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16 May 2014 at 17:22 #27542
Mike Yates is still a bit of an poltroon though. He’s like the David Cameron of UNIT, I think.
I agree that he’s still a bit of a Rupert, but he’s hardly hiding under the bed when it comes to fight various alien nasties.
I did find it interesting that Mike Yates’ RHIP with Sergeant Benton – where he takes the food – is almost immediately contrasted with the Brig’s relationship with the Signallers. Who just grin at his request for a coffee and tell him the canteen’s closed.
15 May 2014 at 22:08 #27536As to why he told River – we saw in Wedding of River Song that part of a Gallifreyan marriage ceremony seems to be revealing your true name. By then, of course, the Doctor already knew that River’s real name was Melody Williams. As you say, she was his wife. Reluctant as the Doctor seems to be to admit his birth name, River had a right to know.
Why doesn’t Clara remember the Doctor’s name? I can think of a few reasons. Firstly, she seems to remember Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS in a subconscious way; the memories seem to be there (she knew where the swimming pool was), but have to be dredged up. So it might be that she hasn’t received the right ‘trigger’ – not the need to say his name, but something she saw when she saw his name on that …
If it’s the above, I’d guess that it’s a planned plot point for Series 8.
It’s also possible that she doesn’t really know it – she saw an incomprehensible set of Gallifreyan symbols, but realised from where they were that this must be the Doctor’s name.
Plan C is that she knows it and remembers it, but knows (perhaps picked up from the TARDIS telepathic circuit, or from River when she was linked through Clara) that the Doctor’s name must never, ever be spoken aloud except by him – when it’s safe to bring the Time Lords through. Even River never says it audibly – she uses the TARDIS telepathic link or whispers it straight into his ear, so no one else can hear it.
Again, if it were C, I’d expect that plot point to be carried on in Series 8. Possibly, after Time of the Doctor, the power of his name is that – if anyone else knows it – they can bring the Time Lords/Gallifrey through into a planned ambush. River, of course, knows that. She knew about Trenzalore, the tomb, and the secret entrance. Clara was told in Time of the Doctor that it wasn’t safe to let the Time Lords through and realised that the Doctor would rather die than restart the Time War. So she found a way of persuading them to help the Doctor without using the ‘come back’ code.
🙂
15 May 2014 at 17:50 #27534Unless it turns out to be the boy’s own father. Or her son (by accident). Or…
13 May 2014 at 08:50 #27491My personal bet? Yes, Philip Morris found some other episodes. But the condition was such that they’re being carefully pulled apart with tweezers and no-one knows if they’ll ever be restorable.
13 May 2014 at 00:12 #27485Lanzarote, eh? Any bets on an exploding volcano?
11 May 2014 at 08:24 #27463@arbutus – yeah, I’d agree that the ending was out of keeping with the tone of the story. I think RTD was trying to equate Elton with the Doctor’s arc in Series 1 and 2. So he had him start with a tragedy, and end with one. But it didn’t fit with the comic tone of the rest of the piece.
@thekrynoidman – that poster you quote has an interesting and possible interpretation. However, I’d say that they’ve got it precisely the wrong way round; they’re confusing ‘what happens on camera’ with ‘objective evidence’.
But Elton is performing to camera. His video diary and voice over narration are the unreliable narrator – he keeps reminding us that he’s selecting the evidence. He starts with the monster, because it’s exciting. He talks about the problem with not having an automatic zoom, then later on we see that he’s bought one.
Look at the scene where he’s searching for Rose. The voice-over narration is a dramatic recital in noir style. The non-video-diary scene shows that he found someone who knew her almost straight away. Similarly, compare the narration with the scene in the launderette.
It’s when Elton isn’t on his video diary that we find out what really happened.
We know RTD watched Buffy – I’d say he’s picked up a trick from Storyteller. In that, the sign that Andrew’s finally starting to grow up is when he switches his camera off at the end. Real life, he’s discovered, isn’t a story.
11 May 2014 at 01:10 #27460By the way, I’m doubtful about reading too much into Ursula’s fate. If you know anything about ‘locked in syndrome’, you’ll know that some people can’t bear it and want to kill themselves – and others cope with it and try and live as long as they can.
Since the Doctor is semi-telepathic, I’d assume that he guessed correctly/could sense that Ursula would be the second type. Plus, having been too late to save Elton’s mum, he’d be very keen to not be too late to save Elton’s girlfriend.
If you compare Ursula with the uploaded people in Bells of St John, for example, you’ll see that they are lost, bewildered and unhappy. Ursula is reasonably chipper. So it makes sense to me that in the one case the Doctor would decide that – if they can’t be returned to their bodies – the uploaded people are better dead, but in the other that Ursula could cope with being a disembodied head.
11 May 2014 at 00:02 #27459This is one of the few stories where I’d thoroughly recommend the Special Edition. The remastering is good, and the additional special effects are very sensitively handled; they genuinely appear to be trying to tell the story that the production team wanted to tell. Also, they cut Nick Courtney nearly falling flat on his face as he slips on the mud in the long-shot run towards the Bulls Bridge. I’m sure he was glad of that. 😉
It is kind of ‘Jason King, Time Lord’, isn’t it? And UNIT can tell the difference between the tunnel and a bridge – it’s just that, strangely, this railway bridge has a tunnel underneath it. The tunnel is part of the Grand Union Canal – it occurs to me that they might have provided a tunnel to walk the horses through under the railway, in case they spooked at the sound of the trains.
I love the way the Third Doctor takes down the terrorist without spilling a drop…
The Special Edition also redoes the video screen so that it doesn’t swing back and forth every time the Daleks move – and has redone the Dalek voices so that they don’t sound like they’re on Mogadon.
10 May 2014 at 22:16 #27458I wish Russell could’ve written The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit. Oh, well.
Anyway, Love and Monsters. I remember how weird this episode felt when I first watched it. Just like Elton, I was waiting for the Doctor to turn up.
Barring the Christmas Special, this was the first ‘double-bank’ episode. A Doctor-lite episode; which meant it could be filmed at the same time as another episode.
I should say it was the first official ‘double-bank’. Series One of AG Who had a serious schedule problem. RTD has been known to joke that Series One remains the only programme he’s ever worked on where they were two weeks behind schedule at the end of the first week… they’d underestimated the number of extra shots needed for the special effects. Badly.
So in Series One, they’d ended up so behind schedule that The Long Game and The Empty Child/Doctor Dances had to be filmed at the same time. That’s one reason you see quite a bit of John Barrowman and Bruno Langley by themselves – Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper were trying to fit in three episodes in a shooting schedule only long enough for two. 🙂 Here, they were hoping for a slightly less traumatic schedule, and planned in a low-budget episode where the Doctor and Rose would hardly appear.
Okay, given that I’m not exactly feeling the Love here for Love and Monsters, let’s dwell on the good points. It starts off very well – a story about the Doctor, seen from the viewpoint of one of the minor characters. Elton had a bit part in one of the Doctor’s unseen stories; he’s (we find out) the small kid with no lines. It’s like telling a story from the viewpoint of the now grown up Arcadian-kid-with-the-teddybear in The Day of The Doctor.
Secondly, it’s one of several attempts to portray the Doctor Who fandom in an episode. This (like Brian Williams) is an affectionate portrayal. LINDA start with their obsessive interest in the Doctor, but end up becoming a group of friends with interests in common. As Elton says, he has other interests – so does everyone else.
Things start to go horribly wrong when Victor Kennedy walks in. Mr Kay, I’m looking at you. It is kind of everyone’s nightmare; a decentish script, good, experienced actors who can make it work – and then one of the guest leads gives a badly misjudged performance. Not too bad – people who liked Peter Kay’s style of comedy liked it and the audience figures actually went up after this episode. But he does create problems which another actor could solve. His Victor Kennedy is neither threatening enough nor charming enough to make it very plausible that LINDA would put up with him as long as they do. And his Absorbaloff doesn’t even reach the level of ‘ham’. Mechanically reclaimed pork products, every roared line. I suspect that a lot of the general dislike of this episode can be laid firmly at his door.
The scenes between Camille Coduri and Marc Warren are definitely the highlight of the episode. I think that’s the shame of it – this was so very nearly a good episode. Experimental, yes. Wobbling a bit, as RTD tried to find a way of telling a story about the Doctor rather than a story with the Doctor. But it was certainly a worthwhile episode.
Whenever you complain about Love and Monsters, remember, next year came Blink – and it came because Love and Monsters showed that an experimental, Doctor-lite episode wouldn’t cause a massive drop in viewing figures. This episode might not have worked, but it showed that there was nothing wrong with the idea.
9 May 2014 at 23:26 #274199 May 2014 at 14:02 #27414@wolfweed – hmmm… sounds like my memory loss theory is still a goer. 😈
8 May 2014 at 07:34 #27405@fatmaninabox – no, you are the undisputed champeen! Must. Try. More. Coffee.
Best score is over 16,000. And two Tennants. I was so close…
4 May 2014 at 12:38 #27347@Purofilion – The Ensign magazine which had the adventures of Jack Harkaway isn’t the same as The Ensign (LDS) magazine. It was a (seemingly) perfectly genuine Victorian/Edwardian penny dreadful, Jack Harkaway starting his illustrious career as a plucky British schoolboy who ran away to sea.
Again, meta references. The Doctor being a plucky Time Lord who ran away to see the universe… 🙂
I love Rapunzel, she’s so sweet. It’s that bright, cheery, ‘Everyone else does’ when the Doctor asks to use her hair as a rope. You almost get the impression that all the other fictional inhabitants have been using her hair as a handy route to the pub.
It’s difficult to believe that this was David Maloney’s first outing as director. He did say in the commentary that he’d used his BBC contacts (he’d moved up from Floor Manager) to make sure he was supported by the guys he thought were the best camera crew. It’s also difficult to believe that Peter Ling wasn’t a science fiction writer and was only doing this to try his hand at the genre. It’s a really terrific story, which takes the oft-handled speculation – what if there’s a world where fictional characters are real – and runs with it.
His fictional characters, of course, aren’t real even in The Land of Fiction. Like Gulliver, they’re confined within the words of their books. When Jamie and Zoe are turned into ‘fiction’, they can only repeat lines from the earlier script – and can be made to do anything the scriptwriter wants.
Good stuff. I’m glad I watched it.
4 May 2014 at 00:12 #27341@phaseshift – I thought everyone understood it was a performance? But seemingly not.
3 May 2014 at 23:21 #27338@phaseshift – I think I’ll make Day of the Daleks a definite, simply because I can happily witter on about time loops and alternate time-lines…
… which may make everyone want to change their votes, of course. To The Daemons. 🙂
1 May 2014 at 23:11 #27293@wolfweed – that 50th Anniversary tribute from Chang Dai is a very good one.
27 April 2014 at 15:56 #27218Doctor Who – educating small children in Classical History since the 1960’s. 🙂
I’m still not certain about Gulliver. He seems to be wandering about in search of a plot – not part of a test, or anything, just generally wandering. Bit like the Doctor, really…
Year 2000, Hourly Telepress? I suspect most youngsters watching this nowadays would assume Zoe was talking about some web-comic. The fight, however, is in the very finest tradition of the WWF, complete with fluffed lines. And Troughton’s hand-wringing is absolutely perfect. Jon Pertwee would have socked the Karkus with Venusian Akido, but not his earlier self. 😉
Does every single door in this place creak menacingly? Is there, as @phaseshift suggested a couple of weeks back, an Igor on the staff?
I agree with @confusedpolarity – Bernard Horsfall is utterly charming as Gulliver. When you compare Gulliver with Chancellor Goth in The Deadly Assassin, you can see how good an actor he was.
So, finally we get to see the Master. Who’s absolutely delighted to see them; hurray, retirement! Very odd make-up – it looks like an ‘old man’ make-up illustration in an old textbook. I wonder if they were trying to make him look like a book illustration?
Okay, trapped in the library. I really do get the impression Steven Moffat has watched this story. I’m not surprised if he did, it’s a great story. I’m genuinely enjoying it – not a duff episode to date and remarkably pad-free considering that they had to add an extra episode at the last moment.
How terrible – not only are Jamie and Zoe about to be squashed in a big novel, it’s a French novel! Le moment de suspense!
22 April 2014 at 22:46 #27120@valg – welcome – and congratulations on creating a genuinely short survey!
What’s the difference between ‘built heritage’ and ‘cultural heritage’?
22 April 2014 at 16:49 #27115(is it just me who finds this really creepy?!?!?).
@whisht – can’t be. There’s a moment in An Adventure in Space and Time where Mervyn Pinfield is experimenting with having Hartnell’s face loom out of the credits – and basically goes ‘arrgh! No, we can’t do that, it’s terrifying!’
20 April 2014 at 22:37 #27063@fatmaninabox – yeah, the Cadburys were Temperance Quakers.
I have heard jokes about people asking if all Quakers are teetotal (no) when the Quaker in question has a pint of beer in front of him… 😉
20 April 2014 at 22:00 #27059Okay, so – I’ve drunk slightly too much and am definitely on a chocolate high. About the right state for watching a Doctor Who Christmas Special.
It’s worth remembering that – as @janetteb says – this is the story that started the whole ‘traditional Doctor Who Christmas Special’ thing. It worked so well as a Christmas Special that – so RTD says – the BBC execs were happily referring to it as ‘traditional’ when they were planning their 2006 Christmas. They were quite shocked to discover that Christmas episodes had never been a Doctor Who tradition – the only previous one had been back in 1966.
The graffiti does have a bit of an ‘art department’ look about it, doesn’t it? The Powell Estate probably has a Banksy somewhere. 😉
Does Russell T. Davies actually like Christmas? Killer Santas, Christmas tree drones. ‘Snow’ that turns out to be cremation ash. To be followed by evil bridegrooms, crashing spaceships for the insurance… compare them with Moffat’s Christmas episodes.
The first use of the Tower of London as a UNIT headquarters. And a lovely little joke that ‘Martians look completely different’.
I agree that Billie Piper and her support cast are basically having to carry the show. She’s the continuity; while everyone’s getting used to the new guy, Rose and family are subtly reassuring everyone that we are still in the same show. That’s probably why they also decided to ask Penelope Wilton to reprise her role and included UNIT from the BG series. All little hints that this is still the same programme; the Doctor is regenerating, just like he always did. The kids would remember Rose and Harriet Jones, their parents UNIT and the previous regenerations.
A vial of blood on a space probe? A vial of actual blood? To Mars? Couldn’t RTD have made it cell classification data or something? Space scientists would go ballistic at the thought of possibly contaminating any Martian life forms – probes are sent out as sterile as possible.
Oh, well, it’s the British Rocket Group. Probably by the time they’d survived the mutating plant-person, the weird industrial waste and the 100,000 year old genetic experiments, they were getting a bit casual about cross contamination. 😈
The Sycorax spaceship looks like a giant hollowed out asteroid. Make air-tight, fit propulsion. Mind you, you’d need a decent forcefield to fly it into atmosphere without bits burning off. 😉
That’s another thing RTD is very fond of – the impossible moral dilemma. In fact, his Ninth Doctor starts his entire tenure in the after effects of an impossible moral dilemma – kill billions of children or let the entire universe be destroyed.
We saw the new guy’s steel earlier than the sword fight, though. When he despatches the buzz-saw Christmas tree and talks about the pilot fish – that steel core is very visible. You could see what Tennant would later develop into the Time Lord Victorious…
Another little bit of continuity with the BG series – the Doctor has always been good at sword fighting. Did he pick it up on Earth or is it a Time Lord sport? Certainly the Master is also a good swordsman…
Mandarins are a different fruit to Satsumas. 🙂
Yeah, the destruction of the Sycorax ship does have a strong resemblance to the propaganda version of the Belgrano’s sinking [To be fair, this was back in 2005, and the full intelligence details hadn’t been released]. Politics aside, I’d say this is another example of RTD’s rather bleak view of humans – that even perfectly decent people can turn into monsters at the drop of a hat. Or the threat of an invasion.
But I do think it’s rather hypocritical of a guy who’s committed genocide to complain about someone blowing up one starship. 😉
Ah, Song for Ten. I do like the album version. I think there’s about four different versions of the vocals and of course, the orchestral theme from it appears in several episodes.
20 April 2014 at 17:39 #27044@confusedpolarity – I agree, this is terrifically atmospheric. I’ve never seen this story before and I’m really enjoying it.
Yes, Troughton switches from hand flapping confusion to utter confidence in a moment – you can tell he’s thinking things through, and it’s spotting Lemuel Gulliver’s dialogue that tells him what’s going on. There’s a nice bit of meta by the writer, as well. The fictional trio of the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe wander into a land of Fiction. To discover that they’re part of a story. Which, of course, they are.
Very typical of the Doctor – the string runs out, but he just wants to go on that little bit…
Nice acting by Frazer Hines with Rapunzel – terribly sweet, and of course she’d let him in. Only, she’s let him into the control centre. Is this a deliberate plan by the Master, or is Jamie now the wild card?
A stop motion Medusa – that must have taken a lot of the budget. Worth it though. Anyone else think that there are elements of the Weeping Angels with that hand reaching out for Zoe, and those blank statue eyes?
19 April 2014 at 17:48 #26986There’s also a bridging mini-sode, written for the 2005 Children In Need telethon. It basically just explains regeneration in more detail, and establishes that ‘the new bloke’ really is The Doctor.
17 April 2014 at 16:02 #26937@blenkinsopthebrave – well, of course Rose is a character. You’ll have to excuse me for the actor’s habit of trying to work out characters as if they were real people. Bit ‘method’, I know. 🙂
I don’t see a monster of selfishness in this first series – though I do see a teenager who definitely is inclined to be self-centred. But to me, a truly selfish person wouldn’t be trying to get the TARDIS to take her back into a war zone. A truly selfish character – in this two-parter – is Rodrick. Rose is trying to save her friends at the risk of her own life. That is not a selfish person; a selfish person is someone who’d say ‘thanks for saving my life, Doctor, I’ll worry about you in ten thousand years time. Meanwhile, anyone seen The Rough Guide to the World?’ 😉
Jackie and Mickey love Rose and want the best for her. But the ‘best’ that they want for her isn’t really the best Rose could be. It’s not even the best Jackie and Mickey can be. To me, it’s fairly clear that
@janetteb‘s point that:
During the RTD years everyday life was shown to be vapid, tedious, pointless. (We just eat chips).
means that RTD didn’t quite say what he wanted to say. Or pitched it slightly wrong. Because what he talks about for all three main companions during his era – and later, when he writes for Jo and Sarah Jane – is the people who settle for ‘chips’ when they could have had more.
[I’m thinking especially of the utterly non-academic Clyde in SJA, who eventually realises that his talent for art might be something he could do for a living]
After all, there’s nothing wrong with chips. The Doctor eats chips…
But it’s about ‘poverty of aspiration’. Rose, who could have done ‘A’ levels – but whose mum was okay with her leaving school. Every chance Jackie gets, she says how much she wants Rose home. Which sounds great, wonderful, what a selfish character Rose is to cause her mum such distress.
Then you put this together with Rose being (first episode) bright enough to do ‘A’ levels and yet leaving school because of a boyfriend. If I were looking how to play Jackie as a character, that’s certainly something I’d pick up on. Thinking over the episodes we’ve seen, did Jackie ever encourage Rose to do anything other than come home and be a counter assistant in a shop?
Martha goes to the opposite spectrum – instead of a mum with ‘poverty of aspiration’, she’s got one who’s almost pushing her too hard. Donna’s back with the ‘poverty of aspiration’ theme again; this time it’s being told constantly that she’s not good enough. Don’t try too high, because you’re not up to that standard.
Moffat certainly celebrates the ordinary – but his ‘ordinary’ people aren’t under-using their talents (I except Amy, because the point is that she’s the girl who waited). Rory’s a nurse. Clara’s now a teacher. When Clara is marking time, it’s made very clear that she’s deliberately marking time – because the people in her life need her right now. But once they’re in a situation where they don’t need her, she’s moving on.
If you’re working at your real level, Moffat says, you can enjoy the barbecues. But if you’re not, RTD says, don’t settle for chips.
16 April 2014 at 23:58 #26921@phaseshift – yes, the ‘might have removed all your emotions’ line is a bit daft. The Daleks have always had a bit of an anger management problem – and anger is certainly an emotion.
Russell missed a trick with his Born Again Daleks: “EX-COMM-UN-I-CATE!”
Funny how there’s never enough shuttlecraft. It seems that there’s no SOLAS regulations in space.
The writing in this episode really does play to Eccleston’s strengths. The bleakness in his eyes as he sends Rose away; incredible. I agree that the moment when his hologram turns to address her directly has quite an astonishing impact. It’s also very warm and loving.
Again, this dilemma feels quite different now we’ve seen the War Doctor destroying Gallifrey.
@blenkinsopthebrave – I think you’re being a little unfair towards Rose. Firstly, she’s under huge stress. Her two friends (the Doctor and Captain Jack) are going to die. She can’t do anything about that.
And Jackie and Mickey both know that – you can see it in the way the actors react to her ‘I can’t do this’ fit. The normal reaction would be to yell right back – the closest Mickey gets is a subdued mutter.
Secondly, she does quite promptly admit that she didn’t mean she was better than Mickey and Jackie. She’s supposed to be nineteen years old, an age where most people would struggle to explain why the life their parents live isn’t the one they want.
Finally, I fail to see what’s selfish about deciding that your job isn’t staying safely at home with your mum, but instead is to fight the Daleks. Or, at the very least, help the Doctor escape. If it were a selfish aim, why on earth do both Mickey and Jackie end up helping her? Mickey even tells her not to give up when she’s losing hope. 😉
Rose’s story arc is about leaving home – and part of that journey is discovering that ‘home’ is no longer your parents’ house. As the proverb goes: ‘you can’t go home again’. Rose phrases it, rather bluntly, as ‘There’s nothing for me here.’ Little Rose doesn’t live there any more – though she’ll always visit.
Anyway, while Operation No Chance is going rather badly, Operation Dea Ex Machina is starting to recover. With a recovery truck.
Okay – is Rose a Dea Ex Machina?
Condition 1: Seemingly unsolvable problem. The only way the Doctor can destroy the Daleks is by destroying humanity. He won’t do it.
Condition 2. Sudden and abrupt resolution. The Doctor’s about to get killed, and Rose turns up, casually bats away some energy beams and then disintegrates the entire Dalek fleet.
Condition 3. A previously unknown character, character ability, object or event. The character, object and event were all previously set up – they’re fine. Rose, in fact, has spent half the episode trying to get back to the Doctor.
But since when has the TARDIS had the ability to turn people into gods? Seriously? Telepathic, yes. Opening the console does odd things, yes. But ‘gives people god-like powers’? Which page of the manual was that on?
So yes, of course it’s a DEM, and Russell knows it. If you look at the scene, it’s the moment when all is irretrievably lost that Rose descends in her machine and sorts everything out. It’s not only a DEM, it’s a classically constructed one.
The first regeneration scene of the new series was a stunner. The first sight of that post Time War blow-your-hats-off regeneration effect. No sobbing and holding hands for this Doctor! Unless you want the Companions hand blown off…
… aaand it’s that lovely fella from Casanova!
14 April 2014 at 14:32 #26873Remember how shocked Sarah-Jane was in “School Reunion” that he hadn’t even mentioned her to Rose once?
That was also a neat little shout-out – Toby Whithouse had obviously watched a lot of the Sarah Jane stories. Sarah-Jane is one of the very few companions who did have the Doctor mention other, previous companions beyond the one who’d just left (Victoria, if you’re curious).
So she would be shocked.
13 April 2014 at 08:14 #26856If you want to call Russell T Davies RTD2, can you tell me who’s RTD1?
Anyway, in answer to your comment – in my opinion, he’s a very good writer indeed. He has two noticeable ‘weaknesses’. The first, which we’ll get an opportunity to examine as we go through his stories, is that he has brilliant, creative ideas about dilemmas for the Doctor – and then can’t quite think up equally brilliant ideas for the solution to the dilemma. 😉
The second isn’t really a weakness, more an attitude. It just tends to be an attitude that’s annoying to the dedicated Who fan. Russell T Davies doesn’t give a stuff about continuity. If he has a good idea, he’ll use it, and continuity can go hang. Even if it’s his own continuity.
As it turns out, another Head Writer came along later and explained all the ‘continuity errors’ (::shakes fist:: Moffat!) – so RTD was probably quite right to decide to go for the good idea.
I’d agree with @janetteb that he spent a lot of Who finales trying to match this one – but I think there’s a reason for it. This finale was planned when he knew that there might not be a second series. Ever.
So he brought out his very best idea. If Doctor Who was going to go into that good night, he wasn’t going to go gentle. No ‘we’re off to tea on alien planets’, but a spectacular battle with the Doctor’s greatest enemies. And the Doctor having to answer the question of who he is and what he’s prepared to do.
That would be the way the Whoniverse deserved to end. Not with a whimper, this time. But with a bloody great bang.
12 April 2014 at 19:56 #26842It is a very dreamlike episode – sort of ‘what, exactly, were they smoking in BBC Drama?’ First we’ve got Jamie turning into a cardboard cutout, then Zoe walking through a creaking door. A door with the sort of creak that would need quite a bit of work to produce, that later turns into a painted door on a brick wall.
There’s some bloke from the early 18th Century, followed by a group of creepy kids who seem Victorian. And riddles. Lots and lots of riddles. Then Jamie changes from his cardboard cutout into a totally different actor…
I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m guessing that this isn’t ‘the’ Master. He seems to be running the joint – but is there any reason he’s switching voices all the time?
The whole effect is distinctly unsettling. Yes, it’s dreamlike – but the sort of dream you suspect is going to turn into a nightmare any second. Nothing is quite right, everything is a bit ‘off’, friends don’t wear their own faces and you can never get to where you want to go. The sort of dream where, if you suddenly realise that you are dreaming, your sleeping mind goes ‘oh, thank goodness’.
And then there’s a painted unicorn. It seems more than a little annoyed. Are we going to discover whether Jamie or Zoe are virgins? Since this is a family show, I suspect they’ll find another way to avoid getting stabbed through the heart. 🙂
11 April 2014 at 12:02 #26807@Scouttheairedale
So sorry to hear about Triton. 🙁
You and your mum look after each other.
7 April 2014 at 16:09 #26779Doctor Who has been nominated for the Public Vote BAFTA, and An Adventure in Space and Time has been nominated for Best Single Drama.
The Public Vote BAFTA is otherwise known as the Radio Times Audience Award (other Awards are available) and you can cast your vote here.
6 April 2014 at 22:17 #26776If the Doctor had called Rory an idiot I think Amy would have decked him.
Yes – but mainly because only Amy is allowed to call Rory an idiot. 😉
We’re not going to get to see School Reunion in this retrospective (it was written by Toby Whithouse). But I love it for Mickey’s moment of self-realisation; he’s the tin dog. He is Mickey the Idiot – but his story is a long process of deciding that he doesn’t have to spend the rest of his life being the butt of everyone’s jokes.
RTD chose to show Mickey as ‘the idiot’ by making him – well, the guy that the Doctor and Rose constantly poke fun at. Moffat chose to show Rory as ‘the idiot’ by having him irredeemably accident-prone. In both cases, they’re not actually idiots. This is a difference in writing styles; RTD has a bit of a tendency to write people who are self-absorbed. He also, I think, has a much crueller sense of humour than Moffat and a much darker view of human nature.
I agree that I didn’t think Rose was a genuinely wonderful person (though I’d certainly rate her ‘decent human being’); however I did see why the Doctor would think she was wonderful. The type of person she was forced him into being ‘The Doctor’ again. She was his perfect companion; and he lost her.
Ultimately, the way Mickey was treated by Rose and the Doctor forced him to grow up. I really doubt Rose was supposed to consciously know what she was doing – but I do wonder if RTD thought that the Doctor did.
5 April 2014 at 23:07 #26769@phaseshift – bugger. I changed it to reveal the cliffhanger after I saw your post.
Can you use your Time Lord powers and edit it for me? Just remove the relevant paragraph. Thanks.
5 April 2014 at 23:04 #26768it’ll be interested to hear from anyone watching it fresh.
::waves hand in the air:: Me! Me!
I’ve heard some of the stories, so I have a vague idea what’s going on, but I’ve never seen this before. I didn’t feel that the void scenes were padding. Because I had no idea what happened next they felt very tense. Clearly the Doctor had to come out and rescue Jamie and Zoe and equally clearly he shouldn’t. Then the bit where they redressed Jamie and Zoe in white and they were cheerfully beckoning… arrgh!
The ‘padding’, for me, was more at the beginning. I was entirely with Jamie on that one – never mind the fascinating close-up of volcanic activity, we’re about to become a TARDIS lava brittle!
😀
5 April 2014 at 22:47 #26766Gosh, that’s a good episode.
This is the one that had to be written in a hurry after The Dominators came in one episode short. In a hurry, with almost no budget. Oh, and no cast except the regulars.
Oh, all right. You can have some extras. And we can get Emrys Jones to do a voice over… sets? Will a smoke machine do? And I’m sure we’ve got some white paint around somewhere. 😉
But with all those constraints, it turns out to be a little cracker. The TARDIS, as @craig says, is about to be covered in lava. The always rickety TARDIS chooses this moment to boil its fluid links (Mercury vapour! Yummy!) and the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe frantically try and find a way of getting out before they become pyroviles. Unfortunately, it turns out that the TARDIS’s ‘in case of emergency, break glass’ mechanism is something that takes you entirely out of normal space and time.
It’s to be suspected that the Doctor knows rather more than he’s letting on about the dangers of this. Firstly, there’s a timer on the device, secondly he’s making a beeline for the power supply to do some emergency repair work.
Then the hallucinations start. Jamie sees Scotland. Zoe sees her home city. Zoe manages to convince Jamie not to go out, but when she’s left in the console room alone the hallucinations become too strong. She leaves the TARDIS. When Jamie finds she’s gone, the impulse to rescue her becomes too strong.
What budget they had was wisely spent on special effects rather than set; the set is a white-ed out and overlit studio with some smoke. David Maloney pointed out that he managed to secure one of the best camera teams for this story; it shows. The selection of interesting and varied angles means that the scenes of Zoe and Jamie stumbling around in the ghostly void do look convincingly creepy. Meanwhile Patrick Troughton is acting his little socks off back in the TARDIS set, fighting off a compulsion to go and rescue Jamie and Zoe. He has to bring them back to the TARDIS.
I pause to note that this seems to be one of the times when the Doctor’s usually latent telepathic abilities are being actively used.
He succeeds in bringing Jamie and Zoe back, despite the robots. For a moment it seems that all will be well as the TARDIS takes flight. Except… TBC.
[Yes, I believe that particular shot of Zoe’s extremely tight catsuit is deservedly famous – Wendy Padbury still gets letters about it.]
What happens now?
5 April 2014 at 20:14 #26764This is another episode I didn’t watch on broadcast. In fact, I didn’t watch the finale, either. I hadn’t exactly bailed, but – no, I had bailed, but on Series 1, not Doctor Who. Eccleston’s departure had been announced and I think I had already mentally said ‘sod it’.
I can’t have been the only one; this double parter remains deeply unusual as the only Post Gap regeneration story to have fewer viewers than the series average. It may possibly be the only regeneration story to do that… fortunately, it seems everyone was willing to give the new bloke a go.
The satire is laid on thick, but I think it works because there was an element of ‘Christians to the lions!’ about those naughties shows. Getting ‘evicted from life’ is only a tiny leap.
Apparently they didn’t expect Anne Robinson to agree to do the voice-over and had an impersonator all lined up.
Eccleston gets to play to his strengths a lot; he’s horrified that his ‘time meddling’ hasn’t restored the status quo but has made things worse. He gets to be all shell-shocked when Rose is disintegrated. He gets to be angsty as he defies the Daleks. He really does play the shell shocked ex-soldier very well indeed.
This is, I think, when we start to see that travelling with the post-Time-War Doctor is likely to ruin your life. Yes, everyone above the age of seven knows that Rose isn’t dead – because by this time, we all know there’s a second series and Billie Piper is in it. 😉 But until he finally steps into his own time-line and succeeds in pulling Clara out, travelling with the Doctor is likely to end with him standing over your (metaphorical) grave.
[Martha’s personally the least damaged, but I don’t think having her family enslaved for a year was exactly delightful.]
Yes, I’d say the Programmer is a very deliberate echo of Remembrance of the Daleks. But RTD is such a bloody pessimist, he really is. The news services go off air and the whole of society collapses? Really?
I’ll just imagine that the Daleks had more than a sink plunger or two in that one. 😀
5 April 2014 at 13:20 #26740this dust had the potential to swamp the filters we use and make the results meaningless.
In the sense that the industrial processes just couldn’t compete? Huh. In my young days, we had proper pollution. Bloody foreign dust, coming over, swamping our native particulates. 😉
I’m still coughing – it seems to have irritated my throat quite a lot – but the air is visibly clearer today.
5 April 2014 at 13:12 #26739It would be interesting to see if the criticism you occasionally see that he relies on them is in any way justified.
It will be interesting, because my recollection is that RTD generally doesn’t. The few times he uses a D.E.M. he makes it obvious he knows exactly what he’s done – like Moffat, there’ll be some kind of pun/reference to ‘god’ and ‘machine’.
Very often, though, people tend to substitute ‘ooh, the writer caught me out, I didn’t see that one coming’ with ‘it was a D.E.M.! That’s why I didn’t see it coming!’ 😈
@janetteb – no, I don’t think Rose is being very wonderful here. She’s being a nineteen year old who thinks her boyfriend is going to hang around for her. The real life equivalent would be a girl who’s gone off to university – but her boyfriend didn’t get in and is staying at home with a job.
Then she turns up in the vacation with all her new mates, having a perfectly wonderful time, and expects said boyfriend to like the new mates because she does.
I think she behaves so badly because she does like Mickey, even loves him, and wants some happy happy dream land where he’ll wait for her while she’s away. In the end, Mickey’s the more grown-up; recognising that their relationship won’t survive this and trying for a clean and friendly break rather than a slow fade and possibly bitter break-up.
He’s conflicted about it as well (the suggestion of a hotel room). But it’s very well observed writing; there’s a lot of first year students out there who behave exactly like this. Not because they intend to be mean, but because a combination of naivety and teenage self-centredness adds up to them treating their partner very badly – without even realising that’s what they’re doing.
Amy treats Rory equally badly; the difference is that by then the Doctor recognises the symptoms (I’d say he’s thinking about Rose and Mickey when he decides Rory’s coming on board, no discussion) and recognises the likely consequences. Which were much more high-stakes; Rose and Mickey were boyfriend and girlfriend, but Amy and Rory were about to get married.
5 April 2014 at 00:45 #26735Okay, Boom Town (finally). I’m not sure I’ve ever watched this all the way through, so here goes.
Right, so Annette Badland’s Slitheen is back, and has explosive plans for Cardiff. Memo to self: if anyone ever asks me ‘am I the only person you’ve told about this?’ must remember to say ‘apart from the ‘in the event of my death’ files programmed to be sent to Wikileaks, yes.’ 😉
Ah, yes, and this is why Jack later stays with Torchwood Cardiff. The Rift.
Cardiff Castle will be demolished? Goodness, what will they do for locations? Ah, Blaidd Drwg. This looks rather like it’s the low-budget episode (wasn’t it a rather hurried script to replace one that couldn’t be delivered?) – a hired function room, minimal set dressing, and about twenty extras. Setting it in Cardiff is a nice touch to show off the city – but it also means they can film in local locations.
‘As long as I walk upon this Earth…’ nice one, since we know she’s an alien. Followed by the comic explanation of the series of mysterious deaths associated with the project and Annette Badland milking it for all she’s worth.
Ooh, nice combination of voice work from Annette Badland and physical acting from Alan Ruscoe inside the Slitheen suit. Plus the operation of those big CGI blinking eyes. For such a villainous character, you can feel her grief at the deaths of the rest of her family.
I dunno, somehow this version of Team Tardis doesn’t seem to gel. The Amy/Rory/River/Smith Doctor combination had obvious chemistry together; Rose/Jack/Mickey/Eccleston Doctor feel like they’re acting. And I’m back to feeling that Eccleston doesn’t quite fit the role – possibly because this is a comic episode. He doesn’t have a light touch with comedy, more ‘sledgehammer crushing walnut’. His later angsty moments feel far more real – if he’d gone on to a second series, I think they should probably have let him be even more angsty and left the comedy to the rest of the cast.
Neat little dilemma for the Doctor. Margaret is a murderer – but can he hand her over to her death? Yes. Especially since, in this version of reality, he’s recently condemned his entire people to death. But I agree with @phaseshift – good as Annette Badland’s performance is, it’s a bit difficult having a debate about proper moral values and whether capital punishment is moral when both people are mass murderers. Admittedly, the Doctor attained that status because it was the ‘least worst’ option, whereas Margaret is happy to murder people for money, so it’s not quite a case of ‘pot, meet kettle’. 🙂 But RTD does try – as well as the moment of sympathy earlier, he plays the ‘brought up to be a killer’ card, hinting at the later solution.
Cardiff, earthquake capital of Wales. Bloody Torchwood…
Nice CGI. Is that the first time we’ve seen the ‘beam of energy into the sky’ effect in Doctor Who? They’ve certainly used it several times since.
Yes, that’s a Deus Ex Machina but, in fairness, that the Doctor has the powers of a god was mentioned by Margaret at least twice in the script – hinting that god-like powers will lead to the resolution. The telepathy of the TARDIS is also long established.
The D.E.M. is also helping to set up the Deus Ex Machina of The Parting of The Ways, when Rose becomes the literal Dea Ex Machina; it tells Rose (and the audience) that opening the TARDIS console can do strange things. This particular Deus Ex Machina might possibly be the creation of Bad Wolf herself, giving Rose the information that she’ll need.
Good for you, Mickey. It’s time to grow up and stop being Mickey the Idiot, the kid at the back of the class with the safety scissors and the glue. You do deserve better; nice to know that we’ll see it happen. 🙂
4 April 2014 at 16:38 #26732@mobius64 – the two people well known to have been possible alternates to William Hartnell were Hugh David (who later became a director and ended up directing on the show) and Geoffrey Bayldon (who has the distinction of being offered both First Doctor and Second Doctor).
Otherwise, you really want 1950’s actors – because the actors we think of as ‘1960s’ were all beginning their careers in 1963. Michael Caine, for example, was working on his ‘introducing’ role in Zulu.
The BFI’s short intro to British Film in the 1950’s might give you some ideas.
2 April 2014 at 11:53 #26699Sorry to hear you’ve been ill. 🙁
The CGI was very subtle. The major addition was indeed the scene at the very end, where it had been universally agreed at the time that the lack of Daleks detracted from the drama.
When I say ‘universally agreed’, I mean that the director, actors and producers are on record as saying they bitterly wished that they’d had more Daleks and they thought that the lack of Daleks damaged the impact of the scene.
In that case I’d agree with a CGI revamp: it gives the audience a chance to see the show that the people making it wanted them to see. Not what they had to settle for.
1 April 2014 at 14:23 #26689Inferno is supposed to be Nick Courtney’s favourite – because he and all the UNIT team got to play dual roles. It’s also one I’ve never seen.
Fine with The Daemons – and it would be interesting to watch that after our rewatch of Quatermass.
Day of the Doctor was a pre-50th suggestion; it’s interesting because it has an example of a time loop in it. Other than that, it has the famous ‘invade Earth with three Daleks’ sequences – though if you get the remastered special edition, they’ve CGI’d lots and lots of Daleks in so that it doesn’t look half bad. 🙂
No feelings on Curse of Peladon.
The Mind Robber came yesterday, so I’m all set. 😀
1 April 2014 at 12:09 #26682It’s a shout out to the original news story that Christopher Eccleston wouldn’t be returning for Series 2. It broke on April Fool’s Day 2005 – so everyone thought it was a hoax, at first.
🙂
31 March 2014 at 22:58 #2667630 March 2014 at 12:17 #26660As well as the sad news of Derek Martinus, Kate O’Mara’s agent has now announced her death at the age of 74.
30 March 2014 at 00:21 #26655The broadcast episode had an extra 12 seconds (now lost) which saw the brutal stabbing of the Vikings
Ah, that explains a lot.
As Terry Pratchett remarks, kids are quite keen on blood, especially when it’s the baddies who are doing the bleeding.
I did enjoy the later running gag about ‘winning the lottery’ after it got a bit overused during the Tennant era:
We don’t have a lottery!
29 March 2014 at 23:24 #26652After last week’s stunner of a cliffhanger, we discover more about the Monk’s plan. He’s going to destroy the Viking invasion fleet. King Harold Godwinson won’t need to fight them at Stamford Bridge, and his army will be fresh when it fights William the Bastard at Hastings.
The Monk is a Time Meddler. The Doctor may be 100% rebel Time Lord, but he doesn’t change the course of history. Well, not unless he really has to. 😉
The Monk is a ‘meddler’ – which as well as meaning ‘someone who interferes’, also carries an implication that they don’t really know what they’re doing. To ‘meddle’ is, at best, annoying. At worst it’s damaging. The Doctor, as was later pointed out, has taken a name that means he’s ‘the person who makes things better’.
Going back to the story – our two thick Vikings are busy making yet another terrible decision. I’m beginning to suspect that their Captain sent this bunch off on a scouting expedition in the sincere hope that he’d never see them again – their ship is probably halfway up the Ouse and nearing York by now. 😈
But anyway, having been comprehensively outwitted by two elderly monks (they think), they go ‘hey, lets nick all the treasure in the monastery’. Not exactly the sharpest swords in the sheaths – in fact, they’ve lost both sword and sheath.
Slight script blooper in that the Monk – later referred to as being from the Doctor’s home planet and probably leaving about fifty years after the Doctor – calls a 1960’s police box ‘modern’. It was, of course, to the writer – but it wouldn’t be to the Monk. As well as this being the first time we’ve seen another TARDIS, we also see that the door of a TARDIS might be hidden or difficult to enter. Later producers will have some fun with that.
I’m not entirely sure why Vicki would think that the tide might damage a spaceship – if it’s airtight, surely it’ll be watertight? Or possibly she thinks the TARDIS exterior is light enough to be pushed around by the tidal flow.
Anyway, our dense Vikings are back. Despite one having been knocked out and tied up by the Monk, they immediately think he’s on their side as soon as he proclaims allegiance to Harald Hardrada. Yeah, their Captain has definitely sent them on a ‘please don’t come back’ mission…
The Saxons, however, do have two braincells to rub together. They’ve added up the Doctor’s story of a Viking invasion, the beacon fires, the strangeness of the Monk – and come up with ‘Viking spy’. It’s not a bad guess, given that they’d have no way of realising that he’s a time traveller. Our injured villager coming back with a story of Vikings hiding in the monastery just adds fuel to the fire.
Pitchforks at the ready! Well, actually we’ve got a spear that looks remarkably like it’s made of flint. Possibly that may have been someone’s idea of an in-joke, since the actress holding it was last seen as a cave-person in The Tribe of Gum.
This is still the worst fight arranging ever. Run into monastery in single file, run out of monastery in single file. Meanwhile Edith has done the actual work by finding the Doctor and Companions and untying them. She also invites them back to tea. Edith may possibly be a direct ancestor of Jane Austen. 🙂
The Monk dumps our thick Vikings right in it. They are then horribly slaughtered by a group of Saxons standing in a circle and poking them with sticks. Kudos to the actors, for keeping a straight face.
The Doctor is doing something to the Monk’s TARDIS, involving the removal of some piece of apparatus. Hartnell plays it as very, very irritable – this becomes entirely understandable when we discover later on what he was doing.
So the Doctor, Steven and Vicki return to the now uncovered TARDIS. The Monk, meanwhile, has the same idea. Let’s get the heck out of here. There is, however, now a slight problem with the Monk’s TARDIS.
It’s smaller on the inside.
28 March 2014 at 19:28 #26622@craig – coming to you live from London Bridge, 1814 (You must never tell him!)
25 March 2014 at 22:08 #26600If I answered as honestly as possible, I suspect the result would have been Colin Baker. 🙁
So I lied. David Tennant. 😀
24 March 2014 at 12:59 #26580Some more UNIT stories would be good. I notice that they reminded us, in The Day of The Doctor, that the Doctor technically still has a job with UNIT.
Hmmm… I dare say the Doctor will remember how to fly the TARDIS, but it might be fun if he was kinda-stuck on 21st Century Earth because he can’t. Was that pre-programmed return device to Clara’s time a one-off, or was it foreshadowing? He keeps coming back there because it’s the only place he’s certain he can get to?
That would fit with the ‘Pertwee vibe’ we keep getting from Capaldi’s costume and publicity photos.
23 March 2014 at 01:22 #26565Wot, no speculation yet? Tut.
Okay, to start us off. The Doctor won’t be able to remember how to fly the TARDIS. However, that charger we saw in The Time of The Doctor will continue to return us to just outside Clara’s flat.
Either that, or the lessons in TARDIS flying that we saw Clara start in Journey to the Centre of The TARDIS carried on off-screen, and she’s the ruddy pilot… but I think we’re going to have at least something of a shout-out to the Doctor not being able to control where he’s going.
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