Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

Just a tweak of President Schwarzenegger

Watching this episode for the nth time what strikes me most is the oddly Kubrickesque direction. There are loads of arty shots and it works with the “futuristic” feel. The pace is unrelenting as all three stories are established.

Once you get past the time, (it doesn’t really matter, does it?) which is totally wrong, there’s lots to enjoy in the opening quarter. Inevitably, the Doctor is the first to escape, from Big Brother, and Jack follows having had a great time with the Trinny and Susanna of 200,000. Rose, meanwhile is trapped with the Anne-droid. There’s a little plug for the upcoming Torchwood in one of the questions. I can’t help thinking she would have been better off in another Big Brother. If the controller was behind this, why did she drop one of the Doctor’s companions in probably the most dangerous game?

The music throughout ranges from excellence, (the cheery muzak in the What Not to Wear department) to the wrong-but-right , (schmaltzy strings as the Doctor asks Lynda to escape with him) and the utterly intrusive, (the otherwise ominous shot as the Anne-droid turns to disintegrate Groff). Murray Gold’s work is starting to make some sense but there’s still a lot of bull.

I had a picture of a bunch of writers sitting round a table, each armed with his clever, creepy Dalek reveal and then RTD reaching a compromise whereby each one is used, thus killing most of the clever creepiness.

As the tension builds the Doctor delivers a set of speeches presumably designed to make us at home feel bad. We just sit at home watching telly then writing about it on the internet... The moment when the Doctor realises Rose has died is one of the best in the whole series. It is brilliantly acted out and for once the music is right, blocking out Cptn. Jack’s contrasting reaction. Their arrest and interrogation is suitably non-essential so we can think, “What’s going to happen?! Help, it can’t end here!” Another deft criticism of Guantanamo Bay style detention “without trial” is fitted in.

As the Daleks are cleverly and creepily revealed, again and again, I had a picture of a bunch of writers sitting round a table, each armed with his clever, creepy Dalek reveal and then RTD reaching a compromise whereby each one is used, thus killing most of the clever creepiness. Individually they were all very good techniques; the reflection in the wall as one of the pepper-pots crept up was probably the most effective.

Christopher Ecclestone’s performance while addressing the Daleks is, well, fantastic. He has to act like a timelord acting brave while really being s*** scared. The little details are what make it; the gradual disappearance of bravado, the visible decision making and the final line, “Rose,” “Yes Doctor?” “I’m coming to get you!”.

Only 5 days to go – almost 5 days anyway – until we’re on the first real new Doctor Who in a while. I have high hopes for David Tennant but watching Christopher Eccleston in this has made me wish even more he had stayed on for a second series, at least. He was wonderful in the role and gave it real depth. Still, Parting of the Ways still to go.

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)

Doctor Woo in an Exciting Adventure with Anne Robinson

It's taken three viewings to finally cement my feelings towards Bad Wolf. I finally worked it out - it's all to do with expectations and context.

I've decided to go for the Russian-revisionism approach. You see, now when I watch The Long Game and Bad Wolf I don't hear the words "200,000 years" into the future, I hear "200" instead. And then I can move on. Why should a date bugger up my enjoyment of what has to be some of the most audacious television I've ever seen?

You can tell RTD is a Big Brother fan, and why shouldn't he be - it's a wonderful programme. If you aren't watching the new series you really should - it's the funniest one yet. Anyway, I enjoyed the references to the show's format: the final three are the cook, the camp one, and the nice one who flies under the radar (basically the first four seasons right there), and then there's the proverbial "plant" accusation, the lovely "I'm coming to get you" line, which also closes the episode brilliantly, and the sly, yet affectionate, "it's not what it was" dig.

And it's great to notice in retrospect that this opening sequence reveals some very subtle clues - like the dalek-like voice of Davina and the dalek bumps all over the walls - it's little touches like these that really reward repeated viewings.

The Weakest Link satire works well, thanks to the great performance from Patterson Joseph (surely a contender for a future Doctor) and the way in which Murray Gold manages to make the WL theme tune sound incredibly sinister. it's just a shame that Gold also reprises his 'cheesy motif during the scene between Lynda and the Doctor later. In fact, this episode is a bit of a Murray Gold megamix, which isn't necessarily a good thing.

The What Not To Wear section is by far the funniest. I love Jack 'Han Solo' Harkness; he's been a complete joy in the series so far. It could have been a spectacular misfire but John Barrowman's performance is just the right side of smarmy bravado. I have issues with the bum-gun scene (see my comments elsewhere on this blog) but that's because I'm a purist . It's a great Farscape moment, but it sits uneasily in the world of Doctor Who. But the writing has been on the wall throughout the series - sex, sex, sex, sex, sex. What happened to childhood innocence, eh? I knew Doctor Who in 2005 would need to change but do we really need an injection of so much innuendo? Oh well.

It's not exactly biting satire either, is it? It's just yet another retread of that old chestnut "what if reality TV shows killed people" and it's sub-genre "and the audience were forced to play them". It's nothing new, radical, or, as some fans have been calling it, a work of genius. It's just a staple SF idea. I can't really view these skits as hard-hitting as they come across to me as nothing more than very amusing parodies. And that's fine by me.

And then there's the tricky problem of expectations. We know that the daleks are behind it all. And I'm not just talking about the fans who knew this months and months ago, I'm talking about everyone who watched last week. Thanks to that trailer - the biggest mistake of the entire  series, in my opinion. How can you ramp up the tension of a big reveal when only the lucky ones who missed Boom Town won't have a clue?

This just makes the slooooowwwww reveal of them superfluous. They keep making it obvious (sink plunger, dalek POV, reflection, dalek death ray, the dalek theme music, and fans have also got the ship design and heartbeat to fall back on as well) so when they finally reveal the money shot it's a crushing anti-climax.

But I adored Eccleston's reaction to their "surprise" appearance. The way in which he adjusts his posture and attempts flippancy in order to mask his fear (go on, watch it again) is magnificent. In fact, it's his best performance yet. Completely proactive (for a change) but shame on Russell for having his cake and eating it - twice now we've been treated to that incongruous image of the Doctor as a "lock and load" action hero, and even though we know he won't use it and it's against everything the character stands for - you also have to admit it's a fantastic moment.

And the final expectation - the trap I fell into - I expected to know what Bad Wolf was. We were presented with plenty of potential candidates - the TV station, the Controller, the Daleks - but no definitive answers. If Russell is playing with us then he's doing a simply magnificent job. Just imagine if they'd managed to keep the regeneration a secret too.

I just hope it makes sense in the end...

How Russell got his groove back

There’s an old interview with Blake’s 7 star Paul Darrow, in which the actor talks about a certain scene he filmed for an episode of that series, in which his character had to suddenly produce a gun. Simple enough, you might think, but evidently the costume the production team had seen fit to furnish Darrow with for this particular episode was rather tight-fitting and had no pockets, meaning that there was nowhere on him he could carry the prop. As the script necessitated its appearance, there was no way around it, and a solution was sought. The problem was solved by having a scene hand crouch behind Darrow, just out of shot, and pass the gun into his hands behind his back. This – while undoubtedly a neat solution – had the unfortunate effect of, as Darrow put it, “making it look as if I had plucked the thing from out of my backside!”

I have no idea whether Russell T Davies has ever read that interview, but if he hasn’t then Captain Jack’s novel way of dealing with the year 200,100’s robotic equivalents of What Not to Wear’s Trinny and Susannah is certainly something of a coincidence. It ought to be an utterly ludicrous moment, but somehow it works, in no small part to because of the manner in which it is played by John Barrowman. The actor has been a real treat ever since he was added to the new series’ line-up, and he’s at his best here – whether it be flirting with anybody who comes into his path, playing the action-adventure type role for which he was devised, or – in one of the finest moments of a fine episode – screaming with rage, anger and indignation “Don’t you touch him!” to the Game Station guards as the take hold of the Doctor after Rose’s shocking ‘death’.

Barrowman is merely one of the beneficiaries of what is without a shadow of a doubt Davies’ finest script for Doctor Who to date. I do not mind admitting that when news of some of the elements of this episode leaked out – mainly the inclusion of mocked-up versions of various contemporary reality / quiz shows – I was less than convinced. It all sounded a bit… Well… Silly. However, perhaps that helped – I wasn’t expecting a great deal, so when the episode turned out to not only be decent but excellent, I was even more pleased than I otherwise might have been. There is perhaps an issue of whether the references to various current shows will date the episode – never mind why these shows are still going in 200,100 – but then all TV sci-fi has a tendency to date very quickly, and the shows are very easy to make sense of in the internal context of the episode. I’ve never watched a full episode of Big Brother, The Weakest Link or What Not to Wear, but I didn’t have any trouble understanding the basic concepts and following what was going on.

It’s all dispensed of fairly quickly anyway, as the Doctor and Jack make their way out with new pseudo-companion Jo Joyner in tow as Lynda, “with a y”. Lynda is, as the Doctor says “sweet”, and in the old series you could have imagined such a character joining up with the TARDIS crew at the end of the story. However, the modern series has been somewhat less traditional with its TARDIS crew, and as Lynda is nice, endearing and the Doctor has already promised she’ll get out of Game Station alive, I am rather afraid that this has marked her down for death before the end of the next episode – an episode I suspect is going to be something of a blood bath all round.

Doubtless soon to join that body count is Jo Stone-Fewings as the male controller, another excellent performance, although Fewings does seem to be basically playing the same character he did in Davies’ 2004 ITV serial Mine All Mine. He’s also made surprisingly likeable for a man who’s been overseeing the deaths of thousands of people in the Game Station’s deadly programmes, but I suppose as the Doctor said to Rose back in The Unquiet Dead, it’s a different morality.

Speaking of The Unquiet Dead, we get to see a snatch of that episode as well as the various other instances of the ‘Bad Wolf’ theme present throughout the season, finally brought to some sort of conclusion in this eponymous episode. It’s perhaps not quite what we expected, but it has led somewhere – indeed, that would be a neat description of this episode as a whole. And boy, does Bad Wolf really lead somewhere. The last ten minutes or so of this episode have an electric tension to them – you know what’s coming, and when it finally arrives you can only sit there caught up in the excitement and the tension as the whole series is cranked up a notch ready for the apocalyptic battle to end all battles that we’re going to get next week, if the trailer is anything to go by.

The unveiling of the Daleks as the main threat near the end of the episode is one of those fantastic, “Yes!” kind of Earthshock moments, both for new and old fans alike, although of course neither set of fans will have had the true Earthshock experience as we all knew it was coming. Not, just for once, simply because we old school fans always know too much from message boards and the like, but because the production team rather oddly decided to give the game away in the preview at the end of Boom Town.

Even had you not seen that, Ahearne unveils the Daleks a little early, not once but twice – the eyestalk view with the plunger coming into shot as the Dalek approached Rose was just about okay, especially given its nice resonance with the very first view we ever had of them in The Dead Planet, but then he goes and really spoils things by showing the reflection of the Dalek which exterminates the Controller. Ahearne’s previous reflection-based shot – the Cyberman’s head over the Doctor in Dalek – went down really well with fans, but I can’t see this one being a similar hit. Why not save the pepperpots for maximum impact in the wonderful closing minutes, instead of emulating Peter Moffat’s similarly unimpressive revelation of the Sontarans back in The Two Doctors?

Really though that’s a minor quibble, of course, but I need to pick holes in something as on the whole it was such an excellent episode. Elsewhere Ahearne’s direction is well up to the standards he set previously in Dalek and Father’s Day, and once again this appears to be an instance of everybody really giving it their all as they build up towards the cliff-hanger, setting up the episode to end all episodes – well, for this season, anyway. Christopher Eccleston deserves particular praise – we all know now how difficult the many months of shooting on Doctor Who was for him, but right to the end here he’s really putting everything into the character, with some terrific material to work with. As with Barrowman, his high point in the episode perhaps comes with the ‘death’ of Rose in The Weakest Link game, as he runs his hand through the dust on the floor that appears to be all that is left of his best friend, shocked into silence. His confrontation with the Daleks at the end of the episode is also worthy of a mention, and he proves equally adept at the lighter material – not that there’s much of it in the episode – in the Big Brother house near the beginning.

All in all then, another stunning effort from all concerned, making brilliant what could so easily have been embarrassing. The final battle is just around the corner – and I’m thrilled to say I have absolutely no idea what happens next…

That's Entertainment

Tip number one: don’t watch ‘Bad Wolf’ with your speakers set to surround sound, because you’re likely not to hear some of the most crucial dialogue this series is going to have. Most of the Dalek speeches - not to mention the whole role of the Controller - were absolutely lost on me first time round. And it was only when I caught the BBC3 repeat on mono that I actually knew what the hell was going on. We may live in the era of video and DVD, where greater insight is gained from several subsequent viewings, but surely it was never meant for situations like this?

Tip number two: stay with it, for such persistence will yield rich rewards. Because ‘Bad Wolf’ is forty-five of the most exhilarating minutes of Doctor Who that you’re likely to see. If you ever spent your childhood days imagining the pages of ‘Doctor Who Weekly’s comic - with their epic space battles and fleets of Dalek spaceships - come to life, then you’re gonna love this: and absolutely adore next week. This is Doctor Who as we once only dreamt of: bold, brash and with the budget to finally match its unflagging ambition and vision. Believe me, when you see those saucers finally de-cloaked, revealing the tide of Dalek decimation beneath, you’re likely to cry some huge, fan tears of delight.

But that’s more for next week. For this is very much an episode of two halves, much as this two-parter is likely to become a full-on action fest following the more satirical mystery of this opener. I must admit to actually hating the idea of this episode when the Daily Star splashed its more, shall we say, celebrated aspects a few weeks ago. Not because I was against a Big Brother / reality TV spoof in theory; just that the thought of having the likes of Anne Robinson and Davina McCall involved was the equivalent of using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. How wrong I was. This is about as perfect a parody of two of the 21^st Century’s most successful television formats as you could hope to see. And the inclusion of them - not to mention make-over experts Trinny and Susannah - makes for an occasionally hilarious counterpoint to the more serious shenanigans lying beneath. Russell T Davies’ scripts this year have hardly shied away from trying - and largely failing - to stimulate our funny bones; but after the relentless slapstick of farting aliens and jokes about the north, I’m glad to report he’s finally tickled mine.

And what’s all the more remarkable, given Davies’ self-confessed adoration of the sadistic, humiliation-heavy appeal of the likes of Big Brother and The Weakest Link, is how scathing he is about the whole phenomenon. Because the postulated future of 200,100 witnesses the ultimate expression of modern TV gone mad. While The Weakest Link in our day and age may be a cautious warning of how primal our competitive streaks can be, on the Game Station it has literally become a way of getting rid of the failures in life. And the shallow attention-seekers of Big Brother have followed their natural course of evolution into cattle-like contestants whose desire for fame is forced upon them, not chosen; where the aim is survival, not short-term fame and fortune.

Each of the cameos by these modern TV big-hitters would have made for a great episode in themselves; the fact we have all three merely allows Davies to sharpen his satirical scalpel to a fine point. And it’s all just so much fun. The Anne-droid is just, well, perfect - and all credit to Anne Robinson for not just allowing, but actively taking part in, what is a fairly transparent dig at her matriarchal monstrosity of a persona. Meanwhile, Trinny and Susannah’s spot allows John Barrowman’s Captain Jack to shamelessly show-off as the show-boating stud that he is. And speaking as a self-confessed allergist to almost any type of reality TV (the Doctor‘s attitude to being trapped in this pseudo-prison would pretty much echo mine), I still have Russell T Davies to thank for what is surely the best episode of Big Brother I’m likely to see.

Of course there’s a serious message about modern TV that Davies is trying to impart here. Much as he loves it, he’s aware that a constant diet of game shows and housemates over the several hundred channels we now have access to is only going to make us into the ‘brainless sheep’ of the former Satellite Five; only some one-hundred-and-ninety-eight thousand years premature. And in a series that has already shown us on more than one occasion the future fate awaiting humanity, none can be starker than the smog-covered planet here; beneath which the human race passively submits to its fate. With television as the ultimate mass entertainment sedative.

Safe to say, the regular cast all rise manfully to the occasion, once more blessed with some sharp direction by the now veteran Joe Ahearne. Eccleston in particular showcases all the diverse mannerisms he’s established in this most quixotic of incarnations: one minute flirting like a bloke down the pub with fellow reality refugee Lynda; the next stunned into silence by Rose’s apparent disintegration. The thought of the show no longer being blessed by his, admittedly slow-burning, interpretation of the Doctor grows more regrettable by the week. But at least there seems no doubt, following this episode’s clarion call to resistance, that the Ninth Doctor is going to go out all guns metaphorically blazing. And that this most visceral of incarnations will indeed meet a very bloody end.

But what lifts ‘Bad Wolf’ out of the very good to the truly extraordinary for us fan-boys are the little bits of detail. Take the Controller, for example: a mix of ‘Evil of the Daleks’ Emperor and Minority Report’s Agatha. Or how the old tradition of using the show’s current title sequence as a backdrop to some flashback-type sequence is still in force (though how Rose is supposed to remember that Van Statten’s chopper was monikered ‘Bad Wolf One’ is anybody’s guess). Then there’s the unmistakable, circa-1963 throb of the Daleks’ spaceship interior and the sublime moment when we only see the reflection of one of their number before the Controller’s extermination. ‘Bad Wolf’ is an episode that absolutely fetishises the show’s most notorious creations, giving them a threat and a scale that the old show could only dream of. And the thought of next week’s gloves-off smack-down between the series’ two biggest icons is enough to make the collective body of Doctor Who fans drool incessantly for the next seven days.

Because this is it, people. The culmination of thirteen weeks - and sixteen years - of hope, fear, love and anticipation. Doctor Who is now, without doubt, absolute must-see TV. For the newcomers, it’s been a hell of ride; for the hardcore, this really has been a trip of a lifetime. With the prospect of one seriously wild party yet to come; not to mention the final twist of a less-than-welcome gate-crasher.

So buckle up, because next Saturday’s likely to leave us all breathless…

Reality Bites

Before we commence, just what have the BBC been putting in the feed of their battery continuity announcers? Doctor Woo! She called the programme Doctor Woo. Not once, but twice. "Oh Doctor Woo, what can you do...". And with that...

George Orwell. What a bastard. It's all his fault. Who'd have thought that a novel written in 1948 would have lead to the development of a TV genre so despicable, so dire, that it would have the nation talking for weeks about the would she, wouldn't she question. That is, would Jade Goody know that East Anglia wasn't near Tunisia or wouldn't she.

I have to admit that, in keeping with the wet blanket of pessimism that covers most of the Who community, I was looking forward to this episode about as much as one looks forward to major root canal work with only a 16 year old copy of The Lady, from the dentist's waiting room, to numb the pain. But, as usual, I was wrong...

Chock full of current cultural icons from today's television, and Trinny and Susannah. The strongest spoof is Capt'n Jack's run-in with the two clothes witches. But over in the Big Brother house it's day thorty-seven, and the Doctor's 'aving a bad time of it. Incarcerated with a group of idiots, one of whom, Lynda (with a y), looks like she's been stuck on the Grange Hill deck of the Game Station for around 15 years. And there are Dalek bumps everywhere.

It's good to know that TV quiz shows of yesteryear are being recycled and remixed into extreme versions of their former selves. The version of Call My Bluff, with guns, sounds interesting. And here's a little snippet of this Gansta version:

Robot Robinson: (for it is he) And the next word please... [ping]... Mofo. What do you think is the correct dictionary definition of Mofo? Frank, over to you...

Frank Muir: (for it is he, too) Let me take you back to the balmy summer of '35...

And so on. But wait, here's a few more that I'm looking forward to...

 
• Bullseye where heat seeking missiles replace the darts and people replace the dart board. Listen to Tony, stay out of the black and in the red, nothing in this game for two in the head.
 
• Who Wants To Be A Millionaire where the scooped out cranial cavity of a recently deceased millionaire is the recipient of a new brain stem from a pleb who wants to be a millionaire and the whole corpse is reanimated during a thunderstorm.
 
• Bargain Hunt in which a robotic killing machine, modeled on a cross between the T2000 and David Dickinson, uses an augmented steed to hunt down and brutally kill feral antiques dealers.

The Doctor's reaction, when he thinks that Rose has been killed, has got to be one of the money shots of the series. As he's being manhandled by a guard his blank expression and limp body really sells the shock of what he's just seen. And then there's the kick ass jail break scene, "Let's Do It". The look on the Doctor's face as he calmly mashes a guard's head against the wall in their escape, this is one distraught Doctor. Thinking he's lost his best friend, there's now nothing to hold him back. And the emotion of thinking he's lost her is matched by the joy at realizing that it wasn't a disintegrating beam, but another transmat.

And the climax. What a climax. The pulsing sound of the Dalek control room. Murray Gold's Dalek chanting music rising to a crescendo. Camera pulling back to reveal a massive Dalek fleet (one which I hope will be replaced by a series of crappy little washing-up bottle space ships in the DVD release - in a reverse of the special feature on the Dalek Invasion of Earth release), the Doctor taking no crap from the Daleks and taking so much joy in it. Several punch the air moments. And then Daleks. Fausands of them. Don't shoot till you see the blue of their eye stalks.

And the trailer for next week's bowel clenching finale looks like it's gone all Battlestar Galactica. Fantastic...

All is forgiven

l admit it. I didn't think it was going to work. I despise Big Brother, dislike What Not to Wear and couldn't even begin to imagine The Weakest Link fitting into Doctor Who. I was ready to cringe, ready to finally lose faith in Davies...

But it worked. It made sense. It was justified. And it was brilliant!

Come on, who hasn't forgiven him the fart gags now? And doesn't next week's final showdown with the Daleks look *amazing*?

I don't think Lynda "with a y" is long for this world though, somehow...