SAAALE!

It's been a long old time since I did anything with this blog, so it's a bit anticlimactic to return for something relatively trivial, but... I'm selling some assorted DW merchandise on Amazon. Yep, pretty exciting, I know.

There's a couple of action figures, lots of DWMs (of various vintages), a smattering of VHSes (old school!), and some novels (including relative rarities like Bad Therapy, Eternity Weeps, and even an English Way of Death!) - all rather competitively priced, I might add.

Have a gander HERE.

“Excuse me, Mr Dalek, would you care to move onto this cape?”

Dr Who and the Daleks

Written by Terry Nation and Milton Subotsky, directed by Gordon Flemyng, 1965

I’m a big fan of sixties Doctor Who, and especially of Hartnell. Therefore, you’d be forgiven for expecting me to tow the party line when it comes to the Aaru movies (such as there is even a fan consensus at all): that at best they’re a bit of fun, and at worst a cartoonish Technicolor travesty of the original stories’ relatively unparalleled realism and ‘grittiness’. And I do. I think they’re shit.

But, see, here’s the thing – I’d love, I’d really love to like the films. I love apocrypha – the weird digressions and convolutions that Doctor Who’s colossus-like straddling of numerous media inevitably throws up. I like to be able to go, ‘Hey, you know what – I love the TV originals’ committed approach (which makes their no-budget values pretty much irrelevant), but this is something different’; I’d like to be able to embrace the idea that these are a different thing, some bold, fun, deliriously colourful digression from the norms of the canon. Well, let’s see, as I get my blog-along on for Dr Who and the Daleks.

• If its existence weren’t so accepted (albeit tacitly ignored), it’d seem like a joke: a big-screen sixties remake of Doctor Who?! The jazzy sub-Barbarella titles scream YouTube fake.
• The pratfalls immediately count against it.
• What’s majorly frustrating is that it should be FRICKING AMAZING that Peter Cushing played the Doctor, in any capacity, but, though it’s sweet for him to get to play cuddly, this dithery old duffer is so far from his customary hawkish, dignified screen persona that it might as well be anyone.
• I get the logic of going down the human ‘Dr Who’ path, but eschewing the series’ most iconic elements – the theme, the TARDIS interior design and dematerialisation sound effect – just seems bizarrely contrary (rights issues, perhaps?).
• The protagonists’ absolutely total non-reaction to their arrival on AN ALIEN PLANET firmly locates us within the cartoony tone the film occupies, which has absolutely no time for even the most basic sense of realism, let alone actual emotion or character development. In fairness, that just highlights the original series’ (comparative) realism, and the skills of the TV regulars. By contrast, no-one’s required to act here. It kind of emphasises how miraculous it is that the series bothered to engage with at least an approximation of the emotional trauma that being whirled away through time and space by (in this case) your girlfriend’s dementia-ridden grandfather might engender.
• I was always chronically embarrassed by these films’ naffness as a kid (and my family’s assumption that they must be like catnip to my ming-mong soul). Unfortunately, I really haven’t loosened up on that view. There’s total non-characterisation, non-drama.
• Okay, this isn’t meant to be the Doctor we know, but I find his characterisation at its most compelling when the series plays on his ambiguities, as in The Daleks, which makes dramatic meat out of his endangering the TARDIS crew through his selfishness – something that’s totally skipped over here. Like everything, a potential moment of conflict is neutered by this kiddie bullshit. By contrast to Hartnell’s early crotchety and irascible old gentleman, a loveable Eagle-reading granddad is a bit dull. Similarly, they even fudge the dangling-Thal suicide/self-sacrifice (“Oh, he’s alright!”). So toothless.
• Roy Castle fucking around with some comedy doors is pretty weak anyway, but its unfunniness is emphasised by much of the film’s lack of score.
• Tinfoil on the walls?!
• The Daleks do look ace (you might want to savour that statement; it might be the only positive one), and the forest is pretty good (in a studio-bound, luridly-lit kind of way), but, really, shouldn’t Aaru have been embarrassed that for all their “on the big screen… in colour!” posturing, the sets, while impressively sizeable, are far tackier and crapper than the small screen production design?
• So flat, so undramatic. It’s just stupid and dull. I imagine this might be what it feels like to be a not-we watching Doctor Who in general.
• I like trash – ie, things that are consciously setting themselves up to be about cheap thrills – at least, if they’re well done. But this manages the feat of having zero dramatic value or depth, but while not even being fun either. Even a bag of white chocolate and raspberry cookies to dunk in my tea hasn’t improved my goodwill; maybe getting blitzed on red wine might’ve done the trick. At least the Thals’ Liz Taylor makeup might’ve been funny that way. (Well, there’s a plan for Daleks – Invasion: Earth 2150 A.D.) I’d’ve preferred to see Cushing tackle the role in dramatic mode (he’s far more Doctorish in stuff like The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires), but failing that I sort of wish, as it is a travesty of the original, they’d gone the whole hog and ramped up the camp to the proportions of the Adam West Batman, or at least B-movie thrills’n’spills.
• So static.
• Hard not to see it as a bit of a travesty of the original.
• Roy Castle bumps into things! Comedy gold!
• I reread the DWM Time Team’s comments on the movies recently, so a lot of their comments are still fresh in my mind, yet I’m failing to get their appreciation for Roberta Tovey’s Susan. I mean, she is the only member of the cast who isn’t a total moron, but still.
• There’s some painted landscapes the artificiality of which is quite delish, verging on an almost Fantastic Planet look, bu-ut…
• None of it really makes sense, which is pretty damningly indicative of a fundamental lack of care or even respect for the audience: why does ‘Dr Who’ live in a bungalow but dress like a Victorian? Why did he make ‘TARDIS’ in the form of a police box?
• The TV version (take your pick of titles) is overlong and, obviously, in terms of editing, etc, seems more dated than this; but it’s so much more impressive in its integrity and conviction. This has got higher production values but – not that this should surprise anyone – what does it matter if it’s so flat and moronic, and populated by blue-skinned ponces?
• …The Chase would have been fun on the silver screen, though.

Final verdict: Interminable. Toothless. Invasion: Earth might be put on hold, I need a few months to recover myself.

“A box with little windows! Terrific!”

Review: JUNK-YARD DEMON
Written by Steve Parkhouse, drawn by Mike McMahon, 1981

The Dragon's Claw comic collection is a bit blah overall - the stories are the sort of light silliness you'd expect of a seventies comic tie-in, rather than the sort of thing actually delivered in The Iron Legion (notably, The Star Beast and the titular story). So I can't really be bothered to review it. It's all stories which amount to 'the Doctor goes to a planet where the inhabitants turn out to be butterfly people,' or, 'he encounters some cannibals and helps some other people get away, but who don't really get away'. Hmm.

Junk-Yard Demon, by contrast, is something else. I know I’m behind the curve here… by thirty-one years (the closest I’ve got to it previously being an Adrian Salmon-drawn sequel in a nineties annual), but - it is perfect. It's a snappy story, yet has an actual plot (albeit a slight one – but which fits the length rather than feeling like a truncated or unfinished vignette). Considering its brevity, the incidental characters - scrap merchants Flotsam and Jetsam and their wind-powered robot, Dutch – just work: they’re effortlessly memorable, with idiosyncrasies that show up the deficiencies of characters elsewhere in the collection, like Prometheus (a mythological figure... in space, for no good reason), whose only defining feature is his lack of clothes and perfect pecs.

Probably the story's most apparent advantage though is Mike McMahon's scratchy, stylised, idiosyncratically proportioned and exaggerated art - which is in revelatory contrast to Dave Gibbons' precise, always-impressive but, at this stage, slightly less fresh art. Thanks to McMahon, something that could have been unassuming is instead – let’s say it – freaking beautiful. Even in terms of layout, the use of numerous small panels is remarkable, and impressively used along with silent panels which create filmic pauses in the action.

The whole thing – art and story – still stands up today; it's funny and cool and a bit offbeat, and feels like a one-off, whereas a lot of the rest of Dragon’s Claw is quite flat and very much of its (slightly naïve) time. (I hope future issues of Vworp Vworp! might focus on Junk-Yard Demon…)

And all this is in spite of the slightly odd Tenth Planet-cum-Moonbase design of the Cyberman, the use of exclamation marks for nearly all of its dialogue, and its "Cybernaut" controller, which should make the strip seem horribly apocryphal and unofficial.

The Neutron Knights is the only other story in this collection that really stands up with the best of these earliest strips – strangely, because its King-Arthur-and-Merlin-in-the-future premise should be bollocks – but even that is little more than a scenario rather than a complete story. But with Junk-Yard Demon, the art, the dialogue, everything seems a cut above - one of those depressingly rare occasions of a story being as much of a classic as its reputation - bold and instantly memorable. Love at first sight with this one.

Reaction: THE DOCTOR, THE WIDOW AND THE WARDROBE

Written by Steven Moffat, directed by Farren Blackburn, 2011

So, was it me, or is this basically total shite? That it manages to be simplistic yet somehow still laboured, is, I suppose, a triumph of sorts. But it’s entirely lacking in danger, far too well-equipped with wildly hokey concepts (piloting a disguised-wood spaceship thing through the vortex with the power of a mother's maternal instincts?!), and it even looks massively cheap - all those big, plain sets feel a bit… season seventeen.

And was it strictly necessary to CG the aerial views of the forest? Unfortunately, that says a lot about the level of realism; it probably would've seemed more awkward, in such a cartoon, to have shown some stock footage of the Black Forest or whatever, such was the episode's distance from any sense of realism (I don't mean reality, rather any sense that disbelief could be suspended about the whole premise - acid rain to melt trees which act as power sources?! WTF? Once again, there’s a disappointing sense of Moffat hurriedly and imperfectly filling in the gaps of a concept which was more important that its justification). Even the acting was shit (Arabella! Holy god).

The only spark it mustered was the scene on the Ponds’ doorstep – mainly, it must be said, due to Amy – which is odd as that felt quite inorganically tacked-on anyway. Most damning though is its total lack of story, the plot amounting to the Doctor arriving (alright, in this case he was already in situ); something bad happening; and then… the Doctor not even solving the situation - it simply progresses to a point where it all sorts itself out. That's IT. The story amounted to a walk through a wood. I don't like CS Lewis (who does?!), but at least The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, plundered here for its iconography if nothing else, had the time and space for a plot that involved more than four characters, and more than one situation. 

I’ve spoken before about how much I like low-key episodes, but, oddly, despite its small cast, I wouldn’t categorise this as one: it's definitely leaning toward Moffat's occasional flirtations with his predecessor’s more ‘Superman’ approach to the series (the in-orbit opening; the journey through the vortex), yet the fact that it has so few characters just makes it feel sort of inadequate or unfinished, like they could only afford to do it on a shoestring. And, like the simple plot nevertheless feeling totally forced, even given the small size of its cast, none of them really get to do very much, much less have the opportunity to ring true as real people.

I really love Claire Skinner, but even she just got to play a less funny version of her Outnumbered persona. Which is telling, actually; she basically doesn’t have a character, and isn’t presented as being important to the Doctor in a way other one-off seasonal companions like Astrid were; that the Doctor goes running back to Amy at the end just reinforces the idea that she is where Moffat’s heart (...or whatever) lies, and makes me a bit dubious about how well he's going to cope with her eventual departure and replacement.

The comparison to Caves (which Moffat might regret making), in purely story terms, does TDTWATW no favours. Think of the characters in that: Jek, Salateen (and his double), the colonel, the bounty hunter dudes, Morgus, the president... Yeah, yeah; I know it’s longer, but there aren't even equivalent roles here - everyone's a goodie: the mother, the kids (companion-surrogates); even Bill Bailey's posse are mild-mannered even when threatening interrogation, and even the nominal monsters aren't bad. WHERE'S THE TENSION, bitch?!

There are some nice ideas, for sure - well, namely the idea of trees growing together into a disguised tower - but co-opted into a 'sci-fi' environment (the conspicuous nods to Caves didn't help this) just seems awkward and ridiculous – ‘It's the future!’ has come to be used as justification for trees spawning fairytale wooden monarchs, growing into towers apparently made of stone, metal (and glass), and expelling their souls. (God, since when has DW had any truck with such a wanky concept as souls? I know it's just being used as shorthand, but I miss the series’ formerly relentless rationalist religion-bashing.)

And then there's the fact that, despite its simplicity, the plot still didn't WORK: much is made of Madge being a suitable receptacle for the trees’ ‘souls’... yet they're dumped into space at an undisclosed point during the journey (rather than finding a home on earth?). And no word at all on how exactly the trees’ spaceship/golf ball thing found its way into the time vortex - what, the power of Madge's desire to get home? (It didnt even NEED to time travel, for the trees' sake.) Give me a break. Why is Doctor Who lately so riddled with full-on ‘magical’ explanations from the love-saves-the-day school.

Also, the lifts from A Matter of Life and Death were unfortunate, as the association simply served as a reminder of something actually packed with ingenuity, creativity, imagination, emotion, and a satisfactory plot...

 God, I found that really dispiriting. I don't LIKE specials; I don't like the idea of a ‘Christmassy’ Doctor Who story automatically being magical, but equally, I don't think it should be that difficult to achieve that confluence. In advance, the elements of the story - the wartime setting, the old house, the Narnian forest, seemed to have a lot of potential richness, but in practice that's lost in the story's prevailing tone of glibness. I think that's what’s been bugging me about this phase of DW: its increasingly one-note comic/smug tone. All the Doctor's ‘I know’ bollocks, and still more self-indulgent references to ‘timey-wiminess’ and all that. It’s just becoming a bit... painful. There's no danger, no originality...

I mean, I realise this is a bit harsh, as there were some stories I really liked in the last season, but... it was all a bit depressing, really. Which sucks especially because it shouldn’t be hard to do a Christmas story. Creepy old house. Snow. That should write itself. Obviously it's a hard balance to strike, as neither Davies nor Moffat have ever quite nailed it.

I'm even dubious about the Doctor's positioning as goofy Santa, providing the children with hammocks and rotating Christmas trees. For a nominally moral series, I'd hope that it might engage with a less self-involved Christmas message: helping others, no...? It’s okay, we have remote-control armchairs.

Every time I sodding well say I’m going to try to get back into the habit of updating this site, I… totally fail to do so. Soz. (I’ve been spending more time on a collaborative film review blog what I've started with a friend, Caramels & Kerosene – which will include illustrations and everything, eventually.) But I keep getting urges to watch, like, Time and the Rani, so maybe the time has come for a revival. I’ll post that motherfucking Doctor, the Witch and the Wardrobe review soon, I promise. And then I can do something more interesting.

In the meantime, enjoy this Robert Hack picture.

Reaction: THE WEDDING OF RIVER SONG

You might have noticed I’ve neglected this site a little recently (in favour of Wild Horses of Fire!) – though the idea of anyone noticing may be wishful thinking; is this thing on?!

I have to admit to a certain amount of apathy to this season; I like these characters, and, as I’ve repeatedly said, the prevailing tone Moffat’s brought to the series in much more my bag than it was under Davies… However, there’s a glibness to the series too – it’s almost never convincingly serious or authentically emotional – which I find quite disappointing, and makes me miss the perhaps more successful engagement with the regulars as real people under Davies. Therefore it’s been a bit of a stuggle to get round to posting all these reviews – which is particularly a shame as I have a million billion other reviews to put up afterwards.

But - okay, so: The Wedding of River Song.

I know it’s kind of Moffat’s thing to have certain tropes that he reuses, but – haven’t we been here before? The death of time, creating a messed-up unreality with the Doctor/TARDIS as the epicentre. I quite like his wide-ranging thing, but, strangely, this story left me a bit cold. It’s nifty, lots of things come together nicely, it ranges all over the universe, but… well: seen it. It’s funny, under Davies (ohh, that doesn’t bear thinking about), Moffat’s stories were reliably the best of their seasons, but, as showrunner, his stories – at least this season – have been at the other end of the scale. They have the big events and twists, and the ambition, but they just haven’t been satisfying to me.

In fact, I like ideas like that of River visiting her mum and dad in between previous adventures and found the simple link back to Flesh and Stone more satisfying than, say, the cheat of the Doctor’s ‘death’. Oh. A shapechanging robot. That seems like a work of desperate convenience on the part of Moffat, and, where the whimsy of the Tessalectas fitted in the mid-season opener, it seems a bit shonky in relation to a big universe-spanning death-of-the-Doctor narrative. I mean, surely that’s a bit below Moffat? Or has he started second-guessing his audience so much that he’s starting to rely on simple solutions cos no-one’d expect it? Whatever – it does feel like a cheat in a way that River’s revival of the Doctor in Let’s Kill Hitler didn’t.

Hmm, River. She’s a funny one – much as I like her, the schematics of her timeline and where she fits into the Doctor’s world kind of overshadow her significance as a character. I think, perhaps, once the series itself isn’t so based around the various revelations of her life, it’ll be easier to see her purely as a memorable addition to the Doctor’s world – as a recurring figure, she’s kind of up there with the Brigadier; the recurring friend who know him that much more than anyyone else.

Ever since Silence of the Library, which immediately established her as a significant character, I was concerned that the scale and scope of the relationship suggested there would be undermined slightly by the relatively few conventional adventure encounters they were ever likely to share on-screen – but, at the point we’re at now, where they’re both equally familiar with each other, it’s fun to speculate on the scale of the relationship they share during her nights.

Having read other reviewers’ takes on the finale – and the series in general – I feel a bit churlish; I forget that my underlying appreciation for the current regulars may not always come out (River especially is perhaps one of the most fascinating and effective additions to the Doctor’s world, with the idea of his marrying his ‘bespoke psychopath’ being quite genius), and, equally, even if it may not have sustained the dizzy heights of some of his earlier, standalone stories, we’re extraordinarily lucky to have a man of Moffat’s audacious imagination at the reigns.

I did really hate the mashed-up history, though; it’s churlish, but, it really seemed a pretty limited history. A sort of week junior-school-curriculum take on the scope of something like Philip Purser-Hallard’s City of the Saved.

And as for the ‘Doctor who?’ thing – okay, I get that it’s nice that this is being given significance within the fictive reality of the show, but I just hope Moffat has more of a plan than the slightly abortive ‘Cartmel Masterplan,’ which planned to add mystery in the same way, but which, one speculates, never had any actual answers to deliver. At least Moffat’s built in the caveat that it’s a question that should never be answered. That doesn’t make it very appealing as a season-spanning tease, though, but who knows…

Stuart Manning

Apologies for the lack of recent updates (I've been posting more on my film/TV blog, Wild Horses of Fire!) - however, The Wedding of River Song and The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe reviews will be forthcoming in the probably-quite-immediate future. And after that I've got a bazillion other reviews lined up, of all manner of Who-ish marvellousness - so fear not!

Reaction: CLOSING TIME

Written by Gareth Roberts, directed by Steve Hughes, 2011

Being a fan of The Lodger, I was very much hoping this’d make a hat-trick of high-quality consecutive episodes, yet in the end it erred somewhat too much on the side of mundanity. Not quite as funny or likeable as the previous Colchester-set offering, the general tone is undoubtedly congenial, but let down by the marginalised and somewhat ineffectual Cybermen. Seriously: impassive robot men with the strength of ten who make people like themselves – this stuff should write itself, yet the Cybermen have nary a handful of effective stories under their shiny belts (for my money, Tomb and The Invasion, and, er…?), and, while it kind of worked in The Lodger, the love-conquers-all ending is pretty weak; conversion is the thing that should give the Cybermen a frisson of abjection, so to have the process overcome by fatherly affection is just… weak. Having said that, it’s characteristically snappy and fun, and I think will no doubt repay multiple viewing, but seems a little bit nothingy at this point in the season.

I know nothing about the finale beyond having seen the RT cover [at the time of originally writing this], so I know Amy and Rory are on hiatus here rather than gone for good already – and let’s face it, they were never going to be written out at the end of an inter-season story – however, I quite like the disruption of the norms of companions’ coming and going by having them not appear. Craig makes a surprisingly good surrogate comp, though it makes me realise, given the Tenth Doctor’s multiple pairings (…slag), how much I’d like to see Eleven in the context of someone new.

As for the coda… Well, let’s leave that until after The Wedding of River Song…though it was nice to see Alex Kingston get to do some Actual Acting for once, as opposed to her usual vamping.

On the possibility of a David Yates feature film

Christ, I’m sick of hearing about the sodding thing already. Mooted cinematic Doctor Who outings have so consistently gone nowhere that this feels too abstract to really believe that in four years I might be here reviewing it.

But – regardless of the actual likelihood of this whole thing coming to aught – my initial response, that refitting Doctor Who for a global audience will no doubt be seen to require some major work, fills me with horror. But, actually, there’s a lot about the template Davies established (and which Moffat has done little to change, fundamentally) that I don’t like in the present incarnation of the series, so the idea of an entirely fresh approach could in fact yield something amazing, and perhaps unprecedented.

Could.

Maybe a ‘new take’ (in the sense that the UNIT era, or season 18, or the Cartmel seasons – and numerous others – were relative departures at the time) is quite exciting – there just seems to be an arrogance immediately apparent in Yates’ patronising ‘they did a good job, but we’re going to do something better’ implication… which reet puts my back up. On an entirely first-impressions basis, I’m feeling maybe it’ll be a godsend if this is entirely separate from the series, and even the existing canon/continuity (rendering it as apocryphal as the Dalek movies).

Obviously, speculation at this stage on whether a film might be a continuation of the series, or replace it (at least temporarily), or exist entirely separately, is patently futile, so let’s put that to one side. More to the point, a film, at least if done relatively straightforwardly – eccentric, mysterious time traveller fights aliens – could be great. But David Yates' hand on the tiller doesn’t fill me with massive amounts of confidence. Okay, he’s done some worthy TV, and Harry Potter admittedly isn’t my bag, but he doesn’t strike me as a director with the individualistic or original sensibility that a project like this might really benefit from. (The Harry Potter movies’ self-importance and sense of undeserved weightiness is actually not a million miles away from the TVM. And if you've read my thoughts on that, well – ALARM BELLS, to put it mildly.) Of course, from an industry perspective, what you could politely term ‘a safe pair of hands’ (ie, not a Terry Gilliam) is always going to be the preferred route – the path of least resistance - but creatively, that thinking is death.

In a period characterised by the bastardisation of anything vaguely worthwhile (remaking The Wicker Man, The Ladykillers, Akira, Let the Right One In, Straw Dogs, blah blah blah…), I can’t begin to imagine how horrendous a big-screen ‘reimagining’ has the potential to be. Either the excessive, pointless backstory-wank of the post-Survival movie pitches, or some ‘postmodern’ Bewitched-style metatextual abortion where ‘the Doctor’ is really Peter Cushing’s son. Pretending to be an alien. (Or something.)

I shudder to think the liberties that might be taken in the interests of making the property accessible to a global audience to whom Doctor Who means nothing. If the twenty-first century revival has shown us anything, it’s that respect for the existing series is not only possible in light of an effective reboot, but desirable in terms of depth of story and also fan/audience goodwill. There’s definitely an unfortunate potential for a movie to try to define itself as a separate entity from the series (even if it does prove to be ostensibly linked to the existing continuity) with gratuitous redesigns and rethinking of established elements. (Which seems a bit pointless given the infinite possibility for satisfying adventures within the ‘mad man with a box’ template.) I just really hope things aren’t changed things for the sake of change, or that they're at least justified narratively if they are.

Also, in structural terms, with so much riding on a (by comparison to TV) large budget and a short running time, I can imagine a one-off Doctor Who movie becoming hamstrung by trying to represent the entire franchise with a standalone hour-and-a-half story, and ending up trying to be all things to all people and doing too much. This could be ugly. Given Doctor Who’s ability (in a series) to change from episode to episode, maybe the way to equal that in film would be a wide-ranging, multi-location story akin to Moffat’s finales. It would also be good to see the budget used for foreign location filming outside of the series’ means, but I imagine a biscuit-tin England is more likely, given its ‘Englishness’ will no doubt be used as an international selling point.

More generally, in terms of money, I’ve repeatedly said that, in recent years, my favourite stories have been the lower-budget ones that have to get by on invention rather than money, so the prospect of a big budget take makes my heart sink. Though, on the (admittedly, rather meagre) plus side, a cast of actors of the calibre of Maggie Smith, Richard Harris, John Hurt, Fiona Shaw, et al, in Doctor Who, would be pretty nifty.

So, I dunno. I’m not actually as absolutely scandalised by this announcement as I could be – although apathy could be doing its bit there. A big, fun, exciting, scary, mad adventure (which doesn’t mess up or, necessarily, even engage with existing continuity) – sounds like it should be easy. Just as long as it’s not mired in continuity, backstory, infodumps. Or Gallifrey.

(I’ve seen a lot of messageboard comments suggesting pre-100,000 BC adventures. To which I can only say: please, god, no. Not only because of my massive affection for the earliest seasons, but because (DUH!) elucidating origins that have remained opaque for 50 years would be even more of a disaster than, say, ahem, opening a stand-alone movie with a regeneration. More prosaically, the First Doctor doesn’t even like humans at the time of that first story, and he’s certainly not a moral crusader at that point, so how would earlier stories work? A Hartnell lookalike collecting soil samples hardly screams moneyspinner.)

I will monitor development with… trepidation.

Oh, and, okay, while we’re at it: the inevitable casting mêlée. The one slightly interesting suggestion that I’ve heard so far (read as: which will never, ever happen) is Andy Serkis. I’d go with Toshiro Mifune, myself. But he’s dead. Or take a punt on Klaus Kinski. But he’s insane and dead. Or Tilda Swinton. But that would be too ‘edgy’. Or Simon Russell Beale. But he’s rotund, 50, and no-one knows who he is. More realistically, Chiwetel Ejiofor could be good. Maybe Peter Capaldi, or Dominic West (a burlier Doctor?). Just no-one boringly young, bland and good-looking – ta.

Play with Captain Jack!

Just put a few Character Options action figures on Amazon Marketplace, y'all, in addition to DWMs, books, videos, etc. Check them out!

Dan McDaid

I haven't been following the DWM comic of late, I'm ashamed to say, so I don't know what story this is from, but... I like it. That is all. It's the TARDIS going freaky - that's cool, is it not? And at least I'll be able to catch up now the trade collections are being restarted. (HUZZAH!) But, yeah - Dan McDaid's art is a funny one. I have a lot of time for the comic, and I'm always happy when they branch out and take a punt on artists less concerned with realism than the prevailing style of, say, Martin Geraghty - having said that though, I wasn't massively enamoured when Hotel Historia came along, which just seemed a bit too scratchy and messy... But, having become more familiar through his blog with his style I'd certainly be up for the chance to get round to reading this strip. And he created Majenta Pryce. RESPECT.*


Next Time: CLOSING TIME


*...Sorry!

Reaction: THE GOD COMPLEX

Written by Toby Whithouse, directed by Nick Hurran, 2011

TWO IN A ROW! Well, bugger me.

I was quite a fan of Being Human… to start with… even if it did quickly degrade into humourless self-importance - so I’ve always hoped Toby Whithouse’d have it in him to deliver. Much like The Girl Who Waited, a relatively tight, small-scale setting and premise is a massive benefit, as is the fact that Whithouse isn’t working to some horribly hackneyed alien-invasion template. I can’t help thinking in some ways that DW is at its best when taking a slightly mental concept and running with it, rather than just indulging in bog-standard robots-and-spaceship sci-fi-ery.

There’s quite a comic book feel to the story’s premise – nightmares in hotel rooms! – so it’s especially striking that this is then built up into something with a certain amount of genuine emotional kick. The coda may seem a little out of nowhere but works because it fits thematically, while of all the new series’ would-be companion figures, Rita is quite lovely, and feels real, and as such there is a weight to her death that, say, a more contrived character like Lorna Bucket didn’t achieve.

Stylistically, the B&W CCTV footage and various other camera affects are perhaps slightly overegged, but are unusual enough to give the story a unique feel (and it’s certainly welcome to see the show developing a visual identity beyond soap-style point-and-shoot).

Also! ‘A distant cousin of the Nimon’! I love the strange sense of validation when obscure stories are referenced on primetime BBC1.

Get them while they're hot!

Public service announcement:

Just put a couple of years' worth of Tennant-/Smith-era Doctor Who Magazine back-issues on Amazon Marketplace: check! Them! Out!

There's also assorted Doctor Who books, including a copy of Gareth Roberts' The Well-Mannered War - have a scroll through!


Next Time: THE GOD COMPLEX

Mel Vogt

I have little time for fan-art. And genre mash-ups between shows are par for the course in that sort of arena. So-oo, I should hate this... But, I only just discovered Adventure Time (I was so excited, I even wrote about it on my not-we page) and I like it enough that I actually think this is pretty cute.


More of Vogt's work here.

Reaction: THE GIRL WHO WAITED

Written by Tom MacRae, directed by Nick Hurran, 2011

Okay, so, despite the white void and white robots, this isn’t 'Return to the Land of Fiction'. But – that’s okay, because this is the good stuff. And, yeah – the miraculousness of that doesn’t escape me, coming as it does from the writer of The Age of Steel – aka, THE WORST NEW SERIES STORY EVER.

I’m wary of openings as hackneyed as ‘the Doctor promises a location which he doesn’t deliver,’ but this makes it all the more astounding that The Girl Who Waited has almost immediately become located alongside my favourite episodes of Moffat’s era, Amy’s Choice and The Doctor’s Wife. That is (the latter's fannish grandstanding aside), stories which rely on strong premises and sense of place over flimsy ‘return of the Daleks!’-style concepts; which hold to their internally consistent rules (the failing of Night Terrors); and which are low-key enough to be able to explore that situation.

It’s no coincidence - and I'm aware I always bang on about this - that the ‘cheap’, limited episodes are the ones which are often most satisfying, having as they do to rely on compelling storytelling rather than sloshing money around on special effects. Having said that, this episode does look good, but all the more for being as controlled as the plot itself is. Equally, there really isn’t a lot to the plot, but, akin to mysteriously-opening stories like The Space Museum or The Web Planet, the situation is opaque enough to remain interesting and not develop in an entirely predictable way.

Plus, a major point in its favour: a DIY-samurai Amy, taking a leaf out of River/Liz 10’s book – fabulous! (ACTION FIGURE!) The makeup is even nicely underdone, while her hatred of the Doctor and her embittered outlook on life is convincingly brutal. And the climactic fast/slow robot slice-and-dice is pretty sexy.

The idea of characters ‘waiting’ has recurred repeatedly with Amy and Rory, but rather than feeling repetitious, it’s become a trope that lends some continuity to the characters, and is genuinely expanded upon here rather than simply being referred back to as a smug little nod. The various moral dilemmas here also don’t seem false or rote either, and the emotion seems to develop naturally - as opposed to the inevitable re-establishement of the ideal (and highly predictable) status quo in Night Terrors.

Obviously emotionalism has become a tenet of the revivied series, yet often its development can seem as textbook as a lazy pre-titles death, so it’s something of a joy when that emotionalism creates something genuinely moving, given how absurd a series it is we’re talking about.

I don’t have a great deal to say about The Girl Who Waited because I liked it so much it seems counterproductive to pick over it too much. But, a sincere development of Rory and Amy’s relationship is always going to be welcome, as is a return to a more authentically ‘adult’ tone adult tone. On this evidence – unlikely though it feels to be typing this – Tom MacRae is more than welcome to return for future seasons.

(Also, the reference to ‘Disneyland, Clom’ made me laugh more than anything else so far this season.)

Dan Hipp

I love illustrators who work in really bold, distinctive styles, and especially given his unashamed pop-cultural glee (Tintin vs Aliens, anyone?) Dan Hipp's work is consistently exhilarating and effortlessly cool. So, I love that he’s done a Eleventh Doctor illustration, but considering there’s so much that could be done with Doctor Who, I wish he’d done… more.

Loads and loads of other stuff here. (Warning: it's quite addictive.)

Next Time: THE GIRL WHO WAITED

Reaction: NIGHT TERRORS

Written by Mark Gatiss, directed by Richard Clark, 2011

As this is the sort of second-tier episode we’ve seen so many times before, why isn’t it at least proficient? (And given that no-one has a good thing to say about Fear Her, why sanction something that comes across as little more than a rehash?) In the face of these seasons’ increasingly baroque approach to arcs, the idea of stories based round relatively basic scenarios is an appealing one (not because Moffat’s approach is ‘too’ complex, simply because the show is increasingly appearing rather too desperate to impress)… But despite how easy that sounds, Night Terrors doesn’t entirely deliver.

I’m sure Mark Gatiss is lovely fellow – but I don’t rate him as a writer. Not least since his brand of unreconstructed ‘trad Who’ grates so much, as it’s almost entirely founded on a spurious good-old-days behind-the-sofa nostalgia, which seems to necessitate the regulars being split up, and liberal amounts of textbook corridor-wandering. Let’s Kill Hitler may have been almost absurdly batshit crazy, but at least its melange of varied locations and flashbacks is inestimably more ambitious than a script like this. It reeks of wannabe ‘classic storytelling’ – yet despite the familiarity of its component parts, Gatiss manages to make his story both wildly ‘untidy’ (despite its generally simplistic premise in practise it seems weirdly overcomplicated), yet also rather too slight. The SJA-style ‘he’s an alien’ justification for the whole situation, and its saccharine happy ending are pretty bit weak, too (well, happy ending until the greasy landlord comes to collect, I imagine).

Overwhelmingly though, this is a bit of a too-transparent attempt to ‘do a scary one’ – though at least this belies and contrasts the opener’s rollicking broadness. The dolls are pretty freaky (though who’d give a child a house with figures like that in the first place?!), though an old dark house and disembodied child laughter are ridiculously old hat. Visually, it’s a shame they didn’t make more of the (obvious-from-the-wooden-pan) dollshouse, plumping for location filming rather than a set which could’ve more realistically replicated the scaled-down simplicity of a dollshouse, and made more of the oversized Planet of Giants props.

Ultimately its failings are in its lack of cohesion – even the various ways in which the incidental characters are taken suggests the story could’ve done with some judicious tightening up: people being sucked into a dollshouse: okay (though the lack of reference to the previous story’s miniaturisation makes its reshuffling pretty obvious) – the lift and the bin bag bit prob weren’t necessary.

Where it succeeds is in returning the show to a “could get a bus here” location – it’s been a while, and given my initial feelings about series one’s urban locales, it’s unexpectedly agreeable to be back somewhere akin to the Powell Estate, especially in the company of this most whimsical of Doctors. Less positively, I wondered at the time of A Christmas Carol whether the new series’ engagement with child characters (something unknown in the old series) would start to get old. It is something of a no-brainer, but I admit I’m starting to become a bit apathetic to it, maybe cos the Doctor-as-oversized-kid is maybe a bit of an over literal representation of his anti-establishment outsider status.

I’m sure Gatiss has got a good story in him; this just isn’t quite it. As I say, I think the notion of a ‘traditional’ Doctor Who story is kind of a nonsense – but though none of his TV stories have been entirely successful to my mind, it feels like there must be a Doctor Who and the Silurians-style unreconstructed number somewhere in his mind; something that’d work without being pulled between old-school straight-forward adventure and new series emotionalism. Or maybe just a full blooded monster story with graveyards and things. Yeah, there you go: someone pass that brief on: “graveyard and things” – go!

Elin Jävel

Apologies for the chopping-and-changing in the design department ('design'; I use the word loosely). I'll get it nailed... One of these days. (Sigh. I hate Blogger.)


But, in the meantime, THIS! This is great. Not only do I love that someone has made a doll of the Eleventh Doctor - and a non-realist one to boot; Character Options have got that covered - but I particularly love that it has the vibe of something that's been lurking at the back of an Eastern European toyshop. For forty years.


(More Deviations by Jävel here.)

Reaction: LET'S KILL HITLER

Written by Steven Moffat, directed by Richard Senior, 2011

Well – I seem to increasingly be saying this about Steven Moffat’s stories, but that was a queer fish. There’s lots of fun to be had here, and some lovely moments, but once again we get a rather self-involved tangle of wrapping-up and foreshadowing played out among the four main characters, in a situation which might as well have taken place anywhere. Like most people, I’m somewhat relieved quite how much the Hitler situation turned out to be ratings-baiting misdirection, but equally, I’d quite like Moffat to actually deliver an honest-to-goodness plot that occupies definite location, and features more than a handful of very minor characters in addition to the regulars. (Certainly, none of his event episodes have delivered as well as his first finale, which somehow managed to balance scale with a tangible sense of plot development.)

It’s a concession I’m slightly loathe to make, not least because it was a dynamic I’ve always been so disapproving of in the Davies era, but I suppose this story’s reliance on twists, set-pieces and the laying of future groundwork is acceptable in a season premiere (well, kind of). It goes without saying that the series’ ability to support a story featuring “a time-travelling, shape-shifting robot operated by tiny angry people”, a Hitler cameo, and an evil early Melody and the regeneration into the River we know – and more – is a prime example of Doctor Who’s deliciousness. But, equally – and, I suppose we can again lay this at the door of the ‘event episode’ defence – the series seems to be sliding in a somewhat lighter direction than Moffat’s avowed ‘dark fairytale’ mentality might initially have suggested. However, I say that with no foreknowledge of the remainder of this half-season, so who knows – it just concerns me somewhat that the Doctor is almost entirely a comic figure by this point.

As for River, in a way I sort of preferred her as a mysterious-but-glam archaeologist, though it’s undeniably good fun to see her psychopathic programming in action. Mels takes the piss a bit though: she’s like a refugee from some alternative-universe Hollyoaks-demographic version of the series. Mainly though, the sudden advent of a character in this way both reinforces the sense of Moffat’s on-the-hoof manipulation of at least the details of his own masterplan, whilst coming across as a contrivance too far. It’d be almost an unforgivable cheat, perhaps only justifiable because it involves River, and she can get away with anything.

Case in point: River giving up her regenerative ability to save the Doctor is pretty neat, and doesn’t feel like a pat reversal of his death-by-lipstick, but then, River’s Time Lord powers seem a bit too neat to me anyway. (Though the Doctor’s description of her as the ‘child of the TARDIS’ goes some way to suggesting a semi-conscious helping hand on the part of the old girl which sits slightly better with me that the idea that anyone shagging on board will produce a brand new Time Lord.)

What else? There are lots of pleasing nods – Rose, Martha and Donna’s images seemed a bit unnecessary, but the reappearance, even briefly, of young Amelia, and the glimpses of Amy and Rory’s pre-Doctor Leadworth lives are appreciated.

However, overall, there’s something quite shonky about this story – an uneven, slightly clunky tone, as well as the plot. It feels slightly, at the moment, like the River/Silence saga might keep on unfolding, forever, in ever more tortuous ways, but I guess when this arc is resolved it may be easier to accept Let’s Kill Hitler as the balls-to-the-wall romp that Moffat no doubt intender. And, fair enough.

Also: like the Doctor’s new coat. It’s good. Also, I found the Tesser-whatsit’s antibodies hearteningly crap.

NB: I enjoy the tortuousness of Moffat’s arc; but, I have to say, I kind of hope, next year – are we getting new companions?! – stripping things back wouldn’t be entirely unwelcome and might be quite refreshing. The unravelling of River’s identity, her killing of the Doctor, blah blah: as a dedicated follower, though it can get a tad overwrought, it’s satisfying to watch it all unravel, but, really, what did a casual viewer think of this?! I feel like the aforementioned Big Bang, say, wrapped itself up quite neatly, but in ways self-contained enough to not be entirely baffling.., whereas, this…

'Shall We Destroy?' - reborn!

Well, mercy me, I'll be goddamned; SWD? has been idle, necessarily, for quite some time - but now, as (I'm sorry to say) I don't have any international jaunts on the horizon (...or a job), I intend to update with something approaching regularity for the foreseeable.


First things first, obviously there's series 6b to get out of the way (but I can't be fagged with Miracle Day...). Then, as I've been suffering classic series withdrawal somewhat, I'm planning on allowing myself a strict regimen of Doctor-by-Doctor stories (as per my previous Ten Stories series) - as a way to avoid spiralling off into an endless spiral of VHS-consumption...


So what else is already on here? Well, there's a handful of articles, of sorts, on DWM's 'Mighty 200' countdown, on the Doctors themselves, on the Doctors' costumes, top novels... Then there's the aforementioned series of Ten Stories; story-by-story reviews of series one and Matt Smith's debut season; a whinge about (old-school) Torchwood masquerading as a review of From Out of the Rain; and standalone reviews of Evil of the Daleks, The Massacre, Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, An Unearthly Child, Fang Rock, Paradise Towers, Invasion of the Dinosaurs, The Smugglers, Planet of the Spiders, Revelation of the Daleks, the Voyager and A Cold Day in Hell! comics collections - amongst others. Have a browse.


I've also accumulated a large array of visual apocrypha, with which I plan to continue gradually interspersing the reviews. This one's credited to 'Art Grafunkel' (which I presume is this guy), from a series of unbound Thirteenth Doctor designs, others of which I've posted before - here. A female Doctor with clown makeup, in an African blanket, fishnets, with a sonic staff/spear and a serpentine cybermat. This should be totally absurd, but somehow I like it; it has a confidence few of the other unbound Doctors from that ‘challenge’ did, both in terms of its visual realisation and in its concept; most of the others where white men in period costumes, so I appreciate the fact that, by comparison, this is a slightly bizarre imaginative leap.

So, SWD? isn't dead. Yet. Enjoy.


(PS - oh, BTW: assorted Doctor Who oddments for sale HERE, on Amazon Marketplace.)

Next Time: LET'S KILL HITLER