Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

Teatime and the Rani

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Day of the Clown, part one.

WHO’S in charge of PR for clowns these days? Whoever it is, they need to seriously re-think their strategy, as they’re currently getting a worse press than John Leslie and the Icelandic banking system combined. I mean, when did you last see a clown being funny - you know, like old Charlie Carolie or... well, people like that – as opposed to creeping us out, like The Joker, or Pennywise, or Papa Lazarou or a hundred other ghost-faced killers.

Day of the Clown started breezily enough with a kick-about in the park on a sunny afternoon. If this was Doctor Who, I thought, this scene would be set at night, but they’re probably trying not to scare the peewees too much. Then the circus freak from Hell appeared screaming down the camera lens, and all bets were suddenly off. (I think it’s fair to assume there’ll be no tie-in Happy Meal for this particular story.)

My fanwank antenna was twitching like a Zarbi at the Rentokill Christmas party

And as if that weren’t scary enough, it turned out the clown was actually Bradley Walsh, Nu-Who’s equivalent of Ken Dodd’s Tollmaster – though, when you think about it, he’s actually pretty decent casting, having more than 20 years experience of not being funny under his belt.

By the time the gang had tracked Walshy down to the Museum of the Circus (and how disappointing is that for a kid? "Roll up, roll up, the Museum of the Circus is coming to town! All the thrills of the Big Top – represented by some pictures and explanatory text) my fanwank antenna was twitching like a Zarbi at the Rentokill Christmas party. But no, there appears to be a strange law of Who continuity that decrees you can waste precious time jabbering about the UNIT dating conundrum, but slipping in a sly poster for the Psychic Circus would have been a stretch too far. Pah.

Away from the circus, the hot news is that new arrival Rani is a total fox. Don’t worry, she’s 18 – I checked (“Well that was what she told Digital Spy, your honour”). The fact she’s Asian will no doubt have some OG posters frothing at the mouth about the show’s United Colours of Benetton casting policy - like Doctor Who hasn’t always tried to promote a positive message about mankind - but that’s their problem, frankly.

And with Rani, of course, we also get the latest entry from The RTD Big Book Of Comedy Mums (Mina Anwar this time, though seemingly voiced by Jane Horrocks) and a dad, played by Ace Bhatti (real name Dorothy Bhatti, natch), who was last seen bareback Billie-riding in Secret Diary of A Call Girl. (And for anyone whose filthy little mind is already leaping ahead to the crossover possibilities, let me add that Billie was recently shown pissing all over Love & Monsters’ Mr Skinner – now that’s what I call slash fiction.)

With a giant PC in her attic called Mr Smith, she’s on dodgy ground criticising anyone for their computer dating habits

Despite Rani inviting Luke into her bedroom and telling him she’s “into weird things”, it’s obvious Bubbleshock Boy is still pining for Maria. Sarah Jane disapproves of him conducting a relationship by email but then, with a giant PC in her attic called Mr Smith, she’s on dodgy ground criticising anyone for their computer dating habits. For her part, Rani’s clearly intrigued by the air of mystery surrounding Luke – the biggest conundrum of all being: Since when did the science geek become the class hero, with his own cheerleader chant and everything? At my school he’d have been lucky go get away without getting his head kicked in.

Clyde, meanwhile, continues to be saddled with all the worst excesses of CBBC dialogue, including this week’s gem: “This place doesn’t just take the biscuit, this place takes the whole Christmas cake.” Huh?

Still, at least he didn’t have the dumbest line of the week – that honour fell to Luke, who asked, “Why would an alien be dressed as a clown?”. Has he never seen any of the sixth Doctor’s stories? (Honk honk, cymbal crash, fall over, etc.)

Potato waffle

The Last Sontaran, Episode 1

OOOH look everyone, woods. We haven’t had woods in nu-Who before. Russell probably has one of his funny rules about it – “when you’ve got an actor of the calibre of David Tennant, you can’t risk him walking behind a tree”, that sort of thing. But here we are, deep in the forest with Sarah Jane and a lone Sontaran. Takes you back, doesn’t it? And it’s by no means the oddest thing about The Sarah Jane Adventures – which, by all the normal rules of the universe, shouldn’t really exist, let alone be a hit – that nostalgia for a 35-year-old event is one of the central attractions of a show aimed at eight-year-olds.

This is basically Predator for pre-teens

Not that the rugrat demographic don’t have plenty to squee about themselves: towards the end, this episode dissolves into total continuity porn, revealing itself to be a direct follow-up to this year’s Sontaran two-parter and even including clips – clips I tells you – from The Poison Sky. None of them feature Tennant, of course, as it’s the first law of the Spin-off Limtation Effect that The Doctor must never, ever appear, even though everyone stands around nattering about him all the time anyway. Sarah briefly touches on the ATMOS saga herself, before going back to talking about The Time Warrior, in recognition of the fact half this CBBC show’s audience are actually grown men guiltily setting the video for 4.35 in the afternoon. (And for those lifers really paying attention, we even get a bit of that green goo from The Two Doctors. Surely the Ark In Space bubblewrap isn’t far behind.)

With its lone warrior and snazzy invisibility effect, this is basically Predator for pre-teens. The single enemy concept works well – not just because of the CBBC budget, but because it’s just instinctively more dramatic. It’s the reason Dalek is a lot scarier than Journey’s End, and the reason no-one ever looked at King Kong and said “You know what this needs? More monkeys”* And the scarface is a nice touch, plugging into Who’s long history of deformed wretches, from Magnus Greel to Sharaz Jek to Midshipman Frame. (Sorry, that’s cruel – I really just wanted an excuse to use this picture of RTD’s choice for the 11th Doctor.)

Baked potato as audience signifier

As Kaagh, Anthony O’Donnell clearly takes his cue from Christopher Ryan’s recent reinvention of the Sontarans as more frustrated middle managers than merciless killing machines – a shift in tone reflected by the number of baked potato gags, which the people who wrote that Dissertations in Time In Space book would no doubt refer to as “reflected audience signifiers,” or some such bollocks. (More bizarrely, at one point Clyde also calls Kaagh “kettle-head”, which would only really work if you happened to have a novelty Sontaran kettle - and don’t think we won’t by Christmas.)

Sure, some of the acting’s a bit stage school, and Lis Sladen has developed a habit of getting all teary-eyed at the slightest provocation (maybe it’s The Change) but, on the whole, The Last Sontaran is a neat, economical run-around that only occasionally reminds you (specifically in lines like “That’s 100% creeped-out to the max”) that you’re watching children’s telly when you’ve still got those box sets of The Wire to work through.

*Dr Desmond Morris writes: Yes, I know apes are not monkeys. I just really like the word monkey, okay?

The Doctor Who Technical Manual

Selected extracts from Advanced Learners’ Edition, now featuring

Doctor Who: Journey’s End

Biomatching Receptacle: Talk to the handy plot device.

Reality Bomb: The ultimate demonstration of Einstein’s E=MC2, in which matter, in the form of Gita from EastEnders, is dispersed to atoms, and then nothing at all (pretty standard post-Albert Square career trajectory, in fact). Thus all matter in every universe ceases to exist, except for the Daleks, who are hiding next door, or something. Also the TV industry term for Castaway, coincidentally.

Project Indigo: Top secret teleportation device developed from scavenged Sontaran technology (full name: Project Indigo Here And Outdicome Here.) Classified status only slightly compromised by Martha Jones’current Facebook status: “Martha is… Medical Director of Project Indigo!”

Dimension Jumper: Device that allows the wearer to cross the vortex between realities. Made by Fisher Price.

Dimension Cannon: Device that allows Rose Tyler to cross between parallel worlds. A bit like a Dimension Jumper, but much bigger, and requiring a crash helmet and someone to light the fuse. (NB: Not to be confused with Dimension Canon, a tedious argument about whether the Third Doctor really did meet Kathy Beale.)

Instantaneous Biological Metacrisis: Device that allows David Tennant to charge a double fee.

Temporal Prison: A Chronon Loop. That’s that cleared up, then.

Zed Neutrino Energy: The core of The Crucible. Also early 90s rave band (Z-Nu-trino NR-G, obviously).

Dalek Waste Disposal: “How many times have I told you? Dead Time Agents go in the green bin.”

Extrapalator Shielding: TARDIS security system, built using an intergalactic surfboard disguised as a model of a Welsh power station. True story.

TARDIS Base Code Numerals: If you lose these, you’ll never get the stereo to work again.

Magnatron: Alien tech cannibalised from fairground dodgems and old issues of TV21.

Osterhagen Key: Big bomb.

Warp Star: A warp-fold conjugation trapped in a carbonised shell. Really big bomb.

Planetary Alignment Field: With thanks to the show’s new scientific adviser, Russell Grant.

Time Lock: Developed by Tosh, appropriately enough.

Dalekanium Power Fields: With built-in reverse gear. Phew!

Spatial Genetic Bioduplicity: Tennant squees his pants after recognising actress from Series One box set.

TARDIS Tow-rope: “If you break down after being dragged across time and space in order to build a Reality Bomb, please stay with your planet and await the emergency services – in this case, eight insufferably smug bastards in a phone box. Welsh male voice choir accompaniment optional.”

Biometric Damping Field with Retrograde Arse Inversion: Well that’s what it sounded like.

Barrowman Damping Field with Performance Containment Inversion: Hey, we can dream.

Dimensional Retroclosure: Imagine the size of the prop Jon Pertwee would have needed to write down all the technojism in this script…

Zed Neutrino Biological Inversion Stabiliser: Oh you’re just taking the piss now.

I lost heart with a Starship Trooper

Doctor Who: The Stolen Earth

I don’t really like science fiction. That might sound like an odd thing for a lifelong Doctor Who obsessive – not to mention a writer for, duh, SFX magazine – to say, but it’s true. Sort of. What I mean is I’m actively turned off by so many of the staple trappings of sci-fi – spaceships, laser guns, big fuck-off battle scenes – I wonder if I oughtn’t find a better word for the bits I do like.

When I consider the kind of stuff that is – whether it’s the claustrophobic terror of Sapphire and Steel, the warped psychodrama of Twin Peaks or the whip-smart wit of Buffy – I’d say it roughly breaks down as “reality with a twist” - which is why you’ll find no bleating about a lack of alien planets from me.  (Just to add a note of confusion, my DVD shelves are also home to highly prized box sets of Battlestar Galactica and Firefly, though whether I like them because they adhere to certain sci-fi conventions or deliberately set out to subvert them (more dialogue than dogfights, basically) I honestly couldn’t tell you.)

So what of Doctor Who? I guess, more than any other show, it’s anything you want it to be. I know we all blether on about its “infinitely flexible format” all the time, but it really is its greatest strength, and the reason why my favourite episodes include unique spins on horror movies, historical epics, screwball comedies, romances, revenge tragedies and boys’ own adventure stories, but very little in the way of rocket ships, jet packs or chicken dinner pills.

Now, before you start accusing me of being an insufferable la-de-da smuggo who thinks you’re shallow for getting your kicks from space stations and fighting robots while I labour over illuminating studies of the human condition, I can assure you my tastes are not quite as recherché as I’d like people to think. For example, I’m a sucker for a good – or even a bad – rom-com, so while it’s true I’d watch literally anything rather than sit through the likes of Independence Day or Starship Troopers, that anything is a lot more likely to be Four Weddings And A Funeral or In Her Shoes than it is The Seventh Seal or A Matter of Life and Death.

But enough about me. Oh, actually, a tiny little bit more about me: I’ve never really “got” the Daleks, either. I mean, they’re just not scary, are they? Creeping shadows, creatures under the bed, dead kids in gas masks, men turning into plants – that’s the stuff of nightmares. But big tin cans with stupid voices who are always shouting the odds about how terrifyingly invincible they are, seconds before being bitch-slapped into submission - again? They never did it for me in my original behind the sofa days, never mind now.

The David! Catherine! Freema! John! With Liz! And Billie! title parade was like the world’s most thrilling Powerpoint presentation

You won’t be at all surprised to learn from this solipsistic preamble that I didn’t really like The Stolen Earth. Or, at least, I couldn’t help feeling it was aimed at someone else – someone younger, less grumpy, more squee-inclined (for more on this, should you be able to bear it, see my previous ruminations on the difference between Optimus Prime and a loaf of bread). Which is ironic, as this was the episode in honour of which words like fanwank and fangasm have been chucked around like… well, like the product of both those things - and I’m a big enough fan to have once owned a copy of Gary Downie’s cookbook.

Which is not to say my fan buttons didn’t take a few big punches along the way. For starters, I was unfeasibly giddy over the David! Catherine! Freema! John! With Liz! And Billie! title parade, which was like the world’s most thrilling Powerpoint presentation. And the combination of Richard Dawkins and Doctor Who – two of the great loves of my life – was enough to make me think the universe is now being run specifically for my personal gratification (and yes, I do appreciate the irony in that). I particularly loved the way Dawkins, true to form, was shown to be right about everything; no doubt somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic, Anne Coulter was insisting those planets in the sky were all a giant liberal atheist conspiracy.

There were also a few belly laughs, courtesy of the Doctor’s hilarious exchange with the Judoon captain (especially Tennat’s crowning “Ma-ho!”, which sounded like the sort of thing Mr T would say, were he fluent in Judoon), and Donna’s description of the subwave network as an “outer space Facebook” (though if anything’s going to date-stamp this episode, it’s that).

Rose’s petulant, jealous reaction to Martha on that same network was also a nice touch, neatly reversing the Rose-envy of series three and giving Freema her moment in the sun. In the end, though, poor old Martha couldn’t hope to compete with that emotional reunion, which took one of the conventions of those rom-coms I’m so guiltily fond of, milked it for all it was worth and then fried the hell out of it with a severe case of Dalek-powered coitus interruptus – an iconic moment destined for a long afterlife on a thousand TV clip shows.

And then there was Davros. It was fashionable for a time to criticise ol’ blue eye for having stolen all the Daleks’ thunder, but that’s a bit like accusing The Beatles of making Cliff Richard look a bit lame – a better alternative came along, that’s all. Davros is everything the Daleks aren’t – creepy, repulsive, insidious, and capable of holding his own in genuinely thrilling confrontations with the hero. And Julian Bleach has clearly nailed it from the get-go – the perfect synthesis of Wisher’s cunning and Molloy’s barely contained hysteria, he just might turn out to be the daddy of them all. (Is it just me, though, or is there something inherently funny about Davros being played by a bloke called Julian? Or is it actually slightly less ridiculous than his real name being Terry?).

Oh, and the cliffhanger was a bit of a doozy, too.

Sadly, these triumphs were in danger of being buried under an avalanche of lazy plotting, spurious continuity, vaulting over-ambition and a general, pervasive air of silliness. A few random examples:

What the hell was going on with the big talking kids’ TV computer?

Spin-offs-a-go-go. If last week saw a good episode tainted by its association with Voyage of the Damned, this week RTD went one better by smearing Torchwood all over it like some kind of cross-franchise dirty protest.  And I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for The Sarah Jane Adventures but, bearing in mind it pulls in a million viewers, tops, wouldn’t 80% of the audience have been wondering what the hell was going on with the big talking kids’ TV computer?

Continuity overload. On top of the cast who actually appeared, there were namechecks for Tosh, Owen, Maria, Maria’s dad, Clyde, even Mr bloody Copper, not to mention references to the plot of The Dalek Invasion of Earth and the planet Calufrax (see how my point last week about casual viewers not being familiar with The Pirate Planet suddenly makes sense? Hey, if RTD can retcon random nonsense as significant plot arcs, so can I.)

John Barrowman turning it up to 11. And then turning it up some more. This isn’t I’d Do Anything, you know.

The Shadow Proclomation. Once darkly invoked as the most powerful force in the galaxy, it turns out the SP is nothing more than “posh outer space police”. Way to undercut your own mythologising, Rusty. And while the exterior looked great, why did the TARDIS appear to land in some Victorian public toilets?

Too many “special” Daleks: Davros, Dalek Caan, The Supreme Dalek – typical bloody management-heavy organisation. I bet they’re all on whopping bonus packages, too.

“Annihilate UNIT”. Not sure why, but this really made me laugh.

The Doctor and Donna. They didn’t actually do an awful lot, did they? And what was with the Doctor just giving up and chucking in the towel like that? That just wasn't like Ten at all. Hasn't Russell got character notes he can refer to, or something?

Martha: “I’m medical director on Project Indigo.”
Jack: “They got that working?”
Martha: “Indigo’s top secret – no-one’s supposed to know about it!”

“Take this – it’s the Osterhagen Maguffin!” And where did Dempsey think he was sending Martha, exactly? Or was he just atomising her for the sheer heck of it?

The TARDIS, a time machine, bursts into flame with the effort of… travelling through time. Bit of a design fault, perhaps?

Harriet Jones - from mumsy MP to war-mongering PM to expert hacker. I believe this is what’s known in the trade as a “character arc”. And yes, the whole planet may have been taken out of time and space using technology so advanced the entire fabric of the multiverse is threatened, but don’t worry, all we need is a signal booster and we can still phone out for takeaway. (Using the power of a rift in time and space that ‘s now about a billion light years away. Did anybody actually read this before it got made?)

There’s a fleet of Daleks on the way to wreak more devastation on Cardiff than Charlotte Church on a night out to wet the baby’s head

The “wobbly TARDIS” shot. I know I’ve just spent ages affecting a snooty disregard for special effects and CGI set-pieces, but even I noticed this one. (The flying saucers over the street money shot was genuinely cool, though, I’ll give you that.)

I’m alright Jack: “Gwen, Ianto - there’s a fleet of Daleks on the way to wreak more devastation on Cardiff than Charlotte Church on a night out to wet the baby’s head, but I’m off. And I’m taking the Dalek-killing gun with me. See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya.”

The direction. I’ve said this before but, while Graeme Harper was once the nearest thing Doctor Who had to a genuine auteur, these days he just looks a bit flabby alongside Young Turks like Euros Lyn and James Strong. For example, check out the way he introduces the “Exterminate” broadcast – it’s supposed to be a pivotal moment: a chilling invocation of the power of a single word to fate a planet to its doom, but Harper chucks it in as casually as a Skype call from his mum, without any attempt to build up the tension, and then proceeds to over-compensate by having everyone get instantly hysterical. Or look at the way he has Cribbins gawping up at the sky for about five minutes without noticing it’s full of giant planets (and he’s supposed to be an astronomy buff! No wonder he always misses all the action).

Of course, The Stolen Earth can’t have been all that bad, otherwise why would I still be in such a state of feverish excitement for the next installment? (Incidentally, I think all the portents of doom surrounding Donna are a red herring, and Billie’s going to be the one to cark it. That’s not a spoiler, just a hunch). I guess I was just disappointed the episode wasn’t what I’d hoped it would be: I was all geared up to be indulged by one kind of fanwank, and I got a whole different type instead.

I love Doctor Who way more than is healthy but, considering this was the (almost) culmination of four years’ emotional investment, why was my most moving, enduring TV image of the day was Elbow’s anthemic triumph at Glastonbury? “Throw those curtains wide,” sang Guy Garvey exultantly. “One day like this a year would see me right.” This wasn’t that day but, in the same way a mistreated dog will always return to its tormentor, I’m still putting my faith in Russell delivering the goods this Saturday. Because love is blind, and hope springs eternal. Just go easy on the spacey spacey, stuff, okay?

Get Back

Doctor Who: Turn Left

Donna Noble wasn’t the only one changing direction this week. While the temperamental temp was dooming the world with a casual flick of her indicator, Russell T Davies was slamming on the brakes, locking the wheel and executing a complete 180. Or at least that’s how it looked, as the man who never wastes an opportunity to remind us how vulnerable the average Who viewer is to the lure of ITV’s big shiny floors went charging pedal to the metal through four years’ worth of backstory, collecting spaceships, spin-offs and supporting players from Sarah Jane to Sarah Parish like bugs on his windscreen.

Only last year, Rusty was still claiming that only a small percentage – two million, tops – of his audience were regular viewers, while the rest was made up of casual floating voters who wouldn’t know a Polyphase Avatron from an egg sandwich. Turn Left – and series four in general – suggests the big man has either decided to give these fairweather followers the finger, indulge his own fanboy fantasies and leave Moffat to deal with the fall-out or, more likely, has come to his senses and realised there’s a hardcore audience of at least five million who would stay in and watch this show even if a nuclear-powered replica of a giant ocean liner was about to land on their heads.

And who among those five million didn’t secretly punch the air every time they spotted some throwaway reference to another episode, character or distant outpost of the franchise? (There were more of them than you might think, too: I know I felt particularly pleased with myself for noting the tragic irony of Private Harris declaring the Doctor dead, knowing, with benefit of hindsight – or is it foresight? – that the Doctor isn’t, but he almost certainly is.)

A healthy dose of retconning’s all very well, but dignifying Voyage of the Damned with this sort of dark apocalyptic vision is a bit like making a Holocaust drama out of Bedknobs and Broomsticks

And that’s fine - there are perfectly good evolutionary reasons why we get such an endorphin rush from spotting these allusions and being able to piece together the evolving jigsaw puzzle in our heads. It’s to do with tribal allegiance, status within groups and the fact we’ve been hard-wired since the Pleistocene epoch to see every familiar face – or webstar or lunar hospital – as safe and secure, and every strange new thing as a potential threat. (Or something like that – look, you don't really come here expecting hard science, do you? The important thing is that cheering when you recognise a bit player from Smith and Jones, or a passing reference to The Time Warrior, doesn’t make a you a geek or a fanwank obsessive – it just makes you human.)

Turn Left, then, crosses hefty chunks of Sliding Doors with a dose of Love & Monsters, a dash of Father’s Day and a sprinkle of – well, everything else, really – to create what looks suspiciously like the first volume of a three-part Doctor Who Greatest Hits collection. Which is all terrifically exciting, so long as you remember that, just as greatest hits packages rarely come without their fair share of ropey filler, it’s impossible to travel back through this show’s history without tripping over some of its more maddening inconsistencies.

I’d dearly love to have seen the tone meeting for this one: “It’s gritty, tragic, hopeless; filled with dark shadows and a sickly sense of foreboding. Oh, and the Titanic lands on Buckingham Palace.” Because even the most causal viewer must have trouble reconciling scenes of refugees, internment camps and mass slaughter with that frothy festive nonsense with Kylie and the Queen. A healthy dose of retconning’s all very well, but dignifying Voyage of the Damned with this sort of dark apocalyptic vision is a bit like making a Holocaust drama out of Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

And yet, somehow, it works. Well, most of it works. This episode has so many ideas that some – like the gratuitous implication of gassing immigrants, which only served to cheapen a very real atrocity - are bound to fall short. And some elements seem only to have been included in a bid to paper over previous mistakes and inconsistencies (while haplessly throwing up a few more into the bargain – wasn’t London supposed to be deserted during VOTD, for starters?). But it’s always better to have too many ideas than too few and, in Turn Left, Davies’ scattershot imagination fires new (and, indeed, old) faces, locations, concepts and mysteries at us like an ADHD-afflicted Raston Robot who's missed his Ritalin shot.

According to this week’s Confidential, this was supposed to be “the cheap episode”. From that, I can only conclude that David Tennant is trousering the bulk of the weekly budget because, that bloody beetle aside, this certainly didn’t look cheap. I know the sfx were recycled, and every clip from the archives is a few quid saved but, even so… It seemed to have a massive cast – including every vaguely Chinese-looking person in Wales – and about a hundred different locations: Surely they’re still more expensive than a couple of minutes of CGI from The Mill?

In an episode filled with flying ocean liners, killer fat and the ghost of Earl Mountbatten haunting the Boat Show, Rose’s voice was by far the oddest element.

(Oh, and while we’re on locations, don’t think I’m going to let that cheeky Manc take on my home city of Leeds pass without comment. Suffice to say that, for all Donna’s horror and those redbrick terraces straight out of Life On Mars, if you’d turned over to BBC Two straight afterwards, you’d have seen Andrew Marr wrapping up his History of Modern Britain from “the Knightsbridge of the North”, and holding the city up as an icon of 21st century style and prosperity. Or empty consumerist Temple of Mammon, depending on which way you choose to slice it. But the point is it’s not all whippets and rickets and outside crappers. That is all.)

What’s striking about Turn Left is how, even though David Tennant is the beating hearts and wheezing-groaning engine of this show, he wasn’t really missed. And you can put that down to Catherine Tate, who was amazing. Again. Funny how easily we take that for granted now, isn’t it? And interesting how, now we’ve been assured of her versatility, and her character’s innate likeability, we can sit back and safely enjoy watching her resurrecting the strident, shrewish Donna of The Runaway Bride for a tour-de-force encore.

And then there was Rose - or Roshe, as she now appears to be known across the entire interweb. I mean, what was that all about? I know Billie has admitted struggling to find the accent again, but what on Earth – any Earth - made her think a speech impediment was the answer? In an episode filled with flying ocean liners, killer fat and the ghost of Earl Mountbatten haunting the Boat Show, Rose’s voice was by far the oddest element. Still, I guess at least she’s good for recycling old Sean Connery jokes (“Shall I meet you at 10ish?” “Tennish, I thought we were playing golf!”). And sorry to get all Closer on you, but who was Billie’s stylist on this - Neill Gorton? It’s all very well rhapsodising about the Doctor’s “great hair”, but you might want to sort out that Croydon facelift ‘do’ yourself, luv. (Incidentally, I don’t think it’s so much that Billie’s teeth have grown, as some have speculated, as that the rest of her face has shrunk around them, with the result that she could now, as my old mate Bobby used to say, comfortably eat an apple through a five bar gate. Hopefully those pregnancy cravings should sort her out – she was certainly looking a lot healthier in her Confidential interviews. I know, I know - it’s like Loose Women in here sometimes.)

All that aside, it was still a treat to have Billie back, even if she was reduced to playing a supporting role to Catherine Tate and the continuity researcher. It would have been all too easy to construct an entire episode around Rose’s return but, as we’ve discovered, RTD just has too many stories to tell right now – stories about mothers and daughters (and wasn’t that scene in the hallway - “S’pose I’ve always been a disappointment” “Yeah” - the bleakest, most brutal in Doctor Who’s long history?) and grandfathers and destiny and darkness and death and triumph and hope. It’s a big, bold vision that, for all its occasional over-reaching and over-ambition, has never looked bigger or bolder. Until next week anyway.

Next time: RTD breaks out in a cold sweat when he realises he’s neglected to find a place for K-9 and Company’s Bill Pollock in The Stolen Earth.

Sweet dreams (are made of this)

Doctor Who: Forest of the Dead

For a show about a time traveller, Doctor Who has always been strangely unforthcoming on the subject of time. Sure, in the early days we had the standard pulp sci-fi stuff about not interfering with the course of history, and lectures on how saving an Aztec from sacrifice in 15th Century Mexico could one day result in Primark closing down in Bracknell (or something) but, with the odd notable exception, the show’s writers have been largely silent on the subject ever since.

The man has wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff where the rest of us have DNA

Not Steven Moffat, though. The man has wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff where the rest of us have DNA. He would, as an old friend once said, get dizzy trying to walk in a straight line. I bet he even writes his shopping lists backwards (after he’s got back from the supermarket, probably).

Look at the evidence: The Girl In The Fireplace is a love story about two people who are unable to overcome their age difference – specifically, the difference between the Age of Enlightenment and the 51st Century. And Blink, Time Crash and now Forest of the Dead all use time, and the benefit of turning hindsight into foresight, as a way of solving thorny plot problems. Even his sitcom Coupling got laughs by replaying the same scenes from different perspectives, making time travellers of the audience even while his characters remained firmly tied to a west London wine bar.

The cheeky bugger also takes advantage of the show’s unique relationship with time to forward date his CV and tell us that, hey, if you think Doctor Who is cool now, you should see the stuff we’re doing in the future

In Forest of the Dead, Moffat has time working harder than a child in a Bangladeshi sweatshop, using it to give his story velocity (Donna’s hyper-accelerated alternative life, which slyly riffs on the conventions of television editing to pack several years’ worth of soap storylines into a matter of minutes), humour (“Why have you got handcuffs?” “Spoilers!”) and, ultimately, heartbreak (“Time can be rewritten.” “Not those times, not one line, don’t you dare.”)

And, cheeky bugger, he also takes advantage of the show’s unique relationship with chronology to forward date his CV and tell us that, hey, if you think Doctor Who is cool now, you should see the stuff we’re doing in the future - we’ve got red settings, Alex Kingston out of ER, the lot. And if the Tenth Doctor you know looks like the grooviest urban spaceboy on the block, he’s Iggy bloody Pop where I come from! (Oh, and he also looks set to be wearing the same face for some time to come – casting news from the future, perchance?)

For a moment there, I think I may actually have forgotten I was British and punched the air

Not that he’s exactly underplaying the Doc of today, of course. Ten may not have pimped his screwdriver with dampers yet, but it seems the Moff can’t help but write our goofy hero as a powerful being whose name – whatever it might be – echoes across the universe, as evidenced by his thrilling confrontation with the Vashta Nerada: Where most screen heroes would pull out a gun, the Doctor puts the lengthening shadows of death to flight with a simple: “I’m the Doctor and you’re in a library – look me up.” (For a moment there, I think I may actually have forgotten I was British and punched the air.)

And yet, as the Moff pointed out on this week’s podcast commentary, the Doctor is also just an ordinary bloke at hearts – a point amply demonstrated when, still reeling from having his holiest of holys whispered in his ear, we saw him physically shrug back on that facade of breezy, matey bonhomie he uses to keep other types of shadows at bay – a beautiful moment, exquisitely performed by Tennant who, by now, knows this character inside out and, indeed, back to front.

Poor Miss Evangelista, a badly copied, market-stall knock-off of her former self, destined to live a half life, brilliant, unloved, and definitely no oil painting (unless you’re a fan of Dali, of course)

It wasn’t just the Doctor who was served well by his new curator, either – every character had something to add to the rich tapestry of this episode. There was Anita, stoic, but not too stoic, in the face of death (“I’m only crying. I’m about to die – it’s not an overreaction.”). There was The Girl, railing at the terrible power to casually switch off her own daddy like an episode of Castaway, and Doctor Moon, dutifully presiding over the ebb and flow of the world’s virtual tides, and Lee McAvoy, who’s stammer not only denies him the woman he loves, but leaves her convinced he never even existed. Now that's tragedy. And then there was poor Miss Evangelista, a badly copied, market-stall knock-off of her former self, reduced to a half life, brilliant, unloved, and definitely no oil painting (unless you’re a fan of Dali, of course).

If Moffat had fun alluding to his own future history, this was also the week that saw him embracing his past, playfully reworking his greatest hits with some cool new riffs and a few subtle changes to the lyrics. The “so why are there six of us?” sequence is a motif that runs through his stories like a watermark. First seen in The Doctor Dances’ “if the tape’s finished, why is he still talking?” heart-stopper, (officially the Greatest TV Moment of 2005, lest we forget), it re-emerged in the same story’s “who’s typing?” scene, and again in The Girl In The Fireplace’s “the clock’s broken, so what’s ticking?”. Some may call this laziness; I prefer to think it’s the sort of signature trope Hitchcock might have relished in his pomp.

The average Doctor Who guest character has the life expectancy of a chain-smoking Mayfly

Zero body counts are another Moff trademark, but The Forest of the Dead went further with a blatant allusion to another iconic moment of ’05 vintage, the Ninth Doctor’s triumphant “everybody lives!”. Here it was packaged as nothing less than a part of Who – or at least Moffat Who – folklore: the Doctor who always wins, always heals. This cheerfully ignores the fact that, most weeks, the average Doctor Who guest character has the life expectancy of a chain-smoking Mayfly, but the idea this battle-scarred war veteran never gives up hope of a happy ending – “I do think that all the skies in all the worlds might just turn dark if he ever, for one moment accepts it” – is an irresistible one. (Just look at the smile the Doctor flashes The Girl as he’s saving River – it could melt your heart, or turn you gay, or both.)

The most audacious manner in which Steven Moffat plays with his own reputation, though, is in the episode’s closing moments, as River tucks in her children (including, significantly, The Girl – chalk that up as another child who stops wreaking havoc the moment she finds her mummy) and wishes them – and us – sweet dreams.

That’s right: The master of nightmares, the man responsible for more bed sheets going into the wash than Russell Brand, is tucking us up and telling us to sleep soundly.  Because it’s okay – the Doctor has fixed it: Everybody’s saved and, this time at least, they're safe as well.

Britain's Got Tennant

Doctor Who: Silence In The Library

So ITV’s singing dogs and lapdancing grannies were all set to give the opposition a pasting on Saturday, but don’t worry – the Beeb’s continuity announcer had it covered: “New initiatives to bring down waiting times - and Charlie’s not happy, in Casualty” he promised tantalisingly, as if daring us to so much as think about touching that dial.

But before Holby General’s preternaturally reasonable head nurse could come along to apply his patented “scratching head while looking bemused” shtick (imagine Stan Laurel being told his entire family has just been wiped out in a freak bobsledding accident, and you’ll get the general idea) to the NHS apparatchiks’ latest Kafkaesque machinations, there were 45 minutes of Steven Moffat-penned Doctor Who to get through.  How ever would we stand the suspense?

JobCentre Plus! Under the sea!

It’s getting pretty boring to say Moffat is Who’s best writer, but it doesn’t make it any less true. Even without his reputation and groaning trophy shelf, though, this story would apparently still have been a shoo-in because, in the never knowingly under-effusive words of Russell the T himself: “Space! Library! How can that not be commissioned? It’s a must!” (Blimey - if I’d known that was all it took, I’d have sent in my own one-line pitch - “JobCentre Plus! Under the sea!” years ago.)

But I guess Rusty has a point: Libraries are kinda cool. And, as Moffat pointed out on this week’s Confidential, being a bit of bookish, nerdy sort does set the Doctor apart from the alpha male Bonds and Bourne’s of this world, and is thus officially considered by champions of public service broadcasting to be a good role model for The Kids.

Having said that, it’s difficult to see how turning libraries into terrifying temples of doom where, even if you manage to avoid an overdue fine, you're still in danger of having the flesh stripped from your bones, is exactly going to help the nation’s child literacy crisis. But then, as Who’s scarifier in chief, Moffat brings a wonderfully unrepentant zeal to his mission to leave no bed un-wet, delighting in poking about in the corners of our primal, atavistic fears, be they creepy statues, monsters under the bed or, erm, gas masks.

Giant pink brain! It's A Knockout! Mr Sheen!

This time, of course, he’s taken the plunge and gone straight for the biggie – chapter one, page one of the Big Book of Scary Things: darkness itself. "Almost every sentient species in the universe has an irrational fear of the dark,” says the Doctor, who has developed a habit of speaking in movie tag lines. “But they're all wrong. It's not irrational..." Oh, and just for luck, it turns out the dust in sunbeams could quite happily have your face off as well. Who's writing this - Mr Sheen?

In many ways, Moffat would have been an ideal writer for the budget-stretching “classic” series, sticking as he does to the edict that it’s the things unseen that inspire the most dread. After all, why pay The Mill a fortune to produce a giant pink brain, or go to the effort of stitching Peter Kay into a comedy It’s A Knockout suit, when all you have to do is position a few lamps to throw some spooky shadows around the place?

Mr! Whippy!

The absurdity of screening this journey into Who’s heart of darkness while the sun was melting ice creams on the pavements has been noted elsewhere in this forum, but this was still pretty scary stuff for 7pm – and no less so for the terrors being as much psychological as physical. After all, would seeing Miss Evangelista being eaten alive have been any more disturbing than being confronted with her disembodied, final thoughts? This wasn’t fear of death, this was the fears of the dead (from BEYOND THE GRAVE) – a pretty chilling concept, even if did have to compete with Mr Whippy nosily plying his trade outside.

And then, because nothing in a Moffat script is ever wasted, minutes later the newly-minted terror of “ghosting” came back at us in the most trouser-browning manner imaginable. From his multiplying shadows to his eerily uplit skull, Proper Dave’s slow surrender to the Vashta Nerada was truly horrifying – even if The Sun did dedicate a full page to its similarities to a 40-year-old Scooby Doo ’toon (and how surreal was that? They’ll be asking Lawrence Miles to write the TV Biz column soon).

Again, the most unnerving element was not what had been taken, but what was left behind: Dave’s casual insistence that “I’m fine, I’m okay, I’m fine…” and his confused, halting “I can’t, why can’t I…?” were positively haunting, like one of those car crash victims who walks from the wreckage without a scratch on them and then drops dead a few minutes later. (Did I mention that this stuff is for kids?) “Who turned out the lights?”, meanwhile, is clearly intended to join “Don’t blink” and “Are You My Mummy?” in Moffat’s ever-expanding playground glossary.

Oh, and if all that wasn’t enough darkness for you, Catherine Tate gave us what most rank as the most blood-curdling scream in the series’ history (yeah, beat that, Langford) before being forcibly turned into what appeared to be this season's must-have Apple accessory; the iGob, perhaps?

Harold Pinter! Fighting robots!

Some have been quick to criticise the talky nature of this episode, but that’s a bit like dismissing the works of Harold Pinter on the basis it doesn’t have any good fights between robots. It’s not a question of whether you’re talking, it’s what you’re saying, and you could hardly accuse dialogue like this of being time-filling verbiage. A few choice examples:

“The real world is a lie, and your nightmares are real.” “I’ve dated androids – they’re rubbish.” “If you understand me, look very, very scared.” “I never land on Sundays. Sundays are boring.” “She’s a footprint in the sand and the tide is coming in…” and, my personal favourite, “We go way back, that man and me. Just not this far back” (which has definite shades of last year’s killer “They send you back in time and let you live to death”). And I loved the Doctor hacking into a sophisticated piece of alien tech, only to be confronted with the question: “Would you like to speak to my dad?”

All this, and I haven’t even touched on Professor River Song (more on her next time, no doubt), the classy production design, Euros Lyn’s assured direction and Other Dave’s frankly magnificent hair.

But you get the idea: Simon Cowell may have won the day, but people will still be watching Silence In The Library (probably in “classic flat-o-vision” or some such) in a hundred years’ time, which is approximately 99 and a half years after anyone outside his immediate friends and family will give more than a passing thought to breakdancing “sensation” George Sampson.

Britain’s got talent? You bet your life it has.

Music from and inspired by the hit BBC television series

Doctor Who: Musical Interlude #5

As someone who despairs every time he sees The Bends or Revolver topping yet another of those pointless All Time Best Album lists, I’m disappointed to say my choice of favourite Who music is so crushingly populist you can probably get it at Asda. I mean, you only have to look at the title – The Doctor’s Theme – to see I could hardly have been more obvious if I'd chosen what I believe professional musicologists refer to as "the Woo Woo section” of the title music.

But anyway, The Doctor’s Theme it is. Performed by mezzo soprano Melanie Pappenheim, this beautifully ethereal siren song is like a soft sigh disturbing the dust of ages; a slowly unfurling curl of musical smoke caught and then scattered on the unforgiving winds of the time vortex…

Sorry, seem to have strayed into “sonic cathedral” territory for a moment there. It’s just it’s such a relief finally to have something to rhapsodise about after all those years of discordant clatter from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, whose scores tended to sound like a cross between a dial-up modem and Stephen Hawking falling down some concrete steps.

People can bellyache all they want about the music “telling us what to feel”, but you might as well complain about a scene being edited to make it look exciting – it’s the composer’s job to punch our emotional buttons just as much as the scriptwriter’s.

As our hero’s personal musical leitmotif, The Doctor’s Theme has inevitably been employed to underscore some of the series’ most emotionally resonant moments – particularly to emphasise the Doctor’s “lonely angel” status as a solitary traveller weighed down by the burden of those he’s left behind. Of these, my favourite is probably the sequence in The Satan Pit in which the Doctor contemplates what might be his parting words to Rose. It’s a fine scene whichever way you slice it, but it’s the music that really helps lift it from a standard ‘Doctor in peril’ scenario to a moment of transcendental beauty that wouldn’t disgrace the final moments before a regeneration. (And people can bellyache all they want about the music “telling us what to feel”, but you might as well complain about a scene being edited to make it look exciting – it’s the composer’s job to punch our emotional buttons just as much as the scriptwriter’s. So let’s have no more of that silly talk.)

Several weeks later, this haunting refrain was treated to the Who equivalent of the 12” remix to become the pulsing, throbbing heartbeat of raw emotion that soundtracked the Doctor and Rose’s story reaching it’s shattering conclusion. At which point, I’ll admit, I may have started to lose perspective.

Cos here’s the thing: A few years ago, a friend and I had knocked out a demo of some songs we’d been working on - unremarkable bedsit angst stuff, for the most part, plus a token political protest number that was so timidly afraid of sloganeering it was actually impossible to tell what it was supposed to be protesting about (and, as far as I’m aware, has thus far failed to lead to the downfall of any governments.)

Anyhow, the point is I’d written most of these songs as a poor, pathetic wretch reeling from a particularly bruising failed relationship. But by the time we got round to talking about doing some more songs, I was happily – some may even say smugly - married and looking forward to growing fat and old with my beautiful wife. Which is great for the soul, but not particularly conducive to heartfelt emotional outpourings.

In fact, preposterous as it sounds, the closest my lip had come to wobbling recently was while watching those final, throbbing moments of Doomsday, which had been simultaneously so heartbreaking and triumphant (I believe the Spanish word, which has no English equivalent, is duende - “exquisite sadness”) I couldn’t get it out of my head for days. And then there was that phrase the Doctor had used: “I’m burning up a sun, just to say goodbye” – a typically OTT piece of Russell T Davies nonsense, but a punch to the guts nonetheless – which sounded not unlike the title of a lost Muse album.

And so it was that, in the struggle for inspiration, I took the Doctor and Miss Tyler for my own muse and wrote a song about them. That’s right, a song – a bloody ballad - about Doctor Who.

This, I realised even at the time, was not cool. In fact, it couldn’t have been less cool if I’d been cooking chips on the sun in a 100% polyester gorilla suit. What’s more, I couldn’t help thinking of that old Smith and Jones sketch about the composer who keeps writing inappropriate music hall songs for Hollywood epics (“Where’s your Apocalypse Now, boys, where’s your Apocalypse Now?” etc) – not to mention the wailing ghosts of previous Who-inspired musical travesties from the likes of Frazer Hines, Roberta Tovey, Blood Donor and, lest we forget, Jon Pertwee.

So it was probably a lucky escape for everyone that that second demo never got made. But if a mawkish musical tribute to Doctor Who with just five chords and a defiantly unadventurous AAAA rhyming structure is what you feel your life has thus far been lacking, do feel free to play along - or at least wave your lighter - at home…

I’m burning up a sun, just to say goodbye

C                      Am     C          D         
I’ve been living out among the stars

C                   Am                   Em         
Seen death on Venus, life on Mars

C                   Am        C           D         
Fought with monsters, fought in bars

C      Am                G
I got bruises, battlescars
                           
Thought that I was so alone
’Til you showed me a place called home
Spirits healed and hearts re-grown
Now I’m back here on my own

D                                   C   
Took you out beyond the sky

      Am                          G
To distant stars and satellites

D                                                   C 
And though I can’t stand to see you cry

                         Am                          G
I’m burning up a sun, just to say goodbye

I touched the face of God and Jesus
Found that they were worked by levers
Pulled by liars and deceivers
Broke the hearts of true believers

But I have faith in all your people
Planet like a blue cathedral
When I thought I was destroyed by evil
You wrote my story such a sequel

Took you out beyond the sky
We watched the Earth break up and die
And though I can’t stand to see you cry
I’m burning up a sun, just to say goodbye

Dead funny

Doctor Who: The Unicorn and the Wasp

Despite an otherwise tediously forensic examination of its every epigrammatic cough and spit, the one thing my English teacher neglected to mention when we read The Importance of Being Earnest at school was that it was meant to be a colossal piss-take. I think I might have enjoyed it a lot more if he’d let me in on that one.

No such worries about this week’s Doctor Who, though: Even a schoolboy as slow on the uptake as I was couldn’t have failed to notice The Unicorn and the Wasp was such a reverential parody of the works of Agatha Christie – and the country house murder mystery in general – it was in danger of meeting itself on the way out of the billiard room with the candelabra.

Being Doctor Who, of course, it went one further and made the loving element of homage the fulcrum on which the entire plot revolved – and even found time to chuck in a bit of meta-textural fluff about the show’s own blending of fact and fiction. (In fact, there are probably all sorts of tedious quasi-academic treatise to be written about the viewers’ complicity in this particular TV parlour game, so if you see anyone acting suspiciously in the vicinity of terms like fourth wall, post-structuralism or, indeed, meta-textural, you are advised to alert the appropriate authorities.)

In many ways, Gareth Roberts was on easy street here – chucking in a grab-bag of familiar tropes from even the sketchiest Christie primer was exactly what the project demanded and, ultimately, what gifted the episode so much of its charm. And, far from being mere window dressing, it’s the period trappings that prove crucial: Imagine, for a moment, that Pip and Jane Baker hadn’t been such ham-fisted hacks and had turned in a reasonable murder mystery pastiche for Terror of the Vervoids (I know, I know, but try); the fact it was set aboard a white plastic spaceship filled with people in casual 80s sportswear would still have damned it to being on the back foot when trying to present a satisfying whodunnit. But give us gramophones, sun-dappled lawns, mahogany trim and a pink gin and we’re up for anything, what what?

Ultimately, though, comedy episodes stand or fall by one criteria – was it funny? And The Unicorn and the Wasp was an absolute hoot. I watched it in extremely mixed company, ranging from casual fans to several Americans who had never seen the show before (“Which one’s Doctor Who?”) to the bloke who played the sax on Howard Jones’ Like To Get To Know You Well (don’t ask), and everyone laughed in all the right places the whole way through.

Tennant simply excels at this sort of light comedy, bounding from parlour to dining room to library dropping bon mots like cake crumbs and devouring Roberts’ witty wordplay with the relish of a Trappist monk who’s just been given leave to tell a particularly filthy joke.

It was obvious from the get-go that this was a script custom-built for David Tennant, and it’s impossible to imagine any other Doctor having quite the chutzpah to carry it off. Tennant simply excels at this sort of light comedy, bounding from parlour to dining room to library dropping bon mots like cake crumbs and devouring Roberts’ witty wordplay with the relish of a Trappist monk who’s just been given leave to tell a particularly filthy joke.

The poison sequence, in particular, must be a contender for the funniest scene in Doctor Who’s 45-year history, Tennant’s blustery exasperation (“Harvey Wallbanger?!?”) matched tic-for-tic by Catherine Tate’s boneyard dry sarcasm (“Oh, too much salt”). Tate’s Donna was also particularly suited to her role as the sleuthing Doctor’s plucky gel assistant, moving easily between girlish enthusiasm and a sort of withering Greek chorus (“Professor Peach. In the library. With the lead piping.”). She still can’t run in heels, though.

Elsewhere, the story’s parade of familiar archetypes were well served by a strong cast, including national treasure Felicity Kendal and fan treasure Christopher Benjamin. It was a shame the ensemble nature of the piece reduced most of the talent to little more than glorified cameos, but it was entirely appropriate that the one performer who really got a chance to shine was Fenella Woolgar as Christie herself. Previous sleb historicals have opted for a familiar name in the pivotal role, and the temptation to indulge in a spot of stunt casting (in an alternate dimension, there’s an issue of DWM with the quote “Tamzin Outhwaite is the busiest woman in Britain, so we were thrilled when she said yes!”) must have been strong, but Woolgar was just perfect; if anything, her chemistry with Tennant was even stronger than Tate’s – the scene in which she admonished him for enjoying himself too much was delightfully played by both actors, and I loved the mock reproach in her declaration: “Doctor, you are impossible.”

If you’re looking for the one major element that let The Unicorn and the Wasp down, the clue’s in the title – and it has nothing to do with jewel thieves or horny horses. There’s a certain stripe of Who fan, of which I count myself one, who would love to see the producers have the cojones to go monster-free occasionally but, hey, I’ve read the memo on keeping those damned kids’ happy, so I understand why this perfectly enjoyable time travel caper had to have a ruddy great Hymenoptera plonked in the middle of it. It’s just a pity the Vespiform couldn’t have taken the guise of something a bit more organically linked to the setting – a giant Victoria sponge, perhaps? Okay, maybe not. (The transformation effect, incidentally, was a spectacularly cheap affair – ask the actor to say “zzzzzz” while shining some coloured lights on him. But if you care about that sort of thing, you’re probably reading the wrong blog.)

There were other irritations: It wasn’t just the Doctor who was breezily cavalier about death (witness how quickly Lady Woolgar appeared to get over the death of her own son) but I guess, from Christie to Cleudo to Midsomer Murders, the genre has always worn its tragedies somewhat lightly. The sci-fi elements of the plot – alien wasp man absorbs works of Agatha Christie through a necklace, or some such bollocks – were also even flimsier than usual (and that's saying something). But what the heck. It might be ironic that, in a tribute to the first lady of plotting, the plot itself barely had time to simmer, let alone thicken, but with so many other giddy distractions on offer, it would be churlish to grumble too much. As a gay old treat to be enjoyed over a Mint Julep on an early summer’s evening, this was the cat’s pyjamas.

Jenny from the Doc

Doctor Who: The Doctor's Daughter

Like any good sci-fi spod, there’s a part of me that despairs at the nation’s obsession with soap operas (well, soap operas that aren’t Coronation Street, anyway). With the boundless potential of the human imagination at our disposal, my inner dork argues, why limit our interest to the same tatty carousel of adultery, family feuds and teenage pregnancies?

And yet there’s no denying the personal will always triumph over the political. It’s a basic evolutionary survival strategy to value your life, and the lives of anyone who can help propagate your genes, above all else, which is why we all spend a lot more time fretting about family and friends and whether that girl from Starbucks likes us or not than we do the fact the world is fast disappearing down the shitpipe.

So when Russell the T says it would be impossible to make 21st Century Doctor Who without heightening the emotional content, only an idiot - or someone who has just really enjoyed The Invasion of Time (and, let’s face it, those two groups are really more of a circle than a Venn diagram) – would disagree; without love, I am as a clanging bell and all that. What’s more, some of the most effective New Who episodes – School Reunion and both Paul Cornell’s contributions among them - are the ones extrapolated from a simple, one-line emotional pitch: What if the missus met the ex? What if Doctor were human? If I’d been Phil Collinson, then, when Russell turned to me during one of their brainstorming drives up the M6 and said “Ooooh, I know, what about giving the Doctor a daughter? Hurrah!” I too would have said yes, wonderful, marvellous and all those other things Phil Collinson likes to say.

The problem is (and here’s the grit in the Vaseline you knew was coming) when the entire story ends up tying itself in knots and jumping through hoops (or lasers, anyway) in a desperate, doomed attempt to sketch in enough background to support this initial, Ginsters-fuelled premise, you do have to wonder if the tail isn’t wagging the dog just a little.

So yes, playing Who’s the daddy was a good wheeze, and when you’ve got an actor of the calibre of David Tennant it’s good to stretch him and blah blah blah. But did anything about this story – set-up, characters, situation – actually convince? Or were they all just cogs and pistons grinding mindlessly away to deliver the Doctor a daughter – and then dispatch her – in 42 perfunctory minutes?

This guy has to be the most back of a fag packet Doctor Who villain since that Nazi who came over to England to steal a bow and arrow and watch the tennis.

One example among many: The beardy general. This guy has to be the most back of a fag packet Doctor Who villain since that Nazi who came over to England to steal a bow and arrow and watch the tennis. I’d love to have been a fly on the wall when Nigel Terry asked the director what his motivation was. Was he really only supposed to be a few hours old? How had he become leader of an army? Why did he look so knackered and grizzly and disheveled? Why did he have a West Country accent? And, sorry, what was his name again? (I just looked it up in the Radio Times and it’s Cobb - probably on account of it being quite a small role. Small roll, see? Oh never mind.)

And he wasn’t alone. I mean, what was with that flatpack world in a fishbowl nonsense? Why did it start building the new planet to resemble a disused Welsh paper mill? And what, since we’re all here, was the point of the Hath, exactly, other than to remove poor Freema Agyeman from the main action again? (After Torchwood, The Sontaran Stratgem and now this, it’s starting to look like the writers haven’t got a clue what to do with Martha, which is a bit worrying, given she was specifically created to be the heart of the show and the viewers’ emotional touchstone. Maybe Russell should have gone with that Victorian parlour maid after all?)

Anyway, none of this would have been so bad if the central premise had been handled more credibly. As it was, any attempt to introduce Jenny in a convincing, measured and emotionally resonant manner had to be sacrificed to the exigency of having her arrive fully-formed before the title sequence kicked in. Talk about a lost opportunity. They could, at the very least, have had the Sontarans and Evil Martha just popping casually out of a pod last week and saved the bubbling bath of gloop for the Big One. That way we might have got some sense of a new life being brought into the world: something gasping, shivering, disoriented, frightened and generally a bit less… well, perky. Instead, we got Jenny Who stepping out with a grin and just stopping short of saying “Tonight, Doctor, I’m going to be your daughter!” (Then again, maybe you’d be happy to discover you were a genetic anomaly if you’d spent your life thinking half your DNA came from Sandra Dickinson.)

All this did was throw up more and more questions: Who created Jenny’s fetching tight t-shirt and leather pants combo? Who did her make-up? Who put her hair in a ponytail? (Is that scrunchy part of her DNA?) And is this the first example in television history of what can only be described as gratuitous non-nudity?

Of course, you could argue that, hey, this is Doctor Who - dumb stuff happens and you've either got to roll with it or get off the horse and watch The Wire or something. But I’ll admit I was fully pre-sold on the concept of this one, and genuinely disappointed to see it so badly fudged. And because I never felt able to believe in Jenny in the first place, it just made all those “let’s stop running and take five for a bit of bonding” moments seem unbearably contrived. (Jenny’s “death” being the worst offender – partly because this crushingly inevitable sequence was signposted the minute she was offered a place aboard the TARDIS, and partly because it was uncomfortably reminiscent of the horribly forced emotion of the Doctor cradling the dying Master in last year’s finale.)

Terrifying, brilliant and fun, all at the same time

But even if this was a bit of a pony tale, there was still much to enjoy. Like Stephen Greenhorn’s script for series three, the best thing about The Doctor’s Daughter (apart from Georgia Moffett, whose plucky performance and, ahem, demeanour helped us to cheerfully ignore the fact there'd clearly been a mix-up with the Who and Hollyoaks casting calls) was the dialogue. Though lacking a set-piece showdown to rival the Doctor and Lazarus’ electrifying dialectic on humanity last year, this should still comfortably fill a page or two of The Doctor Who Bumper Book of Quotations. The Doctor being outwitted by his own progeny on the question of whether he was a warrior was beautifully conceived, and there were a couple of successful passes at distilling the essence of the Tenth Doctor (“Not impossible – just a bit unlikely” and “You talk all the time but you don’t say anything”) into handy soundbites – not to mention a sly tribute to the magic of Doctor Who itself (“It can be terrifying, brilliant and fun, all at the same time”).

Catherine Tate, meanwhile, continues to avenge the theft of her comedy award by stealing every scene in sight. Donna’s teasing the Doctor over his “dadshock” (“You can’t extrapolate a relationship from a biological accident” “Child Support Agency can...”) was an example of exactly the sort of sparky interplay Tate was hired to provide, while her attempt to display her feminine wiles – only to be knocked back in favour of a clockwork mouse – was priceless.

With its underground humans praying to false totems, the plot, such as it was, contained echoes of The Mysterious Planet - not to mention the countless other Who stories in which a Godhead is unmasked as only a slightly more sophisticated version of The Wizard of Oz standing behind a curtain pulling some levers. (And yet people still insist on holding seminars about Christianity in Doctor Who; I guess Mark Twain was right - faith really is believing something you know ain’t true.)

Visually, this had all the hallmarks of being a budget episode designed to save a bit of cash for the end-of-season all-star blow-out. It started impressively enough with a huge FX sequence – CGI, explosions and some kick-ass stunt work – but it turned out this was just a trailer for The Antiques Roadshow, of all things, and, after that, things were considerably more restrained, to the point where Jenny Who’s victorious flight to freedom was reduced to little more than a firefly speck of moving light.

Oh yeah, about that. It was lost on me at the time but, thanks to a bit of a-nodding and a-winking on Confidential (you know, in those rare moments that aren’t Danny Hargreaves blowing things up), it seems having a distaff Doctor rattling about the universe may yet prove to be Very Significant in the near future. But what’s the big secret? Will Jenny be used to lure the Doctor into the ultimate trap? Will she be turned to the Dark Side by an old enemy lurking in the shadows? Will she get her own Big Finish spin-off series? Or will the sheer force of will being generated by a few die-hard Ming Mongs force Rusty to finally lose it and turn her into the Rani? Like everything else about The Doctor’s Daughter, it wouldn’t be impossible – just a bit unlikely.