Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

Cathode Worded Hotline

Later on You And Yours we talk to the residents of South Wales, who’ve been unable to use their telephone service for quite some days with vital services being effected.  BT say that they’re doing all they can, but people who’ve contacted us via the internet are furious about the lack of communication they’ve been receiving.  “Not even a phone call” says Roxy from Newport …

How many old flames does Captain Jack have?  In two out of three of these plays we’ve met some long lost loves, both of them singed by him and Torchwood though it’s good to know, judging by Dona (Matron Casp) Croll's nostalgic performance that they’re not all loonies despite having to deal with a Dorian Gray whose magic picture is his own reflection.  So whilst the amnesiac Eighth Doctor was working his way through the twentieth century trying desperately not to offend anybody (depending upon how broad your approach is to canonicity) Captain Jack was shagging anything with a pulse, the cad.  Assuming as upcoming revelations suggest he didn’t always love them and leave them, his alimony bill must be ignominious.

Just as these three radio plays look like they’re about to pass on without some kind of Declassified style treatment, the producer, Kate McCall, has posted this useful post at the Radio 4 blog about the production.  The main issue seems to have been the availability of the regular cast who were all passionate to take part but found themselves otherwise potentially engaged in other more lucrative projects starring Trevor Eve, with Barrowman recording his section in about two days between between the end of his tv show and the opening of his national tour.  Talk about making someone feel guilty...

Today’s edition of Torchwood, Phil Ford’s The Dead Line was apparently the most hit – John’s participation curtailed leading to “a major creative decision” to Jack’s storyline, one of which was presumably led to him being out of action for much of the duration.  This eleventh hour rewrite must have had two effects – the building up of Rhys’s part so that he’s effectively a full blown Torchwood member for the duration (when he was clearly otherwise the prime candidate for the temporary vegitative state) and some filler material in the shape of Ianto’s chat with his boyfriend in a coma and as is so often the case in these situations those are the best things about an episode that more than the other two gave the impression of being proper Torchwood, except on the radio.

Like the other two plays, the main story wasn’t particularly strong or original, but here Ford, whose writing has wobbled left and right in the past few years (as viewers of The Sarah Jane Adventures will have endured) milked it for all its horrific potential so whilst the idea of having an appliance that pervades modern life becoming a deadly killer (or in this case non-killer) is something we’ve seen a fair few times before and probably would have worked just as well in SJA with some tweaking, his d escription of the effects, the stillness, the eyes, the minimal brain activity added reality particularly since that description is equally applicable to the specimen/cretin who sat behind me on the bus the other day listening to Akon through his mobile phone speaker.

This subliminal advert for Skype showed how extraordinary situations can allow couples, in this case Gwen & Rhys & Ianto & Jack, to say what you want to say and sometimes get an answer.  In other words that it’s good to talk. Which also makes it a subliminal ad for BT too, I suppose, assuming they're not under the grip of some molevolant force which isn't always certain in the real world if you've ever had to face down the automated system.  Frankly given all the TV Cream / I Love the 70s palava I'm surprised Ford didn't also decide to sneak in a reference to sinister dead-eyed phone call eavesdropper Busby for extra creepiness.  A giant man sized version of him once frightened the shit out of me at the Liverpool Show.

Some of Ford’s previous writing has been a bit mechanical (Invasion of the Bane a particular low), but on the basis of The Dead Line I can understand why Davies was happy to collaborate with him on the specials.  Given the chance to write for adults (both in the narrative and the audience), his characterisation was top notch, especially the scenes between man and spouse as we heard how the trousers are passed about in that relationship, Gwen now and then sounding like Rhys’s mother desperate to protect him, her needing a loving word and a cuddle and a slap-up breakfast, even if one of one of them does see it returning in the opposite direction later in the day.

Whereas the authors of the previous two plays were description happy, Ford knows that sometimes in audio, offering an impressionistic idea of the world can be even more effective than completely orientating the audience.  Notice that in the scene were Gwen and Rhys visit the source of the problem and break through to the room in which the ringing telephone is hiding, all we hear is the sound of whatever they find and their reaction to it; we’re left hanging until some way into the next scene to find out what they’ve discovered and the state it was in, and because our attention is drawn to it, our imagination happily gets lost in the gory details.  

If I was an unforgiving mood, I’d rattle something terrible about the climax, a Fanthorpian deus ex machina utilising the sonic screwdriver with a male enhancement procedure that is the Hub and its convenient ability to interface via a PDA with the hospital’s medical facilities but since we can’t be sure if that to was a result of the Bannerman related last minute rewrite, let’s just assume that the original idea was better and with a hope that the upcoming miniseries isn't solved with quite so much ease whatever catastrophe we're about to witness.

Luckily, a quick Twitter survey (and the thoughts in my own head) indicate this play’s probably going to be remembered for Ianto’s speech.  In the pre-publicity interviews for the shows, Gareth David-Lloyd talked about how in one of the plays he’d enjoyed working his way through a three page speech that was unlike anything else he’d had to tackle on the series before and what a privelige it was (or words to that effect).  That’s understating things a smidge isn’t it?  

Though it covered much the same sentiment and ground as School Reunion and dozens of episodes of Highlander and every vampire love story ever written, this was intimate, emotive and cut the heart of the budding relationship between Jack and Ianto, Gareth at his sentimental finest.  Compare the moment when he choked back a tear to the severe weather warning waiting to happen in Countrycide and we see a maturingg actor who understands what his character is about.  Plus, though it's probably redundant to note this, how wonderful that a gay relationship can be dealt with such subtely in an afternoon slot on Radio Four.  How far we've all come. 

You can download the play here for the next week at least, and you really should.  It's (generally) ace.  

Twitter says it made people cry.  Good-oh.

Next week: Anything could happen in the next five hours ...

Latched Wooed Gorgon

“Hello and welcome to Excess Baggage with me Sandi Toksvig.  Today, India and slightly different view of the subcontinent with our guest Ianto Jones of Torchwood.  Ianto, hello.”

“Hellooo.”

“So Ianto.  Tell us about your visit to India.”

“I can’t reeally.  It’s classified.”

“Oh.  Um, okaaay.  So what did you do while you were there?”

”I can’t tell you that either.  That’s classified too.”

“And yet we invited you on.”

“I knoow.  Strange that.  Can I have cup of coffee?”

In its somewhat random history, Torchwood has had a tricky time coping with how to approach it’s own mythology.  Not aided by a symbiotic relationship to the mother series and to some extent its younger sister, it’s had to be cautious when establishing anything just in case it interferes with the plans of either Doctor Who or The Sarah Jane Adventures (something us continuity wonks will be fixing our beady eyes on next week).  So it’s generally looked inward offering glimpses of earlier Torchwood both in Cardiff and across the world and James Goss’s Golden Age or Torchwood Flies The World, with its excursion to Delhi, is another example of that and crucially in comparison to yesterday afternoon’s story, actually making the most of its radio format to deliver places which would not necessarily be available on the current budget for the show.

Lord knows what the typical audience for this timeslot made of it.  I offered the same point in my review of Lost Souls, but do people just tune in every day at 2.15pm no matter what’s on, a continuity heavy blast of sci-fi adventure, or as they may have heard on Tuesday a drama about assisted suicide?  Either way, it’s to the good that Goss didn’t attempt to explain everything from the off, preferring to alienate potentially unaware listeners whilst keeping us happy (even hurling in a squee worthy mention for some silver balls) and delivering a fun, sometimes intriguing story that made me laugh on at least a couple of occasions even if ten minutes before the end I realised I was listening to the Soylent Green Corporation doing a cover version of City of Death.  And said so.  Out loud.  With a contraction then a swear word in front.

It took a while, but all of the elements which sounded a bit familiar and niggled throughout began to coalesce.  Instead of Scarlioni/Scaroth we have The Duchess, or Charley Pollard’s sister Cecelia with a game face.  An old colonial mansion for the chateau.  Space age wi-fi rather than the now retro seeming micromeson scanner.  General odd-jobber Mr. Mahajan for mad old Dr. Kerensky.  And a time bubble designed to recreate a previous status quo. There are only seven stories in the world, or twelve, or two or however many they’re currently teaching in creative writing classes right now and this paragraph belabours the point, but I’m just relaying the experience of listening to the play and once again it was somewhat spent decoding where in the franchise an iteration of this story had appeared before.

Still it its impressive to hear the series reach into thematically complex territory in talking about overpopularion though I can't quite believe that these multitudes could disappear in India without someone noticing (unless they were seeding the water with retcon).  A colonial Torchwood is a neat idea, however, and having them previously bruised by Captain Jack following establishment orders underscores the kind of man he became to survive after being plopped in the 19th century first time around as well as demonstrating how this kind of organisation, if it did exist, would clearly be buffeted by world events.  Just a pity it's another example of him atoning for another previous fuck-up, this time leaving just the right kind of alien tech in the wrong hands for maximum levels of catastrophe.  Also, why Torchwood India not Torchwood Delhi if Torchwood Cardiff is Torchwood Cardiff not Torchwood Wales?

A larger than life character in the spirit of Captain John, The Duchess (who probably looks like Kiera Knightley) proves a decent foil though the chemistry between Jasmine Hyde and the Barrowman was rather low, the latter often sounds uncomfortable without a camera lense to relate to.  You'd also think these two would have more to reminisce about than proper dancing, though no doubt the timeslot was a factor in this and we were supposed to read between the lines or childish giggles, an extended version for the cd could feature the untransmittable extended flashbacks utilising the soundtrack from Elvira Madrigan.  Or whatever.  Not that I've thought too much about it.  Then again, having had to sit through a similar conversation in real life ("Do you remember when we went to that hotel with the broken springs on the bed etc") perhaps Goss stopped short at just the right moment.

Eve and Gareth are well served by the material continuing the dynamic we saw in the Doctor Who orgasmo-finale, suggesting a less buttoned up Sarah-Jane and Harry, especially in that lovely moment when Gwen was awakening in captivity and Ianto broke their predicament to her ‘gently’.  As lovable as Tosh and eventually Owen were, this new trimmed down configuration seems to work rather better in story telling terms, subtlely fleshing out the remaining characters.  Ianto still remains a slightly weird figure though.  He's not quite gotten over the cry baby image of the first tv season especially the Cyberwoman thing, or the oddness with watching Paul O'Grady in a crisis much later.  4oD is fabulous but was that the right time?  Already worked your way through the whole of Press Gang?  Disappointed that Pob isn't available?

I'm babbling now (it's the heat) so I'd best end with this:  I spent this past weekend watching some of the BBC’s productions of Shakespeare’s history plays from the 1980s.  They’re very good, all the generational skullduggery of I, Claudius except rewriting our own history.  Brenda Blethyn plays Joan of Arc like she's just stepped out of a Mike Leigh drama.  The Idiot’s Lantern’s Ron Cook does Richard III as a kind of northern spiv.  Most of these things are three or four hours long, but none of them feel like it because between the text and the direction it runs like the clappers with battle after unceasing battle spilling across the space as the crown is relayed between successive camps. 

By comparison, the first half hour of Golden Age feels twice as long because we're essentially waiting for the villains to reveal their plan to Torchwood, with  the inevitable delayed verbally in the case of The Duchess and her feminine whatsits or the guided tour George gave the other two, our/somebody's heroes not really discovering the horror for themselves, but being told what was going on to a narrative timetable.  I’m no writer (obviously) but I think I would have probably had the team break free much earlier than that, with Torchwood India/Delhi/whatever chasing them around a bit attempting to protect their secret, with lots of shouting and more blasts of that gun.  But with forty-odd minutes worth of drama to fill and a limited cast, what are you going to do?

Tomorrow:  "Hello?  Hello?  I'm in Torchwood.  It's ...."

Clamorous Dot Why

Burning.  Burning. Open the window.  Close the fabric flaps.  Download.  Download.  Head speakers on.  Hear.  Noise.  Welsh.  Imaginary domesticated animal.  Loud music.  Lots of heavy breathing before wordage.  Bevattna.  Bevattna.  Tired, so tired.  Boredom.  Depression.  Irritation.  Indignation.  No – no – no! Off!  Off!

Spoilers ahead.

Torchwood’s back then.  Eight episodes, ten days, four stories beginning with some specially recorded radio prequels/useful merchandising opportunities because last year’s Large Hadron Collider episode was so well received (well I didn’t think it was that bad).  John Barrowman said recently in the Radio Times that he thought that the reduction in editions felt like a punishment (as well he might having had to sit through Something Borrowed).  At a time when the license fee is being crunched, he should be pleased that the show’s still being made at all, let alone in this truncated state.  Primevil’s not even being gifted a tv movie to close out its cliffhanger (at least Hannah won’t be out of work, S Club are touring again).  The BBC simply can’t justify spending thirteen episodes on any sci-fi series in this climate unless it has the letters d, o, c, t, o, r, w, h and another o in the title.  Obviously.

Anyway to the asylum, sorry, Asylum by Anita Sullivan, in which the Torchwood team met a refugee from a Woman’s Hour drama, internal monologue intact, and helped her get her life sorted out.  That’s an over-simplication of course; she was an alien from the future who’d been dragged through the rift by a future version of the institute with an elastic understanding of temporal mechanics, in the pricess making a point about how Torchwood treats visiting aliens, that they’re not all bug eyed monsters hell bent on global destruction, some of them just want a place to kip with state benefits.  In other words, like another ‘very special episode’ this time constructed around a Daily Fail baiting (this time non-existent) day of programmes about a hot topic with the usual constraints about having to make a point about something sacrificing proper drama in the process.  

Generally underwhelmed, I kept expecting it to tip over into something more involving, a twist which set everything on its head.  Nothing.  For hardy fans of the franchise, an amnesiatic sixteen year old girl babbling in a strange language being arrested for shop lifting is clearly either going to be an alien or from another time.  Or both.  Fans of Skins would obviously have another opinion.  Given that Asylum was supposed to launch a new short series of radio plays and signal the return of Torchwood to our screens, Sullivan’s play was hardly the slam-blam-creepy-glorious adventure we know this corner of the franchise is capable of (for better or worse) and something which sounded like it could have been put together for television on the average budget of an episode of The Bill.  

Brave perhaps, then, to tell a small story in these circumstance, but with just three episodes to play about with, why not take advantage of our imagination and do something really spectacular, something startling, rather than 'show' us the interior of a safe house, some terraces and a lake?  The future language was nicely developed, and well done to Erin Richards for wrapping her larynx around that, and the form could only have been done on radio, but it just -- wasn't -- enough.  Usually in these reviews I like to write about individual scenes, what worked, what didn't, but just hours later I can't think of anything specific.  Nothing especially bad, I suppose, just ...

I know this was being made for Radio Four in the afternoon which would hardly be the place for a Day One, but does have to be a rerun of the tepid Out of Time (to the point of referencing that exercise in romantic witlessism mid-stream)?  I'm not really criticising the writer in this -- well alright perhaps a little -- but she was simply comissioned to write the story in this way -- and given the ideas she's produced on radio and in theatre before (detailed here) and she's talked recently (in the Radio Times too) of giving Cardiff loads of ideas to choose, I simply wonder what fell by the wayside.  Sullivan clearly grasps what Torchwood was about.  She captured the individual character voices beautifully, especially Gwen.  She even picked up the television series's habit of moving the plot forward by having a Torchwood member leaving their keys in a motor vehicle.

There were still some entertaining elements.  We love PC Andy and it was fun to finally hear him reacting to what Gwen’s been doing with her life since she left the police force, Tom Price almost channelling Jason Mewes in Dogma when he was trying to comprehend the existence of aliens (though with less swearing) and presumably setting something up for next week.  After some initial deep inhale acting (“inhale … my name’s Gwen … inhale … I’m hear to help … inhale … would you like a coffee?”) Eve Myles stepped away from the microphone slightly to deliver her dependably down to earth performance.  Neither Barrowman or Gareth were given very much to do though the scene in the Torchwood Love Machine with the toy gun/remote control/Cardiff traffic management bothering device was sweetly played and surprisingly clean (even if the bike love did make me want to chew through the arms of my chair).

Tomorrow:  The hitherto unmentioned Torchwood India.  Oh.

[Torchwood: Asylum can be download here for the next week.  If you're living in the UK.]

We Don't Want To Lose You, But We Think You Ought To Go

The War Games

Due to be Released: 6 July 2009

Produced by 2Entertain

(This review contains spoilers.  But come on...it was made 40 years ago.)

Here it is at last.  The War Games has long been recognised as one of the most important Doctor Who stories ever made, and you can make a shopping list of the things it introduced to the series, from the naming of the Time Lords and the first sighting of their home planet, to the trial of the Doctor and his eventual, slightly odd, exile: "You will be sent to a new kind of series, made in colour, with a bit of ITC and Quatermass thrown in, but you'll get much longer holidays".  It's also a story that set the parameters for a number of massive arguments that raged around fandom, the most persistent of which maintains that the series went downhill from the moment that the Doctor was identified as a Time Lord and saddled with a backstory that could only ever go on to provide diminishing returns.

This line of thinking holds that the Gallifreyan hairdressers' waiting rooms and potted plants of Arc of Infinity were an inevitable consequence of the moment when Edward Brayshaw's Security Chief recognised the Doctor in Episode 4, and this view of the Time Lords as a bad thing seemed to be reinforced when Russell T Davies brought the series back and only waited until the second episode before revealing that the Time Lords had been wiped out.  Of course, this was slightly undermined by the fact that the new series subsequently went on to mention the Time Lords in virtually every other episode, until by Series 4 whenever the Doctor got dewy-eyed and started to mention the Time War you could almost see the other characters rolling their eyes in the same way that Del Boy and Rodney did whenever Uncle Albert started telling his war stories.  The point is, that you can extrapolate all of these controversies from The War Games, and chunter on about them for months, but the story itself gets little attention.  If there is any consensus, it's that the adventure is a crashing bore, a tedious runaround, only redeemed by the last episode-and-a-half of beautiful, myth-making fanwank.  Well having watched this sumptuously produced DVD set, I can say to people who hold that belief that, in the words of Chris Morris, you're wrong and you're grotesquely ugly freaks.

you're wrong and you're grotesquely ugly freaks

Don't get me wrong - I was one of the grotesquely ugly freaks as well.  I hadn't seen The War Games for years, and I'm a sucker for an easy life, so assumed that my memory of being a bit bored the last time I watched it would remain my definitive judgment.  Within just a few minutes of watching this DVD release I realised that I was wrong.  Now, there are obviously certain things about the story that are undeniable - there are an awful lot of instances of the TARDIS crew being captured, escaping, and being recaptured, in fact the first capture happens about five minutes in, and the escape one minute later is actually a recapture.  So criticisms that the story is repetitive may well be justified, but repetitive is not the same thing as boring - there's a crucial distinction.  And it's worth taking a step back and considering what this story is about - there are lots of wars separated into time zones on an alien planet as part of an experiment to develop a fearsome and resilient army.  Now leaving aside the fact that this is quite barmy (this is Doctor Who after all) it is evidently going to be the case that each war zone is going to exhibit the common characteristics of warfare - treatment of the enemy, military justice, etc - so it's fairly obvious that when crossing the time zones the Doctor and company are likely to get more than their fair share of deja vu.  One of the most interesting things about The War Games is that there is no attempt by Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke to maintain an air of mystery around the events.  Some writers may have chosen to wait an episode or two before revealing that an alien presence is responsible for the weird behaviour witnessed by the Doctor and his companions, but Dicks and Hulke reveal that General Smythe is an alien roughly ten minutes into Episode 1.  This immediately means we are aware that the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe are the only free agents (until they start gathering a resistance group) in a nightmarish world of amnesiac puppets, where every moment they seem to make progress is foiled by an alien donning a pair of Mr Magoo spectacles and returning them all back to square one.  Repetition is part of the point.

And yes, I'm aware that the length of The War Games was a consequence of a number of production disasters that led to the loss of both a six-part and four-part adventure, and that Dicks and Hulke had to knock out the scripts faster than Target novelisations of Tom Baker stories, but to me that makes the story even more remarkable.  It's all very well for Dicks to talk about the use of "return loops" (i.e. padding) within each episode, but the fact is that the central idea of the story was a stroke of genius as it gave narrative justification for an expanding number of similar episodes.  And just because you employ return loops doesn't mean that they can't individually be interesting in their own right.  Being recaptured by General Smythe is very different from being recaptured by the War Chief and his cronies.  The continuing development of the alien's own narrative is particularly engrossing.  The infighting between the War Chief and the Security Chief is fantastic, and their antagonism evolves throughout the story, not least when the Doctor arrives which sends the War Chief into a scheming frenzy, and the Security Chief into an even deeper pit of paranoia.  And all of this before the arrival of the War Lord, surely one of the most sinister characters to appear in the programme, made even more memorable by the resolute lack of a back story for him or his race.  But maybe I just enjoy thinking about a planet where Nehru-jacketed men with bottle-bottom glasses walk around flanked by gimps in rubber suits and bathing caps.  Imagine how weird it must look when they're all at the local supermarket.  Another positive side-effect of the production problems is that this story got the equivalent budget of two stories, which consequently means that the relatively few sets here get more money lavished on them and it shows.  The alien set looks great, and David Maloney's direction gets the best out of it, with the famously grim Brighton rubbish tip also setting an appropriate tone.

gimps in rubber suits and bathing caps

Even though I consider any boring moments to be few and far between, my attention was always sustained by some wonderful acting performances throughout the cast.  David Savile (Carstairs) and Jane Sherwin (Lady Jennifer) are solid and believable goodies, as is Graham Weston as Russell the Boer War refugee.  There's an immaculate turn by Noel Coleman as the repellent General Smythe who first alerts us to the genuine nastiness of the aliens, which is later bolstered by David Garfield doubling up as equally unpleasant German and Confederate generals.  But it's the trio of alien leaders who really hold your attention.  James Bree and Edward Brayshaw put in arresting performances as the Security Chief and War Chief respectively, with Bree out-Daleking the Daleks with his staccato delivery, and Brayshaw going large with his florid depiction of a megalomaniacal traitor.  And then Philip Madoc enters the scene as the War Lord, and things go to another level entirely.  His performance is outstanding, and from the sharp lines of his stubble down to his soft voice and scary spectacles, he is immaculate.  Even when his character is dematerialised, he continues to underplay it merely intoning "No, no" in a way that makes his death even more disturbing. 

As usual, the regulars give it their all, with Patrick Troughton excelling over the final couple of episodes when the Doctor is increasingly frazzled and desperate as he realises events are beyond his control.  The consequences of his eventual solution lead us to the justly famous final episode, which ironically features about three attempts to escape and is probably more padded out than any of the previous nine installments.  This doesn't detract too much from the final impact however, as it's an impressively grim conclusion to a notably serious piece of work.  Zoe and Jamie depart with a proto-Donna Noble mindwipe, with Jamie deposited back straight into an unequal pitched battle with an armed Redcoat, while Zoe ends up on the most boring space station in the universe.  The latter features a wonderful, but heart-rending performance from Wendy Padbury, as Zoe struggles to remember her time with the Doctor but eventually says "I thought I'd forgotten something important, but it's nothing".  As if this wasn't angst-ridden enough, the Doctor is then catapulted into some kind of existential netherworld, spinning around like Descartes' mind before fading into echoing darkness.  And in this singular way ends one of the most remarkable of the Doctor's adventures, which here, in this stunningly restored version, should cause everyone to view it again with wonder.

Extras

The restoration on The War Games is so good that it would justify the release on its own, but there are also a large number of high-quality extras, even down to those regular features that are often taken for granted.  The production notes by Martin Wiggins are easily the best I've seen so far.  They are unobtrusive and clear even though they have a very complicated production history to convey, and this is all achieved within the very fiddly logistics of matching the notes to the screen while giving viewers enough time read them.  If that's not enough, Wiggins also manages to be witty, and there's a note about Zoe and spanking during episode 5 that was just one example that had me sniggering.  These production notes don't get enough praise, as when they're done well (as they are with bells on here) they add to the viewing experience tremendously. 

Kubrick would have been shaken

Commentaries are another de facto extra, and one that I'm a bit more wary of for a whole host of reasons.  The commentary participants here are numerous, as you'd expect for a such a long story, and the full line-up is Frazer Hines, Wendy Padbury, Terrance Dicks, Philip Madoc, Derrick Sherwin, Graham Weston and Jane Sherwin.  There are some incidental moments of humour - the word bouffant is mentioned but not in relation to Pertwee; Dicks and Sherwin went to see 2001: A Space Odyssey when on location and hated it (Kubrick would have been shaken) - and occasional moments of interest, such as Derrick Sherwin refreshingly still remembering Troughton's awkwardness on set during the period, and Philip Madoc explaining (when you can hear him over the others) how he decided on the characterisation of the War Lord.  But the overwhelming impression you get from the commentaries, in spite of Frazer and Wendy being as jovial as ever, is of a lot of half-remembered anecdotes from a group of people who have varying degrees of success in covering up their boredom.  This is fair enough and understandable, but if you're in a good mood and enjoy the story then treat with caution.  On a lighter note, the definite highlight is when Derrick Sherwin launches into an enthusiastic description of Wendy Padbury's bum in the famous scene in The Mind Robber.  He gets so into it ("you could make out every twitch of the cheeks") that you feel like shaking him and saying "Come on man, this isn't even the commentary for The Mind Robber stop slavering like a fanboy".  Priceless.

you could make out every twitch of the cheeks

There are so many feature extras that it's hard to know where to start.  I happened to watch them on the same day that Mark Gatiss's Radio 4 tribute to Target Books was transmitted, so it's probably not surprising that Marcus Hearn's On Target: Malcolm Hulke really stood out.  Maybe the impact of this feature depends on how much of a Hulke fan you are, but as I'm a paid-up member of the Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon Appreciation Society it really hit the spot for me.  There are readings from Hulke's work by Peter Miles and Katy Manning, and some lovely contributions from the various talking heads, with Gary Russell in particularly fine form as he nails the reasons why Hulke was so good.  This is a gem of an extra, clearly put together with great affection for the subject, and probably because of the general outpouring of Target-y goodness recently, I was actually quite moved by it.  On a lighter note, James Goss's Talking About Regeneration is a successful blend of humour and insight from various commentators on the subject of regeneration.  Amongst others, Rob Shearman (gorgeous as ever in maroon shirt), Joe Lidster and Kate O'Mara (!), make some very funny comments about the perils of turning into Colin Baker, and the importance of Bonnie Langford's death when trying to achieve a really convincing regeneration.  You also get to find out what Clayton Hickman considers to be the most pleasurable experience you can have.  Clayton - you really should get out more.

Other features include Steve Broster's War Zone, a 'making of' which contains some very good interview contributions from the late David Maloney, and a great anecdote from designer Roger Cheveley about MichaelJohn Harris and his big bag of explosives.  Paul Cornell crops up as well, and he seems to be very enthusiastic about Zoe's coat.  It probably says more about me, and not about him, that I tend to find Cornell a little bit irritating on some extras.  There's nothing wrong with what he says, indeed I nearly always agree with him, but I keep thinking about a phrase my grandma used about some people: "If he was a lollipop he'd lick himself".  Still as Auden almost said "Time will pardon Paul Cornell, Pardon him for writing well".  But it's an illuminating extra, as is another episode of Marcus Hearn's Stripped for Action where Gary Russell (on top form again) and others talk about the crazy comic strips of the Troughton era, and as a result I spent several days thinking about the logistics of skiing Cybermen.  Imagine what a ski resort for Cybermen would look like.  It'd be like The Pink Panther film only in metal, and with hardly any aloof countesses or David Niven.

Of the remaining features I found a couple slightly underwhelming but that's probably just me being picky.  The Dudley Simpson and Sylvia James interviews were informative shorts but a little bitty.  More significantly, I think that the Shades of Grey feature probably emerged from a very laudable desire to contextualise early Doctor Who within the wider environment of the other programmes that were being made at that time.  This is close to the heart of archive television fans, many of whom were introduced to the world of 1960s/1970s television through their interest in Doctor Who, and it's nice to think of any new fans of the series coming to this DVD and similarly becoming inspired by the knowledge that there is vast range of old programmes waiting to be explored.  But purely as a standalone piece of work, I thought the feature was a bit of a hotch-potch with only the early part of the piece genuinely concentrating on the aesthetics of working in black and white, whereas the latter part used the phrase "black and white" as a synonym for "old television".  The final section of the piece entitled "The Sound of Black and White" being a case in point - the fact that a programme was in black and white had nothing to do with what the sound was like - it's all about the era rather than the aesthetic.  But that section is fine if only because it includes the clip of Brian Hodgson being interviewed by a woman who is clearly in love with him - watch her face throughout - she is completely enraptured.  Wonderful.

a bottle of wine. Or two

Of the other major extras (yes there are more) there is a piece entitled Time Zones which features some historians filling in the background to the various battles featured in The War Games.  I find it hard to be objective about this, as within two minutes of the piece starting I was confronted by Dr Martin Farr, who I've shared the odd pint with over the years through a mutual friend followed swiftly by Lindsay Allason-Jones who I've also encountered a number of times at various business meetings. This Newcastle University connection (see the recent Manchurian Candidate extra on The Deadly Assassin DVD) is getting too close for comfort.  But this is an informative extra, with the experts' combined efforts to understand which war David Troughton's character was supposed to be from, and their thoughts upon The War Games itself being particularly interesting.  From another planet entirely is fan film Devious, an attempt to bridge the gap between the end of The War Games and the start of Spearhead from Space which is particularly notable for featuring the last performance of Jon Pertwee.  I'm a bit of a fan film virgin, and genuinely don't know if this is at the good or bad end of the spectrum, but I do know that it was perfectly palatable when washed down with a bottle of wine. Or two.  And the commentary (yes there's a commentary) is also amusing, probably for the wrong reasons, but it's there if you fancy it.

I think I've banged on about this release for long enough now, but I hope appropriately so.  It's one of the best DVD releases of the range so far, and lives up to all the expectations that have been heaped upon it.  If I have one regret, it's that the planned feature on Patrick Troughton fell through for logistical reasons, but you can't have everything, and this release is more than enough unless you're really greedy.  The sum of its parts would be impressive enough, but the whole is outstanding.  Buy it.

Oh and there's a great Easter Egg on Disc 2.  Exile?

Crackerjack!

Delta and the Bannermen

Due to be Released: 22 June 2009

Produced by 2Entertain

Time heals all wounds.  Or as the Seventh Doctor might mumble "Time wounds all heels".  The McCoy years still cause some people to get red in the face with anger, frustration and the memory of one too many playground taunts circa 1987 about how terrible Doctor Who is nowadays.  Others launch incredible defences of the era, usually in exhaustive detail, arguing that actually Silver Nemesis just appeared to be a load of old crap but was in fact playing with the conventions of the series, and that Time and the Rani was not a fearful mess, and even if it was, well, The Time Monster is much worse.  So ner.  Personally speaking, I always felt slightly caught in the middle, as I bailed out on Doctor Who immediately after the transmission of Episode 1 of Paradise Towers, and didn't see another McCoy story until the DVDs started coming out years later.  But following an embarrassing conversation at a convention (what other kind is there?) when someone's reference to a 'Red Kang' left me bewildered and suspect, I decided I should do something about this and watched every McCoy story in rapid succession.  As a result of this, I formed the uninspiring conclusion that while the stories do get better and generally less embarrassing, I still can't get over the fact that throughout the era the performances of the leading actors range from mediocre to terrible.  This is quite a problem for me, as watching a programme called Doctor Who loses its attraction a little when every time the title character appears I have to wince and squint my eyes.  But it's my problem, and I mention it only so you can bear my prejudices in mind.  The important thing is that there's really no reason for anyone to get angry about it anymore. In 1987 - no-one died.

The production is so peculiar and the tone so odd, that you are constantly left wondering if the makers are pulling the viewers' collective plonker

Delta and the Bannermen is the McCoy story from Season 24 that most people now try and rehabilitate.  I'm sure at one point Dragonfire was the one that everyone firmly stated was the best, but the revisionists are out in force for Delta, and it has to be said that maybe, just maybe, they have a point.  Certainly it moves at a hell of a lick to start with.  No sooner have we seen the tail-end of an unexplained genocide, than Gavrok (Don Henderson) is gunning people down, the Doctor and Mel win a ticket to Disneyland from Ken Dodd, and a space/time travelling coach comes crashing down in a 1950s Butlins-style holiday camp.  And I haven't even got around to Stubby Kaye as Weismuller yet.  The production is so peculiar and the tone so odd, that you are constantly left wondering if the makers are pulling the viewers' collective plonker, or just incompetent.  Take Hawk and Weismuller.  The infamous tent scene (if it isn't infamous it should be) is like some unholy cross between Brokeback Mountain and Five Go Mad in Dorset: "Oh Weismuller - you're so licky!", and similarly you wonder if Gavrok's gunning down of Ken Dodd is the wish-fulfillment of someone who barely made it through to the fifth hour of Dodd's stand-up act.  But there's enough genuine incompetence on display to cast severe doubt on Delta being some kind of sophisticated post-modern playpen.

The kind of acting last seen in Plan 9 from Outer Space

Any remote interest you might have in the characters on display is instantly dispelled by the kind of acting last seen in Plan 9 from Outer Space.  Belinda Mayne (Delta) has the permanent expression of someone trying to remember something important that has just slipped her mind. In her case it’s that she should start acting, but alas she doesn’t have a knot in her hanky.  David Kinder (Billy) is just a constipated sloth on Mogadon, while Sara Griffiths (Ray) is bearable aside from her accent which probably angered more Sons of Glendower than the whole of The Green Death.  It's not all bad - Don Henderson and Richard Davies (Burton) are rarely anything other than great, and Johnny Dennis is genuinely charming in his role as the hapless Murray.  Unfortunately I was unable to concentrate on these positives as my ears were usually ringing from the full onslaught of Keff McCulloch's incidental music which makes the average Murray Gold score sound like John Cage on one of his quiet days.  Five minutes of 1950s pastiche is just about bearable and indeed arguably necessary.  Ten minutes and you're calling the hospital.

Criticism of Delta and the Bannermen needs to be kept in proportion.  A lot of people like it precisely because it was a bit of fluff unfettered by the increasingly heavy continuity that dominated the Colin Baker era, and therefore they seized upon Season 24 as a fresh start.  For others, the whole of Season 24 was the nadir of Who, with a programme that once vaguely resembled mainstream drama finally descending to the level of one of the comedy sketches from the end of Crackerjack. Fortunately it can now be seen as just of the many weird phases in the continuing story of Doctor Who, rather than the beginning of an ignominious end. 

Extras

Delta fans will probably bemoan the absence of a "making of" feature in the release, and I suppose I would have liked to have at least seen evidence that Belinda Mayne and David Kinder were either method acting or just playing themselves.  That aside, there's more than enough material here to keep people happy. Effectively filling in for the lack of a "making of" is a feature on the filming of Delta from the Andy Crane-helmed kids show But First This which is supplemented by unedited versions of the featured interviews.  There's some interesting stuff in the rushes, not least that McCoy is much more explicit about his admiration for Patrick Troughton as well as coming out as a fan of Blake's 7.  It also features Ken Dodd giving away everything about what happens to his character, and leaving the poor sods who edited the final version to pick the bones out of it as best they can.  There's another very short contemporary piece from Wales Today notable mainly for the interviewer asking McCoy how his new job was going: "They haven't sacked me yet" is his jovial response.  If only, if only...

"JN-T was one of the great pantomime producers I’ve ever come across"

There are some other gems, including a slight but nice interview with Hugh Lloyd where he makes his feelings about John Nathan-Turner known: "JN-T was one of the great pantomime producers I’ve ever come across”.  It's hard to disagree with this, and I cite the main feature and the rest of Season 24 as evidence.  Less welcome is the baleful presence of Noel Edmonds in one of his regular skits from Noel's Saturday Roadshow known as Clown Court.  For those of you who are lucky enough not to know about this, Noel's Saturday Roadshow was Edmonds's low-key penitent comeback show  which acted as a rehabilitation programme after the death of Michael Lush on The Late Late Breakfast Show.  It's effectively a form of Noel parole ("get through this without anyone dying and you'll be fine"), only sadly without the earlier imprisonment.  I can't really do it justice here, but only Edmonds could turn something as innocuous as outtakes into a tongue-poking sneerathon.  It's a far greater abomination than anything else in the McCoy era, but it has the added awkwardness of showing that McCoy couldn't even handle a brief skit without screwing up his lines about a hundred times.  So it was a relief to move on to another episode of Stripped for Action, even if it meant an inevitable appointment with Mr Cartmel.  (Who is the most annoying of the 1980s script-editors?  There's only one way to find out...fight!) I don't know an awful lot about the Doctor Who comic strips, so I found this piece pretty illuminating and had no idea about stuff like the Hulk appearing as an early form of cross-product placement.  Unfortunately after 15 minutes everyone got very bogged down with continuity issues and the mind-boggling difficulties of trying to reconcile the novels, television shows, comic strips and Golden Wonder packets.  After a while I started to lose the will to live, and briefly felt like Lance Parkin must feel all of the time.  But it's a diligent and well-made feature, as are the assured Delta production notes written by an unknown novice who goes by the name of Andrew Pixley.

Unsurprisingly, Andrew Cartmel's voice remains resolutely unsexy

The most revelatory of the extras is the unedited version of Episode 1.  It lacks incidental music, but it becomes rapidly clear that this is not so much a lack as a positive boon. The episode passes by in an oasis of blissful silence and it's approximately 150 times less irritating with McCulloch's clamour removed.  Almost as revelatory is the DVD commentary where we get to hear that Sara Griffiths's real voice (minus the ersatz Taffness) is about as sexy as it gets.  Unsurprisingly, Andrew Cartmel's voice remains resolutely unsexy but despite that he can always be relied upon to bring a rich vein of unintentional humour to the proceedings.  He insists on reading out some of his extraordinary contemporaneous diary entries, but brought my house down when he started riffing on the brilliance of the name Ray for a companion: "Ray gun, x-ray, space ray... (pause) ...cosmic ray”.  With a masterplan from this man, how could people have ever imagined that the programme's future was anything other than assured?

Dr Who Charity Auction Results

Thanks to everyone who bid in my charity auction in support of UNICEF.

Sticking to the rules I have only accepted bids that used the correct BTS code and the winners are as follows:

• Paul Gee wins a signed copy of Paul Cornell's Scream of the Shalka novel
• Dave Sanders wins a copy of Martha's Story signed by Rob Shearman
• @thirtysix wins a copy of British Summertime signed by Paul Cornell and a copy of A Christmas Treasury signed by yours truly
• John Williams wins the signed Mary Tamm photo and a copy of The Nightmare Fair signed by Nicola Bryant
• Daniel Smith wins the signed copy of the Kingmaker CD
• Andrew Smith wins a signed photo of Bernard Horsfall

I will be in touch with all the winners in the next few days via email.

Many thanks - you managed to raise £131 for UNICEF!

In Dreams Begin Responsibilities

So the Doctor’s new companion is Karen Gillan and I’m very excited.

Not because like the also largely unknown Matt Smith I can claim knowledge after having watched something she’s been in – with the exception of The Fires of Pompeii in which she played the Soothsayer -- you couldn't get me to sit through The Kevin Bishop Show if you paid me -- but because once again it demonstrates that the new production team are thinking very carefully about what the new version of the show is going to be like.

Selecting someone who's not already a household name, a Freema rather than a Catherine, potentially resets the dynamic of the show; the companion can once again be the viewpoint character for both kids and adults as we discover who the Eleventh Doctor is in much the same way that Billie did in Rose, something which has changed over time as we’ve become used to David.

Does the look in the publicity picture point towards the kind of character she'll be, someone rather more angstier than we're used to, perhaps prone to the odd voiceover relating how she's feeling any given second?

"When I stepped into the TARDIS for the first time, it was like, stepping into a new world.  It was, like, bigger, on the inside, than the outside.  I wondered if the Doctor's brain was like that too.  Or something."

Sponsor a Doctor Who fan to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro - UPDATED!

UPDATE: now with added Rula Lenska Appeal and extended to June 4th...

Regular listeners to Tachyon TV and readers of this blog will almost certainly know about my Kilimanjaro Challenge next month but if you don't please click here for more details. A while back I mentioned something vague about a Doctor Who charity auction. Well, here it is. Many, many thanks to everyone who contributed something. You're all brilliant.

I had originally intended to use this auction to make one last push towards my fund raising target but late last night a Radio Free Skaro listener made a massive contribution which sent us over our £3000 target. However fantastic that is - and it is bloody fantastic - there's nothing stopping us smashing that target to bits. And with your help we can.

How this works:

The good news (or bad, depending on how tight you are) is that even if your bid fails then your money still goes to charity. That's right, everyone's a winner; especially UNICEF.

If you wish to bid you'll need to donate some cash to my climb. You can do this with any debit card, credit card or paypal. If you are a UK taxpayer you can use Gift Aid to donate an another 25% at no extra charge! All the money goes directly to UNICEF - none of it goes towards the funding of my expedition. Which is a shame because it's almost bankrupted me.

Anyway, when you make your donation you'll be asked to leave a short message. All you have to do is put the following code in brackets somewhere in this message when you make your bid so I will know which item you want.

Here are items and codes:

• Scream of the Shalka novel signed by Paul Cornell (BTS1) - minimum bid £20
• British Summertime novel signed by Paul Cornell (BTS2) - minimum bid £15
• Martha's Story signed by Rob Shearman with personal message (BTS3) - minimum bid £20
• The Kingmaker Big Finish CD signed by Nev Fountain with personal message (BTS4) - minimum bid £20
• Signed 10x8 photograph of Mary Tamm which has been mentioned on many TTV podcasts over the years! (BTS5) - minimum bid £10
• A Christmas Treasury Short Story Collection signed by me because I contributed to it. My story isn't very good but all the other stories are great! (BTS6) - minimum bid £15
• Signed 10x8 photograph of Kate O'Mara (BTS7) - minimum bid £5
• Signed 10x8 photograph of Jacqueline Pearce from The Two Doctors (BTS8) - minimum bid £5
• Signed 10x8 photograpgh of Bernard Horsfall from The War Games (BTS9) minimum bid £5
• Signed 10x8 photograph of Frank Windsor from Ghost Light (BTS10) - minimum bid £5
• Signed 10x8 photograph of Michael (not actually in TV Dr Who) Praed from Dynasty (BTS11) - minimum bid £5
• NEW! - The Nightmare Fair novel signed by Nicola Bryant with personal message (BTS12) - minimum bid £15

You can put multiple codes in your message if you are happy to win something from a selection of items, for example "BTS1-6" or "BTS1, 4, 6"  or BTSALL if you aren't bothered what you get and put the numbers in order of preference if you like.

UPDATE: The closing date for bids is Thursday 4th June at 7pm GMT. The highest bid made at that time for each reference number wins.

I will announce the results on here shortly after that.

PLEASE BID HERE

Many thanks to everyone who has supported me so far and happy bidding! Please use the comments section below if you have any questions...

Cheers

Neil

Prose And A Con

Fab Cafe, Manchester, 3rd May 2009

I'm a seasoned, if somewhat lapsed, convention goer. I've done them all, the Trek cons in the mid 1980s to the big Blackpool Babylon 5 bashes in the 1990s. The last Doctor Who con I attended was the Panopticon in Manchester way back in 2002. A one day event at Fab Cafe in Manchester seemed the best way of gently easing myself back into the way of all things con wise.

"You're a bad dog baby, and I don't want you around... oh, I thought you said Gilbert O'Sullivan"
Photo courtesy of Dave Cooper

A good line up from the Classic Series of Doctor Who was present: Frazer Hines, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, Nicola Bryant and Mark Strickson. Which does kind of beg the question these days as to whether they'll have anything new to say. Surely, their anecdotes will be etched permanently on the brains of most fans of the original series? It's entirely possible the audience will end up reciting all the appropriate bon mots without the need of guests at all. I suppose they'll be fresher to younger fans who've only just decided to investigate the back catalogue of the series having seen the new series ponce itself in all its multi-media, cross platform glory since 2005. Still, we got some very interesting anecdotes about Mark winning the role of Turlough and nearly being eaten by crocodiles, chased by komodo dragons and finding John Nathan-Turner in his Lanzarote hotel room, McCoy (looking more like Blakey from On The Buses) on King Lear, the obligatory trouser and ferret incident and kid's telly legend Tony Hart, Aldred on that other legend Brian Cant, Bryant (doing a wearing sunglasses indoors Audrey Hepburn on us) on her failed career as a ballerina and Baker... well Baker has started to resemble Pertwee with his mane of silver hair as he nattered about operettas. Same spiky attitude too! All had very positive things to say about new boy Matt Smith and there was a general thumbs down for the new series indulgence of Doctor/companion 'romance'. Don't ya just love the stoicism of Classic Series ming-mongs! And a big thumbs up for Big Finish which quite rightly kept the flag flying during the Wilderness Years.

Nicola "I'm just crazy about Tiffany's" Bryant
Photo courtesy of Tim Drury

Frazer "I say Jamie, that is a BIG one" Hines
Photo courtesy of Tim Drury

However, the question here is not how entertaining the guests were, and, by and large, I did enjoy the Frazer Hines and Mark Strickson chats for, in the former, the lovely, finger fiddling impressions he did of Pat Troughton and, in the latter, a interesting jaunt through his wildlife film-making career since resigning from the role of Turlough. Conventions have moved on from the days when you'd go and watch new episodes of whatever show you were into and swap fanzines, because they've had to, and they are now more about being able to meet people in conducive surroundings whilst also being able to pop into a panel discussion when you feel like it. They are about social interaction and even a one day event such as this must recognise that it's as much about friends meeting up and having a natter than it is watching Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy play a version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire no matter how much fun it might be. It's still great to see those we have loved interacting with fans and overall each panel was entertaining but I just wish it had taken place in more convivial surroundings. In the background, 21st century social interaction was in full flight as instant reactions hit the web via Twitter and I wonder how Twitter, Twitpic, Facebook, MySpace, vodcasts, podcasts et al will impact on one day gatherings such as these. Perhaps we should just hold a virtual con on Twitter? You'd be £25 better off for a start. Mind you, you wouldn't get McCoy and Baker recreating the playful antagonism that existed between Pertwee and Troughton that kept many of us convention whores entertained back in the day.

Mark Strickson trying not to say 'fuck' every five minutes with strategic positioning of pint
Photo courtesy of Dave Cooper

"I'll get you Baker" (c) Behind the Sofa Comedy Department
Photo courtesy Dave Cooper

The huge problem that Fab Cafe had yesterday was that it is simply too small a venue to cope with an over-subscription of attendees. I personally felt like one of several hundred East European prostitutes crammed into a shipping container, suffocating to death on the rank, Flanders like stench from the venue's loos and, no doubt, from various orifices during the long, often frustrating, hot day. This was then compounded by having the signing sessions about ten minutes down the road at the Tiger Lounge, the kitschier cousin to the Fab Cafe, where the great British tradition of queuing was defiantly upheld as we waited for guests to sign bagfuls of merchandise in the environs of what looked like a lap dancing club. And that's no exaggeration as some attendees were clearly intent on getting the remaining contents of Zaavi covered in florid handwriting by a, shall we say, slightly grumpy Colin Baker. Me, I just admired the Tretchikov paintings on the wall and gossiped with the Behind The Sofa triad.

Eastern European prostitutes, yesterday
Photo courtesy Dave Cooper

Its heart was definitely in the right place but the Fab Cafe's one day event did remind me of how frustrating conventions and similar events can get when guests don't arrive on time and you haven't got a plan B up your sleeve, the venue is overcrowded to the point where you would quite happily walk out the door in a strop, the loos resemble a WW1 trench, egos and self-importance are flying all over the place (and that's just the fans) and the organisers don't communicate the reason for the delays. It was probably a nightmare to organise and my sympathies do go to Erica Egerton of the DWAS Liverpool group for trying to hold all this together. My suggestion, if you indeed want it Erica, would be to find yourself a better venue or at least organise within your means and not oversell the event.

Pictures courtesy of the very fabulous Dave Cooper and Tim Drury

Planet of the Dead reviewed by sock puppets.