Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

Stuffing and nonsense

The worst thing about Christmas when you're not feeling well is that it just becomes an exercise in going through the motions. 

This year, I've spent most of the festive period sneezing and snuffling and coughing my guts up, enjoying Christmas dinner and Boxing Day trips to see the extended family across the country, but not really being into it as much as everyone else.

And that's how The Next Doctor felt to me.  It was fun, it wasn't demanding, but it felt like going through the motions, particularly after the grotesque excesses of The Swollen Earth.

As a piece of drama, it seemed strangely flat and lacking in either urgency or threat, largely through some truly plodding, leaden direction by Torchwood refugee Andy Goddard. There was no ship plummeting to Earth, no lurking menace hanging in the skies above Earth - as with the last three years of festive Who.  Take out the references to Christmas and this would have worked in the same way that the previous three specials wouldn't.  It wasn't special.  Not by a long chalk.

hoping we'd hear Cyber Dervla asking where her fucking keys where

And there was the Cyberking.  I know people have drawn comparisons with Transformers, and given Russell's tendency for cross-cultural looting and pillaging that would come as no surprise.  But watching the big metal lug stomping across London, I couldn't help but think of XOTANG, the giant grumpy mechanoid of quirky BBC Three comedy The Wrong Door, and hoping we'd hear Cyber Dervla asking where her fucking keys where...

Appropriately, much like The Wrong Door, there were a lot of instances in this episode where the visual effects failed to match up to the promise.  Not just with the Cyberking's attempt to restage Cloverfield, but even the more basic stuff such as Tennant swinging off the exploding factory ledge with Lake Jr, which featured perhaps the worst green screen in the show's recent history.

As with The Stolen Earth and Journey's End, there was a sense of the writer and production team tying up loose ends.  We've had the void, the Daleks and now the Cybermen from One Canada Square all being dealt with over the last year or so now, as the RTD era officially starts to wind down.

The other problem I had with The Next Doctor is a more fundamental one, and something that will be no longer an issue by mid 2010. 

The first half of The Next Doctor had the potential to be an interesting exercise in character.  Namely, what is it that makes our favourite Time Lord the Doctor.  Is it personality, backstory, behaviour or what?  And if you transpose those actions, beliefs and behaviour onto someone who isn't the Doctor, what does that make the person?

Morrissey turned in a grotesquely panto-esque performance that suggested the infostamp backwash had got stuck on Colin Baker

The idea of The Doctor encountering someone who may or may not be him, or who has assumed the mantle, is a fascinating one.  Big Finish, of course, tried something in that vein with The One Doctor, while a proposed spin-off series from Death Comes To Time, according to it's producer, would have had Stephen Fry's Minister of Chance crusading through space and time taking the Doctor's place and, ultimately, his name, as though it were the title and actions that maketh the man.

And if only that's what we'd received here.  Instead, through both writing and performance, we ended up with a piece of caricature.  Morrissey, normally such a subtle and honest actor, turned in a grotesquely panto-esque performance that suggested the infostamp backwash had got stuck on the Colin Baker era files. 

There's long been a complaint that decent actors (Crowden, I'm looking at you) turned it up to 11 when cast in old Who, and that still seems in evidence today going by Morrissey's turn in the role.  Curiously, he and Tennant seemed to lark any on-screen spark, all the more ironic given how much the pair lit up the screen in Blackpool.

And to be fair, he wasn't helped by a script that had the character turn from bombastic comic book hero to snivelling crybaby, then emasculated him in favour of giving the Doctor another valedictory hero moment as he rescued Jackson's son from the Temple of Doom... sorry, the Cyberking's intestines. 

Yes, before the moaning starts, I know the show's called Doctor Who, but in an episode which could have been about the nature of the Doctor's character, to give the heroic rescue moment to a character that doesn't need it seems a bit OTT.  But then, this is a Davies script, and RTT and OTT seem to go together perfectly.

And was it just me, or did Tennant look absolutely knackered here?  I know it's a tough gig, but there were times during The Next Doctor where young Mr MacDonald looked positively drained.  Between a lacklustre, tick-box script, plodding direction and Tennant clearly shattered after carrying the show for three years, this felt a Christmas episode too far.

There were lots of little gifts in the episode, but they were trinkets and stocking fillers

Now, I know I risk sounding like the Grinch by expressing such dissatisfaction with The Next Doctor.  So for the sake of balance, and because they deserve mention, what was likeable about the episode?

Well, Dervla Kirwan was, for a start.  Creepy, cheeky, playful - this is exactly what a Doctor Who villain needs to be.  Even one that spends 99% of her screen time not encountering the Doctor.  Likewise Velile Tshabalala, playing Generic Spoof Dr Who Assistant No. 41, made a hugely underwritten character likeable.   That opening gag, as seen on Children in Need and YouTube for the last month or so, works perfectly.  As does the reveal of the other TARDIS. 

There were lots of little gifts in the episode, but they were trinkets and stocking fillers, distracting from the coal at the bottom.

It's just a shame the episode was Doctor Who by numbers.  For a Christmas Day feast, this felt very much like warmed up Boxing Day leftovers.

But then, what do I know?  I'm Scottish.  We're more about Hogmanay than Christmas anyway, in which case bliadhna mhath ur to you all at home...

Time's up

Downtime

So here we have an Earthbound romp, set in an educational facility, with investigative reporter Sarah Jane Smith teaming up with the Brigadier to face an old enemy of the Doctor.

Sadly, this isn't a sneak preview of the new series of The Sarah Jane Adventures. Oh that it was, that it was a story with the wit, charm, energy and excitement that the SJA episodes boast, let alone the mothership.

Instead, this is Downtime. Last of our little spinoff reviews - for the time being, anyway. And with so many former characters, companions, creatures and cameos featuring within its VHS confines, it's a case of saving the guest until last.

Now, the first thing to note about Downtime is that it's a Marc Platt script. Specifically, it's a post-Ghost Light Marc Platt script, which means self-consciously weird and quirky. There's nothing worse than a writer who believes his own hype, and Downtime very much feels like one of those cases.

So we get lots of weird dreamlike sequences set on the astral plane, and layered with references to Cromer and other Doctor Who staples, and a script self-consciously laden with wit. and New Adventures-esque nods to Cyberspace.

It's not a particularly bad script - just one that's both a bit full of itself and full of a desire to please Johnny Fanboy.

It’s got quite a tight plot, actually, which makes the Great Intelligence seem, well, intelligent. Imagine this realised with a Sarah Jane Adventures budget, or even better a new series budget, where the soldiers and the Yeti and the cameras filming the action hadn’t apparently been found down the back of a store cupboard in Blackpool, and this could almost appear watchable.

No, the deficiencies are in other areas. Although not, for once, in special effects. In fact, this is one area where Downtime is surprisingly effective. A bit of proto-CGI here, silly string there and the Honey Monster after a bad Britney dye-job elsewhere, and they just about pull it off. It’s amazing what a bit of string and a metal ball can do when tied to an old Betamax camera, isn’t it?

Sadly, as seems to be an ever familiar echoing cry in these mini-reviews, it’s the performances where it all falls down. Which may not come as a surprise when you consider who it stars.

Ah, Lis. Maybe it's the quality of the new series writing and directing, maybe it's just Lis finding something new in the role these days. But this is very much from the time when La Sladen's acting range could generously be described as 'limited'. She's not quite K9 and Company bad here, but she's certainly Big Finish Sarah Jane bad. Meanwhile Nick Courtney gives his customary 'nice' performance. As in, he's a nice guy I'm sure, but he's a bloody awful actor.

A fusion of Mark Thomas and Timmy Mallett

But incredibly, neither of these pair provide the episode's nadir. Nor does John Leeson, playing a DJ-cum-undercover activist who seems to be a fusion of Mark Thomas and Timmy Mallett - an idea which really is as bad as that sounds. And nor do the rookie actors and can't-get-work-anywhere-elses that pad out the cast - yes, Geoffrey Beevers, I'm unfortunately forced to look at you.

No, the real splinters of barrel underside come courtesy of Debbie Watling. You thought she was bad in that missing episodes documentary a few years back (and thoughtfully brought back to public awareness by the Lost in Time DVD)? Trust me, you've really seen nothing yet. That's Dame Judi Dench picking up another Oscar levels of acting compared to her turn in Downtime.

Most performers' talents seem to mature the older they get. Watling's skills have instead gone off, covered in an inch of mold like rotten old cheese. Truly, this is a contender for the worst Doctor Who-related performance of all time. It's not even fun to watch. This isn't so bad it's funny. It's just bad. There's enough bad performances in here to get laughed out of a third division am-dram festival.

And that's where, ultimately, Downtime falls down. Indeed, where all the spin-off fan videos fall down. Where all the spin-offs fall down, in fact. It seems notable that the less a show has to do with Doctor Who, the better the performances. Downtime and Shakedown are the best examples of this, or worst, depending on which side your Denis Norden is buttered.

Downtime is a video that only a Doctor Who fan could love. It has no appeal, no mainstream identity. It's sole reason for existing is to pander to a fanbase which even to this day looks back on the era between Sylvester McCoy and the Scouse Ray Parlour lookalike as some kind of golden age, when fans took back their show via spin-off films, via books and whatever other medium they could employ.

But it's not.

If anything, Downtime shows the worst excesses of that era - a desperation to pander to an audience so starved of new Doctor Who that anything with even the faintest whiff of diamond logo or tie-in will be snapped up. So we have a script which, while solid and with the occasional flourish, is also choc full of characters and continuity, and a casting process that brings together anyone with a vague connection of the show, regardless of their genuine worth or ability.

Now when the new series brings back Lis Sladen it's to show the legacy of the Doctor's travels and to provide a bridgehead between the young audience and their parents. With Downtime, they bring her back because, well, she's Lis. And she's available.

Perhaps we’re spoiled nowadays, but when the only thing we can moan about is the fact that Torchwood’s a bit rubbish and has a semi-naked Cyberwoman, then maybe these are actually blessed times after all.

Hypo Full of Love

Cyberon

A couple of years back, I was between jobs, having taken voluntary redundancy and decided to go travelling for a bit, my parents kindly agreed to stow my gear - and me - temporarily.

While I was staying there, I happened across a very odd TV show airing on SixTV -  the local public access-style network serving Oxfordshire.  The Adventures of Stephen Brown, it was called, and it was a quirky, likeably amateurish attempt at doing Doctor Who with the serial numbers sawn off.  A weird fusion of fan-video and BBV, if you like. 

It was creaky, and hackneyed, and occasionally very very cheap looking.  But it was also made with passion, and charm, and an attention to detail in writing and performance that belied its zero-budget ultra-local telly origins.

Cyberon reminds me a lot of that.  If you can get by the alien costumes - no, they’re not really badly made Cybermen at all, and you’d be a fool and a communist to think otherwise - it’s an eminently watchable, entertaining piece of drama, boasting some decent writing and performances.  It’s the sort of thing that, with a few more quid spent on it, you’d expect to have been shown on Channel 5 back in the day.

they’re not really badly made Cybermen at all, and you’d be a fool and a communist to think otherwise

And, if you’ll permit me to put on the wank hat for a moment, there’s some interesting ethical discussions at the heart, over the morality versus the practicality of science.  If anything, as debates rage between church and state over the potential application of hybrid embryos in stem cell, it’s more topical than ever.  There’s a real sense of expecting the viewer to not only pay attention to the technobabble, but to understand the arguments at the heart of the episode, rather than just chew cud and wait for the monsters to turn up.

Indeed the script, by chubby ginger veterinarian Lance Parkin, is at its best when steering away from the more Who-heavy concepts.  Specifically, the aforementioned big silver giants who favour the word cyber.  When he’s focusing on the rights and wrongs of Cyberon, and the mystery of what the drug is and how it works, it’s a far stronger tale.

Ochlan is one of those rarities in the Who spin-off field - a proper actor

It also benefits, too from some surprisingly strong performances.  BBV stalwart Jo Castleton, last seen getting her baps out for some red hot Zygon action, gets in some practice here while boffing scrawny Yank scientist Tom Mordley, played by PJ Ochlan.  Ochlan, incidentally, is one of those rarities in the Who spin-off field - a proper actor, who has real credits on his CV.  Little Man Tate, The Practice... oh, and he was also in Police Academy: The Series, one of those TV spin-offs you suspect was only commissioned under the influence of a shedload of single malt and blow.

But the pair are very good - Castleton as the Scully-like sceptic who begins to realise the potential of Cyberon, then becomes aware of its dangers, and Ochlan as the scientist misguided by his hope of curing the world’s ills and manipulated into a position of evil.  The relationship that develops between them also feels realistic and adult  - and not in a Zygon way, even if Castleton spends a reasonable amount of time in her scanties.

There’s some good support too.  OK, gay flatmate Ray - played by sleepwalking Simon Cowell lookalike David Roeciffe - is a bit bland, but veteran actor Oliver Bradshaw as the elderly George, cured of his dementia by Cyberon but eventually driven to its death by the alien side effects,turns in a gentle performance.  It’s the sort of role that, had they the money, Graham Crowden would probably have got, but Bradshaw is a more than able deputy.

The difference between being a Channel 5 drama and a straight-to-video fan cash-in

In fact, that seems to be the best way to sum up Cyberon.  You get the feeling that with a bit more resources, this could have been even better, but with the limitations it has, it just about gets away with it.  It’s the difference between it being a broadcastable Channel 5 drama and a straight-to-video fan cash-in with a BBFC certificate.   There’s a lot that’s decent, don’t get me wrong, and given the resources and limitations the production must have endured, it’s a damn sight better than it could have been.  It’s also a damn sight better than Spooks: Code 9, but to be fair, so’s herpes.

But when Cyberon creaks, it creaks heavily.  Nowhere more so than the Cyberons themselves.  They look like they’ve been lifted from a dodgy cracked copy of Manhunter v Boxhead.  The creatures have this sort of weird, melted plastic face that looks halfway between Tomb era Cybermen, and the kiddies plastic voice changer helmets released on the back of the new series.

They work best when they’re kept out of shot, seen as a ghostly transparent presence,  reflected in a syringe, or otherwise distorted.  When one’s leaning over the bannister of Mordley’s mezzanine, however, suddenly it threatens to come crashing down.  The drama, that is, not the bannister.  They might as well have used one of the Tubcon costumes from Stephen Brown.  Effect would be about the same.

But Cyberon just about gets away with it.  Allow it a bit of leeway with the not-Cybermen, and it works as a taut, surprisingly strong piece of drama in its own right.  God alone knows what it’d have been like with a bunch of washed up Doctor Who actors, so kudos to Baggs for going down the route they did instead.   Of the three stories I’ve watched for this little mini-series, it’s definitely the best, and the one that stands up to scrutiny the most.

Next time, Downtime.  And the wank hat is most definitely getting left on the peg for that one.

Shaker maker

Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans

Having recently moved house, I’ve found myself surrounded by boxes and boxes of junk. Tonnes of the stuff. Things I’d forgotten I even had. Old ECW compilation tapes. Fan videos. And some of the ephemera that attempted to fill the gap during the Who-less years between Survival and Rose (Grace: 1999 excepted).

So while we’re waiting patiently for new Doctor Who spin-offs to distract us before Christmas, I thought I’d break the old VHS player out of cold storage and have a look back at three of the more famous pieces of straight-to-video cash-ins.

It seemed only appropriate to kick off with this, the Sontarans' big day out, since we’ve had the return of Mike the Cool Potato Head and his band of midget King Edward troopers this year - and will apparently be seeing them again soon during The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Shakedown (annoyingly, I keep wanting to type Smackdown...) takes it’s inspiration from... well, from just about everything. Terrance Dicks’ script is laden with references to just about every one of his Doctor Who scripts, while the casting is obviously aimed at jaded old Who and B7 fanboys. Even the music comes second hand, with Mark Ayres’ soundtrack not so much referencing James Horner’s score for Aliens as looking round and making off with the sheet music when nobody’s looking.

Ironically, given how much of this is just reusing old ideas, actors, lines and references, Shakedown itself would go on to be recycled as a New Adventure, bookending the action from the film with the adventures of the Doctor and co, making this perhaps the most eco-friendly Doctor Who ever. Or certainly the one that will leave you feeling greenest.

Not so much referencing James Horner’s score for Aliens as making off with the sheet music when nobody’s looking

Plotwise, it’s part Alien, part Horror of Fang Rock, on board HMS Belfast. Or rather, HMS Belfast standing in for the solar sailing yacht Tiger Moth, which a motley crew of rich layabouts have chartered to take part in an race. However, the Sontarans - who are now big puffa jacket wearing hoolies with a face probably influenced by Babylon 5, but more likely carved from plywood, board them in pursuit of a Rutan hiding aboard. With hilarious consequences.

Now, given the low-budget nature of the story - filmed by the late, unlamented Dreamwatch magazine to coincide with their mid-90s rebranding from DWB - it’d be churlish of me to pick on the special effects. And, indeed, harsh, since by cheapo TV movie standards they’re actually fairly decent. The odd bit of pyro here, a nice bit of CG there, and in a nice homage to Blake’s 7, a badly CSO’ed spaceship elsewhere.

But it’s the acting where Shakedown falls down.

Michael Wisher is attempting eight different accents simultaneously, none of them American

The central trio at the heart of the story - Jan Chappell, Brian Croucher and Toby Aspin - are actually pretty decent. Chappell’s playing to type as tough but vulnerable space female Lisa Deranne, while Croucher’s clearly having a whale of a time getting ready for his role as Tiff’nee’s dad on the ‘Enders as slightly dodgy businessman Kurt. And Toby Aspen as Steg is eminently watchable too, coping with the varnished plywood mask and hackneyed dialogue to turn Steg into an almost Worf-esque warrior.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of the rest of the cast. Carole Ann Ford appears to be in a different production to everyone else - a school panto version of Eldorado, apparently - while Michael Wisher's as Robar (which forever makes me think of Roobarb, to the point I expect to hear the theme whenever he’s on screen) is attempting eight different accents simultaneously, none of them American.

Meanwhile Tom Finnis is playing Sontaran Lieutenant Vorn as Harry from Nebulous about 12 years too early. I keep expecting him to turn round and tell us that, unlike the viewer, he no longer has the luxury of eyes/legs/lips/a brain (*del as applicable).

And then there’s Sophie Aldred. Ah, the lovely Sophie. Don’t get me wrong, I think she was actually tremendous as Ace, where her genuine friendship with Sylvester McCoy and a script editor who cared about the character let them give her more depth than most of her predecessors. Given that Ace followed from Mel, a character with the depth of a damp teaspoon, anything would have been an improvement.

But here... whether it’s Uncle Tewance’s scwipt, Kevin Davies’ direction, or it’s just Sophie’s choice, something’s gone catastrophically wrong. It’s fair to describe her performance as spirited or energetic. Just watch the scene where her limp lettuce boyfriend gets shot by Steg. From hysterical screaming to passing out under the influence of a tranquilliser, it’s behind the sofa stuff - and not in a good way.

Anyone want to lay bets on Freema, Billie, Julian Bleach and Dougie Henshall for Shakedown 2030?

What Shakedown exposes more than anything else is that, removed from their comfort zone, a lot of these people just aren’t very good. That’s not intended as a slight, or an insult. It’s just fact. How many companions from Doctor Who went on to have successful acting careers after their time on the show? Louise Jameson, Frazer Hines, Bonnie Langford and... well, that’s about it really. How times have changed - anyone want to lay bets on Freema, Billie, Julian Bleach and Dougie Henshall coming together for Shakedown 2030? Thought not.

Shakedown’s a curious beast, at heart. It desperately wants to wear it Doctor Who credentials on it’s sleeve, but as with BBV’s audios it goes to astonishingly clunky textual lengths to avoid actually doing so. It wants to be gritty and real, but still plays to the parental basement audience, pulling lines like ‘promises to inferior species have no validity’ like they’re supposed to be cheered at, rather than cringed at. It wants to be fresh and modern, with its Virtual Reality sequence and its modern, redesigned Sontarans, but moves with a glacial pace. Seriously - even Tezza’s New Adventure ‘novelisation’ moves quicker than this.

Even leaving aside the effects, Time has not been kind to Shakedown. I'd love to say that nostalgia overcomes its weaknesses, but the truth is these weaknesses don't relate so much from fan origins as fan wish fulfilment. It attempts to be everything a British cult telly fan would want in 1994, but ends up being something nobody would want. Not so much back of the neck, more back in the box

Metacrisis on Infinite Dearths

Before Journey’s End started, I had a moment of panic singularly unique to Glasgow in summer.

About an hour before the episode started, the massed ranks of the Orange Order descended on the road outside my flat, giving it yahoo with their particular brand of marching. 

For a moment, a brief moment, I panicked.  The horrible thought struck that this year’s season finale would be less Journey’s End, more the The Sound of Drums and Flutes.

Thankfully, after about 10 minutes, they passed, marching up Paisley Road with their entourage in tow.

60 minutes later, I was wishing they’d taken up camp outside my window and given it the full Murray Gold.

Doctor Who: Journey’s End

It seems curiously appropriate, on the 60th anniversary of the NHS, we get an episode with more Doctors than at any point in the modern history of the show.  Although only one of them is fully qualified, the other two still being junior Doctors, busy arsing about and running around showing off the obscure jargon they’ve learned while they play with their remote control Dalek set.

It was a surprise they didn't start wheeling Davros down the corridors and offering Dalek Caan a rag mag.

And if that sounds a dumb, ridiculous and over the top idea, then it’s no more than this episode deserves.

This was Doctor Who at it’s best and worst, in sadly unequal measure. 

Now, last week I was hugely disappointed, but the berating I received over my review,  and the insanely high audience and AI figures for the episode, would suggest I’m very much in the minority.  So if you disagreed with my complaints last week, you might want to look away now. 

It was Abraham Lincoln who said you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.  But The Stolen Earth’s incredible rating and the hype surrounding Journey’s End suggests old President Beardy Chops hadn’t factored on Russell T Davies into that particular concept.

at least they can make a good fist of their relationship this time round - in all senses of the term

Clearly Russell wants to clear the decks before he clears his desk, and make sure everything is neat and tidy in the toy box before Steven Moffat takes charge.  Which explains the Lord of the Rings-style multipart ending.  So Mickey and Martha are factored into Torchwood, as was previously rumoured, to join Gappy Riftmouth and former Big Brother housemate Glynn.  Sarah’s safe and well and away to look after Luke and Mr Smith for another series on CBBC, just in time for more school-based alien invasions.

Meanwhile Rose and Jackie are back where they belong, locked away in parallel Norway - although at least this time the Doctor left her something to remember him by -  the Time Lord  equivalent of a sex doll.  Still, at least they can make a good fist of their relationship this time round - in all senses of the term.

And then there was Donna.  Oh, Russell T Davies, why?  Why did you do this to us?  What was this, an exercise in point scoring?  A reminder to us plebs that ultimately you’re in charge?  Because that’s what it felt like.  It felt like Russell saying a big up yours to the naysayers.  Perhaps this was his punishment for all the criticism of Catherine at the start.  ‘Oh, they think she can’t act then?  They think Donna’s a horrible character? I’ll show them.  I’ll write her into being one of the best companions the show’s ever had, and give Catherine every opportunity to showcase her skills as an actress, to the point where you really, really care about her.  That you forget the criticism you had of Donna and of Catherine from The Runaway Bride.

‘Then BANG!  Fuck you for falling for my manipulative writing.  Fuck you for your emotional investment.  Now you’ve learned your lesson.  Never doubt me again.’

Because this was the most ignominious exit Donna could have.  It wasn’t dark, it wasn’t heart-wrenching, it was brutally, cynically manipulative.  Even just killing her, melting her brain under the sheer weight of Time Lord knowledge, would have been a more noble exit for Noble. 

Russell’s self-proclaimed desire to never kill off a companion, even allowing for his ever-more-pompous attempts to work the DWM audience, has effectively forced him to do something worse.  After managing to imbue Donna Noble with a sense of dignity lacking in The Runaway Bride, he denies her a dignified end.  We're supposed to feel sorry for Donna's loss, and sorry for the Doctor's.  But ultimately, his mindwipe solution just left me feeling hollow.

a celebratory hug in the TARDIS so cursory it’s practically off-screen

His solution highlights what was biggest problem with Journey’s End - the writing, and how much the episode exposed the showrunner’s biggest faults as a writer.  Doctor Who has become an exercise in spectacle, every climax bigger and more bloated than before.  But each time, it needs more coincidence, more deus ex machina, more gratuitous technobabble and more suspension of belief than ever before.  And eventually it means writing himself into a corner.

Witness the cliffhanger resolution for instance.  Mickey and Jackie teleporting in I can just about cope with - Rose had already set the precedent last time.  Diverting the regeneration energy was daft, but at least it had a purpose, to set up the semi-Doctor.  But the ‘time lock’ at Torchwood?  What?  It wasn’t even a case of not having an adequate resolution to their dilemma as it was him not having any ideas for the Torchwood team full stop.

The episode as a whole was just... it just failed.  It failed on so many levels.  Too many ideas set up in the The Stolen Earth were just dumped or ignored.  The Shadow Proclamation, for instance.  Last week they were just a bunch of Albinos running what looked like a deep space branch of Nobu.  But we were supposed to believe they were preparing for war, that they were coming and needed the Doctor to lead them into battle.  The Osterhagen key - this ultimate threat, revealed as a planet-busting set of bombs... neutralised by a transmat.  That heartbeat Donna’s been hearing?  Those timelines converging on her?  All just more wibbly-wobbly timey wimey nonsense, but without even using the catchphrase.

And more crucially, Rose and Martha.  A meeting that’s been building for two seasons, and one we needed done properly, especially after Rose’s bitching at the social networking webcast last week, and the shadow Blondie cast over Martha’s stint as chief ankle-twister. 

Instead we got a ‘she’s good’ as Martha appears on the big Dalek telly, and a celebratory hug in the TARDIS so cursory it’s practically off-screen.

As for towing the Earth, a phrase that even written down just looks ridiculous... I refuse to dignify it with any comment.

when it comes to Doctor Who he’s just a carny - Vince McMahon with a BAFTA on his mantelpiece

The one thing that did carry over - in fact, got shoehorned and highlighted so much that it’d have been more of a failure NOT to rely on it - was the hand.  I’m all for the principle of Chekhov’s gun, but as a friend remarked, this was more like Stanislavsky’s Great Big Fuck-Off Crowbar.

Russell T Davies has done this too often to get a pass now.  He may be an award-winning writer and producer, but when it comes to Doctor Who he’s just a carny.  A showman. Vince McMahon with a BAFTA on his mantelpiece.

Davies says he’s not going to write for the show again, once Moffat takes charge, and blasphemous though it may be I’m not going to miss him.  He writes fantastic, beautiful character moments then flattens them against leaden plotting and storylines that leave you drooling in stupefaction.  The man responsible for the sublime Midnight was also responsible for this ridiculous nonsense.

And there were beautiful moments in Journey’s End, don’t get me wrong.  As an episode it failed, utterly, but as a collection of scenes it had moments that made me practically cheering.  Most of them, in some way, involved Julian Bleach, who’s performance as Davros was stunning, truly stunning.  In the same way that Christopher Gable managed to make Sharaz Jek a charismatic monster while hidden in a gimp mask, Bleach’s performance shines out from under layers of latex.  His interplay with the Doctor is exactly what we should have got from Tennant and Simm last year.

The German Daleks were a nice touch.   Not only do the dustbins know who Harriet Jones, former Prime Minister, is, but they also apparently did a Berlitz course before invading the planet.

Tate’s business with the semi-Doctor as he realised who he was, and then more importantly who she was at heart, was wonderful, and the perfect underlining of their screwball relationship.  It paid off wonderfully as the Doctor berated Sylvia at the end, a moment of domestic in Doctor Who that actually, for once, meant something and really worked.

And Bernard Cribbins, of course.  Wonderful throughout his appearances in the series, his sad farewell speech to the Doctor, as he alone realises how lonely and forsaken the Time Lord is, was again pitch-perfect.  As was that final shot, the rain-sodden Doctor all alone at home.  Any kind of ‘what?!’ moment to set up this year’s Christmas special would have undermined what was an intensely strong moment.

In purely production terms, actually, there wasn’t a lot to fault.  Visually it looked great, again everyone did their job in terms of performance with skill, to the extent that even Barrowman seemed good, and the direction carried Graeme Harper’s now traditional blend of breathless energy and poignant stillness.  Watch Journey’s End with the sound off, and this would have been a visually blow-away piece of television.

looks like old Abraham was wrong after all

No, everything that was wrong with Journey’s End came from the script - structurally, conceptually and creatively, this was a bellyflop from the high dive board.

With the hype, the weather, Wimbledon and the summer holidays not quite having started yet (except for viewers in Scotland) I’m expecting this to absolutely shatter the viewing figure records for nu-Who.  As I write this it’s just a couple of hours until they’re available, so without the benefit of some timey wimey foreknowledge I can only guess.  But with the mainstream media, and even BBC.co.uk’s own News homepage, running stories last night that Tennant hadn’t gone, it’s clear something huge has happened to Doctor Who.  It looks like old Abraham was wrong after all. 

The world shifted last night.  And I think it left me behind.

Saturday Night’s Non-event

Doctor Who: The Stolen Earth

Three words.  Three simple words to undermine the credibility of the biggest cliffhanger since the show returned.

To.  Be.  Continued.

Good grief, who’s bright idea was that?  Talk about putting the c--- into continued.  What is this, an episode of Live and Kicking?  This was beyond family TV -  with whacky sound effects, it was like something from the worst cheapo kids game show.

And while this might sound like a ridiculous piece of nitpicky ranting that’s recycling an old Screenwipe joke, there’s a reason why I’m starting at the end of the episode.  Namely, that the ridiculously OTT graphic is perfect encapsulation of everything right and wrong about The Stolen Earth.

For The Stolen Earth was preposterous, overblown, loud and in your face.  This was Doctor Who as Michael Bay would make it.

Stolen Earth?  Swollen Earth more like.

Clearly the theme at the tone meeting was epic.  Everyone’s talked about a Crisis on Infinite Earths scale romp but that’d only really have been true if the final scene in Torchwood and the Sarah Jane Adventures’ most recent series had been a cliffhanger leading into The Stolen Earth.

What this feels more like are those god-awful annoying crossover episodes that shows like CSI or ER would do with other programmes on the network.  The ones where the characters crossing over are written by people who don’t normally write for them, who perhaps don’t grasp the nuances or subtleties from the host show, and thus give us a broadbrush caricature that only superficially, if we’re lucky, resembles the characters we know.

This is an episode of Doctor Who with guest stars from established shows that Russell hasn’t written for

In fact, it feels very like that because it’s exactly what Russell T Davies has done here.  This isn’t the Doctor Who multiverse, this is an episode of Doctor Who with guest stars from established shows that Russell hasn’t written for - ever, in Sarah Jane’s case, and for more than two years in Torchwood’s.  So the Ianto, Gwen, Luke and Sarah Jane here aren’t the ones we know and love (or tolerate, in Gwen and Ianto’s case).

This determination to cram in every aspect of the last four years, no matter how desperate, stretches the episode close to breaking point.  Harriet Jones’ appearance makes so little sense dramatically as to be nonsensical, especially the idea that she’s now some superhacker able to unite Dumbledore’s Army... sorry, the companions.  It means having the Daleks attack New York while Martha’s there, as a nod to last year.  It means throwing in references to Klom and Slitheen, to Owen and Tosh's deaths, to Maria and her dad.  It means dragging Dalek Caan out for one last go-round, and throwing in dialogue tributes to just about every episode featuring the dustbins over the last 45 years.

And it means three separate reprises of the sodding ‘Yes, I know who you are’ gag about Harriet in the space of a couple of minutes.  One of which involves the Daleks.  I mean, seriously.  The Daleks - the all-conquering, most fearsome race in the universe, able to move Earth half way across the universe and subjugate its population in hours - are reduced to playing comic stooges.  Frank described it in his review as taking the joke to its logical conclusion but I see it as quite the opposite.  It’s unnecessary, and ineffective in inverse proportion to the way ‘No, don’t do that’ became chilling and tense in Midnight.

Part of this does indeed feel like Russell clearing the decks, getting rid of the last four years worth of loose ends so that the new production teams (plural, to include Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures) inherit a relatively clean slate for 2010.  But it also feels like Russell has got caught up in his own hyperbole.  Every year he sells the season climax as the new biggest threat ever.  Last year we had the Earth enslaved for a year, and a Doctor/Jack/Martha team-up.  This year it’s the whole universe at stake, with pretty much anyone who’s ever appeared on camera getting a look-in.

And eventually something has to give.  It’s not the performances - everyone’s pretty much uniformly great here, even Billie, who’s apparently recovered from her dental work last week, and Freema, who finally reminds us what she can do.  But everywhere else, there’s a sign of creakiness, almost desperation, creeping into the production.  The sets don’t look quite so polished or convincing as usual. 

More than once the CGI looks ropey - and indeed, in one obvious case is a reused shot from The Parting of the Ways.

But mainly it's because of the script, which leaves monstrous credibility gaps.  Why would Sarah abandon her son, if she knows the Daleks can trace the signals and could, potentially, work out where he is?  Why does Jack bugger off from the Hub, knowing the Daleks are on their way, with the only Dalek-killing gun in the complex?  For that matter, why doesn’t he teleport Ianto and Gwen with him - we KNOW the bracelet can teleport three people, because we saw it last year.  In Russell’s script, no less.

Occasionally, you feel Davies should have his creative licence revoked.  He's so desperate to work on the bigger picture here that the fine detailing, what made his work on Doctor Who by and large so notable  has been lost.

I don’t want to suggest that they’re being overambitious, but this is a production team that has worked bloody hard, consistently, for almost four years solid as we come into The Stolen Earth.  And maybe, after all this time, the strain has started to show.

The biggest giveaway that things are stretched just that little bit too thin this time round is the Shadow Proclamation.  For four years we’ve had the Shadow Proclamation name-checked in dramatic, universe-shattering terms.  It’s clearly something to be feared, invoked as it is against the Autons, the Sycorax et al.  But we’ve never known what it is - a treaty?  An organisation of some kind?  A planet?

When we finally get there, after four years of build-up, the Shadow Proclamation turns out to be a branch of Pizza Express run staffed by Judoon and a couple of albino Scottish Widows.  And all the tension and the threat and menace that concept, that warning the name carried... gone.

After four years of build-up, the Shadow Proclamation turns out to be a branch of Pizza Express run staffed by Judoon and a couple of albino Scottish Widows

 

So this is Doctor Who as BayVision.  It’s big and loud and flashy, and ultimately dumbed down and as hollow as a toilet roll tube.  And it’s sad, really, because there’s lots in there which works.  There’s lots of moments that are wonderful to watch.  The Daleks swooping down and attacking the Valiant is the new series’ version of the Trial of a Time Lord space station FX shot - a breathtaking, dizzyingly gorgeous visual that looks so far ahead of everything else in the show you can’t help but forget for a second that this is just Saturday night telly. 

Rose’s jealousy at Martha?   Spot on - it’s exactly as it should be, and it works so much better when we remember how pissed off Martha got about the constant Rose mentions.  The cliffhanger, kicking the stakes up to furious levels of danger as four main characters face death (of a sort) - wonderful.

And there’s Davros.  Julian Bleach’s performance is wonderful, evoking the clinical genius of Wisher and the deranged villainy of Molloy.  The design is consistent yet fresh, looking like an aged decrepit version of the Great Healer.  The menace Davros carries is perfectly judged - it’s not just the Doctor who sells it, it’s also Sarah Jane, which gives that connection back to the first time we met him.

But there’s little to hang it on.  The pacing’s all over the place.  Harper’s direction is good - he’s been here before, of course, so this sort of stuff he can do in his sleep, really - but there’s too much going on.  The production team are trying to pour a pint and a half in a pint glass, while jogging.  Stuff’s sloshing about everywhere, it’s seeping out the sides and being left in a messy trail behind so that, crucially, once the job’s finished there’s still a lot to be unaccounted for, and there’s far less left than we started with.

Now, I’ll be charitable and fair.  About time too, I hear the squeeing fangasmers reading say to themselves.  This is only the first part of a two-parter, or the second of a three-parter depending on how you count, and so much of it is set-up for next week.  There’s still many loose ends to be resolved, not least the matter of a certain regeneration.  It could turn out that the hour-long finale is a work of genius, and the most audacious piece of TV broadcast in decades.

Until then... don’t you think they look tired?

Beetlemania

Doctor Who: Turn Left

Let the fangasms begin.

Bad Wolf, Morgenstern, the Trickster, shout-outs to Martha, Luke and Clyde.  Those alone should have been enough to leave your die-hard Doctor Who Forumites gasping for air, and your fanwank haters reaching for the Gaviscon -  let alone the additional returns of UNIT, the Titanic, the Christmas Spider and You-Know-Who.

But all the continuity on display shouldn’t overshadow the most important thing about Turn Left.  That it was an absolutely phenomenal piece of television.

First things first.  Catherine Tate.  Over the course of my involvement with Behind the Sofa, I’ve been happy to admit how wrong I was with regards to her returning.  Yes, we’d all heard about the RSC training, but after suffering through that pantomime performance in The Runaway Bride,  it was clear a lot of fans - myself included - feared another Bonnie.

How wrong we were.

This was a tremendous turn from Tate, as we see a very different Donna - one clearly undermined and almost downtrodden by her mother’s disappointment in her. Who remains wrapped up in her own little world, even as the rest of the universe collapses in around her. Donna not meeting the Doctor might have killed him physically, but it also killed her spirit.

Her finest scene in this episode?  There’s so many to pick from, but for me it’s that moment when realisation slowly dawns, as the foreign family sharing the refugee home in Leeds is sent to a ‘labour camp’, what that actually means besides her own family having more room.

She’s never been less than great this season, and here she was on another planet

You see it in her eyes, the shattering of that selfish reality she’s wrapped around herself, and it’s replacement with the harshness of their new, Threads-lite environment.

Given the hype about Rose’s return, this is very much Donna’s story and Catherine’s performance.  Partners in Crime aside, she’s never been less than great this season, and here she was on another planet.

As with the previous Doctor-lite episodes, the chance to do something experimental and out-there drew the best from a talented scribe.  Russell’s script, revisiting the world without Donna’s influence on the Doctor, was a genuine joy, taking the big Earth-based set-pieces of the last two seasons and turning them up to 11.  It almost redeemed the Voyage of the Damned.  What was a ridiculous premise - a spaceship replica of the Titanic hurtling towards Buckingham Palace - became a chilling, hideous concept, as a mushroom cloud rose on the horizon.

Graham Harper’s skilled direction also helped.  Joe Ahearne, Euros Lyn and Harper have helped define a visual style for these key episodes, and as with Utopia last year Harper’s energy takes a great script and makes it rollercoaster stuff.  Can you imagine what this man would be like doing a season of 24?  There’s not enough adrenaline in the world to keep up.

Often, in fact, there was a feeling of Sam Raimi about the direction, especially as the Bad Wolf revelation kicked in, and we crash zoomed into the posters and banners around the market, each one hammering home the point.  Harper’s due his bus pass in two years - let’s hope the producers don’t pension him off prematurely.

So that was the good - and let’s not be mistaken, there was lots of good to go around here.  But there were two big problems with the episode.  Two huge problems.  Two massive, ginormous problems.

We all know the Doctor Who stories where a pisspoor monster model has come close to ruining things

Specifically, the oversized beetle.  And Billie Piper’s teeth.

So let’s take the former first.  We all know the Doctor Who stories where a truly pisspoor monster model has come close to ruining things.  By and large, most shows get away with it, but the same time these moments have an effect.  They serve, even just for an instant, to take you out of the moment.  It’s breaking kayfabe. Yes, we already know it’s not real, it’s just a fiction, but getting it hammered home like that has a corrosive effect.

The giant rat in The Talons of Weng-Chiang is the nearest analogue to Turn Left’s beetle.  Just a big, ugly, dumb, fake moment, where the ambition and concepts of the script are largely let down by the production’s limitations.  And the reveal of the beetle is the same.  It just looks rubbish.  It looks like the sort of prop they’d use to dress the set on I’m A Celebrity... no, worse - On Safari.

As for the second problem - what the hell happened?  Seriously?  Charlie Brooker on Screenwipe talked of a great game you can play with Billie Piper’s face, trying to work out what part is the biggest.  But the truth, the answer, is that it’s plainly her teeth.  Somewhere between Doomsday and Turn Left, La Piper’s teeth seem to have grown an inch, leaving her with a Simpsons overbite and Langford lisp.

Piper’s performance was... interesting.  She talked in Confidential and during interviews of having a crisis of confidence going into the part, and having to buy a bunch of box-sets to relearn the character again.  Unfortunately, it seems to be the box set of Secret Diary of a Call Girl rather than the chavvy saarf Laaahndaaner that we dumped on a beach in Norway (or Wales) last time.

She wasn’t bad, by any stretch.  And since the character was supposed to have moved forward, clearly, then it makes sense that she sounds different.  But what was notable was how pale a performance it was when put up against Tate.  Piper was seen as a revelation when she joined the show initially, for a generation used to seeing her singing, dancing and getting hammered with Christopher Evans on a grand tour of the world’s best public houses.

In fact, one of the harshest, and most unfair, criticisms of Freema Agyeman was that she was no Billie Piper.  Well, on this evidence, Billie’s no Catherine Tate.  And that’s a phrase I never envisaged writing.

SFX’s smouldering sex kitten of science fiction, Jayne Nelson, wrote on her own blog how this episode was the most nu-Who has ever felt like Buffy and I can see where she’s coming from - specifically The Wish, where we see life in Sunnyvale if Buffy had never arrived.

But what’s remarkable too is how unafraid the episode - and the show itself, to an extent - is to embrace itself and it’s other franchises, despite the age and demographic gap involved.  So we get the Torchwood team and Sarah Jane’s adventurers namechecked casually, as if everyone should know exactly who they are.  We get references to the Trickster and his brigade, from The Sarah Jane Adventures and the Doctor Who website. 

And most importantly we get the feeling that Russell has turned this show, rather than a franchise for the BBC to milk and exploit with lots of spin-offs, into a remarkable, cohesive world where everything that happens has implications, even if it’s years down the line on another branch of the line.  It feels almost like a reward for paying attention all these years.

Still, it all sets up perfectly for next week’s episode, which judging by the throw forward we got at the end of Turn Left, will be An Audience Without Craig Hinton.  Is Doctor Who going out on a high?  You bet. 

Knocking on heaven’s door

Doctor Who: Midnight

There used to be a lot of talk during the fag-end of the JNT era that they were looking to bracket the stories, pigeonholing them into easy-to-pitch categories.

So you got your traditional tales, your big action story such as Remembrance or Battlefield, and your quirky stories - Delta, Happiness Patrol, Ghost Light.

Midnight falls firmly into this category, which in the new Who has become the final story before we run at the season climax proper.  In the past we’ve had an alien on the loo in Cardiff, Fan-ageddon, and DVD easter eggs as drama.  Now we get Who as one-act play.

for the first time since Utopia, Russell T Davies stops fannying about and justifies that OBE 

And we also get the point where, for the first time since Utopia, Russell T Davies stops fannying about and justifies that OBE, with perhaps one of his best scripts since pulling the show from the deep-freeze in 2005.

There was a real sense of stripping the Doctor down here.  Almost, in fact, as if someone was gearing up for a franchise reboot.  Everything the hero usually relied on was removed or otherwise neutered.  The most notable aspect, of course, was his voice, as the Doctor was left a literal echo of himself, seemingly reduced to parroting Sky while shivering in terror. 

Even his wit was gone by the end, as his usual jokey chastisement for his companions about their speech became a serious, chilling warning.

It was as if this was a wrapping-up of the show, in a way.  The phrase about always being darkest before the dawn seemed made for Midnight.  More than ever, we saw how vulnerable the Doctor can be - indeed, it almost feels like a running theme this year, as it was with Eccleston.

Given the nature of a story like Midnight, which was effectively a one-act, single set piece of psychological theatre, it helps when you’ve two genuinely international class performers to carry the bulk of the script.

Tennant’s credentials are beyond question - indeed, I hope someone sits Jonathan Miller down with a copy of Midnight - while RTD repertory company member Lesley Sharpe was chilling as Skye.  Coupled to that was a supporting cast which, distracting though they were for being lookalikes, added to the quality of the performance.

late substitute David Troughton looked and sounded so much like his Dad it was disturbing 

Although they were drawn in the broadest brushstrokes possible - Lindsay Coulson’s Daily Mail-on-legs being the worst example - it worked in the same way that lifeboat movies are about putting stock characters together and seeing how they interact.

I wasn’t kidding about the lookalikes.  Daniel Ryan, as Biff, was a slimmer Ricky Gervais, while late substitute David Troughton looked and sounded so much like his Dad it was disturbing.  Seriously - watch the scene where he’s delivering the lecture on Midnight’s surface with your eyes shut, and it could be Pat doing some technobabble.

What was wonderful was that this was an episode that didn’t look for easy answers.  Indeed, at times, it didn’t look for answers at all.  As viewers we were as clueless and impotent as the holidaymakers, but we could at least take comfort from the presence of the Doctor as our familiar identification point.

If anything that made the Doctor’s loss of control and Sky’s subsumption of his speech more chilling.  Even we, as viewers, were being left without the one defining identification point we can rely on.

That said, I don’t think Midnight was anywhere near the perfect episode that it’s been hailed as elsewhere - although for once, it wasn’t Rusty’s script that was the problem, it was the implementation.

bright and flat, and lit as a homage to The Happiness Patrol

I’m not sure what it was, but something about the set failed for me.  Remaking Lord of the Flies in a single room should be an exercise in terrifying claustrophobia, but for some reason the tour vehicle felt just that little too large and spacious.  Even as the survivors huddled and plotted at the back of the bus, they seemed to have enough room to mill about. 

The lighting, too, didn’t help.  It was bright and flat, and seemed lit as a homage to The Happiness Patrol.  We had moments of startling shadow and torchlight which, although masking the dimensions of the set, also masked the limitations.  Once the lights were back up, that tension was gone.

What did work was the sound.  Just as well, given how much they banged on about the sound mix during Confidental.  In fact, my regular viewing partner Jamie and I were left howling with laughter at the proclamation from the sound mixer than there’s as many as 40 channels of sound in your average Doctor Who episode.   Maybe so mate, but you can’t hear 35 of them for Murray’s music.

Here, though, it worked.  And it had to, given how much of this episode was about dialogue and performance.  The knocking on the side of the vehicle was reminiscent of the sound of Hell breaking through from Evil Dead 2 (incidentally, given how many other pointless cameos we’ve had in Who these last few years, when do we get a Bruce Campbell appearance?), while the mix on the dialogue was perfect, adding to the creepiness of Skye’s repetitive behaviour.   

And Gold’s score was spot-on this time - neither too intrusive or too over the top, building tension and hitting its peak at just the right time.  Well done those sound mixers.  You deserved your screentime on Confidential this week.  Hurrah.

Midnight is one of the rare occasions in the new series where the show gets away with it despite production flaws.  So often the hoary, ropey cracks running through nu-Who have been papered over by gorgeous production values and a feeling that we’re watching, if not actually experiencing, something special and unique on British TV.

Instead here we got a show that felt special and unique in spite of its production, thanks to writing and acting that most shows could only dream of.  As a palate cleanser for the final course of Doctor Who 2008, it worked a treat.

Can’t see the wood for the trees

Doctor Who: Forest of the Dead

I suppose if you were being charitable, you could at least say this two-parter didn’t go off a cliff, unlike its predecessor this season.

If that seems harsh, then it possibly is.  There was a lot to love about Forest of the Dead, an episode that positively dripped lushness, from the performances to the visuals, and even the score, there was a real glow about this as an episode of Doctor Who.

But there was also something not quite there with it.  Yes, it looked great, yes everyone played fantastic in it, and yes the whole package had this sumptuous feeling of terror and cool running almost simultaneously through it.  But it also had something much less than the week before.

And ironically, that something - specifically, a preservation of life - left the ending feeling somewhat lifeless.

A title as blunt and obvious as being bludgeoned around the head by a hardback Jeffrey Archer

The plot felt somewhat stretched at times, not helped by a title as blunt and obvious as being bludgeoned around the head by a hardback Jeffrey Archer. As soon as the Klaatu Barada Nikto or whatever they were called said they were in their forest, it was obvious where the episode was going. 

Certainly puts a whole new spin on the idea of a book being a killer read, anyway.

But the Vashtu Nerada felt like a sidebar this week.  Almost like the Husks of Ghost Light, at times their presence felt shoehorned in to provide  a monster where one was no longer required.  They were an undercard to a main event dominated by the mystery of CAL.

The CAL’s world stuff worked remarkably well, even as it became clear just how 90s and clichéd an idea it was, one that we all thought Keanu Reeves had nailed shut a few years back.  A large part of that was down to the presence of Colin Salmon, who helped imbue Doctor Moon with an incredible sense of creepiness and unsettling calm. 

In fact, the only sad bit was that we never got to see Tennant and Salmon on screen together.  If ever a character deserved a face to face with the Doctor, it was Doctor Moon.

A cameo appearance by the Scottish Widows advert from hell

But to make up for it, and after sidelining Catherine Tate last week, we got a hefty chunk of her this time round, in the virtual reality world where CAL had preserved her. 

A disturbingly fractured reality at that, thanks to the constant timeshifts, a wonderfully uneasy and distracted performance by Tate playing someone who obviously thinks she has a mental illness, and a cameo appearance by the Scottish Widows advert from hell.

My particular favourite moment of the whole episode came among that, as we see Donna turn up for a date with her fellow resident, to go fishing, in a spangly black number.  A nice, throwaway gag, that underlined Donna’s character far more than any dialogue could. 

Between that, and the horrific moment she thought her children - no matter how fictional - had been taken from her, any doubts that bringing Tate back was the right move must now surely have been put to bed.

And by and large it all came together.  How the Vashtu Nerada arrived on the planet made sense, albeit being so obvious.  The CAL stuff made sense.  And how they all meshed together made sense - just.

So my only real problem, but it’s a biggie, with the episode is the finale.  Killing River Song off was a brave if obvious decision, and she was given a heroic sending off as befits her character.  In many ways she’s the new series’ version of Sara Kingdon - you’re never quite sure if she counts as a companion, but she does nothing to justify not including her in that roll of honour.

So the ending felt like a cop-out.  It felt like an attempt by the writer to have his cake and eat it.  Let’s kill off the companion, but hey, let’s give her a happy ending anyway.  And worse, it felt like a cheap emotional rehash of the end of The Doctor Dances, with its cheery ‘everybody lives’ denouement.

It wasn’t like we needed such a stunt anyway.  It’s been established that River’s very much from the Doctor’s personal future, so if he ever wanted to resurrect the character, there’s a natural route into it - in fact, one that would be tinged with more emotional punch knowing the Doctor had watched her die.

The sad thing is that Moffat’s best script, for me anyway, is the one where he didn’t pull the cop-out ending, and instead went for heartbreak by offing Reinette.  It struck me that perhaps that's why we keep seeing these 'keep everyone alike' conclusions - that the Future Doctor is more heartbroken over her death than it seems.  But if so, we need something more concrete to back that up on screen.  Otherwise, it just feels like a cop-out.

Last week I wrote about not drawing too many conclusions about Moffat’s forthcoming tenure running Doctor Who based on the evidence of this two parter.  And I stand by that.  But I can’t help but fear, at the back of my mind, that we’re going to get the same self-proclaimed position as taken by RTD OBE - that we’re not going to see companions get killed off.

And sometimes, we could do with the odd bit of gratuitous death now and again, just to keep the Doctor - and the audience - on its toes.

Nobody in the Library

Doctor Who: Silence in the Library

I didn’t know whether or not to feel sorry for Steven Moffat going into Silence in the Library. 

Three series of rightly lauded, enuresis-inducing stories had ramped his reputation up to Bob Holmes levels.  When even critics of the stature of Charlie Brooker are praising Blink as “simultaneously the best piece of sci-fi AND horror the BBC has produced in a decade”, you start to worry if he can live up to the hype. 

And then came the big announcement.

So suddenly Silence in the Library takes on new, unprecedented levels of importance.  This is his template, the chattering classes murmur.  This is what we can expect from his forthcoming tenure as producer.  This is what Doctor Who will be for years to come.

Throwaway lines come under greater scrutiny than BBC taxi receipts

Whether it is, or it isn’t, is academic.  We won’t really know what Steven Moffat’s vision of Doctor Who will ultimately turn out to be like for another couple of years yet, and we’ve a quarter of a season plus all next year’s specials to get through before then.  So let’s not put Silence in the Library under any more of a microscope than normal.

But, that said... the thing is with Moffat’s scripts that their reputation proceeds them now.  Throwaway lines come under greater scrutiny than BBC taxi receipts.  You can’t help but see things in the shadows, as it were, where there may not be anything. 

That said, I can’t help but think that having a main character called Mr Lux, who’s family founded a library currently plagued by darkness, is just asking for trouble.  It puts me in mind of the old gag about Charles Dickens’ Cluedo.  “I think it was Professor Plum in the Library with the lead pipe, in the library, with the lead pipe.”

Anyway, lame gags aside, I loved this.  This is what Doctor Who does best.  Creepy, quirky, funny, charming and occasionally downright terrifying.   

It turns out the Holmes comparison was on the money after all, because Moffat’s approach to Who has been very much like his predecessor - take horror/sci-fi clichés, give them a slightly quirky twist, ramp up the fear factor as much as is acceptable in a family viewing slot, then let them loose.  We’ve had healers that take things too literally - to the point of death, monsters living under the bed, statues that hunt and kill, and now something deadly living in the dark.

Oh, and space piranhas.  Which makes it all the more incredible that he can get away with this.

But from this borderline genius/ludicrous premise came one of the most chilling, charming and downright Doctor Who-ish scripts the new series ever produced.

There’s something with Tennant where he clicks with 40-something redheads - sorry Kylie

And even better, the two leads were genuinely brilliant in this.  And by two leads, I mean David Tennant and Alex Kingston.  We don’t yet know what the significance of River Song’s relationship with the Doctor is, but what we do know is that Kingston and Tennant have a fantastic on-screen chemistry with each other.  Obviously there’s something with Tennant where he clicks with 40-something redheads.

Sorry Kylie.

In fact, this was Tennant’s best turn as the Doctor, for me.  A hugely restrained yet energetic performance that was Doctorish without being a cliché.  Much as with the Sontaran two-parter, this seemed a distillation of the best bits of the Doctor, where the clowning around is a cover for unease, menace and hidden danger as in the best moments of Troughton and Baker T.

And let’s not forget Catherine Tate.  By and large sidelined in this action-wise, she got the proper emotive stuff to do and carried it off with aplomb.  The sense of gutwrenching horror and disgust as Donna tries to reassure the dead PA’s dataghost, underplayed perfectly, was as powerful a moment as anything in the show’s current run.  She’s still rubbish at screaming, but otherwise Tate’s ticking all the boxes as a proper, classic companion, and who’d ever have thought that a year ago?

The guest cast were all superb too, if slightly undeserved so far - although, distractingly, Other Dave looks disturbingly like Carlito from the WWE.  And that’s not cool.

And visually, it was gorgeous.  Absolutely gorgeous.  All the stuff in the library, thanks to the location shoot... just sumptuous.  With the best will in the world to set designers and construction teams, there’s no substitute - especially on Doctor Who’s budget - for a real life location that looks just so perfect as the Library did.  Meanwhile the CG shots of the planet were breathtaking.  The one thing, more than anything else, the Mill have got right since the start of the new series is being able to create wonderful rip-offs of Coruscant.

Meanwhile the side-plot stuff, with Doctor Moon and the little girl, seemingly in a normal little suburban world (although wonderfully, a normal little suburban world with a Robbie the Robot on the telephone table) is as intriguing as it is baffling.  Moffat and the directors have left just enough clues to make you think you know what’s going on, without actually being sure.

I was wracking my brains, writing this, trying to think of criticisms of the episode.  And eventually I had to stop.  Not because I couldn’t think of any - there’s loads.  The dialogue’s occasionally too knowing.  Donna’s too sidelined.  The archaeologist team just too clichéd.  The folders on the book shelves just too obviously folders.  That sodding psychic paper again.  Slightly dodgy compositing on the Nodes’ face.  There’s dozens of niggles when you stop and analyse it too much

No, the reason I stopped trying to think of criticism is that it felt like I was looking for criticism.  It felt like I was trying to balance out the love that this episode left me feeling, to be a cynical snarky fanboy.  Which I am, don’t get me wrong. 

But much as I knew I should have loved The Wasp and the Unicorn, but couldn’t, there were things here that should have stopped me loving Silence in the Library but didn’t.

Of course, this Saturday that's subject to change.  The last two parter started brightly, with an almost retro feeling of quality, then in episode two went off a cliff and never stopped falling.  But until then, the future’s bright...