tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88664405863430586922024-03-18T20:57:06.841-07:00The WatcherThe Watcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11602758115357737803noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866440586343058692.post-86234468928060055452008-07-05T13:38:00.000-07:002008-07-05T13:58:14.718-07:00Time we said goodbye…of course, nobody <em>really</em> thought he was regenerating, did they? Still, that ‘regeneration energy’ business struck Team Watcher as slight swizz, as if Rassilon’s great gift to the Time Lords - a complete cellular remix, but only when strictly necessary - was little more than the recipe for a pick-me-up, like Lucozade.<br /><br />That said, it only registered a 4.4 on the ‘Naaaaaah!’ scale from the voters on the sofa; the Daleks’ temporal prison round the TARDIS got a six, while Jackie ‘Flippin’’ Tyler’s return got a nine, plus four for her gun. Honestly.<br /><br />No, here’s the thing: at least the non-regeneration had a sort of purpose, and linked to the spare hand, which was in the first Tennant story, and later reunited him with Jack, and was used by the Master last season, and so brought a kind of… well, one hesitates to use the phrase ‘organic unity’, but… brought a kind of organic unity to proceedings. We were in the tonal rough and tumble of Russell T Davies’s masterplan, but at least things had been thought through.<br /><br />Although there are the stand-alone specials to come, this really felt like the end of the RTD era, too - flashing back, wrapping up, signing off. One always worries about the extra-long eps, especially after last year’s season-closer, and the one with the… (<em>shudders</em>) <em>Scissor… Sisters… </em>bit…, but this time it wasn’t just for gorging, trumping and exploding (although there was plenny o’ that), a blow-out for the big man.<br /><br />Rather, there was space for characters we’ve come to really love - yes, we’re looking at you, Donna Noble - to step forward and shine. And nice as it was to see all the old faces, if any more fellow travellers had come back they’d have needed another TARDIS; time too, for some real goodbyes, and a clearing of the console room.<br /><br />Having rebooted Rose, and risked devaluing all the emotional capital invested in 2006’s Bad Wolf Bay parting (no, it’s all right, it’s just something in my eye), it was brave to go back - and it worked beautifully. It’s odd to think of that one-hearted Doctor and Rose really together, but it’s right, too. If RTD wants his cake after he’s eaten it, let him. Somebody get him another cake!<br /><br />But if Rose brought the Doctor back to life, he brought Donna alive. Has any companion suffered a crueller fate than she? To see new worlds, expand her mind, save the universe, save reality - and then have it all, even the memories, snatched away, rubbed out like the stars were.<br /><br />Forget your lovey-dovey stuff, that is yer actual A-grade heavy, RTD creating a fate genuinely worse than the show’s oldest friend, death. And it was all there from the start, the clues about lost worlds, rubbed-out reality… Donna had every world at her feet, and it was taken away; she lost the universe, her better self stolen. Gulp.<br /><br />All brilliantly played, needless to say; the performances this time round make season four (or 30 if you prefer, ye olde Whovians) the best of the new series, we’re saying. Tennant outstanding, of course, his efforts lifted and matched by Tate’s range and energy; love the moments when they riff on each other, he gawping and wide-eyed, she rabbiting and brilliant-ing and uncheckable. It’s a real shame it had to end.<br /><br />But things do, don’t they? This has! Your correspondent toyed with a Bonekickers blog but… well, our hearts just weren’t in it. And then they flagged up that new BBC Merlin thing, didn’t they, and we suddenly remembered that in one of the Doctor Who spin-off books he, the Doctor, sort of was Merlin - with ginger hair! - only it was a future projection of an <em>alternative</em> Doctor, and then it didn’t happen like that because of the TV Movie, so the timelines changed and then…<br /><br />Ah, but I can see you’ve already stopped reading. I know that look.<br /><br />See you at Christmas, then (or when they officially reveal Paul McGann is coming back; same thing!).The Watcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11602758115357737803noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866440586343058692.post-3426519818499254432008-07-02T13:35:00.000-07:002008-07-02T13:39:07.055-07:00Regeneration: Who knew?If you can read this, it means that - finally - the Internet is cool enough to touch again.<br /><br />As has been widely reported, the sheer level of fan speculation following Saturday’s explosive climax (it reached an incredible 17.3 on the Hugh-Bonneville Scale) caused heat exchangers at the Internet’s UK hub - actually a giant warehouse in Rugby - to go into meltdown.<br /><br />As I write, fire crews are still damping down frothing pockets of superheated, liquid opinion, while explosives teams are slowly defusing servers full of unfounded conjecture about the Osterhagen Key.<br /><br />It’s great, innit?<br /><br />When your correspondent first broke cover back in April, we recalled a time when Doctor Who was the love that dare not speak its name; this week it’s been hard to get people to stop (although it might be that they think it’s all the Watcher is interested in… quite correctly, as it goes).<br /><br />There have been texts, calls, e-mails and whatnot from the long- and longer-lost.<br /><br />Some Saturday snapshots, then, Russell T Davies-style, from Team Watcher’s UK operatives, a loose collective known (by their wives) as the Big Children of Time; cue that teleprinter…<br /><br />…in Edinburgh, a ‘respected’ geneticist blows mushroom biryani threw his nose, such is his excitement at the ‘I’m regenerating!!’ bit…<br /><br />…in the Black Country, a hospital radio DJ slips on an emergency prog-rock tape, dropping the requests and shout-outs to Ward D so he can watch the last 20 minutes of the show uninterrupted by suffering…<br /><br />…in deepest Worcestershire, a church - <em>church!</em> - barbecue-and-celebration is delayed by 25 minutes while the organiser experiences (ahem) ‘car trouble’ on the way there…<br /><br />…in the blasted East, a gentlemen connected with the Press spectacularly fails to get to sleep through sheer ‘It can’t be!/It might be!’ excitement; he was, at the last count, 36...<br /><br />What’s neat about all this chatter is the way it mirrors the show’s quaint adoration of the mobile phone, the ’net and social networking sites - surely no one’s idea of a new thing any more.<br /><br />But RTD in particular seems in the thrall of connectivity - odd, given that instant communication arguably strips some essential urgency from drama (though to be fair the writer does use it to spring the narrative forward, on the whole).<br /><br />Perhaps it’s just an extension of the way the show’s own big-screen, backdrop moments - y’know, First Contact with aliens, alien invasion, er, alien invasion - are validated by constantly referring to them on the telly. The Doctor himself viewed one such happening in the Tylers’ front room, and thanks to Saturday’s ep., we now know his phone number (no, don’t bother: we tried).<br /><br />Of course, you could say it’s just a savvy show reflecting its own time, the information age; quite right too. But the odd, really pleasing thing about Saturday’s is-he-or-isn’t-he? regeneration twist was that nobody at home, or online, or anywhere but the future saw it coming.<br /><br />RTD played us like a flute - and all in the name of delivering the most spine-realigning, satisfying few minutes of Saturday night telly since, ooh, June 8, 1974. It was old-skool, showbiz surprise, the lost art of not knowing what’s going to happen next, rediscovered: how very Doctor Who.<br /><br />Now, it’s highly likely that David Tennant will continue in the lead role… but suddenly we just can’t be sure, and what we already ‘know’ about the Christmas special, and next year’s schedule, and 2010... well, all bets are off.<br /><br />Reading the online runes is suddenly a bit like listening to Dalek Caan after he’s had a few.<br /><br />Basically if you need to know, you’ll have to watch, Saturday’s finale really is unmissable, event telly, just like it used to be.<br /><br />Anything could happen.<br /><br />I like Saturdays.The Watcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11602758115357737803noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866440586343058692.post-1684002764984775372008-06-28T13:23:00.000-07:002008-06-28T13:29:02.726-07:00Last-minute changeWhat? <em>What?!<br /></em><br />As your correspondent (currently convalescing in East coast exile) drops, drained and confused, into the Chair of Reckoning for the weekly outpouring, the mobile goes off.<br /><br />It’s a distress signal from the sofa back at Watcher Acres - and if I were to record here precisely what the text said just after the end of the episode… well, it would effectively be my resignation letter. Let’s just say it’s like ‘Flippin’ eck’, only turned up to 11.<br /><br />As your resident Mysterious Projection From The Future, I feel I’ve let you down, because I just didn’t see it coming. But did you? I mean it can’t be, can it? If it is… but it can’t be! But it could be! No, but it isn’t. Relax: in the cool, calm seconds it’s taking me to type this, I am suddenly at one with everything. It isn’t. Breathe, and relax. Think of cool, cool moss…<br /><br />BUT IT COULD BE! IT COULD BE!<br /><br />I blame the trees, a lovely mindless day walking in the trees, tea in the flask, breeze in the face, not a care in the world; I was lulled, sloppy, mind off the job. But, in my defence, there was no disturbance in The Force, no sign of The Darkness threatened in the weather forecast, no distant clang of the Cloister Bell.<br /><br />‘Yes, the Daleks are back tonight’, I remember musing idly – I may even have been humming something by Delia Derbyshire – ‘and one’s had a bit of a paint job, and unless that shadowy figure was Jackie Tyler in a pimped mobility scooter, we should see Davros again tonight, and we haven’t seen him for ages, have we, not since… ooh, I wonder what kind of tree that is…’<br /><br />And all that did happen, of course, although up to about the 44th minute this was perhaps the most horrible, noisy episode we’ve had, genuinely hard on the eye, ear and soul. I felt like I was trying to watch the actual show while someone changed channels by smashing my face against the television set: ooh look, it’s Sarah Jane (PMPHH!)… I mean, Captain Jack (PMPHH!)… no, it’s the other one…(PMPHH!)… er, is that Dempsey and Makepeace? PMPHH! PMPHH! PMPHH!<br /><br />People running, shouting, watching people watching other people watch other people on big screens, big guns locked and loaded, the end of the world redone as a kebab-house rumble. I almost wasn’t having any of it, until the Daleks zapped that mouthy bloke’s house, a restful suburban dream-wish moment amid all the volume and face-pulling.<br /><br />But then it was back, the only calm clear voice the Judoon sergeant, whose ‘Kro! Blo! Flo! Mo! Ho! Yo! Bo! Ho Ho Ho! Toe! Flo Jo!’ seemed to sum things up nicely. Pity he’s thrown his lot in with The Shadow Proclamation, which is, apparently – and despite all the dark mutterings – merely the foyer of a smart dental practice, now ‘manned’ by former child genius James Harries.<br /><br />But that was before The Big Surprise…<br /><br />Russell T Davies: part genius, part wind machine. He’s like a brilliant chum you invite round for dinner in the hope of <em>bons mots</em> and airy charm, only to see him eat everything in sight, off every plate, before regurgitating and rounding out the evening with a protracted postern blast.<br /><br />Except… he then comes back, washes up, and tells you the most thrillingly brilliant thing ever.<br /><br />He did it last year with Utopia, the cosmic twin of this show in which nothing much happened for 30 minutes… and then suddenly The Master’s back. The writer even organised a real-life thunderbolt for that bit, at least at a storm-lashed Watcher HQ, and the effect was pretty much the same this time.<br /><br />Ah, that deliberately-overdone run as Rose and the Doctor rush to embrace; the slo-mo; the syrupy strings; the wry smile on Donna’s face.<br /><br />The Dalek.<br /><br />The gone-into-negative death-ray.<br /><br />The regeneration crisis.<br /><br />The regeneration.<br /><br />I mean it can’t be, can it? If it is… but it can’t be! But it could be! No, but it isn’t.<br /><br />BUT IT COULD BE! IT COULD BE!The Watcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11602758115357737803noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866440586343058692.post-41321809971158704622008-06-21T13:19:00.000-07:002008-06-21T13:21:46.928-07:00Left in no doubtWell, it was the Doctor-Lite one… but otherwise this was as heavy, bleak and brilliant as anything ever done under the Doctor Who banner. It was almost… ach!.. <em>too good</em>…<br /><br />Doctor Who’s always been about death, see, really; something about death. Not morbidly, but courageously: it champions life - grabbing at movement and sensation and change - because it understands that death is always the favourite in the big race.<br /><br />Writer Russell T Davies certainly understands that - and what a brilliant, long game he’s playing with the viewers. First the showman’s tricks, the feints, the misdirections; <em>‘This season will be the ‘lighter one’</em>(!)’. And then this.<br /><br />Yes, perhaps this season has lacked gravity at some points - only suddenly that doesn’t seem at all true, after watching recent events replayed with the happy endings rubbed out. Just this once, nobody lives, the Doctor’s presence never felt more massively that by his absence.<br /><br />Even the fairly fluffy Voyage of the Damned was suddenly the prelude to Threads (I know I’m not the only one flashbacking on that mushroom cloud; imagine if the Christmas Day episode had ended like that!), while the formerly-cutesy Adipose ate America, and Donna and family ended up in the desolate streets of Peter Watkins’ War Game. Martha dead. Sarah Jane and gang dead. The only bright spot was Torchwood copping it, too.<br /><br />I’ve said it before, but, well: everything else is kids’ TV. Despite what the other inmates of Watcher Towers might have you believe, your correspondent isn’t actually aged eight, mentally. So I ask: how is this heavy stuff going down in the longest-day living rooms of the nation? The show’s always been scary, but some of the ideas here - labour camps, noble sacrifice under the wheels of a truck, moving to Leeds - are troubling in a way that, say, murderous giant vegetables just weren’t. Are the spawn sticking with it all?<br /><br />The script was well served by director Graeme Harper too; ace with action, he handled the intimate stuff confidently. RTD has always loved the domestics - back-chat and hard home truths - and here it’s beautifully woven through a vast notion: death in excelcis, The End of Everything. Harper had something to offer every idea.<br /><br />But the actors, of course, stole it. Bernard Cribbins’ cameos until now have been sketches of lovely, warm wonder; here his old soldier, all rheumy eyes and haunted heart, made the apocalyptic streets a terrible notion, not just sci-fi set dressing. And what a shame we haven’t seen more of Donna’s mum, Jacqueline King - fine actress.<br /><br />But what we thought would be Rose’s night was Donna’s - I’ll stick my neck out and say Catherine Tate should make Bafta space on her mantelpiece (if that’s okay with Ant, Dec and Robbie Williams). How far she has brought the character from that first Christmas outing, a Donna any right-minded individual would queue up to push under a van. Now she’s funny and sad and brave and scared at the same time; she’s true. The scene in the time-thing where she suddenly understands that she really has to die… well, as I say, put her name on the plaque now.<br /><br />Loving the new Rose, too - Rose the revenant, a ghostly, hardened time-hopper in the Doctor’s image, glib because she’s seen it all now, and words can’t convey how bad it’s going to get.<br /><br />Oh, and the Bad Wolf stuff! Up there with the ‘Professor Yana checks his watch’ in the need-a-wee! stakes, as far as we’re concerned.<br /><br />If we were giving out stars, it would be the big five - but the stars are going out of course…<br /><br />Anyway, next time: look who they’ve wheeled out…The Watcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11602758115357737803noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866440586343058692.post-24676797272617418152008-06-14T13:17:00.000-07:002008-06-14T13:19:54.501-07:00Don't knock it till you've tried itThe one predictable thing about new Who is that – like the Doctor himself - you never know what you’re going to get into next. Midnight was one of those no one saw coming.<br /><br />You know, a lovely old lady of the Watcher’s acquaintance often uses the word ‘different’ to describe things she’s tried, in the spirit of necessary adventure, but probably wouldn’t want to try again, thanks all the same. She uses the word kindly, diplomatically, but Midnight – a show partly about fear of the different - probably falls into just that category. And yet, and yet…<br /><br />If anything it was probably scarier than the last story, with which it shared some ideas. There, when the isolated humans faced an exterior threat they stuck together, more or less; here, the intruder unleashed something really nasty - a frenzy of murderous paranoia and self-loathing.<br /><br />The babble of doubling, hating, blaming voices and the booming knocks really did seem to suck the air out of the place, the tension wracked up by Alice Troughton’s (no relation) edgy direction. Are they sure this is kids’ TV?<br /><br />This was, in some ways, Voyage of the Damned remixed, scaled down and made self-consciously theatrical, the big sets and simplicity of that Christmas Day confection pressed into a suffocating space where words are weapons and nobody is in a hurry to be noble (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Bad Wolf?, anyone?).<br /><br /> It certainly gave the brilliant-as-ever Tennant the chance to polish his Dane, as they say (no, it’s not a euphemism; he’s doin’ Hamlet, innit?). Words or action, Doctor? Well, cornered and unsure he demands silence and inaction – most unheroic.<br /><br />And how perfect that this most verbose incarnation (‘A skinny idiot ranting about every single thing that happens to be in front of him!’, no less), having failed to persuade or out-brain his fellow passengers, almost dies because the words suddenly run out and they don’t trust clever types. That’s… y’know… like… heavy…<br /><br />(Heavyweight cast too: you seldom see anything less than excellence from Lesley Sharp (those eyes!), but Lindsey Coulson and David Troughton (most definitely some relation) too? Many viewers of the Watcher’s vintage might shudder to see lovely young King Peladon is now a balding older man in a cardy, but there’s always the videos, and he’s still absolutely magic.)<br /><br />But all that said, what was RTD OBE’s script really getting at? There’s deep, unsettling obliqueness… and then there’s sub-Star Trek-ian portentousness that can’t quite remember what it wanted to say. Which was this?<br /><br />Team Watcher Might need another look at it all before deciding… but you can’t help admiring this format-stretching effort from the big man. All-over-the-place is, after all, just an undiplomatic way of saying different, and different is what we like<br /><br />Anyway, next time: the Doctor’s dead, Rose has risen again and Donna’s doomed – we’re heading in strange directions in Turn Left…The Watcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11602758115357737803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866440586343058692.post-17845424037639396632008-06-07T12:35:00.000-07:002008-06-07T12:41:57.948-07:00An awkward silenceStrange news from another world: it appears - and perhaps you’d better sit down - some people didn’t like Silence in the Library.<br /><br />Yes, yes, I know exactly what you’re thinking: the chumps! But it isn’t like that, friends. As contradictory as it may sound, these nay-sayers are basically decent types - some sympathisers, some lapsed Whovians drawn back to the faith, some new fans, all clean and tidy types with brains and responsible jobs and partners and opinions and stuff.<br /><br />They are, in a word, viewers - or at least they were until last week’s adventure (you remember: the Absolutely Brilliant One About Death with the space library, killer shadows, killer lines, a murderous skeleton in a spacesuit and some chicken bones). But one miscreant admitted - and I didn’t even know this was technically possible - <em>actually turning the telly off halfway through the episode</em>.<br /><br />Another confessed to disappointment on discovering there was a part two due - and not as in ‘I just can’t wait another week!’, either.<br /><br />The true Whovians were need-a-wee excited, of course… but it’s all led to more brooding than normal at Watcher Towers, dark mutterings of the ‘What Does It All Mean?’ variety. Because… well, what does it all mean?<br /><br />Long-term fans found themselves flung into an alternative universe back in 2005, when their show was not only alive again (with three exclamation marks) but a palpable hit, and no longer a guilty secret. Everyone liked it, it seemed. That was weird, sure… but you can get used to popularity, however meaningless.<br /><br />And we put up with weaker scripts, and occasional flabby bits, because mostly it was brilliant, and grown-up, and energised by a big Saturday night audience; the executive producer, the great RTD, actually said ‘We feared a small, niche audience’. Well, he didn’t get it… but is that the way things are going?<br /><br />Because get this: viewing figures were down last week (although the appreciation-index stuff was gold standard). Now, a lot of weird variables feed into viewing figures, including sport and the weather, plus complicated-but-dumb other telly-stuff beyond the Watcher’s ken (Britain’s Got Talent? Yeah… but it’s probably not on ITV).<br /><br />And of course, the Beeb is meant to be slightly above the mere chasing of big numbers… but having had a hit, Aunty won’t want a prodigal show go all niche-y again, will she?<br /><br />Still, Watcherworld was encouraged by reports from the South, where a <em>bona fide</em> particle physicist of our acquaintance admitted to being ‘a bit scaredy’ after seeing the Vashta Nerada (he spends a lot of time in the dark. With, y’know, particles); and from the West, where a sensible eight-year-old was too scared to go to bed until Wednesday.<br />Now that’s how you blood future Doctor Who fans… and thus perhaps save the show from those swarming black clouds of disaffection…<br /><br />What’s that? What about <em>this </em>week’s episode? Oh, brilliant, absolutely brilliant - a dark, dark, mind-blowing fairytale about (amongst other things) small matters like being, and nothingness, and the dreadful ticking of the clock.<br /><br />Brilliant.<br /><br />But you knew that.<br /><br />Let’s just hope that’s a<em> good</em> thing.<br /><br />Anyway, next time: tickets please, for the bus ride to oblivion… the Doctor’s son’s on board - and it’s nearly Midnight…The Watcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11602758115357737803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866440586343058692.post-14883418895186632632008-05-31T13:06:00.000-07:002008-05-31T13:13:44.835-07:00Shelf life... and death…and <em>that </em>is how you do <em>that</em>, in case anyone, anywhere was in any doubt.<br /><br />Good news, fellow travellers: the future of Doctor Who is looking absolutely dazzling… and very, very, very dark. Really, very. I think it’s fair to say, without any hint of over-exaggeration, that Silence in the Library was one of the Greatest Things Ever To Happen - not just on telly, but anywhere, ever… and the bloke who wrote it is taking over the whole show very soon.<br /><br />I need a sit down, or air, or a non-sonic Screwdriver (large, please, barman)…<br /><br />As the Doctor nearly said, there were so many brilliant, brilliant things in those 43 minutes (how could it be a mere 43 minutes?) that we’re gonna need bigger heads to take it all in!<br /><br />Space. Library. Sounds like a Hartnell classic, a brilliant, pure concept. But then, you see, already the dark mind of writer Steven Moffat (you’re buying him two pints of whatever he’s having, next time you see him, by the way) is twisting it into new, confounding shapes, refining and expanding themes and motifs from previous work: the fierce power of a child’s mind; how ideas shape reality; disturbing fusions of personality and technology; how writing and recording a life is sometimes the only way of adding meaning to it (All those books! All those biographies! All those adventures!); and the sorry turning of the last pages (All that silence. All that death).<br /><br />But even then, there’s more to unpack. What if you don’t travel the slow path, one way through time? If someone has a book of your life - even the stuff that hasn’t happened yet - do you read it? What about the spoilers?<br /><br />And this isn’t even the bit that everyone in the playground/office will be talking about - that’s the Vashta-ruddy-Nerada, the scariest-ever baddies since the last scariest-ever baddies, Blink’s Quantum Angels, created by - yup - yer man Moffat.<br /><br />Imagine: it’s not what’s in the dark you should be scared of - and you should - <em>but the darkness itself</em>.<br /><br />So, Mr Moffat: there are indeed monsters under the bed; statues are, as many of us suspected, alive (don’t blink, by the way); and the darkness can tear you to shreds in seconds. Yes, I’m afraid your application for the position of supply teacher has, sadly, been unsuccessful, this time…<br /><br />But know the darkest thing here? Probably the most genuinely disturbing thing on telly in a while? The sad undoing of that pretty, stupid girl who wandered off into the shadows, just like in the fairytales.<br /><br />Words let the mind express, create, communicate, code your personality. How horrible, then, when suddenly they become empty, meaningless (remember ‘Are you my Mummy?’; who could forget). How hopeless they are at comforting. And how horrible the silence that follows when they stop - the sound of Moffat, a book-lover, a word man, briefly losing his faith.<br /><br />He then twists it again, making Proper Dave’s sad, confused ‘Hey! Who turned out all the lights?’ into a chilling mantra - probably about existence - only one uttered by a skeleton in a spacesuit bent on death. Only, as they say, on Doctor Who.<br /><br />And to think some people actually believe Doctor Who is a kids’ show! Listen: <em>everything else is a kids’ show</em>. Fact.<br /><br />Anyway, next time…<br /><br />Hey!<br /><br />Who turned out all the lights?The Watcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11602758115357737803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866440586343058692.post-47954075696571568002008-05-24T08:59:00.000-07:002008-05-24T09:05:21.321-07:00Whorovision: It's really no contest...Look, keep quiet at the back, will you. Yes, it’s a more than a bit annoying that the Eurovision Song Contest (all 38 hours of it) has nudged the Doctor off into Dark Space 8 for a week, but let’s be honest: the two shows do have what might be considered a shared constituency - last week’s writer Gareth Roberts co-penned a nice DW/ESC spoof called Bang-Bang-A-Boom! a few years back - so there will be some Audiential Carry-Acrossput, as we say in digital media circles.<br /><br />Simply put, many of you will be happy enough.<br /><br />Not the Watcher, though. As far as we’re concerned the contest hasn’t been the same since sixth-Doctor-lookalike Michael Ball was stitched up back in ’92 (or was it ’91? Pain clouds the memory).<br /><br />The cherubic nans’ favourite bounded down the old stairs, like an overfriendly tiger promised a couple of steaks for his trouble, and simply roared into a killer - kill-er - versh of One Step At A Time. ‘One step out of time/ One reason to put this love on the line again/ Can’t believe that it’s true/ Now I’m one step out of time…’ it went. Er, probably.<br /><br />Anyway, fast-forward to the end of a very sorry saga: The Ball was second. Or third. Not top, anyway. The winner was - and I can still ‘tsk’ about this, when memory catches me unawares - Melinda, a handsome-enough Belgian with a ’tauche, and her thoughtful take on the old why-can’t-we-live-together? business, End The Crazy Madness (This Nuclear War In My Heart). Impossible to dance to, need I add.<br /><br />And - not to put too fine a point on it - I had money on Ball. ‘Can’t believe that it’s true’! You said it, Mikey. Talk to my landlady.<br /><br />Anyway: has the ESC ever been the same since the participants and organisers twigged the camp thing? It was just more fun in old days, when someone who looked like Lordi - but without the make-up - might just have won it. Never shall we see their like again.<br /><br />So at Watcher Acres it’ll be the new, old routine: pizza, a crate of Strongbow and a Curse of Peladon/End of The World double-bill, two prime slices of Who with a spiritual kinship to the old Euro V, in which disparate casts of aliens (variously, a woman who looks likes a trampoline; a desiccated skull in a bubblegum machine; a five-foot hermaphrodite cucumber in a shower curtain; and a warthog dressed like an ageing Teddy Boy) all come together on strange ground to forge Galactic Peace Through Song.<br /><br />Or something like that. Well, in the 1972 story, the godlike Jon Pertwee croons a Venusian lullaby, while the 2005 episode does have Tainted Love and Toxic in it; people, you know what I’m talking about. And with the sound down and ESC coverage on the wireless you wouldn’t know the difference, honestly, especially when the ‘apple champagne’ kicks in…<br /><br />Some parting thoughts:<br />Sandie Shaw: The companion we never had!<br />Lulu: The other companion we never had!<br />Lynsey de Paul: Likewise!<br />Abba: Stylists to the Cybermen!The Watcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11602758115357737803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866440586343058692.post-57891269832072733112008-05-17T13:21:00.000-07:002008-05-17T13:28:09.671-07:00Wonderful nonsenseWell, that’s more like it. After slightly undercooked, over-egged fare of late, here was something light, sparkling and giggle-inducing - just perfect for a garden party (and they’re always bugged by wasps, aren’t they?) Surely no one summoned to the parlour for the Unicorn and the Wasp could have been disappointed? And it was On At Seven O’clock, aka The Proper Time, schedulers, d’ya hear? Except… well, we’ll get to that later…<br /><br />Confession: Team Watcher are suckers for the ‘celebrity historicals’ in new Who, and writer Gareth Roberts’ follow-up to The Shakespeare Code was a smasher, sharing its playful sensibility, knowing references (there were loads of book titles slipped in, of course, though no Man in the Brown Suit, oddly enough) and deliberately heightened atmosphere.<br /><br />Shooing a real figure into the Whoniverse whets the appetite, sets the tone quickly, gets the audience up to speed - and then allows a clever script to start playing with the conventions. A country house mystery with Agatha plus the Doctor plus Felicity Kendall’s illegitimate alien wasp-child? Bring it! You don’t get that on EastEnders. Yet.<br /><br />It was very much in Christie’s image too: prod the plot too hard and it might just fall over, but what a lovely way to pass the time. And - clever old thing - Roberts linked this to the deeper idea of Christie’s real-life disappointment and doubt. Did her books matter? Would they be remembered? The phrase ‘wonderful nonsense’ was seeded throughout, an idea thrown between the show’s own writers and fans for 45 years; does any of this stuff from the imagination really matter?<br /><br />Well, yes: it helps create the Real World so many non-believers are proud of living in, and Roberts underlines his faith in the power of the imagination by making Agatha’s mind the engine of the action. Whatever her fears, she writes on, as did Shakespeare, as did Dickens, a fine message for the kids and further proof that Doctor Who is good for you, friends.<br /><br />There was tomfoolery aplenty, too, of course: The ‘Agatha Christie/What about her?’ business; the wheelchair revelation; the body in the soup - all that and the Doctor’s inhibited-enzyme kitchen freakout, to boot. It’s good when his cool’s blown, just occasionally.<br /><br />And the ‘Doctor Smith of the Yard and his plucky girl assistant’ schtick fits nicely with the ongoing idea of Doctor as shape-shifter, a role-player, an actor: hard to pin down, finding puzzles, putting off The End.<br /><br />Knowing your role was an idea played with here - the minute that pretty girl said ‘toilet’, the mask dropped for everyone at home. She was, perhaps, our suspect… and we liked how clever camera angles telescoped us into the drawing room for the denouement, too, viewers getting their thrills from the safety of the sofa, as ever.<br /><br />A hit then: Who did it.<br /><br />Anyway, next time: an exciting adventure with… The Eurovision Song Contest, it sez here! Our sworn enemies the schedulers up to their old tricks, again! But fear not: there’s a way you can get your Who fix and still enjoy the third-campest night of the year. Watch this space…The Watcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11602758115357737803noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866440586343058692.post-50295428204267753562008-05-10T13:04:00.000-07:002008-05-10T13:07:38.619-07:00You big kidders...As the Watcher prepared to dematerialise from the office on Friday night, thoughts turned to the upcoming Doctor’s Daughter, 24 hours in the future (Earth time).<br />‘There’s a lot riding on it,’ said a sympathiser.<br />‘As long as this ‘daughter’ business isn’t a flippin’ swizz,’ replied the Watcher, with some feeling.<br />Fast-forward 24 hours…<br /><br />…and it is a flippin’ swizz! Sort of. Well, it is inasmuch as ‘Jenny’ (tch!) hasn’t come floating out of deep back-story to throw the show in a Whole New Direction and change Received Fan Wisdom forever - but did we really think that would happen? Well, the production team sort of hinted… but did we really want it to? You know how your real friends die inside a bit when they get kids: do we really want that to happen to the Doctor? Exactly - and what if this ‘Jenny’ (honestly) turned out to be some winsome, Ace-like, combat-trousered action-bunny with a spaceship and boundless enthusiasm for the endless possibilities of the universe? Er, hang on, we’ve accidentally got ahead of ourselves here…<br /><br />Not that the Watcher has any problems with Georgia Moffett. Quite the opposite. But ‘Jenny’ is a warrior-clone-thing created from a scratched hand (and wearing mascara, too, noted the Watcher’s companion; warpaint?). You could forgive our man if he should signally fail to bond deeply in 44 minutes, although the Dadshock-savvy script also noted that fatherhood can often stem from such unplanned biological ‘incidents’. Respect to Tennant and Moffett for making it work well enough, then, and hinting at how emptiness inside, rather than a shared wellspring of hope, can still create a connection.<br /><br />Tennant’s saving this season, wringing everything he can from less than he deserves. The Time War speech was controlled and bitter; his warnings to General Cobb (sounds like a low-rent sarnie shop) were cold and on the edge; and the final confrontation with the gun was chilling and brilliant. For a second there - just for a double-heartbeat - he might actually have shot the bad guy’s face off. Occasionally Tennant lets you see - just around the eyes - what 1,000 years of death and disconnection could do to you. The Doctor seems thrillingly close to tipping over into something very dark, and very bad. There’s gonna be a reckoning, I tell thee…<br /><br />But as for some of the rest… nyeeaah; just bit too much sci-fi shorthand, perhaps. The seven-day war idea was nice, but unexplored - it was ultimately just another wrong-headed space spat, sorted by a hero who thrives on self-mythology then damns it. So another meaty idea slips by. Is there ever a case for a just war?<br /><br />And what was Martha doing here? There was enough peril and puzzle-solving for one companion, but not two. Did they just get the (great) Tate in again, after realising they missed a trick not asking her on board after the Christmas special, then divvy out the lines? We need to be told.<br /><br />And it was a bit tricksy: The Watcher and companion both said ‘She’ll get killed’ the minute Jenny bounced in, and she did… then didn’t! Be braver, script editors! Not that we’re unhappy Georgia Moffett could return. Quite the opposite.<br /><br />Anyway, next time: it’s The One With Agatha Christie… and we suspect it might be rather good fun…The Watcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11602758115357737803noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866440586343058692.post-18484891816682032162008-05-03T12:31:00.000-07:002008-05-03T12:36:27.677-07:00Looks aren't everything...The textbook definition of a scoundrel used to be “Someone who mentions the wobbly sets whenever Doctor Who is mentioned”; never mind the rich ideas on offer, the championing of the imagination, and the heart, or the limitless possibilities of adventure in time and space, some bozo would always chip in with a sink-plunger/ tinsel/ double-sided sticky tape reference.<br /><br />These sorry souls suck up the commercial stations now, of course, their too-small minds utterly rotted out… but in a weird, alternative universe, reversed-polarity sort of way, your correspondent is suddenly them: probably the best thing about The Poison Sky – or at least the bit one has something to say about - was how it looked.<br /><br />Perhaps we’re taking all this snazzy stuff a bit for granted, Whofriends. Rewind a couple of weeks and the Ood one only got nyeaaah out of ten – but the early-on spaceship shot alone was a thing of lovely wonder. Pompeii looked ravishing, too. Here, the burning skies of the denouement were beautifully done (especially as seen on the Big Telly the Watcher is enjoying in his current east-coast exile). And yet, and yet… none of it can cover a paucity of ideas, or at least thought-through, satisfying ideas.<br /><br />Like last week, this was bitty fare. The Sontarans-Are-Back!! factor, and some performances, kept it together last time – but did a second episode really add anything? Life and Death, The Glory of War (or Not), Families, Eh? We’re Killing Our Planet, People! – big, potentially meaty themes either undercooked in Helen Raynor’s script or smothered in RTD’s patent I-Want-All-This-In-Too sauce – you decide.<br /><br />It wanted us to care, but didn’t give us enough well-drawn characters to care about: only Bernard Cribbins’ lovely old eyes make me root for Donna’s lot. The sappy, misunderstood geniuses were just Beat The Kids swots in tracksuits; the new UNIT chief’s speech was more, incidentally superfluous, hot air; and as for the ‘We won!’ kiss, and its implied subtext… well, you wouldn’t have got the Brigadier and Yates doing that. Probably.<br /><br />Yes, we know the Doctor wanted us to feel sad about ‘His-Name-was-Ross’ Ross – but how could we? Ross, we hardly knew ye! The excellent Commander Skorr we did get to know, a bit, but the fascinating ideas thrown up in the ecstasy of his dying were never explored. So while the Doctor complains about guns and bangs as solutions, that’s all we had really. Shame.<br /><br />Idea: there are brilliant characters in Who already – like Donna and Martha - so use ’em (but not at the same time, eh?). No companion worth her salt should spend more time round the kitchen table/phoning her mum than she does fighting evil. Where’s Sarah Jane Smith when you need her? Oh, look, she’s coming back - and flippin’ Rose too! And as if it wasn’t crowded enough round here, here’s the Doctor’s daughter – Jenny(!) – back-flipping into view…<br /><br />Yes, Who’s the daddy, in what’s already looking a decisive/divisive episode six. Let’s just hope it delivers – if we must have family, show us it matters.The Watcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11602758115357737803noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866440586343058692.post-90575962606915604412008-04-26T12:34:00.000-07:002008-04-26T12:39:58.412-07:00Spuds we likeWell, I don’t know if it was just low expectations following last week’s flattish effort (and previous two-parters stinking the place up), but I ended up rather enjoying that. Not sure it all quite hung together, but there were a lot of very pleasing bits - not least the fact the Sontarans are rather interesting all of a sudden, aren’t they?<br /><br />Where the Cybermen have, arguably, had their reps diminished by the new show, coming across as a bit dopey, these uber-tubers look fighting fit: conversational, cheerily confrontational, opinionated and with nicely-sketched characters. They’ve even got personal mottoes and a crazy haka-style war dance! Since when?! They’ll be on MySpace next (though it will, inevitably, suddenly become TheirSpace)<br /><br />Great costume design helps, of course, but Christopher Ryan had fleshed out General Staal into an almost-likeable villain. He’s part de Niro, part Colonel Blimp, a talker and a fighter - although the invasion plan so far seems a bit unnecessarily complicated: give everyone catalytic converters, dodgy sat nav and shopping vouchers and then invade while we overheat looking for the exit in Tesco’s car park? Been done, hasn’t it? Perhaps I need to watch it again - I may have missed something…<br /><br />Sontarans aside, there was a lot for oldies and newbies to go ‘squeeeee’ over, here, not least Martha’s return (and what 12-year-old boys will forever refer too as the, ahem, ‘cloning scene’). UNIT! With Greyhound call signals! A teleport! Bernard Cribbins! UNIT!!<br /><br />All right, they’re not quite the 1970s’ UNIT (or was it the ’80s?), but having them around is just good, and raises loads of interesting questions about the Doctor: just what was our freewheeling wanderer in space and time doing, chucking his lot in with the Establishment? He doesn’t do salutes, or orders, or guns… except in the latter case, especially, he does. And has.<br /><br />This season is showing how Tennant’s magnetic Doctor is as likely to repel as attract. Is it that he ‘doesn’t do’ families (units?)… or that he can’t? Why remind soldiers prepared to salute him (and even blimmin’ Donna!) he’s a genius? They know: they’ve got the files. Why bully the (admittedly really-slappable) teen genius, who he clearly empathises with? Can’t he get a reaction any other way?<br /><br />‘A face-changer’, Staal calls him, and that’s close. The Doctor himself is an actor on a stage, entering, exiting, trying stuff on to get what he wants, and messing it up, a lot, where humans are involved. He doesn’t ‘get’ that Donna is just popping home: he’s ready with a stagy leaving speech. Donna and Grandad know each other; who does the Doctor know like that? And Donna and Martha bond quickly - so secure in each other that Martha gives the new companion what she needs most: a warning.<br /><br />It all ends with the Doctor, so hubristic, now impotent and lost, in a fog, in suburbia. There’s gonna be a reckoning, I tell thee (oh, and why didn’t he just smash the window?)…<br />Anyway, next time: The Sonatarans are buying, what’s your poison?The Watcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11602758115357737803noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866440586343058692.post-15304311209634504152008-04-23T00:28:00.000-07:002008-04-23T05:23:19.928-07:00Why the Sontaran Stratagem counts as one of your Five-a-Day...<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDW3Sl5R1WkpBDrqwGG4-UYRRqejyO_3NiDOuEuhmhoVzN2yskZ0z36S-u5BVJSGpCpKzqSSSmDMuL-OX6heXwjririJ-Yj7d90kM5GHXO3GMiJ4T3DwNte43rFBEpPp8v964rzvqb2gaK/s1600-h/sontaran.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192415255854947778" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDW3Sl5R1WkpBDrqwGG4-UYRRqejyO_3NiDOuEuhmhoVzN2yskZ0z36S-u5BVJSGpCpKzqSSSmDMuL-OX6heXwjririJ-Yj7d90kM5GHXO3GMiJ4T3DwNte43rFBEpPp8v964rzvqb2gaK/s320/sontaran.jpg" border="0" /></a> A CASUAL glance at my contract reminds me that, as part of my role as Evening Post Scientific Adviser/ Mysterious Projection From The Future With Special Responsibility For Alerting Mankind to Impending Doom (hey, it pays the rent), I’m meant to give you a heads-up about the Sontarans, who begin their two-part invasion of the airwaves on Saturday, weather permitting.<br /><br />Allow me to apologise, then, because they’re already here, built for war and deeply embedded in the listings magazines and telly previews. You can hardly have missed their piggy little eyes staring out at the newsstand, and the fact that Sontarans are nasty, brutish and short… and look very like baked potatoes.<br /><br />Look, I’m only saying it before some other scoundrel does - don’t imagine the chip-loving Doctor will let the resemblance lie. In fact, the Sontarans pretty much define ‘chippy’. Locked in an aeons-long war with the Rutans (who for their part look like manky cabbages; think of the money you’re gonna save on action figures, Whokids), all they’re interested in is a) battle and b) victory, and not necessarily in that order, either. A bunch of slightly-Cockney Sontarans (imagine the Mitchell bruvvers in dwarf star-alloy survival suits) even had the neck - well, not neck… even had the cheek to invade Gallifrey back in 1978, with a view to conquering all of space and time, forever, in one go.<br /><br />Basically, if they’re on the way, it’s trouble, so here’s your essential print-out-and-keep guide to Sontar’s main baddies:*<br /><br />1) High gravity on their homeworld means they appear super-strong on Earth – but their muscle-form means they’re actually hopeless at leverage, the chumps; ace at war, rubbish at arm-wrestling, we’re saying (somebody put that on a T-shirt);<br />2) They might have accidentally introduced – yes – potatoes to the West centuries early when a stricken Sontaran scout crashlanded in 12th-century Wessex (see Time Warrior part two, Who-pals);<br />3) They’re clones, but did once have a primary and secondary reproductive systems. Too much info?<br />4) Even these relentless warriors need to ‘recharge their life source’ now and again when operating outside their regular environment. Aw, diddums, etc, etc; try telling your own boss that, next time you throw a sickie!<br />5) They don’t handle coronic acid very well;<br />6) The probic vent is their real weak point – it’s a hole at the back of where their neck should be;<br />7) In the Sontaran Experiment (1975) they assessed a post-apocalypse Earth’s suitability for invasion by carrying out cruel tests on surviving humans; one poor sap had to eat 50 eggs in an hour. Sick.<br />8) They’ve got little jazz beards;<br />9) Sometimes their heads deflate when defeated;<br />10) Beans and cheese £1.50, tuna/mayo and coleslaw 10p extra.<br /><br />*<em>Advice not legally binding in event of actual Sontaran invasion.</em>The Watcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11602758115357737803noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866440586343058692.post-47812520671502113382008-04-19T12:30:00.000-07:002008-04-19T12:32:49.175-07:00A slip in the snow?The Sensorites: a harmless little first Doctor potboiler from 1964 set on the Sense-Sphere (a planet rich in Molybdenum as I remember it, if you’re thinking of going). It’s wholly appropriate it got a namecheck here, because Planet of the Ood is just such a harmless little potboiler. Okay, it’s not Blink, but it’s not Dragonfire either - it’s one of the many Who adventures that make you think nothing much more than ‘Nnnyeah…’, while still entertaining every right-thinking person in the house and raining fire on whatever the commercial stations have reheated to insult the brain.<br /><br />Talking of which… was it, in parts, a mite over-icky for a teatime slot? The schedulers have been meddling unnecessarily, anyway, but should the villain be sneezing his grey matter up and exposing his tentacles when there’s still daylight creeping over the top of the front room curtains? You can’t help thinking the rabid Ood was a bit too 28 Days Later for a six-year-old, say.<br /><br />Not that the Watcher secretly serves the Church of Mary Whitehouse or anything; raised on fishfinger sandwiches and the Brain of Morbius, we think it’s wholly brilliant that there’s literally a great, pink, throbbing brain at the centre of things, and that if pushed, it will absorb you, secret-goodie or not. And the Klineman Halpen reveal at the end was priceless, as was Tim McImpossibletotype’s performance - just the kind of well-judged casting and playing that can inflect a so-so story with colour and dimension. He sloughed the old scalp off like a banana skin.<br /><br />Heads, er, hats off to Graeme Harper too, a director who just gets Doctor Who. The grappling hook chase was briskly done, as was the sales pitch intercut with the Ood hunt - beats, angles, cuts: that’s how you tell a story.<br /><br />But there was unevenness here: the body-horror seemed a tad overdone, yet the moral conclusions wouldn’t have satisfied an MI:High viewer. Slavery bad, service industry soul-destroying, capitalists grasping and uncaring. Er, we know! The real shocks were Donna’s upset at the crushing unfairness of the Universe (was she expecting something else? Is she losing faith after three episodes proper?) and the Doctor admitting it’s sometimes better not to know what’s right and wrong. Eh?! He can be a cold, dark one, sometimes, this Tenth.<br /><br />Some of you thought Tennant was a bit too shouty last week (maybe…), but he’s every inch the Doctor now, is he not? Time served in potboilers is part of the job description, and he’s an all-time top-three Doc, we’re saying.<br /><br />And then, with the snow falling, and the Ood song rising, just when your mind was drifting off to the bees, a spine-freezer: the Doctor’s song is ending? Tell us more… but otherwise, nnnyeah…<br /><br />Anyway, next time: cover your probic vents, they’re sending in the clones - it’s the return of the Sontarans.The Watcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11602758115357737803noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866440586343058692.post-81424403767193187892008-04-12T12:49:00.000-07:002008-04-12T12:52:48.610-07:00Firing on all cylindersI’ve just checked in The Shadow Proclamation, and I’m allowed to say this: the Fires of Pompeii rocked (‘Stone me!’ is the banned one).<br /><br />Having gone to all the trouble of going to Rome’s Cinecitta for filming (even timing their arrival to coincide with an unexpected disaster in the shape of a fire, aptly enough), you sort of assumed the production crew would make it all look brilliant, but hang on; let’s not speed past that last thought - it all looked absolutely brilliant. “Sumptuous,” according to the Watcher’s assistant, and she’s not wrong. From the dappled dust and sunlight of the opening scenes to the TARDIS/Vesuvius/The Ordinary Family Lives! tableau at the close, this was perhaps the best-looking bit of Who ever served up (but over to you).<br /><br />Ordinary folks anchor so much of the new series, of course, and the bit-too-soapy comings and goings of Caecilius and clan early on made one cry out for a 24-megaton firecracker, the sooner the better (I always felt the same when the TARDIS landed on the Powell estate, mind). And yet… James Moran’s RTD-guided script did actually make one care, and gave a human dimension to the historical pyrotechnics. Okay, Peter Capaldi, and baddie Phil Davis (and That Woman Out Of Howard’s Way) didn’t have that much to do, but what they did do was fine, and the fact they’re there speaks volumes for the new show’s pulling power.<br /><br />Nice nods to the old show, too: coin behind the ear? Hello, third Doctor! Incongruous police box as modern art? Hello, City of Death! Loopy-looking seers hoofing round a flame? You’re not the Sisterhood of Karn in disguise, are you? No, you’re the Sibylline Sisterhood, and you’re right to say there’s something on Donna’s back: flippin’ critics. So many seemed ready to hate Tate from the get-go, but this episode really underlines Donna’s qualities: heart, guts, and conscience, all brilliantly evoked by the actress. She really gets the Doctor - “You fought them off with a water-pistol! I bloomin’ love you! - and he needs her; he admitted it!<br /><br />DT brilliant, needless to say: zig-zagging and mercurial as ever, but offering deep, dark hints into the Doctor’s plight, casting a cold eye over the life-and-death fix and flux of the universe. All those souls saved, but all those lost, too; no wonder he keeps moving - and what is his real name, written up there in the Cascade of Medusa? You’ll just have to keep watching…<br /><br />Good to see in the coda that the citizens of the Rome AD 80 quite rightly worship the Doctor, too, even fitting a widescreen altarpiece - but how disappointing that the feckless son looks set to become an Aston Villa fan, judging by the colour of his toga. Some kind of Roman/Villa gag, is it, in a show packed with better ones?<br /><br />Anyway, next time: The odd couple meet the Ood millions…The Watcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11602758115357737803noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866440586343058692.post-850410537680740512008-04-05T12:02:00.000-07:002008-04-05T12:04:48.044-07:00Tate Brilliant“And off we go again…”: Season 30, Adipose... <em>Episode</em> One.<br />Er, have they put some harsh, tasty beats under the sig tune or something? Not to worry - and not to worry too much about the plot, here, while we’re at it. The start of term is always about finding your feet and working out who you’re going to get on with, and I don’t care who knows it: I Like Donna.<br />And I say that as someone who didn’t like her in the Christmas special. Nor am I a Catherine Tate Show fan - it’s just not funny, right? But Tate’s clearly a fine actress, and surely nobody seriously expected Donna Noble to just shout for 13 weeks? She’s changed, the Doctor’s changed, and as Donna shifts between soupy stargazing and seen-it-before mild disappointment (“That’s one solution, hiding in a cupboard… I like it!”) it occurs to me she might be the perfect match for the quicksilver tenth Doc because she is, simply, a bit crackers.<br />And she doesn’t fancy him! Phew! Jury’s still out on the “I just want a mate/ You just want to mate!?” schtick, but the leads interact beautifully on the whole (and for the first few minutes don’t interract beautifully, too, missing each other by parsecs); the mimed meeting through the glass will rightly be replayed across the land tonight. Look at her face, yeah?<br />Loving Tennant, too: electric, cocky, cold, brooding, and a dab hand with a fire exit. How odd-yet-right that, just occasionally, The Oncoming Storm is found checking catflaps. That tells you as much about the real Doctor as does all the mythopoeic, grandstanding stuff.<br />It was a bit too loosely directed to be screwball, and a bit-too Sarah Jane Adventures story-wise to merit close examination (actually, that’s unfair to SJA; I’ll get back to you on that one). Was there a deeply-hidden message about too-busy parents undermining society? No, I didn’t think so. Old Whovians might want to suggest ‘It’s a bit like an inverted Terror of the Autons, with the troll-like invaders coming from our insides’, but they would be trying too hard. Sarah Lancashire: ace… but just two henchmen? Hmmmm…<br />But, hey, c’mon, what’s not to like? The EastEnders trailer that followed made we want to kill myself, and it makes Primeval look like a cheap ITV knock-off. Ahem.<br />And guess what? Just when you start thinking you might get over Martha, it’s Rose that casts a cold shadow over proceedings. Brilliant.<br />But Donna we like: roll on volcano day…The Watcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11602758115357737803noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866440586343058692.post-26027310852821554582008-04-03T02:16:00.000-07:002008-04-05T08:30:14.615-07:00TIME WAS: (OR, HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING ABOUT LOVING DOCTOR WHO AND CARRIED ON LOVING DOCTOR WHO)I CAN say it now, of course: I love Doctor Who. Always have, always will. Can’t remember a time when I didn’t. If you haven’t got the message, let me put it this way: I Think Doctor Who Is Brilliant. And now everybody else does, too! Great, isn’t it? When two young men can walk into a pub, order alcoholic drinks and freely discuss - ooh, I dunno; their Ood habits - without fear of scorn, or worse, you have to believe the world (older viewers may know it as Sol 3) is not such a bad place after all…<br />Because it wasn’t always like that. There were no ‘watercooler moments’ in – I pluck a date from the ether – 1987, for example (the year Pete Tyler died, right kids?); ask a colleague back then what they thought of Delta and the Bannermen last night and they’d reply: “I think you ought to kill yourself.” Nowadays men, women - adults - wax about the way David Tennant puts his glasses on. But be assured, when it came to seventh Doctor’s spoons, it was no dice, conversation-wise.<br />No, there weren’t watercooler moments. There were snatched - I hesitate to say furtive, but furtive - moments, mainly grabbed in playgrounds, libraries and canteen queues, brief sequences where fellow-travellers might share a muttered ‘joke’ about reversing the polarity of a broken tea urn, or some such. We saw, and understood in each other, the flatness after the fourth Doctor went; shared the same symptoms through the sixth Doctor era (headaches, mainly); were unsteadied by the mad gleaming joy of getting the novelisation of The Five Doctors before the show itself had even been on the blimmin’ telly! I still get a weird feeling in the, er, tummy about that – the tingle of a bottled-up feeling with nowhere else to go (see also: Elisabeth Sladen).<br />It was torture on the old love life, actually, especially in The Teen Years. Three moments grabbed from the vortex (humour me): a too-involved discussion of thermodynamics on a bus that ultimately ‘forced’ a feeling-left-out girlfriend into the arms of a trumpeter; a rather-too-casually-left-about copy of Revenge of the Cybermen scuppering a lunchtime tryst; and a horrible, cringe-making scene that went: ‘MustyoureadDoctorWhoMagazinewhenyou’resupposedtobewatchingmeplaytennisGodyou’resoembarrassingIhateyou (In fact, girls turned out be vastly overrated, anyway; but still).<br />No, I don’t know from where this Who love sprang; first memories, unlocked by expensive medical experts, show a confused picture of the third Doctor fleeing giant bats in a haunted house and falling headlong down a creaking staircase, landing, heroic but broken, only to regenerate into… Captain Kirk. Needless to say that never happened, not on Sol 3 telly anyway, and is not, in fans’ parlance, canonical; but it’s etched in the old tablets nonetheless.<br />I think it all started there… but then, I don’t remember the moment I ‘picked’ my football team, either, and regard those that do with a deep suspicion. Sometimes stuff – the good stuff – finds you. And it’s a lifelong affair from then. Over the years, we Doctor Who fans have seen it all: some amazing Saturday afternoons, especially in the seventies, with famous victories and bitter defeats; brilliant signings; strange managerial decision, and appalling tactical gaffes (Tegan, Adric and Nyssa?!); flat midweek action; misguided foreign interference; relegation and - ulp - administration… Exterminated. Us, of all people.<br />Still, I’m not bitter - far from it. There’s new money in the club - the, er, show - now, and everybody’s a fan. Good. Very, very occasionally you might find me browsing for... well, let’s say special interest DVDs (all right: Doctor Who DVDs), and some young scamp will push past and tell his mum how this DVD is the one with the old Doctor - that’s Christopher Eccleston - and the Slitheen from ages and ages ago, but could he have £13.99 to complete his collection anyway?<br />‘Complete your collection!?’ I almost say, but don’t; ‘Where were you in ’89?’ likewise. Why bother his slightly-too-big head with talk of Androgums, Binro, Cheetah People, Daemons, E-Space, Fendhal, the Great Intelligence, Haemovores, Ice Warriors, Jasko, K’anpo Rinpoche, Li H’sen Chang, Morbius, N-Space, Omega, Peladon, Quiquaequod, Rasillon, Sea Devils, Theta Sigma, Ultima, the Valeyard, Warriors’ Gate, Xoanan, the Yeti and the Zarbi? He already knows about Autons, the Boeshane Peninsula, the Cybermen and the Daleks - and before too long there’ll be a brush with the Sontarans, a cloned, militaristic race from the planet Sontar, locked in a millennia-long war with the Rutans… Oops. I nearly went then…<br />No, the important things is the adventure is still unfolding; next Saturday night, and the Saturday after, and after that, and after that, forward, backwards, sidewards, courtesy of the old timey-wimey stuff. Anything and everything could happen.<br />And it’s okay: nowadays, we can talk about it… right here, every week...The Watcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11602758115357737803noreply@blogger.com11