Gunpowder: Episode 3

"I mean to die!"

So here we are at the finale, a somewhat tricky episode dramatically as we all know how it ends.The answer to this conundrum is, of course, to make it all about character. So again we get the contrast between Catesby and Cecil, although this time with very contrasting fates. Once again Liv Tyler's Lady Vaux acts as the conscience, perhaps even the chorus, but her role seems disappointingly passive throughout, and she's the nearest we get to a significant female character. But I suppose the nature of things in 1605 makes that difficult.

Much of the episode plays out the asymmetrically contrasting plottings of the doomed Catesby and the puppetmaster Cecil, leading to Catesby's inevitable doom and Cecil's inevitable elevation, and it's gripping enough to entertain despite the fact that we all know full well that Fawkes will be caught red-handed.

More interesting is the inevitable martyrdom of Father Garnett, whose tortuous death has been inevitable ever since he declared himself a coward last episode. Fawkes, though, comes across (deliberately, I'm sure) as an extremely weird individual, and even during his horrible torture it's less easy to feel sympathy. There's a lot of torture in this episode. There's a lot of torture throughout.

It's a decent little series, though; historical drama by numbers but sumptuously done as the BBC always do. It's just that, well, it doesn't really do anything new.

Gunpowder: Episode 2

“Kings are anointed by God!"

And so we come to the middle episode of three, linking the first episode and finale with lots of narrative and exposition and traditionally the weak link. I don't actually think that this is the case here though; after the exposition and shock therapy of the first episode we get to the fun of watching Catesby and Cecil move their chess pieces around, trying to outwit each other.

Much as Cecil is the cleverer and more evil of the two, Catesby's visit to Spain has him witness a poor Jewish lady be burned at the stake by the Spanish Inquisition who, for all their famed judicial due process, were obviously complete bastards. Catesby, though, is shown to be complicit. It literally sickens him but he doesn't complain, which reminds us that, wronged though he is, he'd be just as intolerant if his lot were in charge, even if he doesn't sit there like Mark Gatiss' delightfully evil Cecil and personally direct the torture. It's 1605 and religious tolerance hasn't been invented; everybody thinks they're right and everyone else is a heretic. people just weren't awfully good at not torturing people of different religions back then. This adds much-needed balance to the first episode, which seems less polemical in retrospect and has risen in my estimation.

But then the script goes to great lengths to emphasis the parallels between Catesby and Gatiss, with both of them given similar-sounding confessions as to how they neglect their sons. But Catesby's plotting has an air of doomed desperation while Cecil always seems assured, even when out-maneouvred by the splendidly-moustacho'd Constable of Castile and temporarily out of favour with a King James who wants to have his cake and eat it in much the same way as our current leader..

Liv Tyler comes to the fore as Lady Vaux reveals herself as the sharp-tongued Catholic moral conscience of the gentry, and we have the interesting little sub-plot on whether or not Father Garnett is a coward for not risking his own life. Knowing how TV dramas work, I fear that martyrdom may beckon for him next week, much as it appesrs to beckon for Father Gerard who is rather nastily tortured before he seems to escape in a somewhat confusing ending. Still, it's all very good this week.

Gunpowder: Episode 1

"Would you rather that I conform?"

Well. That was well-acted, well-directed and... violent. It's entertaining, historical religious persecution was indeed wrong but, well, it feels somewhat jarring for a historical drama to be so... polemical.

We begin with some text intro telling us that it's 1603, Elizabeth I has just copped it and King James VI of Scotland has gained a second throne and a chance to shag his way through the pretty young men of the English aristocracy, although not in many words. There are some nice shots of the Queen looking on in her stoic Scandinavian way while James flirts with his latest boy tart.

Then the story proper starts as a mass is disrupted by agents of an intolerant state and, with practised efficiency, a whole panoply of priest holes and mattress turning springs into action, and there follows a brilliantly tense scene in which the scarily young boy priest is arrested, and the very brave Lady Dorothy takes the flack as a furious, sword-waving Robert Catesby looks on furiously, and we know he's important because we know our history and we've seen Game of Thrones.

So, after being introduced to the sinister Robert Cecil- scion of the Marquesses of Salisbury, don't you know, and archetypal spymaster- we can only conclude that he could be played by absolutely no one other than Mark Gatiss, who has himself a minor bit of typecasting as sinister eminences grises in historical dramas but wears so many hats in the TV world that he can afford to be utterly unbothered. He is, of course, perfect casting. And we see him slowly manipulating the relatively tolerant James into supporting his sinister agenda.

And then comes the really nasty bit; Lady Dorothy has refused to plead- a guilty plea would disinherit her children- so she is stripped naked and publicly pressed to death. This is closely followed by the hanging, drawing and quartering of the boy priest, as graphic as these things get although at least we don't see the castration. This is all, of course, quite realistic, but an artistic choice has been made to dwell on the gory details. I'm not going to go all in and join the chorus of complaint here, but this is quite blatant in its didacticism, and that can be self-defeating in a drama.

More spying, skulduggery and misfortune for the persecuted Catesby brings us towards the end, and Guy Fawkes. Let's see where this goes.

Doctor Who: Tooth and Claw

“This is not my world.”

Crikey. It’s gone all Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Generally speaking Doctor Who can embrace all genres but there’s something about these martial arts scenes, or rather the aesthetics of these martial arts scenes, that feels very odd.

But then we’re back to the TARDIS, and what on Earth is Rose wearing? By God, those clothes look awful. Fortunately, the Doctor’s taste in music this episode is rather better than Rose’s taste in clothing. Going to see Ian Dury in the late ‘70s is exactly the sort of thing I‘d do if I had a time machine, frankly.

They end up, of course, in Scotland in 1879, where the Doctor decides to put on a Scottish accent for some reason. This is obviously at some level a self-referential acknowledgement that Tennant as an actor is doing the exact opposite, but for all my enjoyment of this kind of thing it seems a bit empty here. Still, it’s nice that he calls himself Dr James McCrimmon. From the township of Balamory, naturally.

And Pauline Collins is back after 39 years, this time in a rather different role. The dialogue immediately makes us suspect that Vicky is being led into a trap- the pre-titles sequence was a bit of a clue as well, admittedly- but for the moment that takes second place to the sheer spectacle of what she’s actually like. For the moment we see her nicer side before she’s provoked, but it’s interesting to see RTD opting for a compromise between the mardy battleaxe of popular imagination and the more fun-loving character who flirted with Disraeli and actually, rumour has it, may have had a sense of humour. The character ultimately disappoints, though; she essentially does nothing but react to the threats to her safety and to the Doctor’s behaviour. This isn’t a “celebrity historical” in the way The Unquiet Dead’s portrayal of Dickens was.

The carriage leads them to the, cough, Torchwood Estate. Gosh, I wonder if that’s going to be significant?

By now it’s clear that there’s something worrying about the tone of this story. Nothing bad has even happened yet but the frivolous attitude of the Doctor and Rose has already become annoying. And Rose’s bet with the Doctor that she can get Vicky to say she’s not amused is the worst example of this. Once the monks and the wolf start becoming a threat their frivolity becomes even more objectionable- people are dying. I can certainly see why Vicky reacts as she does.

Oh, and incidentally, it struck me immediately after the wolf announcing its intention to bit Vicky and establish its mighty steampunk “Empire of the Wolf”- this is influenced by Brotherhood of the Wolf, innit?

Annoying though Rose is, the Doctor’s attitude here is basically unforgiveable. His frivolity slips into bad taste here. Even the very fact that he’s ended up with the responsibility for saving Vicky’s life ultimately stems from an act of frivolity- casually flashing the psychic paper before sniggering to Rose shortly afterwards that “We just met Queen Victoria!”

The ending with the telescope is decent enough, and I like the indication that Vicky was bitten, although it should have just been left there. But the scene where our heroes are dubbed “Sir Doctor of TARDIS” and “Dame Rose of the Powell Estate” is cringeworthy in a way that even the parallel scene in The King’s Demons wasn’t. Nothing about the dialogue, the attitudes of the Victorian characters, or the way the Queen does things quite rings true for the period, but this scene takes the biscuit.

I’m on Vicky’s side as she banishes them both, personally, and I can see exactly why she establishes this mysterious Torchwood thing.



Well, after it’s so-so predecessor we finally get the first true clunker of the “new” series, surprisingly so as I recall liking this well enough at the time. But although the plot functions well enough the period just feels wrong and, unforgivably, the Doctor and Rose are completely unlikeable, frivolously arsing about while death and destruction happen around them. 2/5.



The David Tennant I’m-So-Sorry-ometer

The Christmas Invasion: 0
New Earth: 1 (“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”)
Tooth and Claw: 0