Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

Incy wincy spider

I will freely admit to coming to this special with every intention of enjoying it and succeeding in my aim. In many ways I think it proves the argument for showing Doctor Who in the winter – it’s much easier to create a spooky atmosphere in the dark and cold and people are more forgiving too.

The Runaway Bride has its problems – not least its title. As usual there are some plot points which fail to come together (such as the force-feeding of Lance with Huon-particle mineral water) which could have been explained  with a few lines of dialogue. So much of the plot hangs on shaky pseudo-science anyway, it wouldn’t have jarred at all to say, for instance, that the Huon particles in Lance were simply used to draw Donna back to the nest. In fact, it probably was said, it was just lost under Murray Gold’s score and Sarah Parish’s mannerisms.

And thus, handily, we come to the biggest turkey on the plate – the Racnoss. Such an opportunity! What could be scarier than a massive spider? Unfortunately not nearly enough is made of that fantastic prosthetic. So many shots are of the head in close-up, losing the scale and highlighting the human features. Why not make her scuttle about a bit, chewing the scenery on all sides? Admittedly Sarah Parish does some great stuff with all the head-tilts and jerky movements and I don’t think an ancient, omnivorous scourge of life on all planets should be subtle and underplayed. She comes across as little more sophisticated than a talking spider and it fits. Despite what Julie Gardner  may say on the commentary, we finally have a proper, evil villain who gets killed and that’s fine. No sympathy, no “I’m so sorry,” just incy-wincy killer spiders from the Dark Ages of the universe getting washed down the drain. Fantastic.

At last we’re seeing the Doctor we were promised – ruthless and scary and not constantly hopping about saying “avoid the void!” It’s a double-whammy of continuity glee as we get transcendental pockets and, at last, GALLIFREY. It actually brings in a lots of elements from the past: there was some City of Death, the secret at the centre of the Earth made me wonder about Inferno and the intelligent spiders, regrettably, recalled Planet of the Spiders. Finally, too, the whole “pilot fish” problem is sorted out. It makes much more sense for the robotic santas to be remote-controlled mercenaries – whose master I imagine we may meet next year (if a third special is commissioned). The big gong though has to go to the flying TARDIS sequence. Forget the physics, (the simplest way is just to think, “the Doctor’s smarter than me” as Salem suggested on the Canada Redux thread) it looks brilliant. The CGI is some of the best we’ve seen yet and when it spins up into the sky it’s a real punch-the-air moment. Don’t get me started on the final de-materialization though, what the hell was that supposed to be? In fact, my only quibble with the sequence is that I really didn’t like the children cheering them along, which other people loved. It just seemed too cheesy.

My biggest worry was always Catherine Tate – her programme is the sort of sub-Little Britain schlock which pollutes British comedy at the moment. It’s all endlessly repeated catch-phrases and gross-out “humour”. What happened to the Pythons, hmm? Intelligent, witty and 100 times funnier than a man dressed as a WI member being sick on a vicar. Of course, I needn’t have worried because the comedienne wasn’t writing and, as a character, Donna really grew on me over the course of the episode. She’s a brash selfish type but whose heart didn’t bleed when Lance said he’d prefer being the Empress’ escort than spending a night with Donna? Ouch! That’s just mean. She also fulfilled the wishes of many a blogger and kept the Doctor in check – delivering a quick slap when he started getting smug and flippant.

Being an RTD script, (oh here I go again, RTD-bashing) there’s a lot of excellent dialogue, my particular favourite being “walking in the dust”. I actually think he constructed a very good story – well-paced, exciting, entertaining and I watched with a cheesy grin – what more can you ask for? And before you reply, yes, I know: tighter script editing, a more dynamic villain and a remote controlled K9.

And I Feel Fine

Torchwood: End of Days

End of Days was a great end for the first series of Torchwood, and they certainly did pull out all the stops for this final episode and, the result was a, thrilling conclusion to what I consider to be an exciting series.

I must admit that I didn’t feel absolutely anything when I heard the TARDIS at the end (which I will assume would be most Doctor Who fans favourite moment of the whole series), mainly because I am not the slightest bit interested in the Tenth Doctor. Part of me hopes that when Jack enters the TARDIS he has a barny with the Doctor asking where the Doctor went and why he is speaking in that crap Dick Van-Dyke style accent, and then slaps him round the face with the wet end of the Doctor’s severed hand (that bit won’t happen as he didn’t take the tank with the hand in to the TARDIS with him did he?)

It can only be the Doctor really as for some reason his hand glowed when we heard the dematerialisation sound and if that wasn’t a definitive clue as to who it was I don’t know what would be, but I think it would more interesting if it was the Master who’s TARDIS Jack ran to at the end of the episode. I know that that is not very likely, but that’s just me.

Following on from the end of the previous episode we get to see the full consequences of Owen’s meddling with the rift and boy does he start to panic when he discovers the full meaning of what has happened, but doesn’t regret it, which I suppose he wouldn’t when we was only doing it to get his missus back.

Again all of the characters had something to do in this episode and all of them (apart from Jack and Gwen) had a vision telling them that they had to open the rift in Owen’s case it was Diane again, with Ianto it was Lisa in her pre-cyberwoman persona and with Tosh it was her mother. This was a good idea as they all had to have a reason to try and make sure the rift was opened again and what better reason that to have someone who you care about, because otherwise you wouldn’t either have bothered.

With Gwen it was the possibility that she might lose Rhys, even though she did often seem to be that concerned about him, I think that she really does love him but she wants to have her normal life with him, and the excitement of her life with her mates at Torchwood as well and it is patently obvious that she cannot really have both, and at times did chose the Torchwood crew over him.

It was certainly a shock to me when Billis actually did stab Rhys because you (well I did anyway) actually believe that Rhys was safe with being in the cells at Torchwood, and even when he did leave the cells, I still did think that he might have been able to escape, but of course the rather strange Billis actually did it the end.

Billis Manger was in this episode just as odd as he was in the previous episode and we still know no more about him that we did in the previous episode. He is certainly not human, or at least not a pure human and that was much is obvious with his ability to project himself into a police cell and then being able to disappear seemingly at will.

I have heard a theory that he might be a Timelord, which as they have now mentioned Gallifrey in Doctor Who, seems plausible and I for one never believed that there was no other Time Lords in exsistence. I am still not sure that Jack is pure human either, perhaps he might be a Time Lord as well. You never know, and I wouldn’t put it past RTD at all.

There were a load of interesting ideas in this episode and it is quite possible that some of them might have made interesting storylines in their own right, such as an outbreak of the plague in modern day Cardiff, which could possibly work in a Doctor Who setting if it were done right. If I had a main criticism of the episode it was that that could have been an episode in its own right, and who is to know that it might not be in the future.

One thing that made me laugh was the little piece of rolling news on the news reports that the Beatles were on the roof of Abbey Road studios. It was nice that other temporal refugees were mentioned such as the samurai running amok through the streets of Tokyo, but I wonder why Diana wasn’t thrown back, perhaps she never actually made it through the rift, and if she had of done, would she just have vanished at the end of the episode when the rift was sealed once more?

I thought that it was quite good to see the other crew members actually standing up to Jack for the first time, although I did think Owen shooting him was probably a little too far to go, but that allowed Jack to let everyone, apart from Gwen, to know a little bit more about him. I would assume that revelation will bring the characters a bit closer together in the second series (if Jack makes it past Doctor Who this coming season that is), because they all now know that Jack is virtually indestructible. That may well change the dynamic of the crew next series.

So we now come to the end of the first full series of the first spin off from Doctor Who, and I for one can say that, for me at least, the series has been everything that it could have been and was pretty much what I thought it would have been like. I can’t say that I had particular hopes for the series, because I didn’t, but I was more than happy with the finished results and look forward to the second series.

Invasion of the Bane

First off, many thanks to Neil for giving us such a fantastic weblog. It has  so far provided a forum for many balanced (and unbalanced) analyses of Doctor Who and its related spin-offs in various media. And many thanks to Damon for taking over the baton - or the rock, depending on your point of view - from Neil.

I have spent the last almost two years pondering writing a review, and on the showing of the Sarah Jane Adventures pilot I finally decided to bite the bullet and attempt one. As BTS reviews go, this one is probably fairly pedestrian, but I hope to loosen up a bit as I become more familiar with writing (again). A doctoral thesis was almost enough to make me never want to see another printed word. Almost, but not quite...

Judging by the quality of the transmitted Sarah Jane Adventure Part I, you could say that that was where the Who production team appear to have been focusing their creativity and energy over the last 12 months or more. The story didn’t have too many glaring holes, the acting was good (especially Lis Sladen), the villains were suitably villainous, and I grew to care about at least two of the characters (Sarah Jane and Maria) in less than 60 minutes, although Sarah Jane has previous form, it must be said!

Spiky to begin with, the crabby old so-and-so next door (well, across the road, but it’s essentially the same thing) was led out of herself by an engaging child. By the end of the episode, Sarah Jane had acquired a surrogate family (I wonder what happened to her aunt Lavinia’s ward, Brendan?) and a potentially more humanly emotional anchor in a - to her - lonely and alien world. Alien in the sense that her immediately-pre-episode friends appear to be an extra-terrestrial alien of questionable provenance (a Torchwood spill-over) and two computers, one at least of which is not of this world (although K-9 Mk 1 admittedly did originate in the same solar system).

This suggests that she had lost touch with the rest of the human world, or at least that there were no important humans in her life, unless we get some gap-filling between the coven and the school. If Sarah Jane has spent the last twenty-five years or so without any real human friends, however, it’s amazing that she wasn’t totally off-the-planet and incarcerated somewhere. K-9 having unhappily fallen into a Disney/FOX "black hole" with very restricted visiting hours, and the departing alien having been an escapee from the Cardiff Rift, that really left "Mr Smith". "Mr Smith" is a yet-to-be-opened box of tricks as far as the viewer is concerned: perhaps he will be revealed to have a character like that of Orac, Avon help us.

Sarah’s eventual acceptance of the girl, Maria (and the strange alien-assembled "human"), reminded me a bit of the scene at the end of Survival when the Seventh Doctor realises where his home really is, and accepts it. Yasmin Paige’s Maria not only seems to accept who Sarah is, but offers to give her something back that she arguably hasn't had since meeting the Doctor: human warmth and friendship. You couldn’t exactly say that Sarah embraced her former sidekick Brendan with any degree of warmth or friendship, but that’s a bit unfair, seeing that the BBC rather cruelly decided to chop the series for which A Girl’s Best Friend was the pilot. In a way the posited portrayal of Sarah Jane’s "return to humanity" was, for me, as affecting as the end of School Reunion.

Co-writers Russell T Davies and Gareth Roberts carefully build on Sarah Jane's experiences with the Doctor, but at the same time allow those who had never heard of her before to accept that she has that background. This episode, and to a lesser degree Who 2006’s School Reunion, also heals the breach of faith that the BBC made when it cancelled the "original" Sarah Jane Investigates.  Some would argue that the way in which Sarah Jane Investigates was presented (especially the risible opening titles sequence) was in itself a breach of faith. This may have been one of Davies’ overt intentions with Invasion of the Bane: indeed, maybe Davies is trying to heal a breach of faith that some people have perceived that he has made with both series. In that case, he has a lot of ground still to cover.

"Luke" the "Archetype" is so far only a cipher, but given that he’s the supposed amalgam of circa 10,000 different personalities, perhaps he is going to be the audience’s "touchstone", although Maria is really the obvious character to fulfill this role. It was rather hard to judge Thomas Knight’s performance in a character that by definition is a work-in-progress.

Like the panto-villain in The Runaway Bride, the aliens played their parts sufficiently well. They stuck out a mile and a half, but given the CBBC target audience they were supposed to. The "pre-6 p.m. watershed" monsters were well realised. Since molluscs and insects are on the same "branch" of the evolutionary "tree", the mixture of features wasn’t quite as unlikely as it would seem (although I suspect that that might have been more by accident than design, any branch of Science not being Davies' forte).

In fact, it is the care with which Invasion of the Bane has been produced that leaves one scratching one's head even more about the shortcomings both the 2006 season of Doctor Who and the now-notorious Torchwood. No arrogant smugness (Doctor Who), no cheap-thrills cynicism (Torchwood): but in the “grounding” of Sarah Jane this supposed children's program is a lot more grown-up than either of its stable-mates. It tackles loss, loneliness, fear and despair - all ingredients of "adult" drama - but in a way that allows the characters to grow and learn something about themselves and their boundaries - and other people. It does it without hitting the younger end of the audience over the head with it, and at the same time almost avoids falling into the trap of producing tacky syrup for the older end of the spectrum to become stuck in. The exception here was the daft father, who should probably be given a one-way bus ticket to a Cardiff weevil cell, along with his horrid ex-wife. Maybe she’s going to be one of the monsters that Sarah Jane & Co. will have to face off in the coming season.

Which, I suppose, honours the grand old tradition of the Children’s Television Foundation films, in making the adults into a bunch of feckless bumbling idiots. Or feckless, bumbling Weevil-food. Maybe the growing-up of the dad will be one of the forthcoming series’ sub-plots. He needs to: he was the caricature of a caricature. And if, as someone has suggested, Sarah Jane falls for him - well, more fool her. Although that might seem improbable, I refer you to what happened in Torchwood between PC Gwen Cooper and “Dr” Owen Harper ...

Unlike the supposedly adult Torchwood, I was not left feeling nearly as embarrassed by Invasion of the Bane as I have been by many 2006 series Doctor Who and Torchwood episodes, with the slight exception of the appearance of "Mr Smith" (at least he's not a paving slab). The series will no doubt find  "him" being "fleshed-out" a bit more. But PLEASE, not a la Torchwood, or as a male version of Ursula from Love and Monsters . "Strong language", explicit (well, almost) sex and buckets of giblets’n’gore do not a good drama make, even an adult one, unless there is an underlying framework to hold it together and give it some meaning and/or purpose. Structure and purpose this Sarah Jane Adventure had, and it was a great relief to be reminded that Davies can actually do it. Then again, Everything Changes had structure and seemed to be pointing towards good drama to come; instead the  (at least for the first few episodes) unsuspecting audience was served up with mostly tripe. And not very well cooked, at that.

Invasion of the Bane gives a solid, promising basis for a good series. I don’t think Davies will dare inflict anything like the Torchwood mish-mash on The Sarah Jane Adventures’ target audience, but fingers crossed that he and the rest of the production team don't drop the ball when it comes to the full series, anyway. Good luck, kids!

Keysof Marinus

Keith Topping writes movingly on his blog about the late Craig Hinton, Doctor Who author: 

"Craig was one of the most articulate, instantly likeable, witty, gregarious, violently - and endearingly - bitchy(!) and genuinely warm people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. He wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination and he could hold a grudge for a long time if he felt it was warrented. But there wasn't so much as an ounce of maliciousness in the guy."

The story about faking a Terry Nation script is beautiful.

Seika no Takigi

Proper Torchwood season one overview to follow. Meantime, here's a rip-off of the Tachyon TV fanzine. Oh, but they did the Haiku thing so well...

Everything Changes: Gwen gets a new job. / As the worst cop ever she's / overqualified.

Day One: "Gas-possessed woman / nobbing fellers to death." Steam / pours from Querry's ears.

The Ghost Machine: Very dull visions. / Poor old Blake's still hung over / from the last Star One.

Cyberwoman: Which of them cries more, / Ianto Jones or Kit Pedler / spinning in his grave?

Small Worlds: Death by rose petals. / Jack and Gwen have been assigned / but he bottles out.

Countrycide: Hepatitis jokes / while the Welsh eat each other. / Owen then eats Gwen.

Greeks Bearing Gifts: Tosh reads people's thoughts, / in between has fish supper / to no-one's surprise.

They Keep Killing Suzie: Resurrection plot. / Someone's most-loved Hitchcock film / wasn't dumb enough.

Random Shoes: Eugene's episode / with little Torchwood in it. / Blimey, that was great!

Out Of Time: Half a century / later, one thing hasn't changed: / carbon monoxide.

Combat: Owen climbs into / a Weevil cage. You would too / if you sat through this.

Captain Jack Harkness: Blinovich Effect / used to burn people right up; / now it turns them bent.

End Of Days: Bilis Manger's god / stomps through Cardiff's express aisle: / 'ten minutes or less'.

Season one overall: The most misconceived / show since Star Trek: Enterprise. / What's on Channel 4?

The Captain and Tennille

Torchwood: Captain Jack Harkness

Jings, Berty. This is much better. A chap could start getting into this lark, what?

"Renegades who, not only don't play by the book, have no concept of what a book actually is."

And to think it all started so unpromisingly, when Torchwood, that crack gang of renegades who, not only don't play by the book, have no concept of what a book actually is or what function it could possible perform in the devil may care world of alien tech recovery and shagging, are called out to investigate what is in effect a noisy neighbour. Instead of dialling 999 or even 101 why not get Torchwood to pony up some hardware at the scene. Got a cat stuck up a tree? Why not call Torchwood? Watch them remove it with a cat scaring and seduction bracelet that fell through the rift from a 43rd century branch of Accessorize and then hump Grandpa out of his Althzimers induced fug.

Some episodes of Torchwood were definitely written with the No-One Will Notice This Field turned up to a full 11 that you just accepted that Billis would, for no obvious reason, have a piece of the Rift Manipulator in his grandfather clock and that the good burghers of Cardiff City Council would use council tax payers money to build a massive Rift Manipulator in the middle of the Bay area and dress it up as a piece of modern art that spurts water down it. Century Falls? More like Weakly Trickling. Which reminds me of another oft ignored question, why do Torchwood personnel never feel the urge to be constantly running to the lav? With the base of the water tower, sorry, Rift Manipulator, being at the centre of their hub, the constant trickle of water down it must mean everyone is inexplicable wanting to make toilet every 7.5 minutes.

"God save us from internet sites that dissect Doctor Who and Torchwood."

And Bilis. Ahhh, Bilis. The evil gay. Not a good gay, an evil gay. It's just the sort of mad bastard role you can see Tom Baker taking in the next series of Torchwood. No sooner had this character's rather unusual name been mentioned than the forums were a wash with questions about who this person might actually be. Could his name be an anagram? I swear, some people were taking his name, adding half a dozen random letters, and then proclaiming, "Look! It is an anagram of 'Where is Chibnall buried'". God save us from internet sites that dissect Doctor Who and Torchwood.

"The Audience Appreciation Baker Fanzine Irritation scale."

But on the plus side Ianto produced his best scene of the series so far, by shooting Owen in the back. He was aiming for his head but every time Owen's lips swing apart the centre of gravity shifts on account of the hinge at the base of his skull (the one that imposes some semblance of order upon the two halves of his flapping face) causing him to stumble slightly. If I'd been watching that in a hall full of people it would have probably registered a 7 on the Audience Appreciation Baker Fanzine Irritation scale.

I wonder whether the second part of the climactic climax will leave me breathless and panting for more...? We might never know. We might never care.

The Torchwood Bumper Book of Date Rape Techniques has this to say about Captain Jack Harkness: This episode was originally pitched as a gay remake of the Nicholas Lyndhurst time travel "comedy" Goodnight Sweetheart.

The Bloggies 2007: For Your Consideration

The Bloggies 2007 are looking for nominations again and since everyone else with a blog is making a pitch, here is ours.  The categories Behind The Sofa might be eligible for are ...

Best Entertainment Weblog
Best Group Weblog
Most Humorous Weblog
Best Writing of a Weblog
Best-Designed Weblog
Weblog of the Year
Best Kept Secret Weblog
Best British or Irish Weblog
Best LGBT Weblog (what with Torchwood, probably)

Vote early, vote often.  Remember you can repeat the nomination in more than one category.  The space theme on the voting page might be a good omen.

'Brain transfers are a really stupid idea.'

Unsurprisingly, this review contains a few spoilers so don't read it unless you've heard 'Blood of the Daleks' first.  I'll just reassure you that once again, it's really, really good and you should go here and listen to it here if you haven't already or you're waiting for the cd.

Who is the mysterious Mr. Halburt and what does he want with Lucie Miller?

Unlike the television versions, Doctor Who spin-offs have always been good at plot arcs.  Whereas the Key To Time Season was handstrung by telling essentially the same story four or six times, in the first few seasons of the McGann audios, the problem of Charley Pollard become heart rendering and in the books the amnesiac Doctor, stuck on earth for nearly a century was a fertile ground for stories and mysteries and cultural investigation.

The arc in this new BBC7 series has begun.  Lucie and The Doctor are very much stuck together by the timelords, he apparently hiding or protecting her after she's witnessed something unknown - that much was apparent from Part One.  Now, a Mr. Halburt has engaged the services of someone called the Headhunter (played with a sinister professionalism by Big Finish stalwart Katarina Olsson), an apparent bounty hunter with the facility to travel all time and space, to find the reluctant companion. 

It's all very mysterious, all very Lost, but unlike the Bad Wolf scenario were anything was possible and the reveal was inevitably going to be disappointing, this has very specific parameters, and turns this whole season into a chase and it's going to be really fun as the clues are revealed over the coming weeks as to what the Northerner saw, why the timelords want to hide her, and the connect with their antagonist.

But that's for the future.  Tonight's concluding part of Blood of the Daleks was an eclectic mix of traditional and nu-Who, authentic enough to have the announcer give a recap beforehand (which if this had been television would have no doubt featured on-set photos of the cast looking at something far off) but with the contemporary spin on the Doctor's arch foes seen in the new series - they fly and say 'Elevate!' as they're doing so.

After the setting up of the world and the tragedy in the opening part, this was the Dalek heavy end of the story, with Nick Briggs doing over time on the ring modulator to create a cast of hundreds.

After the setting up of the world and the tragedy in the opening part, this was the Dalek heavy end of the story, with Nick Briggs doing over time on the ring modulator to create a cast of hundreds.  Perhaps knowing that this story was to be heard by a much wider audience than something like the Dalek Empire stories, writer Steve Lyons concocted a straightforward meat and potatoes plot riffing on Genesis of the Daleks or Spare Parts, in which a proto-Davros, Martez (a chillingly clinical Hayley Atwell, pictured), living beyond his own execution in the body of one of his young female lab assistants was employing a crashed ship from Skaro to breed a new race using the inhabitants of his world, Red Rocket Rising, as fodder.

Unsurprisingly, the classic Daleks decided that these new boys weren't pure enough and set about trying to eradicate them, and in a twist I loved, the Doctor was helping them.  Seems that he always regretted not using the right all of those centuries ago and wanted to nip this genesis in the bud, "I had chance like this before", he says, "and I chose not to take it.  Big mistake."  This was catharsis for him and it revealed a much darker streak in the Eighth Doctor than we've seen before (well since the whole Zagreus thing), deciding that it's a perfectly viable option to use one evil to destroy potentially an even greater one.  Even after all these years, the Daleks still have the capacity to push buttons -- whenever they talked about racial purity, a chill went down my back.

If this had been made for television the result would have been Dalek porn

If this had been made for television the result would have been Dalek porn, as the two factions went to war, with the tiny human colony jammed in the middle, their ravaged world becoming a shell.  If last week the story resembled the BBC's Day of the Triffids, this had all the hallmarks of Spielberg's War of the Worlds with the Doctor and everyone else dodging in and out of buildings trying to escape the carnage.  The atmospheric sound design here has a much greater depth than most Big Finish production, with one scene in which the Doctor and Lucie viewed the first meeting of the two factions from the top window of a building being particularly potent.  The score too was far more apparent, with a lovely use of the strings to punctuate the catastrophe.

Inevitably, comparisons can be made with the new television series, with the mass Dalek army flying through the air, despite apparently being the classic models according to the cd box of the first episode, probably looking exactly like similar scenes in Doomsday.  The resolution too smacked of The Age of Steel, but the final end to the conflict, fittingly for audio, was more to do with the Doctor's persuasive powers rather than some massive explosion.  The theme of parallel development was repeated here too.  I remember wondering, watching that mid-second season two parter what it would be like if the Telos Cybermen actually ever fought the parallel Earth versions and I imagine the results would have been something like this - although given that the former frequently couldn't walk or shoot straight and took ages to build a bomb the contest might not have been as even handed as this.

In this month's Doctor Who Magazine, in reviewing the opening episode, Matt Michael noted that unlike Rose, there wasn't much time set aside for the listener to get a handle of Lucie, for us to love her.  I'd dispute that this is actually too important, and that unlike Rose, we're seeing the adventure largely from the Doctor's point of view - she's actually part of whatever the problem he's dealing with.  Lucie had less to do in this episode and yet she was still given that moment which all companions seem to have, when dealing with Tom Cardwell (whom I'd marked for death but turned into something of a heroic figure)  and his explosive batteries, when they realise that whatever the Doctor is doing must be right and they should be doing everything they can to help him.

I'd love to know what the kids listening to this are making of this version a character, so huggable on screen, so aggravated on radio.

The reason I like her, apart from Sheridan Smith's delicious performance is that she's actually bringing out a new side to the Eighth Doctor.  I'd love to know what the kids listening to this are making of this version a character, so huggable on screen, so aggravated on radio.  I don't think he laughed for this entire fifty minutes except in mockery, and he's no doubt got a permanent scowl which says 'the timelords have bloody gone and done it to me again'.  As I said last week, and I'll probably to continue to keep saying, the chemistry between the two actors and so characters is brilliant - it's like someone has taken Clarke Gable and Claudette Colbert's characters from Frank Capra's It Happened One Night and dropped them in a Tardis together.  Sort of.  The Doctor's less charming than Gable, but you get the idea.  Screwball.  As in comedy.

But what I really love about this is that it isn't afraid to drop in continuity references - it fits within the classic series more fluidly.  In one exchange, the Doctor wonders if the Daleks were fighting the Movellans, the Mechanoids or each other and there's a lovely twist at the very end, in which Anita Dobson's vacant President Klint reveals that the woes of the Red Rock Rising aren't entirely over - some change from an arena in which just saying G-word is a major event.  Only a fan though would also still be stressing about were in the Eighth Doctor's timeline this is set; according to the Gallifrey spin-off the Doctor was still in the divergent universe in the closing episode in which case the timelords are all but destroyed.  In which case this might be happening before Storm Warning, but that doesn't seem right either.  Any ideas?

Next Week:  The Tardis lands for the first time properly in the year of my birth.  Scary.