Doctor Who: The Next Doctor

“Are you thick or something?”

Bit off-topic for the Marathon, but it’s a bit deflating to arrive at the first Doctor Who DVD of the no-commentary era. Anyway, it’s good to be back reviewing actual Doctor Who again!

This is an odd one: indicative of RTD beginning to flag a bit in that the plot is little more than a collection of set-pieces, yet the characterisation is as psychologically astute as ever. Just one line of Miss Hartigan’s (“Yet another man come to assert himself against me in the night.”) hints so much about how she came to be as she is without dwelling it. This sort of thing is masterful writing. Both “Doctors” are characterised quite brilliantly, too. But still, I’m somewhat underwhelmed.

This is a proper Christmas episode, with snow, Dickensian scenes with urchins and lots of women in bonnets, and a rather amusing early riff on a scene from A Christmas Carol. But essentially this is a story based on one intriguing conceit; David Morrissey’s character apparently being the Doctor’s future self. Of course, the truth gradually unravels, bit by bit. The script is fantastic in its treatment of Jackson Lake, and so is David Morrissey, who puts in one of the finest guest performances we’ve seen.

Also admirable is the way that, although this is a suitably fluffy Christmas episode, the dark side of Victoriana lies beneath the surface. This is a world of workhouses, grinding poverty leavened only slightly by private charity, and not an ideal place to be a woman. Not only is there the aforementioned line by Miss Hartigan (Dervla Kirwan pitches the character just right- mainly cartoon villain, but with genuine hints of greater depths), hinting at her being raped many times in the past, but her line to the Doctor about him “not paying” Rosita for “that” seems to imply to me that she’s a prostitute, which would put Jackson Lake’s references to her as his “companion” in another light. In which case it is at least good to see that the story ends with Jackson Lake “rescuing” this “fallen woman” in suitably Victorian fashion, rather than having her die, as would happen in any Victorian novel to any female character seen to depart from convention. Importantly, none of this is too overt for the kind of story we have here.

Anyway! The Cybermen are back, they look great against the snow, the Cybermen are great, and the central funeral scene is a great set-piece. Of course, they benefit from having Miss Hartigan as this story’s Tobias Vaughn, and her taunting of Mr Cones, Mr Scoones, Mr Fetch and Mr Milligan” is quite delicious. On original transmission I was somewhat critical of this story’s use of Cybermen, thinking their plan (and the Cyberking!) to be silly and vague, and a return to the days when the Cybermen were used in such a way that they could have been any old monster. I must be lightening up, though- this time back none of that bothered me at all. It’s a well-established tradition for Cyberman stories, after all, and one that’s given a lot of fun. And this is another one of those RTD plots where the A-plot is really just there to play second fiddle to the character development. Also, steampunk Cyber-technology is well cool.

Also well cool are Jackson Lake’s accoutrements: the “sonic” screwdriver, a delicious piece of misdirection with the fob watch and, of course, Tethered Aerial Release Developed In Style. And we get a rare series of clips of all ten Doctors. Is it just me who wonders why, every time we get to see clip shows like this, they conveniently stop at the current Doctor? Oh, and it seems McGann is definitely canon.

There are some nice twists at the end- Hartigan is to be the Cyberking (“That was designated a lie!”), but discovers, to her glee, that her personality is strong enough to control all the power she now has (“Joy is not acceptable!). And we get a massive Cyberpunk Cyberman, the Doctor ascending in a balloon to give the villain her traditional last chance, and the Doctor, for once, being appreciated for his efforts.

Not to depart from the chronology of the Marathon, there’s an intriguing couple of lines, which I’m guessing most people have already mentioned, highlighting the oddity of how this has been forgotten by history. It’s impossible to tell whether or not this is deliberately foreshadowing the next full season (I suspect not; it’s too throwaway for that, more along the lines of the Brigadier’s line about the Skarasen in the Thames in Terror of the Zygons), but it certainly doesn’t bother me; this sort of niggle only really needs to be acknowledged by the script for the honour of nit-picking viewers such as myself to be satisfied.

Some interesting stuff with the Doctor at the end, too, which we know is foreshadowing something; Jackson knows that he needs companions for his own sake, but the Doctor admits that “in the end, they break my heart”. Still, at least this time he gets to enjoy Christmas Dinner. A very solid 3/5.

Torchwood: Something Borrowed

“By day you’re chasing the scum of the universe. Come midnight, you’re the wedding fairy…”

Of all the weeks to watch this one…!

It occurs to me before watching this that there’s something quite clever in making sure that the previous story features a wedding ruined by the death of the groom. Let’s face it: there are all sorts of tropes and genre conventions indicating Rhys should be dead meat. And the similarities between this series and Angel remind me that Joss Whedon would have definitely killed him off. So it’s not only nice, but a genuine twist, that it doesn’t happen.

I’ll be honest; I didn’t really get the humour in this episode. It’s not necessarily that it’s a farce; I’m not exactly the world’s biggest fan of them but I liked The Romans. Then again I don’t exactly have a wide frame of reference when it comes to farces. No, I think it’s the mother-in-law jokes (even if they’re about Nerys Hughes) and seeing this kind of humour in a modern context for which put me off for some reason. I can accept farce in The Romans; that was made in 1965 and is now archive television. It doesn’t feel very Torchwood. Still, lots of individual moments were great, and Ianto gets some nice one-liners. Plus Jack gets his fashion sense critiqued by Rhys’ mum, and Rhys says a very naughty word.

There’s some good character stuff, too; I like the moments with Gwen and Tosh, alone with the wedding dress, unable to really connect with each other, as always. And still we’re being told that Gwen and Jack have a forbidden attraction to each other; it might actually be the shape shifter, but for a moment it looks as though Gwen is actually going to kiss Jack. And, gentleman that he is, it’s clear throughout that he’s jealous of Rhys. There’s always potential for this as a possible future love triangle. After all, the scene with Rhys’ chainsaw cutting out just before Jack shoots the alien dead with a Very Big Gun might be seen to symbolise something by those with dirty minds.

There are other good moments, of course: the shop assistant’s scepticism at Ianto buying a wedding dress for a “friend”; Owen dancing with Tosh to Paul Weller (aaah!); “That’s for calling my mother an ugly thing”. The final revelation that Jack was married long ago isn’t one of them, though; random revelations from Jack’s past are a much devalued currency by now. There’s no sense of any thought-out pattern to his history.

So, an amusing bit of fluff, little more. 3/5. Oh, and is it just me but is it only weddings in pop culture where you get asked if there’s any reason why the couple shouldn’t get married? I’ve been to a fair few weddings, and this never seems to happen in real life.

Torchwood: A Day in the Death

“I am literally too cool for school.”

I’ve never come across any of Joseph Lidster’s Big Finish work so this is the first work of his I’ve encountered, and it’s a damned impressive debut. After a short and almost perfunctory introductory few seconds of “Torchwood is ready” we move straight to Owen via a monologue and montage, showcasing the excellence of both writer and director.

To briefly cover the regulars who are not Owen, this episode sees a lot of mentions of Gwen’s now very imminent wedding, while she very capably seems to assume the mantle of leadership for large chunks of the “B” plot (concerning an energy spike from an item in a collection of alien artefacts kept by eccentric millionaire Henry Parker) and, interestingly, Jack lets her. I’m not sure whether this comes across as strength or weakness. Certainly, he makes a hash of things early on while relieving Owen of duty to have medical tests and make coffee(!)- surely he could have put that a bit more diplomatically and got a slightly less negative reaction.

Tosh gets a hard time this week, with an upset Owen saying some very hurtful things to her. And by now it’s clear that she really does love him, or thinks she does at any rate. Is this going to go anywhere in the long-term? Tosh hasn’t necessarily looked weak in earlier episodes which dealt with her apparently unrequited feelings for Owen, but there now seems to be a very real risk that she may do so. That would not be good.

But of course, this is all about Owen, and the episode is more or less dedicated to an almost poetic reflection on what has happened to him and the implications of what it does to a person. Particularly horrifying is the moment, after Owen (accidentally?) cuts his hand, when Martha makes it clear that neither this nor any other injury he suffers will ever heal again. Owen is, as he says, made of glass. Ageless, sexless, unable to eat, drink, or even feel Martha’s hand, he has continued existence but is unable to truly live; what, then, is there to live for? This is our main character theme, achieved through great dialogue and great direction. The episode is full of great little visual sequences and great little monologues which are quite staggeringly effective.

The episode’s framing device is great, too. Owen is narrating this to Maggie (only named, significantly, at the end when we know she won’t jump), about to commit suicide exactly one year after her husband died in a cruelly random car accident just an hour after they were married. She and Owen are both faced with the consequences that come from life’s random cruelties, and have to decide whether life is worth living.

But there’s a deeper theme, too; that we are all mortal, and that this makes us all mortal in the end. The whole episode pretty much functions as a memento mori; there’s a series of shots of Owen’s extremely luxurious apartment making it very clear that he’s a very wealthy man, but it all means nothing now. There’s a direct parallel here with our villain (well, sort of), Henry Parker (Richard Briers, this time without a toothbrush moustache). Parker is an old man who has experienced so much of life- fighting in the war, travelling, marrying, becoming widowed- and has made himself rich from his own efforts. But he is dying; like Owen, he finds that his power, status and material possessions mean nothing to him now. He is alone, as we all are in the end, afraid of death and the strange “darkness” of the Torchwood afterlife, which both is and isn’t oblivion. This is classic memento mori stuff; every time I watch it I’m reminded of lecturers banging on about Hans Holstein’s The Ambassadors.

Importantly, the episode never allows the bleakness to be undermined by a too life-affirming message; the message seems to be that life is mostly crap, but there’s also the odd bit of hope- that’s pretty much what Owen says to Maggie, and pretty much the message that the alien McGuffin of the week is there to symbolise. It gives false hope to Parker, who dies in spite of his clinging to the belief that it is keeping him alive, but real hope to both Maggie and Owen. There’s also a lot of this, I reckon, in Owen’s fantastic speech to the security guard.

A triumph of both writing and direction, and an acting masterclass from Burn Gorman, mean this gets an easy 5/5, and it goes straight into the chart at number two.

Torchwood: Dead Man Walking

“I’ve been looking for the phrase ‘I shall walk the Earth and my hunger shall know no bounds’ but I keep getting redirected to Weight Watchers.”

The feeling of shock continues as we open with Martha is about to start performing an obituary on Owen- who was, apparently, 27 years old and “Torchwood officer 565.” But Jack dramatically intervenes before she makes the first cut. In a dramatic and eventful pre-titles sequence, Jack goes to visit a mysterious little girl, a soothsayer (to be heard from again?), and learns about the location of the second of that pair of gloves.

It’s quite an opening, and quite an episode. Yet again, Matt Jones (I had to correct that- I originally wrote it as Matt Smith!), who gave us the Devil in The Impossible Planet, presents us with a supernatural theme. And together with the opening that makes this feel very much like a later episode of Angel- always a good thing in my book.

There are obvious echoes of They Keep Killing Suzie as Owen is brought back to life- and stays alive. But then again, he isn’t; he can’t eat, drink, sleep or, er, supply blood to a certain part of his anatomy. And it seems that date between Tosh and Owen is not to be; when it looks as though Owen is only back for a couple of minutes Tosh tells him that she loves him, only for him to rather too enthusiastically help her to backtrack later. It seems their moment has forever passed.

Martha, although obviously necessary as to the plot, takes a back seat here character-wise. This is appropriate; we need to see the reactions of the whole team here, and this we do. We see Gwen holding things together most of the time but when she’s on the phone to Rhys her true feelings show- an illustration that Rhys’ initiation into the ways of Torchwood has been good both for Gwen and their relationship. Tosh, of course, hasn’t got a Rhys and behind the professionalism she’s devastated. Jack, meanwhile, is quite aware of the extent both Owen’s death and the consequences of his resurrection are his own fault, as we see in the fantastic cell scene as well as his reaction to Owen’s comments at the end of the episode.

But, of course, this is all about Owen’s situation, and some old themes arising from this: there being “nothing” after death even though this is a “nothing” that stuff can happen in; the “darkness”; and something moving in it. And it seems that this something is “Death”, although true to The Impossible Planet form the idea is never really defined in the usual terms of the show. Like Small Worlds last season, this is fantasy rather than science fiction. Still, unlike The Impossible Planet with its musings on exploration and Victorian imperialistic poetry, there’s no discernible subtext to the iconic supernatural figure here; it’s all about the characters.

We get to compare Owen’s life to his old one as he cruises the bars as he has done many times before, drinks beer as he has many times before, and pulls as he has many times before. Except that he is now unable to perform on both counts. A pity, especially regarding the beer; it looks as though it could be a pint of something decent rather than the usual bottled lager.

Owen is really rather brave and heroic here, offering to be injected with formaldehyde and, of course, saving the day at the end, in a way which cleverly makes sense of those cryptic clues of Gwen’s. And he kisses Tosh, although I’m sure he’ll later insist it meant nothing. He does that.

Good stuff. Not even some rather poor age make-up from Martha can prevent this from earning a high 5/5.

Torchwood: Adam

“I’m going to marry this bloody mad woman even if it kills me!”



The opening titles start, and there’s a new character in them- yep, this is Torchwood’s version of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “Jonathan”, right down to the titles and, indeed, the title. Revealingly, it’s still Gwen who acts as the audience’s proxy and initially realises that Adam hasn’t already been there.

In fact, given the irony inherent in Gwen’s forgetting Rhys completely, given the way the last episode ended, this is the perfect placing in the season for this episode; we’re able to successfully gloss over Jack’s failure to carry out his threat as events take over. Still, the Gwen and Rhys element of this episode, where they almost fall in love over again, is fab. Eve Myles and Kai Owen are again great.

Also interesting and revealing are the changes to Tosh and Owen. Tosh is happy, confident and apparently free of her insecurities in her relationship with “Adam”, although this is at the same time pretty much literally rape. Owen, meanwhile, has become shy and nerdish, and it’s a testament to what a bloody good actor Burn Gorman is that you accept him as the same character. Fascinatingly, Owen here apparently has unrequited feelings for the unattainable Tosh, which seems to indicate he secretly likes her in reality, whatever he may say at the end of the episode. Perhaps most worryingly, both of them exhibit a disturbing fondness for horrible bottled lager.

It’s nice to slow down for a character-based episode here, and a good way of doing it, but when we turn to Jack things start getting arc-heavy. We get a flashback to the Boeshane Peninsula (so he wasn’t completely lying to the Doctor and Martha in The Sound of Drums), complete with the obligatory CGI city, where Jack’s entire family and community are under attack from an unnamed and unseen alien race which apparently howls a lot. It’s revealed that the mysterious Gray, as mentioned by “Captain John”, is Jack’s younger brother, and that Jack blamed himself for his death. Heavy stuff, and the revelation of all this also offers us our first clue into who Adam is and what he’s up to.

It is Ianto who works out, via his own diary, that Adam is a fake, and the price he pays is horrible. His sheer horror and despair at the false memories, his basically decent behaviour in insisting he must be locked up, and his later composure in front of Adam- who spitefully tells him he “could murder a cup of coffee”- says a lot about Ianto’s character. Jack, of course, knows perfectly well that Ianto is no murderer; Adam is now exposed.

The conclusion is simple but logical; everyone blots out the last 48 hours with amnesia and Adam ceases to exist. It’s rather jarring to think that Adam has only been alive for the 48 hours since the box was opened, and interesting to hear of his speaking of nonexistence as “darkness and the stench of fear”; once again in Torchwood it is implied that nonexistence is a state in which events can happen and be experienced, a very odd and singular philosophy. And Adam’s revenge, depriving Jack of his last good memory of his father, is devastating.

Very good, if again falling just short of excellence: 4/5.

Torchwood: To The Last Man

“It’s still warm, at least. Not been gone long.”

The pre-titles sequence introduces us to Tommy and sets up the time paradox forming the spine of the episode, and for the first time we’re introduced to an earlier generation of Torchwood. It’s 1918, and Gerald and Harriet are investigating “ghosts” at a hospital. Future visions of Tommy and Tosh lead them to take Tommy and cryogenically freeze him, waking him for just one day a year. Oh, and they’ve left sealed orders for a future Torchwood in the event of these events coming to pass. The Torchwood of our present are effectively playthings of their own past and future.

It’s a brilliant concept for a story from Helen Raynor, and to that we add some top-notch characterisation and a real emotional kick. This is Tosh’s episode; she clearly likes Tommy and their scenes together are sweet but… isn’t there something a bit creepy about having a boyfriend in a box to be used once a year? This isn’t a relationship, really, for her; there’s no need for commitment. For him, on the other hand, Tosh is around all the time, albeit getting a year older every day, and it’s a proper relationship, or can feel like one for a bit. This can’t last, and we know damn well that Tosh is about to be put through the emotional wringer.

There are lots of little things here which resonate; Ianto notes that Harriet died young, aged 26, the following year, “just like them all”. If I didn’t know better I’d have thought something was being foreshadowed here. And then there’s the other side of Owen we see- he’s worried about Tosh. He actually has a caring side. Blimey. He’s never been this likeable before. It’s almost as if something really bad was about to happen to him.

Inevitably, the time loop starts to work itself through. Tommy has to close the rift, effectively going over the top, and then, having saved the world, he gets shot for cowardice. Lovely chaps, those British WW1 generals.

The last few minutes are heartbreaking and gripping television, and Tosh is left devastated. Naoko Mori is excellent.

This isn’t quite enough for a 5/5; the dialogue doesn’t quite sparkle as much as I’ve recently become accustomed to. To be honest I’m having second thoughts about whether it might be worth a 5/5 after all, but I’ve already voted in the poll so 4/5 it is. Still, more Torchwood excellence.

Torchwood: Combat

“I didn’t want saving.”

The first rule is: you do not talk about Combat. The second rule is: YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT COMBAT. But nobody tells me what to do. I’m a rebel, me. I live life right out there on the edge.

This is our first and so far only script by Noel Clarke, which reminds me I must get around to watching Kidulthood sometime. It’s much better than I remembered; bloody brilliant in fact. And once again there’s a lot of story arc stuff, some of which passed me by the first time round. Not the Gwen / Rhys stuff, of course. Their relationship hits a real low here; “What’s happening to us, Gwen?” asks a despairing Rhys, just before things start to get worse. Even Jack is warning Gwen, not exactly without hypocrisy, that she should take a bit more care of her personal life, but she doesn’t get it: “Rhys will get over it. He always does.”

Things don’t get better; Gwen has to give the bad news to a bereaved wife and immediately gets snapped at by a particularly depressed and nasty Owen (of whom much later, obviously). He surpasses even his own history of nasty putdowns with “I was getting tired of your fuck-tricks anyway”. It’s clearly over between them.

And then, the climax: Gwen confesses her infidelity to Rhys. His reaction is to say “But you wouldn’t do that,” bless him. But Gwen makes her confession meaningless by revealing that she’s drugged Rhys with retcon, desperate for forgiveness. Ever since Gwen joined Torchwood it’s been changing her for the worse; this is rock bottom. And this is where she discovers Torchwood is no replacement for her life with Rhys. Symbolically, she turns up at the Hub with a pizza in a parallel scene to the one in Everything Changes. But this time the team aren’t there for her and she sits alone, crying.

Anyway, Owen. On the one hand the character is so unlikeable and shallow I have no sympathy for him, even after what’s just happened with Diane. But on the other hand I suspect I’m not expected to. And on the, er, other hand (assume a hypothetical three-armed alien creature, or something), Burn Gorman has been putting in brilliant performances right through the series and is truly outstanding here. It’s a staggering achievement to make such a git of a character so compelling. Especially as we start off with him just being a bit of a mardy git and having a bit of a foreshadow-y fight in a bar with Hot Chip’s “Over and Over” playing in the background. How very 2006.

Also very 2006, and this time not in a good way, is the Crazy Frog ringtone found on the phone of the corpse found by Tosh and Jack. I’d managed to repress my memory of that particular trauma, and now it’s all coming back. Damn you, Torchwood. Fortunately the plot is gripping enough for me to almost forgive this. And once Owen deigns to actually joining in with it by going undercover, things start getting really good.

Owen meets Mark Lynch, who seems to like him in the false belief that he’s found a fellow Nietzchean wanker to be all nihilistic and laddish with. Mark is a fascinating and well-written character, though; for someone with a basically shallow personality whose life revolves around arrogance, crap beer, fighting and cod philosophy he’s made to seem quite compelling. Oh, and we get another line about something coming, “out there, in the darkness”. Gosh, do you reckon this might be a subtle piece of foreshadowing?

Interesting to hear the speech from Mark about the world having no meaning without, among other things, “faith”. On the one hand this fits in with the pessimistic pseudo-atheism of the series, but on the other it hints at a possible religious meaning intended by the author. Either way, it’s a superficially shallow philosophy at the surface level intended by Mark but asks interesting questions about the series themes deeper down.

The stuff with the Weevils and the cage may not be particularly original (Angel did this a year previously), but it’s just a McGuffin; this is another story where theme and character are the main focus. And Owen’s apparent death wish is a very interesting development.

Another interesting point; Jack allows Janet the Weevil to run loose as bait, at the risk of killing innocent bystanders, although Tosh and Ianto both object. And Tosh later calls Jack on his treatment of the Weevil. Once again, we’re shown that Torchwood may be our protagonists but they’re certainly not heroes.

Excellent stuff, the best Torchwood yet. 5/5.

Torchwood: Countrycide

“What is that smell?”

“That would be grass.”

“It’s disgusting.”



Apologies for bothering those of you not based in the UK with a pop culture reference you many not get, but this story’s title reminds me of a certain quip made by the great Stephen Fry. I couldn’t possibly say anything about it without breaching the COC in no uncertain terms, but if you don’t instantly get the reference then Googling “Stephen Fry countryside joke” should do the trick. Anyway…

Might as well start as I mean to finish; I started watching this so unimpressed with Chris Chibnall’s script and, up to a point, the direction of the series (so much so that there’s been a little unintended hiatus…). But I unexpectedly ended up liking this rather a lot, which is odd for a number of reasons.

The opening sequence is great, with the use of “Monster” by The Automatic actually managing to give this rather annoying song a justification for its existence, which is no small achievement. And after the credits we’re thrown straight into a scene with the Torchwood team in the car, which demonstrates the great strengths of this episode; good characterisation and genuinely witty dialogue. After a bit of friction and unevenness with the writing of the characters (which really has to be laid, ironically, at Chibnall’s door), this is the episode where the team seems to gel. All the characters now feel fleshed out and, if not necessarily likeable as people (I’m talking about Owen here, of course), at least entertaining company as characters.

And we get some good character moments in the early scenes. Tosh’s attempt at innuendo (“Need a hand getting it up, Owen?”) gets an unnecessarily cruel single entendre in response (“If I did, I wouldn’t ask you,”), and she’s extremely jealous when Gwen admits to having snogged Owen. There’s also Gwen’s faux pas with Ianto, and the great scene with Owen using psychology to get inside Gwen’s pants. And it’s all just about the shagging, naturally. He may be a total git, but he’s entertaining for us viewers. That’s good writing.

Of course, the plot itself is basically The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which is not really my sort of thing, hence my initially not expecting to like this episode. I don’t necessarily find the genre unpleasantly violent (it’s done with too much staged artificiality for me to really suspend disbelief enough to be affected much), but I suspect there are all sort of standard slasher movie tropes here which are flying above my head. It doesn’t matter, though; the situation works in terms of how the characters react and how their relationships develop. Oh, and I liked James Moran’s Severance, of course.

Well, except for Jack; I’m getting a bit tired of this miserable git he seems to have turned into. Noticeably he’s the only member of the team who has nothing interesting going on character-wise right through this episode.

This is shot really quite well, with loads of suspense and sudden glimpses of threats suddenly moving in the corner of the screen. The whole situation reminds me of labyrinth-based computer game shooters like Doom. And yes, that really is the most up-to-date relevant computer games reference I can think of.

Ianto and Tosh are captured, where Tosh reveals that “I haven’t met a cell yet I couldn’t get out of.” So we can definitely expect there to be absolutely no long stretches in cells in her past whatsoever.

Of course, the big reveal is that the baddies are not aliens but people who harvest other people every ten years because, well, they’re country people and country people are weird like that. I remember back at the original viewing being genuinely surprised, especially that they’d pulled what seemed like a major genre-subverting trick so early on in the series. This time round, unsurprisingly, it seemed rather more signposted and rather less significant given the lack of surprise.

I like the ending, with the deliberate refusal to give us a psychobabble explanation; the baddies are just bad. And the final scene, with Gwen and Owen clearly having an actual affair, feels in keeping with what we’ve seen.

Not the best episode ever, perhaps- I still have concerns about the uneven tone of the show- but good characterisation earns this a 4/5.