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Fear In A Handful Of Dust

Torchwood: Children Of Earth - Day Five

Watching this in the company of fellow viewers at Bad Wolf 2009 in Birmingham this week really struck home how this series of Torchwood has been a compulsive, if not uncompromising, television experience.

The idea of sacrifice has been one of the strongest themes in both the new version of Doctor Who and Torchwood and the closing episode of Children Of Earth was perhaps the ultimate statement in this 'slaughter of the innocents' dramatic trope, the series own use of the 'death of one to save all' motif. What Day Five clearly demonstrates is the unflinching courage of writers Russell T Davies, John Fay and James Moran to travel into the abyss and conduct a reportage from the front line. I didn't think we were going to get a satisfying ending and I honestly thought that the idea of using a reset might just have made it into the episode as a way of writing themselves out of the various corners they'd arrived in. But they reveled in those dark corners and went further, pulling no punches as they went.

It was striking to open with Gwen narrating the end of the world in similar fashion to Rose's eulogy in Doomsday and it suggested that this was indeed the end of Torchwood itself and that all was actually lost even before the episode unfolded. The structure of the episode cycled back to this reportage and opened it out to feature Rhys filming Gwen in the barn with the children they had rescued from Rhiannon's house. This was not the end, merely a prelude to it. And the children, who were always the focus of the story and had been the beginning of the narrative through their possession by the 456 were also, very fittingly, and in the nature of this circular narrative, their end.

But what an end. As the government, hostage to American General Pierce, carried out their cull of 10% of the child population, those that indeed served its modus operandi in the end realised that they were propping up something so ugly and heinous they understood that only by switching sides could they affect the outcome of the 456 demands. Johnson (we never find out her first name) who has been the cartoon villain in the midst of the narrative finally reveals herself to us and to Alice, Jack's daughter. She's as real as all the other characters and just hides behind her duty. She finally becomes a lynchpin in the desperate solution that removes the 456 from the Earth.

The interesting aspect of Day Five is how it does pick the stories of Johnson, Alice and Clem and makes them integral to the conclusion of the story. Thinking their narratives had drawn to a close in Day Four, it's a surprise and a relief to see how they affect the outcome of the story. Clem's death isn't for nothing because the cause of his death is the way that Jack cruelly hoists the 456 with their own petard; Johnson effectively rescues Jack from incarceration to fulfill this narrative purpose; Alice provides a son, a lamb to the slaughter. It's a fantastic opening out of the narrative and it's chilling in the way Jack uses these separate threads. Jack very much becomes like the untempered 10.5 version of the Doctor, dangerous to himself and others by acting on the knowledge that he has to kill a child in order to save millions more. He doesn't flinch from the operation even though that child is his own flesh and blood. It's Biblical in scope.

Jack, as I discussed earlier, is not a very pleasant person to be around and it is truly shocking to see him go to these extremes. He has to become as monstrous as the 456 and Prime Minister Brian Green, be as ruthless as they are to accomplish the goal of eradicating the threat and saving those children. It's as gut-wrenching as Bernard Quatermass and his daughter setting off the nuke to banish the alien threat in the 1979 Euston Films series. There are great parallels here between both series about human sacrifice as well as the raison d'etre of the alien incursion. In Quatermass, humanity is being harvested as a condiment to a greater meal, here the 456 are simply drug addicts who want to get a good deal on the merchandise and get high on kids. That there was still yet another, darker twist to the 456's purpose in the story added to the complex political metaphors. Here, it's about the demands of the free market.

At the centre of this bleakest of codas is that utterly chilling scene in which Frobisher, ordered by Green to publicly offer his own children up to the 456 as a sop to a government demanding a positive spin on their policy of 'the first born must die'. In that perfectly realised confrontation between Frobisher and Green, where Green can barely raise his eyes from the paperwork on his desk and look Frobisher in the eye whilst telling him to bury bad news, it's Capaldi's performance that succinctly signals to the audience just how dark this is going to get. I can't praise Capaldi high enough and his performance in this epic saga is probably one of the elements that has propelled Torchwood from what could arguably considered cult status to a full blooded serious drama that can hold its own in a prime position in BBC1's schedule. When he kills his own family, the sequence is brilliantly cut together with the scene of Bridget talking to Lois in her cell about him being 'a good man' who 'worked hard' which again touches on the themes of class, the social pecking order and how that refers to Johnson's observations about the desire to remove certain kinds of kids from our street corners whilst the 90% who are 'good' and 'work hard' are spared.

The sequences where the troops arrive to take children away are painfully reminiscent of the ethnic cleansing activities reported from various unstable regimes from around the globe. Euros Lyn connects to this viscerally through rough and ready hand held camera work, adding a searing verisimilitude to the drama. Children Of Earth has clearly shown that Lyn has a blooming career in major films if he so chooses and his contribution to the series should not be underestimated. His visual judgement and his obvious attention to performances has paid off and if Torchwood did return then the notion of allowing a single director to hold the reigns wouldn't be a bad idea at all.

Depressing as it was, the 'final solution' in which Jack kills his own grandson also offered us very decent performances from John Barrowman and Lucy Cohu, as Alice Carter. I was pleased that Alice's story was continued beyond her simply being held in a cell and that there was a conclusion of sorts to the Jack/Alice arc, even though Russell T Davies took it to perhaps one of the darkest extremes he's ever taken his writing. It's also interesting to compare the actions of Jack and Frobisher - Frobisher executes his own family and technically one could argue he's a coward for not facing up to the 456 or even attempting to get his kids out of harm's way and Jack, shell-shocked from all the death and destruction he's instigated, buggers off six months later after a final goodbye to Gwen and Rhys. Technically, is he also a coward for not starting over? Jack's journey could be seen as similar to that of Homer's Odysseus - a hero that undergoes a series of tragedies and moral struggles in striving for a sense of place. Jack flees the cause of his pain for the home of imagination - in this case abandoning the Earth because he observes it as a sterile and futile waste land. Several times in the poem Homer describes Odysseus's quest as a desire for re-birth - a rising from the dead that can only occur when he reaches his home. Jack is now clearly looking for that home.

Torchwood ends as it should. You can either accept it as a well realised conclusion to the entire Torchwood saga or you can see it as the end of this particular phase of the programme and, if a fourth series is given the go ahead, a new beginning, potentially with an entirely new cast. For now see this as a vindication of Davies faith in the series as a modern, adult drama and as the Torchwood we always hoped we would get three years ago.

I'm Alright, Jack

Torchwood: Children Of Earth - Day Four

Or John Fay sticks the boot in.

Did you feel it repeatedly go into the already bloody and battered body of Labour's gloriously tarnished Third Way? Torchwood does politics in Day Four and Fay has at the centre of his script a depressing but horribly realistic satire on how far-right thinking fills the vacuum left by a failed centre-left liberal agenda. He piled everything in there and it was breathtaking: a government's abject inability to communicate to the working classes, the poorly educated, the disenfranchised and the failed asylum seekers is turned into a Daily Mail wet dream of a policy to placate an equally fascistic alien invader. And while they're at it they devise a cunning scheme to use school league tables, a system of figures already proven to be inaccurate and heavily fiddled, to weed out the potential failures...er, units...and hand them over to the 456. How supremely ironic and how apt then that Nick 'voice of the Daleks' Briggs gets to play one of these self-interested kleptocrats who can only see it as a good thing for the planet's resources. Are we sure that isn't Nick 'voice of the BNP' Griffin continually throwing up and draining the life energy out of a child in that smog filled chamber?

Small gods and big sacrifices. Jack does not come out of this mess smelling of roses. In a bid to avert a 1965 swine flu type pandemic he 'sacrifices the innocent' in order to buy time and a cure and packs 12 children (who won't be missed, just like all those failed asylum seekers) to the 456 in a remote part of Scotland. His female colleague hits the nail right on the head and says 'we need someone who doesn't care', simultaneously damning Jack and Prime Minister Green's government. In fact, Jack's a bit of a fool because even if he's immortal he's no god, he can't go dashing into a crisis and face off with an alien threat as if he was the Doctor. He's out of his depth and stunningly naive, a common trait within Torchwood, and he gets people killed in the process. Fay's script is bleak because it suggests that even righting a wrong just isn't enough to combat a foe that feeds on the bodies of children. Even Ianto witnesses a version of Jack he's never really seen before and it foreshadows his own fate.

Gareth David Lloyd and John Barrowman have their work cut out for them in ensuring that Ianto's death isn't tokenistic or overly sentimental and I think Fay and Barrowman get to explore Jack's attitude to those who will not only die before him but those who will die because of his actions. It's been an ongoing theme in Torchwood and Clem sums it up well: 'The man who sent me and my friends to die can't die himself'. It's this that makes Jack an anti-hero who, unlike the best anti-heroes, is very hard to sympathise with at all. What makes it more difficult here is that he's also trying to deal with Alice being held hostage by Frobisher and he's kept it to himself until Ianto dares to push him.

Day Four pretty much dispenses with the capers and absurdities of Torchwood's bluff methodology and concentrates on how a government might attempt to placate an enemy that simply wants to cull a tenth of the child population and the COBRA cabinet scene reminded me of the equally powerful drama Conspiracy which fictionalised the meeting at Wannsee, outside Berlin, in 1942, when the administrative apparatus of the Third Reich set in motion the detailed plans of the Final Solution. There are sprinklings of humour to lighten the atmosphere: Gwen's observation to Clem, who has just witnessed Jack returning from the dead yet again, 'look at it this way, you can shoot first and ask questions later'; Rhys mistaking the FAS file for an SAS file 'now you're talking'; Jonny thinking the kids are chanting 'lottery numbers or what'.

Director Euros Lyn drives this ahead relentlessly, barely letting the tension sag, and doesn't fail to disappoint when it comes to getting the camera inside the 456 chamber to give us further glimpses of the beast and the unforgettable, if bizarre, image of the child it has hooked up to itself. It's a truly arresting moment, emphasising the monstrousness of the creatures and the cruel form of immortality, something Jack recognises about himself perhaps, that they bestow on their victims. It's of course at this moment that the whole house of cards that Frobisher has been trying to protect finally comes crashing down.

What's been curious and interesting in the series so far is how Torchwood has been disassembled and, after Jack's rescue, placed on the sidelines of the plot. It's this structure that has helped shift the tone of Children Of Earth, away from a sort of Buffy alien threat of the week comic book to something resembling a 21st Century Quatermass where the fantastic supports a harder edged social commentary within an epic canvas. In the final third of this episode, Torchwood swings into action having recorded evidence of the cabinet meeting to force their way to the negotiating table and a confrontation with the 456. But there really isn't a plan to deal with the 456 and it has devastating consequences. Jack's gunboat diplomacy simply doesn't work because the 456 just decides to gas everyone in the building. He even quotes the slogan used by the International Workers Of The World at the creature and it simply flags up the fact that the human race blithely accepts the death of its children every day.

There's also the rather horrible death inflicted on poor old Clem just as Johnson finally acquires a conscience after witnessing a government held to account by Torchwood's recordings. Ianto's death is foreshadowed in that phone call to Rhiannon, as it was in all that fluff with Jack about being a 'couple' in Day One, and really, in the end, what did Jack expect? It's a bittersweet departure, drawn out slightly too long, but it's also a devastating moment to end the episode on. Once again, director Euros Lyn, the lead actors and guest artists keep up the high standard and make this gripping and compelling. Ben Foster also pulls out the stops with his score, using some spectacular choral music to great effect. Only one episode to go and crucially it has to resolve this story without resorting to a dumb Deus Ex Machina. Can they pull off a satisfying ending? Will anyone from Torchwood make it to the end of Day Five?

Need His Moth :)

Torchwood: Children Of Earth - Day Three

That. Was. Scary.

Scary Torchwood.

I wonder if this is how we'll have to conduct diplomatic relations with the North Koreans when they decide to hold us to ransom by nuking the entire planet? I've not been as chilled to the bone by an hour of television as much as that in a very long time. Day Three's rendition of an archetypical science fiction genre trope - 'first contact' (except in this case, it was more like...er...second contact) - was magnificently done. More of that later.

We do, unfortunately, have to deal with the rest of the episode first. Round of applause please for Lachele Carl as the ever reliable Trinity Wells. The first half of the script's pincer movement from James Moran and Russell T Davies to try and convince us that, yeah, this a global event. Look out for the French newsreader and American general plus various extras of ethnic diversity to complete the manoeuvre. However, we did get interminable, grating scenes of newreaders with various close ups of their mouths and eyes scattered throughout the hour. Enough! I know the world's hanging by a thread but judging by this we'll all probably suffocate under swathes of rolling 24 hour news bulletins first before the slimy, boomy voiced aliens get us.

The script strikes an ironic note with Ianto's 'All together. The old team' because of course it's not the old team. Torchwood's reputation for early retirement has seen to that and instead we've got Jack fretting about his track suit bottoms fashion faux pas, Rhys throwing a strop with Gwen about sharing her good news and Ianto getting the horn. Erm...excuse me? The Prime Minister's on the telly doing a 'swine flu pandemic' closing the schools type announcement thing. Focus. Despite this fluff, there's a sweet and funny scene where Ianto passes a message on to Rhiannon and we find out that her husband Jonny has reacted with entrepreneurial zeal ('ten quid a kid!') and is getting her to mind the neighbours' kids. I really like the efforts to fill in Ianto's background and with Davies trademark ability to write naturalistic dialogue and characters it's been easy to warm to Rhiannon and Jonny. We also check back in with Jack's daughter, Alice and there's a gently percolating build up to giving her more involvement in Day Three.

I say you can never go wrong having a spare Lemsip so sod recovering the Hub software and put the kettle on. Oh, well. Time for our rag-tag team to remember what they learned from The Real Hustle and use various cons to snaffle themselves enough equipment and money to set themselves up a temporary Hub and get Gwen some clean knickers and Jack a new army surplus coat. Again, this has that comic book feel to it where our heroes simply can't just go out and deal with the problem until they've sorted out their sartorial arrangements. What baffles me is how on earth they cracked the chip and pin on those cards they ran off with? More delaying tactics really and enough to get Ocean's 3 and a half set up so that they can snoop in on the diplomatic talks of the century. And Rhys gets to cook a nice pan of beans, Ianto's got the coffee on and there's loo paper in the shitter. Back in business.

Fortunately, Moran and Davies centre a good portion of the episode on Lois Habiba as our point of view at the meeting with the 456. This is thanks to that ubiquitous Bond gadget, tried and tested by one Martha Jones in Reset, the ACME Contact Lens Camera™. There is perhaps a suggestion here that Lois was pretty much created as a replacement for the rumoured idea of Martha joining Torchwood. In the end, Cush Jumbo has by now already made the role her very own and she communicates great vulnerability and fear when Gwen pleads with her to use the camera to spy on their behalf. We also start to get details of Jack's connection to the incident in 1965 and his relationship to one of Torchwood's former employees. It's at this point that the episode drops all the fluffy caper nonsense and really starts getting hard nosed. Agent Johnson's found Alice and is ordered to bring her in, Gwen gets help from PC Andy to release the recently arrested Clem in a very emotional reunion with some superb playing from Paul Copley, whilst Frobisher prepares for the arrival of the 456.

Lois bluffs her way into persuading Bridget to allow her into the meeting with the 456 by intimating that her relationship with Frobisher is based on more than taking a letter. It's another superb little character moment where Susan Brown, who has been brilliant as the dour Bridget, succinctly reveals all of Bridget's personal history with Frobisher with her tart remark to Lois of 'You're not the first, you know. Don't go thinking you're the first'. Meanwhile, Alice goes all Captain Jack on us, and she even has a matching coat, in an attempt to escape Johnson's clutches ('certainly your father's daughter') but suddenly all the kids go weird and do lots of pointing to the sky. The 456 are here. Lois gets ready to pop her contacts in as, in scenes reminiscent of Euston Films 1979 Quatermass, a column of fire descends to earth and we are treated to probably the finest, and scariest minutes of British telefantasy in a long while.

The encounters with the 456 work because they follow the simplest and most effective premise for generating genuine terror. Don't show the creature. Merely suggest it. The build up to the scene where they arrive and Frobisher converses with them completely rested on how Moran, Davies and director Lyn were going to scare the pants off you. It's really a tour de force of writing, directing and acting as well as the use of impressive and highly suggestive sound effects which again takes us right back to Kneale's early Quatermass serials where alien visitors are only briefly glimpsed but given fantastic presence by good reactions from actors and, more importantly, from the work of the fledgling Radiophonic Workshop. Here, all is required is the combination of brilliant sound effects, Ben Foster's very sensitive scoring, the subtlest of movements broken by violent thrashing and the spilling of lots of very unpleasant looking body fluids in the gas filled chamber to provide fuel for over active imaginations and sleepless nights. And then you get that dead pan, slightly synthesised voice as a bonus. Close Encounters this ain't. Stunning.

Add Peter Capaldi in, quite frankly, what should be an award winning performance as Frobisher, his stress summed up by that exhausted slump against the corridor wall after the first encounter, and this is very definitely must see television. I also loved the contrast between this and the then tit for tat squabble between General Pierce, Colonel Oduya of UNIT and Prime Minister Green in a sort of G8 for alien encounters where, similarly, much hot air fills the vaulted ceilings of rooms bearing witness to the cut and thrust of international relations. Green decides to leave it to the 'middle men' like Frobisher, claiming he's 'expendable' and suggesting that he's possibly unlikely to survive beyond Day Five. As Gwen cuts through traffic to get Clem a cup of tea and a hotdog ('I bloody love 'em'), there's that lovely, rather humanising, moment between Bridget and Lois as she suggests that perhaps her eagerness to 'trot after John Frobisher' didn't forsee meetings with slimy beasties from outer space. Likewise, Frobisher's admission that Jack is the better man because he won't take Frobisher's wife and children as hostage tells us that he's very determined for Jack not to reacquaint himself with the 456.

As we watch, director Lyn covers the formal diplomatic negotiations all through Frobisher's reactions, Lois's eyes, through the laptop screens and translations via shorthand in the makeshift Hub, beautifully building the tension of the scene and also using that lovely bit of tension breaking humour with Gwen's typo of 'Need his moth' and Rhys' comment about smileys. The pieces start to come together and, shockingly, it is clear that Jack and Torchwood originally did a deal with the 456 back in 1965, as recalled by Clem, and now they're back and they want their further 10%. In the end, the story positions both Jack and Frobisher not as opposites but very much as men on the same side in their dealings with the 456.

Let's hope we get more scary Torchwood with Day Four because Day Three was, quite simply, excellent.

Well, I'll Be Breaking These Rocks...

Torchwood: Children Of Earth - Day Two

It's the little touches that impress in Torchwood.

Mucking about with the sound design and giving us Gwen's POV is such a neat idea, so that the audience can share her disorientation and the concussive effects of the explosion that's torn apart the Hub. John Fay's script for Day Two is very much about the public perception of authority, trust and control. It begins with poor Gwen confronted with the realisation that the two ambulance men who drag her from the wreckage of the Hub (stunningly realised on location) are simply there to ensure that she does not survive. Nigel Kneale played on these fears back in 1956, the fear that the public servants you trust have actually been compromised and are working against you or wish to suppress any criticism of their agenda. The opening action sequence is really thrilling with Gwen throwing herself out of the ambulance and firing at a rooftop sniper and then stealing the vehicle. And just hope if you're a paramedic that you don't end up with Gwen Cooper in the back of the vehicle. You don't stand a bloody chance. Trouble is, that sniper must have been trained in UNIT and can't shoot for bloody toffee even with a laser sight. To maintain the realism, either Gwen or Ianto should have been wounded. As it was they both escaped, a la Enemy Of The State, with barely a scratch.

The worst of it is that Frobisher's own wife and daughters are realising that he's deeply involved in the whole of the 'we are coming' business and have noticed those odd, defensive behaviour patterns that are a dead give away that something is, indeed, up. Peter Capaldi grabs the character and manages to create such a tortured government fall-guy that one minute you feel sorry and afraid for him and the next wishing he would die a horrible death for all the destruction he's unleashed upon Torchwood and their extended families. Q branch boffin Dekker, a deliciously slimy performance from Ian Gelder, turns up on Frobisher's doorstep and reinforces the retro science fiction paranoia by producing a hefty reference to Fred Hoyle's wonderful A For Andromeda series in which alien transmissions turn out to be the design blueprint for a super computer and an advanced life form. And off they go with their meccano set from outer space.

Bless, PC Andy. Does he even have a surname? (It's Davidson but he's never credited as such and therefore comes across as a sort of Cardiff equivalent of Camberwick Green's PC McGarry) How on earth did this man graduate from Hendon Police College anyway? He's not safe to be out on his own. Love his introduction as he cops a look at Agent Johnson, 'If she's anti-terrorist then I wouldn't mind being Uncle terrorist' because we know full well he'd run a mile if she showed even a flicker of interest. Tom Price provides great comedy value with Andy sitting in the pursuit vehicle next to Johnson and her troops espousing the values of a 'little bit of local knowledge' whilst clearly leading them directly and unwittingly to Gwen's flat. Gwen and Rhys decide to go into hiding whilst having a row about car keys, Ianto claims ice cream gives him a headache and Agent Johnson's tyres don't last five minutes. The dialogue at this point isn't going to win any prizes, 'What kind of terrorist shoots your wheels?' Deep Sigh. 'A clever one'. It's at this point that, try as she may, Liz May Brice is unable to prevent the character of Johnson from descending into a Sheriff Of Nottingham clone who has no other reason to be in the episode other than to be undermined by those pesky outlaws from Sherwood...er...Torchwood. Fay's script chucks away any attempt at actually making her a three dimensional character and it gets worse.

Disturbingly there seems to be some sort of tradition being carried over from Day One. Clearly, there is an ongoing obsession with male arses. In the raid on Rhiannon's house the troops unearth the equivalent of a beached whale protesting, rather hilariously, that he's a married man and you wouldn't find Ianto in his bed. No, I don't think you would. Later, a man more used to exposing himself, a certain Mr. Barrowman, dutifully fulfills a BBC Wales contract obligation to show us his...well...everything, really. This is Torchwood creeping back into adult comic book mode and Fay's script threatens to undo the sterling work of his boss on Day One. One of the problems here is that we're supposed to pretend that Jack's dead when most of us are just simply waiting for him to inevitably jump back into life. The aforementioned scene of Frobisher at breakfast with his daughters attempting to act as if he's about to have a normal day at the office is terrific, especially the two girls taking the piss out of the situation with their 'We want a pony' chant, and his ongoing agonising about dealing the death blow to Torchwood, realising that taking the Hub out was pointless and taking one for the government at the same time, makes for gripping viewing.

Unfortunately, Clem/Timothy White is somewhat sidelined in this episode and rather embarrasses himself in a pub by intimating, in a rather unintentionally amusing moment, that the bar maid has done an extremely smelly fart by announcing to her, 'Can you smell that?'. Despite the amusing, if not charming, repartee between Gwen and Rhys (the scene inside the haulage truck full of potatoes, perhaps inspired by Hitchcock's Frenzy, is delightful) by far the best character development in this episode is that of Lois Habiba. Cush Jumbo manages to effectively get across the woman's conscience and her concern at what's going on around her and it's a huge relief when she turns up at the meeting with Gwen and Rhys at the cafe after deciding to help them. We even get a bit of location filming in London thrown in for good measure. Another Torchwood recruit in waiting, I hope. Although it does stretch the credibility of the depiction of a government department that allows a temp on her second day of work to continue to access and remove classified files. Mind you, on the other hand, so many departments lose private data on a regular basis it may not be that far from the truth. Can I also say a good word for Susan Brown as the nasty Bridget Spears looking down her nose at everyone and everything? So, Lois to the rescue and a rather barmy sub-plot featuring Gwen and Rhys pretending to be undertakers. Meanwhile, we also get more of the great Katy Wix as Ianto's sister Rhiannon who does her bit to help out Ianto with a laptop and eventually tracking Jack's body down to a military facility.

Jack's reconstitution is downright creepy and disturbing as is the further scene of chanting children but it does turn into a bit of a comic book romp by the time Gwen and Rhys infiltrate the facility only to find Jack's been encased in concrete by the rather peeved Johnson. Never mind, Ianto to the rescue with a great big digging machine (a nod to Jack's similar action in Series One's Countrycide) and a very long drop into that Doctor Who cliche, a quarry. So, as Jack hobbles away, flashing his bits, the episode switches tone again to the very menacing conclusion as Mr. Dekker proudly demonstrates the arrival chamber for the visiting 456 whilst also posing the questions on the lips of the audience. Why are they coming for Britain? Just what did happen in 1965? It ends very unnervingly with that striking visual of Dekker breathing on the glass of the chamber and holding his arms out to embrace it.

Delivered with enormous visual panache by Euros Lyn and again played well by all the regulars and the guest artists, Day Two doesn't quite live up to the polished opening episode, preferring to veer off unevenly into a bit of farce, Scooby Doo villainy and comic book heroics. It doesn't completely reacquaint us with Torchwood's previous penchant for overblown adolescence and histrionics and that's still a bit of a blessing. It's highly entertaining, often spectacular and propelled by good, pacy direction, a thoroughly Bondian soundtrack from Ben Foster and the intriguing mystery of the 456 also ensures I'm still looking forward to Day Three.

The Chuckle Brothers In Speedos

 Torchwood: Children Of Earth - Day One

'You're working for the Home Office and you've never heard of Torchwood?'

Jesus, you mean they're not on Facebook? Not even Twittering? MI6 have got a lot of explaining to do this week. Their new boss Sir John Sawyer popping up on Facebook wearing a pair of Speedos has put the wind up the counter terrorism sub-committee and they've also got their hands full in Day One of the long awaited Torchwood epic, Children Of Earth. Dirty laundry from 1965 has made its way to the top of the pile in the washing basket and social networking isn't going to make diddly-squat difference in the world of Torchwood because here everyone does their washing in public. Everyone knows about Torchwood. People in Cardiff point to the Bay when total strangers ask about them. They're the least secret organisation known to (Welsh) man.

At the heart of tonight's episode is a great big homage to what Brian Aldiss called the 'cosy catastrophe' of John Wyndham, with numerous references to his particular brand of post-war British science fiction in The Kraken Wakes, The Day Of The Triffids and most particularly here The Midwich Cuckoos. For all the attempts, in this first episode at least, by Russell T Davies to globalise the crisis of the world's children abruptly stopping (shades of The Day The Earth Stood Still, another prime example of 1950s paranoid SF) it just doesn't quite come across by simply having Ianto read off a string of countries at the same time that a UNIT officer is providing a similar litany to a civil servant in the Home Office. Mind you, I bet parents would give their eye teeth for something as effective as this to shut their kids up. When it boils down to it, Russell, you're just a sucker for Wyndham and as much in love with Professor Bernard Quatermass as the rest of us who quite happily lap up alien invasion yarns designed to threaten the British Isles and patriotically disturb our stiffened upper lips. Even if he invokes Quatermass

and his own run in with paranoid politicians, there is no doubt Russell will counter this by eventually wheeling out Lachele Carl as American news anchor Trinity Wells. Wait and see.

The homage to 1950s science fiction paranoia and to State Of Play political subterfuge stands the first episode in good stead. It is a very tight script, trimmed of fat, full of urgency and the need to coast towards an equally gripping conclusion. What's also interesting here is the way class is depicted in the story, where we see families and the backgrounds to the main characters revealed within a Britain where education and even how we use Facebook and My Space all still run along the old class divisions. Frobisher's family is clearly upper middleclass whilst Ianto's sister and brother are lower class from a neighbourhood that is, quite literally, as rough as arseholes. In the midst of the crisis, the script has time to highlight these differences and similarities, particularly with the fan pleasing scenes of Jack visiting his own daughter Alice and his great grandson and Ianto struggling to articulate his very individualistic sexual relationship with Jack to his sister whilst she can only simply codify him as 'gay'. Excellently played out scenes, and interestingly hinting at rather unpleasant opportunism on the part of Torchwood's male staff to simply get a chance to examine a relative's child caught up in the alien manipulation, they are a good example of Davies' ability to write good character moments. He does have an annoying tendency to over milk the pudding though and the running gag between Ianto and Jack about their status as a 'couple', whilst initially charming, is clearly a blatant sign-post to the audience that this 'couple' may not survive beyond the span of this week's five episodes.

These problems aside, this is full of broad humour, touching visual motifs and good character exploration. From Gwen turning the lights back on in a darkened Hub, briefly stroking a photo of the deceased Owen and Tosh, to the amusing encounter with Dr. Rupesh Patanjali as Jack and Ianto pose as 'poor old Mr. Williams' neighbours only to then surgically remove an alien 'hitch-hiker' from his dead body. Ianto's 'And I've got Tupperware' line and the observation 'NHS, too much red tape' sums up Torchwood in one brief scene for any brave newcomers. To confirm that this is definitely a Russell T Davies script we even get a joke about Jack and Ianto being The Chuckle Brothers and an ironic nod in Gwen's line about the Hub being 'a big science fiction superbase' in answer to Rupesh's query. Davies also mirrors Gwen's induction into Torchwood with her taking on the role of recruitment officer to the by now curious Rupesh Patanjali. There's a sweet scene where Davies pretty much distills all of Gwen's attitudes towards Torchwood, life and the Universe and intriguingly explores the effects of contact with alien life on the population with Rupesh discussing the insignificance ordinary people must now feel and how it shakes their faith in God. A bit of Davies own atheism creeping in there too.

There's also a very Bondian feel to the conspiracy within government sub-plot, bolstered by a wonderful scene early in the episode as both Frobisher and Lois Habiba arrive for work, he arriving in his sleek black ministerial car and she hoping off the bus, as Ben Foster's score of driving strings echoes Murray Gold's UNIT theme. Whilst the inclusion of Lois mirrors Gwen's 'first day at the office' introduction way back from Series One, there are also a couple of continuity nuggets thrown out to the fans with Frobisher's mention of Colonel Mace (The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky) and news of Martha's honeymoon (or is that perhaps a guarded reference to Freema's flit to ITV's Law And Order? Still, at least Foster pops in a bit of Martha's theme). Peter Capaldi is great as the twitchy Frobisher and at one point I thought he was going to launch in a Malcolm Tucker tirade of expletives at Cush Jumbo playing Lois, as she titted about with cups of tea whilst Frobisher is trying to conduct a debrief with UNIT's Colonel Oduya. 'Fucking tea! Thank you very fucking much. Now will you piss off and go and breach some high security protocols on Bridget's bloody computer!'

When the possessed children eerily begin chanting 'We are coming', the script then introduces another character, one with a link back to the dirty dealings of 1965. Timothy White (yes, and Davies manages to get a joke in there about that but you'd need to be a certain age to appreciate it), in a superb performance from the ever wonderful Paul Copley, is in a care home and one of the best scenes in the entire episode is Gwen's interview with him. It's an emotionally powerful scene with both Eve Myles and Copley magnificent as Gwen tenderly teases his real name and background from him. Beautiful acting from them both, adding a tragic core to the archetypical alien invasion plot. That the plot is also part of a government cover up is later revealed by Mr. Dekker, a boffin straight out of Bond's Q branch who has been tracing the alien signals for donkey's years. Cue intense chat with the Prime Minister, who doesn't want any stains on his hands and orders Frobisher to cover up Britain's involvement with the aliens, the 456. That also means killing Jack.

The final twist is that lovely Rupesh turns out to be an agent undercover at the hospital. But here the plotting gets muddied. Yes, we know Frobisher orders the death of Jack and other retired military personnel, suggesting he may have knowledge or been witness to the original 456 abductions but what exactly was Rupesh doing trying to infiltrate Torchwood in the first place? It seems terribly convenient that he's involved in this set up and is asked to carry out the execution. And if they know Jack is immortal then what plans do they have for him because it seems another agenda, primarily of agent Johnson (a suitably severe Liz May Brice), is also being played out with the destruction of the Hub being part of it. All very Machiavellian even if the discovery of the bomb in Jack's stomach is horribly contrived around Gwen busy giving herself a pregnancy scan. Gives a whole new meaning to having a bun in the oven, I suppose.

This is leaps and bounds ahead of most Torchwood fare it has to be said, complete with a frenetic cliffhanger to ensure viewer loyalty, with director Euros Lyn getting excellent performances from the three remaining main characters, suggesting that the original line up was always too cumbersome in the first place. Here, there is enough involvement for Jack, Gwen and Ianto in the main plot as well as opportunities for character development. Lyn's direction is slick, handling the actions scenes with a grand sweep and understanding the importance of framing actors to maximise their performances for the screen. Coupled with an excellent score from Ben Foster, a committed guest cast, splendid use of Cardiff locations...this is a Torchwood, if the momentum can be carried through the remaining episodes, completely fit for BBC1's purpose.

Prose And A Con

Fab Cafe, Manchester, 3rd May 2009

I'm a seasoned, if somewhat lapsed, convention goer. I've done them all, the Trek cons in the mid 1980s to the big Blackpool Babylon 5 bashes in the 1990s. The last Doctor Who con I attended was the Panopticon in Manchester way back in 2002. A one day event at Fab Cafe in Manchester seemed the best way of gently easing myself back into the way of all things con wise.

"You're a bad dog baby, and I don't want you around... oh, I thought you said Gilbert O'Sullivan"
Photo courtesy of Dave Cooper

A good line up from the Classic Series of Doctor Who was present: Frazer Hines, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, Nicola Bryant and Mark Strickson. Which does kind of beg the question these days as to whether they'll have anything new to say. Surely, their anecdotes will be etched permanently on the brains of most fans of the original series? It's entirely possible the audience will end up reciting all the appropriate bon mots without the need of guests at all. I suppose they'll be fresher to younger fans who've only just decided to investigate the back catalogue of the series having seen the new series ponce itself in all its multi-media, cross platform glory since 2005. Still, we got some very interesting anecdotes about Mark winning the role of Turlough and nearly being eaten by crocodiles, chased by komodo dragons and finding John Nathan-Turner in his Lanzarote hotel room, McCoy (looking more like Blakey from On The Buses) on King Lear, the obligatory trouser and ferret incident and kid's telly legend Tony Hart, Aldred on that other legend Brian Cant, Bryant (doing a wearing sunglasses indoors Audrey Hepburn on us) on her failed career as a ballerina and Baker... well Baker has started to resemble Pertwee with his mane of silver hair as he nattered about operettas. Same spiky attitude too! All had very positive things to say about new boy Matt Smith and there was a general thumbs down for the new series indulgence of Doctor/companion 'romance'. Don't ya just love the stoicism of Classic Series ming-mongs! And a big thumbs up for Big Finish which quite rightly kept the flag flying during the Wilderness Years.

Nicola "I'm just crazy about Tiffany's" Bryant
Photo courtesy of Tim Drury

Frazer "I say Jamie, that is a BIG one" Hines
Photo courtesy of Tim Drury

However, the question here is not how entertaining the guests were, and, by and large, I did enjoy the Frazer Hines and Mark Strickson chats for, in the former, the lovely, finger fiddling impressions he did of Pat Troughton and, in the latter, a interesting jaunt through his wildlife film-making career since resigning from the role of Turlough. Conventions have moved on from the days when you'd go and watch new episodes of whatever show you were into and swap fanzines, because they've had to, and they are now more about being able to meet people in conducive surroundings whilst also being able to pop into a panel discussion when you feel like it. They are about social interaction and even a one day event such as this must recognise that it's as much about friends meeting up and having a natter than it is watching Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy play a version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire no matter how much fun it might be. It's still great to see those we have loved interacting with fans and overall each panel was entertaining but I just wish it had taken place in more convivial surroundings. In the background, 21st century social interaction was in full flight as instant reactions hit the web via Twitter and I wonder how Twitter, Twitpic, Facebook, MySpace, vodcasts, podcasts et al will impact on one day gatherings such as these. Perhaps we should just hold a virtual con on Twitter? You'd be £25 better off for a start. Mind you, you wouldn't get McCoy and Baker recreating the playful antagonism that existed between Pertwee and Troughton that kept many of us convention whores entertained back in the day.

Mark Strickson trying not to say 'fuck' every five minutes with strategic positioning of pint
Photo courtesy of Dave Cooper

"I'll get you Baker" (c) Behind the Sofa Comedy Department
Photo courtesy Dave Cooper

The huge problem that Fab Cafe had yesterday was that it is simply too small a venue to cope with an over-subscription of attendees. I personally felt like one of several hundred East European prostitutes crammed into a shipping container, suffocating to death on the rank, Flanders like stench from the venue's loos and, no doubt, from various orifices during the long, often frustrating, hot day. This was then compounded by having the signing sessions about ten minutes down the road at the Tiger Lounge, the kitschier cousin to the Fab Cafe, where the great British tradition of queuing was defiantly upheld as we waited for guests to sign bagfuls of merchandise in the environs of what looked like a lap dancing club. And that's no exaggeration as some attendees were clearly intent on getting the remaining contents of Zaavi covered in florid handwriting by a, shall we say, slightly grumpy Colin Baker. Me, I just admired the Tretchikov paintings on the wall and gossiped with the Behind The Sofa triad.

Eastern European prostitutes, yesterday
Photo courtesy Dave Cooper

Its heart was definitely in the right place but the Fab Cafe's one day event did remind me of how frustrating conventions and similar events can get when guests don't arrive on time and you haven't got a plan B up your sleeve, the venue is overcrowded to the point where you would quite happily walk out the door in a strop, the loos resemble a WW1 trench, egos and self-importance are flying all over the place (and that's just the fans) and the organisers don't communicate the reason for the delays. It was probably a nightmare to organise and my sympathies do go to Erica Egerton of the DWAS Liverpool group for trying to hold all this together. My suggestion, if you indeed want it Erica, would be to find yourself a better venue or at least organise within your means and not oversell the event.

Pictures courtesy of the very fabulous Dave Cooper and Tim Drury

I'll Get You, Butler

Doctor Who : Planet Of The Dead

Clang, clang, clang goes the trolley...ding, ding ding goes the bell. That'll be the cloister bell, I suspect. The one doomily bonging all over the trailer for the Novemberish special, The Waters Of Mars. The clanging noise is definitely the sound of this particular little folly nosediving into the sands of Dubai. Was it me, or did this just feel like one big dollop of deja-vu? The story, slight as it was, seemed rather overstuffed with references as if it required some significant shoring up to pass muster. Everything from bits of The Highest Science, Iris Wildthyme (time travelling buses and commuters being dumped on alien planets) to The Langoliers, Pitch Black (the nasty manta-rays), Flight Of The Phoenix (stranded in the desert), Lara Croft and 50s pulp SF, with added Giant Robot joke. There’s even a quite unnecessary shoe-horning in of an Easter eggs reference simply to acknowledge that, you know, it’s an Easter special.

Nothing seemed particularly original or fresh this time round and that's a shame because the production side of the programme stepped up to the plate, providing the much needed scope and glossiness for the show's first outing in HD. Director James Strong certainly seized on the opportunities this afforded to make Planet Of The Dead the sweetest, most calorific eye candy he could. Signature crane shots of the bus in the desert, lush travelogues as the Doctor and Christina go exploring, lens flaring silhouettes of Tennant, and dissolves between London and the alien planet. It looked good but shooting in HD is a double edged sword judging by this initial attempt. For all the gorgeous desert vistas you get to see how really dreadful the weather conditions were when they were shooting in Cardiff. No hiding that rainfall now. The CG effects also will need to improve because, for all the fairly good shots of the Swarm, we got a number of rather iffy, cartoon moments of flying bus. The ratio between how small the story actually was and how jazzy it all looked suggested silk purse and sow's ear to me in this instance. For goodness sake, if you are going to shoot your flagship programme in HD then let's have a big enough story to reap the rewards from it.

We never really get to know any of the passengers on the bus properly, which is unusual for a RTD script. Compare how successfully he writes for a similar character ensemble in Midnight and the difference is remarkable. None of them make much of an impression here and this does make you care less about them. The life-cycle of the metallic ray creatures is interesting and as a metaphor for the way blind greed can bring down civilisations it works quite well in these economically turbulent times. Tennant, as ever, simply slips back into the role and is pretty much on automatic pilot. There is that terrific scene where the Doctor asks each of the bus passengers about their 'chops and gravy' destinations, the witty translation banter with the Tritovores ('trite' is probably the best word to describe these fly headed, jump suit wearing, ray gun brandishing, self-sacrificing cliches) and the Billy No Mates confrontation between him and Christina as she unsuccessfully begs for the spare TARDIS key. I liked the way that the script offered us the Doctor and Christina as similar in their independence, where the Doctor reminisces on his own theft of the TARDIS and acknowledges her a kindred spirit, whom he sets free because he’s not really fit to judge her past actions. Michelle Ryan was good enough in the Lara Croft role for me to want her to pop into the TARDIS with Tennant so it made a bit of a change for him to turn a protege down. However, points deducted for the rather obvious need for Christina to repeat her Mission Impossible act to recover the crystal when she's already done the goblet stealing in the excellent pre-titles sequence. What is this, The Crystal bloody Maze? And just where is she going to take that flying bus? It's not a spacecraft and she might be waiting a while before another wormhole pops into existence to fulfill her dreams of voyaging amongst the stars. Air traffic control is going to spot her eventually.

I'm liking Captain Erisa Magambo as the new face of UNIT and once she gets herself and the troops sorted out (e.g. all shooting straight and not fawning over or saluting the Doctor every time he walks by) then it might be worth bringing her back. I would have cheered if she had shot Malcolm and the attempt at raising the tension in that scene simply didn't work because the editing failed to compress the time between Magambo raising her gun at Malcolm and the Doctor driving the bus through the wormhole. And why did only three of the Swarm make it through the wormhole. Did the rest all stop for a bit of a breather after their spinning faster and faster round the planet? Unfortunately, both Lee Evans and Adam James did not find themselves in my good books. As D.I. Macmillan, James seemed to be borrowing Tom Chadbon's dumb show as Duggan from City Of Death but without replicating any of the charm and, as Malcolm, Lee Evans predictably did his goofy, physical comedy nonsense and, rather disturbingly, seemed to attempt to shag the Doctor's leg like a forlorn puppy at the end of the story. All that "I love you" crap was neither endearing nor particularly funny.

The word 'romp' is being liberally bandied about to try and deflect us from Planet Of The Dead's shortcomings and I suppose it just about qualifies for that status. A slight story, visually impressive, but with its fair share of cliches, wafer thin characterisation, cannon fodder nice aliens, nasty but dull aliens and stretches of dubious acting. It really only moved into gear when Carmen glared at the Doctor and predicted his demise. Cue cloister bell. Day return to Mars, please.

Woman On Wheels

Doctor Who: The Next Doctor

The thing about Doctor Who Christmas specials is that they are now traditionally required to fulfill a number of audience expectations. They have to be brash, no nonsense populist affairs with an ersatz seasonal message or spirit of intention. It's no good examining the plot that closely or digging around for complex existential homilies because it won't stand up to the pressure.

At the heart of this 'Cybermen at Christmas' bluster is a deeply personal story...

However, Russell T Davies usually sows the seeds of the forthcoming series into the Specials and the one thing that immediately strikes you about The Next Doctor is, deliberately or not, the way it marks time on the tenure of the Tenth Doctor. With no full series to anticipate, this special makes pains to show the Doctor has clearly made a decision to travel without a companion and has set out to explore on his own. Meeting Jackson Lake is Davies attempt to underline this whilst also getting both characters, whose fractured identities require some mending, to engage in a form of neuro-linguistic psychotherapy. The Doctor suddenly questions his current incarnation's future and eventual demise. And Lake is a blank canvas onto which the essence of the Doctor has been stamped but which then helps him to excavate the true qualities of the real person drowned by his psychological fugue. By this estimation, Davies certainly bucks the trend for at least half an hour of the running time. At the heart of this 'Cybermen at Christmas' bluster is a deeply personal story which delves into identity, anxiety and the effects of dissociative fugue. With Lake it's brought about with a traumatic attack on his family by the Cybermen but with the Doctor it's presumably self-imposed after the treatment he dished out to Donna Noble.

The trouble is that such a heartfelt story, and by extension the twin performances from Morrissey and Tennant, deserves an episode to itself and not mashed in with the cold leftovers of street urchins, Victoriana, snow, explosions and Cybermen. Mind you, Christmas can be as much an emotionally distressing time for families as it is a time of joy and good will to all men (the emphasis here being on men, Cyber or otherwise) so perhaps such an examination of the Doctor's persona and nature isn't too far from the true spirit of the festive season. The whistles and bells that decorate the central premise of the empty man who needs his life and memories back and the lonely god who just can't take this shit any more include the bluff with the fob-watch that then turns out to be an important clue and the info-stamp flashback of all ten incarnations which you could say is pretty much about putting the writing on the wall for the Tenth. When a flashback of all the previous actors in the role turns up, you know your card's marked.

...utterly daft

When you look at the rest of the story it's clear that Hartigan's collaboration with the Cybermen, using children to re-engineer a Cyber-Godzilla, is utterly, preposterously daft. The entire sequence in the workhouse with masses of kids turning big wheels, pulling chains and levers just needed to be set to music, given some suitable lyrics and you'd have had a West End musical. Sure, it may dovetail with Dickens own attempts to pick apart the effects of industrialisation on society in Hard Times and A Christmas Carol but this was more Lionel Bart than Ebenezer Scrooge. I did enjoy Dervla's turn as Miss Hartigan, the mother/whore symbol trying to get a leg up (or over) in a man's world. The ripe tones used in countless M&S ads came in handy as she made a delicious villainess who arrived complete with a feminist liberation agenda. The gathering at the funeral is an interesting framing device for the character. She is positioned in the charitable role, looking after the poor in the workhouses, that many aspiring women of the day sought to do but uses the potency of her sexuality as a way to achieve power in an unjust and unequal society. Hence, the obvious symbolism of the red dress but also her assumption that the Cybermen are simply tools of industrialising power at her disposal to rid society of the kind of greedy, exploitative men she despises. It's an exciting, well edited, sequence as Cybermen emerge from the snow and mist and throttle people. Well, I say people, but men...mostly.

Men, eh? Bloody liars...

The contrast between Miss Hartigan and Rosita is of note too. From the implications of Hartigan's 'I doubt he paid you to talk' we thus gather that Rosita is a lady of the night. Hartigan seems to be confusing the sexual act and liberation and whilst she can talk the talk she certainly doesn't walk the walk. Rosita is compassionate and human whereas Hartigan is ice-cold ambition, preferring the company of Cybermen than that of real men. One of them definitely will be Nancy in the West End musical production, clearly after the wallop Rosita gives Hartigan. Velile Tshabalala was very impressive in the quieter moments, with sensitive playing particularly in the scene where the Doctor reveals that the other Doctor is Jackson Lake. Quite neat then that the Cybermen are simply setting up Hartigan to be the Cyber King. Men, eh? Bloody liars. But why did the Cybermen need to enslave loads of kids to power their ship, couldn't they do that themselves? A highly contrived notion to get masses of children to shovel coal into the belly of the Cyber-King, this was obviously some heavy symbolism about the continuing exploitation of children in the 21st century. It's enough to put you off your pudding.

A rather excessive bit of symbolism there, Russell, me old chuck.

Forty five minutes in and this goes a bit pear shaped. A blend of Dickensian steam-punk Gothic with a very tender story about two psychologically broken men gets sadly derailed by the need to have a big special effects climax with explosions and things. More ho-ho-hum than ho-ho-ho. Hartigan suddenly gets the screaming ab-dabs as the threat of Cyber-liberation looms. The Cybermen are just as narrow minded as their Victorian counterparts and it seems independent women have no place in Cyberdom. However, I rather liked the way that Hartigan then rewrote the software and put the willies up the Cyberleader in another twist on the power of sex over the sexless. Dervla is terrific in this scene, with her black contact lenses and brass worked Cyber head. And I suppose the old adage 'behind every great (Cyber) man is a great (Cyber) woman' is the only way to describe the Iron Man rising from the Thames and stamping the populace to bits. A rather excessive bit of symbolism there, Russell, me old chuck. And history gets further bent out of shape in the process but then no one on Earth ever gives a toss about alien invasions these days, and now, in those days too. The Doctor's offer is a bit pointless isn't it? Why would Hartigan want to be dumped on another world with no one to convert? Her whole raison d'etre is to do just that. It's very handy that the Doctor can recondition Hartigan at the drop of a hat and it's rather silly that she suddenly, as a result, becomes a screaming girlie. With such powerful screams that it all goes tits up for the Cybermen and she and they blow up? Er, what exactly happened there?

It's all entertaining enough with some de rigeur eye-popping visual effects and the sentimental ending suggests a Doctor not quite given up on mixing with the plebs at Christmas time but, I don't know about you, I was expecting some last minute twist ending to lead us off into the specials for 2009. So, it all felt like a bit of damp squib of an ending with no punchline to whet our appetites for next year. Andy Goddard's direction was spirited, with some lovely visual compositions and great lighting and, as ever, the production values were very high. Murray Gold was somewhat in 'this music will tell you how to feel' mode and I didn't much care for it. I did think that David Morrissey somewhat eclipsed David Tennant in places and that's a shame in a way as it's unlikely that we'll see him as the actual Doctor in a future series. However, he did get rather sidelined towards the end as David Tennant went through the heroic motions. There's a real sense here that the tenth Doctor is about to exit stage left. He doesn't look particularly happy once he's met with Jackson, possibly because he sees himself reflected back, and there's a weary inevitability about how he moves through the story. Change is in the air, and on the strength of this festive romp, it's perhaps not a moment too soon.

"Mother do you think she's dangerous to me?"

Sarah Jane Adventures: Enemy Of The Bane Part 2

'Nice one, Mrs.W' as Clyde and Luke are smothered in exploding Bane matter when Wormwood blasts her assailants. The gang realise that UNIT are also on the trail and hide out in Gita's flower shop with Mrs. Wormwood and Lethbridge-Stewart. It's here that Sarah Jane asks the very pertinent question, around which the whole story is built, 'Don't you have any children of your own...?' This aimed at someone who gives herself the title of 'Mrs'. Again, we have some very accomplished playing by Sladen and Bond as the two women sensitively discuss...well...their barreness. Of course it then flips over into bitterness as Wormwood takes a pot shot at Sarah Jane's new found sense of purpose as a result of her surrogacy of Luke. There's a hint at ancient myth and Biblical symbolism with the story positioning both Sarah Jane and Wormwood as barren women, with Luke perhaps indicative of some form of immaculate conception. It's again telling that Wormwood bitches to Sarah about the sonic lipstick being 'very female' and demands 'a more masculine influence' as they go for handbags at dawn in the shop. Of course, the male influence is revealed as Kaagh and the pair of them are double crossing the Bane in order to revive the 'creation figure' of Horath.

Kaagh becomes Wormwood's fawning eunuch which is a rather demeaning role for a former warlord of the Sontaran race and a further reference to Wormwood's power representing a suggestion of anxiety about male castration. Little man syndrome, indeed. Samantha Bond caresses that scroll a little too sensuously for my liking and I'm pretty sure she has cottoned on to what exactly is going on and is camping it up for all it's worth. When Luke asserts himself and stands up to Wormwood she again gets rather aroused and wants to possess him. Her ownership of Luke comes from the need to break the mother/son bond between him and Sarah Jane. However, their passionate declaration of their familial love for one another is something that Mrs. Wormwood would never understand. She simply sees her relationship to Luke as one of sexual and intellectual possession.

...a mother bequeathing her son with the power of life and death

Oh dear. Bloody Gita's back, sticking her nose in again. Except, she stumbles across a rather oddly behaving Major Kilburne and it's at this moment that it becomes apparent that Kilburne isn't what he seems. Not someone you'd invite in for a quick cuppa then, Gita. Meanwhile Luke is dragged off to another desolate factory location where he rejects Wormwood's aspirations for him to be her concubine. Tommy Knight is exceptionally good, getting across Luke's antipathy for the woman's plan of galactic revenge. Bond also gives superb value, managing that tricky balance between sincerity and ham that all good villains need to achieve. Luke establishes that Horath actually isn't a living creature and that he/she/it is a cyborg computer capable of reshaping the universe and 'can destroy worlds and give birth to them in a blink of an eye'. Some sort of interstellar father/mother then, a galactic cradle/grave to which Wormwood compares herself. And with that she hands her 'prince' the glowing dildo of Horath, a mother bequeathing her son with the power of life and death.

Brilliantly, that scene sucks the audience in and just for a brief second you think Luke's fallen under her spell. And then he legs it. What a fantastic twist to a carefully built scene. After a bit of a chase, a couple of explosions and some gloating, Kaagh decides to finish Luke off. However, Wormwood puts him firmly in his place, completing her castration of the warrior and reducing him to the status of slave. Whilst this life/death struggle is played out, Clyde gets all 007 (the look on Lethbridge-Stewart's face is priceless) and the gang have to deal with Major Kilburne. Kilburne is, of course, Bane. But Nick Courtney rises to the occasion and obviously relishes the scene where Lethbridge-Stewart promptly shoots the creature with his walking stick gun! Pity about that appalling 'slimy creep' gag from Sarah Jane, though.

...he simply says, 'I don't want to be a God' when she offers him the universe on a plate.

The climax to all this running around is Horath's dildo opening a big hole in time and space at a neolithic stone circle. Hang on, let me read that again....yeah, that's about the right level of innuendo. And holes are very important symbols when it comes to fertility rites and fertilising power and representing the 'opening' of this world into other planes of existence. Oh, whilst we're at it, it might be useful to flag up that the herb wormwood is often used as a tea to give to pregnant women to ease labour pains. When she prepares to insert the scroll in the hole (I'm sorry, I can't help it) Wormwood even gets a solicitor joke in when Kaagh reminds her of their partnership. But ironically, only the human Luke can enter the circle and open the gateway. I love that moment where he simply says, 'I don't want to be a God' when she offers him the universe on a plate. It's the culmination of a very strong character arc that's been developing for Luke over the series. And Bond's reaction when Sarah Jane arrives and Luke runs to her with a shout of 'Mum!' is beautifully played. She's defeated by very simple human emotions, especially unconditional love, and that resignation is there in her desperate pleading for him.

Kaagh does the honourable thing and with a shout of 'Sonta-ha!' he pulls himself and Wormwood into the black hole. The episode ends on a delightful coda that embraces true friendship, including Sir Alistair of course, and the series de rigeur visual motif of star-gazing wonderment at the universe. A great conclusion to the story and a script that gets the series on track again after a run of uneven stories that took liberties with character development at the behest of recycled ideas. Clyde and Luke did get some terrific episodes, Sarah went somewhat out of character in the penultimate story and I'm afraid Rani and her family ended up as the major casualties this year. Rani is great but there needs to be some serious work done to make Gita and Haresh more appealing. But at least this is a high note to end this series on.

Mother And Child Reunion

Sarah Jane Adventures: Enemy Of The Bane Part 1

I don't know how many of you remember Les Dawson and Roy Barraclough and their double act as fishwives Cissie and Ada but it struck me at about ten minutes into Enemy Of The Bane that, in similar fashion, Mrs. Wormwood and Sarah Jane had started how they meant to go on. And on. And on. As the highly camp Samantha Bond and our Lis traded insults in a disused factory I did imagine them leaning across their garden wall as they bickered at each other about the Archetype, Bubbleshock and Bane. And no, that's not a firm of solicitors. Mrs. Wormwood's elaborate calling card - pretending to buy flowers, subduing Gita (permanently I'd hoped) and leaving a cheque to pique Sarah Jane's interest - seemed a tad on the excessive side but who cares when Bond and Sladen take the crackling dialogue and run with it, trading bitchy insults whilst running away from monstrous CGI blobs. You could tell director Graeme Harper was savouring this in the way he shot the sequence of Mrs. Wormwood and Sarah Jane belting down the corridor to get out of the factory. A frenzy of close-ups, medium shots and some great low angle stuff are joined by a quick flash of Samantha Bond's high heels clacking along very camply. A bit of utterly gratuitous shoe fetish that reminded me of Chrissy's high-heeled magnificence back in The Last Sontaran.  I'd also like to know Mrs. Wormwood's tips for keeping a violent purple hood permanently stuck to her head too.

...the Tunguska scroll looks...well...a bit like an ornate dildo

It transpires that the Bane are out to get their revenge on Mrs. Wormwood for the Bubbleshock affair but Sarah Jane's having none of it. After Clyde's priceless, 'But I thought you said she was an ugly bug-eyed squid thing' and Mrs. Wormwood's exasperated retort of 'Children!', the first hints of what writer Phil Ford is actually wanting to talk about in the drama start to emerge, even after the rather tongue in cheek one-upwomanship between Sarah Jane and Mrs. Wormwood as they mark out their territory in the attic. This is about family. Yes, the major theme of this second series is brought out again for another airing. It's clear from Luke's reaction to his Bane mother/creator that there are issues a plenty lurking under the surface of this witty and rather arch episode. Both women squabble rather broodily over the confused Luke and there's a whiff of a strangely skewed Oedipal love-hate undercurrent emanating from the relationship between Luke and Mrs. Wormwood. In fact, I'd go as far as to say she displays a certain amount of sexual desire for Luke, with her purring, 'I made you rather handsome, didn't I?' One could also argue that the displaced bits of Horath, a sort of dismembered father-figure, represent the absence of mature masculinity in a world populated by brooding mothers and immature teenagers. It's also significant to note that the Tunguska scroll looks...well...a bit like an ornate dildo.

Sladen and Courtney play the reuniting of Sarah and Lethbridge-Stewart to perfection

And the dildo is kept in the Black Archive. That mention of UNIT and their stash of alien artefacts neatly swings the script towards the highlight of the episode. The return of Nick Courtney and Sir Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart. Even before we meet him, UNIT is posited as another symbol of the story's play on the role of the masculine with Clyde getting scolded by Sarah Jane for thinking the use of guns will solve all problems. Still, it is a delight to see him back and Courtney is in fine form as he dresses down the rather annoying Major Kilburne who prattles on about 'homeworld security' in front of a living legend who has dealt with his fair share of what he charmingly refers to as 'space thuggery'. Kilburne's an odd one and Simon Chadwick's performance is angular and brittle, indicating that he's not quite the full shilling, especially with that unsettling moment where he peers at himself in the metal lamp. And Sladen and Courtney play the reuniting of Sarah and Lethbridge-Stewart to perfection even though it's purely a fanboy pleasing moment and the kids watching won't have a clue who the hell he is. Perhaps this will usher in a cameo in the parent series for good measure.

The brief moments between Clyde and Luke, discussing Clyde's dad, leads us to the inevitable scene where Luke's confusion about his parental stock will necessitate a confrontation with Mrs. Wormwood. Clyde recognises that without his dad he wouldn't be alive and this spurs Luke into demanding to see her, despite Sarah's wishes to the contrary. It's a nicely played scene, showing off both Daniel Anthony and Tommy Knight to great advantage. The following scene between Knight and Bond, as Wormwood turns on the charm to escape from the attic, is also a triumph and again emphasises the themes of children and their relationships with their parents that's been running through this series. Here, it is Luke's turn to shed some light upon the woman that created him within the context of nature versus nurture in the development of adolescent social orientation. 

Universal domination and the sweetness of revenge are on the menu once more.

We get to see the Black Archive but I was slightly disappointed and had hoped for a few recognisable objects littering the place as a little treat for us older fans. All we ended up with was a nod to Raiders Of The Lost Ark and mention of Queen Victoria. A shame really. The episode's cliffhanger mixes Sarah and Rani stealing the dildo of Horath and causing a security breach at UNIT intercut with Wormwood's battle against one of the Bane that hilariously turns up on the doorstep posing as a pensioner collecting for charity. Ah, but then there's the bluff and Wormwood it seems is in league with Kaagh, the Sontaran seen off by Sarah at the beginning of the series this year. Universal domination and the sweetness of revenge are on the menu once more. A good opening episode, well directed by Harper and full of wonderful performances, especially from Bond and Courtney, and a reminder of the sheer fun this series can be.