P.R.O.B.E: The Zero Imperative

 "This is a hospital, Miss Shaw. Not Scooby-Doo."

It says a lot about me was that tonight's viewing was a choice between a 1980s BBC TV production of Sophocles' Antigone and this, a straight-to-video Doctor Who spin-off from the wilderness years. My geek side just won out against my pretentious git side... this time!

Thing is, though, this may not be Sophocles but it's a very impressive script from a young Mark Gatiss, a tale of dark, otherworldly forces, possession and family tragedy that is perfectly paced, well characterised and unfolds in a deeply satisfying way, with revelation after revelation. Bill Baggs' direction, too, is impressive, using stylistic camerawork to cover what must have been a tiny budget.

The dialogue is great, as is Caroline John as Liz Shaw, now running her own outfit investigating supernatural weirdness in contrast to "another acronymic organisation from my salad days"- love the pipe.

Nevertheless... although Jon Pertwee, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy (especially towards the end) are all great, I tend to feel that the inclusion of so many former Doctors (although I love Sylv's "Trust me, I'm a Doctor") perhaps undermines Caroline John in what's supposed to be a starring role. Still, that isn't the script's fault, and the overall impression is of a compelling thriller that, very wisely, leads with mood and character as opposed to anything too expensive-looking....

Tales of the TARDIS

 Obviously I haven’t watched the omnibus versions of all these old Doctor Who stories I’ve seen countless times before, just the fabulous new scenes at the beginning and ends. So I’ll say only that the whole omnibus thing makes me nostalgic for the old days of BBC video. Also, The Mind Robber and The Time Meddler have never looked so good. And I’m pleased to see the extended cut was used for The Curse of Fenric.

Earthshock

“Oh, you got old.”

"You didn't."

Of course, we saw Tegan and the Fifth Doctor interact briefly in The Power of the Doctor and ditto for the Seventh Doctor and Ace. These pairings therefore make sense, and this and The Curse of Fenric are the obvious story choices for each respective pairing: bloody good, but also emotionally resonant for the characters. 

So what's going on? This first instalment has to do a bit of exposition on what a "Memory TARDIS" is- part of the TARDIS, although perhaps not a physical location as such. It feeds on memories, so a story has to be told. Wisely, it's all kept a bit vague, and at this point we simplyhandwave over how the Doctor looks visibly older than he was when we saw him succumb to Spectrox Toxaemia with all those heads whizzing around him.

We end with some nicely meta commentary as the two of them mourn Adric. "He loved you", insists Tegan, to which the Doctor responds "Yes, I realise that now." The characters are pretty much acknowledging that the episodic nature of the series back in those days didn't really allow for prolonged dwelling on the characters and their development- but it's not too late to remedy that. It's a lovely sentiment.

We also learn more about what Tegan went on to do, as with many former companions: campaign for environmental causes. Are you listening, Sunak?

The Mind Robber

"I think we're in Heaven."

"I hope not. I'm a very busy woman."

This one was absolutely necessary- the theft of Jamie and Zoe's memories by the Time Lords in The War Games was a truly monstrous crime. It's been left very late in the characters' lives, but at last that great wrong can be righted.

We learn that they've both led good lives- Jamie has fathered a massive family, while Zoe is now president. This one is just vibes, really, but it's lovely. And the chemistry between the actors is as wonderful as ever.

Vengeance on Varos

"The twenty-first century- it feels a lot like Varos."

Both Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant are great here but... is it me, or is the chemistry not quite there? Regardless, this one is perhaps not so successful as the others, for reasons that are not really its fault. The decision to have Peri get married to barbarian king Yrcanos was always an outrage, a shameful treatment of a character who had meant so much. RTD has no choice but to spin this as Peri having achieved great things as a "Warrior Queen", but this isn't enough to wash away the sins of his prdedecessors within that very, very dysfunctional Doctor Who office of 1986. Nothing could.

It's good to see the Sixth Doctor rather less garishly dressed, though. It's also heartwarming to see them both resolve to go travelling again, though. So a Memory TARDIS can travel through time and space, maybe...

The Three Doctors

"Did you love him?"

Katy Manning is, of course, the obvious choice here, but who to pair her with? The only real choices from the era would have been John Levene or Richard Franklin and... yeah. So Daniel Anthony as Clyde Langer is the perfect choice. We get a bit more closure on The Sarah Jane Adventures: Clyde is a successful comic book creator; Luke and Sanjay are astronauts; Rani is an activist, like Tegan and Ace.

There's real heart to this one. A recently bereaved Jo is mourning her Cliff, and in a mood not to allow Clyde to miss his own chance for love. RTD does this sort of character stuff very well indeed, and it works.

The Time Meddler

"I mean, can you imagine the Doctor wearing something like this?"

The above is the best joke in all six of these, with Steven commenting on what we know to be the Sixth Doctor's inimitable fashion sense.

And this one is absolutely the best of the lot. Peter Purves is superb but Maureen O'Brien is absolutely wonderful. A couple of years may have passed but she is still absolutely, utterly, brilliantly Vicki, and a real joy.

Both of them are grandparents. Steven is a king. Yet Vicki's departure in The Myth Makers, while not the Peri level of bad, was pretty appalling, a girl from the twenty-fifth century settling in the time just after the Trojan Wars, a time with few creature comforts and much violence and hardships. But RTD very much emphasises that she's had a happy life regardless, and O'Brien's performance convinces us.

I love the ending, a nice touch.

The Curse of Fenric

"Time streams are funny things. In some, I regenerate. In others, I don't."

The above quote, I suppose, is the best we're going to get in terms of explaining why all these Doctors look visibly older. Best not to ask too many questions, I feel.

This one follows on nicely from The Power of the Doctor, and both characters get closure, with the Seventh Doctor admitting that his manipulations would, yust veeery occasionally, you understand, go a little bit too far. I love the revelation that Ace used to see her nan- Kathleen Dudman- in the nursing home. And yes... the Doctor was always a father figure to her.

So off they go on one more journey. This one was wonderful.

So there we are. Just a few minutes per story, yes, but the sort of nice little character moments that Doctor Who coudn't really do when it consisted of twenty-five minute serialised episodes. It's surprising how much of a delight this all is, considering that it isn't much material. But this is whetting my appetite nicely. I trust RTD.

Dracula (1979)

“Oh, I loved to be frightened..”

This was the last of the famous Dracula films I’d seen and, while it doesn’t rival the recent BBC TV series, it’s easily the best cinematic version of the original novel, excellent though some of the others have been.

This film is, strictly speaking, based on the play written in the years after the novel was published but, despite skipping the famous Transylvanian bit, and with those inevitable lines "I never drink wine" and "Children of the night, what (sad music they make" present and correct, this is broadly very faithful to the original epistolary novel- not without changes but preserving the core of the story, namely Dracula coming through the window to threaten first Mina and then Lucy.

There's no downplaying the original sexual subtext of Dracula drinking Lucy's blood, either: the film is very well-shot throughout but the main scene of Dracula feeding from Lucy is directed in an abstract but obviously sexual way. Plus, of course, Frank Langella gices us a charming and deeply erotic version of the Count, with charisma enough almost to rival the great Christopher Lee.


Laurence Olivier is, perhaps, hamming it up as Van Helsing, although Larry hamming it up is worth a strong performance from a lesser actor. But it's a real stroke of genius to cast Trevor Eve as an appropriately chippy Jonathan Harker, somewhat pissed off at Dracula for nicking his fiancee.

It's also nice to hear Hollywood acknowledging that Whitby is in face in Yorkshire and not the Home Counties, with the not-posh characters having accents to match. It's a nice but crucial detail that is so often forgotten. It may or may not be the best Dracula film, but it's easily the best cinematic version of the novel Bram Stoker wrote.

The Airzone Solution

“Have I been scintillating company?”

 Unexpectedly, Amazon Prime is now showing- complete with subtitles- this interesting little piece of wilderness years nostalgia for us Doctor Who fans. It isn't Doctor Who, of course- in 1993 that existed only in a rather good set of novels. But it's made by fans, and stars no fewer than four doctors plus Nicola Bryant- and a very young Alan Cumming in a henchman role. And, most importantly, it’s a bloody gripping environmental thriller to boot, belying it’s low budget.

It’s very 1993, of course. From the opening music to a couple of jarring instances of casual racism that wouldn’t happen nowadays (Ellie does an arse-clenching  Chinese accent after a takeaway, and there’s an equally arse-clenching exchange about “big chief”, “pow wow” and “heap”.), but most of all it’s fascinating  to see how the perceived problems of the environment have changed over the past 26 years- incredibly, global warming isn’t even mentioned; the threat is pollution and- nostalgia alert!- the ozone layer. Remember that?

Jon Pertwee, as he often did later in life, phones it in. But Peter Davison is superb as a crusading journalist, while Sylvester McCoy shines in a slightly under-prominent role as an environmental activist. But the indisputable star is the superb Colin Baker as weatherman Arnie, a nice guy forced against his nature to resist the nefarious Airzone Solution, a very ‘90s exemplar of private sector greed from an age when Thatcherism was still very much a thing. This is an obscure bit of fandom drama, but something obscure can nevertheless be bloody good.

Doctor Who: The Curse of Fenric (Special Edition)

"Just because you've never been swimming..."

Yes, I know, I've done The Curse of Fenric. But that was during the Marathon, all those years ago. This is the movie format Special Edition from the DVD, and it's sufficiently different for me to do another blog post about it. It has, after all, been described by Andrew Cartmel as the definitive edition.

Ian Briggs is an extraordinary writer, and one with a great deal of thematic depth. He didn't come to Doctor Who with a genre background but, frankly, who cares? It's not much of a spoiler to say that I'm going to praise this to the skies.

The early scenes flow much better in their new order, and I'm reminded once again how the Seventh Doctor was too cool for psychic paper, calmly strolling into a top secret military base at the peak of the Second World War, casually forging the signatures of both Churchill and "C" with both hands just in time, like an uber-cool Leonardo da Vinci.

It's possible to tell the extended scenes, as the grading's a little off, but this version is so much better in terms of pacing, atmosphere and plot comprehension. This Doctor is extremely intellectual, quoting Nietzsche to the Reverend Wainwright. 

The story is full of metaphors. Maiden's Point is transparently about losing one'a virginity, and there's a clear subtext that Jean and Phyllis may have symbolically known each other in the Sapphic sense while swimming. Ace, of course, stays firmly on dry land at this point.

There is, perhaps, a more overt gay subtext for Judson and Millington but they are too bitter and ossified for such metaphors, which are broadly linked with adolescent sexuality and self-discovery.

I like the new CGI with the revelation of the inscription within the crypt. And, once again, I marvel at Millington's genocidal plans for post-war Moscow with his Fenric juice. But it all comes back to the water, with swimming a metaphor for arc; Jean and Phyllis are turned into vampires, a monster with obvious sexual connotations, and are sexually alluring in the same way as Dracula, tempting a man into the water.

The fight scenes around the church are much extended, but only provide a brief respite from the ever-present metaphor. Ace even seduces a guard to distract him, speaking entirely in the most oblique and impenetrable metaphors, discussing "undercurrents, bringing things to the surface". That's a fair description of what this story is about.

The Doctor being revealed to have trapped Fenric by means of a chess game just underlines how cerebral a story this is. We have the Ancient One as a fairly obvious ecological metaphor. We have the brilliantly handled revelations about Ace's past manipulation by Fenric. We have the equally ingenious twist of the Doctor's apparent betrayal of Ace. And always we have the subtext of the water, of the feelings beneath the surface, of sexuality, of the subconscious, of Ace's final, cleansing swim, symbolically entering adulthood.

Is this the best Doctor Who story ever?

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

"I have found it is the small things, the simple deeds of everyday folk, that keep the darkness at bay."

I have a sort of rule with this blog; no remakes before I've blogged the original, and no sequels or prequels before I've blogged the original. So technically I shouldn't be blogging this before blogging the excellent Lord of the Rings films but... ah well, just this once.

It's an odd beast, this trilogy. The Lord of the Rings were big, long and epic because the source material was big, long and epic. But here we have the first of three big, long and epic films based on, er, a children's book. And The Hobbit is very much a children's book on terms of both tone and content, with none of the political or religious content (strenuously denied, of course, by Tolkien) of The Lord of the Rings, although the tropes of Old English literature are present and correct, with a treasure-loving dragon straight out of Beowulf.

So we hit upon an important point; these films are only superficially an adaptation of The Hobbit. The story of Bilbo Baggins co-exists with extensive material dramatising and expanding the Middle Earth backstory as seen in the interminable appendices to The Return of the King to show us the tale of how Sauron slowly rebuilds his strength.

The Lord of the Rings films are superb, and justly are often present in lists of the best ever films. This trilogy will never be able to earn such praise, simply because it is more of the same. It is, nevertheless, good. Peter Jackson seems incapable of escape from the epic mode, so we were never likely to get the small, charming, intimate film that a straightforward 

adaptation of the novel might perhaps have given us. But I much enjoyed this first film. It's a massive exercise in fanwank which may perhaps alienate the children whom one might expect to be its audience, but I can't deny it's exciting to watch. I suspect the trilogy will end up being rather good, if not so Oscar-winningly acclaimed as the previous trilogy.

Right. That's the commentary out of the way. Let's spend the rest of the blog post on some (mainly) fanwanky bullet points.

* Martin Freeman is good in this, and The Office, and Sherlock, but his acting seems very dependent on some idiosyncratic mannerisms, doesn't it? Still, I suppose you can say the same of the likes of Robert Downey Jr.

* Two hours and forty-three minutes!!! This may be co-scripted by Guillermo Del Toro but at that length it's definitely a Peter Jackson film. Two more to go, too...

* Apparently this film has a huge rate of frame per second which is supposed to be really jarring. didn't notice.

* I saw this film while chomping on my wife's magnificent Italian meatballs, the best food in the word aside from her coq au vin. Just saying.

* The dwarves, obviously, come from wider Germanic myth but, in their exile from Erebor at the hands of Smaug, I wonder if there may be something of  the Wandering Jew to them. Probably reading too much into it, although I note the original novel was published in 1937, not a good time to be both German and Jewish.

* There's a long framing sequence; Ian Holm starts out narrating as the older Bilbo on the day of his eleventy-first birthday, and there's even a pointless cameo appearance by Elijah Wood as Frodo. All this sort of stuff elevates the bombast levels and tells us clearly that we're getting something Big and Epic and Not For Kids.

* Ian McKellen and the nonagenarian Christopher Lee are playing younger versions of their characters while being ten years older, and just about getting away with it. McKellen's performance, naturally, is extraordinary.

* Gandalf is an increasingly rare case in today's Hollywood of a character who smokes and isn't a baddie. 

* On the other hand, for a character who pretty much defined the modern fantasy wizard archetype as seen in D&D etc, Gandalf never does any bloody magic. 

* The best thing about the whole film is the song about "What Bilbo Baggins Hates". That is all.

* The Old English roots of all this are obvious, which should not surprise us as Tolkien was a great Old English scholar. The dwarves, with their feasting and drinking in halls, are Anglo-Saxons via a bit of Wagner. The riddles between Bilbo and Gollum are very Anglo-Saxon too. And I've already mentioned Smaug and Beowulf.

* Sylvester McCoy is fantastic and very Doctorish as Radagast, but then that's probably exactly how fanboy Peter Jackson wanted him to pitch his performance. Radagast is an interesting character; in D&D terms he'd be a druid and definitely not a wizard. I note, too, that Radagast is mentioned but never actually appears in any of Tolkien's works. Fanboy Peter Jackson is expanding the mythos.

* The film looks magnificent. New Zealand looks magnificent. The CGI looks extraordinary. This is a brilliantly made film.

Doctor Who: Survival

Part One



“People don’t just vanish.”

“You did.”

“That’s different.”

Blimey. Doing the Marathon has really leant this story a sense of occasion. The last proper McCoy story. The last story of the ‘80s. The last regular story for sixteen years. And for a long time threatening to be the last story ever. Fortunately, though, none of this is apparent in the story itself.

We end with another new writer, Rona Munro, now better known as a playwright, of course, and incredibly only the second woman to write for Doctor Who. It’s set in London’s suburbs in what was then the present day, and for the first time in this Marathon it’s a setting that feels pretty much like now. It’s quite shocking to get this sudden rush of normality; of streets, clothes and attitudes in Doctor Who, especially at this point.

So this is Perivale, where Ace comes from. I can identify with her even more, especially when she complains that “Nothing ever happens here”. Ace is back to see what happened to her old mates, but they’re nowhere to be found. Ace tries a phone box (ok, that’s dated a bit) while the Doctor gets bored very quickly (!) and is distracted by some feline goings-on. There’s something about this Doctor that suits such domestic ennui in a way none of his predecessors ever did.

They reach Ace’s old youth club, which is now the setting for some self-defence classes given by Sergeant Paterson, arse and windbag. I’m very strongly reminded of the Monty Python sketch where people are taught how to defend themselves against fresh fruit.

Said windbag alludes to Ace’s past (“The police let you off with a warning, didn’t they?”) and scolds Ace for not bothering to ring her mother, but fails, oddly, to query why the Doctor is hanging around with this young teenager. I suppose that’s another thing which dates this story a bit. We’re told four other young people are missing, and the Doctor removes himself from Patterson’s tiresome company by claiming he’s “going to see a man about a cat”. It’s a good scene, with Julian Holloway nailing his unlikeable part straight away.

The scene also, of course, introduces the theme of the story. While Ghost Light dealt (loosely) with natural selection, this story is more concerned with social Darwinism and the “law of the jungle”, with the carnivorous ways of our feline friends acting as the pivot. This is underlined in the following scene, in which shopkeepers Hale and Pace regale the Doctor with an obvious parable on this theme. Of course, the fact that the scene takes place in a shop makes it easy to relate the theme to Thatcherism.

And ok, Hale and Pace date the story a bit too.

Ace finally finds a mate who, in a further nod to the story’s themes, is a hunt saboteur. Apparently people are saying that Ace had “either died or gone to Birmingham”. Oi! There’s nowt wrong with Birmingham.

We then return to the topic of Ace not phoning her mother. I suppose it’s a shame the Doctor couldn’t rig some kind of device in the TARDIS, really. I’m sure such a thing will never happen. The Doctor then wanders off to find a cat for some reason, armed with some obviously fake brands of cat food (good old BBC!) while Ace wanders off to the sort of park that I used to play in as a kid but you just don’t find any more, with a roundabout and proper swings and everything.

And then suddenly a Cheetah Person on a horse appears from nowhere, chases her for a bit and then teleports her to Planet Quarry. The Doctor then discovers, firstly, that Ace has gone, and, secondly, that Patterson is still an arse. Ace soon discovers there are other people on Planet Quarry, including her mates Shreela and Midge, one of whom is slightly nicer than the other. Ace, of course, being fab, instantly takes charge. The Doctor and Patterson, meanwhile, are also transported to said planet by a cat of more conventional appearance. Well, I think it’s supposed to be. Actually it looks like some weird stuffed animatronic thing.

And so to the cliffhanger. The Doctor and his annoying companion are in a village full of tents and Cheetah People, and who should be there but the Master…



Part Two



“No dead wood!”

The Sergeant, goaded by the Master, runs, and instantly becomes the plaything of some Cheetah People, giving us our first inkling that he’s perhaps not so well equipped to survive as he thinks. The Doctor grabs a horse and saves him, and they move away from the village. The Master, apparently able to control the Cheetahs, remains unharmed in the village.

While this is going on we get the beginnings of a power struggle between Ace and Midge for leadership of the group. But while Midge offers nothing but cynicism, Ace instantly starts making plans to “get” a Cheetah Person. Her first trap fails, her second works- on Patterson and the Doctor. Here we get an exchange of exposition between our two groups, and the Doctor leads everyone through the village, being careful not to run and attract the attention of the hunters. It’s noticeable here that Patterson, in this context, has no authority and is below not only the Doctor but arguably Ace, Shreela and Midge in the pecking order.

The Doctor explains that the animatronic cats are “Kitlings”, scavengers with the ability to teleport between worlds, while the Cheetah People are linked to the planet and slowly destroying it by fighting each other. We don’t need to look hard for the metaphor here, but I like this way of doing things- science fantasy with social subtexts instead of “hard” sci-fi.

Sadly, a milkman suddenly teleports in front of everyone and the Doctor is forced to watch as chaos ensues. Ace, ending up by a stream, finds a Cheetah Person, Karra, helpless and in need of water, and goes to her aid. This contrasts with Midge, who kills a cat and takes its claw. Does this explain their different fates? I suspect their genders matter, too, especially as one of them is nurturing while the other is hunting and killing. Still, although I’m aware that symbols of femininity are said to be important to this story, that aspect of it went right over my head.

We discover that the Master is seemingly trapped here, and slowly being turned into a Cheetah himself. We’re left unsure whether this is to be Ace’s fate. But the Doctor is surprisingly ambivalent about whether or not Ace should help Karra, leaving the choice to her. The dynamics between the others, meanwhile, are getting very interesting. The Sergeant manages to assert leadership briefly, turning again to the Darwinian (and now more explicitly Thatcherite) theme of “no shirkers and no dead wood”. Midge, interestingly, attempts to consolidate the number two position by bullying others. But he’s too far gone; turning into a Cheetah, he’s captured by the Master who uses him to return to Perivale. Meanwhile, Ace’s eyes turn green…



Part Three


“If we fight like animals, we die like animals!”

Interesting, each episode has a different setting and flavour: the first on a very normal-seeming Earth; the second on Planet Quarry; and the third back on Earth again, but this time no longer so normal-seeming.

The Master is worried that he may still be turning feral, and the juxtaposition of this scene with scenes featuring scenes with Ace and Karra does nothing to diminish our fears for Ace. But when the Doctor arrives and asks her to “come home”, she chooses her existing life. Only at the end of the episode, of course, do we find out what “home” is.

The Doctor informs Ace that she has the ability to get everyone home, as Midge did, but if she does so she risks passing the point of no return and remaining feral. But he insists the choice is her; once again this Doctor’s reputation for manipulation proves an exaggeration of the truth.

We return to Perivale. And while not everything can just return to normal, Patterson immediately switches back to straightforward arse mode. But the Master and Midge are at large, and usurping his territory. Midge, strolling into the youth club dressed like a yuppie and pronouncing on survival of the fittest, seems very much the Gordon Gecko. But of course it’s the Master who’s pulling the strings, and he has a showdown to arrange with the Doctor. This turns out to consist of the Doctor and Midge charging at one another on motorbikes, causing a bit of a bang. The Master, horribly, orders Midge to just give up and die as he’s lost the Darwinian struggle for survival. But the Doctor has survived, and in the true showdown that follows he ultimately triumphs by breaking the cycle of Darwinian struggle and refusing to fight. The Master remains on Planet Quarry, trapped there by his adherence to the empty doctrines of social Darwinism. Anthony Ainley has been a revelation here, at last getting the chance to shine as the Master without the need for any of the “heh heh heh” stuff.

The final few lines are wonderful, as is the fact that we end simply with the Doctor and Ace walking to their next adventure…



Yet another 5/5, then. A brilliant script well made, and a fitting farewell in so many ways.



As for Season 26, with 4.25/5 it gets the same strong score as its predecessor. After a wobbly start the McCoy era has proven a revelation to me.

Doctor Who: The Curse of Fenric

Part One



“I like looking at the sea. It makes me feel small.”

Translation subtitles. Crikey. That’s rare. The subtitles are pretty shoddy compared to the ones we saw in The Mind of Evil, but fortunately this is a much better story.

It’s the North Yorkshire coast, it’s the Second World War, and the Doctor and Ace are striding purposefully into a top secret military research complex. We begin with a brilliant set of scenes in which the Doctor effortlessly bluffs his way into everyone’s confidence as only this Doctor can, blatantly asking for two pens and using them to forge the signatures the Prime Minister and MI6 in front of everybody.

We meet Dr Judson, in a scene contrived to make Ace look clever, and then move on to the scary Miss Hardaker, her two cockney charges, and the Rev Wainwright, a mystifyingly fantastic performance from Nicholas Parsons. We also meet Millington, who has designed his office to mimic exactly that of his German counterpart. When I first watched this twenty years ago I initially thought he was supposed to be Hitler. He certainly has the hairstyle.

There’s loads of atmosphere- mist, Vikings, games of chess- to sustain us while we introduce the cast and before the plot can get started. And also something I noticed this time around; when the Doctor looks at Joseph Sundvik’s grave, you can clearly see that one of his daughters had the married name “Millington”…

With everything in place, Millington kick starts the plot by mystifyingly ordering Judson to use the Ultima machine to translate the inscriptions, in spite of the fact that there seem to be more pressing uses for it; there is a war on, you know. Also seemingly significant is the parallel between the Vikings described by the inscription and the Russians today, both intending to return to Norway with treasure. There’s also something beneath the water which killed half of the Russian party, and there’s a scene with Ace, Kathleen and her daughter Audrey which will pay off later.



Part Two



“I’m not an invalid, I’m a cripple. I’m also a genius, so shut up, the pair of you.”



More creepy stuff happens; new runes are inscribed in the crypt as the translation is read, while the Doctor and Ace discover a secret passage in the crypt. Millington, obsessed by Norse mythology in ways which for once, as we’ll see, actually relate the myth to elements of the story, is producing a strange green poison, a chemical weapon to be dropped on to German cities. Not only that, but the Russians are intended to steal the enigma machine, which will release the Ultima machine as soon as a certain word transmitted by British intelligence is translated: “love”. Blimey. That’s a bit hasty. Can’t they wait until the Cold War actually starts?

We also get a great scene showing the vicar to be losing his faith, and Jean and Phyllis get turned into vampires and lure a Russian soldier to his death in a scene which might, possible, just about have some sexual undertones. On a minor note, some old jar is found underneath the church,

That’s a lot happening for only episode two. And there’s an awful lot here that foreshadows the ending, most blatantly in Millington’s order for all chess sets to be burnt. Millington has also drawn a picture of that old jar. Gosh, do you reckon it might be important?

Miss Hardaker gets killed, which technically means that, old dragon though she may have been, she was in fact right all along.

It’s all kicking off now. There are Haemovores everywhere, the vicar’s having a particularly bad day, and that old flask has started glowing…



Part Three



“Just look for something… evil.”



Gosh, what a coincidence. This is Whitby, where Dracula came ashore in Bram Stoker’s novel, and there are sort-of vampires running around. What are the chances, eh?

We’re told the Haemovores are the inhabitants of the Earth in a polluted future and, in a slightly more domestic vein, that it was Millington who caused Judson’s accident twenty years ago. Meanwhile, the Doctor takes some time to realise that Ace has the flask. Oh, and the church is under siege by hordes of Haemovores. Almost forgot that one.

The Haemovores are defeated by faith- the Doctor’s in his fiends, as we can see by the fact that he’s mouthing the names of all those who have travelled with him. Sorin- well, his faith is in the revolution; he’s a true believer. Ace also clearly likes him and the script clearly intends him to be a good guy. And that’s the one problem I have with this story. Because he’s, like, a Stalinist. And you can’t just present a Stalinist character as a hero. Especially when you’re contrasting his character with that of Millington, shown being an utter git as he abandons two soldiers of the Motherland to their deaths.

Said commie then reveals himself and loudly asks to speak to Commander Millington. Somehow I suspect this may harm his ability to remain concealed. But from this point on things become darker. Kathleen receives a letter telling her that her husband has been killed, and Ace confronts the Doctor about his secretiveness. This scene is not really about what much of fandom seems to think it is; the Doctor’s manipulative side seems to have been much exaggerated compared with what we actually see on screen. Ace’s problem with the Doctor is simply that he’s been too preoccupied to tell her what’s going on.

Naturally, I let out a huge cheer at the line “Evil! Evil since the dawn of time!” At last we get to hear about Fenric, our mysterious big bad. He’s an old enemy of the Doctor, who has been trapped inside that flask for ages. Er, ok. Perhaps we don’t actually get to hear all that much.

We then get quite an extraordinary scene. Essentially it consists of Ace distracting a guard by flirting with him, but it’s all highly metaphorical; clearly none of the dialogue here is meant as a literal reflection of what is said. This seems to be intended as a kind of sexual awakening for Ace (“Professor, I’m not a little girl any more”), but I’m not sure it entirely works; for all the cleverness of the metaphorical dialogue, it doesn’t seem to be saying anything beyond “Look! Here are some sexual undertones of an unspecified kind”.

Oh, and if you hadn’t already guessed there were sexual undercurrents here there’s a sign at Maiden’s Point telling you to beware of undercurrents!

The Doctor frees Sorin, and the Judson gets possessed by Fenric. Oh dear…



Part Four



“Don’t interrupt me when I’m eulogising!”

Fenric has been trapped for seventeen centuries in the “Shadow Dimensions”, apparently. Gosh. He must be a bit cross, then.

The Doctor, Ace and Sorin are about to be executed for treason, and unfortunately the weather’s rotten. Fortunately, the firing squad is interrupted, but unfortunately the rain carries on. The Doctor then rushes off to, er, set up a chessboard, while the Great Haemovore makes himself known. He’s also known as the “Great Serpent”, apparently, so we get an allusion to the Midgard Serpent to go with the earlier allusions to Yggdrasil. This is more actual Norse mythology that we got with the Gods of Ragnarok in Greatest Show, to put it mildly.

The Doctor almost defeats Fenric by, er, repeating his trick of seventeen centuries earlier by setting him a chess puzzle he can’t solve. But rather unfortunately Ace rather ruins it all by telling Fenric the solution: for the pawns of both sides to join together, as the British and Russian soldiers are doing. Er, that wasn’t a legal move the last time I checked.

Ace briefly alludes to Gabriel Chase, but that experience is nothing compared to what she’s about to experience. Fenric’s “wolves”, descendents of all the original Viking settlers, include Millington (shot); Judson; Sorin (now possessed); the Great Haemovore; and even Ace. This is where the “undercurrents” really start to get dangerous.

It turns out that the baby Audrey is in fact Ace’s mother, and that she’s just created her own future. But still, Ace has faith in the Doctor. Until the Doctor demolishes that face by stating that he’s seen Fenric’s hand in many things recently, such as the chess set in Lady Peinforte’s study. But the big revelation here is that the time storm that took Ace to Iceworld in the first place was Fenric’s doing, and the Doctor knew this all along, only tolerating “emotional cripple” Ace’s presence because of it. This devastates Ace.

Crucially, though, the Doctor doesn’t mean any of it, has a very good reason for saying what he does, and doesn’t do anything wrong here. Earlier, he persuaded the Great Haemovore that to follow Fenric would be to create the very future he comes from, a doomed and apocalyptic future which he does not wish to come to pass. (And, incidentally, when we’re told that the Great Haemovore was brought back in a “Time Storm”, that’s a bit of a clue as to what happened to Ace in Dragonfire a few minutes before it’s revealed.) The Doctor destroys Ace’s faith in him; the Great Haemovore is able to act; and the Great Haemovore kills Fenric. Very neat.

Crucially, a line is symbolically drawn under this is the final scene as Ace goes for a swim, symbolically cleansing herself. There’ll be no more “dangerous undercurrents”.



Wow. That was brilliant. A moody, atmospheric thriller with moments of high excitement and a lot going on under the surface. 5/5.

Doctor Who: Ghost Light

Part One



“I’m as human as you are!”

“Yeeesss…”

From the beginning to the end everything we see happens in the same few excellent sets, which are stuffed with various objects to draw the eye. The effect is that for once it’s easy to forget that this is the season’s studio-bound story.

Fairly early on we’re made privy to the fact that this richly atmospheric big Victorian house features some oddly futuristic technology and a strange creature which is kept imprisoned in a cell. But the things that are in store for us are much weirder than that. Such as the magnificent sideburns of the Reverend Ernest Matthews, a character so superbly brought to life that I had to be told by the closing titles that it was John Nettles.

The Doctor’s arrived here as some kind of “initiative test” for Ace. And they land in a richly atmospheric part of the house full of stuffed animals and all sorts of artefacts a Victorian explorer might collect. Speaking of which, we meet the magnificently grotesque Redvers Fenn Cooper, who introduces us to the dense literacy of the script with dialogue alluding to The Lost World, Heart of Darkness and no doubt other things. There’s a lot of this sort of thing.

Matthews, clergyman and naturalist who’s quite high up in the Royal Society, has arrived to question the house’s occupant, one Josiah Samuel Smith, on his blasphemous Darwinian theories, which he dismisses. Of course, no one alive today could possibly hold such a view.

On a related theme, Josiah’s manservant, Nimrod, appears to be a Neanderthal, and no one appears to be behaving naturally. This, and the claustrophobic confines of the house, makes things already feel deeply charged. But then things start happening. The creature is found to have escaped from its cell, and Ace realises this house is Gabriel Chase, a place which affected her very strongly with the evil she sense when she was in its ruins at the age of thirteen. This is a great scene, and one that gains a lot from being watched as part of the Marathon. Ace has been travelling with the Doctor for a while now, and her character is ripe for a bit of development.

It’s often argued that the Doctor’s being cruel, forcing Ace to face her fear like this, but it ain’t necessarily so. She seems to have exorcised some demons by the end of the story, and this all seems to tie in to some long-term plan the Doctor has for her. And the Doctor’s motives in this story hinge rather heavily on where all this is going in the long term. Sadly, of course, all this lies mostly in “what if?” territory.

And then there’s the story of Ace’s friend Manisha, of course, although we’re not told how she ties into Gabriel Chase.

I love “That’s the Way to the Zoo.” After all, not all references to the evolution theme have to be subtle. Nor, indeed, are those husks at the cliffhanger. For all that I don’t think this story is half as confusing as it’s supposed to be, I have no idea what the “Ratkin” stuff is supposed to be about.



Part Two



“Tricky things, mammoths.”

Another episode, another dose of splendid weirdness. This time we get an Inspector from Scotland Yard who’s spent the last two years asleep in a drawer. But things are also moving forward; we’re introduced to the powerful “sleeping one” who “must not be woken” in the stone spaceship. Of course, Ace sets in train the chain of events that will lead to its awakening.

There are some revelations which make things clearer. Well, a bit. The husks are previous versions of Josiah, “old cast-offs” from before he evolved into his present form. Josiah’s not the real owner of either the house or the ship, but was originally “part of the cargo”. He knows as much about the ship “as a hamburger knows about the Amazon desert”. And the mysterious escaped creature is called “Control”.

There’s a lot of wit and literary allusion- dare I say, ahem, semiotic thickness- in the dialogue which prevents the exposition from feeling like an exposition, and it’s all done with a real lightness of touch. It says a lot that most of this episode is exposition, the only real respite from it being the splendidly comical scene of the Reverend Ernest Matthews turning into an ape, but that in no way stops it being great.

The awakened Inspector MacKenzie is another fabulous comical grotesque, the classic small-minded ignoramus who tries to bluff his way through life. He’s also a major plot point; two years ago he was sent to the house to investigate the disappearance of its owner, Sir George Pritchard. And no doubt a second inspector was sent to investigate his own disappearance, and so on. No doubt there’s an entire police force hidden within Gabriel Chase.

The Doctor, being the Doctor, has a plan, and it involves doing a deal with Control. He knows this mysterious “sleeping one” is feared by both Josiah and Control, and worshipped by Nimrod, who, wonderfully, has “gone to see a man about a god”. We end with a few revelations- Mrs Pritchard is in fact Lady Pritchard and Gwendoline is her and Sir George’s daughter- and the unleashing of the powerful and mysterious Light…



Part Three



“Even I can’t play so many games at once!”

Sadly, in a story of almost uniformly excellent performances, we get one duff performance, and Light is it. And even McCoy has an odd moment, delivering the line “Only I didn’t get caught napping” in a most peculiar fashion whilst holding his arm right out in front of him for some reason.

We’re not told who he is or where he comes from, but Light’s ship crashed on Earth (although, as we later discover, it wasn’t significantly damaged) and for unexplained reasons he set about cataloguing all of its life forms. But he was shocked to discover that no sooner had he finished than it had all evolved into something else. It’s a little odd that a being capable of travelling through space at the speed of thought should be ignorant of natural selection, but never mind.

Oh, and in a scene absolutely vital to understanding what’s going on, Control states that “Control is me,” and the Doctor continues “And the survey is Josiah,” telling us the crucial fact that Light’s experiments were performed by using a control (Control) for the experiment (Josiah).

Meanwhile, Control spends most of this episode going through a speeded up version of Pygmalion; she’s even dressed as Eliza Doolittle for most of it. And we get more of Ace’s past- she has a sort of mini-breakdown in the corridor implying there’s a question she may have caused people to die. We’re later told she was guilty of arson at thirteen, setting fire to this very house exactly one hundred years later. If she did accidentally kill someone, no wonder she’s repressed the memory of this house and no wonder she was so upset is the first episode. If I’m reading this right, I’m surprised I haven’t heard about it before. It’s a big, big thing for the character.

The increasingly irrelevant Josiah had been planning to cause Redvers to assassinate the “Crowned Saxe-Coburg” in the delusion that he would somehow precede Bertie to the throne and in some way become an absolute monarch, a plan rather casually foiled by Redvers, simply because he likes Control better than him. Control has a rude awakening of the hugeness of the world outside, but fortunately Ace is there to play Henry Higgins.

Probably the best thing about the whole story is that, in spite of everything that’s happened, everybody just appears at dinner because this is Victorian Britain and failing to turn up is Just Not Done. But this leads to a splendid finale, in which the Doctor actually manages to talk Light to death plausibly, Control and Josiah switch roles, and all the characters who clearly aren’t ever going to be able to function in Victorian society just take off in the spacecraft, heading for somewhere “Light years from Zanzibar”.



Brilliant, easily a 5/5. For all the criticism this story sometimes get, it made a lot more sense to me than Battlefield did. I think I pretty much grasped the plot, although there are a couple of points which weren’t explained, although arguably they all lie outside the main plot (Who is Light? Why is he surveying Earth? Why does evolution surprise him? Why did he become dormant? How long have Josiah and Control been active- since 1881 when Sir George was, ahem, sent to Java? If so, what awakened them?). I must admit, though, this is not exactly my first viewing, and I’m probably advantaged by the fact that I watch all drama with subtitles if I can, so I didn’t have any problems with muffled dialogue.

Doctor Who: Battlefield

Part One



“And boom!”

“Boom?”

“Boom!”

A garden centre. Whoopee. How very exciting. But hang on- it’s the Brig. With Doris, she of the name checking in Planet of the Spiders! How very fanwanky. But it’s great to see the Brig again, even though all the dialogue in this scene is a bit of a crude info-dump (“What, giving up teaching?”)

And we get UNIT too, now a proper UN organisation with blue berets and a few token foreigners to prove it. And there’s a new Brigadier, played by Angela Bruce, the female Lister from the most recently broadcast episode of Red Dwarf. She’s great. Her catchphrase isn’t. And it’s a bit odd how Zbigniew calls her “sir”. Hasn’t she noticed she’s, er, a she?

Blimey, it’s a bit dark in the TARDIS. It’s almost as if they were trying to hide the fact they’ve managed to dump most of the console room between seasons. The Doctor is also a bit darker with his new jacket. Symbolism, perhaps? There’s talk of “sideways in time” which alerts all those aware of how this show works that this is where the baddies are going to come from. They’re following a signal from Earth “a few years” in Ace’s future, a signal consisting of just the word “Merlin”. Oooh! We never do find out what it was.

The Doctor’s great when infiltrating himself with UNIT. I love the old-fashioned pocket-emptying, the passes, his reply to Winifred’s “I think I would have noticed a nuclear explosion.” With “Yes, they are conspicuous.” But he’s even better being all brooding and mysterious about this Arthurian stuff, at least now where the possibility of it all making sense by the end still seems open.

If Patrick’s “Arthur’s Ale” is approved by CAMRA then it must be damn good, but the script seems to mock it, especially with the philistine comments of Ace’s explosive-loving mate Shou Yuing. Bah. Apparently Ben Aaronovitch is not a real ale lover. Disgraceful. Shouldn’t be allowed. All right-thinking people love real ale.

Still, the coolness of the Doctor apparently having a Zoid in his pocket rouses me from my ranting state of mind as the knights with guns suddenly appear and start shooting at each other all over the place. I’m not sure what good the mediaeval armour’s supposed to be doing them under the circumstances, but I understand Aaronovitch intended it to look a lot more futuristic, which would have made a lot more sense and been a lot cooler.

I love the Brig’s constant assurances to Doris that he’s definitely not going to get killed, which were clearly put there to foreshadow his Beowulf-esque demise until Aaronovitch decided otherwise.

We finish by meeting Ancelyn, who recognises Merlin, and then some baddie knights. All this looks good mostly, and there are some cool concepts flying about, but I’m with Shou Yuing when she asks “Can someone tell me what on Earth is going on?”



Part Two



“Yes, remember Badon and my mighty arts!”

For years until I first saw the DVD with subtitles I thought the above quote was about a “mighty arch”. Anyway…

These knights are from another dimension. One of them, Mordred, is obviously a key figure from Arthurian legend, but I don’t think Ancelyn is. I’m still not sure exactly what’s going on, or how it’s all supposed to relate to the mythology, if at all beyond the superficial.

Mordred’s insane laughter is… an interesting approach. The Doctor’s use of a crisp packet to wake up Winifred and Ancelyn is much cooler, and I love the humorous way their relationship develops throughout the story.

A couple of niggles though; who got Geneva to call in the Brig, and why? Is Winifred not considered capable? And then there’s the ridiculously slow pace of Peter Warmsly’s archaeological dig. It would have taken the Time Team crew a bit less than ten fricking years to sort that load of trenches out. And then there’s Morgaine’s confrontation with the Brig at the cemetery- good scene, yes, but what are the Thirteen Worlds, and who are the S’Rax? And why is Arthur in a sodding spaceship under the lake? What’s happening?


Part Three



“Something’s wrong.”

“What?”

“We haven’t been attacked yet.”

So, Warmsley thinks the whole Arthurian thing’s “a bit of a myth really,” in spite of the fact he’s spent ten years digging a site whose only apparent worth is its connection with the legend? Still, it’s cool to see Ace emerge from the lake with Excalibur.

The Doctor and the Brig finally meet, and I love the Brig’s casual attitude to the fact the Doctor’s changed again; “Who else would it be?” We get Bessie too. But the best bit is of course where the Doctor stops the battle. I don’t mean “THERE. WILL. BE. NO. BATTLE HERE!” but the hilarious insults Mordred and Ancelyn throw at each other.

I still have no idea what’s going on, mind.



Part Four



“Exotic alien swords are easy to come by. Aces are rare.”

I admit the Destroyer looks good, whoever he is. This story is getting more and more like an episode of Angel as it goes on. Except nowhere near as good, obviously.

Everything in this story, with the Brig knocking the Doctor out so he can get the final confrontation, is clearly signposting his heroic sacrifice. I’m glad it doesn’t happen though. Full of nice little Brig moments though it is, this story isn’t really worthy of being the Brig’s swansong.

The Doctor’s talking Morgaine out of using the nuke sort of works, I suppose, and I like the note left from his future self. That doesn’t mean I have any idea what’s been happening, though. And it’s with good reason that everyone always asks exactly how they’re supposed to “lock up” Morgaine.

Still, there’s something about this story’s heart that’s in the right place. We may get the very Scooby Dooiest of Scooby Doo endings, but in a good way.


Well, that made no sense. There’s also a sense, although to a lesser extent than Silver Nemesis, that things have been edited so tightly as to affect the clarity of the narrative. And it’s not directed all that well either. But the main problem is the many basic things that aren’t explained- we learn nothing of who Morgaine’s lot or Ancelyn’s lot actually are, where they came from or what they want. And because, unlike last story, this story isn’t abstract or allegorical- it’s not about anything other than the plot itself, not even Arthurian myth in any meaningful way- these things matter. Still, it diverted me, had some good set pieces and some fun humour. A highish 2/5.

Doctor Who: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy

Part One



“Oh no, not the spoons again!”



Another script by Stephen Wyatt, and it’s set around a circus. Already we know we’re going to get a somewhat abstract and allegorical tale which borrows from the style and aesthetics of 2000 AD. It’s quite interesting that we start with a rap, however dated it may be. Doctor Who is now in the age of hip-hop. And, as we’ll see, Goths. And ageing hippies, of course. At last, Doctor Who does youth culture.

We get to see the TARDIS interior for the only time this season, and after a brief nostalgic glimpse of Tom’s scarf we get the hilarious conceit of a junk mail robot. It’s advertising the Psychic Circus, but Ace, like all right thinking people, finds clowns creepy. The Doctor, naturally, wants to see this phenomenon. Of course, he probably has reasons other than the obvious.

There’s some great imagery, with Flowerchild’s hippy look, the psychedelic bus, and the clowns in the hearse, and it’s all very effectively shot. And by the time we get to see Nord (“Do you want me to do something unpleasant to your face?”), with his Mad Max look, it’s all looking like a Tharg’s Future Shock or something, already. Suddenly, Doctor Who looks bang up to date.

Contrasting with the whole hippy aesthetic is the robot bus conductor, who represents, like, the man, and the commercialism that, like, killed off the free festival. It’s highly symbolic that we find such a figure inside a bus that is so symbolic of hippy-ism, if that’s a word. In fact, it’s almost the story in microcosm in the way it foreshadows the wider themes, especially as it’s the Doctor who causes the ticket collector to break down. Far out, man.

I like the ringed gas giant behind the tent. This sort of thing is almost the calling card of post-hiatus Who. I also like Mags, and not only because she’s a pretty goth girl. I’m less enamoured of Adrian Mole as Whiz Kid, but heigh-ho.

That’s a bit of a peculiar place to put a cliffhanger.



Part Two



“It feels more like we’re part of a machine.”


I love the ‘50s family in the audience. And if it wasn’t clear before that we’re watching a piece of allegory and imagery where realism has no place, it certainly is now. After all, if we were to treat the story as “realistic”, why the ‘50s clothing? Along with lots of other things of contemporary Earth cultural relevance, in fact.

There are some things here I’ve not picked up on before. It’s noticeable that the Doctor and Ace are asked if they want to enter before they’re invited into the circus, just as the Doctor is asked if he wishes to perform on the stage before the trap snaps shut. It’s as though the victims need to agree of their own free will before the deceit and their true fate is revealed. But the upshot is that Mags, the Captain, Nord and the Doctor are stuck here, and T.P. McKenna is fantastic as the apathetic, smoothly self-serving Captain, manipulating Nord into performing, and dying, before him.

The Ringmaster and Morgana, meanwhile, have a bit of a chat about whether or not they’ve, like, sold out, man, just in case it wasn’t already clear what this story is about. ‘60s ideals slowly morphing into right-wing economic individualism- how very ‘80s.

I don’t like Gian Sammarco’s Whizz Kid one bit. There’s never been anything big or clever about the nerd stereotype, which has always had something of the school bully about it, and unfortunately the costuming and performance really push this. There’s no excuse, really, however much the production team may have felt under siege from certain elements of fandom. And it’s a shame, really, as the nasty elements of this stereotype don’t seem to be present in the script itself- although the “satire” of perceived fan attitudes certainly does, and this isn’t pretty either. Still, it’s admittedly a nice touch that Morgana, who up till now has subtly tried to persuade potential victims not to enter the circus, encourages Whizz Kid to his doom just to be rid of his annoying presence.

We’re introduced to the pit and the eye, though not yet to their significance. But the Captain has betrayed the Doctor…



Part Three



“Although I never got to see the early days, I know it’s not as good as it used to be. But I’m still terribly interested.”

Ace has a bit of a chinwag with Bellboy. “We had such high ideals when it started,” he tells her; “We shared everything.” I’m glad we got that line, because there’s no way we would have got the selling out subtext without it. Still, I’m enjoying this. It’s nice to have a story made entirely of aesthetics, imagery, allegory and subtext where all pretensions to realism are irrelevant. After all, one could easily point out the problem of how the circus manages to keep up the steady stream of entertainers for their mysterious and demanding audience, as there don’t seem to be many punters to be lured in. But to take things so literally would be to miss the point.

Whizz Kid meets his inevitable demise, paying the price for his inability to realise that the memory cheats. I’ll always defend JN-T, who has generally done a pretty good job however much I may object to certain of his previous script editors, but the unsubtle rant at his critics here comes across as unnecessarily bitter. Still, I’m highly amused by the scene where the Captain persuades him to go first, and especially the double-edged line “A sacrifice I am prepared to make.”

“You’re just an ageing hippy, Professor,” says Ace to the Doctor. Somehow that fits very well indeed, and not just the Sylvester McCoy model. It also shows us where he stands in relation to the allegory, of course.

Poor Bellboy gets hoist by his own mechanical petards. Ian Reddington is great here as the camera turns towards the Chief Clown’s reaction.



Part Four



“It was your show all along, wasn’t it?”

Hooray! The last episode ever I’ll watch on video, and consequently the last episode without subtitles for me and my dodgy hearing. No more muffled dialogue for me!

The Doctor tells the Captain he’s a “crushing bore,” clearly the most hurtful thing he’s ever said to him in his entire life. McKenna’s reaction is great, as is pretty much everything he does.

Appropriately, though, it’s Mags who kills him. Also appropriately, the eye heals Deadbeat / Kingpin, and the story enters its final stretch, much of which consists of the Doctor doing magic tricks for the Gods of Ragnarok. It’s a good climax, although I wish the allusions to Norse mythology had been done either meaningfully or not at all.

All the pieces come together and the Doctor, in a surprising return to traditional values in what I believe we’re supposed to call an “oddball” story, blows up the bad guys. The scene of his calmly walking way as the big top explodes is, of course, legendary. And the extreme coolness of Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor is underlined once again. “It was your show all along, wasn’t it?” asks Ace. You know, I wasn’t expecting to end up saying this, but this Marathon has really made me rethink Sylvester McCoy. As things stand, he might well end up as my favourite Doctor.



Well, the hippies vs. commercialism stuff was a bit more blatantly in-your-face than I remembered, but this is still great. Stylish, full of wonderful visuals, and playing with ideas in an agreeably fun way. 5/5.



As for the season as a whole- well, after a long time of seasons mostly ranking near the bottom, it’s with some relief, and no little surprise, that this gets a very creditable 4.25/5, placing it fourth overall.

Doctor Who: Silver Nemesis

Part One



“…And I have found his secret out.”

Ooh, captions! Stock footage of the Amazon rainforest! A parrot! Nazis! Ride of the Valkyries! A lot of things are being thrown at us thick and fast. And then we switch to 1638 and Lady Peinforte. Both groups of people in both time zones include someone carrying a bow and arrow.

Eventually things slow down a bit and we’re allowed a bit of exposition. Apparently Nemesis is a comet which, in spite of the fact that its orbit is decreasing, continues to orbit the Earth every 25 years exactly. Er, what?

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Ace are outside watching Courtney Pine. The Doctor’s alarm goes off, but he’s forgotten what it means. Er, what? They return to the TARDIS to find out, and are shot at by some half-Cybernised blokes, to the accompaniment of incidental music which is quite the worst to have been heard on the show so far.

So, the Doctor has made Ace a new tape deck using fantastically advanced technology, which seems an absurd thing to do twenty years later. What next? A digital abacus?

We flit quickly from scene to scene, making the narrative very disjointed. It’s not that this makes the story hard to follow (it’s not really that complicated) or that the plot as a whole doesn’t really make sense (it does, more or less, although lots of little things don’t). It’s the characters’ motivations that don’t make any sense- Lady Peinforte and the Nazis are just behaving as the plot requires them to because that’s their role, with no thought given to motivation or characterisation beyond that. And it’s noticeable that the writer can’t seem to manage much beyond plot mechanics; there’s no successful humour in this story, or development of themes, or meaningful character moments.

Peinforte knows the Doctor, and his “secret”, because the statue told her in 1638, and she also knows how to use a “potion” to travel forwards in time. Both Peinforte and the Nazis are converging on the statue, which has now fallen to Earth just outside Windsor.

The Doctor and Ace are caught trespassing in Windsor Castle- and I can clearly recall that when originally broadcast there was absolutely no explanation of how they escaped before next being seen by the statue. For the video release which I watched these “deleted scenes” have been slipped back in. But the fact that this story was originally edited so as to make the basic plot impossible to follow is simply appalling, and arguably render the episode as originally broadcast unsuitable for transmission.

And then the Cybermen arrive…



Part Two



“The bear will not pursue us. Such things happen only in the theatre.”

Peinforte kills a Cybermen with a gold-tipped arrow. We’ll be seeing a lot more of this sort of thing. Meanwhile people shoot at each other for what seems like an awfully long time. It’s also suddenly noticeable that De Flores seems to be driving a Ford Granada just like the one in Ashes to Ashes. If only it were brown…

The Doctor and Ace pop back to 1638 for no particular reason, something they’ll keep on doing throughout the story. The Doctor plays a bit of chess. You know, I reckon there might be some kind of very, very subtle metaphor going on here.

The scenes with the skinheads are appalling, and are the prime example of the awkwardness of the dialogue in this story. But I like the scene where Richard sees his own grave, although it would have been nice to have dwelt on the timey-wimey paradox-y side of this a bit more.

Although this story often seems to get criticised for its treatment of the Cybermen, it actually gets a lot of things right, with its stress on Cybernisation and cold logic. Unfortunately, though, their vulnerability to gold simply becomes absurd here, utterly diluting any sense of threat.

Unfortunately the Doctor’s silly speech about historical events which happen as the comet passes by every 25 years is impossible to take seriously. And De Flores constant banging on about Wagner is starting to get on my wick too.

I like that shot of the lizard in the tree just before the cliffhanger. It would be nice to think it was filmed on the day rather than being a bit of boring old stock footage.



Part Three



All things will soon be mine.”

Ace refuses to go back to the TARDIS, in spite of the fact she’s “really, really scared”, basically out of bravado. This could have been a good character moment but somehow fails to quite get there in spite of some superlative acting from both regulars. That sums up this script in a nutshell.

Sylvester and Sophie are also fantastic in the scene where they dodge several Cybermen to manoeuvre the bow into the statue’s hands, although the whole thing doesn’t quite come off as plausible.

Unfortunately we get a couple of arse-clenchingly awful things in this episode; the stereotypical American tourist character seems to be written without any hint of self-awareness. And while there’s a certain coolness to the Dirty Harry moment, Ace’s firing gold at Cybermen with her catapults pretty much causes them to leap headlong over a certain predatory fish of the genus Carcharhinus. No wonder we’ll never see the Cybermen of “our” universe ever again.

It’s a shame that the generally laudable attempt to reintroduce mystery to the Doctor should focus so heavily on this story rather than on one where it would have been better handled. As far as the general direction of the show is concerned, though, it’s an exciting move, although of course a lot depends on where this is going. But it’s exciting to hear of the “Old Time” and the “Time of Chaos”.



It’s an odd one, this. The plot actually works well enough, and the similarities to Remembrance of the Daleks are general enough to not be a problem. But plot’s all there is- there’s no real sense of characterisation, humour or mood. 2/5.

Doctor Who: The Happiness Patrol

Part One



“Can’t you afford a real gun?”

Everything in this story is very obviously studio-based, with the studio floor prominent even in the early scenes set in a “street”. But this is only a problem if you’re expecting things to be “realistic”, and this story isn’t supposed to be. This is abstract theatre with a camera pointed at it, with sets and costumes to match. And it’s great.

The style of the streets, with a very “Big Brother” visible face on the wall, seems very reminiscent of Kneale and Cartier’s 1954 TV version of 1984. The planet of Terra Alpha is exactly this kind of totalitarian state, and the state persecution of those who refuse to conform by being “happy” works well as a metaphor for all sorts of things. I remember a lot of talk in mid-‘90s fanzines of this story being about Section 28; I don’t think there’s anything to indicate that was particularly intended, but it’s one of many valid interpretations.

As soon as the Doctor and Ace arrive they immediately start plotting regime change, and this story charts how the Doctor acts as a catalyst for the overthrow of Helen A’s regime over the course of a single evening. Helen A herself, played superbly by Sheila Hancock, is of course in no way based on Thatcher.

Visually and stylistically, this feels very similar to Vengeance on Varos, not only with the corridors and the go-karts but in the general aesthetic. What’s different is that instead of violence and sadism we see a less graphic but more insidious type of tyranny, much more psychological in how its people are mistreated. Activities such as walking alone in the rain, wearing dark clothing and reading poetry (except poetry) are banned as unconducive to happiness, the result of which is that Terra Alpha is an utterly joyless place. In fact, it resembles 1984 in more ways than one, with the general drabness of this society echoing the late ‘40s Britain of rationing and gloom which partly inspired Orwell’s novel in the first place.

The sight of the Kandyman is a shock, though- how on Earth did the BBC avoid getting sued?



Part Two



“He makes sweets that kill people.”



The “drones” who work in the factories are demonstrating against the regime, while the indigenous people of the planet have been driven underground. The conditions for revolution are in place. But first the Doctor and Earl Sigma (whose white t-shirt and suit looks so 1988) must escape the Kandyman, who seems to have a lot of personality for an artificial being. It’s a great scene, with the Doctor using his wits and some lemonade to affect their escape.

As Susan Q is taken away to be executed, Priscilla P delivers the most horrifying line of the story to Ace, showing just what a conformist nightmare being in the Happiness Patrol must be: “She was never any good. She never had the right attitude. She never joined in. She wasn’t part of the team.” Stifling conformity and forced jollity; is there anything in the world as terrifying as that?

The Doctor gets another great moment, turning the tables on Trevor Sigma by sheer force of personality in a scene that manages to get away with being completely implausible by means of its extreme coolness. And mere minutes later he gets an even better one as he confronts the two snipers on the roof. This is a great story for the Doctor, and Sylvester McCoy plays these scenes brilliantly. I really like this new Doctor, with the contrasts between the cleverness and manipulative side on the one hand and the spoon playing and physical comedy on the other.

I love the bloke at the box office at the cliffhanger- such a typical example of British customer service.



Part Three



“I can hear the sound of empires toppling.”

“Everything’s beginning to fall into place,” says the Doctor. Revolution is imminent. Fifi is lured to her death, the factories are in open revolt, and Helen A is soon attempting to flee the planet. But there’s still time for a bit of comic relief as the Kandyman answers a retro looking telephone.

Helen A is unable to escape, as her shuttlecraft has been commandeered By Gilbert M and her partner Joseph P, who seem to be eloping together! Her final speech to the Doctor before she collapses into tears upon hearing about Fifi’s death is very strongly reminiscent of Thatcher.



This is a brilliant and very clever script superbly realised by a production style that quite correctly avoided realism in favour of the abstract. It would be easy to criticise this for this lack of realism, and especially for the use of a small cast in a story concerning the fate of an entire world, but that would be to miss the point. There are a couple of worries, however. The direction is a bit flat, but then again the fact that this is deliberately presented as televised theatre that would seem to be required. And I’m not sure taking such a boldly avant garde direction was an altogether wise move for a show which desperately needed to appeal more to a mainstream audience. In spite of its superficially childlike trappings, this is a very adult focused story, too; I’m not sure the story would appeal much to kids, many of whom would have probably seen it, ironically, as childish. I certainly did in 1988. But, all this aside, it still kicks arse. 5/5.

Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks

Part One



“Ace, give me some of that Nitro Nine you’re not carrying.”

As if the pre-titles sequence isn’t great enough, we begin just outside Coal Hill School. Wicked! Except that the kids seem to be wearing uniforms, an apparent continuity error.

The Doctor and Ace are walking by, Ace very much acting the teenager and hinting at a hinterland never possessed by Mel, while the Doctor ‘s new persona is now firmly and fully formed, as shown quite superbly as he just leaps straight into the van with Rachel and Allison and casually takes charge.

Then we’re off to Totters’ Lane. Which looks a lot more plausible than “it” did in Attack of the Cybermen. There’s a building which could be the one where it all started- except that right now there’s a Dalek in it!

I can’t remember any previous story as fast-paced as this. We’re introduced to the clipped but impotent Gilmore, the apparently friendly Mike and the frustrated Professor Rachel Jensen very very quickly, but they all have clear personality traits to remind us who they are. That’s good writing from newcomer Ben Aaronovitch.

I love the Doctor’s muttered “Humans!” as Gilmore insists on sending his men into the meat grinder. For different reasons, I also love the brick Mike uses as a phone! The story’s full of those nice touches to remind us that we’re in 1963- the Doctor having to remind Ace to use the choke in the van, for example.

The scene in the van is extremely nice for a number of reasons- the immense coolness of the Doctor and Ace switching places in the tunnel, the nice character stuff between them, the establishment of the Doctor’s grumpier, more manipulative yet still fluffy personality (or, in other words, a bit like early Troughton, which is definitely a good thing) and of course the exposition. We get an admirably concise potted history of the Daleks and a mention of the mysterious Hand of Omega. Naturally, much is left dangling.

We’re briefly introduced to Mike’s dodgy friend Ratcliffe, only for Mike to let him have the dead Dalek a couple of scenes later. Mr Bronson from Grange Hill turns up- not only Michael Sheard, but as a proper teacher with the glasses and everything! We discover that Rachel is Gilmore’s “Chief Scientific Adviser”- nice title!- and we see the inside of the school chemistry lab, which seems to have a book on the French Revolution left lying about. Hmm.

We finish with the revelation of a Dalek-like thing in Ratcliffe’s office- Davros?- and the doctor and Ace in a spot of trouble in the cellar. The cliffhanger is one of the all time greats as the Doctor is pursued up some stairs by a Dalek…



Part Two



“Frightening, isn’t it? To find others better versed in death than human beings.”

This episode is pretty much the reason I’m doing this Marathon, because one day in October 1988, at eleven years old and having just started secondary school, I happened to come across it. I’d watched Doctor Who before when I was younger, but drifted away from it after Colin Baker took over. This time, though, I was hooked. Looking it up, it seems that 12th October 1988 was the day I became a Doctor Who fan.

And I can see why- it’s bloody exciting. We start with a bit of action, and then we get the fabulous café scene which, bizarrely, seems to feature the butler from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. There’s some philosophical musings about choices and consequences, and also the unspoken implication that while everyone else sleeps through the night the Doctor remains awake drinking coffee and ruminating.

Early in the morning he retrieves a levitating coffin from an undertaker, having been “an old geezer with white hair” when he first dropped it off. Well, well, well. With the assistance of a blind vicar he buries the Hand of Omega- best not to think of how he actually handled all the organisational necessities- and we hear the grave has been ready for “a month”. So presumably the school has been without a history teacher and a science teacher for about that time.

More exposition, during which the Doctor is seen reading a copy of Richard Gordon’s Doctor in the House in what seems to be a recurring gag after The Doctor’s Dilemma showed up in Dragonfire. Will we see any more of this? Anyway, there are two Dalek factions, the Imperial and Renegade Daleks.

Ace is left behind at Mike’s mother’s guesthouse, where among other things she encounters the phenomenon of television sets needing to warm up and almost catching the start of a new Saturday teatime sci-fi show scheduled for 5.15, called “Doc-“ something. I wonder what it was? But most impressive is Ace’s reaction to discovering the “No Coloureds” sign. It’s a nice moment.

Ace goes to the school to find her tape deck, as she misses her uber-modern technology, and discovers that loads of white and gold, Revelation-style Imperial Daleks have transmatted in. She proceeds to kick no small quantity of arseage, attacking Daleks with her baseball bat and leaping through a window. And this leads to another brilliant cliffhanger.



Part Three



“Weapons- always useless in the end.”

This is the first episode I ever recorded on its original transmission- and I’ve done the same for every episode ever since. So for me there will be no more stories in this Marathon that are particularly unfamiliar- although of course there are loads I haven’t seen for years. This one, for example.

The Doctor gets strangled by a strange looking claw from inside an Imperial Dalek; apparently the blobs inside have mutated functional appendages and are cyborgs. Lovely. And then we get more great moments- Rachel and Allison’s faces after the Doctor smashes the Dalek transmat with the baseball bat; the Doctor’s discussion with Ace about how such unimaginably advanced tech as a tape deck is a glaring anachronism in the year when sexual intercourse began; and a casual mention of “Bernard” and “British Rocket Group”. I’m sure Nigel Kneale would have loved that…

We establish that Ratcliffe has possession of the Hand, and then, in a key scene, the Doctor finally explains to Ace what’s going on. And it’s important stuff. Simply by writing the line “[Omega] left behind him the basis upon which Rassilon founded Time Lord society,” Aaronovitch resolves an apparent continuity clash between The Three Doctors and all Time Lord stories from The Deadly Assassin onwards. It’s fanwank, yes, but dammit, it’s the acceptable face of fanwank. Another interesting line is “Didn’t we have trouble with the prototype?” Gosh, I wonder where this could be going? Could script editor Andrew Cartmel have some sort of, I dunno, master plan up his sleeve?

The Doctor certainly has a plan, and apparently it’s to ensure that one particular faction gets its, er, hands on the Hand while ensuring there’s as little human collateral damage as possible. But others have plans too; the Black Dalek turns up, and the Renegade Daleks finally turn the tables on their human pawn, Ratcliffe. We discover that the mysterious Dalek thing is in fact that sinister little girl, and also that these Daleks have a “Time Controller” which is so very late ‘80s.

The Doctor and Ace dodge some tatty Daleks to discover the room where all this has just taken place, and the Doctor explains how the Dalek battle computer works- by taking a child’s natural imagination and enslaving it to the Daleks’ will, thus relieving them of their dependence on logic. How they must wish they’d thought of that during their war with the Movellans.

Mike reveals he’s been betraying secrets to his dodgy fascist mates, leading to some slightly embarrassing ersatz swearing from Ace. But never mind that- an Imperial Dalek shuttlecraft is landing…



Part Four



“Daleks are such boring conversationalists.”

It’s good to hear that old familiar throb inside the Dalek shuttlecraft. It’s also nice to see a bit of innovation and coolness with the Special Weapons Dalek, although admittedly it impresses me rather less now than it did when I was eleven.

I’m increasingly noticing how many excellent little bits of physical acting McCoy is always integrating into his performance, such as his umbrella getting stuck in the shuttlecraft door and using his umbrella handle to close a gate. I’m particularly impressed by the way these little comic moments are used to counterpoint the Doctor’s more brooding side. Suddenly this new Doctor seems to have an awful lot of depth. Davison may have been a better actor, but this is arguably the best Doctor since Tom Baker.

The Doctor communicates with the Imperial Dalek mother ship, claiming to be “President Elect” of the High Council. Er, not when we last checked he wasn’t. Just how many untelevised stories did we miss out on between Trial of a Time Lord and Time and the Rani? But then, if he’s 953 that would imply a gap of fifty years. A lot can happen in that time. For example, the Doctor seems to be carrying out some kind of long term plan against the Dalek, and reels off a long list of fancy Time Lord titles. Davros (for it is he), on the other hand, seems hell-bent against the Time Lords. It’s almost as if there’s some kind of, I dunno, “Time War” of some kind under way.

Anyway, the Doctor essentially destroys Skaro, just like that. It’s a very new departure for the Doctor, which could end up either very good or very bad; it all depends on where all this is going in the long term. For now, though, this story is fab.



Brilliant, a strong 5/5. Fast paced, exciting, and just as good twenty-one years later.

Doctor Who: Dragonfire

Part One



“Nonsense, Glitz! A quick adventure and then back for tea!”

It’s an interesting setting for a story- Svartos, a planet with one pole, apparently the only habitable part, which is permanently cold, and another which is permanently cold. And on this world lurks the sinister Kane, who kills with the cold of his touch, and is named after a famous movie. We’ll be seeing a lot of this sort of thing.

On the cold part, Iceworld, is a shopping mall, where the Doctor and Mel sit down in a café. Amusingly, the Doctor starts to read a crumpled classic Penguin paperback of Shaw’s The Doctor’s Dilemma. I think I’m going to enjoy this story.

Up pops our old mate Sabalom Glitz, and it appears he’s in a spot of bother. The authorities on this planet are going to seize his ship, the Nosferatu (oh look, another movie reference…) unless he coughs up a bit of cash. Fortunately there are rumours of a dragon, and treasure. This provides a chance of finding the money he needs for Glitz, and a bit of adventure for the Doctor and Mel. We also meet Ace for the first time, as the soon-to-be-sacked waitress, for the moment providing little but the exposition.

Incidentally, one refreshing thing about Glitz’s reappearance is that the Doctor’s regeneration is quickly glossed over. Unlike his predecessor, this Doctor isn’t going to be undermined by constant references to earlier incarnations while he’s trying to establish himself in the role.

Ace gets sacked, goes back to her room with Mel, and generally seems to be a fairly realistic and well-written teenager. Sophie Aldred is good too, although she sounds perhaps a bit too RP for dialogue like “I ain’t got no mum and dad” to come across right. I like the surreal simplicity of how she got here- a timestorm in her room in Perivale! It gradually becomes apparent that she kicks arse somewhat, what with her Nitro Nine and blowing up the art room at school. I like her. We even get our first “Gordon Bennett” very early on. Ace!

I was amazed to see the scene where Kane offers Ace the chance to become a mercenary- shades of the New Adventures there! Fortunately, though, she not only turns him down but kicks rather large expanses of arse while she’s doing it.

We get to glimpse the dragon. Now, I know I keep going on about influences from said film every so often in this Marathon, but do you reckon there might, conceivably, be perhaps the very tiniest amount of influence from Alien in the creature’s design? Never mind- I love the way Mel screams at this point and Ace pointedly doesn’t!

And then we get the literal cliffhanger. I tend to agree with a comment I remember from Gareth Roberts on one of the DVD extras on cliffhangers (I forget the story). Ian Briggs is clearly trying to make an oh-so-clever postmodern comment here on how inconvenient is to him as a writer to have to fit his script to a format which demands cliffhangers. How very self-indulgent. Still, other than this it’s been a good first episode.



Part Two



“Tell me, what do you think of the assertion that the semiotic thickness of a performed text varies according to the redundancy of auxiliary performance codes?”

The cliffhanger resolution is a total cheat, but I suppose that’s the point. And I’m not sure that assisting Glitz with the hijacking of his ship is quite the sort of thing the character should be doing. Still, good news elsewhere; we seem to be getting decent incidental music for the first time this season.

The Doctor’s distraction of the guard with intellectual conversation on such matters as theology and Doctor Who: The Unfolding Text is utter genius, and easily the best thing in this whole season. Also good, though, is Kane’s killing of the sculptor as soon as he’s finished his statue. And come to think of it, Kane sleeps in a coffin- er, refrigeration unit- to recuperate, he bites people in the neck- er, gets them to take his shilling- so that he can own them, and as for how he’s going to die next episode… he’s a vampire, isn’t he?

The dragon turns out to be friendly, and reveals that this was originally a prison planet where Kane, a notorious criminal, was banished 3,000 years earlier. Oh, and the treasure is in the dragon’s head. Crikey.

Elsewhere, Ace makes the makes the similarly Earth-shattering revelation that her name is actually Dorothy…



Part Three



“This is naff. This is mega-naff.”

That quote isn’t actually what I think of the story, by the way. I just picked it because it’s the most ‘80s sentence ever uttered by anyone ever.

Kane’s minions are on an “ANT hunt” in scenes which most definitely are influenced by Alien, while the poor lost little girl gets looked after by that nice dragon. Aaaah! It’s all good stuff, but the one moment where the tone jars a bit is where the Nosferatu blows up with loads of people on it, an echo of the bus from Delta and the Bannermen.

Ace gets to see the TARDIS, and then the story ends in true The Hand of Fear style, with Kane’s gruesome demise being most fitting, seeing as he’s a vampire and all.

As Iceworld is a spacecraft, Glitz has appointed himself captain, and for some reason Mel’s going with him. In the end she never really worked as a companion, really, being fairly one-dimensional. She was always likeable, and a breath of fresh air after Peri and the darkness of the Dark Ages of Saward. But she never acquired a personality or a hinterland- the lack of an origin story didn’t help- and her bubbly, kid-friendly personality has seemed out of step with the show since Paradise Towers. All the same, she deserved a better leaving scene than this; it’s not really about her at all, just a pointless re-use of McCoy’s original audition speech.

Ace, her replacement, on the other hand, feels a lot more in tune with the way the show’s going at the moment, and has loads of hinterland.



Good, enjoyable stuff. Not quite up there with the best, perhaps, but an impressive debut tale from Ian Briggs. 4/5.



As for Season Twenty-Four- well, it’s fifth from bottom at 3.25/5, but still ranks a lot better than I was expecting it too. And if you take Time and the Rani out of the equation it’s a fairly solid season with lots of promise for the future. At long last we’re out of the Saward doldrums of violence and cynicism, and the show has seemingly found a new style.