Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

Kylie in a Forklift

The Voyage of the Damned, or The Christmas Inferno, or Kylie in a Forklift

Here are some of my thoughts on the 2007 Christmas special Voyage of Damned.

It’s The Poseiden Adventure meets Enlightenment meets Robots of Death meets Douglas Adams’ Starship Titanic.

It was completely, totally and utterly bonkers, but in a good way. It is unlikely that you will see anything quite like it ever again. You may never want to see anything quite like it ever again but I quite liked it. I mean where else will you see Kylie Minogue dressed in a waitress outfit driving a forklift truck? Only in something as bonkers as this, or perhaps in an alternative history where Kylie’s career is on the skids, and she is forced to appear in adverts for B&Q or Homebase.

The new theme. I am not sure what to think of the new version of theme. It’s the same theme, but it just sounds like Murray Gold has let Buckethead into his studio and let him jam along with the theme. I didn’t mind it after I had watched it again and, boy, it sounds good loud! It’s the heavy metal version of the theme! Still it could have been worse Murray Gold could have written some lyrics to the theme and had Kylie sing them. Imagine the furore if that had happened!

The end credits were a bit quick, but with these new fangled videos and dvd’s they have today with a pause function they can easily be read after the event. It could have been worse they could have squeezed them into a little box in the corner of the screen thus not even giving you the chance to pause them to read them. I wouldn’t imagine that they would be any quicker when they are released on DVD either.

There was some brilliant work from the Mill on display here most notably the external shot of the Titanic drifting through space and the vastness of the Titanic’s engines. That really did give a sense of the scale of ship.

I thought that Kylie did a good job in her rather limited role of Astrid. She was sweet and looks damn good for a woman nearing 40. She was almost perfect companion material for the old series: humanoid but not human, no friends or family, actually wanted to travel with the Doctor, even though she just wanted to jump his bones, which is not traditional companion behaviour but is par for the course in this new version of the show and it was quite sad that her character died. Well she sort of died anyway. She might as well have died but perhaps they felt that it would be slightly too grim to actually kill her off properly. I am not sure.

I always thought that no matter who Kylie played she was never going to be any more than a single story companion (although I thought the same of Donna and look who is returning in series four so what do I know!)I have no doubt though that there will be an Astrid 5” figure very soon. It will be the only one to be a scale model of the actress herself!

Banakaffalata was another interesting character and another great part for the mighty Jimmy Vee. Just like the Moxx of Balhoon he might have been a baddie but turned out to be nothing of the sort and he also died. I have no doubt that there will be a figure of him out very soon as well.

The last ten minutes did seem a little bit tacked on and the sudden change from the grimness of the previous 45 minutes or so to the high camp comedy of the last ten minutes did seem to jar a little bit it was almost as if they didn’t fancy ending it on such a grim note at Christmas (as with Astrid), but look at the average Christmas episodes of Eastenders. For me they could have cut from the bit before the Doctor flew with the angels to the last scenes on board of the Titanic before the Doctor and Mr Copper went back to Earth and it would have made it a little bit tighter as I am sure the silliness of the last ten minutes was not necessary.

The final scene between the Doctor and Mr Copper was a nice little scene. I liked the joke about the snow not being real snow. As we all know it never snows on Christmas day and hasn’t for some years now. At least Mr Copper will be able to find a room for the night, as even though its Christmas the whole population of England has buggered off except for the Queen and Bernard Cribbins

On the subject of Bernard Cribbins wasn’t he good in his little role of Wilfrid Mott, the newspaper seller. I never noticed till it was pointed out to me that he had a U.N.I.T. insignia badge on his bobble hat perhaps he is the Brigadier fallen on hard times and under some sort of witness protection programme? We know that he is coming back in the new series, and the fact that U.N.I.T. are set to return so perhaps that is not as insignificant as it might appear to be at first.

Geoffrey Palmer was another one who had a nice cameo in the special although his character wasn’t particularly sympathetic was he? Even though he wasn’t able to bring himself to kill young Midshipman Frame, he wasn’t exactly bothered about either the rest of the ships crew, passengers and the population of the Earth.

The direction by James Strong was very good and it certainly looked very cinematic, which all of the episodes he had directed, so far, have done.

The Heavenly Hosts were a quite good invention for this episode far better than the robot santas that we have had in the previous two Christmas specials. I am, though, a little disappointed that they were not in face Axons. They were however a lot like the Voc Robots in Robots of Death (even down to one of them having their hand trapped in a door) but without the personality that they managed to muster.

Clive Swift was also very good in his role as Mr Copper and I just loved his little speeches about the Christmas customs on the planet Earth. Great stuff.

Wasn’t Rickston Slade the single most unpleasant character ever to be seen in the new series? Killing him off wouldn’t have been at all dramatic as most people would have been happy if he were one of the first ones to die!

I think that the main problem with the story is the fact that you don’t really care if any of the characters in the story live or die. Apart from Rickston who is the only character you actually want to die the others don’t really register as anything other than ciphers who we don’t really know enough about to care.

If Astrid had been played by anyone other than Kylie I don’t think that her demise would have been that noteworthy either because her character is rather one-note but perfect for an original series companion as I noted earlier.

The characters of Morvin and Foon who are reasonable comic relief characters in the story who, only have the fact that Rickston is being mean to them because they are both big people, as a reason that you want them to survive rather than him.

I enjoyed Voyage of the Damned. It wasn’t perfect, but then what is?; it wouldn’t win any awards for originality, but then neither did the entire Hinchliffe era. It won’t stand up to close scrutiny, granted, but I found it enjoyable which, at the end of the day, is the one thing that is really important.

In fact I would say that it was the most enjoyable of the three Christmas specials to date.

Poll

I am going to compare my responses to the 2007 Doctor Who series poll to the actual results to see if there are any similarities and thought that I would post it on here to see if people agree with either what I thought, or what the readers of DWM thought.

BEST STORY
My choice: Blink
The Winner: Blink

Now I was surprised that this one won the best story of the series poll. I was sure that it would have been the Human Nature/Family of Blood two parter which would have won (it did come a very close second though), as Blink didn’t really feature a great deal of Tennant as the Doctor, one of the reasons why it made the top spot in my list, apart from the superb script, fantastic direction and the acting of all concerned. It was in a word fantastic and deserves all of the plaudits it gets.

BEST WRITER
My choice: Steven Moffat
The winner: Steven Moffat

Again I guessed the winner. To be honest Steven Moffat is always going to win the best writer of any series that he contributes too, so I am not surprised in the slightest.

BEST DIRECTOR
My choice: Hettie MacDonald
The winner: Charles Palmer

I chose Hettie MacDonald soley on her work on Blink, which was astounding. I think she would have won hands down if she had worked on more than one episode. The actual winner, Charles Palmer, did some great work on the series over the four episodes that he directed and would have been my second choice.

BEST GUEST ACTOR
My choice: John Simm
The winner: John Simm

I think that it had to be Simm after his amazing portrayal as the Master in the final two episodes. He was the best thing in the final two parts and was most definitely the star of the show there. I think he should even have appeared in the credit. For a moment I was half expecting him to be. Everyone else seemed to be in agreement with me as well.


BEST GUEST ACTRESS
My choice: Carey Mulligan
The winner: Carey Mulligan

The best companion the Doctor never had was what Steven Moffat likened Sally Sparrow too and boy was he right. Everyone else agreed also.

BEST MONSTER
My choice: The Weeping Angels
The winner: The Weeping Angels

We will never see statues and gargoyles in the same light ever again thanks to these creations which were worthy winners in this category.

BEST VILLAIN
My choice: The Master (John Simm)
The winner: The Master (John Simm)

A close fought battle between Simm and Harry Lloyd but Simm edged it with his manic performance as the Master, kind of like an uncontrolled version of the Tennant Doctor.

BEST SPECIAL EFFECT
My choice: Landing of the Judoon spaceship on the moon
The winner: The Master regenerating

Personally I prefer my choice as the Master regenerating was pretty much the same as the effect used in the regeneration between Eccleston and Tennant but a bit more colourful.

BEST MUSICAL SCORE
The Winner: Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Timelords

I couldn’t chose between any of the episode but I would have to agree with the masses on this one as the music was pretty good in the last three episodes.

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
My choice:Human Nature/The Family of Blood
The winner: The Shakespeare Code

This was a no brainer really. The BBC are the best as period costume design in the world and in The Shakespeare Code they excelled themselves as they always do. I think that the right story won here.

BEST SET DESIGN
The winner: The Shakespeare Code

I couldn’t chose here either but the design for the Shakespeare episode was very impressive. I also quite liked the design for Gridlock too.

BEST PROSTHETIC
My choice: Chantho
The winner: Chantho

I would have to agree with the masses that the Chantho prosthetic was the best of the bunch from the last series.

GREATEST CONTRIBUTION
The winner: David Tennant

I couldn’t really answer this question, as I don’t think anyone’s contribution is more important than anyone else’s and I just couldn’t bring my self to choose one person over another. Predictably David Tennant won.

MOST LIKE TO GET RID OF
The winner: Nothing

I was tempted to put the Tenth Doctor down for my choice as that is the one thing that I really don’t like about the current series but decided against it. Predictably the majority of people would like to see nothing got rid of obviously believing the maxim if it aint broke don’t fix it. The Daleks were the second choice and I can kind of see what they are getting at. Perhaps now that we only have one Dalek left in our universe then maybe it is time to give them a break for a year at least. Companions’ families are quite high on the list as well which didn’t surprise me but I can never see that going away ever, at least while RTD is in charge at least. Spoilers/Next time trailers came third on the list. Now you can never get rid of spoilers because that would be impossible unless they filmed it behind closed doors and then wiped the memory of everyone who worked on it afterwards. I quite like the next time trailers as they give you a glimpse of what to expect the next week but it is a bit annoying if they give away something in the next time trailer like the fact that the Doctor was going to be fine the next episode in Aliens of London which sort of diluted the whole cliffhanger. I think they are fine as long as they don’t give away important plot points and the ending.

MOST LIKE TO RETURN
The winner: Davros

I couldn’t think of one thing in particular that I would like to return to the series so I left this one blank. Davros won this and I am half and half about this one. One the one hand it would be nice to see Davros again as this would be the one way they could carry on using the Daleks but on the other hand I would like see the Daleks take a break for a year at least and quite a lot of people would have like to see the back of the Daleks according to the poll for what you wanted to get rid of! The Zygons came second and I would second then but as they have featured in a bbc novel then I can’t see them returning to the television series anytime soon. The Brigadier and UNIT were next but I would have to disagree with this one entirely. I think the best place for them would be on the Sarah Jane Adventures and not on the main series it worked with Sarah but I don’t think it would work if the Brig returned at all. The Master was fourth on the list and I would like to see the Master return as well but I would prefer if he came back as John Simm but it looks like the next Master might very well be female and might even be Lucy Saxon. Fifth on the list was the Silurians and Sea Devils. Now these would be an interesting choice to come back and would be good for the prosthetic team as well. I’d quite like to see them return as well, as would my wife, who loves the sea devils (she thinks they look sad). The Ice Warriors and Sontarans were also on the list and as the Sontarans are returning in the fourth series then why not bring back The Ice Warriors as well. Past Doctors were on the list and I would have said no before Time Crash but now I actually think that it might work providing it was Davison as he was simply superb in Time Crash. I am not sure enough people would remember McGann being the Doctor, apart from Who fans, for it to work, as he only played the Doctor once over ten years ago now, for the general public.

Time-S*ite

Fasten your seatbelt it’s going to be a rough ride.

Time-Flight Part One

Time-Flight isn’t all that bad for the first twenty-minutes. It is actually quite interesting as first we see a Concorde go missing and then later on another Concorde also goes missing after repeating the last known movements of the first concorde. However this time the second Concorde had the Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan and the TARDIS on board.

Then from the moment they land on prehistoric earth it all goes tits up and starts getting very silly indeed with a rather laughable cliffhanger and a really badly made up Anthony Ainley playing the rather bizarre Kalid.

I can’t see how anybody was fooled by this disguise, it was even worse than the one in Castrovalva, at least that one was a bit more believable, but in this one you could tell it was the Master from the word go. I am not sure that it even fooled me at the time when I would have been 7 years old.

This story was set directly after the events in Earthshock with Tegan and Nyssa both still upset over Adric’s death and demanding that the Doctor go back in time and rescue Adric from the freighter but the Doctor insists that it can’t be done and, luckily for the Doctor, both Nyssa and Tegan buy it and pretty soon they carry on as if nothing had happened, so they can’t have been all that upset, can they?

The problem is we just don’t care.

Time-Flight Part Two

It doesn’t get any better in part two I am afraid. I do find the problem with a lot of Davison stories, particularily the earlier ones is that it takes till the end of the second episode to get to the point of the story and for the most part the majority of the first two episodes are just superfluous padding. About the only time this doesn’t happen is in the two part stories.

I think that the main problem is the writing really. Some of the stories just seem to take an age to get going and this is one of the worst culprits for that.

In this episode a lot of it is spent with Tegan and Nyssa wandering around corridors and the Doctor pretty much doing the same.

At the close of the episode the plot finally arrives and we are supposed to be surprised that Kalid is the Master in disguise. No shit Sherlock. I never would have guessed that in a million years.

The Master? Really?

I don’t believe it!

Lost and Found

Sarah Jane Adventures: The Lost Boy

Well that was a suitably exciting way to end the first series of The Sarah Jane Adventures wasn’t it?

It started off with a fairly interesting plot line that Luke may not be who he thinks he is with an appeal for him to return to his real parents. Of course this turned out to be a ruse by the end of the episode but for the first five minutes or so you could actually believe that it could be true. Well Sarah certainly believed it even though she was well aware that he had in fact been created by the Bane.

Thomas Knight was very good in this episode and he made us believe that he really didn’t trust this people who were claiming to be his real parents and once they locked him in a bedroom that was supposed to be his, he was sure of it.

Even Maria and Clyde saw that something was wrong but not Sarah Jane which seems a little bit out of character when you think of all the things that she was witnessed over the years.

I certainly was not expecting the double twist at the end of the first episode, particularly the Mr Smith twist. I would never have seen that coming and that was a genuine shock to me and made an exciting cliffhanger. It almost made me want to watch the second episode straight after on CBBC but I couldn’t get a signal on my telly upstairs so had to wait till the following week to see it.

The fact that the Slitheen returned in this final story was also a bit of a shock but not as much as the fact that Mr Smith was in face an evil alien intelligence hell bent on destroying the universe and everything that Sarah Jane holds dear.

The second episode as with all the episodes of this series has an awful lot of stuff to do as we never really find out what is going on till the end of the first episode leaving a mere twenty-five minutes to sort out the problem and more often than not save the world.

This story is no different with the moon being dragged from its orbit but there is only one problem the one thing that Sarah Jane knows can move the moon back into its own orbit is also the one thing that has moved it out of its own orbit in the first place.

Luckily Alan Jackson comes to the rescue doing something useful for the first time in ten episodes. The fact that he was a computer programmer who specialises in protecting computers from virus has been mentioned a few times but finally it made him be able to be of some us the story.

Maria’s mum was as annoying as ever but it was interesting that the one person that she called when she thought she was about to die was Alan and not the bloke that she was currently shacked up with.

By the end of the episode though the one thing that most of us had forgotten about (well I had anyway) was the thing that saved the day. Yes you have guessed it K9 returned. Now I know there was a reason why he was actually locked in a cupboard for the whole of the series, he was just there to save the universe from the machinations of an evil computer. Hooray for K9!

Surely The Sarah Jane Adventures has done enough to get a second series? We can but hope.

Whatever Happened to...

The Sarah Jane Adventure: Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane Smith? Episode One

The episode started of normally with Maria, Luke, Clyde, Sarah and Maria’s dad at the park watching Clyde teach Luke how to skateboard, and then Maria’s dad having a go and totally embarrassing his daughter and her friends. Now Maria’s dad probably isn’t much older than I am, so if I had a teenage daughter would I be that embarrassing? Very probably. Never mind I am digressing.

What would the world be like without Sarah Jane Smith? That was the premise behind this story. What if no one had even heard of her? What would the world be like?

This premise was fine but there were some questions that were not answered in this first part such as what about all of the things that Sarah had stopped happening on the Earth during her time with the Doctor? Did any of these things happen?

I suppose this means that K9 & Company never happened, which cannot be a bad thing and there is also all of the adventures they have had in this series such as the Slitheen and the Gorgon and Kudlak, none of these seem to have happened apart from in Maria’s head.

Not even Maria’s dad knew who Sarah Jane was, or Clyde who just thought that she fancied him. There was no sign of Luke either, which is not necessarily a bad thing, as for the majority of this episode Maria was allowed to take centre stage as she was the only person who remembered Sarah Jane.

Everyone else seemed to be convinced that this Andrea who was living in Sarah Jane’s house had always been there and they even had photos to prove it. It was up to Maria to discover the truth and she was determined that she would prove that she was right and everyone else was wrong.

What I like about this episode is that we find out a lot more about Sarah’s past in these twenty five minutes than we ever did in her entire run of episodes in the original series and it is refreshing that the character had a past and it just made her character more rounded and believable than probably any other Doctor Who companion (even Ace) until Rose came along.

Yasmin Paige was particularly good in this episode, which has been Maria’s best episode to date, and you could feel the tension she felt when nobody believed her that there was a Sarah Jane Smith as was Jane Asher as Andrea, the Sarah Jane substitute for the episode, who has a secret to hide.

This has been the strongest episode of the series to date and I am looking forward to seeing the conclusion of the tale. Will Maria be able to convince people that there was a Sarah Jane?; Who, or what is, Andrea? And will the Earth be destroyed by the approaching meteorite?

Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane Smith episode Two

In this episode we discover a lot more about what the hell is going on in this episode about who Andrea actually is and why the Graske is running around taking people away.

Previously we discover that Andrea is actually an old school friend of Sarah Jane’s who had actually died over forty years ago in an accident when they were school girls and were wandering around a disused pier but that she had in her frightened state, about to plunge to her death, was able to save her life but only if Sarah died instead.

Of course she had been tricked by the mysterious Trickster (quite a frightening character for a children’s programme), who just wanted Sarah Jane out of the way because of the meteorite, which was about to hit the Earth that Sarah discovered in the previous episode and which Mr Smith was going to move out of the Earth’s orbit, leaving the Earth a sitting duck which he would then be able to come back to, simply because he likes causing chaos and that is what he does.

This is quite a dark plotline compared to the other episode’s, as if Sarah Jane doesn’t get back then the Earth has, to put it mildly, had it. Blimey!

Even Maria gets taken by the Graske at the close of the last episode and ends up back in 1963 and meets up with a young Sarah Jane Smith and Andrea so it is left up to Maria’s dad Alan who is suddenly the only person who knows who Maria to help save the day.

Andrea meanwhile starts to remember what had happened and what she did and it is her self-sacrifice is what saves the day she takes back the offer to survive in place of Sarah and asks one simple thing of Sarah that she remembered her, which is all that anyone can ever hope to be in the long run

That’s a bit deep for a children’s programme isn’t it? Perhaps it isn’t and that is just me thinking that it is a bit too deep for children’s telly. I mean not all childrens television should be like the Chuckle Brothers which is about as deep as a stonebaked pizza!.

And at the last minute as the meteorite starts to enter the Earth’s atmosphere Mr Smith makes an appearance and saves the day. Hooray!

I thoroughly enjoyed this story and it is a great shame that there is only two more episodes to go before the end of the second series. Please make a second series BBC Wales?

This is about the best thing on television at the moment, even if it isn’t aimed at a thirty something bloke like myself, and fully deserves another run.

Hair Crash

Children in Need in Doctor Who seem to go together very nicely. Back in 1983 The Five Doctors was shown as part of the proceedings. Then 10 years later we had Dimensions in Time another multi-Doctor story but not as auspicious.

A couple of years ago we had the first Tennant scene and now this year we have yet another multi-Doctor story, well a scene anyway.

This scene was the best we have seen in Children in Need since The Five Doctors. It might not have been as long as The Five Doctors, but it had more heart, and more laughs per minute than the twentieth anniversary special.

It also made more sense even though there wasn’t any plot to speak off. What this little scene did do though is make sense of the end of series 3 and explains how on Earth the Titanic managed to crash into the TARDIS, it also proved that just maybe a multi-Doctor might work in this new series as long as they chose a previous Doctor who still looks like they did when they were in the series and who the general public will actually remember playing the part.

It was great to see Davison running around the console like he was twenty-five years younger and getting right back into the part as though he had never stopped playing it.

I know he has had plenty of practice over the last few years in Big Finish, but this is telly and is the real thing, and it was almost like he had never stopped playing the part. He was still the Doctor and in my mind at least showed Tennant a few things about being a proper Doctor.

I loved it when he shouted at Tennant and called him a fan, which is basically how Tennant played the Doctor in this scene, particularly in the presence of another Doctor. I half expected Tennant to pull out his entire collection of Davison Target novels for him to sign both the original photo covers and the reprints.

The script was typical Steven Moffat and there were plenty of great and highly quotable lines. I loved the gentle ribbing of the fifth Doctor such as about his costume and the celery which we can all accept were a bit rubbish but it was also interesting to see how much of the fifth Doctor’s character is present in the tenth Doctor: the breathless enthusiasm; the high pitched squeaky voice when they get excited or are on to something; the trainers and the glasses that they don’t actually need.

It is just a shame then that Tennant seems to find the need to play the part like Tom Baker rather than be his own version of the Doctor which is something that Davison never felt the need to do and is one thing that has always galled me about Tennant’s portrayal of the Doctor.

One thing that Tennant did do that wasn’t acting was his exclamation at the end of the scene when he said that Davison was his Doctor because for most fans of a certain age he was their Doctor and we believed him.

It was nice the way they linked the classic and the new series together with a mention of Linda from Love & Monsters and I loved Davison’s line about the new look console. I never knew that the TARDIS ran on Windows.

They also managed to explain why the Doctor’s always look older than they did originally in a simple throwaway line which is a shame, such is the genius of Mr Moffat just like the other throwaway line about why the TARDIS looks different to how it did in Davison’s era! Sheer class.

It is actually difficult to find fault with Time Crash because there is little wrong with it: it is acted well by the two actors concerned, it is well written, it is well directed, it is enjoyable and it makes you smile.

There are some episodes of the new series (and the classic series) that aren’t as good as this particular seven minutes of television. What better recommendation is there than that?

Bye, Bye Sarah Jane

The Hand of Fear episode four

After the intriguing nature of the first two episodes set mostly on modern day Earth this last episode set on Kastria is a bit of a damp squib to be honest and is probably only worthy because of the last five minutes when Sarah takes her leave of the Doctor.

In fact that is really the only thing worth mentioning in this review as the previous twenty minutes were not actually all that good. Basically Eldrad is taken to a regeneration chamber and ends up turning into Stephen Thorne in a repeat of his rather shouty performance of Omega a few years previous. That’s about it really.

was a very touching moment despite Sarah looking a bit like Andy Pandy.

Now let’s move on the main point of this episode where Sarah leaves the Doctor. This was rather unexpected even though it may of seemed that the Doctor was trying to get Sarah to South Croydon at the beginning of the story and was a very touching moment despite Sarah looking a bit like Andy Pandy.

It was nice that they both seemed to at cross purposes and while Sarah was having her little rant about always ending up in horrible places and how she want her home comforts back etc.

Then because the Doctor wasn’t trying to shout her down about wanting to leave the TARDIS she goes off in a bit of a huff to pack her things, the Doctor was under the TARDIS and had not heard any of Sarah’s little tirade.

Then the Doctor gets the call from Gallifrey and he realises that he has to let Sarah go, unaware that she was packing her things at that moment thinking that he doesn’t want her around anymore. Tom Baker was great in this last scene as you notice that when he is telling Sarah that she has to leave and that he is not able to take her to Gallifrey with him that he isn’t looking at her, almost as if he can’t bare to say the words to her face, that was a nice little touch, and shows just how strong the bond between the two actually was.

Let’s hope her cash card hadn’t expired as how else would she have got home?

Also Sarah was a little taken aback I think about how cold he appeared to be when saying that she couldn’t go to Gallifrey with him. This was definitely the most emotionally charged leaving scene of a companion for a long time and showed that the original series could do emotions when it wanted to.

And the final scene where Sarah realised that she is probably not even in South Croydon is even more poignant after School Reunion where the Doctor finds out that he had in fact left her in Aberdeen, which is more than just a little bit outside of Croydon.

Let’s hope her cash card hadn’t expired as how else would she have got home?

Come, Nuclear Bomb

The Hand of Fear Part Three

In this episode only Professor Watson is still in the nuclear plant after Driscoll had gone and walked into the core of the plant. When they get there they discover that all the radiation has been absorbed and it is perfectly safe to walk around the core.

a bit like hiding under a curtain or painting the windows black, all things than can apparently repel radiation.

The Doctor advises Watson that the Eldrad creature is only going to get stronger and stronger so Watson does the only thing that he can think off and orders a nuclear strike on the plant.

This happens and we have the Doctor, Watson and Sarah hiding behind a car whilst this happens, which is obviously a safe place to hide when a nuclear explosion has happened, a bit like hiding under a curtain or painting the windows black, all things than can apparently repel radiation.

The strike happens but the plant is not destroyed. The Doctor reasoned that the creature must have absorbed the explosion so they decide to go back to the planet. The Doctor tries to leave Sarah at the gates of the plant but she is having none of it and ends up going with them where they meet the Eldrad creature now fully regenerated and taking a form similar to that of a human female.

Apparently Eldrad has modelled itself on Sarah which Sarah takes as a bit of an insult. Perhaps it would have been more interesting if this had been the cast that Elisabeth Sladen had played the Eldrad creature in this episode as that would have made a bit more sense and would have been good for Elisabeth Sladen in what would turn out to be her final story.

So what does the Doctor decide to do with this entity who absorbs radiation? He decides to take it back to where it came from. I suppose that this was probably the only thing that the Doctor could have done because, as he says, he couldn’t very well leave it on Earth.

I don’t think [Watson] is going to get home anytime soon.

Sarah is not too impressed though with this new addition to the TARDIS crew as well she might considering the fact that it had possessed her a couple of episodes earlier. Professor Watson’s assistant turns up after the Doctor leaves with Eldrad and Sarah where basically Watson is left in the shit and left to clean up and explain to the authorities what actually happened. I don’t think he is going to get home anytime soon.

We then go back to Kastria, which is not a very hospitable place, and Eldrad ends up getting shot due to a booby trap left by the people who had cast Eldrad out of Kastria in the first place, on the assumption that he/she would return someday.

Running Up That Hill

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Warriors of Kudlak

We were always told as kids and today that playing too many video games and the like could be hazardous for our health and in this episode that is taken to its logical conclusion as adept players at a laser tag game are being recruited to an interplantery war between old, old foes.

Now I have never played laser tag (it was called Laser Quest when I was a kid), or anything else like that but I can see why it is quite popular even when some people would play it only as an aid to pick up girls. Of course in this episode it is the two lads who get themselves into trouble only for the two girls to come in and rescue them.

poor old Clyde is going to have to have Luke asking him endless questions about girls

Once again Luke shows that he is not just an average, nerdy kid by managing to hack into the onboard computer of an alien vessel. Clyde was quite funny especially in the second episode when he was so obviously trying to impress the girl, Jen, when they were on the Yuvodni spaceship, bigging himself up and basically calling Luke a bit of a nerdy geek, hoping that this would impress a girl by being a jack the lad type.

Unfortunately for Clyde this didn’t work and it was Luke who got a kiss off the girl in the end. The problem is now that poor old Clyde is going to have to have Luke asking him endless questions about girls, the kind of things they like and even how to pull them. Why doesn’t he just ask Maria? She is after all a girl and far more qualified on the subject that Clyde and most teenage lads.

That single shot alone would probably have blown the budgets of every episode of The Chuckle Brothers combined!

There was a nice effects shot in the second episode of the Earth from the Yuvodni spaceship and then the pull back shot from the window of the spacecraft to show the entirety of the spaceship which was a little bit like the shot in the opening titles of some Babylon 5 series.

That single shot alone would probably have blown the budgets of most CBBC dramas and also every episode of The Chuckle Brothers combined!

I also liked the twist at the end where Mr Kudlak just laid down his arms and gave himself up to Sarah Jane after realising he had been duped by a computer programme that just didn’t want the war to end. That gives Mr Kudlak a bit more depth than would normally be afforded to the baddies in a children’s drama and also makes you realise that he wasn’t really a bad sort he was just a solider obeying orders.

If anything the true villain of the piece was the slimy Mr Chadwick who was a fun part and the actor who played him was obviously having a whale of a time playing the part.

Lis Sladen was as good as ever here and she was really quite commanding when she walked straight onto the bridge of the Yuvodni ship and demanded her son back.

I am not too sure about the need for the character of Mr Smith, who is just basically like K9 but not as portable, and with the voice of Alexander Armstrong rather than John Leeson. They do seem to use Mr Smith sparingly, and then only when they need to know what they are up against, so perhaps he is useful as a plot device to explain to the audience all the technical stuff and give them an idea who they are up against, as Sarah is only human after all.

I really enjoyed Warrior of Kudlak it was a fun story, directed with panache by Charles Martin and did not talk down to the children in the audience about the futility, and violence, of war, which was a fairly serious subtext for a children’s television series.

This series is getting better by the story and it would be a great shame if it didn’t get renewed for a second series.

Going Nuclear

The Hand of Fear Part Two

In this episode we see no fewer than three people running amok saying the immortal words Eldrad Must Live! Firstly Sarah, then Dr Carter who tries to cave the Doctor's head in with a wrench and lastly, but by no means least, some bloke called Driscoll.

We are introduced to yet more characters in this episode mainly Professor Watson, the head of the nuclear facility, played by Glyn Houston and his assistant Miss Jackson (played by the directors wife Frances Pidgeon) and Driscoll.

Only Watson has any real character about him as his phone call home to his wife and children shows. Would any one really notice if the rest of the people working in the plant died? Would anybody care? Thanks to the little bit of characterisation afforded him, the audience would care if anything happened to Professor Watson.

Then just when we think everything is alright then poor old Driscoll gets possessed, knocks out one of his colleagues, and takes the hand into the core of the nuclear plant itself.

So just when Professor Watson manages to avert one possible nuclear distaster another one comes along right after, just like buses when you have been waiting at the bus stop for ages in the freezing cold (sorry I'm digressing).

Handy Pandy

The Hand of Fear Part One

Lennie Mayne is one of the unsung heroes of Doctor Who director and, apart from Douglas Camfield, was one of the finest proponents of that craft during 1970's Doctor Who.

This was his last story before his untimely death on a sailing trip and is quite possibly his best work on the series. It has to be said that his work on the location footage is better than his studio work which was often the case in Doctor Who.

What helps with this story in particular though is the fact that is is filmed in an actual nuclear power plant and this gives the earth bound portions of this episode a realistic edge. These scenes are actually more in tune with a typical Pertwee story (and an early Pertwee story at that) than a typical Tom Baker story (if there can be such a thing).

As is per usual for a Lennie Mayne directed story Rex Robinson makes an appearance and this time he plays Doctor Carter, not unlike Doctor Tyler which he played in The Three Doctors, who it turns out is only really a bit part, as is Renu Senta whose character doesn't even warrant a name just as job title.

Actually come to think about the majority of the cast in this episode apart from Tom, Lis and Rex don't make it past this episode!

I must say that the episode is a lot more interesting from the point that the TARDIS first landed in the quarry. That was a nice little touch to have them land in an actual quarry and then assume that it must be an alien planet. I must admit I would have assumed that, as all the alien planets they had visited up to that point had looked suspiciously like quarries! A little bit of satire there from the Bristol Boys!

Then came the cliffhanger which you were kind of expecting when you saw the fossilised hand, and after the Doctor and Doctor Carter discovered that the sample was changing when in close proximity with radiated material.

The one downside of the story was Sarah's costume. What was she thinking when she chose it? Is that the sort of attire that investigative journalists normally wear? I know it was the seventies, but that was no excuse!

Next time the thing from the Addams family makes a guest appearance.

Gorgon Bennett!

The Sarah Jane Adventures – Eye of the Gorgon part two

I would say that this story is more successful than the Slitheen opening story. Quite a time seems to have passed between Revenge of the Slitheen and this adventure as Clyde is now fully integrated into the cast, and Sarah is quite happy to let him stay in her house even when she isn’t there, which shows that there is quite a gap there.

The pace of this episode was full on with a race against time to stop the Gorgons from coming back to the Earth and also to save Maria’s dad from being stuck in the form of a statue for eternity.

That is quite a lot to happen in just twenty-five minutes and due to the nature of the show being primarily aimed at a younger audience it succeeds, and even though for people of our age (who really shouldn’t be watching it) it is pretty much a piece of fluff with little substance and not a lot else, for the core audience it is an exciting, thrilling piece of television, which they should consider themselves lucky to have, as more often than not we didn’t always get children’s television like that in our day.

Maria’s mother continues to be annoying and at times you are actually glad that she is not with Maria’s dad any more, just because she would be a nightmare to live with and you hope that Maria will not become like her mother when she is older because if she does then god help her.

Clyde doesn’t have a great deal to do in this episode and along with Luke isn’t actually able to be that proactive in this episode due to the fact that they are both held prisoner along with Sarah Jane.

Luckily all is not lost as there is someone else who can help to save the day. However, in the previous episode she was having a bit of a teenage temper tantrum.

It did make me laugh in the scene when Bea handed Maria a mirror and Maria couldn’t work out why on earth she was being given a mirror. Bea’s exasperated comment about the state of education these days was exactly what I was thinking at that moment!

The effects work in this story was up to the usual standard that we are used to in Doctor Who, which makes it look totally unlike anything else being broadcast on Childrens BBC at the moment, and less like a programme made for children and more like a full blooded scripted drama for a family audience just like the parent show.

Boom Chicka Wah Wah

The Time Warrior Part Four

By this time Linx has had enough of primitives and just wants to get the hell of the Earth and return to his fleet to die for the greater good of the Sontaran empire and he doesn’t care who he takes with him but Irongron is more than a little persistent and keeps haranguing him for more weapons so that he can become ruler of all.

Of course the Doctor isn’t having any of this and just wants to make sure that all the weapons are destroyed and that nobody is killed but, this is Doctor Who, and things aren’t always as simple as that, otherwise this would be a very short episodes indeed and you would need plenty of padding to fill the episode out.

Luckily the majority of people in the castle are forewarned to flee the castle (apart from the servants who we didn’t see leave the castle) before it explodes taking Linx with it ( who was already dying after being shot in the probic vent by one of Hal’s arrows).

Not a huge amount happened in this episode other than what we knew was always going to happen (i.e Lynx would try to take off in his ship destroying Irongron’s castle in the process) in the end anyway.

Still it was a nice little jaunt into the past for the third Doctor (his first and last in the tv series I believe) but the whole thing was more like previous Doctor adventure than a third Doctor adventure, simply because it wasn’t set on present day Earth with military back up, which the majority of the third Doctor’s era was.

Next for the third Doctor and Sarah Jane: dinosaur infested London or a fun fair ran by the Parakon corporation depending on what you consider to be the next third Doctor adventure.

What a Load of Reubish

The Time Warrior Part Three

Here we come to the episode where things start to slack a bit and only get going near the end of the episode as a lead into the final episode, The Doctor is now on the other side of the fence in this episode and after Sarah realises that the Doctor isn’t really the evil mastermind that she initially thought he was and persuades Edward of Wessex that he will be able to help them against Irongron.

Remembering that they were about to get invaded by Irongron and his men they set to work on cobbling together a plan using Gallifreyan stink bombs and some crudely designed mops designed as soliders to place on the battlements.

Sure enough Irongron and his men are duped into believing that Edward has more men than they had initially believed.

Luckliy there was no specsavers in medieval Wessex so they all had really bad eyesight and were able to get away with their plan. That might also explain why Irongon didn’t seem to bothered when he saw Linx’s true appearance.

I suppose that on the battlefield Linx might have seen a lot worse sights than a baked potato headed alien in battle armour, or again his eyesight simply wasn’t all that it could be.

By the end of the episode the plan had changed and the Doctor got Edward to agree to mount an attack on Linx’s castle with the Doctors magic to help them.

Will they succeed or will Irongron manage to capture the Doctor again. Only time will tell.

Spud U Like

The Time Warrior Part Two

This is the episode where we learn of the name of the Doctor’s home planet for the very first time despite having visited it a few times since The War Games. We also learn that the Doctor has encountered the Sontaran’s before (as he encountered them in his second incarnation in The Two Doctors this would fit but I would imagine that he had met them before that) and find out a little bit more about the Sontarans.

For instance the Doctor refers to Linx as a Sontaran Warrior. Does this imply that there are other Sontaran’s who are not part of the military? Perhaps Sontaran Accountant’s or Sontaran Traffic wardens.

The creation of the Sontaran race is the best thing about this story and it is nice that we learn little snippets about them in each of these episodes the scenes between the Doctor and Linx are some the best in this episode and David Daker continues to munch on the scenery as Irongron.

Elisabeth Sladen continues to impress as Sarah giving as good as she gets to both Irongron and to Edward of Wessex and Dot Cotton (I mean Lady Eleanor) even proposing a commando style raid on Irongron’s castle much to the amusement of Edward of Wessex and Hal the Archer (but not to Dot who certainly wears the trousers in that relationship and is definitely a woman ahead of her time).

The Doctor encounters Professor Reubish who has managed to evade being hypnotised by virtue of being captures sans his glasses rendering him almost blind and also has the problems of having a Sontaran warrior giving a medieval society weapons beyond the planet’s current technological level and also having Sarah Jane wandering around the earth nine hundred or so years before she was born and telling the other local nobleman that he is behind a plot to usurp him.

It’s all going on here isn’t it?

Gorgonzola

The Sarah Jane Adventures – Eye of the Gorgon part one

Again we have another fine piece of children’s television with this episode: it’s everything I wish children’s television was when I was a child (and sometimes it was but the majority of the time it wasn’t sadly) and it is a shame that the children of today are getting such well produced material for them when the majority of them would rather play on their Playstations and Nitendo DS’ and the like than sit and watch well-scripted, well-acted drama.

They said that each episode would have a reference to the classic series and they were right with this episode name checking the Sontarans (quite apt for us on Behind the Sofa and also with the news that they are returning in the next series as well.) and even cracking the joke that they look not unlike a baked potatoe.

Lis Sladen had a lot more to do in this episode, and didn’t seem like a secondary character in her own show this time, with Maria taking a backstage for a portion of the episode.

They had some nice characterisation with Maria and her dad both standing up to her flighty mother who just expects things to remain the same whilst she goes off gallivanting. You kind of feel sorry for her dad who is a little bit caught in the middle of Maria and her mother’s issues with each other, and this is the sort of thing that the core audience will be able to appreciate, whereas the fans amongst the audience can appreciate the references to the original series and the similar production values to that of Doctor Who, and everyone can appreciate the stories, which are well, and straightforwardly, told, and its always nice to have a cliffhanger that has you tuning into the next installment.

It does seem to me from the last few episodes that the whole point of the character of Luke Smith is to do something that brings the menace to Sarah Jane, normally by the end of the first episode so that the plot proper can begin in earnest at the start of the second part. That does seem to be his function to the series as far as I can gather, well it certainly has over the three episodes that I have seen so far!

The story for this episode is stronger than in the first two episodes and the pace builds up nicely in this first episode ending with a strong cliffhanger where poor old Maria’s dad gets accidentally turned to stone by the Gorgon. One could say that if it had been Maria’s mother than had been turned to stone then no-one would have been that bothered! Phyllida Law turns in a good performace as the not quite so dotty Bea and Nicola Walker is suitable chilling as Sister Helene.

Never trust a nun. That’s the moral of this episode!

Star Warrior

The Time Warrior Episode One

It’s all change for the series in this story: gone are the iconic titles that had graced the series since Jon Pertwee’s debut in 1970 which have been replaced by a proto-type of the extremely iconic Tom Baker titles with a full length picture of Pertwee disappearing down a time tunnel (scary or what).

They start of quite well but the bit from Pertwee’s mugshot appearing just didn’t work for me. I much preferred the original Pertwee title sequence. Still, they managed to refine it for the next series and make it so much better.

Also making her first appearance in this episode is the very young looking Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, albeit impersonating her Aunt Lavinia at first, making an impression straight away and giving as good as she gets chiding the Doctor for talking down to her and marking her card as a bit of a feminist (which did seem to be watered down in later stories).

Of course all of this happened almost half way into an episode, which started off with a special effect of a spherical shaped space ship diving out of the sky and then mixed into a shot of Irongron slamming his axe into a big chunk of meat. <p>We then have some great scenes between Irongron and Bloodaxe (Robert Holmes first great double act) with David Daker playing the role of blood thirsty with great relish and certainly one of the highlights of the episode.

Other interesting characters in this episode include Professor Rubeish the absent-minded, Mr Magoo style dotty scientist who got the Doctor’s irie up when he started scrawling equations on the TARDIS’ exterior whom I wrote a brief encounter about in a competition in Doctor Who Magazine many years ago.

If you had tuned in and missed the establishing shot of the ship crashing into the Earth you would have been misled into thinking that this was an historical adventure but the moment that they saw a star fall into a nearby wood that you realised that this wasn’t going to be a pure historical.

I think that all of the main characters make an appearance in this episode, even the Brigadier makes a very brief appearance when we meet the Doctor and then once the Doctor leaves in the TARDIS at the end of the episode, with Sarah also inside, that would be the last we would see of the Brig for a few episodes and was the start of the beginning of the end for the Pertwee era.

It does look a little incongruous when you see the Sontaran ship in the middle of a wood in the 12^th century but the armour worn by the Sontaran Linx doesn’t actually look as out of place as you may think it would. It is also interesting that Irongron doesn’t even seem to blink an eyelid at Linx with his full armour on, unlike Bloodaxe who seems to be terrified of the star warrior.

We get some nice exposition about the Sontaran race and their perpetual war with the Rutans and by the end of this episode the Sontarans are a fully formed alien race in the minds of the audience with a history and backstory another example of the quality of Robert Holmes’ writing.

The episode ends with the realisation that the dome shaped helmet worn by Linx is exactly the same shape as his head (a question I am sure the most discerning viewers were asking when watching the episode).

Disco Inferno

Inferno Episode Seven

We finally reach the end of the epic that is Inferno, but does it go out with a bang or a whisper? It has an awful lot to live up too after the apocalyptic end of the previous episode.

It was a shame that we had to leave the alternative universe to its impending doom as a lot of the characters were far more interesting than their counterparts in our universe (even Sir Keith Gold).

Plotwise this episode is basically a re-run of the last two episodes with a lot less running around and shouting but with a happier ending than they got in the last episode. It almost didn't end up that way though as the Doctor was unconcsious for much of the episode after returning to our universe and after correctly predicting a blow out in one of the output pipes while he was unconscious, Liz and Gregg persuaded Petra to help them reverse the drill and stop the drilling.

Then the rest of the episode was taken up with some nice character moments (i.e padding) where character said their goodbyes and the project was decommissioned. We also said goodbye to Liz Shaw in this episode and I can't but feel sad that she didn't get the proper leaving scene afforded to the majority of Doctor Who companions, rather we see her laughing inanely as the Doctor takes a short trip in the TARDIS as far as the rubbish tip.

Inferno is the best of the third Doctor's first series adventures and even after having watched it numerous times it never fails to engage me despite its seven episode length (which is normally make me run a mile) which is more than can be said for the majority of the other six and seven part Pertwee stories!

Its the end of the word as we know it

Inferno Episode Six

I am sure that the plots of this episode and the previous episode could have been told in a single episode, rather than the two it took them to do it in this story. It was still entertaining to watch and quite tense as the clock ticked down to Armageddon.

Gregg Sutton had the best lines in this episode most involved with putting the Brigade Leader down and in his place as the Brigade Leader loses the plot and starts getting very jumpy indeed. Section Leader Elizabeth Shaw is quite calm considering that she knows she will die very soon and Petra is pretty much resigned to her fate and stands up to the Brigade Leader herself.

This is probably one of the most downbeat episodes of Doctor Who ever but it also one of the very best. You are drawn into the fact that this really is the end for the majority of them (a lot of them actually deserve what they are about to get mentioning no names Brigade Leader Lethbridge Stewart but you do feel for poor Petra and Gregg who you just know want to jump each others bones as soon as possible), and you aren’t even sure that the Doctor will make it out alive.

It certainly makes for stirring viewing and the best episode of this story, as if the Doctor does make it out alive he doesn’t have much time before the same fate could befall his own universe.

Will he make it out alive?

Will he save the earth from boiling up?

Will Gregg and Petra just hurry up and get a room?

Burny Hot

This episode is where the shit really does hit the fan.

Inferno Episode Five

After a rather slow, but no less compelling, first four episode the serial really hits pay dirt in this episode when penentration of the Earth's crust is finally achieved and green gunge starts to burst from the pipes in the alternative Earth as the forces of god knows what have been released by the drill.

Stahlman finally sucumbs to the primord mutation and locks himself in the drillhead, and lots of people get turned into primords including the alternative Benton as all hell breaks loose and the planet heats up. The use of filters in this episode are effectively used to convey the rising heat.

This is a good action packed episode after some of the rather talky moments of the last few episodes and this episode is quite exciting. You are rooting for the Doctor to get the hell off the parallel Earth and are hoping that he can persuade the Brigade Leader and Section Leader Elizabeth Shaw that he is not a spy.

Of course nobody wants to voluntarily die so it is with no surprise that Brigade Leader insists that the Doctor take them all with him but the Doctor refuses saying that it would create a dimensional paradox and shatter the space time continuum.

Exciting stuff I am sure you will agree!

I hope it's Chips, it's Chips!

SJA: Revenge of the Slitheen Part 2

Whilst the first episode was involved in setting up the main threat of the story and setting up the mood and themes, this episode is the one where the plot arrives and everything needs to be neatly tied up in 25 minutes.

There was plenty of running up and down corridors and all of the main characters have a laugh trying to pronounce Raxacoricofallapatorius (which is easier to type then to say - just!) and they manage to come to the same conclusion as the Doctor and Rose did in World War 3 in pretty much the same way as they did, with a little help from Mr Smith, of course, who will, I think, prove a useful tool in the series but could also be relied on a little too much if they aren't careful, but mainly from Clyde's cold chip butty (what is it with chips and the new series of Doctor Who? It seems to be an ongoing theme) and the Slitheen's reaction to it.

The Slitheen looked far more menacing in this episode than they did in the first part especially when roaming around the corridors of a school. If I was a young child watching, I would be looking over my shoulders in the school corridors the next day!

The direction was great again and is quite possible some of the best direction ever seen on children's television ever (Alice Troughton needs to work on Who, as soon as possible, to complete the set of working on all 3 series) and Gareth Roberts provides another excellent script.

The acting of the adult leads (apart from Liz Sladen and Joseph Milson) was hammier than the ham counter at a supermarket in Hampshire. My girlfriend (soon to be wife - 4 days and counting) thought that the baby Slitheen was cute. I am not too sure that was the reaction they were looking for but that was what they got from one adult viewer anyway.

There was also stuff for the original series fans in the episode such as Liz calling on her friends at U.N.I.T. (this series would be a much better place to have an episode featuring the Brigadier than the parent series I feel) and her description of the Doctor near the end. It was also quite heartwarming to see Sarah Jane Smith finally being able to become a mother, something that does seem to be an issue ever since she appeared in School Reunion.

Revenge of the Slitheen was a good opening gambit for The Sarah Jane Adventures, and judging by the trailer for the next episode it looks like it is only going to get better. It might not be aimed at me but I am sure enjoying it. Why should the children have all the fun?

Spy Hard

Inferno Episode Four
This episode is normally where things start to sag a bit in these longer stories and Inferno is no exception to that rule, and it would probably be true to say that if the alternative universe plotline wasn’t there then it would have been a stretch to fill seven episodes but luckily for us that manages to keep your interest and not send you to sleep, like some of the later six part Pertwee’s would do. To be brutally honest not a great deal happens in this episode, the Doctor spends most of his time stuck in a prison cell that they just happen to have in the compound. There he is being chatted up by Section Leader Elizabeth Shaw, or so she would like to think. I would say it is rather more the boot on the other foot here with the Doctor seemingly managing to get through to Liz about his true identity. The Brigade Leader and Benton meanwhile just want him shot for being a spy, no questions asked.

This episode also features an extended action sequence shot on location which would become the mainstay of the Pertwee years and more important than you would think in a longer story, because if in doubt stick a long action sequence in a give HAVOC something to do, after all if you've got a crack team of stuntmen on stand by you might as well use them.

Having a director with an eye for action, like Douglas Camfield, also helps and can often paper over the fact that there isn’t much happening, particularly by inserting these sequences and the judicious use of sound effects and music (the three seven part stories in series seven particularly).

What also keeps you glued to the screen in this episode is how can the Doctor possibly get out of this, as he has no power here and no influence and he is not going to able to flounce on in a huff like he did a couple of episode previously. He is in some danger and that is quite exciting as, at the moment, you don’t know if the Doctor will be able to get back, and you don’t know what might happen when the drill reaches penetration zero.

Anything could happen in the next twenty-five minutes.

If You Can't Stand The Heat

Inferno Episode Three

So at the end of the last episode the Doctor buggered off on a joyride leaving everything to go tits up at project inferno. In his haste to get as far away as possible away from the heat of the inferno it all went wrong and he ended up in a parallell world instead of anywhere but where he was. It was partly due to Stahlmann switching the power of mid way though the dematerialisation and partly because the Doctor's TARDIS is basically a pile of junk so it is amazing he managed to get anywhere at all let alone a parallell universe.

Parallell universes are a science fiction staple but this was the first time that Doctor Who had ever done that, and it wouldn't be until the 2006 series that they would do so again. Star Trek was most famous for what they called their mirror universe stories and that is nowadays what is often referred to when talking about alternative universes and the like, especially when the other universe is an evil version of the real universe.

Here we have a Orwellian nightmare of a universe where Frank Muir appears to be a big brother like figure (well it looks like Frank Muir anyway), the Brigadier is clean shaven and sports an eye-patch and a duelling scar, Benton is a thug, Liz Shaw is a jackbooted, mini-skirted, dark haired military type, and the Doctor is conspicuous by his absence. One wonders what the story would have been like if the other universe's Doctor had replaced our Doctor in our universe. That could have added another episode to the mix and it would still have been watchable. Well, I would have watched it anyway!

The one character that didn't really change from universe to universe was that of Professor Stahlmann, or Director Stahlmann as he is know here, who is just as disagreeable and conceited and arrogant as he was in our universe but now wears a pair of shades and is clean shaven (here the reverse is true they have facial hair in our universe and not in the mirror one). Petra is as stiff and buttoned up in this universe as she was in ours, and Greg Sutton hasn't changed either, apart from dressing more formally that his casual garb in our universe. Poor Old Sir Keith isn't even there in this unverse, having been killed in a road-traffic accident, whilst on the way to see the minister, a trip he was talking about doing in our universe.

In this episode the Doctor discovers that this project is far more advanced than that of the one he just left, but that none of the problems that he had seen had been fixed. He also had to find a way to get back as he certainly wouldn't want to be in this universe when everything goes up the river!

Back to School

If you had told me a couple of years ago that there would be a new series of 25 minute adventures with Elisabeth Sladen reprising her role as intrepid investigative journalist Sarah Jane Smith then I would have looked at you quizzically and thought that you were totally and utterly mad. It will never happen I thought. How wrong was I?

Revenge of the Slitheen Part One

The main difference between this story and the pilot episode was the length. The pilot was a full hour whereas these stories consist of two 25 minute episodes. After watching the first episode I think that this 25 minute episode format works much better for the series than the hour long single episode format.

the majority of viewers will more than likely be in their 30's

It wouldn't work for Doctor Who nowadays but for children's television it works perfectly well and that is, after all what The Sarah Jane Adventure is, children’s television. Well produced and glossy it may be, but it is still mainly written for and aimed squarely at the children's market, as the magazine Doctor Who Adventures is. Of course, despite this the majority of viewers will more than likely be in their 30's (much like the readership of Doctor Who Adventures).

Considering there was only 25 minutes in this episode there was a hell of a lot going on and it seemed to fit it more action and incidence in one episode than in a number of stories from the original run of Doctor Who. It, quite simply, flew by.

the [Slitheen] in Aliens of London were a little more subdued

There are plenty of references for the adults in the audience to appreciate (such as Manimal. I loved Manimal when I was a kid and Street Hawk but I’m digressing) but the rest of it, the pace, the characters etc are aimed squarely at the children in the audience, hence the scenery chewing of the headmaster and the science teacher (the ones in Aliens of London were a little more subdued that they are in this episode).

Elisabeth Sladen was great again as Sarah Jane, as was Yasmin Paige as Maria (who it seems is meant to be the real star of the show – hence her opening narration bit filling in the gaps for those who hadn’t seen Invasion of the Bane - the touchstone with the core audience as it were).

New character Clyde settles in well taking the place of the gobby Kelsey but not being half as annoying. Although how he can stomach cold chip butties, I will never know.

Was it just me or did the Slitheen costumes not look half as menacing as they did in series one of Doctor Who? I wonder if it was something to do with the way they were shot and lit?

The cliffhanger for this episode took its cue from Aliens of London with all of the main characters coming up against a Slitheen revealing their true appearance. I certainly wasn’t expecting a child Slitheen so that was the biggest surprise of the episode for me.

I thoroughly enjoyed Revenge of the Slitheen part one, it wasn’t made for the likes of me, but it is great television and I look forward to the rest of the series.

Feeling Hot Hot Hot

Inferno Part 2

In part 2 things go from bad to worse in the Inferno. More green gungy stuff escapes from output pipe number 2, the same gungy stuff that had affected the maintenance guy Slocum in the first episode. This is seen as a bit of a problem by Sir Keith, but Professor Stahlmann doesn't see it as much of a problem.

It does make you wonder what would constitute a problem for Proffessor Stahlmann as there seems to be very little that would stop him from proceeding with the project. Nowadays Health and Safety would never have let the project get off the ground, so perhaps it wasn't so stringent back in the seventies when you were able to fill buildings with asbestos and nothing would be thought of it. Oh how times have changed.

Somebody on the compound decided that it might be a good idea to test some of this gunge to see what it was made off but just as all good gunge does it defies analysis and Stahlmann takes matters into his own hands (literally) getting some of said gunge on himself. Of course, as soon as the gunge touches Stalhmann's hands he starts to go all Slocum on us and stars to act in a rather strange manner, well a little more strange that he had been doing before anyway.

I did find that the second part of this adventure was a little slow and it did seem to take a while in getting going, of course they do have to fill up seven 25 minute episode so there is bound to be (quite a lot of) padding. However in the case of this episode the padding is actually highly interesting and is more to with fleshing the main characters out and making them more interesting and giving them motivation which is very nice and not that common in Doctor Who, it has to be said.

Pertwee was his usual arrogant and self serving self as the Doctor and Liz Shaw sported the shortest skirt in the history of mankind. Did many female scientists dress that way in the early seventies?

It's Getting Hot In Here...

The first time I saw Inferno was on a really bad copy that I got tape trading. Remember that? Neverthless the copy of Inferno I had was not all that good but was just about watchable. In the pre-UK Gold days we were just glad to be able to see the stories (even if the copies we got weren't that clear themselves) and we would watch it despite the quality of the copy.

Not like nowadays when you can watch a crystal clear DVD copy of the story. For this review I actually watched the VHS becasue I don't actually own the shiny disc version.

Even the story, writer, director and episode number caption seemed to last longer than usual.

Inferno Part One

Boy, you can tell this is going to be a seven part story can't you. The Doctor makes a fleeting appearance in the opening seconds of the story and then doesn't appear for the next seven/eight minutes or so. Poor old Liz Shaw doesn't appear in the episode untill about 15 minutes has gone and even then she doesn't really do that much but is sporting a natty new hair style and a nice new blue outfit. Even the story, writer, director and episode number caption seemed to last longer than usual.

Petra Williams was played quite well by Camfield's wife Sheila Dunn but, when you consider, that he initially wanted Kate O'Mara to play the part you can see how he initally thought of her.

What makes Inferno such a good story is the writing, the direction and the acting. Virtually all aspects of the story are superb: Camfield's stylish direction complete with the use of filters and some excellent juxtaposition of shots such as the solider getting his head caved in by a wrench going straight to a nail being hammered into a wall; Don Houghton's wordy, but never dull, script, and the acting of the Olaf Pooley as the power mad Stahlmann, Christopher Benjamin as the civil, civil servant Sir Keith Gold and Derek Newark as the hard as nails oil man Gregg Sutton.

Petra Williams was played quite well by Camfield's wife Sheila Dunn but, when you consider, that he initially wanted Kate O'Mara to play the part you can see how he initally thought of her.

The first part shows enough to leave you wanting more, and I am glad that I didn't have to wait a week to see the next episode like they did when it was originally broadcast. The story is so compelling that you just want to watch the rest of the story as soon as possible, and that is the mark of a great story!

The Specials

So, what do we reckon the 2009 specials will be:

a. 3 x 60 minute episodes
b. 3 x 90 minute episodes
c. 3 x 120 minute episodes

If they did b then it would be exactly the same screen time as the current format of 3 two part stories a season, which would equate to about half a season, which wouldn't be so bad. I would imagine that a is more likely than c though.

Thoughts anyone?

Also, when do you think they will be shown?

I'm plumping for Easter Saturday, August Bank Holiday and Christmas Day.

Three is the magic number...

I would have to say that Series 3 has been a more consistent series, than series 2 was. Overall there were more good episodes than there were bad ones. In fact all of the episodes had their good points and their bad points, and I would be hard pressed to decide which episode was my least favourite, or at least one that I would never want to watch again even if you paid me.

Smith and Jones did what it said on the tin and introduced the new companion Martha and made her an instantly likeable character, with a family you wanted her to be free of as soon as possible. Her family only made the briefest of appearances in this episode but it was enough that by the end of the episode you really wanted her to just leave them to bicker amongst themselves and run away into the TARDIS.

The Shakespeare Code was a fun second episode with a bravura performance by Dean Lennox Kelly as Shakespeare, and Freema Agyeman impressing further as Martha. Much like Billie Piper in series 1 Freema hit the ground running from her first episode and in this episode she more than held her own against Shakespeare and the Doctor.

Gridlock was the first so-so episode of the series with the totally pointless inclusion of one of the worst ever monsters from the Troughton era, and Captain Ja... er I mean The Face of Boe's final words to the Doctor, which fandom had already guessed months previously. Still the episode looked fantastic even if it was ripped off from 2000AD.

Daleks in Manahttan/Evolution of the Daleks started promisingly enough, but fell down in the second part. I thought Helen Raynor made a good job of her first script considering that she had a massive list of elements to weave her story around. Imagine what she could have come up without having things forced on her! I am not sure about the whole Human Dalek thing, but having Sec exterminated by his fellow members of the Cult of Skaro was very Dalek behaviour. The Daleks were also more like the sixties Daleks than ever before in the new series and that I liked.

The Lazarus Experiment was an odd little episode. Very little actually happened but as it was all set up for events in the finale I suppose that I can forgive it that and accept it as a necessary episode for the benefit of the overall season storyline, rather than a decent episode in its own right.

Then there was a week's gap to make way for Eurovision and you would have thought that the show had been cancelled never to return if you visited a Doctor Who internet forum for the time between the end of Lazarus and the start of 42. Somebody even likened it to an atrocity, which I thought was a bit strong to put it mildly. Still it was worth the wait, and Eurovision wasn't bad either. Scooch were robbed!

Next came 42, the episode the majority of fandom had already decided was going to be rubbish the moment it was announced. Well I really enjoyed 42. It was an intense piece of television well written and well directed. Even Michelle Collins was quite good in it. Again the episode looked gorgeous and full marks must be given to the Mill for their sterling work on this episode.

The next two episodes Human Nature and The Family of Blood were both superb episodes and totally different from the episode that preceded it and the episode that followed it. It is saying something that I actually thought that David Tennant was good in these episodes but then he wasn't playing the Doctor, which explains why.

I thought that there couldn't be a better pair of episodes than these before I saw the next episode Blink which was quite simply the best episode of Doctor Who ever. I thought that Love & Monsters was good but this one blew it out of the water.

Steven Moffat is a genius plain and simple, but I don't think that he would be right to be the show runner. I think that if he wrote more episodes it would dilute the impact that his writing has on the show and they wouldn't stand out as works of genius as they do when he only writes one or two a year. Blink also stand as the scariest ever episode of Doctor Who and is the only one that has ever made me jump.

Utopia was pretty boring for the first half an hour, and was pretty much a standard run around and quite like an episode of Blakes 7 or Star Trek as opposed to a Who episode, but the last fifteen minutes more than made up for it. Derek Jacobi who had been excellent as the Hartnell like professor Yana was supremely evil as the Master and did more in five minutes in the role than most of the previous Master's ever did.

The Sound of Drums was an excellent episode with John Simm's Master well and truly stealing the show. He was a perfect counterpoint to Tennant's Doctor, sometimes wacky, sometimes deadly serious, and always evil. The tension built up wonderfully during the episode and when the Doctor was aged near the end of the episode you really did wonder what was going to happen and would the Doctor be able to save the day, especially in his aged state.

All was set for a remarkable final episode, which we got, but not perhaps in the way that it could have been. I actually really enjoyed Last of the Timelords, it was a truly bonkers episode and didn't really make that much sense to me, and the less said about the reset button, which is an old stand by in series like Star Trek, the better, but it was certainly enjoyable, mostly down to John Simm's Master yet again.

David Tennant was once more sidelined in his own show. He probably had more to do in Blink than he had in Last of the Timelords, well at least until the last ten minutes. At least he was himself, albeit a recording of himself, in that episode, and not some sort of strange Gollum/Dobby the house elf cross like he was here.

Freema was great in this episode too and her kind of leaving scene at the end of the episode was also great. It bought the whole season full circle really. Martha didn't need the Doctor at all, and by the close of this episode, she finally realized that she didn't need him and so went on her way. The giving of her mobile phone to the Doctor shows that she will be back at some point in the future, but for now her story is done, and we will apparently see her in Torchwood, which will be interesting. Will she suddenly display some hitherto unseen lesbian urges and cop off with Tosh? It might happen.

Overall this series of Doctor Who was a triumph in the main. The Doctor didn't annoy me as much as he did the previous season, we had a great new companion, some fantastic guest actors gracing the series and some of the best episodes of the series since its rebirth back in 2005.

I guess I will have to wait till the end of the next series (at least) to see the back of the tenth Doctor but, I suppose, that it is nice that we have a leading actor who is now embedded in the role like an iceberg in the Titanic.

Am I the only person who doesn't mind that Catherine Tate is returning in the role of Donna Noble? I reckon that series 4 could be the best one yet!

I Can't Decide

I was only disappointed on two counts after watching Last of the Timelords:

The Doctor didn’t regenerate into Barney from Totally Doctor Who, or somebody else less smug.

There wasn’t a cameo by Kylie at the end of the episode.

After watching the episode twice, so far, I am still not too sure what I think about Last of the Timelords. I don’t think that it was a bad episode, nor do I believe that it was one of the best episodes of the series. It was just ok, much like the series finale of series 2. It certainly wasn’t as good as The Sound of Drums or even Utopia but it was enjoyable and was nothing like anything else on television.

Once again David Tennant was overshadowed in his own show, which is not a bad thing if you are still not that fond of his Doctor, but is it a good thing for the show itself. I mean he spent some of the episode sat in a wheelchair; some of the episode as the bastard son of Gollum and Dobby the House Elf and only really did anything in the last five minutes when he suddenly became a god like figure, because all of the human race was thinking about him. I mean how does that work exactly?

On the subject of the Gollum/Dobby version of the Doctor who else wished that he had remained like for the rest of the episode, and probably the entirety of the fourth series as well? Just me then.

The Doctor didn’t regenerate into Barney from Totally Doctor Who, or somebody else less smug.

It was good that they used the Master’s plan to defeat him, which was how it often went in the Pertwee era back when the Master was good but I am not sure if I am a fan of this pressing a reset button at the end of the story so that the events in the episode itself never actually happened like they did in the Star Trek Voyager two part story The Year of Hell. I mean in both cases that was the only thing that could have possibly happened to make everything all right at the end of the episode, so that the series could have carried on.

In Doctor Who’s case that is even more important as there are two spin-off series to think about as well. I mean where would that leave Torchwood and Sarah Jane if the Doctor hadn’t have reversed time? In the case of Torchwood some people might have wished that he hadn’t had, but really what else could they have done?

Won’t the Doctor start getting random calls from Martha’s friends asking her if she wants to go down the pub for a drink?

It was certainly different when they had a whole year gap between the first part and the second part of a two parter, surely the longest Doctor Who story ever, in terms of the duration of the story itself - ie a year and a couple of days - (on television that is) but did that really add anything to the story that it wouldn’t have had if they had just carried on when The Sound of Drums ended?

I actually think that the idea of a weapon that could kill a Time Lord stone dead was much more interesting and likely than the fact that Martha would travel the whole world just to tell people a story about the Doctor, a man she is in love with, who hadn’t ever, and probably never would, give her a second look. I mean, as if!

I don’t blame Martha for deciding to leave at the end of the episode. I would have done the same thing if I were her. I mean you travel the whole world and all the person you have done it all for has to say is thanks! The ungrateful bastard! It is obvious that we haven’t seen the last of her, as she gave him her mobile phone, but won’t the Doctor start getting random calls from Martha’s friends asking her if she wants to go down the pub for a drink, or from her mother or sister? Imagine that! I hope she gets a new phone and changes her number!

Freema shone in this episode and I hope that she appears in most of the episodes of the next series as she was been one of the strongest elements in this series and it was quite sad to see her leave at the end of the story, even though as far as her relationship with the Doctor has gone, leaving was the right thing to do at the moment in time.

John Simm was fantastic as the Master again and he has been the highlight of this two part story. He was like the Master was meant to be, just like the Doctor but madder and badder, the mirror universe Doctor as it were and was a great deal of fun in both of these episodes and also very, very creepy and evil. I don’t believe that this is the last we have seen of the Master.

Does that mean that all of the previous Master’s had the Doctor Who theme in their heads?

I don’t think that we will see John Simm reprising the role but the fact that we saw a woman’s hand (probably Lucy Saxon) picking up the Master’s ring from the ashes of the funeral pyre at the end of the episode and heard the Master laughing, shows that the Master’s story is far from over.

The ring is significant I think and that might be what brings the Master back into the series in the future. We probably haven’t seen the last of Lucy Saxon either. My girlfriend is convinced that there is a lot more than her that meets the eye. She pointed out that it was the Master who had hypnotised Lucy to shoot him if things worked out the way that they did and when you watch it she still seems to be under his spell when she shoots him, so we have definitely not seen the last of Lucy Saxon.

It makes more sense than Jack being the Doctor’s son, or his father, or his second cousin twice-removed.

That is one of the things that still puzzles me from this episode. Who is Lucy Saxon? Is she human or is she an alien who was working with the Master? She had very little to do in this episode and it looked as though the Master had been beating her up (spot the shiner she was sporting and the way she was moving throughout the episode), although that might have all been an act on her part. Perhaps her joining in with the chanting of the Doctor’s name was also part of her plan? Why did we never find out about the drumming. Still we don’t know why the Master had constant drumming in his head. Perhaps we will never know. Does that mean that all of the previous Master’s had the Doctor Who theme in their heads?

The biggest revelation in the episode seems to be that the Face of Boe is in fact Captain Jack in the future. I mean this sort of makes some sense to me, as it would explain why the Face called the Doctor an old friend, and how he knew that the Doctor was not the last of the time lords. He had also been pregnant, which was one of Jack’s first lines in Torchwood, so that also still works for me. Having said that the Face of Boe actually died in Gridlock but Jack apparently cannot die, so how does that fit? It was also said that the other boe creatures only lived shorter life spans and that nobody understood why the Face of Boe had lived for that long so if you take the boe creatures to be humans and Jack to be a human who has lived a lot longer that humans would normally do, that also makes sense. Still it makes more sense than Jack being the Doctor’s son, or his father, or his second cousin twice-removed.

Last of the Timelords was a roller coaster ride and I still don’t quite get