Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

iWho Podcast: Fear Her

"It's Doctor Who meets the Daz Challenge..."

Tachyon TV present their alternative DVD commentary to Fear Her.

Topics up for discussion this week include: the ghost of Papa Lazarou, Jon Pertwee 'from beyond the grave', Alan from 'Modern Toss', the exorcism of Frank Bruno, Blockbuster Rental Deals and ****ing kitchens.

Available from the usual place

My future vision is impaired

Everyone else has pointed out the obvious flaws in this episode: why did the UK not disappear when it was drawn on the wall? What was the father-thing that menaced them at the end after the Isolus had gone? Who were all the other children in the pictures? Why wasn't the street crawling with police given the disappearance of all those children? Why fill in pot holes on a street when the torch will only pass by the end? And, in the process, destroy vital evidence in the search for the missing children? Why are the parents of the missing children so secretive when you'd think they'd be tearing their hair out in worry instead of acting vaguely embarrassed? Why were the cameramen in the studio not taken when the presenters were? Why was it dark in the Olympic stadium but not a few miles down the road? Why was the Doctor not shot by anti-terrrorist marksmen when he ran in to the stadium? Where were the missing people? What did they experience while they were there? How come the Doctor was able to draw a torch (and presumably listen to everything going on) in the 'netherworld'? Why did the Isolus want to collect all those friends by putting them in some extra dimension when it was already in the company of six billion of them on Earth? Why did the torch continue its journey, and the BBC continue coverage, given that several thousand people had just vanished? Maybe such things are everyday occurrences in the future? (Given the number of alien invasions everyone's experienced, maybe it's a case of alien abduction-fatigue?)

I didn't like this episode, by the way. But rather than the strong feelings the L&M fostered in me, this one just left me numb. I just didn't care for it.

As much as the 'non-we' seemed to enjoy this episode it doesn't stand up to even the most basic of scrutiny and simply proves the thesis put forward by me and many others here that someone is failing to subject this year's scripts to any sort of editing process. It also proves that audiences are a lot less discerning than we might hope.

I have a problem, unrelated to Doctor Who, but one that causes problems when I watch it. I was a graphic designer for ten years, and teach and write about design for a living now. It means I'm a little more sensitive to aspects of this show (and others) that most people miss. For example, I can spot a fake newspaper in a drama from a thousand paces, notice the difference between the candid snaps most of us have on our mantelpieces and the BBC publicity stills that adorn Pauline Fowler's.

This story was, to put it bluntly, an example of the BBC's design department being asleep on the job.
The first problem is one that maybe most people didn't think about: it seems in 2012 we will all be wearing the same fashions as today - including kids happy to wear six-year out-of-date football strips. Now, SF has a bad record in predicting future fashions (though it would have been nice to have seen some tin-foil jump-suits) but considering this was set in the future, even the near future, there was absolutely no attempt to make it look futuristic. Even the vehicles looked like the ones we have today. I don't think it would have taken much to try to put a few little touches in there to suggest the six years' difference (or rather, to hide the contemporary stuff). Oh I don't know: maybe in 2012 there'll be a trend for the 2006 retro look.

I thought it was odd that a young girl had her bedroom's TV tuned in to BBC News 24 and, while it wasn't odd that the TV was also the laptop computer, it was strange that it was a 2004-model Apple G4 Powerbook (interestingly similar to the one Peter Kay was using last week). I know they last a lot longer than crappy Dells but that's stretching it.

Given the BBC's taste for frequent revamps of its identity (there's another one coming this Autumn, I understand, with the dancing idents making way for something else) it was jarring to see that in 2012 News 24 will still be using the same graphic styling as it is in 2006.

And why were people tuning in to News 24 for Olympic coverage given that it would be covered on BBC1 and ITV? (If ITV's still around in 2012 - it's not looking likely). News 24's remit is entirely different and given the charter renewal debates going on now it's clear that although the channel might cover the opening ceremony as a news event, it wouldn't include the sycophantic commentary that Huw Edwards served up.

Okay, it's all a bit anal - or is it? The devil is in the details, except that maybe it was the attention given to the devil in The Satan Pit that made people assume they could sleepwalk through this. Future visions always look dated a few years down the line, as Doctor Who, Star Trek, Blake's 7 etc show, but the lack of any styling in this episode means it will look dreadfully dated in a couple of years' time, never mind in 2012. You could argue that the series isn't made with posterity in mind, that it's made for today's audience - but you'd be wrong. Japan won't get this episode for two years, it's going to be on UKTV Gold on endless reruns until doomsday, it's made with an eye on DVD sales...

My point is, all the plot points above aside, the episode was badly produced at a fundamental design level, and that worries me. Because while the writing and production team might be content to produce blatant filler material of this nature, I've always assumed the BBC design department to be one that cared. They didn't on this one - not at all. I bet they didn't even realise the story was set in 2012 and produced some fantastic sets of modern-day interiors. I expect better.

Suburbia Strikes Back

I was intending to watch Fear Hear again to do this review, but, after an incident involving a book shelf collapsing and knocking my tv off, breaking the tv/video combi and my dvd player in the process, I have been unable to watch it again since first broadcast. On the plus side our Wharfdale freeview box is obviously indestructible as that survived with just a small dent. Damn gravity!

It did take me a while to get into Fear Her when watching it. I found it to be quite slow at first and it did get take a good 20 – 25 minutes before it started to get good and by the end it was pretty good, well apart from the Doctor running with the Olympic torch that is, which was just silly, but was exactly what I thought was going to happen when everyone else who had been turned into a drawing had returned apart from the Doctor at that point.

Like Sean said, the episode did seem like it was a remake of Survival. They even had a bloke about to wash his car, an annoying teenage companion, a Scottish Doctor unable to do anger and cats. So, quite a lot like Survival then. It did seem a little odd that the Doctor didn't like cats as none of his other incarnations seemed to mind them but I guess he could all of a sudden take a dislike to cats. I can't really imagine why. Cats are cool, they do whatever they like, whenever they like. What's not too like about that?

I guess it was only a matter of time after having a monster based on a child’s drawing that an actual child’s drawing would become a monster itself. I must admit when I saw the clip on Totally Doctor Who where Rose was being attacked by a scribble I did think to myself "what on earth are they doing?", but in the context of the story it worked despite being rather silly as did the Doctor running with the Olympic torch.

The Doctor and Rose were again very smug and very, very slappable throughout the story, well apart from the Doctor who did look rather frightened at the end of the episode with The Terminator-a-like line “There’s a storm coming.” More on that story in the coming weeks. However up until that point I dearly wanted to slap them both round the head.

Probably the best thing about the episode was the performance by Abisola Agbaje as Chloe Webber. She was very good in this episode and pretty much out performed everyone else. There is just something about children being possessed and evil that really freaks me out. It was the same watching The Ring and Dark Water (the Japanese original and not the recent Hollywood remake) Nina Sosanya was good as her Mum but really she didn’t have that much to do but what she did was pretty good. That’s yet another Casanova alumni appearing in the series. I wonder who we will get next season? I’d like to vote for Peter O’Toole or perhaps Rose Byrne. She’d be good.

Euros Lyn's direction here was quite restrained by his standards but was still far better than what we used to get in the old series. This episode looks like it wouldn't have been out of place in a soap opera, well a soap opera like Revelations perhaps. Well it was Matthew Graham who proclaimed this was his the TARDIS lands in Brookside Close episode.

It was pointed out by a fellow fan, whom is also a parent (unlike myself who isn’t), that this story may actually be more frightening to parents that to children themselves. I can see his point entirely. For the children watching I would imagine that the idea of their drawings coming to life would be quite attractive, but not the same could be said for their parents. I think that, as a parent himself, Matthew Graham knew exactly what buttons to press to make this story frightening for the parents amongst us.

My girlfriend really enjoyed this story and she said it was probably the one she enjoyed most of all the episodes shown thus far. I grew to like the episode over the course of the 45 minutes, but did find it a bit lacking in places, though that’s probably just the curmudgeonly old fan in me. There were some good parts (the performance of the young girl) and some not so good parts (the Doctor carrying the flame) but the same can be said for most of the episodes this series. It was enjoyable and, was again, the best thing on television at the moment.

The BoMUDWF had this to say about Fear Her: It was David Tennant’s birthday during the filming of this episode. His mother made him the cake with the edible ball bearings on as a treat and he insisted it was put into the episode itself.

Fear and Loathing in Suburbia

I’ve always tried to appreciate each episode on its own terms; it makes things a lot more enjoyable. I lost sight of that last week and buried what was an original and rather charming 30 minutes (the last fifteen being dire). Well, I got what I wanted: a totally unoriginal, average, beige story. Keeping to my rule, however, it was pretty alright and jolly enough. Just awful at the end. Again.

There’s plenty of reasons to like – and enjoy – Fear Her, (man what an unimaginative title) but they’re sadly outweighed by the negative. The marmalade bit is just wonderful, and even council attitude is given a good pick-axing. The driving idea – a little girl with supernatural powers – is by no means original, (even forgetting decades of cinema and TV there’s TEC/TDD) but a good’un and it’s interesting to see a not-so-villainous villain for once. That said, I had hoped they wouldn’t go the whole hog and bring the Earth into it.

It’s competitive, political, dog-eat-dog, narcissistic, boring drivel that occurs ever four years to celebrate various sports-geeks being better than anyone else at chucking things or hopping over things.

It’s all the sadder that the replacement for Stephen Fry’s CGI fest – which I’d imagine would have been a sight to behold – is rather bland. The whole thing is littered with plot holes but above all else, the ending is very, very wrong. For one thing, the padding is put at the wrong point. After the natural denouement of the Isolus’ departure we have a tacked-on scary bit with a red lantern for no reason whatsoever.

Where the Doctor picks up the bloody torch and prances up to the stadium, however, things take an altogether more desperate turn. In any rational script, he’d be tackled to the ground by 150 policemen, “accidentally” shot and most definitely would not have been allowed to make his self-satisfied way up to light the flame. And where’s the love in the Olympics? It’s competitive, political, dog-eat-dog, narcissistic, boring drivel that occurs ever four years to celebrate various sports-geeks being better than anyone else at chucking things or hopping over things. I do not love the Olympics and more than anything else the torch represents what has been coming across as arrogance in DW.

Anyway. Rant over, it was just an excuse to crow-bar a “current” event in and for DT to look smug.

The only other positive that comes to mind is the kick-ass preview for next week which looks expensive and – hopefully – brilliant. It’s the first time in weeks I’ve looked forward to a particular episode rather than DW in general. We know the Cybermen are involved but...WARNING! THOSE OFFENDED BY MEANINGLESS SPECULATION NEED NOT HIGHLIGHT THE BELOW TEXT it’s 2012, right? In an underground bunker near Salt Lake City a Dalek is trying to escape. The Cybermen are awakening. Something from another realm – similar to Earth – is breaking through and returning. We’ve seen the Dalek gun. Who wants to bet alternate-reality Daleks sidle over? Perfect excuse to reintroduce them. But what a surprise to give away in the preview...

The single most made-up fact in the whole BoMUDWF is this: at the end of Doomsday, we’ll all slap out legs and say, “Russell, it was really worth it. At points I thought that smugness gaff was way too irritating as a constant presence but no, that was totally worth it, all for that one moment of pay-off.”

What others think

Meanwhile, outside the Whovian community reactions to Fear Her were rather different. In Monday's Guardian Sam Wollaston admitted here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv_and_radio/story/0,,1805942,00.html

to finding it all rather terrifying. And apparently using "you can't watch Dr Who" is still a punishment, just as I remember it in 1964.

Meanwhile, on the pagan scene at least one person reported having nightmares featuring the monstrous figure of the father. This leads to a rather interesting point, from my point of view anyway.

Fear Her does tap into primal fears. In my own case there was a period when I was a bit scared of my father, because I didn't know who he was! He had been working so hard at his business that he would leave for work before I got up and return after I was asleep, Mondays to Saturdays. As I grew up, certainly by the time Dr Who had come on, this had passed. In this story what has been tapped into can exist within the memory of an adult of any age. This is, unfortunately, what the "Hypnotic Regression Therapists" who "recover" memories of alien abduction or satanic abuse get their hands on. People forget that children have imaginations, and that in later life scraps of memories of imagined things can be welded together with half-remembered Sci-Fi or Horror films by a biased therapist to create whatever their prejudices believe in.

Anyway, with regards to Fear Her, the ordinary viewer (as opposed to us geeks) seems to have been far more terrified than we were. I suspect that this is for a few reasons:

1. Hardly anybody saw Paperhouse because it had even worse distribution or publicity than the greatest Rock and Roll parody since Spinal Tap - Still Crazy. This made the mechanism more surprising.

2. A lot of people are the wrong age to remember Chocky. TV in children's slots each programme has a narrow window for their viewer profile of perhaps three years - kids too old or too young won't watch something if they feel it is for younger kids than them or they are too young to understand it. This made the explanation more surprising.

3. Although the special effects were minor, the animated scribble was actually rather original. This made it more frightening.

4. A lot of people, perhaps most, live in roads like that - it seemed more familiar than the tower block in which the Tylers live because they are being pulled down. This added to the fear.

5. Children disappearing taps into the tabloid frenzies of recent years - justified but terrifying, especially for parents.

This doesn't affect my overall view of the episode, but does remind me that there are a lot of people, whom we depend upon to provide the viewing figures that will keep the show being made, who don't care as deeply as we do about the entire Dr Who phenomenon. It seems they are still subject to true "behind the sofa" moments, and I rather like that.

Olympian

Haven't we seen this one already?  Just a few weeks ago if I recall, only I think that was the original version from the 1950s where some alien woman, played by that Beattie from the British Telecom ads a few years back, sucked people into their tellies and stuff.  This must've been the re-make, set in the near-future, and as is the case with most re-makes, this wasn't anywhere near as good as the original.  This was the BBC at its laziest...this was Deja View!

As with last year's grand finale prequel, Boomtown, this just felt out of place.  As on another street (Sesame), one of these kids was doing her own thing.  Possessed by some alien lifeform buried...oooh, at least three millimetres below the surface by former footballer Emile Heskey (his over-egged acting had me fearing that Rose had discovered the new Mickey), Chloe quite literally drew people into a vortex.

I often imagine that sub-standard tracks on otherwise quality albums were written and recorded in a hurry so as to beat the 4.00pm studio-hire deadline.  By all accounts Stephen Fry has so much to answer for Fear Her.  The title was bland, and whilst this wasn't by any means dreadful, it too was bland and must have so disappointed those who'd waited for 167 hours and fifteen minutes.  Rusty surely had the TDW viewership in mind in a 'hey kids, you can be monsters too' kinda way when he provided the core ingredients here.

The Budget too, wasn't exactly exhausted here was it?  It was like 'Shit, we've only got £20.12 left in the kitty!  I know, 2012 - the Olympics, BBC coverage and all that so let's get one of our broadcasters in off his lunch break - got to be Welsh, mind!  Planet London'll do.  Monsters?  Monsters Schmonsters!  Let's just draw some, but to make them more original we'll draw them blindfold using our wrong hand.  Brilliant!' 

Like a student receiving their first term's grant, thinking the amount would see them minted for life only to run out of money weeks before Christmas, the Doctor Who kitty was so spent on Foo Fighter Dave Grohl reprising his Devil role from Tenacious D's classic Tribute video, Maureen Lipman's The Wire, that Peter Kay thing, and only the fucking Prime Minister himself as the School Reunion baddie, not to mention the Pet Shop Boys' entire backing dance troupe for next week's end game, that they only had twelve pence left over to buy a HB pencil to conceive the fucking Scribble Monster and his cohort, the Pubic Hair monster who tried to bushwack Rose; in keeping with the Poundstretcher theme of this filler the latter was doubtless the result of one of Rose's Brazillians which was left on the cutting room floor.  Laydeez and Gennelmen, I'm sorry to announce that this weekend's Glastonbury has been cancelled...instead, enjoy the dulcet tones of Missster Shayne Ward!

But worse, even worse than all this was to come.  Huw Edwards' OTFuckingT commentary was simply excruciating, but the coup de grace had to be the Doctor's assuming of the Olympic torch - cringeworthyness itself wouldn't have been worthy; this wasn't just pants, it was underpants, soiled in post-vindaloo skidmarks!  And of course, we now know two things for certain to spoil out viewing - the Doctor will survive all wars etc for the next six years, and Doctor Smug will still be in office - stay tooned for more Happy Dayz!

The Bumper Book Of Doctor Who Made Up Facts has this to say about Fear Her: Rose's breaking down of Chloe's bedroom door was based on the 1980 Kubrik classic The Shining, which was itself based on SlipKnots 2000 hit Spit It Out video.

Possibly the most in-depth analysis of Who you'll read today.

Okay, first of all - I kinda enjoyed 'Fear Her'. To a point. More on that later.

Secondly, I got into an interesting conversation with someone from the Outpost Gallifrey forums, and I'd like to type up some of my posts here, if you'll endulge me. Feel free to skip to the end of this post if you're not interested in my views on the new series, or my look at 'Fear Her'.

Ahem.

People these days need a bit more then just a monster. A show needs more depth then that, and having the human element can give it a new edge, one which the mainstream public can identify with. RTD himself has said 'If there's planet X with monster Y, then I'm not interested. But put a human colony on planet X, and suddenly I'm interested', or something similar. He has a point. In a similar style most, if not all, programmes these days have story arcs. It keeps people interested and in a way it rewards them for watching by having a blazing conclusion. Doctor Who had an arc in the first series which paid off in 'The Parting of the Ways' (well I thought it did), and it has another one this series which will pay off in 'Doomsday'. And while I agree that at times that arc (occasionally) seems crowbared into the episodes, it doesn't make the rest of the story any less great. If you look at them as individual stories, they do stand up well. The writers aren't writing themselves into a corner, because there is no corner to write themselves into. That's the beauty of Doctor Who - you can do almost anything.

Sadly, some of the science (there's a scientific explanation behind all magic! ) from the first series has been lost in this second one. It's hard to say why exactly, but I personally think it has something to do with the main characters. Eccleston had a hard shell, if that makes sense. He was a lot tougher, more of a loner. And Billie, essentially, drew him out of that shell, almost made him into the father she'd lost. There was good chemistry with that relationship, and I enjoyed the series a lot because of it.

We don't have that chemistry with Tennant. He's not a loner, he has no shell, he's just a happy-go-lucky guy with few cares in the world who's out for a laugh. That doesn't make him bad, but it does make him a mate to Rose rather than a fatherly subsitute. And when you have two friends who think they're invincible, they can get very, very irritating. I didn't notice it at first, but as the series went on, their smugness became more and more apparent.

The first time I really noticed it was in 'Rise of the Cybermen', when the Doctor & Rose got into the Tyler house working in the kitchen. Rose says some very bitchy things ("or maybe she's just a little bit thick") and that's really when it first hit me. I started noticing it a lot more when I rewatched the episodes after that, but since that point in RotC, it hit me that the two were really starting to irritate me. They ticked me off during 'Tooth & Claw' ("Where the hell have you been?" is NOT what I would yell at that point), during 'The Idiot's Lantern', at the beginning of 'The Impossible Planet' (not so much during the rest of the story, which I think is the strongest of the series), whenever we saw them in 'Love & Monsters' and throughout 'Fear Her', which is my biggest flaw with the episode. Truth be told, the episodes that work best are when the two are split up - 'The Girl in the Fireplace' and 'The Satan Pit', but they also have another reason for being great.

I'm going to pick on 'Love & Monsters' for a moment, if you don't mind, because I enjoyed that episode. For the first 32 minutes. Watch it again (if you can) and you'll see where it all falls apart, but for that first half-hour, things are good. Why? Because the story is focused on a person who isn't having a laugh. Elton is a real person, who has real feelings. He shares them with us, whether it be by telling us or through the quality of the actor's perfomance.

Hard as it may be, I can't really think of many times we get that with the Doctor or Rose this series. We got a couple with the Doctor while he's in the caves, and later climbing down the pit, during 'The Satan Pit' (as I call the 2-parter), and they were great. We also had a few in 'Girl in the Fireplace' (it's a really touching moment when he reads that letter), but sadly that's about it. And we had them all the time in the first series. That, I guess, was the magic of the first series that simply isn't there in the second. We've lost the emotional connection with the characters.

I mostly enjoyed 'Fear Her', although I will admit it wasn't perfect. You only need to read the other reviews her to see what other people thought of it. Hopefully that ridiculous air of smugness that's been surrounding the lead characters this series be addressed in the final episodes, but still... Anyway. Yes, 'Fear Her' - not perfect. But FAR from pathetic. There was no real monster, which was the whole point of the episode. It was all about one lost soul finding another, which is what the Doctor and Rose were when they first met, in a way. Eccleston was somewhat lost, and Rose was... well, stuggling to find a meaning to it all. Then they found each other, and all was right. Until he turned into Tennant, and that connection was lost.

Here's hoping they can get something like that connection back in the third series.

Okay, and finally: I was doing an audio version of The Clockwise Man, remember? Well, I had to put that on hold when I got a job (yay!), and when I cam back I found all my enthusiasm for the projecty had been drained (boo!), simply because I really didn't want to be sitting in front of my PC reading out and entire book. Boring in the extreme.

But (!) yesterday I was skimming through the book again when I had a realisation. Maybe... maybe I could turn it into a Big Finish style audio instead? So I went back to the beginning and went through it again, seeing if I could mentally adapt certain bits to suit the BF style. And I think it's a very real possibility.

Which is where you come in. I'd need people to provide voices! I can do a couple, as well as the Doctor (since I've been told I do a pretty nice Eccleston), but really I'd need a couple of other people to join in - most importantly someone who could do a decent Rose impression. So if you're interested, let me know!

Okay, that's it. You may return to your episode bashing now.

Now where have I seen that before?

Something old, something new, something borrowed........as Rose Tyler heads for whatever her fate is to be, the Doctor’s most romantically-inclined assistant (well, inclined towards him anyway) marks time for the second week running as the series reins in the budget with yet another earthbound story with minimal special effects.

The “something new” is not entirely new, it’s the dreaded concept of the story arc, more or less introduced to Sci-Fi TV by Babylon 5 - long after Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor and irrelevant for the Paul McGann one-off.  What did this episode hae to do with the story arc for Season 2?  Nothing, it was the second “filler” episode in a row, but before the concept of the story arc there was no such thing as a filler, each story had to stand on its own merits.  Last week used the “seen from another perspective” idea that once saw an entire B5 episode played from the point of view of the maintenance crew, this one, well, this one, eh?

The “something old” was the “something borrowed” as well.  Dr Who has always been unafraid of recycling ideas from other shows and/or films - the Cybermen appeared remarkably soon after the Cybernauts featured in an Avengers episode (though they resembled animated shop dummies, not something you’d expect Dr Who to come up with, well, not just once anyway) and the Daemons story with Jon Pertwee essentially mixed Quatermass and the Pit with The Devil Rides Out.  This episode seamlessly mixed Chocky (earth child contacted by child-like alien) with Paperhouse - a woefully ignored piece of British film genius in which a child invents a reality through drawings.  Add in “entire stadium full of people almost vanishes forever” from the last ever episode of Quatermass - hello again old friend - and you’ve got, well, what?

It wasn’t a bad story, although the lack of geographical breadth until the very end reminded me a bit of Brookside.  What it wasn’t was a particularly Doctor Who story, it felt more like Sapphire and Steel (and guess who is on the writing team nowadays) with Rose at least being able to play a saviour role for a change.  The only addition to the “Russell tries to make sense of the mythology” aspect of the two new series was a clever rejoinder to several fannish attempts to explain away Susan, the Doctor’s granddaughter, by a tiny mention of “I had a kid once”.  Now we will wait with bated breath as the BBC tries to persuade the Olympic Committee to have David Tennant light the 2012 flame - because otherwise the illusion will be shattered, won’t it- or we will finally get a story in which we learn that absolutely everything in the show happens in an alternate reality, which at least would explain the collective memory loss about London’s invasion by Daleks, dinosaurs, war machines and a whole host of others
these 43 years.

All in all, reasonable budget-saving mash-up of ideas, but we’ll need a spectacular rabbit pulled out of the hat now to justify it.

Dinnae Be Feart

What the hell do we have here? Is it an advert for Daz washing powder set in Cleaner Close? Is it a corporate for Barrett Homes? Of course not silly, it's an episode of everyone's favourite time traveling, space adventure series, Doctor Who which is back on planet Earth, in the early 20th century, for only the 93rd time this series. Christ almighty, it might have been popularly seen as shit back in the old days, but at least they used their imagination a little and got off world occasionally. You don't see those SG1 types ending up in Wal Mart stores week in week out, or holed up in a Popeyes on the interstate somewhere. This is getting ever so slightly fucking tedious.

Before the template for Daz washing powder adverts and, it seems like, this current series of Doctor Who, was laid down in stone, there was this chap called Danny Baker who used to molest people on their doorsteps with a family sized box of Daz and challenge them to switch and see the white. A kind of Jehovah Spin Cycle. All hail Danny Baker. Once upon a time he had a programme on the Radio 1 wireless station with someone also called Danny (Kelly) who, for reasons only known to his personal psychiatric staff, used to cut out pictures and headlines from the day's papers, scrawl the word "TURMOIL" across people's foreheads and place them in front of Baker who would, more often than not, rupture something semi vital laughing at them. That was usually extraordinarily funny.

This, however, is not.

Fear Her

Someone once said, about this show, that if you give kids good writing now, they're going to be more demanding in the future. Based on this series, if they flipped over to Hollyoakes they'd probably think they've found a latter day Shakespeare. On first viewing it was merely functional. Nothing special. Nothing too terrible. Bit flat. However, a subsequent viewing has made my mind up. I had hoped for much better from Matthew "Life on Mars" Graham. That, incidentally, is his really full name, having changed it from Matthew "Love Thy Neighbour" Graham some years ago.

Scratching around the bottom of the barrel, there were still things to like, the TARDIS landing up against a container for instance. Although in the good old days (yes, that's right, the good old days) if the Doctor had taken off again there is no way in hell he'd have ended up just turning through 90 degrees, he'd have been propelled into - at the very least - an alien world in the far future.

So it's 2012, and we've not been destroyed by American foreign policy, so it's time for the Olympics. Another wall-to-wall tediumfest that's going to be marginally more annoying than having a sledgehammer grafted onto your perineum. Especially since it's in London. And given that they've landed in the East End, why has Rose absolutely no desire to drop in on Jackie? Given that she would otherwise do so at the drop of a hat from much further away. And if all that weren't enough, we've got another 6 years of Shayne Ward to look forward too. Brwilliant.

Chloe O'Brien was dull, dull, dull. About as fearful as a nine year old scribbler could be. Why not give her some Bart like special powers from that Treehouse of Horrors episode, where he could bend things to his will. If taking her pens and pencils away didn't to the trick just break her fucking arms. Social Services would have understood. The most exciting thing she did was attempt to bring to life Modern Toss' Alan who, instead of merely barging out of a garage should have stopped to ask Rose whether she still had two arms and then proceed to fix a cable to a cement mixer and drag it backwards through the living room of a nearby house.

Skipping forward to the very end (out of necessity more than anything because I'd be tempted to swear some more) I even forgave the production the fact that the Doctor hijacked the torch and lit the flame. Although why the hell you needed to regenerate the Isolus' ship in the flame. Ramming it in on gas mark 7 would have probably served a similar purpose and negated the need to have included the whole Olympic schtick in the first place. Saving us a quite frankly embarrassing cameo from Huw Edwards. So not only is that another 6 years of Shayne Ward, that's another 6 years of Huw Edwards. Bastards.

It was nice to see the Great Intelligence's control spheres back again, in the form of cake decoration. This is obviously the repeating meme being set up for next series where the Hundreds and Thousands monsters over run the UK's cake stores in a 6 episode story arc, culminating in the return of the Candyman and imminent cancellation.

And then the final scene... "they keep on trying to split us up, but they never, ever, will". You better bleedin' believe it. I want an end to this. I want it over now.

And I certainly hope that something powerful can shift these irritating little stains...

The Bumper Book of Make-up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about Fear Her: inadvertently, the production team had contracted a pipe fitter from Dagenham, called Graham Matthew, to write this episode instead of award winning scribe Matthew Graham.

Prophecy 11: FILLER!!!!!!!!

It was alright.

This episode, in the same position in the series as Boom Town last year, screams FILLER, made more true by knowing about Stephen Fry's lack of an episode. I have a lot that I want to say, and it isn't really about the episode itself. However, I would first like to say that I didn't find it as bad as a lot of the reviewers, and my immediate instinct is to argue, and I'm sure I would end up proclaiming it the greatest story ever told, as is human nature. I know, because having berated The Da Vinci Code often enough, people who originally only thought it was "alright" have ended up saying that it was the best cinematic release of the century. So instead, I'll take the unbiased approach. Also, I've given up repeating the facts that others state, so I'll try to explain why I think it made the mistakes that it did.

It mostly comes down to Time (Irony!!!). Now, anyone who watched Life On Mars, pay attention. By the by, I have the DVD set, so am very familiar with the episodes. For me, the best episodes are 5 and 6, and episode 6 is written by Matthew Graham, in coalition with Ashley Pharoah. Of Matthew Graham's 4 solo episodes, Episode 8 is the worst (for me, feel free to argue). Not that it's bad, but it's not the same quality as the others. It focuses too much on the relationship with his dad, and while remaining good drama, it loses some of its power by being a character-based episode. Episode 1 is his next-least-good episode, again building character.

Now, imagine for a moment that the BBC hadn't commissioned a series, but instead had offered a one-off, a pilot for a potential series, say 90 minutes long. Which stories would he have done? We would have lost the superb episodes 2,3,5 and 6 in place of the slightly above mediocre 1 and 8.

Do you see the point of all that I just wrote? He had 45 minutes, and as a writer, wants to do an emotional, character building episode, which he can't do as successfully as real drama, with action, with horror, with power.

Then there's the Sonic Screwdriver, which is so blatantly an easy way out, has become incredibly annoying for everyone: again this is expanded on elsewhere in the blog. But why is it conveniently defaulted to any alien menace that comes about? Time. 45 minutes isn't enough to set up a sub-monster, build it up, and get rid of it, before dealing with the main essence of the story. Look at Talons of Weng Chiang, it divides up the action nicely, developing a story at a time, whilst building up the main menace throughout. Instead, the episodes have to rush through all the points that the writer wants to make, and so where do you cut corners? Ah, there's that good old Sonic Plot Enhancer.

If you break down the episode, you will see that by itself, each portion is well written, but unfortunately the portions are only bite-size chunks of all that Matthew Graham wants in his episode (and he has a hell of a lot of ideas). Consequently, it all feels very disjointed.

Oh, and the girl moves her mouth too much. Is she proud that she has the ability to talk, or is she concerned about her diction?

Now the prophecy. *sigh* I was wrong. I assumed it was Rose-centric. Ah well, live and let live.
"Rose-centric, so slightly cringeworthy at times, but a very well written piece. Probably a bit of a flop towards the end, but as long as Matthew Graham gets more than one episode, he should produce some right corkers. Trust me, watch Life On Mars."
And...
"Very well written pieces, but not very well strung together. Matthew Graham had the wrong aims methinks, but as long as he gets his priorities right his next one should be a corker. Trust me, watch Life On Mars."

As I said earlier, Time was the real enemy of this episode. However, I doubt if 25 minute episodes would suit modern audiences. Instead, if the 45 minute style remained, but with a system of two parters adopted for each series as a whole, with the odd one off and the odd 3 parter, the stories might have a better pace.

6.5/10. Sorry Matthew. I think I'll go watch Life On Mars to make myself feel better.

(Coming next week, aliens invade contemporary earth on a massive scale, alerting everyone to the fact that aliens do exist, accept it. Again.)