Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

Private Eye

I’ve tried, with limited success, to review City of Death before and I couldn’t do it again. It’s clear to anyone sane who watches it that it’s a near perfect union of plot, character, dialogue, performance, design and location. The script is almost too witty for its own good, (but not quite) the leads are almost so charming they’re smug, (but not quite) and plot is brief and padded, (but what padding it is).

Instead, I’d rather highlight a DVD feature similar to one which came with The Green Death – taking the piss out of classics. I love the DVD from the summation to the lovely matte disc (it's a thing for unwrapping - same reason why I like subscribing to magazines) and in the last SSS I commented briefly on the extras but, in the absence of anything original to add to the episode, I think I’m justified in reviewing a featurette. Hey, if you can podcast them...

He has no Parisian villa (no Parisian wife, either)

Eye on Blatchford purports to be covering the strife of an outsider struggling to integrate into rural England – Sardoth the Second to Last Jagaroth. He has no Parisian villa (no Parisian wife, either), no bricked-up Mona Lisas or even a decent Julian Glover mask. The ensuing “documentary” ticks all the right boxes: Brasseye-ish titles, EU mocking, finding work for some extras happy to charge about fields and they even have their own comedy-accented expert, played by nonetheless than Gabrielle Woolf.

I wonder if it would be such an outrageous idea to include more fan-contributed material on DVDs. Some of the stories themselves could have been fan-vids, but more on that tomorrow. Very often the commentaries merely repeat what the documentaries used to bulk up the release will tell you in shorter time. There’s no need for a person to be attached to a production for them to have something entertaining to say (and anyway, it’s probably safe to say they played Agador at some point), and I’m sure out there would be some fans with an acidic sense of humour and a microphone... Maybe it’s a bit unlikely but still, there’s a terrible epidemic of commentators announcing how much they love everything – particularly in the new series – when it’s clearly bollocks. A whole commentary may be too long, but I can’t help but wonder what the results of letting Mr Querry loose with a camera and a rough spec would be.

what, I wonder, is a “duck procurer”

Back to my original point - which appears to be wandering the plains at the moment – what, I wonder, is a “duck procurer” and what were they doing on a production which, to all appearances, is devoid of duck-life? Answers on the back of a postcard.

PS - if anyone is interested and remembers a rather rabid piece of bile I wrote on Love & Monsters, they may be relieved to know it's now been edited to conform with EU standards and the law of reason.

Produced By Télé Hachette & Belvision

Pretentious music accompanied by incomprehensible montage of artsy background images by Barry Newbury and Ian Scoones. Diamond-shaped title reads 'Late ReWho'. Cut to studio.

Kirsty Wirrn (for it is she): Good evening and Daleks. Tonight on Late ReWho, noted art crtic Brian Sutekh, feminist author Germaine Greendeath and foodie columnist Nigella Nimon will be throwing open a discussion on the influence of Quantel Paintbox on late twentieth-century art, and throwing punches at each other once the cameras stop rolling. But first, we contiune our retrospective look at European graphic literature with one of the most enduring icons to emerge from the genre in the last fifty years.

Herge's Adventures Of Tomtom

The first sketches of the boy reporter that would later be christened Tomtom were drafted by Herge for a local Bedford newspaper in 1946. Even at this early it clear that Tomtom was destined for bigger things. The character would change and evolve over the course of twenty years until he ready for national print exposure, but would never lose his distinctive boyish face and blond cowlick.

By 1979, our coiffeured hero was romping across the funny pages in his first major role as the larger-than-life boy adventurer we would remember him as, accompanying Captain Pillock and his crew to the Antarctic to defuse an atomic bomb in the book 'Tomtom And The Red Wire-Blue Wire Sequence'. Tomtom's own future had never looked more secure. In fact barely six months passed until the next instalment saw print, hurriedly written in order to take advantage of the previous graphic novel's success, one which would bring him closer to home in the springtime Parisian streets. This book was 'Tomtom And The Gamble With Time'.

Comics historians and Tomtom fans alike are unanimously agreed that Tomtom And The Gamble With Time represents the definitive chapter in Herge's career, one which would seal forever Tomtom's status as one of the most popular comic characters in the world. Certainly it shares many characteristics with Herge's other celebrated works; the sparkling dialogue and character interplay, the balance between serious narrative and wit, the playfully humanist touch and the exquisite European landscapes rendered in lovingly picturesque detail. But Tomtom And The Gamble With Time has a special uniqueness to it, as Herge confounds readers' expectations with radically altered character dynamics which nevertheless work extremely well.

The main paradox present in this volume is that the blond detective, Tomtom himself, never gets to do any actual detecting. Instead, this function is performed by the normally hapless Timelord Twins, the lovable bumbling idiots who talk inconsequental nonsense to each other. Similarly, since Captain Pillock had at the end of the previous book sailed away to search for the Lost Colony of Starwun, it falls to Tomtom to provide the action-hero muscle, a role which Herge has him take on with great gusto.

Another return alumni for Tomtom And The Gamble With Time, and which would prove to be his final appearance in the series, is the madcap scientist Professor Parkerlus, replete with more typically zany futuristic inventions and the complete misinterpretation of everything said to him. Parkerlus is deftly written out in a blaze of glory, indeed he surpasses himself in this book with a device that (a) is capable of breaking the barriers of time itself and (b) almost works. It was therefore something of a shock at the time to see Parkerlus fall victim to his own contraption and age to death, given the number of mishaps with previous inventions that had yet to prove fatal, though in hindsight, this time is heavily signposted from the start of the book. Whether Herge had decided that Parkerlus as a character had reached his limit, or that he had finally tired of writing far-fetched characters with outrageous accents is unclear, but the brushing-off of Parkerlus' death by the remaining cast mere pages later strongly suggests the latter.

Every good Tomtom adventure needs a colourful central villain, and Herge duly provides with the return of Tomtom's arch-nemesis, the tycoon and smuggler Aristotle Kristatopulos, this time masquerading for the majority of the book as a French aristocrat. However, in another twist for which this particular volume is so highly acclaimed, Kristatopulos himself is merely the front for an even darker secret; the man is in reality the secret Gestapo war criminal Oberleutnant Jeagerotz, whose wealth, power and trophy wife disguise a maniacal obsession to reinstate the former glory of the Master Race. Ironically for Herge himself, by depicting Jaegerotz as so utterly ruthless, yet sophisticated and in his own way almost likeable, the book would add further fuel to the speculation of Herge's own alleged Nazi sympathies that would dominate his later published career, and Jaegarotz would never be used again.

It may be churlish to point the inadequacies of such a beloved book, but otherwise the viewing public wouldn't be subjected to poncey art programmes like this. It's a pity that the faithful dog, Leesonowy, makes no more than a token appearance as Herge had not yet decided how best to resolve his previous writing-out from a bout of canine laryngitis. Also, the fact that Herge was never blessed with children himself serves to underline the glossing-over of certain marital nuptials between Jaegerotz and his consort. Most disappointing though is that Herge's famous eye for scenery detail does not extend to other areas of the book; considering that so much of the plot deals with the smuggling of priceless long-lost art trasures, Herge's own research into this field turns out to be thinner and less accurate than David Howe's rejected book 'Doctor Who: The Nineties'. The resolution to this subplot with nothing more than a marker pen has also raised many an eyebrow, but is still no less imaginative or believable than the myriad of mystic artifacts from lost civilizations found in Herge's other works. None of this, however, detracts from a volume that ultimately offers all manner of insightful observations on life, humanity and the nature of incongruous objects as abstract art, as well as being a rollicking good satisfying read.

Unfortunately, by the time Tomtom And The Gamble With Time reached publication, it was already clear that Herge's talent had peaked with this particular book, and that Tomtom's subsequent adventures would never quite rise to the same heights again. Indeed, it would be another another seven years before the character would return to the fore in another book of his own, the less distinguished 'Tomtom And The Deeply Boring Underground Station'.

Next week we cast a critical single eye over Russel T. Davies' signiature series, 'Arsetricks The Gall'.

The Bumper Book Of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about City Of Death: Micheal Hayes' direction to Lalla Ward, once The Creature From The Pit was in the can, was "actually love, don't play it like Mary Tamm."

"I say, what a wonderful butler. He's so violent!"

So, City of Death. The serial which got the highest ratings in Doctor Who's history and is often claimed as one of the greatest stories in the show's entire run (I stand by the readers of Doctor Who Magazine that the actual greatest is Genesis of the Daleks). And, certainly compared to some other stories I've seen (I shall name no names, Mr G. Death) it's a fantastic little story, and it's one which I very much enjoyed and will no doubt watch again at some point in the future.

The trouble with 'reviewing' it is trying to saying something original about it. At this point in time, over 25 years since it was first shown, anything you could say about it - good or bad - has already been said far better than you could ever hope to explain it. So if this 'review' sounds familiar or is similar to something you've read elsewhere, you'll have my excuse, insincere as it may be, and I'm sticking to it.

First and foremost, it's absolutely wonderful to get away from the UK! Doctor Who spends far too much time in our motherland. Yes, I know it's a British show and we're supposed to be proud of it, but look at it this way - what were your favourite stories of the newer series? Chances are, if The Satan Pit wasn't the top one (which it is for me, I love that serial) then it was pretty high on the list along with Tooth & Claw. And, alien planet and creatures trying to kill everybody aside, it was great to get away from bog-standard England once or twice, wasn't it? Same with this serial. It didn't happen often, but when Doctor Who was set outside the UK, it's always nice to actually see it as with this adventure.

Next up, the cast. Julian Glover is, and I suspect always will be, utterly watchable, and it was an utter delight to watch him here. The other, incidental characters were also great fun, from Duggan and his obsession to breaking things to the Butler and... well, his obsession of breaking people, they were all good fun to watch. As for the two main leads, they did a great job and were clearly enjoying themselves. As I believe someone else here mentioned, it's fun trying to spot when the two have just emerged from a back alley having done some unmentionable deed. But they both do a good job with this serial and I believe I may even be warming to Mr Baker somewhat. Maybe.

Finally, the plot. It's a typical Douglas Adams script - a good idea with plenty of light-hearted moments scattered around... although, that said, it's also one of the problems I had with the story. At no point did I really feel any sense of menace, or that the main characters were in any danger. I had a rough idea of what was going to happen (you always do when watching a classic serial) - 7 Mona Lisas, set in Paris, giant green alien splintered across time, the big bang which kick-started life on Earth - but even so, I didn't feel much of a threat. It's not a huge flaw, but I tend to like my stories being much darker. Perhaps that's why I think Genesis is the best Doctor Who story. But whatever I feel, it's a small problem and doesn't stop the serial being a good watch.

One other point I feel I must point out - the ending. Did it feel rushed to other people as well? Scaroth has been punched out, and all of a sudden WHAM! Everything's all settled before you've had a chance to pause the DVD and figure out what the heck is going on. Did anybody else find this a but of a turn-off?

Anyway, those minor quibbles aside, it's a fun little story  and I mostcertainly don't regret having bought it, but it will be a while before I watch it again. I like my stories, and my Doctors, somewhat darker than this. And that, I believe, is why I'm not a huge fan of Tom Baker or, to a degree, David Tennant. When they do dark, they're very very good, but when they don't...

The Bumper Book of Made-Up Doctor Who facts has this to say about City of Death: The real reason behind the story being set in France was that most of the shooting staff were alcoholics and needed the excuse to grab some cheap booze. Tom Baker is understood to have bought several trucks worth of liquor during the production and to have made Lalla Ward consume most of it, which would explain their brief marriage which ended when she finally sobered up.

Exquisite

Can never remember - and can never be bothered to look up, frankly - whether it’s this episode or the last that still holds the record for Doctor Who’s most watched episode (something like 17 million viewers, yes?). And as we all know in the days of three-channel television - especially with the other big-hitter taking an unplanned sabbatical - such a figure was somewhat artificially enhanced. Still, at least the ITV strike didn’t coincide with something like ‘Underworld’, eh? And I bet JNT would have sold his entire Hawaiian shirt collection for a similar event in 1989...

City of Death Part 4

The story so far: Romana and Duggan have been captured by the Count, with the former blackmailed into producing something called a ‘field interface stabiliser’ in order for Scaroth to go back in time and reunite his twelve fragmented selves. As a fitting demonstration of his megalomaniacal powers he has just reduced the loyal - but dumb - Professor Kerensky to a heap of background scenery from Steptoe and Son and threatens Duggan with a similar end unless Romana helps him.

Meanwhile the Doctor has arrived back at the chateau, where he immediately name-drops Shakespeare and reveals that it was he and not the bard who wrote (or at least transcribed) Hamlet; as ol’ Bill was resting his wrists at the time (a spurious claim which next year’s Globe-set episode will almost certainly avoid mentioning). The Countess is suitably impressed and we are at least given some reason why she hasn’t questioned her husband’s activities in the cellar, not to mention his fetish for rubber masks (apparently all the bling and fur coats clouded her judgment). But what’s great about this scene is how it perfectly illustrates Tom Baker’s almost unique ability to go from jovial charm to sinister intensity in a (double) heartbeat. No-one has - and I fear no-one ever will again - combine these two Doctorly traits in quite the same way.

Tom’s still on ‘don’t f**k with me’ form when he goes down into the cellar to confront the Count. And after several minutes of ‘you can’t stop me / I must stop you’ type verbal duelling, the Count realises that his marriage is over and goes to break the news gently to the Countess. In some bizarre parody of a break-up scene he first reveals to her that he is an alien called Scaroth, then pulls his face off to unveil the green, one-eyed truth beneath. The Countess - rather understandably - is a little distraught at this unlikely turn of events, having hoped instead for a quiet night in and a game of checkers before bed that night. And we can only be thankful in these pre-RTD days that Scaroth didn’t go the full Monty and show the Countess what he had really been packing all these years in the trouser department.

With the Countess put out of her misery - in a death with provides a solemn warning about the perils of wearing too much alien jewellery - Scaroth makes his departure in Romana’s hastily-arranged time bubble. And the Doctor, Romana and Duggan find themselves, not for the first time, holed up in the cellar. Escaping with the help of the private dick’s typically no-nonsense attitude to doors, the trio rush through some more padded-out location work in Paris to get to the TARDIS and follow the last of the Jagaroth all the way back to 400 million years ago (a Sunday I think).

There, two art curators have mistaken the police box for some avant garde addition to the gallery’s collection and wax lyrical for several seconds about the wonderful a-functionalism of the time machine’s presence until the Doctor and co arrive to whisk it away in front of their eyes. The fact that cameo-ing as these two budding Mark Lawsons are a) the star and writer of a then very, very popular comedy show and b) one of the best-known women satirists of the past fifteen years makes you all the more relieved that the current production team would never pull a cheap, attention-grabbing stunt in these enlightened days. No, sirrree!

Back in 400 million years ago, the TARDIS has handily arrived mere yards from the about-to-go kablooey Jagaroth ship and it’s left to Duggan to save the day by providing the most important punch since (until?) Henry Copper floored Cassius Clay in the sixties. With his time - quite literally - out, Scaroth is flung back to the mansion where Herman loses points on his employee loyalty card by blowing the green-skinned git into extinction.

And we end as we began - atop Eiffel Tower with the Doctor and Romana extolling the aesthetic qualities of Paris to a still-bemused Duggan. There’s almost a post-modern comment about fandom in the closing message about art being meaningless if you have to be told that it’s worthy (a point that several super-fans since the 1980s would do well to heed). Then it’s just a charming farewell and an inconceivably quick descent from the tower before the credits crash in.

Someone once said that Doctor Who - at least until 2005 - ended as a populist drama following the original transmission of this story. I’m not too sure of that - as the show would once again reach a peak of mainstream success with the early Peter Davison stories - but ‘City of Death was certainly a watershed story both in 1979 and in terms of the direction the show would take the following year. Out would go the post-grad humour (and arguably, fun) of these stories; in would come ‘real’ science and a solemn Doctor pondering the end of the universe. There’ll always be proponents for each style and I’m not about to launch any debate about the merits of one over the other now.

Not here. Safe to say though that, no matter how changing attitudes come to regard Doctor Who as a body of work, for now at least - for today - we’ll always have Paris…

(The Bumper Book of Made-Up ‘Doctor Who’ Facts has this to say about City of Death Part 4: John Cleese and Eleanor Bron only stepped in to perform cameos after ‘George and Mildred’ stars Brian Murphy and Yootha Joyce declined as a result of a filming clash)

Are you warm, are you real, mona lisa?

City of Death one of my favourite Doctor Who stories, certainly in the top five, perhaps even the top three.  Rather than transcending the format, it takes full advantage of it, with elements of humour, time travel, history, big ideas, excellent characterisation and horror balancing, for once, just perfectly.  I can tell its a favourite because I've stood at the top of the Eiffel Tower with a copy of the opening scene and read it out-loud.

The long travelogue moments in Paris with Tom and Lalla dashing about the city are some of the most cinematic to appear in the series and its a shame that the classic show was so studio bound for much of the time.  But they also represent the spirit of experimentation happening all over.  Some knock the Graham Williams era but forget that City of Death was one of its products and simply might not have happened under Hinchcliffe or Holmes.  See this far-sighted quote which flashed on-screen during the excellent Paris in the Springtime documentary on the dvd.

Imagine -- North Africa or Iceland.  Amazing.

There is, however, one element that has always bothered me.  The Mona Lisa.  Throughout the story much is made of the fact that it's supposed to be the greatest painting in the entire galaxy and it might well be -- but the real painting only features in this story at the very end when Duggan buys a postcard.  For the rest of the time we're treated to a rather sad looking copy which appears to have been painted along with Nancy, impressionistic paint strokes which might have worked in long shot but hardly look right in the close ups selected by director Michael Hayes.

It's just difficult to understand why a print couldn't have been utilised which at least looked like it could be in Leonardo's hand.  I remember being fooled once by a print which had be plonked in a nice frame with a varnish applied (although not far enough to buy it) and given that there needed to be seven identical works that all look this same this would surely have been the way to go, and less hassle for the prop department painter.

But that seems somewhat churlish given that none of the sets look like they were created other than Studio B in Television Centre and that the Louvre in particular looks a bit small (compare and contrast with the famous running scene in Jean-Luc Godard's brilliant new wave film Bande A Part).  There's also the moment when Duggan breaks through the cellar wall and the foam back of one of the 'stones' can clearly be seen.  And the boom mike in the Renaissance scene. 

The important thing to remember then, is that script, those performances and that fact that actually most of this extraneous stuff is unimportant if you can suspend your disbelief.  Under those circumstances, me?  I'll believe anything.  Probably.

Scarlioni's Angle

City of Death Part 3

Finally, in this episode you find out what Scarlioni is up to and why he is seemingly able to be in two places at the same time, nearly five hundred years apart. He also reveals himself to be a Jagaroth, but not just any old Jagaroth but the last of them. That’s it I’m afraid, the last of a proud race now living in pieces all over time.

It took a while to get there but now it all starts to make sense. Not that it really matters as the story is so enjoyable you wouldn’t mind if it took several more episodes to get to the crux of the matter. Well I wouldn’t anyway. Tom Baker is just being his usual self as the Doctor and Julian Glover is continuing to play the Count with a great deal of dignity, when many lesser actors would just resort to playing it completely over the top.

Like the rest of the episodes this one contains plenty of great, very quotable dialogue, more than the entire Sylvester McCoy era put together (which isn’t difficult let’s face it).

Lalla Ward gets quite a bit to do in this episode being very Doctorish with Duggan as her clueless companion. Duggan gets to do what he is best at in this episode also (i.e smashing and breaking things).

As Kerensky gets to hear of the Count’s real plans he finally works out that he is not interested in ridding the world of famine after all, he defies him. Cue cliffhanger with rather a funny death scene by David Graham.

There really isn’t much else you can say about the third episode as they aren’t particulary interesting on their own, but suffice to say that the third episode of City of Death has plenty of great lines, in fact the majority of the lines in this story are quoteable and virtually all of them work out of context as well as within the story itself.

City of Death Part 4

Sadly we come to the end of the story now, which is a great shame as I have throughoughly enjoyed watching it back. It is difficult to put one’s finger on what it exactly is that makes this story work because it is pretty much a triumph in virtually every way: the direction in particular, especially in the location shooting in Paris, is excellent and looks very much like a feature film quite unlike a lot of other episodes of that era; the script is simply sublime, chock full of one liners and very, very funny lines.

It may not be atypical Doctor Who at times but as it so enjoyable and just so much fun you can forgive it, you can even forgive the fact that for about three episodes very little happens.

For a quite a few fans City of Death is usually in their top 5 Doctor Who stories of all time, more usually than not in the top two. Indeed it is my favourite story of all time, this may be the fact that I am also a fan of the works of Douglas Adams, but it is mainly because it is such a good story. Douglas may have written the script, but the majority of the ideas came from David Fisher. However it was Douglas who made the story what it was. I am sure had it been written by David Fisher that it may not have been anywhere near as good.

There are lots of interesting ideas present in here. The idea that a person can be splintered throughout time and live independent lives is quite an interesting sci-fi concept and then, of course, there is the major plot point that if the villain wins the day then the human race would never have been. These are both very science-fiction and although they are the most important aspects of the plot they are often placed into the background pretty much until the final two episodes, mainly the final episode if you are honest!, for a lot of pretty Paris travelogue and people stealing the Mona Lisa.

I guess that one aspect of the plot that doesn’t really make sense in the final part is the whole relationship between the Count and his Wife. I mean how did she not realise that he was not human and that he really was a spaghetti Bolognese headed alien. I guess they never actually enjoyed conjugals during their marriage.

I am digging a bit too deep on this point as it doesn’t really matter, you just sort of accept that they were married and that he was such a good master of disguise that she was never made aware of the fact that he wasn’t who she believed him to be. In this part, all the of the plot threads came together nicely and their was a satisfying ending with the universe being saved by a punch from Duggan to Scaroth’s nut.

There was even time for a lovely reverse zoom shot from the top of the Eiffel tower at the end of the story showing the lovely views you can get from the top of the tower. The French tourist board could probably have used this as a corporate video showing the sights of Paris!

It just wouldn’t have worked had it been filmed anywhere else. You can’t imagine a scene shot from the top of Blackpool tower having the same effect.

Finally, there is the cameo by John Cleese and Eleanor Bron. Virtually pointless, but a lovely little scene that is about some the major themes in the story, i.e the value of art. It didn’t need to be there, but you are glad that was.

Enough gushing now, let’s move on to Mark of the Rani. God help me!

A Tale of Two Cities

This week on ‘Holiday ‘79’, Cliff Michelmore will be basking in the delights of Florence 1505, while back in the studio we’ll be showing you how to take advantage of those ever-popular cheap package trips to Paris.

City of Death Part 3

Okay, ‘Who’ cliché of the week - Romana is a female version of the Doctor, with the point driven firmly home in this story by having her own dumb ’n’ blonde (though this time, male) sidekick in order to a) explain the plot to and b) generally act superior towards in a slightly condescending manner. Anyone who still yearns for the likes of Joanna Lumley or - Gawd fakkin help us - Catherine Tate to one day take the title role could start here…and bear in mind just how much worse the real thing could be.

The pairing-off of the regulars is necessitated by the fact that this episode takes place in two different - though equally sartorial - settings. So while Romana and her new sidekick try to stop the stealing of the Mona Lisa in 1979, the Doctor has found that Leonardo’s been busy knocking off multiple copies of his signature piece all the way back in 1505. Though why he takes so long to notice the first copy - the original, you might say - sitting on a stand when he’d already taken a languorous tour of Da Vinci’s study in the previous episode is, frankly, anyone’s guess. But never mind the details, feel the banter as Baker, Glover and Peter Halliday - in one of his innumerable ‘Who’ guest roles - play ‘who can give the most dead-pan reaction’ along to some more excruciatingly witty Douglas Adams dialogue. There’s even a moment that dates this story more than anything else: when the Doctor takes a picture of the marvellously matter-of-fact guard with a Polaroid camera. I mean, what year other than 1979 could it be..?

Back at the chateau, Kerensky is plumbing new depths of gullibility as he reacts to Scarlioni’s delirious mumblings about the Jagaroth as proof he is helping some noble cause with all the chickens he’s producing. Perhaps I’m being a bit too harsh on the oddly accented scientist, as he’s certainly got grounds for employee grievance given that a) his boss seems to be stark raving bonkers and b) his initial remit of producing food for all mankind has swiftly descended into producing a half-arsed time-travel machine on pain of death. Had the professor survived his untimely end - of which more later - then I think we’d have been looking at some sort of landmark case in employment tribunals.

Kerensky's initial remit of producing food for all mankind has swiftly descended into producing a half-arsed time-travel machine

Whilst Romana and Duggan reconvene at the TARDIS-substitute café - the owner of which hasn’t noticed that a) two English-accented tourists appear to have been there all night and b) one of the pair has smashed a window to get in - Scarlioni helpfully enters exposition mode to give us some background on the ancient race of the Jagaroth. With the aid of a flick through the family tree - during which we see ‘Cleopatra Scaroth’, ‘Jesus-look-alike Scaroth’ and ‘Romany-looking Scaroth with a slightly Crusades-ish nose-guard’ - it seems that the Jagaroth are just one more of at least half-a-dozen Who races to have a decent claim on the human race’s existence and all its subsequent development. Stand back Azal, Fenric and all the other pretenders to the throne - there’s a new (old?) player in town…

And being episode three, there’s of course a sudden drying-up of plot; so we’re once again treated to some completely unnecessary - though undoubtedly more pleasing on the eye - running around Paris as the Doctor, Romana and Duggan rush from their respective locations to get back to the chateau. Where Romana is given the very simple choice of building a fully functional time machine for the Count in exchange for him leaving Paris’ beautiful landmarks - not to mention Paris itself - standing.

Ultimatums ahoy! But at least the Doctor’s escaped the prospect of torture by cold hands and - having called back at the Louvre (where, bizarrely, two guards treat him like some specialist investigator) - he arrives at the café to find Romana and Duggan already on their way to the chateau (and you’d be forgiven for expecting Brian Rix to pop up at this point). And before you can say ‘not more location filming filler’ he’s on his way in hot pursuit just as Romana is stalling on her Deal or No Deal dilemma. Unconvinced by the Count’s ability to build a stable warp field (or some such), she’s forced to witness some of the worst ‘Dad dancing’ outside of a family christening; as Kerensky’s naivety finally costs him his life and he gyrates himself into a time-accelerated grave like some bizarre body-popper.

forced to witness some of the worst ‘Dad dancing’ outside of a family christening

Should have stuck to the Saturday-night comedy double-act, methinks…

(The Bumper Book of Made-Up ‘Doctor Who’ Facts has this to say about City of Death 3: in polite circles, the dialogue for this episode has been used as a template for charming dinner party conversation. Except for the bits about warp fields)

Shards Reunited

Or "I'm Putting The Band Back Together Again"
Or "Trisha Special: 'Why I Married A Man With Green Skin And One Eye'"
Or "Duggan's Dreary Dicksome Decking Drags Down Dear Doctor"

City of Death - Episode Four

The destruction of Paris is contemplated at many points during this story. And who hasn't thought about exercising his anger on the French before now? Although you'd have thought that merely having Duggan go on one of his signature rampages would eventually cause more damage to the city and its populace than this laughable machine that Kerensky's built (for real Parisian destruction you need go no further than Team America's open few scenes).

"The decorative gold leaf looks more like Caramac wrappers that have been flattened out and stuck onto the doors."

I'm not totally convinced that this lash up would cause anything more than x-rays of molars to be taken. And on the evidence presented here the most it seems to be able to do is instill in its victim a need to perform a jiggy little movement that would even embarrass Pan's People and then engage Star Trek Aging Process To The Max. In short, it looks no more horiffic than many an anti aging skin care advert.

Of course, it's x-ray capability does mean that it could at least be used to workout which of the Mona's are the duds and which is the bobby dazzler. But wait! What will the stupid Count do with all this high tech gadgetry now that its creator has been removed from the equation before he was able to complete the Dummies Guide level owners manual. This where Romana comes into play, up off the bench, rubbed down and slipped right into the middle of the action in her not-at-all pervy school girls outfit. Phwoarrrrrrrrr.

And from a school girl outfit to an all in black number, as the Countess begins to get a glimmer of what she might have married. And she gives more of an insight into the marital activities she might, or might not, have enjoyed with the Count, in the process revealing that she's enjoyed the high life with the Count, to such an extent that he's installed a really shoddy version  of the statuette that leads to the Bat Cave in Wayne Manor.

"Why she didn't also graft on a spectacle wearing donkey spleen, with a cockney accent, whilst she was at it?"

But getting back to the plot, as the Countess' little grey cells audible start to piece together all the bits of her sham marriage to the Count, he returns to the main drawing room to say his goodbyes. I'm not too sure she's gotten the lifestyle the lack of physical contact merited because some of the decorative gold leaf looks more like Caramac wrappers that have been flattened out and stuck onto the doors.

Romana reveals a level of stupidity hitherto unseen in her character when she realizes, with a Gallifreyan D'oh, who she's been working for. "Ohhhh, if I had known it was the Jagaroth I'd not have helped him at all. Silly me!" And then announces an utterly pointless two minute limit she'd built into the field sustainability germinator (or whatever it was called). Why she didn't also graft on a spectacle wearing donkey spleen, with a cockney accent, whilst she was at it?

Two minutes. But that's enough time for him to get back to 400 years BC, throw some croutons into the primordial soup and stop himself from blowing his reproductive organs into twelve different bits. Perhaps that's why their sex wise activity was curtailed.

You've got to admit it, it's certainly a unique explanation of small penis syndrome, or SPS. And one that shall shortly try out myself...

Good bite.

The Bumper Book of Made Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about part 4 of City of Death: The Shards of Scaroth made it to number 27 in 1983 with their only hit, the slow rock ballad/skiffle fusion number "Green Skin Small Nob".

Paris, Jagaroth

One thing I have noticed from watching these stories episodically for these Stripped Down session is that often very little happens from episode to episode but that you do not seem to notice this when you watch the stories in one go like the majority of us Who fans do. Anyway, I digress.

City of Death Part One

City of Death is another one of those stories where very little happens in the first episode. In the case of this story it doesn’t matter that not a great deal happens because it is all done so beautifully.

It starts off well enough with some great model work by Ian Scoones of the Jagaroth spaceship on prehistoric earth, followed by a great shot of the ship trying to take off and then exploding. All well and all Doctor Who.

Then for the next twenty minutes or so you wonder if you are in fact watching Doctor Who and not some strange French thriller of an episode of a holiday programme. Don’t get me wrong it is done beautifully and looks great and all and you can tell that Tom and Lalla are having a whale of a time waltzing around Paris. The question is: is it Doctor Who? The answer to that is, of course, a resounding yes. Doctor Who can be absolutely anything its wants to be and this is proved with stories such as this and Love & Monsters.

What I loved about all the sequences of the Doctor and Romana wandering through the streets of Paris was Michael Hayes direction. He was determined to really make this episode look different and he also shot scenes in front of stranger and stranger objects such as a ornate gate or a postcard rack, or through railings on top of the Eiffel Tower. He also made good use of the location. If you are going to go to all the trouble of filming in Paris you might as well show that you are actually there!

On the subject of Tom and Lalla they were so obviously into each other during the filming of this episode that part of it almost seem like it is a honeymoon video directed by a French auteur, you are just basically watching them wandering around savouring the sights and sounds of Paris enjoying each other’s company. Even Dudley Simpson’s music sounded French! This was certainly a different type of score from the other stories of this season and one can believe that he had been listening to French music or watching French films before starting work on the score for this story.

Apart from a few elements such as the slips in time and the work being done by Professor Kerensky in the basement of Count Scarlioni’s chateaux there is precious little science fiction in this episode but you just don’t care.

On the subject of Count Scarlioni, what a performance this was by Julian Glover. He is pretty much playing a Bond style villain, a role that he would later actually take in a Bond film proper. Scarlioni even sounds like the name of a Bond villain for christ’s sake! He brings a great sense of dignity and gravitas to the role of the Count that not even ripping his face off to reveal that he really has a head made out of spaghetti Bolognese can dent!

I must admit I really didn’t see that cliff-hanger coming when I first watched the story (what does that say about me, eh?) but I guess it was really quite obvious if you thought about it for a while. Also, it happens so out the blue that you are just not expecting it. That is what makes it such as good cliffhanger.

City of Death Part Two

So, after the jolly that was part one, this second episode is set virtually entirely in the Count’s chateaux, and contains some of the wittiest, funniest scenes ever seen in the history of Doctor Who.

This is partly down to the writing (it is written by Douglas Adams after all) and partly down to Tom Baker’s performance as the Doctor. Well in his portrayal of himself, because by this time Tom had stopped playing the Doctor and was just playing a version of himself. They might as well have changed the name of the series to The Tom Baker show because, at the end of the day, it was popular because of him and no matter what you say about Tom Baker he was always very watchable as the Doctor even in some of the more suspect stories.

This episode contains very probably the best lines ever uttered in Doctor Who and the scene between the Doctor, the Count, the Countess, Romana and Duggan is very possibly the wittiest scene ever in Doctor Who. The story is certainly the wittiest ever, and there is some very clever humour on display unlike in some of the other stories of the seventeenth season where they were often trying to be funny but failing miserably, City of Death is not trying to be funny it just is funny.

Lalla Ward as Romana is a perfect foil for this Doctor although in this episode she really has very little to do except to stand their and look pretty. Catherine Schell is also in the same boat as Lalla Ward in this episode, there but not really taking much part in the proceedings. Like Lalla, though she does a very good job of just looking glamorous.

You start getting more hints about how the Count is not all he seems, apart from the fact that he is actually a spaghetti headed alien obviously, when they find a roomful of bricked up Mona Lisa’s. Then the episode goes off on another tangent with the Doctor disappearing to Renaissance Italy to meet his old mate Leonardo. Then you get another very surprising cliff-hanger when as the Doctor is at the mercy of a comedy guard the door is flung open and a man looking very much like Count Scarlioni enters and demands to know what the Doctor is doing there. This is another example of something that you weren’t expecting happening. That is what good scripts do, always surprise you, and this was a very good script, despite the fact that it was written basically over a weekend.

Apart from that, after two episodes still very little has actually happened, but it is so enjoyable you just haven’t noticed that in reality fifty minutes have passed without a great deal going on.

Duggan. And the betting pencil of Doom.

I wonder what's on the other side...

City of Death - Episode Three

It's party time for the shards of the Jaggaroth as it's their annual works outing. Although when you've been the only member of your species for 400 million years, and you instantly know every single thought that every other splinter of your being has. This tends to make small talk fairly difficult.

"Are they the only race to have invented prosthetics before masturbation?"

So... Here are some conversation pointers for the shy and/or perpetually bored splinters of Scaroth. I'd start asking questions like, how comes all the shards look the same? And where are they getting their bulk supply of Glovermasks? You can just about swallow the fact that the 20th century version has access to rudimentary makeup techniques, like those last practiced in Mission Impossible, but where's his old Italian counterpart getting the fright masks from? To say nothing of the other shards of Scaroth we see. Are they the only race to have invented prosthetics before masturbation?

And precisely how, all over, is this disguise? For the most part he's mincing around in a green kimono but presumable he, and the Countess, have enjoyed a full, loving and occasionally squelchy  relationship. She's obviously not twigged that nothing's amiss with her partner's physic. So have they actually seen each other naked? Have they? I'd hope that bit part of his disguise that's molded to look like the Old Chap is actually a damn sight more robust that his face mask. Of course, they do say that love is blind. Well in this case it's not only blind but it's also retarded to the point of Boris Johnston.

"The fish with boobs epic Splash wasn't based on Da Vinci's work"

Still, at least his other splinters have associated themselves with those who aren't so demanding. Take the chap who works for the Borgias. The only gentleman in existence who wouldn't even know if he was gay if he had arousing thoughts of man meat whilst at the weekly madrigal musical theatre event. The Bourgias recruitment policy must have gone down hill in recent years if this was an example of their recent appointees. Perhaps they were too concerned with their Papal cousin who was busy laying the foundations, with Leonardo, for Tom Hanks' movie career.

What do you mean the fish with boobs epic Splash wasn't based on Da Vinci's work? At least her prosthetic work was a damn sight more reliable than Scaroth's and would stand up to a whole lot more action. At least, if my recurring dreams have told me anything...

The Bumper Book of Made Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about part three of City of Death: a full range of Scarlioni dressing gowns, kimonos and night attire are now available from all good C&A high street outlets.

The Da Vinci Coda

It’s getting increasingly hard to review this story without resorting to cliché or just regurgitating Douglas Adams’ quite wonderful script verbatim. I can’t remember a time when watching a story in which so very little happens - halfway through and no-one’s yet got a reason why the Count is either funding time travel experiments or trying to flog off seven genuine copies of the Mona Lisa - yet been so entertained. If only so much of Who’s oeuvre was like this…

City of Death Part 2

Of course, we have to start with that scene. What on paper was probably little more than a traditional ‘Doctor confronts the villain’ piece becomes pure gold in the hands of Adams’ witty, literate script (no wonder current Who scribe Steven Moffat’s such a big fan) and Tom Baker’s almost sixth sense delivery of every line. Many fans find the whole postgraduate shtick of the late Graham Williams era completely off-putting (and arguably it’s only in this story that the whole knowing, clever-clever pastiche of the show’s format truly succeeds). But you’d have to be the most curmudgeonly fan - and probably like Season 18 and Christopher Bidmead far, far too much for your own health - to be anything but dazzled by the almost impossible ease with which Baker, Ward, Chadbon, Schell and Glover (given perhaps the hardest task, as he’s still meant to be malevolently monstrous throughout) deliver their lines in what is almost a cross between Oscar Wilde and Blackadder. But it’s Tom who really brings it to life; and I don’t think it’s any stretch to say that - if pushed - the great man himself would choose this as one of the defining moments of his acting career, Doctor or not. And how fitting that in a story all about the ‘value’ of art - be it financially or aesthetically - that this very story contains perhaps one of the few moments in forty-plus years that you’d unashamedly recommend for anyone’s gallery.

Of course, we have to start with that scene

If we must talk about the plot, then it’s only to note that yet again we have a supposedly genius scientist who’s really a bit thick. Kerensky’s delusion of the Count being little more than a philanthropic version of Bob Geldof is a little far fetched (though he’s hardly alone here in having the proverbial rug pulled over his eyes) and in any other story not so blessed by genius would be ridiculed beyond mere words. Growing chickens to feed a starving world? Beyond the lack of ethical comment on a society which already breeds livestock for the dinner table, it’s hard to imagine the likes of Ethiopia and Uganda being particularly impressed with an unending stream of chicken Mcnuggets across their food dishes every day. Though admittedly the idea of stealing something only in order to make something else more valuable is rather neat (and owes more than a little to the plot of Goldfinger) and it’s a shame that this whole aspect becomes redundant later on as Scarlioni turns his intentions instead to the TARDIS.

it’s hard to imagine the likes of Ethiopia and Uganda being particularly impressed with an unending stream of chicken Mcnuggets

Elsewhere we can only bask in dialogue and performances that the majority of the show’s original run could have done with much more of (even the much maligned Tom Chadbon makes Duggen likeable in a brainless, stereotypical kind of way). And you really can’t praise the sight of Tom in his pomp too much; shamelessly indulgent, whilst winking at the kiddies back home, as he’s become. I don’t think there’s ever been a finer tool for getting across Douglas Adams’ characteristically stream-of-consciousness ramblings either.

And the trip to Renaissance Italy’s a nice diversion too (reminding one how rare it was for the TARDIS to travel in time as well as space during the course of a story). And I remember even now just how shocking that cliff-hanger revelation was at the time; as Scarlioni somehow reveals himself from the shadows in sixteenth century Florence despite still lying on the cellar floor in 1979.

Beautiful episode. No probably about it.

(The Bumper Book of Made-Up ‘Doctor Who’ Facts has this to say about City of Death 3: despite the common conception of him being no more than a pseudonym, David Agnew was in fact a real person; he provided the geese with which Tom Baker would wrestle during rehearsals)

Bracelets, baubles, bangles and bells

June 1937. And as the massed ranks of the Hitler Glee Club start to gather their sowing, one man's toil in Strasbourg has resulted in the creation of the world's first artichoke. Using nothing more than a scrap of lined note paper, a discarded pram and six grams of Charlie, the artichoke would go onto rule the world. This feat wouldn't go unnoticed. He was wooed by the biggest companies of the age; Camel Laird, Bird's Custard and Player's Cigarettes. Unfortunately a glittering career was cut short when he was squashed beneath an advertisement for depilatory cream leaving his godson to compete his scientific legacy...

City of Death - Episode Two

Listen up, girls. The key to wealth and happiness is to accessorize the bejesus out of yourself. There's nothing better than a pair of earrings that can tell the future, a necklace that offers salient discussion points for that difficult office small talk and not forgetting a bracelet to set off the entire ensemble. I'd go for one that'll scan security systems. You'll look fantastic. No doubt.

Whilst the obvious accessory to go with a bad case of wriggly green skin is a Julian Glover fight mask. But, be careful how you remove them after a hard day's mwuhahahering cos those things are expensive to replace. The heart might say rip from your face in a sort of cliffhanger reveal manner, but just think of the damage. Perhaps a slow and painstaking removal might be more prudent? Sure, not as dramatic but at least you'll not have to splash out on another one so soon. Because, you just know when you run out of suave masks, the gas man'll be round knocking on your door and the only one you'll have left is that Frank Spencer mask your Jaggaroth aunty bought you for Christmas that you pretend you've not yet had the opportunity to wear.

"....find your off-colour oily wank canvases."

When guests do turn up you'll look like a fool if you've got to replace your human skin seconds after a dramatic reveal, even if those guests do start acting like they're on one of those homes programmes that choke up the schedules of daytime television. This Doctor fella is obsessed with furniture and trying to get Herman to engage with him on the age of the property, whilst his female companion, Romana, is obsessed with the size of a cellar. And all the other chap, Duggan, needed to do to complete the effect would be to throw some scatter cushions around the place, and the pummel them into submission. By the end of this they'll be ready to make an offer and move in.

Of course, when your cellar's some sort of KFC research facility run by the godson of the creator of the artichoke (played by Peter Glaze in a Crackerjack mad professor style). Barely reaching the high standard set by his fascistic godfather, he ended up being kicked out of the Laboratoire Garnier facility. It was life on the street eating discarded weasels and croissants until the green one came along and gave him his own state of the art facility and ordered chicken. Super chicken.

And you don't want to have your half millennia old stash of erotica bricked up in an adjoining room, and then stick your house guests in there where they could not only influence the chicken machine but also find your off-colour oily wank canvases.

Not only will it undoubtedly bring the house price crashing down, it'll also result in a nasty out break of Allo' Allo' Fallen Madonna disease. And you'll need more than depilatory cream to clean up that mess...

The Bumper Book of Made Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about part two of City of Death: Julian Glover took home a double pay packet for this episode, which is why K9 doesn't play any bigger part that that of soiling the TARDIS console room floor with ball bearings and WD40 off screen.

Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's 180Fr. Shag Hole

Bouillabaisse. The impish overlord chef of Middle Earth, Anthony Worrall Thompson, has a recipe for bouillabaisse that, to be honest, sends shivers down the reclaimed bovine spine of my non-fish eating diet. I eateth not of the legless meat. Subsisting solely on a diet of things with hooves is no bad thing, mankind shouldn't even consider scoffing anything that looks like it was ever in The Underwater Menace (apart from the choreographer of that underwater fish scene).

City of Death - Episode One

Obviously inspiration for the following season's pan across poo encrusted Brighton Beach, we scan across a vista of a baked hard turds (which has recently been visited by a herd of antelopes following their recent curry night), we see that Baron Silas Greenback has landed his ship on a desolate and unfathomable landscape. Just think West Midlands after a thunderstorm. This green spaghetti chap seems to be having a little engine difficulty. It's unlikely that Green Flag will be able to reach him  in time, and he's fresh out of panty-hoes to replace his fan belt.

"Parisian streets all look the same."

Segueing into contemporary Earth you begin to see the problem with the whole shebang. You feel like a tourist who's on a super European mini break, trying to leg it round as many of the famous sights as possible in record time, before the overnight coach back to Wolverhampton pitches up to whisk you back to everyday life.

Looks like they also forgot to take some additional mics away with them as most of what we get are long shots of our heros legging it through Parisian streets. Streets that all look the same. Consequently, whenever they get to a scene with dialogue you get it faster than Richard Hammond going round an airstrip in York. That's Numberwang! How pissed would the rest of the cast have been when they realized that only three of them would be making the trip.

Particularly as you had heavy weights like Countess Catherine Schell and Count Julian Glover. Decadently smoking ciggies in long holders, sipping Creme De Menthe and wiggling like there's no tomorrow. Have you seen Catherine Schell tottering around on those pins? Phworra.  It's Paris in the spring time. And lust is in the air for our heroes...

And that, like many a fish-based dish, has got to be a recipe for disaster...

The Bumper Book of Made Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about part one of City of Death: cutting edge visual effects where used to transform Blackpool into Paris.

More of a Table Wine

How to review one of Doctor Who’s all-time classics? It’s a question that keeps popping up at least once during all of our Stripped Down sessions; and in the case of arguably one of the most literate stories - from a time when Doctor Who was little more (and little less) than ’The Tom Baker Show’ - the temptation is to just transcribe the script verbatim and have done with it. Still, like an onion there’s always one more layer to peel off - I guess I’ll just have to be prepared for the tears in my eyes…

City of Death Part 1

We open on an Ian Scoones-sculpted landscape of prehistoric, paper-mache vistas. In an incongruous, spider-legged spaceship a green, single-eyed alien is test-driving his ship’s latest warp-drive enhancement with all the skill of a seventeen year-old joy-rider with his Burberry hat over his eyes. Before you can say ‘engines canna take no more, cap’n’ said ship and its pilot are scattered across the landscape and we fade onto the sunny façade of a spring day in Paris (the significance of which would have surely left the viewer none the wiser back in 1979). Here the Doctor and Romana are struggling to find the apposite epithets with which to describe their latest holiday destination, sounding like a pair of middle-class interlocutors who have suddenly discovered the delights of life outside of a Dorset sand-pit. Pretentious? Possibly. Almost insufferably self-satisfied? Certainly. Yet if we study the following formula we can put into context the difference between such annoying - yet strangely endearing - social sequiturs with more recent forays into the realms of twattability:

Doctor & Romana / Doctor & Rose X Intelligence / Smugness = Likeability

As you see, the formula for achieving a successful mix of know-it-all loftiness with audience identification is a tricky brew. But let’s not be ostentatious about this, the combination of Tom at the height of his mesmeric self-indulgence with a companion who seems only too happy to keep up with his stream of consciousness persona completely knocks Tennant and Piper into a severely cocked hat.

a green, single-eyed alien is test-driving his ship’s latest warp-drive enhancement with all the skill of a seventeen year-old joy-rider with his Burberry hat over his eyes

As always, I digress. But given the sheer amount of location footage that this first foray onto foreign soil afforded the show has yielded, this is perhaps understandable. The most difficult thing to accept about ‘ City of Death’s opening episode is how little actually happens. Yet because it all doesn’t happen so beautifully we never notice that our heroes have merely swapped walking aimlessly around the corridors of TC1 for walking aimlessly around the sights and smells of gay Paris. Quite rightly the production team have taken full advantage of the chance to bring some real gloss to the usual studio / quarry-based programme. And they’re so in the moment of being abroad that they’re bloody well gonna make the most of it, goddammit!

But as always the plot’s afoot. Basically Julian Glover - purring his way through the role of a post-modern Bond villain as though he’d be doing the very thing a couple of years later - has got a Ronnie Barker-lookalike Professor holed-up in his cellar conducting experiments on time (the effects of which the Doctor and Romana periodically experience whilst sightseeing at the licence-payer’s expense). To what end these machinations are for is yet to be revealed, but safe to say they’re serious as their funding requires the Count to flog off as many copies of the Guttenburg bible as to make sales of The Da Vinci Code seem pale in comparison.

And though it seems almost rude to distract our heroes from their Gallic gallivanting, a visit to the Louvre alerts the pair to an attempt to breach security and purloin a certain scribble by one Leonardo da Vinci (understandably so, as it is a very pretty painting). Reeling from another of the time-slips as though his alter-ego has enjoyed a particularly good night on the Soho tiles, the Doctor attracts the attention of both a two-bit private detective (who proceeds to follow him and Romana around Paris like a bad smell) and the Count’s (very probably) beautiful wife, who includes amongst her bling armoury a very curious bracelet which detects alarms and is about as likely to turn up in this year’s Argos catalogue as the Sash of Rassilon.

The Doctor reels from another of the time-slips as though his alter-ego has enjoyed a particularly good night on the Soho tiles,

Stealing the bracelet like the tea-leaf ragamuffin he is, the Doctor is soon finding all manner of guns shoved in his face as first Duggan (the private dick…think a slightly more buffoonish Harry Sullivan with lashings of Mickey) and then some of the Count’s goons (who clearly think black is very in this season) take turns in getting all heavy with the handguns. While back at the chateau, the Count’s gone for a sabbatical down in the cellar; during which he rips off his perfectly coiffed bonce to reveal - der der derrrr - the face of the hopeless one-eyed alien who had totalled his space-ship just twenty-five minutes previously.

So, before next time I leave you with the following imponderables to ponder…

• Why does the Count feel the need to unmask save for the sake of a good cliff-hanger? Is this some kind of Jagarothian onanism?
• Can you identify three scenes in which Tom and Lalla have just had an off-screen tiff and three in which they’re so hopelessly drowning in each others’ ardour as to literally make the TV glow with sexual frisson?
• Why does the Doctor need to slice open his novel before speed-reading it (a la ‘Rose’) in the Paris café? Does Gallifreyan literature come shrink-wrapped?

Answers on a priceless painting - marked ‘This is a Fake’ - by next time…

(The Bumper Book of Made-Up ‘Doctor Who’ Facts has this to say about City of Death 1: as a cost-cutting exercise to maximise the amount of budget that could be spent on the Paris location shoot, the entire cast and crew were paid in glasses of water)