Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

Who Fix

Just a quick plug for a brand new blog from the makers of Tachyon TV: Who Fix - your daily dose of Doctor Who goodness. It's pretty self-explanatory and we hope that you enjoy it...

http://www.whofix.net

Cheers

Neil and John

Just Like That...

Doctor Who: The Big Bang
Review by Neil Perryman

Well, at least I don't have to eat my Tom Baker underpants.

I still feel like a bit of a berk, though. I may have been right about a future-Doctor gallivanting around the Byzantium but my subsequent theories, the ones I'd tirelessly harvested from apparent inconsistencies littered throughout this series, failed to bear fruit. So either I've been reading far too much into it or the story isn't over yet. It's frustrating to say the least.

As it currently stands, the Injustice League of Pandorica's plan still makes very little sense (see my grumbles last week), the duck-less pond turned out to be a blind alley after all, and Rory's ID badge means somebody should be fired; or was Rory a qualified nurse at the tender age of six?

Even worse, Amy's house wasn't "too big" because it was trans-dimensional, it was because her mum and dad weren't around when the Doctor originally came-a-calling. I'll have to watch The Eleventh Hour again to make sure but doesn't Amy tell the Doctor that she lives with her Aunt? And isn't it possible for people to live in a house that is too big for them without their lives failing to make any sense? I live in a bloody volcano and my life… erm… well, you get the general idea.

At least the predestination postcard (don't forget to use the red pen!) was vaguely significant. I guess.

This was a bit of a let-down for me, as was the catch-all explanation that the crack somehow made Amy "special", which just felt a bit easy, although I suppose it does explain how Auton-Rory can remember his own death at the hands of the Silurians. However, this understanding can only be arrived at once you've wrestled with the finer points of the timey-wimey narrative and you finally allow yourself to succumb to the conclusion that Amy's memories could include adventures that she hasn't actually had yet when the Nestene Conciseness turns up. I think. I really couldn't swear to it. And you should probably thank me for not spending another paragraph trying to explain it.

That took me two hours to work out. During the transmission itself, I was utterly bewildered.

the Injustice League of Pandorica's plan still makes very little sense...

The way they handled Amy's "death" was disappointing but unless she stayed dead (highly unlikely, bordering on the impossible) how could it have been anything but? I suppose it all depends on how quickly you can accept that the Pandorica has a dual-function as a handy resurrector without any prior warning. Last week it was an impenetrable prison and now it's a giant reset button. That felt like a convenient switcheroo to me: keeping someone alive isn't the same as bringing someone back from the dead, is it? Even RTD would have balked at the speed of that particular turnaround.

But at least the increasingly odd safety features that we've encountered throughout Moffat's reign can now be said to form a theme of sorts. A really silly theme but a theme nonetheless. Both the Dalek's Progenitor and the pseudo-TARDIS from The Lodger required the right person to interact with a machine in just the right way to make it work, and now Amy brings herself back to life by doing just that. Say what you like, but at least Moffat is consistent, and while you may not like his ideas at least he has the decency to foreshadow them properly.

Here's another example: Amy's memories are used to create the scenario for the Alliance's overly-complicated trap and while this sounds unbearably cool in principle, it doesn't really bear any scrutiny (the Doctor arrives at Stonehenge with no tangible intervention from Amy at all). But that doesn't matter to Moffat - he treats the Alliance as complete idiots, so maybe this is just another massive cock-up on their part. Or perhaps they thought Amy would ask the Doctor to take her there one day, given her fascination for the subject? Yeah, that could work. But what really matters is that it helps to sell to the audience the conceit that Amy's memories can manifest themselves in the flesh/plastic. "If it can be remembered it can come back".

The problem I had with the initial set-up wasn't that Amy's memories could be used to recreate physical objects and people (I can suspend my disbelief as much as the next fan), it was the inconsistency and pointlessness of the recreations themselves that baffled me. But once you are able to toss that niggle aside then yes, by jove! It really does make sense!

I am actually talking myself into going along with this as I write this review, as if you hadn't guessed.

Even RTD would have balked at the speed of that particular turnaround...

This was an episode that liked to cheat. The Doctor lies about being dead (although this makes sense as it keeps his companions moving) and he happily crosses his own time-line to deploy a couple of cheeky predestination paradoxes so he can save the day. Aaron Blinovitch must have been spinning in his grave, assuming he hadn't ceased to exist at that point; forget the Time Lord Victorious, this was the Time Lord Mischievous. I wonder if he'll keep this up? I mean, what's stopping him?

The Doctor's plan - to fly a magical box into his dying TARDIS so he can ignite a ret-conning Big Bang - was about as bold and as silly as this show gets. But given that we've seen the universe wiped out of existence the only practical solution was for a massive reset to occur. What possible alternative was there? And the only machina capable of being deus ex-ed at such short notice is sitting right in front of them and I suppose it could have been worse, it could have been left to the sonic screwdriver to sort the mess out.

So a reboot was completely unavoidable and carping on about it now would be a complete waste of time. So, I won't.

How the reboot was played out remains the most important thing and once again I'm slowly coming around to its singular charms. By time I reach the end of the next paragraph I may even grow to love it.

The Doctor's sacrifice was handled nicely, if predictably, and while the box's function will probably continue to irk me for quite some time to come, at least the sentiment felt right. Watching the Doctor spooling back through his adventures, heard but not seen, trying to influence events in the wrong order was inspired too; it's just a shame that more of this wasn't planted throughout the series. And the moment where the Doctor implores Amy to remember what he told her when she was seven, and you realise that he doesn't even know what he's going to tell her yet, skirts pretty close to genius in my book.

forget the Time Lord Victorious, this was the Time Lord Mischievous...

The memory that he eventually plants in Amy's mind, which he specifically designs to be triggered during her wedding ("something borrowed, something blue"), is quite remarkable and I couldn't help but be moved by his triumphant return to reality via Amy's sheer force of will. It was a scene that managed to walk a very fine line between fairytale magic, metatextual mysticism, pseudo-scientific technobabble, oh and complete and utter BOBBINS.

Thankfully, in between all the head-scratching and leaps of faith, The Big Bang still offers some truly iconic moments, even if you you aren't seduced by Moffat's vision: the calcified Dalek begging for mercy, that eerie vision of TARDIS keeping the planet alive long enough for the Doctor to figure it all out, the thrill of two Doctors coming face-to-face, Rory's mythical sacrifice, the sheer joy of Matt Smith's dancing…  Ah yes, the joy that is Matt Smith. Sigh.

However, I must confess that the episode's climax lacked a certain something. And while I was relieved that the thread concerning the Big Bad lurking behind the TARDIS's destructive behaviour was left hanging, I was still a little surprised not to have been furnished with another hint as to their identity or next move. OK, I admit it, I was one of those poor saps who was expecting Philip Madoc to turn up as Omega. So sue me!

Instead, we were either treated to a sly dig at RTD ("The Orient Express. In space.") or we're in for one hell of a bizarre Christmas Special.

And I can't wait.

Boxing Clever

"It's the episode we've waited 47 years for!" declared über-fan Ian Levine on Twitter after the BAFTA screening last week. I immediately sat up and took notice. Ian usually reserves that kind of hyperbole for boy bands...

Doctor Who: The Pandorica Opens
Review by Neil Perryman

Whatever your feelings about this episode, you have to admire Steven Moffat's impeccable sense of timing. He produced a satire about an election just before the country went to the polls, he tied an episode that featured a football match to the opening weekend of the World Cup, and now he's successfully showcased Stonehenge on the eve of the Summer Solstice. And if that wasn't impressive enough, he did it in the very same week that the heritage site's funding was withdrawn by an improbable coalition of insane megalomaniacs who committed this heinous crime in the misguided belief that they were actually doing some good.

Spooky or what?

Moffat has even hardwired the finale's transmission date into the narrative itself. That could shed some light on why the BBC have thrown the show around the Saturday schedules like confetti at a wedding; perhaps this was the price they had to pay for tying the final episode to a particular transmission date in the middle of a football tournament, a reality show and an increasingly moribund song contest?

Because make no mistake about it, this is an audacious and challenging experiment in televisual storytelling. From the timing of the Big Bang itself to the built-in cameos that kick-started this episode, everything appears to have been meticulously planned. The result is as complex and compelling as anything you'll see on a prime-time Emmy award-winning show, and while children will delight in its spectacle, the adults that I know are lapping up the deeper mysteries and complex plot twists. Stephen Fry should really hang his head in shame.

It could even turn out to be a work of genius if the final episode delivers the goods. While RTD shoehorned Bad Wolf into his episodes so fanboys would have something to talk about, Moffat has apparently gone to the other extreme. We've been trained to expect our regeneration stories to feature fairly perfunctory plots but it seems as if The Eleventh Hour could turn out to be the most important episode of the season. Seeds were sown, hints were dropped, and inconsistencies were raised. Some of the foreshadowing was easy to spot ("silence will fall"), some of it was more ambiguous (how does a kissogram make a decent living in a sleepy village?) and some of it was obscured by my own preconceptions (the duck pond shtick felt like the sort of thing an eccentric Doctor might fixate on after a regeneration).

Because this season began with Moffat throwing down a gauntlet - he dared us to pay attention. Every line of dialogue ("a madman with a box"), every throwaway plot point (Amy's predestination paradox postcard in The Lodger), every potential continuity error (Rory's ID badge?) could have far-reaching implications for those members of the audience who have truly engaged with this show. Or I could be reading far too much into it and I'll look like a right berk come Saturday.

Ian usually reserves that level of hyperbole for boy bands...

Whatever the outcome, The Pandorica Opens is as good as Doctor Who gets. It's epic, exciting, funny, scary, touching and mad. It's everything you could possibly want from the show and a lot more besides. And while you could probably argue that they've thrown in the kitchen sink again, at least Moffat had the good grace to pick a really nice sink and the foresight to have it plumbed in properly.

Matt Smith has never been better for a start. Or as my wife put it: "He's really into this, isn't he?". There are far too many magical moments to mention here but I was utterly transfixed by his silent reaction to the Daleks inevitable reappearance (there's so much going on behind those eyes) and his glorious speech to the assembled invaders was a triumphant, punch-the-air moment, undercut by the revelation that it was all part of Alliance's plan and they were stalling him. Only Moffat would - and could - do that.

And I really must single Arthur Darvill out for special praise. His awkward resurrection was beautifully realised and his interplay with Matt Smith was a highlight of the series so far. His story arc has been tragic and heartbreaking and his final scene with Karen Gillan was incredibly moving.

The direction was sublime, too. The Cybermen were horrifying for the first time in decades, the Pandorica Chamber was suitably malevolent and magical, and the climax was cinematic in its scope and execution. Those final moments, when the Doctor was incarcerated and his companion lay dead in her lover's arms, as the universe exploded around them and the silence fell...

...well, does it really get any better than that?

My only nitpick is with the Evil Alliance itself. If you are going to list half-a-dozen classic enemies in order to induce multiple-fangasms in a specific demographic then you'd better follow up on it! It wouldn't have been so bad if was just the Big 3 who had turned up in person (Daleks! Cybermen! Sontarans! Oh my!), this way Moffat could have out-fanwanked Russell and we could have imagined the Zygons, Terreleptils and Quarks as some sort of orbital back-up. That would have been great.

Instead, we are treated to a roll-call of some of the oddest "villains" in the history of this show. Weevils? Really? The Hoix?! Yes, the alien who was literally a running gag in Love & Monsters. Right.... The Silurians? Eh? And is that an Adherent to the Repeated Meme I can see standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a Cyberman? Terrifying. I can only assume that The Moxx of Balhoon was on loan to an exhibition.

And if Moffat really wanted to turn the episode into a giant Character Option playset then would it have killed him to have included a Drahvin or two? I thought he would have jumped at the chance to reintroduce a race of Barbarellas to the series; at one point I thought I saw a Chumblie but sadly it was just a close-up of a Dalek's rubber neck.

The Moxx of Balhoon must have been on loan to an exhibition...

This grandstanding nonsense aside, the concept that all these bad guys would come together to stop "the most evil being in the universe" is a brilliant idea. I think...

I just find it hard to believe that this coalition would last five minutes, let alone the amount of time it must have taken them to set-up and execute this incredibly convoluted trap. I would have put good money on them killing each other before they'd finished going through the minutes of the last meeting.

Their plan begs quite a few questions, too. Like, how does raiding Amy's memories have any impact on the Doctor turning up to Stonehenge? Amy doesn't lead him there, River does (via Vincent). Why did they need Amy's memories to duplicate a bunch of Romans? Haven't they got Wikipedia? How does Rory remember dying in Wales if Amy doesn't, and even if she did remember, how could that memory have possibly been taken from her house? And why bother throwing a Rory duplicate into the mix in the first place? Do the bad guys really think that they have to sprinkle bits of Amy's past around in order to keep the Doctor interested in the Pandorica? If anything, surely these details would have tweaked his suspicions?

And what was stopping Tom Baker, for example, popping back to read the first words ever written in history - would he have ended up at the Pandorica instead? After all, the 11th Doctor's decision to take that fateful trip appeared to be completely arbitrary.

And you have to question the Alliance's research as well. How can so many races get it so spectacularly wrong? Didn't any of them think to check if anyone else could pilot the TARDIS, or if the explosion could still occur if the Doctor was separated from his ship? Is this why they don't kill him outright, just in case they're wrong? Or do they believe that the Doctor is indestructible and a prison is a far better bet than, say, cutting his head off?

Or is somebody else pulling their strings?

For example, does this Alliance even know about Amy's mysterious background? The fact that her life doesn't make any sense and her house might be a trans-dimensional spaceship can't be a coincidence, can it? That duck pond implies that Leadworth might not even exist and now that we've seen Rory as an Auton all sorts of possibilities have opened up.

And we're still no further forward when it comes to working out why the TARDIS explodes in the first place. Is it because another TARDIS is nearby? Since when did that cause the universe to implode? And that spooky voice in the TARDIS - is that the real villain behind all of this? Or is it just a callback to The Eleventh Hour and Prisoner Zero's warning? And what is it with all the circles in this season, anyway? It's full of them.

Oh...

You know, I don't think I ever spent this much time thinking about Lost...

Speaking of which, it could still fall apart at the end. I realise that some of us (myself included) have grown accustomed to crushing disappointment when it comes to the finales; the bigger the set-up, the bigger the disappointment (and as far as set-ups go this one takes the biscuit), but I honestly believe that Moffat will pull it off.

I still stand by my theory that Flesh and Stone has two Doctors running around the Byzantium, and I firmly believe that oddities and inconsistencies (especially with Amy's character and Karen's performance) will be addressed soon. I also believe, more strongly than ever, that the Doctor was partially responsible for Van Gogh's suicide and I also believe that The Lodger's "squatter" has something to do with Amy's house. Even that bizarre "believe you are human" nonsense in Victory of the Daleks looks like it could have been there for a reason and Amy's Choice might turn out to be even more important than we first thought. And is the Doctor The Beast Below now? In fact, every episode this season is practically begging to be re-watched and re-evaluated in light of this frankly magnificent hour of television.

Except for Chris Chibnall's efforts. They will remain irredeemable.

Man About the House

Doctor Who: The Lodger
Review by Neil Perryman

I like James Corden.

No, honestly, I do. Gavin and Stacey was brilliant, his turn as the swotty student in Teachers was unforgettable and his definitive Hamlet will probably remain unsurpassed for a generation. Sure, his lesbian vampire movie was rubbish (which is quite hard to do), his sketch show was massively misjudged, his number one hit single is bloody awful and his chat show skills (not to mention his award-giving skills) are practically non-existent, but I still like him. I just can't help it.

Having said that, if you'd told me two years ago, when I saw him skulking impatiently outside a hotel in Birmingham as he waited for his girlfriend to leave a Doctor Who Convention, that he would star in an episode of our favourite show, then I would have laughed in your face. But James Corden has nothing to do with this episode's failings. Or to quote the man himself in a recent interview for Digital Spy: "I didn't write it, guv!"

I'm also an enormous fan of Daisy Haggard. Has any other actress in history been saddled with such an inappropriate surname? Somebody called Bob Gorgeous should marry her immediately. I've loved Daisy from the very first moment I saw her in Man Stroke Woman and her turn as a call girl in Saxondale continues to haunt me to this day. She's lovely and fantastic and you can't lay the blame at her door, either.

Matt Smith was wonderful too. However, I am convinced that you could ask Matt Smith to set fire to his own farts whilst wearing a tutu and he'd still be utterly brilliant.

Seriously, could you imagine anyone else playing this part these days? Forget previous Doctors trying to cohabitate in a bedsit, just try wrapping your head around Patterson Joseph or Chewitel Ejifor making small talk about call centres as they spit out their wine. Actually, don't. It's a horrifying thought.

And we can hardly pont the finger in Karen Gillan's direction, either. Admittedly, she does spend the entire episode shrieking like Victoria Waterfield in a torture dungeon, but given the fact that she probably filmed her part during a loo-break in Block 3, that's hardly her fault.

I am convinced that if you asked Matt to set fire to his own farts whilst wearing a tutu, he'd still be brilliant...

The set-up was great as well. That concept of something nasty lurking at the top of the stairs works beautifully in the context of this show, especially for any youngsters watching who don't live in a bungalow, and some of these moments are genuinely creepy. The opening scenes between Matt and James are effortlessly charming too and there are some seriously quotable moments, like "People just can't stop telling me their plans" and "Less of a young professional, more of an ancient amateur". Everything was going just fine.

And then I simply lost interest. Maybe it was the impending England football match, maybe it was impending King's Arms football match or maybe, just maybe, it was the thoroughly predictable love match unfurling before my eyes, but suddenly I found myself caring less.

It didn't help that some of the comedy didn't translate to the screen very well. The scene with the half-naked Doctor thinking that he'd picked up the sonic screwdriver instead of an electric toothbrush probably looked good on paper but on telly it came across as forced slapstick. The gentle character moments fared better: the awkwardness as Craig dug himself a hole in front of the woman he loved was particularly sweet, although I could have done without all the comedy parping from Murray Gold; I get it, it's funny.

But the main problem I had with The Lodger was my growing impatience with the Doctor's response to the threat.

I appreciate that any climax has to be delayed for as long as possible (well, that's what the wife keeps telling me) but I found the Doctor's reluctance to investigate the room at the top of the stairs a bit absurd and completely out of character. It's not enough to simply imply that he's scared of the threat because he certainly doesn't look like he is. He's simply pissing about! This wouldn't be so bad if THREE PEOPLE DIDN'T DIE! That's right, while the Doctor is larking about making omelettes and scoring nutmegs, innocent bystanders are brutally murdered. This takes the shine off the quaint Odd Couple routine just a bit.

while the Doctor is larking about making omelettes and scoring goals innocent bystanders are murdered...

We are also expected to go with the conceit that the Doctor can't pass himself off as a human without hilarious hi-jinks ensuing. Forget the fact that he was exiled on this planet for several years and that he hung around with beer-swilling soldiers most of the time, he also spent most of his 9th and 10th incarnations knocking around a flippin' housing estate! And now he suddenly doesn't know what football is? Seriously? This just makes his miraculous prowess at the sport come across as even more smug and silly than it already is.

And then, thanks to five minutes spent watching a pointless kick around in a park, there's no time left for the Doctor to explain to Craig know what the hell is going on and so he just head butts him instead. Right. Whatever.

I'm sure a lot of people loved that scene for a variety of complicated reasons but sadly I'm not one of them.

All of this could have been swept under the carpet if the climax hadn't been quite so ridiculous. Yeah, yeah, go on, tell me that I'm watching a show about a time travelling telephone box. But there are limits, you know!

she spends the entire episode shrieking like Victoria Waterfield in a torture dungeon...

The reveal is fairly exciting to begin with: someone is trying to build a TARDIS! A dark, scary TARDIS! The sort of TARDIS that Anthony Ainley wouldn't mind driving. Ohhhhh, suddenly the Doctor's reticence about going upstairs makes sense... But no, it's just a nebulous threat with a massively contrived glitch.

What is it with the superior races in this universe that they have to include such bizarre safety features in their technology? First of all we had the Daleks with their 100% pure Dalek lock (ideal for any extinct race), and now this lot (whoever the hell they are) have installed a "must be willing to travel" clause in the ignition key.

I'm sorry? WHAT?

The monkeys didn't even get a helpline!

And am I the only person who thought perception filters just made something invisible or difficult to perceive? Since when did they manage to induce mass hallucinations and impossible staircases? Did I miss a meeting? Still, when you've got psychic cats roaming around the halls, who actually cares anymore? It's just a good job the door wasn't double deadlocked. Phew.

Next week looks fabulous, though. And if you thought Daleks bitch slapping Cybermen was fangasmic, then just wait until the Drahvins show up!

Corden Sanitaire

Doctor Who: The Lodger
Review by Neil Perryman

I didn't like this episode at all.

So here is a picture of some kittens:

Next week looks good...

Starry Starry Shite

Doctor Who: Vincent and the Doctor
Review by Neil Perryman

First things first: the Krafayis is a terrible adversary. Not only does it look ridiculous, it's badly defined too. The Doctor's feelings towards it vary wildly, depending on which emotions need to be tweaked at the time. One minute it is a brutal, unforgiving pack animal that kills without mercy. The next minute it is a poor, disabled alien that has been cruelly abandoned and warrants our pity. But that would be boring, so they kill the bloody thing anyway.

Making it invisible made me disengage with the threat almost immediately. I initially hoped that the creature only existed in Vincent's mind; just how fascinating and challenging would it have been to watch the Doctor try to defeat a psychological demon haunting a tortured soul? Maybe Amy's love could have saved him, if she had only stayed behind, setting up a dilemma for an actress who's setting has been stuck on kooky for far too long now. But no, it really is a giant turkey running amok. A Giant. Turkey.

I'm not the biggest fan of the psuedo-historical star-***ing subgenre of Doctor Who but I really had to laugh when Den of Geek recently claimed that Vincent and the Doctor was a return to the show's educational remit. Really? So Vincent really did battle a giant turkey, did he? Is this what Reith had in mind: mixing the impossible with fact? Even when the protagonists actively attempt to screw with those facts? It's not exactly Marco Polo, is it?

And does this mean that Vincent wasn't mad after all? And when did a pack of these things land in France anyway? Has this thing been gobbling up (sorry) half of Europe over the last few months? Oh, sod the poor peasants - they won't amount to anything anyway.

sod the poor peasants - they won't amount to anything anyway

But this is the least of the episode's faults. If it had concluded after the slapstick battle with a gaint turkey (it never gets boring writing that) it would have been bad enough: smug, complacent, muddled and vaguely boring. But it didn't. It concluded with a blatantly manipulative scene that made me want to vomit. A scene so sugary and schmaltzy it makes Jerry Maguire look like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.

The Doctor's decision to take Vincent to an art gallery in 2010 makes the artist's eventual suicide a few months later problematic, to say the least. I was hoping against hope that the final trip to the gallery would be set in a wildly divergent timeline with lots of new paintings by Vincent or even no paintings at all. Something odd and dangerous that could have had repercussions for a Doctor who seems more than happy to fiddle around with the timelines these days. Maybe a big crack on the wall where the sunflowers used to hang? But no, the self-indulgent trip in the Unappreciated In Your Own Time Machine has no impact on Vincent at all. 

All it did was make easily manipulated people cry.

And this review is written by a man who cries at the slightest provocation. I wept buckets when Vincent (no relation) lay down next to Jack at the end of Lost, even though I hated that episode too. I've cried over my fair share of Doctor Who as well, from Rose getting stuck behind that wall, to Madame de Pompadour popping her clogs and Adric plaintively wringing his belt (one of these is a lie) but I steadfastly refuse to cry at gunpoint. Especially when the first weapon in the text's arsenal is a power ballad by the band Athlete, a band who were recently described to me by a friend as a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of Coldplay (perhaps it's a subtle reference to City of Death but somehow I doubt it).

It has to be the most atypical and incongruous moment in Doctor Who ever. If this song was stipulated in Curtis' original script then I'm not convinced that he's actually seen an episode of Doctor Who; perhaps he simply stumbled across an episode of Confidential on BBC3 instead? What makes matters even worse is that I watched this in the presence of a Doctor Who virgin. What a way to introduce this show to someone - it's a bit like New Moon crossed with Bill and Ted. There's another one we've lost forever.

the self-indulgent trip in the Unappreciated In Your Own Time Machine had no impact on Vincent at all

Vincent then listens intently to Bill Nighy as he describes Van Gogh as the most incredible human being to have ever lived. Admittedly, Nighy's character is a little biased given that he spends most of his days waxing lyrical about Vincent anyway (although he can't pronounce his name right), but even so it's a bit much. Yes, he's a very nice painter and I'm sure the millionaires who have his work hanging on their walls are very grateful but don't push it. You'll be saying Agatha Christie is the greatest author who ever lived next. Only someone as fascinating as Nighy could have gotten away with this scene; he could make the telephone directory sound interesting, and this monologue is only a short step up from that. But if anyone was still crying anything other than tears of laughter when Nighy did that double take when he saw a man dressed as Vincent (bloody fans!) then there really is no hope left for you.

Or maybe, like me, you have decided that transporting a fragile, emotionally disturbed man on the brink of suicide into the future to be overwhelmed by an experience that he couldn't possibly explain to anyone else (especially those peasants who stone him in the street for being a bit odd) was an incredibly stupid thing to do. As far as I'm concerned the Doctor and Amy were responsible for this man's premature death. Vincent is told that he was unappreciated in his own life time. This means he will suffer decades of misery if he goes on living after being cruelly dumped by Amy (who he is obviously smitten with cos she's sassy, if you hadn't noticed). So he decides to end it all instead. Think about this the next time you weep into your tissues, Caitlin Moran.

So what's next? Why not cheer up Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart by taking him to an eScale concert? Or maybe they could show Herman Melville his Amazon page after they defeat a giant, misunderstood space whale? Oh, they already did that one. I know! Why not take Guy Fawkes to a fireworks display and be done with it?

And an advice line? Seriously? I called it to complain about the episode but a very nice woman on the other end told me firmly but politely that I was wasting her time and that the phoneline was designed to help people who were effected by the mental illness that was explored in the programme. You know, that aspect that is handled so delicately and effectively by showing a man crying on a bed when he isn't chasing an invisible giant turkey, which actually turned out to be a real turkey after all. In more ways than one.

You Know The Drill

Doctor Who: The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood
Review by: Neil Perryman

It was very clichéd. It was very routine. Running up and down corridors and silly monsters - Chris Chibnall, Open Air, 1986

A common complaint regarding this lacklustre two-parter is that we've seen it all before. Silurians wake up. Silurians want the planet back. Apes don't like them apples and so chaos ensues before everything inevitably ends in tragedy. Seen it, bought the DVD, designed the website. You literally know the drill. But to be fair to Chris Chibnall, he does manage to introduce some unique twists on what's gone before. It's just a shame they are all terrible.

In the Pertwee era, the planet was under threat from an ultra-secret drilling project that looked like it cost a bomb to operate. In Chibnall's version it's a couple of bumbling fools in what looks suspiciously like a garden shed. In Inferno the base was staffed by a small army and security was as tight as a nut, but here the earth shattering project looks like somebody's strange idea of a hobby. They've somehow managed to drill further into the earth than anyone before them and yet there's no press, no military, and no nosey neighbours anywhere to be seen. Where's their bloody Facebook group? Why isn't Kay Burley haranguing a miner? Why do the Silurians put up a heat shield anyway? Who are they trying to keep out? The postman?

In the Pertwee era peace was averted by the pig-headed, xenophobic military establishment who proceed to bomb the crap out of the poor, misunderstood reptiles. In Chibnall's version war is almost started by a loud woman with a handbag who looks like she's wandered off the set of Jeremy Kyle. However, instead of bombing the crap out of them at the end she vows instead to encourage her traumatised son to start preaching a new and strange religion about giant lizard men taking over the planet in a thousand years time. And David Icke thought he had it bad - all this kid has to go on is some blue grass and a collapsed mine shaft. The Doctor also appears to have forgotten that the planet will be purged by solar flares just as the Silurians are waking up, but he's having a bad day so I'll forgive him.

Why isn't Kay Burley haranguing a miner?

In ye good olde days, the Silurians looked truly alien. Even if they weren't really, which just made seem even more odd to me. In Chibnall's version the Silurians look like they've just walked off the set of Babylon 5. They must sense deep down inside that they look crap or they wouldn't go to all that trouble of making scary, alien-looking face masks. It's little wonder they plunge the earth into darkness - they're a laughing stock! I reckon that the fat bloke and the terrible comedian will mate with this particular strand of Silurian and they'll end up looking even more human the next time we meet them. Perhaps they'll just have green eyes and extremely dexterous tongues. It'll save a fortune on the budget.

In the original Silurian story, the Silurians were depicted as a fully developed race with complex shades of grey. In Chibnall's version there are good Silurians and there are bad Silurians. Even the ones that torture humans and grave-rob for some inexplicable reason are good eggs (try not to squirm with embarrassment as the Doctor does the hand jive with the reptilian Dr. Mengele) but they don't come any nicer than the Silurian King. He's ridiculously reasonable seconds after being woken up. I don't know about you but I'd be a tad more suspicious about that bloody great drill bearing down on my civilization - especially before my first cup of coffee.

In the original Silurian epic, a terrible plague was unleashed on planet earth and the Doctor had to race against time to come up with a cure. In Chibnall's version a bloke gets a nasty rash and has to sit down for a bit.

the Silurians look like they've walked off the set of Babylon 5...

Are we really suposed to believe that Amy, Nashreem and the Lizard King are going to thrash out a lasting peace?  It's a bizarre scene: one minute Meera Syal is sledgehammering us with her BNP style-immigration policy, the next she is giving up half of Australia for something that might cure PMT once and for all. I would loved to have seen Amy and Nasreem heading off to the UN to seal that deal. What utter nonsense.

And is this is the first time we've seen the Doctor attempt to kick-start a whole new timeline (I bet Lance Parkin almost shat himself) - and doesn't that remind you of something else in this series?

But that doesn't matter - there's a bad Silurian on the loose! Two bad Silurians! And if you can't keep up they both look the same! And that's about as morally ambiguous as it gets.

But who cares? No one will talk about the first 85 minutes of this tiresome, hackneyed, reheated tripe as they'll all be focusing on the final 5 minutes that could have occurred in practically any other adventure. 

It's bollocks.

And it's such a blatant cheat I can hardly bring myself to bother discussing it. If Rory doesn't come back unscathed I'll eat my Fisher Price Leela Doll with a side helping of Rolykin Daleks. It's bollocks.

And who didn't see it coming a mile off? The pompous voice over at the beginning of the second episode spelt it out in capital letters, and the "future Rory waving blissfully" followed by "no one dies today" speech rammed it home long before that. They might as well have stuck that image of him on the right on the front of The Radio Times.

The crack itself remains an interesting concept, though. There's a chunk of a police telephone box stuck inside it, although how the Doctor can remove his hand with no ill effects but they can't drag Rory into the TARDIS is baffling. And it's quite clever to "kill" someone significant without all that bloody angst that goes with it. I mean, just look at Time-Flight. Er, on second thoughts...

I Haven't Been This Drunk Since 1989

Introducing the very first Tachyon TV vidcast: a lighthearted documentary on the Gallifrey Conventions in LA during 2009-2010. A larger version and a download link is available via the new-look Tachyon TV website which also includes an interactive podcast player.

Behaving Badly

Doctor Who: Amy's Choice
Review by Neil Perryman

Blimey, this season of Doctor Who is turning out to be a bit erratic, isn't it? It's currently as reliable as the Liberal bloody Democrats. 

After the barnstorming Eleventh Hour we've had to endure the glorified toy advert that was Victory of the Daleks and the woefully uneven Beast Below. And then, just as the series appeared to have hit its stride with a fantastic Weeping Angel two-parter, we were subjected to the unholy mess that was The Catfish of Croatia, an episode so banal I couldn't bring myself to review it (space fish are supposed to be scarier than bona fide vampires? Are you absolutely sure?).

And then Amy's Choice comes along. 

I suspected that I was in for a bit of a treat when Den of Geek gave the episode a distinctly lukewarm preview - they are usually wide of the mark so this ramped up my expectations to a ridiculous degree. And I wasn't disappointed. In fact, it's the first time since Blink that I've felt compelled to watch an episode twice in the same evening. You have to - it cries out to be experienced again with the benefit of hindsight, even if the catalyst for the threat is utter bobbins. But who cares about improbable specks of psychic dust when the ultimate revelation is so damn potent.

Toby Jones was the Doctor all along!

Yes, Toby Jones was the Doctor all along. Or maybe he was the Valeyard. Whatever floats your boat. Either way, it was a powerful reveal (made even more disturbing by the flippant manner in which it was delivered) and I honestly didn't see it coming, even if the giveaway line about no one hating the Doctor quite so much seems painfully obvious in retrospect. It's also the second time that this show has postulated the premise that our hero has the innate potential to be a complete and utter bastard. Not to mention a sexual predator with some serious self-esteem issues.

In Star Trek this would be the result of a quaintly segregated parallel universe or a bizarre transporter accident but in Doctor Who we are told to accept the fact that the villain of the piece is buried deep within the psyche of our hero. And still is.

How macabre is that?

Toby Jones' performance as the Doctor's dark side is delicately balanced; it could have been disastrous in lesser hands but Jones manages to colour the role with just the right shades of menace, charm and sadism, which can't have been an easy task given the increasingly surreal brief he had to work with. He even manages to give Matt Smith a run for his money (which is really saying something) and practically every line he says is quotable; his rant about the Doctor's endless list of tawdry quirks elicited genuine applause from this quarter. I'd love to see him return for a re-match soon.

A sexual predator with some serious self-esteem issues...

I was also impressed at how deftly Simon Nye managed to keep me guessing when it came to working out which world was the real one. It says a lot about Doctor Who when a spooky village possessed by marauding OAPs could quite easily be the plausible threat, and while it's admittedly a bit of a cheat at the end of the day (the fact that it's impossible to correctly work out which reality was "real" really irritated me initially) the concept at the heart of the story is one of the funniest, scariest and most complex ever devised for this programme.

The Mid-afternoon of the Practically Dead siege plays into our collective fears about old age and impending death with a potency that alarmed me. You could almost smell the stale piss and Werther's Originals as they advanced on the house in a twisted parody of Assault on Precinct 13 and Cocoon, and while I should have been laughing at the marching Zimmer frames I found myself gripped by a increasingly morbid horror. Sadly, while grannies up and down the country are reported to find themselves with tingling nipples and a warm glow whenever they run into Tom Baker, Matt Smith will probably end up with a chorus of scornful tuts and cold shoulders as a generation of children start treating their grandparents with suspicion.

Mid-afternoon of the Practically Dead

I've noticed that some Pond/Gillan scepticism has reared its head over the last couple of weeks. I just don't get it. Yes, she's full of contradictions, kooky mannerisms and bouts of selfishness but that just makes her feel like a fully-rounded character to me. Even if the crack of doom isn't exerting a malign influence over Amy, her actions seem perfectly reasonable when examined in context.

Amy's lack of compassion for her unborn child, as she hastily cobbles together s suicide pact with the Doctor, could simply be interpreted as yet another subtle clue that the OAP world wasn't real, even if I'm still surprised that the Doctor would go along with her plan considering that he didn't know for sure that she was right, and she wasn't exactly thinking straight having just seen Rory crumble to dust like that.

Just think, there's an alternative reality out there where the Doctor is painfully regenerating next to the twitching corpse of his pregnant companion. Assuming of course that crashing a bus into a wall at 5 miles an hour doesn't result in anything more serious than whiplash and a bruised elbow.

It's a turning point for Amy Pond and it concludes her opening mini-arc beautifully. For the last few weeks I haven't really understood what Rory and Amy were doing together. Rory is certainly a likeable, if vaguely pathetic, character but I've been labouring under the impression that Amy was simply settling for second best until someone better came along. Yes, it's an immature attitude to have but it's also very, very real. Her realisation that she really does love the daft bugger felt right and truthful because In the words of Joni Mitchell, you don't know what you've got till it's gone... Trite, maybe, but it felt right to me. How she'll develop from here remains to be seen of course...

I adored Amy's Choice. Just writing about it now just makes me want to watch it all over again and even if Chris Chibnal's effort turns out to be utter rubbish tomorrow (Den of Geek seem to like it) I really won't care. Stories as good as this only come up once every 2 or 3 weeks so I'll savour them while I can.

Don't Look Now

Doctor Who: Flesh and Stone
Review by Neil Perryman

Well, it doesn't get much better than that.

I've avoided the forums and I've given Twitter a wide berth; I've even held back on reading my colleague's reviews over here. All because I don't want anyone to rain on this story's parade. I don't want anyone to tell me that the Doctor blinked when he shouldn't have, or that the Angels accidentally look at each other if you freeze Sky+ at just the right second, or that gravity shouldn't have an effect on the wind. Because right now this story is the best Doctor Who story ever made. And I'd like it to stay that way for as long as possible, thank you very much.

Before I begin, I'd like to address the continuity error that patently isn't. How audacious was that? Just as I was sitting there smugly noticing that the Doctor had his jacket back on again (call in the emergency Collinson! Write to Points of View!) it dawned on me that this wasn't an error at all but a tantalising glimpse of the Doctor crossing his own timeline so he could give Amy the instruction to "remember". It certainly isn't the Doctor who left her a moment ago and the instruction is never mentioned again. The kiss on her forehead is a bit of a giveaway too, and if we don't see this scene revisited in episode 13 then I will eat my Tom Baker underpants. And then call for the person responsible for continuity to be shot...

I will eat my Tom Baker underpants...

And it's just one ingenious moment in an episode that's full of them. Most stories would kill for an iconic scene (the sort of scene people will fondly remember and talk about for decades) but Moffat throws them around like confetti at a wedding. He makes it look so easy! Just when you think you have a handle on the threat, the rug is continually pulled away. Anyone expecting the Angels to be the main threat, or for the Marines to end up embroiled in an Aliens-sytle shoot-out are in for a shock: the Angles run away! The marines can't remember each other! You can't even open your eyes, let alone blink! OK, the last one is a little odd, especially when the Angels simply assume they are being looked at, but still...

And it really doesn't get more "fairy-tale" than a blind girl dressed as little red riding hood traipsing through a forest filled with threats, even if it is in the middle of a spaceship.

And finally! Moffat kills someone in an unpleasant manner who isn't a redshirt, and he does it in the most horrific way imaginable. The initial jump-cut was shocking enough but when you suddenly realise that the only thing keeping Octavian alive is the Doctor's gaze, you can't believe they're actually going to go ahead and do it. 

Best Doctor Who death ever. Mainly because the Doctor has to initiate the final moment but also because he's never seemed so helpless. It helps that Iain Glen gives a strong performance, and while he has the word "DEAD" stamped on his forehead from the moment we meet him, he's a solid addition to the cast; his unflappable stoicism is a much needed contrast to the mania erupting around him.

I'm beginning to bore myself now but Matt Smith is quickly cementing himself as the greatest all-round Doctor that we've ever had. He can do it all: flippancy, genius, affection, anger, weirdness and strength. And this was his very first crack at the whip. God knows what we'll get from him once he's settled down.

An interesting character trait for the 11th Doctor is his propensity for thinking out loud, which leads to some hilarious, yet brutal pronouncements when he doesn't bother to filter the results in order to reassure his companions. This makes him edgy and unpredictable - not to mention fascinating to watch.  His anger is played just right too - more petulant annoyance than the wibbly-wobbly lippy-wippy we've had to endure recently - and he delivers some fantastic lines to boot: "I made them say comfy chair", "I said I'd thought about it" and my favourite: "You're dying - shut up".

more petulant annoyance than wibbly-wobbly lippy-wippy...

If I have one criticism to make it's that we should never have seen the angels move. Granted, it's an undeniably powerful image but it also breaks the conceit that the audience's gaze was causing the angels to freeze (which would also explain quite a few niggles, even if the notion is patently ridiculous) and I feel they lost some of their mystery as a result. I was also confused by the fact that some of them sported flat bases - how on earth did they move? But I adored their casual sadism and their attempts at winding up the Doctor easily make them the best Doctor Who monster of all time.

But the biggest threat in this story is the Crack. I thought this would be nothing more than a distracting motif, following the Doctor around like a Bad-Wolf wannabe, but not a bit of it: it's front and center and it means business. It also means that everything that's ever happened in the entire history of Doctor Who is now fair game. You can write-off anything even remotely irritating from the canon now (bye-bye Cyberking! ta ra Sycorax Mothership!) and you can even create ridiculous articulations of classic monsters while you're at it. What's next? Silurians that look a bit naff but who actually come from the Silurian era this time? Lance Parkin is going to have his work cut out...

the Horny Army Manoeuvre

And I'm willing to bet good money that the forums are buzzing over the final scene, hitherto referred to in Doctor Who folklore as the Horny Army Manoeuvre. It makes perfect sense to me and I'm just glad that they managed to throw us off the scent in all the pre-publicity. Let's be fair, given what's just happened, coupled with Amy's mixed emotions about her impending marriage, it would have been more unbelievable if she hadn't tried to jump his bones like that. But unlike Rose or Martha this isn't soppy, puppy-dog love - it's pure, unadulterated lust. She's more like Captain Jack than anything else, and I bet the Doctor had to lock his bedroom door when he was travelling in the TARDIS as well.

There's even the vague suggestion that her raunchy behaviour is the direct result of Amy's Crack (oh don't start) but I don't buy that. I think she just fancies a quickie. And under the circumstances, who can blame her? And to anyone who raised an eyebrow at all that talk of "sorting Amy out" at 7pm obviously hasn't watched Hollyoaks recently, and that goes out at 6:30pm! Kids today, eh?

I also bet that everyone believes that River Song will kill the Doctor too, probably in episode 13, but that's just bollocks. Probably. Of course that's what we're meant to think but the facts don't add up. If she kills him in this incarnation then she won't have met him when he's "older" - and that will be the first time she meets him in her timeline (are you keeping up?) and that's obviously a future incarnation (unless he was William Hartnell at the time and he just forgot). In which case, at the very worst she'll make him regenerate. And I can't see why she'd be thrown in prison for that. Also, given that episode 13 has already happened for her, and she seems to imply it's all a bit of a lark, it might be a potboiler for years down the road. Unless she's pretending...

Ahhhhh, it's making my head hurt! But in a good way.

And there you have it. My initial reaction was that if you were eight years old it must have seemed like the best thing ever broadcast on television, but sod that, I'm 40 years old and it's still the best thing ever broadcast on television. So there.