Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

Blockbuster

Horror of Glam Rock is a great title for a story, it is probably one of the best episode titles of Doctor Who we have had for quite a while, but I wasn’t really impressed by the story that comprised it if I am being honest. In fact I was downright disappointed, and I don’t think that this will be a story that I will listen to again for quite some time.

Having said that I didn’t hate the whole thing and there were some elements that I quite liked. I liked the end titles with the glam rock version of the Doctor Who theme (so much better than the Mankind version released in the 1970s, you remember the one that was released as a blue 12”vinyl record. I had one once (on 7”) and sold it to a mate of mine for £5. I am not sure that the record is worth that now) and I also liked the incidental music with its guitar riffs.

Apart from the title there are some other obvious nods to Horror of Fang Rock such as the fact that it was a fairly standard run-around base-under-siege type story where a group of people are trapped in an enclosed space with alien nasties trying to attack them from outside. In Fang Rock it was set on a lighthouse whearas in Glam Rock it is a motorway service station.

So if the plot was a riff on Horror of Fang Rock, then the ending was a riff on The Idiot’s Lantern with the alien menace getting trapped inside a piece of audio/visual equipment on a video cassette in The Idiot’s Lantern and on shuffle mode on Lucie’s MP3 player in this story. It may be highly unoriginal, and is another apparent coincidence between this audio season and the last television series, but within the confines of the story it does just about work and was probably one of the only ways that you could have vanquished an alien being who arrived in sound waves.

Paul McGann continues to impress as the Doctor and Sheridan Smith was a little less annoying than she was in Blood of the Daleks and is starting to settle down in her role as the Doctor’s assistant, there is still that spikeyness between them but there is definitely a growing admiration developing too. I have found her to be quite annoying in both Two Pints of Lager and Grown Ups but here she actually isn’t that bad and is starting to grow on me as a character.

Bernard Cribbins was good in his role as the manager from hell Arnold Lane, Una Stubbs was ok in her role although I didn’t realise that it was her until the end credits, and Clare Buckfield was good in her part of Tricia Tomorrow and it was a shame that it was her who was killed in the story and not her brother (played by ex Boyzone member Stephen Gately).

I thought that Stephen Gately was very wooden in his role as Tommy Tomorrow but I guess that can also be put down to his character who was written as being quite wooden anyway so perhaps that is not his fault.

My main problem with Horror of Glam Rock is that the story never quite engaged me and I just found myself checking my watch every five minutes whilst listening to it, but I will say that the plot did fit the fifty minute format well and that the sound design was as good as ever, and it really did sound like you were actually in a motorway service station.

Only The Lonely

Nostalgia just isn't what it used to be, is it?

Paul McGann stars in Horror of Glam Rock, another cracking episode of Doctor Who, where a motorway food stop is the target for an alien race to begin chowing down on humanity. An alien race which seems to share properties with The Wire. In my head, I see the same alien as the lesbian in Torchwood and the poet in SJA for the angelicy voices, and sort of scaly hippopotamuses walking on hind legs for the monster form. Whatever the intent, of all the monsters I've heard in the audios, these aliens are the ones that I'd most like to see in the series. So much potential, because they can exist in so many forms.

My first question before listening to this was "Why?". My second, and more pertinent question, was "How will it pace?". There have been problems with pacing in some of the one-parters in the TV series over the last two years, so I was curious to know if the same problems would afflict a single episode of Audio. The answer: Fine. It all is paced perfectly. By keeping the right level of subplot, there is no clash between the plots, no fight with the story-arc for room, no fake character development to pretend it's been there when it hasn't. No. They cut as much as they need to, and only leave the stuff that they ACTUALLY HAVE TIME FOR. Result, the characters all develop as much as they should, believably.

Perhaps the best thing about the plot here is that, rather than creating a set of monsters who want to destroy the earth or take it over, they manage to endanger the lives of all humanity without making it all cliched. I was happily surprised to learn that they just wanted to feed and move on, as it makes Earth much more to scale in respect to the rest of the Universe. I have found it very difficult over the last two years that there are so many aliens out there wanting to destroy or take over our planet, and so this seems a much more natural reason. Father's Day and The Empty Child were great with the same reason, they both had original ways to put humanity in jeopardy.

Bernard Cribbins was unfortunately cast, as it became incredibly difficult right from the start to do anything but smile fondly whenever I heard his voice, with memories of The Railway Children keeping any negative thoughts at bay. Already Sheridan Smith has settled well into her role, but has managed to retain a slight uneasiness towards the Doctor, which Rose seemed to completely bypass, to the point that she clearly wanted to have his babies resting in a crib while the two of them played Yahtzee by a fireplace by The Unquiet Dead.

Una Stubbs is quite stale in her conversations with Lucie, and it unhappily is only at the end that her performance is at all believable, although that could well be down to a shoddily written character (in, I might add, an otherwise not bad script). All her reactions to hearing about how she has no life in the future are unbelievable, and her delivery isn't much cop anyway.

Paul McGann is a genius. Period.

One thing I would have very much liked at the end of the episode, is when the Headhunter arrives, for her to turn the ending completely upside down by killing all the surviving characters at the cafe. I was really hoping for that sort of a shock ending, where after the entire episode being cleared up neatly with a pink bow, for the entire lot to be put into the box marked "All For Nowt" by having everyone killed anyway. This would have really emphasised the Headhunter as a character. Of course, if as it's starting to look, the Headhunter is going to simply offer Lucie a job, then killing people would be out of character, but it still would have made a cracking ending.

The Bumper Book of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about "Horror of Glam Rock": Barnaby Edwards wrote this story with the intention of sabotaging the memory of glam rock, as revenge for when David Bowie ran over his dog.

"Hey, Doctor, leave those kids alone."

Time for the weekly spoiler alert.  I've given away the ending somewhere in here again.  Sorry.  But hey, man, you can listen to play first if you like.  Like wow.

I was shopping in HMV just before Christmas, flicking through the Bob Dylan albums in the sale trying to remember the ones I hadn't heard yet and an old work colleague sauntered up beside me.  He's an old fashioned muso, the kind that DJs in bars and plays bebop and northern soul and when I told him I couldn't remember whether I already had a copy of Live At Budokan he smiled ruefully and said: "So you've bought it rather than lived it then."

That's probably how I felt during the brilliantly titled Horror of Glam Rock the latest Eighth Doctor adventure on BBC7.  This was the kind of story that could only have been written by someone clued up on music, but just sometimes I'm sure it's that crowd, looking out for all the lyrical references, who will more than likely have rung the most enjoyment from it, and especially from "Children of Tomorrow" the original song which appeared in the teaser.  Since the first album I bought was Five Star's Silk and Steel and I've never recovered and I was a fetus at the time when this episode was set,  I was left with what was in essence a fairly standard base under siege-type story with the usual, for this series, wicked sense of humour.

I was left with what was in essence a fairly standard base under siege-type story with the usual, for this series, wicked sense of humour.

The Tardis, in attempting to land Lucie back in her own time and place finds itself as close as it can get, in the year of my birth, 1974 near a motorway café.  Doctor Who Adventures recently ran a story in a similar locale with hungry aliens, but this began in much grimmer style with the Doctor plus one discovering the corpse of a horribly savaged glam rocker but as the story ensued it became apparent that some alien mammals were also becoming big fans of the dining out just off the M62.

Slowly a group barricaded themselves within the cafe, away from the monsters.  Claire Buckfield and yes, that Stephen Gately as a group called 'The Tomorrow Twins' who along with their manager played by Bernard Cribbins are on their way to a miming session on Top of the Pops.  Una Stubbs is in there too playing diner's waitress and Lindsay Hardwick as apparently random customer, Pat, whose significance is slowly revealed.  No point grumbling about celebrity cameos in this radio series as pretty much ever part has been filled with famous names by director and casting director Barnaby Edwards.

Obviously the touchstone was The Horror of Fang Rock with the strangers slowly dying across the duration in a tiny location; for me though, there was more than a hint of the film Tremors as some deaths were treated less than seriously and the trapped weren't entirely horrified by their bestial enemy.  I'm surprised they didn't try to name them, although given the presence of Cribbins and the reference from Una to all the bands that pass through the restaurant, all the greats, "Hendrix, Lulu, The Wombles" I'd say they were modeled after Uncle Bulgeria's lot.

This all seemed rather more sympathetic than the last time Big Finish tried to evoke a sub-culture, in the awful Seventh Doctor story The Rapture

Tons of atmosphere, what with the sound of the snow underfoot and the special rock opera incidental music by Tim Sutton.  This all seemed rather more sympathetic than the last time Big Finish tried to evoke a sub-culture, in the awful Seventh Doctor story The Rapture, and unlike that story it had some fun with it, hardly taking it seriously at all.  That the alien communication device was a stylophone would please Rick Wakeman and it's a shame that the budget couldn't stretch to some actual musicians from the period.  This seemed like the perfect story to have someone playing themselves - wasn't Roy Wood or Noddy Holder available for once?

If I'm slightly disappointed it's because I've just finished reading writer Paul Magrs* novel The Scarlett Empress one of the most inventive things I've ever clapped eyes on, whereas this felt, particularly towards the conclusion much more like a soup of familiar elements (rather like the kind of soup that might be cooked up using the Proppian signifiers the Doctor suggests in that novel).  So along with the base being under siege, and blood thirst mammals all tooth and paws, there was the relative of a companion, Gelthian elementals "The Only Ones" ala The Unquiet Dead who aren't what they initially appear to be who were trapped within some modern media in a similar way to The Idiot's Lantern (told you there'd be spoilers).  I can understand though, why after the epic happenings of the previous story, producer Nick Briggs decided to reduce everything down to something much more intimate.

Like many aging rockers, it also sagged a bit in the middle as the characters sat around waiting for the next event or for the Doctor to figure something out.

Like many aging rockers, it also sagged a bit in the middle as the characters sat around waiting for the next event or for the Doctor to figure something out.  This kind of thing is customary in these types of stories as are the deaths that appear to be inserted almost to create some incident when there isn't anything due.  This is the first story that features the completion of a whole story in fifty minutes without any kind of cliffhanger but unlike the last two episodes it doesn't feel like two episodes slapped together in the middle which might accounting for the lack of pace.

Which isn't to say that this sag didn't allow for some wonderful character moments as the Doctor and Lucie reconciled a little bit: "I'm glad I met you." She said.  "I'm glad too." He agreed.  Eighth also seems to be developing some of Ninth's ticks, commenting on the foibles of human beings and his alieness more than I've heard before.  Lucie's wicked quips were there too though: "Tranny pile up on the M62?"  Marvelous.  Across the board everyone was given an inspiring moment and there wasn't anything wrong with Magrs' characterisation (it's pronounced Mars then?  I've been calling him Paul Maggers for years).  Watch for the moment towards the end when the Doctor realises his plan isn't exactly going exactly as, well, as  planned.

It's pronounced Mars then?  I've been calling him Paul Maggers for years.

Performances were good across the board, exceptional in the case of Stubbs and Cribbins who actually gets to be heroic.  McGann continues to be a revelation and I loved hearing in the documentary afterwards that they simply didn't tell him who had been cast so who would be coming in each day and his excitement at being given such talent to play against is evident in his performance.  Sheriden, although inevitably in more of a companion-like role is still bucking my expectations and was particularly lovely when she meets her Auntie Pat.  Oh and I can't wait for Katarina Olssen's Headhunter to get some meatier scenes.

The close of this play revealed that she's gaining on Lucie, but little else was revealed.  I do think that like the opening seasons of the McGann stories there is a building plot arc featuring elements that have been inserted that will only really resonate later - Lucie meeting her Auntie cannot have been a coincidence can it?  Will she return?

Next week:  The Mythmakers revisited.