, how else do you tell a story like this on a TV budget in the early 1970s. I look on them now as a kind of comforting presence in these things and count myself lucky that, unlike some other films and shows put out in high definition, the copyright owners haven’t tried to tart up the special effects and turn them into something they never were (although they have in some of these Blu Ray sets, it’s true.... but there's always the option to watch the original version). I like that the cell holding the prisoners here wobbles when they bash it and stuff like this should always be left in. It’s not just entertainment... it’s art and, as importantly, a historical document of its time. So leave it alone is always my view on the decision to intervene too much with modern technology.

The Target novelisation of the story, always a big winner with kids... I guess they were the Harry Potter novels of their day to some extent, when it came to promoting children’s reading... was one of the few of their adaptations not to use the name of the story for the book title. Instead of going on the shelves as Frontier In Space, the book version was called Doctor Who And The Space War. I probably enjoyed this one along with all the others... I certainly had a copy of this shelved with around 60 others at one point, I’m sure.

The next story in the series and on this Blu Ray set is Planet Of The Daleks, which I assume follows on directly from this story. I only remember a few things from it which haunted my nightmares but I also remember being disappointed with it when I watched this one again on a VHS tape in the late 1980s so... yeah, we’ll see how that one goes. Frontier In Space, though, is an absolute corker of a story and probably, it turns out and much to my surprise, the real jewel in the crown of this boxed set.

Doctor Who - Legend Of The Sea Devils

Pirate Ship Devils

Doctor Who -
Legend Of The Sea Devils
Airdate: 17th April 2022
BBC 1

Warning: Spoilers looping back into spoilers.

Okay, so, I may have got prematurely excited for a new spurt of good writing on Doctor Who after the brilliant New Years special Eve Of The Daleks (reviewed by me here) as, yeah, this episode wasn’t that great in many ways. But, it has to be said, the return of Sea Devils was not as badly handled as it was in their second appearance against the Fifth Doctor in Warriors Of The Deep (reviewed by me here). Although, yeah, not nearly as iconic an appearance as their first dance with the Third Doctor in the original story The Sea Devils (reviewed here), it might also be noted.

Doctor Who - Legend Of The Sea Devils gives us the returning triumvirate of Jodie Whitaker as The 13th Doctor (depending on how you count them, with the added complication of The War Doctor and various other manifestations), Mandip Gill as Yas and John Bishop as Dan. And it’s set in a couple of time zones in a sea faring adventure with a real, historical pirate queen (kind of) and various anachronistic shipboard instruments or overlooked details such as, you know, the fact that a cannon has a bit of recoil when fired.

It also suffers a little in the writing, I thought. The story was the usual, ‘think of a jam and then spout scientifiction gobbledy gook to enable a gadget to save the world’ kind of thing... which is getting a bit tired. And some of the dialogue was bad too. The stuff with Yas and The Doctor trying to come to terms with their recent, much rushed burgeoning romance was okay (but, you know, could have done with a longer playing out of that rather than start it off two episodes before Jodie leaves the show) and those were definitely the best moments in it. However, a load of the rest of the dialogue sounded like characters were trying too hard to say something big, surprising or funny to transition into the next scene with and, yeah, it kinda ended up sounding a little stilted and child-like in its performance (much like the dialogue in Pierce Brosnan’s last James Bond movie Die Another Day). It was a bit much and left me kind of cold, which is a shame.

However, I’m going to temper all that with... the show looked pretty good. Especially when it came to getting the Sea Devils right.  I mean, they’ve streamlined them a bit and they were nowhere near as good at creating a sinister presence in the episode but, they were a darn site better than their truly, comically bad re-designs from the Peter Davison era, at an rate. Yeah, I missed the Pertwee era’s string vests but, at least the costumers added a kind of echo to that in the texture of their new clothing for this one.

The mucic was okay too although, since Silva Screen now seem to have totally stopped releasing proper CDs of the scores, I’ve kind of lost all interest in that aspect of the show. I think they’re alienating a certain section of their audience by cutting off the supply chain there.

Overall, like I said, Doctor Who - Legend Of The Sea Devils wasn’t terrible but it could have been a lot better. I didn’t mind it but, unlike the New Years Eve story, it will be forgotten quickly, I suspect. So, we have one more Jodie episode to come this autumn (although I’d be surprised if she didn’t return for a guest spot in the November 2023 episode). And it looks like it’s pitting her against... the Daleks, the Cybermen and The Master again so... yeah, not the most inspiring of challenges, I suspect. 

However, there is one aspect of the Coming Soon trailer at the end of that episode which certainly, already, has fans talking... and that’s a bit of T & A action which everyone seems excited about. By that I mean, the return of Janet Fielding’s Tegan (Fourth & Fifth Doctor companion) and Sophie Aldred’s Ace (companion to the Seventh Doctor). It will be nice to see them in action again, for sure but, I think it kinda says something that we’ve just had an episode featuring the return of the Sea Devils and all people are talking about is the trailer for the next show. Perhaps the reveal on the casting decision was a bit too soon (although, hopefully, there will be some other surprises in store for us in the episode itself). My only other complaint, seeing that they’ve stripped it down again from 13 episodes to two or three specials (again, depending on how you count them) is that the episode was only 50 mins long, like a regular episode. Since when did ‘specials’ stop being feature length?

Anyway, it was entertaining enough and, as always, it’s nice to see Jodie as The Doctor and still, I insist, doing very well in the role despite the scripts she’s working with. So I do hope she returns for the sixty year anniversary episode next year. Also hoping all in our house are safe and well enough to watch that one when it comes on.... but that’s another story.

Doctor Who - The Three Doctors

Real 3D

Doctor Who
The Three Doctors
UK Air date:
December 1972 - January 1973
Four Episodes.
BBC Blu Ray Zone B

And so it came to pass it was time to crack open the Doctor Who Season 10 Blu Ray box set and, the first story in the box is the much loved fan pleaser The Three Doctors. This show must have been a nice Christmas present when the first episode was first broadcast in the holiday period between Christmas and New Year in 1972 and it was the programme’s ten year anniversary story. Of course, only the last three episodes were in it's 10th year and in January... the show itself wouldn’t reach that 10 year marker until November but, nobody seemed to care much and it’s an entertaining story.

This one tells of the Timelords on Gallifrey trying to save themselves and the rest of the universe by teleporting in previous incarnations of The Doctor to help himself fight the threat of the famous, 'missing presumed dead' Timelord Omega, who sacrificed himself many centuries before to give their race the power to master time travel... and who now lives in a black hole of his own making, out for revenge.

This was the first time in the history of the show that two or more incarnations of The Doctor had met each other and, to date, this has only happened four other times (not counting CGI trickery of half glimpsed running feet etc). This marks the first time that Patrick Troughton’s wonderful second Doctor would appear in one of these crossover stories (also his first time in colour) and he would go on to do the same in 1983 and 1985 (although his 1985 appearance, reviewed by me here, is perhaps best left forgotten). Also, because of the failing health of first Doctor William Hartnell, a small ‘limbo’ set was constructed at his home and his few brief scenes, roughly one per episode, were relayed as communications to Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee’s Doctors by video screen... the excuse being that the timelords didn’t have enough energy to fully transport him to rendezvous with the others.

And for an obvious, celebratory gimmick episode it’s actually quite well written, at least in terms of dialogue and the story isn’t too bad either. The show also features the then current Doctor’s companion Jo Grant, played by the inimitable Katy Manning (this would be her last season until she returned for two episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures opposite Matt Smith’s Doctor in the next century), Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge Stewart (played impeccably, as always, by Nicholas Courtney, who again made his swan song in a story from The Sarah Jane Adventures) and also a bigger part than normal for John Levene as Sgt. Benton (this is due to the part originally being earmarked for Frazer Hines to reprise his role as Second Doctor companion Jamie but, alas, he was busy doing Emmerdale Farm at the time... or Emmerdale as it seems to be known as today).

The chemistry between all the players is very strong and the humour coming from the dialogue is great. This one has probably one of my favourite scenes where, at UNIT HQ in the first episode, where the situation is already dire, the Brigadier asks The Doctor if there’s anything he can do to which Pertwee’s Doctor asks him to hand him a carbon rod. When the Brigadier does this, Pertwee uses it to stir his cup of tea... good stuff.

The really good decision the writers made in this was to not have the two primary Doctors, Troughton and Pertwee, who are present for all the episodes... get on with each other all that well. Just because you’re both the same person doesn’t mean you will agree on things and a great source of the humour and entertainment of this story is the constant bickering between the two of them, both put in their place by Hartnell at one point who calls his ‘replacements’ a dandy and a clown. Yep, there’s some good writing here. Such as the explanation of why so much stuff is pulled into the black hole when Omega is just after The Doctor... “Rather like taking a pill with a swig of water.” There’s even a joke reference in this, made by Katy Manning, to The Beatles song, I Am The Walrus.

I also liked the breakaway sets that were whisked away into the ‘quarry’ landscape of the planet in the black hole and the way bits of man made items are scattered about seemingly randomly in surrounding landscape... UNIT HQ even gets completely transported as the cliff hanger ending of one episode.

The special effects, though, are... not great. The electronic jelly that beams everything back to the black hole is a pretty rubbish looking video effect and the iconic gel guard monsters are actually quite awful and unconvincing suit creatures when you see them moving around. Quite disappointing for monsters who were never used again but whom everyone seems to remember (they even made it onto Weetabix cards, if memory serves).

Omega himself, a completely masked up figure, looks fairly impressive, a little like a golden pre-Darth Vader type presence. Alas, camera angles being what they are, especially when restored to Blu Ray, when the creature is revealed to have been eaten away with, as much of a surprise to him as to everybody else, nothing actually inside the suit, the illusion is ruined a little later on when you can clearly see the actors eyes behind the slits in the mask at one point.

About the Blu Ray... the transfer is pretty good but, for some reason the externally shot scenes, especially those at the beginning of the first episode, look fairly blurry and foggy still. I am guessing this is because the cameras weren’t quite in focus, maybe and, bearing in mind the way these episodes would have been received on first broadcast, probably nobody minded much. It wouldn’t look very different on those old TV sets compared to the rest of the footage, which on this new Blu Ray looks very sharp in comparison.

And that’s me about done on The Three Doctors. Omega would return in a different form for a Fifth Doctor story in the 1980s and the other thing that’s very important about this episode is that, as a reward for helping out the Timelords and saving the known universe, The Doctor is gifted with the components and memory needed to be able to control his TARDIS and travel in time again. His exile to Earth, brought in at the very end of the last Troughton episode and designed to make the show cheaper by not having to constantly make unrealistic looking alien sets, was over. Of course, this meant a very reduced role for the Brigadier and the rest of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (as it was in those days.. I’m not having any of this new Unified stuff, thank you very much) officers in the show but they wouldn’t disappear completely... not yet anyway. Overall, one of the more enjoyable stories and a cracking set of scenes with the Second and Third Doctors working together and bickering their way through the story. An entertaining celebration of a series which, I’m sure, had already run far longer than the show’s original producers had expected it to.

Doctor Who Flux - The Vanquishers

Split Infinity

Doctor Who Flux
Chapter Six - The Vanquishers
Airdate: 5th December 2021
BBC 1

Warning: More spoilers.

Wow... saved the universe again then.

The final part of Doctor Who Flux, The Vanquishers was, well, it was a bit anti-climactic really. Once again Jodie Whittaker as The Doctor, companioned with her regular ‘besties’ Yaz (Mandip Gill) and Dan (John Bishop) defend the Universe from the evil swarm. Teamed up with Professor Jericho, Bel, Vinder, The Dog Man, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and Diane from previous episodes. And absolutely nothing is revealed about what the heck any of it is really about by the conclusion of the show.

The novelty aspect this week is The Doctor somehow fragmented and split into three splinters of herself to work with her companions in various time zones simultaneously to defeat the big bad guys The Swarm... and all the other monsters such as Sontarans, Cybermen and Daleks. As usual, the scriptwriters attempt to blind the audience with scientific jargon rather than explain the dynamics of both this transformation and the ultimate defeat of the Flux... and The Swarm. Well, okay, I kind of understood the clichéd old matter VS anti-matter tactic but, yeah, it seemed such a basic idea that one wonders why pretty much anyone in the rest of the universe hadn’t thought of it first.

So... acting was all very good and the old “contact” exclamation to establish a mental link, this time with two Doctors of the same incarnation, was a nice little Easter egg for long term fans who remember stories like The Three Doctors I guess (review coming to this blog in 2022, fingers crossed). They even threw in a character death to try to keep up the audience interest but, nah, it was an okayish episode I guess but that tactic didn’t really do much for me and it was telegraphed so early... and with a character who’s only been in the two previous episodes... that it felt a bit flat, to be honest.

The real kicker on this is the fact that, asides from The Doctor being aggressively warned by the essence of time manifesting as herself towards the end... we get no clue as to what this has all been about in terms of her past and her links to division. Indeed, the dog man even, it turns out, was once her loyal friend in the days she has no memory of... but if he ever talks about it, an implant put in his blood by The Division will let out a poison and he’d be dead within three seconds, so he can’t tell her anything. Vinder and Bel’s baby was an equal wash out... it’s possibly nobody special at all, unless they decide to bring these two characters back in one of the three specials next year.

So all we have left is a tearful Doctor, who is once again travelling the universe, this time with Yaz and Dan as her constant companions... and the Timelord pocket watch which holds all the memories which she’s lost. But, rather than open it and get full disclosure of her past lives, she instead buries it in the heart of the TARDIS with instructions for her to never be allowed to get a hold of it.

It’s interesting because the special effects were all fine (as much as they could be in a show which has a long standing history of having special effects which aren’t always that fine) and the episode was really going for a kind of epic look to it. However, for all the whiz bang glitz and light shows, it felt perhaps the least epic of any of the installments which made up this six part mini series and, certainly, not really something worthy of what some of the more interesting episodes this year have been teasingly building too. At least, that’s what I thought.

And so once again I am left with nothing much more to say about this one. Sorry it’s such a short review, again... but Doctor Who Flux - The Vanquishers really didn’t do much for me and, since the whole serial was so wedded to the underlying story arc, it kinda takes the other episodes down in flames with it too. I mean, it’s kinda okay but, yeah, maybe I’m expecting more from Doctor Who these days. I think we could really do with a return to form, to be honest. Not exactly my favourite episode or season and, well, I still think the writing needs to be less lazy on the science and, just a bit better than this. I love Jodie as The Doctor but, once again, I wouldn’t recommend this year’s series as being in any way special. But, you know, it’s just in a slump. That can change... I’ll be watching on New Year’s Day, for sure.

Doctor Who - Can You Hear Me?

Prison Break

Doctor Who - Can You Hear Me?
UK BBC1 Airdate: 9th February 2020

Warning: Spoilers but, you’ll get there way before the characters in the episode do anyway.

Okay so... many apologies but once again I suspect this is going to be a very short Doctor Who review. I’ll try and make it up to regular readers by updating the blog twice more this week. Sorry but, I’m afraid this current series isn’t giving me very much to work with and last night’s episode, Can You Hear Me?, was a good indication of why.

The thing is.. there wasn’t much really going on and it was a set of ideas we’ve seen done again and again in many things, including this show. And not all that long ago in slightly different clothing if memory serves. But possibly I think my standards are slipping because I was much more forgiving of this episode compared to what I’ve seen of some other people’s reactions (people I know in real life, not just people on Twitter).

My first reaction, you see, is that it wasn’t terrible. And nor was it very special. You still have some great turns by Jodie Whitaker, Mandip Gill, Bradley Walsh and Tosin Cole and a story that, just about, holds itself together without ripping apart at the seams (okay, so maybe it kinda did but I’m trying to be nice here). The point is, if this thing had been shown as part of one of the David Tennant era stories, for example, I would have singled it out as being one of the worst episodes in a very long time. As it is though, with the era it’s currently in, my initial thoughts are... yeah, that wasn’t too terrible.

We had a good, sinister looking villain in the form of Ian Gelder playing an immortal called Zelin. He even made a few fan pleasing references too, including mentions for the Celestial Toymaker from the 1960s and the Guardians from the 1980s. It’s just that it’s an episode full of old ideas and not a very tight presentation, it seemed to me. And as such, there were absolutely no surprises here...

For instance, it was pretty obvious the monsters at the start were leaking from the head of the character who is alerting everyone that they are coming. And, yeah, there was a genuinely nice monster moment where a big, clawed hand slowly closes around the head of one of the characters but... alas... the director wasn’t smart enough to keep the monsters to the shadows because, when you see the monsters in full CGI mode, they looked a bit shoddy, to be honest. Also, it’s pretty obvious The Doctor has been manipulated/tricked to get open a lock that needs picking so another immortal can escape confinement. I don’t know why she’s supposed to be so smart when she didn’t even see that one coming a mile off. So that was kinda... bleah.

And, by the end of the show, the resolution seemed really rushed and unimportant... just whisking out a bit of machinery and suddenly conjuring immortals to where you want them seems particularly old now and it’s not exactly the first time the writers have done this, is it? So much ‘deux ex machina’ going on in the show these days. Also, when The Doctor is tied up, she manages to somehow magic up her sonic screwdriver from her pocket into her hand above her head as though she’s suddenly got Jedi skills. What the heck? Where did that come from? That was so implausible.

There were a couple of nice things I liked about the character of The Doctor though and one of these things she’s done a few times this series...

The first thing is... she’d not noticed at all when all her companions wander off and got themselves into trouble. Of course, it’s also lazy writing because it means you can put them into any threat situation you like to be the next thing The Doctor has to solve but... I do like this aspect to her character.

Secondly, when Graham (Bradley Walsh) took her aside for a conversation about the fears his cancer will return, she didn’t say anything particularly reassuring (or even bother to check him out with one of the instruments in the TARDIS)... which was a nice reminder that The Doctor isn’t actually human and so doesn’t completely know what to say in candid moments. Which is fine and I’m sure this was introduced as a running sub-plot thing anyway so I’m sure she’ll either come through or fail Graham spectacularly when the time comes. I’m more and more getting the feeling that Graham is not a character who is meant to survive his tenure on the TARDIS. So that’s the first rumblings of that plot thread, I reckon.

Okay so, yeah, that’s it... I said this one would turn out short. Sorry about that but I’m hoping to have two more cinema reviews up by the end of the week so, you know, keep checking back here. The next episode of Doctor Who looks like it will be all based on the events that prompted Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein so, you know, that does have the potential to be fun, at least.

Doctor Who - Praxeus

A Praxeus To Grind

Doctor Who - Praxeus
UK BBC1
Airdate: 2nd February 2020

Okay, so this weeks episode of Doctor Who, Praxeus, didn’t bother picking up any of the threads dangled in last weeks episode (nor from earlier in the series) but this one wasn’t a bad romp. There were good things and bad things. Asides from the usual brilliant performances by Jodie Whittaker, Mandip Gill, Tosin Cole, Bradley Walsh and this weeks co-stars, it had a nice structure to it and, even though the plot itself was slow burn, the multiple repeat location hopping (very much in keeping with the style of an old 1930s - 1950s US theatrical serial) made sure that things never got boring and gave the pleasant illusion of an episode being, perhaps, a little pacier than it actually was.

Which is all fine, of course.

I also liked the, admittedly totally illogical but, ultimately, good looking make-up job (some of which was also CGI, I think) of this episodes ‘special guest virus’. Doctor Who is, once again, pulling no punches by being a family show in which, on a number of occasions in this episode, death strikes in a spectacular fashion. In this case, the final stage of the virus when it overwhelms its humanoid host causes said host to explode. Admittedly, it’s a completely bloodless explosion but it still looked suitably ostentatious as a form of death and one of the things I’ve liked about Doctor Who over the years is its willingness to go down this kind of route.

So... good acting, speedy pacing and a nice structure to it, where various companions in different places around the planet Earth were working on different and, at first, seemingly disconnected sides of the same problem. All great fun and certainly a nicely done episode. There were, however, some bad things too.

Bad thing one and, it has to be said, this goes for most episodes in the last two series... it was way too preachy about making its points again. I don’t know what’s going on but previously on Doctor Who the writers were quite able to put in a lot of relevant and topical subtext without dumbing it down so much that it hovers right on the surface and threatens to engulf the story. A big long monologue from The Doctor about the harm humans are doing by poisoning the environment and themselves with plastic was really... well... it was a bit embarrassing actually. Also, these kinds of messages are always better off going into the subconscious so the audience can come to the realisation themselves... it somehow seems more effective when that’s the case. You don’t for example, see someone climbing up onto a balcony in George A. Romero’s Dawn Of The Dead to tell the audience it’s all about the evils of consumerism and retail therapy. There’ a brief mention of it by one of the characters and then, that’s it... you pick it up for yourself later on. So, yeah, I didn’t need all this stuff shoved down my throat, thank you very much.

The other really bad thing in this one, I thought, was the credibility of one of the characters... and this wasn’t the actresses fault, for sure. There are two female bloggers travelling the globe together in this and one of them explodes fairly early on in the show. Her best friend who is desperate to find her, after seeing her death, only reacts a little. Yeah, I know the emotional stuff on these kinds of shows and also in cinema are such that nobody stays upset for very long otherwise you don’t have time to, you know, actually progress the plot but the lack of reaction written into the character throughout the show... for instance as the character goes off smiling about her experiences at the end of the episode, only a few hours after seeing her friend die a very violent death, just felt really wrong here. I understand there’s a fine line but I think the writing could have been a little more solid, perhaps alluding to the process of grief in off screen moments to maintain an illusion of emotional torment. Instead we more or less got an attitude of ‘Oh, she’s dead. Oh dear. Moving along now... next?” Again, I don’t think it was the actress portraying the character who brought this, almost absence of appropriate affect, with her. I think it was the writing not giving her enough time and dialogue to express it. maybe it’s just me but I did get a feeling of the writers painting themselves into a corner and then running through the wet paint quickly in the hopes nobody would notice when it comes to this kind of stuff. And it isn’t the first time I’ve picked up on this over the last couple of years of Doctor Who, for sure.

And that’s me done on that one. Short review again but, ultimately, the bad stuff didn’t really outweigh the good stuff... just popped you out of the experience a few times. Fingers crossed that next week it’s not back to ‘business as usual’ for the show though because, just lately, business hasn’t been booming.

Doctor Who - Spyfall Part 2

Deton-Ada

Doctor Who - Spyfall Part 2
Airdate: 5th January 2020
BBC 1

Warning: Slight spoilers regarding the future of The Doctor’s origins.

Well, that one was certainly... something. I’m not sure what but it was certainly... an episode of the new series of Doctor Who.

Nah... I’d like to just leave it there but I can’t.

There’s something which has kinda been happening a lot recently with the show... ever since Russell T. Davies left and Moffat jumped on board and then, carrying through to the present. And it’s the phenomenon of starting off either stories or, more often than not, arcs with a bang and then not following through on them with anything like a satisfying conclusion. And that seems to be what happened here.

Last episode (reviewed here) we started with a mad rush of humour and spy spoof and I was thoroughly caught up in it. This week... well it’s not completely terrible but it did seem to kind of fizzle out a bit and, while I admire the chaos and friction of jumping through different time periods and picking up strays... such as Ada Lovelace lobbing miniature hand grenades... as The Doctor goes on her merry adventures, well.... I dunno, it just felt a bit dull to me this week.

The cast, as usual, were all excellent. I really like Jodie and her friends as The Doctor and her companions but, honestly, I think the scripts are a bit hit and miss and that’s especially infuriating when you’re halfway through a story and it kinda loses impetus.

Sacha Dhawan was okay as the new version of The Master... although I’m the only one who seems to like him in the house. His performance was a lot less histrionic than last week and I think he’ll hopefully improve as the series progresses... and due to the nature of the underlying story arc I’m sure we’ll be seeing him reprising that role before the series is finished. Having said that, I’ve still no idea how the heck The Master survived after his/her final death in the Peter Capaldi stories so... I hope they don’t just leave that one with a big question mark over it.

There were some nice things with Bradley Walsh hogging a lot of the best lines. I loved his little tap dancing laser shoes and the way he used them. That brought some much needed humour to a mostly dark episode... when you start using Nazi imagery and seasoning it with some heavily noirish atmosphere then, unlike some of the other Doctor Who shows that have used that period, you’re not necessarily going to invoke a miasma of fun. Of course, the argument is that you shouldn’t anyway but it depends on the message you’re pushing and I somehow didn’t think the gravitas of this period really matched what was going on in the rest of the episode so well.

My real big worry is how the show will progress now. As each new show runner has come along, they’ve usually tried to either change or add to the underlying mythos of Doctor Who a bit. Davies did it, Moffat did it and now it looks like Chibnall is also trying to do it. as well. This might mean he’s already on his way out and, if he goes towards the end of the season, he may well take some of the cast with him, is my guess. Is a regeneration on the cards anytime soon? If it comes to it, I’d rather that than a cancellation of the show outright but we shall see.

So, yeah, we have some serious implications here, via a recorded message from The Master, that there is something amiss with the origins of the Timelords on The Doctor’s home planet of Gallifrey. So much so that The Master burned the planet to the ground as a result of hearing what that ‘betrayal’ was. Maybe it's a Rassilon or Omega thing... who knows? Of course, this could all blow over but I suspect the show runner wants to put his stamp on the history of the character before his tenure is done and so I suspect this will possibly be leading to a kind of soft reboot of The Doctor in some way, to a lesser extent. For all I know The Master and The Doctor are aspects of the same person but... we shall see.

That being said, it could all just be something which we’ll look back on and point accusatory fingers at the BBC for in the future... after all, is anyone asking about The Valeyard lately? I think there’s definitely some underlying tinkering going on here and while I loved what Davies did with the history of the show... which was kind of retracted in the Moffat era when Gallifrey was alive and well but then hidden away to materialise at a later date... I don’t think all this unnecessary tinkering with the basic plot mechanics is particularly good for the people who have grown up with the show from various decades.

So, yeah, big tonal change on this one. Lots of drama and gravitas but a deadly serious, dark edge which, while not completely unwelcome, doesn’t really sit as well alongside the set up episode, I think. There was a distinct shift in tone which, frankly, could have worked well and been a genius touch but... I don’t think it was here. At least, it didn’t quite do it for me.

Oh well, the next episode looks much less interesting so, with my expectations set relatively low again, I can only hope it will get better again soon. Luckily, there’s a doctor in the house.

Doctor Who - The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos

Ux Dodgers

Doctor Who - The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos
Airdate: 9th December 2018
BBC 1

Hooray... we actually had a finale to the series which wasn’t half bad.

After a prologue where we see an alien race (a race which consists of only two people) called the Ux witness a person transported into their midst, we jump thousands of years in the future to find The Doctor (as played by the excellent Jodie Whittaker) and her three companions Graham, Yas and Ryan (played by Bradley Walsh, Mandip Gil and Tosin Cole) answering a distress signal from the same planet. The planet has unusual properties which attack and break down a person’s grasp of reality so The Doctor fits them all with neural inhibitors and they go to the rescue of the latest in a crew of people who have fallen victim to the floating building at the centre of the planet and its sinister inhabitants.

Now, it has to be said, when we got to the point in this story when the main villain from the first episode was obviously supposed to be someone I should remember... well, I’m sorry but I didn’t. I did figure he would be back at some point but new show runner Chibnall said there would be no multi-part story arcs this series so I kinda assumed they were saving it until next year. So I was a little surprised when the four main protagonist twigged just who the villain was way before I’d cottoned on. When I saw that it was, indeed, the rubbishy looking villain from the first episode... well... my heart sank a little.

However, it turns out it was a nicely staged, compelling episode and somehow the director even, for the most part, managed to successfully distract me from the somewhat cheap looking sets.

There was also a nice dramatic edge to the episode set up where Graham takes The Doctor to one side and makes it clear that when he catches up to this alien who took the life of his wife, he would definitely kill him... despite The Doctor’s warning that if he killed anyone he could no longer travel with her. And, I have to say, Bradley Walsh carried out the various scenes where he really made you think he was going to put down said alien villain with such expertise that it was an absolute pleasure to watch. It gave the episode a certain dramatic weight which would have been sadly lacking, I suspect, if a personal element had not been added into the mix with one of the regular characters.

So, yeah, some of the props and effects did look like they were conjured up from leftover packaging left over from Marks And Spencer but when you have a dramatic tension created by the characters like this... well... appreciation of the quality of the special effects goes out the window, to be honest.

It was also nice, if just a little corny, to have The Doctor give one of those little speeches to the various supporting characters before leaving in the TARDIS which was another of those dialogues towards living in hope. It kind of reminded me of Hartnell’s Doctor leaving Susan Foreman in The Dalek Invasion Of Earth (reviewed here) speech a little bit. I don’t know if that was the vibe the writer was going for with this but that was the way it came across to me, at any rate.

So, yeah, yet another short review on this one (my apologies) as I don’t really have that much else to say about The Battle Of Ranskoor Av Kolos... but this time because I don’t have any really negative take aways from this specific episode, I'm happy to say. It was nicely paced, brilliantly acted by all who sailed in her and not badly written, either. Some fairly nice music too which I believe is being released on CD by Silva Screen in the new year so... you know... looking forward to that (although, note to Silva Screen... can we please have Murray Gold’s music from Series 10 before you release that one please?). And, you know, there was honestly not a dull moment in this one (which is good because there have been plenty of dull moments in some of the previous episodes this year.

Quietly looking forward to the New Year’s Day special now which, if the teaser is anything to go by, features the most terrifying, evil creature in the universe dormant and buried in the Earth for gazillions of years. If it’s not the Daleks then I may get a little annoyed but we shall see. Expect the review of that one to go up in early January.... in the meantime lots of reviews and the annual Christmas cryptic movie quiz to go up here so, hopefully you’ll give this blog another read before then. All the best.

Doctor Who - It Takes You Away

Norway Out

Doctor Who - It Takes You Away
Airdate: 2nd December 2018
BBC 1

Well this... was better than last week’s show at any rate.

In fact, I’d go as far as to say that this week’s episode, It Takes You Away, was pretty good, classic Doctor Who storytelling in some ways. Admittedly it looked a little cheap at some points and, excuse me but those flesh eating moths might just as well have been imported from the B-movie Brides Of Blood (review coming very soon) in that they looked completely ludicrous, unthreatening and, basically, couldn’t have looked much worse if you could have seen little threads of cotton holding them up.

So this week’s show had The Doctor, Graham, Yas and Ryan pitching up in a forest region in Norway of 2018. They find an almost deserted cottage with a blind girl barricaded in it, who has lost her father to... ‘a thing’. So it’s up to our regular crew... played as marvellously as ever by Jodie Whittaker, Bradley Walsh, Mandip Gill and Tosin Cole... to get a shift on and find out what has taken the girl’s father and why. Of course, since this is one of the better Doctor Who stories this season, at least in terms of plotting, there’s also a little twist involving a copycat world through a portal between a kind of airlock/bubble filled with deadly moths and an alien whose soul purpose, it seems to me, is to fill in bits of the plot to let The Doctor, and the audience, know just what’s going on. Maybe he came from the legendary planet of Exposition.

In terms of pacing it has to be said that, while the episode was interesting in terms of dialogue, it felt a little light on action but it more than made up for it in terms of giving us a kind of enchanted... or maybe I should say disenchanted... frog creature and also yet another appearance from Graham’s dead wife. Yeah, I knew they hadn’t finished yanking on that string just yet and I suspect we’ve not seen the last of her in the shows to come.

So... performances were all good and this included a stand up series of moments of Graham having to come to terms with the fact that his dead wife is not real and having to choose to reject her to keep himself... and everyone else as it happens... safe. Bradley Walsh shows just why he’s the right choice for a show like this here although, honestly, I’d really like to see an episode where it’s just him and The Doctor talking about the things which went down in that first story. It would also make sense for The Doctor to address this elephant in the room much more than she did here... although what she did in this one certainly made for a good start.

There were some nice lighting effects in the protective bubble which manifested as a cave/buffer between the worlds but ultimately, yeah... it just looked like a cheap set so I wasn’t so impressed with the execution this week. However, the revelation of the beast which the blind girl’s daughter is trying to hide from was a nice little reveal I didn’t see coming and it wasn’t an over cooked moment either. A throwaway reveal can sometimes be a lot more powerful than something which is built up constantly throughout a show and I think this one was handled with just the right lack of gravitas, to be honest. That being said... there was absolutely no follow through logic to the reveal which kinda made it completely redundant and questionable, to tell the truth.

There was also a nice, classic moment when Yas came up with the idea of ‘reversing the polarity’, which obvsiously had it’s origins in Jon Pertwee’s incarnation of The Doctor before being carried through as almost an unofficial, conservatively used catch phrase over the years and The Doctor’s response to Yas 'talking her kind of language' was a special moment.

And that’s all I’ve got to say about this one and here I am again at the end of another very short Doctor Who review in a year of episodes which has pretty much been inspiring nothing but short reviews. So I’m sorry for not having much else to talk about here but... there’s not a heck of a lot of substance to these latest shows, I guess. I think the problem is possibly we have a very good incarnation of The Doctor, right off the bat, with stories and ideas which aren’t really up to the strength of her personality. I think it might have been a bit of a mistake to not use any of the character's old foes in this series as some of those would have brought some considerably weighty baggage with them which may just up the stakes when the story needs a lift. I’m hoping next year’s series doesn’t take the same path as the current one. So, yeah, short review for, frankly, a very short series. Next week’s show is already the last episode and I feel like things have been deliberately truncated even more so than the previous ten years of shorter seasons. Let’s hope that, next week, they really go out with a bang.

Doctor Who - The Witchfinders

Doctor Which?

Doctor Who - The Witchfinders
Airdate: 25th November 2018
BBC 1

Aaah... well... that one was what it was, I guess.

For me this episode was a bit of a dud again, alas but, to be fair, I’ve never really liked the idea of witchfinders and the persecution of innocents to push through personal agendas. That period of history always rubs me the wrong way and so, to be fair to this episode, this was never really going to be one of my favourites.

That being said, yeah... there was loads of good stuff here and so I’ll flag up some of this and try and suppress my own prejudices on this one.

So a nice thing about this was we had a great Hollywood actor in this episode, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve always had a soft spot for Alan Cumming since I saw him as Boris in Goldeneye (reviewed here) back in 1995. I was also impressed with him as Nightcrawler in the second of the X-Men films (before the franchise lost it and ate its own continuity on a film by film basis) and, if you appreciate this actor, then you owe it to yourself to see his absolutely brilliant villain in the astonishing but, alas, under appreciated modern masterpiece Josie And The Pussycats. So I don’t know how they got this guy for Doctor Who but here he is and he’s playing King James.

And it was absolutely brilliant to see the four series regulars... Jodie Whittaker, Bradley Walsh, Mandip Gill and Tosin Cole more than holding their own against him in terms of commanding the screen. Not that it’s a competition, of course but... sometimes strong personalities can inadvertently dim the fire of their fellow actors in a scene but, I’m glad to say this wasn’t the case here.

And we had a plot with the background of the Pendle Witches in Lancashire, although it gave us an addition to actual events, I suspect, rather than interpenetrate with the recorded history of those times as they occurred. I can only assume that’s the case because... well, there were no mud filled alien prison cell trees in the records as far as I know but, as I made clear, I’m not likely to be an expert on this period or subject matter.

That being said, though... everything just seemed a bit flat on this one, to me. We had The Doctor highlighting the prevailing attitudes of men and how difficult it is to be a woman in that time period and, frankly, things probably haven’t changed all that much since those days. I just get tired of hearing about that myself and it seemed such an obvious point that pushing it into the audience and highlighting it in this manner just seemed a bit... well... a bit like ‘old news’ I guess. Still, at least the message behind that sentiment is a worthy one for younger audiences to hear so I can’t see that as a hugely bad thing, personally. Just a little dull, in all honesty.

The music was lively in some scenes but I wondered if the composer was trying to be authentic to the time with all that fiddling (I have no idea but it kind of felt out of place to me here). I did get the feeling that the music was being deliberately written up-tempo to try and disguise the fact that, yes, this was a very slow moving episode. At least that’s how it seemed to me. Elmer Bernstein had the same problem with his score for The Magnificent Seven but that was much more suited to picking up the pace of that movie, it seems to me.

The special effects on the alien creatures were quite good in places... at least on the leading alien... but I did wonder if we needed all that CGI’d facial movement (I’m assuming that’s how it was done). Especially since the latest series has been further whittled down to only ten episodes. Personally, I think I’d prefer it if more stories were produced with slightly less than special effects rather than try and lend an air of credibility to some of the writer’s creations. Maybe I’m being a little cynical here but I suspect the effects have had a make over since the last season and this might be where some of that ‘possibly missing’ budget might have been rerouted to.

Okay, so this is once again a very short review for this week’s story but, honestly, this one didn’t inspire me. That being said, I hope people are now beginning to realise that Jodie Whittaker is doing a fantastic job here and I think she deserves a lot of credit for carrying the show in the way she is right now. I have absolutely no problem with her playing The Doctor at all... I just wish they’d get some better stories because there have been a few this season which felt like they didn’t have much of anything interesting to say and, to boot, weren’t all that entertaining. And this one, for me at least, was one of them.

Never mind, despite the protests of others in my near vicinity, I shall still be ready for another tale from the UK’s much loved TV hero next weekend. Let’s hope we get a really great one.

Doctor Who - Demons Of The Punjab

Punjabi Dozi

Doctor Who - Demons Of The Punjab
Airdate: 11th November 2018
BBC 1

Warning: Slight spoilers

Well, that was another corker... and I really didn’t expect it to be, in all honesty.

When I read that this latest episode, Demons Of The Punjab, was dealing with the partition of India in 1947 I became somewhat sceptical because, frankly, the show has been getting a little bit too preachy and educational of late. Yes, I know, it's something the show was originally designed to do back in 1963 when it first started... a family show to entertain and educate but, if you’ll remember, Verity Lambert took a step away from that approach straight away by putting the first encounter with the Daleks as the second story and, though the show alternated between tales to educate via adventures in history and much more classical science fiction for the majority of the first Doctor’s tenure on the show, it would never have kept going without that shrewd move, in defiance of her superiors, that early on.

So, yeah, this latest series has been getting a bit Hartnell-ish to be honest and I really didn’t want (and possibly didn’t need) another history lesson on man’s inhumanity to his own species. However, I’ve got to hand it to them, if they’re going down that route then this one was another example of just how to do it. Mixing up a fast paced adventure yarn and throwing a hard science fiction plot device in the form of antagonistic aliens, perceived as demons, who turn out to be in no way antagonistic in their intentions and who are, instead, going around the universe and bearing witness to the many people who die alone.

And pretty much everything about this episode was good. You had Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor in shining form but almost taking a back seat... almost, although her character holds everything together...  to Bradley Walsh, Tosin Cole and very importantly, Mandip Gill’s character Yasmin, who persuades The Doctor to go back in time to find out what her auntie has been hiding from her all these years in terms of her wedding day and the things she has been through.

We have a nice moment with a broken watch which has a shattered glass front and, as you will no doubt guess, we find out just how that watch got that way all those years ago, as The Doctor and her companions arrive in time for the wedding of Yas’ auntie and, at the same time, the bloody legacy of Mountbatten’s decision regarding the partition of India. And, yes, Yas has to try not to meddle with her own past so she doesn’t inadvertently alter the course of history and erase herself from existence.

The episode is, there’s no getting around this, good old fashioned Doctor Who and the effects of the teleporting ‘demons’, while a throwback to the 1980s in terms of visual effects, also worked very well and moved so fast that you didn’t really have time to perceive how ropey they might have looked (something which people dealing with moving image have been doing for a long time now... that and hiding their fantastic machinations in the shadows).

Talking of which, the alien creatures in this one were really beautifully designed but, it has to be said, were a throwback in some ways to the non-moving face masks of yesteryear. They reminded me a little of the old Silurian costumes back in Pertwee’s day... in that they were a much better looking design to the modern equivalents but with much less expression to their faces. Still, it seemed to work okay here and it didn’t jangle the wrong way with me, at any rate.

Also, Segun Akinola’s score for this was another big hit with me, taking Indian ragas and rhythms and weaving them into the score to give it almost a kind of pseudo-authenticity but without beating the audience over the head with it and not overpowering the traditional action scoring of the episode with too much altered colour. It never once threatened to dominate the function of the scoring and, much as I miss Murray Gold’s time on the show, this new composer seems to be knocking it out of the musical park as much as Gold did. Am hoping this series will get a CD score release at some point (once we’ve had Gold’s last series released please).

And that’s me done on this one. Another good episode in a debut season for Whittaker's Doctor which really is turning out to be a surprisingly excellent introduction to her spin, such as it is. I hate having to watch it on a Sunday night before I have to go to work the next day rather than in the traditional Saturday slot but, this is the only thing I could find to complain about with this week’s show. Let’s hope the team behind and in front of the camera can keep up the great work. 

Doctor Who - Arachnids In The UK

I Never Metebelis
I Didn’t Like

Doctor Who - Arachnids In The UK
Airdate: 28th October 2018
BBC 1

Here we are again. Time for what is, again, a very short review for this week’s new Doctor Who adventure... Arachnids In The UK. But, wow, what an episode? This one is classic Doctor Who and it really felt good to have the series starting to feel really familiar again.

This one deals with what happens when The Doctor finally gets her new companions home, safe where they want to be in Sheffield. Except... nope, it’s not safe anymore when a whole load of mutated, giant spiders are parcelling up the population in order to, maybe, eat them or some such thing later on. As it is, though, not even the spiders really have a plan or clue as what they are trying to do here... they’re just trying to deal with suddenly growing to huge sizes with no rule book to help them figure things out.

It’s a nice story and it shows the difference between Doctor Who as it is now and what you could have got away with 30 or more years ago. Ambitious stories like this which calls for huge special effects in terms of hordes of, quite convincing actually (for a change), mutated giant spiders would have maybe had the writers shying away from their original concept due to the scope of the thing and how it could have been achieved on a budget. The curse of CGI actually means that when you want to do something like this, you can at least have a fair stab at it and I was impressed with how these spiders were rendered here. They sure beat the days in the early 1970s when Jon Pertwee was running around and trying to face down a giant spider, which actually saw him regenerating as the result of his experiences in that story.

Talking of which... how can you have an episode like this without The Doctor mentioning the spiders of Metebelis Three? Unless I missed it when somebody I was watching with was asking silly questions but, I’m pretty sure they might have made more of it if they’d wanted. After all, they mentioned Jon Pertwee’s Venusian Aikido the other week, didn’t they? It’s not like they’re shying away from references to the old days here.

The best thing about this episode for me, though, was Jodie Whitaker finally being completely like The Doctor. Or at least The Doctor as he has been for the last ten years or so. There was a lovely scene near the start where she’s dropped off her new friends and is trying to say goodbye but... nobody, including her, really wants to and the dialogue here and the way she quickly accepted Yas’ offer for a cup of tea was completely nailing the character as far as I was concerned. It was good Doctor Who writing (from Chris Chibnall himself, which I totally didn’t expect) and it was made so much more of by the way Jodie performed this stuff. Astonishing moments here by an incarnation of The Doctor I have already accepted into my heart. I know my dad will be taking a few more seasons to get the hang of her but then again, he always does with each new regeneration. He only starts to appreciate them when they’re almost done with the show.

So... a sci-fi yarn involving scary monsters, a mild eco friendly message to educate the youngsters and young at heart among us and some truly great performances. Whittaker, as I’ve said, was astonishing. Mandip Gill and Tosin Cole were doing great too... these characters are starting to feel familiar. And Bradley Walsh as Graham... well he was superb and has the ghost of his dead wife haunting him in that good way. I hope they keep the character on board the TARDIS for a very long time but, something is telling me that I wouldn’t surprised if the writers have some very dramatic plans for Graham before the season is over. So I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that things work out for him by the end of the season... or at least continue on with him as a regular on the show.

Okay... one bad thing about this week's episode was... I totally didn’t understand the off-screen resolution of the story. The big mother spider is dead but nobody has said what’s happened to the slightly smaller versions... or did I miss that too. Everything just seemed to stop on the dramatic resolution of the emotional drama rather than actually tying the story threads up, it seemed to me. Not that I care that much, however... I’m just grateful we got a good story here. Or rather... a doctorish story. It feels like Jodie has brought the programme home again now so I’m really looking forward to the coming weeks.

Also, apart from the opening music arrangement, I’m really getting used to Segun Akinola scoring these things now. It’s almost Herrmannesque at times, in that the composer is using short, repeat motifs in places to build up the tension which can be, presumably, quickly edited if a scene is suddenly cut by a few seconds or, you know, added to if it runs longer than an earlier cut. So looking forward to a CD release of this at some point, hopefully, once Silva Screen finally get around to releasing Murray Gold’s last season, that is.

And that’s me done on Arachnids In The UK. Classic Doctor Who stuff by a cast and crew who seem to be really getting into it. No real complaints from me (for once). Looking forward to more time traveling shenanigans soon.

Doctor Who - The Woman Who Fell To Earth

Fall From Grace

Doctor Who
The Girl Who Fell To Earth
Airdate: 7th October 2018
BBC 1

Warning: One spoiler in here... though I expect you’ll see that dramatic moment coming a mile off due to pre-publicity reveals mixed with the way the characters are written.

So back in the early 1980s, when Tom Baker finally made good on some of his previous threats and quit Doctor Who for good (almost), there was real possibility that the new incarnation of The Doctor might be a lady. And the same rumours persisted in the British tabloids when Peter Davison finally decided to leave. And I remember, when those rumours first started flying, 14 year old me was terrified at the prospect. How can a lady be the male character The Doctor. Nobody had really thought of the idea that a Timelord, although able to change their appearance and, quite obviously, certain parts of their personality... could possibly change their sex. There just wasn’t a precedent for it. Sure, there were lady Timelords and we all, in those days, assumed that they always were ladies from birth to death and birth again.

Switch to modern times and I actually welcome the idea. There have been examples in the last few years of Timelords regenerating and changing their sex at least twice (and don’t think I didn’t know where you were going to be going with that idea Moffat) and I’d like to think attitudes have changed with the youngsters along with a lot of things involving female inclusion in film and TV. Although, it has to be said, when Jodie Whittaker was first announced last year, a lot of kids (including the kids well into their 30s, 40s and 50s) were not accepting of the idea. Equally, there were also a lot of happier, supportive people too and I’m hoping the new series will really hit the ground running.

That being said, I do have my reservations about this series now but they are much more to do with things which have been said by the new show runner Chris Chibnall rather than anything else and, at the end of the day, I reckon his show direction can’t be any worse than the Steven Moffat years. Nothing against Mr. Moffat mind... he’s always been on my radar as a brilliant writer since I first saw the Doctor Who episode Blink but, he always struck me as someone who would have brilliant openings and terrible finishes...often waving some nonsensical made up scientific sounding tosh and wielding it like a magic wand for a quick fix.

So here we have the 13th Doctor Jodie Whittaker headlining, although she’s technically the 14th since the addition of John Hurt (and don’t even get me started on things established in the Tom Baker story The Brain Of Morbius). She’s also been given a whole load of companions which is something the early shows in the 1960s used to do a lot and which is a trend that came back into fashion a bit during the Peter Davison years. So we have a new Doctor, three new companions... Tosin Cole as Ryan Sinclair, Mandip Gill as Yasmin Khan and the one and only Bradley Walsh as Graham O’Brien... a new format with hour long episodes (but a shorter series), a new composer in the form of Segun Akinola and, oh yeah, everything’s new.

And it’s also not a bad episode, as it happens.. although I have to say I was the only one in the house who actually liked it. Then again, my folks always take a couple of seasons to get used to the new Doctor.

Right. Where to start.

Well Jodie Whittaker is almost spot on. She’s a bundle of energy and I certainly felt confident she can succeed as The Doctor. I say ‘almost’ because at the moment she seems to be playing it a little like Peter Capaldi’s version in some ways... I could almost hear him saying the lines in my head but I suspect this is more to do with the way the dialogue has been written. The writers maybe haven’t found their feet with the new personality as yet and I’m sure, just like Capaldi did, the character will be more evolved by the time we get around to Jodie’s second series. Anyway, the important thing is... she’s pretty great in the role. Of course, no Doctor has ever proven themselves before they go up against the Daleks but, until we get to see that for ourselves (and we really do need to see that at some point) then I’m confident Whittaker can do a good job of protecting people from alien invasions and such like. And, as it was, the dialogue was pretty great at any rate.

Her companions?

All really good. I was worried the larger ensemble would not give Jodie room to shine but she easily holds her own with what is a fantastic supporting cast, all with certain quirks which lend themselves to a, perhaps somewhat obvious but ultimately refreshing (for this show), set of dramatic character developments.

Okay, another plus is that the incidental music was actually quite good. I was really worried when Murray Gold left that the glue of the show would melt a little and things wouldn’t hang together but the new composer is doing okay so far. I couldn’t detect any leitmotif for the new Doctor yet other than riffs on Ron Grainer and Delia Derbyshire’s original title theme but it’s early days yet.

If I had to be a little critical I would say the actual storyline and plotting wasn’t up to much and was a little bit obvious in a lot of places. That being said though, the consequences of people’s actions shown was good with a fair few deaths including one important character called Grace who dies while helping save the others. However, the dialogue saved things a lot of the time and I even liked the cheesy way the writers thought to address the growing incidents of knife crime in the UK at the moment.

That being said, there were a few things I didn’t like.

First thing is... no TARDIS. We know it’s waiting for The Doctor somewhere but we don’t know where. Chibnall said there would be no multi-episode story arcs in this show but finding the TARDIS is a pretty big set up if you ask me.

Secondly... no opening titles. Something tells me this is going to be a regular feature of the new show and I really hope I’m wrong about that. We need that familiar theme and set of graphics welcoming us in each week. This seems a bit of a no brainer to me.

Thirdly... there were a few little moments which reminded me that the show is as cheap as it ever was. One thing in particular, where a hand smashes through a glass window but the edit takes us away just as the impact is about to happen makes me believe the sugar glass, or whatever it is they’re using these days, didn’t break all that convincingly and they couldn’t afford to do another take. I may be wrong about that but that’s what that creative edit felt like to me. That last criticism is only a minor thing though. Doctor Who was always cheap and that was sometimes part of the charm. It’s never harmed it too much over the years. Occasionally, maybe... but not for long.

And that’s me done on the first episode of the new series. Too early to tell what kind of shape and style the current incarnation of the show will take but I think we’re off to a fairly good start here. And even if all the other scripts turn out to be lousy... Jodie Whittaker is going to be a good version of The Doctor. I’m pretty sure about that.

So, looking forward to seeing what the timey wimey future will bring to this series. It’s a shame it’s on a Sunday night but what can you do?

Doctor Who - Empress of Mars

19th Centauri Fops

Doctor Who - Empress of Mars
Airdate: 10th June 2017
BBC 1

Warning: Some slight spoilerage about the appearance of a certain character here.

Okay, so that was surprising. After last series’ one truly abominable episode, Sleep No More, Mark Gatiss gives us new hope with one of the few, as it turns out, of the latest season’s non-dud episodes. There’s still a chance, I guess, that this isn’t a season with a majority of duff episodes... after the strong opening three... and I hope this episode is the shape of things to come for the remaining three weeks.

I have to admit I was dreading this after Gatiss basically ruined The Ice Warriors for me, who are the lead monsters this week, in a Matt Smith episode a few years ago by doing to them exactly what Ridley Scott did to H. R. Giger's majestic, dead space jockey creatures from A L I E N in Prometheus... made them a ‘something in a suit’. However, although said suitage is certainly mentioned again in this episode, it’s just a passing reference and we have more of the hulking menace of the original creatures who first went up against Patrick Troughton in the 1960s back. I believe, actually, since they were off our screens for so long up until a few years ago, that this is only the fourth incarnation of The Doctor they have come up against.

Okay, so the episode starts ‘fairly’ strongly (and it would have been a lot stronger without the preview trailer from last week) with The Doctor, Bill and Nardole dropping in on NASA. One of the few weaknesses of this particular episode is in this pre-credits scene, actually, because... why the heck did they drop into NASA in the first place? Anyway, NASA receives a photo transmission from one of their probes of the surface of Mars and, clearly spelled out in some rocks placed on the ground are the words... “God Save The Queen”.

So of course Bill, Nardole and The Doctor, who has somehow figured out, more or less, when those rocks were placed, travel back to Victorian era Mars and they are startled to find a bunch of Victorian troops stranded there, along with their “Man Friday”... a loan Ice Warrior. Of course, in traditional Tomb Of The Cybermen fashion, it’s not long before a small group (because, you know, budgets and costumes) of Ice Warriors being led by their Empress are locked in battle with said humans on the surface of the alien world. What’s more, Nardole has accidentally deserted with the TARDIS and can’t seem to get back to The Doctor and Bill, who are also stranded in this mess of a situation. So... can The Doctor and the ‘Man Friday’ Ice Warrior broker some kind of peace between the two races before the humans are totally wiped out?

It’s really great to have a ‘mostly’ stand alone episode of Doctor Who like this which works well as a short form story and the performances by all of the usual suspects sparkle and gives Gatiss’ words their due. I’ve always liked this kind of Victoriana science fiction style of story (I love the writings of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, for example) and it seems clear the people involved in this episode must have done too. Big shout out to the costume designers and builders because the wonderful Victorian spacesuit with the nice old grammophone style speaking tube are a lovely bit of steampunk sensibility brought to the show. This is good stuff and the episode is fast paced and ingenious.

Also, there are a load of shout outs to things in this episode for fans of the art of the moving image to revel in. Not just movies such as The Terminator and The Thing but also some great nods to the history of the show too... as is becoming customary over the last few years in Doctor Who. For example, we have a lovely portrait of Queen Victoria which the human soldiers have brought with them to Mars and it’s clearly Queen Victoria as played by Pauline Collins (No Honestly, Shirley Valentine etc.) who played Queen Victoria in the David Tennant/Billie Piper episode about Victoria being trapped with The Doctor and Rose in a battle between king fu Zen Monks and a werewolf in the episode Tooth And Claw (an encounter which brought about her creating Torchwood, which Captain Jack Harkness, as played by John Barrowman, would later head up).

My favourite little nod, however, was something I saw coming just a second or two before it happened. There is a voice on a viewscreen and, just after, the image of the alien doing the talking is revealed. Yes, it’s Alpha Centauri, the ‘hermaphroditic hexapod’ who was a delegate involved in the delicate negotiations which also involved the Ice Warriors in the 1972 classic Jon Pertwee story The Curse Of Peladon and the not so classic sequel, in 1974, The Monster Of Peladon. Alpha Centauri has got to be one of the most affectionately cheapest and ridiculous monster designs in the entire history of the show (I can think of others, though) and it’s nice to see ‘it’ back on screen for a fortunately brief period of time here. What’s even more startling is it’s voiced, once again, by 92 year old Ysanne Churchman, who voiced the character in its two other appearances and who is probably more famous for playing Grace Archer in the long running British radio show The Archers (a character who died in a fire on that show in 1955).

So, yeah, a nice slice of nostalgia for fans of the Pertwee era and it certainly left me with a good vibe.

However, we also have the return of Missy/The Master as the only way Nardole can get the TARDIS back to The Doctor is to release Missy to help. Which reveals a possible other weakness of the episode as it stands at the moment, without the context of whatever’s going to go down with Missy in weeks to come. That is to say... we have absolutely no idea why the TARDIS malfunctioned in the first place. Was it just pulling itself out of danger like it occasionally has before (I don’t think it would leave The Doctor without coming back for him). It certainly looked like an invisible hand was pulling at the controls. Or is something more sinister going on. Was the TARDIS reprogrammed to do this on cue so that Missy would gain access? I guess we will, at some point, probably find out... or possibly not since the resolutions in most series finales of Doctor Who these days often leave a lot of badly forgotten loose ends and a lot to be desired. We shall see.

There’s also the matter of how the probable predecessors of the Ice Warriors set many years in our future on Mars, in the David Tennant episode The Waters Of Mars, can somehow be fully evolved and in hibernation for thousands of years in the Victorian era. I’m not too fussed though. Something for the fans to figure out, I guess.

However, as far as Empress Of Mars goes, for now, let me congratulate all involved, especially Mark Gatiss, in bringing us a cracking episode of Doctor Who just when we really needed one. God Save The Queen.