Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (2008)

"I'll be bored to death by sheep and hobbits!"

Yes, you guessed correctly; I watched this with Mrs Llamastrangler, being a 39 year old man who doesn't usually watch films aimed at teenage girls. But this was an entertaining and diverting film which held my attention throughout, however illegal I may think it should be to be that young. And it's weird seeing QI's very own Alan Davies as a father figure.

It's a standard plot for a film aimed at teenage girls, really, but I enjoyed the fact that it's set in,of all places, Eastbourne. I also enjoyed the fact that the PE teacher is Osgood from Doctor Who, and the very deliberately obvious animatronic cat. It's fair to say this isn't the sort of film I'd probably choose to watch, but it's well-acted, shot and written for its audience and even I enjoyed it.

Doctor Who: The Zygon Inversion

"Why do you have a Union Jack parachute?"

"Camouflage."

"Camouflage?"

"Yeah. We're in Britain."

Wow. That's how you do it. A Part Two that outstrips Part One. Genius.

The structure of the whole thing is a marvel. The pre-titles bit, revealing the not-dead Clara in her very self-aware dream state in the pod, seems as though things are going to go a bit Forest of the Dead, but instead we get an episode that's all heart, centred around a superb speech by Peter Capaldi that uses a brave amount of screen time and is an acting tour de force. And if that's not enough we get not one but two extraordinary performances from Jenna Coleman. Oh, and Osgood rules. Oh, and there's a nice little moral about ceasefires, peace processes and not obsessing over past grievances that will hopefully get watched in Israel and Palestine.

Basically, the plot is clever, and the Osgood Box is a great big red herring; it's not objects but ideals that are important. This is a deeply and unusually satisfying plot resolution. Evil Clara, played with delicious malice by Jenna Coleman, even has a convincing change of heart and, in a brilliant stroke, becomes the second Osgood. Oh, and Osgood's first name is Petronella. And the Doctor's is Basil, apparently.

Another nice twist is that Kate (Jemma Redgrave underwhelms again, sadly)  was just pretending to be a Zygon, but at the end she almost threatens to act like her dad in Doctor Who and the Silurians, a nice little bit of character development that is, sadly, wasted on Redgrave's phones-in performance. Can we kill the character and put Osgood in charge soon, please? She's cool. Even the Doctor is a huge fan.

But one duff performance doesn't stop this from being a fine episode, and certainly the finest script amongst some stiff competition this season. Only thing is that all this foreshadowing of Clara's death (I'm unspoiled, but it's bleeding obvious) is getting deafening by now...

Doctor Who: The Zygon Invasion

"Well, you can't have the United Kingdom. There are already people living there. They'll think you want to pinch their benefits."

This is an awfully clever episode. At first it looks as though it's a traditional, RTD-style, alien invasion two parter. But it's also a very timely bit of political commentary about immigration and xenophobia, albeit this doesn't quite work. And the twist at the end, of course, reveals that everything we thought was wrong: Clara has been a Zygon since early in the episode. And... did they actually just kill Clara? Like that? A really low key exit for a massively important companion? I really think they may have done, you know.

For something that looks, on the surface, like the same sort of thing as The Sontaran Strategem and similar stories, this is a text full of, ahem, semiotic thickness. References and clever tricks abound. Yes, the method of bringing Osgood back may be predicable but a) Osgood's back, so yay, and b) there's a line about her being a "hybrid", which reminds us of what Davros said in The Witch's Familiar. This is just a mischievous bit of misdirection, of course, but it's clever. We get a nice bit of metatextual playfulness as Kate states that Terror of the Zygons took place in the "'70s, '80s", and it also turns out that it was none other than Harry Sullivan who invented a kind of Warriors of the Deep style genocide gas for the Zygons. Which the Doctor promptly nicked, no doubt declaring that Harry Sullivan was an imbecile.

What else? The Doctor, as a tribute to the JN-T era, wears question marks on his underpants. Kate summoning the Doctor at the start because of Zygons echoes her father doing the same forty years earlier. And, although UNIT is a much more feminine place these days, it still has Berks like Colonel Walsh who just want to blow stuff up. Walsh is played here by Rebecca Front who, with this and Humans, seems to mainly play hard faced bitches these days.

The cliffhanger is superb: Clara and Kate are both dead and Zygon Clara seems to blow up the Doctor. Get out of that one.

I'm impressed so far but I'll reserve judgement until I've seen the second part. There's a slight worry I have in that, although the scriptures to satirise the hysterical tabloid attitude to immigrants, there's no denying that immigrants are literally shown as the baddies free, much as the script tries to emphasise that both humans and Zygons encompass goodies and baddies. It's all very Malcolm Hulke, very Doctor Who and the Silurians (it's even the young Zygons specifically who are portrayed as the bigots), but... well, let's see what happens. 

Doctor Who- Death in Heaven

"Typical officer. Got to keep those hands clean."

Wow. That was quite possibly the best season finale ever. Looking over the season, in fact, it's possibly the best treatment of season-long plot threads in Doctor Who, in terms of both plot and themes. And yes, I'm calling it: this is the best season since Philip Hinchcliffe left, a time when Jim Callaghan was prime minister, I was just about to be born and Elvis was alive. Basically, expect a positive review. 

We begin with a clever feint- Clara trying to convince the Cybermen that "Clara Oswald" never existed and she's really the Doctor. This is clever; we've been primed, by a female Master, for a female Doctor, and there's been a season-long theme of Clara being Doctorish; think Flatline. Still... the Doctor is four times married, and has multiple children and grandchildren, all presumed dead. Interesting.

Still, back to the actual plot, UNIT appears, in the form of Kate Stewart, Osgood ("Bow ties are cool!") and a nice reference, via a version of Handles from the late '60s, to The Invasion, later to be echoed with the plane as HQ. It's good to see the Doctor, like Sulla, being appointed dictator of Earth; this is such a great bit of plot economy and is a great way of avoiding so much tiresomeness.

The scene with Clara in a graveyard about to erupt with zombie Cybermen is terrifying, but this is immediately eclipsed with an awesomely scripted and heartbreaking scene between Clara and a Cybernised Danny that brings home the true body horror of Cyber conversion in a way which, for me, eclipses all previous attempts. Wow. Again, wow.

I like the revelations- as expected, it was Missy who rang Clara in The Bells of Saint John and brought her and the Doctor together in Deep Breath. But Michelle Gomez is a brilliantly insane Master, and gets a fantastic showcase scene in which she, sob, kills Osgood! Moffat, YOU BASTARD! Yes, Kate lives, and yes, it's a touching scene with the Brig, but let's be honest, who really likes Kate, and Jemma Redgrave's utter lack of charisma? It's Ingrid Oliver's Osgood who makes UNIT cool, and she's dead!!!

Just as good is the debate between the Doctor and Danny, which pays off another theme of this season- is the Doctor like a military officer, getting others to kill and die for him? Here, he fails to see the humanity present in Danny, seeing him again as a pawn.

Then Missy arrives, all Mary Poppins with her flying umbrella, and reveals a plan which underlines the same theme; the Cyber army is to be put at the Doctor's disposal for him to put to universe-saving purposes. This is for him to realise that the two of them are not so different. And here we get the expected flashbacks to "Am I a good man?" and "You are a good Dalek!" And the Doctor's epiphany; he is not a good man, a bad man, a hero, a president or an officer- just a traveller who helps people out. And, with that, he steps back and let's Danny save the world like the hero he is. And then seems to actually kill Missy. Hmm. Not sure I like that. It's awfully close to endorsing capital punishment.

The story ends with the Doctor and Clara parting, each misunderstanding and lying to each other; she thinks he's found Gallifrey, but he hasn't, and he's devastated, while he thinks that she's found Danny when, in fact, he gave up his one shot at resurrection to the child he killed in Afghanistan, like a true hero. Wow.

And then, tragically, it ends there. The end credits start... and are interrupted. By Father Christmas. Played by Nick Frost.

What? What? WHAT???!!!

Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor

"What are you going to do- assemble a cabinet at them?"

I saw The Day of the Doctor at the pictures with my good lady and a bunch of good mates from Leicester area fandom- Phoenix Arts Cinema to be precise: it's a rather arty place with none of the petty annoyances you find with the large chains, and you can take your pint of Boddingtons into the screening. I recommend it hugely.

This also means I got to see a rather amusing introductory bit by Strax, our favourite Sontaran, and an introduction to all that new-fangled 3-D stuff by Matt Smith and David Tennant. Oh, and the episode itself was pretty damn good too. The visuals, especially the opening bit with the TARDIS, were certainly cinematic.

Quite rightly, the Moff refused to saddle himself with leading men and restricted himself to three: Matt Smith, obviously; David Tennant, who has only recently left and this has not appreciably aged; and the outstanding John Hurt, on a part which was, I suspect, originally intended for Christopher Eccleston. But no matter: John Hurt is magnificent, for that is what he does, and he absolutely knocks it out of the ground for a six.

Having not saddled himself with too many leading men, Moffat manages to produce a magnificent script, one which honours the past while not overly dwelling on it and changes the status quo of the series while doing so. In this respect, it is more The Three Doctors than The Five Doctors. Oh, and it's a damn good script in its own right, ranging from epic scenes of Daleks on Gallifrey during the Time War (which we finally get to see, albeit in 3-D rather than 4-D) to deeply affecting character scenes for the Doctor. And the big, status quo-defining change also serves as a brilliant plot twist. All that plus Peter Capaldi's eyebrows, and a brief yet wonderful scene with Tom Baker as a possible future, retired Doctor with nostalgia for past faces and a future beyond thirteen of them.

The necessary narrative restrictions on how many leading men a script can bear may well restrict the number of returning Doctors, but there are many nods to the past. UNIT's engineering wallah is called Osgood. We get the Hartnell opening titles, I.M. Foreman and Coal Hill School. The Zygons are back, albeit not looking quite as co as they did back in the day. On a more recent note we also see Kate Stewart, now fully established as a recurring character. Here's hoping Osgood comes back too.

Clara is much better here, finally able to be a character rather than a plot point and spreading her wings. She's sassy, clever, brave, witty and cool. We get a glimpse into her future, too, as Kate Stewart refers to a security clearance she has not yet acquired for the Black Archive. The Black Archive is a nifty concept, a UNIT deposit of juicy alien artifacts including a vortex manipulator with belonged to the late Captain Jack, and which absolutely must be kept secret. ("Think about it. Americans with the ability to rewrite history? You've seen their movies!!!")

We also get Billie Piper, though not as Rose but as uber-MacGuffin the Moment. And we get Queen Elizabeth I whose accent occasionally betrays the origins of the Ap Twdyr dynasty. And people hiding in paintings. And Time Lords. Lots of Time Lords.

Mainly, though, the heart of the episode is about their interactions and the effect of one devastating decision made by the Doctor on "the day it wasn't possible to get it right." It is the Moment who allows the War Doctor to interact with his future selves before making said decision and, of course, despite the usual frictions, he eventually concludes that the inevitable has to happen, mainly because of a reluctant admiration for his future selves, both scarred by his decision in different ways. Tennant's Doctor's scars are raw, whereas Smith's Doctor's scars bear the sign of long years of repression: to his previous self's disgust, he no longer remembers how many children died on Gallifrey that day. Yet, as Hurt's Doctor puts it, "How many worlds has his regret saved, do you think?"

Fittingly, the B plot is resolved via a very clever third option, cutting the Gordian knot by forcing the two parties to negotiate terms while they have forgotten who is human and who is Zygon. And this leads to a fiendishly clever way for all three- no, all thirteen Doctors to save Gallifrey. It may still appear to have been destroyed (and Hurt's Doctor regenerates  into Eccleston cruelly forgetting that Gallifrey in fact survives), but Gallifrey is out there, somewhere. The Doctor has a quest. The days of post Time War angst are over after eight long years. What now...?