Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

Graske yourself this...

In "The Difference Engine", by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, they hypothesize what would happen if the computer revolution happened 100 years earlier and the industrial revolution was supercharged by the development of steam-driven cybernetic Engines. I'd like to propose a similar conceit, what would have happened if interactive television had been created 20-odd years ago?

Would we have been able to go interactive at the end of Earthshock to prevent a pixel-realistic rendering of Adric from going squish into a ferocious, mountainous, pile of T-Rex excretions? Would we have been able to assist the Doctor, when dangling from the Pharos Project dish, dodge barrels thrown by the Master, looking more like Chuckie Egg than a dark lord of Time, in a Donkey Kong homage? Or would we have been able to play the role of the sixth Doctor running down many corridors using naught but a joystick waggle, a la Daley Thompson's Decathlon (the cause for many cases of premature arthritic conditions in early-thirtysomethings), to hurry him along?

Well, thankfully, we've not been able to undertake any of the above outside my slightly soiled night musings, until we were presented with Attack of the Graske.

Discussion of the story is probably an exercise in utter futility, much like supporting Sunderland AFC, as there wasn't really one of any substance - summat about an annoying girl at Christmas, Mr Vee in another prosthetic mask (more gimp masks hang in his wardrobe than in Madame Pain-Threshold's sardonic S&M dungeon's off of the Old Kent Road - coach parties welcome - worth £80 on the Pornopoly game board with three bordellos on it) and a couple of set piece action sequences. Just like those annoying "make your own adventure" books that seemed to be popular in the 80's, this relies on choices to problems to build the story and guide you through the adventure. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that if you're the sort of person who enjoys constructing salad from the salad bar in Pizza Hut, picking your own strawberries and D.I.Y. For the love of Robert Robinson, that's why you pay people to do it for you - because you inevitably end up making a porcine's ear out of a chamois leatherette change purse. Can you tell how short changed I felt with these 'exciting' make-your-own adventure books I received as a child?

So, instead of that, revel in the tenth Doctor in concentrated form. Once a role that was popularly conceived as a laughing stock of a profession, to be doled out like Maundy Money to any twat with an equity card, has now been reclaimed by the elite. Mark my words, you'll be asking "Tom, who?" by the end of all this as Tennant will wipe the floor with the previous nine who blazed the trail before. Can you really see Eccleston doing this sort of thing? Can you? Really? They'd have had to have held a loaded weapon, just out of screen, trained on him to force him to take part in this. With a play pen of newly born puppies, every single one of them would have been given to Guide Dogs for the Blind to become top class guide dogs, and an electric stun probe ready to knock one off, every minute on the minute, to become Hush Puppie fodder.

Roll on series two...

The Bumper Book of Made-up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about Attack of the Graske: Originally this was to have been penned by Who stalwart, Terrance Dicks, who miss heard the answer phone message RTD left one evening, thinking that what he actually said was that he's suffering from an attack of the graske, and spent the next three months on an Indian reserve attempting to cleanse his insides with the world's longest session of colonic irrigation and bowel scraping. In addition to finding out what exactly graske was and how he contracted it.

"I might just pick you up one day..."

About half an hour after Attack of the Graske was first broadcast, an online discussion board was already fired up trying to decide whether it was canon, giving explanations as to why The Doctor would be talking to the camera.  The point that they and others appear to have missed is that some of us had the opportunity  to see the new model in action for the third time this year, and to witness the genius of actually how well defined the character is this early in the game.

I've no idea how far into the new shooting schedule this was filmed but the timelord's personality is already perfectly refined.  David Tennant is funny, exciting and authoritative, even when he's asking the audience to make selections with their remote.  Here, even more than in the preceeding dramas we see that capacity of the man to spin comedy on a dime -- witness the moment when he dashes around the console explaining what the game is about then dropping that hillarious incredulity of 'Including you mate ... how'd you get the energy?'  We haven't seen anything this manically brilliant (in the television version of the series at least) since Tom Baker.

It was an excellent piece of scripting from the always underated Gareth Roberts in his first tv work, filled with cherishable moments which play to the same strength we've seen in his previous work of adding detail to minor characters.  Witness the tragedy of the patronised  grandfather in the family scenes being ordered around by his madam of a granddaughter, bemoaning the lack of inspiration in his Christmas present ('Another year I've got vouchers.  Vouchers.  Anyone would think I don't have a personality.  I quite wanted a footspa.  I do have a personality.') and told off by his daughter ('Put the wrappers in the bin not in a box. It causes confusion and disappointment.  People think they're reaching for their favourite and realise it's only an empty wrapper.')  This is a depth of character much greater than the average interactive game.

The costume design of the Graske was very good, presenting a plausably menacing alien.  The plot, grabbing people from throughout history and replacing them with zombies might not have had the greatest depth in terms of storyline, but was perfectly fine for such a short adventure.  Not to forget that this is actually the first time the new series has traveled to a new alien world, which is an innovation even if we didn't see too much of it.

Other mini pleasures included the cohesive use of onscreen graphics, particularly the Gallifreyan script, which I'm really beginning to warm to after some initial cynicism; seeing the TARDIS console up close; the Victorian Christmas; seeing what looked like a new form of Zygon or even an Ice Warrior in one of the storage containers on the planet; the new Slitheen animation which seemed more plausable and integrated than anything that appeared in Aliens in London; the revelation that this might not be the last we me not have seen the last of the Graske.

The only weakness was really the 'interactive' element of the show, although this was largely due to the technology available.  On Freeview at least, this was a sequence which ran from start to finish, the only variations being whether the player selected the correct answer, the box moving between the two interactive channels.  But hey, this was an experiment and fun to play.

And at the end of it all, we had The Doctor wishing us a Merry Christmas through the tv.  Just like the old days ...

Games Without Frontiers

I won’t bother regurgitating what I had to say six months ago about either ‘Bad Wolf’ or tomorrow’s season finale, as judging by what I seemed to have to say about both at the time (Bad Wolf Review and Parting of the Ways Review) my views have not changed a bit. So instead - and at the risk of coming over a bit Jimmy Carr - here are…

Twenty things to love about ‘Bad Wolf’

1. The spinning, head-down shot of Eccleston’s Doctor waking up in the Big Brother household - in an episode resplendent with director Joe Ahearne’s visual gymnastics, this remains my one favourite shot.

2. ‘You have got to be kidding’ - Who rips open the zeitgeist of modern TV with a scathing (but affectionate) satire of the whole ‘Reality TV’ sub-genre; and it’s RTD’s best self-scripted episode of the series by far.

3. The Anne-Droid. And I don’t care what anyone else says, the lady herself was a genuine sport for getting involved.

4. ‘Ladies, your viewing figures just went up’. Captain Jack flirting with the makeover-bots.

5. Lynda (with a ‘y’). As the Doctor himself says, ‘sweet’; and like Rose before her, offered the chance by the Doctor to change her life for the better.

6. The Doctor’s reaction to finding himself in the Big Brother household would pretty much echo mine. And I just love the way Eccleston reluctantly holds hands with the other housemates.

7. ‘I’m gonna find my friends…and then I’m gonna find you’. The Ninth Doctor gets tough.

8. Play or Die over on The Weakest Link. Who doing what it does best: taking a familiar (even banal) concept and giving it a macabre, surreal twist.

9. The Controller: equal part Minority Report’s Agatha and the first Emperor Dalek.

10. ‘Believe it or not, all I’m after is a quiet life’.

11. The human race as brainless sheep, consuming a diet of endless game shows, reality TV and makeover programmes. 200,100 or 2005?

12. The Doctor’s stunned - almost paralysed - reaction to Rose’s ‘death’. A genuine contender (amongst oh so many) for Eccleston’s finest moment as the Doctor.

13. ‘Let’s Do It’. All’s not lost, as the Doctor and Jack kick arse.

14. That familiar throbbing sound effect as Rose awakes…

15. …and the reflection as the Controller finally meets her Masters.

16. The moment when forty years of cruel jibes about cheap special effects and sub-Star Wars spectacle died in people’s throats: the Dalek fleet is decloaked.

17. Eccleston squares his shoulders, faces his oldest and deadliest enemy and gives that speech. Henry V, eat your heart out.

18. ‘Rose’ - ‘Yes Doctor’ - ‘I’m coming to get you’. And to think that I needed this Big Brother in-joke explaining to me.

19. Thousands of Daleks rise en mass and prepare for battle.

20. The trailer for next week - ‘They survived through Me’. And being convinced that that was Terry Molloy’s voice.

God, I still get goose bumps at the thought of that seven day wait.

('The Bumper Book of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts' has this to say about 'Bad Wolf': the planned shot of John Barrowman's naked bottom was vetoed when RTD remembered the last time the show had a complete arse in it between 1981-2)