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The War Games

Due to be Released: 6 July 2009

Produced by 2Entertain

(This review contains spoilers.  But come on...it was made 40 years ago.)

Here it is at last.  The War Games has long been recognised as one of the most important Doctor Who stories ever made, and you can make a shopping list of the things it introduced to the series, from the naming of the Time Lords and the first sighting of their home planet, to the trial of the Doctor and his eventual, slightly odd, exile: "You will be sent to a new kind of series, made in colour, with a bit of ITC and Quatermass thrown in, but you'll get much longer holidays".  It's also a story that set the parameters for a number of massive arguments that raged around fandom, the most persistent of which maintains that the series went downhill from the moment that the Doctor was identified as a Time Lord and saddled with a backstory that could only ever go on to provide diminishing returns.

This line of thinking holds that the Gallifreyan hairdressers' waiting rooms and potted plants of Arc of Infinity were an inevitable consequence of the moment when Edward Brayshaw's Security Chief recognised the Doctor in Episode 4, and this view of the Time Lords as a bad thing seemed to be reinforced when Russell T Davies brought the series back and only waited until the second episode before revealing that the Time Lords had been wiped out.  Of course, this was slightly undermined by the fact that the new series subsequently went on to mention the Time Lords in virtually every other episode, until by Series 4 whenever the Doctor got dewy-eyed and started to mention the Time War you could almost see the other characters rolling their eyes in the same way that Del Boy and Rodney did whenever Uncle Albert started telling his war stories.  The point is, that you can extrapolate all of these controversies from The War Games, and chunter on about them for months, but the story itself gets little attention.  If there is any consensus, it's that the adventure is a crashing bore, a tedious runaround, only redeemed by the last episode-and-a-half of beautiful, myth-making fanwank.  Well having watched this sumptuously produced DVD set, I can say to people who hold that belief that, in the words of Chris Morris, you're wrong and you're grotesquely ugly freaks.

you're wrong and you're grotesquely ugly freaks

Don't get me wrong - I was one of the grotesquely ugly freaks as well.  I hadn't seen The War Games for years, and I'm a sucker for an easy life, so assumed that my memory of being a bit bored the last time I watched it would remain my definitive judgment.  Within just a few minutes of watching this DVD release I realised that I was wrong.  Now, there are obviously certain things about the story that are undeniable - there are an awful lot of instances of the TARDIS crew being captured, escaping, and being recaptured, in fact the first capture happens about five minutes in, and the escape one minute later is actually a recapture.  So criticisms that the story is repetitive may well be justified, but repetitive is not the same thing as boring - there's a crucial distinction.  And it's worth taking a step back and considering what this story is about - there are lots of wars separated into time zones on an alien planet as part of an experiment to develop a fearsome and resilient army.  Now leaving aside the fact that this is quite barmy (this is Doctor Who after all) it is evidently going to be the case that each war zone is going to exhibit the common characteristics of warfare - treatment of the enemy, military justice, etc - so it's fairly obvious that when crossing the time zones the Doctor and company are likely to get more than their fair share of deja vu.  One of the most interesting things about The War Games is that there is no attempt by Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke to maintain an air of mystery around the events.  Some writers may have chosen to wait an episode or two before revealing that an alien presence is responsible for the weird behaviour witnessed by the Doctor and his companions, but Dicks and Hulke reveal that General Smythe is an alien roughly ten minutes into Episode 1.  This immediately means we are aware that the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe are the only free agents (until they start gathering a resistance group) in a nightmarish world of amnesiac puppets, where every moment they seem to make progress is foiled by an alien donning a pair of Mr Magoo spectacles and returning them all back to square one.  Repetition is part of the point.

And yes, I'm aware that the length of The War Games was a consequence of a number of production disasters that led to the loss of both a six-part and four-part adventure, and that Dicks and Hulke had to knock out the scripts faster than Target novelisations of Tom Baker stories, but to me that makes the story even more remarkable.  It's all very well for Dicks to talk about the use of "return loops" (i.e. padding) within each episode, but the fact is that the central idea of the story was a stroke of genius as it gave narrative justification for an expanding number of similar episodes.  And just because you employ return loops doesn't mean that they can't individually be interesting in their own right.  Being recaptured by General Smythe is very different from being recaptured by the War Chief and his cronies.  The continuing development of the alien's own narrative is particularly engrossing.  The infighting between the War Chief and the Security Chief is fantastic, and their antagonism evolves throughout the story, not least when the Doctor arrives which sends the War Chief into a scheming frenzy, and the Security Chief into an even deeper pit of paranoia.  And all of this before the arrival of the War Lord, surely one of the most sinister characters to appear in the programme, made even more memorable by the resolute lack of a back story for him or his race.  But maybe I just enjoy thinking about a planet where Nehru-jacketed men with bottle-bottom glasses walk around flanked by gimps in rubber suits and bathing caps.  Imagine how weird it must look when they're all at the local supermarket.  Another positive side-effect of the production problems is that this story got the equivalent budget of two stories, which consequently means that the relatively few sets here get more money lavished on them and it shows.  The alien set looks great, and David Maloney's direction gets the best out of it, with the famously grim Brighton rubbish tip also setting an appropriate tone.

gimps in rubber suits and bathing caps

Even though I consider any boring moments to be few and far between, my attention was always sustained by some wonderful acting performances throughout the cast.  David Savile (Carstairs) and Jane Sherwin (Lady Jennifer) are solid and believable goodies, as is Graham Weston as Russell the Boer War refugee.  There's an immaculate turn by Noel Coleman as the repellent General Smythe who first alerts us to the genuine nastiness of the aliens, which is later bolstered by David Garfield doubling up as equally unpleasant German and Confederate generals.  But it's the trio of alien leaders who really hold your attention.  James Bree and Edward Brayshaw put in arresting performances as the Security Chief and War Chief respectively, with Bree out-Daleking the Daleks with his staccato delivery, and Brayshaw going large with his florid depiction of a megalomaniacal traitor.  And then Philip Madoc enters the scene as the War Lord, and things go to another level entirely.  His performance is outstanding, and from the sharp lines of his stubble down to his soft voice and scary spectacles, he is immaculate.  Even when his character is dematerialised, he continues to underplay it merely intoning "No, no" in a way that makes his death even more disturbing. 

As usual, the regulars give it their all, with Patrick Troughton excelling over the final couple of episodes when the Doctor is increasingly frazzled and desperate as he realises events are beyond his control.  The consequences of his eventual solution lead us to the justly famous final episode, which ironically features about three attempts to escape and is probably more padded out than any of the previous nine installments.  This doesn't detract too much from the final impact however, as it's an impressively grim conclusion to a notably serious piece of work.  Zoe and Jamie depart with a proto-Donna Noble mindwipe, with Jamie deposited back straight into an unequal pitched battle with an armed Redcoat, while Zoe ends up on the most boring space station in the universe.  The latter features a wonderful, but heart-rending performance from Wendy Padbury, as Zoe struggles to remember her time with the Doctor but eventually says "I thought I'd forgotten something important, but it's nothing".  As if this wasn't angst-ridden enough, the Doctor is then catapulted into some kind of existential netherworld, spinning around like Descartes' mind before fading into echoing darkness.  And in this singular way ends one of the most remarkable of the Doctor's adventures, which here, in this stunningly restored version, should cause everyone to view it again with wonder.

Extras

The restoration on The War Games is so good that it would justify the release on its own, but there are also a large number of high-quality extras, even down to those regular features that are often taken for granted.  The production notes by Martin Wiggins are easily the best I've seen so far.  They are unobtrusive and clear even though they have a very complicated production history to convey, and this is all achieved within the very fiddly logistics of matching the notes to the screen while giving viewers enough time read them.  If that's not enough, Wiggins also manages to be witty, and there's a note about Zoe and spanking during episode 5 that was just one example that had me sniggering.  These production notes don't get enough praise, as when they're done well (as they are with bells on here) they add to the viewing experience tremendously. 

Kubrick would have been shaken

Commentaries are another de facto extra, and one that I'm a bit more wary of for a whole host of reasons.  The commentary participants here are numerous, as you'd expect for a such a long story, and the full line-up is Frazer Hines, Wendy Padbury, Terrance Dicks, Philip Madoc, Derrick Sherwin, Graham Weston and Jane Sherwin.  There are some incidental moments of humour - the word bouffant is mentioned but not in relation to Pertwee; Dicks and Sherwin went to see 2001: A Space Odyssey when on location and hated it (Kubrick would have been shaken) - and occasional moments of interest, such as Derrick Sherwin refreshingly still remembering Troughton's awkwardness on set during the period, and Philip Madoc explaining (when you can hear him over the others) how he decided on the characterisation of the War Lord.  But the overwhelming impression you get from the commentaries, in spite of Frazer and Wendy being as jovial as ever, is of a lot of half-remembered anecdotes from a group of people who have varying degrees of success in covering up their boredom.  This is fair enough and understandable, but if you're in a good mood and enjoy the story then treat with caution.  On a lighter note, the definite highlight is when Derrick Sherwin launches into an enthusiastic description of Wendy Padbury's bum in the famous scene in The Mind Robber.  He gets so into it ("you could make out every twitch of the cheeks") that you feel like shaking him and saying "Come on man, this isn't even the commentary for The Mind Robber stop slavering like a fanboy".  Priceless.

you could make out every twitch of the cheeks

There are so many feature extras that it's hard to know where to start.  I happened to watch them on the same day that Mark Gatiss's Radio 4 tribute to Target Books was transmitted, so it's probably not surprising that Marcus Hearn's On Target: Malcolm Hulke really stood out.  Maybe the impact of this feature depends on how much of a Hulke fan you are, but as I'm a paid-up member of the Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon Appreciation Society it really hit the spot for me.  There are readings from Hulke's work by Peter Miles and Katy Manning, and some lovely contributions from the various talking heads, with Gary Russell in particularly fine form as he nails the reasons why Hulke was so good.  This is a gem of an extra, clearly put together with great affection for the subject, and probably because of the general outpouring of Target-y goodness recently, I was actually quite moved by it.  On a lighter note, James Goss's Talking About Regeneration is a successful blend of humour and insight from various commentators on the subject of regeneration.  Amongst others, Rob Shearman (gorgeous as ever in maroon shirt), Joe Lidster and Kate O'Mara (!), make some very funny comments about the perils of turning into Colin Baker, and the importance of Bonnie Langford's death when trying to achieve a really convincing regeneration.  You also get to find out what Clayton Hickman considers to be the most pleasurable experience you can have.  Clayton - you really should get out more.

Other features include Steve Broster's War Zone, a 'making of' which contains some very good interview contributions from the late David Maloney, and a great anecdote from designer Roger Cheveley about MichaelJohn Harris and his big bag of explosives.  Paul Cornell crops up as well, and he seems to be very enthusiastic about Zoe's coat.  It probably says more about me, and not about him, that I tend to find Cornell a little bit irritating on some extras.  There's nothing wrong with what he says, indeed I nearly always agree with him, but I keep thinking about a phrase my grandma used about some people: "If he was a lollipop he'd lick himself".  Still as Auden almost said "Time will pardon Paul Cornell, Pardon him for writing well".  But it's an illuminating extra, as is another episode of Marcus Hearn's Stripped for Action where Gary Russell (on top form again) and others talk about the crazy comic strips of the Troughton era, and as a result I spent several days thinking about the logistics of skiing Cybermen.  Imagine what a ski resort for Cybermen would look like.  It'd be like The Pink Panther film only in metal, and with hardly any aloof countesses or David Niven.

Of the remaining features I found a couple slightly underwhelming but that's probably just me being picky.  The Dudley Simpson and Sylvia James interviews were informative shorts but a little bitty.  More significantly, I think that the Shades of Grey feature probably emerged from a very laudable desire to contextualise early Doctor Who within the wider environment of the other programmes that were being made at that time.  This is close to the heart of archive television fans, many of whom were introduced to the world of 1960s/1970s television through their interest in Doctor Who, and it's nice to think of any new fans of the series coming to this DVD and similarly becoming inspired by the knowledge that there is vast range of old programmes waiting to be explored.  But purely as a standalone piece of work, I thought the feature was a bit of a hotch-potch with only the early part of the piece genuinely concentrating on the aesthetics of working in black and white, whereas the latter part used the phrase "black and white" as a synonym for "old television".  The final section of the piece entitled "The Sound of Black and White" being a case in point - the fact that a programme was in black and white had nothing to do with what the sound was like - it's all about the era rather than the aesthetic.  But that section is fine if only because it includes the clip of Brian Hodgson being interviewed by a woman who is clearly in love with him - watch her face throughout - she is completely enraptured.  Wonderful.

a bottle of wine. Or two

Of the other major extras (yes there are more) there is a piece entitled Time Zones which features some historians filling in the background to the various battles featured in The War Games.  I find it hard to be objective about this, as within two minutes of the piece starting I was confronted by Dr Martin Farr, who I've shared the odd pint with over the years through a mutual friend followed swiftly by Lindsay Allason-Jones who I've also encountered a number of times at various business meetings. This Newcastle University connection (see the recent Manchurian Candidate extra on The Deadly Assassin DVD) is getting too close for comfort.  But this is an informative extra, with the experts' combined efforts to understand which war David Troughton's character was supposed to be from, and their thoughts upon The War Games itself being particularly interesting.  From another planet entirely is fan film Devious, an attempt to bridge the gap between the end of The War Games and the start of Spearhead from Space which is particularly notable for featuring the last performance of Jon Pertwee.  I'm a bit of a fan film virgin, and genuinely don't know if this is at the good or bad end of the spectrum, but I do know that it was perfectly palatable when washed down with a bottle of wine. Or two.  And the commentary (yes there's a commentary) is also amusing, probably for the wrong reasons, but it's there if you fancy it.

I think I've banged on about this release for long enough now, but I hope appropriately so.  It's one of the best DVD releases of the range so far, and lives up to all the expectations that have been heaped upon it.  If I have one regret, it's that the planned feature on Patrick Troughton fell through for logistical reasons, but you can't have everything, and this release is more than enough unless you're really greedy.  The sum of its parts would be impressive enough, but the whole is outstanding.  Buy it.

Oh and there's a great Easter Egg on Disc 2.  Exile?

Crackerjack!

Delta and the Bannermen

Due to be Released: 22 June 2009

Produced by 2Entertain

Time heals all wounds.  Or as the Seventh Doctor might mumble "Time wounds all heels".  The McCoy years still cause some people to get red in the face with anger, frustration and the memory of one too many playground taunts circa 1987 about how terrible Doctor Who is nowadays.  Others launch incredible defences of the era, usually in exhaustive detail, arguing that actually Silver Nemesis just appeared to be a load of old crap but was in fact playing with the conventions of the series, and that Time and the Rani was not a fearful mess, and even if it was, well, The Time Monster is much worse.  So ner.  Personally speaking, I always felt slightly caught in the middle, as I bailed out on Doctor Who immediately after the transmission of Episode 1 of Paradise Towers, and didn't see another McCoy story until the DVDs started coming out years later.  But following an embarrassing conversation at a convention (what other kind is there?) when someone's reference to a 'Red Kang' left me bewildered and suspect, I decided I should do something about this and watched every McCoy story in rapid succession.  As a result of this, I formed the uninspiring conclusion that while the stories do get better and generally less embarrassing, I still can't get over the fact that throughout the era the performances of the leading actors range from mediocre to terrible.  This is quite a problem for me, as watching a programme called Doctor Who loses its attraction a little when every time the title character appears I have to wince and squint my eyes.  But it's my problem, and I mention it only so you can bear my prejudices in mind.  The important thing is that there's really no reason for anyone to get angry about it anymore. In 1987 - no-one died.

The production is so peculiar and the tone so odd, that you are constantly left wondering if the makers are pulling the viewers' collective plonker

Delta and the Bannermen is the McCoy story from Season 24 that most people now try and rehabilitate.  I'm sure at one point Dragonfire was the one that everyone firmly stated was the best, but the revisionists are out in force for Delta, and it has to be said that maybe, just maybe, they have a point.  Certainly it moves at a hell of a lick to start with.  No sooner have we seen the tail-end of an unexplained genocide, than Gavrok (Don Henderson) is gunning people down, the Doctor and Mel win a ticket to Disneyland from Ken Dodd, and a space/time travelling coach comes crashing down in a 1950s Butlins-style holiday camp.  And I haven't even got around to Stubby Kaye as Weismuller yet.  The production is so peculiar and the tone so odd, that you are constantly left wondering if the makers are pulling the viewers' collective plonker, or just incompetent.  Take Hawk and Weismuller.  The infamous tent scene (if it isn't infamous it should be) is like some unholy cross between Brokeback Mountain and Five Go Mad in Dorset: "Oh Weismuller - you're so licky!", and similarly you wonder if Gavrok's gunning down of Ken Dodd is the wish-fulfillment of someone who barely made it through to the fifth hour of Dodd's stand-up act.  But there's enough genuine incompetence on display to cast severe doubt on Delta being some kind of sophisticated post-modern playpen.

The kind of acting last seen in Plan 9 from Outer Space

Any remote interest you might have in the characters on display is instantly dispelled by the kind of acting last seen in Plan 9 from Outer Space.  Belinda Mayne (Delta) has the permanent expression of someone trying to remember something important that has just slipped her mind. In her case it’s that she should start acting, but alas she doesn’t have a knot in her hanky.  David Kinder (Billy) is just a constipated sloth on Mogadon, while Sara Griffiths (Ray) is bearable aside from her accent which probably angered more Sons of Glendower than the whole of The Green Death.  It's not all bad - Don Henderson and Richard Davies (Burton) are rarely anything other than great, and Johnny Dennis is genuinely charming in his role as the hapless Murray.  Unfortunately I was unable to concentrate on these positives as my ears were usually ringing from the full onslaught of Keff McCulloch's incidental music which makes the average Murray Gold score sound like John Cage on one of his quiet days.  Five minutes of 1950s pastiche is just about bearable and indeed arguably necessary.  Ten minutes and you're calling the hospital.

Criticism of Delta and the Bannermen needs to be kept in proportion.  A lot of people like it precisely because it was a bit of fluff unfettered by the increasingly heavy continuity that dominated the Colin Baker era, and therefore they seized upon Season 24 as a fresh start.  For others, the whole of Season 24 was the nadir of Who, with a programme that once vaguely resembled mainstream drama finally descending to the level of one of the comedy sketches from the end of Crackerjack. Fortunately it can now be seen as just of the many weird phases in the continuing story of Doctor Who, rather than the beginning of an ignominious end. 

Extras

Delta fans will probably bemoan the absence of a "making of" feature in the release, and I suppose I would have liked to have at least seen evidence that Belinda Mayne and David Kinder were either method acting or just playing themselves.  That aside, there's more than enough material here to keep people happy. Effectively filling in for the lack of a "making of" is a feature on the filming of Delta from the Andy Crane-helmed kids show But First This which is supplemented by unedited versions of the featured interviews.  There's some interesting stuff in the rushes, not least that McCoy is much more explicit about his admiration for Patrick Troughton as well as coming out as a fan of Blake's 7.  It also features Ken Dodd giving away everything about what happens to his character, and leaving the poor sods who edited the final version to pick the bones out of it as best they can.  There's another very short contemporary piece from Wales Today notable mainly for the interviewer asking McCoy how his new job was going: "They haven't sacked me yet" is his jovial response.  If only, if only...

"JN-T was one of the great pantomime producers I’ve ever come across"

There are some other gems, including a slight but nice interview with Hugh Lloyd where he makes his feelings about John Nathan-Turner known: "JN-T was one of the great pantomime producers I’ve ever come across”.  It's hard to disagree with this, and I cite the main feature and the rest of Season 24 as evidence.  Less welcome is the baleful presence of Noel Edmonds in one of his regular skits from Noel's Saturday Roadshow known as Clown Court.  For those of you who are lucky enough not to know about this, Noel's Saturday Roadshow was Edmonds's low-key penitent comeback show  which acted as a rehabilitation programme after the death of Michael Lush on The Late Late Breakfast Show.  It's effectively a form of Noel parole ("get through this without anyone dying and you'll be fine"), only sadly without the earlier imprisonment.  I can't really do it justice here, but only Edmonds could turn something as innocuous as outtakes into a tongue-poking sneerathon.  It's a far greater abomination than anything else in the McCoy era, but it has the added awkwardness of showing that McCoy couldn't even handle a brief skit without screwing up his lines about a hundred times.  So it was a relief to move on to another episode of Stripped for Action, even if it meant an inevitable appointment with Mr Cartmel.  (Who is the most annoying of the 1980s script-editors?  There's only one way to find out...fight!) I don't know an awful lot about the Doctor Who comic strips, so I found this piece pretty illuminating and had no idea about stuff like the Hulk appearing as an early form of cross-product placement.  Unfortunately after 15 minutes everyone got very bogged down with continuity issues and the mind-boggling difficulties of trying to reconcile the novels, television shows, comic strips and Golden Wonder packets.  After a while I started to lose the will to live, and briefly felt like Lance Parkin must feel all of the time.  But it's a diligent and well-made feature, as are the assured Delta production notes written by an unknown novice who goes by the name of Andrew Pixley.

Unsurprisingly, Andrew Cartmel's voice remains resolutely unsexy

The most revelatory of the extras is the unedited version of Episode 1.  It lacks incidental music, but it becomes rapidly clear that this is not so much a lack as a positive boon. The episode passes by in an oasis of blissful silence and it's approximately 150 times less irritating with McCulloch's clamour removed.  Almost as revelatory is the DVD commentary where we get to hear that Sara Griffiths's real voice (minus the ersatz Taffness) is about as sexy as it gets.  Unsurprisingly, Andrew Cartmel's voice remains resolutely unsexy but despite that he can always be relied upon to bring a rich vein of unintentional humour to the proceedings.  He insists on reading out some of his extraordinary contemporaneous diary entries, but brought my house down when he started riffing on the brilliance of the name Ray for a companion: "Ray gun, x-ray, space ray... (pause) ...cosmic ray”.  With a masterplan from this man, how could people have ever imagined that the programme's future was anything other than assured?

Valerie Singleton's Erotic Sausage

 The Rescue/The Romans

Due to Be Released:  23rd February 2009

Produced by 2Entertain

I admit that I might not be typical, but until the DVD range appeared I experienced the Hartnell era of Doctor Who through a series of filters.  Firstly, the alternative universe of Target novelisations and pre-Pixley Doctor Who Weekly/Monthly archives, then via booze-fuelled drinking games in front of UK Gold (usually a series of elaborate bets - if you make it past A Race Against Death you get the dregs of the Diamond White - that kind of thing) and intermittently through bad VHS transfers that seemed designed to repel all but the very strongest or most masochistic.  So it's been a particular pleasure to encounter Hartnell's stories again without any interference aside from my ageing brain.  They haven't all been great, but the discovery and rediscovery is part of the fun.  This latest excellent release features two stories that were produced in one block, but in most other ways are startlingly different. The Rescue is a two-parter, written by the departing script-editor to introduce a new assistant, and features the regular cast (give or take) running around an alien planet trying to find a logical plot. Whereas The Romans is...well where to start?  It's a comedy, an historical epic, a psychological drama, a farce, a story that's way ahead of it's time, and to me personally a complete revelation.  Happily, the supporting extras on this release, particularly alongside The Romans, get to the heart of why the story is so important.

It's unfortunate for The Rescue that it gets overshadowed by its companion story, but it's entirely deserved.  In essence, it's another story by David Whitaker that, like The Edge of Destruction, has only a passing acquaintance with sanity.  The bare-bones of the plot (can I spoil a 44-year old story?) have been taken to pieces many times over the years, usually by fans who get far too angry, but although it's nonsense the adventure is worth it for sporadic moments of genius.  Barbara's bloodthirsty shooting of Vicki's pet sand beast is reminiscent of a sci-fi version of Disney's Old Yeller. I wish they'd have kept her bubbling resentment towards Barbara going for a bit longer, possibly resulting in an assassination attempt a few stories down the line:  "This is for Sandy you murdering bitch!"  Sadly the Doctor snaps her out of it a little too quickly for my taste.   Even better is Bennett's fiendishly cunning loop of tape: "You can't come in!".  I've already contacted Character Options and suggested a talking Bennett doll with a pull-string.  Kids all around the country will be chanting "You can't come in!".  There'll be a spin-off pop hit mark my words.  Or maybe not.  Certainly The Rescue has a leisurely charm, but it takes the length of one new series episode to say "Hello Vicki!" and made The War Games seem snappy.

The Romans on the other hand, is jam-packed with genre-busting action, and it's entirely typical of the story as a whole that it opens by lurching from an actual cliffhanger (featuring the TARDIS falling off a ledge) to the TARDIS crew happily squatting in a villa having a whale of a time relaxing and joking.  And they've apparently been doing this for a month, for which I can't blame them as just surviving The Dalek Invasion of Earth would have taken it out of me, let alone dealing with Bennett's wearying antics.  The switch from drama to comedy continues throughout the story, most obviously, but not exclusively, between Ian and Barbara's experiences of slavery and Vicki and the Doctor's capers in the imperial palace.  It's a tribute to the regulars that they pull this off so well.  Jacqueline Hill is her usual self, that is to say brilliant, while William Hartnell uses all his Army Game background and early experience in farce to more than hold his own against excellent performances from Derek Francis as Nero and Michael Peake as Tavius.  There are so many little bits of comic business going on between the actors in some scenes that you get the impression rehearsals were a lot more fun than usual.  Hartnell in particular is full of tics and quirks, my favourite being when he tries to remember his new alias and goes through so many contortions I half-expected him to regenerate into Rob Wilton and ask if anyone fancied a woodbine.  The scenes of Tigilinus's death and the Doctor miming on the lyre are justly famous and veer from light to dark to pitch-black.  Even the lyre scene, although it seems to show the Doctor making fools of everyone, results in Nero planning to have the Doctor eaten by lions.  It's true that Hartnell's giggling is excessive on occasion (such as in episode 4) but even that is unhinged enough to be vaguely disturbing.  The switches of tone, great performances, and rattling pace all combine to demonstrate that The Romans is a very substantial story, a conclusion reinforced by the thoughtful extras.

Extras

The main supplementary documentaries on the set are produced by Steve Broster who, with writer David Harley, was responsible for What Lies Beneath on The Silurians release.  As this was one of the best extras of the range he certainly had a hard act to follow.  But in What Has 'The Romans' Ever Done for Us Broster once again avoids focussing too narrowly on Doctor Who, and sets the story effectively both in its era and in the context of other television representations of Rome and the Emperor Nero.  Former Neros Anthony Andrews and Christopher Biggins appear alongside cast and crew, historian Dr Mark Bradley and series writer James Moran amongst others.  It's a very stylish piece of work, although I felt the very strong opening promised more than the piece ultimately delivered.  Broster's Mounting the Rescue is less engrossing as it's a fairly standard "making of" documentary about a not very interesting adventure, but the often elusive Ray Barrett is good value, and Maureen O'Brien (missing from the commentaries) speaks interestingly about working with William Hartnell and describes the various coping strategies she employed when faced with his consistently grumpy moods. 

Good as these main extras were, I particularly enjoyed Rob Fairclough's excellent Dennis Spooner - Wanna Write a Television Series.  From its pleasing mock-ITC opening titles (complete with appropriate Jason King theme tune) this piece showed that shorter extras don't have to be slighter.  It features interviews with Spooner's friend and colleague Brian Clemens, rare footage of Spooner taking part in amateur dramatics (he made the right career choice) and Rob Shearman making a convincing case for the lasting significance of Spooner's contribution to the development of Doctor Who.  Although not quite at the same level Girls! Girls! Girls! - The 1960s sets out its groovy stall with the canny use of Tachyon TV's favourite tune "Dreamy Party" from The Prisoner, but the piece as a whole rather falls between two stools by trying to analyse a complex cultural scene while desperately cramming every single female 1960's companion into a 17 minute slot.

Special mention has to go to the Blue Peter extra, which has nothing to do with Doctor Who, and is surely only there because it tickled the Restoration Team.  This bizarre look at Ancient Rome features the dream team of Lesley Judd, Peter Purves and Valerie Singleton lounging in togas while scoffing food that is rapidly curling under the million kilowatts of studio lighting.  They are attended to by their slave who, with staggering inevitability, is played by working-class ba gum peasant John Noakes.  Val is particularly fetching in her robes, and the vision of her decolletage while she gnaws on a sausage is an even more erotic sight than Rob Shearman in his maroon shirt.  Extraordinary.

The usual additional extras are all present and correct.  The production notes seem much improved after some dodgy recent efforts (I'm looking at you Black Orchid), although the epic explanation of the Emperor's New Clothes was a mighty sledgehammer for a tiny nut.  As for the commentaries, these old stories are often problematic as left alone the aged participants can wander off-piste and end up talking about their latest trip to the garden centre, whereas moderated commentaries can easily become the DVD equivalent of convention panels.  Actor and comedian Toby Hadoke (friend of Tachyon TV although rather more well-known for his show Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf) steps bravely into the breach and acquits himself well.  William Russell, Christopher Barry and Raymond Cusick all do their best on a slightly stilted commentary for The Rescue, but The Romans, much like the story itself, is a real hoot.  As well as those already mentioned, the commentary also features Nick Evans and Barry Jackson, the latter of whom, in a particularly amusing moment, departs from the commentary booth at the same time as his on-screen character is defenestrated.  All involved seem to have a great time, as befits a fun story, but Toby keeps things on track with some well-placed facts and elicits some useful information from the participants as well.  I hope Toby and others get a chance to moderate more commentaries in the future, as even those cast and crew with good memories but a diminishing pool of anecdotes could benefit from the presence of an independent moderator whose name isn't Andrew Cartmel.  If you're reading this Toby, I've already been in touch with Chris "Happy Go Lucky" Boucher and he's agreed to do a commentary with you on every episode of Blake's 7 from his holiday shack in Dungeness.  No, don't thank me.

If the extras on this set don't reach the very heady heights of the best of the range, then that's more of a compliment to the range than a slight on the latest features.  The real star of the set is the brand-spanking new restoration of The Romans, with great support from extras that extoll its many virtues, and rightly praise the largely unsung Dennis Spooner.  I'd recommend that you all buy it, but if you've bothered reading this, then you'll have it on pre-order anyway.  Suffice it to say that I was so full of Hartnell good cheer at the end of my viewing that I immediately reached for The Web Planet to prolong the moment.  But I didn't have any Diamond White left.

Twitter me

Tachyon TV on the Radio

If you check out this BBC Tees link for The Bob Fischer Radio Show and go about 17 minutes in (after the Tom Jones single) you can hear me being interviewed on the topic of the 11th Doctor by the eponymous  host and author. 

If anyone from The One Show, Sky News or Newsnight wishes to get in touch then please contact my agent rather than the blog.

Another Nice Mess

Trials and Tribulations - Featured in the Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord DVD boxset

Due to be Released: 18th August 2008

Produced by: 2 entertain

It's a brave person who gets involved in the making of extras for Doctor Who DVDs nowadays. Even short bits of fluff on uncontroversial topics can be subjected to the kind of criticism the mainstream media would usually reserve for the paedophile wing of the mujahideen. As the range grows ever larger, content producers try desperately to think of new variations on the classic “making of” format while 2Entertain valiantly commission slightly left-field features which frequently involve humour.  It's very hard to get this right all of the time, and some extras have been rightly slated by all and sundry on the usual forums. Less explicably, even a top-notch, groundbreaking documentary like What Lies Beneath (Doctor Who's very own The Power of Nightmares) also had a significant number of people grumbling that the makers hadn't devoted enough time to the story with which it was nominally associated.  Which just shows that even when you produce an intelligent and original piece that extends beyond the world of Doctor Who, there will still be people who prefer to see Caroline Johns talking about what it was like in the studio just before the union turned the lights out at 10pm, despite there already being a shedload of such material out there gathering dust after a single viewing.

an hysterical, woozy and still traumatic time

So if it's hard enough for those working with uncontroversial material, then it requires balls to take on those truly pivotal moments in the show's history that can still cause incendiary arguments between fans that end with tears before bedtime. You can argue about what constitutes a pivotal moment, but to me it's about beginnings and endings. Richard Molesworth's Origins is arguably still up there as one of the best DVD extras yet, with A New Body at Last vying with it for the top slot along with Beneath the Surface. Whereas Endgame disappointed with its somewhat bashful tiptoeing around the subject of Philip Segal and a general failure to be as open about the end of the series as Origins was about the beginning.  Happily, the key documentary in The Trial of a Time Lord boxset is definitely up there with the best.  Trials and Tribulations covers a ripely controversial period in the show's history that can be seen as a kind of end but also as a potential beginning – an hysterical, woozy and still traumatic time that is now represented by a phrase that still gives the shudders to fans of a certain age. The Hiatus. Although the piece is an impeccable and balanced overview of that troubled time and a definitive picture of Colin Baker's curtailed era, it still won't end the arguments and is likely to stir up a frenzy on the forums once again. But that is not intended as a criticism.  It just goes with the territory.

Trials and Tribulations is the dream documentary about a nightmare era.

Trials is the dream documentary about a nightmare era. If you are old enough to remember 1985 in detail, then prepare to be catapulted back. The documentary is not narrated but relies on brilliantly edited talking-head interviews and clips from the period to tell the story, and it's so evocative that it even managed to bring back the terrible knot in the stomach that my sixteen year old self had throughout most of the crisis.  If you've ever wondered about that infamous wedding party where Colin Baker entertained his way into Doctor Who, then wonder no longer because Trials features actual photographs from the event thus immortalising probably the first and only time that Baker managed to entertain Eric Saward. In a flurry of clips we see the BBC News coverage of Baker's first press call, his appearance on Saturday Superstore and an almost heart-rending description from Nicola Bryant and Baker on how happy they were when they started filming Season 22. It's like watching a slowly unfolding car crash, which I suppose is as good a description of Season 22 as any.

The tale being told is already gripping enough, but the centrepiece of the documentary concerns the hiatus itself and Baker's eventual sacking. Star interviewee Jonathan Powell is there to put his side of the story, and although he doesn't exactly have any actual out-and-out "shock" revelations there are some important admissions which fans will find significant. The reasons behind the hiatus are illuminated, but it's acknowledged that there are still some aspects and motivations behind the subsequent sacking that are likely to remain a mystery. Almost as important an interviewee as Powell is David Reid, former Head of Series and Serials, who makes the very pertinent point that for the top brass at the BBC to intervene in casting (i.e. sacking Baker) was virtually unprecedented at the time. Sadly Michael Grade did not do a new interview for the show - this time he was dealing with the ITV hotline scandal when the documentary was made rather than off somewhere skiing - but an extract from TV Hell fits in nicely, and I personally doubt he'd have revealed all that much even if he'd been available.  On the hiatus possibly, but on the sacking - doubtful.

It was the moment when fandom stopped being the onlooker and became part of the story

Trials helps the viewer to find a path through the chaos of the time but relishes portraying that chaos as accurately as possible. There are some bravura sequences that had me roaring with laughter, peering through my fingers and fighting back the tears simultaneously. Which was certainly uncomfortable for the other passengers on the train that day. Special mention has to go to the clip of Ian Levine being questioned by Leonard Parkin (Lance's dad) on News at One which is followed fairly rapidly by an appalling clip of Doctor in Distress and Colin Baker's heartfelt regret at ever being involved with the (alleged) song. These moments, along with some well chosen covers from contemporary issues of DWB and Celestial Toyroom, illustrate another important aspect of the hiatus and its aftermath. It was the moment when fandom stopped being the onlooker and became part of the story with all of the good and bad that involved.

the accompanying sight of Martin's masterpiece Gangsters was enough on its own to warm my heart

The fact that Trials necessarily covers fandom's role during the various hiatus crises will doubtless bring it criticism from some quarters. Lots of people are allergic to Ian Levine in theory, let alone when it comes to seeing him interviewed in all his glory, but it would be a poor documentary that didn't include him and, to a lesser extent, Gary Leigh as they are a vital part of the tale. Also heavily featured is Eric Saward, someone else who often gets it in the neck just because he has the audacity to be alive and interviewed when JNT is dead and unavailable for comment. To compensate, Trials features extracts from an old Bill Baggs interview with JN-T which is both sympathetic and informative, and effectively gives both sides of the story concerning Saward's departure and that Starburst interview.  There are also valuable contributions from Philip Martin, and the accompanying sight of the opening credits of Martin's masterpiece Gangsters was enough on its own to warm my heart but I got even more excited when David Halliwell's original notes for Trial appeared on screen with comments such as "Bob first 4, Phil second 4".  This combination of an entertaining, compelling narrative with a wealth of rare or previously unseen factual detail is one of the things that raises Trials to the very highest rank of extras released so far.

the show was a target because the BBC simply didn't think it was any good

I could quibble.  When Jonathan Powell mentions that the fate of Doctor Who was not uppermost in the minds of BBC executives, it would have been useful to have a bit of context.  The BBC were cutting programmes left, right and centre to save money for the new daytime schedule, and it doesn't seem an overly Marxist interpretation of events to consider that this economic climate made everything, including Doctor Who, more vulnerable than before.  But this is a minor concern, as it seems clear that the show was a target because the BBC simply didn't think it was any good.  The whole documentary can't help but set the counterfactuals spinning through your mind, and especially to ponder what might have happened if Peter Davison had stayed on for another year with the same production team in the same institutional context.  Fans will still be discussing the repercussions of the hiatus for many years to come, and this documentary will surely be an essential starting point for those debates, but in the midst of all the cut and thrust of BBC politics, the changing face of broadcasting and the clash of personalities it shouldn't be forgotten that somewhere along the line one man lost his job in the most public way possible.  It's another great strength of Trials that it manages to reflect the (retrospectively) humourous side of events, and the very real tensions that existed whilst maintaining a balanced and sympathetic approach to the notably candid protagonists.

buy it and fill your nostalgic boots

So well done to Ed Stradling and 2Entertain for a splendid piece of work.  I never thought I'd want to relive February 1985 and its aftermath again, but I couldn't have been more wrong. So when it comes out I recommend that fans buy it and fill their nostalgic boots.  Remember picking up your pen and writing to Bill Cotton and Points of View?  Watching every news bulletin and scouring DWB and Celestial Toyroom for information in a state of perpetual anxiety?  Well here it is again in all its cathartic glory.  And when you've finished you can make a start on The Trial of a Time Lord. You go ahead - I'll catch you up.  Honest.

Saying Goodbye with Rhys and PC Andy

Well it had to be said that interesting panels have been a bit thin on the ground since John Leeson, so we've only been tempted into the final panel of the day by the prospect of PC Andy aka Tom Price possibly causing mayhem with Kai Owen.  But I'm not expecting miracles.

On the whole this convention has been fun, but the first day was better than the second, and as well as slightly lacklustre panels the attendance seems to have been a bit down (possibly) on previous events.  I hope this isn't a sign of a continuing trend.  But well done to the organisers for putting on the show.

Anyway onwards to Andy and Rhys.  They are introduced by a montage of Doctor Who credits which seems odd since they are in Torchwood.  Still, as Damon points out, Rhys was on the other end of the phone in The Stolen Earth so I suppose it counts.

Kai comes on and introduces Tom Price.  It's a Q&A, which I can't possibly keep up with. 

In summary, this was a great knockaround session and Kai and Tom did a wonderful job in keeping the crowd going at the end of a long day.  An excellent end to a patchy weekend.

And that's it.  We may well be blogging again at Dimensions in November, but as I'll be back on the drink by then the results may be even less coherent than this.

Bye, bye.

The Trampoline of Attention

I'm a bit late for the John Leeson panel so here we go.

They are talking about the K-9 cartoon, and John drops the unlikely information that at one point Tom Baker was going to do the voice of K-9.  Can this be true?

John Dorney our host then asks John how he feels to be so hidden as an actor.  And John replies that he's quite happy hiding.  Ever since rep after drama school, John was always cast as old men and so got used to being covered in makeup, fake beards and generally being hidden away.  He has never been recognised in the street as K-9, mainly as John says because he isn't showing any signs of rust. 

John discusses The Invisible Enema (sic) and how he got the role.  A man knew that John used to be Bungle the Bear in Rainbow, and recommended him for the role.  He was offered two parts, as Neil says "a dog and a prawn".  John was concerned that the role of a virus might be a small part.

He mentions Billion Dollar Brain (Ken Russell) which featured a computer.  John admits he has a talent for creating the voice of a tin dog.  He also makes passing reference to the fact he's been a bit ill recently, so I'm sure we all wish him well in the future.  In John's day monsters were real rather than CGI, and he sounds like he regrets that a bit.  John Dorney agrees that he thinks real effects are more impressive and makes the good point that people like K-9 because he is a big, physical object.

For his recent appearance in Doctor Who, John only needed about 30 minutes in a sound studio, and this is contrasted with the old days where he would scurry around in rehearsals and be on set for all the recordings.

John Dorney moves on to John's actual appearance as Dugeen in The Power of Kroll.  John says it was nice to look an actor in the eye rather than the knee. He was also in Blake's 7 (Mission to Destiny and Gambit).  This results in the host spoiling the end of an episode.  If you can spoil a programme shown in 1978.

John Leeson tell the story about Troughton not working in the theatre because he doesn't like "shouting at night".

Question 1:  "Which Blake's 7 episode do you most prefer?" "Gambit"n  The phrase the "trampoline of attention" is used which is the first time I've heard that phrase.

We move onto Dad's Army (which John was in) and his later work with British Forces Broadcasting on the border of East and West Germany.  The German operatives were horrified at people laughing at the old men, but they loved the big boots in Jeux Sans Frontieres.

Question 2:  "How did K-9 feel about playing chess?" John tried his best with this question.  John Dorney sensibly brings up crosswords which John says were used as a good method of keeping Tom Baker out of trouble.  The Stones of Blood anecdote is told to rousing applause which was nice.

Question 3: "What are your memories of David Brierley?" John expresses his sadness at David's recent death, and tells of their first meeting at a poetry recital. Once at a convention they decided to concoct a fake rivalry, much to their amusement.

Question 4:  "What was it like doing the scene in the furnace in The Armageddon Factor?" John tries his best with this bizarre question.  At least it elicits John's backward spool K-9 noise which makes Damon shudder.

Question 5:  "How long have you been doing K-9's voice?" "More than three weeks ago."

Question 6:  "What's the daftest thing you've been called upon in your career/Doctor Who?"  A commercial for a furniture show in Earls Court.  He played a castaway on a raft with a dolly bird.  It was shot in November off Southend.  He was dosed with brandy.  He also found it hard to give autographs when dressed as Bungle Bear, especially when he had to sign a child's sticking plaster.

Question 7:  "How do you compare the differences between the different Marks of K-9?" John sensibly has the same sort of answer as the Tachyon TV team - "there is no difference they're the fucking same!!!"

Question 8:  "What was it like working with the Chuckle Brothers?" John is ambivalent about being asked this question.  "Very interesting"  The script was "approximate".  You had to be adaptable.  But they were lovely chaps  "it wasn't Radio 3" - The line of the day.

Question 9:  "Were you surprised that they did a spin-off and were you upset that it didn't continue?"  John wasn't expecting the spin-off.

The Tachyon team were fatally distracted from the rest of the panel by the sight of one fan in front of us whose arse is out and hanging over the back of the chair.  Sorry about that.

Question 10: "Tell us about your involvement with the K-9 theme tune?"  John was hauled to a recording studio and asked to repeat "K-9, K-9, etc...."

A nice panel from a lovely John Leeson, and John Dorney is the best interviewer of the weekend so far so well done to him.

Question 5

Song of a Baker

Good morning everyone.  Steady as we go - it's Colin Baker.

Colin chats about Big Finish work, and makes passing reference to the JumpCon problems.  He also mentions that Maria's dad in The Sarah Jane Adventures is brilliant in Hamlet at the moment alongside Louise Jameson as Gertrude.  Oddly he then decides to make an anagram out of Charlie's name.  It's like watching an episode of Crosswits. 

We turn to The Trial of a Time Lord boxset which is due out in August.  Colin was intrigued by watching the show again, as "contrary to opinion I don't sit at home every week watching my old stories."  Interestingly Colin first met Graeme Harper on the set of War and Peace in 1970.  He's then asked his opinion on the final two stories of the recent series, and Colin then sympathises with Steven Moffat for having to take over after RTD threw in the kitchen sink.  Colin cannot understand why they didn't cast Terry Malloy as Davros, but he loved The Silence in the Library. 

We get on to more controversial territory with ToaTL, but this potentially interesting area is lost when Charlie brings up the costume.  Colin wanted black, but JN-T differed.  Oddly Colin blames this on the 1980s as this was "an era of glam rock".  He then talks glowingly of audio drama as opposed to television and film.  He did a lot of Radio 4 drama work in the 1970s, and goes on to praise Peter Brooks' Shakespeare productions. 

As a side note, Colin is wearing bright red crocs - maybe you can't take the man completely out of the costume after all.  Charlie posits that Colin was the best thing about the show at the time and it was everything else that let him down.   It's an arguable point.

Colin praises JN-T, and then goes on to discuss whether RTD would be wise to attend conventions as you need a thick skin.  Charlie moves on to Colin's experience working with Patrick Troughton.  Colin was David Troughton's best man.  Colin had cross words only once with JN-T and that was when they were left out in the sun for too long.  The Sontaran glue didn't work because the actors were gushing with sweat. 

Q&A

Question 1:  "Nicole Bryant is my favourite companion.  Is she yours?"  Colin says no, and that he much prefered Frobisher.  Not really.  He says he loved working with her.  It doesn't get much more controversial than that.

He tells the old story about Peter Davison winding her up about him.

Things look decidedly ropey for a while when Charlie asked Colin "What's the most annoyed you've ever been at a convention?"  Time seems to slow down as a re-run of Col-gate looks not just likely but inevitable.  Fortunately, Colin not being paid once is ranked higher than the Tachyon TV escapade.

Question 2:  "Which monster would you rather face from any era of Doctor Who?"  Not sure.  We suggest the Midnight monster, and Colin praises the episode.  He suggests the Celestial Toymaker, but also thinks that the Davros of the "I, Davros" episodes is fantastic.

Question 3:  "How would the Doctor respond to the Railyard (Valyard)?" Not unreasonably Colin replies that he would react exactly how he did react in the episode.

Question 4:  "Who's your favourite Doctor?" (from a small child who likes him).  He agrees with her graciously.

Charlie ends oddly by saying that Colin will always be in their top three.

Back at some point.  The panels are a bit thin today.

End of Part One

Sadly I'm not sure what happened to Sheridan Smith, but here are Georgia and Peter to say goodbye.

Charlie Ross asks a few light-hearted questions (although it doesn't seem as if he watched the earlier panels) and it's a nice panel to finish things off for the day.

It's been a fun event so far from the vantage point of the interview panels this morning, and the bar this afternoon.

Question 1: "Which format would you prefer to make Doctor Who in if you had a choice.  Old way or new way?"  Peter's not sure, but agrees it's hard to build character in such a rapid way.  But he'd like the old stuff tidied up.

And tomorrow it's Colin Baker at 9am. 

In the meantime Damon, Neil and I will be touring the bar to record extracts for our forthcoming audio extravaganzas.  See you tomorrow.

"Graeme Harper has never forgiven me for Bergerac"

Charlie Ross takes over and Terry arrives carrying the head of Davros.  At this juncture we don't know if it contains Julian Bleach's severed head.  Perhaps we'll find out.

The session starts with an amiable amble through the differences between Who and Archers fans, and working on televison and radio.  The shock revelation here is that Jazzer in The Archers is blind.  You read it here first.

Somehow we get onto the type of editing equipment used in BBC studios.  A general chat about the use of sound effects, but it ends well as David Darlington (Big Finish sound man and barfly friend of TTV) gets some well-deserved phrase. 

I perk up when they move on to Crossroads.  Terry was in it during the William Smethurst era (just like virtually everyone else in The Archers at the time) playing the regenerated Stan Harvey. 

And on to Davros.  He got the gig because he worked on Matthew Robinson's TVS show about radio.  So Terry did the research, and jumped at the job.  *FIRST MENTION OF BLEACH HERE*.

A lot of detailed stuff about the genesis of the "I, Davros" series starts here.  Terry thinks Davros has got Aspergers Syndrome, which is odd as in theory that would make him likely to be a huge Doctor Who fan. 

The dividing line between genius and evil genius.  Shaun Lyon has to walk that tightrope every day.

Terry praises the cast of Revelation, and comment that poor old Colin (Baker) didn't have a lot to do.

Terry Malloy tells the story of visiting Cardiff and being collared by David Tennant who shocked him by saying that they had worked together on a radio play years before.  He then went over to Graeme Harper and by the sound of it almost gave him a stroke.

Best line of the panel "Graeme Harper has never forgiven me for Bergerac".

Apparently Terry played a director as a lunatic Irishman who often appeared in the background.  Harper only noticed later that Malloy was actually playing him, but by then it was too late.

Q&A

Question 1: "Would you play Davros in Doctor Who" "They've got another one!"  Terry hasn't seen Bleach's performance yet as he's been out of the country.  Julie Gardner apparently rang Terry to explain they wanted to drive the character in a different direction.  Terry wondered if that meant "Davros would be gay and a tap dancer".  Controversial.  Terry admits it is difficult to see another person taking over a role and he does, naturally, feel a little proprietorial.   He is "handing on the mantle".

Damon wonders if Terry Malloy and Bill Oddie have ever been seen in the same room.  If anyone out there has any photos of such an event then please send it in to Tachyon TV where you could win a signed photo of Mary Tamm.

I just inadvertantly put my hand up when Charlie asked Terry how many people listened to The Archers.  It wouldn't be a normal panel if I didn't embarrass myself in some manner.

Neil wonders if we've stumbled into an Archers convention by mistake.  I draw his attention to the man on our right who is dressed up as Ed Grundy.  We ponder the issue further.

Potentially embarrassing moment where the organisers show Terry a clip of Davros from Journey's End.  Terry would have liked the modern-day prosthetics when he played the role.

Question 2:  What was it like working with Nicholas Courtney on The Scarifiers?  "It was great fun"

Question 3:  "Question about Davros and Hitler." "Weimar republic, yadda, yadda, yadda...."

I don't raise my theory about Davros being based on the Portuguese dictator Salazar.  According to Damon, Julian Bleach based his portrayal on Robert Mugabe.

Question 4:  "What was the source of Davros's charm?" CHARM?  Charm?  He wore Nyder's favourite aftershave, other than that who knows.  I didn't hear Terry's answer through my own incredulity.

Question 5:  "Has Davros always been looking over the Daleks?"  Terry muses on the fact that Davros can't stop tinkering with them, and that causes all sorts of trouble. 

Question 6: "Revelation question.  Was the tank a second life-support system? " "Terry quotes the script that "It was but a lure""  But Terry had an awful time in the tank.

That's it.  Terry is off to do The Archers.

Lunch now.  See you later.