End of Ten and Starter for Eleven

Hiya my little chickens (well, it is Easter after all) This is the annual 'David determines to write on his blog each week -athon' ... let's see how far we get. Honestly, I do often think that I should pen something each week, but every week there's way too many other things to do. But today, Easter Sunday, with the sun shining, Sam in bed with the baddest flu/cold I've ever seen, I have an hour or so to spare, so here I am putting some thoughts down. This year has been hectic already, and it looks like continuing in the same vein. We were out in LA for the annual Gallifrey Convention at the end of Feb, and it was a great event as always. Lovely to make some new friends there, and to catch up with all our old mates. Highlight was seeing Ben and Kim get married at the event, but there were so many wonderful moments. The costumes were again awesome, with everything from multiple Zoes to Sally Sparrow to White Robots and even the Ergon strutting the corridors. And best not to mention the soriority girl party one evening - about 1000 cloned 5 foot tall, skinny, blonde all-American teenagers in little black dresses and red shoes invaded the convention halls! Now there's a story to write about! After the convention we stayed on in LA to relax with Frazer, staying with mates Josh and Em. We got to visit Redondo Beach where Sam got a genuine rare black pearl from an oyster bought at a store selling them. We got to see the incredibly brilliant film Batch Slap for the first time - and this film is superb. Trust me. Get some mates together with some beers and wine and slap it in the DVD. A rollicking grindhouse release about three gorgeous girls with big boobs and big guns looking for diamonds in the desert. It's smart and sassy, violent and cheesy ... everything you need from a fun film. Check it out. Another film we saw at Josh's for the first time was Trick r Treat, a smashing little Halloween film about a town and what happens there one year. It's clever and thought provoking as well as creepy and scary ... what if Samhain really does come and visit ... another recommended DVD. Back from LA, and last weekend we were off to World Horror Convention in Brighton (which is probably where Sam picked up the sickness). The event was great, but the hotel was too cramped and way too airless and hot. Apparently loads of people got sick there ... not good. It was lovely to meet up with old friends Jim Herbert, Neil Gaiman and Graham Masterton again, as well as to make lots of new friends. Tanith Lee was beyond awesome and it was an honour to sit and chat with Chelsea Quinn Yarboro. Telos launched some brilliant books by Simon Clark and Vincent Chong, and all in all everyone seemed to have a great time. We managed to find a really nice gluten-free Indian restaurant on Saturday lunchtime and spent a quiet and relaxed time in the company of Farah Mendlesohn and Edward James which was an appreciated respite from the mania of the convention. And so to Who, the usual reason why I put finger to keyboard and muse on what's been going on. I realise that I never blogged on the last David Tennant special, and the reason is that despite watching it a couple of times, I really couldn't find the energy to write about it. It was big and bombastic, full of giant, crazy ideas ... and totally lacking in any depth or plot whatsoever. Every turn of the wheel brought more unexplained nonsense: the Master is dead but can be resurrected with some DNA from his human wife, who has a plan to stop him, but he comes back anyway as some sort of flying superhero who can burn people to death with electric bolts fired through his hands ... then there's a machine which can make everyone the same ... and aliens ... and a spaceship ... and then Time Lords who can somehow send a crystal back in time through a hologram, and who made the Master mad all along so that they could return ... only for them to be banished again ... while the Doctor goofs and gurns and ends up saving Wilf only to die himself - but not after he has time to re-visit everyone he has ever met ... I *still* have no idea what it was all meant to be about. And then the Doctor regenerates and the TARDIS explodes ... well that makes about as much sense as anything else we'd seen in the story, so why not. Which brings us sort of up to date and the debut of young Matt Smith as the Doctor. I had very few ideas as to what to expect - I tend to avoid spoilers and reading news pages - and so it was all pretty fresh and new to me. The one thing I *really* disliked was the incidental music. From the choral harmonies through the 'jokey music' as the Doctor tried to decide what to eat, through the bombastic symphonies and back to choral again ... Murray Gold seems to have no idea that drama should not need the music to tell you what to feel at every moment along the way. It was all too much. I wish that someone else had been brought in to look after this critical aspect of the show as Gold seems to layer everything with sledgehammer precision, and leaves no room for appreciating the acting and performances as his choir sings in the background. Other than the music, the other aspect which I find it hard to like, at least initially, is the title music, and the title sequence. Now Doctor Who has a long history in this area. Successive producers have tweaked both to try and keep it all up to date, and, more importantly, timeless. This worked just fine for the first 17 years or so, but then John Nathan-Turner decided that rather than creepy electronics and timeless graphics, he wanted the theme to be played on a kazoo, and the titles to be composed of starfields and a logo created from an old Letraset pack. This then got worse and worse until we ended up with the McCoy 'tumbling kid's blocks' logo, and music which was dated at the time. I don't know about you lot, but when I look back today at those stories, I *still* feel the same today as I did then, that the titles and music did the stories no favours whatsoever. And I feel the same about this new set. The theme seems to have lost all it's oomph, it's weak and spangly where it should be pumping and driving, and it's not otherworldly at all. And the sequence - well the last little bit is OK, when the 'DW' splits away from the logo, becomes a TARDIS and vanishes down the tunnel of fire ... but the first bit, with the TARDIS spinning along a cloud tunnel, being hit by bolts of lightning, is desperate. I am actually reminded of the C Baker sequence, where they added in lots of little wooshes and stuff to try and hide the fact that the music was so poor. I've seen this a couple of times now on YouTube and it's not improved for me. It seems very 'young' as well - maybe I'm just getting old - but Doctor Who should have a timeless appeal and not be rooted in today's CGI world. It is especially unfortunate that this is the case, as otherwise the episode was really good. Matt Smith seemed to grasp the mettle and made the Doctor his own, but Karen Gillan as Amy was just awesome. I guessed she was a strippergram straight off - no Policewoman would have a skirt that short - but she was sparky and endearing, and had the best backstory yet. The girl playing her as a young girl was also excellent, although she really needs a talking to about letting strange men into her house at night. All the stuff with the food was padding ... unnecessary, and strangely worrying to see the Doctor spitting out good food like that. There wasn't even a clever way that this was worked into the plans of the Atraxi (the 'Eyeballs in the Sky' from the old Perishers cartoon made large) later on. I liked the direction and the idea of the monster ('Prisoner Zero') being one or more objects ... the whole thing rattled along nicely, and I can't think of any annoying lapses in logic which threw you out of the narrative and rendered it all meaningless - something which tended to blight the last five years of the show. So for the moment it's a thumbs up from me for the new series. Steven Moffat knows what he is doing, and I hope and trust that the next few weeks will get better and better. There is a tradition of the opening episode being a little lighter in tone and content (New Earth, Smith and Jones etc) and so this bodes well for the rest of the season. I can only assume that Steven was on holiday when the title sequence and music was approved ...

Wow

Hi all Yes yes yes I know I need to blog on the end of Tennant ... meantime ... here's something amazing on the 'tube. Enjoy ... David

Doctor Who - The Waters of Mars

So that's what it takes ... a new Doctor Who episode to drag me kicking and screaming back to the keyboard to pen some thoughts ... soooooo much has been happening since I last posted here it's unbelievable. Those who keep up with me on Facebook will know some of it ... but every time I vow to post more here, everything conspires to get in the way. Anyway ... enough of that, and onto the latest Who episode, The Waters of Mars which was on a week or so back. What an intriguing episode. The trailers and pictures really got my imagination going, especially as they revealed the monster and all ... but what of the story itself? Well as usual I'm just gonna waffle on and we'll see where it takes us. The TARDIS arrives on Mars ... possibly the first time the Doctor has visited there since Pyramids of Mars (and I know people will correct me if I'm wrong) and it's a rather lovely red quarry, and the Doctor has a fetching spacesuit which looks very similar to other spacesuits he has worn (maybe to make it easier for the people who make the little figures to release another variant). As the Doctor had a helmet on, I wondered how he heard the cute Gadget robot when it threatened him ... and that robot ... hmmm ... another merchandise opportunity perhaps. To diverge slightly, I had to laugh watching the Confidential episode when they showed a drawing of Gadget and everyone sort of nodded sagely in the face of Russell T Davies' obvious enthusiasm and love for it ... when all I was thinking was that it was the same as Number 5 from the Short Circuit films ... at least it was changed for the televised version as presumably someone else spotted the near identicalness of the drawing. We head to a space-base which looked very CGI to me, more so than other exterior CGI shots in other episodes, and there the Doctor meets the crew. I liked the Doctor's response to 'Name, Rank, Intention' with 'Doctor, Doctor, Fun' ... but I was less impressed by the woman in charge - Adelaide - waving a blaster around. In a pressurised room? What if she missed? Maybe it was just some sort of Stun Gun or something, a taser perhaps. The flashes to the future-Wikipedia were nice at first, but became increasingly laboured as we saw them for every crew member. Alright already, we get the idea. They're all going to die. Today. The whole scene was further let down by the wall-to-wall rubbish music which irritated me throughout the episode. Please would someone tell Murray Gold that less is more ... But the monsters are afoot, and I liked the first transformation taking place in the background to the shot. It's a shame then that every transformation was then seen like this, weakening the initial good idea and making it all feel very samey. The lights go off in the Biodome, but they seem to make a noise when they do. Do lights actually make a noise when you switch them off and on? They do in films and on TV, but in real life? I know that when you switch on hot outdoor floodlights, there can be a sizzle as any moisture on the casing is evaporated ... but on Mars? In a partial vacuum? I don't know. And then they analyse a roar and decide that it's Andy's voice print. Rubbish! How could that possibly work? A speechless howl can be tracked to a person's normal voice print ... disbelief is beginning to be stretched here. Before we can say Lynx Deodorant, the monsters are sweating just like the poor man in those advertisements. Water literally pours off them, and the effect was very well done and very unsettling. When the coloured girl, Maggie, changes into a monster, she's the best of them all as she stands in the isolation ward. Now why does that have door seals of a lesser quality than elsewhere in the base? Don't the designers know what 'isolation' means ... Ah ... but of course ... the base was designed by the same lunatic who designed the spaceship in 42 and the walkway with the giant fans in The End of the World ... that also explains the hideously long, vast, pointless hangar-like connecting walkways to the external domes. So as it's all getting a bit scary for the kids - and Maggie is very scary and unsettling indeed - we need some light relief, so the Doctor manages to make a robot that is designed to go at 2 miles per hour, somehow sprout rockets and go at 10 miles an hour instead. Baffling but fun. I liked the ice field set a lot - very simple - and I hoped that something might come up from the ice later, but no such luck despite all appearances to the contrary. But the chat here between the Doctor and Adelaide is tedious. It drags the whole thing down for a good five minutes. Moments in time being fixed ... I dunno ... sounds a bit like make-it-up-as-you-go-along to me. But then a Dalek interlude. What a rubbish Dalek! Why didn't it kill her? The Daleks were dragging Earth light years off course ... killing countless people into the bargain. If Davros' plan had worked, then everyone would have died anyway ... so are they now trying to say that it would never had worked because Adelaide could not die until her allotted time? Makes it all seem a bit pointless then. Back to the plot, and how can water get in through airtight seals? Air has smaller molecules than water, so there's no way it could happen. And in any case, if water did get through, why didn't the air inside then escape? The pressure seemed quite great later on ... Now we have messianic choral music which is OK, and the bit in the airlock where the Doctor talks with Adelaide was much better than the earlier scenes. And so the Doctor walks away ... listening as the humans all struggle to survive behind him. This is a lovely sequence, very nicely played and quite original I felt. However, where the Doctor said that Adelaide's dying to save the Earth was what inspired her granddaughter ... how does that then reconcile with the ending? But the Doctor has a change of heart and returns to try and help save who he can. I liked the hopelessness of it all when Roman was splashed with a drop, and then the Shuttle-guy, Ed, getting sprayed was nice, leaving them all with no hope. The shuttle explosion was spectacular - lovely effect and very impressively carried out. The hull is breached ... so how does everyone breathe then? And the Doctor can electrify the doors? Why didn't he do that before? And how does that work anyway? On what sort of space-base does a control panel allow you to electrify the doors. It would have to have been designed by a lunatic ... oh. The point of including the Gadget robot becomes apparent as the Doctor sends it to get the TARDIS. How convenient that it can hold a key, is the right width to get through the doors, can operate all the correct controls and get the TARDIS back to the Doctor in the nick of time. Lucky that the TARDIS console didn't need hitting with the rubber mallet then. But I was wondering ... when the Doctor first got to the base, he left the TARDIS and climbed over mountains and ended up looking down on the base from a quarry-like area which was in a crater of sorts with a mountain range around it ... so how did Gadget manage a straight run to the TARDIS then? Slightly puzzling. So the people are saved and the base and the water is blown up. A great climax, which is then spoiled by a rubbish final ending. I appreciate the Doctor's mindset of 'I can do anything I like' and being Timelord Victorious, but it all came over as wrong handed. I could see that they were riffing on Donna telling him he needed someone to rein him in sometimes ... and it put me in mind of how perhaps the Master justified his actions ... because he could. I also wondered if the climax to David Tennant's run will see the Doctor and Master change places, with the Doctor being the menace to the universe and the Master having to stop him ... All of which would have worked, except that the Doctor had no need to dump everyone down on Earth on the day the base exploded, outside Adelaide's own house! Why not anywhere else in the world, and tell them to take on new identities and allow everyone to think they all perished on Mars ... much more sensible and logical. So Adelaide's granddaughter is going to be inspired because her gran blew her brains out? She didn't save Earth doing that now did she? I can see it being all hushed up by the family anyway, and them pretending she died on Mars ... which makes her death ultimately pointless. There's also the question of why Adelaide killed herself at all - she never once gave the impression that she was a quitter, that she would accept her fate. It was only when all other options were exhausted that she set the base to detonate ... so it's so out of character for her to do what she did. So unworked for in the narrative and the acting. Just very disappointing. And finally, to cap it all, a comedy Ood Sigma appears like the Watcher of old, and stands, silently watching the Doctor as he gets all griefy and angsty about it all ... and as the Cloister Bell tolls in the TARDIS, so the credits roll. Overall then ... it was a great episode. Exciting and rollicking, you bet! Some brilliant monsters which were creepy and scary, genuinely unsettling and very well acted and brought to life by the cast. I loved the base under siege setting, so redolent of Doctor Whos past, and another great performance by David Tennant capped it all really. The script was generally strong - and I think the juxtaposition of Phil Ford and Russell T Davies' ideas really worked well, though I would be at a loss to guess who came up with what bits. I would hazard a guess that the basic plot of alien water monsters on Mars came from Phil, while Russell jazzed it all up with the Adelaide/Doctor interplay, and the ending. But I could be completely wrong. It had moments where it dragged - like the Dalek sequence half an hour in - but also moments of magnificence - like the Doctor walking away listening to humans die as he goes. Overall it was perhaps the best of all the Specials to date, managing to maintain the excitement and tension, to tell a nice little story, and to keep interest throughout. Personally I know very little about the final two episodes due for transmission, but as I'm not a fan of the Master, I'm kind of ambivalent about them. We have already seen a climactic two parter with the Master and I have a sense that this will be more of the same - all the characters from the past rolled out in a potpourri of deja vu, feeling like some sort of 'best of' all the previous season enders. Maybe I'm wrong ... but as always we shall see.

A Day at the Races

'So, David, back to the race ... how do you feel Something Perfect will do?' I'm standing on a small green, speaking with Jonno from Channel 4 Racing about a horse running in the next race to start; the 3:15 at Newmarket on Saturday the 20th June ... and I've never so much as stepped foot at a Race before! So how did this happen? Since when was I a Channel 4 pundit on the races? It all started because I was enjoying a nice weekend away with an actor friend, Frazer Hines, and we decided to spend the Saturday at Newmarket, which is where Frazer has his stud farm. So Sam, Frazer and I all roll off down to Newmarket on the Saturday. I am as green as anything, not having a clue what to expect. Sam had booked tickets for the Premier enclosure, so we finally figured out how to get in there and of course the first thing we did was get a jug of Pimms and settled down to watch the first race, and study the horses running that day. For me, it was all a case of seeing which one had the best name, but horses called things like 'TARDIS Travel' or 'Tennant's Fancy' weren't listed ... so I had no idea. Then Frazer spotted that a horse owned by a friend of his was running, so he decided to make a call ... seconds later, he's back with a big smile ... his friend's wife was there, and she had invited us into the paddock to see the horses with the other members of the Silver Lining Syndicate before the race. Now, to me, a paddock is a big straw-filled area bounded by wooden fences like you see on telly ... and I imagined we'd perhaps be sidestepping the piles of dung and trying to avoid getting trampled by these racehorses, all fired up before the race. Not at all ... the paddock is apparently a lovely big grassy area with a sort of track around it, where the grooms lead the horses next up to race, warming them up and getting them ready. So we wandered in there and stood watching the horses going around us. The horse owned by Frazer's friend was called Polly, and raced under the name 'Something Perfect' and she looked very smart. In fact, she won the 'best turned out' prize and we all applauded politely. Then the jockey arrived and we had a chat before he headed off to get on Polly to ride her down to the starting gates for the race. But Polly was having none of it. She got a little skittish and kicked out ... not at all a happy horse. The jockey hopped off and calmed her, and then led her out onto the racetrack before mounting her again and riding off to the start. We then decided we ought to put a bet on her, after all, the syndicate which owned her had been kind to us and ... well ... you just do that sort of thing don't you. So we popped out to the betting huts and Sam put a small bet on her. I nipped to the loo, and when I emerged, Frazer was standing by a fence. 'Here he is,' says Frazer. A nice gentleman on the other side of the fence says, 'Oh yes, hello, good afternoon, I understand you write for Doctor Who?' I smile, I often get this ... 'No, not for Doctor Who, about Doctor Who. I'm a sort of historian?' 'Oh very good, come round here then ...' So I look at Frazer, slightly perplexed, and he nods and smiles, so off I trot to the other side of the barrier. There to stand next to the nice gentleman, who seems to be called Jonno. Next thing I know there's a microphone thrust under my nose with a big Channel 4 logo on it. I look up, and there's a TV camera pointing at me. Oh crikey! The questions start with some stuff about Doctor Who ... that's fine ... I can deal with those. 'I understand you've travelled all over the world with the show ...' Eh? How could he possibly have known that! So I say something about conferences taking place in LA and that it's great the show has such a global following. And then he asks me about the horse ... I couldn't remember its name ... nor even the name it raced under ... at that point I couldn't even remember if it was a boy or a girl! We had enjoyed a jug of Pimms remember. I mention that the horse seemed a little skittish, but the jockey had sorted it, and we hoped she'd do well in the race ... Then Jonno asks me who else is in the Syndicate ... erm ... um ... but you can't do that on telly can you. So I say that there's quite a few people in it, including TV actor Frazer Hines who is here today ... Jonno seems happy ... he closes the chat and we return to the studio to watch the race. I thank Jonno and return to Frazer, now joined by Sam, who are laughing their faces off. 'You have to be the biggest bulls**tter going, David,' says Frazer when he can speak. 'I'm glad they didn't ask you how the syndicate named the horse!' So was I!! As it happened, 'Something Perfect' came third in the race. Beaten by 'Cosmopolitan' in first place, and 'Penzena' in second. There was a bit of a flurry, as the jockey on 'Penzena' was apparently seen smacking 'Something Perfect' in the face with his riding crop during the race, however on playback, the officials decided it was accidental as the horses were all close together on the track ... but then as there were only 8 horses running in the race, bets only paid on the top two places ... so we were robbed! Like I said to Frazer on our way back, the races have been spoiled for me now as I think you always get to see the horses before and after the races, get to go in the owners' enclosure, drink Pimms and appear on Channel 4 ...

Radio Appearance

Folks might be interested to know that I'm interviewed talking about the old Doctor Who Target Books on a radio documentary being broadcast on Tuesday 23 June, from 11.30am to 12 noon. 'On the Outside it Looked Like an Old Fashioned Police Box' The PR reads as follows: "Mark Gatiss, Doctor Who writer and fanatic, presents a feature exploring the hugely popular Doctor Who novelisations of the 1970s and 80s published by Target books. In an age before DVD and video, the Target book series of Doctor Who fiction was conceived as the chance for children to 'keep' and revisit classic Doctor Who. They were marketed as such, written in a highly visual house style. Descriptive passages did the work of the TV camera; the scripts were more or less faithfully reproduced as dialogue. They were as close to the experience of watching as possible and were adored by a generation of children who grew up transfixed by the classic BBC series. Target Doctor Who books became a children's publishing phenomenon selling more than 13 million copies worldwide. From 1973 until 1994, the Target Doctor Who paperbacks were a mainstay of the publishing world. From humble beginnings they grew into a list running to 156 titles, shaping the reading habits of a generation." I've also heard that Russell T Davies, Gary Russell, Terrance Dicks, Philip Hinchcliffe, Chris Achillios, Caroline John and Anneke Wills are taking part. So give it a listen if you're around, or it should be on the BBC iPlayer afterwards.

Heatwave

England is such a crazy country. One day you have to wear a coat to work in the morning as it's so cold ... the next it's chucking it down with rain so hard that you need a big golf umbrella (ella ella eh eh eh) to keep dry, and then that evening it's so scorchingly hot that you can't wear a jacket! But we live here and so are kinda used to the vagiaries of the weather ... Taking advantage of the nice weather, my partner Sam decided that she wanted another car (to be fair, we need two as I will be using the one for work, and so she needs another for her work) and so headed out and ended up getting the most adorable little silver softtop MG ... so we have been posing in it with the roof down, catching the rays, and generally enjoying the sunshine and the weather. The other week we ended up down by the river Thames and spent an amazingly relaxing afternoon eating tapas and drinking Long Island Iced Tea and beer while watching people go by. Both Sam and I love watching people ... I think it goes with the territory of being writers. Sometimes you see someone and a story just pops into your head! Their background or history or something equally bold and diverse and strange about them. Film-wise we finally saw Twilight ... hmm ... not that impressed. Some nice scenes where the evil vampires are hunting, but apart from that. And, I'm sorry, but vampires do not 'glitter' in sunlight. They smoke and scream and writhe and burn ... burn ... BURN! Much, much better was Ultraviolet, a kick ass SF vampire romp with Milla Jovovich. I liked the stylish way it was put together, the effects were great, and Milla struts her stuff wonderfully. The vampiric element was effectively handled as well, but it was also quite subtle too. Until next time ...

Forgotten Warriors

I managed to pick up a paperback edition of Tony Lee and Pia Guerra's graphic novel The Forgotten a month or so back and had a happy time reading it on the way to and then back from Paris, bracketing a nice weekend away. The strip had been published originally by IDW in their Doctor Who series (which, in a very rubbish way, is only available in the US. Such a shame as it's really very good) and now has been collected in this graphic novel format. I picked up a copy from Forbidden Planet, but it should be available online I guess. FP also stock some of the individual comic magazines, but a good place I have found is Graham Crackers, a retailer based in the US. Their website (www.grahamcrackers.com) lists just about every issue still available. Anyway, the idea behind Tony Lee's tale of ten Time Lords is straightforward, and yet it manages to work so well that I think it's probably the best multi-Doctor story we'll never see on television. The Doctor and Martha (for she was the companion at the time of writing) arrive in a museum which seems to contain a multitude of objects all related to the Doctor in some way. Unfortunately the Doctor has lost his memory and has no idea why this is. The pair stumble across a room which contains all the Doctor's standard outfits, along with a key item for each. 1st: cane; 2nd: recorder; 3rd: keys to the TARDIS; 4th: bag of jelly babies; 5th: cricket ball; 6th: cat badge; 7th: umbrella (ella, ella, eh, eh, eh); 8th: cravate; and 9th: psychic paper. By holding each object in turn, the Doctor is able to 'see' an adventure his earlier self had, and in doing so it returns part of his memory to him. The ideas come thick and fast, with mini-adventures interspersed with the main narrative. As the Doctor remembers, so he comes under attack, first from Autons, and then by giant spiders before finally being hunted by a Sandminder Robot and a clockwork Droid. However a mysterious someone is controlling events from behind the scenes, and I won't say more or it will spoil the lovely surprises that this story has to bring. I loved all the continuity elements - and there are a lot of them - but they are worked into the story brilliantly and don't seem forced at all. Indeed, some points of continuity are worked into the resolutions as well. Overall the story has a very satisfying feel to it, and you can tell that the creators have a great love for the subject matter. One of the small pleasures for me was trying to spot as many of the objects in the museum as I could, I managed quite a few, but I wonder if there is a definitive list anywhere ... Another wonderful item which I have to rave on about is an Ice Warrior Helmet ... a what I hear you cry! Well, the Ice Warriors from Mars are probably the last, great, Who monster from the dim and distant past not to make an appearance in the new series on television. We've had the Daleks, the Cybermen, Sontarans, the Master ... even the Macra ... but no Ice Warriors as yet ... give it time I say. Anyway, this is one in a range of scale helmets produced by the amazingly talented people at Weta in New Zealand. When I first heard about the helmets I was a little unsure ... I had seen similar ranges for Lord of the Rings and Narnia amongst other current film franchises, but wasn't convinced that Doctor Who really lent itself to such a range. Well, if the quality of this Ice Warrior one is anything to go by, this should shape up to be a pretty awesome little addition to the collectors' shelves. It comes in a rather nice little printed box, with a great pic of the creature on the front. Inside, nestled in protective polystyrene is the helmet, and also a smart looking stand on which to display it. The first impression is how heavy the helmet is. After all it is cast in metal, and then painted up. It's a brilliant re-creation of the Martian creature, complete with red eye shields. If I was going to be picky, I'd suggest that a mouth section would have completed it nicely, but I can understand why that wasn't done, as the mouth is not really a part of the helmet, being part of the creature underneath. However in the series, it's suggested that the helmet might also be a part of the creature, with electronic 'ear pieces' and so on ... The helmets are limited to 500 each, and the limitation number is given on the base of the stand. With others in the range including a ceremonial Time Lord headpiece and a Cyberman head, they would look very nice indeed lined up in a display cabinet I think. Even the price isn't too shabby, being around the £35 mark each with shipping of £7.62. They are available from Weta direct from their website at www.wetanz.com. The helmets also ship from the UK directly, and don't come winging their way from New Zealand!

Star Trekking

That's the way to do it! Went to the pics recently to see the new Star Trek film and had one of the best times I can remember at the cinema in recent years. What a brilliant film! I have to admit that I am not the world's biggest Star Trek fan. I'm not even sure I have seen every episode of the original series and certainly can't name them or know what order they came in. Later Star Trek variants bored the pants off me, with perhaps only the Borg episodes coming close to interesting me (and that's only because the Borg were a cunning reworking of the Cybermen from you know what). But this film had it all. J J Abrams takes us back in time to before the original crew of the Enterprise were in situ, documenting the events which surrounded and led up to them all meeting and ending up at the helm of the USS Enterprise in the first place. The touches were all there - Captain Pike, Romulans, Vulcans, Kirk's legendary way with women ... but recast and mixed up so that it's not quite what you expect. The actors are uniformly brilliant, with each managing to capture traits of the original cast members without it being too forced. I particularly liked Simon Pegg's Scottie (along with the almost obligatory appearance by Deep Roy who must hold some sort of record for genre film appearances by now) and Uhura was also nicely played, though I couldn't get my head around her romance with Spock. Sylar out of Heroes played Spock and was suitably broody and logical (even if I did expect him to wave his finger at Kirk and start to trace a line of blood across his forehead ... a little Heroes reference there for the initiated). The effects were awesome, with so many magnificent crowd-pleasing sequences on show. To pick just two: the sight of Vulcan imploding into a black hole was jaw dropping, and I loved, just loved the shot of the Enterprise rising up above the atmosphere of Titan like some sort of submerged behomoth hoving into view. The film managed to play with the emotions maginificently as well, eliciting tears in the pre-credits sequence - and any film that can bring you to tears in less than ten minutes is doing something right! But it then handled the comedy well, with Kirk's inflated hands and tongue, as well as his chase by the plant-monster-thing on the ice planet. Of note in all this is the sequence with Scottie in the water tube - a nicely handled piece of sctick which ended, predictably with Scottie being saved. The plot was well worked out (Doctor Who take note), playing with time in a way which got the brain cells working overtime. I adored the sequence near the end where Nero's ship is being destroyed on one side of the black hole in the sequence at the start of the film, while simultaneously being sucked into itself at the end of the film. Lovely stuff. Nero himself was suitably loony, but perhaps was also the weakest character as although he talked a lot, we never really saw what was driving him apart from his insane desire for revenge at any cost. Overall it's a rollicking two hours, which pass like lightning and which never drags. A brilliant way to revisit and reinvent the series, setting it up for more films, and along the way, by means of the cunning 'alternate time line' conceit, avoiding problems with the hard core fans of maintaining continuity with the original series. Truly a magnificent achievement.

Doctor Who - Recent Specials

Finally ... getting some time on a Sunday afternoon to sit down and pen some thoughts about recent Who and other things ... Thanks to those of you who nudged me to see if I was still alive after all this time. I am ... and I'm OK, though there have been some quite dramatic changes in my life since last I blogged. Anyway, onwards and upwards and first on my list of things to catch up with are the two latest Doctor Who specials. We had The Next Doctor at Christmas, and at Easter there was Planet of the Dead. Heading back to Christmas first, and at the time I wasn't sure how to take The Next Doctor. It seemed to be quite a fun romp at times, but scattered through with disjointed elements which didn't seem right. Overall I felt it was certainly one of the weaker Cybermen adventures, with only the very cool black and silver with brain showing variant to elicit much interest - though quite why this CyberLeader was like that is anyone's guess. I liked the setting and the idea of David Morrissy being the Doctor was a nice conceit which unfortunately fell into the Doctor's Daughter school of not being that at all, and all being something else entirely ... a shame really as again, the 'gosh wow' idea of it was better than the actuality. As usual for BBC Drama, the setting was well realised, but I'm not sure that the number of black gentlemen who were seen around could have been correct - at this time in England's history, weren't black men and women menials rather than toffs? Which brings us to Rosita and her perfect Cockney accent, let alone that she's treated as an equal ... hmmm. The Cybershades were frankly rubbish. Eliciting no form of excitement at all and looking like something which had been constructed from the pages of Doctor Who Adventures Magazine (but then perhaps that was the intention, to feature a monster which every child could effectively pretend to be with a sheepskin rug and a cardboard mask ... And why would the Cybermen convert cats and dogs anyway? There are enough people around after all. Then it all goes Oliver with Miss Hartigan's Fagin capturing the kids to work in a factory ... again, not much explanation as to why the kids were used ... why not controlled humans? Why were they needed at all? And of course finally it turns into Transformers and a giant Cyberking rises from the Thames to stomp all over London ... I have no idea what the point was, but it all looked nice if you disengaged your brain. Yes ... different from the other Christmas specials, perhaps not as good as Voyage of the Damned, but better than The Runaway Bride ... But then we get Planet of the Dead. Oh dear. I had high hopes for this, but it turned out that everything we had heard about it was exactly what it was. Recorded in a Dubai which looked like sand dunes in Cornwall, and featuring some woman off EastEnders and The Bionic Woman who acted well but had no clue really, and a race of giant flies who eat excrement, and you start to think that it's all going to hell in a handcart. What niggled me most about this was the lack of plot. The Doctor is on a London bus acting like the loony you try to avoid and wittering on about easter eggs and fiddling with something electronic when the bus is sucked through a space time portal and dumped in the desert. As happens you know ... We then have most of the running time taken up with Doctor on said bus trying to figure out how to get back while another loony on the bus goes on and on about death coming (no love, it's just a swarm of alien stingray things), while on Earth, UNIT has it's hands full as they've inexplicably put Lee Evans in charge of the tech ... Lucky that on board the bus is the Bionic Woman who can't do anything useful really, but who has a gold chalice she just nicked and which is exactly what the Doctor needs to turn the bus into something out of Harry Potter and fly back home again. And that's about it. Obviously co-writer Gareth Roberts has a thing about flying beasties as he's used them in The Shakespeare Code and The Unicorn and the Wasp as well as Planet of the Dead. Maybe we should call it Lara Croft on the Planet of the Flies and be done with it as that was really what it seemed to be about. Of course we had to end with the loopy woman going on about something returning and knocking four times ... but then her predictions of death were so way off kilter that if the Doctor has any sense then he'll ignore her. But then again, he's so used to everyone he's ever met suddenly turning up again on a giant Dalek saucer, or at the end of the world, or in a submarine or somewhere equally unlikely, that if I were him, I'd just assume that Rose was coming back for him having worn out her clone Doctor, or that Donna had remembered her past and rather than Wilf have to put up with her whining about that, decides to find the Doctor himself and give him a piece of his mind. I've been hearing the rumours about Tennant's swan song and thinking ... oh no, not again. It's interesting to look back just a couple of years ... I watched a repeat of Army of Ghosts and Doomsday again last week, and I was again reduced to crying my eyes out over the ending. They should have left it there, they really should. The production team seem to have stopped trying in many respects. Now that Doctor Who is rightfully back on top of the schedules, and that it's pulling in more money than ever before in its history through merchandise and overseas sales, it seems like the golden goose cannot be harmed. So the scripts get a little rushed and shoddy, less care is taken over the finer details than in which celebrity casting we can use this time around ... it's all worryingly like the slow decline of the show under John Nathan-Turner, when scripts came second to crowd-pleasing reunions and a wacky opportunity to record in Spain gave us The Two Doctors rather than spending the money on a decent set of scripts and some great ideas. I worry because I care ... I love that Doctor Who is top of the telly pops again, and that my interest in it is seen as being cool and interesting rather than geeky and sad ... but if the scripts aren't cutting the mustard, then the public will turn away quickly and find something else to watch. Primeval perhaps, which has really given Who a run for it's money with this new season. The episode shown along with Planet of the Dead apparently killed off one of the lead characters in a way that was dramatic and effective. Not just for show, or to try and grab viewers (as no-one knew it was going to happen), but in a script that was tense and well thought through. The Who production office has many, many very talented people working in it, and I know they do care ... but complacency has a way of creeping in. I'm glad that Russell T Davies has stood down and that Steven Moffat now needs to prove himself against the mirror of Davies' television juggernaught. This should provide the necessary boost and up the ante for everyone to create not just Doctor Who, but a bigger, bolder, better Doctor Who. Something that amazes and terrifies in the same breath, something which is thought provoking, touches on the human condition, and which works on a number of levels. No pressure then ...

Guilty

My word, doesn't time fly ... I'm feeling very guilty at having completely neglected my blogging and hopefully will be able to make some time to catch up a little over the next few weeks. There's a lot been happening for me personally which is the main reason for the the lapse but I have notes on the Christmas Who special, and the recent Easter episode to talk about (Lara Croft on the Planet of the Flies), as well as hopefully some other random subjects. So apologies to all, and I'll try and pen something more pithy over the coming weeks.

Story Publication

I wrote a few posts back that one of my short horror stories had been accepted for publication in a magazine called Murky Depths ... well the cover for the issue (number 6) has just been released, and it's a doozy :) The magazine is fairly new ... been running for just over a year now, but the editor, Terry Martin, is very proficient at seeking out the best content. It's a mixture of graphic novel stories and prose fiction, all designed to the highest calibre and illustrated by artwork from some impressively talented artists. Basically it's a horror fiction magazine with an agenda to present disturbing fiction of all sorts, along with some top-notch artwork. I hope folks reading this might be moved to give an issue a try (maybe the one with my story in *grin*) and so please head over to www.murkydepths.com to find out how to get hold of a copy. As I know myself all too well, small presses in the UK need support to survive, and when someone is putting a lot of time and exceptional talent into a project, then news of that needs to be spread so that more people can discover it, and hopefully ensure longevity in a difficult marketplace.

FantasyCon 2008

The annual FantasyCon convention was held in Nottingham over the last weekend, and as usual I was there to hopefully sell some books, but mainly to meet up with friends and have a great - if slightly drunken - time. I arrived on Friday, and after dumping the books in the Dealer Room, headed off to see what might be happening. The organisers were busy filling the delegate bags with a pile of goodies kindly donated for the event, which this year included books, fliers, a poster, a smart little CD of erotic poetry by Sam Stone (on which I am one of the readers!), and a brilliant convention magazine. The first event of the weekend for me was the Quiz which took place on the Friday night. I was hosting, asking questions posed by the devious minds of Sandy Auden, John Aitken and Gary Couzens. The questions ranged from the hard to the impossible, and, as it was International Talk Like A Pirate Day, I had to do just that for some of the time. Initially it looked as though the room would be empty as there was a book launch for Humdrumming taking place at the same time, but we eventually managed to rustle up four teams and hopefully all had a good time. The next morning, Telos had a launch for three of the non-fiction books, and this was combined with a launch by fellow publishers Murky Depths for Killing Kiss, a novel by Sam Stone. Because of the time of day, we decided to go for a tea and coffee themed affair, with chocolate biscuits, A fair few people came along, which was great and we managed to sell a few books too! Sam Stone managed to out-glam everyone though, and her book went down very well indeed, much to the delight of Terry Martin from Murky Depths. Throughout the convention there were readings in a 10th floor room, which seemed to attract a fair few attendees (probably dependent on what was happening elsewhere to be honest) and among those reading was Allyson Bird, who read from her first collection Bull Running for Girls. It's a great looking book, and Allyson was delighted to sell out of copies over the weekend, proving that the short story is as popular as ever. I was on a Doctor Who panel with friends Rob Shearman, Mark Morris, Simon Guerrier and Simon Clark and we had a great time, but barely scratched the surface of the subject. The audience seemed pleased though and it was great to chat about Telos' novellas and about the whole Doctor Who phenomenon. Saturday evening was the BFS Awards Banquet and we all got dressed up to the nines. The food was passable, and there were strange squidgy rubber body parts scattered all over the tables which was interesting! After the Banquet the BFS Awards were presented, and unfortunately Telos didn't win. We were only in the Novella category with Black Tide, a great zombie yarn by Del Stone Jr, but the award was taken by Conrad Williams for his excellent PS Publishing book The Scalding Rooms. After the Awards came the Raffle. This is almost legendary in BFS circles and can be entertaining and enlivening, but it can also be dry as dust. Thankfully hosts Guy Adams and Sarah Pinborough were lively and engaging and it passed the time nicely. There were books galore, signed copies sometimes, proofs, a corset(!), artwork, goodie bags from the BBC, DVDs and lots more besides. I didn't win a thing of course ... but then that's usual with me no matter how many tickets I buy. The Raffle ended at around midnight when, despite the lure of Dave McKean film shows, I couldn't stay awake any longer and so crashed! Sunday and things slowly slid down to a quiet close. I was on a panel about organising conventions which was interesting, and then there was a Small Press Launch which seemed to go well and brought the convention to a close. Overall it was an enjoyable affair, enlivened by much alcohol and bonhomie. FantasyCon is always a very friendly event, and it was good to make some new friends this year as well as catching up with people I'd not seen for a year! Here's to next year ...

Films

Been watching quite a few films lately ... so here's a quick rundown: HELLBOY - watched this again in preparation to seeing the new one. I like the way it mixes up the physical, prosthetic effects with CGI giving an overall impression of realism which can so often be lost with CGI-only effects. I remembered enjoying this the first time, and a second viewing doesn't disappoint. HELLBOY 2 - went to the pics to see this one ... and it's well on a par with the first. What is interesting is that the first film is complete in and of itself, and so this second film, although it is a continuation of the story, doesn't really link to the first. There is a quick recap at the start of Hellboy's origins, and a fairly pointless scene of him as a kid - ramming home what the eventual denoument to the whole film will be - but otherwise it's another great romp. I thought Luke Goss eas magnificent as the Elven prince, and the princess was also very nicely played. The mix of physical vs CGI is used to good effect again, and the whole thing rattles along in very enjoyable style. There are touches of Del Toro's design preferences coming through in the Elven Chamberlain and the strange Eagle/witch/woman, and his imagination still soars through the visuals and mix of fantasy and science fiction. The main part that annoyed me was the attack by the tooth fairies at the start. There are millions of them, and they shoot at them! That's like trying to disable a swarm of bees or wasps by shooting at them ... it's simply never going to work. And yet they spend quite a bit of time plugging away at them before Mrs Hellboy does her 'flame on' act and saves the day (speaking of which, her flames are red in this film but blue in the first ...) LET THE RIGHT ONE IN - This is a Swedish vampire film I saw at Frightfest. Before it started, the writer stood up on stage and said that anyone who didn't like it was evil ... well I must be a bit evil then. The film was OK ... but glacially slow. It really dragged which is a shame as there's a good plot there, good characters (though the two child leads struggled a little) and some nice set pieces. It's basically the coming of age story of an 11 year old boy who is bullied at school. He befriends a 12 year old girl next door who also happens to be a vampire, and she encourages him to fight back against the bullies. Meanwhile her helper, a man who could be her father, or brother, or just a friend, is killing the menfolk around the town to provide blood for Eli to drink until he is trapped and, in a strange moment, disfigures himself with acid before allowing Eli to kill him too. In this way, there is an undercurrent that Eli is just using the boy and he will grow, killing for her and hiding her just as her previous human did. Maybe I'm cynical, but it did throw another level onto the kids' relationship. Maybe with half an hour cut out (it's around 2 hours long) it might work, but even shorter the pace is so very very slow. There is a cracking final sequence in a swimming pool which had the audience applauding, but it was a long time to wait to get to it. Another friend said he loved the slow build-up and the pacing, so maybe it's me and the film is fine. I've been spoiled on a diet of fast-paced blockbuster movies! DARK CITY - I picked up the new director's cut of this and watched it ... great film! It's a long time since I saw the original, and so I couldn't tell what was new/different this time. However the film really hangs together well, and it all belies when it was made, the effects are smooth and integrated and the visual design of the film is boggling. Richard O'Brien is awesome as the somewhat obsessed Mr Hand, and the strange aliens led by Ian Richardson are a cross between the Hellraiser Cenobites and the Gentlemen out of Buffy. It's a film that makes you think and appreciate the performances and the love and care that went into it. All the cast are superb, and overall this has to be one of the best films for re-watching as I'm sure you'll see more and get more from it every time. David

Doctor Who - Journey's End

Well it's taken a little time, but I've finally found some moments to pen thoughts on the final episode of this year's Doctor Who. What a whirlwind ride it was! I'll add some thoughts on the season as a whole at the end, but first we need to address that cliffhanger.

It really was an inspired way to end an episode - with the Doctor apparently regenerating and yet no-one, not the press, newspapers, magazines or anyone knowing about it. Of course I was thinking that it was a fake, that this couldn't be a real regeneration or Russell and crew would have pulled off something quite incredible. But part of me really wanted it to be true, for there to be a new Doctor that no-one knew about. Thus the week was spent waiting for Saturday ... waiting to see what would happen ... and sort of expecting, if I'm honest, a let down.

Well the regeneration as we now know was a fake. It was a mcguffin, nothing really to do with much at all, and over so quickly too. The shots of the Doctor's hand bubbling away in The Stolen Earth were a bit of a giveaway too - setting the scene for the significance of the hand. And I liked the way that the hand linked things together as well ... in fact the way that Russell brought together several elements was clever here - especially as in some cases he could have had no idea that he might re-use the elements in this story.

As this was a final, season-ending episode, and the second part of a two part story, it tended to cram a lot in ... so all the cliff hangers were really non-cliff hangers. Sarah's bursting into tears as the Daleks surround her car was resolved by them just wanting to take her prisoner, despite Mickey and Jackie arriving with more big Dalek-busting guns. And at Torchwood, well they have the biggest mcguffin of all as apparently Tosh, before she died, perfected a time lock to protect the hub from invading Daleks. Which is convenient but not very helpful as Gwen and Ianto now have to sit the rest of the episode out, a little like the 4th Doctor and Romana in The Five Doctors ...

Meanwhile Martha heads off via teleport to use the Osterhagan key and ends up 60 miles outside Nuremberg where there are Daleks speaking German! Aside from this being really cool, it brings home that the TARDIS isn't on the Earth and so there's no autotranslate system in operation. Speaking of which ... I forgot to mention the system's failure last episode where the Judoon's speech was not translated - and the Doctor's reply was also in Judoon! Shades of The Doctor's Daughter. One thing that's worse than using a mcguffin, is ignoring (or forgetting) something that is well established, and this will-it-or-won't-it approach to the TARDIS translating language is one of those.

So the Doctor, Rose, Donna and Captain Jack arrive on the Dalek Crucible, which is a huge Death-Star-like space station. As they leave the TARDIS, Donna is distracted by heartbeat sounds again and remains inside ... so that when the Dalek Supreme drops the TARDIS into the z-neutrino energy heart of the ship, she goes with it. But amidst the explosions and destruction as the TARDIS is boiled alive, Donna sees the Doctor's hand-in-a-jar glowing and touches it, suffusing her with energy, and making the hand grow a new Doctor! So we have two Doctors now ... the same Doctor twice. Confusing and puzzling, but very entertaining. And a nice element to add to the mix. So the regeneration wasn't a complete mcguffin as it has a large amount of significance to the plot. Much more satisfying then, than just having it happen for no reason at all.

Jack is exterminated by the Dalek Supreme (but he's Jack so isn't killed) and so escapes as the Doctor and Rose are taken to the cellar to be Davros' playthings. Jack sees a group of humans heading to test the reality bomb, among them Sarah, Mickey and Jackie. Sarah and Mickey escape the group and join Jack, but Jackie is trapped there. At the last moment, she is able to use her dimension-jumping teleport to escape (it conveniently having a 30 minute recharge period), leaving the lady from Eastenders to be disintegrated along with the rest of the kidnapped humans by the bomb which cancels the electrical enegery between atoms, making everything in the vacinity just fall apart (of course we wonder how the Dalek ship was protected from this then ... why didn't the whole chamber just cease to exist?)

Conveniently Sarah has a warp star - some sort of energy source given to her by a Baran soothsayer - and Jack fashions this into a weapon. Martha gains access to the room where the Osterhagan key can be used to detonate 25 nuclear bombs around the Earth which will destroy the planet. Both then threaten the Daleks simultaneously. It's lucky how all these things come to pass at the same time. After all, Martha's threat wouldn't be much good in ten or even five minutes time ...

The Doctor and Rose meet Davros who is just superb! Out of everything in this jam-packed couple of episodes, Julian Bleach is simply divine as Davros, using the same quiet tones and menace as Michael Wishers's original, but adding his own twists to create a memorable and effective villain. Far better than the visually impressive but silly Dalek Sec Hybrid, the shouty CyberController or the loopy Master. His speech about the Doctor turning his friends into weapons was brilliant. Loved it. Even the flashback sequence, so overused and crass when used in the 80s, really works well here.

We're now approaching endgame as all the pieces are in place, and the drama is reaching its conclusion.

The Dalek Supreme easily disarms Jack, Mickey, Jackie and Martha and brings them all to the Crucible and Davros orders the reality bomb to be detonated. Then the TARDIS arrives in the room bringing Donna and the newly created Doctor. Davros zaps Donna and sends her flying, and he disables the new Doctor as well.

But then Donna turns off the power from a central unit. Then she disarms everyone, Davros and Daleks alike ... seems she is now part-Time Lord and is loving it! In fact, she is the DoctorDonna mentioned by the Ood. This point I thought was just silly as at the time it seemed that the Ood saying 'DoctorDonna' was just that this was what they were shouting at them themselves! Seemed to be something of a continuity reference too far. But Donna saves the day, as this single console, deep in the heart of the Crucible, in an area where Davros has been trapped by the Daleks, conveniently seems to control everything to do with the ship, the Daleks, and their master plan! Donna manages to disable all the Daleks and puts all the planets (barring the Earth for some reason) back where they came from. The Doctor realises that the insane Dalek Caan was behind it all, Jack destroys the Supreme Dalek, and the Doctor finally feeds back the power (reverses the polarity anyone?) which destroys all the Daleks so they can't try this again. This is all so familiar - how many times before has the Doctor destroyed all the Daleks only for them to rise again?

This leaves the problem of the Earth - why Donna couldn't send it back the same as all the other planets is conveniently forgotten - and the Doctor determines to tow it back using the TARDIS, aided by power routed from Torchwood (released from their time bubble) and Mr Smith (Sarah's supercomputer) aided by codes from K9 (now this is getting very silly ... if K9 can be called at a moment's notice like this, then why hasn't he been used by Sarah beforehand, or even in her own adventures ... oh well).

With all his companions around him, and another one of him, the Doctor has enough people to pilot the TARDIS 'properly', one per panel of the console. So Sarah, Mickey, Rose, Jack, Martha and two Doctors bring the Earth back home. Jackie however is not allowed to help ... made me smile anyway.

Amusingly, the people on Earth experience tremors and all sorts as this happens, and then seem to have fireworks on hand to celebrate with when they get back ... but how would they know they were back anyway? Never mind. It's all fantasy.

Now comes the goodbyes bit.

Sarah races off back to her son Luke. As a participant in this story she was a little underused I felt, and acted somewhat out of character by blubbing when the Daleks appeared. She's also a little obsessed with this 'son' of hers who isn't even her son!

Jack and Martha leave together, with Mickey coming after. Now, Mickey was brilliant. I felt that Noel Clark is the one who has grown and developed the most as an actor and as a character through the series. After his somewhat dire offering in Series One, I was sad to see him go here. But all the implications are that he's joining Torchwood, and I feel that the show could only be improved by including him.

The Doctor, Donna, Jackie, Rose and other Doctor head off to Bad Wolf Bay in the alternate Dimension as this is where they need to be. Donna points out that Rose now has her own Doctor ... and they have a snog to prove it. This was a nice touch, giving the Doctor-obsessed Rose her own Doctor to get jiggy with, although poor Jackie - I hope she has a good supply of sick bags to hand.

Leaving them in their own dimension, Donna and the Doctor return to the TARDIS, but Donna is a little hyper. Or should that be more hyper than usual. Something is going wrong ... but it's frustratingly not explained apart from as a 'Human-Time Lord Metacrisis' whatever that is. It allows the Doctor to do his 'I'm so, so, sorry' routine again, before he wipes Donna's memory of him and takes her home.

This was so crass! I'm sorry, but we were repeatedly promised that a companion would die! Not that someone would have her memory wiped! For all the protestations that this was awful and worse than death and so on, I can't see that it was. Perhaps it's because I never warmed to Donna. Catherine Tate was always Catherine Tate playing Donna, rather than the character being real and alive in the way that Rose was, for example.

The closing scenes also spoiled the pace of the episode. The last 15 minutes are slow and plodding, playing out the Doctor leaving Donna with such great gravitas that we're meant to think it's all meaninful and painful ... too much! Much better that she should have died being a heroine, let the Doctor grieve for her briefly and move on. This is where the show descends into the soap opera territory in which it really doesn't belong.

Bernard Cribbins was again marvellous though, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one wanting the Doctor to take him along with him ... but no, the lonely traveller remains alone, and the final scenes of the empty TARDIS served to emphasise that well.

Onwards with the adventures ... and at Christmas ... Cybermen ... Dervla Kirwan ... graveyards ... hopefully something scary and spooky for Christmas Day.

Before I get to the season as a whole ... here's a picture of Girls Aloud in black rubber ...


Overall I didn't think this season was a good as the last. Some of the stories were poorer than general (with The Doctor's Daughter and perhaps The Unicorn and the Wasp being a little too experimental) and even the return of the 'big' monster - this year the Sontarans - was not as effective as it could have been. Several themes were repeated, which starts to make it look as though the production team are running out of ideas (which I seriously doubt), and generally, although the show was undoubtedly the best thing on television once more, I felt that a little more thought in the scripts would not go amiss.

Everyone had been dreading Catherine Tate as Donna, and she was okay ... but nowhere near as great and fantastic as the increasingly hagiographic Doctor Who Confidential shows would have you believe. As I mentioned, for me, there was way too much Cathering Tate there and not enough acting. I'm also really not sure what sort of a viewpoint character she provided for any girls watching ... I suppose the subtext of a Temp from Chiswick turning out to be the most important person in the universe is nice, but I doubt that Temps from Chiswick were watching. Part of the problem was that Russell T Davies got it so right and on the ball with Rose, that anyone else was going to fail by comparison. Martha did OK, but Donna was not a success. It will be interesting to see which way the series goes now, and I have a nasty feeling that we will be seeing the Doctor and his 'daughter' Jenny travelling together for a time ... although she was great in The Doctor's Daughter, I can't see Jenny lasting as a 'gee whizz isn't this fab, jolly hockey sticks' type of character for very long. But then again maybe we'll have River Song back and have a proper family in the TARDIS for the first time (and have to ignore the fact that David Tennant is going out with Georgia Moffatt - something which adds a whole new dynamic to watching The Doctor's Daughter).

If I was to go through and add some simple and quick assessments to the episodes this year, plus a positional rating from 01=best to 13=worst:

11 Partners in Crime - silly but fun. And it has THAT Rose scene.
04 The Fires of Pompeii - superior and well made. Great monsters.
08 Planet of the Ood - well made, but disappointing and silly.
12 The Sontaran Stratagem - disapppointing and a repeat of Age of Steel.
13 The Poison Sky - disappointing and reminiscent of Evolution of the Daleks.
07 The Doctor's Daughter - pointless but nice to look at.
05 The Unicorn and the Wasp - nicely made but too much humour.
01 Silence in the Library - superb. Great horror episode.
02 Forest of the Dead - again superb.
10 Midnight - forgettable. Missed opportunity.
09 Turn Left - could have been a disaster but not too bad. The bug is awful though.
03 The Stolen Earth - probably the best episode of the season, but not as good as the Moffat ones.
06 Journey's End - A fitting ending, but the last 15 minutes are very disappointing.

So for the next year we have only a handful of specials to look forward to before a new, Steven Moffat-steered series in 2010. I'm sure the rumours will start flying and companions being cast, new and old monsters called into service, and that the press will have a field day trying to get the scoops, and the production team will delight in throwing curve balls and trying to preserve all the surprises for transmission night.

Thoughts on Doctor Who's finale

A few people have commented and emailed to ask where my final review is. Apart from the fact that I'm quite pleased that some people like reading my burblings, it's just pressure of work which is preventing me from sitting down and penning my thoughts. Unfortunately there's a lot of Telos-related work that needs doing on the books for later this year, and this is taking all my time at the moment. So patience ... and as soon as I can find the time, I'll pen and post my thoughts on the finale.

Doctor Who - The Stolen Earth

I'm really not sure what to make of this one. I know we were expecting something big, but the sheer scope of this story beggars belief. I can't think of much else on television which would try and get anywhere close to the cinematic and epic quality that this episode presented.

I think my main concern is how understandable it might be to those who have not been diligently watching each and every episode (and Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures). When Doctor Who came back with a blaze of glory in 2005, a lot of effort was put in to try and make sure that everything was explained, even in a sketchy form, so that the Doctor, the two hearts, the TARDIS, the Time Lord ... all the key concepts were reintroduced in a way that viewers could understand and follow. I get the impression that all this is out the window now, and pretty much anything goes.

I think my worries were amplified through the opening scenes, which should have been quick and effective introductions to all the characters. Instead they expected you to just know what was going on.

Following on from last week, the Doctor arrives on Earth but all seems fine. No Bad Wolf anywhere. Even the TARDIS was back to normal. So what was all that about then? Just a dramatic episode ending for no reason, apparently. But then the Earth vanishes, leaving the TARDIS behind. Just the TARDIS. Everything else on Earth, right down to a milkman, his float and bottles of milk, were transported across the galaxy with the planet. So why wasn't the TARDIS?

Meanwhile ... on Earth ... a group of soldiers and a woman recover from the move. We don't really know who they are or what they have to do with anything. There's little in the way of dialogue to try and establish what's happening here. We are expected to know that this is UNIT and ex-companion Martha Jones (who was so out of water all the way through the episode. Not a good performance at all from Freema Ageyman).

In Cardiff, there's some sort of scientific base. Probably Torchwood as that's written on the walls, and some people. We might recognise Captain Jack, but who are the other two? What is Torchwood anyway? Last time we saw them they were running Canary Wharf ... Again, there's no attempt to provide explanations.

In Ealing, a woman and her son inexplicably have a giant supercomputer in their house. Erm. This is Sarah Jane Smith who we might recognise from the School Dinners episode a couple of years ago ...

In Chiswick, Donna's family, Wilf and Sylvia are amazed at the sky. And then that blonde woman from the last episode arrives with a big gun. And we see that there are lots of planets overhead. We're not in Kansas any more ...

So the seeds are sown for a big finale. The Doctor and Donna are puzzled as to where the Earth has gone, so the Doctor heads for the HQ of the Shadow Proclamation - this organisation which every race seems so scared of - and it turns out to be on an impressive asteroid-like space station, populated by female albinos and Judoon! There he figures out that the Earth was moved using something on the same frequency as that used by bees (or something - honestly, if you try to explain this stuff to people they look at you as though you're mad) and he's off with Donna in the TARDIS again to find it. Donna meanwhile seems to hear a heartbeat noise, and one of the albinos comments on there having been something on her back, and how sorry she is for her loss to come ... how do these people know what's going to happen? And if they do, why don't they tell the Doctor or at least warn him! Instead they seem to want him to lead them into war. Of course the Doctor does what any self-respecting Time Lord would. He runs away.

Meanwhile, on Earth, the phones still seem to work which would be impossible unless all the satellites were moved along with the planet, and there are loads of spaceships arriving. It's the Daleks again, up to no good, and they start slaughtering and then rounding up the humans for some reason. We seem to be in a bit of a remake of The Dalek Invasion of Earth here, and there's even a cool red Dalek with a Dalek Emperor-like voice bossing them around. But along with the Daleks (which are totally brilliant ... as are the effects of the battles and the Dalek ship and pretty much everything to do with them), there's mention of the Crucible, harvesting humans and lots more.

Lurking in the background is another figure who seems to be in league with the Daleks but who superbly remains in shadow. And Dalek Caan, the last surviving Dalek, is also present, though broken open and babbling insanely.

On Earth, the problem is that no-one knows where the Doctor is and so as the Daleks attack, so everyone tries to do what they can. Martha makes use of a prototype transporter based on Sontaran technology to escape. The Daleks slaughter anyone who resists, and even Wilf's paintball gun cannot impair their vision (a great fanboy line that). Rose arrives and blasts the Dalek away.

Anyway, more surprises come as ex-Prime Minister Harriet Jones contacts everyone using a sub wave network she built using facilities from the Copper Foundation. This sentient software cleverly seeks out everyone who might be able to contact the Doctor. Though how it does that is anyone's guess. Everyone except Rose, it seems, who gets a bit sulky and feels left out. Mighty convenient that everyone has Web Cams as well (except Rose). The plan is to use everyone's combined resources to send the Doctor's phone number (07700 900 461) into space so he gets the message! What! This is utter tosh. It's also the same plot as last year where, if everyone prayed for the Doctor at the same time, then he'd come back to them. So everyone does this, and the Doctor gets the message and realises that the Medusa Cascade (which is where the bee trail led him) has been timeslipped by one second, hiding all the planets there. So he gets the TARDIS synchronised in time via the weakest CGI in the episode, and joins the Friends of the Doctor conference call.

But the call is hacked by the mysterious individual with the Daleks - it's Davros, lord and creator of the Dalek race ... and that's all the explanation you get! His reveal was badly handled and disappointing. After all the build up, I was expected and wanted either a slow move of his visage from shadow into light. Or some crash close up/zoom affair. Instead we get a sudden full view from a funny angle. Peculiar. The Doctor knows him as he was unable to save him when he was destroyed in the first year of the time war at the gates of Elyssium when he flew into the jaws of the Nightmare Child. All this flows at speed from the Doctor's mouth ... and leaves you reeling. So much information, too much input!!!

Okay, so this Davros character has some connection with the Daleks - he is sitting in a Dalek bottom half after all - and he's cackling and quietly, understated evil and is wonderfully, wonderfully played by Julian Bleach, putting all the other Davroses after the first (played by the late, great Michael Wisher) into the shade.

Their little online conference abandoned, everyone decides to find the Doctor. Sarah Jane rushes off in her car. To where I have no idea. How would she know where to go? Anyway, she encounters a couple of Daleks and instead of running them down, she stops and bursts into tears. This is not the Sarah Jane we know and love (even if you knew who she was in the first place).

Jack repairs his wrist transporter with coordinates obtained from Martha and heads off, leaving Gwen and Ianto to certain death at the suckers of the Daleks. Again, this assumes we know how all these different characters can do these things ...

The Doctor finally arrives on Earth, and sees Rose for the first time since their separation. Cue totally daft and somewhat overlong scene of them running the full length of a road towards each other's arms. But then we knew something would happen ... and a Dalek appears and exterminates the Doctor!!! Jack appears just too late and destroys the Dalek, but the Doctor is dying. So they get him into the TARDIS where Jack knows (not sure how) he can regenerate. Only Rose has actually seen this happen before, but she is being pretty useless and telling him he can't (why?).

And so the Doctor starts to regenerate ... and the credits crash in.

Well wow. Really. Wow. That was one twist I wasn't expecting. But I can't shake the feeling that it's not what it seems. That the Doctor is not going to regenerate. Maybe he will for part of next week, maybe not. Maybe we'll see James MacAvoy or James Nesbit as the Doctor for part of the time? I think there's more to this. There's a lot going on with Donna and the time beetle ... I wondered at one point if she STILL had a beetle on her back and that what we were seeing was just more alternate-universe gubbins. Dalek Caan said 'everlasting death for the most faithful companion', so who is that? Rose? Donna? The TARDIS? Jack? Sarah Jane? Take your pick really.

Or maybe the Doctor really is regenerating and the production team have pulled the perfect blinder on everyone. Fans, press ... everyone.

I can't help shake the feeling that there's a great big red reset switch lurking somewhere. Rose will become Bad Wolf again and turn back time to defeat the Daleks (again) or the Time War will restart and time will be reset as part of that ... or this strange key thing that Martha has will do something to reset everything (using ... I don't know ... Krillitane computations). But it's like last year - way too much has happened that it can really all be left in place at the end ... The Earth is in the wrong place in the Universe for goodness sake!

Reading back through my comments from this week (and indeed last week), it sounds as though I'm not enjoying the show. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I love it to pieces. Watching this episode back was even better. It is epic on a scale undreamed of. The effects are awesome, and the Daleks and Davros are just the best they have been for many many years. I am concerned that the general public won't 'get' this intense level of continuity fest fun which pushes all the right fannish buttons. I lost count of the number of back references in this episode, everything from Crucibles to Medusa Cascades, to bees vanishing ... to the biggies like Judoon, Daleks, Davros, Shadow Proclamation, Rose, Harriet Jones, Dalek Caan ...

And above all, I hope that the next episode doesn't drop the ball. That we don't have a rushed and unsatisfying ending to all this.

As the rubbish and crassly done caption at the end of the episode said: TO BE CONTINUED ...